Tony tried to force words from his dry throat. Everly seemed kind. Not someone trying to apprehend a criminal. But how could the man be so nonchalant? “I could sue you,” Tony gasped.
Everly’s eyebrows raised a fraction of an inch. “For what?”
“You locked me up. You—”
“I didn’t lock you up.” The smile remained.
“That girl—”
Everly’s face settled into smug satisfaction. “Oh yes, I’m afraid I have to apologize for Taylor’s... overzealousness. But I doubt you would have undergone the test voluntarily, and it was vital that you complete the First Rite of Initiation. Which you passed with flying colors, by the way—”
“First Rite! But I—” Tony panted, trying to catch his breath.
Everly crossed his elbows over his chest. “If you want to sue us, be my guest. You won’t be able to prove a thing.”
“I could have you arrested.” Tony reached for the remote unit with the nurse call button.
Everly snatched the remote out of reach. “Come on Tony, hear me out.” Tony went limp. He lacked the strength to grapple for the remote or shout for help. Everly was right, he wouldn’t be able to prove a damn thing.
Everly held up a hand. “Look, I realize our methods seem... extreme, but the test is necessary. We have to be sure you’re the real deal—that you really can move through time. We have to have proof that you have the mental faculties, the problem-solving aptitude to deal with it, and the moral fabric to only use your abilities in accordance with the Society’s strictures.”
“Why—”
“You’d be amazed at how many have tried to infiltrate the Society. Researchers, thrill-seekers... the government... especially military types. They’d love to find out how we do it—and exploit it, change the face of history. Which is strictly prohibited by the Society Code. But we can go over that later.” He squared himself in the chair, his hands on his knees. His constant grin reminded Tony of the Cheshire cat from Alice in Wonderland. “So, tell me about your trip. Where—or I should say when—did you go?”
“Nine...” Tony’s voice came out a dry whisper.
Everly filled a cup from the pitcher on the bedside table. Water splashed over the rim as ice cubes plopped into the cup. He handed it to Tony.
Tony downed the water then wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. The wanted flyer. Panic rushed down his body. There he was, lying in the hospital with scarcely enough energy to lift his arm, much less escape.
“Tony?” Everly said.
“I don’t care to discuss this with you.”
The ubiquitous grin widened. “It’s okay. I’m like you, remember?”
Uh-huh. Except Everly’s face wasn’t on a wanted poster.
“It’s not like I’m going to toss you in a rubber room.”
Tony ran his finger and thumb over the edge of the sheet. The other man’s face bore no malice or deceit, and Tony considered himself a decent judge of people. The panicky feeling ebbed.
Maybe Everly didn’t know about the wanted posters.
What the hell. “Nineteen thirteen.” Tony’s voice was getting stronger, and his anger at being trapped against his will was returning with his strength.
“Oh, shit. I was afraid of that.” Everly’s grin disappeared. “The flood.”
“Yeah, the flood.”
“Oh, man. I’m sorry—”
“Sorry?” Tony clutched the bed rails and pulled himself forward. “I froze my ass off, about starved—and you’re sorry?”
Everly turned his palms up. “What would you have me do, Tony? Is it money you want? Because if you join the Society, you’ll never want for anything in that regard.” His smile reappeared. “Do you want to make it not happen? You can, though I don’t recommend it. And you’d have to wait until next year—”
“Next year?”
Everly lowered his hands and tipped his head to one side. “You jump in time, not in space. So the earth’s at the same point in orbit around the sun. Which means you always go back to the same date, give or take a little, in a different year.”
“And when I come back?”
“Same thing. If you’ve been there for two weeks, you return to the present two weeks later.”
Tony had already figured that part out. His sister told him their mom had almost wound up in the hospital, too, with the stress of her son being missing for three weeks.
No more unscheduled visits to the past. Not worth the risk.
He ran a mental calculation. He could go to the Saturn Society house on March twenty-first next year, make the jump again, only to a less eventful year. Or better yet, not at all. “You mean I can... un-do my trip back to 1913?”
“If you want to—”
“No.” Tony picked up his cup and twirled it around, making a piece of ice circle its bottom.
He’d done something important in 1913. Because of him, little Charlotte Henderson had survived the flood, gone on to live—he hoped—a full, happy life.
He’d done something meaningful. If he relived the experience, he wouldn’t change a thing.
Except maybe the trip over the wires.
He set the cup down. “I saved a kid’s life. I don’t want to un-do that.”
Everly’s grin disappeared. “You what?”
“Saved a little girl’s life—”
“That’s what I thought you said. Oh, Jeez.”
“What’s wro—”
“You changed history.”
“Oh...” Shit. The non-intervention edict he’d read on the membership form. What if Charlotte was the reason Tony was on that wanted flyer? “The kid was drowning!” He picked up his cup again, gripping it tightly enough the sides started to collapse. “There was no way I could just stand there... could you?”
Everly pulled at his ponytail. “I’d like to think I could—”
“You what?” What kind of monster was this guy?
“Tony, do you realize what you’ve done? That little girl could’ve grown up to... oh, give birth to Hitler, maybe. Or—”
Tony sneered. “In Dayton, Ohio?”
“Okay, bad example. But you get what I’m saying? A seemingly inconsequential act could have a tremendous impact on us all, on life on earth as we know it—”
“One of her descendants could find a cure for cancer, too.”
Everly’s lips tightened. “Possible, but unlikely. I’ve heard of a lot more examples where that kind of change had done no good... and plenty of harm.”
Tony dragged his finger down the cup’s ridged side. If Everly had a problem with Tony’s saving Charlotte, there was no way he’d condone preventing Bethany’s death.
And he’d been Tony’s best possible source of information.
Too bad. Tony would learn how to do what he needed with or without the Society’s help. Whether Everly approved or not, Bethany should not have died. How could an innocent child being beaten, brutalized, and murdered be meant to be?
Maybe Charlotte Henderson wasn’t meant to die that day in 1913. And what of the others he’d helped ferry to safety the next day? What purpose could there be to such an extraordinary gift, if not to fix things that shouldn’t have happened? What about his warp back two years, where he’d busted Dora cheating on him, and the change in his timeline had resulted in their divorce?
“Okay, I see your point.” Everly must not know about Dora, and Tony wasn’t about to tell him. “But what about that little girl? Are you saying I should go back next year and not save her?” Not that he had any intention of doing so.
Everly waved at the floor. “No. Definitely not. It’s bad enough to change history the first time. But in the Society’s experience, going back to un-do one mistake only leads to others, often far worse. Maybe you did do a good thing, and nothing more will come of it.” He didn’t sound convinced. “You have to understand, changing something—no matter how small—can have serious consequences. Not from the Society, but in terms of the very structure of tim
e.” He met Tony’s gaze with an almost frightened look in his eyes. “Each time one of us makes a change, it makes a tiny tear in the fabric of time. Usually it’s not noticeable.” He held out his hands, turned up his palms. “What does it matter if a blade of grass—that died ten years ago—shows up in someone’s yard today?” He lowered his hands, then held them in front of him and made a circling gesture. “Holes in time, if you will.”
Tony’s lip curled. “Holes in time?”
Everly shrugged. “Or, if you subscribe to the multiple universe theory, holes between realities. Every time you make a change, you create a new universe, a new dimension. And the division between them gets thinner. Either way, it’s dangerous. Did you see that story on the news a few weeks ago, when some kid found a grasshopper—a kind that people thought was extinct?”
Tony twirled the sheet between his finger and thumb. “Sounds familiar.”
“No one can say for sure, but it’s pretty much accepted in the Society that that’s how it happened. A hole in the fabric of time. Or between realities.”
Tony’d seen the news story, right after he returned from his warp back two years, where he’d busted Dora and Charlie. And changed his own life significantly. Was the emergence of that grasshopper, a hole in time, Tony’s fault? “What’s one little grasshopper?”
“No big deal, right? One insect can’t reproduce. But what if the holes get big enough to let more through? What if it’s something bigger? What if the holes get big enough that people disappear into them? Or what if technology from the future appears here, and people misuse it? Or animal or plant life our current ecosystem can’t handle?”
Tony stared down at the sheet while his mind tumbled around the possibilities. Killer mosquitoes. Bacteria. Viruses long eradicated, or stronger ones from the future. “Do these holes always happen when someone goes back? Surely people make unintentional changes all the time.”
“We don’t know. Like I said, most of these tears are so tiny, we don’t notice them.” He relaxed, crossed one ankle over the opposite knee in a square. “Look, I’m not trying to scare you. As far as we know, the big holes only happen when someone makes a big change. And that’s what the Society’s here for. To educate, help you learn how to deal with time travel in the safest way possible.” He drew a folded sheaf of paper from the inside pocket of his vest and leaned over to hand them to Tony. “I brought these in case you’d like to consider joining us again—especially in light of your recent experience.” He pushed the over-bed table across Tony’s lap, then laid a pen on it.
Tony unfolded the pages. The words swam in his vision, until Everly handed Tony his glasses.
Tony shoved them on and read. It was the same form Taylor Gressman had given him.
He skimmed the questions, then the provisions requiring his agreement, and reached for the pen.
Before he could talk himself out of it, he filled in his name, address, social security number, phone number and work information. Under income, he put “enough to pay the bills.”
As he completed the form, a sense of weight lifted from him, as if the sheets had been made of lead before, and had now metamorphosed into ordinary cloth. Though he didn’t look up at Everly, he could feel the man’s perpetual smile.
He needed this. Needed the help, the support, the guidance.
And the instruction. To help him learn—
He reached the signature line, then paused as the full implications hit him.
He couldn’t sign this.
Everly raised an eyebrow. “Questions?”
Oh yeah, he had dozens, all pushing forward in Tony’s mind at once. But he’d better bury the most important one in a bunch of others—which were also important. “When I was in 1913... why was I stuck there for almost three weeks? But when I went back two years, I was only there for a couple days?”
“The farther back you go, the longer it takes for the pull to hit,” Everly explained.
“The pull?”
“The force connecting us to our own natural present. Before you came back, did you start to see things from today?”
“Yeah... sort of like a double-exposed photo. And I had a hellacious headache.”
“That’s the pull.” The Cheshire cat grin spread across Everly’s face again. “You can’t stay in the past indefinitely. No matter when you go, the pull will eventually snap you back, even if you fight it. I take it you were around other people all the time?” Tony nodded. “That’s why you got the headache. The pull was trying to haul you back home, but you can’t warp when you’re in view of linear people.”
“What?”
Everly’s smile came back in full force. “People who experience time in a linear fashion. Normal people. If a linear person were to see you warp, it would jar the space-time continuum, create a difference in their perception and in the generally-perceived reality.”
“There were people around when they—” Tony had to bite the word out—“sacrificed me in Mexico.”
“That’s different. You died.”
Tony’s insides turned to jelly. “What?” He put the cup down on the over-bed table and dropped his hands to the sheet.
“Sure,” Everly said. “You die in the past, it instantly pulls you back to your own time, healed, at least partly.” Tony’s jaw went slack as he remembered Everly’s comment in the parking garage—How can you die before you’re born?
In a weird way, it made sense. The idea was freeing, magical. An odd sense of relief mixed with anticipation trickled through Tony. “Let me get this straight. If I’m in the past and I find myself in a jam, I can die, and... come back?”
“As long as you’ve gone back to before you were born.” Everly pointed up. “But you still feel the pain. You still have all the...” His gaze fixed on Tony’s neck. “Unpleasantness.”
Tony slid his fingers around the neckline of his hospital gown. “Okay. So if I go to the past again, I take some medication with me... poison... or pack a gun, so if I get into another situation like in Mexico—”
“You can’t kill yourself.” Everly crossed his arms and let the silence sink in, along with his ever-present smile. When he warps, does the smile stay behind? “If you do, you’re dead. Permanently. Plenty of Society guys have had the same idea... an easy way to get through the Second Rite. Never works, not even if you try the old fall-on-your-sword trick. It’s the intention of taking your own life that seems to make the difference.”
Tony snatched off his glasses, and rubbed them with a corner of sheet before putting them back on. What was this Second Rite? He’d ask after he cleared up this death thing. “What if I go back and do something I know is dangerous, like uh... doing the tightrope act on the telephone wires?”
“That’s a gray area. If you’re doing something dangerous because you want to die, you probably will. For good. If you’re doing it for other reasons and get killed, you’ll come back.”
Not that it mattered to Tony. He wasn’t going to go back to the past again, except to save Bethany. Which reminded him of his most pressing question. “What if I start to warp... and I don’t want to?”
“That’s easy,” Everly said. “You warp by concentrating on how a place was at the time you want to go, right? How it looked, the sounds and smells, the feel of it.... So to stop a warp, you do the same thing—concentrate on the here-and-now, what you see right in front of you.”
Tony closed his eyes and let out a breath. It was that simple. No more unpleasant, unplanned visits to two years ago. Or any time. He met Everly’s gaze. “What about warping within my own lifetime?” Everly’s smile wavered, but Tony forged on. “A couple weeks ago, I went back two years, relived two days of my past... yet when I tried to do it again, I couldn’t.” He lay the pen down.
Everly’s smile flickered, then dimmed, but enough remained that it was still a smile. “Aren’t you going to sign that?”
Tony stared down at the paper, the non-intervention clause burning like a neon light.
&n
bsp; He needed these people. Needed their help, their support. Their information. But he couldn’t sign that paper.
It would be a lie. Most people would probably go ahead and sign, even if they planned—as Tony did—to break the rules. But Tony couldn’t. “I don’t think I’m ready for this.” He pushed the forms across the table toward Everly.
Everly’s mouth drew into a hard line. “Tony... I know what you’re thinking. Don’t do it.”
“Do what?” Tony slid his hand under the blanket and clutched at a wrinkle in the sheet beneath him.
“Your daughter. You’re thinking about going back and changing—”
Tony smacked his lips, his mouth suddenly dry. “How do you know about my daughter?”
“The Society researches all prospective members.” Everly’s stare was relentless. “Don’t do it. Don’t change the past. Observe and learn. But don’t change anything. Hard as it might be. Believe me, the ramifications...”
A concrete ball formed in Tony’s stomach. All this mess of slipping back in time, and here Everly was, trying to take away the one good thing that could come of it. Tony’s baby, back in his life... He could feel the solidness of her slim body in his arms when he hugged her after a game, feel the cool skin of her forehead as he kissed her goodnight...
Everly’s voice softened. “Tony, if you do this, you’re playing God. Not to mention the dangers of the time-distortion holes. What gives you the right to determine what should and what shouldn’t have happened—”
Something snapped in Tony’s hand. He looked down. He’d picked up the plastic cup and squeezed until it cracked.
Everly rose and moved to the bed. “You’re not the first one who’s thought about changing the past, you know. Taylor said you saw Fred at the House—”
“The guy who was wandering around drooling?”
Everly nodded, his mouth pressed in a hard, straight line. “We make sure all his needs are met—”
Tony gripped a wad of sheet. “The guy’s a zombie! What did you do to him?” He let go of the sheet. Gripped it again. Let it go. Smoothed it. Rolled a wrinkle between his finger and thumb.
Everly faced the TV, his eyes unfocused. “A combination of surgery and medication.” He turned to Tony. “Those who did it, did what they felt had to be done. He violated the Code. And he would have done so again—”
Time's Enemy: A Romantic Time Travel Adventure (Saturn Society Book 1) Page 13