Alt.History 102 (The Future Chronicles)

by Samuel Peralta

  Anyway, on this trip, I'd been there about a week, and we'd spent the past few days working one of Saul's simulations. Some of his simulations were practical, trying to figure out what things we could change in order to increase the power of Cyrist International, the religion we created. Saul would measure the impact of a minor miracle in 1620s Connecticut against the same thing in 1980s Japan, and see how it panned out for the Cyrists. Would the investment portfolio be fatter or would we take a hit? Would Cyrist membership go up or down? Other simulations were random. What would happen if you killed baby Hitler? That sort of thing.

  Saul gets really wound up when he's doing the simulations. I'd say that's because it's a high-stakes game—many of the suggestions from the practical simulations were eventually put into action—but he even gets riled up during the theoretical stuff that we'd never try in real life. Maybe the simulations are just how Saul copes with not actually being able to jump and change things himself. How he copes with having to delegate, and always wondering if his minions did exactly what they were told. If the outcome wasn't exactly what the simulation predicted after we made the change, was that due to the margin of error or because someone didn't follow his directions to the letter?

  Nine times out of ten, it was the latter. And I think Saul suspected that for a long time.

  But anyway, on this particular occasion, Saul was pissed that Cyrist International stock was down by some fraction of a percent after I returned from performing one of the time-tweaks. And, ironically, this was one of the occasions where I'd actually done exactly what I was supposed to do. Well, there was one little side trip a few months forward to watch the whole Gunpowder Plot unfold while I was in 1606. But since that was chronologically after my assigned jump to the Cyrist temple in Nice, there's no way me chatting with Guy Fawkes over a pint screwed with the end result.

  The problem was that Saul's stupid computer didn't predict that the Cyrist—I don't know, priest, monk, whatever they called them in 1606 France—wasn't exactly a pacifist. I nearly got my head shot off while trying to slip some documents into their library, and Saul's mad at me?

  I took deep breaths and held my tongue, reminding myself that getting Saul riled up was never a good idea. It worked pretty well until he muttered something that ended with "…half-witted gox."

  That last word is from Saul's era. I have a decent idea what it means based on context, since he uses it a lot. And half-witted was an insult even in my era. I'd know that one if I'd never made a single time jump.

  I'd had just about enough of his trash talk, especially since he's known from the day of the testing, back when I was eight, that I was far and away the best candidate out of the bunch. He may even have suspected before the testing, based on stories from June and some of the other Cyrists, because his eyes lit up the minute I blinked into the room for the test, long before I showed him what I could do with the key.

  Although, now that I think about it, that look may have had more to do with…

  Never mind. Getting ahead of myself.

  Anyway, I'd had about enough of his insults and snide remarks.

  "Fine," I said, taking my CHRONOS key out of my pocket. "If that's the way you want to play it, run your own damned errands."

  I ran my finger across the glowing orange center to pull up the stable point back in 1902, inside my room at the Farm.

  Saul tossed back the last of whatever he was drinking. "If I could jump, I'd do a better job of it than any of you."

  "Yeah. Easy to say when you're grounded with no way to prove it, old man. But, either way, if you don't like how I do things, get Patrick or Pru to help you. Or maybe June. I don't have to sit here and take your garbage."

  It was a bluff. Even if I blinked out, I'd show up again eventually, and I suspect Saul knew that. Yeah, I could jump away to pretty much any place or any point in time, and he'd never catch me. But I liked the privileges of being Saul's protégé. You can travel without money and IDs and so forth, but it's a whole lot easier when you have the resources of a multi-billion dollar institution at your disposal.

  But even if I was only away for a little while, Saul would have to do his stupid simulations all by his lonesome. And as much as Saul Rand loved himself, he never liked being alone with himself.

  “Okay.” Saul held up one hand. “Take it easy. All I meant is you can't let little inconveniences sidetrack you."

  "The man was shooting at me! That's not a 'little inconvenience.' I've half a mind to go back to France and erase the son of a bitch. If he's never born, he won't be firing shots at my head in the middle of the night."

  "Yes!"

  I didn't know if I was startled more because Saul was yelling or because he was agreeing with me.

  "Yes," he repeated, jabbing a finger at my face. "That's exactly my point, Simon. If you want to fix things, if you want them to be right, you have to take matters into your own hands. You have to be willing to stand up to people. Even more important, you have to be willing to do the dirty work.”

  I was tempted to tell Saul that I'd already learned that the hard way with the whole Marilyn Monroe disaster. Tell him how I fixed it, how I set things straight. But I knew he'd just say it was my fault for being there in the first place. Saul might have tolerated my "time tourist expeditions," as he called them, but they weren't exactly encouraged. So I just kept my mouth shut, since his new mood seemed a lot less explosive than the temper tantrum he was working his way toward a few minutes back.

  “I learned that lesson myself back in 1892," Saul said, pouring both of us a shot from the bottle on the sidebar. "That's when CHRONOS stuck me with another one of their trainees, and…”

  Oh, great. He’s off on another one of his Amazing Tales from CHRONOS.

  Saul's stories were interesting at first. But they grew old fast. I mean, you always knew how they'd end. The punchline never varied. Saul was smarter and wiser than everyone else at CHRONOS, and that’s what saved the day. Yawn.

  But I took the drink he offered and settled into one of the chairs near his desk. The comfortable one. And for the next ten minutes or so, I nodded in what I hoped were the right places while Saul rambled on about some murder trial and how the trainee CHRONOS stuck him with nearly screwed everything up.

  I’d pretty much zoned out, until he said, "…Lizzie Borden's acquitted. Of course, if I hadn’t stepped in, there wouldn’t have been a trial at all.”

  That name caught my attention. Was there a single kid alive in the 1890s who hadn't heard of Lizzie Borden? I doubt it, at least not if that kid lived in the United States.

  I was only four when the murders happened, but Kiernan said children in Chicago were chanting "Lizzie Borden Took an Axe" before the trial even began.

  I didn’t have parents around, but I'd seen the adults chopping wood plenty of times. For a couple of years after I heard that verse on the playground, the whack, whack, whack of an axe against the chopping block had me looking over my shoulder for old Lizzie. I had no clue what she looked like, but in my nightmares, she was a dead ringer for Berta, my least favorite teacher at the Farm.

  I wanted to know what Saul said about Lizzie Borden, but I didn’t want to piss him off by admitting that I hadn’t been listening.

  Eventually, curiosity won out.

  “So,” I began, choosing my words carefully, “what exactly did you do?”

  Saul stopped and looked at me for a long time, almost like he was measuring me. There was an amused gleam in his eyes. Maybe because he’d realized I hadn’t been listening, but it seemed to go beyond that. Almost like something clicked into place while he was looking at me. Or like he'd scored a point in some game I didn't know we were playing.

  “Exactly what I told you, Simon. The girl screwed up, so I fixed it. I did what I had to do to set history straight. No.” He held up one finger and pointed it toward me. “I improved it. Did I get any accolades for that? Hell no. CHRONOS didn’t even notice. And Esther, who was only there as an observer and wh
o should probably have been kicked out on her ass, didn’t even get a reprimand.”

  Saul shook his head in disgust and walked over to the computer. At that point it was clear that he wasn’t going to give me more info, so I let the subject drop and we returned to the North American simulation we’d been working on before Saul brought up the disaster at the French temple again. He played nice for the next two hours, even patted me on the shoulder and complimented a clever move I made that resulted in Alaska never joining the Union.

  But his story about Lizzie Borden had piqued my interest. What did he mean when he said he fixed history? Or rather, improved it?

  So, after Saul turned in for the night, I rummaged through the shelves near his desk until I found his Log of Stable Points. It's a handy little book…well, more a computer, but it looks like a book. The Log contains all of the stable points used by the historians at CHRONOS. Not just the spots that are entered into everyone's key—major battles in the various wars, assassinations, and other epic events in history—but also specialized locations where only a few historians traveled.

  The Log showed four active points in Fall River between 1890 and 1900. Two were at the local courthouse, a big stone building that looked kind of like a castle. One was between two trees, with an obstructed view of a property across the street that matched the images I found online of the Borden place, a three story Victorian with a barn out back. I couldn’t see the front door of the house from that stable point, but the side door was visible. The final location was inside a barn loft, probably the barn behind the Borden house, since the geographic coordinates were almost identical.

  I knew the murders happened in 1892. I knew that Lizzie was found not guilty. Beyond that, however, was a big blank.

  If I'd had questions about something in 1902, it meant asking the adults in most cases. If you were lucky, there might be information at the new library that opened the year before in Fort Myers. And we were better off than most at the Farm, because we had a couple of handheld computers that June brought back for those of us who could use the key. Still, it wasn't like being connected. If the answer wasn't already on the machine, you were out of luck.

  At Saul's place, however, all I had to do was ask. Not just books, either. Most of the time, I could find less painful ways to get information about the times and places I wanted to visit by watching TV shows, movies, and so forth. But that type of research takes time, and I wanted the facts at my fingertips quickly.

  "Alisa, pull up any books and articles you can find on the Lizzie Borden murder case."

  Thirty seconds later, I had more information than I could wade through in a week, but it only took a few hours to learn the basics.

  To summarize: Lizzie’s stepmother, Abby Borden, was killed with a hatchet in her upstairs bedroom at 92 Second Street on Thursday August 4, between nine-thirty and ten-thirty a.m. The coroner counted a total of forty blows to her head and body. Mr. Borden, who'd taken a stroll downtown, returned to the house around ten-thirty. He decided to lie down in the library and the hatchet-wielding murderer caught up with him around eleven, giving him the same number of blows as his wife, plus one extra for good measure. Emma, the oldest of the two Borden daughters, was out of town visiting friends, but the younger daughter, Lizzie, was there all morning. So was the maid, Bridget. Neither of them heard anything unusual.

  The entire family was feeling like crap that morning, either as a result of a stomach flu, bad food or, according to some theories, a wee bit of poison in their dinner the night before. Mrs. Borden was clearly a bitch of the highest order, because even though she knew the maid was sick—so sick she had to stop and hurl a few times—the old bat still sent her out into the heat to clean the windows. Once the windows were finished, Bridget snuck upstairs to the attic for a nap. Abby Borden would probably have found something else for the poor woman to do, but after forty whacks from a hatchet, she was no longer in a condition to give orders.

  Lizzie’s whereabouts were a little more varied. During Abby's murder, Lizzie was ironing in the kitchen, then in her bedroom sewing for a bit, and then back in the kitchen reading a magazine. While her father was being killed, she was hanging out in the barn looking for fishing tackle or maybe materials to mend the door. Oh…and eating pears. She decided the loft of the barn was a good spot to hang out for twenty minutes or so on a hot August day and eat pears. And while she didn't hear anything suspicious, she's not surprised her father was killed. He had lots of enemies. In fact, she's told several people in the past few weeks that she wouldn't be surprised if something awful happened to her poor, dear papa.

  Despite her iron-clad alibi, Lizzie was accused of the murders. And although she was eventually acquitted, most experts think she did it. Or, at the very least, they believe she had a hand in planning it. It's possible that she was working with an uncle, John Vinnicum Morse, who was visiting at the time. Or maybe she conspired with William Borden, her father's illegitimate son by his own brother's wife. William definitely had the necessary skills and temperament—he was a butcher, and he'd been known to threaten people with a hatchet, although none of that information came out at the trial.

  The circumstantial evidence against Lizzie was strong. There was absolutely no love lost between the Borden girls and their stepmother, Abby, and though Lizzie was her father's pet, she had recently been more than a little angry at him over the slaughter of her pet pigeons. The fact that Andrew Borden had killed those pigeons in the barn—with a hatchet, no less—struck a lot of people in the town as being too strange to chalk up to mere coincidence.

  And then there were the financial motives. Despite the family's wealth, Mr. Borden was a tightwad. Emma and Lizzie were both spinsters, well over thirty and never married, but they complained that he gave more property and cash to his new wife's family than to his daughters. Lizzie's way of getting around this was to simply wander into stores and take whatever she pleased. The store owners then sent Borden the bill, and he valued his reputation enough to cough up the cash to keep her out of jail.

  One of the things Lizzie had going in her favor was the fact that Andrew had a natural-born talent for pissing people off. Maybe the only incontrovertible piece of testimony Lizzie gave was her statement that there were plenty of people who wanted Borden dead. Indeed, Lizzie might never have been indicted if not for her odd behavior before and after the murders. She just didn’t seem shocked enough to please the fellow residents of Fall River. For example, Abby Borden had been Lizzie’s stepmother since she was four, but Lizzie got all snippy when the investigators referred to the deceased woman as her mother.

  Even Lizzie's friends had to admit she was acting weird. One friend who stayed with Lizzie after the murders reluctantly testified that she’d seen Lizzie stuffing a blue dress into the stove a few days later, claiming that she was burning it because there were paint stains on the fabric.

  And then there was the local pharmacist who said Lizzie stopped in earlier that week to request cyanide for cleaning a sealskin coat. And yeah, it can be used for that purpose, but it also makes a damn good poison. Luckily for Lizzie, the autopsy revealed no poison in either body, and that bit of evidence was deemed inadmissible.

  So there were a whole lot of little things pointing toward Lizzie. It didn’t help that she kept switching her story every time she told it, either. But despite the evidence, it was hard for many people to imagine a Sunday school teacher and member of the local Women’s Christian Temperance Union picking up a hatchet and hacking anyone into hamburger. When the prosecution displayed the skulls of the deceased as evidence, Lizzie fainted. The cynics claimed it was a calculated move on her part, but either way, that little swoon sealed the deal. Not guilty, said the jury.

  Of course, her being acquitted meant that people kept looking for the real culprit or for some other explanation to make their order-loving souls feel that justice had been served. And they kept searching for new evidence, even a century or more after the murders.

 
Maybe it's just human nature to want to solve a mystery, to try and fit the puzzle pieces together until you can see the full picture. That's exactly what I found myself doing as I read, trying to piece together the clues to find the truth.

  Until I remembered that was a pointless exercise for someone with access to a CHRONOS key.

  If Saul found out the truth with the CHRONOS key, then so could I.

  Fall River, Massachusetts

  August 4, 1892

  As I ran my thumb over the medallion in my hand, a holographic display popped up in front of me, with the location, 92 Second Street, visible in the center. I started skimming backward in thirty-second increments from 11:00 a.m., around the time that Andrew Borden was killed, to see when Saul and his CHRONOS partner arrived on the scene.

  Pedestrians came and went along the street during the entire period, but I focused on movements around the house. A little before eleven, a woman in a blue dress walked toward the barn. Scrolling back a bit further, Andrew Borden arrived at the house around 10:31, returning from his trip to the bank and post office. Bridget Sullivan, the maid, was outside cleaning windows beginning at 9:22. A kid climbed the fence and snatched a couple of pears from the Borden family's tree around that same time, but Bridget either didn’t see him or didn't care. Going back further, Andrew Borden left the house for his walk downtown at 9:18. Another man, tall and thin with a dark beard, left at 8:52. Judging from the images I’d seen in my computer search, I was pretty sure he was John Vinnicum Morse, Lizzie’s uncle.

  The house was quiet during the half-hour before Morse left, although several people walked past and a few carriages clattered down the street. Then, at 8:22 a young black woman appeared directly in front of me, blocking my view of the house. As she stepped away from the stable point, I saw she was wearing what looked to be a servant’s uniform. She quickly surveyed the area, probably to be sure no one saw her arrive. Then she stepped out from behind the tree and headed toward town.