Time Travel Omnibus Volume 2

by Anthology

  There was something about this race from the future. He had felt it dimly at first, before Kleph s nearness had drowned caution and buffered his sensibilities. Time travelling purely as an escape mechanism seemed almost blasphemous. A race with such power—

  Kleph—leaving him for the barbaric, splendid coronation at Rome a thousand years ago—how had she seen him? Not as a living, breathing man. He knew that, very certainly Kleph s race were spectators.

  But he read more than casual interest in Cenbe’s eyes now. There was an avidity there, a bright, fascinated probing. The man had replaced his earphones—he was different from the others. He was a connoisseur. After the vintage season came the aftermath—and Cenbe.

  Cenbe watched and waited, light flickering softly in the translucent block before him, his fingers poised over the note pad. The ultimate connoisseur waited to savor the rarities that no non-gourmet could appreciate.

  Those thin, distant rhythms of sound that was almost music began to be audible again above the noises of the distant fire. Listening, remembering. Oliver could very nearly catch the pattern of the symphonia as he had heard it, all intermingled with the flash of changing faces and the rank upon rank of the dying—

  He lay back on the bed letting the room swirl away into the darkness behind his closed and aching lids. The ache was implicit in every cell of his body, almost a second ego taking possession and driving him out of himself, a strong, sure ego taking over as he himself let go.

  Why, he wondered dully, should Kleph have lied? She had said there was no aftermath to the drink she had given him. No aftermath—and yet this painful possession was strong enough to edge him out of his own body.

  Kleph had not lied. It was no aftermath to drink. He knew that—but the knowledge no longer touched his brain or his body. He lay still, giving them up to the power of the illness which was aftermath to something far stronger than the strongest drink. The illness that had no name—yet.

  Cenbe’s new symphonia was a crowning triumph. It had its premiere from Antares Hall, and the applause was an ovation. History itself, of course, was the artist—opening with the meteor that forecast the great plagues of the fourteenth century and closing with the climax Cenbe had caught on the threshold of modern times. But only Cenbe could have interpreted it with such subtle power.

  Critics spoke of the masterly way in which he had chosen the face of the Stuart king as a recurrent motif against the montage of emotion and sound and movement. But there were other faces, fading through the great sweep of the composition, which helped to build up to the tremendous climax. One face in particular, one moment that the audience absorbed greedily. A moment in which one man’s face loomed huge in the screen, every feature clear.

  Cenbe had never caught an emotional crisis so effectively, the critics agreed. You could almost read the man’s eyes.

  After Cenbe had left, he lay motionless for a long while. He was thinking feverishly—

  I’ve got to find some way to tell people. If I’d known in advance, maybe something could have been done. We’d have forced them to tell us how to change the probabilities. We could have evacuated the city.

  If I could leave a message—

  Maybe not for today’s people. But later. They visit all through time. If they could be recognized and caught somewhere, some time, and made to change destiny—

  It wasn’t easy to stand up. The room kept tilting. But he managed it. He found pencil and paper and through the swaying of the shadows he wrote down what he could. Enough. Enough to warn, enough to save.

  He put the sheets on the table, in plain sight, and weighted them down before he stumbled back to bed through closing darkness.

  The house was dynamited six days later, part of the futile attempt to halt the relentless spread of the Blue Death.

  VOICES

  Jackie Cassada

  1

  She awakened in a room free from the stench of burning flesh and boiling tears. As her eyes adjusted to the soft, warm light surrounding her, she realized that she no longer felt the searing knives of fire scorching her lungs or the devouring hunger of the all-consuming flames that the Church had assured her would purify her soul.

  “Sweet Jesu,” she whispered. “There is no pain at all!” Not even the aches of old battles or the cramped muscles of her recent confinement intruded into the blessed sense of relief and rebirth she felt. Surely, this must be the reward of the faithful.

  She sat, surprised as she did so that she was in a bed—one of softened linens and finely woven blankets, assuredly, but a bed all the same—not unlike the ones she had glimpsed in the dauphin’s court. This was a bed for a noble. The coverlet slipped away, revealing her naked body.

  “Of course,” she said aloud, reveling in the sound of her voice that was no longer hoarse from yelling out commands to her armies or scratched from repeating her story over and over for the inquisitors. “My clothes would have burned in the fire, leaving me clothed only in God’s mercy.” She fought against the impulse to cover herself; if this was her purified body, it was the body of Eve before the serpent’s temptation. Therefore, it was blessed in God’s sight.

  For the first time, she looked at herself in a clear light, unclouded by the smoke from camp or cook fires or the oily smoke of torches in sconces outside her darkened prison cell. Her scars were gone, and her skin—when she touched her (smooth!) hands to her shoulders and her once-roughened elbows—was as soft as the youngest of babes she had cared for as a young girl in the village of Domrémy. Even her feet had lost the hard, cracked shell of tough skin that came from years of going without shoes and, later, from ill-fitting boots. Something tickled her back, below the nape of her neck, and she put her hands behind her and felt hair, long and soft, like a lady’s hair after her maids had brushed and combed it. She had never been so coddled, but she had seen such lavishing of labor in the French court. She had cut her own hair when her voices told her she would have to become a soldier. She had not missed its weight until now, when she felt it again pulling at the crown of her head.

  Filled with wonder and humility, the girl, not yet out of her teens, known to some as La Pucelle, to others as Jehanne d’Arc, and to more as Joan the Maid, dropped to her knees on the spotless floor, crossed her hands at her throat and bowed her head in prayer.

  2

  “How long has she been kneeling like that?” the commander asked as he entered the observation room where his lieutenants were watching the latest recoveree. The two women looked at each other, some silent message passing between them, before the taller one rose to her feet.

  “All morning, sir,” she replied, her voice clipped and impersonal.

  The commander nodded. “And you’ve made no attempt to communicate with her?”

  Again, the look, as if neither woman wanted to take the responsibility for provoking the commander’s wrath by giving him news he would rather not hear. The second woman finally stood, her blonde hair hiding part of her face as she stared at the floor.

  “No, sir,” she said, a slight quaver in her voice. “We thought it best to wait for you. Michael always drops the big ones on her. Catherine and Margaret are the support team.”

  The commander’s eyes narrowed, considering the blonde woman’s words. Though she always seemed reluctant to voice her thoughts, Lieutenant Fiero’s skill at observation and fine detail were undeniable. He nodded his head once, in agreement.

  “You’re correct, Fiero,” he said. “We all go in at the same time. I’ll take the lead.”

  “Sir—”

  “What is it, Sauvigne?” the commander regarded the other woman guardedly. Lieutenant Sauvigne could get under his skin with a word, sometimes merely an intonation of her voice. She never crossed the boundary between legitimate challenge and insubordination, but each time she confronted him, she managed to put him on the defensive. It was important to keep her happy, though. She was the one with the degree in medieval French history. She could also speak the French of Jo
an’s time period and coached him and Fiero with their own mastery of the antiquated language.

  “Is she ever going to be told the truth?” Sauvigne’s voice held just enough restraint to sound merely inquisitive.

  “That’s a decision we’ll make when the time comes,” the commander snapped, immediately regretting both the quickness of his answer and his revelation that he had not yet made a determination. His “we” was, of course, only a courtesy. All three of them knew that he alone was calling the shots.

  “The immediate question before us is whether we will be able to work with her at all,” he said. “For the present, she must continue to believe that the three of us are her ‘voices.’ Otherwise, I’m afraid we cannot guarantee her cooperation.” He turned abruptly toward the door, motioning for the women to follow him.

  3

  Joan forgot her surroundings whenever she prayed. Her friends in Domrémy, her family, and, later, her beloved comrades-in-arms could never understand how she could spend so much time on her knees or lying prostrate in prayer. They did not know the joy it gave to her to open her heart to Jesu and the saints, who heard her troubles and gave her comfort, who knew her weaknesses and gave her strength, who received her love and returned it many times over. That she should hear their voices when they needed her seemed the most natural thing in the world. That they asked her to bring the dauphin to his rightful throne and drive the English out of France was little enough in return for everything they gave to her. That she should face the flames of martyrdom at the hands of her English captors was not unexpected. Her voices had told her she would die and be taken up to be with them in heaven.

  This was not what she had expected heaven to be like, however. Even though carnal desires did not exist in God’s kingdom, and she need not fear succumbing to temptation, she felt uncomfortable being naked for too long. She had somehow always imagined that all who entered heaven would be given robes of sanctity. Only the damned remained naked in their condemnation, the more keenly to feel the fires of Hell as it burned their flesh—much as hers had burned, though for much shorter a time than the poor damned souls in Hell.

  The sound of a door opening shook Joan from the reverie that her prayers had become. She raised her head in time to see three figures bathed in light enter the room and stand before her, their arms outstretched in welcome.

  She started to rise and accept their embrace, when the remembrance of her nakedness stopped her. She dared not touch them with her unclothed body; their holiness would surely destroy her. She was in their presence only by the grace and mercy of God and not through any merit on her part. Afflicted with the shame that the first parents felt when they encountered God in the garden after they had eaten of the deadly fruit, she covered herself with her hands as best as she could and waited for their judgment.

  “Ave, Ioanna!” St. Michael’s voice resounded with the fire of a church bell tolling the Easter Mass. “Welcome, beloved and faithful sister.”

  From behind him, St. Margaret and St. Catherine stepped into Joan’s sight, holding between them what looked like a robe of shining cloth. Together, they clothed her in the soft fabric, winding it about her into a garment a little like the paintings of the Roman women she had seen in the homes and courts of the nobles of France.

  “Merci,” she murmured, feeling the comfort of modesty in the presence of these holy beings.

  “Come with us,” St. Michael said.

  Joan responded immediately to the sound of command in his voice, following the three sanctified ones from the room and into a garden. The sweet fragrance of summer flowers filled the air around her, and Joan breathed deeply, letting the scented air flow deep into her lungs. Near the center of the garden, the flowers gave way to a clearing of fresh green grass. Three stone benches formed a semi-circle in the center of the clearing, with a small pond occupying the remainder of the circle. Michael indicated that Joan should take a seat on one of the benches. She did so, folding her hands demurely in her lap, awaiting whatever lay ahead.

  Her suffering was over, and she was with God’s saints in eternity. What had she to fear?

  “Joan,” Michael said, his deep blue eyes penetrating the new clothes, stabbing her soul with his righteous power, “we have delivered you from the fire because God is not finished with you. Once more, you must be his instrument. But where once you saved France, now you must save the earth itself.”

  4

  Joan fasted often during her short lifetime as a way of getting closer to God and purifying her sinful body. So she thought nothing of the hunger pangs that gnawed at her stomach as she listened for most of the day to Michael, Catherine, and Margaret explain to her the task at hand.

  Michael spoke briefly about God’s plan for creation, which seemed to involve something called “evolution,” a concept that puzzled Joan.

  “But is not the world already perfect as God created it?” she asked when Michael paused for a moment.

  Michael tensed, his jaws clenching as he struggled to find a way to answer Joan’s apparently simple question. Catherine stepped forward, looking at Michael for permission to field the query. He nodded, trying not to appear disturbed.

  “What is perfection, but growth and change?” Catherine said. “It was God’s will that you be born a helpless infant and that you grow into a woman capable of delivering France from her enemies. You grew into your perfection as God willed it. So, too, does the world grow more perfect if it is allowed to become what it was created to be. This changing and growing is what we call evolution.” Catherine watched Joan’s eyes as she absorbed the answer. Finally, Joan’s expression cleared. Her face grew calm. Catherine continued with the story that Michael had started.

  “People have become greedy for wealth and personal gain,” she said. “They desire to make their fortunes by using the world’s riches without taking the time to replenish them. Over many years, they have carved great wounds into the earth, wounds that cannot heal by themselves—” she paused, aware that Joan was leaning forward on the bench, drinking in the words and turning them over and over in her head. I’ve said too much.

  Frantically she looked over her shoulder at Margaret, who was staring at Michael and mouthing something only she and Michael could hear. Catherine did not have to hear the words to know that Margaret was suggesting to Michael that the time had come to speak the truth. Something beeped softly at her wrist and she glanced down, surreptitiously pressing the button on her wristcomm. An urgent message flashed across the display. This time she spoke in a whisper that both Michael and Catherine could hear.

  “We have no time to waste,” she hissed. “There’s been another incident, a volcanic eruption just off the coast of Alaska. A big one.”

  Michael sighed and closed his eyes. Margaret took his gesture as a signal for her to take over. She moved closer to Joan and in one swift gesture, knelt before her and took her hands in her own.

  “Joan, we are not your original voices,” she said. “And this is not—”

  “—heaven,” Joan finished. “I know that now, though I do not know what place this is.”

  “This place is your future,” Margaret said. “We are from your future. We traveled back in time to your present and snatched you from the fire under cover of the smoke and flames.”

  “But my body is whole,” Joan said. “Even the scars from battle are gone. How?”

  Margaret allowed herself a small smile. At least Joan wasn’t panicking yet.

  “We have learned much about medicine and healing since you received those scars. We were able to grow new skin for you and replace your hair and eyebrows. For us, it is a natural part of our lives.”

  “Why is the world in danger? Is this the end of the world?” Joan’s voice was calm. After all, she had grown up believing that God would eventually destroy His creation and bring all the blessed souls to Heaven to be with Him.

  “It may very well be the end of the world,” Margaret said, “but it is not God who is causing it
. We have brought it upon ourselves, and we are the ones who must make it right.”

  5

  Joan learned quickly, absorbing the knowledge of nearly nine centuries of history, politics, and eco-science. As a peasant girl in Domrémy, she and her family lived close to the land, so she easily grasped the principles of cause and effect that led to the world’s current state of advanced global warming, worldwide famine, a near-permanent pattern of El Niño winters and mammoth hurricane seasons. A crash course in geology and earth science helped her understand the mass tectonic shifts that caused unprecedented numbers of hurricanes and the eruptions of long dormant volcanoes. She was particularly fascinated by Michael’s discussion of the development of science and the discovery of the Einstein-Hawking principle, which ultimately allowed humans to bypass the constraints of time and space and make short visits to the past. With the help of subliminal induction, she learned to speak modern French and English fluently and to carry on simple conversations in Arabic, Mandarin, Russian, Hebrew, Fulani, and Swahili. For her personal interest, she asked for a Bible, which she read almost constantly when not occupied with her grueling learning schedule. She also asked for history modules and was particularly fascinated with the history of France just after her death, though she found parts of her post-mortem story disturbing. She wept for two days when she read of the fate of Gilles de Laval, Baron de Rais.

  “I failed him,” she said, when Catherine asked her why she cried over such an evil man. “He believed in me and I deserted him.”

  “How did you desert him?” Catherine asked.

  “I died,” Joan replied. “I do not think he would have done those horrible things if I had lived. I would have prevented it.”

  “You cannot hold yourself responsible for his actions,” Catherine said, but Joan shook her head emphatically.