Red, White, and the Blues

by Walker, Rysa

  Once I’m back in the hallway, I glance around the auditorium for Tyson. We need to get up to our seats on the second level before the speeches start. Locating him is no longer a simple matter, however, since the main level is now teeming with people, including dozens or maybe even hundreds of men in Nazi attire. So I head upstairs to find our seats and continue searching from there. Finally, I spot the glow of Tyson’s CHRONOS key at the back of the balcony on the other side of the auditorium.

  The tickets the Dunnes purchased for us are no doubt considered the cheap seats, since we’ll only be able to see the speakers in profile. For our purposes, however, that’s perfect. We’ll mostly be looking at the audience, anyway.

  Tyson is now at the edge of the stage, talking to a police officer and a tall, dark-haired man. He hands something to the dark-haired guy, then heads toward the stairway. When he joins me a few minutes later, he asks how many stable points I set.

  “Twenty-five, maybe thirty,” I say. “Most on the lower level.”

  “Good. We should be able to see everything we need to remotely. It’s going to take time to scroll through, but between the five of us . . .”

  “Or we could outsource that and move on to the next thing that requires an actual time traveler. Jack wants something to do. From what Clio said, her mom can still use the key enough that she might be able to help as well.”

  “Excellent idea. I’d like to stay through Dennis’s speech and maybe part of Coughlin’s. We can go once Kuhn begins, that way we’ll be out of here by the time the panic starts. Wish I had the little audio devices I used at CHRONOS so we could hear the rest of it, but this place is going to be crawling with police, so we’d have a tough time retrieving them anyway.”

  I ask if he had any luck with the cop.

  He hesitates for a second, looking a bit confused. “Oh, no. His badge wasn’t on the list, and I wouldn’t want to attract too much attention by being nosy before the attack happens. I was actually talking to the guy with him. That’s Lawrence Dennis.”

  I recognize the name from the poster. He’s the guy Tyson said was one of the more intellectual fascists. “What did you ask him?”

  “Asked if he’d meet me at a bar a few blocks away for an interview after this is over. Gave him the reporter’s business card from the background file. Didn’t expect him to recognize me, though.”

  “Recognize you?”

  “We’ve met before,” he says. “It was a public event a few years back, and like I said, I really didn’t think he’d remember it. I wasn’t even sure it would have happened for him, since there’s no CHRONOS in this timeline. But it was a solo jump, so . . .” He winces slightly as he says this. I’m not sure if it’s a double memory of some sort or if it’s just the typical headache of trying to figure out how these stupid time shifts work. “It was my second solo jump, actually. Just a day trip, to attend a talk he gave after his book on fascism was published. I didn’t tell him my name at the event, so there’s no conflict with the business card. And he may have thought I was a reporter back then, given that he didn’t like a question I asked him. But even if I hadn’t met him before, I’d have been trying to find a way to talk to him.” Tyson motions for my CHRONOS key. I hold it out, and he transfers a stable point. “Scroll back a few hours to 6:24 p.m.”

  The stable point is on the second level. I glance over my shoulder at the back wall, but Tyson shakes his head, nodding across the arena to the spot where he’d been earlier.

  “But . . . the reports said the sound came from the right side of the building.”

  “Yeah, but did that mean the right side when you’re facing the stage or right side facing the door? That’s why they usually specify the south side or east side of the building or whatever.”

  I scroll back to nearly six thirty, not long before we arrived. When I pan around, I see a few people on the lower level, but the balcony is empty. Then a shadow obscures the stable point. I follow the blur, and it takes the form of the tall, middle-aged man with dark hair I saw talking to Tyson. He moves to the back, opens the door of what looks like a broom closet, and enters. Less than a minute later, he steps back out. This time I can see his face—very distinctive looking, with a square jaw and strong features. “So what made you scroll through to investigate this particular stable point out of the dozens you set?”

  “Easy,” Tyson says. “I opened the door. It’s a storage closet. Inside, I saw a record player, hooked up to a loudspeaker. There’s a timing device on the back. Given the lack of damage to the building that the papers reported, I’m pretty sure the noise people heard wasn’t a bomb. Dennis was probably starting the timer when he stepped inside.”

  “But the cops supposedly searched the place . . .” I trail off and shake my head. “Never mind. Since the cops were responding to a bomb threat, they probably wouldn’t have paid any attention to a phonograph hooked up to a loudspeaker. So . . . did he agree to meet you?”

  “Yes, although he insisted on a club across town. I decided to appeal to his ego. I told him I was now a writer for Time magazine, and we were thinking of doing a profile story.”

  I ask if I should join them, and Tyson shakes his head. “Dennis’s libido is reportedly as big as his ego. He might talk more if you’re around, but I think I’d have a tougher time keeping him on topic.”

  “Do you think he’ll show up even after what happens? I mean, he’s probably going to feel bad that three people were killed, right?”

  He shrugs. “He might have a twinge of guilt about it. Especially the kids, since he’s a father. But I think there’s a good chance he’ll choose to blame the Jewish protestors who storm into the building rather than the audience trying to get out of the building. Either way, I’m hoping I can get some information from him about the changes in the fascist movement. He wasn’t closely allied with the Bund in the previous timeline. Neither was Coughlin. Oh, they were all in the same ideological camp, generally speaking, but both of them felt that the Bund was a little too explicit in their embrace of Hitler. And now here the two of them are, casting their lot not just with the Bund, but with each other. That’s what had me doubting that the deaths tonight were the triggering event for the timeline shift in the first place, instead of an unintended consequence of some earlier action.”

  The band that was tuning up earlier has now started. I don’t know the piece, but it’s the type Nora referred to as Sturm und Drang, by which I assume she meant loud and overly dramatic, because it’s drowning out our whispered voices. Tyson is saying something, but I can only make out a few words. I ask him to repeat it, but he taps the disk behind his ear three times. I do the same and the music fades. It’s still there, but it’s muted now, and I can hear his voice.

  “Better?” he asks.

  I nod. “They’re almost as loud as the Beatles. But at least the audience is a bit more orderly. No shrieking.” Of course, that reminds me that some members of the audience will soon cease to be orderly and there will be shrieking. I shiver, even though the night is still quite warm for February.

  “Yeah,” Tyson says. “But I’d much rather listen to an auditorium of screaming teens than “Heil Hitler Dir!” being sung by a bunch of Nazi chucklefucks.”

  The word instantly conjures up a memory of walks on the beach with my grandmother, near her house in Bray on the Irish coast.

  Tyson frowns at my expression. “Sorry. Guess I should watch my language.”

  “Oh, no,” I say. “It’s not that at all. You just used one of Nora’s favorite swears. She’s not a particular fan of her mayor, mostly because he pushed through a law that allows personal hovercrafts along the stretch of coast near her cottage. Any time we were on a walk and one of them would go zipping by, she’d launch into a rant about ‘that chucklefuck Mayor Peters.’”

  He smiles, and then says, “We’ll fix this, okay? You’ll see Nora again soon.”

  “What about your family?” I ask, realizing that I know almost nothing about them. “Do y
ou think they still exist?”

  “Possibly. They weren’t connected to CHRONOS. But given the radical change in the racial makeup of the US, and the fact that so many black and brown people headed to the western states or other countries . . . I think it’s unrealistic to assume each link in the chain that made either of my parents is still intact. Katherine is pretty sure her parents would never have met. Rich’s apparently did, but they do a lot of tweaking to our DNA. He said he looks very different. In some ways, though . . .” He trails off, shaking his head.

  “What?”

  “This will probably sound weird to you. I mean, you lived with your family for how long?”

  “With either my parents or Nora until around age twenty,” I say. “But that’s not typical. Nora’s flat in London was close to my classes. And that last year probably shouldn’t count as living with her, since she was at the cottage in Bray about half the time. Why?”

  “It’s just . . . so many people think it will be cool for their kid to get the CHRONOS gene, but it guarantees that there will be a chasm between you and your family. You’re basically giving up your kid at age ten, aside from vacations. We live and breathe the eras we’ll specialize in, and sometimes that makes it hard to communicate with our families. Katherine’s really the only one who’s close to her parents, probably because she’s an only child and her mother works at HQ. I still managed to stay fairly close to my dad—he is a teacher, knows a lot about history. But my mom oversees a day-care center, and she really has more in common with my sister. Richard says it’s the same for him, except he’s not especially close to either of his parents. He seems to think this was a status thing for them . . . Unless you get a waiver, the CHRONOS gene is one of the more expensive chosen gifts. Losing Angelo feels more immediate for us. Plus Glen, in my case, and all of the other historians who are still active. HQ is home. We lived there longer than we lived with our families.”

  I feel a little bad now. Tyson, Katherine, and Richard lost everything. I still have Thea. Maybe my mother, too. Thea says she’s fine, although I got the sense that she hasn’t actually checked, and since Jarvis didn’t find any record of her existence, I’m not exactly optimistic. Alex, Lorena, RJ, and Yun Hee have become almost like family in the past few weeks. And I still have Jack.

  Thinking about Thea now has me once again wondering about her origins. “How common is human cloning in your time?” I ask Tyson. “In your time in our timeline, that is.”

  He arches an eyebrow. “It’s definitely a thing. An illegal thing . . . but people do it anyway.”

  “Do they make clones of clones . . . of clones?” I ask.

  “Not that I’m aware of. Why?”

  “Just thinking about Morgen’s clone from the other timeline. And Elizabeth Forson, the bioterrorist Jack’s dad was trying to block. She had two clones she raised as daughters. And, well . . . Thea. I’m a bit suspicious that she’s a clone, too.”

  “Of Sister Prudence?”

  I nod. “And I’m kind of wondering if that’s what made her so flaky. Or maybe it’s just a personality trait. I mean, according to Kate Pierce-Keller’s diaries, the original Prudence wasn’t exactly a picture of stability, although I had the sense that was mostly from looping back over her own timeline on way too many occasions.”

  “My guess is that they just make a new copy from the original genetic material. Assuming they have it. Pattern degradation would be a problem, otherwise. I mean, a copy of a copy of a copy of anything . . . well, you’re apt to lose some definition. But that’s just a layman’s assessment. You’d probably get a better technical answer from your geneticist friend, even though I’m sure there was some progress in the field between 2136 and my time. How do you think Thea fits into all of this? Is she on our side?”

  I have to take a moment to process that, because I really don’t know the answer. “It’s complicated,” I say. “I don’t think she’d ever purposefully do anything to hurt me. She loves me. I love her. But, first and foremost, Thea is on Thea’s side. Even before all of this, she’s probably the last family member I’d have sought out if there was a crisis of some sort. She’d be as likely to make the situation worse as she would be to help. Which is pretty much what Kate Pierce-Keller said about Sister Prudence in her diaries. A loose cannon might be the best way to sum her up.”

  He makes a sick face. “A loose cannon we are unfortunately stuck with for the duration. And apparently, a loose cannon who had some advance notice of this entire situation.”

  “She claims that it was in The Book of Prophecy, but . . .”

  He raises his eyebrows for me to go on, but I nod toward the stairwell, where one of the security officers is staring at us. There are half a dozen seats between us and anyone else, and we’re barely even whispering. But apparently even that is a breach of decorum now that a speaker is approaching the microphone.

  In one sense, I’m glad to table the discussion for later. It gives me a bit of time to think about how much to tell Tyson about Kate’s experience with the Cyrists. I sort of glossed over all of that when we were fixing the last time rift, with his blessing. Anything that disrupts the chain of events that produces me threatens the existence of CHRONOS, or at least that’s the working theory, which means the less the historians know about the earlier events, the better. But the Cyrists are clearly part of the equation with this new time shift. Tyson needs to know that they were created by Saul Rand.

  He also needs to know Katherine is probably aware of that fact. Kate’s diary states that Katherine knew prior to Saul’s sabotage of CHRONOS that he’d created the religion and incorporated it into his time-chess strategy. If this other Saul is doing the same thing, then she may be able to give us some insights.

  I spend the next forty-five minutes half listening to the speeches. Political history isn’t my field, and I find myself nearly nodding off on several occasions, partly because I don’t have the historical background to follow a lot of what they’re saying or recognize the people they’re complaining about. I know Franklin Roosevelt, who they apparently think is some sort of devil. I know Hitler, who many of them seem to think is a god, but that definitely doesn’t accord with the histories I’ve read. The female pilot is mildly interesting, but the rest of it is snooze inducing.

  Tyson, however, is listening intently, especially when Lawrence Dennis is called to the podium, even though Dennis’s speech is easily the most boring of the lot. I’m not the only one who thinks this. Quite a few Bund members are fidgeting in their seats. It’s hard for me to connect this man at the podium to the one I watched sneaking out of a storage closet on the CHRONOS key. He doesn’t seem like someone who would be involved in any sort of direct political action. In fact, he reminds me quite a bit of this professor I had for research methods, who was obviously intelligent, but extremely insecure. Every lecture felt like he was trying to make sure everyone knew how very, very smart he was.

  A really odd thing happens at the end of his speech, though, just before Dennis introduces Coughlin, who follows him on the program. I don’t even catch the first part of what he’s saying, but he ends with the four words that’s why I’m here. With each word, he points to a different section of the audience, ending not just with our section, but pointing directly at Tyson, who seems mildly amused. This is a massive auditorium, with over twenty thousand people in attendance. The lights on the stage probably prevent the speaker from seeing beyond the first few rows of faces. I know they spoke before the event began, but I’m not sure how Dennis could have picked him out in the crowd.

  If anyone in the audience dozed off during Dennis’s speech, Coughlin wakes them right up. He opens with a joke about the publicity surrounding his conversion, and then quickly shifts gears to shaking his fist and railing loudly against a shopping list of things that he deems un-American, communistic, and anti-God, which he seems to view as basically the same thing.

  About ten minutes in, Tyson nudges me and nods toward the exit. I’m a little s
urprised, since he’d said we’d stay until Coughlin finished speaking, but not at all sad to be leaving. Once we’re outside the arena, he says, “As he was talking, I realized that his speech will be in that newspaper of his. It’s a waste of time to sit through it, and I don’t know how long this meeting with Lawrence Dennis will take.”

  The chants of the protestors, combined with traffic noise, are nearly as loud as Coughlin’s shouting inside the rally. Most of the crowd is gathered around the front, but there are a few stragglers near the side exit, along with a couple of police officers on horseback. One of the demonstrators, a guy in his early twenties with a Smash Anti-Semitism sign, gets right up in Tyson’s face.

  Tyson shoves the man back and then pulls out one of the business cards. “We’re press, okay? Someone has to report on what the sons of bitches are doing!”

  There are a few grumbles, but they let us through without any further conflict. Tyson just holds out the card and says, “Press. Let us through,” every few yards. The crowd has mostly cleared out by the time we reach Broadway, about ten minutes later, and Tyson starts looking around for an isolated spot where we can jump out without attracting attention.

  I’m looking around for something else, however. A coffee shop or restaurant where I can get something to wake me up and give me a bit of courage for this conversation.

  “There,” I say, nodding toward the Ham n Egg Corner at Fifty-First and Broadway, beneath the sign for the Roseland Ballroom. “I need coffee. And there’s something I have to tell you.”