by Anthology
Her heart started pounding. Her planned lie about Mr. Morgan seemed wrong, somehow.
“I saw the open door . . .” she said.
“Christ,” hissed the man who flushed. “She saw us. No one was supposed to see us.”
His teeth were white. Even. Perfect. So were the teeth of the first man who spoke. So were her teeth. People here remarked on that.
These men didn’t belong here any more than she did. And, she would wager, no one in the Time Division knew about them.
She backed out of the room, slammed the door closed, and ran for the stairs. With one hand, she lifted her skirt enough so that her own boots didn’t catch, and with the other, she put the steno pad in her pocket. Then she reached for the railing. The steps were slick, and she had to slow down some.
She heard footsteps behind her. She sped up just as someone grabbed her. He smelled of cologne. Not Bay Rum. Cologne. Nothing from this time period. It was too subtle, too complex. And the hand that covered her mouth had had a manicure.
She bit his palm. He cursed, but didn’t let her go. Instead, he dragged her up the stairs. She struggled, but couldn’t free herself. Her feet banged on every step, jarring her all the way up her spine.
Surely, someone on the lower levels heard that. Surely, someone would come investigate. Surely, someone would do something.
She elbowed the man, then tried to hit his face with her fists. When he pulled her onto the upper floor, she levered herself up on his arm and kicked him on his shins. He didn’t even flinch. He continued to drag her. One of the other men joined him, and they flung her into that room.
She slid along the floor on her skirt, and nearly slammed into the wall. The men peered down at her.
“What do we do with her?” asked the man who had flushed.
The man who had dragged her reached down, and pulled her lips back so that he could look at her teeth like she was a horse. She tried to bite him again.
“Feisty bit of business,” one of the other men said.
“Who are you, really?” the man who dragged her asked.
“Philippa Darcy,” she snapped, using the name she used in this period. “I’m expected in Mr. Morgan’s office.”
“It’s eleven-thirty,” one of the men said to the others.
The man who dragged her grinned. “Then I’ll wager that Mr. Morgan won’t mind if you don’t show up. He probably won’t even notice.”
“He will,” she said, keeping to the game. “He’ll notice. He’ll send someone searching for me.”
“Nice try, honey,” said the man who dragged her. “But you girls aren’t that important to anyone in the House of Morgan. No one except your boss even knows your name.”
“What do we do with her?” the man who flushed asked again.
“We can’t send her home for another thirty-one minutes,” said the man with the shoes.
Her heart rate increased. They knew. They knew about the bomb; they probably knew that she didn’t belong here.
“What’s really going on?” she asked.
“Ah, honey,” said the man who dragged her. “That’s above your pay grade. It’s strictly need-to-know.”
She struggled to her feet. Damn the skirt. Her legs caught in its folds.
“I think I need to know,” she said, with more bravado than she felt.
“And you will know,” the man who dragged her said. Then he grinned. “All in good time.”
And all of the men laughed, as if he had told a particularly witty joke.
Washington, DC
March 23, 2057 (supposedly)
Lane was deep in his research when his assistant peeked her head in the door. He nearly snapped at her, but thought the better of it. Her lips were in a thin line, her hair slightly out of place. She looked frazzled, and one reason he had hired her was because she was the most unflappable person he had ever met.
“The Attorney General just called a meeting downstairs,” she said. “He says it’s urgent.”
“I thought nothing was urgent in the Time Division,” Lane said.
“Apparently,” she said, “this is.”
Manhattan
September 16, 1920
At 11:55 a.m., Charles Gage took his seat at the back of Fred Eberlin’s New Street restaurant. The place smelled of frying meat and spilled beer. The table was sticky, and even in the middle of the day, the electric lights were on. They weren’t very powerful, and they barely cut the gloom.
The waiter who had greeted him didn’t want him to sit so far back.
“Wouldn’t you rather have a seat up front by the window, sir?” he asked as Gage strode toward the back of the restaurant. “You can watch all of New York go by without moving a muscle.”
“Not today,” Gage said. Today, if he sat by that plate glass window, or any plate glass window within six blocks of Wall Street, he ran the risk of serious injury, maybe even death.
Even sitting this far back was a risk. But he wanted to be inside the timeguard. Within the hour, the police would block off sections of Wall Street, and he wouldn’t be able to get in unless his paperwork was perfect.
He didn’t want to rely on perfect paperwork. He wanted to rely on outsmarting whatever it was that had set up the time bubble in the first place.
The waiter sighed loudly. “The specials are on the board up front, sir, but I suppose I can recite them for you.”
“I’d rather have a sarsaparilla,” Gage said. He’d acquired a taste for the damn things on another job, ten years ago his time, but only a year before this one. He had a hunch that whatever the Coca-Cola Company used to make the drink was bad for him, but he didn’t care. It was a taste he couldn’t get anywhen else. If, of course, he had time to drink it.
He pulled out his pocket watch. He’d set it to New York time the moment he arrived. He couldn’t get to Washington, DC, on September 16, so he’d had to settle for Philadelphia which, for some reason, wasn’t time-guarded at all. He took a train to Manhattan, and arrived at Penn Station at 9:00 a.m. Then he’d walked down the island, and stopped near the Equitable Life Insurance Building, which, at thirty-eight stories, was currently the tallest building in the city, if not the world.
He’d loitered outside for as long as he could, watching the cutthroat operatives of the outdoor Curb Market trade the junk stocks and bonds that the regular markets sneered at. Part of him was fascinated to see history in action. The Curb Market’s annex was nearly finished, and these traders would move inside within the year. But for the moment, they acted like street vendors, waving their tickets and shouting to be heard.
But he couldn’t simply observe them. He needed to keep an eye on the street. He was watching for a touring car with a New Jersey license plate. He was also looking for some sort of old wooden wagon being pulled by an elderly horse. The horse would end up in pieces all over Wall Street, as would the wagon. The touring car would end up on its side.
Smart money believed that the car rear-ended the wagon, which had probably come from the DuPont Powder Works with a load of dynamite. Manhattan had banned the transport of explosives on its streets during the daylight hours, but that didn’t mean that companies followed the rules.
He saw the touring car, recognizing its plate—NJ24246—and realized that the man who claimed to the chauffer in the news reports looked nothing like the man driving. Then Gage saw a brand new wagon being pulled by an elderly horse. He wished he could take video, but he didn’t dare. He was already attracting enough attention by standing outside the Equitable Building.
He’d slipped through the crowds and made his way to the restaurant where he sat now, wondering if the things he had seen had any meaning whatsoever.
Not that he was here for the bombing. He wasn’t. He was here to find Philippa D’Arco, or Darcy as they called her. Her image was stamped— literally—inside his mind. One of those chips that the investigators for the Justice Department used on occasion. He knew what she looked like when she walked, talked, laughe
d, as if he had known her well. He wouldn’t be able to miss her any more than a lover or her own family would have.
If Gage saw her. If he found her.
He wasn’t entirely sure she was still here. He had telephoned the House of Morgan that morning, and asked if she was working. He’d been told that secretaries did not receive personal calls while at work, and then someone had asked his name.
“I’m her father,” he had lied. “Her mother’s gravely ill. I would like to speak to her.”
“You may do so during her regular luncheon,” the young man who had answered the phone told him. “All female secretaries take luncheon beginning at noon.”
“But she is in the office?” Gage pressed.
“She signed in at 7:45 a.m., sir. Good day.” And the young man had hung up.
So Gage had three pieces of information to take back with him. Philippa D’Arcy had shown up to work. The chauffer on the touring car did not look like his photograph in the papers from the hearings. And the wagon that might or might not have been carrying the dynamite was brand new.
The waiter set down a tall glass with the greenish brown liquid foaming inside. Gage picked it up, hoping for one sip before all hell broke loose—
And then the world went white. A sound, louder than anything he’d ever heard, shook the building. The air turned fire hot, then evaporated, and his lungs ached. He dove under the table. Too late. Already shards of glass had slid their way here.
Everything went deadly quiet. Nothing. Not a single sound. Almost as if all of New York held its breath at the same moment.
And then someone moaned.
The waiter was crouched against the back wall. The two customers who had been sitting near the window were sprawled on the floor. Another waiter leaned against the counter, still clutching a plate of food.
Gage stood, ran his hands over his suit, checking to see if he was uninjured. He was. He knocked some glass shards out of his hair, picked up his hat, and shook it off as well.
The screams were beginning, as were the cries for help.
He took a deep breath, tasting smoke, blood, and something acrid, but at least there was oxygen again. He steeled his shoulders, and stepped into what he knew would be the hardest few minutes of his life.
He had to step over the injured, pass the dumbstruck, avoid the helpless, and head for the door. It had been blown open by the force of the explosion. A young man sprawled on the steps, bleeding from a gash in the head. His trembling right hand reached for a spiked rail that had ripped through the shoulder of his suit.
That had to be George Lacina, who worked at Equitable Life Assurance, the man whose comment to The New York World had set off all sorts of alarms in 2057. Lacina said that he later noticed that all the buttons on his coat had come off, and his watch was ten minutes slow.
Almost as if time had stopped. Or gone backward. Or rippled.
All signs of a time-guard.
Gage glanced at his pocket watch. It appeared to have stopped. But as he looked at it, the second hand moved. He needed to do the same.
It was easier said than done. Hundreds of people poured out of buildings, hurried down stairs, and ran away from the financial district. Some of them bleeding, many of them covered in glass or plaster, all of them looking terrified.
He had to go upstream, pushing through them all, careful not to fall or he would be trampled to death. All the while his feet slipped on blood or severed limbs or body parts he couldn’t identify.
A woman on fire screamed as she ran past him. A man tackled her from the side, wrapping her in a coat.
Gage pretended he didn’t see, reminded himself it was history. When that didn’t work, he lied to himself that it was a virtual simulation—and he’d been through hundreds of those. Thousands. He couldn’t help these people. They were more than a century dead, and for most, this was the worst day of their lives. But he couldn’t reach out, couldn’t do anything.
He had to find Philippa.
He reached the House of Morgan, pushed his way up the narrow steps toward the open doors. People still poured out, but he didn’t see her among them. He caught some of the women who looked unhurt.
“Philippa,” he said. “Where’s Philippa?”
Mostly they shook their heads, then shook him off. One heavyset older woman frowned at him, said, “She went . . . necessary. But . . . an hour ago.”
Only she was gone before he could parse out what that meant. Or what he hoped it had meant. Philippa had gone to the ladies room an hour before and had never come back.
If she was a smart little time traveler, she would have vanished by now, safe back in 2057, inside the Bubble, making her report. But he was here because she hadn’t done that. Her body hadn’t shown up, her chip hadn’t activated, her failsafe device hadn’t returned.
He knew his chip would survive a blast—he’d been through half a dozen of them, not to mention the fact that everything was tested for all kinds of conditions—so he doubted her equipment had failed.
He kept grabbing people, asking, “Philippa?” and getting no response.
Except from a red-haired young man, wearing shirtsleeves, and ripped pants.
“Thought I saw her upstairs,” he said, voice trembling. “Lordy, I hope she’s all right.”
Gage nodded, kept moving, found the stairs, tried to ignore what he saw. Couldn’t ignore all of it. The young man held into place by something large—a bit of wall, maybe?—pinning his skull to his teller cage. The man with the broken leg trying to help another man bleeding from the face. The woman ripping pieces of her skirt and using them to tie off oozing wounds.
Above the trading floor, the glass dome that marked this part of the House of Morgan creaked. People screamed and dove for the walls. He didn’t. He knew it wouldn’t collapse.
Junius Morgan, carrying a wounded man toward the door. His face was scorched, his clothing blood-covered, but he seemed determined.
All of these people were heroes. Gage wasn’t. He couldn’t be. He had to keep searching for Philippa.
He explored several floors, saw more wounded, but no more dead, avoided some of the dazed victims, and kept searching. He didn’t see her and no one seemed to know where she was.
He spent nearly two hours inside the House of Morgan, exploring each room, seeing all the damage—which was much more considerable than the papers ever made it out to be—and he found no trace of her.
It was as if she had followed instructions and vanished. Only she hadn’t.
Finally, when he walked out of the bank, exhausted and covered in dirt and blood, he braced himself. Time to assume his identity as a Pinkerton, pretending he’d been hired by the Equitable Company, since the House of Morgan was unofficially using William J. Burns’s International Detective Agency.
He would find Philippa, or the parts of her, or what became of her, if he had to stay here for the next year to do so.
Washington, DC
March 23, 2057 (supposedly)
The conference room, bunkered under the building, was an unassuming little space, modeled on the White House’s Situation Room. Bunkered, time-guarded with all the latest gadgetry, but so shielded that no one could travel in even from inside the Bubble itself.
Lane hated the little room. It looked like something out of time itself. Rectangular, with blond wood paneling, matching table, and the most uncomfortable blue chairs in the world, the room was always stuffy and tension-filled.
He was the last person to arrive, and as he pulled the door open, he had only seconds to prepare. No one had warned him that he faced not only the Attorney General, but Cabinet Secretaries from Treasury and Time as well. And, off in a corner, as if he were monitoring the meeting instead of participating in it, Brandon Carnelius, the Chairman of the Federal Reserve.
Lane had barely gotten the door closed when the Attorney General said, “You need to recall Charles Gage from 1920.”
Kayla Huntingdon was not known for her diplomatic sk
ills, something that had gotten her into trouble with Congress more than once. Sometimes Lane wondered how she ever made it through her confirmation.
“We lost an operative,” Lane said. “And we’ve found some anomalies.”
“We know,” said Noah Singh. He ran Treasury. He was known for his diplomacy, not that it showed at the moment. “Recall him anyway.”
Lane knew better than to remind Singh that he did not work for Treasury. Annabelle Tsu, the Time Secretary, nodded. “We have decided. We’re going to leave the time-guard in place.”
“We didn’t create it,” Lane said. “I’ve researched. It didn’t come from the government.”
“Not technically,” Singh said. “But you needn’t worry about it.”
Lane looked at Huntingdon. He realized from the set of her full mouth that she was furious. She had not been informed about something. Tsu’s long red fingernails tapped on the tabletop. Apparently she hadn’t been informed either.
“You want to tell me what’s going on?” Lane asked. He’d directed the question at his boss, Huntingdon, but he didn’t care who answered.
“Technically, you don’t have the security clearance,” Singh said. “We’ve decided to bring you into this, since you might run into an anomaly, as you call it, again, and we need you to be prepared.”
Huntingdon looked down, her blond hair covering her face. Lane had seen her do that before. It was a deliberate move so that no one could see her expression. Yep, she was pissed. And he had a hunch he was about to be.
“I’m not sure that you’re aware of the fact that the Federal Reserve System was founded in 1913,” Singh said.
“I know my history,” Lane said.
“Let him speak,” Tsu said quietly.
“And worked with other central bankers in other nations during the various wars. The Fed’s powers expanded after the Great Depression, the Great Recession, and of course, the recent Currency Crisis,” Singh said. He sounded like every bad professor Lane had ever had.
“Let me cut through the bullshit for you,” Huntingdon said. “Somewhere along the way, these so-called financial geniuses figured the only way to control monetary policy was to change it. By going backwards.”