Jackman dropped the phone back into place. He looked at Wallace and shook his head.
Ben’s eyes narrowed and his fingers curled involuntarily into fists. “It goes without saying that we sent him back; that signal proves it. The question is, what has he done that shifted the timeline if he’s dead?” He paused a moment, thinking. Then he said to the technician sitting at the workstation beside him, “Prep the machine. We need to send a message to our scouting agent.”
He reached inside his coat pocket, pulling out his copy of The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyam and tapping its binding against his chin. This was a gesture everyone in the room knew well, so no one else spoke as Wallace pondered the next course of action.
Finally, he came to a decision and said to Jackman, “I’ll be back. Call Lucas again and have him ready.”
Jackman watched Ben exit the room in quick strides, then he lifted the phone to his ear once more.
“Jackman here. Get your team ready. And double your efforts; I want Ethan Tannor found – now.”
PART II
Then of the THEE IN ME who works behind
The Veil of Universe I cried to find
A Lamp to guide me through the Darkness; and
Something then said – “An Understanding blind.”
– The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám
34 Iron-Plan
Adelaide, Australia
February 3, 1948, 3:11 PM
Doctor William Amhurst tinkered with ‘The Machine’ – as he had come to call it – until he was satisfied that all of the bolts were tight and all the moving parts were in working order. Then he stepped away and marveled at his masterpiece, uttering a silent prayer to himself that this time would be the one. All the others had been failures, but his hope never faltered. There was too much at stake and the time for the final test had arrived.
He began removing his clothes and stuffed them into the footlocker that rested at the end of his makeshift bed on the far side of the basement lab. With the exception of taking bathroom breaks and grabbing bites to eat, William had rarely ventured upstairs to the living quarters during most of the summer, preferring to grab needed sleep in quick snatches on the small bed. His gut had told him he was close to achieving the goal and he’d been working with tireless determination to get to this point.
The coffee and tea shop down the street from here was the only place he visited anymore. Martin, the owner, had become accustomed to William’s visits, which were now almost like clockwork – the first one coming at close to six every morning, when he would stagger in with an armful of notes. Along with the notes, he also toted various leather bound volumes of old and odd-looking books.
When he’d first settled here with Celice, the location was almost too remote, but it was affordable and at the time that was all that mattered for the young couple. He’d fixed up the basement lab with soundproofing and installed glass thicker than his fist in the windows so his work wouldn’t bother Celice upstairs. That was no longer a concern, but William was glad now that this location was still on the fringes of town so that the odd noises and loud hums generated by his work wouldn’t be heard by passersby. He’d almost closed up the lab windows entirely but finally decided against it. He’d already excommunicated himself from friends but resisted the pull to alienate himself from the world completely.
In truth, it had been staring out at the night sky through those windows that sometimes gave him the most resolve for his work. “Beyond the shining sun and stars, and further than the seven glittering veils is where our final resting place awaits us.” It was what his grandmother, dear old Elisabeth, – God rest her soul – had told him when he was a child.
Yet it was not for her that he worked. It was for those who completed him: his true love and the unnamed child they had created. Gone now, for so long. Many sleepless nights he would reach his hand toward the moon, and cry out to her. “Celice. Sweet Celice,” he would whisper. A name to his son, he had never given; it would only make the hurt worse.
Amhurst gave a final, longing, look at the waxing moon and then walked back to The Machine. It sat idle on the circular platform, a hulking beast of metal and wiring that resembled a modified deep sea diving suit, only slightly larger. Huge plugs and wires extended from the chest piece, connecting with cables that ran the length of the lab and hooked into the power junction box.
A heavy weight of anticipation and impending regret pressed on him. He unlocked the back of The Machine and pulled the hatch down, walking up the three steps to situate himself inside the giant apparatus. He engaged the locking mechanism and the rear door squealed on its hinges as it sealed behind him.
Within seconds, the interior atmosphere of the metal machine became muggy and hot to a near unbearable level. With great effort, Amhurst worked the mechanics of The Machine, flipping the necessary switches in sequence until all that was left was to pull the lever that gave a final charge to the suit.
With methodical skill he performed the tasks, and imagined the possible ramifications of his next actions. But as before, all he could see was a cloud of uncertainty. There wasn’t a way to fathom all the possibilities the following few seconds of his life would bring.
Twenty-eight years ago, William Amhurst had been happily married and about to become a father. Complications arose when his wife went into labor, and the surgeon lacked the skills to save her and his unborn child. He barely remembered the delivery nurse’s explanation about why Celice and the child had passed. But what he could never forget was one of her final comments to him: “What’s done is done.”
He could not live with those words.
William still didn’t know how he managed to keep from killing the woman right there in the waiting room. As the months passed, he somehow found his way back to his old lab, plunging himself into his experiments with a ferocity that would have frightened Celice. If she’d still been alive. The work served to occupy his mind and, perhaps, offered something more …
He had crumbled apart then, and had never been able to put the pieces back together. Maybe this would change all of that.
William looked down at the giant metal arm with the large hook on its end. His breath fogged up the four inch glass plate of The Machine’s helmet. He closed his eyes and pulled the lever.
As if the inside of the suit wasn’t already blazing hot, the temperature escalated another twenty degrees as quickly as a light turns on with the flip of a switch. Through the looking glass, William saw the blinding glare. The suit didn’t give him the dexterity to move its arms and block it, so all he could do was close his eyes. Brightness beyond compare rendered his eyelids useless as it penetrated through the thin skin. He felt pressure building in his ears and worked his jaw to unclog them. Seconds later, there was a loud whooshing sound and the light was gone.
He blinked several times and attempted to regain his bearings. When his eyes focused, he saw with dismay that he was still in the suit, and everything in the room was the same. The heavy air inside The Machine felt like a living entity, smothering him with the weight of his disappointment. For the first time in a long time, he felt tears coming.
This was wrong, all wrong. He shouldn’t be here. He’d failed yet again, perhaps never to succeed. Thomas Edison’s comment about not being a failure despite the hundreds or thousands of times it took him to complete his invention – which had long served as an inspiration to William – now felt like an insult.
He climbed out of The Machine, his body covered in a layer of perspiration. The unexpected chill in the air stung him with surprise and he lost his breath. He began shivering and moved quickly to the footlocker to escape the sudden cold that seemed to be settling in on his bones.
Donning his pants and an extra sweater, he walked back to his chair, slumping down hard on the seat. His head hung low against his chest and he closed his eyes. He sat like that for several minutes, still absorbing the blow of his recent failure.
As he regulated his breathing back to normal
, other sensations poked their way into his brain. Something smelled … strange. He tried to identify what it was, but the answer eluded him, like a forgotten name to a familiar face. He wiped his eyes and sat up straight. It would be best to put his mind at ease by focusing on his work again.
William leaned across the desk for a pencil and paper. As he jotted down the recent event and his thoughts, he noticed the pencil wasn’t working correctly. He stopped writing and looked at the tip to see if it needed sharpening. It didn’t. Then he noticed dust on the paper. He rubbed the side of his hand across the sheet and only then realized quite a bit of it had settled on his notepad.
In a daze, he put the pencil down on top of his notes with a slow, measured movement and touched his palm to the surface of the desk. Slower still, he brushed his hand across the tabletop, wiping away a thick layer of dust that had been there just seconds before.
“What in the devil?” he whispered.
William looked down at his open palm. Then his gaze jumped back to the table, which displayed a streak of wood beneath the dust. The odd smell wafted to his nose again and it took him a moment more to realize the source – his sweater? He clutched a fistful of the material and brought it to his nose. He sniffed, and made a face. It stunk, like clothing that had been kept in storage for a while.
He sat there for a heartbeat, processing this discovery, and then jerked back so suddenly that he almost toppled out of the chair. He pushed away from the desk, stumbling as he tried to regain his mental bearings and balance. Forgetting his age, William ran across the room and opened the door, racing up the stairs to the main floor of the house.
By the time he got to the top of the staircase and bustled through the upstairs door, he was out of breath. But he didn’t stop, continuing through the kitchen area, into the foyer, and then outside into the cold clip of the wind.
William stopped then, a hand to his chest as he tried to calm his heaving lungs and racing heart. The chill air cut deep and he found himself shivering again beyond control. His eyes found the familiar beacon up ahead, and he crossed the street then made his way north for the coffee and tea shop. The little bell over its entrance door sounded and Martin looked up.
“Hey Willy, long time no see!” Martin boomed over the howl of the wind that blew in as William entered. “How’s it going?”
William didn’t answer, but walked over to the counter, still shaking from the cold. He forced himself to look into Martin’s eyes and asked, with a voice that cracked and trembled, “Can – can I get a coffee – umm – black – and – and a newspaper please?”
“Comin’ up,” Martin said. His face registered concern and confusion, but he just swung around, grabbed a cup, and began serving up coffee.
William was frozen in place as he waited, his anxiety growing. Martin came back to him with a cup of coffee in one hand and a paper under his arm. He sat the coffee down and passed the paper to William, who snatched it up, bumping the cup and sloshing coffee on the counter.
He didn’t notice, digging blindly into his pants pocket for some money and thrusting it at Martin. It was more than enough for his purchased items, but he didn’t notice that either.
Martin scoffed and pulled the hand towel from his shoulder to clean the ‘liquid petrol’ – as he called it – from the counter top. He threw a cautious glance at his patron as he put the money away, but William was oblivious to this also.
William picked up his cup and crossed the room to a booth by the window, where he sat down and opened the paper. His mouth went dry and his heart stuttered then began pumping in a fury. The paper slipped from his numb fingers and fell to the tabletop.
The date on its front page read: August 16, 1948.
35 Message in a Body
August 16, 1948, 3:51 PM
Gernot Kalkolov cut a sliver of medium rare steak and stabbed it with his fork. He popped the juicy bite into his mouth and chewed slowly, savoring the taste.
Inside the cramped kitchenette, he sat at a small table rereading the notes he’d taken from the research completed in the lab. They were getting close; it was almost an art in precision.
Gernot sliced another bite of meat and flipped a page of the journal, staring at the schematics drawn out on the page. He was placing the next morsel in his mouth when there was a violent explosion of wind accompanied by a crashing noise.
He pulled back in surprise when a body form, along with bits of wood and an upside down domed slab of concrete, landed on the floor in a heap, leaving behind heavy swirls of dust in the air and a smell of smoke. He coughed and batted a hand at the debris floating in front of his face.
Gernot looked around, dazed to find he was already standing; he had no recollection of getting to his feet. He approached the body. It had listed off to the side and its face was obscured from Gernot’s view. Next to the body was a rock, or what looked like an ordinary stone.
Can it be? He walked closer to the unmoving form, holding his breath. At first glance, he saw that the body was missing its right hand and had a wound in the abdomen. He could only assume it was a fellow traveler. It had to be. Gernot reached down and pulled on the shoulder of the limp man, rolling him over for closer inspection and came face to face with … himself. The breath whooshed from his lungs, and he stumbled back a step, eyes bulging.
What to do with this news? His mind scrambled to make sense of what he was looking at and quickly settled back into analytical mode. The object by his dead body was the meteorite. It must be preserved for his countrymen.
He turned back to the journal on the table. The schematics were not complete. He still needed more time, and Amhurst would be returning soon. It was necessary to approach the doctor today and no earlier. The old man needed to know that his research was successful; otherwise, it would take more convincing.
The fact remained that whether Gernot liked it or not, it appeared a new timeline had been set. Once this happened, to change it was an exercise of extreme difficulty. He knew this even without knowing the catalyst of the event. And what was the catalyst – or who?
It did not matter. He squatted down to remove the watch from the corpse, and the dead man stirred. Gernot flinched, but didn’t move away. The man’s lips moved, and he rasped, “He’s – he’s here.” Before Gernot had a chance to ask questions, the alternate version of himself – his Other – drifted away to the next realm.
Who’s here? Is it one of the six? The possibility had always been there, but he would still want to be sure. If it wasn’t The Marshall himself, Gernot knew with certainty that he was behind it.
Gernot finished the task of pulling off the watch and tossed it to the floor. This one would be useless now. Still, he rose and brought the heel of his boot down on the timepiece again and again until it was irrevocably demolished. With that task completed, he took a moment to look down on the body of an older and dead version of himself before he pressed the nodes on his own watch one last time.
If he was unable to change the timeline, it would have to be preserved. Otherwise this body would not turn up again in the cycle. Maybe – with this knowledge of his possible looming death – the situation could still be changed. He clicked another prong, setting the point where he stood as ‘LOC1’ on the timepiece. The body would have to be disposed of later.
Right now he had somewhere to be.
36 Where the Red Burn Shows
August 16, 1948, 4:38 PM
Dr. Amhurst somehow found himself outside Martin’s coffee shop, staring blindly into space, the newspaper clenched between fingers that hadn’t stopped trembling. His mind’s eye was fixed on the paper’s date, still in shock and disbelief but at the same time in awe of what had happened.
It occurred to him then that his habit of prepaying bills months in advance – in order to continue his work unhindered by monthly annoyances such as writing checks – had reaped an unexpected benefit. It would have been most inconvenient to discover his electricity was cut off during his absence. Or that th
e bank had auctioned off his mortgage to someone else.
He’d always thought – hoped – he would be successful in traveling backward in time, or that he would die in a failed attempt. But he hadn’t counted on this type of error – jumping forward.
Now that it was over, only then did the likelihood of disastrous consequences occur to him. Any number of anomalies could have done serious – most likely fatal – damage to his body as his matter was thrust into the void. He shuddered as he considered the possibilities and crossed the street to his lab’s building as fast as his aged bones could take him.
A tall, unfamiliar man wearing a full-length trench coat stood on the front stoop of the entrance, leaning against the railing. He wore a top hat that shielded his face from partial view. As Amhurst drew closer, he noticed a large burn across the man’s face. It appeared to have been inflicted recently. Amhurst’s scientist brain stirred with curiosity, but he knew it would be rude to ask. Apart from the scar and the tightness of the stranger’s features, he seemed kind enough to warrant striking up a conversation.
“Can I help you?” Amhurst asked as he halted on the second to last step and came eye to eye with the man.
“William Amhurst.” It wasn’t a question. Somehow, the unknown man knew who he was and this greeting was just a formality.
Amhurst squinted at the stranger. “Apparently you know who I am already. The question is, who are you?”
The man flicked his wrist to bat the query aside. “Let’s just say I am someone from far away who follows your work.” He withdrew a book from his coat; it was tattered, ravaged by time. A smell of death accompanied the book as the man’s arm outstretched, bringing it forth like a proffered gift.
And the Tide Turns Page 18
