The Curiosity Killers

by K W Taylor

  “No,” Cob replied. “Time travel is a means to an end. My identity–who I am—is a…a seeker.”

  “A seeker? Of what?”

  “Knowledge. Understanding.” He saw the shadow of a knife falling across Elizabeth’s dead body. “Justice.”

  “Justice.” Phalène nodded. “Excellent. You can seek justice for the one who killed Gael. It was one like you, a time traveler.”

  “Do you know the person’s name?” Cob asked.

  “Gael’s children met him. He called himself Braiden Welty, but that was an untruth.” Phalène waved in the air next to her; an image hovered there, as if projected onto an invisible screen. It showed a room with low, white tables. A man took a small object from one of the tables.

  “Brimley Wheaton,” Cob murmured.

  “You know him? You’ve traveled together through time?”

  “Not together. We’re friends. Neighbors.”

  Oh, God, Wheaton, what did you do? I was the one who referred you to the agency! Did you abuse your trip somehow?

  “You can bring justice for my ancestor?” Her voice took on a plaintive note.

  Cob’s heart sank. He’d forget this interaction when they wiped his memory, but maybe he could explain this before it happened. “I’ll try,” he said.

  “Thank you, seeker,” Phalène replied. She steered him toward a spot a few feet behind, and suddenly night bore down again.

  The slender man separated himself from the shadows. “Did you have a fruitful trip, Mister Cob?”

  Before Cob could answer, Claudio was upon him, scrawny limbs wrestling him down to the ground with a surprising strength. Claudio shoved a sweet-smelling rag over Cob’s mouth and nose. Once Cob felt a swimmy dimness fuzz at the edges of his vision, the rag was removed. Claudio forced a pill down Cob’s throat, and then all ability to see and hear clearly was taken from Cob. His palm was hot, flashing, and Cob gagged and dissolved away, molecules whizzing through time and space.

  Tuesday, August 31, 2100, Avon, Vermont, NBE

  “There’s a gorgeous place, just across a kind of veil from this world,” Cob said. “Only saw it once, but it looked really nice, and it’s full of Mothmen.” He laughed. “I don’t think they’re hostile, but maybe we should ask Violet if she wants her family living with a bunch of winged alien things. I met one, talked to her, and I promised her I’d try to help her with something.” His grin faded. “If I see her again, I can apologize that I couldn’t do it.”

  Ben sank down on a stool and rubbed at his eyes. “You met a Mothman and talked to it?”

  “Mothwoman, I guess? It was one of the memories Eddy restored. All flooding back to me now,” Cob said. “I’m the only one who can get people over there. You have to have time traveled a bunch to even access it. The only one who fits that bill is me.”

  “Maybe we should try it out,” Violet said. “I can go back to Roanoke with Cob just after Ambrose took me and send everyone else to this other…what, dimension? Planet? What is it?”

  Cob shrugged. “It’s really nice, whatever it is. Gorgeous. Quiet. Probably safe.”

  “If we do this and I’m not erased from the present, then we’ll know we can do things and not mess our own timelines up,” Violet said. “It’ll save my family, keep them away from Claudio. They’d have to live there though. Forever, I guess.”

  Ben got up and drifted away from the kitchen. “I need an aspirin,” he muttered as he wandered out toward the front parlor.

  Violet’s gaze met Cob’s. “He’s just scared,” she said. “Considering everything.”

  Cob shrugged. “I get it.” He glanced in the direction Ben went. “He probably just feels like giving up, honestly. I would, too, if I were a little more like him.”

  “You don’t feel like giving up?”

  “I sort of do,” Cob said. “I mean, it’s gonna be hard and scary and people might get hurt.”

  And I might die trying this crazy thing.

  “But it’s gonna be hard and scary and people will get hurt if we don’t try, too.” He frowned. “Plus, you might just…” He let his voice trail off.

  It doesn’t matter if my head explodes while I’m trying to save her, so long as I save her.

  Violet crossed the room and gave Cob a peck on the cheek. “Let me check on Ben. I’ll try to convince him.”

  Once Violet was gone, Vere moved around Cob and put the unused dinner plates away. “You shouldn’t encourage her,” he said. “Not in your condition. If you keep going on like this, I can’t begin to predict how things might accelerate for you, health-wise.”

  “I understand,” Cob said. “But I can’t say I don’t feel something there.”

  “You’ll put her through quite a bit if you make it seem as if it has a future,” Vere said. He gave Cob a sad smile. “Perhaps you think all I know is science, that I don’t know people.”

  “I never thought—”

  “But trust me, Mister Cob,” Vere said, shaking a finger at him, “I know loss. I know loneliness. I know pain.” Vere paused. Cob noticed wrinkles in the other man’s face that weren’t apparent even moments earlier. “I dare say nobody wants that for such an important young lady.”

  “No, sir. Nobody does.”

  ~

  Ben stood in the upstairs sitting room, a place he usually spent time with a favorite book or poring over schoolwork, when it seemed his dissertation was still something worth writing. Now it wasn’t his special study, but simply a place to get away from the incessant debating over the bad ideas Cob proposed. He looked at himself in the mirror above the fireplace. His eyes were hooded and tired.

  The knock on the doorframe was so light at first Ben thought he’d imagined it. But there in the mirror he saw her, pale face and hair, lingering halfway between the room and the hall.

  “May I come in?”

  “Free country.” Ben gave a bitter laugh. “Well, or sort of, anyway.”

  Violet took a step forward and looked around. “This is nice,” she remarked. She approached a salmon velvet settee. “Lovely piece.”

  “Recent acquisition,” Ben said. “Wilbur—” He stopped. “It’s an antique,” he said, “from a friend.”

  Violet settled herself on it, smoothing out the folds of her skirt on her lap. “I know you’re worried about me, about everyone.”

  “I think you’ll still disappear,” he blurted out. “That’s what I’m worried about.” Ben turned to face her, not just lock eyes with her in the mirror. “I understand linear time,” he continued, “not physics, not paradoxes, not that little diagram Cob tried to draw me. I understand how Event A relates to Event B, and I understand how they continue in a line moving forward.” He became more animated. “I understand the depths of needing to know and understand facts, to have answers. That’s what makes sense to me. Events. The details of those events. I don’t understand the bigger science, and I don’t think even Eddy understands that stuff as much as he’d like.” He had a sudden longing to fall to his knees on the floor in front of her, to take her hands in his and kiss them.

  I can’t lose you.

  But he didn’t. He stopped pacing and kept his back to her. He stared straight ahead at a window overlooking the tree-lined boulevard. Carriages and stampers and hovercars kept up a steady stream of traffic. A man in a dark suit bowed to a woman passing with a clockwork dog. The dog emitted a tinny bark, and the man tipped his top hat to it.

  “All of that out there, all that world,” Ben said, gesturing at the window. “We change one major thing in the past—and it is a major thing—and maybe you don’t disappear, but maybe someone out there isn’t born, maybe a different one is, maybe my great-great-grandfather never emigrates to this continent.” He whirled around to Violet. “We just can’t know.”

  I can’t lose you!

  The thought became percussive in his mind, desperate and rhythmic and unrelenting.

  Violet took a deep breath and squared her shoulders. She regarded Ben with an even, mea
sured look that implied all business and logic. “Look, we can’t know, okay? But the colony disappeared. I disappeared along with it. Those are the biggies, right? If all goes according to plan, those two things will still happen.”

  “But the prevailing theory of what happened to the colonists was that they were absorbed into the local tribes. Thousands and thousands of people born from unions between the groups might cease to exist.” Ben went to a chair opposite Violet and sat down. “And even if we’re somehow okay with that, what if you still stop existing in the present when we decide where to…remove Claudio from history?”

  One edge of Violet’s mouth quirked up. “Nice euphemism.”

  “Nothing’s been decided,” Ben snapped.

  “Okay, if I disappear, you could still kidnap me from an earlier point in time,” Violet said. “And if you object to taking the colony to the other dimension, who knows what might have been the real reason the colony disappeared, right? Claudio could have gone back alone and killed them all. We’re testing a theory, and we’re saving so many people’s lives in the process.”

  “I don’t like to test theories,” Ben said. “I like to know facts and study them as static texts.” He left the room and went back downstairs. Violet’s footsteps echoed behind him.

  Cob and Vere were still in the kitchen. “Guys, I think we’ve got some investigation to do before going off half-cocked,” Ben called, gesturing at them to join him in the front parlor. Cob and Vere frowned at each other before entering. Vere sat down in front of the unlit fireplace.

  “The last bit of reconnaissance didn’t go well, Benoy,” Vere said.

  “That’s because I was alone.” Ben lifted his chin in a half-nod to Cob. “You and me, we’re gonna get to the bottom of what really happened at Roanoke. The first time. The real fate of the colonists. That’s what we need to know before I’ll sign off on this crazy plan to send them to Mothman World or whatever we’re calling that place.” He strode to the bookshelves and scanned them before pulling down the volume he sought. “I’ll create an exact timeline of when it’s theorized the colonists all truly disappeared. We’ll go back as close as Eddy can get us to that precise moment and stay far, far away from everyone.”

  “Aw, man,” Cob whined. “I wanted to actually talk to people and stuff.”

  “Talking to people is what led to some unfortunate circumstances in that same time and place, Mister Cob,” Vere said. His eyes grew wide. “Oh, dear me, that woman. That woman, Benoy. She was likely working with him, wasn’t she?”

  “Who do you mean, that client?” Ben considered this. “Yeah. Or else she was just another creepy Rénartian looking to live out her white supremacy fantasy.” He glanced at Violet. “You’re real popular with them, you know.”

  Violet looked away. “I hate that,” she said, her voice low. “Of all the weirdness about finding out who I really am, that’s definitely the worst part.” She looked at Ben but her eyes didn’t quite meet his. “I feel like it’s my fault somehow.”

  This was a surprise. “I hope you know I don’t think you’re like them, these people who look to you as a symbol of their ideology.”

  Violet shook her head. “No, I know, but I still feel guilty somehow.”

  “You didn’t do anything wrong, miss,” Vere said. He waved a hand at Ben. “Come on, son, what’s the rest of this idea of yours?”

  “You want me to go with you?” Cob asked.

  “Yeah, it didn’t really go so well me trying on my own,” Ben replied. “And I think you by yourself could be equally dangerous. Let’s go together and keep each other out of trouble.” He chuckled. “Well, I’ll keep you from doing something brave but stupid, and you keep me from accidentally getting myself killed.”

  Cob barked out a laugh. “Sounds good.”

  Violet joined Vere on the sofa facing the fireplace. “I don’t like this,” she said. “What if you accidentally go when Ambrose did and cross some kind of timeline or something? What if he doesn’t get me away safely?”

  “Let’s get him here,” Ben said. “Find out specifically when he went and avoid him if we can.”

  Vere rose and went to Ben’s desk. “I’ll get in touch with him,” he said.

  “Wow, we’re really finding out something huge here, you guys,” Cob said. His eyes sparkled, though Ben noticed the other man’s forehead took on a sheen of perspiration.

  He isn’t well, is he? This might be the last mystery he gets to solve.

  Ben held out his right hand to Cob, inviting the other man to shake it. “You up for solving the biggest missing persons case in all of recorded history, buddy?”

  Cob grinned. “Am I ever.” He clasped Ben’s hand in his and shook it. “And we’re buddies now?”

  “Watch it,” Ben said.

  Across the room, Vere spoke quietly into the phone before hanging it up. “He’ll be here shortly, but in the meantime he gave me the date of his arrival at the colony.” He handed Ben a small slip of paper. “Reference this against your target arrival before we begin to determine the coordinates.”

  “And clothes,” Cob said. “We need to look…what, kind of Renaissance Faire-esque?”

  Ben groaned. “Oh, God.” He sat down and paged through his book. “We want to be as stealthy as possible anyway, so I’m thinking camouflage. Fatigues.”

  “Yeah, but if someone does see us, we’re gonna look even weirder then,” Cob said.

  “Compromise,” Violet suggested. “Greens and browns, but period appropriate.” She grinned. “I bet none of us dreamed as kids about someday picking out camo-themed Pilgrim wear.”

  “This colony wasn’t a Pilgrim group,” Ben said. “The Pilgrims were a religious sect that—”

  Cob groaned. “Stick to the books, man, and take care of that stuff yourself. I don’t want to feel like I’m in school when we actually get there.”

  Friday, October 6, 1587, Roanoke Island, British colony

  This was the pain of hot pokers, fire, and ripping, tearing, rending. This time, however, Cob didn’t permit himself even a second of incapacitation—he fought through the pain, clenched every muscle in his body, and forced his eyes to open, his limbs to move.

  I have to find Ben. Have to find him. Get to him. Now. Now. Now. Go.

  Sure, Ben was grating on him; the two men couldn’t be more different, and Cob knew what would happen between Violet and Ben after he was—

  Dead. You’ll be dead, man. Face it. This pain right now is nothing compared to what’s in store for you down the line. Get it together.

  He grit his teeth and scrambled to standing, looking around a wooded area. It was dusk, and the scraggly copse of trees in which he stood was on a small hill. Between branches, he could make out a lower-lying area with some form of civilization on it. A circular wooden fence surrounded buildings with crudely fashioned chimneys visible above the fence line. No one appeared to be around, but Cob still felt a need to keep his noise to a minimum.

  He couldn’t call out for Ben, but he could look, and yet their forest-colored clothing would make this search more difficult. He pushed aside bush limbs and picked his way over fallen logs. This was no modern hiking path, cleared of scrub and made hospitable for weekend campers. This was real, virgin forest, untouched and not designed for human navigation.

  Trees rustled on Cob’s left. He snapped to attention, and there was Ben clambering toward him, making his own feeble attempt to be quiet. Cob pressed a finger to his lips and pointed down on the flat land of the colony site below.

  “We that close?” Ben whispered.

  Cob nodded.

  Ben smiled for an instant, but then pressed his lips together. “Sorry, this is kind of cool,” he whispered. “I want to see it, just for a second.”

  “That’s all we’re doing, seeing,” Cob whispered back. “Go see to your heart’s content, man. Hell, we should probably get closer, even.”

  “But they can’t see us.”

  “I got it, I know, we are as
ghosts. Now go get your first look.” Cob pointed behind him. “Good sightline a few feet that way.”

  Ben inched past Cob and then stopped, ramrod still. “Oh, my God,” he murmured. “I can’t believe it.”

  “You did time travel once already, you know,” Cob said. “Does it really inspire that much awe?”

  Ben turned back to him. “I saw a bridge and a corpse. It could’ve been anywhere, any time. This, though.” He gestured at the colony buildings. “This is history, right here in front of me. Definitive. This couldn’t be just any time or place.” He looked at Cob intently. “It’s what I think about all the time, wishing I could understand what this life was like, what the past all means. It’s kind of a big deal for me.”

  “You could’ve seen this any time since you met the good doctor, you know,” Cob said.

  Ben studied the ground. “I could have.”

  “Why—” Cob shut his mouth. If Ben were braver, he might be in Cob’s very predicament by now, brain being eaten away by these adventures. Maybe caution meant Ben would live long enough to see Vere develop a way around the physical damage time travel could cause.

  “Why what?”

  Cob shook his head. “Never mind.”

  Ben turned back to the view before them. “Dammit, that fence.” He gestured at the land below. “I want to see more, and it’s blocking so much.”

  “Yeah, but if somebody comes and carts people off, or if people start leaving,” Cob said, “we’ll see it, even from up here.”

  Ben’s frown deepened.

  “You want to go in, don’t you?”

  “We can’t.”

  “Yeah, I know we can’t,” Cob said, “but that doesn’t stop you wanting to.”

  “Of course I want to. But unlike some people, I have restraint and control.”

  “Restraint and control are way overrated, buddy.”

  “That attitude has served you really well, too,” Ben said.

  “I’ll have you know that—”

  Ben held up a hand to Cob as his attention was distracted by something below. He pointed at the colony site.