“You have not taken proper care of your Book of Time, that is all. The book not only serves as a log of the travelers’ voyages, it is directly linked to the stones. If you are traveling through Time — to 1932, for example — and some person who wishes you ill rips a page from your book, the stone through which you arrived will be destroyed. Unless you can find another stone, you would be condemned to live out your lives far from your own time.”
“But the Book of Time is hidden in my bedroom,” protested Lily.
“You can be sure it is no longer there, miss.”
“But why come after us?” Sam asked. “We haven’t done anything!”
The priest shrugged. “You may have unwittingly stirred up things beyond your understanding. Take this Arkeos man. The solar horns stand for Res daughter Hathor, the two-faced goddess who can punish people severely or shower them with gifts. Depending on which path one takes, great good or great suffering can result. The mans ability to use this sign shows a high level of knowledge, and if he has profaned your Book of Time, as I suspect he has, it is not hard to know which path he has chosen.”
“Does that mean Sam was right about the tattoo? That the Arkeos sign lets you travel to specific places?”
“Only to some extent,” cautioned the high priest. “The sign of Hathor will take you to a place where you have already drawn it, but it does not let you choose a specific place among all those that exist. In other words, you may need ten attempts to reach one particular place. And the more signs there are, the greater the uncertainty.”
Sam said, “What really scares me is that if the Arkeos man stole our book, that means he broke into our house. And that means Grandma and Grandpa are in danger. We have to go home as fast as we can!”
“I will not abandon you,” Setni promised. “Even if your book is damaged, I have certain resources that I can draw on. You can start by taking the Chinese capsule. It will be more useful to you than to me.” He handed the curious wooden button to Sam. “I will explain the rest downstairs,” he added.
He headed for the stairs, with Lily at his heels.
“There’s still one thing that bothers me,” she said. “Can the Thoth stone send us to a period where we already are? What I mean is, is there any chance I’ll run into myself at age seven or thirty-five?”
“That is very unlikely, my girl. A body is an assemblage of flesh, bone, and fluids, but a soul is completely unique. Two identical souls cannot be in the same place at the same time. If that were to happen, the soul would inevitably consume itself, unless the traveler were in a hypnotic trance or a magic sleep, perhaps. But otherwise . .
“That’s good!” said Lily. “I’d hate to see myself twenty years older!”
They stepped into the basement, and Setni again rummaged in his sack.
“This should do the trick. As I told you earlier, an experienced magician can use his own book to send a traveler back to his or her starting place. I doubt that two travelers will be much more difficult than one.” He handed Sam a coin.
Sam took the disk of Re in his fingers. It was an ordinary coin, with plant designs twining around the hole in the center, but it gave off a characteristic warmth.
“You are saving our lives, high priest.”
“That is also my role, as a servant of Amon. And speaking of which …” I Ie stared at Sam, and for just a moment, Sam had the feeling that an invisible hand was touching his brain. It was frankly unpleasant.
“I am getting older,” the high priest said gently as he dropped his gaze. “Time is irreversibly wearing me down. I can feel it. And I am not immortal, as you know from visiting my tomb in Thebes.”
Sam would have liked to reassure Setni about his age, to tell him that he still had many years to live, but the priest raised two fingers to prevent him.
“Shhh, my boy! I do not desire to know anything about my death, either what precedes or what follows it. That is one of the conditions of fulfilling my task honestly. But whatever happens, the Thoth stones will need a new guardian someday. Someone with enough strength to resist the temptations the traveler faces, enough heart to distinguish good from evil, and enough judgment to keep the course of Time from being changed. This last point is especially crucial. A series of infinite catastrophes could follow if someone decided to change the unfolding of the world — someone like your Arkeos man, for example, who uses the sign of Hathor for his own profit. That is why there must always be someone to guard the stones. And I am convinced that you, Samuel Faulkner, would be worthy of fulfilling that function.”
“Me?” Sam blinked. “But I just want to save my father and go home! That’s it!”
“Of course, of course,” said Setni. “It is too soon, much too soon! But think about it, and when the time comes … Well, make what you feel is the right decision.”
The high priest took a step toward them. “It is now time for you to leave, my children. You are still far from the end of your road, and many other paths await you!”
He held them briefly in his arms, then led them to the stone. As Sam knelt to put the coin in the center of the sun, he couldn’t help asking one last question, the one that had been on the tip of his tongue. “Will we see each other again someday?”
Setni’s expression was unfathomable. “Probably not in the way you imagine, young man.”
18 A Matter of Trust
Sam slumped onto his side and remained prostrate for a moment, unable to move. He felt overcome by a great weariness, as if his body had reached the limits of exhaustion. But the fatigue didn’t feel so much physical as psychological. The meeting with his great-grandparents and the high priest Setni, his cousin’s illness, and the fear of never getting back to the present had all affected him more deeply than he liked to admit. And the main thing, saving his father, still lay ahead.
Even though he already knew where he was, Sam was pleasantly surprised when he opened his eyes: no more mold on the walls, no rusty machinery, no dead rats in the corners! The feeble glow from the night-light felt like a wonderful source of life, and the ordinary yellow stool struck him as being in perfect taste. He was home!
“Lily, are you okay?” he whispered.
His cousin lay huddled against the stone in a fetal position.
“I can hear you fine, Sam,” she said in a thick voice. “No need to repeat everything!”
“I’m not repeating anything, Lily, that’s just the echo effect. It happens when you come back to the present. It’ll pass, don’t worry.”
She got to her feet with difficulty and gave him a questioning look. “Are we back for real, Sammy?”
“Yes! This is the basement — our basement!”
Lily put her face in her hands and started to cry. Sam gently wrapped his arms around his cousin to comfort her. Then, when he figured that the effects of the trip had somewhat dissipated, he led her out of the storeroom.
Upstairs, things had been straightened up a little. The armchairs were upright again and some of the books had been reshelved. Leaving his cousin at the threshold, Sam went to the front door, where he saw that a brand-new lock had been installed.
“The grandparents were here,” he guessed. “They probably came with the police when they were looking for me. They took care of the basics, anyway. Do you feel up to facing them, Lily?”
“Are you kidding? I can’t wait to see them!”
They left the bookstore via the backyard and took a bus home, wondering what fate awaited them. By the clock, their little prehistoric/Roman/North American escapade had lasted an entire twenty-four-hour day in the present, so everyone was likely to be furious at their disappearance. Sam didn’t know which he should fear most: the cops investigating the museum burglary or the demonic duo of Evelyn and Rudolf. If those two got their hands on him, they would cheerfully cut him to ribbons and ship the pieces to a juvenile detention center. With the police, at least, regulations forbade that kind of treatment.
Grandpa and Grandmas garage was empty and locked.<
br />
“Do you think the Arkeos man could have come after them?” Lily whispered anxiously as she took out her keys.
“I dunno …”
They went inside, called for their grandparents without result, then raced upstairs. Someone had certainly been in Sam’s room. Clothes were strewn on the bed, the night table drawer stood open, a book bag had been emptied onto Spider-Mans head — the foot-high model of the web-slinger was a gift from his father — and …
“My computer!” Sam shouted.
His desk was an indescribable mess — more indescribable than usual, that is — and the CPU of his computer was gone!
“Sam!” yelped Lily from the next room.
Sam rushed to her bedroom. The setting was pink and purple, but the chaos there was similar.
“The loudspeaker!” she moaned. “Setni was right!”
The speaker cover lay on the floor, and neither the Book of Time nor the small black notebook remained inside. The three coins with holes were still taped to the top of the speaker case, however, and Sam put them carefully in his pocket. On a hunch, he went back to his bedroom and saw that his closet had also been visited: The cardboard box where he stored everything related to the stone statue was empty.
“He came, Sam! He came here!”
Just then, the familiar roar of Grandpas car rose up to them from the driveway, sounding like something between a chain saw and a trumpeting elephant. Sam and Lily rushed outside to greet their grandparents, who gaped at them as if they were ghosts.
“Lily! Sammy!” cried Grandma. “Oh my God!” They ran to her arms, and she burst into tears. “My babies! My little babies!”
Grandpa, on the other hand, was a lot less demonstrative. Wearing his grimmest expression, he gestured for them to go inside. When the door had closed behind them, he exploded.
“Son of a gun, Samuel! Are we going to have to lock you up or what? You just don’t ever think, do you? Do you know how young your cousin is? What did you get her mixed up with this time? Do you realize that the police searched the house — under my own roof, right in front of my neighbors?”
In seventy-five years, little Donovan Faulkner had lost a lot of his carefree ways. He still made train noises, but now they sounded more like a runaway locomotive.
“Why the police?” Sam asked innocently.
“Because of the museum burglary, smarty-pants! You went there with Harold the other day, didn’t you? Well, they found your cell phone in one of the rooms right after the theft!”
“And for that they searched our rooms?”
“Drugs, that’s what they were looking for! And then you drag your cousin into it! I’m going to wind up thinking Rudolf is right!”
“Did they take anything?” Sam continued, keeping his cool.
“You want to know if they found your stash, is that it? Don’t you have any shame at all?”
“Take it easy, Donovan, it’s bad for your blood pressure,” Grandma said. Then she turned to Sam. “Yes, they took some papers and your computer. They talked about breaking up a gang of drug dealers… . They’re wrong, aren’t they, Sammy?” she said imploringly.
“Of course they’re wrong!”
“So will the young gentleman kindly explain what his telephone was doing in the museum?” asked Grandpa.
Sam looked at his grandparents one after the other. There was no way to back out now. The police were after him, and Aunt Evelyn would happily see him flogged through the streets in chains. But if he was going to save his father, he had to be completely free. Sam needed allies, and who better to protect him than his grandparents?
“Are you prepared to listen to me for at least fifteen minutes without yelling?” he said.
They sat down around the table in the living room, and Sam told them everything — or almost everything. He skipped the most sensitive episodes: the Vikings on Iona, for example, and the Bruges alchemist and his knife, and the bear in the cave. He was also careful not to mention his suspicions about his father’s thefts, including the mortgage problem, the Navel of the World, and the Arkeos company. When he reached the final stage of the voyage, the Chicago visit, Sam could feel his grandfather stiffen.
He had no sooner finished than Grandpa pounded his fist on his thigh and shouted, “This is just unbelievable! A bunch of fairy tales! Time travel — is that the best you could come up with? If you think the police are going to fall for even a thousandth part of that nonsense, you’ve got another think coming!”
“I was there, Grandpa!” said Lily. “Chicago, the Faulkner grocery store — everything Sam says is absolutely true!”
“You’ve got to be kidding! He was poking around in the attic the other day. He must’ve come across some old photo albums, and that’s the whole story! These are hallucinations, and it sounds to me like they come from taking drugs!”
“Don’t tell us you never played with trains in the yard behind the store!” Sam protested.
“All the kids played with trains in those days — in a yard if they had one!”
“You must remember us, then. Lily spent three days up in the guest bedroom! You even came to the train station with us on the last day. There was a Pacific 231, and —”
“The train stations were full of Pacific 231s!”
“Well, what about Zeb?” asked Lily, putting her hand on her grandfather’s arm. “Remember Zeb, the little stuffed zebra?”
Grandpa hesitated for a moment.
“Zeb,” he repeated in a faraway voice. “Zeb … Yes … He was black and white, with zigzag stripes. I remember I used to put him on my bed and … How do you know about that?” “Because we were there,” Sam assured him.
“So is this … is this some sort of dream?” Grandpa was at a loss. “I’m going to wake up, for sure! Nobody can travel through time, right? Least of all you. No, it’s impossible.” He continued to mutter to himself.
He was quiet for a long time, and they took care not to break the silence. Then he suddenly looked at them differently, as if some veil across his memory had been pulled away. “Sam and Lily, that’s right! I’d forgotten their names. I was so little! But the girl was sick. That’s right, it’s coming back to me. And the boy …”
He rubbed his eyes, wiping away the tears that filled them. “You’re … you’re right. There was that business with the two kids at the grocery store. They were bigger than me, and I remember the boy very well, with his knickerbockers and his yellow and orange clothes. I can’t remember their faces, though. This is crazy… I apologize, Sammy. I never should have doubted you — you or your cousin.”
He took both of their hands and kissed them hard.
“You stubborn old mule,” said Grandma, who was as moved as he was. “If you’d only trust your heart a little more than your head!”
“To be honest, that year wasn’t an easy one,” he said by way of explanation. “So many things happened after that!”
“What sorts of things, Grandpa?”
“My father … I don’t like talking about it, and it took everybody a long time to get over it. But that summer, I mean the summer of 1932, he killed a man.”
Lily jumped. “What?”
Grandpa bowed his head. “A gangster threatened him one night when he was closing the store. This dirtbag said to give him money or he and his pals would come after Mom and me. Dad had a gun, and …”
His voice fell to a whisper and died away.
“The Browning pistol,” guessed Sam. “And the mob!” “That’s right. The investigation didn’t turn up anything. But looking back now, with what you’ve told me, I think I know what must have happened. The gangsters had already threatened him once, he bought a pistol just in case, and when they came back …”
Grandma walked over, put her arm around her husband, and finished the story. “His lawyer argued it was self defense, and James Faulkner was acquitted,” she said. “But the poor man was broken, and so was Ketty, of course. Her husband already had a weakness for the bottle, and af
ter that…”
Grandpa forced a smile. “When I think that you saw the two of them just before that terrible business … At least they seemed happy then, didn’t they?”
For her grandfather’s benefit, Lily gave a detailed account of their stay at the Faulkner grocery store, stressing Ketty’s big heart and James’s gruff kindness. This seemed to delight him, and he began to get some of his good humor back.
“I like that a lot better!” he said happily. “And if they helped you seventy-five years ago, it would be pretty sad if your grandmother and I didn’t do the same today! Not that I think it’s going to be easy. Remember, the police are still looking for Sam, and Evelyn is on the warpath. What do you plan to do?”
“Do you know where Mom is now?” asked Lily, sounding worried.
“Rudolf took her to the doctor to renew her prescription for tranquilizers,” said Grandma, sighing. “When she found out that you’d disappeared, she had hysterics. She hasn’t been very well these last days, but if we break it to her gently, without rushing her, I think she’ll understand. I’ll take care of every thing.”
“No way!” said Sam. “Letting anyone else know about the stone statue is impossible, and especially not Aunt Evelyn! Dad’s life depends on it! I have a coin from the right time period and the Chinese capsule to get me there. I absolutely have to try to bring him back without anybody else getting involved.”
“You mean to go to that Dracula person?” asked his grandmother, dismayed. “In that medieval castle, with knights everywhere ready to kill you? Sammy, you can’t be serious!”
“I can take care of myself, Grandma. Otherwise I wouldn’t have made it this far! But Til tell you what: Before I go, I promise I’ll learn everything I can about Vlad Tepes. That way, all the odds will be in my favor. It’ll just be a matter of a quick round-trip.”
“What if you’re taken prisoner there?”
Unexpectedly, Grandpa came to his grandsons rescue. “Martha, do you think Sam could live as a man and look himself in the face if he abandoned his father? I reproached myself for years for not being able to help mine. Besides, Allan sent his call for help to Sammy, didn’t he? That shows he trusts him more than anybody else. What more proof you need? If I were younger …”
The Gate of Days - Book of Time 2 Page 15