Changeling

by David Wood

  “Even worse,” he replied. “The Phantom Time hypothesis is a conspiracy theory first advanced by Herbert Illig and Hans-Ulirch Niemitz, which—in very broad terms—posits that during the early Middle Ages, the Church added an extra three hundred years to the calendar.”

  Jade’s forehead creased in a frown. “What do you mean by ‘added’?”

  “Four centuries after the conversion of Constantine to Christianity,” Roche explained, “and about seven centuries after Christ was thought to have walked the earth, the Holy Roman Emperor Otto II, along with Pope Sylvester II and the Byzantine Emperor Constantine VII, made a pact to change the calendar system in such a way that their respective reigns would coincide with the end of the millennium.”

  “Like a kid tearing out pages in a calendar in the belief that he can make Christmas come sooner,” Professor said.

  “The deception endures to this day,” Roche went on. “You see, it is not actually the 21st century AD, but rather the 18th.”

  Jade gaped at him. “People actually believe that?”

  “Not nearly enough people,” Roche said, gravely. “Most have been completely hoodwinked by the great hoax.”

  “Phantom Time is the hoax,” Professor countered. “The entire hypothesis rests on an alleged error during the change from the Julian calendar to the Gregorian calendar in the year 1582.”

  “Oh,” Jade said. “Well, that clears everything up.”

  “According to the Julian system,” Professor continued, “the solar year was 365.25 days long.”

  “That’s why we have a leap year every four years.”

  “Right, but the solar year is actually 365.2425 days long. I know it sounds like a meaningless difference, and practically speaking, it is. About ten minutes a year. But over the course of a few hundred years, it adds up.”

  “The Julian Calendar was introduced in the year 46 BC,” Roche said. “The error was known even then, but it was thought too insignificant to correct. Ordinary people lived by the turning of the seasons, not some arbitrary system of time-keeping. The Church however was very concerned with dates since it was necessary for Easter to coincide with the vernal equinox, so Pope Gregory instituted the calendar system we use today, which corrects the problem by skipping a leap year at the turn of each century, except in years divisible by 400.”

  “Which is why we had a leap year in 2000,” Professor supplied.

  “Instead of twenty-five leap years per century, there would be ninety-seven leap years in every four hundred year period. However, to adjust for errors in the preceding years, it was necessary to delete the days that had been inadvertently added over the course of the centuries, so Thursday, October 4, 1582 was followed by Friday October 15, 1582.”

  “That part really happened,” Professor said. “It’s well documented in history. Unlike the so-called Phantom Time conspiracy.”

  “The Gregorian calendar adjustment accounted for ten extra days,” Roche said, ignoring the barb as he closed in on the crux of his argument. “Counting forward from 46 BC, there should have been 394 leap years, but under the Julian calendar, there were 407. But if it was really the year 1582, the correction should have been thirteen days. Gregory knew this, and he knew what his predecessors had done. That’s why he only moved the calendar forward ten days. He knew it was really the year 1183.”

  Roche delivered this pronouncement with such gravity that Jade almost felt guilty for not caring.

  “See what I mean,” Professor said. “It’s pretty thin soup.”

  “Look, this is really interesting,” Jade said, openly disingenuous. “But it seems like something that should be pretty easy to prove or disprove.”

  “There is surprisingly little physical evidence against the hypothesis,” Roche said. “The Church was the accepted time-keeping authority in its day. The historical record relies heavily upon medieval chronicles, which were fabricated for the sole purpose of reinforcing the deception. Many of them, such as the so-called contemporary accounts of Charlemagne, are little more than romantic fiction, but scholars do not question their veracity. To do so would undermine everything we think we know.”

  Asserting that all evidence refuting a viewpoint was manufactured and proof of a conspiracy was a common defensive tactic among the true believers, but as Roche spoke, it finally occurred to Jade that the man actually believed what he was telling her.

  “Hold on,” she said. “You’re saying that everything that happened between 600 and 900 was just made up?”

  “That’s what he’s saying,” Professor said. “Charlemagne, the beginning of the Holy Roman Empire, Muhammed and the rise of Islam, the Tang Dynasty in China—”

  “Fiction,” Roche insisted. “Every bit of it. Tug a loose string and the web of lies unravels.”

  Jade raised a hand. “Just for argument’s sake, let’s say you’re right. What difference does it make?” And why on earth, she did not add, do you think I would care?

  “Don’t you see?” Roche stared at her as frustrated that she could not see something so obvious. “If those three hundred years never happened, then the foundation of our entire world is built on a lie.”

  “So? A lot of people believe things that have been scientifically disproven.”

  “And many of them are willing to kill to protect those beliefs,” Roche insisted.

  Jade realized he was not talking about wars fought over religion but rather a much more immediate threat. “You think people are after you because of this?”

  “Phantom Time is a fringe theory,” Professor added, “but it’s hardly a secret. The ‘truth’ if you want to call it that, is already out there.”

  “There’s more going on than anyone suspects,” Roche insisted. “Illig may have uncovered the truth about the conspiracy, but he was wrong about the motive behind the Phantom Time adjustment. It wasn’t just to fool the world into thinking the millennium was at hand. There was a much darker purpose at work. It was my intention to explain everything in my next book, but there are powerful forces working to keep the truth from being revealed. They murdered my publisher to prevent the book from being released.”

  “Murdered?” Jade asked. Paranoia was one thing, but if Roche’s publisher had actually been the victim of foul play, it might confirm everything he had just said. On the other hand, even a mysterious or unexpected death might turn out to be a coincidence. True believers like Roche were adept at turning such coincidences into proof of a conspiracy. “By the Changelings?”

  Roche ducked his head as if the question had been a physical assault. “Possibly. Ultimately, I’m sure they are the puppet masters, pulling the strings of their unwitting agents.”

  Professor leaned forward. “Why bring this to Jade? Are you looking for protection?”

  “Protection?” Roche murmured. A sad smile touched his lips. “Truth is the only protection. But knowing the truth is not the same as proving it. That is where you can help.”

  Jade made no attempt to hide her skepticism. “You think I can find proof that Phantom Time is real?”

  “No. You can find—” A loud bang from outside the room cut him off in mid-sentence. It might have been a car backfiring or a firecracker thrown by a prankster, but Jade knew it was neither.

  “That was a gun.” Professor instantly went on the defensive, seizing hold of Jade’s arm and pulling her down. She needed no further urging, scrambling around the end of the desk, seeking cover behind it with Professor right behind her, but while her body knew what to do, her mind was reeling.

  This can’t be happening.

  It was not the threat of danger that tripped her up. She had been shot at before. Rather, her denial stemmed from the fact that this apparent attack seemed to validate Roche’s paranoia, and by extension, his insane theories, and that was a big pill to swallow.

  Roche reacted as if he had been rehearsing for just such a scenario. He slid from his chair, dropping to his knees behind the desk, and lowered his bulk so that only his ey
es and the top of his head were visible above it, a small semi-automatic pistol gripped in his pudgy hand.

  The door to the office swung open and Jade’s already overtaxed brain did a back-flip as she instantly recognized the man framed in the doorway.

  “Rafi?”

  Roche raised up just enough to stab his pistol in Rafi’s direction but he pulled the trigger prematurely. The gun barked, the small room amplifying the noise of the report, but the bullet plowed harmlessly into the wall two feet to the right of the intended target. Jade’s ears rang with the noise of the shot and her nostrils were filled with the sulfur smell of burnt gunpowder. Before Roche could correct his aim and loose another shot, Rafi raised the gun in his right hand, calmly took aim and fired.

  FOUR

  The bullet punched into Roche’s chest, knocking him back. Jade gave an involuntary—and inaudible—yelp, but Professor pushed her aside and dove for the pistol that had fallen from Roche’s grasp. Faster than Jade’s eyes could follow, he crawled around the end of the desk and returned fire.

  Jade’s senses were assaulted by the roar of gunfire and the sound of bullets striking the wall behind her and the heavy wooden panels of the desk. Even though none of the shots found her, each impact reverberated through her like a punch to the gut. A haze of sulfur fumes and wood smoke curled in the air overhead, further obscuring her view of the gun battle, and a blizzard of splinters stung her face, forcing her to seek refuge behind Roche’s body. In the instant that she did, the tumult ceased. She looked up just in time to see a crouching Professor disappear around the end of the desk, taking off in pursuit of—

  Rafi?

  —the gunman.

  “Wait!” She started after Professor, but a hand gripped her forearm, restraining her. It was Roche.

  He was still alive, but only just. The shadow of death, a gray pallor, was on him and in his wild eyes, Jade could see that he knew it. His lips moved, a torrent of blood spilling out as he tried to form words.

  “Fuuuuhhhh…” She could not hear what he said through the ringing in her ears, but the way his teeth and lips came together, she could only assume he was wasting his final breath on a curse. “Eeewww.”

  His pupils, sharpened to pinpoints by pain, abruptly lost focus, and Jade knew he was gone.

  Murdered.

  Rafi, the young man she had saved from drowning earlier in the day, someone with whom she had broken bread and shared jokes, had just gunned down a man in cold blood, and tried to kill her as well.

  Maybe I didn’t know him as well as I thought.

  She pulled free of Roche’s deathgrip and scrambled after Professor. She caught up to him just as he was preparing to venture through the exit. His eyes met hers, just for a moment, but long enough for her to divine what he was thinking.

  The killer had been in their midst, and Professor blamed himself. Despite all his precautions, a deadly assassin had insinuated himself into their circle, waiting for the moment to strike.

  Yet, Rafi had killed Roche first, almost as if he had been lying in wait for the conspiracy theorist. But how could he have even known Roche would visit her? It didn’t add up, which she assumed was why Professor was giving chase. Who was Rafi working for? The Dominion? The Changelings?

  A body—Jonathan, Roche’s hulking bodyguard—lay sprawled across the exit, blood leaking from the precise hole drilled into his forehead. Just beyond, a car—a silver sedan that had not been there when they had arrived—peeled out of the parking area in a cloud of dust,

  “Stay here,” Professor growled, and then leapt over the corpse and sprinted toward their parked Land Rover.

  “Like hell,” Jade muttered and bounded after him.

  Professor shot her an irritated glance but knew better than to argue. As he opened the driver’s side door, Jade was right behind him. “Let me drive. You shoot.”

  “Shoot what?” he retorted, displaying the pistol he had taken from Roche. The slide was locked back, an indication that Professor had already fired out every round in the magazine. He tossed it onto the passenger seat and then slid behind the wheel and slotted the key into the ignition.

  Jade hastened around the front of the vehicle, more than a little worried that Professor would try to leave her behind. She climbed inside as the engine turned over, and barely had time to close the door before the Rover began to move. Professor stomped the gas pedal and the tires threw up a shower of sand and gravel. Though the fleeing car had a lead of only a few hundred yards, it had reached the paved highway and was pulling away. The Rover jounced down the dirt access road, but once the wheels reached pavement, it took off like a rocket. Jade stole a look at the speedometer and saw the needle creeping toward 150 Km/h—almost a hundred miles per hour.

  She shifted to the side and wriggled the spent pistol out from under her. The metal was hot to the touch. “So what are we going to do if we catch him?”

  “Bluff.” Without taking his eyes off the road, Professor reached over and worked the pistol’s slide release one-handed. The gun shuddered in Jade’s grip as the spring-loaded mechanism shot forward, giving the appearance that the weapon was ready to fire. “Judging by how many rounds he fired, he’s probably out, too.”

  “And if he has more bullets?”

  Professor shrugged. “He ran. If he had the ammo, he would have stayed to finish us.”

  “You’re betting our lives on that.”

  “I told you to stay behind.”

  Jade could not argue with that so she changed the subject. “Rafi. Damn. Why do you think he did it?”

  “First thing I’m going to ask him.”

  Jade had questions of her own, and felt a burning need to ask them, if only to make sense of the insanity she had just witnessed, but before she could articulate her thoughts, the Rover began to shudder as Professor pegged the speedometer. She decided to let him focus all his attention of the task of driving. The town of Paracas was only two miles away along a lightly traveled road that curved gently as it followed the shoreline, but at their current speed, every bump in the pavement was amplified, every mistake potentially fatal. Jade was glad that Professor had refused to let her drive; his military experience had included training in tactical driving, and those lessons were paying off. They were starting to close the gap. Unfortunately, they were also approaching a populated area.

  The fleeing car abruptly vanished into a smudge of brown as Rafi, without any warning and seemingly without reason veered off the highway and out onto the open sand.

  “What the hell is he doing?” Professor let his foot off the accelerator, allowing engine compression to slow them down. Even so, they were still pushing ninety Km/h when they reached the edge of the dust cloud. Jade felt herself thrown forward as Professor applied the brakes, further reducing their speed, as he steered to the left in pursuit of the barely discernible dot trailing a plume of dust. Rafi seemed to be heading straight for the bay.

  The pillar of dust seemed to stall at the water’s edge, momentarily eclipsing Jade’s view of their quarry, but she knew what had happened. Rafi had stopped the car. Professor put on the brakes and steered to the right, coming to a full stop fifty yards away.

  There was a loud crack as something slammed into one of the Rover’s fenders. Jade did not have to hear the gun’s report to know that it had been a bullet.

  “Down!” Professor shouted, leaning over the center console and forcing Jade’s head down below the dashboard. The noise sounded again and the driver’s side window went opaque as a round struck the safety glass, fracturing it into a thousand tiny beads.

  “Out of ammo, yeah?” Jade said. She grimaced, as much a response to having unconsciously slipped into Pidgin, which made her sound remarkably like her mother, as to their current situation.

  Professor ignored the accusation and reached past her, working the lever to open Jade’s door. “Stay here,” he said as he started to crawl over her. “I’m going to try to flank him.”

  “Are you serious?”
Jade pushed him back. “Just drive away.”

  “We might not get another chance.”

  “Another chance to what? Get killed?”

  “I’d like to know who he’s—”

  Before Professor could finish the sentence, something like the fist of God slammed into the Rover and Jade’s world dissolved into darkness.

  FIVE

  In the instant that he jolted back to consciousness, Professor knew what had happened. He had been in close proximity to enough explosions to recognize the signs even without raising his head. The overpressure wave had pulverized the Land Rover’s windows and sucked the air out of the interior, which more than anything had probably contributed to the black out.

  “Jade?” He knew he was shouting, but all he could hear was a persistent ringing sound inside his head.

  He could feel her beneath him, still breathing but not moving. Unconscious. Possibly concussed, but more than likely just stunned. He lifted up a little, brushing away particles of safety glass that looked like a shower of diamonds, and stared out at the still burning wreckage of the car they had been chasing. The sedan looked like it had been turned inside out.

  Professor did a quick check in every direction to make sure that no one was creeping up from behind, and then turned his attention back to Jade. He shook her gently. “Jade. Wake up!”

  She stirred and then came awake with a start. Her lips moved, a question. What just happened?

  He faced her squarely so she would be able to read his lips. “Gas tank explosion.”

  Her forehead creased in confusion. Rafi?

  “Don’t know.” He laid a hand on her shoulder. “Stay here.”

  He doubted that she would heed his admonition, but at least this way, if something happened, she would have only herself to blame. It was the kind of lesson that only experience could teach.

  He twisted around and worked the door lever, but the door did not budge. He tried shouldering it open, but the explosion had mangled the door and the surrounding frame and nothing less than the Jaws of Life would get it open. Professor abandoned the effort and instead squirmed through the hole where the window had been.