Under Cover of Darkness

by Julie E. Czerneda

  The cold and the antiseptic smell brought it back to her as she and Vincent again walked hospital halls.

  Vincent found the room he wanted and they stood in the doorway, watching. An old man lay in bed connected to a web of wires, tubes, monitors, and machines. Racking coughs shook his withered frame; his voice was thin and raspy. A middle-aged man sat at his side, holding his hand. They talked in hushed tones, and sometimes the old man would smile meekly, or weep gently.

  “James is dying,” Vincent said quietly. “He won’t last the night, the doctor says. That’s his son, Derrick. He’s come to say good-bye.”

  Kayla said nothing. She could feel the tingle of moments all around her, like an itch she wanted to scratch. She wouldn’t let herself.

  “The world won’t let children stay children for long these days,” Vincent said. “The kids in the park deserve one golden summer to always remember, so I’ve been giving them time for weeks now.

  “That couple on the patio? Today was the day they fell in love. And, well, you know how relationships go.”

  Only hours ago, Kayla realized, she would have taken that as a veiled accusation. Now, she nodded her head and understood.

  No matter what happened later in their relationship, the couple would always have that magical, intensely lived day they fell in love. That’s what Vincent had given them. Just as, Kayla realized, he had tried to give her.

  She didn’t want him stealing time for her, but had she misjudged him? She considered him for a long moment, seeing perhaps for the first time what she loved in him.

  “And them?” Kayla asked, turning her attention back to the old man and his son. “This is an awful time to be in-moment.”

  “But it’s not, Kay! That’s what you made me realize. With us, I tried to prolong all the happiness, all the easy moments. I didn’t want the difficult ones. No one does.”

  He became very still. “My father died last year.”

  “Vincent . . .” Kayla took his hand. Vincent’s father had been ill for several years, the whole time Kayla and Vincent were together. Vincent hadn’t wanted them to meet until he recovered, saying his father didn’t want people seeing him as an invalid. Now it was too late.

  “It was a lot like this,” he said, looking over the hospital room. “I sat with him, held his hand. We were close, I thought. We talked a few times a week; I’d go visit him. But then he was gone, and I realized there was so much unsaid. I could have taken time, spent weeks and weeks with him in-moment . . . but I didn’t. It was too hard, too scary. And now . . . Now it’s too late.” He wiped away tears.

  Kayla’s throat burned. She squeezed his hand, and felt him squeeze back.

  “That’s when everything you’d said about my selfishness made sense. Even if we don’t want those moments, even if they scare us, we need them. They make us see what we don’t like about ourselves; they shake us up and change us.

  “Look at this man, dying in his bed, and tell me that he hasn’t been robbed of his most precious possession—time. For him, it’s lung cancer, but it could as easily have been some Guild agent who took just enough moments . . . I can’t make him say the words, but I can give him time, and give him the chance. Time to say all the things he never said. Time to bring some peace to his life, and his son’s, before the end.” He turned to look at her. “If you want to put me away for that, well, you’re welcome to it.”

  Kayla leaned up and kissed him, standing on tiptoes as she’d always had to. As their lips met she felt her resistance melt away, and she gave in. Every second—every one!—washed over her like a warm rain. She was there with Vincent, and with the old man and his son, in the moment, fully living each instant. It was all she remembered it being, and more. This was how life should be lived!

  She broke the kiss when she realized the hushed conversation by the bedside had stopped. Kayla could feel eyes on her. The old man could see her, was looking at her! She was so used to not being seen she could find no words to answer the questioning look on the old man’s face.

  “Sorry,” said Vincent. “We must have the wrong room.” He took Kayla by the elbow. They stepped into the hall and back into baseline time.

  Waiting there for them by the nurse’s desk was Strangway, the tall, grandfatherly Guild agent who’d set Kayla after Vincent.

  “Don’t move,” Strangway said. Men appeared at Strangway’s side, and others blocked possible avenues of escape. They were the kind of men librarians wouldn’t know to hire.

  Cold slipped down Kayla’s spine as Strangway settled his gaze on her. He knew, didn’t he? He knew that she had let Vincent escape his apartment, that she now did not intend to turn him over to the Guild. They’d just been using time—had he been able to sense it? Is that what drew him here?

  A pair of the men with Strangway moved to either side of Vincent, each roughly taking an arm.

  “Hey! Easy!” Vincent said.

  The gun. It was still in her bag, Kayla realized. Could she get it before they stopped her? She slumped her shoulder, trying to slide the strap down her arm.

  “You’re a little late to the arrest,” Vincent said, as the men pushed him toward Strangway. “Kayla was about to bring me in. She’s convinced me to turn myself over.”

  Kayla wanted to scream that was a lie, but his look as she caught Vincent’s eyes held her back. I know what I’m doing, they said. Don’t stop me.

  “Well done, Kayla,” Strangway said. “I knew I was right about you.”

  Kayla didn’t like the implication.

  “You know,” Strangway said, stepping to within inches of Vincent, “what we do is like building a bridge of stone. All of humanity walks as one across the endless span of this bridge, except for us. We walk a few steps ahead on the leading edge, laying down the next course of brick, the next row of stones, so everyone else will find safe footing for their next step. What you do, though, is monstrous—stealing bricks from under the very feet of your fellow man!”

  He nodded his head and the men ushered Vincent down the hall, through a set of swinging doors, and out of sight.

  As she motioned to follow, Kayla felt an arm slip around her shoulder. She fought the urge to shrug it away.

  “It’s gratifying to know that you are on our side, Kayla,” Strangway said. “This wasn’t easy for you, I’m sure. You realize by now that this wasn’t a simple assignment from the Guild.”

  Kayla considered the slipperiness of his statement, the layers of meaning: a veiled reminder of his secret knowledge of her crime; a kind of congratulations on passing the test and expiating her sin. It was how Vincent would have picked apart the statement, she realized. He was right—she had been naive.

  Not anymore.

  “I think any lingering doubts have been put to rest,” he said, slowly guiding her down the hallway. “You made the right choice in the end, and that’s what counts. There’s no need to discuss your, hmm—youthful indiscretion?—ever again, as far as I’m concerned.”

  Kayla mumbled false words of thanks and forced her attention to stay in the moment. Trauma was one instance where it was easy to skim the seconds, awareness shutting down as you went into shock. She was determined to have every instant of the pain, to feel it all, remember it. Like Vincent said, the hard moments helped you change. . . .

  “It’s clear you’re a person of special talents,” Strangway continued, “one who won’t be content in the trenches, gathering time forever, yes? I have something of an eye for talent, and you have greatness in store for you, I’m sure of it. I don’t doubt eventually you’ll be sitting on the Council with me. It might do you good to have a friend in high places as you make your way.”

  She allowed herself a moment of dark pride at the confirmation. Pieces had fallen into place after Vincent said her mission was a test. Of course Strangway was on the Guild Council: who else would be trusted with the knowledge that you could turn time to your own purpose?

  Something about keeping enemies closer crossed Kayla’s
mind as she forced the effusive thanks for Strangway’s patronage that he would expect.

  He smiled softly and disappeared through the swinging doors at the end of the hall.

  Kayla headed for the elevator, tears in her eyes at last.

  Strangway wasn’t the last person Kayla expected to see when she peered through the peephole, but she thought he would wait longer before coming to see his new pro tégé. It had been less than a week.

  He knocked again.

  She watched him, strange and distorted through the peephole, grow increasingly impatient with waiting. He checked his watch—not his chronograph, Kayla noted; that was a good sign—knocked once more, then turned and walked down the hall.

  Kayla waited, ear pressed to the door, until she heard the elevator open and close again. She exhaled a deep and ragged breath. Had she been holding it the whole time? She slid the door chain across and decided to have more dead bolts installed; she’d seen how little help chains could be.

  She closed the blinds on her living room windows—the ones she’d made herself when she made Vincent’s—and returned to work on her chronograph.

  Did Strangway suspect? Had he taken apart Vincent’s chronograph, seen how its gears and counterweights, its crystals and wires had been modified?

  Vincent had explained the basics of his borrowed time during their hurried trip to the hospital. The chronograph was the key. Simple modifications turned it from a meter for time into a conduit to dispense it.

  How many others, in the long history of the Guild, had happened upon this secret? How many of those had the Council also “disappeared?”

  She’d heard the rumors, of course, the urban legends chronographer trainees told each other. Cross the Guild, they said, and you’ll end up in the coma wards, your body kept alive as Guild agents steal away every moment of the rest of your life. . . . She’d never had reason to believe that, until now.

  Was that where she’d find Vincent—a John Doe in some faraway coma ward? And would she find other chronographers who’d made the same modifications Vincent had? Did they share his vision? As she soldered wires and reweighted the mechanisms in her chronograph, Kayla vowed to find out.

  Stephen Kotowych has is a member of the Fledglings, a Toronto-area writer’s group brought together by Robert J. Sawyer in 2003. He has his Masters in the history of science and technology from the University of Toronto, which serves the dual function of looking pretty hanging on his wall and being good fodder for his fiction. He is currently an acquisitions editor at the University of Toronto Press. This is his first published work of fiction.

  SHADOW OF THE SCIMITAR

  Janet Deaver-Pack

  SWEAT STREAMED THROUGH his short mud-brown hair and down the back of Percival St. Croix’s neck. Unrelenting sun hammered on his head, shoulders, and back. Climbing a pitted rock spire in the Arabian desert in the middle of the day wasn’t his idea of intelligent action, but he needed to speak to the rebel leader on the summit.

  I bounce around on a camel across half the desert to get here. Then circumstances dictate that I climb this rusty spine for a meeting with an old friend. Well, he’s not exactly a friend—I never got to know him that well at Oxford.

  Percival grinned, an expression bringing boyish enthusiasm to his oval sunburned face. “The things I do for my Order and people who need my help,” he grumbled aloud, enjoying himself despite the heat.

  A twenty-nine-year-old man of forgettable features, mild mien, and average height, Percival’s blandness hid remarkable talents. He was the only Advocate of the Rosicrucians, appointed by the eminent Council of Twelve and the Order’s leader, a seldom-seen figure known as the Liberator. Percival’s lifelong assignment was to seek out and annihilate Chaos.

  And now, during the first third of 1917, one of the greatest threats to mankind’s peace and security is gaining power in the Middle East, Percival thought. The war has little to do with the real menace: conflict between nations makes a convenient curtain for the growing power of Devlin Quint.

  He stopped climbing, right hand digging into a crevice while his toes balanced on a protruding bulb of ancient lava. Percival wore smoke-colored lenses rimmed by silver wire to protect his eyes. Lifting them, he swiped a blurring tear from his left eyelid with a brown sleeve. That eye felt tired and grainy, the white likely still deep red from the ritual dust he’d employed yesterday to ferret out his path through the desert.

  Settling the lenses back on his nose, he reached upward for the next handhold. Sudden peculiar fluttering, like cotton robes whipped by a dust devil, made him stop. A dark form crossed the sun. Percival looked up, seeing nothing.

  “Things are not right here,” he whispered. “I must hurry.”

  It took him a good fifteen minutes more to grasp the sand-scoured ledge of the volcanic plug. As Percival’s eyes lifted above the shelf, he discovered a dozen rifles pointing at his face.

  “The peace and blessings of Allah to you,” he said in calm Arabic to the Bedouin holding the rifles, knowing use of their language would confuse them. I can tally on one hand all the British in this country who speak Arabic. Two of them are on this blasted rock. “Please, may I see your leader Aurens?”

  They shifted their feet and argued about what to do. Finally one lowered his gun, looked at the top of the ridge, and called, “Aurens. Aurens! Someone asks for you.”

  A conspicuous figure in white and gold glanced at Percival, then back out into the desert. “Very well, but not for long.” He turned, skidding down from the summit, spitting Arabic. “You’d better have an extraordinary reason for interrupting us. Who the hell are you, and what are you doing here?”

  “Spy, he’s a Turkish spy!” suggested several nomads.

  Careful of the rifles, Percival levered himself up enough to sit on the ledge. “I wondered where you were, Thomas.” His English wheezed and cracked from dust. “I came partially in response to your letter.”

  Captain T. E. Lawrence slid to a stop near him. “Ahmad, get some rope. We’ll have to tie him up until we’re finished with the train . . . wait.” Lawrence squinted blue eyes beneath sun-bleached brows, barely shaded by his head cloth. “Is it—no, it can’t be.” He switched to English. “Percival St. Croix from Jesus College at Oxford, is that you?”

  “In the flesh.” He nodded, and couldn’t keep mischief out of his tone. “Only you would endeavor to confuse the enemy by wearing Arabic wedding robes, Thomas.”

  Malice faded from the nomads as Lawrence held out a hand. Percival stood and took it: dry and gritty, it felt like leather-wrapped bones with a minimum of wiry muscle, very much a part of this desiccating desert.

  “What’s this?” Lawrence fingered the six-inch Latin cross Percival had pressed to his palm while shaking hands.

  “My calling card, the Rosae Crucis.”

  Leaning to shade it from the sun, Lawrence studied the cypress cross with its delicate carved rose. He turned it over to scrutinize the mystical symbols on its back. A long moment passed as he considered what it meant. “The Rose Cross.” Turning to the tribesman beside him, he ordered, “Give him water.”

  Percival felt as if he’d passed a test as a goatskin bag was thrust into his hands. He upended it, drinking the warm stream of mineral-tasting liquid. He returned it with thanks in Arabic.

  Lawrence handed back the cross. “I’ve heard about the Rosae Crucis, of course, but I’ve never seen one.” He squinted as Percival’s fingers made the cypress disappear, apparently behind a fold of his cloth belt. Indicating his own costume, Lawrence shrugged. “This is a necessary ploy. These were a gift from Prince Feisal, meant to bring me more credibility among the tribesmen I live among these days. And they’re much more comfortable than British military kit while riding camels.”

  Percival looked deep into the shrewd eyes that had a startling ability to assess both minutiae and men. Suddenly he remembered Lawrence’s sensitivity about his short stature. There were four inches of difference between the two. Perciv
al discovered a wide hole in the rock with his toe and eased his sandals into it, putting his and Lawrence’s faces on the same level.

  “You look well despite this heat,” Percival grated in English, his throat somewhat relieved by the water.

  “As well as can be expected.” One side of Lawrence’s mouth quirked upward in a wry smile, and he shook his head. “None of us are getting much rest charging around the desert at all hours, chasing trains and befuddling the Turks.”

  “By the way, I bring greetings from Prince Feisal. He hopes your mission is going well.”

  Lawrence waved a hand at the desert beyond the top of the rock. “So you stopped at the prince’s camp. I’m sure he told you that we’re awaiting a train along the Hejaz Railway. We’re going to blow it off the tracks and pillage what’s left. Damned Turks aren’t always punctual, but they often send wagons fat with horses, mules, and staples for stations up the line. The only ones we let pass have cars of women and children whom the Turks have decided to uproot and send away.”

  He squinted suddenly at Percival. Tension gathered about him like electricity, carrying an unmistakable question.

  “Yes,” Percival replied. “I’m here to investigate the odd deaths of Turkish soldiers you mentioned in your letter. And hopefully glean more from the train.”

  “I really didn’t expect your appearance in the middle of a war zone in Arabia, or your ability to climb rocks,” Lawrence stated in a soft voice. “I thought perhaps you’d reply by letter. Figured that was more your style: you were always quiet at school, chasing from one place to another with an intent look on your face.”

  “I had other duties. They more than filled any spare time.”

  “I must say, your arrival is a pleasant surprise. Frankly, I’m impressed that you’d come all the way from Feisal’s camp to find me.” His expression hardened, looking much like the rock he stood on. “Few of the military higher-ups bother to respond to anything I tell them. I’ve been talking myself silly to no effect in almost every meeting I’ve had. Most think this is a mere side-show to the important side of the war.” His voice gained passion. “If they only realized how pivotal this area is!”