“He make you happy?”
“I can’t deal with this, Will. Not here. Not now.” She pauses, glances back nervously, then looks at me again. She sets her face. “Not ever.”
“I just wanted to see him,” I say. “I’m going away, Ame. I won’t come back. You won’t see me again. I just needed to see him before I went.”
“You’ve seen him now.” It’s not like her to be cruel. It comes from desperation. And I deserve it.
I want to tell her I’m sorry, but I can’t bring myself to do it. She has her new life, a son, and someone to love her. I should be happy for her, but all I can reach is hate and bitterness.
My eye catches Luanne’s when I get up and turn to go. She looks at the man holding my son, then back to me, and smiles. Yeah, she’s quite the gal.
Outside, among the gravestones surrounding the church, all laden with dead leaves, I find I am shaking.
They’re here. Watching me.
“What do you want from me?” I whisper. When no answer comes but a cold wind, I say, louder this time, “What do you want from me?” I say it over and over until I’m screaming. I’m on my knees, the ache in my heart bleeding into every word.
But of course, they don’t answer. They never do.
Two days later, I’m gone.
* * *
Something’s wrong. Sure, this is only the fourth time I’ve jumped in my life, so it’s not like I’m an expert, but instantly I feel something’s off. It should be 2020. That’s the way it works—ten years. That’s the way it’s always worked.
But this can’t be ten years. I’ve realized, during the course of my fractured life, that there’s a pattern to the world’s advance. A certain symmetry to the way things develop over the course of a decade—the way buildings appear in a cityscape, the subtle changes in technology, the curious revolutions in fashion. There are sometimes abrupt advances, but even those have roots.
There’s no way this is 2020.
The first thing I notice is the rain. I’m lying in the street on wet, muddied concrete. Rain sluices over me and runs down my face and back, soaks my hair. It’s night, but smears of color shimmer in shallow pools on the saturated pavement. I look up to see a big screen, tall as the entire side of a building, tossing a vivid luminescence into a black sky. The air is thin, almost choking. Despite the rain, it’s warm.
The buildings seem taller than before; I can’t see where they end and the sky begins. There seem to be more of them, clustered and crowded as though every morsel of space has been filled by concrete. Neon signs buzz intermittently in grimy shop windows. People walk around me, all of them draped in long, slick coats. Others perch on stools outside some kind of street food place.
But the real clincher is the car—or what looks like a car—that roars over the street. Nearly thirty meters above it. The lights burning around its body give it a strange orange halo. I watch it open-mouthed for a few seconds, but then it’s gone. Farther above, there are more of them, weaving in between buildings. The flickering light from yet more billboard screens glistens on their wet bodywork.
I pull myself off the ground and start searching for the old movie cliché—something that will tell me the year. A newspaper is the usual starting point, at street corner vendors or dumpsters, or wherever else I can find one. But there’s nothing like that here. Instead I see people on the stools staring at flickering holographic images—silent, slightly hazy when seen from a distance, but more vivid and clear up close.
“You want something, buddy?”
I didn’t realize it, but I’m almost standing next to a guy, watching the holographic projection depicting what might be a newscast or a TV show. If TV even exists.
I mumble an apology and back away. The guy mutters something I don’t catch and goes back to his food. I lean against a window, the fizzing neon resonating through my skin. I can hardly breathe. My heart is beating so hard it’s starting to hurt.
Through the crowd, I catch sight of a face. At first, I’m too stunned by my surroundings to notice it, but instinct takes over. A woman, hidden beneath the folds of a hood so only vague feathers of the light on her wet skin are visible. Yet she seems familiar to me, and I can’t stop myself from staring. The feeling is there now, I realize too slowly. That familiar, distant sensation of not belonging. When she stares back at me, I recognize her.
One of T-Bone’s girls. It’s her face, I know it. I catch that same sneer she gave me back in his steakhouse.
But it’s not possible. The cars in the sky above me, the holographic projector the guy was watching, the buildings—all of it tells me this is further in the future than I have ever been. A longer jump. A big fistful of decades instead of the usual one.
She can’t be here. Not like this.
She’s already reaching into her coat as my brain staggers to this conclusion. I catch the glint of rain on metal in her hand. My body is heavy, sluggish. I can hardly move.
She reaches out. I manage to turn away and push through the crowd. There are startled shouts behind me, but I don’t stop. I just run. I keep running, filtering between the angry faces, pushing aside coats slick with rain. I jostle people in the street, but keep going. Steam hisses up from the sidewalks, billowing around me.
I don’t know how long I run like that, but I can’t breathe when I stop. I’m doubled over, hands on my knees, searching faces in the crowd for any sign of her. For a second, I see someone I think might be her and make to run again, but it isn’t.
What the hell is going on?
It takes a while to pull my shit together. To try to focus.
As I stumble through the throng, all I can hear in the whine of the cars above me and the cacophony of voices, is my son’s cry. It’s been with me for the last two days—ever since the christening. I can’t get Amy’s red-rimmed eyes out of my head or the image of some other guy holding my little boy. It’s stupid, really, but every time I jump, I check to see if people I know still exist. Mostly they do, but obviously they’re different. They’ve led different lives. They don’t know me.
The moment I left the christening, I knew I was going to do exactly the same with Amy and my son. And that it would probably break me.
* * *
I lean against a window and watch the symphony of the street play out in front of me. I don’t know these people—their psychology is alien to me. People are people, but what makes them who they are changes over time. We adjust to the ever-changing world around us, but desires and motivations stay the same. When it comes right down to it, human beings have been driven by greed and vanity for a long, long time. But not all confidence tricks focus on greed—some prey on naivety and compassion. And those need a certain kind of mark.
I need someone who isn’t in a hurry, isn’t pre-occupied by getting somewhere. Someone eating alone. A girl, because she’ll be more likely to take pity on me than a guy. There are a few sitting at the food bars that line the grimy streets. Enough play with those holographic devices to make me think everyone has one and that they must be networked to something—some kind of internet. I’m guessing, if I’m right, what I need will be stored online somewhere.
I’ve watched for almost an hour before I’m hooked onto someone.
She’s stooped over a plate of what looks like noodles with some kind of fried meat as she taps fingers on the small plate of the device, cycling through a whirl of holographic images that hover above it. She’s bobbing her head as though listening to music, but I see no earphones. I tap her gently on the shoulder and she flinches and turns sharply to stare at me. When her eyes hit mine, she taps the device.
“Hey, really sorry to interrupt you,” I say, hands open, carefully watching her reaction. Narrowed eyes, twitching lips—there’s suspicion at first, but that’s to be expected. “Looked like it was good, whatever you were listening to.” She glances down at the device, then back at me. I keep smiling. “I’m new here. Just got in. I was supposed to meet a friend, but we missed each other
. I’m trying to get hold of him.”
“Why don’t you pim your friend?” The suspicion gives way, just slightly, to confusion. Of course, I don’t have a clue what “pim” means, but if I let her see that in my reaction, the grift is finished.
I shrug, pushing just enough desperation across my face. “My bag got lifted on the way here. I don’t have anything. Just what’s in my pockets. I don’t even have my—” I don’t know what the device is called, so I indicate it vaguely to finish the sentence. “I think he said he lived downtown somewhere. He told me the address once, but I’ve been going all day and I just can’t remember.” I throw in a look around the buildings near us, as though I think it might be nearby.
She pauses as she watches me. I give her a tired smile, like I’ve had enough to deal with today. “You want I should check for you?” she eventually offers. “I can see what his media profile has. I mean, it should be complete, but, you know—” She rolls her eyes, like this is a well-known issue. I mirror her reaction, keeping the smile. Clinging to hope. That it’s different this time.
“I’m really sorry about this. Don’t want your food to get cold.”
“It’s no big deal,” she says. “What’s his name?”
“James William Longden.”
I stand opposite a clutch of old brownstones. Beside me, a fire sheds a fluttering orange glow over the stanchion of a derelict subway viaduct. This neighborhood must have been a high-class place once, but not anymore. The muted light thrown by the streetlamps hardly breaks through a heavy layer of grime on faded advertising billboards, and the sidewalks are cracked and thick with mud.
I head inside the one that supposedly contains my son’s home.
The hallway reeks of old damp and stale urine. Above me, a striplight fizzes and tosses flickering shadows over grubby walls. At one end, a window is streaked with rain. This beaten-down old brownstone is a lifetime away from the skyscrapers of downtown. I hate the idea of my son living in a place like this. A mirror of the dives I’ve always called home.
When I get to 231, I see the two is missing. All that’s left is a darker stain on the wood of the door in the shape of a two, and a couple of worn screw holes. I try the handle and find the door is open, although there’s some kind of magnetic-strip lock. I don’t understand why it wasn’t engaged and something hard gathers in my throat. Outside, there’s a hollow growl of thunder to accompany the incessant rain.
I push open the door and step through.
In the dirty half-light from the hall, the room has the look of a place that might have been lived in once, but not for a long time. Books covered by a thick layer of dust are stacked on a table by the door. The paper on the walls is peeling and faded. There’s a couch and an armchair, neither of which look like they’ve been used in a while. Ornaments and a bunch more books teeter on top of bookshelves set against one of the walls. I pull open the drawers in a chest, but they’re all empty. There’s a door through to a bathroom and a bedroom, and a kitchenette off the main room. None of it convinces me my son has been living here recently.
I head back to the door and glance at the books on the table beside it. All old classics, even from my time. My eye catches one—H. Beam Piper’s Paratime. Despite the ache inside me, I smile. I’ve read everything Piper ever wrote. Seemed appropriate at one time, a boy reading about time travel in a world where he doesn’t belong.
I pick up the book. It’s identical to the one I had—a reprint published in 1981. For a moment it kindles something inside me, a curdling sensation of grief mixed with longing. Thoughts cascade. Where am I? What am I doing here? Where is my son?
Here, now, holding this book in my hands, I realize how alone I am. How alone I’ve always been. Five years is all I have—all I’ve ever had. Maybe I could’ve learned to love someone in that time, but then losing them would’ve been the worse for it. So I stayed distant. Alone. Isolated. This book is the only anchor to a past that isn’t really mine.
I open it and peer down at the yellowed, old pages. I have a notion to take it with me, but when I begin to read, it’s not Piper at all. It’s something else entirely.
Your life is in immediate danger. You must leave at once. Take this book with you. In it, you will find the answers you’re looking for.
The words choke me, shuddering on the page. Or maybe I’m dizzied by the realization that this was placed here for me. By someone who knew I’d pick it up. Right now.
When did they place it here? How could they know?
There’s a noise in the hall. A subtle, soft rush of something unknown.
Instinct beseeches me to flee. I listen at the door. I’m sure the noise is slightly louder now. Either that or I’m going crazy.
The apartment has a window that leads to a fire escape. Rivulets of rainwater streak down the grimy glass. I reach for it and find it’s open, just like the door. In this neighborhood, an apartment door and a fire escape window left open? I can’t believe that’s coincidence.
I climb out into the rain and am drenched again in seconds. The book is tucked beneath the folds of my coat.
I’m about halfway down when I see the car. It’s parked in the alley below me and I know instantly it’s there for me.
Where else can I go but down?
The door opens upwards and a woman steps out, her long, unkempt hair instantly saturated by the rain. It’s not T-Bone’s girl, but someone else. I don’t recognize her. She’s wearing an ill-fitting zip-up jacket that does nothing to keep out the rain. She places a hand on the roof of the car and looks straight at me.
“You need to come with me,” she says. “I can explain what’s happening.” Her voice is tight and high-pitched. Her pinched face is plain and unremarkable, a little too bookish.
I shake my head. Frustration has been building inside me, probably for years, and for a second I let it get the better of me. “Tell me here,” I demand, shucking the rain from my eyes. “Tell me now.” In that moment, I don’t give a damn who’s up there. I’m sick of running.
She tosses a look down the alley, then back at me. “It’s not that simple.”
“It is that simple. In fact, it better be that simple because—” I don’t get to finish. There’s a noise just away from us. A small animal, a cat maybe, kicks over something and it clatters across the ground.
She glances down the alley again, eyes full of fear. She’s ready to bolt and take the truth with her. I search the fire escape above and see a shadow flicker across the window. “We don’t have much time,” she insists. “Please, you must come with me now.”
Some choices are slap-you-in-the-face wrong, but we choose them anyway, usually because they’re easier. Too often the right ones come with baggage. And sometimes we just don’t know what the right play is. Sometimes we just have to trust to luck.
Her fear convinces me. I get into the car and pull down the door. The inside is mostly given away to engineering—there’s only just enough space for us. It’s hot too. She reaches across and straps me in. She’s breathless and I can almost feel her heart beating. She keeps blinking. As she leans over, her damp skin touches mine and instantly it makes me think of Amy. I get another hit of guilt and longing in my throat and look away. The car hums, then vibrates, and I feel something pressing beneath me, pushing upwards. The cityscape slides unnaturally away beneath us.
“How long have you been here?” she says. She looks the way of the fire escape, but we’re hammering down the alley too fast for her to see anything.
“A few hours, maybe.”
“And before? What year was it before?”
She knows. She understands. And somehow, sitting in a flying car, I’m still surprised by this. “It was 2010. I should’ve ended up in 2020.”
She nods. “We don’t understand why you’re here. Now.” Still blinking, eyes dancing.
Something clicks inside my head, but too many questions tumble out. “You know? You’ve been watching me? For how long? And how?”
&nb
sp; It’s only then that I see the pistol in her lap. My heart kicks.
“There was a prediction that you’d come here eventually. This universe. It sounds stupid really, now that I’m saying it, but we just didn’t know when.”
I want to ask who “we” is. Instead I ask, “What’s been happening to me?”
She glances across at me and opens her mouth to say something, then hesitates. There’s regret in her eyes now. She turns away and stares out of the front windscreen. The car banks between two vast, towering billboards and her wet face is smeared with glistening color.
“Tell me,” I demand.
“I can’t,” she says. Her voice catches. “I made a promise. When we get to where we’re going, you’ll understand.”
“That’s not good enough.”
“It’ll have to be. I’m sorry.” Her face is set, like she made that decision a long time ago.
“Then at least tell me what we’re running from.”
She snaps her gaze back to me. “What do you know about that?”
“They’ve been there most of my life. But they don’t belong, do they? Just like I don’t belong. They never talk to me, and it’s like they’re not really there. Not ghosts, they’re more than that, but they...” I kick my head back in frustration. “I can’t explain it.”
She nods and concentrates on driving. Or flying. Whatever it is. She’s biting her lip, breathless again. “I don’t know who they are,” she says finally. “There were simulations, predictions, but they were only ideas. Just hypotheses. That’s all we ever had. We had so little information.” She slams her hands on the controls of the car and it lurches. Then she turns to me again, eyes burning. “That’s why we needed you.”
“You must know something.”
“I think they can move between universes at will. I don’t know how or why they do it. I don’t know if that means they can, or do, change anything. Whether there is an Observer Effect, them being here. I don’t know what they want with us.”
The Time Travel Chronicles Page 28
