After a long few seconds, I exhaled loudly and looked first at Alex and then at the model ship floating in the blackness. Nothing had happened. It hadn’t sent me back. It had simply turned my green globe to a red one.
“I was afraid that might happen,” Patrick said.
So was I.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Boat Deck
Fifth Cycle
April 15, 1912
“THREE MORE SONGS left,” Marjorie said as the band started another ragtime tune.
“Lovely.” I glanced up from the deck chairs I had been attempting to tie together with frozen hands and looked at the eight-piece band. The white life jackets over their formal dinner clothes gave them an almost comic look. I didn’t think they were so funny. I hadn’t thought so the first time I had been out here building a raft, and I didn’t think so this time. They were ghosts a whole bunch more real than Gretchen and these ghosts frightened me something awful.
“I think this might actually work,” Alex said, straightening up from where he had also been tying deck chairs into a raft. He blew on his hands. “At least it will give us a fighting chance.”
“More than most of these poor souls got,” I said, indicating all the passengers that were streaming past us toward the stern of the boat. The looks on their faces ranged from blank shock to total fear bordering on hysterics. I’d bet the look on my face was much closer to the fear side.
Alex sighed and studied the flow of doomed passengers. “After eighty years, watching this scene still bothers me. I always preferred to stay down below in my room.” He took a long look at the passengers, slowly shook his head, and then went back to working on the raft.
One more look, a quick smile at Marjorie, and I did the same. The raft was our insurance policy. We’d had a long discussion about what we should do after my globe turned red and I hadn’t gone anywhere. Patrick figured that I would cycle back to the lodge at the next cycle, or somewhere else. He figured the energy needed for transportation was only brought through from the source at cycle intervals. That was why, when I turned my globe red, I hadn’t gone anywhere. His argument made a sort of logical sense, but I really didn’t like the thought of gambling my life on it.
When I pushed him, he even admitted there was a very slight chance that I would stay right through the cycle and go down with the ship. I figured that would be a pretty good way for the inventors of all this to get rid of bad apples among the “prisoners.”
But Patrick insisted it wouldn’t work that way. The Seeders would never allow someone from the future any chance at all of getting into the current time stream around the Titanic. Logically, I would be sent back to my own current time.
I wished.
After considerably more argument, Alex had elected to also activate his globe. He figured he might as well tag along with me if that was how it was going to work. Since I was so good at it, I used the stick to turn his globe red. For a moment afterwards I felt as if I had killed him. Maybe I had.
After that, Patrick and Marjorie had gone up to the library to recruit a few defenders. Alex and I had gone down to E deck to talk to a few old friends of Alex’s into also helping if there was a fight.
We found it hard to convince anyone to help, especially when both Alex and I were not really convinced whose side was the “right” side and whose side needed to be guarded against. We tossed the basic situation at them, plus some of our own doubts about Patrick, and somehow got a few to agree to meet up with him after the next cycle and do whatever they thought looked right.
Forty minutes after the ship hit the iceberg, Alex and I had worked our way back up the tilted grand staircase to the boat deck and started building the raft. We had nothing else to do and nothing to lose.
“How much time do we have on board after the cycle?” Alex asked. “I’ve always wondered what exactly happened, but past asking how many of these poor souls got killed, I never did.”
“Not much, I’m afraid,” I said, standing and trying to take some of the kinks out of my knees from kneeling for too long on the cold wooden deck. “The ship damn near does a headstand, then settles back to about forty-five degrees and slides under the water. There are some reports that it broke in two at that moment. If we don’t cycle, we need to be off the ship almost immediately.”
“He’s right,” Marjorie said. “You’d have a better chance being in the water.” She tried to give me a weak smile. I could tell she didn’t like the idea of me going in the water. I didn’t like it much either.
“Are we finished?” Alex asked.
I studied the raft. It looked solid enough. We had layered deck chairs like plywood, five deep. Each layer was securely overtied and then the next layer turned the other direction and tied. It was a hundred times better than my first attempt. “As good as we’ll ever be.”
“Which will it be?” Alex said. “Over the side or down the deck?”
“Down the deck,” I said. “I don’t think I could stand the shock of hitting the water. Let’s see if we can float it off the deck as the water comes up.”
“One song left,” Marjorie said. “Remember that first funnel collapses. You don’t want to be anywhere near it when it does.”
I glanced up at the huge funnel that towered over us. She was right. We’d have to try to go sideways away from the ship. I moved around in front of the raft and tried to pick up the front end. It was heavy and I couldn’t get it more than a few inches off the ground. But it would be easy for the three of us to drag it down the steeply sloped deck. The water wasn’t yet up to the bow end of the boat deck, but it didn’t have far to go.
We all got good holds and started pulling. In front of us, on top of the officers’ quarters, a dozen men frantically worked at loosening the two remaining lifeboats. A few passengers stood on the boat deck, watching, or staring out at the lifeboats rowing away on the dark sea below. Almost all the passengers had gone toward the stern, climbing to the highest point left out of the water in hopes that the ship would stay afloat.
We dragged the raft down past the band and past the empty davits that stood mocking those still left on board. “Not too close to the rail,” I said as we approached the bow end of the boat deck. “Don’t want to get tangled up in it when the raft floats.”
Alex nodded and we dropped the raft. The water swirled and splashed against the face of the deck. One swell washed up and drenched my feet and kicked the raft sideways toward Alex.
The sudden jarring sting of that intensely cold water brought the fear I’d been holding right to the surface. I didn’t want to die. Not now. Not after finally starting to really feel alive again. Even with all my years of diving, I wouldn’t last fifteen minutes in that cold water. If we didn’t cycle, the raft had better work. I took a deep breath of the biting, cold air and forced myself to calm down.
Behind and above us, the band paused for a moment and then started into the hymn “Autumn.” Another wave cut around us and sent cold jabs of pain up my legs and into my stomach.
Being careful not to slip on the slanted, wet deck, Marjorie moved over and gave me a hard, desperate hug, then one first and final kiss.
“I’ll see you,” I said as I hugged her back. “Don’t think you can get rid of me this easily.”
She smiled a half-smile at my stupid attempt at humor.
I kissed her a second time. One for me to remember. “Be careful,” I said. Then I turned to Alex. “Ready?”
He nodded. “Why not?”
The next wave cut at our feet and kicked the raft sideways as the blackness of the cycle pulled me from the cold.
If I could have cheered, I would have. It looked as if we wouldn’t be using the raft.
Good. Real good.
Now where were we going?
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
The Lodge
June 30, 1990
ALEX AND I appeared, standing side by side, in front of the lodge fireplace. The mirror was on the mantel behind us. Constance w
as working in the kitchen with her back to us and I could smell venison steaks cooking from the direction of the outdoor grill. It was the best smell that had ever crossed my nose. We had made it. Patrick had been right. I wanted to jump up and down, dance and shout, but the pack held me tight to the floor.
“Better tell Fred to put on a couple more steaks,” I said as I slipped the pack off and leaned it against the wall.
Constance jumped, sending the dish she was holding clattering across the counter. She jerked around. There was no way in the world I will ever forget the look of pure joy that filled her face as she saw us standing there.
“Doc!” she yelled. In the quickest move I had ever seen that big lady make, she was across the room and doing her best to break half my ribs with a hug. I hugged her right back. She felt damn good.
I’d been gone thirty hours and it seemed like a lifetime. Alex had been gone eighty-one years. I couldn’t imagine what he was feeling right now.
The front screen door banged opened and Fred and Steven ran in. “Doc! Hot damn!” Fred shouted and started toward us. At that same moment Gretchen came through the log wall beside the fireplace.
Talk about a welcome back.
Constance pulled me out of the ghost’s way and Fred moved over and slapped me on the back. In front of the fire Gretchen and Alex faced each other.
I glanced over at Steven. He was slumped in a chair, his eyes closed. I didn’t want to think about what he was hearing in his head.
Alex looked completely stunned at seeing Gretchen. He started to take a step toward her, then stopped. The intense cold radiating from her wouldn’t allow him to get any closer. I watched his eyes study her. I could feel the sadness and regret he felt. Eighty-one years was a long time, but it hadn’t been long enough for him to forget.
Slowly, without ever breaking her intense expression, Gretchen faded and was gone.
I moved over beside Alex and touched his arm. He seemed in shock. Steven groaned and sat up. His face had gone white, but he was smiling.
“She’s glad you have returned,” he said.
Alex took a deep breath and straightened his shoulders. His hands shook as he fought for control. “I didn’t mean to leave her.”
“She knows,” Steven said. “I could sense that she understood.”
Alex sighed, moved over to the couch and dropped down on it. After a moment he asked, “How can I help her?”
“I think she needs you to return to the Inn,” he said. “She waited for you there to return and she is still waiting.”
Alex glanced over at me. “You said the town was gone. Flooded out. Is going back to the Inn possible?”
“If you mean go down to where she plays the piano, I suppose so.” I turned to Fred. “Do we have enough tanks?”
He nodded.
“Then it’s possible,” I told Alex. Making a dive into that lake with a beginning diver would be hard, but we could do it.
“Will she wait a little longer?
Steven laughed. “She will wait as long as it takes.”
“Thank you,” Alex said.
I had a sudden idea and turned to Steven. “There may be some people coming to try to take Alex’s mirror. If that happens, would Gretchen help us protect it?” I didn’t know what she could do, but I figured it was worth the question.
Steven shrugged. “I doubt if she has any interaction at all with the living. She is tied to Alex and the mirror.”
I shrugged. “You never know when that might come in handy.”
“All right,” Fred said. “What’s this about someone coming to take the mirror? And where did you go? And who is this?”
I laughed. “It’s a long story that for now we’re going to have to keep short. And, yes, this is Alex. Even though you know that can’t be possible.”
I finished the introductions and we all moved over around the dining room table. Alex and I both ended up turning down Fred’s offer to put steaks on the grill for us. My stomach was still full from the huge lunch Constance had forced down me before I left and Alex said he had eaten right before he was pulled through the mirror, so he wasn’t hungry yet, either. He said he hadn’t been hungry in eighty-one years and wasn’t sure if he could even remember how to eat.
That statement set off a dozen questions from Constance, Fred, and Steven, so while they ate, I tried to give them a quick rundown of where I had gone and what had happened.
Fred wouldn’t believe I had actually been on the Titanic and after three attempts, I gave up trying to explain to Constance how the six-hour cycles worked and why Alex was exactly the same age as the very hour he had left the mining town of Roosevelt in 1909.
Sitting there trying to explain what went on started me doubting the last thirty hours. Maybe I’d had a bad dream. Or too much to drink. I might have been able to convince myself it hadn’t happened if not for the fact that Alex was sitting across from me and his grandmother’s mirror was on the mantel. And I didn’t want Marjorie to be a dream. She had been too solid. I wanted her to exist.
I ended my story with a fast explanation of how Patrick thought his enemies might be showing up here real soon to try to take the mirror.
“We have five new guests coming in right now,” Fred said.
“How do you know that?”
“Mail drop this morning. There was a note in there that five people had asked directions into here in Yellow Pine. The note said they were almost at the summit when the mail was dropped.”
“How long ago was that?”
“An hour,” Constance said.
“So if someone is trying to get down that trail now,” I said, “how long will it take them?”
“If they make it in the dark,” Fred said, “I’d guess five hours at the quickest. Stupid thing to do.”
“Well, if Patrick is right and they’re going to try to take the mirror, we’d better be ready for them.”
“If someone tries to take that mirror,” Fred said, “we’ll give them a fight.”
The smell and the look of that blood-spattered hall in the Titanic came flooding back over me. I didn’t want to have to stand and watch Fred’s or Constance’s face as the life drained from it.
I glanced over at Alex. He didn’t like the sound of Fred’s words either. “I hope we can find another way,” I said.
“Suggestions?” Steven said. “If these people are as you say this Patrick described, then they will stop at nothing to get the mirror. Correct?”
“I really don’t know,” I said. “We could be defending the mirror from the wrong people. Patrick trusted us, but he really had no choice, except to kill us. On the other hand, Susan went along with the rules we put on her. She didn’t try to take the mirror by force and I would wager she could have. We sure wouldn’t have expected it.”
“One thing is clear,” Alex said. “If we do not stop whoever is coming down that trail from getting the mirror, there will be a battle fought on the Titanic. Some of my friends may be killed and I do not want that. There has been enough killing. I would prefer that we try to deal with it here.”
“We could destroy the mirror,” Steven said.
“No!” I said. Alex was also shaking his head. That mirror was my only way to Marjorie. “If nothing else, the three of you can take off and hide and Alex and I will go back to the ship to warn the others.”
Both Fred and Constance were looking at me with looks that said, You’ve got to be crazy. I didn’t blame them. With me saying I wanted to go back to the Titanic, it was amazing they weren’t flat on the floor in fits of laughter.
“Could Susan have gotten word out to her people after she left here?” Steven asked.
“I don’t think so. Patrick seemed to have her wrapped up right from the moment she got there. Plus he made it seem there was no way in and out of the ship except through the original devices like the mirror.”
Steven nodded. “So they won’t be expecting any resistance at this point.”
“But they al
so won’t come in unprepared,” I said. “Susan told them who was here. We can count on that.”
“It seems to me,” Constance said, “that we don’t really know who these people are and how they are going to act. They might come in as nice as can be and simply ask to use the mirror.”
“They might,” I said, “but I doubt it.”
“But we have to find out for sure before we do anything,” Steven said. “Right?”
“That’s the problem.” I said.
“That’s simple enough,” Constance said. “We’ll let them come in and prove their intentions.”
“You have a plan?” I asked.
Constance smiled her wide, infectious smile. “I have a plan.”
***
Three hours later I found myself sitting on the same log Susan and I had sat on three nights before. Again tonight, the lake below me was a deep ink black, the air had a crisp, cold bite to it, and there were more stars in the sky than I could have imagined possible. But this time I was alone and scared. Not scared of the dark or the black lake, but instead of what was about to happen.
After two hours of working over Constance’s idea of letting them come in and prove themselves, we had come up with a plan of attack. Right now Constance was sitting at the dining room table, reading, and waiting for them to arrive. Alex was hiding upstairs. Fred and Steven were up the trail watching for whoever was coming. When they spotted our guests, Fred was to hotfoot it back to the lodge and warn everyone. I was to hide under the front deck and Fred would hide near the back door. Steven would follow them down the trail after they passed his location.
Constance was to see what they wanted and what their attitude was. If needed, on a signal from her, we were to all come in and surround them. Simple enough plan, if it worked. The simple plan for freeing Susan sure hadn’t.
All of us had guns. Constance had a small pistol in the pocket of her apron. Alex had Fred’s deer rifle, the same rifle that had killed Lawrence and Susan. Fred and Steven both had pistols. Constance’s .22 saddle rifle leaned against the log beside me. I didn’t like the thought of carrying it and Fred knew that. But in this case, with my best friends’ lives at stake, it was better to be safe than sorry. Amazing how situations can change hard-held beliefs. I didn’t plan on firing the rifle at anyone, but I actually felt slightly better having it beside me.
Laying the Music to Rest Page 19