“Well, yes and no. There were only three spots the computer picked out. But remember that the computer wasn’t exactly behaving normally. We don’t know why it chose those three points as focal events in leading up to the evaporation of all of humanity. But there’s one other place we need evidence about. And that’s the events immediately preceding Lee’s firing of the gun at your forehead.”
“The present, you mean.”
“More or less.”
“What would that tell us?”
“Well, maybe we could find out what should have been the first thing we looked into—why Lee wanted to kill you.” Fischer leaned back in his chair, and Ivan the tomcat appeared from underneath his desk and jumped into his lap, purring. Fischer scratched the cat’s ears. “If we’d been thinking, we’d have sent you there first. Because, after all, that’s really where the action is. Whatever happened—whatever caused all of this—it was consequent to Lee’s shooting you. Everything before that happened afterwards.”
“That sounds rather Zen, Fischer,” Maggie said.
“No, but it’s true. Whatever he did led to a temporal paradox. If we know why he had it in for Ault, it might give us a way to stop it. I wish we’d been smart enough to see that from the beginning. It would have saved us a lot of time.”
“Remember, we thought at first that Lee himself had escaped into the past and altered the flow of time. It seemed like a good idea“—the corner of Maggie’s mouth twitched again—“at the time.”
Fischer looked over at him. “There’s a couple of things, though, that you should know. First, we don’t have the leisure to give you a night’s sleep. It’s going to be a quick shower and change of clothes, and off you go, bruises and scrapes and all. And second… there’s going to be a difference when you go to Seattle.”
“A difference? What kind of difference?”
“The system has an internal safeguard, set up to prevent anything from interfering with people whose actual tracks haven’t been locked yet. In other words, people who are still alive. As you’ve found out, through the Library you can go back in time, and witness events, and even interact with people, but only ones who have already chosen their own actual tracks. For people who are still alive, the present is… fluid. Things only freeze in place when a person dies.”
“Rather settles the question of free will, doesn’t it?” Maggie said. “Don’t tell the philosophers. They do so enjoy debating the topic.”
“So we have a way of preventing anyone from messing with recent events, and stopping people who are still alive from choosing freely. If you go back in time, but not far enough that the people in it are already dead… you can’t actually talk to anyone. It’s too risky. You could change your own timeline accidentally, or deliberately. You could try to talk to yourself, with alarming results. You could influence someone’s choices, instead of the person choosing for his or her own reasons. So, to everyone there who was part of that temporal anomaly—in other words, to everyone who was alive, and who disappeared when Lee shot you—you’ll be invisible and inaudible. You’ll be able to witness what’s going on, but not interact.” Fischer paused, and then added quietly, “You’ll be a ghost.”
“It’d have been a hell of a lot less painful if I could have been a ghost in the other places you sent me.”
“No doubt. Objects will still be solid, but you should refrain from messing about with anything. If you pick up a pencil, anyone looking in that direction will see a pencil magically float up into the air. Can’t have that.”
“I guess not.”
“The good part is that no one will be able to harm you. After what you went through in Kentucky, that’s bound to seem pretty appealing. But there’s a downside. You’ve got only twenty-four hours. Less than that, because the clock started a little under an hour ago. So you’ll excuse the rush, but we need to get you showered and changed, and then it’s off you go, back to your home town. And if you don’t figure out why Lee killed you and come up with a way to stop it, you’ll be dealing with an entirely different bunch when you get back.” He blinked solemnly. “And I don’t think you’ll find them as warm, charming, and lovable as I am.”
Darren looked over at Maggie.
“I wish he were joking, Mister Ault,” she said, her face serious. “Missus Holcombe makes Fischer look like Winnie-the-Pooh by comparison.”
“Oh,” he said.
• • •
Darren was whisked up to his temporary quarters, where he found his original clothes—clean and dry—waiting for him in a neat stack by the bathroom door, along with a light windbreaker that looked brand new.
“Couldn’t send you back to Seattle in March in nothing but a t-shirt,” Fischer said.
“Thanks.”
“I’ll wait here while you get yourself cleaned up.” Fischer dropped into an overstuffed chair in front of the television. “Don’t take too long. Maggie wasn’t joking that we’re under some pressure.”
He went into the bathroom, and stripped off his nineteenth century clothing. Bits of dried mud, twigs, and leaves pattered onto the floor. He considered cleaning it all up, then decided that it wasn’t his problem, turned on the shower, and stepped in.
The hot water stung his scrapes and cuts, but overall, it was delicious.
Every time I return from the past, the best thing about returning is a hot shower. I think hot showers may be the finest invention of the human race.
He stayed in as long as he dared—he didn’t think Fischer was above coming into the bathroom and dragging him out if he took too long— then got out, dried off, and looked at himself speculatively in the mirror.
His left eye was progressing toward black, and the opposite cheek had a bluish bruise and the healing cut he’d received from his first encounter with Crenshaw. There was a tender spot on the back of his scalp, probably from one of the several times he’d landed flat on his back. His upper chest had several more bruises. There was a long scrape on the side of his neck, and both hands ached—the result, he thought, of all of the punches he had landed. The human body was a harder target than he’d thought. As he got dressed, though, he couldn’t help but give his reflection a roguish smile. Winning a fight, especially against such a deserving target as Crenshaw, had done something to him.
Crenshaw had to be stopped. And I’m glad I had the balls to do it. For once in my life, I didn’t wimp out.
He pulled on his boxers, t-shirt, and jeans, and went back out into the living room. Fischer had the television on, and was slouched in the chair, legs stretched out in front of him, watching some chick-flick-looking movie. Gwyneth Paltrow was running for a train, missed it, and turned away in frustration, as Darren said, “I’m ready when you are, Fischer.”
The Librarian looked up, and punched the “Off” button on the remote.
“Okay.” He gave Darren a quirky smile. “You know, Ault, you do look like a badass. I don’t know if it’s the bruises, or something different in your eyes, but something’s changed. You look like you might actually be able to pull this off.”
“I’ll do my best.”
“You’ve done pretty fucking amazing so far. You know, I gotta say… thanks. I know this hasn’t been a pleasure cruise. I really appreciate everything you’ve done.”
“I’m sorry about killing Crenshaw,” he said. “I know that was against the rules.”
Fischer shrugged. “He’d be dead by now anyway.”
“I guess that’s one way of looking at it.”
“It’s amazing how comforting taking the big-picture approach can be.”
He sat down and pulled on his socks and shoes. “So, I really won’t be able to talk to anyone?”
“No. No interactions allowed with living people, and as few as you can manage with everything else. That’s the rule. The most important thing is to see if you can figure out what Lee McCaskill was up to, and what made him suddenly turn homicidal. He has to have found out something that triggered that, and whatever t
hat something was is the key to this whole thing. So if we can fix that… maybe we can set everything else right at the same time.”
“Understood.”
“There’s food in the backpack on the floor. Resist the temptation to try to eat anything you find when you get there. Or move anything. Or, really, do anything. You’re an observer only. It takes some training to perfect this, but you have to try your hardest not to change things while you’re there. You have no idea how often we’ve had to go back and fix stuff our own employees inadvertently screwed up.”
He picked up the backpack and slung it across his shoulder. “I’ll do my best.”
“You’ll be pulled back in a little under one day’s time. We’ve timed it to give you until about ten minutes after Lee murdered you.”
“I can’t believe it, but that actually makes sense to me.”
Fischer gave him a wry grin. “I told you, you get used to it. You should try to be there watching when the shooting happens, but then be ready to jump immediately afterwards. We’ll get you back here an hour or so before the deadline. I know that doesn’t give you a lot of time to figure this out. You’ll have to work fast.”
“I’ll do what I can.”
Fischer thwacked him on the shoulder. “That’s what you’ve done all along. It’ll be enough. It’ll have to be.” He paused. “Any final thoughts?”
“Just that this scares me more than any of the other jumps did.”
“We’re at the heart of it, now. This is the real deal, this time. Oh, and one last thing… don’t freak out when you see yourself. Some people do.”
“I’ll try not to.”
“Okay, then. Good luck. See you in twenty-four hours.”
He closed his eyes, and everything went dark.
• • •
When Darren opened his eyes, he was standing on a street corner at night. Cars swished by him, but something about them was insubstantial, as if he were the only real object in a world of phantoms. People walked past, lots of them, but they didn’t look his way, and he had to jump out of the way of a young man propelling a skateboard down the sidewalk.
He looked up at the street sign. The intersection of 15th and Madison. Two blocks from his apartment, six blocks south of Lee’s.
Where to first? It was more important to find out what Lee was doing, but there was something compelling about seeing himself, to know what it was like to look at his own body from the outside. The whole idea was simultaneously terrifying and fascinating. Without even consciously making a decision, he headed toward his own apartment building.
The city by night was familiar and unfamiliar, like the contents of a dream. A metro bus rushed by, and a gust of warm air washed, but the people whose faces looked out of the windows were translucent, gray specters, their edges blurred like an out-of-focus photograph. No one’s eyes met his as he walked past, and once, a young man walking hand-in-hand with a laughing girl stepped suddenly to one side to avoid a cracked place in the sidewalk, and there was a clutch of nausea as the man’s free hand swept right through his midsection.
Fischer was right. He was a ghost in a city full of ghosts. This was way worse than being in the past. It was like a nightmare he wouldn’t wake up from for twenty-four hours.
He hiked another block, and found himself looking up at the tan stone façade of Kingswood East Apartments. The front of the building was a sickly yellow in the streetlight. He fished around in his pocket for his keys, and then put the key into the lock on the entrance… and it turned, no resistance, as if the interior of the lock mechanism wasn’t there. He grabbed the handle, rattled the door. An elderly man in a tailored suit and a fedora with a small feather glanced around, gave the door an odd look, and kept walking.
Great. Now what? I’m locked out of my own apartment building. And even if I get inside the building, I still won’t be able to get into my apartment.
But luck was on his side. A middle-aged woman he’d seen before—she lived on the second floor, he recalled, and had two teenage kids—came bustling out of the door. He moved aside just in time. Not that it would have mattered, she would have walked right through him, but reflexes were hard to change. He ducked inside before the door closed.
The interior hallway led to an elevator, and farther along, a staircase. He opted for the stairs, wondering how the electronic controls on the elevator would respond to someone who, technically, wasn’t there. With that not particularly comforting thought, he trotted up to the third floor.
His apartment was 304. He went up to the door, his footsteps making no sound on the worn indoor-outdoor carpet, and stood there, looking up at the three brass numbers he had seen so many times without even registering.
How could he get into his apartment? Would he—the Darren of one day previous, of two weeks previous, of what seemed a whole lifetime previous—even be inside? He didn’t bother trying the key. There was no reason to suppose it would work. And after standing there for five minutes, he did what in retrospect was probably the only thing he could have done. He knocked on the door.
There was the sound of footsteps, and the door opened, and there was Darren, looking out into the hall, a perplexed expression on his face.
I remember this happening! Darren thought, and his mental voice sounded a little hysterical. I’d just gotten home from the bookstore—and there was a knock on the door—and when I opened it, no one was there! But there WAS someone there… it was me…
An almost painful shiver ran up his spine, and he nearly had the door shut in his face before he remembered why he’d knocked in the first place. As the door was closing, he slipped in, stepping right through his other self and into the familiar foyer of his apartment.
Darren watched Darren, as his shadowy doppelganger went back into the apartment, and busied himself fixing an unimaginative dinner of Chef Boyardee Ravioli, some reheated green beans from the previous night, and a bottle of beer.
What had happened next? He’d lived all this before, and yet couldn’t remember a single thing from that evening. At that moment he realized how little he ever paid attention to what went on in his life. The big events, the major upsets, were all that stuck. Life, real life, was going on all around him, and for the most part, he ignored it into nonexistence.
No wonder Fischer had said most of the events in the past had no effect. No one paid them any attention, so they could have happened any number of ways, with the same overall outcome. It made the whole Butterfly Effect idea ridiculous.
He had just finished the last forkful of ravioli when the phone rang.
Right. Lee called. That was when he called and said he wanted to have dinner together. How could he have forgotten that?
The shadow Darren stood, went into the kitchen, and picked up the telephone.
“Hello...? Oh, hi Lee. What’s up...? I know it has. But you’ve been busy with everything…. Sure. Tomorrow works fine for me. It’s not like I have a social calendar or anything…. Cool. My place or yours...? Sounds good. And don’t worry about cooking. I can pick up something on the way there. You got any prefs…? Okay, I’ll figure out something. Maybe get some sushi from Sumo or something. Will Sherry be there?”
The Darren on the telephone frowned, a momentary crease of the brow, immediately smoothed. “Oh. Too bad. Okay, then, just us. Looking forward to it… Later, dude.”
Shadow Darren put the telephone back in its cradle, and returned to the dinner table to finish the last of his beer while looking at a magazine.
But now the other Darren, the observer, remembered something about that conversation. There had been an odd tone in Lee’s voice when he’d said that his girlfriend, Sherry, wouldn’t be coming to dinner. Some strange little catch in the voice, a hesitation, there and gone again almost too quickly to notice. At the time, he had barely noticed it. It slid across his perception like a leaf on the wind, seen but not really registered. Subliminal. Forgotten as soon as observed.
Like most things in life.
> Darren got up, carried the dishes to the sink, and then walked into the living room, dropped into a chair, and picked up the remote.
He did not want to watch himself sitting for an hour in front of reruns of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. There were more pressing things. He needed to find Lee, follow him around for a while. There was something here he wasn’t understanding, and he wasn’t going to figure out what it was stuck in his apartment staring at himself vegging out in front of the television.
Darren-the-Observer looked around his apartment. The whole place was strangely unfamiliar, as if it belonged to another life he’d led, decades ago. He padded silently over to a bookshelf, where the wooden box from his grandmother, Katherine Clevenger Ault, always sat. The box that Per Olafsson had thrown into his arms from a burning building, the one for which Per had made a beautiful silver key, a key that should have been hanging around his neck.
He half expected the box to be gone. Fischer had said that removing it from Norway had yanked it out of the timeline, and that in some abstruse sense, it didn’t exist. But the box still sat there, its carvings polished smooth with time and the caress of many hands, in its accustomed place on the bookshelf, looking solid and heavy and real. More real, in fact, than the shadow Darren sitting in the recliner, settling in to watch television.
He gently ran his fingertips across the groove made by the incised figure of a dragon, let it take him back to his childhood, when he’d spent hours looking at the strange, mythological carvings, wondering what they were and who had made them. He wondered now, as he had then, how many hands had done the same thing, only now he realized how far back the box’s history went. Almost seven hundred years.
He put both hands on the sides of the box, and tried to lift the lid. It was locked. Probably for the best. Fischer had cautioned him against so much as picking up a pencil. Even though one Darren couldn’t see the other, all the objects in the room were clearly visible to both. Darren would certainly see it if he moved anything, to judge by the reaction of the old man who had heard the door rattle. He couldn’t imagine what the reaction would be if the box lid suddenly, mysteriously swung open.
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