Time's Edge

by Rysa Walker

  Trey fakes an offended look. “Excuse me?”

  “Not you. I’ve seen you undercover. You’re like James Bond. I’m the gullible one. Mom says I’m too trusting, just like Dad. Apparently she’s right.”

  “Maybe. But do you want to go through life assuming the worst about everyone you meet? One of my favorite things about you is the fact that you have the personality of a golden retriever.”

  I narrow my eyes. “I’m neither blond nor fluffy.”

  “And you don’t have doggy breath, either. I said personality. You’re kind. Loyal. You give people a chance. Do you want to be the type of person who’d automatically assume Charlayne was bad, before the evidence was in?”

  “Well, no.” Even now that I’m pretty sure what she’s up to, I don’t like thinking of Charlayne that way. I push my salad around on my plate, stab a few veggies, and then put the fork back down. “I actually don’t believe Charlayne’s bad. I mean, not really bad. She could have reasons we don’t . . .”

  I stop, because Trey is grinning. “I rest my case. We need to find a good golden retriever nickname for you.” I kick his foot under the table, and he laughs. Then his eyes take on a different sort of light as he rubs his calf gently against mine and says in a soft voice, “I’m looking forward to tonight. Maybe you could bring that thing you were wearing?”

  I raise an eyebrow. “The librarian outfit?”

  Trey rolls his eyes. “Yeah, right. You know exa—” He snaps his mouth shut as Charlayne and Ben come up from behind, sliding their plates onto the table.

  “Only bacon crumbs,” Charlayne grumbles. “And the lady snapped at me when I pulled the container out of the bar and dumped the rest on my plate. What was I supposed to do?”

  Bensen, who hasn’t spoken until now, says, “I think she’s just grumpy. She’s the one who splashed gravy on my brownie. And it’s not even next to the potatoes.”

  I suspect they’re talking about the same cafeteria lady I saw earlier, and I’m torn. Part of me is thinking it’s not cool to be prejudiced against all Cyrists just because some are jerks, and the other part is sizing her up as a potential ally against the Dark Side. Although she’s older than Katherine and seriously out of shape, so I’m not sure how much help she’d be.

  We talk about classes for a few minutes, although most of the conversation is carried by Charlayne. When there’s a lull, Trey jumps in with a question.

  “Aren’t you afraid you’ll get shunned, sitting on this side of the Great Divide?”

  Ben smiles, a fleeting upward twitch of his lips that I’d have missed if I’d blinked at that moment. “I’m on scholarship,” he says. “Partly need based, which makes me a charity case, which means I’m shunned by definition. But I don’t know what Charlayne did to piss them off.”

  Charlayne gives him a dirty look. “No one is pissed at me, Ben. This isn’t kindergarten. I can sit wherever I want.”

  “But you have a tattoo,” I say, looking over at Bensen’s hand. “So I thought . . .”

  He shrugs, tossing a bit of dark hair out his eyes. “Mom wanted me to go to Carrington Day. Charlayne’s mom told her I could probably get a scholarship if I’d agree to the . . . conditions. So I ran the odds. The average male of Indian descent loses his virginity around nineteen. Additional factors: I’m fat, short, and my favorite book is Lord of the Rings. Put those together, and it’s virtually certain that I’ll be a virgin at twenty with or without this tattoo, so I might as well reap some sort of benefit from it. And I’ve heard the tattoo will make me forbidden fruit for nonbelievers.”

  Ben’s eyebrows flick upward a fraction of an inch.

  “Shut up, Ben,” Charlayne hisses. “I thought you were supposed to be smart. Do you believe every locker-room fantasy you hear?”

  “Only the ones your brothers tell me.” He does the little lip-twitch grin again. This guy has clearly mastered the art of understated facial expressions.

  “How long have you two known each other?” Trey asks.

  It’s the same thing I was thinking. They snipe at each other like siblings.

  “Too long,” Charlayne replies. “His mother was our nanny. She still helps out from time to time, when my parents have to travel or something. She’s nice. It’s not her fault Ben’s a jerk.”

  “There’s a picture of us in the tub together when we were two. It’s as close as I’m likely to get to a naked female for quite some time, so I carry it in my wallet. Would you like to see?”

  Charlayne jabs him with her elbow. “I’ve half a mind to report you to the temple, you little twerp.”

  A tiny shake of his head and a miniscule smile. “Rah. Ool.”

  I glance over at Trey, and he seems as confused as I am. And then something about Charlayne’s expression makes me realize that Ben is teasing her about a guy. Someone named Raoul.

  I manage to keep from laughing, but it’s a close call. If I had any doubts at all whether the real Charlayne was still inside this crispy Cyrist shell, they’re gone now. And even though I know the primary reason she’s here is so she can report back to her Cyrist overlords, knowing that she’s still Charlayne gives me hope.

  The first day of senior year ends without casualties, aside from a bruised elbow I pick up when some guy with an uncanny resemblance to Gaston from Beauty and the Beast shoves me against the lockers. The shove may have been an accident, but since the big lunk was with Eve in the cafeteria a few minutes earlier, I think it was accidentally on purpose.

  Trey and I are both a little preoccupied on the drive home. I’m thinking about the fact that I’ll be in Georgia in half an hour, watching for evidence of my grandfather’s crimes, and that sort of winds my stomach into a knot. I’m not sure what’s up with Trey—maybe he’s still annoyed at the Gaston guy. He drops me off at the house with a quick kiss and a promise that he’ll see me at six.

  I grab a bag of chips and a soda from the kitchen, because there are no nacho-cheese Doritos or diet sodas in 1905.

  “Are you running away, dear?”

  Katherine is standing in the doorway, with one of the CHRONOS diaries in her hand. She’s wearing her robe and looks like she hasn’t been awake for long.

  “No. Just taking a few supplies with me.” She opens her mouth, and I can tell there’s a lecture coming about carrying out-of-timeline items, so I quickly add, “Kiernan’s cabin is in the middle of woods, Katherine, and I swear to God, I’ll bring back every single wrapper, okay?”

  She gives me a resigned look but doesn’t say anything.

  “Did you just wake up?” I ask.

  Katherine nods and then crosses over to grab the kettle from the stove. “These new medications tend to make me sleepy in fits and spurts during the day. Then I’m awake half the night. How was school?”

  I groan and shake my head. “We now get the Cyrist Creed along with the Pledge of Allegiance and Cyrist teachers along with our regular teachers. No holding hands in the hallway and a new dress code. My outfit for the Expo showed more skin. We have until next Monday to comply, but I’m not ordering it. If this isn’t over before then, you and Dad can homeschool me. It’s bad enough to be stuck in a uniform, but the boys’ uniform doesn’t change at all. What’s with the Cyrist focus on female chastity? I mean, according to Adrienne, Saul wasn’t exactly a prude.” In fact, Adrienne told me pretty much the opposite, noting that Saul tried to sleep with almost every female at CHRONOS, but Katherine’s expression suggests I might want to skip the specifics.

  “No,” she says, “but he wouldn’t be the first to decide that rules of behavior should be stricter once they no longer affect him personally. We have plenty of that type in public office today. If I had to guess, I’d say it’s the result of co-opting so many different religions. Like any partnership, each group has to compromise a few things when they merge.”

  The image of our new Purple Pigeon mascot pops into my head, which makes me think of homeroom and the Cyrist teacher who handed out the folder. “I didn’t r
ealize until today that the Cyrist men have a blue lotus tattoo, instead of pink. How cliché.”

  Katherine chuckles silently. “That’s been true since the Cyrists started the whole tattoo thing back in the 1600s. Saul was not a gender historian, so he obviously assumed that was the natural order of things—pink for girls, blue for boys—since there are still remnants of that in the future. But it’s a much more recent custom. In the timeline before Saul inserted his Cyrists, pink wasn’t associated with girls until the 1940s. I don’t know why they even use the tattoos for males. The whole chastity thing for them is sort of wink-wink, anyway—a token nod to gender equality.”

  She sits down next to me and dips her tea bag up and down in the water, a reflective look on her face. “But . . . I don’t think the choice of values the Cyrists adopted was entirely coincidental. Looking back, Saul was always a bit . . . misogynistic. He’d make comments about the good old days when men were men and women knew their place. About how it was natural for the stronger to rule. He didn’t care for my counterargument that there are different kinds of strength, that in a civilized world, upper-body strength isn’t all that relevant. We’d always pretend it was a joke, but even then I knew there was a bit of truth under the banter.”

  “So . . . how would Saul have felt about having to rely on Prudence to set up Cyrist International? About sharing power?”

  “He would hate it. And he’d fight it, especially if he thought Prudence was developing a following. Saul never cared for anything that took the focus away from him.”

  “And Prudence does precisely that. She’s the human ‘face’ of the Cyrists. When I was at the temple in the other timeline, Charlayne said that few people had seen Saul but many had seen Prudence—and she always looks the same, eternal. That makes sense, because only those with the CHRONOS gene can go forward to see Saul, but Prudence sometimes appears in front of entire congregations. So it makes sense that Saul would push all of this weaker-vessel crap—he wants them to see her as his subordinate.”

  Katherine shakes her head. “I just wish I could talk with Prudence. That she’d speak to me. I find it hard to believe she’s willing to help Saul in this Culling thing. Prudence could be a difficult child, but she and Deborah were both very compassionate. They’d pull the last coin out of their pockets if they saw a beggar on the streets. Prudence once saved her allowance for an entire year to give to this international children’s group that came to their school. I can’t fathom how she could change so much.”

  “Well, Kiernan did say she was different when she was younger, before her mind became all muddled. Apparently, Saul has a very convincing . . . I guess you’d call it a demo reel for future events. Kiernan said Simon took him around to select locations—wars, famines, environmental devastation—and he said those sights made it easy to believe that the future needed changing. Maybe Saul showed the same things to Prudence when she found him?”

  “Maybe. There are certainly plenty of examples to choose from, both in this century and the next. But things do get better. Most of the environmental problems have been addressed. Famine isn’t a problem in my time—truthfully, it wouldn’t be a problem now if we had the political will to address it. Political conflicts still happen, but they’re rarely armed conflicts. Those are on the decline now, compared to the rest of history, although people don’t seem to believe it. The 2300s are not utopian, but . . . they’re a vast improvement over the present. I think you’d agree if you could see it.”

  “So why aren’t there any stable points after . . . 2150, I think it is?”

  “Well, for one thing, we have solid documentary evidence of most events we’d want to view after that point. But I think the more important reason is that’s when the mechanism we use for time travel was invented. The cutoff prevented us from going back and tweaking things that affected our personal lives and from going back and uninventing CHRONOS, I guess.”

  I snort. “Uninventing CHRONOS sounds pretty good to me right now. What I don’t get, if things are really okay like you’re saying, is why Saul and these Objectivists wanted change.”

  “You’ll always have discontents in any system, Kate. Some people feel they’re being oppressed or held back, even if they have everything they need or everything that a reasonable person could want. Some people always want more.”

  She takes a sip of her tea. “Everyone knew that the Objectivists argued that CHRONOS technology wasn’t being used to its full potential, but it seemed like . . . I don’t know, an academic exercise, maybe? An ongoing esoteric debate. Only a handful of the DC-area Objectivists had any connection to CHRONOS. I attended a few functions with Saul but stopped going, because I didn’t like the way he acted around them. He seemed like a different person, especially when Campbell, the group’s leader, was around. Campbell was a nasty man, but to his credit, he opposed Saul’s ideas on using religion as a tool for shaping history.”

  “He didn’t think it would work?”

  “I don’t know whether he thought it would work or not, but he thought it was a bad idea. He once poked fun at Saul and said that increasing the role of religion in society would make things worse, not better. Saul said that depended on the religion, and they went back and forth. Like everyone else, I tuned it out, assuming it was a pointless, ongoing argument between two—what’s the word they’re using these days? Frenemies? I never thought . . .”

  Her voice is small and sad. And as I watch her staring into her cup of tea, I realize she looks old. Old and weak and very ill. I’ve never known Katherine when she wasn’t terminally ill, but despite that, she’s always seemed strong to me. Forceful. That’s certainly how Mom thinks of her—a force of nature you encounter at your peril.

  The woman I met at the Expo also seemed strong. She was good at her job, poised, and self-assured. But somewhere in that mix was the fragile, insecure young woman I saw in her diaries, a girl so in love that she ignored the signs that the man was a psychopath. And now she blames herself for not knowing, not realizing, not having the strength to ask the hard questions about Saul before it was too late.

  Just like I’m going to blame myself if I can’t set things right before she dies.

  I sigh, slip my backpack over one shoulder, and grab the unopened chips and soda. Might as well get on with it.

  “I’m going to go up to change clothes and then check in with Kiernan. I’ll be back soon.”

  “Kate?” she says softly as I’m turning to leave.

  “Yes?”

  “I know you know this, but I have to remind you anyway. You can’t stop this thing in Six Bridges. I’m sure you want to. And I understand, but . . .”

  I lean over and give her a hug. “It’s okay, Katherine. I know.”

  ∞16∞

  BOGART, GEORGIA

  October 7, 1905, 8:00 a.m.

  Even before I jump in, I can tell that Kiernan ignored my request to wait. It’s something about the set of his jaw as he sits there at the kitchen table. He isn’t staring at the stable point, all combative like he was last time. He’s just looking down at the floor, tapping his right foot in a nervous jitter against the chair leg.

  His eyes flick over to my feet when I arrive, but he doesn’t look up.

  “Why didn’t you wait?” I ask.

  “I was bored.”

  Yeah, right.

  The box that holds the newspaper clippings from God’s Hollow is on the other side of the table. One of the articles is outside the box, a few inches from his arm. It’s one with a photograph, so I avoid looking at it as I pull one of the other chairs around so that I’m facing Kiernan.

  “You know this isn’t fair, don’t you?” I ask in a quiet voice. “You can’t complain about me not treating you like a partner unless you’re willing to do the same.”

  Kiernan’s laugh is short and bitter. “Kate, you don’t want to see what I saw.”

  “You can’t protect me from everything.”

  He looks up, his eyes imploring. “Trust me, p
lease?”

  When he can tell that it’s not working, he sighs and hobbles over to the couch. He’s dragging the injured leg even more than he was yesterday.

  “Saul tested whatever it was he put in their well. He also tested the antidote. Both passed with flying colors. Then he went back to whenever. Leave it at that, okay?”

  “Maybe I would. But there’s something you’re not telling me.”

  He leans his head back against the top of the sofa and lets out an exasperated huff, avoiding my eyes.

  “I can see it in your face, Kiernan. Either give me the coordinates I need to watch or make yourself comfortable for the next day or two while I go through every single one of them. Because I will.”

  “Fine, Kate. Have it your way. Bring me your damn key.”

  I sit down next to him and tug the medallion out of my T-shirt. It would be easier to hand it to him, lanyard and all, but there’s nothing like Connor’s contraption to make this cabin a safe house, and I’m not inclined to put too much space between me and the medallion.

  Kiernan copies one item from his key to mine and hands it back to me. “That’s the only one you need to watch. Martha’s not among the bodies in the church.”

  “You’re sure?”

  He nods, but his expression keeps me from even starting to hope that this means Martha escaped. “As best I can tell, Saul locked her up someplace, probably in a cellar, during the two days when people were sick and dying. I’m guessing he used her as the test case for the antidote, but there’s no way to tell for sure.”

  I take a deep breath, then slide over to the center of the couch and bring up the coordinates he gave me. It’s the chapel, Friday, September 15, 1911, at 2:54 p.m. The static image I see initially is from the stable point I set at the back of the church, where the view mimics the newspaper photographs. The bodies are all in the same position, but from what I can tell, the mummified look is only apparent on some of them, and it’s partially due to some sort of rash or discoloration. Others look like they’re just taking a nap, although their eyes are sunken and the skin seems almost deflated, probably due to dehydration.