“I needed some repairs,” Mika admitted.
It was the wrong answer. “Tell me where you have been,” he demanded. “Past the ninth century? The tenth?”
Mika shook her head, mute, afraid to give away more than she already had.
Petro pursed his lips. He knocked on the door, three quick raps, and another young man wheeled in a heavy wooden cart draped with lush black velvet. Nestled in the fabric was an enormous codex, six inches thick and bound in fraying red leather.
The history book. Mika cringed and turned away.
“You know what this is,” Petro said. “You know we have questions.”
The other young man—a librarian, no doubt high-ranked to be handling a full copy—gently opened the book past the midway point. The thick pages crackled and wafted up the scent of old paper, tickling her nose, tempting her back. She kept her eyes trained firmly on a trailing length of velvet instead.
Now the questions rained down upon her, and Petro grew more flustered with every vague response. When did you conduct these repairs? What was the governing structure at the time? Did you, at any point, visit the library?
“I have nothing to tell you,” Mika insisted.
This was largely true. Mika had landed in dozens of eras, met hundreds of people, glimpsed technological wonders she barely comprehended. But she always kept her head down and absorbed as little as possible.
It was better not to know. A future left unknown was, theoretically, still flexible.
Mika had seen the history book once, in her own time, but she had never read it. In the mid-sixth century, the book was for scholarly use only, and sections of general interest were copied out and taught in public classrooms. There were other eras in which access was even more restricted, and the book was confined to government use, whether that government was militant, religious, or, as in Petro’s time, guild hierarchical.
The book documented the curious tangled history of a city that knew what was coming. For centuries, fishermen and fisherwomen had washed up on the wrong shore, bringing with them tidbits of information from every known era. The book was the accumulation of their written memories, but there were many gaps and infamous inconsistencies. Did the course of history adjust as more information was added, or were some of the contributors misinformed? Theories abounded.
The gaps left room for forward planning, but every attempt to influence the timeline was ultimately futile. In 332, the subjects of Queen Mennias built a fifteen-foot wall around Maelstrom to repel an attack by the Frenian horde. As the day approached, the Queen went mad obsessing over the paradox, and when the horde arrived, they were pleasantly surprised to find the gates thrown open for them. They ruled for nearly a hundred years behind the strength of that wall.
Once the Frenians discovered the book, they were less inclined to respect the narrative. Warned of a coming attack from northern Candorrea in 422, they launched a campaign of oppression so brutal that the northern tribes joined forces and destroyed their regime in 414 instead.
Generations destined for conflict did their best to prepare—but by the time their enemies arrived, the population usually greeted them with resignation, if not pleasure. The history of Maelstrom included an impressive number of bloodless coups.
The book was only strange to first-generation immigrants, accustomed as they were to living in mystery. Their children took for granted that history extended in two directions.
Petro ran his finger down the open page of the history book, to the visible discomfort of the librarian. “We know this age of reason will end,” he said. “We will be sabotaged by unknown agents. Maelstrom will succumb to another age of warfare and then reemerge under the thumb of an oligarchy. Eight families with a stranglehold on trade, applying their will with brute military force. Merit and skill replaced by—by greed and nepotism!”
“I’m sorry,” Mika said. And she was.
Petro sniffed and turned another page. “According to Fisherwoman Gentle Carvier—lost in 1172, found in 690—the oligarchy is firmly established by the mid-ninth century. If this is true, the guild system will fall within the next seventy years. We need a more specific time frame. We need to know more about our attackers. Where do they come from? How do they prevail?”
Mika shook her head. “I don’t investigate the city when I land. I stock my boat and I set sail again.”
Incredulous, he demanded, “How can you touch the shores of the future and not want to know what will happen?”
“I don’t care,” Mika said faintly. “It means nothing to me.”
He ranted on about loyalty and civic duty and treason, and at last Mika lost her temper. She stabbed one finger toward the book and said, “Don’t you know by now? The more you try to alter your destiny, the more surely you will bring it on.”
“Oh?” Petro said. “And what is it you are trying to do?”
“I . . .” Mika faltered. With a mouth gone dry as dust, she said, “I’m not in there.”
Petro slammed his notebook shut. Coldly, he said, “We’ll find out soon enough.”
He gestured at the librarian to pack up and, lifting his nose imperiously in the air, lobbed his parting shot: “Your days in the timestream are over. You could have a good life here . . . if you tell us what we need to know.”
Mika held her breath till he’d gone. She stared at her hands, struggling to keep black thoughts at bay. A few minutes crawled by, and she realized the librarian was still there, dawdling over the history book wrappings and sneaking increasingly fervent looks in her direction.
“What?” she sked, resigned.
With a nervous glance at the door, he whispered, “Please, I have to know—are you Mika Sandrigal?”
She recoiled. “No,” she said, but too late; her hesitation had betrayed her.
“We—the other librarians and I—we’ve gone over the list of missing fisherwomen,” he said excitedly. “I admit, the changes to your boat threw us off, but your description is quite clear. Your children—”
“No!” she shouted, and his eyes widened at the force of it, at the sudden rage.
The librarian leaned back, his expression wounded now. “You only had to ask,” he said. “We do abide by the archives’ code of ethics, even if our bureaucrats don’t.” Plaintively, he added, “I didn’t tell him, did I?”
“That is my name,” Mika admitted desperately. “But please don’t tell me anything more.”
He grinned, and Mika’s heart sank. This was it, all of her precautions for nothing—but the librarian’s code prevailed. He whispered, “Sit tight. I’m going to get you out of here tonight. I’ll say nothing else, except: your journey doesn’t end here.”
He was good as his word, and by cover of darkness she fled to the beach. The librarian smuggled her off with a bag of food, first aid supplies, and a set of letters to deliver to the archives one day—only if she felt comfortable doing so, he hastened to add, and only if she came ashore before the year 717.
It was a relief to reach her boat. A relief to feel the spray on her face. But she couldn’t dislodge the stone from her gut, the weight of a thousand questions swallowed whole every time she landed.
To ask about the events of the late sixth century would be a betrayal, an admission that she might not see it for herself. Mika longed to know if Emry had been accepted to the school of letters; if Bowen was still smitten with woodland creatures; if Terrewyn had resolved to study navigation with Keira. But she wouldn’t go begging at the doors of the library to find out.
She would be there.
Mika took the first timestream she found, a forward-leaning current that landed her a full century later. She held back from the shore, unwilling to risk a tussle with the oligarchy Petro had so feared, and waited for an opportunity to sail free of it.
The ninth century was an odd time, transitional in nature. Much of the smog had cleared, and enormous machines were visible in the hills, reducing the last of the industrial age’s smokestacks to rubble.
It was a busy time on the water, as well, as fleets of fisherwomen and researchers and merchants took advantage of the relatively stable political situation to pursue their trades.
Mika avoided them all, including a luxury boat of people she could only assume were tourists from inland, keen to experience all of Maelstrom’s oddities. At the sight of her comparatively quaint craft they shouted and waved their arms and excitedly tried to flag her down, but she fled for the horizon, trusting that their captain wouldn’t be reckless enough to stray too far from land.
For a week she subsisted only on her own catches and the curiously preserved fruits and meats packed by the librarian. The ocean was frustratingly calm, taunting her with nothing but the unremarkable scent of seaweed, until, at last, the weather conspired to grant her a bit of temporal uncertainty.
At dawn, there were sprinkles. By afternoon, it was a steady downpour. Her spirits surged. There were few better opportunities for catching a timestream than the churned-up currents of a summer storm.
Mika sliced through the breakers with practiced ease, and then it was nothing but wind and salt for miles. She let the current whisk her away from the city and toward the storm cloud brewing black in the distance.
Soon the ocean was roiling beneath her, pitching her boat side to side like a ringtail hopper in the jaws of a redwolf. She reefed her sails and strapped herself to the helm, desperate for some sign of a back-leaning current.
When she saw it, she almost couldn’t believe her eyes: three waterspouts, barely visible in the reflected light of the deeps, but there, most definitely there. Mika steered toward the hot, swirling winds, hardly daring to hope that this might be her passage home.
Just as she touched the edge of the timestream—and yes, yes, that was the familiar scent, like warm bread—frenzied sea creatures knocked her boat from below and dark waters flooded the deck. A shadow-crusted behemoth crested over the starboard railing and slapped one meaty fin across her deck.
Mika reached into the storage space beneath the ship’s wheel and fumbled blindly at the buckles holding her fishing gear in place. There—yes! The harpoon. She spun to face the beast, weapon in hand, but the boat tipped, groaned, threatened to capsize under its weight—
And crashed portside down into the timestream.
She awoke in a warm room heavy with sunshine and the scents of cinnamon and clover. Her face was hot, her right arm swollen, her breath ragged like there was a sack of fluid in her chest. She was the sole inhabitant of a small infirmary. A woman with a kind face sat in a wicker chair beside her bed.
“What year?” Mika rasped.
“The Year of the Manticore, 616.” The woman smiled, setting aside a dog-eared book. “We found you a half-mile offshore with a fairly impressive bite out of the side of your boat. It’s been towed in, nothing our fishleaders can’t repair, but they’ll need a few more days. Take it as a blessing and get some rest. Here. Start with water.”
She handed a cup over and Mika drank her fill. The pause gave her time to swallow her disappointment, bitter and all-too-familiar. “How long have I been here?” she asked.
“In the infirmary? Four days. Based on your condition, perhaps another full day at sea before we found you.”
Mika sighed. Eight years, four months, and seventeen days since she left the year 537. Tears pricked her eyes. 616 was the closest she’d gotten yet, but it might as well have been 1616.
In 616, her children had been dead for decades.
“I’m Kendrall Millivar,” the woman offered.
Mika shoved her ruinous thoughts aside. Cautiously, she said, “My name is Jera.”
It was a quick-blooming friendship. Kendrall nursed her through the following week, determinedly battling the infection that had taken hold in Mika’s lungs. She kept Mika entertained with good-natured complaints about her three grown children, and in return Mika shared some of her exploits at sea.
Mika’s boat was not fully repaired by the time she was discharged, so Kendrall offered a temporary room in her own house. “No charge for a fisherwoman,” she said. “There’s a city fund to cover your essentials.”
One week turned into two, and two turned into a month. Mika’s boat was ready by the third week, but a bone-deep weariness had invaded her body in the wake of her illness. Eight years of hard sailing had left its mark, and Kendrall convinced her that a good rest now would serve her better in the long run.
It was far too easy to settle in. It was far too easy to let herself be surrounded by Kendrall’s family, Kendrall’s home, Kendrall’s happiness. The woman glided seamlessly back and forth between nursing and homemaking, and Mika saw what life could have been like if she hadn’t been so irrevocably drawn to the sea.
After one particularly long, warm evening of laughter and drink, Mika confessed her real name. After so many years of lonely caution, it was like a rock had cracked through the hull of her chest, and the entire story poured out: her home and her hope, her children, her fear. And Kendrall didn’t run off to the archives, or tell her it was futile, or ask for anything more than what was offered. She took Mika’s hands and said, “Tell me what you need.”
Kendrall wanted her to stay, though she didn’t say so aloud. She didn’t have to. Mika knew she could live comfortably in this century. Fisherwomen were well-regarded. Their livelihoods were supported, but their actions were autonomous. It was a time of peace, which she knew from her childhood history lessons would last at least twenty years past her lifespan. The cultural and linguistic changes from her own time were more curious than onerous. And there was Kendrall.
But every dawn, Mika marked the passage of time in her travel log with a grease pen. And every dawn, it seemed the wrinkles on her hands had deepened. How old would she be, when she finally made it home? Would she return to her children as their caretaker, or would they be forced to take care of her?
Keira, Emry, Bowen, Terrewyn. Her navigator, her mathematician, her biologist, her astronomer. Her babies.
Eight years, six months, twenty-two days, and Mika returned to the sea. Kendrall came to see her off, and Mika wasn’t ashamed to shed a few tears. “Say hello to your children for me,” Kendrall said, and Mika left the Year of the Manticore behind.
It took three days of sailing for Mika to catch a back-leaning current. On a warm evening, in the dim light of dusk, she spotted tendrils of pink light slithering up from the deep. They burst on the surface like air bubbles, releasing the sickly-sweet scent of tropical wildflowers.
She followed the lights north, and in their glimmer and flash she spotted untimely schools of fish flanking her hull. They were spiny beasts, gray and gruesome, slipping through the waves from an era long before humanity studded the coast. Each one would have been worth a small fortune in the sixth century, but she had no time to cast a net.
The timestream sucked her in with the force of a whirlpool and it took all of Mika’s skill to keep the craft upright. By the time she spun out again she was trembling with exhaustion but wholly, fiercely alive.
It took her until dawn to reach land. There were no mechanical cargo lifters, no buildings of metal and glass in the hills. In fact, there were no buildings at all, and no docks, either. A long, thatch-roofed pavilion stood on the lonesome beach, still smoldering from a recent fire.
Mika had gone too far.
She didn’t stay in the Pre-Mendorian era for long. If the stories were true, these hills were controlled by competing warrior bands—territorial at best, cannibals at worst. Archaeologists and anthropologists were divided on the subject, and she didn’t care to investigate on their behalf.
At night there were lights to guide her, those strange phosphorescent blooms that lived in the midspace between eras, native to none. Sailing was trickier by day, when the glare of the sun blinded her against multicolored hints from the deep, but a good fisherwoman trusted her nose over her eyes. She knew the sharp herbal scents of drifting leviathans, the floral pockets of midspace cilia, the burnt-rubber sharks
and the sour lemon sleepwhales.
Mika drifted back and forth along the coastline until she caught the scent of black tar under a hardboiled sun, and then she turned her boat west, toward the future.
The Year of the Bat, 1127. There were more ships in the air than ships in the water, but as soon as Mika touched the beach, there were customers waiting, as always. Their food packaging was nearly as incomprehensible as their slang.
The Year of the Two-Headed Calf, 312. Mennias was Queen, but her famous wall was still years away from breaking ground. The local language was so far removed from Mika’s that she had to haggle by sketching numbers in the sand with sticks.
In 1520 the cityscape was so terrifying and unrecognizable that Mika never even landed. In 415 Maelstrom was in ruins, on the cusp of being repopulated by Mika’s northern ancestors.
The Year of the Candlemaker, 702. The Year of the Usurper, 139. Back and forth she sailed, feverishly charting the stars, the tides, the scents and colors and speed of the timestream, desperate to unlock a pattern that would guide her home. And if it really was all chaos? If the only way home was through sheer luck? Then she would roll, and roll, and roll again, until her number came up. Mika sailed and sailed, ’til the years blurred together and she hardly remembered the feel of earth beneath her feet or fresh water on her skin. Four times she encountered the trio of waterspouts, and four times she skipped off their turbulence a little too early, landing two hundred years out, one hundred years out, wrong and wrong and wrong again but circling closer with every attempt.
And there was a pattern. There was a complicated interplay between the season, the weather, the orientation of the stars, the migratory pattern of whales, and the duration of time spent in the stream. As Mika’s data piled up, her predictive models grew more precise. Now, with a bit of careful observation, she could predict the arrival of forward- or back-leaning currents down to a window of a few days.
The New Voices of Science Fiction Page 24