by Walker, Rysa
Alex yawns. It’s catching, and after I shake it off, I ask if he’s managed to get any sleep.
“I grabbed a few hours.”
“He actually did,” RJ says. “Ate a giant bowl of cornflakes and fell asleep right there on the couch with the empty bowl propped on his chest. And I’m guessing you haven’t looked in the mirror lately, because you’re not exactly the poster child for healthy sleep habits right now. There are circles under the circles under your eyes.”
“He’s right,” Alex says. “How many times have you used the key since you slept? And how many of them were long jumps?”
“Well, I jumped here, and then back to 1966 Memphis,” I say, tallying the trips on my fingers. “Back here. Seneca Falls, 1935. Seneca Falls, 1966. Back here. New York, 1939. Skaneateles, 1966, and then back here.”
“So about fifteen hundred years in the course of a day,” Alex says. “Leaving aside the distance. Maybe you should—”
“Promise. I’ll sleep as soon as I get back to New York . . .” I glance at the timer. “Which needs to be pretty soon. But yeah, Tyson already mentioned that we might not want to overdo it. And that reminds me . . .” I tell Jarvis to add Tyson, Katherine, and Rich to his voice controls, so that they’ll be able to use him for research when they jump in.
“We’re planning to take turns coming back here,” I tell them, “so that we can reserve our energy for any jumps we may need to take for research.”
“And . . . that’s my cue,” RJ says, picking up the tablet on the table next to him. “Since Alex has the physicsy things to do, Lorena is busy trying to turn your kitchen into a genetics lab, and Thea is . . . distracting, I took up the research task. Historical research isn’t exactly my field, but I’ve had to do a bit when writing grant proposals at my last job. And luckily for me, Jarvis is already pretty well trained as your research assistant. I was going to write all of this out, so that you wouldn’t have to carry back an anachronism like the tablet, but it would take more time than we have, and you do not want to try to decipher my handwriting. I started out with a broad overview, but then Alex said . . .” He turns to Alex. “Have you explained what you found yet?”
“Nope. Hadn’t had a chance.” Alex spins one of the displays toward me and pushes a button on his keypad. The image is one he’s shown me before, with hundreds of colored bubbles of varying sizes. A few of them, the ones that depicted my jumps and Tyson’s to the mid-1960s, had clear bubbles attached to one side. That’s how he figured out that we had carried in hitchhikers from the other timeline.
Alex zooms in on one section of the screen, then taps something that divides it into three sections marked 1938, 1939, and 1940. Each of the three sections has bubbles. There are six colors, three of which I recognize. Amber is the shade I see the key. Purple is Tyson. I know from the diaries that the pale-orange shade is Katherine’s color. There are a few in mint green and dark red, but most of the ones remaining are a deep blue green. In fact, that color accounts for about half of the bubbles on the display. There are also dozens of clear bubbles, but unlike last time, they’re not attached to colored ones.
When I ask Alex why, he says, “They didn’t need to hitchhike this time. They already had stable points in this reality, so they were just able to adjust the time and location. Not a simple matter, to be sure, which is probably why we go with using saved stable points instead of setting all of the coordinates on the key each time when we develop the system. But it could be done. The bright side to CHRONOS being erased is that it cleared out this grid. Before the shift, I’d have had to filter out the jumps by the various CHRONOS historians who had research trips to New York during this three-year period. All of those blobs vanished from the display, however, when they were erased. As I noted before, each bubble measures the surge of energy required to initiate a time jump. I was going to look at 1941 as well, but there were no clear bubbles that year, so I narrowed the field.”
I point to the three colors I recognize. “That’s me, Tyson, and Katherine. I assume the others are Clio, Rich, and . . . I guess that blue green could be Jack, but I thought his bubbles were lighter. And smaller. And there are so many of them.”
“Not Jack,” RJ says. “He hasn’t been anywhere but 1966, right? The blue green is Clio, given that there are also a bunch of jumps to upstate New York and Chicago. She wasn’t kidding when she said she spent a lot of time in 1930s New York. And the light-green one is Richard.”
“So . . . who is the red bubble?”
“Excellent question,” Alex says. “You might want to ask Katherine, because she went white as a sheet when she saw it pop up on the display earlier.”
“Really?”
“Yes. I’m guessing the red one is our mystery jumper, because while that dot appears in New York and Detroit, it also appeared here in DC on November 12, 2304—which is when the time shift zapped CHRONOS—within a hundred yards or so of the location where Katherine and Rich jumped out. And they jumped at right around the same time. The red dots don’t appear to be especially stable, however. Like I said, one of them vanished from the screen while Katherine and I were watching. And no, I don’t really know why.”
“We also have recent trips to two locations in Florida and also Boston,” RJ says. “Those were the locations you told me to include in the notes. You said there were others, but we haven’t tracked those down yet.”
“Where in Florida?” I ask as a knot begins to form in my stomach.
“Miami and Fort Myers.”
“It’s Saul,” I say. “Damn it. They manage to erase everyone else at CHRONOS, all the people who might have been able to help us, and yet somehow, somehow, he survives.”
“Yes. That was our guess, as well,” Alex says. “So I guess that’s bad news, but there’s good news, too.” He zooms in further, highlighting the largest cluster of clear bubbles. “These are arranged on a chronological axis, and”—he spins the display slightly—“also on a geographical axis. You’ll see that there are some outliers from this angle, but most of the clear bubbles are clustered in this region.”
“So . . . New York City?” I say.
“No. The entire display was New York City. This subsection,” he says, “is the roughly five-square-kilometer plot of land that housed the World’s Fair. We already knew that some of Team Viper’s moves were taken there, but given that extra geographical bonus they earned, I think it’s a safe bet that it was all, rather than merely some. Unfortunately, all of their bubbles are that same clear shade. I can’t even tell which ones are players and which are observers.”
“We can, however, give you approximate dates,” RJ says, tapping the tablet. “There are a few jumps scattered about from the time the Fair opens on the last day of April 1939 through its closing in October 1940, although there’s a big gap during the off-season from Halloween 1939 to late May 1940, during which the exhibits were shuttered. But most of them are clustered into these five groups. Jarvis, display this list on the wall screen.”
1) May 9, 1939
2) May 28, 1939
3) June 2, 1939
4) September 12, 1939
5) July 4, 1940
“Three and five,” RJ says, “are on our original list. June 2nd is Japan Day, and the attempt on the ambassador. July 4th is the bombing in the Court of Peace.”
“But . . . all of these are after the rally that Tyson and I just attended in Madison Square Garden,” I say. “There were changes. Charles Coughlin becoming a Cyrist. And Tyson discovered that Lawrence Dennis is the guy who faked the explosion by hiding a recording in the janitor’s closet. We think someone also bribed the police to let some of the protestors through. All of those are changes to the historical record. They resulted in three deaths. So how in God’s name could the first possible date of a change be nearly three months later? That doesn’t make sense.” And then it does make sense. “Saul,” I say. “He’s working with them. And his actions aren’t entered into the system, so . . . it’s a free move. Or
moves.”
“We agree that it’s probably Saul,” Alex says. “There are red chronotron pulses in New York in early 1939. Plus a lot of activity near Detroit.”
I sit there for a moment as the reality sinks in. Our odds of winning seemed small before, but this just whittled them away to almost nothing.
“But,” RJ says, “we’re not entirely sure he’s working with them. Coughlin’s rhetoric grows increasingly less isolationist and less anti-Semitic over the next year and a half. By late 1940, he’s actually arguing that we have to balance against Hitler. Not completely in favor of entering the war, but he supports lend-lease. That’s not the kind of thing you’d advocate if your goal was to keep the US neutral. So, the situation may not be as bleak as you think. And we can’t give up, even though this complicates things a bit.”
I close my eyes. Complicates things a bit? That’s an understatement, to say the very least. But then Alex and RJ haven’t read Kate’s and Katherine’s diaries. They have only a vague understanding of why the possibility that Saul Rand is on the other side—or more accurately, knowing that the other side now has two Saul Rands—has me ready to toss in the towel. But RJ is right. Giving up isn’t an option.
“And like I said,” he continues, “we know what the last two dates are. I have a printout of events that happened at the Fair on May 9th, May 28th, and September 12th. There’s a writers’ conference going on during the first one, and the opening of the Italian Pavilion, where a bunch of people cheered for Mussolini, which might be relevant. The last one is a pretty normal weekday, nothing big going on. But . . . it is the day where the two Japanese tourists are mugged. That has to be significant.”
“Do we know their names?”
“We do,” RJ says. “But we haven’t been able to find any information about them. Two people saw them come out from behind a building, but the news account doesn’t even say which zone it was in, and the only thing we get for a time is that it happened that evening. One of the men was bleeding and needed a stitch. I’m not even sure it would have made the paper if not for the fact that the injured guy told security there are men of that sort in all countries, and it was far outweighed by the kindness he’d seen from others in this country both before and after the attack. And so it was picked up for the section called ‘Heard at the Fair’ as a heartwarming human-interest story. We’ll keep looking, but I’m not sure we’ll find anything else. On May 28th, however—”
“Einstein is there,” Alex says. The excitement in his voice is palpable. “In order to fix this thing, you’re going to have to meet Einstein.”
As he says it, I flash back to the living room that Alex shared with Jack. I was only there a few times, but I clearly remember the image on the door to Alex’s room. Albert Einstein, with his trademark wild hair, sticking his tongue out at the camera.
“If I could use that key,” Alex says, “I’d be begging you to switch places.”
I smile. “And while that would mean absolutely no progress on the temporal-physics front during your absence, I’d still let you take a turn. Why was Einstein at the Fair that day?”
“He was there several times that first year. On that particular day, he was giving a speech at the opening of the Jewish Palestine Pavilion. Huge crowds, because the Jewish people had to organize and push hard to get any sort of recognition at the event. But I think the reason he was there may be less relevant than the overall picture of what he’ll be doing in a couple of months. In August 1939, Einstein will coauthor a letter to FDR, along with physicist Leo Szilard, telling the president that the Germans are developing an atomic bomb. According to our list of anomalies, that letter was never written . . . and it was the catalyst for the Manhattan Project.”
I heave a sigh. “I thought the rules said no nukes.”
“That probably just means neither side can use them,” RJ says.
“So, what do you think happened?” I ask. “How did something at the Fair in May convince Einstein not to sign this letter months later?”
“I’m not sure,” Alex admits. “But Einstein regretted writing the letter after the US used atomic weapons to end the war. My best guess is that someone either convinces Einstein that Germany isn’t as close to having nuclear weapons as Szilard and the other experts believed . . . or they convince him that the US can’t be trusted with those weapons, either.”
FROM THE NEW YORK DAILY INTREPID
WORLD’S FAIR OPENS TO LARGE CROWDS DESPITE WEATHER
(May 1, 1939) President Roosevelt officially opened the largest international exposition in world history at just after 3 p.m. yesterday afternoon. Attendance was reportedly more than 600,000, somewhat less than anticipated, but afternoon crowds may have been deterred by the rainstorms that hit shortly after the opening ceremonies concluded in the plaza known as the Court of Peace.
Fewer than one-tenth of the crowd that attended yesterday was able to jam into the open-air Court of Peace to watch the opening ceremonies, but a far larger number viewed the parade as it made its way from the 600-foot Trylon and 200-foot Perisphere—the giant orb that houses the Democracity exhibit—down Constitution Mall toward its final destination. The marchers numbered 20,000 with military troops, participants from around the world in native costumes, and hundreds of workmen who have spent the past several years constructing the building and statues, and landscaping the fairgrounds, which were built atop a trash heap.
The president’s address focused on the theme of the exposition—the “World of Tomorrow”—as he declared the fair “open to all mankind.” He further stated: “The eyes of the United States are fixed on the future. Yes, our wagon is still hitched to a star. But it is a star of friendship, a star of progress for mankind, a star of greater happiness and less hardship, a star of international goodwill, and above all, a star of peace. May the months to come carry us forward in the rays of that eternal hope.”
Rain began to fall during the 150th-anniversary reenactment of the first presidential inauguration and the dedication of the 65-foot statue of George Washington. Crowds scurried to take cover as drizzle turned to downpour. Most exhibits and restaurants were soon standing room only, with several forced to close their doors to additional guests for safety reasons.
The rain did not let up until after 9 p.m., but those who stuck it out were able to hear Dr. Albert Einstein give a brief speech on cosmic rays, before launching the cosmic-ray detector, which was supposed to capture ten separate rays in order to illuminate the Trylon. All ten rays were captured in a feat the announcer referred to as “modern temple magic,” but the electrical system overloaded. The audience was disappointed, but there were many other marvels to enjoy—the Lagoon of Nations, the fireworks display, the stage shows, and the music of Guy Lombardo and his orchestra at the Band Shell on Fountain Lake.
∞20∞
TYSON
NEW YORK, NEW YORK
FEBRUARY 20, 1939
I blink into the living room of the apartment in Manhattan. Clio is seated in one of the armchairs, scanning through something on her key. She looks up when she realizes she’s no longer alone.
“Is that blood?” she asks, staring at my sleeve.
“Um . . . yeah. Not mine, though.”
“Where’s Madi?” she asks, alarmed.
“Oh, no. It’s not hers, either. She was going to drop off some stable points in 1966 for Jack to monitor and then check in with Alex and the others back at her place. I . . . I guess I need to change.”
She nods. “Sure. Give me the jacket. I’ll treat the stain.”
I toss her the jacket, and the shirt, too, once I realize that the blood has seeped through. In the hallway bath, I rinse away the red smear on my arm and splash some cool water on my face. Then I go back to the room that I’m sharing with Richard and grab another shirt from the closet. My hands are shaking, so I sit down on the edge of the bed and take deep breaths until they are steady enough to work the buttons. Then I take out my CHRONOS key. We’ve got nineteen minute
s left on the five-hour timer. I pull up the stable point in the living room and scroll through. Richard will arrive about seven minutes from now. Madi in twelve minutes. Katherine will bring up the rear, popping in about three minutes late.
When I get back to the main room, Clio has the jacket spread out on the tiled kitchen counter and is pressing a dry towel against the stain on the sleeve.
“Will it come out?” Even as the words leave my mouth, I can’t help thinking that it’s a truly unimportant question. Who gives a fuck if the blood comes out of a stupid jacket?
“It’s wool,” she says. “And it didn’t have much time to set. Are you able to talk about it yet? There’s bourbon in the cabinet if you need it.”
I do need it, so I pour both of us a shot and then sit down at the small table on the other side of the kitchen. “I’m pretty sure the blood belongs to the doorman at a club in Greenwich Village called Café Society.”
“I’ve been there,” Clio says. “A couple of times. It was later, though. After the war, just before they closed it down.”
“I thought at first the blood might have been Marcy’s,” I tell her, “but then I remembered that the blood disappears when you yank the key if the person is out of timeline, so . . .”
“Marcy. She’s one of their observers, right? The one you knew?”
I toss back the bourbon before answering. “Yes. The one I dated. And apparently the relationship was a bit more serious in her timeline.”
“Did you get a look at him? The guy who shot them, I mean. Not the doorman.”
“Oh, I definitely got a look. Not a guy, though. It was a member of Team Viper. Esther. Which definitely means that we made the right call about you sticking to the apartment. If they’ll kill one of their own observers, then . . .”