The Time Roads

by Beth Bernobich

  A dozen steps and darkness closed around us. I glanced back and saw only a blurred square of light. Gwen whispered urgently that we could not hesitate. Her words were hard to make out but her intent was clear enough. We hurried on into a thick mist. Within moments I no longer sensed the walls of a corridor around us. My boots trod soundlessly on a smooth road that arrowed straight ahead. My breath came short, but I heard nothing beyond the thrumming of my pulse, and even that had an odd unnatural quality to it. When Gwen spoke again, her lips moved soundlessly. She shook her head and frowned. For the first time, she seemed anxious.

  The darkness eased.

  Pinpricks of light appeared overhead. If I stared directly at them, they shifted. Jumped. Their halos blurred. I dropped my gaze back to the road. It tilted oddly beneath me and my stomach lurched. I blinked. Saw the road divide into a dozen, a hundred, a myriad of separate paths spinning off in all directions, to other pasts and other futures. I must have made a sound, because Gwen gripped my hand tightly. She spoke, but the words ran together and swirled around like the waters of two rivers when they meet.

  Sound stopped. Started.

  We were running. No, walking but the mists streamed past us, making our passage seem much swifter. The stars overhead had become streaks that spiraled down to the horizon, to the point where the road vanished from sight. Gwen was murmuring to herself. I heard her clearly now. She recited a stream of numbers.

  “353665707. Times two. 25814. Minus 1. 353665707*225814+1. 1958349*231415–1. 1958349*231415+1. Yes. There. There it is. The future, Your Majesty.”

  My attention snapped back to the road. The stars had stilled. An indigo band marked the division between ground and sky. And there, where Gwen pointed, a bright liquid flare of true sunlight. We ran. We ran without hesitation toward the sun-bright disc. I believe I was laughing, though partly in terror. And when Gwen herself loosed my hand and leapt into its heart, I followed.

  * * *

  For many long moments, I was aware of nothing more than an overpowering giddiness. I crouched with hands splayed against icy cobblestones, spewing water and tisane. My stomach knotted into a fist-sized lump and heaved itself against my ribs, though I had nothing left to give. Snow was falling in steady streamers, and a bone-deep cold penetrated my clothes.

  Gwen Madóc pressed a hand against my shoulder. “Your Majesty. My friend. We must hurry. We have an hour, if that, before the time fractures undo our passage back.”

  She helped me to my feet. I staggered, then clutched at her arms. My head was swimming and I wanted nothing more than a shot glass of whiskey. “Where are we?” I croaked.

  “Cill Canning,” she replied softly. “But the when is more important. I told the truth that we could not send ourselves to one particular moment, past or future. The most I know is that this is the winter of 1943. January or possibly February.”

  I wiped the snow from my eyes and stared at our surroundings.

  We had not traveled more than a dozen yards, if that, from where Gwen and Síomón Madóc’s machine had stood. Everything else, however, had been transformed beyond knowing. Cill Cannig had vanished. In its place was a ruin of walls. A few hundred yards away stood a large stone building with electric lamps burning in two or three of the ground-floor windows. By their faint light, I could see the ground between was taken up with rubble and trash, now vanishing under the snow, and a strange sour scent filled the air—not poison, not exactly, but the smell made me think of slaughterhouses and those laboratories dedicated to breaking down flesh and analyzing its properties.

  “We must hurry,” Gwen said. “We cannot have anyone find us here.”

  She dragged me down a lane filled with more rubble, more trash. We exited the palace grounds, leaving behind even the electric lights, and plunging into a maze of lanes bounded by tall wooden buildings. The fields and farmland I remembered were gone, replaced by ugly warehouses.

  The snow was falling faster now. I had to tuck my hands under my arms and bend my head to watch my footing. Moonlight broke through the clouds from time to time, but our progress was slow. More than once, we dodged into alleyways or courtyards to avoid the patrols that kept watch. I heard muttered conversations in German and Éireann. The patrols had no dogs, and I had the impression the cold discouraged them from making a thorough search. Even so, my pulse thrummed hard and fast, and I had to bite down to keep my teeth from clattering together.

  We had just reached the old outer walls of Osraighe when a mechanical grinding broke the silence. Then came the booming noise of a bell directly overhead. A naoi, a deich, a haon deág … The midnight hour was striking.

  “The doorway will close before the bells mark the next hour,” Gwen told me. “We must not be late. Are you afraid?”

  Do you wish to go back now? was her second, implied question.

  “I am terrified,” I told her. “Let us go.”

  We hurried as quickly as the deepening snow allowed, but nearly half an hour longer passed before we found the address in Breandan’s papers. The building was an older brick and timber structure, tall and narrow, that dated from the mid sixteenth century, with a chimney that spiraled up from the slate rooftop. This had once been a prosperous neighborhood three hundred years ago. Since then the nobles had sold their homes to wealthier merchants, whose descendants had rented to the rising working class. Now? Between the late hour and the darkness, I could not tell.

  A narrow porch gave us some protection from the snow and wind. The door itself was a massive thing, fashioned from heavy iron that was giving way to the inevitable rust. Gwen pointed to a metal grate set into the left-hand side of the door. She wiped away the snow and uncovered a series of plaques with names, and a button next to each.

  Ó Corráin, Breandan, read one.

  Gwen stopped me before I could press the button.

  “Remember what I told you,” she said. “There are no guarantees in what we do. I know. I tried more than once to alter the past. You might find that you cannot undo the future.”

  “I know I might fail,” I said quietly. “But I must try. I must.”

  She nodded and stood aside. I stabbed the button—a harsh buzzer reverberated, making us both jump with sudden panic. I glanced over my shoulder, certain we would be discovered. Gwen counting under her breath to a hundred, then rang the bell six times quickly.

  “Who is there?”

  A tinny voice emanated from the metal grill.

  I recognized him at once. “Breandan. Breandan Ó Cuilinn.”

  There was a pause. “You’ve misread the sign. My name is Breandan Ó Corráin.”

  Even with the distortion I could hear the alarm in his voice. Hurriedly, I said, “I have not misread the sign, Doctor Ó Cuilinn. I came to say I received your message. I have some questions…”

  “I sent no message.” But now the voice was uncertain.

  “You did,” I said. “Or you will try to. Please, listen. Just a moment.” And then, because memory itself flooded me, I could not keep the anguish from my voice. “You told me you would prove your device. Your golden octopus. Do you remember that day, Breandan? You set your own journal into the octopus and launched it into the future. And then, and then … you followed.”

  By now I was weeping, my tears frozen into specks of ice. I rubbed my knuckles over my eyes and glared at the silent metal grating, as if by glaring alone, I could force it to produce Breandan Ó Cuilinn. Next to me, Gwen shifted from foot to foot. In a moment she would flee, I could tell it. My own flesh felt unnaturally heavy from the cold.

  “Áine. Wait.”

  A dozen, two dozen heartbeats, echoed in my ears. Then the door opened.

  It was him—the face I had seen in my bedchambers not three hours before, but alive, his cheeks flushed with emotion and his gazed fixed on me, as if he thought I might vanish from before his eyes.

  Then he saw Gwen and flinched back. “Who are you?”

  “A friend,” she said quickly. “A fellow traveler of
the time roads. You exchanged letters with me one summer, Doctor Ó Cuilinn. My name is Gwen Madóc.”

  Another jolt of amazement and recognition. Then he glanced up and down the street. “We cannot talk here,” he said. “Come inside.”

  He led us up a flight of stairs to a landing with three doors. The air here was chill, and the plaster walls chipped and discolored. Wood smoke and urine and the scent of stale cabbage made for a noxious combination of scents. Breandan unlocked the door to the left and ushered us inside.

  We came into an entryway, which was little more than a cupboard, hung with several coats that smelled of mud and smoke. There were no lamps here, and the only light spilled through a half-open door ahead. A man’s boots had been flung into one corner. A faint electric scent, which called up memories from years ago, drifted from the rooms beyond.

  Gwen passed me and went into the main apartment. I followed with Breandan.

  More memories, but transplanted into this cramped and shabby setting. What had once been the parlor or sitting room was given over entirely to an enormous worktable covered with trays of wire, screws, batteries, and strange glass tubes. Various tools were scattered about, and in one corner stood a metal cage that reminded me of Gwen Madóc’s own metal monster, but on a much smaller scale. An electric lamp hung over the table. The windows themselves were papered over thickly.

  Breandan came into the room, still with that frightened wondering expression. “Áine. You … how did you find me?”

  I touched his cheek. “Because you found me first. Let me explain.” I needed a few moments to do so, however. I rubbed my cold-numbed hands together and paced around the room, finding it easier to speak when I did not look at Breandan directly. “For me, the year is 1914. You came to me at midnight, on March twenty-ninth.”

  “Yes, to warn you. There is a plot against Éire. Lord Ó Tíghearnaigh—”

  “Ó Tíghearnaigh?”

  “It started with another man. I can’t remember his name. There were bribes, monies offered in exchange for more favorable trade agreements with the Prussian Alliance. Lord Ó Tíghearnaigh entered the scheme later, on the promise that he—”

  “Enough,” Gwen said sharply. “We must return to Cill Cannig, Your Majesty.”

  From outside, I heard the quarter bells ringing. Once, twice. We had half an hour, or less, before the time roads closed to us. “One moment,” I said to Gwen. “Breandan. You must not return to the past. If you do, you will die. You already have.”

  “But Áine, I must tell you more.”

  I shook my head. “I have Ó Tíghearnaigh’s name. I will find out his accomplice. But you—you must not attempt to come back in time. Promise me, Breandan.”

  He seized me in an embrace. “I love you,” he whispered in my ear. “I will always love you. Go, my love. Go, before you too are caught in the web of time.”

  He pressed his lips against mine in one last, long passionate kiss. Then, with a laugh, he caught up a book from the worktable and pressed it into my hands. “My last message, my love. Farewell.”

  * * *

  I remembered only fragments of our journey back to the Éire of 1914. We hurried through the lanes to Cill Cannig’s ruins. There, in that same courtyard where we had emerged, the air had already taken on an iridescent quality. Then a man’s voice called out from the shadows. Gwen tightened her grip on my wrist and hurled us into the maelstrom.

  Again the blackness. Again the stars blurred and jumped. Again the thousand and more paths radiating outward from each step. A numbness overtook me, until I knew nothing except Gwen’s cold hand clasping mine, and the book Breandan had thrust at me in those last moments, which I held against my chest.

  The stars spun around, and down toward the horizon, to a speck of gold, which seemed much smaller than the golden disc of the future. Gwen was reciting her numbers again, but with longer pauses in between. The numbers were growing smaller—from six digits, to five. I recognized a prime number from the mathematical studies of my childhood. The light marking our destination wavered, but Gwen did not deviate from the road, nor did she stop her recitation of ever smaller and smaller numbers.

  … Forty-one. Thirty-seven. Thirty-one. Twenty-nine. Nineteen. Seventeen. Thirteen. Seven. Three …

  Zero.

  * * *

  We tumbled into the time machine, skidding over the smooth floor until we crashed against the far wall. Bruised and dizzied, I lay gasping for breath. My skin prickled in the unexpected warmth. My heart thudded against my ribs. My thoughts tumbled even faster than my body had.

  Gwen had loosed her grip on my hand. Dimly I heard her stumble to her feet. I rolled over onto my hands and knees. A stitch caught beneath my ribs and I bit back a groan. Already the images from Éire’s future had blurred in my memory. It would be all too simple to believe them a fantasy. And what, after all, had we accomplished?

  My companion was now hunched over her keyboard, tapping out a new command sequence. Her gaze skipped from me to a point beyond. I followed the direction of her glance and saw a book lying a few feet away, surrounded by a spattering of melting snow. Breandan’s gift. I snatched it up.

  The cover was plain black cardboard, worn around the edges with handling, and with a crack running diagonally across the title—A History of the Modern World, Volume III—printed in thick square letters.

  The author’s name was printed along the bottom edge of the cover. I could just make out the title of professor and a few letters of the surname. My hands still shaking, I opened the book and leafed through several blank pages until I came to one with the title repeated, then in smaller print, Herr Professor Edward James White, Professor of Anglian Histories, Second Edition, Copyright 1939.

  My breath deserted me in that moment. This, this was more than a last message. This was a roadmap to the future.

  I closed my eyes. No. This was a record of one future. Remember all those other roads, leading to other futures, I told myself. They might all be true, a set of parallels, or they might each represent potential futures, with only one remaining in the end. It didn’t matter which. It only meant that changing one moment now did not necessarily create the future I desired.

  Gwen had finished with her manipulation of the equipment. Now she eyed me with a strange intent expression. “Think carefully what you do.”

  I nodded. “I will. I promise.”

  Her brother had vanished from the outer laboratory. Gwen sat down at the nearest worktable and switched on one of the electric lamps. She had already dismissed my presence from her thoughts and was writing in a journal. I tucked Breandan’s book underneath my arm and continued on to the outer doors, where my guard waited. We stared at each other, and I was conscious of my wind-blown hair and the mud stains on my coat. Then his gaze went blank and proper. Oh, there would be rumors, I knew. But not yet. Not until I had a chance to act.

  Once I gained my apartments, I dismissed my escort and passed alone through the darkened rooms to my bedchamber door. I slipped the key from my pocket and let myself inside.

  A turn of the switch flooded the room with cold light. I saw my rumpled bedclothes. Saw a shadow on the carpet, like that of a blanket hurriedly cast over a figure. Even as I fixed my gaze upon it, the image faded.

  My breath trickled out. I drew another, and another.

  He lives. Yes, he lives. Now I must see to the rest.

  * * *

  I spent the rest of the night reading and taking notes. By sunrise, I had the shape of a plan. Oh, but I would need all the caution and cleverness I possessed. Each decision I made would undo snippets of the future, but once undone, they might cause other and greater difficulties. More than once, I wished for my own machine to calculate the probabilities for each decision and its outcome. More than once, I wished for Aidrean Ó Deághaidh’s counsel.

  My first interview took place at seven o’clock, with Commander Ábraham of the Queen’s Constabulary.

  “I have received vital information,” I
told him, “concerning certain radical factions in Éire and across the Continent. Here are the names of their leaders, and where you might find them.”

  I handed him a sheet of paper with the names of Daniel Strong and his associates, the specifics gleaned from White’s chapters on Éire’s civil war. I included the method they had used to communicate their plans—a code based on the metaphysical poets of the seventeenth century—as well as the observation that Michael Okoye himself was not a part of their conspiracy.

  Ábraham stared at the sheet. His lips moved, and I thought I saw recognition on his face, as though these names were not unknown to him. “What do you wish me to do, Your Majesty?”

  “Detain our own citizens on suspicion of treason,” I said. “While you have them in custody, take measures to contain the devices they have planted in Osraighe and other cities throughout Éire. Here is the list of suspected sites. The devices are not visible yet, but you understand the means they’ve used. Secure them as you would any ordinary bomb. Lord Ó Cadhla will have responsibility for the ones outside our borders. You understand?”

  “Oh, yes, Your Majesty,” he breathed. “I understand. Where—”

  “From a number of sources,” I replied. “They wish to remain anonymous.”

  Not that I thought he would believe me if I told him the truth—that my source was a book written in the future, which foretold my assassination this summer, and which told how, if we did not act, our cities would be turned to dust and Europe would be overrun by hordes of soldiers from the Prussian Alliance. Perhaps something of my own horror showed on my face, because Commander Ábraham did not question me further. “I will do as you command, Your Majesty.”

  Lord Ó Cadhla arrived when the clocks were striking half past nine. “I’ve heard a number of interesting rumors, Your Majesty.”

  “No doubt you have, my lord. The truth is even more unsettling.”

  He glanced around the audience chamber. I had locked away Breandan’s history book in my private safe box long before I emerged from my bedchamber, but I knew at least one guard had noted its presence the night before.