“What about Poe’s portraitist, Basil?” John said, suddenly animated. “He was working on one of Charles. Can he still—”
“He never finished it,” Bert interrupted. “Charles asked him not to.”
“Oh,” said John, suddenly crushed. “But he still has it, doesn’t he? It can still be completed, correct?”
“Yes,” Bert said, casting a hesitant look at Verne. “But …”
“There’s something you need to know,” Verne said, “but it may be best discussed when we get back to Poe’s house. Please, John—trust us on this. Charles has not been abandoned.”
“All right,” said John, deflated. “I do trust you, Bert.”
“We don’t even know if we can get back,” said Ransom, who seemed to have taken the news of Charles’s death worse than any of them. “Do we?”
“We do,” said a voice from the door. It was Mark Twain. “We’ve crossed back and forth several times,” he said as he entered the Kilns with Burton close behind. “Tamerlane House, in fact, all of the Nameless Isles, are now connected to Oxford.”
It was true. From the garden, all that could be seen was half of a stone bridge, leading to nowhere. But looked at straight on, one could see the ghost images of the other Caretakers and Tamerlane House just beyond.
“Whatever it was that caused this particular problem seems to have ended when the Nameless Isles were wrenched away from the Archipelago,” said Twain. “Tamerlane time and Oxford time are the same, now, so it’s safe to cross.”
“Maybe,” said Verne, “but we still have no idea what’s caused the discontinuity to begin with.”
“That matters less to me,” Jack said, wiping tears from his eyes, “than it would have just a week ago, when Charles was still alive.”
Warnie and Hugo stayed behind while John and Jack returned across the bridge with the others to tell the bad news about Charles to the rest at Tamerlane House. One among them took the news worse than the rest. The sorrowful howling echoed throughout the isle.
It was Fred. “Awooo …,” he howled again, eyes filled with tears. “I—I should have crossed over with him!” the little mammal said, sobbing. “I’m his apprentice! I should have been there! He didn’t have to die alone!”
John and Jack both knelt and grasped the small badger by the shoulders. “He didn’t, he didn’t, Fred,” Jack said soothingly. “There were many people with him, all of whom loved and admired him. He wasn’t alone.”
“Take heart, little apprentice,” said Burton in an almost sincere effort to seem supportive. “You’d have been broasted by the fellows at Magdalen the minute they caught sight of you. So really, you saved him a bit of grief already by not having to mourn you.”
Strangely enough, Burton’s poor attempt at a joke was more buoying to Fred than anything else anyone said, and after a few moments, he regained his composure.
“Does this mean I’m to take his place?” Fred asked Bert. “Not that I’m in a hurry to, or in any way as capable as Master Charles,” he added quickly, glancing at John and Jack. “I’m just thinking that in a crisis I don’t want the Caretakers to be left shorthanded.”
It occurred to John that at that particular moment, between the Caretakers, past and present; the members of the Imperial Cartological Society; and the Messengers, Morgan and Ransom, they were anything but shorthanded when it came to bootstrap Caretaking. But he kept this to himself—Fred didn’t need to hear something that made him think he wasn’t essential.
Once more the Caretakers Emeritis gathered in the meeting hall, where, for most of them, they had dined just hours before. But for John and Jack, it had been two years.
“The war is all but won,” said John. “There’s a new American president, and the Germans surrendered only a week ago. It was terrible—especially the waiting, knowing it would have to eventually end. But we stuck it out, and I think Charles held on just long enough to know that we’d done what was needed. And then he let himself go.”
“When we didn’t hear from you,” Jack said, “we feared the worst, especially as the war continued. But then suddenly things turned around—and we realized that our defeat of the Shadow King was finally being reflected in events in our world.”
“We’re very happy to see you,” John said, “even as sad as we are to have lost … to have …” He stopped, groping for words, and wiped at his eyes. “Well, yes. I wish Charles were here. But tell us: What happened? Obviously the bridge works.”
“Works now, you mean,” said Shakespeare miserably. All of Rose’s consoling words could not bring back his earlier confidence. From his point of view, he’d done worse than fail. He’d failed because he was too confident he’d succeeded.
“The best we have been able to figure,” said Morgan, “is that Will’s principle was sound, but he missed a few things in the execution.”
“Indeed,” said Ransom, who was still a bit ashen. “The orbs allowed the Dragonships to pass between worlds, but they were also moving. At some point, they would cross. The bridge didn’t move—it was forming a fixed point in both worlds. And because of the discontinuity I discovered, we think that the Nameless Isles were pulled out of Kairos time and into Chronos time, and we lost two years in the process.”
“But how is that possible?” asked Jack. “I thought time moved more slowly in the Archipelago.”
“It did,” said Verne, “but now it appears to be speeding up. We think that’s why you couldn’t use the trump—the time differential was too great. The cavorite in the bridge let it function enough for you to cross over, but we lost two years in the transition when the chronal stresses became too great, and now we’ve been completely cut off.”
“Tamerlane House is now connected to Oxford,” said Ransom, his voice shaky. “But that is nothing compared to what we fear is going on back in the Archipelago.”
Before he could elaborate, Ransom’s eyes widened, then rolled back in his head as he collapsed to the floor, unconscious.
“What’s wrong with him?” Jack asked as they got Ransom to bed in one of the spare rooms. “He looks deathly ill.”
“He may be,” said Bert. “He’s gone past his Prime Time in Chronos time now. We’ve never seen that happen before.”
“His Prime Time?” asked John. “Then he was meant to …” He paused. “Like Charles,” he said suddenly. “He’s exactly like Charles.”
“An aspect,” said Verne. “Not so much a direct analogue of Charles, as your fellow Chaz was. But an aspect is enough. Think of him as a Charles from another dimension—somewhat like your H. G. Wells, Herb, is to our Bert.”
“However you choose to think of him,” said Bert, “Alvin Ransom is dying.”
“It’s time to call a full council of Caretakers,” said Twain, “and you, as well,” he added, waving at Burton. “We need all our friends now, and our old enemies, too.”
The group waited to start the council until the elder members of the Caretakers Emeritis had joined them. Some, like Chaucer, had been at dinner the night before. Others, like Malory and Tycho Brahe, had been busy with other matters. But the one they were all waiting for was Edgar Allan Poe.
He was the master of Tamerlane House, and more of an anomaly than Bert was. John was the Principal Caretaker of the Imaginarium Geographica; Verne was something called the Prime Caretaker; but Poe stood above them all as an enigmatic adept in matters involving time and space. His abilities and counsel were oracular in nature—he was not always present, not always involved, and did not often offer advice unless Verne specifically requested that he do so. But when he did choose to involve himself in matters at hand, it was both a relief and an added fear. For despite all the good he could do, he only got involved when the situation was most dire.
The rest of the caretakers had been seated for several minutes when Poe finally took his place at the head of the long table. “This note,” he said to Twain, “about Rose’s visitor. Perhaps we should start there.”
Rose recounted the
details of her visit from Mother Night two evenings before. Following that, Verne, aided by Morgan and Bert, elaborated on the happenings after the celebration, when they discovered that the trumps weren’t working. When they got to the part about the bridge, Shakespeare bravely took the stage himself to explain.
“Interesting,” Poe said when he had finished. “You demonstrate the same sort of genius that Arthur Pym had.”
“Thank you,” said Will.
“You also made the same mistakes,” added Poe.
“Oh,” said Will.
“Do you think the events are related?” Verne asked. “Could the discontinuity be the fault of the Shadows?”
Poe pondered this. “The Echthroi,” he said at last, “exploit weaknesses, but I don’t think they are the cause of this. I think we are.”
“How so?” asked Twain.
“Independence Day marked another event,” said Poe. “The final destruction of the Keep of Time. I think this is what Mother Night was referring to when she said the threads of history had come undone. I think that caused the discontinuity.”
“Great,” said Burton. “You fools have broken history.”
“I hate to admit it, but he’s right,” said Jack. “We have. And we’ve just assumed that it would take care of itself, but it hasn’t.”
“So how do we fix it?” asked John. “It isn’t like the Geographica, where we can just replace the tower with a book of maps.”
“Maybe we can, at that,” said Verne. “Time is mappable, you know. It’s difficult in the extreme, but not impossible.”
“Only one among our number has ever had the facility to map time,” said Chaucer, “and I know it pains you, Bert, to hear him referred to thusly, but it was our renegade, John Dee.”
“Cambridge man,” Fred said, before spitting over his left shoulder and winking twice.
“Hey now,” said Jack. “Enough of that. Or have you forgotten I’m a Cambridge man too? Or about to be one, anyway.”
“Big diff’rence between being drafted an’ enlisting,” said Fred. “We know your heart will stay pure, Scowler Jack.”
“Actually, that’s exactly what we were using Morgan, Ransom, and the other adepts to do,” said Verne. “We had begun by mapping the Keep of Time itself. The Messengers were our primary exploration force, venturing through each doorway and then reporting on what they found there.”
“Ransom was one of the latecomers,” Twain added, “though he certainly made up for his relative inexperience with a marked ability to report on unorthodox environs.”
“With their experiences in time travel,” John said looking at Burton, Houdini, and Doyle, “it had to be helpful to draw on the Society’s collective knowledge. Was that part of the reason you agreed to the truce?”
“It was a bit of a Hail Mary pass on their part,” Verne said with a barely concealed smirk. “There was practically nothing left of the original Imperial Cartological Society after the split in the ranks, and other than Burton’s core group, all of the members were either missing, dead, or permanently indisposed.”
“Permanently indisposed?” asked John.
“Kit Marlowe was stranded on a fictional island, which is entirely different from being stranded on an imaginary one,” Chaucer said, his face an impassive mask of memory. “De Bergerac is on a comet, I believe. Or the moon. I forget. Anyway, he’s no longer of this physical world. Defoe you know about, and also Coleridge, who still sits in despair on that island past the Edge of the World.
“Wilhelm Grimm was killed by the Shadow King,” he continued, “and Byron is on probation, so he will remain out of circulation as either a Caretaker or a member of the Society.”
“We can still make that a more permanent state,” Percy Shelley grumbled.
“Christina Rossetti is in Fairy Land,” Dickens said, consulting a notebook, “and Milton was last said to be in the Underworld somewhere.”
“Which underworld?” asked John.
“Does it matter?” said Dickens.
“So,” Chaucer concluded, taking a tally on his fingers, “that’s six we know of then. Burton, Houdini, Conan Doyle, Byron, and Magwich here—and Dumas fils and William Blake unaccounted for.”
“Does Magwich really count?” said Jack.
“I heard that,” came a whining voice from the next room. “Just because I’m a tree doesn’t mean I can’t hear you. Trees have feelings too, you know.”
“Here,” John said as he handed his jacket to Fred. “Cover up the shrub, will you?”
“My pleasure,” said Fred as he covered up the vehemently protesting plant. “Time for a nap, Maggot.”
“Blake was never one of us,” Burton said. “We had … diverging opinions about the direction of the Society. One day he simply left. I’ve not seen him since.”
“We can discuss Blake another time,” Verne said with a mysterious expression on his face. “For now, the one I’m concerned about, who may be the most significant player on the other side, is still unaccounted for.”
“Who was that?” said Dickens, consulting his notes. “I don’t—”
“Dee,” Poe said. “Dr. John Dee. The renegade.”
All eyes turned to Burton, who scowled.
“No one really knows what happened to him,” Burton said. “He was the originator of the Society, but he operated more as a mythic archetype than a colleague. I’ve never met him myself—not face-to-face.”
“We’ll take your word on that,” said Twain, “for now.”
“If it’s just one man,” said Jack, “then why would he be of any concern? Can’t we just put him in the ‘missing’ column next to Blake and young Dumas and focus on other matters that are in the here and now?”
“Not like Blake,” Verne said brusquely, “and perhaps not missing. Just because we can’t find him doesn’t mean he hasn’t already found us.”
“And he’s not likely alone, either,” added Burton. “There were always other recruits to the ICS, but Dee was never forthcoming about who they were, or in what numbers he’d recruited them.”
“So what do we know?” John said, exasperated.
“Only this,” said Verne. “Our enemy is more skilled than any here in mapping time, and he may already know everything he needs to know about us— while we know almost nothing about him.”
“I’d like to ask something,” said Rose. The Caretakers fell silent, in deference to Poe, who immediately turned to her. “The keep has fallen—that was going to happen regardless. But how does that affect your ability to move through time?”
“That’s a good question,” said Bert, “which I can’t begin to answer.”
“I was just thinking,” Rose continued, “that if I’m supposed to restore the threads of history, then maybe I’m meant to go back in time and fix the keep before it can be damaged?”
“That’s a tall order,” said Verne. “Too much of that can just make things worse. And besides, we don’t even know if we still can travel in time.”
“We can certainly find out,” Morgan said as he whipped out his watch and twirled one of the dials. “We are a part of the Summer Country now, right? So why not have a look? Back in just a bit,” he added with a wink. “Don’t let the badger steal my chair.”
“I would never …!” Fred huffed before Laura Glue elbowed him in the ribs. “Uh, I mean, not again, anyway.”
Morgan disappeared. There was a soft popping sound as the displaced air rushed in to fill the Messenger-shaped void where he had been standing.
A few moments later, the air pressure of the room increased ever so slightly as he reappeared—but it was not the Hank Morgan who had just left. Or rather, it was, but he was not in the same state. This Hank Morgan was old—impossibly, inconceivably old—and he was dressed as a pirate, exactly like the apparition Charles and John had seen at Magdalen Tower.
“Zero point!” Hank said as his eyes rolled back in his head.
John, Jack, and Twain rushed forward to grasp hold of th
e old man as he collapsed in front of them. He was sobbing, not from pain, but from relief.
“Oh, mercy,” he cried. “I’m back! I’m finally back!”
“You weren’t gone but thirty seconds!” Jack said as they lowered the fragile Messenger into a chair.
“Fifteen,” Fred said as he offered some silver to boost Morgan’s strength. “Twenty, tops.”
Morgan’s eyes widened in alarm, and he pushed aside the silver and mug of ale proffered by the badger. “Twenty seconds?” he wheezed. “I’ve been leaping through time trying to return here for over two hundred years!”
“I was going to say he looked pretty decrepit,” Houdini said to Doyle behind his hand, “but for two hundred and forty-odd years old, he actually looks pretty champion.”
“At least we know when he was,” Verne said, “or at least, when he was last.”
“Tried to send you a message, yes I did,” said Morgan.
“We got it,” John said, leaning close. “Charles and I—we got your message. How did you do it?”
Morgan closed his eyes. “Chronal stereopticon,” he murmured weakly. “Like I made for Shakespeare’s Bridge, only better. Projected a message through time, to tell you how to make it work.”
“But why did you project it at Magdalen Tower?” John asked. “Why not the Kilns, or our offices?”
Morgan cackled. “Weren’t built yet,” he said, “not in the seventeenth century. But the tower was. Had to make a trump of what was there then, to reach you here now.”
“I wonder how his watch malfunctioned,” said John. “Will ours do the same?”
“Yes!” Morgan said as he staggered to his feet and clutched at John’s lapels. “But it wasn’t a malfunction! There are no zero points! Don’t you understand? There was nothing for the Anabasis Machine to cling on to. Nothing to show where, or when, I was. I have spent three lifetimes leaping blindly from instant to instant trying to find my way back to now.”
“No zero points?” asked Jack. “What does he mean?”
“A zero point is created by events of great significance,” said Bert. “The watches are attuned to all of them through history. He should have been able to leap straight back. And for some reason, he didn’t.”
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