by Lyn South
“Hypothesis?” Nico asks.
“Comparison of correlating historical documents with the available quantum data suggest the anomalies exist because Drs Joseph Pesce and Katherine Johnson—the physicists who developed safety protocols that eliminate time travel side effects—do not exist.”
“What does she mean they don’t exist?” Fagin asks.
Carter exhales an exasperated huff and motions to Nico to surrender the handheld tablet. Nico glances at him, settles back in his chair, and takes his sweet time scrolling through the results. Nico finally puts the device on the table in front of him, requiring an irritated Carter to rise from his seat to retrieve it.
“It means safe time jumps are now crap shoots because those scientists were never born,” Nico says, not looking at me.
Frowning as he reviews the data, Carter agrees. “Because they were never born, the GTC hasn’t perfected the safety protocols time portals use to protect us. Wild energy fluctuations in the portals can exceed the stress load of our ships’ bio-filters and safety protocols.”
“Betty,” I say, “if ship safety mechanisms are compromised, what are the current statistical odds of injury during time jump?” Cosmic changes to both the universe and my boobs weren’t something I bargained for when I shoved my better angels in a closet and barricaded the door.
“Current odds of time travel-related injury occurring are approximately one in three time travel events. Minor symptoms such as nausea, vomiting, and migraines, and potentially serious adverse side effects such as blindness, paralysis, or lack of reunification can occur.”
“Define lack of reunification.” Nico’s voice is anxious, like he knows exactly what she means but doesn’t want to know the answer.
“Lack of reunification occur when a travelers’ consciousness does not integrate with the physical body. This results in a permanent vegetative state.”
Fagin gasps. I nod slowly, trying to absorb the information. A living death. Maybe that’s what Nico meant when he thought he’d lost me.
“Anyone on your ship get sick?” I say to Carter.
“After we touched down, three out of twelve crew members experienced flu-like symptoms” he says.
“Dodger experienced more serious side-effects. Took her a while to come around,” Nico said.
“Computer,” Carter says. “Are there physical variances between the two Timeships that may account for differences in physical side-effects between our two crews?”
The computer remains silent long enough for Carter to roll his eyes. “For fuck’s sake,” he grumbles, throwing both hands in the air in frustration.
“Betty, answer the question, please,” Nico says.
“Four temporal filter settings in my programming differ from Commander Carter’s ship,” she says. “This may account for symptom severity variations if the temporal protection buffer is drastically compromised.”
Carter fires a blazing look at me. “We have to set the timeline straight before this gets worse.”
I can’t look him in the eye. I know there are other Observers, other travelers, risking comas and death trying to get home from their missions. For a moment, I could swear I had a river of blood running off my hands.
“Arseneau? You with us?” Carter snaps his fingers in front of me. When I look up, he must see the anguish in my eyes. Whether it’s pity or pragmatism, his expression softens. “You look like you need a break,” he says. “Garcia and I will analyze, and adjust, the temporal filters to align them for both ships. That might improve our odds of getting everyone to 1532 in one piece.”
“My team will work with you to modify both ships’ programming. How long do you need?” Carter says to Nico.
“Depends. Check back with us in an hour and we’ll have a better estimate.”
Carter turns his attention to me. “Catch a nap, if you can. Make sure whatever’s going on in that noggin of yours gets sorted and you’re ready to go when I give the word.”
“Check back in an hour,” I say with a grim smile, knowing it will take a hell of a lot longer than that to sort out the guilty noise in my head.
As I suspect, sleep is impossible. I settle for rehearsing my part of the plan to stop Trevor from planting her version of the letter—which takes sixty seconds. For all Carter’s insistence on my involvement in repairing the timeline, my part is inexplicably small. I’ll be stuck in the kitchen, disguised as a servant boy, waiting for Becca Trevor to show her traitorous little face. I’m not supposed to engage her. Instead, I’m to call Carter’s men to come haul her away.
Is this the sum-total of the GTC’s use for me? Carter could have one of his flunkies do this job. Yet, he insists my participation is crucial to mission success.
There’s a soft rap on my door. “Dodger, are you awake?” Fagin asks.
I swipe the lock on the remote control panel and the door to my quarters opens with a soft swoosh.
She enters, looks around my cramped, Spartan berth and shakes her head with a smile. “You’ve never been one for girly decorations. You were all business, even when you were small.” She settles on the edge of my bed and looks at me with that keen awareness I’ve been accustomed to since I met her. “Why didn’t you tell me? I could have helped you.”
“You’re on the GTC’s side,” I say. “Or the Benefactors’ side. Hard to tell which sometimes.”
“I’m on your side,” she whispers hoarsely. “Always have been.”
“They made you my keeper. I knew they had more on you—that you had more to lose— than you were saying. So, who’s withholding information now?”
She emits a tiny, laughing snort. “How much more is there to lose than your mind or your life? I’m not sure which I prefer: the blank nothingness of a memory wipe or to just blink out of existence altogether.” She snaps her fingers for emphasis. “Gone and forgotten.”
“I’m not talking about your life.” I pause, waiting to see how long it takes her to acknowledge the Benefactors’ leverage. She doesn’t take the bait, so I fix it on the hook a little more solidly. “Isabella.”
Fagin usually controls her body language, but I catch the small wince at the name. I’ve hit a nerve. “Who is she? Your kid? Your sister? She’s someone important to you or Trevor wouldn’t have mentioned her when I was trapped in King Henry’s toilet.”
Fagin stands, forces her posture into ramrod straightness from shoulders to feet; she looks more like a puppet with a stick up its ass than I’ve ever seen her. “She’s none of your business, that’s what she is.”
The lack of trust stings. “Who has her? Benefactors or the GTC?”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about.” Fagin says, angrily swiping the control panel to open the door.
I jump up, reach past her shoulder and close it again. “You’re not leaving until you tell me about Isabella.”
“I can’t.”
“Yes, you can.”
“The more you know, the more danger you’re in.”
“I can handle my shit.”
“This time, you’re in over your head and the consequences will be deadly,” she says, trembling. Tears stream down her cheeks and the raw emotion shakes me to the core. “Isabella will die.”
“I can’t help you if you don’t tell me what’s going on,” I say, measuring my words into calm, steady beats, hoping to settle her frantic emotions. “Secrets are bad. Let’s have no more of them.”
We sit together, on the bed, holding hands tight, an attempt to keep our world from flying completely apart. She sniffles and I hand her a handkerchief from bedside table. She runs a thumb over the Vicomte’s embroidered initials and quirks an eyebrow at me.
“Old habits,” I say with a dismissive wave. I could be eighty years old and I’d still nick a gentleman’s handkerchief just to see if I could.
“Isabella?” I ask, again.
Fagin nods. “My god-daughter.”
“I didn’t know you believed in that sort of thing. Religion.
Being a godparent. Raising a child in the way they should go and all of that.”
“When you owe a life for a life, you have little choice over how, and when, markers are called in. When I was an Observer, before crawling my way up the ladder to Thief Master, another a woman named Andreen—another Observer—saved my life. She said I owed her a blood debt and, one day, she may need my help. I figured it was a small price to pay: a future favor in return for my life.”
“Blood debts aren’t small,” I say, stroking her knuckles with my thumbs. “They’re huge, hairy, life-changing deals.”
“Isabella was certainly life-changing,” she says, nodding in agreement. “Social worker showed up at my door one day with the four-year-old girl in tow.”
“What happened to Andreen.”
She shrugs. “Disappeared. A neighbor found Isabella sitting on her doorstep with nothing but the clothes on her back and notarized documents naming me as her legal guardian.”
“Wow.”
“Yeah.” Fagin blows out a huff of air. “And me, not the maternal sort.”
“That’s not true. You mothered every kid who passed through your doors.”
“Ah. That was good for business.” She smiles.
“You’re not as tough as you think you are, and whoever is using Isabella as leverage knows it,” I say.
Her smile fades as she presses her lips into a tight, thin line. She takes a breath and rises from the bed, extricating her hands from mine.
“That’s all you get,” she says. “You know who she is and why she’s important. I can’t risk telling you anymore.”
“Fagin, together, we can fix—”
“Enough,” she says. The set of her jawline confirms that I could take a sledgehammer to that infamous stubbornness and never do more than surface damage. “I can’t lose both of you, and that’s what will happen if I keep talking.” She glances around the room, once more. “You should at least change the wall color. Gray is so depressing.”
An hour later, with the temporal filters modified to mitigate the more serious time travel side-effects, Carter gathers everyone on the bridge and lays out the departure plan.
“We have the arrival set for the date, time, and geographic coordinates. Since Becca Trevor plants the bogus letter in King Henry’s chambers at eleven-thirty in the morning of December 23, 1532, we need to be in position by sunrise of that same day to intercept her.”
“That’s cutting it close, isn’t it?” Fagin asks, her brow furrowed. “Why not go back earlier than the day she screws everything up? It gives us more time to kick her skinny ass.”
“To give the Benefactors less time to throw counterattacks at us,” I say. “If they’re as brilliant as we think they are, they’ll understand the more the timeline changes, the more the future may not be what they wanted.”
“You’re damn smart, kid,” Carter says. “If only you used your powers for good.”
“Where’s the fun in being good?” I give him a sly smile and a wink.
Playful banter with Commander Carter. Will wonders never cease?
“We’ll leave a small crew behind,” Carter continues, “to protect the timeline from more manipulation. As I was saying,” he nods at me. “Arseneau will take position, disguised as a servant, in the kitchen, and once she has eyes on the target, our security detail—dressed as the king’s guard—” He gestures toward the four soldiers to his left. “will arrest her on charges of stealing jewelry. Easy enough to convince everyone she’s a common thief.” He grins at me and I smirk in return.
“There’s nothing common about me,” I say. “And you know it.”
“What happens if she spots Clémence first and high-tails it out of the palace?” Nico asks. The nearness of him, the smell of soap on his skin, is distracting. I have to force myself to focus on Carter again.
One of the security detail leaders, a giant of a man whose muscles have muscles, says, “You’ll be coordinating all of the security cameras installed from the command center on your ship. As we worked through in our strategy sessions, we’ll have sentries posted at various points outside and inside the palace. Once she steps foot on the grounds, we’ll track her movement through human and cameras observation. She won’t get far if she bolts.”
“Unless you guys were able to track the other ship and identify how many other Observers are on the ground, that’s a risk.” I point out what I think is the fatal flaw in their plans.
“We have elite special forces on this mission, Mademoiselle Areseneau,” the security chief says. “Our boys will scout the grounds while it’s dark to neutralize suspected targets. No one gets by us.”
“What about the other versions of ourselves?” Nico asks. “Seeing our duplicates on that day presents certain paradoxical problems, right?”
Fagin leans into the conversation. “We avoid those problems by staying out of our own way. You,” she points at Nico. “Remain on the ship, monitoring data feeds and providing intel. Since we know that Dodger went to the king’s chambers after Original Timeline Me left her in the great hall, Current Timeline Me,” she points at herself, “can step in after that and steal OT Clémence’s letter before she gets to the king’s apartments.”
I roll my eyes at her. “Please. I’ll see that coming a mile away. Do you have a backup plan?”
“Darling girl,” she chuckles. “Remember who taught you to pick pockets.”
I’m not sure what kind of paradoxical fuckery would happen if I came face-to-face with myself, even in this shitty disguise. I’d prefer not to mess with that.
“Regarding the time jump,” Carter continues, “which will occur as soon as this briefing session is done, we’ll caravan through the time portal. Since only one vessel can go through at a time, the other ship will go through first and wait—using the cloaking shield to obscure their presence—for us to complete our jump.” He makes an inclusive circular gesture of himself, Nico, and me.
“Us?” I ask, hoping he’s not suggesting what I think he is.
“You don’t think I’m gonna let you jump all on your own. Look what happened last time. You wound up in hell. I’m here to keep you from wandering off. I’ll also have a few of my boys along for the ride to make sure things go smoothly.”
Three of the security team, all of them looking like professional wrestlers, nod at me. I’m not sure if it was a congenial, let’s-be-friends acknowledgement or a try-anything-funny-and-you’re-toast warning. To be on the safe side, I’ll assume they’re looking at Nico and me as potential toast.
“I can buckle into one of the jump seats in the ready room,” Fagin says.
“Oh, no.” Carter smiles and takes Fagin by the elbow. He steps her over to the security team leader. “Lieutenant George, here, will see that you’re settled on the first ship. First class all the way.”
Fagin and I exchange looks. First class, my ass.
Her smile is more nervous than appreciative. “That would be lovely. Thank you.”
“Any questions?” Carter asks.
I raise my hand and the simple act of asking permission to speak instead of blustering forward startles him. “Areseneau,” he says.
“What happens after we catch Trevor? We all go home and live happily ever after?”
Carter cocks his head and offers a smile. “That depends on your version of ‘happily ever after’, doesn’t it?”
Chapter 29
“This is ridiculous.” I push the brim of the twice-too-large cap up for what seems like the hundredth time. “Trevor gets an eyeful of me, she’s going to see right through this disguise.”
Carter gives me a hard look, up and down, inspecting my clothes. “You look like a servant boy to me. All you need to do is fire a flare when she shows up in the kitchens, and—” He stops, mid-sentence, and stares at the bulge under my shirt, right in front of my left shoulder. “What’s that?”
I give him my most innocent look, but he’s not buying it. He pulls me to a stop and pats down my upper bo
dy. He steps back and makes a “give it here” gesture. I sigh and pull the phaser from the shoulder holster.
“I confiscated all of the weapons. Where’d you get this one?”
“I didn’t like the idea of going into this situation unarmed.”
“Nuh-uh. No weapon for you,” Carter tugs the phaser out of my hand. “I wouldn’t want to tempt you to take matters into your own hands and have anyone wind up dead on the ground as you make your escape.”
“I’m a thief, not a murderer,” I seethe.
“We’ll let historians debate that point,” he says with a crooked grin. Then he speaks into the CommLink. “Someone check Garcia and Delacroix. Make sure they don’t have weapons on them.”
“We confiscated all phasers on their ship,” comes the reply.
“Check again,” Carter says. He turns back to me. “Alert me the moment you get eyes on Trevor. Understood?”
I hate feeling useless. On every job since I was fifteen years old, if I wasn’t the one in control of the mission objectives, I was at least up to my eyebrows in the action. This time, I’ll be up to my eyebrows in vegetable scraps and chicken gizzards waiting for the action to happen.
Given that I’ve been relegated to the sidelines and relieved of my only weapon, I’m ready to spit nails by the time Carter—posing as a visiting nobleman insisting on his own servant preparing his food—leaves me in the hands of the master cook.
Turns out the kitchen isn’t just one room, it’s a suite of rooms each dedicated to a specific part of a meal: bake houses for baking bread, pastry rooms for pie-making and cakes, the roasting room where dozens of chickens, pigeons or other fowl and meat, are roasted on open-fire spits. There are the boil houses for cooking soups and stews, a confectionary room for creating sweets both grand and humble, and various larders for storing all of the foodstuffs.
Because Henry’s court feeds several hundred people a day—nearly a thousand during holidays— it takes an army of people to prepare and serve the food for several meals each day.