Neil thought about the people he had killed. They were only individuals and were small and almost insignificant against the scope of all of human history. But they mattered to him.
They returned to the hotel, to their two adjoining rooms. Elliot went to bed and Neil stepped out onto the balcony. Cities were so much darker in this time, and the lights inside nearby buildings were barely visible while the stars were much brighter. Somewhere out there, the art party was being held, and he was missing it.
Well, this was a once in a lifetime opportunity, and he wasn’t going to let it pass him by just because Elliot was overly cautious. His clothing wouldn’t impress anyone, but he had passed through Hollywood parties and royal galas without being seen. A little party in wartime Kentucky would be nothing.
He slipped out the door, closing it silently, headed down to the street, hailed a cab and asked to be taken to Oak Street. Once there, he walked up the street until he found the most brightly lit house on the block where people moved in and out. He didn’t want to go in the front door, and a few of the men were smoking in a side yard. It was nothing to slip around the other side of the house, into the large yard in back and then into the house.
As promised, a long room to one side held various paintings. A small knot of people stood off in one corner, crowded around a painting in a heavy gold frame. The Rembrandt.
He moved up behind the crowd, and though a man stepped backward onto his foot, he didn’t move. The painting was one he had seen before in art books, but never in person. It was called The Anatomy Lesson. A group of men with pointed beards crowded around a table upon which lay a nearly nude male corpse. The man was stocky, and his chest was so large that he looked like he was taking a deep breath. Of course, he was dead, but the artist even made the dead look lively and interesting. A man in a black hat, not unlike a pilgrim hat, was cutting open the man’s arm to show the bones inside.
Neil could not draw or paint. He couldn’t play any instruments or write poetry. Elliot had been correct when he had said that Neil loved art and music and plays and opera, but never created anything himself. But Elliot did not know why. Neil could love things like this painting, the sculpture of a rounded miniature woman on the display table to the right, orchestras full of moaning cellos and drums that raced like heartbeats, but he could never create anything himself. Heaven knew he had tried over and over, failing each time. Like a machine, he could replicate the work of others, but what he created himself was as lifeless as the corpse on the table in the painting. It had the shape of life, but was colorless and cold, bereft of the breath that made the creations of others live.
A woman bumped into him, and he ignored her apology. “I’m sorry, but I’m not sure we’ve been introduced,” she said, looking him up and down.
“I’m a guest of Miss Jones,” said Neil. “I’m afraid I need to be getting back to her. If you will excuse me.”
He left through the back doors and had reached the street in front of the house when he felt he was being watched.
Elliot. It was Elliot, leaning against a lamppost like a man in an old-fashioned movie, glaring at him from under his hat. Neil saw him wait a moment, push off from the lamppost and walk slowly to join him.
“Don’t ever do that again,” said Elliot. “A Time Corps agent can’t simply do as he pleases. We have a job, and we do it.”
“I didn’t talk to anyone, I didn’t prevent any conversations. I just looked at the painting and left, no harm done.”
“Glad to hear it, but the issue is one of disobeying a direct order.”
“Order? I don’t take orders from you, Mr. Van Dorn.”
“Don’t call me that,” said Elliot. “Look, I’m not trying to bust your ass. I’m just saying that we can’t have a rogue time agent running around. I’m the one who is supposed to train you, and you have to do as I say.”
“Like an apprentice?” said Neil, not bothering to disguise the resentment in his voice. Who the hell was this man, following him in the night as if he needed a babysitter? He had traveled through time many, many times and Elliot knew it. And yet, he was supposed to be some subservient student.
“Yeah, like an apprentice.”
“I’m not your apprentice, Elliot. I’m your partner.”
“Not yet, you’re not. Not until you’re trained. And doing this job with me is your first lesson.”
“And what job is that? Where exactly are we taking this ship in a bottle? Why is it important?”
“I can’t explain that, not entirely.”
“Another of your time loops, right?”
“I’m not making things up to torture you. For any agent, their earliest times in the Corps are the most sensitive. Almost all the other agents already know who they are, so revealing anything important to them could be risky. Once you’re trained up, you’ll get the full briefing, just like the rest of us.”
“Tell me now. If that little ship is something I need to know about, then I want to know. So tell me right now.”
“God, you’re a pain in the ass, do you know that?” Elliot said, and there was no laughter in his voice. “You are so difficult when you’re young. You’ll mellow a lot, I’ll tell you that about your future. You’re not a willful, thorny, sneaking pain in my ass then.”
“I wouldn’t have had to sneak if you weren’t being unreasonable. You won’t tell me why we’re here, you give me no information about our job and expect me to obey you like you’re my dad.” He paused. “You’re not, are you? My dad?”
“God I hope not.”
Elliot hailed a cab and they climbed in.
“Look,” Elliot said. “You’re going to be a good agent. One of the best. But there are rules, and one of them is you have to listen to whoever is in charge of the mission. The Time Corps is not dictatorial and we don’t expect mindless obedience. We value initiative and more than half our jobs don’t work out according to plan. The ability to improvise can be key. But running off because you wanted to see a painting is just plain irresponsible.”
Neil watched the city pass by out the window.
“The Time Corps is like a stabilizing force,” Elliot continued. “We’re like the stabilizing hand on the rudder of history.” He sat back, satisfied with his analogy.
But Neil had heard that argument before. The hand of justice. The hand of stability. How different were they, really?
Chapter 17
January 6, 1864
New Orleans, Louisiana
Hazel was sitting in the library when she heard shouting from the backyard where the Professor and McCullen were running experiments. She threw her book down and rushed downstairs, wondering what horror awaited her. Perhaps the experiments with opening a door to the hub universe, the world that stood between their own and Miss Sanchez’s world, had caused an accident like the one that had made the Professor’s old laboratory vanish. Or they could have created an unstable time rip. Perhaps worst of all, they might have attracted the void wyrm. She had rarely seen the Professor frightened, but his look when he had described the creature to her was still vivid in her mind. If the thing scared him, she never wanted to encounter it herself.
Hazel threw open the back kitchen door, hoping she was ready to face whatever awaited her outside. Everything was calm. McCullen was telling Miss Sanchez something, and for some reason, she was smiling as if they were old friends. The Professor was off to one side, bouncing up and down on the balls of his feet. He stopped moving, got a startled look and hurried to the iron patio table to make some note in a little book.
“What is it? What happened?” Hazel demanded. They were all alive, smiling and happy, while she was scared out of her wits.
“They did it!” said Miss Sanchez. “The door, they opened the door to the other world! Right there.” Miss Sanchez pointed to a spot of empty lawn. “They
got the door to open, and the readings confirm that it’s the world that September Wilde told the Professor about. They did it!”
“We all did it,” said McCullen. “Do not discount your contribution, Miss Sanchez.”
“He’s just being nice,” Miss Sanchez said to Hazel. “I didn’t do much.”
“Now, we’ll have none of that,” called the Professor as he continued making notes. “It was Miss Sanchez who came up with the Spaghetti Theory.”
Mrs. Washington rushed through the kitchen, carrying a handful of spoons and a cloth, a terrified look on her face. She must have been polishing the silver. “What is going on out here?” she asked Hazel, stopping beside her.
“They opened a doorway into another world,” said Hazel. “Nothing to worry about.”
Mrs. Washington gave her a look as if to say that it was most definitely something to worry about. “As long as no one is getting killed or is disappearing. Now you, Miss Dubois, you shouldn’t be getting involved in all this.
“I was reading in the library.”
“You know what I’m talking about. If the Professor wants to risk his neck, that’s his business. But you—just stay away from it. Promise me you’ll look after yourself.”
Hazel didn’t answer, as she didn’t want to make a promise to Mrs. Washington that she intended to break. The housekeeper touched her shoulder. “Try not to let them do anything foolish,” she said before going back to her work.
Miss Sanchez helped McCullen with a small box with a twisted jumble of wires running to another box. Hazel went out to help them wind up the tangle.
“What is the Spaghetti Theory that the Professor mentioned?” she asked.
“Well,” said Miss Sanchez, “you know how we perceive time as a straight line, one event after the other? As it turns out, time in each universe is like a strand of spaghetti. It’s a line, but it can curve, touch itself and, most importantly, touch other spaghetti strands, other worlds. All of the worlds together are like a giant plate of spaghetti, each touching the others in various places. If you find the touch points, which are usually marked as synchronicities, then you can travel from one to the other. But the spaghetti strands move, so the touch points can change.”
“Like a plate of worms,” said Hazel.
“I suppose. But I like spaghetti better.”
“And now,” said the Professor, “we have some preliminary readings. Traveling is not safe yet, as we need to study it more, determine a few of the touch points between our strand and the other world’s strand, and get time readings so we don’t end up in prehistoric times or the distant future where we could be lost or arrested or who knows what?”
“How long will that take?” Hazel’s birthday was only the day after tomorrow, and it was possible that when the Professor opened the time door, that it might be the method by which Neil Grey came to see her. It might also be her opportunity to go see the universe, or universes as the case may be.
“A few days, I’d say.” The Professor glanced at McCullen for confirmation. He gave a nod. “Yes, a few days.”
It was strange to see the Professor working so well with McCullen, and Hazel wondered what the two of them had been like together in prison in Ireland, or here in New Orleans after their escape. Perhaps the prospect of returning to his own time and world had given McCullen a chance to reform. Perhaps he no longer wished for power or war. But she doubted it. Her mother, God rest her soul, had not raised a fool. A scorpion’s nature was to strike.
“Hazel, would you recalibrate the sensors to these settings?” The Professor handed her a slip of paper, grinning at her like a fool. He looked like he wanted to slap her on the back or muss up her hair like he had when she was younger. She couldn’t help but smile back, so contagious was his enthusiasm.
“This is marvelous. It’s all finally paid off,” she said to him, low enough so as not to be overheard. “All the years, all that work. It paid off.”
“That it has. That it has.”
She gave him a quick hug and then recalibrated the sensors, wondering what time the new doorway would lead into, and how this other world would differ from her own. She wanted to go and see, especially if it was the future. She wanted to ride in an automobile, though the Professor had told her that it was a sickening experience. Apparently he had somehow managed to ride in one in 1961. More than that, she wanted to go on an airplane. Imagine, sailing through the sky, even above the clouds. Miss Sanchez talked about it like it was an ordinary experience, but how could anyone ever tire of such a thing?
But she was torn. On the one hand, leaving with the Professor, McCullen and Miss Sanchez would be a grand adventure, but she hated to leave Cassandra, Mrs. Washington and Mr. Ross behind. Mr. Ross was not her fiancé, not yet, but he was her dear friend, her beau, and he did not deserve abandonment.
On second thought, if they could travel through time, why not just return to the day they left? Was that too much to hope for? Could the Professor ever perfect the machine to have that degree of accuracy? When she was a child she would undoubtedly have thought so. Now, she wondered. The Professor and McCullen were brilliant, but not infallible. And if it hadn’t been for September Wilde telling them that she and her siblings, whoever they were, would get rid of the void wyrm, then the doorway in Jackson Square would have remained and more people would have been killed. The two of them could not control their dangerous inventions.
Her own world here was safe, more or less. Marrying Mr. Ross was safe, but terrifying at the same time. Going with the Professor was both terrifying and unsafe. But it was so very, very appealing.
Time was running out. Her birthday was close, the prospect of the Professor opening a door they could travel though was a reality, and Mr. Ross awaited her answer.
Chapter 18
January 6, 1864
Cairo, Illinois
Neil walked more than a block behind Elliot as he followed him through the streets of Cairo, Illinois. Elliot was unaware that he was being followed, or so Neil hoped. Whenever he had needed to stalk a target before, the person was unaware of his presence. Elliot, however, was presumably well aware of Neil’s talents.
That morning, their riverboat had docked in Cairo, which, Neil had learned, was pronounced “kay-roh.” It was still a day by riverboat to Memphis, where Elliot would deliver the Viking ship in a bottle to its mysterious recipient. Elliot had informed Neil that he had to meet with a fellow member of the Time Corps in Cairo, and that Neil should remain on the boat, or could sightsee. His choice.
The town was nestled on a point of land at the confluence of the Ohio and the Mississippi Rivers, where Illinois, Kentucky and Missouri met. It was not large enough to warrant much exploration, nor was Neil content to remain behind while Elliot had a clandestine meeting. So he had decided to follow him.
Neil slipped sideways to avoid being banged into by a large man carrying a box, and then resumed his pursuit. Elliot seemed to know where he was going, and opened the door to a candy shop with a window full of chocolates, lemon drops and colorful hard candies. The painted lettering on the window advertised “Sumptuous Sweets” and a cardboard sign informed him that fresh Brown Betty and apple trifles were available that day.
Now, what could Elliot want in a place like that? Well, everyone liked sweets. Perhaps he was getting some to bring to his colleague. Maybe a female colleague. Was that why he didn’t want Neil to come along? Could it be something as innocent as a romantic liaison? No, he decided. If Elliot had some sort of office romance brewing, then with all of time available, Neil was sure they could get some time alone if they wished. Besides, Elliot could simply have told Neil he had a date, and that would have been that.
Neil waited on a far corner, where Elliot would not see him when he emerged from the candy shop. But he did not emerge.
Neil could have kicked
himself when he understood that this place was the location of the meeting. For some reason, he had assumed it would take place in a fancy hotel restaurant or a seedy pub, perhaps at a person’s house. But at a sweet shop? Why not?
It was no trouble to find the alleyway that ran behind the row of shops and to locate the door leading into the candy shop. It was unlocked, and Neil stepped inside, moving silently and with his practiced stealth. He did not go into the main shop or even peek around a corner. There was no way to know when someone might glance his way, so he leaned up against a door in the back hallway, presumably an office or storage room, ready to open it and hide inside.
Elliot was speaking. “I didn’t even know what Brown Betty was until I started time traveling.”
“You didn’t need to time travel, just travel a little in your own country,” said a woman.
“Well, I was living in a trailer on the beach in LA before I joined the Time Corps, and I was too broke to even buy a Greyhound ticket. So travel was out of the question. But I had a lot of carnival desserts working at the boardwalk, that’s for sure. Then I was indisposed for quite a while.”
Neil hadn’t known that Elliot was also from California. He hadn’t bothered to ask, assuming that Elliot was as reluctant to discuss his origins as Neil was. The woman and Elliot talked back and forth about desserts, discussing Russian apricot cream delight and Asian sticky rice with mango until Neil wondered if he had wasted his time entirely.
“So, tell me about the new recruit,” said the woman.
“He is surly and aloof and only follows orders when it suits him.”
“That’s our Neil, when he was young at least.”
“Yeah, well, he’ll be a hell of a lot more useful once he’s trained up. He’s the best strong-arm guy we have. Will have. You know what I mean,” said Elliot.
The Time Corps Chronicles (Complete Series) Page 40
