Time's Edge

by Rysa Walker

  Aside from Dad, who was dutifully parked on the couch with a book when I walked in, the rest of the house was quiet. I gave him the brief answer to his “Did you have a good time?” (Yes, wonderful! along with a kiss on the cheek) and then floated up the stairs.

  But it is now morning, and I need to report back to the team on the elements that weren’t so wonderful.

  First, however, I run a Google Image search on “Prudence” and “Cyrist.” There are no photographs, but there are dozens of drawings and paintings, all very similar, including quite a few of her in the late stages of pregnancy. Even in the clip art, the face is clearly defined, the hair long and curly, and the entire package disturbingly like me. Not identical, however. Most of the paintings show a face that’s a little wider than mine, especially across the brow. Her nose is a bit shorter, the shape of her lips slightly different. Her breasts are definitely larger, but then she’s pregnant in most of the paintings and being depicted as a fertility goddess in others, and I’ve never seen a fertility goddess with normal-sized boobs.

  Out of curiosity, I run a similar search for other religions. There seems to be a bias against redheaded Marys, but you have blond Marys and brunette Marys and Marys of almost every ethnicity. Depictions of the various Hindu goddesses don’t have the same range, but their appearance varies at least somewhat from one picture to the next. I have a feeling no one’s plagued by constantly being told she looks like Mary or Lakshmi or any other religion’s demigod or patron saint.

  I take the iPad down to the kitchen, still in my pj’s. Daphne’s at attention at the far end of the counter. She’s too well trained to snatch anything, but it looks like she’s trying to will a slice, or maybe even the entire platter, to jump off the counter and onto the floor. So far, it isn’t working.

  Dad, who’s chopping vegetables by the sink, has put Connor to work mixing the eggs. But Connor is stirring them instead of whisking them, which means we’re going to end up with rubbery omelets. I set my tablet down on the other side of the bar and hold out my hands for the large silver bowl. “I believe that’s my brunch assignment. But you can make yourself useful and pour the sous chef some coffee.”

  “With pleasure.” Connor gives me the bowl and grabs a mug from the cabinet. “Did you and Trey have a good time?”

  “We had a very good time, but . . . also a rather complicated time. Is Katherine eating with us?”

  “Not sure. She was still asleep when I . . . checked on her.”

  “I know, Connor,” I say with a sympathetic smile. “It’s okay. I’m not a little kid. You guys don’t have to hide it anymore.”

  “Yeah, well, you’ll have to clear that with your grandmother. And I suspect you don’t want to have that conversation with her, right?” He gives me a tight little grin as he hands me the coffee.

  I respond with a point-taken look.

  “So, why were you wondering about Katherine?” Connor asks.

  “Just debating whether to wait and fill everyone in when she’s here, too.”

  “Her sleep is off due to the change in her medications, so I’ll just give her the highlights later.” The upside of Katherine’s outburst at our pizza summit the other night is that it finally convinced her to see the doctor to adjust her meds.

  “Okay.” I grab the milk from the fridge and pour a bit into my coffee, then add a larger splash to the eggs and start whisking again, putting a bit more muscle into it this time so that the omelets will be nice and fluffy. “So, Dad, did you know that Carrington Day was Cyrist?”

  He looks over his shoulder from the stove. “Uh, no. That’s something I’d definitely have mentioned.”

  “That’s what I thought.”

  “Who is Carrington Day?” Connor asks.

  “The correct question would be what is Carrington Day.”

  “Okay, what is Carrington Day?”

  “Carrington Day School is merging with Briar Hill,” Dad says. “It was decided back in January, right after I started teaching. In this timeline, at any rate. Kate didn’t remember it.”

  “As I discovered last night, Carrington Day is a Cyrist school. I don’t know if it’s officially owned by the Cyrists, but the party was held at the home of Eve Conwell. Her grandparents have this larger-than-life painting of Prudence in their living room, with her pregnant belly sticking out. It was like looking in a weird fun-house mirror.”

  “So I take it you didn’t stay long,” Dad says.

  “Correct. Trey needed to speak with this teacher who’s retiring from Briar Hill, but we left just after.”

  “Harvey Tilson, right? He’s been out on sick leave since I started teaching.”

  “Yes. Whoever decided to hold his retirement party and the Carrington Day welcome at the same time clearly didn’t ask for his input. He was livid. Said he’d spent decades researching those charlatans, and let’s just say he thinks the merger is a bad idea. That it’ll turn Briar Hill into a propaganda tool.”

  “That probably is a risk for science, although I’d think it’s a bigger issue for social sciences. But I doubt it will affect my department. How would you politicize math?”

  Connor snorts. “There are always the word problems, Harry. ‘You have ten apples. You give one apple to Cyrus. How many do you have now?’ And the correct answer will be, ‘It depends. If you only have nine, Cyrus does not find you worthy.’ ”

  We toss around a few more word problem possibilities. None of them are particularly funny, and Connor’s quip about subtracting the unfaithful from the global population is gallows humor, pure and simple.

  “Well,” Connor says finally, “this definitely means you won’t be going to school.”

  “No, it doesn’t. Eve’s memory wasn’t wiped—she remembered our encounter at the temple. And Prudence seems to be using her as a messenger. They’re watching me, and I don’t think Pru’s exactly happy with what she’s seeing. I don’t know if this has to do with me working with Kiernan or what, but Eve said my aunt was very concerned that I focus on my studies, instead of what she called ‘extracurricular activities.’ Which reminds me, have you noticed the blue van outside? The one that’s always parked at the curb?”

  “You mean the one that belongs to the guy next door?” Connor asks.

  “I guess. You’re sure about that? I’ve gotten a weird feeling . . .”

  “Yes. I’ve talked to the guy. Kate, you know as well as I do that the Cyrists don’t need a surveillance van to see who’s coming and going. All they have to do is set up a stable point and have someone with the CHRONOS gene monitor it for activity.”

  “Yes. But you can’t hear them. For that, you’d need the type of equipment that you might be able to hide in a van. But whether they’re watching from a van or a stable point doesn’t matter—either way, they’ll know if I’m not going to school. We’re in a state of truce right now. If they see me stepping out of line, things are going to heat up really, really fast.”

  “All the more reason to hunker down and get this over with,” Connor says.

  Dad gives me a meaningful glance over his shoulder. Your call, don’t let him bully you.

  “Maybe,” I say. “But school starts on Tuesday, which leaves today and Labor Day. I’m still researching the other two jumps, and there are only so many times I can repeat the same day. I pulled several seventy-two-hour days last week, and unless I start sleeping in the past or sleeping less than eight hours, it’s going to be hard to cram much more than three days into one twenty-four-hour slot. And that’s doubly true if I’m going to avoid bumping into myself. Since Katherine said that’s a bad idea and Kiernan’s pretty certain it’s a key reason Prudence is now several fries short of a Happy Meal, I’d kind of like to avoid it.”

  “So you think it’s a good idea for you and Harry to just stroll into Briar Hill every day? Like nothing has happened?”

  “I’m not sure we have a choice, Connor,” Dad says as he pours the last of the eggs into the pan. “As Kate just noted, she c
an’t wrap all of this up before school starts, even if she repeats the next two days over and over. Prudence might suspect Kate’s working against them, but she’s going to be even more suspicious if Kate disappears. If I had my way, I’d pack her into the car and we’d go back to Iowa—”

  “Ick.”

  “Or somewhere remote, and hope and pray they don’t find us,” he continues, giving me an annoyed look for the interruption. “But since we can’t pick up the apparatus you have protecting this house and take it on the road, I’d prefer to have Kate, and myself for that matter, sleeping under a stable CHRONOS field until this is over.”

  Connor huffs. “Which was kind of my point, Harry. When the two of you are at school, you aren’t under a stable CHRONOS field.”

  “Connor,” I say, “we can go round and round about this, but the reality is that we need to stall Prudence for at least a week or so. Dad’s right. She has eyes and ears at Briar Hill. If I’m not in class, she’ll know something is up, and I don’t think anything we have here is going to protect us from a full Cyrist onslaught if Prudence decides the truce is off. She was adamant about two things when we clashed at the Expo: stay out of her way, and stay away from Kiern—”

  As I’m finishing the sentence, I realize there was a third thing. Be nice to your mother.

  “It wasn’t Katherine,” I say softly.

  Connor pauses midbite. “What wasn’t Katherine?”

  “Mom’s trip. I thought—”

  “Why would you think Katherine was connected to that?” Connor says.

  “And,” Dad adds, “if you thought that, why didn’t you say something earlier?”

  “Well, Mom wouldn’t have gone if she thought it had anything to do with Katherine, and she was so happy about the grant. And I didn’t have any proof . . .”

  “You definitely didn’t,” Connor says, “because Katherine didn’t have anything to do with it. But what made you figure that out now?”

  “Something Prudence said at the Expo. I think maybe Prudence arranged the trip to be sure Mom is far away from here.”

  Dad looks alarmed. “Then we need to let Deborah know. She could be in danger.”

  I shake my head. It’s more of a gut feeling than anything solid, but I don’t believe Prudence would endanger Mom. She might be willing to let us think she would, but . . .

  “Prudence won’t hurt her. Whatever she may think about Katherine, or about me for that matter, she doesn’t hold it against Mom. If anything, I think Prudence took Mom out of the picture to keep her safe. I don’t know about you, but I’m pretty okay with that, at least until this is all over.”

  Dad still looks skeptical.

  “That doesn’t mean I’m not going to call her right now,” I say, “because this kind of creeps me out.”

  I put my plate in the sink and grab my tablet. That reminds me why I brought it downstairs in the first place, so I turn back to Connor. “Do we have anything I could use as a disguise? Not just period costumes but something to make me look different. I can’t just go around looking like this on jumps.”

  “Like what?” Connor asks.

  “Like me. Like Prudence. Obviously, when I’m at school being a good, little sheep, it doesn’t matter. But when I’m doing things that are potentially truce breaking, it’s kind of dumb not to use a little subterfuge. Hair color? Floppy hat? Fake glasses?”

  They both nod, but I don’t think they get the full picture. Of course, they didn’t see the look the woman at the barbecue gave me when I bumped her plate. It was almost like I’d honored her by knocking fruit onto her shoe.

  A phone rings, and Dad pulls his cell out of his pocket. “Oh. It’s my mom.”

  For a weird moment, I think he means Evelyn, and then I realize it’s Grandma Keller. “Tell her hello for me,” I say as he heads into the living room.

  I pull up the image search from earlier and slide the tablet over to Connor. “This is what I’m talking about. There are paintings of Prudence going back several hundred years, and they’re way too close for comfort. Well, except for the pregnant ones, thank God. What’s up with all of those?”

  He casts an uncomfortable look toward the living room.

  “Really, Connor. I’m not asking about the mechanics. Obviously, Prudence was pregnant at some point, and I’ve already had the little talk about how that happens. Why is it central to their mythology, or whatever?”

  “Well, Saul needed people on his side who could use the key. Both to tweak the timeline and, maybe, from the religious side of things, to be the ones the Cyrists view as eternal and unchanging. With Prudence, he had two options, right? She could go back and convince his former colleagues or their offspring to join the Cyrists, but I don’t think Saul had many friends among the other historians. Also, the CHRONOS gene seems to get weaker each generation, at least in my own experience, and the trait isn’t always expressed. The other option would be to use Prudence to create his own little cadre of time travelers. And that last option might be easier, since those kids could be born at pretty much any point in time.”

  My omelet stirs uneasily in my stomach, both at what I’m thinking and at the realization that I’ve been a bit naive about all of this. Given the pictures, I assumed that Prudence had a child or children, but I hadn’t really thought about those pregnancies as being a conscious strategy. And that raises a whole host of other questions.

  “You don’t really think Saul would . . .” I pause, not wanting to finish the sentence.

  “I don’t know. He’s planning on wiping out half of humanity, so who knows where he draws the line. But I assume that he . . .” He rubs his eyes with the palm of his hand and then looks up and continues in a very matter-of-fact voice, “That he . . . bred her with one or more of the other historians or one of their children or grandchildren. But I don’t think we can exclude anything, and I’m not sure that it really matters now.”

  “Of course, it matters. How can you even say that?” I look back down at one of the images, a painting of Prudence with small children gathered around her feet and one more clearly on the way. Suddenly, it’s hard for me to think of the Prudence I met at the Expo. All I can think of is the girl I saw at Norumbega the other day. She’d looked haunted. Maybe even drugged.

  Connor looks a little hurt. “That’s not what I meant, Kate. Yes, it matters. She’s your aunt, Katherine’s daughter. In that sense, it definitely matters—”

  I cut him off. “Prudence was fourteen when she disappeared. How old was she the first time she was—I can’t even believe we’re using this word—bred? Was it her choice? Did she have any say at all?”

  “Whether or not Prudence was a willing participant in all of this doesn’t change anything for us. It doesn’t change—”

  Dad comes back into the kitchen, and Connor stops when he sees Dad’s face. We both ask what’s wrong at the same time, and Dad kind of sinks down onto the bench at the breakfast nook.

  “It’s my dad. He . . . he had a stroke.”

  “Oh my God. Is he going to be okay?”

  He shakes his head. “They don’t know. He’s in intensive care. Mom’s a wreck. Listen, Katie . . . I need to . . . I need to go, okay?”

  “Of course! I’ll pack some things—”

  “No,” he says. “You should stay.”

  “But I want to see him!”

  “Kate, he’s not conscious right now. There’s nothing you can do.”

  “But Grandma is conscious. I don’t want her to think I don’t—”

  “Baby, it’s okay. I told her you have school and that someone needs to stay here with Katherine. She understands. I hate leaving you right now, but—”

  “No. No, Dad. You need to go.”

  “It’s okay,” Connor says. “We’ll take care of her, Harry.”

  Dad’s expression is hard to read. It looks for a moment like he’s going to snap at Connor, but then he takes a breath and shakes his head. “I should only be gone a few days. I still don’t lik
e it. What god-awful timing.”

  I spend the next hour repeating many of the same things I told Mom the week before she left—I’ll be fine. I’m a big girl now. I leave out the part about being really busy, because Dad knows exactly how busy I’ll be and thinking about what I’ll be doing while he’s gone won’t make either one of us feel any better about him leaving.

  Maps of downtown areas don’t change much over time. After staring for about half an hour at a grainy, low-resolution 1938 map of Athens, Georgia, we found online, I compared it with Google Maps and found only a few new streets and one or two name changes. Otherwise they were identical, so I’m sticking with the digital version that doesn’t give me a headache and does give me useful stuff, like estimated walking times.

  Yesterday was divided between language lessons and going over the details for the 1938 recon jump. The plan is to go in and, simply put, observe. I need to get familiar with the city, the era, and the customs. If I’m feeling ambitious, I’ll watch the three historians from a distance, but I’m not going to make contact.

  I’m in the middle of counting the blocks from the stable point to my destination when there’s a tap at my door—and I promptly forget whether I counted seven or eight. I rub my eyes. “Come in?”

  “I won’t ask if you’re busy,” Connor says, “because I already know the answer. But I need your CHRONOS gene for a few minutes.”

  “Too bad I can’t rip it out and hand it to you. What do you need me to do?”

  He sits on the arm of the couch and leans forward. “I think I’ve found Wallace Moehler. I’m not sure we want to let Katherine know this yet, but if I’m right, he didn’t go to Russia. He went to Copenhagen. And it’s 1955, not 1957.”

  “Okay. That’s incredible. How did you manage to track him if she gave us the wrong year and the wrong country? Sputnik was in 1957, right?”