“This is marvelous,” said Hazel softly to Seamus. “Don’t you agree?”
“I do.” Talking over a long distance with this device was indeed marvelous, as were the internal combustion engines within all the multitude of cars that zipped up and down the street. A building with a cross on top sat on the far corner with a mostly empty parking lot.
“Is that a church, do you suppose?” asked Seamus.
Hazel squinted at it and said that she thought it might be. Neil hung up the phone and said he knew which way they needed to go. As they got closer to the building, Seamus could read the letters on the concrete and metal sign out front. Saint Faustina’s. He had never heard of this saint.
“You two,” said Seamus, indicating Miss Sanchez and Neil, “tell us how to get to Julius’s and you go on ahead without us. Hazel and I are going to have a little time alone.”
“What are you talking about?” said Hazel. “We need to get to Julius’s house. I’m hungry and tired.”
Seamus lowered his voice and spoke into her ear. “You’ve killed a man, and you’re going to confession.”
He looked into her eyes, and after a moment of defiant anger, she looked down. “I know I ought to. But I don’t want to. Perhaps another day.”
“Hazel, I’ve killed a man too, you recall. And you need to go get this weight off of your soul. Mr. Grey and Miss Sanchez love you, but you and I are not like them in some ways. I know you, and you need to go.”
Hazel glanced at Miss Sanchez and Mr. Grey who stood side by side, neither encouraging or discouraging her.
“We’re not in any real hurry,” said Miss Sanchez. “The pawn shop is only two blocks away. We can meet up here after Neil and I go there to get some money.”
That seemed to help Hazel make up her mind, as she turned back to Seamus.
“Will you come with me?”
And for an instant, she was that little scruffy girl who came to his house, wild-haired and filthy, frightened to go out for fear of encountering her monster of an uncle in town. The man was dead, and Seamus’s only regret was that Mr. Grey had taken the privilege of killing the animal from him. But that was no thought to have before entering a church.
Mr. Grey went with Miss Sanchez to find the pawn shop and Seamus rolled the trunk across the street, Hazel by his side. Confession hours were posted on the sign on the church’s side door, and there were no confessions on Wednesdays. The rectory was behind the church, and they knocked on the door. Mr. Escobar leapt from Hazel’s shoulders and scampered up a tree at the edge the property. A small, brown-skinned man opened the door.
“We need to see a priest about confession. It’s urgent,” said Seamus.
The man looked from one of them to the other, and then opened the door and invited them inside. The building smelled like boiled cabbage and aging upholstery. The small front room had a sofa, and they sat together while the man left and then returned with a purple stole around his neck.
“There’s a room down the hall we can use,” he said to Seamus.
“I’m the one who wants to confess,” said Hazel, and she disappeared through the door with the priest.
Miss Sanchez would be down the street, but he would wait here. She had aged, he thought, though physically she was less than a year older than when he had first met her. Her manner was different, more weary, but perhaps stronger. She had grown quieter since missing her synchronicity, and he wondered if she was losing hope. Hope in finding a way home. Hope in him.
And how different Hazel was now. In bits and flashes now and then he saw the little girl she had been, but now she was a woman grown. He had thought to walk her up the aisle at her wedding, but she was married to the ship now, in a way, and the hoard of little monkeys were her children. He had hoped to dandle her babies on his knee. Uncle Seamus, they would call him. Or perhaps Granddad. He could teach them a bit of Gaelic, and like the Irish children, they could call him Daideó. Or perhaps another name for a grandfather, Athair Críonna, Father of the Heart.
Well, there was still time, and Seamus had seen how Mr. Grey looked at Hazel, and how she sometimes looked at him. Seamus wasn’t sure about the man. He knew Mr. Grey would grow into a good man, but the person he was now was largely unknown. Even after weeks on the ship together, he did not know how the man’s mind worked. More importantly, he didn’t know what the man was. He wasn’t human, that was certain. Was he a creature like Santiago or Mr. Escobar? Or perhaps like the Twelve? Seamus knew that Mr. Grey would age. He had met the older man. But how long, exactly, would that aging process take?
Too restless to stay put on the sofa, Seamus went outside and stood on the front step. The inside of the building felt confining, and he liked being under the open sky. It was sunny here, as it supposedly always was in Southern California. It was the complete opposite of Ireland in that way, and it felt and smelled different than New Orleans too.
He felt like he too had aged over the last few months. The world was nothing like he had imagined it to be, an intelligible place that could be understood through science and reason, exploration and experimentation. It was a place of wonders, like a foldable Viking ship, and horrors like the void wyrm. And other things, like the Twelve. Julius had mentioned something about his siblings. They were watchmen, and they stood on the ramparts, whatever that meant. What they guarded against or watched for, Julius would not say.
Well, whatever stood in his way, Seamus would find a way to get Miss Sanchez home to her family and to her sick nephew. He would erase the worried, tired expression on her face and replace it with one of joy. And in doing that, he would redeem his mistake in bringing her from her world, and in creating the machine in the first place. They were headed to Julius’s house, and he knew what, or who rather, waited for them there. Today was a momentous day. For now, he and Miss Sanchez were lost. But that would change.
As for Hazel and Mr. Grey, the two of them seemed to prefer it on the ship, with no home and no set destination. They were lost also, but they seemed to like it that way.
Chapter 42
February 12, 2014
Los Angeles, California
Hub world
They paused at a crosswalk, and Hazel insisted on pushing the button to tell the illuminated sign that they wished to cross. To her delight, it changed from an image of a red hand into a walking figure.
“Miss Sanchez, would you teach me to drive a car?”
“Call me Felicia. It’s going to sound strange if you keep calling me Miss Sanchez.”
“I’ll do my best. But might I drive a car?”
Hazel glanced at the Professor, just in time to see him smile and then try to hide it.
“You can learn,” said Miss Sanchez. “But first, you need to be a pedestrian for a while.”
“What about a bicycle?”
“Yes, that’s fine.”
Hazel wanted to go fast, to try flying through this world the way she flew over the waves on Skidbladnir. The ship was in Mr. Escobar’s pocket. According to the rules of its possession, if it was stolen from him, it still belonged to Hazel. But if someone took it from her directly, then it became theirs. Odd the way things worked.
The priest had been kind enough, but when she said she had killed a man, he hadn’t seemed to believe her. He gave her an easy penance, a few prayers, but she didn’t feel any better. She was still a killer, forgiven or not. The act had left an indelible mark on her. The Professor had been right.
Half an hour later, they moved off of the main street and into a neighborhood full of matching houses.
“These were built in the early twentieth century,” said Felicia. “It’s an older neighborhood.”
Fragrant pepper trees ran up and down the street, providing shade, and the footsore travelers stopped to rest. Felicia checked the addresses painted on the curbs o
r on painted metal on the front of the houses.
“That one,” she said, indicating a yellow and white two-story house across the street. Hazel loved it on sight. It had a wide front porch, not as large as the galleries on their house in New Orleans, but still roomy, with painted steps leading up to it. A driveway ran along one side, leading back to a garage. A silver car sat parked in front of it. They climbed the steps and knocked on the front door.
Julius answered and shook each of their hands before showing them in.
“I’m glad you got here when you did. It gives us a little time before the rest of the guests arrive.”
“Who else is coming?” asked Felicia.
“A few of my siblings and some other people you may know. It’s an auspicious day. But first, let’s get you situated in your rooms upstairs. You must be exhausted.”
For Julius, more than a century had passed, and yet he was unchanged. They left the time machine downstairs near the kitchen door. Julius led them up the stairs, and Hazel took in the details of the house. There were books, hundreds of them, on bookshelves, which was perfectly ordinary. There was a television, or perhaps a computer, in the living room. She would have to ask about that later. The bathrooms had hot and cold running water and flush toilets, just like her house in New Orleans, but she knew that this system was more efficient and didn’t require the Professor’s homemade water heater to operate.
“You’re welcome here as long as you like,” said Julius. “As I said back in 1864, I’ll be here for a while, and you can always come here. September said the same about the New Orleans house back in your home world. Whatever time you’re in, you have a place to stay.”
Hazel thought she’d rather stay on Skidbladnir than in a strange house, but she would never be so impolite as to refuse an invitation of hospitality, kindly offered. Felicia and Hazel were shown to one room, while the Professor was given his own, presumably because he liked to make messes and work on projects that would disturb a roommate.
“You and Elliot sometimes share a room,” Julius said to Neil. “But that’s only when we have a full house. Most of the time, various ones or the others of you all are in and out, so you can have your pick of the rooms. Today, I expect a full house.”
“What is he talking about?” Hazel whispered to the Professor while Julius showed Neil the closet where he hung his black duster.
“You’ll see,” he said. “Once the other guests arrive.”
“Who is coming? McCullen?”
“Lord, I hope not. No. But I believe Mr. Augustus might come by.”
She wasn’t sure what to think of that. She liked Mr. Augustus, but was wary of him now. How much of his friendship had been manipulation and how much was sincere? Mr. Escobar jumped from her shoulder to go explore the house, including the trees in the yard. Once Hazel’s coat was hung and she had flipped the electrical light on and off a few times for fun, she hurried downstairs to the kitchen. Hazel knew what the refrigerator was, but still opened it and the freezer.
“Ice cream!” she smiled at the Professor. “They have ice cream.”
“Oh yes,” said Julius. “And cold milk, central heating, so many cable channels I can’t even keep track and wireless Internet connection.”
She understood these things from conversations with Neil and Felicia.
“And if you want, you can even take a hot bubble bath later,” said Julius.
Oh, she hadn’t had a hot bath in ages. She imagined that it would feel just like heaven. Neil was watching her, with that look of his that was almost a smile.
“Don’t tell me you don’t like seeing marvels like this,” she said.
“On the contrary. I know exactly how you feel.”
“He just thinks it’s cute how you think ice cream and a bubble bath are the height of excitement,” said Santiago. He must have slipped into the kitchen without her noticing. He hadn’t changed in the slightest, from the faint lines around his eyes to the tawny yellowish color of his hair. He wore blue canvas pants, which Hazel knew were called jeans, and cowboy boots.
“Did you travel through time also?” asked Hazel. “Julius said we’d be seeing some people we knew.”
“No, I don’t bother with that. I just live one day right after the other. There’s enough trouble to get into without all that time travel business. Besides, meeting the void wyrm once was enough for me.”
“Yooo hooo!” called a woman from the entryway. She hadn’t bothered to knock, but had come right into the house. Hazel went to see who it was. September Wilde stood with a plate of cookies, along with Mr. Augustus, both of them dressed in twenty-first century clothing. The white cat that had been at Miss Wilde’s house snaked between them and walked into the living room, tail high. A raven sat on a perch behind a chair in the front room, and it made a tok tok tok sound at the cat.
Others came. There was a blond man in his mid-twenties named Elliot Van Dorn. Neil whispered in Hazel’s ear that he was much younger than when Neil had known him. Elliot wouldn’t remember punching Neil in the face or Neil’s theft of his machine. Behind Elliot was a young woman, also blonde, who looked very much like Elliot, but did not speak. A woman who might have been Native American came and embraced September. Hazel thought she caught the name May. A few minutes later, two Asian women arrived. The older of the two, June Yee, was a sister to Julius, September, Mr. Augustus and the woman named May and went into the dining room to speak with them. The younger woman did not give her name, but when she saw Mr. Augustus, she went pale. Then she caught sight of Santiago and glared. He winked at her and went to talk to her.
“Neil!” said Elliot. “You have to come see this art book I got in 2126. There’s this artist who is a hybrid, and she does amazing work. The book is up in our room.”
Neil followed him upstairs, leaving Hazel alone. Various clusters of people spoke together, all of them apparently familiar with each other. Even the Professor was speaking with Felicia and the five members of the Twelve that were present. Hazel wished Mr. Escobar was there, but he was off exploring.
Hazel went into the kitchen and poured herself a glass of cold iced tea. She leaned over the sink and looked out the kitchen window, into the world that she had longed to see for so many years. But there was more than just the wonders, the technologies and the food. And it didn’t end even with the vehicles, marvelous as they were. The world was so much bigger than she had ever imagined.
“It’s time,” said Julius, poking his head in. “They’re meeting in the dining room.”
“Time for what? I don’t even know these people.”
“You will, I’m sure. And as for what, it’s the first official meeting of the Time Corps.”
The Time Corps. That was the name of Neil’s time traveling group. And here she was, about to meet some of its members.
“Tell me something,” she said. Julius must have caught the seriousness in her tone, as he let the kitchen door swing shut behind him. “What are you?”
“My siblings and I are watchers. We keep an eye on things.”
“But March did more than watch.”
“Precisely. He chose a side, and sadly, it was the wrong one.”
“Side? There are sides?”
“There always are. An old war with new battles. Good and evil. Though, of course, both sides claim to be good. But don’t worry, September and I are on the right side.”
“And Augustus? And what about June and May? And the others?”
“Augustus has chosen to remain neutral, but seeing as he’s not against us, I have no reason not to trust him. As to the others, they make their decisions, just like your kind do. It’s not too much different.”
“If March was on the bad side, why did he send Neil to leave a message with September? They’re not on the same side, right?”
He lo
oked thoughtful. “At that point in time, September knew March was violating some of our rules, but she didn’t know the extent of it. And he would have counted on her good nature to faithfully deliver a message. But let’s set this aside for now. It’s time to join the others.”
Hazel decided to ask him more later, but she wondered how forthcoming he would be. She found the dining room which was equipped with a long wooden table. September had set out cookies on a few plates and Santiago grabbed one before pulling a chair away from the table, shoving it into a corner and flopping down onto it.
“I’m not a member,” he said to Hazel.
“Then why are you here?”
“This is my territory, my land. I like to know what’s going on, especially if it involves strange happenings and strange folk. And you lot are the strangest. Well, some of the strangest.”
The Professor, Neil, Felicia, Elliot and everyone else took a seat. Hazel found herself next to Elliot and June Yee. The white cat leapt up onto the table and the raven perched on a seat back. No one seemed to give these things a second thought, and Hazel wished Mr. Escobar had come. After glancing at September, who gave a small nod, the Professor spoke.
“I’m glad to meet you. I’m afraid I’m at a bit of a disadvantage, being where I am on my personal timeline, but I’ve been assured by my friend,” here, he nodded toward Julius, “that you will not mind. You are, most of you, the members of the Time Corps, and you are used to asynchronous events.”
“What do the Time Corps do?” Hazel whispered to Elliot.
“I’m about to answer that,” said the Professor, overhearing. “You’re early in your timeline also, as are Neil and Felicia. The rest of you, I understand, came as early in your timelines as you could manage. Our purpose, our official purpose, is to mend the problems that I have caused by the creation of the time machine. I have ripped holes in time, attracting the void wyrm at some points, and at others, allowing people to come through from other worlds who did not wish to do so. I take full responsibility for these actions, and I will dedicate my remaining years on this earth to correcting the problem. I will set events right that have been pushed out of place. We will identify time loops and make them into stable timelines. Our first job will be to work with Miss September Wilde to permanently stabilize the time rips in New Orleans. I am not sure how we will accomplish it, but that seems to be the modus operandi for the Time Corps.”
The Time Corps Chronicles (Complete Series) Page 57
