by Claire Davon
He was going to have no idea how much things cost, or how to get through life. Fortunately it was a simpler time, and there was nothing that stood out about the teenager, besides his clothes, to peg him as a suspicious outsider. Rogald’s lack of knowledge about this time would be a problem, but Fiona knew by looking at the older version, that somehow the youth managed.
“Now what?” Sonder asked after Rogald was dressed in 1950s contemporary clothes, his old belongings stuffed into a pack the older Rogald held out.
Rogald pointed to the subway car, with its open doors and two people filing on. Everything was frozen. “We get him on there. The back is free. We put him in and release the time stream. Sonder?”
Sonder nodded. With a grimace, he hauled the youth into his arms, grunting as his solid, dead weight fell against Sonder. It was like moving a statue. Sonder waved Fiona off and gripped the boy under his arms.
“Concentrate on keeping this stationary. We need to make sure.”
Even as he spoke she felt a shift, a tug, and everything moved forward a fraction. Rogald’s eyes widened a little and one finger moved.
“We’ve got to get him on that trolley.” Rogald swayed, almost dancing with impatience. “It happened but it hasn’t come to pass yet, and something could go wrong. Hurry, Sonder.”
Sonder struggled with the burden, Rogald’s weight sagging in his arms. Finally, the younger man was on the train. Easing his limbs into a seated position, Sonder placed Rogald on the opposite side of the car and exited.
“Let the time stream go, Fiona. Can you do that? Do you have that control?” Rogald gestured to his belt. “I can try some things if you don’t. I don’t want it to unfreeze on its own.”
She thought for a minute and then squeezed her eyes shut and concentrated. Buzzing filled her ears and she felt power surge in her veins.
The scene erupted to life again. With a clack, the car closed its doors and began to pull away. Rogald was seated on the opposite side from where they stood, slumped in his seat where he had slid down as soon as the time reanimated. He would have been looking towards the unseen Commonwealth Avenue, if he’d been awake.
The teenager was receding in the distance, borne away by the nineteen fifties version of the Boston subway with the “61” on its front. Only then did Fiona react. “Oh my god, what have I done?” She had an urge to chase after the train, and even turned to do that.
“No, Fiona.” Rogald’s took her arm and held her firm. She wanted to pull free, but his grip was unbreakable.
“But he’ll be trapped here.” With the cars leaving there were a few people lingering on the strip of concrete. Most were bustling towards their next destination and paying the oddly dressed trio little attention.
It wouldn’t stay that way, Fiona knew. They had done too much. They had at most a handful of minutes before the Guardians or Liberators arrived.
The older man looked grim before he nodded. “Yes, Fiona, yes he will be. I will be. He has to go, get further away. He is too close. We should not be together in any time. You should go too. We might encounter your grandparents and that wouldn’t be catastrophic but it could be unfortunate. It’s time to leave. This is my past now. It cannot be changed again. The time stream implications could be horrific.” He paused, tilting his head to one side. “It...man that is strange. The streams are merging again, the new reality of how I got to Virginia fading into how it originally happened. The important thing is that it transpired, somewhat as it did before, and the outcome remains the same.”
“But…” She began speaking and then stopped. For once in your life, Fiona told herself, don’t argue with someone who knows more than you do. Instead, she relaxed and swallowed. Looking at Rogald on the train, and back to the older version, she nodded. “I understand, sort of. I mean, I understand that you know what is right.”
“I do. You can’t change this, Fiona. You cannot. It’s part of who I am. It has to happen or everything that I am today will be lost. Come, we need to go. We have to leave here before the Guardians trace us to this time frame. Every minute we delay could be our last. My past, my future, is at risk. I have an interest in keeping it the way it happened. This time.” He looked at Sonder. “Thanks, Guardian. Good thing you kept fit.”
She saw Sonder smile, but wanly. Between all the time shifts and his near fade, they both needed to get somewhere where they could rest. “There are lots of stairs on Santorini. We use them, at his insistence. Sonder harped on the need to build up muscle. But you…” She wanted to ask him how he wound up where he was and how he became a Liberator, but couldn’t form the words.
Rogald seemed to understand. “I am plucked from the time stream in ten of these years. I went to Virginia and it wasn’t too hard there. I liked it, after I got used to it. Things are very different in this era, but once you get past the lack of the Internet, and skateboards, and decent TV, it’s a good time to become a man. The Korean War was just over so there was no danger of me going into battle. I blended in, once I learned how things were. Much of it was the same. I had to be careful, especially at first. A lot of what we take for granted doesn’t exist. I had to remember so many things. I made many mistakes, but I learned and I kept moving until I got it right. My history is their future, and I knew enough about their future to make it a little easier. In the end, I was happy, so you don’t need to worry you have sent me off to some horrible fate. I made friends, and settled in pretty well until Hurricane Camille. My town was destroyed and like so many other people, I was dying. It was then I was given my choice and when faced with death or the Liberators…well…I’d seen what you could do.”
Fiona made a mental note to investigate Hurricane Camille. Once again she was tripped up by her lack of knowledge about history. “You…did you know me? When you first met me? Here? There,” she said, gesturing at the diminishing street car, in the direction of her former Washington Square stop. “Hong Kong,” she corrected. “Or was it Australia?”
If he understood she was making nervous small talk, he made no sign of it. He smiled, a pensive, slow smile.
“The neutral meeting field and then the little town you ran to, but I thought it might be you in Australia and I was sure in Florida. It was part of the reason I was so interested, and I convinced the Liberators to pursue it. I didn’t expect you to be able to take us to the Event. Yes, of course I knew you.” He looked at her intently. “You don’t forget the person who strands you in another time. I knew what you could do. First hand.”
Fiona flushed. “I’m sorry.” How did you make up for stripping a man’s life away from him? Nothing seemed adequate. But he’d gone, and Illiria had pushed it to ensure it happened the second time, even if Fiona had no memory of the first one. Illiria’s part in this saga was bigger than she had expected.
He looked away. “I gave him resources to get to Richmond and get settled. When he comes to, he runs. He wants to get as far away from you as he can.” He paused. “It is how it should be. The younger me is in the place he has to be. Even though I’m a Liberator, and believe in fixing the time stream if it needs fixing, altering this, altering my life, would be a disaster. Besides,” and he smiled, a true and sincere smile, “if you didn’t pull me back to this time then the rest wouldn’t have happened, and I like my life today. That isn’t to say I didn’t curse the crap out of you when I woke up. The subway cops almost arrested me. Fortunately, I was a good runner.”
She wanted to protest, explain, but a look at Rogald’s face told her there was nothing she could say. She’d changed his life, but for him that had to have been over twenty years ago. He’d had plenty of time to get used to what happened, but it had only been hours for her.
“We need to go.” Rogald said, looking around. People were looking at them, casting each other wary glances and then back at the strangers in their midst. The Brookline police would show up before too long, Fiona thought, and it would be easier to leave than to risk changing the time stream by even casual interaction. They
had done what they needed to do.
Rogald nodded at Fiona, and shot a quick look at Sonder’s belt. “I believe you can take care of yourselves. Keep that, Guardian,” he said, nodding at his waist. “You never know when you will need it.”
“I intend to, Rogald,” Sonder said. “Liberator. We will meet again, I think.”
Chapter 9
The other man shrugged. By the set look on his face, any hope of further discussion was pointless. Rogald had seemed more like friend than enemy to Fiona in the past, but now she didn’t know. She wasn’t sure what he was, or how their lives overlapped from this point, forward or back. The paradox that was Rogald was making her head swim. How on earth did you avoid paradoxes?
“I am sure of it.” Rogald looked at the trolley, now three stops ahead of them and heading up the small hill. It was the same hill that the subway car that started all this would lose its brakes and careen down, a few months in her original past’s timeframe, changing Fiona’s life forever. “Stay close to Sonder. As long as you are together he should be able to jump wherever you need to go. Be careful.”
A muscle jumped in the other man’s jaw, but Sonder said nothing.
Fiona was unsettled at the idea of Sonder fading again and vowed to have her hands on him at all times, if necessary. Which wasn’t such a bad thing.
Sonder looked at Fiona. “Where to, kale mou?” His ignoring Rogald was deliberate, Fiona knew, but she couldn’t blame him.
She bit her lip, looking from Rogald to Sonder. Rogald was getting his device ready for time travel, punching in coordinates.
“Any ideas?” she asked, catching Rogald’s eye. “I don’t think…I don’t want to go back to Santorini. Not for long, anyway. Not to stay.” The thought that they had been guided to visit the island, for multiple reasons, was making her head swim. She started humming “a paradox, a paradox, a most ingenious paradox” before she was aware she was doing it. Fiona clamped her lips down, cutting off the sound. She doubted either Sonder or Rogald knew the musical. Then again, the Pirates of Penzance was a classic, whenever it was written. Fiona’s head was swimming. She had so much to learn. If she didn’t get her head in the game, her chance of trying to save the Earth from its future demise would be lost. When they got to wherever they were going, she was going trace all the disasters she saw and see if she could find a common thread.
“What did the Minoans say? No, not the Minoans, the…others? What did the others say?” Sonder asked. He paused, the space between his eyes furrowing.
Fiona concentrated. An image surfaced. A burst of light in the sky, flattened trees, destruction for miles. Something flashing in a forest, pulling everything around it down. It seemed distant, but not as distant as Thera. A date flashed in her mind. She relayed it to Sonder.
“Tunguska?” He said. “The 1908 Siberian meteor strike?”
She looked at Sonder and then back at Rogald, who nodded slowly, as if unsure himself. Fiona eyed Sonder’s belt. They had refrained from using it, but that had been foolish. They were going to have to take the risk. Most of the time they wouldn’t have the Internet and it might be the difference between success and failure.
She was going to have to try jumping to the future. She would take it small shifts, not big ones. She could use Sonder’s memories for the near future, which had been his present. It was the future, but it also wasn’t. Not to him.
Fiona didn’t know what Tunguska was, but it sounded Russian, and Sonder had said Siberia. Sonder’s words brought a dim memory of some sort of thing that happened in Siberia at the turn of the century, something that was a mystery until recent times. It seemed as if the 1906 San Francisco Earthquake would have made more sense. She had given up understanding about time anomalies. What mattered was that Sonder was with her. Her companion, her lover. Her man. Tunguska had to be part of the time ripple, part of the buildup to the Event. Perhaps they were going to be disaster chasers, following the nexus points and looking for any clues to stopping the cataclysm. Maybe she had to be their student, trying to learn each tragedy in turn so she could find out how to stop the worst one. If so, she was going to have to get a lot better at history.
“The Voice didn’t name specific places,” she said to her man. The trolley, the streetcar, had disappeared over the hill, taking Rogald to his fate. She wished the younger version well in her mind, knowing by looking at the older one that it would be okay. If it hadn’t been, if something had changed, she thought that this Rogald would have winked out. It may have been as if he never existed. Fiona shuddered as goose bumps erupted on her arms.
Sonder nodded as if in approval. She was wary about taking Sonder that far out of his time stream. Tunguska was about a hundred and fifty years before his original time. But he was here right now, at the edge of his cutoff for jumping, and after the brief scare, seemed to be fine. It was a risk. As long as she was with him, he had more time freedom. They were going to push it from time to time, find out how much leeway they had.
“I don’t know, Sonder…” she began but he waved it aside.
“We have to try. I’ll get the belt ready in case I fade. It will be set for Alaska. Even in my time frame there is still much wilderness up there. I like it there.”
“You need to go,” Rogald said. “We are attracting attention.”
“Yes.” Sonder said, with a slight nod to the other man. “We only have a few minutes,” he said to Fiona. “We need to be out of this time before the Guardians, Liberators, or worse, the Commander, get a fix on this location.”
“They said we needed to go where the energy surfaced. I saw so many things in my trip back, none of them good. Tunguska it is. I don’t have a reference point so I guess it’s back to our house in Santorini so I can get some bearings. There’s no Internet in this time.” She looked at Rogald, and then tightened her grip around Sonder. He looked at her with a hooded expression.
Rogald waved his hand in that same jaunty wave he’d given her one of the first times they’d met. “Until we meet again, Traveler. There will be a next time. Count on it.”
Fiona nodded. If there were no coincidences in this world then Rogald was important to this quest, as was Illiria. Maybe even the Commander too, but for different reasons. But none were as important to her as Sonder.
Rogald made some adjustments to his belt, looked up, and winked at Fiona. There was a ripple and Rogald vanished.
“We won’t be able to stay long back at home,” Sonder warned. “The Santorini police will be asking questions. It is a military airport, after all.”
She nodded. “Just long enough to get a reference point in space and time and collect a few items. I don’t know anything about Tunguska. But I agree we can’t stay on the island. The Commander might be there, or the Guardians. I think…if I take us a day after our original jump we should be okay. It won’t be long enough for Rogald to be missing and the Commander won’t be expecting that.” It was tricky timing, she knew they ran the risk of running into themselves. They were also risking bouncing from the time if she did it wrong, if she tried to get them to a time they had already been as their current selves. It would be delicate, but it was important.
“That would give us three signatures almost on top of each other,” Sonder said. “It should be enough to distract them.”
Rogald. It was all so strange. She was beginning to think that everyone she met had a part in this drama. It was yet one more mystery in this evolving strangeness that was her life, her destiny. Rogald’s destiny too, and Sonder’s.
Sonder took her hand, his palm warm against hers. She was grateful for the reality of him in a way she’d never thought she would feel about another person. She looked up into his dark eyes, and smiled. Whoever the Voice were, she owed them for bringing him into her life.
“Let’s go. Tunguska, whatever you are, here we come.”
#
The sound of music danced on the wind, and a scent of wood smoke hung in the air. A low fire guttered in the fireplace of
the small cabin they were in, fighting a losing battle against the snow pelting down onto it from the uncovered chimney.
Outside it was cold, far colder than anything she had experienced in Brookline winters. Fiona clutched the edges of the parka that Sonder had bought, and she was grateful for the furry warmth. It didn’t keep the chill away, but it kept the worst of it at bay.
She didn’t know what a meteor strike would have to do with time anomalies, but that was what they were here to learn. If she had discovered nothing else, she had learned that many of what people had called “natural disasters” were the time nexus points.
She saw Sonder glance at his old-fashioned wind-up watch. “I think we should check out our surroundings and then jump to after the meteor strike.” His breath came out in puffs of visible air and she could see frost around his hood.
She had worried about him fading, and kept her hand in his during their shift. Her fears had been groundless. He was as solid and real as if he had only jumped one or two decades and not far outside his time.
Fiona didn’t like Russia. She was raised in cold weather and had never thought about moving. Now that she had tasted the warmth of the sun and the blue Aegean sea, she didn’t ever want to go back to ice and snow again. When this was done, she wanted to go to somewhere warm and sunny. Bali, maybe, or Costa Rica. Anywhere and anytime were available to them. She had discovered it could be tricky to shift times without the right clothes or money, but anything was possible.
“Okay, let’s see about this time anomaly.”
There was a great deal to learn and they had just begun to investigate. Follow the disasters, she had been told. Follow the disasters and she would get her answer, but she didn’t know what they would tell her. It was going to be vital to find out what roles Illiria and Rogald played, and the Commander. She didn’t know the pattern yet, but she would find it. The fate of the world depended on it. Fiona no longer thought she had a choice. It was time to accept her destiny, whatever it was.