In Retrospect

by Ellen Larson

  “How did you meet him, Castor?” she asked.

  “That first summer I spent in Rasaka? Gabriel was interning at the clinic. He was one of the team of doctors trying to help me.”

  Proof enough that Gabriel Castor was familiar with attunement science. Castor had misled her. He had feigned ignorance of the process and about retrospection in general. Yet he had an office in the VCC. She should have seen the contradiction sooner. Of course she had been a little preoccupied, what with one thing and another.

  “How did Castor learn about me and Torre, Lena. I never told him. I never told anyone.”

  Lena turned to Merit with a scowl, pointing the plasma gun. “Time’s up. I’ll find the key later. Get in the Vessel.”

  “Just answer me—humor a dying woman.”

  “Well, if you put it that way.” Lena grinned like the devil she was. “It was Torre who identified you after you were captured. Sent word to Authority. They immediately called in Gabriel.”

  “And?”

  “Gabriel doesn’t believe in coincidences. He checked your travel documents and found out you’d been visiting Torre regularly for three years before the war. That’s all he needed.”

  It didn’t sound like Lena had any feelings for Eric at all. Of course, there would be plenty of time for them to get to know each other over the next two days. Only, in the cloister, she could have sworn—

  Lena tapped the plasma gun against the bookcase. “Are you going inside?”

  Merit’s mind snapped back to the matter at hand. The only sign of history having changed was the upheaval in her own understanding of it. And why should history have changed? So what if there was no tondo behind Zane’s desk for her to find on Saturday? No one had seen there it but her. By pocketing the second tondo she had at best changed only her own past. She would be dead, and no one would ever know that an anomaly had occurred. So much for paradoxes.

  “Time’s up,” said Lena.

  Merit threw her head back and stared Lena down. “Are you gonna shoot me if I don’t go inside?”

  “If I have to.”

  “Who’s gonna believe I killed Zane if I turn up with a big fat plasma hole in my forehead?”

  “You’re going to fry on the reflex. What’s one more fatal burn?”

  “They’ll conduct an autopsy.”

  “Yes, they will. And which Authority medical officer do you think will do it? Believe me, Merit, Gabriel and I have thought this through.”

  “They’ll wonder how I unlocked the p-gun,” said Merit.

  “With your Resistance reputation for being able to pick any lock? Please, Merit, accept it. You’ve lost.”

  Merit eyed the mouth of the plasma gun. Such a tiny hole. Such potential for destruction. She would gladly pay the price, if it would save her world from this monster and her kind.

  You have to be willing to die to change history.

  She shivered at the memory of Zane’s words. What if Eric’s “something insignificant” were something intangible? What if there were a price for changing the past? What if it was a price no one would be willing to pay: their own future?

  That had to be it. She was the only one in the local time-frame who knew what would happen over the next three days. If she were dead, there would be no witness to the change; no paradox.

  She took a step forward.

  Lena’s eyes narrowed. “What are you doing?”

  “I’ve been trying to change the past. It didn’t work.” Another step. She would enjoy getting her hands around Lena’s neck, maybe causing that bruise she had seen. “So I’m gonna take a crack at changing the future. Which, as I’m going to tell you on Sunday, is really quite easy.”

  “I will shoot you.”

  “Yep.” Merit took another step towards the chubby barrel. “But think about it. Is that part of the plan? You said two bolts fired. And I can confirm that the Documentation Team’s report states that two bolts were fired. You’ve already shot twice.” Another step. “You can’t shoot again.”

  Lena hesitated, then sprang forward with a snarl, cracking the butt of the gun against Merit’s head.

  Merit, blinded, fell hard against the grandfather clock.

  Lena swung again, missing, then came at her with her body. Merit grabbed wildly and caught a handful of robe. She went over backwards, pulling as she fell. Lena sailed over her head and crashed into the settee.

  Merit’s vision cleared. She lay on her back in the middle of the room, entangled in the robe.

  Lena appeared above her, a short dagger in her hand. Merit threw the robe in her face and scrambled to her feet, wrenching away from Lena’s thrust as the blade slashed across her cheek and ear. Merit fell backward with a gasp.

  She tried to roll away, but Lena was on top of her, the little dagger pointing straight down. Merit stared into her eyes. They were afire with the pleasure of battle and the confidence of one who knows she cannot lose. Merit lashed out with her elbows and fists. The dagger clattered away, but once empty, Lena’s hands closed around her exposed neck, her fingers digging in.

  “Benedicte, Select.”

  Fighting the urge to struggle, Merit got both hands around Lena’s left wrist and wrenched as hard as she could. Lena went over sideways, but did not loosen her hold. Merit dug her nails into her skin, but she might as well have been kissing Lena’s hand for all the effect it had. Her ears began to ring, her vision blurred.

  Merit coiled her free leg and kicked. Her boot caught Lena in the groin and at last she let go.

  Gasping for air that did not want to come, Merit grabbed the bookcase and hauled herself upright. Her thorax burned and she could not swallow. She gasped, and air flooded into her lungs.

  Lena, also breathing hard, propped herself up on one elbow. “You’re putting up a hell of a fight for someone who wants to die.”

  “I’m resisting,” croaked Merit. “It’s what I do.”

  Merit launched herself as Lena rose. Planting her left foot, she kicked with her right, catching Lena square on the chin. Lena’s head snapped back and she fell into the fireplace. The poker set tipped over and clattered onto the andirons.

  Merit dropped to the floor, still struggling to breathe. With no way of defending against the next onslaught, she crawled to the shelter of the settee.

  But Lena did not move. She lay crumpled on the stone hearth, head to one side, one arm twisted behind her back. Not breathing.

  Merit squinted, waiting, one hand on her aching throat. But still Lena did not move. Glancing about, Merit saw the p-gun in the middle of the room. She staggered to it and picked it up.

  Her breath came more easily. She went to Lena’s side and dug the toe of her boot into her ribs. Still nothing. She squatted and pressed her fingers to Lena’s throat. Nothing. She pressed harder. No sign of any pulse—except in her own body, where her heart pounded strong and fast.

  That was unexpected.

  More significantly, that was impossible.

  Merit rested her forearms on her knees. Had she done it? Changed the past? Somehow—by accident or design—unearthed the improbable secret? Nudged her world into an alternate reality where both Lena and Omari Zane were dead, and she, Merit, lived?

  Her head jerked toward the clock. How long would she live? That was the question.

  She dodged into the Vessel and stared at the mission chronometer. Sixteen minutes left. Sixteen minutes before the reflex was initiated with a ripped security net, ending her life. Sixteen hundred beats of the heart.

  Wasn’t it what she had wanted? Shouldn’t she just accept it? Sit down and say a prayer to her father, to the old Prioress, confess her sins to the Saints and offer herself to their judgment? She raced from the Vessel and stood in the middle of the study.

  Where was the damned key? She fell to her knees, searching frantically beneath the settee. No, not there; look somewhere Lena had not searched. Yes, there! Propped up against the wainscoting behind the grandfather clock. But what good was it? It could o
pen and close the hatch, trip the reflex, and send an emergency alert back to her home time-frame, but it couldn’t unrip the security net; it couldn’t undo the fact that she had left the Vessel.

  She shoved the key into her belt and raced back inside. The sight of the twisted access panel startled her. What if the damage she had done prevented the Vessel from making the reflex? No, that couldn’t be right—the Steward would be entering shortly, and he hadn’t reported seeing a sodding great hunk of sixty-sided synthetic nylon floating in the middle of the east bay. Or was that time-line now lost somewhere in metachronic space? She crouched before the open panel. Should she try to destroy the circuitry for the security net? No. Even trying to physically damage the security console would trigger a reflex—the eggheads who had invented the security net had not been fooling around. Could she disengage it?

  She focused her eyes on the control screen. The status bars were green. The security net was up and running. Thirteen minutes.

  Merit’s fingers raced over the touchpad, calling up the mission stats. There was her name and the link to her biomets and the time relative to the home time-frame. And underneath, right there, where there should have been a flashing red light reading WARNING: UNAUTHORIZED HATCH OPENING: SECURITY NET RIP were the words SIMULATION: NO PILOT.

  Which was also unexpected.

  And impossible.

  Because Eric had uploaded her biomets into the security matrix; she had watched him do it. And after that he and the Marshall had run the final check, which included a scrupulous check of the security net. The Marshall had taken it upon himself to lock down the Vessel and take away the key, for he was too smart to trust her much, and he did not trust Eric at all.

  Merit’s mind whirred. The only other possibility was that between ten p.m. Sunday night and noon Monday, someone with access to a key had gotten into the Vessel and somehow programmed it to think it was running a simulation.

  The Marshall? He had the Vessel key, but he did not have the knowledge to sabotage the security net.

  Eric? He, if anyone, had the knowledge to sabotage the security net, but he did not have the—

  “Key,” whispered Merit. “Oh sweet Saints!”

  The cloister in moonlight. Ten p.m. Sunday night. The Prioress, all in white, handing Eric an oblong box with the stripe around the middle.

  Through the open hatch, Merit could see the box where Lena had placed it on the bookshelf after she had removed the key.

  Merit stood motionless in the middle of the Vessel. Think it through.

  If—and that was a monumental if—if her biomets had been unlaced from the security net matrix; and if Eric—though why he would do so was unclear—had used the key Lena had given him to go back into the Vessel and rigged the security-net controls into accepting that the mission was a simulation, then leaving the Vessel would not have ripped the security net. And if that were true—

  She would live.

  And quite suddenly, she wanted to live, wanted it with a fierce desire she had thought she would never feel again. Her mind, so long fascinated by ideas of defeat and its icon, death, reeled in confusion.

  But she was in the wrong time-frame! And how could she hide Lena’s body in the next—she glanced at the mission chronometer—ten minutes.

  “Damn it!” she screamed. “What am I supposed to do!”

  Screaming hurt. She raised a hand to her throat. She’d have a hell of a bruise tomorrow—if there was a tomorrow. And what would happen in it if there was?

  To know the future, walk in my footsteps, see with my eyes.

  Pound, pound, pound, went her heart. Tick, tick, tick went the chronometer.

  She bolted out of the Vessel and glanced frantically around the study. It was all wrong. In the scans that would be taken by the Documentation Team in a scant half hour, there had been no sign of struggle. Zane’s body looked right, but it was damned certain that Lena’s body hadn’t been there. Not to mention the fact that this was Friday and Lena had been walking around alive and well on Saturday and Sunday, full of beans and spouting out her nonsense.

  Seeing him dead, I finally understood how important it is to give the benefit of the doubt.

  She caught sight of her reflection in the case of the grandfather clock.

  You won’t recognize yourself.

  A moment in time. And in that moment Merit caught her first glimpse of the truth.

  “Saints,” she whispered.

  The door to the future opened and she saw what lay on the other side. And what she saw was wonderment.

  But there was no time for wonder, no time to think, no time to spare. No point in worrying about who, or why, or when. It had already happened.

  She unbuttoned her shirt, her fingers fumbling against the urgent need for speed. Everything had already happened. No need to change a thing.

  As she flung her clothes off, it came to her that she had been right all along and Eric had been wrong: past history could not be changed. Nothing she had done—not the picking up of the second tondo nor her willingness to give up her life—had changed anything. The past was indeed set in stone. And for the first time in her life, she realized that the future could be, too. At least, for the next three days.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  * * *

  Friday, 14 April 3324, 10:47 p.m.

  Merit hefted the pilot’s chair and smashed it half a dozen times against the hatch, thus creating a few dents and scratches. Not very convincing evidence of how she might have gotten herself out. But then, as Lena had pointed out, it didn’t need to be very convincing.

  She went to the console and looked again at the status—SIMULATION: NO PILOT. That would be hard to hide. It was too obvious—anyone who saw it would know something was wrong. Should she risk resetting it? Risk re-lacing her biomets to the security net?

  “It won’t make any difference,” she whispered, and hit the reset button. The mission status changed to WARNING: UNAUTHORIZED HATCH OPENING: SECURITY NET RIP.

  She turned to Lena’s dead body, dressed now in Merit’s sage-green uniform and boots, lying on the floor. Kneeling at her side, Merit wiped the plasma gun, gripped it with her own right hand, then slipped it into its holster and secured the flap. She put her crack tools in the jacket pocket. Lastly, she removed the opal pendant from her neck and placed it around Lena’s.

  “I hope it was worth waiting for,” she whispered.

  With fifty seconds to spare she exited the Vessel, leaving the hatch open. She didn’t want there to be any doubt that she had indeed gotten out. No point in worrying if anyone would notice that the pile of ash that arrived back in the study at one p.m. on Monday wasn’t hers; she had done what she could to hide the truth. And Authority, guided by Gabriel Castor, would be doing everything in their power to keep it hidden.

  A dizziness came over her and she closed her eyes. Instinctively, she tried to slow her breathing, to slow her pulse, to slow time itself.

  Five, four, three. . . . Saints, she didn’t want to die.

  She opened her eyes. The Vessel was gone. She was alone in the study with Zane’s body.

  Light-headed to the point of giddiness, she turned to the pile of Lena’s clothing on the floor. She pulled on the soft under-things, the silk leggings, then the loose-flowing tunic. The outer robes were spattered with blood—how could she possibly explain that? Panic clutched at her heart. She looked at the grandfather clock: ten fifty-three. She had five minutes, maybe less, before the Steward would arrive.

  He found the Prioress cradling the dead General in her arms, and thought at first from his blood on her robes that she had been injured too.

  That would do the trick.

  She pulled on the bloody robes. Though she was bruised and cut from head to toe, they would hide her injuries for now. But it would take a good twenty-four hours for the cuts on her face and hands to close. She couldn’t risk bleeding in front of anyone. Somehow she had to stay out of sight.

  The Prioress was ill and to
o overcome with grief to speak with the Team.

  Merit shivered, as the vision of the future rose again before her eyes.

  It’s confusing, sometimes—all of the time. Should I say what I know? Should I keep quiet? Does it matter which I do?

  Attired in the unfamiliar clothing, she flitted around the room, returning the globe to its stand, smoothing the rugs, straightening the disorder caused by the fight. She retrieved the striped box from the bookshelf and slipped the Vessel key into it. That was going to be a problem.

  Lena had said she was supposed to return the key to Gabriel Castor. But Merit had seen Castor at the VCC and knew that though he had expected to receive the key, he had not.

  What unknown event would cause her to fail to return the key? She had no idea. She knew everything that she had done the first time she had lived these three days, but only snippets of what she would do the second time through.

  Except—

  Of course, she couldn’t return the Vessel key to Castor Sunday afternoon! Eric would need it to sabotage the security net on Sunday night! She would have to find a way to get it to him.

  The vision of the moonlight garden came once again to her mind—the scented breeze in the plum trees, Eric’s tall frame stepping out of the darkness, the Prioress soaring in the air—but this time she saw it from a different perspective, not huddled like a beaten churl watching from the outside.

  “Sweet Mother Earth,” she whispered. Lena could not have been there—because Lena had died on Friday night. Memory twisted and wriggled as she struggled to understand.

  She, Merit, not Lena, had met . . . would meet . . . Eric in the garden. She had flown . . . would fly . . . into his arms. It would be her body that met Eric’s with the passion of lovers too long apart and reunited in secret. The memories buckled one last time, then realigned themselves into a straight line.

  There was no Eric and Lena conspiracy and never had been. His letter had been meant for her, for Merit. They would meet, in two days, at ten p.m. Sunday night in the cloister garden, and she would hold him in her arms again, no dream. The thought overwhelmed her, and gladness made her heart soar beyond the reach of fear.