by Riser Troy
‘Bonjou, Honoré,’ said Honoré Lechasseur.
Chapter Three
‘A wormhole?’ Emily said. The word sparked associations in that dormant, unremembering part of her mind. She felt a vague sense of physical discomfort, and realised she had been unconsciously clenching and unclenching her fists. She glanced at the palms of her hands, and saw them indented with a row of half-moon impressions almost deep enough to draw blood.
‘A wormhole, yes,’ said the woman who called herself Em – for ease of reference, Emily supposed; things were confusing enough. ‘Or a bridge, if you like,’ the woman continued. ‘“Bridge” is truer to the concept.’
The quality of the woman’s voice, too, was disconcerting. It isn’t my voice at all, Emily thought, but it is: same inflection, same tonal range, same highbrow lilt at the end of each sentence. The voice I would hear if played on an especially faithful recording.
‘The Einstein-Rosen Bridge?’ Emily said. ‘But that’s only a theory.’ Emily blinked, back in the present. ‘It is only a theory?’
‘As far as we know,’ said Em. ‘But then, how else do we account for your presence in this reality?’
‘We’ve encountered ourselves before,’ Honoré said.
Lechasseur, his double, nodded and grinned his lopsided grin. ‘Time loop,’ he said. ‘Thought of that, too, but no. Dr Einstein, he be right too often not to be right now.’
‘You follow Einstein?’ Honoré said, looking doubtfully at his double. The man’s Creole accent was understated, barely above the surface, but the sound of it in a voice otherwise identical to his own brought back memories of endless hours spent alone, mimicking the newsreader on the radio, reading aloud from books, practicing, practicing on losing his accent, as he recreated his life. The transition period had been hard but necessary. Honoré had wanted a new beginning, a new world, and this man had obviously never felt that need or made that effort. ‘Eske ou pale kreyol?’ he had gamely asked Honoré earlier, but Honoré hadn’t risen to the bait. Lechasseur unsettled Honoré, much as Em unsettled Emily.
‘Only when Dr Einstein explains his ideas slowly,’ Lechasseur was saying. ‘Numbers describing infinity make my head hurt. But Albert, he a patient man, going only as fast and far as I can understand him.’
‘You’ve spoken with Albert Einstein?’ Emily asked.
‘Just a few moments ago,’ said Em. ‘Relatively speaking, that is. Right after we noticed your approach on the monitors.’
‘Monitors?’ Honoré asked.
Em smiled indulgently. ‘Yes, monitors. Just like television.’ She opened the doors to a cabinet and revealed a thick rectangle of glass, surrounded by an indecipherable array of buttons and knobs. The moving picture behind it was a reproduction of the front street as if one were looking out through the second floor window, coloured in various tones of green and red-orange and black.
‘Television, televideo,’ Emily said.
‘Some of the best technology the late 21st Century has to offer,’ Em said. ‘Of course, with dusk coming, the system has automatically switched to infrared – night vision.’
Honoré stared at the display. Through the window he heard a car drive past, then saw it in real time displayed on the monitor, its engine compartment glowing brighter than the chassis or the interior. Yet he had seen no camera outside when he arrived. Miniaturised vacuum tubes and resistors, he thought. Incredible.
‘We saw you the moment you entered the grounds,’ said Lechasseur. ‘I don’t mind telling you, we were probably just as surprised then as you are now.’
‘And in the span of time it took us to get from there to here,’ Honoré said, ‘you’ve spoken with Einstein?’
‘As the man says, “Time is relative,”’ said Em. ‘The few minutes you spent exploring outside were a handful of hours to us.’
Honoré frowned in concentration. ‘So you made a concerted effort to go to a specific place and a specific time.’ With all the jumps Honoré had made with Emily, it was never so casual. For these two, traversing time and space seemed to be no more than a jaunt on the bus to Piccadilly Circus.
Lechasseur rose, stretched, walked over to a shelf laden with bric-a-brac and took a baseball from where it rested in a glass ashtray. ‘Look here,’ he said.
Honoré looked. ‘A baseball.’
Lechasseur grinned. ‘Look more closely.’
Honoré let his vision relax and let it work on the baseball. Its image began to waver, then overlay itself as he saw it make its way back to the shelf. Tiny bits of dust began erupting from it like a white leather supernova as he began looking further back, faster. Then, suddenly, the room blurred, darkened, and the ball was being taken out of a boy’s pocket outside a wooden fence. The boy dropped it on the sidewalk. The ball rolled away, then began to bounce, higher and faster as it left, until it bounded over the high wooden fence. Honoré sailed through the air with the ball until it made contact with the wooden bat and sailed back into the pitcher’s leather glove.
‘Enough,’ Honoré said, turning away and rubbing his temples.
Lechasseur tossed the ball into the air once, caught it. ‘Washington Nationals,’ he said. ‘1928. Goose Goslin hit this one out of the park.’ He placed the ball back on the shelf. ‘Anytime I need a way back home –’ He motioned to the other objects occupying the many shelves and pedestals. ‘Or anywhere else, for that matter.’
‘You make jumping through time sound like a trip to the corner shop,’ said Honoré. He started to say more, but Emily tugged at his sleeve.
‘Honoré, a word?’
Emily pulled him aside, hoping they were out of earshot. ‘Honoré, we have a problem. If Jonah Rankin is somehow opening a door between parallel timelines, and he goes back to our here-and-now without us …’ She trailed off, watching his face intently.
Honoré nodded. ‘I follow: we’ll be stuck here,’ he said.
Emily nodded. ‘Wherever here is. We need to go, Honoré. We need to go now.’
Honoré turned to their hosts. ‘Look, I don’t mean to be rude, and an opportunity to compare notes with other selves is something we wouldn’t ordinarily miss, but something has come up,’ he said.
‘We really must be going,’ Emily said.
‘Immediately.’
‘Do stay,’ the woman calling herself Em said. ‘We insist.’
‘There is much to talk about, my brother,’ Lechasseur said.
‘Another time,’ Honoré said, and after a moment, smiled in spite of himself.
Chapter Four
Honoré and Emily walked briskly back to Scarper’s place, their surroundings now looming with a surreal, dreamlike quality they hadn’t possessed before. Familiar streets and buildings were suddenly alien and strange.
‘Not our time,’ Emily said. ‘Not our place.’
‘London, 1951,’ Honoré said, matter-of-factly.
‘May as well be 2001 on Jupiter,’ she said. ‘Incredible, really. Unbelievable. As if we’ve stepped through the –’ She paused, catching Honoré’s expression. ‘Sorry; too clichéd?’
As they mounted the steps to Scarper’s, Emily’s tone became pensive. ‘What do we do if Jonah isn’t here? What if he’s gone on without us?’
Honoré paused, his fist inches from the door.
‘Honoré, what if he’s gone?’
Honoré knocked twice.
‘I know our man, Emily. Or think I do. He won’t be gone.’
Jonah Rankin had gone.
Scarper had apologised profusely, copiously, tears welling at his eyes, until Honoré had stopped the very un-Scarper-like theatrics with a short, chopping gesture of his hand.
The Scarper of my world would’ve shrugged and moved on, done what he could to make it right, Honoré thought. That isn’t Scarper at all. That isn’t Emily. That isn’t me.
‘He may c
ome back, you know,’ said Emily, by way of consolation. ‘For all we know, he pops back and forth all the time.’
Honoré glared. ‘For all we know, Jonah “pops” in and out of more than just our time and place. For all we know, Jonah may have “popped” in front of a moving train.’ He tossed another rock into the Thames as they sat on the bank, waiting for sunrise.
Emily let him grouse for a while. After a long silence, she stood, brushed the dust from the back of her skirt and said, ‘Well, I suppose we should get back then?’
‘Get back where?’ Honoré asked. Realisation dawned on him. ‘You aren’t suggesting we go back to the flat?’
‘Why not?’ countered Emily. ‘They’re us, after all. I mean, if we were to open the door one day and find ourselves standing there, wouldn’t we invite ourselves in and help ourselves out?’ She laughed. ‘Come on, Honoré. It isn’t like they’re evil twins or anything so clichéd.’ She laughed again when Honoré didn’t answer her. ‘What could you possibly be concerned about?’
Honoré gave her a silent, meaningful glance, then directed his gaze to a point somewhere across the river, on the opposite bank. The sounds of the waking city began to waft across the river. ‘Tell me more about this bridge,’ he said, finally.
‘The Einstein-Rosen Bridge,’ Emily said. ‘There isn’t much I can tell you. I only barely remembered it when that other Emily mentioned it. It’s obviously something I knew about once, but …’ She shook her head. ‘You remember you talked of time being like a tapestry? You and I, we can travel along different threads of the tapestry, and we can snip them and tug them and reweave them a bit. But in the grand scheme of things, the tapestry of time remains much the same.
‘Now imagine that the tapestry is in a stack of tapestries. If you lift the first and peek at the one below it, it may look identical, or near enough so as not to matter. Keep lifting, and each one may appear just like the one before it. But after you’ve gone down several, if you compare the next tapestry to the first, the accumulated changes become obvious.’
Honoré nodded. ‘Our friend Jonah is like a weevil, then? Eating a little hole in the rug, all the way through to the next?’
‘And the next, and so on,’ Emily said. ‘Although that’s the second rather atrocious analogy you’ve offered in as many days.’
Honoré looked to the sky and pointed. Emily saw a speck on the horizon, growing closer until she could make out its shape.
‘What is that?’ she asked.
‘An airship; a dirigible,’ Honoré said. ‘There’s another one, to the west of that. And I saw one come down over there just moments ago.’
‘I don’t understand,’ said Emily, as another airship floated into view, this one from the east, lining up with the others in an aerial holding pattern.
‘I can guess,’ Honoré said. ‘But I think we’re more than just a few tapestries away from home.’
They walked back to Lechasseur’s. Thankfully, when they arrived, there was no sign of Mrs Bag-of-Bones or her resurrected son. Honoré assumed the two were given the day off. Good move, he thought. The fewer ripples he and Emily made in this world, the better.
‘So in your world, the Hindenberg met with disaster,’ the woman called Em said as she poured the tea. Honoré noticed she didn’t form it as a question. ‘Lives were lost, the tragedy was enormous, and an otherwise quiet, friendly, energy-efficient form of air travel was never realised.’
‘Something like that,’ Honoré said. He held his teacup and waited for someone else to drink first. Lechasseur, noting his reluctance, smiled and sipped from his own cup.
‘I take mine with more than the cream and sugar, non?’ he said, taking a flask from his pocket and pouring a little of the contents into the cup before offering it to Honoré, who declined.
‘Not before noon, thanks,’ Honoré said.
Lechasseur chuckled, gave Honoré a wink. ‘As our Grandperè used to say, “Noon somewhere in the world.”’
‘So why did you let the Hindenburg happen?’ Em asked.
‘We weren’t there,’ Emily said. ‘What were we supposed to do?’
‘Make it un-happen, of course,’ the woman said.
Honoré was incredulous. ‘We were supposed to prevent the Hindenburg disaster?’
Lechasseur snorted, but Em’s smile remained frozen and sweet. ‘“Were?” You still can. And other things, as well. Really, what have the two of you been doing with all your time?’
‘You’re saying we should exploit our gifts?’ Emily asked. ‘How can you decide something like that? What gives you the right to …?’ Emily trailed off, stopped by the change in her twin’s physical attitude: the woman had grown stiff, her face frozen into a doll-like semblance of friendliness and normality. It’s her eyes, Emily thought. So cold in there. Emily went on after a moment, picking her way carefully. ‘I mean, who are we to change anything for the better, when we can’t be sure what better is?’
‘So you think things like slavery, or the Jewish Holocaust … they were good things, maybe?’ Lechasseur leaned in as he talked. ‘Things that you should leave alone? Or if you had the chance to make it un-happen, to save all those lives, you would not take it?’
‘You did all this, didn’t you,’ Honoré whispered. ‘There was no Hindenberg disaster here, because the two of you stopped it somehow.’
‘And you didn’t, I suppose,’ Em said. She put her arm up in an Oh, the humanity type of theatrical gesture that Emily would never consider making, consciously or otherwise. Emily could be sarcastic, but never cruelly so.
‘What else have you done?’ Honoré asked.
Lechasseur grinned and said nothing, patiently crossing his hands across his lap, letting Honoré fill in the blanks on his own.
‘The War,’ he said. ‘You stopped the War.’
‘Wouldn’t you, my brother?’
‘Perhaps,’ Honoré said. ‘If I had known then what I know now. But once something’s happened, something that big …’
‘Everything starts out with something no more powerful than the brush of a butterfly’s wing,’ Em said. ‘Find that fragile beginning, remove it, and the bigger things fall into place.’
‘But it isn’t right,’ Emily said. ‘Our role isn’t to go about interfering with the way things are supposed to be. We set things right, yes, but setting things right means ensuring they happen as they are meant to happen, no more than that.’
‘Our role …’ Em checked herself and began again more softly. ‘Our so-called role is undefined at best,’ she said. ‘We have managed to save lives, improve the world, advance ideas and technology.’
‘You’re interfering with a delicate balance,’ Honoré said. ‘I can’t believe these “improvements” come about without adverse consequence. Who loses? Someone always loses.’
Lechasseur shrugged. ‘Omelettes and eggs, my brother.’
‘You can’t make one without breaking the other.’ Honoré said. ‘An old argument made by bad men to justify worse actions.’
‘A row is pointless,’ Em said, rising from the table, walking to the telephone beside the door and lifting the receiver. ‘One argues to persuade or dissuade, and it is clear none of us is willing to move.’
‘Come on, man,’ Lechasseur said. ‘How hard you got to think to decide whether Adolf Hitler was a “bad egg?” Or Stalin?’
‘International operator,’ Em spoke into the receiver. ‘Yes, here’s the number.’
‘Why stop there?’ Honoré said, taking up the challenge. ‘What about men like Nero, or Attila, or Genghis Khan?’
‘Hello? Yes, it’s me, darling,’ Em said into the phone. ‘Always interesting. And you?’
Honoré leaned in nose to nose with Lechasseur. Lechasseur didn’t flinch. He didn’t blink.
‘Pontius Pilate,’ Honoré challenged. ‘Judas Iscariot.’
&
nbsp; Lechasseur grinned, predatory, vulpine. ‘A solution exists for every problem.’
Em tapped Honoré on the shoulder and held the phone receiver out to him.
Honoré glanced at her warily.
‘It’s for you, Honoré,’ Em said. Taking the receiver, he tried to read her expression, but in vain.
‘Who is it?’ he asked as Em stepped away. Her smile was warm, but her response made his knees feel weak, his balance suddenly uncertain. He could hear his own heartbeat throbbing in his ears like a drum in a cave.
‘It’s your mother,’ she said. ‘I understand you haven’t spoken in a while.’
Chapter Five
The following morning, Emily rubbed the sleep from her eyes as she entered the dining room. The first thing she noticed was Honoré. The second was the table – or rather, the silver service, china place settings, and platters piled high with sausages, scrambled eggs and fresh fruit.
‘That smells good,’ she said, pulling up a chair across from him.
‘Help yourself.’
‘Have you been learning to cook?’
‘I am a man of many talents,’ Honoré said. ‘Cooking, though, is not one of them. Tom brought it in. He seemed a little shocked to see me. No, not shocked. Nervous. I think he was surprised to see “me” already awake.’ He rearranged the eggs on his plate thoughtfully. ‘Apparently he intended to be in and out before anyone was up and about.’
‘You didn’t sleep?’
‘Too much to think about.’
‘Your mother?’
Honoré said nothing. He glanced up at a photograph, neatly framed and set on a shelf all its own – a photograph of himself as an older teenager, sitting on the steps of his grandmother’s house, one arm around the old woman and the other around an older-than-he-remembered-but-still-striking Evangeline Lechasseur.
‘Hearing her voice must have been quite a shock.’
