Paradox Bound: A Novel

by Peter Clines

  She barked out a laugh.

  “Why?”

  Harry swallowed another mouthful of bourbon. “This is going to be one of those explanations that’s been passed down the Chain,” she said. “Are you going to get upset and interrupt?”

  He snorted and tossed back a shot’s worth of his own drink.

  “Abraham Porter designed Hourglass to be our safe harbor. We all come here. Once, twice, hopefully three times during our life as searchers. So many of us overlapping at once creates a situation which could have repercussions throughout history were it to be disrupted.

  “For example,” she continued, “my wedding party is going on right now across the street. It sets off ripples as the people there interact with each other and with the town’s residents. The piano player. The bartender. The cook. The serving girls. The other townsfolk out for a drink, or perhaps kept up by our revelry. The sheriff and the deputy who check in on us. Do you follow so far?”

  He nodded and raised his glass again.

  “Those people interact with their families, bunkmates, what-have-you. The thing is, many of them also interact with us over here.” She gestured across the bar with her glass. “James is here, and Irene is trying to devour him with her eyes. But he’s also over at the First Time Around right now, almost twenty years younger and flirting with one of the Huang sisters and also with the young boy who plays piano. Two or three of these people might meet up tomorrow and whisper about their nights, not realizing they’re all talking about the same man.”

  Eli nodded again. “Okay. That makes sense.”

  “And that’s why the faceless men stay away. As long as we all follow the rules, this town is a Gordian knot in the lines of history. It’s having hundreds, maybe thousands of effects, and all of these effects loop and twist and tie back to here and now.” She waved her hand at the door. “Out there, they can pick us off one or two at a time and neaten up whatever problems it causes in history. But here, during this week, it would be catastrophic. One extreme action here would affect thousands of different threads at once.” She swallowed another mouthful of bourbon. “Melodramatic as it may sound, attacking this town could destroy America.”

  Eli sipped his own drink. “And you’re sure it’s safe?”

  “We know it’s safe because we’ve all seen it. I’ve already been here this week, remember?” She waved her free hand at the crowd. “So has everyone else in this room. And some of us maybe down the street at the Paradox too. The faceless men never set foot in Hourglass.”

  “So why don’t you just stay here? Take some time off. Not…” He glanced around the crowded room. “Not be part of the search?”

  “Stay here for a week? That’s the plan.”

  “What?”

  “It’s only one week,” she said. “If we all tried to come back again and again, we’d start tripping over ourselves, and upset the system Porter created. That’s why no one goes back and forth between the saloons. Hourglass is perfectly safe as long as we all follow the rules.”

  “Ahhh.”

  She looked around the room, had another sip, then leaned in closer to Eli. “We’re on the right track with Hawkins.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “I am. Ask me how.”

  Someone bumped Eli and jostled his drink. He glanced up, then back at Harry. “Ummm…how?”

  She moved her glass side to side in front of her, gesturing at the room. “I know everyone here.”

  “Okay.”

  Harry watched his face for a moment. “Think, Eli,” she said. “How can I know everyone here?”

  “Well…” He glanced around the room and caught glimpses of the detective, James, the lumberjack, an Asian woman in a red dress, the man with the eye patch, the top-hat woman. “Are they all part of the Chain?”

  “Some of them. Others are friends and acquaintances from different Chains. But I know them all. How?”

  He picked up the green-edged poker chip and flipped it back and forth between his fingers. “If you know them,” he said, “it means they came before you.”

  “Yes.”

  Eli looked around again. “There’s nobody”—he lowered his voice—“there’s nobody here who comes after you? After us?”

  She shook her head. “Not a one. The searchers end with us. With our generation. There are no more links.” She picked up her glass. “Hawkins is it.”

  Eli nodded once. “Or maybe the faceless men wipe us all out.”

  “Oh, you’re a cheerful drunk.” She threw back the last of her bourbon. The empty glass came down hard on the table. “I need another,” she said. “You?”

  “Good for now, thanks.”

  She stood up and strode back across the tavern.

  Someone shuffled by in the crowd, patted Eli’s shoulder, and said, “Greetings, programs,” with a laugh. The stranger vanished into the crowd before Eli got a look at him. Instead, he found himself eye to eye with a Latina in a rumpled white tuxedo. She raised her brows and stared back at Eli over her spectacles until he looked away.

  He caught a glimpse of the card game as people parted for a moment, and locked eyes with the noir detective. She blew him a kiss, tossed three chips into the pot, and then the shifting bodies hid her table again. A moan of despair from the lumberjack rose over the crowd, followed by laughter.

  Harry returned with three glasses and clunked them on the table. “Good to see you haven’t wandered off,” she said.

  “That’s why there’s three saloons,” he said. “First, second, and last. Whenever you come back to the town again, you go to the next one so you don’t run into yourself. And you’re running into everyone else in more or less the right order.”

  She bowed her head. “Very good, Eli. Took me a while to catch that one when it was first explained to me.”

  “What happens if someone tries to come more than three times?”

  “To the best of my knowledge, no one’s ever made it that far.”

  “And nobody goes back and forth between the bars?”

  Harry froze, then shook her head. “No,” she said. “Not yet.” She selected a glass, saluted him with it, and took a sip.

  Eli sighed and had another sip of his bourbon. “Who are the other drinks for?”

  “One for me,” she said, raising her glass again, “and I got you another one anyway. I didn’t want to go back to the bar again in a few minutes.”

  “Who’s the third one for?”

  “Also for me. I just told you I didn’t want to go back to the bar. Please keep up.”

  “I’m trying my best.”

  “Normally, I prefer not to imbibe on such a scale. It’s not good for driving, and accidents on the road are bad enough when one isn’t traveling through history. But we’re not on the road at the moment, and…”

  She gazed down at her drink, then took a sip.

  “And?”

  Harry looked at him with hard eyes. “And I’m about to do something I find unpleasant. So the bourbon helps.”

  “Hopefully it doesn’t involve plans for me,” Eli said.

  Another sip. “I’m afraid it does, Eli.”

  His own glass paused halfway between the table and his mouth.

  “Nothing sinister, I assure you,” she said. “Well, not to the best of my knowledge. Just unpleasant.” She stared down into her glass again. “More for me than you.”

  The woman with the top hat started awake and grabbed for her hip, where an olive-green, nylon holster protruded from inside her Civil War jacket. Her hat tumbled to the table, rolled, and fell to the floor. A man in a camel-colored overcoat bent to scoop it up before the crowd trampled it. She relaxed and thanked him.

  Harry cleared her throat. “I need you to go across the way. To the First Time Around.”

  “What?”

  “Just go over there. Buy a drink for yourself. Two if you like.” She reached into her coat pocket and dropped two quarters on the table. The two coins she’d set aside before.

/>   “You just said the whole point of the saloons is that people don’t go between them.”

  “Usually.” She set a finger on each coin and slid them across the table to him.

  “Are you trying to get me in trouble or something?”

  “You won’t get in trouble.”

  “But I thought people aren’t supposed to meet themselves.”

  “You won’t meet yourself,” she said. “You’re not over there. Not yet, anyway.”

  He picked up the two quarters. “Are you trying to get rid of me?”

  “No, Eli. I don’t think so anyway.”

  “You don’t think so?”

  “I don’t know all the details. I just know you have to go over there.”

  “How?”

  “How which? I presume by walking.”

  “How do you know I have to go over there?”

  She picked up her drink again. Studied it. Swallowed a mouthful of it. “Because I saw you over there.”

  He blinked. “What?”

  She sighed. “On the second night of our party—the Tuesday night—Christopher wandered off to the bar and ended up talking with someone I didn’t know. A man I’d never seen before, with a short wool coat, a derby, and a few days’ worth of whiskers.”

  Eli glanced at the derby on the table and let his gaze continue down to his pea coat.

  “Whatever they were talking about,” she went on, “I could see Christopher became very serious. I asked him about it later and he wouldn’t tell me anything, said it wasn’t important. I’d forgotten about it altogether until we were standing outside, looking over at the First Time Around. I remembered what night it was. And I realized how you were dressed.”

  He rubbed the coins together between his fingers. “That was nine years ago.”

  “Nine years ago,” she said, “is right across the road.”

  He took a sip of his own drink. “And you think it was me?”

  She shrugged and didn’t meet his eyes. “I guess we’ll find out, won’t we?”

  30

  The night had eaten up a little more of the day’s heat. Eli tugged his jacket closer around himself. Cold enough for a chill, but not enough to warrant buttoning up.

  Across the dirt-road intersection, the First Time Around tossed out flickers of light and sound. He heard voices. Laughter. Notes from a piano. Enough to overwhelm any other noise in the small town.

  He walked across the street.

  The First Time Around had cleaner paint and glass than many of the older buildings Eli’d seen in Hourglass. The planks and posts of the boardwalk in front of it were straight and sharp. No scrapes or gouges or nicks, just two or three small scuffs by the stairs. Barely a year into the life of Hourglass and someone had decided to invest in a real, three-story saloon.

  Someone, apparently, being Abraham Porter.

  The swinging doors at the building’s corner were bright blue, not sun-faded in the least. Someone had written POLICE BOX in white chalk across the twin doors. A handprint had smudged the B.

  Over the tops of the doors he could see people. Dozens and dozens of people. The sound and life and energy of the party spilled out and washed over him.

  He glanced back over his shoulder, half expecting to see Harry watching him from the Second Iteration. The tavern’s door was empty, though. The night watchman made his way back up the street, his rifle still on his shoulder.

  Eli pushed the blue doors open and stepped inside.

  The chandeliers in the First Time Around had twice as many candles, enough to make Eli think “fire hazard” before anything else. The white ceiling reflected the light back down at the patrons. Mirrors on the walls added to the brilliance and magnified the size of the crowd.

  Eli stared at the seething mass of people. Harry had called it her wedding reception, but it seemed like at least three different celebrations were in full swing. Smaller groups orbited the bigger clusters, and there were still dozens of people in trios or pairs or standing alone. The heat of them warmed the big room.

  He stood by the door for a moment, overwhelmed. A man and a woman walked past him, and the man thumped him twice on the shoulder with a smile. The woman glanced back to wave at Eli as they moved on.

  Eli reached up, tugged his derby down a little tighter on his head—a gesture that already felt comfortable and familiar—and waded into the saloon.

  According to Harry, he needed to be by the bar. He could get a drink, watch the room, and try to blend in.

  Of course, nobody was blending into the crowd. He could see clothes from at least a dozen different points in history, sometimes mixed on the same person. His eyes panned the crowd, wondering if he’d see young Harry before she saw him.

  He had no idea what Christopher looked like. Eli tried to remember any distinguishing feature Harry’d mentioned and couldn’t come up with one past “big.” Hopefully, at their reception, he’d be the man spending the most time with Harry.

  Eli passed the woman in the top hat and the lumberjack at a table together with a bottle of what looked like red wine. Each of them grinned as they looked from each other to a map of the United States that didn’t seem to extend past Texas. As he watched, the man slid the woman a red-edged poker chip decorated with a blue spiral.

  A man with twin anchor tattoos and a sweat-stained tank top left the bar, and Eli squeezed in next to a thin man wearing a dark suit and a black hat. The bartender appeared, an older woman with brittle blond hair, and Eli asked for a bourbon. It seemed to be a good default drink in almost every era they’d visited.

  The bartender waited, stared, and after a moment Eli took the hint. One of his coins slid onto the bar. The woman swept it up and replaced it with a glass, then did a slow pour until he signaled her to stop at three fingers. She walked off without a word.

  He sniffed the bourbon. It didn’t burn his nose as much as the stuff across the street. Next time they were in the late twentieth century, he’d make a point of getting some vodka.

  He turned and leaned back against the bar, bumping the man in the suit as he did. Alcohol splashed on the bar. “Sorry.”

  “No, it’s my fault,” said a soft voice. She slid her own drink away and tilted the black fedora back to look at him.

  “Did you follow…” The question dissolved on his tongue.

  An ounce or two of baby fat made the detective’s face a little rounder and fuller. Twenty, maybe twenty-one years old at the most. Her youthful, smooth skin gleamed in the candlelight. She smiled at him. “Did I follow…who?”

  “Sorry,” he said. “I thought you were somebody else.”

  “It’s the hat.”

  “Probably.”

  He tried to look casual as he studied the crowd. She leaned back against the bar, mimicking his pose. Her coat fell open to reveal a loosely knotted tie and a black satin vest that matched her hat. She raised her own glass toward him. “To the dream?”

  “To the dream,” he agreed. They drank. “Eli.”

  “Monica.”

  “Good to meet you, Monica.”

  “And you, Eli. So, we don’t know each other yet?”

  “I…no, I guess not.”

  “Such a shame,” she said. “You weren’t here last night.”

  “No, I…I got in late. Just a few hours ago.” He looked at her again. Her clothes were loose at the shoulders and waist, tight across the chest and hips. A man’s outfit, not tailored for her frame at all.

  “Like what you see?”

  “I…sorry,” he said, his eyes snapping back to hers. “I wasn’t…I’m still new at this. All the outfits and clothes are still kind of—”

  She waved him off. “We’re all new at this,” she said. “And I grew up in the ’70s, Eli.” She smiled and clarified, “Nineteen-seventies.”

  “Still sorry.”

  “Like the woman says, I will survive.” Monica downed the last of her own drink and twisted to put the empty glass on the bar. As she turned back, she reached o
ut and ran a finger across his chin. “If you can’t find who you’re looking for, come find me. You might get lucky.”

  She sauntered off into the crowd before he could respond. Then his eyes flitted away and he almost dropped his bourbon.

  John Henry stood at the far end of the bar, younger and broader. His big hands gestured as he spoke with a man about Eli’s age and two Asian women in contrasting red and black robes. The man looked familiar. Eli added ten years to him, then twenty, and at thirty he recognized Theo Knickerbocker.

  John would be part of the wedding party. He’d more or less said so back on his train. He and Harry had known each other for years.

  Eli began to scan the crowd in John’s area. James stood by the piano with a cigarette in his hand, at least two decades younger than he’d been across the street. Eli caught his breath when he recognized the man.

  Then a squeal of laughter echoed over the voices, and Harry rose up out of the crowd.

  Like with Monica, the years made a subtle difference. Harry’s hair stretched longer. The curves sat smoother on the planes of her face. Her eyes were bright and wide, the lids not weighed down by those extra years.

  Her teeth gleamed in the candlelight. A smile stretched across her face and up to her eyes. Happiness beamed out of her like light from the chandeliers.

  The man whose shoulders she straddled had to be Christopher. He looked like a large man who’d been wrapped onto an average-sized frame. Big shoulders, big arms, big chest, all squeezed into a black jacket, but still somehow an average-sized man and not a heavy one. His eyes were bright, his golden hair just long enough to be shaggy. He had the same happy aura as Harry. One hand rested on Harry’s thigh, balancing her, while the other held a half-empty glass mug.

  Eli’s attention turned back to Harry. Her vest was a white, satiny thing, and a cluster of snowy ruffles tumbled down the front of her shirt. The wedding gown of a history traveler, Eli mused.

  His eyes dropped away. He’d been staring too long at the bride. Someone was bound to notice, and Eli didn’t think he should attract any more attention than necessary. Although he wasn’t sure how much that would be either.