Lock & Key

by Gordon Bonnet

  “Nevertheless, we are trying to remedy that, so we have to think ahead,” Fischer said. “The answer is no.”

  “Fine. What do we do now?”

  “I’d say the first thing to do is to find you some dry clothes,” Maggie said.

  “I’d be in favor of that. But I didn’t exactly bring a suitcase.”

  “Fischer is close to your size.” She looked at her boss with one eyebrow slightly raised.

  “Oh, hey now,” Fischer said. “I am not giving away my clothes to this guy, just because he happens to have dropped out of the sky and into our laps.”

  “Not give, lend. You can’t send him off to Norway soaked to the skin.”

  “Norway?” he said, alarmed, but Fischer ignored him.

  “Well, what if we go to the Artifacts Department and see if they have any period clothes he could wear? Or we could throw the ones he’s wearing in the dryer.”

  “Fischer, be reasonable. He’ll catch his death of cold. Remember the second divergence happened in April of 1350, in Trondheim. Not only is that early spring, near the Arctic Circle, it’s during the Little Ice Age. He’ll be hypothermic twenty minutes after he gets there, even if we dry his clothes.”

  “I am not lending him my winter coat,” Fischer said. “My mother got it for me at Land’s End last year. It was a Christmas present.”

  “Wait!” Both of them stopped, turned to look at him.

  “Yes?” Fischer said.

  “Norway?” he said, his voice cracking a little. “You’re sending me to Norway?”

  “Of course. That was where the second of the three divergences occurred.”

  “But look, I just got back from Scotland, and it didn’t fix anything. Lee never showed. How will going to Norway be any different?”

  “You changed one thing in Scotland,” Fischer said. “You saved the Gilla-what’s-her-name chick from being dragged off to Denmark. What we don’t know is whether you have to fix all three divergences to reset time and bring humanity back. It certainly seems as if that’s the case, given that what you did in tenth century Scotland didn’t rescue the human race from the logical void. It might be that you have to clear up all three of the problems first.”

  “This makes no sense whatsoever,” he said, trying unsuccessfully to keep a whine out of his voice.

  “Now there’s the pathetic Darren Ault we know and love,” Fischer said, his mouth twisting sardonically. “I’d wondered if fighting off a horde of Vikings would have improved you permanently. It’s reassuring that my original impression was correct.”

  “Now, now, Fischer,” Maggie said. “Remember what Mister Ault has been through.” She patted his damp shoulder. “You need to get into some dry clothes, or you’ll catch your death here, much less in Norway. Fischer, I must insist. Take him to your quarters, and lend him some clothes. Warm ones, and without the usual…” she gestured at his t-shirt, adorned with a weeping cartoon kitten, “… decorations that you favor. Surely you have plain, straightforward, warm clothes Mister Ault could wear, so that he won’t stand out too terribly on his next journey, and won’t freeze immediately upon arrival?”

  Fischer scowled at her, but he seemed to know when he was defeated. He said, “Fine.” To Darren he said, “Follow me,” and got up abruptly and left the room.

  As he trotted after Fischer, he turned and looked over his shoulder, and said, “Thanks, Missus Carmichael.”

  And she responded, with a faint smile, “You may call me Maggie.”

  • • •

  Fischer led Darren down a long hallway, and to an elevator. Fischer punched the “Up” button, and while they were waiting, Darren said, “I’m sorry I’m being such an inconvenience.”

  Fischer gave him a sidelong look, said, “No problem.”

  “No, really. I know this whole thing is pissing you off.”

  “That’s okay, you didn’t cause it,” Fischer said, a little reluctantly.

  There was a ding, and the doors opened. He followed the Librarian into the elevator, and Fischer pressed the button for the ninety-sixth floor.

  “This place is huge,” Darren said, awed, as the elevator rocketed upwards.

  “Yup.”

  “And you really run the whole place?”

  “Yup.”

  “That’s impressive.”

  “Do you always feel the need to talk incessantly?”

  He started to answer, thought better of it, and shut his mouth tightly.

  There was another ding, and the doors opened into a brightly-lit hallway. Fischer stepped out, and he followed. Suddenly Fischer stopped, and turned around, and looked him square in the eyes. It seemed as if the Librarian had come to some sort of decision.

  “Look,” he said. “I’m sorry if I’m being an asshole. Being responsible for the fates of humanity, and having the entire human race vanish on your watch, kind of ruins your day, you know? I really am not blaming it on you, and I know you’re doing your best to try to repair whatever monstrous fuck-up caused all of this. You’ve been a good sport, and god knows I’d be complaining too, if I’d been through what just happened to you. It’s more that… okay, look. I’ve only had this job for two years, and there was some serious concern when I was hired that I was too young to be the Head Librarian. The Board voted me in—and I understand it was by a narrow margin—but I can’t afford to bollocks things up, you know? They could always fire me and find another Librarian if I blow it. And losing the entire human race… it kind of falls under the category of ‘You Blew It.’ The fact is, I don’t know if sending you back to Scotland was the right thing to do, but it seemed like our only option. And sending you to Norway—and if that doesn’t work, to the time of the third divergence, in Kentucky—well, think of them as reconnaissance missions. Intelligence-gathering. Even if you can’t fix what went wrong, you can find out what happened at the divergence points. That way if we can’t repair the damage, at least we can go to the Board with more information than, ‘Hey, guys, all of humanity seems to have been mislaid. Whoops.’ So, if I’m a little testy, blame it on the fact that if I can’t get this fixed, I’ll probably be out on my ass.” He frowned. “Of course, where I’d go, given that the entire human race is AWOL, remains to be seen.”

  This was the most that Fischer had said to him since his arrival in the Library, and he simply stared at the Librarian for a moment.

  Then he said, “I’ll help in whatever way I can.”

  “I guess that’s all you can do,” Fischer said. “It’s all anyone can do.”

  He turned and continued down the hallway to the end, then pulled out a large set of keys, and unlocked the last door on the left.

  “My humble abode,” Fischer said, opening the door.

  Darren stepped in, and looked around. Fischer’s apartment looked like some hybrid between an upscale New York City penthouse and a college dorm. The carpet was plush, silvery-blue, and appeared brand new. The furniture was simple but elegant, and there was a spacious kitchen with polished maple counters and lots of shiny chrome fittings. On the other hand, the living room wall had a huge framed picture of Kurt Cobain, and there were promotional posters for Blink-182, the Stone Temple Pilots, and R.E.M. in prominent positions. A recycling bin next to the door into the kitchen was full of beer bottles, and a pile of laundry sat on the floor next to the couch.

  “It’s kind of a mess,” Fischer said. “Straightening up isn’t on my radar, most days.”

  “No problem. My apartment isn’t much better.”

  “I’ll get you clothes. Then you can take a shower. Help yourself to a beer if you want. They’re in the fridge.”

  He walked around the apartment, passing a bookcase that seemed to be devoted to books on quantum physics. Stephen Hawking’s A Brief History of Time had about a dozen places bookmarked with sticky notes. A photograph of a smiling middle-aged couple stood on one of the shelves. Probably Fischer’s parents, given the resemblance between Fischer and the woman, who had straight white-blon
de hair and blue eyes. He wandered over to large picture windows that overlooked a rocky shoreline stretching off into the distance, with gulls wheeling in a brilliant blue sky.

  At this point, Fischer walked back into the living room, carrying jeans, a long-sleeved t-shirt and sweatshirt, and a pair of boxers.

  “This place is near the ocean?” he asked.

  “It’s not actually near anywhere,” Fischer said. “I just like the ocean.”

  He absorbed this in silence for a moment, then decided that it wasn’t any weirder than anything else he’d heard in the past few days, so he said, “Oh.”

  Fischer handed him the clothes, and pointed him in the direction of the bathroom. “You can use my razor if you want. You’re looking a little scruffy.”

  He spent the next hour under a deliciously hot shower, which served the dual purpose of abolishing the last of the chill and washing off what felt like a dozen layers of grime. Afterwards, he climbed out, toweled off, and got dressed in Fischer’s clothes. The pants were a little short, but otherwise the fit was close enough. His own damp, filthy clothes he carried out of the bathroom.

  Fischer sat on his couch, playing Mario Kart on an enormous flat-screen television. He looked up as Darren entered.

  “Nice place,” Darren said.

  “I can’t complain,” Fischer replied.

  “How did you land this job, anyway?”

  Fischer looked up at him, and set down his game controller. Mario’s car went spinning off into a wall, and there was a burst of quasi-Italian imprecations from the speakers before Fischer shut it off.

  “You can chuck those on the pile of laundry over there,” Fischer said, and Darren added his dirty clothes to the pile next to the couch. “I’ll have them washed and get them back to you. We should get back down to the office.”

  Fischer stood up, and walked out of his apartment, locking the door behind him. Darren had decided that Fischer wasn’t going to answer the question, but while waiting for the elevator, the Librarian said, “I was kind of a washout in high school, you know? Never wanted to do anything but read, listen to music, and write seriously depressing stories about kids whose parents didn’t understand them, and then they committed suicide and then the parents realized how much they loved their kids, but it was too late.” He made a little snorting noise. “When Maggie showed up, and told me I was a Monitor, and that I should come with her, go into the training, I didn’t believe her. I thought it was another one of my dad’s schemes to turn me into a Productive Member of Society, by which he meant an engineer or doctor or lawyer or something.”

  The elevator dinged, and the doors opened. He followed Fischer in.

  “I wasn’t like Maggie. She knew pretty much from birth that she could see through time. I had no idea. I mean, I’d had daydreams about being able to go back and relive moments, or change the past, or whatever, but who doesn’t? It wasn’t until I started my training that I realized I could have done all of that, I just didn’t know it at the time.”

  “So after you were done with the training, they made you Head Librarian?”

  Fischer smiled. It was the first time Darren had seen him do so. It softened the severe lines of his face, made him look almost childlike. “No, it didn’t happen that fast. I was a rank-and-file Monitor for four years, under Mister Furnival. Going back, doing cleanup for minor divergences, keeping track of the records, learning the computer systems. All ordinary stuff.”

  “It doesn’t seem very ordinary.”

  “You’d be surprised how fast this stuff becomes… well, if not boring, exactly, at least mundane. Once you accept that this is the way things work, it stops seeming weird.”

  “I haven’t gotten there, yet.”

  “No, I suppose not. But anyway, Mister Furnival, I understand, had his eye on me as his successor, and Maggie thought I would be up to the job. So when he retired, I applied, and between his recommendation and Maggie’s, I was offered the position.”

  “I’m surprised that Maggie didn’t apply herself.”

  Fischer shrugged. “I asked her about that. She said she’s much happier being an administrative assistant. Or, as she put it, ‘I play a lovely second fiddle.’ Everybody fits in where they’re comfortable, I guess.”

  “Do you like your job?”

  The bell sounded again, and the elevator doors opened. “I don’t know. It seems a little beyond ‘liking’ or ‘disliking,’ frankly. I guess the best way to say it is that I can’t imagine doing anything else.”

  They walked down the hallway in the direction of Fischer’s office. Maggie was already there, filing manila folders in a huge and overstuffed filing cabinet. She turned and looked at them as they entered.

  “Clean and dry, Mister Ault?”

  “Much better,” he said.

  “I must say, those are remarkably pedestrian clothes, Fischer. I had visions of your sending Mister Ault back to the Middle Ages wearing a Nirvana sweatshirt.”

  “I have ordinary clothes, Maggie,” Fischer said.

  “Evidently. I was simply unaware of them until now.”

  “Anyway,” Fischer said, “I suppose you’re ready to go, then, Ault? Go check out what your buddy Lee did in fourteenth century Norway?”

  “Not really. But I don’t guess I have much of a choice.”

  “You always have choices,” Maggie said.

  He looked at her. “I suppose. I could stay nonexistent forever. Some choice.” He sighed. “Okay, I guess I’m ready. Who am I looking for, again?”

  “I printed out the Norton results for you, Fischer,” she said. “On your desk.”

  “Thanks,” Fischer said, and picked up the printout. “A guy named Per Olafsson. He’d have been about twenty-seven years old or so. Lives in Trondheim. I’ll land you there a couple of days before the divergence takes place, so you can have a chance to snoop around and see what’s going on. Keep your eye out for Lee. I still think that the only way any of this makes sense is if Lee somehow went back and fucked around with things. I’ll bet that somehow he was traveling with those Vikings, and you just didn’t see him.”

  “Then why didn’t rescuing Maíre fix the problem?” he asked. “There’s still something screwed up back in the tenth century. The computer said so.”

  Fischer frowned. “I don’t know. But look, maybe you have to fix all three of the divergences before everything will reset.”

  “Why would that be? How are they connected?”

  “I don’t know,” Fischer said again, annoyance clear in his voice. “Let’s see what happens, okay? We don’t have any other working model to go on, so I think unless you want to give up now, this is pretty much our only way to go.”

  “Fine,” he said. “All right, I’m ready.”

  Maggie looked over at Fischer. “You need to tell him before he leaves,” she said, giving her boss a disapproving frown.

  “He’ll find out when he gets there.” Fischer shifted from one foot to another like a child caught in a lie.

  “Fischer, that’s not fair,” she said. “Tell him.”

  Fischer looked at him, and cleared his throat. “Um, maybe you should know what was happening in Norway in 1350.”

  “What? Was there a war or something?”

  “No, no war. Just this… thing. There was this sort of… um… plague going on at the time.”

  His eyes widened. “A plague? What kind of plague?”

  “Well, it was sort of,” Fischer said, and winced a little, “sort of… the Black Death.”

  “The Black Death?” His voice rose nearly an octave. “You’re sending me back there during the Black Death?”

  “Well, that’s when the divergence happened. Not my choice. Just, um… watch out for rats. And fleas.”

  “Watch out for fleas? How do I watch out for fleas?”

  “I don’t know. Take lots of baths.” Fischer gave him an uncomfortable smile. “Anyway, off you go. Remember, you’re trying to find some guy named Per Olafsson. Ask a
round. There can’t be many Per Olafssons.”

  “Now wait a minute, Fischer, you can’t send me somewhere when they’re in the middle of a freakin’ plague…” But Fischer flicked his fingers at him, as if he were brushing off a fly, and the office was abruptly replaced by a chill, windy darkness and silence that seemed to his mind distinctly plague-like.

  • • •

  At first, Darren thought that there was something wrong with his eyes. Then he wondered if he’d materialized inside a cave, or in a dungeon. The blackness around him appeared absolute. Then he remembered his last night in Scotland, the total, cloying darkness, in the absence of any sort of artificial light source, a darkness that most modern humans never experience. But once his eyes had a minute to adjust, he realized that it wasn’t completely dark. In the distance were spots of a faint, yellowish glow that could have been candles or torches. It wasn’t much, but it gave his eyes something to focus on and his brain something to hope for. He walked toward them, down what seemed to be some sort of tree-lined road, although it was hard to tell in the dark.

  The wind was incessant and icy. He had thought that the Hebrides in summer was cold. Here, his ears and fingertips were numb within five minutes of his arrival. His foot found a puddle, and there was a cracking sound as his sneaker broke through a rind of ice and he sank up to the ankle in frigid mud. Swearing, he pulled his shoe free, and continued to trudge toward the light, which had resolved into a collection of low buildings whose windows held oil lanterns, smoky and guttering, producing a jaundiced glow against grimy panes of glass.

  “Charming place,” he muttered under his breath. “All this, and the plague, too. What else can go wrong?”

  And that was when he heard a sudden thudding noise, and turned just in time to be knocked flying by a running horse that struck him broadside. He was airborne for what seemed an amazing amount of time. He had time to think, Broke my cardinal rule. Never ask “What else can go wrong?” Because the next thing you know, things go further wrong, like being trampled by a wild horse. It figures. And then his head struck something solid, there was an explosion of fireworks inside his skull, and his consciousness winked out like a snuffed candle.