I glanced at Ian. He really was praying, his eyes no doubt seeing invisible hosts, his lips painting silent litanies for their merciful pleasure.
Dammit, I liked the man. He was honest, open-minded, intelligent, good company and he loved Mary. I couldn’t just stand by and let someone—even a damned ancestor—take her away from him over his dead body. There had to be a way to get my two progenitors together without taking Ian apart.
“Ian,” I said, rising from the bunk I’d been sitting on, “stay here and don’t open the door for anyone but me or Mary.”
“Where are you going?” he asked.
“To do a little research.” I started for the cabin door.
“You’re a true friend, Arthur,” he told me. “I promise you that the first son Mary and I have will be named after you.”
Startled, I could only blink at him and smile wanly. Then I hustled off the forward hold.
oOo
The database told me no more than I already knew about Charley and Maureen Dunbar. Some sources said they were married, though one indicated there was some scandal about the timing of the birth of their first child, others said she was his mistress and the child, Arthur Llewellyn Dunbar, was conceived out of wedlock.
I had difficulty seeing Mary MacCormac as anyone’s mistress.
About Dr. Ian MacCormac the data was no less ambiguous. There was a record of him on the Essex up until Bombay, 1805; then he disappeared. Jumped ship, according to the ship’s log.
Okay, I thought, that was another possibility. Ian didn’t die; he abandoned Mary out of fear for his own life.
Right. And dragons fly daily out of LAX. Who was I kidding? Ian would never leave Mary. Not while there was still life left in him.
Ultimately, as I sat huddled before my Grid comp, bathed in the colored backwash from its uninformative display, I could see only one way to assure both Ian’s existence and my own and I was sitting on it.
oOo
“Captain,” I said, “we need to talk.”
The Essex rolled into a long trough and wallowed there momentarily, challenging my sea legs. He hesitated with her, then turned from the helmsman to face me.
“Ah! If it isn’t the guardian angel.”
“I’m not an angel, Charley, and I’m about to prove it.”
He eyed me suspiciously. “What are you about, lad?”
I sighed. “I wish I knew. Come below with me a moment. We need to talk.”
He glanced at the helmsman, who squinted dispassionately ahead, clutching the wheel in gnarled hands. Essex charged up another long wave and teetered at its top.
What the passengers don’t know, I thought, would definitely make them sicker.
“I belong on deck in heavy weather, boy. But, here . . .” He moved to the fore side of the mizzen mast and beckoned me to follow him.
I didn’t see any errant blocks dangling about, so I did. Then I went on the offensive. “You’re trying to kill Dr. Mac,” I accused him.
He gazed at me steadily. “You think that of me, boy?”
“I know that of you. It’s got to stop.”
“Oh, has it? And can you thwart destiny, then? Is that within your powers?”
“Charley, look. If you and Mary—Maureen—are destined, then you don’t need to be doing this to Ian.”
“She is currently a married woman, Arthur. I can’t wed a married woman and her husband shows no inclination toward abandonment. In fact, he’s a most loyal and responsible fellow. Under other circumstances, I’d find him quite likable.”
“There are alternatives, Charley.”
He nodded. “Aye. I suppose he might sicken and die when we reach Bombay or suffer amnesia in a fall from bed. But why should I wait? What difference how he dies?”
“The difference is, if he dies from natural causes, my an—er . . . you won’t go down in history as a murderer or at least a suspected one. More to the point, you won’t, in fact, be a murderer.”
“But I’ve already murdered Ian MacCormac in my heart several times o’er, lad.” He shrugged. “Damage is done.”
“Look, if you could rewrite history as you wanted, what would you have happen?”
He frowned. “You mean history . . . between me and Mary?”
“Yes.”
“Well, I’d meet her before he could. Sweep her off her feet. Marry her and carry her off to sea before young Dr. Mac even figured in the story.”
“Then Ian wouldn’t have to die and you wouldn’t be a cold-blooded murderer.”
“No, I suppose not. And I’d never be a cold-blooded murderer.” He grinned wickedly.
I took a deep breath. “What if I told you you could do that—go back in time and meet her first?”
“I’d say you were tetchy from all the pitching.”
“The Warren Hastings,” I said. “Maureen Llewellyn. Need I say more?”
“I believe you can see the future, lad. I don’t believe you can travel to the past.”
“I can. I’ll prove it.”
“Right and well. Show me a sign. Make the lightning strike the ship and knock me dead.”
“Don’t tempt me,” I growled. “Come below with me. I’ve got something to show you.”
“What? More little flashing baubles invented by your uncle? A whole trunk full of ’em?”
I chilled. Reardon had told him. No, I realized as his hand slid surreptitiously to his coat pocket, Reardon had given it to him. I smiled. Two birds, one stone.
“Something much bigger and better than that,” I said. “Come down and take a look.”
“Ah, so you can rap my melon and throw me overboard?”
“Gee-zoo, Charley! What an imagination! I wouldn’t harm a hair of your mustache. Not with a ship full of loyal crewmen to tear me limb from limb. That’d be about the stupidest thing I could do. I just want to show you something to convince you I can travel in time.”
“Show me here.”
“Charley . . .”
As Providence would have it, we received, at that very moment, a lurid manifestation of that phenomenon known as Saint Elmo’s fire. I could not, in my wildest sea-dreams have conjured up anything so perfect. The helmsman called out above the hiss and rattle of wind and rigging and pointed aloft, looking incredibly archetypal. Every man on deck looked up into the darkening sky and smiled. Their patron Saint had blessed them—Bombay, look out.
Charley looked at me suspiciously. “It’s beyond the powers of men to bring on Elmo’s fire.”
“Yes, it is,” I agreed cheerfully. “Or travel in time, either, I suppose. Or foretell the future.”
“All right. Show me your miracle in the hold, Arthur Dunbar. But it had better convince.”
We went down into the Essex’s forward hold via the aft-most hatch. I had no intention of making my way down an open rolling, deck with Black Charley Dunbar on my heels. I sent him down the stairs first and directed him all the way to the forward hatch through O’Hara’s carefully ordered cargo.
Halfway to our goal I told him to take out the “bauble” he had in his pocket and use it to light our way. That rattled him a little and I felt a moment of giddy power.
“I don’t know how it works,” he complained.
I heard him fumbling for it and removed it from his possession, then unleashed a flood of soft pink-white light on our surroundings. Shadows loomed and crouched. A few scuttled. They were small enough to ignore, so I did . . . assiduously.
Behind the forward steps we came face to blank face with my Crate. Charley stopped.
“It’s a shipping crate,” he informed me.
“Is it?” I felt for the palm plate (a crudely stenciled palm tree, no less). It recognized my imprint and activated the door. “After you,” I said.
He peered at me intently in the skewed light, then hesitantly slipped into the big box. “Blessed saints and angels!” he muttered as the lights, dimmed in my absence, came full on.
The interior of the Crate carried no semblan
ce of crate-ness; it was an ergonomically designed, state-of-the-art piece of machinery with all the attendant frills and furbelows of same—blinking indicators showing time and space coordinates, temperature, barometric pressure, life support readings, oxygen mixture adjustments for the additional passenger and, of course, the onboard computer console and tactical display. The actual muscle of the thing—the Temporal Grid itself—was tucked out of sight under the flooring. All very impressive, I’m sure, to a man whose idea of hi-tech was a particularly well-oiled capstan and a few extra sails.
“This is—is . . . What is this?” he stammered, making an all-inclusive gesture.
I tried not to let the growing sense of power go to my head. “This is my time machine.”
He gazed around the tiny chamber, his eyes lighting on the lettering on the face plate of the Field Generator. “Tegren? Sounds like some sort of mythological beast.”
“Temporal Grid Enclosure. Time machine to you. Do you believe me now?”
“Where are you from? Are you an angel or a devil?”
“Neither. I’m an historian.”
“Ah. A little of both, then.”
I ignored the quip. “Do you believe me?”
“How does it work?”
I sighed. “Reader’s Digest version: We call it Shifting the Spectrum. It takes advantage of the fact that light behaves both as a wave and as a particle.”
He stared at me blankly.
“Look, that branch of science hasn’t been discovered yet. In fact, the word science hasn’t even been coined. Let’s skip the explanations.”
“What’s Reader’s Digest?”
“Look, do you believe me? Come on, Charley. Do you want to marry Mary without resorting to murder, or not?”
“How will it work? How can I meet Mary before he does?”
“By making sure you’re in the right place at the right time. Are you ready to try it?”
He glanced around again, then nodded uncertainly.
“All right. Now, they met five months ago yesterday morning in Manley Park, right?” I settled in over the Grid comp.
“Aye. She fell from her horse.”
“All right. Where were you that morning?”
“In town at . . . at an hotel, as it were.”
“And you spent the night there?”
“Aye.”
“I need an address.”
“Very well. Four Dunne’s Cottage.”
I repeated the address to the computer and was rewarded with a map of the area, its houses and businesses marked as accurately as possible.
“Spatial coordinates drawn from Four Dunne’s Cottage,” I ordered. “Temporal Coordinates: April 10, 1805—twenty three hundred hours.”
“It was the eleventh,” said Charley. “They met on the eleventh.”
“I want to have a head start. You’re so bull-headed it’ll probably take you all night to convince yourself to go along with you.”
“Beg pardon?”
“I’ll explain later. Sit down.” I pointed him to a spot on the floor.
“I can see this contraption wasn’t made for comfort.”
I ignored him, crossed my fingers and began a pre-Shift systems check. It was completed in seconds. I sent an emergency-Shift blip to my Shift-Eye and engaged the Field Generator.
It hummed. Charley looked concerned.
“Close your eyes,” I warned him. “Otherwise you might embarrass yourself.”
First-timers often neglected to close their eyes out of a desire to see the pretty colors generated as their physical reality responds to the Spectral Field. They also often lose the contents of their stomachs. For some reason, I’ve never done that, but then I’m of particularly hardy stock.
Charley closed his eyes and did not lose his lunch, but he was surprised as hell when I asked him to open them again bare moments later.
“That’s it?” he asked. “We’re back in London? Back in time?”
“Yes, sir. We are.” I scanned our immediate surroundings. Not pretty. We were a couple of inches deep in water of an unhealthy hue and surrounded by general refuse—broken boxes, stove-in barrels, splintered carriage wheels. We blended nicely into the contents of the alley next to Four Dunne’s Cottage.
I wrinkled my nose in anticipation. “Not a good neighborhood. Geez, Charley, can’t you afford better than this?”
“I don’t need to afford better than this.”
I rose and cautiously opened the door. The alley was empty . . . of humans, at any rate. I will not bother you with what it smelled like.
Together, Charley and I leapt the ankle-deep flood and made our way to the street. I looked up at Four Dunne’s Cottage, then turned to my very great grand-scoundrel.
“This isn’t a hotel, Charley. It’s a brothel.”
oOo
I convinced him that he had to be the one to go in and bring himself out. He knew his own habits, I argued. Knew which lady he favored. Besides which, what could be more convincing to him than meeting himself face to face?
“If I came to you and told you this wild story, you’d think I was crazy, wouldn’t you? But if you appear and tell, well—him—”
“I’d think I was crazy.” But he was nodding. “All right, Arthur. Your point is well taken. Are you sure there will be no deleterious effects?”
“Hollywood stuff,” I promised. “No one has ever expired upon seeing their own past. It’s not recommended, but hardly deadly.”
He gazed at me, brow furrowed, then squared his shoulders and marched purposefully to the front door of the house.
“Don’t get lost in there,” I called.
He emerged only ten minutes later with himself in tow. Thank God, I thought, they’re wearing different clothes. At least I’d be able to tell them apart.
They were arguing—I should be surprised?—and gesticulating wildly, almost in unison. It was like watching a synchronized mime team. I shook my head and trotted over to meet them at the bottom of the front steps.
“Here, this is Arthur,” said Charley-Is. “He can explain about the time box, if you really care so much to know. The important thing, Charley Dunbar, is the woman. You—I—we—must meet Maureen Llewellyn before that upstart MacCormac.”
“But I don’t want to marry,” argued Charley-Was. “I treasure my freedom, thank you, and I’ve no intention of chaining myself to one woman.”
“This is no ordinary woman, dammit. This is Mary.”
“I’ve yet to meet a woman—”
“If you come with us, you will meet her. The very woman. Dammit, man, you have to meet her. Meet her before she’s wed to someone else.”
Charley-Was smiled crookedly. “I’d say that’s the perfect time to meet any woman—after she’s married someone else. Married women make the finest mistresses . . . I’m told,” he added, glancing at me uncertainly.
“Charley Dunbar, you mutton-brain!” Charley-Is exploded. “This woman should be no man’s mistress! She’s an angel! Incomparable! Divine! I near sold my soul to get her. Truth is, I’m not sure I haven’t done that anyway. But, to the point—she’s married to some spineless doctor, a man completely unworthy of her. She—”
Charley-Was looked at me blandly. “He do go on, don’t he?”
Charley-Is threw up his hands in exasperation. “Mule stubborn! Arthur, you talk to him!”
I was finding it difficult to maintain my composure. “Me? He’s you—you ought to be able to handle him. You know how he thinks.”
“Aye, like a mule-stubborn mutton-brain!”
A movement at one of the facing windows above us caught my eye. “Look, people are staring at us. Let’s go someplace a little more private.”
“Aye, let’s show him the box,” suggested Charley-Is.
We returned to the alley, but I seriously doubted a crateful of incomprehensible technology was going to make Charley-Was willingly meet his match. Nonetheless, I showed him the Box, as Charley called it, and even demonstrated the di
sclite. He was impressed, but not enough to give up the life of a happy seafaring bachelor. He had less trouble accepting time travel than he did the idea of changing his lifestyle to exclude Four Dunne’s Cottage.
“Did I mention,” I said as he examined the disclite, flicking its vari-colored beam on and off against the grimy alley wall, “that Miss Maureen Llewellyn’s papa is Llewellyn, Lord Eachan? Or that after marrying her you acquire your own ships and an estate in Hampshire?”
He looked at me with new interest. “No, you didn’t mention that. A grave oversight under the circumstances.” He glanced at his “twin.” “You trust that prediction, do you?”
“I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t.”
Charley-Was gave the matter a long, hard thought. “All right,” he agreed. “Show me this paragon of female virtue. I’ve always fancied Hampshire.”
“Philistine,” muttered Charley-Is.
oOo
We were forced to take a room in a seedy inn since returning to Essex was out of the question. We explained the Charleys away as twins, but assigning them names proved problematic.
“You can’t both be Charley,” I observed. “Nobody names both twin boys Charley. What’s your middle name?”
They looked at the grimy sidewalk and scuffed in unison—precision pouters.
“It’s . . .” began Charley-Is, glancing obliquely at his second.
“It’s Charles.”
“Charles Charles Dunbar? I think not.”
“Charles is my middle name,” said Charley-Was. “My first name is . . .” He glanced at Other Charley.
“It’s Percival,” Is admitted.
“P-percival?” I repeated with as straight a face as possible. I could see why he’d gone by Charley; “Black Percy Dunbar” didn’t quite fit the image of a hard-driving East India captain.
“Fine,” I said, pointing at Charley-Is. “You’re Charley. You’re Percival.” I thumbed at Charley-Was.
“No I’m not,” he objected. “I am not Percival. I have never been Percival. I will never be Percival.”
“Well, you can’t be Charley, because I’m Charley,” argued Is.
“I’m as much Charley as you are and you know it! Fact, I’m more Charley, because I’m Charley first.”
All the Colors of Time Page 13