Time's Edge

by Rysa Walker

  “Young Pru.”

  “Yeah,” he says, his voice strained.

  “And Older Pru doesn’t know what’s up with that?”

  “Older Pru sometimes doesn’t know what she had for breakfast.”

  That cranks the eww factor up even more, but I keep quiet.

  “Anyway,” he says, “about a week in, Pru’s talking to Philippa one morning and makes a joke about you getting the keys from Timothy and Evelyn in Dallas. Pru says maybe she needs to slap baby’s hand for breaking the rules, but it’s clear she doesn’t care one bit about those keys. Her only concern seemed to be that you’d start poking around in what they’re doing in 2038. So . . . I offered to babysit.”

  “You what?”

  “I told her I’d keep you out of the way, since you seemed sort of taken with me.”

  I really do want to hit him, but he’s driving. I grit my teeth and say, “So she went for it?”

  “No. Not at first. So I shrugged like it didn’t matter and went back to reading my book and sunning by the pool. Later she said she should put some surveillance on Katherine’s house, and I told her I was bored. At least she could let me take care of that minor task.”

  “You hired someone to spy on us?”

  “Sort of.” He glances uneasily at my clenched fists and then goes on. “That blue van you’ve seen out front—”

  “Connor says that belongs to the neighbor.”

  “It does, sort of. I went back a few years and had someone at the local temple buy the house next door when it was up for sale. The guy I hired stays there. He uses the van to get a visual confirmation when anyone is coming and going. And he was told to report back to me if his audio equipment picked up anything about the specific locations where I knew we’d already been. The first report I handed over to Pru said you were planning the trip to Australia and had also worked your way through a few of the stable points at Estero between 2028 and 2030.”

  “But I haven’t . . . I didn’t even know there were—”

  “Yeah, I know all that, and you know all that, but you’re missing the point. Me saying you were poking around in the future is what made Pru reconsider—she decided me keeping you busy wasn’t such a bad idea after all. And that’s why she’s left us alone.”

  “Left us alone? She’s threatened me twice, Kiernan. She left the message with Eve and . . . she broke into Trey’s house.”

  He looks a bit surprised at the last part but says, “Has she hurt anyone? Like I said before, Pru’s not playing with a full deck, and I expect she can’t resist getting in a few blows. But if things go as planned today, we’ll have all of the keys. Well, except for Houdini’s, but I’m still working on that.”

  I’m starting to wonder whether Kiernan is the one not playing with a full deck.

  “What difference does it make?” I scream. “You’ve already said Prudence isn’t interested in any of those keys! The question is why? Are they replicating CHRONOS keys somehow? You said they had at least six . . .”

  “Yeah. But I’m thinking now that I was right the first time—it’s more like twelve, maybe thirteen.”

  I stare at him, dumbfounded.

  “Think it through, Kate—there’s only one possible answer. There were thirty-six historians, but only twenty-four in the field, including Saul. They’re not worried about the ones you’ve been looking for, because they have the other twelve.”

  “But . . . how? The system doesn’t allow jumps past 2100 something—whenever it was that the equipment was invented. There aren’t any stable points after that.”

  “I think maybe there’s one,” he says. “CHRONOS headquarters at the time the teams were supposed to return. It’s what all of us see at first, before we figure out how to use the keys. Do you remember? At the beginning, it’s all black, with bits of static. I think maybe that’s what’s left of CHRONOS. It may be a very unstable stable point, but I think it’s there, and I think it’s where Pru landed when she accidentally used the key.”

  The black void Katherine talked about. I only saw it briefly that first time I held the key, but then Katherine was a little surprised at how quickly I was able to lock on to images. After only a second, I saw the wheat field and Kiernan, then white buildings near the water. After that, there was darkness. Someone crying. And then I was back in the wheat field again. But none of those were really like viewing a stable point for me. All of my other senses were active, too, which never happens when I pull up locations on the key now.

  “Why go to the trouble of grabbing keys scattered about time and space when they had twelve all waiting in one spot?” he continues. “Prudence never came out and said directly that’s what happened, but she did say that neither she nor Saul is particularly worried that one little girl can use the equipment, especially when that girl is barking up the wrong tree.”

  I clutch my head, which is pounding mercilessly, as I try to separate the threads of everything Kiernan has just said. It’s a tangled mess, but I find one semicoherent thought sticking out at the edge and follow it. “Okay, so why didn’t you go back and tell me I was barking up the wrong damn tree?”

  “Two reasons—no, wait, three. First, that would have resulted in a lot of screwy memories for both of us. Second, this kept my cover, which could help us later on, because all of the times I was with you, in Boston, at Katherine’s house, in Georgia, were no longer a problem once Prudence said I should keep you busy.”

  “But, Prudence just recently told you to do that, after you’d already . . .”

  “But she didn’t know that, did she? You can’t think about this linear—”

  “Yes, I know! I know. Just tell me the third reason. And find me some ibuprofen.”

  “I can’t help you there, love. Gave the last I had to Jess. But the third reason is that the keys we’ve collected are only irrelevant if Prudence and Saul think we’re not going after the ones they stole from CHRONOS after the explosion. If we prevent them from getting those keys in 2305, which is precisely what I plan to do, then you’d better believe they’ll come looking for the ones we’ve been collecting.”

  Kiernan executes an impressive multipoint turn on a narrow trail lined with densely packed pine trees, so that we’re now pointed out toward the road we were just driving on, in perfect position to pull out once we see their car pass by. I’ve been silent for the last few minutes, and he keeps shooting nervous glances my way. I can’t shake the feeling that he hasn’t told me everything, but it could be because my head is still throbbing from trying to sort out everything he has told me already.

  “You’re certain Prudence trusts you?”

  “Kate, I’m not kidding when I say she’s crazy. If she doubted me in the slightest, I would—at a bare minimum—have claw marks up and down my face. More likely, I’d be dead. You saw Philippa and Leo back at the cabin, right? They’re with her most of the time. Leo’s pretty good at talking her down. Not as good as Simon was and not nearly as good as I am, but he helps. And Philippa has a syringe ready if that doesn’t work.”

  “And those people, Leo and Philippa, they trust you, too?”

  “I doubt it,” he says. “But it’s more because they don’t like me hanging around Pru than that they’re worried about me going to the other side. I’m not even sure they know about me and . . . Kate.”

  I grab at another thread from the tangle in my mind. “Why does Leo look like Simon?”

  He shrugs. “Same mother. The gene pool is pretty shallow at Estero. If you ever want a family reunion, we can just stop by the Cyrist Farm after, say, 2030, and I’ll introduce you to the entire gang.”

  “No thanks. By same mom, you mean Pru, right?”

  He nods.

  “So, Simon is my cousin?” I wouldn’t have thought that our encounter on the day Katherine disappeared could be any more repulsive, but this ratchets it up a level.

  “Yeah. And so’s Leo and Philippa. Eve—I guess she’s sort of a half cousin. Of the ones who can use the key,
there are only three I know who aren’t descended from Pru—me, Patrick Conwell, and one other woman named Edna. The Patterson woman, the one who’s president in your time, that’s Edna’s great-granddaughter.”

  “Can Patterson use the key?”

  “No. But she’s inner circle because of the family connections.”

  I finish off the last of the coffee. “Okay. Let’s put aside family ties and personal relationships for the time being, although it might help if you draw me up a family tree when we get back. I need you to give me the bigger picture. You say Saul and Prudence are at odds. I get the sense that part of it is that he just doesn’t like the idea of her having a bigger following among the Cyrists than he does, right?”

  “Yeah. That’s part of it.” He leans forward a bit as a car passes by on the road in front of us, then relaxes again.

  “But not all of it, right?”

  “No. It’s more of a . . . schism. Sort of a civil war. Saul’s trying to keep a lot of very different groups together, Kate. He pulled in smaller faiths and movements that already existed, the Koreshans and a bunch of others. Then you have those who are only around because the Book of Prophesy gives pretty solid stock tips to the faithful. Others came on board because the religion seemed woman friendly, though they tended to start questioning that when they saw Prudence treated more as Brother Cyrus’s assistant than as a prophet in her own right. And finally, you’ve got Cyrists who joined up because they’re worried about the damage being done to the earth by overpopulation, global warming, corporate farming, you name it. They find it a wee bit puzzling when church doctrine claims the End is coming to protect the earth but still encourages those who follow The Way to invest in the companies doing the damage.”

  “I’m guessing those last two clusters are more attracted to Prudence’s side?”

  “Yeah,” he says. “At least that’s true for those who realize that there are factions. Most of the local temples just focus on what seems important to their people and skip the other stuff. Sometimes you’ll have two in the same town who can’t agree on a bloody thing, but both call themselves Cyrists.”

  “So, like most religions? Okay then, let’s get back to the big-picture questions. Why build the Cyrists? Why go to all this trouble in the first place? If Saul just likes killing people, if all he’s after is death on a massive scale, wouldn’t he simply replicate this toxin and release it?”

  A blue sedan drives past, and Kiernan waits a second and then pulls out onto the road behind it. After we’ve settled in about a quarter mile behind the car, he answers my question. “I don’t know, but when I was down in New Orleans with Simon? When he was drunk and running his mouth about Six Bridges? He said Saul started all of this because he has a wager with this guy Campbell at his club.”

  “What? A wager? You mean he’s doing all of this because he made a bet?”

  He shrugs. “Yeah, that’s pretty much the sum of it.”

  “That’s crazy.”

  He looks at me out of the corner of his eye. “And this surprises you? You saw him in the chapel, same as I did.”

  I just sit there for a few minutes, pondering the fact that one-quarter of my genetic makeup is seriously screwed up. “And you think Prudence inherited his crazy?”

  “I’m not sure I’d go that far, although the jury is still out on Simon, since he seems to think the whole wager thing is funny. Pru’s has come on gradually, and it’s pretty clear, at least to me, that it’s due to too many jumps and too many memories that clash. It’s like she sometimes can’t tell what’s real anymore. Pru—I think she sees the Culling more like collateral damage. Saul sees it as his bloody masterpiece.”

  “Did Prudence send my mom to Italy?”

  “What?”

  I realize I’ve never mentioned that theory to him and explain my reasoning.

  “I don’t know,” he says. “But she’s never spoken against her sister. I don’t think your mom is in any danger, at least not from Pru.”

  That’s pretty much what I thought, but it’s a relief to hear it confirmed by someone who has shared more than a few dozen words with her. That thought, however, reminds me exactly how much he’s been sharing with Prudence, something that bothers me on many different levels. His reasons for getting into Pru’s good graces make sense on the surface, but I can’t help but feel that there’s something he’s not telling me.

  The truck is cooling off now that we’re moving, and the breeze feels nice on my face. We pass a cemetery named Mars Hill, and after that the woods we’re driving through begin to thin out a bit, with a few farms scattered here and there.

  About a mile later, we approach an intersection. The road ahead is lined with cars and tractors and even a few horses, some of which are attached to carriages. The blue car pulls onto the shoulder, and Kiernan parks just behind. Delia and Grant, both seated in the back, step out and cross over to the left side of the road, where a group of maybe fifty are gathered.

  “Do you want to get out or wait here and follow them someplace less crowded?” Kiernan asks.

  “Out,” I say. “I want to see FDR. But let’s keep our distance from Delia’s group.” There are too many people around to risk talking to them here, but I want another chance to observe them before we approach. Also, the temperature seems to have gone up by several degrees since we left the cabin, and the truck is stifling hot—it has to be cooler out there than it is in here.

  Kiernan starts to get out, but I grab his sleeve. “How much do you think Grant knows about Saul and Six Bridges? I mean, he looked unconscious when Saul drove past the stable point, but . . .”

  “No idea. When I asked Martha, she said he kept to himself and was kind of Saul’s shadow. Which makes sense if Saul was his trainer. Katherine doesn’t remember anything about him?”

  “Only that he was probably first-year CHRONOS. She didn’t have a lot of interaction with trainees.”

  “Well,” Kiernan says, “the only way it matters is if he was in on Six Bridges. And I really doubt that, if Saul saw fit to knock him out.”

  Abel, who has been waiting in the driver’s seat, gets out of his car just as I’m about to open my door, so we wait a minute longer, watching as he strolls over to a group on the right side of the intersection. He’s a large man, tall and muscular. I hadn’t realized exactly how big he was when I saw him in Athens, but I think he may have been trying to make himself less conspicuous. No one is paying attention now, and he walks with a more confident gait. He leans back against one of the trees and pulls a pack of cigarettes from his pocket, offering a smoke to the two men standing next to him. One of them takes him up on it, and they start a conversation.

  I look at Abel under the trees and then at the opposite side of the street, where the summer sun is blazing down on the spectators. “The pictures I’ve seen always show the whites getting the better accommodations in the segregated South. And yet Abel gets the shade?”

  “Athens is to the north. The folks on the white side of the street will see FDR first.”

  It will be a few seconds’ advantage at most, so personally, I’d rather be in the group with the shade. And I’d also rather leave the sweater in the truck, but since it helps to hide the gun I’m carrying, I guess I’ll have to roast.

  Given the physical road separating the two groups, the racial divide was immediately apparent. But as we get closer, I see there’s also something of a gender divide. A few younger couples are together, but otherwise, the men are off a few yards to the north, with the women closer to the fence. Kids are scattered all over, younger ones near where the women are talking and older ones chasing each other around or climbing on the fence that keeps the cows from wandering onto the highway. And it actually is a highway—according to the sign, which looks pretty new, it’s U.S. Highway 129. It’s nothing like the six- or eight-lane roads around DC that I’m used to, but it’s wider and in better condition than the narrow road we drove in on.

  Kiernan and I stand by the fence,
near the other couples. Grant is with the men by the road. He looks out of place, and I remember one of the first things Katherine told me about CHRONOS historians—they all loved their jobs because they were naturally good at them, better than they’d be at anything else. Maybe Grant would have reached that point eventually, but right now, he looks like he’d rather be anywhere but here.

  Delia, on the other hand, seems totally at ease. When I first saw her in Athens, I couldn’t help but think that her looks would be a liability in her line of work. Long dark hair, flawless skin, hourglass figure—she tends to draw most eyes toward her, male or female, and I think that would make it tough to blend in with a crowd. She walks toward the cluster of women, stopping near a young mother with a fussy toddler propped on her hip and a girl, my age or maybe a bit younger, who holds a small infant against her shoulder. The toddler is wriggling and whining nonstop, clearly intent on getting his mom’s attention.

  Delia crouches down a bit, her red skirt brushing against the grass. Once she’s at the same level as the grumpy boy, she makes a silly face, crossing her eyes and using her fingers to stretch out her lips, which are outlined in a red as vivid as the skirt. The kid looks suspicious at first, but he stops screaming and tries to make the face back at her. Delia counters with an even sillier face, and he giggles, reaching out to tug at her scarf.

  The sudden change in temperament finally causes the mom to look at the kid, and she exchanges a smile with Delia. A few seconds later, Delia’s chatting with the women like they’re old friends. She hands the kid the scarf from around her neck, and he seems content, at least for the moment, to wave it back and forth. I’m not close enough to catch what they’re saying, but the women seem to be telling her about their children, because the toddler’s mom points at a group of kids a few feet away from where Kiernan and I are standing.