Time Shards--Tempus Fury

by Dana Fredsti

  “Yes,” Cam replied solemnly, “but I left it behind, sadly.”

  “Enkati, help me show our friends the map,” his father said. A servant approached, bearing a leather case, and removed a large scroll, spreading it out before them.

  “Fine grade birch-bark paper,” Leila said proudly. “We make it ourselves.”

  The exquisitely hand-drawn chart covered some fifteen hundred miles or better, laying out the main body of the Mississippi and its tributaries, spotted with a handful of settlements, from the Great Lakes to the Gulf of Mexico.

  At the center lay Cahokia, its subdivisions and outskirts, the heart of the New World. To the east lay a mosaic of shards all the way to the Appalachians—mostly alternating fingers of forested waterways and prairie, with some jungles and tall, isolated glaciers still slowly melting, eight years after the Event.

  Virtually everything west of the Mississippi was largely terra incognita. Kha-Hotep explained that the city traded with the German and Irish miners in the mountain ranges of the Ozarks to the southwest, but otherwise—past Laclede’s Landing and the ruins—the great plains were marked as Nomad Territory. There, tribes still followed the buffalo or brontosaurus herds and occasionally clashed with one another.

  Through diplomacy, Kha-Hotep and Leila had unified several feuding tribes, and some had put down roots in Cahokia, along with Spanish, French, and American settlers.

  “And our canny Nile merchant prince has cultivated trade routes up and down the river,” Leila said, “as far north as the Chippewa and Ojibwa nations and the Yooper Republic, all the way down to the Duchy of New Orleans.” She pointed out each area in turn. Whatever lay beyond the Rockies or the Appalachians was a mystery, but Kha-Hotep stretched a finger to the south.

  “The peace between us and the Landing is shaky at best. Boss Giannola trades with the slaver plantations, and they don’t like us anymore than we like them. Below them is New Orleans, our most important trading partner in the south. Then there is the great desert, and below that”—he indicated a pair of shaded blotches filling the region below the vast desert—“two rival empires, the Empire of the Tenochca—”

  “We’d call them Aztecs,” Leila cut in.

  “—and their enemy, the Conquistador States, who call themselves the Viceroyalty of Nueva España. Long may they stay at each other’s throats.”

  The three newcomers had continued eating with gusto while Kha-Hotep and Leila talked, but as soon as he finished his meal, Blake grew restless.

  Eight years… How much time is passing right now back in Antarctica? If we make it back, will we show up at the same time we left—or eight years too late? Christ, we need a bloody Einstein to get this mess sorted.

  “Listen,” he said. “Don’t get me wrong. Thank you. We needed food and rest, and it’s good to see you—but there’s no time for this. We have to go. I’m not saying that you need to come, too. With all respect, you two have gone native and made a home here. That’s fine, but we have to get back now.”

  An awkward silence dropped.

  “How would you do that?” Kha-Hotep asked, his tone strangely cool.

  Blake shrugged. “I assume back through the portal.”

  “Didn’t you already try?”

  “Yes, but—”

  “Don’t you see?” Kha-Hotep said. “There is no going back. That was all eight years ago.” He paused to let that sink in. “Listen to me. Those aftershocks that were tearing up the world, they had already stopped here before Leila and I arrived. So Amber and the other women somehow succeeded in halting the destruction. They probably died in the effort,” he added.

  Harcourt stopped eating and looked up, shock on his face.

  Leila gasped. “Kha!”

  “I’m sorry, my love,” he said. “We don’t know what their fate may have been. We’ll never know, but whatever became of them, it is a thing completed. They succeeded, they saved the world from shattering, and restored Ma’at. They brought life and order to our new world, strange and troubled as it is. We are the proof.”

  “You two have done great things here, my brother,” Cam said, “but… Merlin had said that once we set things aright, it would be as though the Event had never happened at all.”

  “He’s right,” Blake affirmed. “None of this should be here.”

  “Then your Merlin was wrong,” Kha-Hotep replied.

  “Or this is all just some temporary fluke,” Blake countered. “Some random eddy in the timestream.”

  “This is our world!” Leila exclaimed, glaring at Blake. “This is our life now! We have children. We’re rebuilding civilization!” She clutched her daughters tight, and the girls stared back at the adults, suddenly as solemn as their brother.

  Kha-Hotep raised a hand. “You are right, Beloved, but come, let there be no strife between us, for there is no need to fight. Our lost friends are returned, and now they join us. This is a gift—how splendid a gift!” He turned back to the three men.

  “Know this now, my friends. There is no return. The portals of time that brought us here, they flow like a cataract. We have been dropped here, and none can return up those streams again.

  “Yet take comfort,” he added, his voice conciliatory. “Mighty battles you have fought. Truly, you have saved the world. You have earned your reward—a hero’s welcome in this great city of peace and abundance. Your new home welcomes you with a full heart.” He raised his glass. “Welcome home.”

  Blake started to reply, but changed his mind and joined the toast with the others.

  * * *

  Later that night, side by side on their royal bed, they lay in silence, listening to the cicadas. Their children and their old friends had all been seen to their rooms, but Kha-Hotep and Leila could not sleep. After a long period of stillness, he reached over to give an enquiring caress of Leila’s forearm.

  “So remarkable a day, our brother returned, our friends with us again,” he said. “Don’t you think?”

  Leila didn’t reply.

  Kha rolled over to face her. “Are you happy?”

  She turned her face to his, eyes gleaming in the moonlight. “Yes. Very.” Her beautiful smile almost worked.

  “But… what is it? Are you frightened?”

  “Yes. Very.”

  “Tell me your heart.”

  “Kha.” She faced him completely, taking his hand in hers. “What if they did find a way to go back?”

  “How could they?”

  “I don’t know, but think about it. If they went back and did what they said, it would destroy everything we’ve built—our lives here, our family. Habibi, we would have to stop them. By any means. No matter what it takes. You know that, right?”

  A shadow passed over Kha-Hotep’s face. He quickly banished it with a reassuring smile.

  “Hush now, my love. You worry for nothing. We are safe.”

  “But what if they could,” Leila insisted. “Promise me you would stop them.”

  “And with what sorcery would they accomplish this miracle?”

  “Promise me!”

  Sitting up straight, Kha touched his lips, heart, and forehead. “As truly as lives the divine Ra, Ptah, Isis, and Osiris, so I bind myself to this oath. The great gods bear witness to the words I speak. I keep the oath and abandon it not, for all my days.” He raised his eyebrows. “Satisfied?”

  “No.” She stared back, unmoved by his theatrics. “No, swear by me. Swear by your love for me and your children.”

  He took her hand and kissed it. “I swear it truly, with all my heart.”

  “No matter what it takes?”

  “No matter what it takes.”

  Leila took a deep, ragged breath, and as she exhaled, the tears she was holding back slipped down her cheeks, catching the moonlight. With gentle strokes of his thumb, Kha wiped them away. Taking him by the hip, she pulled Kha-Hotep atop her like a blanket.

  “Love me?”

  “You know that I do.”

  “No,” she whis
pered. “I mean love me. Now.”

  He bent his head down to kiss her as she spread her legs, wrapping herself around him.

  * * *

  On another terrace of the palace, in the guest wing, Cam lay waiting for sleep that would not come. Instead, a silent voice called to him in his head.

  “Cam? Are you there? It’s me, Amber…”

  43

  The Niantic Hotel & Boarding House

  San Francisco, California

  April 18, 1906

  Ninety minutes before the Event

  It had started with a jolt, enough to wake Rose from a sound sleep. She wasn’t due to be at the Todd’s abode until ten, so she had planned on sleeping till the luxurious hour of seven.

  The jolt was deep and sudden, but not immediately frightening. Before making the journey to San Francisco, she’d been warned about the possibility of earthquakes. Still, the siren call of Paris of the West was far stronger than any fears of what nature might do. After all, she’d experienced tornadoes in Missouri, and surely nothing could be as terrifying as being in the path of one of those monsters.

  She was wrong.

  Rose burrowed back down under the single quilt, determined to go back to sleep. Not a minute later, the earth screamed in pain and the walls, her bed, the very foundation of the house itself shook.

  Before she could get out of bed, Rose had been thrown to the floor, landing with a jarring thud that rattled her brains. There was no chance to gain exit to the streets—the floors collapsed one on top of the other, the weight driving the building and its occupants into the ground. The screams and moans of the injured began, and the swampy ground on which the structure had been built began swallowing pieces of wood, bricks, furniture… and people.

  “God, help me! Please, help…”

  The cry trailed off into a thick burbling as watery mud clogged the poor soul’s throat. Rose tried to pretend otherwise, but she couldn’t fool herself.

  It would have been easy enough to give up if not for a crossbeam that had fallen, one end onto the rapidly disappearing floor, the other still attached to a chunk of ceiling near the exterior wall. She managed to scramble onto the steeply slanted beam, but didn’t dare move for fear of upsetting the delicate balance of her perch. Yet she was alive. Which was more than she could say for those drowning in the muck below her.

  The smells were horrific.

  “Rose…” A rattling cough followed her name.

  She jerked, nearly upsetting her precarious perch. The beam listed to one side with an ominous creak from above. She froze, barely breathing until it stopped moving.

  “Vera?”

  “Oh god, Rose, help me!”

  “I… I can’t move,” Rose replied weakly. “If I do, I’ll fall.” She hated herself for her cowardice. Vera was only thirteen, living with her aunt in the room next door.

  More coughing, a wet sound.

  “Please, I can’t… I can’t get out,” Vera pleaded. “There’s something on my leg and there’s water and mud, and it’s getting higher.” Vera’s voice broke. Rose heard splashing. “Rose, I can’t—” Vera’s voice cut off in a choked, waterlogged cough.

  Rose shut her eyes, not daring to speak. If she tried, she would scream her throat raw, and she wouldn’t be able to stop.

  Vera didn’t call her name again.

  * * *

  Within the first hour after the quake, all sounds ceased from those trapped in the lower levels of the crumpled rooming house. Drowned or crushed, Rose knew. The part of her crossbeam that rested on the buckled second-story floor was under muddy water. Only the fact the beam still clung to its original mooring kept Rose from the same fate.

  She focused on the sounds coming from above. More cries and moans, to be sure, but also the muffled sounds of rescuers. Voices and noises that indicated digging, wreckage being cast aside.

  The sounds of hope.

  “Hello…? Hel—” Dust filled her nostrils and she coughed, choking on crumbled plaster and god knew what else.

  “Hello, miss? You alive?”

  “Yes! Please, help me!”

  “What’s your name?”

  “Rose. Rose Pearson.”

  “I’m John. Don’t you worry, Rose,” the calm male voice assured. “We’re here and we’ll get you out.”

  She believed him. He meant what he said. She still believed him, even when the acrid tang of smoke stung her eyes and nostrils.

  “John,” she said, raising her voice to be heard of wreckage being shifted and cleared, “I smell smoke.”

  “Don’t you worry, Rose,” he repeated. “We’ll get you out.”

  The sounds of activity increased in tempo and volume. Shouts and crashing as pieces of wood were flung aside. The thankful cries of lucky people being extracted from the ruins of the building.

  The distant crackle of flames, growing louder with each passing moment.

  Still, Rose believed John’s repeated assurances that they would get her out, even when she heard worry replace the confidence in his tone. She believed him right up to the moment she heard his voice crack.

  “Rose. The fire. It’s nearly here. I… we have to leave.”

  “Oh god. No. Please, John, can’t you—”

  “I’m so sorry, Rose.” A pause. Then, “I have a wife. Two children. I’m so sorry.”

  And then he was gone.

  The smell of smoke grew stronger. A muffled roaring sound, crackling, roaring… and heat. So much heat. Sweat beaded on Rose’s brow and between her breasts. The hair on her arms, face, head started to singe…

  Flames roared over the ruined structure, down to where Rose straddled the beam. Searing heat streamed into her nostrils and lungs.

  Oh god. She tried to hold her breath, even though she knew it was pointless because her next breath would be her last. She held the breath, held it… held it… and then the earth shook with another sharp jolt, nearly unseating Rose from the crossbeam as a high-pitched keening filled her ears. Rose couldn’t help it—

  She closed her eyes and screamed.

  Instead of flames, however, cold air rushed into her lungs. The smell of smoke dissipated, whipped away by a bone-chilling, whistling wind. Rose opened her eyes.

  There was no fire bearing down on her. Instead of the hopeless tangle of fallen beams and walls, instead of fleeing rescuers, she found herself staring at a grassy plain. A family of large elk stopped its grazing to stare at her in surprise.

  Crawling carefully to the end of the beam, she shimmied up onto the earth, shivering as her sodden nightgown pulled up and ice-encrusted grass scraped against her bare flesh.

  44

  Nauvoo, Illinois

  August 8, 1844

  Three hours before the Event

  “They have killed him! Goddamn them! They have killed him!”

  At dawn, he thundered out of the wilderness at full gallop through the streets of Nauvoo, a howling, wild-haired Sampson. The faithful leapt up from their troubled sleep as Porter Rockwell wailed the terrible news coming from Carthage jail.

  “Joseph is killed!”

  * * *

  Porter Rockwell snapped out of his painful memory, startling those seated on the pew beside him. He sat there, inconsolable, heavy as stone. The loss of his prophet, leader, and childhood friend had hollowed him out.

  His fellow parishioners were just as lost. He stared up, mouthing the gilded words written across the arch of the ceiling.

  THE LORD HAS SEEN OUR SACRIFICE

  He watched as the Church’s designated heir apparent squirmed in the front pew next to his stricken mother Emma—the Prophet’s oldest son, Joseph Smith III, all of eleven years old. The next choice would have been the Prophet’s older brother Hyrum, but he’d been martyred alongside Joseph in Carthage. Barely a month later, their younger brother Samuel suddenly dropped dead at age thirty-six.

  The official cause of death? A mysterious “bilious fever”—but others whispered about the unidentified white po
wder his personal caregiver fed him until his death, saying Samuel died trying to spit out his daily “medicine,” crying out that he had been poisoned.

  So much for the obvious choices.

  Rockwell knew all too well that behind the scenes, the Church was fragmenting, and factions were already squaring off for power. In the six weeks following the Prophet’s death, plenty of rivals had claimed that Joseph had personally ordained them as his successor when no one else was looking.

  One of them, a new convert named James Strang, claimed that both a signed letter from Joseph Smith and a vision from an angel appointed him as president of the Church. As further proof, Strang had unearthed and translated a book of ancient brass plates, the final testament of an ancient American king, Rajah Manchou of Vorito, a place known to them as Voree, Wisconsin.

  Rockwell fully expected to be called upon to deal with the man at some point, just like he’d dealt with the ex-governor of Missouri when he’d fired four lead balls into him. Instead, Strang was excommunicated.

  So now it was down to two, and at the conference assembled in the Nauvoo temple, it was the frontrunner’s turn to speak. First Counselor Sidney Rigdon had hurried to town, announcing to everyone he had just received a revelation from Joseph at the right hand of God, appointing him the Guardian of the Church. Sickly, peevish, and overly emotional, he gave an overwrought performance for an hour and a half, while Rockwell fought to stay awake.

  Most of the faithful had long grown inured to his hysterics. As Rigdon sensed his drama souring, his performance suddenly shifted from pious, aspiring shepherd to a diva scorned. Rockwell sat up for that, as the counselor’s failing bid for leadership ended with him slinking away from the pulpit, fuming and swearing he would expose the Church.

  The second round went to the president of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles. Rockwell felt another sharp pang of regret watching the beefy man take the pulpit. Coarse and foul-mouthed, unpleasant, spiteful, a brass-tacks meticulous workhorse without warmth or charisma—in nearly every way Rockwell could imagine, Brigham Young was the very opposite of Joseph Smith. But watching the man roar into action and tear into his rival, even Rockwell had to admit Young had a formidable presence. There were moments he turned into a second Joseph, and then his silver tongue turned sharp.