by Devon Monk
Abraham, being unconscious, didn’t have a lot to add to the conversation, but maybe all I needed right now was a really good listener. A comatose man three pints low on blood fit that bill pretty handily.
I surveyed the room, spotted a chair, and brought it over, setting it next to the table and then sitting down.
“What am I supposed to do? House Brown relied on me and on Quinten to keep them safe. If I die . . .” I took a breath, let it out. “I suppose the world will just go on without me, won’t it? No big loss.”
“No,” Quinten said quietly from the hallway. “It would be a very great loss. To the world. And to me.”
I wiped at my face, at the tears that were threatening to fall. I didn’t want him to know how scared I really was.
“What are you doing up?” I asked. “You barely got to bed.”
“I slept on the plane.” He walked into the room, plucking up a chair as he did so and setting it down across from me. His shirt was still untucked and mostly unbuttoned, his sleeves rucked up to his elbows. He must have smoothed his fingers back through his hair, setting most of it into a semblance of order.
“We need to talk,” he said.
“We need to plan,” I countered.
That stopped him, and he frowned while taking a moment to consider me, as if he’d forgotten what I looked like.
I wasn’t the same little sister he had left behind. I’d been taking care of a farm, stitched animals, an elderly grandmother, and all the crises that cropped up with House Brown for three years without him.
I’d followed a wounded man into a city and politics that were so far over my head, I didn’t want to know what could have gone wrong, just for the chance to save my wayward brother.
A girl had to have guts to do that sort of thing.
And I had guts.
“All right,” he said, “we need a plan. But first you need to know some things.”
“About Gloria?”
He clasped his hands together and looked down at them. “That’s . . . private, Tilly.”
“You like her.”
“Yes,” he said, still not looking up.
“Do you love her?”
He finally lifted his eyes. He didn’t have to use words to tell me the answer to that question. He was so in love with her, the pain of it shadowed his eyes.
“Okay. I won’t ask anymore,” I said.
“I want to talk about the Wings of Mercury experiment,” he said, switching smoothly into teacher mode. “The easiest way to think of this is that the Wings of Mercury experiment fell like a hammer and shattered a moment in time.”
“You’ve told me that already.”
He gave me a look and I shut up.
“What I’ve spent the past three years at the Houses searching for is the journal that lists the calculations that went into the experiment.”
“How will that help?”
“Once I have those calculations, I can—we can—mend time. Fix it.” He waited, maybe for me to be amazed or impressed, but I had no idea what he was talking about.
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
He scratched at the stubble of his jaw, then pressed his fingertips against his lips as he stared up at the ceiling. A moment later, he looked back at me.
“Time broke. A piece of it flew off like a ball on a rubber string, and now that piece is winging back to its rightful place in the flow of time. When that happens in three days, all these extra years the galvanized have been living . . .”
“Three hundred years,” I said.
“Three hundred years,” he agreed, “will come due like a bill that hasn’t been paid. The galvanized will die.”
“And so will I.”
His lips went tight, a white ring spread around them. “Yes. When you were little, when you were eight years old and dying and I implanted your mind and thoughts into the galvanized body you’re now wearing, I didn’t know about the experiment. I didn’t know time was broken. I need you to understand that, Matilda. I never would have done this, done this to you, if I’d known about the time experiment.”
I reached over and took his hand in mine. He looked so sad, so worried.
“Of course I know that,” I said. “You saved me, Quinten. You were only thirteen. You didn’t know what would happen. And no matter how this ends, I love you. You gave me years I never would have had.”
His eyes glittered and he wiped at them quickly, as if I hadn’t noticed. Then he smiled and it was his “I’ve got a plan” look. “This doesn’t have to end. You don’t have to end. Your life doesn’t have to end, and the galvanized don’t have to die. We can fix this. We can fix time.”
“Don’t you think us Cases have done enough damage trying to control time? Our great-grandfather was the madman who started this whole mess.”
“Yes, he was,” Quinten said, his growing excitement clear and his eyes shining with something more than tears: hope. “That’s my point. His calculations must have been off by just a fraction, but when one is meddling in time, one must be precise.”
“All right, Einstein, you’ve lost me,” I said. “What are you talking about?”
“We can, if my theory holds true, change the calculations of his experiment and make it so that time didn’t break. It will simply stretch, as he intended. And since we will have allowed it to mend in this time space, the galvanized won’t die. You, my dear little sister, will not suffer an early death.”
The fire of fanaticism lit his eyes and words. In front of me was a man who had spent years tracking down the solution to a very complicated problem. A man who had sacrificed his own freedom to find that solution, and very possibly a man who had gone a little off his rocker in doing so.
“I knew this would happen someday,” I said.
“What?”
“You. Losing your mind.”
“I haven’t—”
I grinned at him.
He just pointed one finger at me. “The calculations of Alveré Case’s experiment were so close to being correct. I was finally able to put the last pieces of the puzzle together when I was working for House Orange.”
“Working? I thought you were a prisoner.”
“Well, yes. I was that too, but he gave me unlimited access to his histories.”
“House Orange histories told you there was a way to fix time? That sounds like trustworthy information.”
“This new thing of yours?” he said. “Doubting everything I say? I can’t say that I’m a fan of it.”
“If you don’t like it, then don’t take off and leave me alone with no way to contact you—with no way to know if you’re alive or dead—for three years.”
He sat back at that, surprised at my words.
I was surprised too.
I swallowed and reached out for his hand again, holding him, knowing he was here, real.
“Three damn years, Quinten.” My voice faltered down to a whisper. “I thought you were dead.”
“Matilda,” he said just as softly, “Tilly. I’m sorry I didn’t contact you. I couldn’t. Not even at the beginning. They were watching me so closely, I knew they’d find you. But this was so important—”
“Nothing’s more important than us. Nothing’s more important than family. The people you love.”
He seemed to fold down into himself, the manic energy gone. It was worrisome how quickly he looked pale, thin, and exhausted. His three years spent at the Houses had not been kind to him. “I was doing this for you.”
“I know. I know that. It’s just . . .” I shook my head. “You’re important to me. More important than . . . anything.” How did I explain to him that he may have just gambled away three years of our lives? Three years with him I’d never get back.
“And you’re important to me,” he said. “You understand that, don’t you?”
I squeezed his hand and let go again. There was no use wasting more time on regret. “Yes, I understand. So, we’re in this together now. How
can we fix time?”
“It’s . . . a little hard to explain,” he said. “And without the journal—”
“Grandma’s journal.”
“Yes. Without that I can’t be one hundred percent sure, but my best guess is if we can stand in the eye of the experimental storm at the exact moment time returns to mend itself, we will be able to cross through a . . . brief opening. Then all we have to do is find the Wings of Mercury machine and change the calculations.”
I waited. Then shook my head. I didn’t understand what he was saying.
“You know where the experiment took place, right?” he asked.
“I didn’t even know the experiment was anything more than a legend until a couple days ago. So no. I don’t know where it happened.”
“On our land. Our property. That’s why we’ve kept the place out of House control and in the family. That’s why the nanos and minerals act so strangely. That’s what Mom and Dad died for.” He swallowed around the catch in his voice.
I missed Mom and Dad something terrible, but Quinten had been a lot older when the Houses had come out to our property, killed our parents, and ransacked our home, looking for Dad’s research.
Quinten had been gone, studying, when it happened. He’d always blamed himself for not being there to save them. And even though I hadn’t thought about it for years, he had often told me that he would give anything to find a way to bring Mom and Dad back to life.
“Tell me this isn’t about Mom and Dad,” I said. “Quinten, you know you can’t bring them back. No one can.”
“You can’t begin to know what I can and can’t do, Matilda,” he said, drawing himself up stiffly. “I have stared down death and dulled its blade. You are breathing because I refuse to believe in the limits of genius.”
“I know,” I said sitting back and studying the anger and righteousness he always resorted to when he was deeply, deeply frightened.
“You’re brilliant,” I said, “and I love you. I know you love me.” I lifted my hands and turned them so the light ran across my stitches. “I have lasting proof of that. You’ve probably saved Abraham’s life too. But Mom and Dad? They’re gone, Quinten. And even if we could . . .”
What could we do? Dig up their graves and try to stitch them into functioning bodies? I supposed if anyone in this world would know how to do that, it would be my tenacious brother.
“Even if we could somehow find their bodies and bring them back, I’m not sure they’d want to live that sort of life, whatever that kind of life would be.”
“I’m not talking about bringing them back,” he said. “Not right now. What I want is for you to believe that we can change what happened all those years ago. If we can get back to that origin point in space—on our property—and also activate the countermeasures I’ve put together for the time event, we can go back in time. We can thread the knot before it cinches tight. Once back in time, all we have to do is get to the machine and adjust the experiment.”
“Traveling in time?” I shook my head. “Quinten, I don’t know. No one’s done it. And even if we did, aren’t we risking making the world even worse than it already is?”
“I’m doing this for you, Matilda,” he said. “Yes, I wish Mom and Dad were still alive, and if there’s any chance that can happen, I’ll take the chance. But if we don’t try to adjust time, to slide through that gap and go back to the origin point of the event, then you will die. That isn’t a theory. That is an absolute I have spent years trying to change. And I . . .” He swallowed again, shaking his head, his voice down to a whisper. “I can’t endure that.”
“Okay,” I said. “I don’t want to die either. So we’re in agreement there. You think if can we get home and trigger something . . . What did you build—a bomb?”
“Not a bomb. Do you know the timetable in the basement control room?”
The control room was where we received and sent all transmissions for House Brown, and where we tried to coordinate staying ahead of the other Houses while trying to keep the people who claimed House Brown safe.
“You never told me what it was. I thought it was some kind of clock.”
“It is, in some ways. I built it to predict the exact moment when the time event would trigger. Once I knew when the break was going to self-heal, I knew that I’d have to rework the calculations of the original experiment and spot the error our great-grandfather made. It wouldn’t have been difficult if I’d had all the information, but since I never found the journal . . .”
“I thought you said you pieced together information.”
He shrugged. “I didn’t find the journal. Just bits of it. So without the journal, this will be a little more difficult.”
“Holy crap, Quinten. So you’re just winging this? Making best guesses while you’re going to try to alter time? No. Very no. Our grandfather already screwed up time, killed hundreds of people with that experiment, and caused all manner of hell for the thirteen people who survived his meddling. We’re not going to repeat that mistake.”
“It is not a guess.” He sounded offended. “I found bits and pieces of reliable information here and there, stored away in different House histories. Enough to know that other people over the years have tried to track down all the information on this experiment.”
“Why did Grandma have the information in her journal anyway?” I asked. “How did she get it?”
He shook his head slowly. “I would love to know the answer to that.”
I glanced over at Abraham, who still looked more dead than alive.
“All right. We’re going to alter time. One more time: how?”
“We get to our basement and trigger the timetable, which should generate enough power to catch the moment time mends. In that moment, a portal through time should open. Then all I need to do is step through.”
“You? Alone? And you’ll be where exactly?”
“When, is what you really want to know. 1910. Before the Wings of Mercury experiment is carried out.”
“And what do you think you can do in 1910?”
“Find our grandfather and convince him to change his calculations.”
“Change them to what?”
He leaned back and ran his fingers through his hair. “I’m still working on that.”
7
Quinten and the others talk about me in hushed voices. What I am. How worried they are about hiding me from the others.
—from the diary of E. N. D.
I’d heard a lot of crazy things in my years. I’d seen my fair share more of impossibilities that turned out to be probabilities, and probabilities that went on to become realities. But time travel?
“You’re going to go back in time,” I said.
“Don’t say it like that.”
“Like what?”
“Like you don’t believe me.”
“Well, I’m just trying to understand the details.”
“Someone was going to break the code on time travel,” he said. “I don’t know why it couldn’t be me.”
“Sure, you’re smart.” At his scoff, I added, “The most brilliant person I know.”
He gave me a grin. “Go on.”
“But you’re going to walk in on what I assume was a secret, or at least private, experiment and jiggle the handle?”
“It’s mathematics. You don’t jiggle the handle. You make minute corrections to the equation.”
“By walking into a stranger’s lab and telling him he forgot to carry the one? I know you’ve worked out the math on this, but have you thought through the practical nature of actually traveling through time?”
“Of course.”
I narrowed my eyes, but he held my gaze. I thought he was bluffing.
“You worked out all the details of approaching our great-great-granddad, telling him he was wrong, convincing him you aren’t an escapee from the loony bin, and talking him into adjusting the formula—”
“Calculation.”
“—whatever—on an ex
periment he wouldn’t even have done yet? You really think he’ll believe you’re from the future and that you have his best interests in mind?”
“As one scientist to another, he’ll believe me. The recalculation will be proof enough.”
I sighed and unbraided my hair, running my fingers through it as I did so. “There’s no guarantee he will believe you.”
The shadow of fear clouded the blue of his eyes, and I regretted my words. I’d seen my brother worried, angry, sad. I’d never seen that shade of fear in him.
“It will work,” he said. “It will have to.” Desperate words, softly spoken.
“Okay,” I said. “If it has to work, then we’ll make it work. We need that journal. Do you have any idea where it is?”
“It’s possible Slater Orange has it. He told me he did, but he may have been lying.”
Slater Orange. The man who had implanted himself in Robert’s body and accused Abraham of murder. “Did he tell you where it is?”
“No.”
I shook my head. “Here I thought getting you out from House imprisonment would be the worse of my problems.”
“Just the straw that brought the camels tumbling down, I’m afraid,” he said.
I stared at Abraham. He was part of that tumble.
“He will recover, Matilda,” Quinten said as he stood, and groaned, rolling his shoulders. “The question is when and how well. But he will wake. And if he has enough time, I believe he will heal.”
“Thank you for helping him,” I said, still watching Abraham. “I know he’s a stranger to you, but it means a lot to me that you did what you could for him.”
“How did you meet?” he asked.
I glanced up at him. He had on his interested, patient-brother expression, his hands loose and at his sides.
“He knocked on the kitchen door. Neds about blew his head off.” I smiled, remembering a day that had happened less than a week ago but that felt like years ago.
“Why didn’t you tell him to leave? You must have known he was trouble.”
“I suppose I figured as much. He was bleeding. Gutted like a fish. He passed out on the floor, but not before telling me that he had come to save our dad.”
