A Girl in Time

by John Birmingham

  The smoke and the noise and the smell of the city.

  The stench of it.

  She was no longer in Seattle.

  She was nowhere that she knew.

  When Smith stepped away from the window and came to offer his hand, she took it. He lifted her gently from the floor and led her over to the open window.

  “Probably best that you set yourself down a spell,” he said. “I find what's a-coming for you to be a powerful tribulation.”

  She did as she was told, dropping onto the stool where he had been sitting. Her mind retreated to childhood wonder and confusion, and to fear, as she sat and marveled at all that Smith had revealed.

  Their room was on the top floor of one of the tallest buildings for miles around, but that did not lift them high above the scenery. She was peering out of a dormer window set into a steeply-pitched roof. The room was small because it had to fit within the confines of the attic space. Marshal Smith's head scraped the ceiling, not only because he was an unusually tall man, but because the ceiling itself was set low so that the walls could meet it at the perpendicular. Her room was a little box, hidden inside a triangle of roofline. A city stretched away before her, but not a city that she recognized.

  Her eye found none of Seattle's seven hills. The distant ranges were so far distant as to be invisible, and the cold waters of the northwestern Pacific found no ingress here. Puget Sound, Lake Washington, the peninsula, the mountains had all vanished, plowed under a vast grey-brown plain of tumbledown brick and fetid smoke. Here, a dark labyrinth of dense and winding alleyways; there, a giant iron scab of mills and factories, spewing toxic waste into the air, pissing foul chemicals and poison onto the streets and into the waterways.

  There was a river, she saw now. A wide, slow moving sewer, crowded with sail craft and steam boats. Not the jaunty paddle steamers of Deep South mythology and modern tourist trap, but working vessels of bizarre mashed-up topology and tech. Mast, sail and smoke-blackened funnel all crammed in together on the same deck.

  Small patches of greensward struggled to breathe under the crushing weight of vast slums and dark factories. The smell of it was choking, a strong hand squeezing her throat as she gagged involuntarily to deny the foul miasma. The uproar was a constant assault upon her ears, yet so different in tone and color to the traffic hum and jet roar of a modern city that Cady could not help but listen. She heard the crunch and shuffle of a million feet, actually heard them, in amongst the clip-clopping of horse shoes on cobblestone, the rumble of wooden wheels and the shouts and curses of a language which she spoke, but did not understand.

  And what she didn't see was even more important that what she did.

  There were no cars anywhere, but hundreds of horse drawn carriages, most of them two and four seaters, and some weird-ass conveyances as big as buses.

  “Oh, shit,” she whispered. A shiver turned into a shudder and became a series of deep body tremors like the uncontrollable extremes of late stage Parkinson's.

  Smith pulled down the window and let the tatty curtain fall back into place.

  “Ma'am,” he said, “will you be in need of some assistance to return to your bed? It will help you reconcile yourself to the hard truth of this if you are to take a spell off your feet.”

  She slumped against him and swore again.

  He did not scold her this time.

  “I do understand,” he said. “It is a most surprising and unsettling experience, believe you me. I have had the misfortune of it more than once.”

  Smith gingerly helped her back to the bed, letting Cady lean against his arm, but not supporting her in any other way. Her legs were weak, the muscles rubbery, and waves of hot flushes followed by chills rolled through her body.

  She was certain she would vomit and reached for the porcelain bowl he'd given her earlier, recognizing it this time as an old-fashioned bedpan.

  Last night's sushi and beer came up in a loose, sour rush. When she thought she was done, that there could be no more, she heaved again, her stomach muscles convulsing to expel the last few drops of yellow bile.

  “Oh, God,” she croaked, and this time took the cup of the water when he offered it, using a mouthful to wash and spit.

  “I'm sorry,” she said weakly, passing the pan to Smith, who took it without complaint.

  “Ma'am, you have no need of an apology on my account. It is I who am in debt to you and fear I cannot repay what I have taken.”

  Still shaking, and now snuffling through a snotty nose, she folded her arms and rubbed her hands against the goosebumps which ran up to her shoulders.

  “You'd better explain,” she said for the second time that morning, but this time no aggression or faux menace inflected her words. Cady McCall's voice came from far away and sounded small and lost.

  Marshal Smith refilled her drinking cup from a small jug of water. He looked like a man in need of something a good deal stronger, but handed her the heavy mug and returned to his ridiculous little stool.

  “Look, no, stop,” said Cady as he was halfway seated. “You look like a rodeo clown on that thing. Just … sit at the end of the bed. I trust you. That thing looks like a terrible sight gag about to go wrong.”

  Smith appeared to consider the invite.

  “All right then, Miss Cady. I do appreciate the consideration. This little milking stool sits about as cozy as a big old dab of prairie coal.”

  She rubbed a thin, greasy film of sweat from her face with a shaking hand.

  “I have no idea what you're talking about. But sit down, please, and tell me what's happening.”

  The mattress sagged, and the metal bed frame squealed in protest when Smith lowered himself. If possible, he looked even more uncomfortable sitting on her bed. He fetched that old, gold watch out of his vest pocket and made another face at it, as if he too had a BuzzFeed guy waiting on him somewhere.

  “I do believe this here timepiece to be the source of our perdition, Miss Cady.”

  He held it out for her.

  “Ms.,” she said absently.

  The pocket watch was obviously an antique, but so was Titanic Smith. The gold casing was dull and scratched, the glass face—she almost called it a screen—not much better. It was a working man's device, used hard and oddly heavy, but then it was made of gold. Or she assumed so. Cady hefted the piece in her hand, turned it over, looking for an inscription, but found none.

  There were no complications on the face.

  Everyone knew about complications these days because of the Apple Watch. This thing had none. No date. No calorie counter. Nothing. It didn't even have a minute hand. Just a crown for winding and one very ornate-looking hour hand, which was coming up on ten. Her mind slipped back to Seattle, to Matt and Georgia, and she had to drag herself back into the here and now with an effort of will.

  Suspend your disbelief, Cady. Hear him out. Then deal.

  “Looks like an old watch,” she said, passing it back.

  Her nausea was backing off, and with it the headache.

  “That it does,” he conceded.

  Smith took the watch and carefully replaced it in his vest pocket, fastening it to a small, but sturdy chain. For it being the source of all their “perdition,” he seemed neurotically attached to the thing.

  “So, where'd you get it? The TARDIS?”

  He digested the question, chewed it over as though there might be some real protein to it, before shaking his head.

  “No, ma'am. And do not haze me as a tenderfoot. I have this infernal device from the Indian Territory. From a Chinaman in some distress I happened upon there.”

  “Go on,” she said. The discomfort she had felt upon waking was gone, as if she’d washed down a couple of aspirin with vodka. As improved as she may have felt in body, however, her mind was still circling the drain.

  Marshal Smith's eyes roamed over the hills and valleys of her crumpled blanket, but he was not scoping her out. It was as though he were searching an internal landscape, reflected
in the world in front of him.

  “All righty then,” he said, as though preparing to lift a heavy load. “Best I start my tale at the beginning of all this. On the say so of Judge Parker, Marshal Fagan had hired on more'n two hundred deputies to clean out the western district and the Territory with it. That's where I was, tracking the Buford twins, when I chanced upon my Chinaman waylaid by road agents.”

  Smith was an easy man to listen to, she found, in spite of the odd turns of phrase. He had one of those voices that was a pleasure to hear.

  “My oriental friend was, I am afraid to tell it, not long for our world, being two or three good bootlicks from pleading his case to whatever slant-eyed captain of the gate guards the heathen heaven for the yeller devils.”

  Okay, maybe not so easy to listen to.

  “There was three of them and one of him, but they were so busy with kicking him to actual pieces that I was able to walk right up with my Spencer rifle and do for them.”

  “You shot them?”

  “Dead,” he confirmed with a satisfied nod.

  “Wait. When was this?”

  “I would call it four and a half weeks passed, ma'am.”

  “No, when did your Marshal … what's his name?”

  “Fagan.”

  “On what date did Marshal Fagan send you after the evil twins.”

  “The Buford boys?”

  “Yeah, them.”

  “I rode out of Fort Smith on June 3rd, 1876, ma'am.”

  Cady closed her eyes and took in a deep breath, holding it for three seconds, and releasing it slowly.

  Gather your data. Do not make assumptions.

  “All right. Go on.”

  Smith returned to his tale.

  “There weren’t much I could do for Wu; that was his name as he told it to me. They had been fixin' to annex his gold, Wu said; all Chinamen, like leprechauns being known to have a stash of it about them.”

  Cady could not tell if he was being serious, but she let it pass.

  “I nursed him for a day and promised that I would inter him when the time came, which seemed more of a consolation to the man than my having done for those who did for him. He was delirious, or so I thought, most of that time. He told me of travels so peculiar that I could not credit them with any plausibility, even though as a Chinaman so far from home, he must have covered some strange and foreign miles to fetch up dead in the territories.”

  Smith, who had fallen into a sort of reverie in the telling of his story, returned from it then, looking up at Cady with eyes so haunted she had to suppress a grimace.

  “I tell you true, Miss Cady, I do not doubt his tales now.”

  “Go on,” she said, in a quiet voice.

  “Well, those road agents might have been meaner than cat meat, but they were not entirely stupid with it. Mr. Wu was indeed possessed of some gold and sundry valuables. A short time before he passed, he bid me to fuss at the roots of a nearby tree. There I found his swag.”

  He patted the vest pocket where he kept the watch and unhooked a small leather bag from his belt, opening it to show her a handful of gold nuggets.

  “The time piece, Mr. Wu explained, was very special, and dangerous, with it. He was far gone by then, and I misapprehended him, assuming that he meant it was a danger to a man like him to carry that quality of precious trinket. For myself, a sworn and well-armed regulator of hard won experience, what danger might there be in having such a handsome fancy? Even on the frontier,” he added with a small, bitter laugh.

  Cady waited for him to go on, but he didn't. He seemed lost within his thoughts again. Finally she prompted him by tapping his knee with her foot.

  “So what? The watch. It's like a time travel thing?”

  He needed a moment to consider that before answering.

  “Yes, ma'am, I suppose it is. That and more. A time traveling thing.”

  6

  INTERLUDE.

  Small fissures and cracks opened on the face of the mountain two days before the eruption, and from them poured hot streams of ash and smoke. Birds and mountain goats fled from these signs and survived, at least for another day or so. Tainted air, hissing from the same ruptures in the earth, settled into some of the valleys overlooking the blue-green waters of the bay, poisoning a small flock of sheep and one young boy who had been watching over them.

  The boy, the third son of Marcus Luvenalus of Misenum, was the first person to die in the eruption of Mount Vesuvius, but his passing was not recorded. A day later, his remains were entirely destroyed by a pyroclastic surge of superheated fluidized gas and rock fragments that burst forth from the ground, rolled over the tiny corpse, and raced away toward the coastline at a speed of nearly three hundred miles per hour.

  Having rumbled, shuddered, and groaned as the very armor of the planet cracked beneath it, the mountain finally exploded in the middle of the day with a roar that was not merely akin to the ending of the world; it was the end for many thousands in its shadow. A gigantic column of smoke and ash thrust up miles into the sky, throwing off sheets of flame and long arcs of blue-white lightning. Night fell hours before its time, and with it, a rain of fire. The countryside and the tiny Roman settlements around the Gulf of Naples suffered bombardment by white hot pumice stones and suffocation by ash and smoke. Again and again the earth tore itself apart, eventually firing monstrous boulders into the heavens, giant fists of hot rock shot through with veins of magma that landed like the hammer blows of the gods.

  Through the early moments of this cataclysm stole two figures who were not gods, but who seemed just as little perturbed by the destruction and carnage. They had arrived in the town of Pompeii a day earlier, well before dawn, without attracting the attention of the city watch to their presence.

  They looked like… well, like nothing and nobody. They were unremarkable men, unremarkably dressed. You could stand behind them, waiting for a punnet of sardines at the marina gate or a piece of fruit from vendors along the Via dell'Abbondanza, and two minutes later you would be unable to recall a thing about them.

  The minutes before the first major eruption found them enjoying the sun while they could, across the street from the house of Julius Polybius. There were thirteen people resident in the rather grand villa: seven family members and six servants. The thunder of the mountain tearing itself apart brought some of them out into the street, where the other residents of the town were already starting to gather and point and excitedly discuss the event. The first small, hot flames of fear were already racing through the streets of Pompeii, preceding by a few minutes the initial fall of real fire.

  The two men, who were apprentices, did not announce themselves when they followed the occupants of the house back inside. They moved through the building as though they were as intimately familiar with its passageways as any of the inhabitants. They did not cross paths with anyone, making their way by a circuitous route to a small nursery at the rear of the dwelling. A child, not yet old enough to walk, slept in a cradle there.

  The men entered the crèche, took the sleeping infant from its bed, and disappeared. Quite literally. They winked out of existence, all three of them, and the child, who would grow up to follow them into apprenticeship, was perfectly excised from human history. All that remained was a harsh, unpleasant smell, like burning motor oil.

  That is how it always is when the apprentices arrive. They come in the moments just before the ship sinks, or the earth cracks open, or the deep space platform catastrophically disintegrates after being struck by a microscopic black hole. They snatch a cradle from beneath the hooves of the Mongol horde, rescue a newborn from the great black wave of the tsunami, pluck a lone and lucky soul from the ovens of the death camp.

  The apprentices replenish their ranks in such a way that the life edited from the long and bloody narrative arc of humanity is never missed.

  But that is not all they do.

  7

  How could she not believe him? She had the evidence of her own eyes, the
testimony of her senses. She could hear and feel and smell the truth of it. The only thing stopping Cady from believing everything Smith had said was the objection of her rational mind to so much crazy piling on to her all at once.

  She plucked at the thin and probably unwashed blanket. It felt sticky. Verminous. She looked at his hands as they lay in his lap, his fingers rubbing at each other as though he were rolling invisible dice in them. She took a breath. The room smelled no better than it had before. It was moldy and stale. She started to feel gross just because she was sitting in it.

  Cady tested her injuries again. She had deep scratches on the back of her hands. They stung when she made a fist and cracked open the scabs. Of her headache and her nausea, however, there was no sign. They had passed in something of a miraculous recovery. She looked at Marshal Smith again and at the vest pocket where he had tucked the watch away. The sick, free-floating nausea she had felt on waking in this room had disappeared when she took hold of the watch.

  “Can I see it again?” she asked. “The watch, I mean.”

  “Most certainly,” Smith said, before going through the elaborate procedure of unchaining the thing to hand back to her.

  Cady took the timepiece from the Marshal and turned it over in her hands, paying much closer attention this time. But there was nothing to it that she had not seen the first time around. Only the absences were noteworthy: the lack of complications, the missing inscription by the watchmaker identifying the work as his or her own—his own, most likely, she had to concede—and no keyhole or latch or mechanism for opening the face or the body. That seemed strange.

  “Man, I wish I could get an iFixit teardown on this,” she muttered before addressing Smith directly.

  “How do you change the time?” Cady asked. “I mean, when it runs down. I imagine these old things needed to be wound every day. Maybe even twice. What is it, the crown? Is that how you wind it?”

  “No!” he cried out when he saw she was about to do just that.