Time's Edge

by Rysa Walker

  “Yes, but I asked Katherine a few . . . clarifying questions, shall we say . . . about Wallace when her medicines started kicking in last night. She mentioned something she hadn’t before, something about him attending the International Geophysical Year. IGY was this huge scientific conference held in 1957 and 1958, but the planning began two years earlier. So I started poking around and pulled up this article about how the U.S. and U.S.S.R. were just starting the space race and some Eisenhower administration bigwig announced we’d have a satellite in orbit as part of our participation in IGY. And that tiffs off the Soviets, whose representative at IGY calls—you guessed it—a press conference to say the Soviets will do it first. And theirs will be bigger. The international press sort of rolled its eyes, but the Soviet guy was right.”

  He tosses me a printout of a photograph. Men in suits, mostly middle-aged, sit in front of a window. A slightly younger guy stands off to the left. The only odd thing about the picture is the curtain, which is white lace and looks out of place for a press conference.

  “Which of these guys is Moehler?”

  “Funny,” he says and then looks like he’s considering it. “Hmph. I guess he could be in the photo. Hadn’t really thought about that. Katherine’s description is average height and weight, thinning hair, glasses, kind of geeky looking.”

  “So pretty much any one of them. Is there a stable point nearby?”

  “There are only two stable points in Copenhagen for the 1950s, so it will be pretty easy to check. The one at Rosenborg Castle is closest to the Russian Embassy, so I’d start there. The newspaper article says the press conference was August 2nd. He might have come in earlier, however, so maybe check August 1st as well.”

  He hands me my old nemesis, the Log of Stable Points, and I groan.

  “You’d prefer doing the language lessons?”

  “Nyet. I’ll let you know what I find.”

  “What were you doing with the maps? Is that something Katherine or I could take over?”

  I shake my head. I mean, they could figure out how many blocks I’ll be from the stable point, but it’s really more about getting a feel for the place before I go, and I’m not sure how to farm that out. “Maybe one of you could make some coffee? The good stuff.”

  He comes back twenty minutes later with a big mug of coffee, a protein bar, and an oatmeal cream pie. “Brain food or comfort food?”

  I snatch the oatmeal pie. “But leave the protein bar. I’ll get to it eventually.”

  “Any luck?” He sits down beside me on the couch and looks over my shoulder at the Log, even though I’m pretty sure he’s only seeing row after row of black squares.

  “Yeah, actually. Maybe too much.” I grab the pen and notepad from the coffee table, jot down another entry, and hand it to him. The list now includes six different jump coordinates, and I’m not quite finished. “There was apparently a lot going on that Moehler wanted to see on August 1st. He had several different suits, and he’s wearing a mustache one time, but mostly he’s just really average looking. Three different versions of him could be standing in a group, and you’d never notice it was the same guy.”

  I take the list back and tap the third entry, which has a little star next to it. “So far, this is my best guess for which one was his final jump—the one after Saul’s attack. Everyone else has been a little off balance when they land from that jump. Katherine said she was knocked over. Evelyn twisted her ankle. When I was researching Port Darwin, Adrienne looked like someone had punched her in the gut. She just sat there in the stable point, stunned, for two or three minutes. But I haven’t found anything like that yet.”

  Connor goes back to the library, and I go back to viewing the stable points. About five minutes later, I find Wallace Moehler’s last jump. He arrives in the little nook along the stone walls at the rear of Rosenborg Castle at 5:45 a.m. on August 1st. When Moehler lands, he sways on his feet for a split second and then falls flat on his ass, his legs splayed out in front of him, nearly smacking his head against the wall. He’s less than a foot from the stable point, so I mostly see his torso. He has a black briefcase in his lap and the CHRONOS key in his left hand.

  Moehler sits there for maybe thirty seconds, probably trying to process what he’s just seen at headquarters. Then he tucks the medallion into his jacket pocket, straightens his glasses, and starts to stand. He’s about halfway to his feet when he rocks backward again. This time his head does hit the wall, and he slumps against it.

  I watch Moehler’s face in the display for several seconds, wondering what happened. Then I see the small red circle on his forehead and the thin red line spreading downward onto his nose.

  BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS

  July 31, 1905, 10:25 a.m.

  Kiernan transfers the Copenhagen stable point to his key and then hands the Log back to me. It’s stupid, but I feel better now. Katherine wasn’t able to stabilize the display enough to see it, and, of course, Connor couldn’t see anything. I knew I hadn’t imagined it, but it’s nice to know that someone else has seen the shooting, too.

  Kiernan’s still in his Boudini bathing suit, his hair sticking up in spikes. He drums his fingers along the edge of his CHRONOS key before pulling it up to watch one more time.

  Only a few minutes have passed for him since we returned from Norumbega—it was the one time that I knew for certain he’d still be in the room. But he seems a lot drier than he should be, given that he was soaked when I left.

  I’m about to ask why when he says, “You’re sure no one took the key from Moehler after he was shot?”

  “As sure as I can be without watching it straight through. I fast-forwarded in thirty-second increments for the next three hours, until a groundskeeper finds his body and calls the police. Before the groundskeeper arrives, the only things that come into the picture are a bird and a stray piece of paper that blows past. We need to go back through and watch the entire thing to be sure, but—”

  “I’ll handle it. When we get back from the Athens jump.”

  “Thanks,” I say, and then something about his voice stops me. What exactly is he saying he’ll handle? That he’ll watch the stable point in real time, no fast-forwarding? Or . . .

  “What do you mean you’ll handle it?”

  He just looks at me.

  “No. Absolutely not. Do not retrieve that key. There’s someone in the garden with a gun, for God’s sake.”

  “C’mon, Kate. I could blink in, grab the key, and be back before anyone has time to aim and fire. For all we know, the KGB saw Moehler hanging around the Russian embassy and decided he was a spy. Even if it’s Simon or some other Cyrist in the garden, which, I repeat, we do not know, they’re not expecting me—”

  “Bullshit, Kiernan! We don’t know what they’re expecting. They’re watching us. Not just you, not just here, but me as well, and Prudence apparently doesn’t like what she’s seeing.”

  He raises his eyebrows expectantly, and I tell him about Eve’s warning to me at the party. “So, unless they have cameras in Katherine’s house, which Connor says isn’t possible, they’ve either seen me here in your apartment or when we were walking around Boston.”

  I take a ragged breath before continuing, the words tumbling out. “Or, yes, even more likely, when we went to Norumbega. And please do not remind me that you tried to cancel that trip. I was wrong, okay? Let’s just accept as given that I’m incredibly stupid and this is all my . . .”

  Kiernan reaches over and takes my hands in his own, and my sentence trails off in midstream a few words later. It’s actually a very clever tactic for shutting me up, since I always use my hands for emphasis when I’m agitated. I’m a little surprised that no one has done it before. Then I look at Kiernan’s face, and I’m pretty sure that he has done it before. More than once, judging from his expression.

  He looks down at my hands and runs his thumb across the Band-Aid on my forefinger. I lost the other bandage somewhere during the day, and he pulls that hand toward him,
pressing his lips against the chafed knuckle. When he looks back up at me, his eyes are on the brink of tearing over.

  “I don’t know what to do, Kate. Before, when things went all to hell and you were upset, I’d take you in my arms and hold you and tell you it would all be fine, all be okay.” He laughs—a brief, bitter sound—and shakes his head. “It was a load of crap, and we both knew it, deep down, but somehow it seemed like maybe everything would be okay when I held you.”

  I look down, focusing resolutely on his hands clasped around mine, warm and strong. I don’t dare catch his eye, because there’s this rebel voice in my head telling me that it would be really nice, unbelievably nice, to feel like everything will be okay. Even if it was only for a minute. Even if we both knew it was a load of crap.

  “I went back, Kate. Back to Norumbega. Not to finish the show—Operation Boudini is on ice for the time being.”

  An image flashes through my mind: the audience at Norumbega, frozen in place, waiting for Kiernan to return. Or not return. Or is it both at the same time, like that experiment with Schrödinger’s cat?

  “I went back when the theater was empty,” he says, “and I set a stable point in the auditorium, up in the fly space. The area above the proscenium?”

  I have no idea what either of those words mean, but I nod so that he’ll keep going.

  “That way I could see the entire audience. They aren’t there every show. Tito was exaggerating. I’ve been doing this for over two weeks, and they’ve been there maybe one show out of three. Usually Simon is with her. Sometimes it’s June. She’s the doctor down at Estero. Once it was another guy—I don’t remember his name. Pru just watches. Just stares at the stage when I’m up there.”

  “That’s what she was doing when I saw her. She looked . . . odd.”

  “I didn’t get close enough to see her very clearly, but it’s like she’s, I don’t know, drugged or something. I’m pretty sure she was expecting—she was always wearing one of those dresses that are gathered up high, so it’s not noticeable, or at least not as much. I’ve seen Pru at every age, Kate—well, every age between seventeen and, I don’t know, maybe forty. I’ve seen her both times she was with child, and I’ve seen her pretty near stark, raving mad. But I’ve never seen her like that. Like she was a shell, almost, with no one inside at all.”

  I finally look up at him and nod. That’s pretty much what I thought when I saw her at Norumbega, even though it was only a brief glimpse.

  “So Prudence had two children?” I ask.

  “She had two pregnancies. One was miscarried. And I have no idea how many children. I’m guessing maybe twenty total.”

  He sees my expression and shakes his head. “After the first two pregnancies, Pru put her foot down. Told Saul she was tired of puking all day, and he agreed but only on the condition that she give up her eggs. There were dozens of Cyrist women more than happy to carry her babies to term. And let’s just say Estero had an extremely modern infirmary from the very beginning.”

  “Who was the father?”

  Kiernan shrugs. “To be honest, I don’t know. It wasn’t something Pru ever brought up, and I wasn’t stupid enough to ask.”

  He draws in a deep breath and releases my hands, then reaches up and rubs his temples. His eyes stay locked on my face, and I feel like he’s measuring me, deciding whether or not to say what’s on his mind. “There were six men at the Farm, the one we were at in Illinois, who had some ability with the key, including me, although I was nowhere near a man at that point and my abilities may have been the weakest of the lot. My da was a lot better with it. And I know for a fact that they tried to convince him to . . . shall we say, donate to the cause?”

  “Did he?”

  “No. I didn’t understand a lot of what was going on back then, but I put the pieces together later. It was one of the things he fought Pru about. Not the main one, but . . . I remember him telling her once that he was doing his damnedest to get his one child out of their clutches so why would he be fool enough to let her take more of them hostage. It didn’t make sense then, but looking back . . .”

  We sit there in silence. I have other questions, but I don’t have the energy, physical or mental, to ask or process the answers.

  Kiernan finally pushes himself up and stands. “I need to get out of this suit.”

  While he’s dressing, I remember the second reason I’m here. “I’m thinking it would make more sense if we . . . I mean, if you don’t come with me on these other jumps. We don’t know what information they have. They might be scouting out the same locations we are.”

  His shadow pauses momentarily behind the red curtain, and then he resumes dressing. He doesn’t respond until he comes out from behind the barrier, and judging from the annoyed look in his eyes, he doesn’t like what I’ve said, but he’s having a hard time disagreeing with it.

  “Okay,” he says, plopping down on the bed next to me. “You’re right. We shouldn’t be seen together anywhere they might be watching. That doesn’t mean I’m letting you go in alone. I’ll jump in ahead of you and come back after you’ve finished. But I’ll stay in the background, like I did at Port Darwin.”

  “But . . . you didn’t go to Port Darwin.”

  “Did you really think I’d let you out onto the beach with that monster prowling about?”

  “Monster?” I stare at him blankly for a minute, and then my mouth falls open. “The crocodile? Kiernan, what did you do?”

  “What do you think I did? I shot the bloody thing.”

  “My God, Kiernan, you can’t do that! Those animals are endangered—I mean, well, maybe not in 1942, but—”

  “Endangered? What on God’s green earth could possibly endanger that creature? Three bullets to the head and it was still coming at me.”

  I cover my face with my hands. Is it worth explaining about the endangered species list? Is it even relevant? The turtles those crocs grab from the shoreline are probably even more endangered.

  “Never mind. It doesn’t matter. What did you do with it?” I ask. “I think I saw where you shot it, but there was just a big red puddle in the sand.”

  “I didn’t do anything with it. Four men came over from that camp up along the ridge—”

  “The military post?”

  He nods. “I think so, yes. Anyway, they heard the shots and came to see what was up. They fired a few more rounds into the thing for good measure and asked if I wanted it. When I said no, the four of them heaved it onto their shoulders and carted it off the beach. I’m pretty sure they were going to eat it.”

  Ick. “Really?”

  “Seems fair enough to me. It would certainly have eaten them, given the chance.”

  He slides off the bed and opens the cubbyhole beneath, removing a leather holster and a revolver. Just looking at the thing, cold and black in the palm of his hand, makes me nervous.

  “Another crocodile hunt?”

  Kiernan looks at me, his eyebrows raised. “Probably not. But there are other sorts of monsters. And a gun won’t do me much good if I don’t have it on me.” He slides the floorboard back into place and straps the holster over his shoulders, then clips the revolver into place. “I’d be happier if you were armed, too, but since I never could get you to carry one in the past . . .”

  I bite my lip, hard. “Do you have another gun hidden under the bed?”

  “No,” he says, his voice both surprised and a little worried. “I can get one, but you’ll need to learn to use it. And there’s no point, unless you think you actually would use it if you had to. Are you sure?”

  I’m not at all sure, but I nod anyway. As much as I hate the idea of carrying a weapon, I know it’s stupid not to be prepared. Holmes had a gun. Simon has a gun. Whoever shot Moehler most definitely had a gun, and I’m sure he’s not the only Cyrist that Saul has armed. And no matter how many hours I spend in the attic, no matter how hard Sensei Barbie’s eventual replacement works me, I’ll never be able to dodge bullets in midair.r />
  He leans his head back against the bed and stares at the stars on his ceiling for a moment. “I have to clear out of here. So, I’ll contact you.” He tosses me his key. “Put in a place and time that works for you.”

  It’s a little before one at Katherine’s. I put in three—even though Moehler’s killing has disrupted the schedule a bit, I have a promise to keep at 2:00 p.m.

  “Where will you go?” I ask.

  “Jess’s, for tonight—or at least I need to check in with him and Amelia before I go. Tomorrow, I’ll head south, find a place near Athens. It’s always easier if my jumps are just temporal, not to a different physical location as well. Might help to give us a base location for the 1938 jumps, too.”

  “Okay . . . but don’t you need to keep doing the Norumbega shows? Otherwise, they’ll know we know—”

  “Not if I do the shows at some point. Houdini still has the key, and we still have to get it.”

  “Could you build up a small buffer of shows now? How many trips do you think you can manage tonight?”

  “Two, at most. I’ve already jumped here and then back to the theater to check on Simon and Pru. But I’d rather keep those as an emergency escape, after what we’ve just seen. Boudini can wait for now.”

  I nod and give him a little smile, because I don’t want to admit why it bugs me to leave this hanging. It’s not because I think it’s a risk—I honestly don’t know one way or the other. The real reason is that it hurts my brain to think about a theater full of people, just sitting there, suspended in time, while Kiernan is either in or not in that tank on the stage.

  Or maybe both at the same time.

  ∞12∞

  I’m at the townhouse and have just finished watering the plants when Trey rings the bell, a few minutes before two. I open the door and laugh at the look of surprise as he takes in the round black glasses and pale blue shirtwaist dress I’m wearing. I’ve added a few streaks of gray to my hair with a temporary dye Connor picked up at the drugstore. It won’t fool anyone if I come under close inspection, but it’s better than nothing.