I can’t actually remember, but Katherine shakes her head. “I don’t…think so.”
“Well, there you have it. The women in that group don’t control the money. Jemima’s not stupid. She sucks up to the ones who actually fund her ministry, thanking them for any service their wives or daughters may have given. Since you are the one who rendered a service, you’re the one she was thanking.”
“But, I didn’t…” Her voice is quieter now, worried.
“I haven’t gone near Susannah Potter. You, on the other hand, sat with her for nearly half an hour last night.”
That silences her completely.
I tug my CHRONOS medallion from my shirt so that I can see her face more clearly in the reddish glow. She looks like a child, bracing for a scolding, and I soften my tone a bit before delivering the blow. “The question we have to ask is what you did, Kathy.”
“Nothing!” she whispers when she regains her voice, shaking her head frantically. “I did nothing, Saul, I swear it!”
“So you just sat in a chair for thirty minutes and—“
“Yes! I mean…no. I wiped her forehead with the cloth her mother gave me. The quilt came off the bed, so I tucked it back around her. I didn’t do anything that would have…changed it. And I’m sorry for what I said earlier. I wasn’t thinking. Of course you didn’t do anything. Maybe…maybe they just recorded the date wrong?”
I paste on a sympathetic smile and pull her into a hug. She doesn’t resist at all.
“Almost certainly. And…even if Susannah does live, even if something you did altered that tiny bit of history, it’s unlikely that anything will show up in the system. They’re looking at the big picture. They probably won’t even notice. So don’t worry. And I’ll defend you to Angelo and to the board if there’s an inquiry.”
“Inquiry?” Her voice is barely above a whisper now, and I feel the word against my shirt more than I hear it.
“Well…there could be, but I’ll tell them you did nothing wrong. They won’t kick you out.”
She flinches at those words and I breathe a sigh of relief. Any suspicions about my conversation with the Friend are now weighted down under a mountain of worry and self-doubt.
Her heart races against my chest, like a caged rat on a wheel. I smile, pressing my lips to her hair and shushing her. “Trust me, okay? You’ll be fine. I’ll protect you.”
∞
The Objectivist Club
Washington, EC
December 17, 2304
I tweak three different parameters on the simulation board in front of me and then spin it around in midair so Campbell can see the moves I’ve made. “You already have copies of the two books I mention in the second step. The ones I sent over before our last session?”
He makes a noise somewhere between a snort and a laugh as I go over to the bar to pour myself another drink. Campbell will take a good half hour to figure out what to do next, so I might as well stretch out and relax.
“Clever,” he says, after several minutes of surveying the screen. “If you were thinking about this in practical terms, however, beyond our little game, you do know you’d never get away with it, right? CHRONOS would have your key. You wouldn’t be able to duck out like you did with that recent stunt.”
“What recent stunt?” I add a hint of indignation. CHRONOS internal affairs are supposed to be secret, but it’s just show. We both know Campbell can find out pretty much anything he wants to.
“You’re lucky they didn’t boot both you and your little blonde protégé.”
“Wasn’t my fault.” I lean back on the sofa, closing my eyes. “Rookie mistake on Kathy’s part, I suspect. Or one of those odd flukes. Neither of us were even reprimanded. The woman died in childbirth a few years later anyway.”
“Gave a boost to your cult leader, though, didn’t it?”
“A bit.” I add a false hint of modesty to my voice, although to be honest, it only boosted Jemima a tiny bit. A few hundred additional followers, but her entire enterprise still fell apart over land rights and money in the 1790s, once she herded them all up to New York. If she’d listened to me and predicted the actual day of the event…who knows? Might have been a few thousand new adherents. And maybe they’d have been less likely to turn on her if they’d been a little more certain that she was God’s special messenger.
When I open my eyes, Campbell is watching me through the translucent game screen with a shrewd look on his face. “You might be able to hide a minor miracle or two popping up out of nowhere across the fabric of history, Saul. But sticking in an entirely new religion? That's bound to ruffle a few butterfly wings."
“As I’ve said many times, Morgen, this is all purely theoretical. You’re right, it would cause a stir…although maybe not too much if you did it gradually. Evidence of one minor miracle at a time over the course of several hundred years, combined with a string of dead-on prophecies? Concrete stuff, not vague Nostradamus hand-waving. Those two things would lay a solid foundation for a new messiah to effect some pretty major changes when he finally arrived on the scene.” I nod toward the screen. “And they’d survive whatever countermoves you’re plotting.”
Campbell sniffs and takes another sip of whiskey before turning back to the game. He’ll sit there for another twenty minutes or so, planning his next move as though it actually matters. As though he has the power to change anything. But if he’d been given the CHRONOS gene instead of whatever lame genetic tweak his family chose, Campbell wouldn’t hesitate to act. That’s the thing I admire about him. He has no more use than I do for a society that refuses to cull the weak in order to strengthen the whole.
I close my eyes again and mentally thumb through my agenda. A healing and maybe a prophecy or two once my plan for the 1893 Parliament of World Religions is approved. A little test of my agent-of-the-Cyrist-apocalypse, along with its antidote, on some invisible villagers no one will miss. Polish up my two little books so that they’ll be all ready to deposit with William Caxton in 1476 when I’m free of my CHRONOS tether.
Within three years, I’ll have all of my game pieces in place for the coup de grâce, without setting off any of the CHRONOS tripwires.
My final move, however, is one CHRONOS is most certainly going to feel. And they won’t see it coming until the whole system explodes in their faces.
Check and mate.
A Word from Rysa Walker
I’m going to be really pretentious and start out with a quote by George Santayana. He once defined history as “a pack of lies about events that never happened told by people who weren't there.” As a former history professor, I’m sad to report that his assessment is dead on. Even eyewitness accounts can be fatally flawed and filled with bias, making it damned near impossible to figure out what actually happened and why. Any historian who hasn’t wished at least once for a time machine, to actually be there to observe things firsthand and discover the truth of the matter, simply has no passion for the work.
But actually being on the scene could open up an entire case of canned worms. Let’s leave aside the whole issue of butterfly effects and unintentional changes and deal with the on-purpose variety. How difficult would it be to simply watch an event that you knew would have tragic repercussions if you had the power to prevent it? Even those of us who have absolute faith in our ability to screw things up might be tempted to tweak things just a bit, whether for humanitarian reasons or for personal gain.
A megalomaniac like Saul Rand, however, would be convinced that he could do a better job of shaping history. And he wouldn’t have even a single qualm about doing it.
Saul Rand isn’t the main character of my CHRONOS Files books. He only shows up in person a few times, and the plot revolves around his granddaughter Kate, who’s left to clean up his mess. But Saul is definitely the catalyst. The event he’s planning in this prequel tale—the destruction of CHRONOS headquarters—and his decision to use religion as a cudgel to bludgeon history into shape are what set the story in mo
tion. The final book in the series, Time’s Divide, is scheduled to launch in October 2015, if you’re interested to discover how his little game wraps up.
If you’re a history buff, Jemima Wilkinson’s story is real. After her miraculous “resurrection” as the Publick Universal Friend, she built a ministry of several hundred followers, supported in part by Judge William Potter and his family. Historical accounts tell us that Wilkinson predicted the “dark day” that fell over New England in 1780, the very same day that Potter’s daughter, Susannah, died. Or did she? While writing this story, I stumbled upon a second record that suggests Susannah lived for several more years. Could this be evidence of timeline contamination?
I’m delighted to have Saul’s story here in The Time Travel Chronicles. If you enjoyed “The Gambit,” you can find the full CHRONOS Files series at Amazon (http://www.amazon.com/author/walker), with additional stories in the CHRONOS Files World at Kindle Worlds. On my website (http://www.rysa.com) you can sign up for my newsletter, which should be monthly but in reality is just when there’s a new release or other big announcement. I love to chat with readers on Twitter, and if you find me there, or on Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/Timebound), please, please, please tell me to get back into the writing cave.
Beasts of the Earth
by Ernie Lindsey
THE DELICATE TEACUP CLATTERED against the bone white saucer. On a cold morning in late autumn, Dutton Quinn watched his wife push her Earl Grey to the side and begin massaging her temples.
“Headache again?” he asked.
“No. Just another… Forget it. You wouldn’t understand.”
“Wouldn’t understand what, Jess?”
“Sometimes you… Sometimes you act like she was never here.”
Her words felt like sharp claws across exposed skin. “That’s not fair. I think about her all the time.” Dutton gripped his newspaper tightly for a moment, then flung it across the kitchen. It thrashed through the air, pages falling, flailing like wounded birds. “Are we really doing this again?”
“Doing what?”
“Every. Single. Day. Every goddamn day, I think about how I couldn’t save her. And you pile it on with this bullshit.”
Her voice was soft, as if the words themselves were uneasy about being heard. “You could at least show it a little.”
“It’s been almost a year.” Dutton beat on his chest with a fist. “It’s in here. Just because I’m not standing on the street corner with a bullhorn doesn’t mean—”
“Nobody knows that. Not even me, Dutt, and if it makes me wonder, then of course they’ll talk. People are starting to ask questions.”
“Like what? Who?”
“Just people, Dutt.”
“Who, Jess?” Dutton turned to the bay window. Outside, snowflakes floated through pine boughs and across the dying grass. “I hate this, and I hate that you keep doing it to me.” He slammed his palm on the table. Teacups clattered and spoons danced off the edge.
Jess slumped back in her chair, arms crossed. “Don’t take it out on me.”
“Take it out on you? You’re the one accusing me. I’m not the asshole here.”
Jess shoved up from her seat, the chair legs vibrating against the hardwood floor. “You’re such a jerk.” There were no tears. Those had dried up weeks ago. Now there was nothing left but the hardened, cracked layers of a riverbed gone dry.
He watched her go, and didn’t chase after her. The fights were getting worse.
The front door slammed. Dutton returned his attention to the window.
The drifting snowflakes fell peacefully, quietly reaffirming that Mother Nature took no notice when a star went dark. The world continued to turn.
Life without their daughter, Lucy, was just as gray and cold as the November morning, and there were frequent moments when he wished that he could freeze time and stop it all, because for one brief second, he had forgotten the heartache and loss. That was what Jess was talking about. Those fragile times when he dared to smile around her.
He watched Jess march across the front yard and down the small, sloping hill. She wore running shoes, yellow running shorts, and a blue long-sleeve shirt, hair up in a ponytail. She turned left and picked up her pace. She was graceful. She ran with purpose. She had told their marriage counselor that she ran to forget, but it never happened.
She would be running forever.
Hours would pass before she came back, Dutton knew, and he would have room to breathe, to work without the suffocating blanket of remorse that hung over Jess wherever she went.
He stood, cleared the breakfast dishes, and left Lucy’s unused place setting in her usual spot. The pillow that had cushioned her delicate knees so long ago was pink, decorated with unicorns, and had sat vacant for eleven months.
Dutton felt his bottom lip quiver and turned away, trying to make it through the memory one more time.
Six-year-old Lucy, lying in her hospital bed, the cords, wires, and tubes nothing but medical jewelry decorating her frail frame, accentuated by the never-ending smile on her lips.
“If you could go back in time, honey, what would you do?”
The question was for him, really. He already knew the answer he would give.
Dutton would rewind time, again and again, until he found a cure.
An expert oncologist with a young daughter dying of a brain tumor. What a twisted sense of irony the universe had.
Lucy, with her dimpled cheeks and bald head, had answered, “Unicorns.”
“What about them?”
“I’d go see Noah. I’d help get them on his ark.”
Dutton had smiled and taken her hand. Ever the realist, he’d begun with, “Honey, unicorns didn’t…”
“Didn’t what, Daddy?”
He remembered thinking, Let her have this one.
“That sounds like a beautiful thing to do. The world needs more magical creatures.”
Across the bed, back when Jess was still able to cry, the tears poured down her drained, pale cheeks in heartbroken streams.
Dutton shook the images from his mind, wiped his nose with the sleeve of his sweatshirt, and left the teacups and a half-eaten scone in the sink.
Out in the garage, the air was cool. He could feel the chill of the concrete floor through his slippers. He stopped for a moment, hands on his hips, and surveyed the room. Shelf upon shelf of junk that they needed to get rid of, boxes overflowing with clothes and knickknacks that they hadn’t seen in years.
At least one shelf had to be emptied. Some of Lucy’s things would be coming out here soon. Jess had finally convinced him—said it hurt too much to walk past the abandoned bedroom with its pretty pink paint, flowery bedspread, and toys that had collected dust, hadn’t been touched since. Toys that were scattered all over the carpet in Dutton’s unjust dreams of Lucy alive and playing with them. Tea parties with the stuffed animals, house with the dolls.
The thought of putting Lucy’s things out here felt as if they were burying what remained of the light she had brought to their lives. Like they were making room for future possibilities, for hope, and it felt wrong to have that without Lucy.
He stepped over to the shelving and reached up, pausing with his hands on the cool cardboard. Removing the first box to make room was like jamming a shovel in unbroken earth for a grave waiting to be dug. He pulled it down, held it there, feeling the weight and wondering how much force it would take to throw it through a wall.
Behind him, the side door to the garage banged open. He turned, the heavy case of used books in his arms, and saw Jess sprinting toward him, frantic and excited.
“Whoa, what’s—”
“Put that down. Come with me,” she said, grabbing his wrist. Her fingers were icy on his skin. She pulled hard. Dutton dropped the box and skipped to the side, the falling books narrowly missing his toes.
“What happened? Are you okay?” he asked, their earlier transgressions momentarily forgotten.
“Hurry. I need to
show you something.”
“What is it?”
“Just come, please,” she insisted, already turning back toward the house.
“It’s freezing,” he said. “At least let me go put on some clothes. I’m pretty sure the neighbors don’t want—”
“We may not have time,” she insisted.
“Seriously. Pajamas here.”
“Doesn’t matter. Let’s go!”
“Talk to me,” he said. “You’re freaking me out.”
“It’s—I don’t even know how to describe it. Just hurry.”
“I—okay, whatever.” Dutton chased after her, down the hallway, past the living room, through the kitchen, and into the mudroom. She paced eagerly while he slipped on a pair of sneakers and yanked a jacket down from a peg. “Where are we going?”
“Down the trail. We have to hurry before it’s gone.”
“Before what’s gone?”
Jess didn’t answer. Dutton followed her through the open door, jogging into the chilly morning, the cold air finding a way through his thin plaid pajama bottoms, blowing against exposed ankles.
The neighborhood was too serene for a Sunday morning. Dutton put one foot in front of the other, chasing his wife as he studied the surrounding houses, each structure similar and familiar in layout and design. The contractor had an unimaginative mold, the only difference being the shade of white, brown, or gray on the exterior.
Odd that things were so quiet.
With the threat of snow, the locals often raided the grocery stores and hunkered down with popcorn and movies, hot chocolate and books. Dutton glanced up at the sky. Snowflakes fell, yet it wasn’t enough to cause a dusting, let alone accumulate. The bulk of the storm was hours away.
The Time Travel Chronicles Page 8