by Walker, Rysa
She makes a face but doesn’t argue the point. “I’ve heard the name. I mean the Esther in this timeline, obviously. She gets stranded back in 1300 or something like that, and essentially redesigns the entire map of Africa. Saul pulled in one of her daughters to be a Cyrist Templar when he was planning his little global disaster.”
“What do you mean Esther redesigns the map?”
“The map, the history of the continent. My mom says there was a time when Africa was composed of dozens of small countries. Akana didn’t exist. Neither did the African Union, except as sort of a regional League of Nations.”
“But . . . that’s just wrong. I’m not an Africanist, but the Akan were one of the first empires. The AU came along later, but the Akan have controlled West Africa for millennia.”
“That’s how I learned it, too,” she says, swapping the now-bloody dishcloth out for a clean, damp one. “But I’m guessing if you rummage through the shelves in the library back in Bethesda or, even more likely, some of the books in their computer system, you’ll find at least a few histories that show the version my mom mentioned.”
“But I thought they fixed the timeline.”
She shrugs. “Fixed is a relative term. They destroyed most of the keys, but apparently Madi and her buddies couldn’t leave well enough alone. Probably the government, too. My dad always said that there was no way the genie would stay in the bottle. Nukes, genetic modifications, time travel . . . once big secrets like that are out, they tend to stay out. Preventing the Culling just bought some time.” She chuckles. “Bought some time. How’s that for irony? Anyway, there was once a timeline without the Akan Empire. And there was a timeline without Cyrists, too. At least that’s what some version of Katherine told my mother in 2015 or whenever. They stopped Saul from killing billions of people, but they never got back to that reality. My mom says they had to accept the timeline where people have frog tongues. Do you know what that means?”
I shake my head. “Can’t say I’ve ever heard that one.”
“A TV reference, apparently. My dad didn’t get it, either. Said it was probably from this cartoon show she liked. But it’s the sort of weird comment that sticks in your mind. Why do you think Esther shot one of her team’s observers?” She looks at me for a second, then shakes her head, tossing the jacket over the back of one of the kitchen chairs. “You know what? Just wait. You’re going to have to tell it to the others when they get here, and I’ve got a feeling it’s not a story you want to repeat multiple times. Grab a couple of cans of soup out of the pantry, okay? Maybe toma . . . to . . .” She stops, staring down at the red stain on the blue gingham dishcloth she was using to clean the jacket. “On second thought, maybe something else would be better. You pick.”
I scan the red-and-white cans for something that looks reasonably safe. “Chicken noodle okay with you?”
She says it will be fine, so I hunt for the opener while she slices cheddar off a block for grilled cheese. When I finally locate the opener, I can’t get the stupid thing to work. It’s partly because it’s old, but my hands are still a bit shaky. Clio takes the opener from me and gets it started.
“Were you in love with her?” she asks. “I mean, not this version, but . . .”
I shake my head. “Just friends. The romance didn’t really take on either side in this reality. The spark was missing from the beginning. She was nice and we were in the same social group, so I asked her out.”
“But there is someone at CHRONOS?”
“For Marcy? Yes. For me . . . no. Not at CHRONOS.” That, of course, pulls the image of Antoinette Robinson into my head, but I push it away. “Or anywhere really.”
“Not buying it,” she says, apparently reading something in my expression. “What’s her name?”
I know what Clio is doing. She’s trying to get my mind off the scene in the alley. Off the blood. And maybe she’s right. “Her name is Unattainable,” I say as I empty the first can of soup into the pot. “Off-Limits. Verboten. And even if I wasn’t a historian, even if I was native to 1966 Memphis, there’s a damn good chance that if we spent more than fifteen minutes together, we’d find we’re not even compatible. But she was very pretty in her orange dress, outside Exchange Avenue Pharmacy with her friends and her sister, waiting for their ride to the Beatles concert. And I won’t consider any timeline legitimate that doesn’t include that scene. I mean, I might have to accept it as good enough, as a . . .”
“As a frog-tongue universe?”
“Exactly. I might have no choice but to accept it. But it won’t be right.”
“Time travel screws everything up,” she says. “I had a great relationship with a wonderful guy in Chicago, but he wanted the whole white-picket-fence thing. Which I wanted, too . . . but way too much of my time was diverted to making sure Simon Rand didn’t screw up the timeline.”
“Simon?”
“Long story, best told when I’m not holding a knife. Anyway, Matt got tired of waiting. Bought a house. Gave me an ultimatum. Last I heard through normal channels, back in 1935, he was engaged.”
“Maybe once all this is over . . .”
She shakes her head. “I don’t think so. Because I enjoy torturing myself, I set a stable point in front of that house. Here in 1939, he’s married, with an adorable little boy and another kid on the way. And yes, I scrolled forward. In this reality, at least, he ends up with five kids before the moving truck arrives . . . presumably to take all of them to a bigger house. And five kids makes me think maybe Matt and I weren’t nearly as compatible as I thought.”
I’ve just emptied the second can into the pot and added water, when I realize that Richard will be blinking in any second. “I need to talk to Rich for a moment. It’s kind of personal, so . . .”
“It’s okay,” Clio says. “I can take it from here.”
When Richard arrives, I motion toward the hallway leading to the bedrooms. “We’ve got four minutes until Madi arrives and ten until Katherine, and I need to chat with you first.”
“Okay,” he says, following me. “What’s up that can’t be discussed with the whole team?”
“Mostly, we can’t discuss it in front of Katherine. Madi’s already in the loop, and we’ll bring Clio in shortly, but . . . I wanted to let you know about this first and get your feedback. You know her better than any of us.”
“Yes.” His eyes narrow slightly as he sits on the edge of one of the beds. “I do know her better than any of you. What’s up?”
“Madi says Saul created the Cyrists. She believes Katherine is aware of this, and that she’s covering for him out of fear that he’ll get booted from CHRONOS. And . . . maybe just out of fear, period.”
Condensing everything Madi told me into three minutes isn’t easy, and I wind up looping back around a couple of times to fill in bits that I’ve forgotten.
“Doesn’t make sense,” Rich says when I finish. “The Cyrists have been around since . . . what? The 1700s, I think, at least in terms of US history. Maybe earlier.”
“Except Madi has access to diaries written by Katherine and her granddaughter that beg to differ. Clio just confirmed that much without me even telling her what Madi said. Apparently, they have books in that library in Bethesda that were protected under a CHRONOS key, and those show our history without Cyrists.”
“Yeah, well, we have an entire archives section protected by a CHRONOS key that shows history with them. Or at least, we did.”
“I know. Madi described the situation as a time spiral, but I’m not sure how that explains CHRONOS not picking it up. Unless it was just so incremental . . .” I rub my temples, hoping to loosen a bit of the tension that’s been building all day. “All I’m saying is that we have an issue. Madi admits she has no idea how much Katherine knows about Saul’s actions. In the diaries she’s read, Katherine doesn’t find out for a few more months, when it’s too late to prevent Saul from sabotaging CHRONOS and stranding the two of you in the past.”
“What about y
ou? Are you stranded, too?”
That question is definitely one that occurred to me at the diner as Madi was telling me all of this. I could spot the moment when it occurred to her, as well, because she went kind of pale. “She didn’t say, and I didn’t ask. And I don’t plan to ask. Either I’m stranded at some point in the past, like you and Katherine, or I’m killed in the—” I stop as I hear Madi’s and Clio’s voices in the other room. “Or I’m killed in the explosion. Madi says CHRONOS is just a pile of rubble afterward.”
“Well, that’s one pile of rubble more than it is currently,” he says. “I mean, Saul can’t reduce it to rubble if it never exists.”
“Yeah. And either way, it’s a moot point, because if we fix the timeline, we’re sure as hell not going to turn around and let him break it again. If there was any doubt in my mind on that point, it was erased a few minutes ago as I watched . . .” I shake my head. Clio is right. I don’t want to rehash the story multiple times. “I’ll get into that once everyone else is here. The reason I wanted to talk to you first is to ask if you believe Katherine would have covered for Saul if he was breaking CHRONOS regulations. And if so, can we risk telling her what we know?”
“But we don’t know anything. Why are you believing people we just met over Katherine? Personally, I’m going to have to see some serious proof before I make that kind of leap. Madi needs to hand over this diary and any other information she’s got, so that we have something to go on aside from her word.”
I’m about to add that it’s Clio’s word, too, but he’s already out the door. I sigh and follow him. This is precisely why I didn’t want to be team leader. We’re going to end up with a schism in Team Hyena if I’m not careful, and we literally don’t have time for this sort of drama.
Madi is already at the table when we get to the kitchen, with food in front of her. Clio is at the stove, flipping sandwiches.
“We’ve got a big problem,” Madi says around a mouthful of grilled cheese, which is already half gone. “Saul—the one from this reality—may be working with the other side. Alex says he survived the time shift. He’s already been in Detroit, New York, and Florida, including Fort Myers, which is where the Cyrists were founded. I’m guessing he’s the one who converted Coughlin. Maybe that Dennis guy, too. That’s why it didn’t register as one of their moves. Alex is almost certain that all of Team Viper’s moves were taken at the World’s Fair.”
“All of them?” Richard sinks into one of the chairs, his demand to see the diaries apparently forgotten for the time being.
“Yeah,” Madi says. “That’s how they got the double geographic bonus. It’s within five kilometers or something like that. Those clear bubbles Alex uses to display the chronotron pulses from the other group are scattered all around the fairgrounds during the time period, but there are five main clusters. Two of them are the attack on the Japanese ambassador and the bombing on the Fourth of July. We just have to figure out which of the other three was their third move. From what I can tell—”
I hold up a hand. “Katherine’s going to be here any minute. You said Saul has been in Detroit?”
Madi nods. “He jumped out from the same place that Katherine and Rich did. Alex measured three pulses from the same location, which I’m guessing is the Objectivist Club. Katherine is pale orange. Are you mint green, Rich?”
“I always thought of it as closer to sage,” he says. “But yeah.”
“The other one is red, and Alex said Katherine reacted strangely when she saw a red bubble pop up on his display earlier.”
I take two of the sandwiches from the counter and slide one in front of Rich, who glances down at it without much interest. “We both thought we saw Saul,” he says.
“In Detroit?” Clio asks as she joins us.
“No,” Rich says. “Before we left the OC. I told Katherine we could go back and check, but she said there was no way Saul could have been under a CHRONOS key when the shift happened. That whoever we saw down in the Redwing Room couldn’t have been him, and the only hope we had of getting Saul back, of getting any of them back, was to win this stupid game.”
“Why didn’t the two of you arrive here together?” Madi asks, looking toward the stable point in the living room. “You were both in Detroit, right?”
“Yes,” Rich answers, sounding rather defensive. “We were both at the church. I was outside for the press conference, and she was in a conference of Coughlin’s women’s group. We were going to meet up an hour ago, a few blocks from the church, but we set up a secondary meeting point—here—in case the research took longer than anticipated for either of us. That’s standard for team travel.”
“And you didn’t see Saul there?” Madi asks.
“No. I just saw a gaggle of journalists waiting for the story from Coughlin, who was sporting a Cyrist cross when he came out of the building. We walked with him across a nearby park to the location where they’re building the new Cyrist temple. Saw the shiny new airplane, too, with the Cyrist symbol emblazoned on the side, and met the pilot—a woman, which is a bit unusual for the era.”
“Laura Ingalls?” Madi asks. “Early thirties? Dark curls?”
“Yeah,” he says. “How did you know?”
“She’s with America First,” I say. “And she spoke briefly at the rally earlier tonight. She’s the one who drops leaflets at the White House. Like Coughlin, she’s on the Nazi payroll.”
“Okay,” Rich says, looking confused. “But . . .” He stops and glances over at Madi. “I know what you told Tyson earlier. And I hate to break it to you, but the Cyrists aren’t something Saul created. They can’t be. We’ve got a massive historical archive at CHRONOS, and—”
“You’re wrong,” Clio says matter-of-factly. “Saul definitely created the Cyrists. Yes, he built it upon a tiny historical kernel of a group originally under the leadership of some guy named Cyrus Teed, but unless they’re going around now saying that we live inside the earth, there aren’t many similarities between the two groups. Saul is the author of The Book of Cyrus, although it’s mostly cobbled together from other religious texts, self-help manuals, and get-rich-quick books. He wrote the other one, too, The Book of Prophecy, with the stock tips they dole out to their loyal sheep to make them believe that God wants them to be rich. So long as they keep sending in that tithe to Cyrist International, of course.”
Rich shakes his head. “I’m telling you. That’s just not possible. Temporal Monitoring would have picked it up.” He’s practically yelling at her, and while I suspect that his frustration and anger are mostly due to the news I gave him about Katherine, Rich is also used to being the guy with the answers to temporal conundrums. We’re breaking new ground now, however. Everything is so tangled up that I’m not sure how anyone could easily separate the threads.
Clio ignores his tone of voice and calmly stirs her soup for a moment before looking up at him. “Possible or not, I’m telling you what is. I spent the past few years babysitting Saul Rand’s favorite errand boy, one of the two people who jumped back in time to drop off those nasty little books of his at one of the first printing presses. Madi’s grandmother is quite clearly a clone of Saul’s daughter, a.k.a. Sister Prudence. And yes, I know it hurts your head, but why are you people surprised at that? It’s the logical result of creating a technology that sends people back to your own past. Sooner or later, that kind of tampering will inevitably screw up your present and your future. Which is probably why Team Viper prefers to play their little games in someone else’s backyard. That way, they don’t have to clean up the messes they leave behind.”
“You’re right,” Madi says. “I’ll take the blame for that, since some version of me, in some reality, apparently thought time travel was a smart enough idea that I let some version of Lorena tinker with my DNA.” She yawns, then continues. “The rest of you had that decision made for you, so you’re off the hook. But I think all of that has to be on the back burner for now.”
“Exactly,” I say. “We
have about three minutes to figure out how to handle this situation with Katherine. Although I guess a lot will depend on how she reacts to the news about Saul. You said he might be working with the other side? That feels excessively optimistic to me. Is there really any other way to interpret this?”
Madi makes a noncommittal gesture. “Alex and RJ both pointed out that the whole thing seems more like it was designed to block the other side than to help them. Coughlin’s radio sermons actually start tilting away from isolationism during the coming year. He apparently tones down the hate speech, too. I didn’t have time to get complete details, but it’s possible that Saul is trying to help us, rather than them.”
“But why?” Richard asks. “If he’s the monster the three of you seem to think, that is. I don’t trust the man one bit, but even I wouldn’t have pegged him as a genocidal maniac.”
“Maybe because this is connected to The Game,” I suggest. “You know how competitive Saul is. We’ve both seen him at the Club when he plays in the annual tournament. If he’s competitive there, why would this situation be different? Maybe he can’t stand the idea of these off-worlders beating the home team? But regardless of his reasons, we need to find out more about what he’s doing and why. Which means that, for now, we have to keep Katherine at least partially in the dark. Because if we tell her all of this, I don’t think she’ll be able to hide that knowledge from Saul. Do you, Rich?”
There’s a long pause, and the look he gives me is baleful. “No. He plays her like a freakin’ violin. You know that. But you just said he’s dangerous. And you expect me to keep quiet about that when she heads off alone to meet him?”
“Maybe we could adopt a buddy system?” Madi says. “We could decide who goes with whom once we’re clear on how we’re going to divide up the tasks, but that way someone could keep an eye on Katherine.”
“Won’t work,” Rich says. “Think about it. Are we going to follow her into the bathroom? Keep a guard posted to watch her while she sleeps? She could go wherever she wanted and be back a fraction of a second later. The only way we could keep her from jumping out is to take her key . . . and we can’t do that without erasing her.”