“No?” Rob shot back. “I might be just a savage, but I’m not ignorant. Not anymore.” He pointed to Tally. “Because of the stasis poisoning both my wife and child must leave me when the child is born. I’ll never see either of them again. Ever. You’ve got to great lengths to educate me on that painful fact.”
“Rob….” Tally began, her heart breaking.
But Rob held up his hand, looking at Lee. “I have these few short weeks with her,” he said. The anger had gone from his voice now. “That’s all I’ll ever get. You get eternity with her. Let me have my wife while I can.”
Lee opened his mouth to speak, but didn’t.
Tally held her breath.
Lee’s response, in the end, was to leave. He stepped past Rob without comment and walked out of the room. A few seconds later, Tally heard the outer door of the building close, too.
Tally didn’t realize she was crying until Rob dropped to his knees beside her chair and wiped her tears away.
“I won’t get to see you ever again, either, Rob,” she whispered. “Do you know how much that tears at me?”
“Leave it be, Tally,” he told her. “Leave it be for now. You’ll hurt the babe if you upset yourself too much.”
“How can I leave it be?” she cried. “Rob, I don’t know how I’m supposed to just leave you, when the time comes.”
His lips were on hers, hushing her. Telling her wordlessly of his love, making her forget everything but the joy of being in his arms. He carried her into the little room that was theirs and lay her upon the bed. His lovemaking was simple and sweet and still Tally found herself crying out in impassioned ecstasy.
And for a while she did forget that she couldn’t keep Rob forever.
* * * * *
“If this was a human agency, I’d be the one doing background checks,” Brenden Christos explained, shaking Charbonneau’s hand. Christos was a huge man, in all dimensions. He was tall, broad of shoulder, with a big smile, a loud voice, platter-sized hands, well-developed muscles. Charbonneau suspected the man’s laugh would be as large as his smile and his appetites—all of them—to be as grand. Charbonneau liked him on the spot.
“You can check if you want, but my family history is one long lie,” Charbonneau told him.
“Ah, the family-line model.” Christos nodded. “It’s always interesting investigating the ways we’ve found to pass amongst humans. The family-line is one of the most popular, next to the itinerant traveller.” Christos waved around the large room they were in. “What we really want, though, is your memories. That’s the real gold, for us.”
They were in a very large room, filled with digital equipment on desks, many of the desks with people working at them. One wall was transparent, showing the still breath-taking view of Earth with its dark-side up. Africa, with the mysterious middle almost completely black, was the feature of the hour. The corner of the room was divided off with clear partitions, to form an office. Christos’s office, Charbonneau assumed, as Christos was head of security.
The wall opposite the view of Earth was covered from one end to the other with a board that carried horizontal and vertical lines, with a list of names on the right. Travellers, Charbonneau assumed, and their current positions in history.
Justin returned, a pixie-like woman with him. The woman looked to be barely out of childhood, with coffee-cream skin, a mane of wild black hair that had been treated to shine different colours depending on how she moved in the light. Her eyes were enormous, innocent jewels of blue. Her hair and eyes were the most substantial thing about her and overpowered her petite and fragile frame.
She seemed to bounce right up to Charbonneau, crackling with energy. “Monsieur Villeneuve! Ooooh, but you are such a pretty one! Just like they said!” She walked right around him, inspecting him. She made a sighing sound. “Too much for my little body to bear. Vous serez la mienne ce soir, oui?” She smiled up at him, her chin dipped coyly, the big eyes staring at him.
“Pritti, give the man chance to draw breath before you proposition him,” Brenden growled.
“This is Pritti,” Justin explained. “She—” and he stopped with his hand in mid-air, clearly looking for a way to explain Pritti.
She slapped gently at Justin’s arm. “You didn’t introduce me properly!” she accused in her child-like voice. She spun on her toe to face Charbonneau again. “My name—my real name—is Volume 89345, File P3445.” She thrust out her hand in the old-fashioned way. “I’m so pleased to make your acquaintance, Constant Charbonneau Villeneuve, the Fourth.”
He found himself shaking her tiny hand in a knee-jerk response left over from centuries before. “You’re….” He, like Justin, couldn’t finish the sentence.
“I’m a Psi-File,” she said, in her high voice, and smiled at him. “Want to withdraw your hand now, Monsieur?” Then, before he could respond, she let go of his hand and spun on her feet again. “Oh, a demonstration! Please, please?”
Christos rolled his eyes. He seemed to be used to Pritti’s swift changes of direction.
Justin scratched his head. “Well, I dunno…we’re supposed to be seeing to yer training, mate. A demo wouldn’t be out of place.”
Pritti put her hands together and gave a little squeal. “Oooh, goody!” She bounced on the spot and turned to face Charbonneau.
“Before he meets Ryan or Nayara?” Christos asked.
“What’s he got in his pocketses, yes, hmm?” Pritti asked, sliding up against Charbonneau and looking up at him with her wide eyes.
“Something important to you,” Justin added. “Something that you know is there. Touch it. You can even curl your hand around it, if you want. And tell us what it is.”
“A watch,” Charbonneau said. “It’s been in the family for generations.” He saw a fleeting expression cross Christos’s face and added, “I suppose I should say I’ve owned it for generations. There is clearly much I must relearn, now.”
Christos thumped his shoulder. “You’re amongst friends here,” he added encouragingly. “Well, Pritti, whenever you’re ready.”
She gave a little wriggle of excitement, spun like a ballet-dancer doing a pirouette and disappeared.
Charbonneau hid his surprise. “Where did she go?” he asked calmly enough. “She’s a teleporter?”
“Teleporter, mind-reader, amongst a few other minor talents. Pritti has an extended DNA profile.”
And just as suddenly, she was back. She stood with her hands behind her back, smiling coyly at them all. Charbonneau almost expected her to toe the dirt.
“Go ahead, Pritti,” Justin said. It sounded a lot like he was trying not to laugh.
“Wait for the wave,” she said. “It’s almost here.”
Charbonneau didn’t have enough information to puzzle her comment out, but even as he wondered, he was hit with a wave of dizziness so intense, it was disorienting. The sensation was very much like one he’d suffered once, when he’d been caught in a minor avalanche while skiing in Switzerland. He’d been rolled and tossed about by the roiling snow, unsure of which way was up, or where the surface might be. It had taken all his hundreds of years of experience in self-preservation to remember to hold his arms around his head, to give himself the air pocket he’d need to dig his way out, when he finally came to rest.
This time, the sensation was much briefer and less intense. He came back to his senses to find himself on his knees, one hand on the floor before him, propping himself up. The other was still in his pocket. Justin had a hand under his arm to help him back to his feet.
“What was that?” he asked, shaking his head to clear it.
“A time wave,” Christos said, crossing his arms. “Care to show us your watch, now?”
Charbonneau felt around in his pocket, but it was empty.
“Is this what you’re looking for?” Pritti asked, holding up her hand. Hanging from its chain, his watch slowly turned, glinting dull gold in the light.
“That looks like my watch,” he said cautio
usly.
She held it out to him. “Check. See that it is yours.”
He checked the outside, then looked inside. It was his watch.
“Check what time it reads,” Pritti said.
“It’s almost four hours slow.”
“It’s showing the right time. That’s the time when Pritti took the watch from you,” Justin explained.
“Four hours ago, we were on Half-way station. I did not give my watch to anyone.”
“But you did!” Pritti said, bouncing with suppressed excitement or pleasure, or some emotion that she could barely contain. “I went back to when you arrived at Halfway. As you and Justin were heading for the ferry, I introduced myself to you. Justin confirmed who I was and I asked you for your watch, as a demonstration that would make sense much later.” She gave a tiny peal of laughter. “You were sooo reluctant to give it to me. I promised on my life I would take care of it. And I have!” The excitement in her face abruptly changed to fright. “I did, didn’t it?” she asked quickly. “I have returned it to you.”
Charbonneau shook his head. “I do not remember this. It didn’t happen.”
“Not that you remember, no,” Christos agreed. “When you start re-arranging time, things get confused, very quickly. My job is to make sure those confusions don’t happen. The Agency’s primary charter is the preservation of history and now you can see why.”
Charbonneau shook his head. “No, I don’t see,” he said flatly. “I did not give my watch to Pritti four hours ago. I touched it just a moment ago.”
“That’s because when Pritti jumped back four hours ago and took your watch, she changed history,” Justin explained. “That time wave that made you so dizzy was the quantum effect of Pritti’s tweak of history surging ahead through time, making adjustments to everything that her change affected. In this case, your watch was longer in your pocket when the wave had passed through.”
“But I remember the watch being in my pocket,” Charbonneau pointed out.
“The wave does not change our memories of the time we have experienced. It is that fact that allows us to monitor and preserve history,” Christos explained. “You remember the watch in your pocket. Pritti changed history so that you gave her your watch four hours ago. A minor change, all in all.”
“But…if she jumped back far enough, say, to the fourteenth century, old calendar and killed the King of Scotland…?”
Christos frowned, his good humour fading, while Pritti’s chin wobbled and tears glistened in her eyes.
“No-one knows what the long term effect might be,” Justin murmured, his tone full of sadness. “But there’s a good chance that such a drastic action would set up a wave so large, with such sweeping changes, that critical mass would be achieved. You’d have a time-tsunami on your hands and no guarantee that mankind would survive the changes.”
“Which is what happened 193 years ago and the reason why the agency was first established,” Charbonneau finished, studying Christos and Pritti. His heart was thudding even though their palpable upset was unspoken. “What is wrong? What did I say?”
Big tears rolled down Pritti’s face and Christos sighed. “An unhappy coincidence, that is all. You mentioned fourteenth century Scotland. We have a traveller trapped in that time and her outcome is uncertain.”
“I am sorry…you speak of Natália?”
Pritti sucked in her breath, staring at him, her tears forgotten.
Charbonneau pointed at the board on the wall behind Justin and Pritti. “I read it there on the board. ‘Natália,’ and a large dot over the 14th Century and a tag that says ‘Scotland’. Did I mis-read the board?”
There was a small silence. Then Christos cleared his throat. “No, you got it right, brother.”
Pritti opened her eyes wide and gave a little squeal of delight. “Melisandra has chocolate!” She spun on her toes and was suddenly gone.
Charbonneau cleared his throat, feeling a little winded at the changeable, highly excitable Psi.
“I thought she’d been told not to teleport inside the station?” Justin said mildly.
“Psi….” Christos rumbled, shaking his head and glowering.
Chapter Nine
Rob sat on the end of the bed, watching Tally sleep, until his own body clamoured for sleep, too. Then he dressed and headed for the chill air outside, knowing it would keep him awake a little longer. He could sleep all he needed to, once Tally had left for good. Right now, sleep seemed like such a waste of precious time.
It was refreshingly cool out in the night air and he moved away from the protective walls of the building until the dark shadows swallowed him, giving him the sensation of being completely alone with his thoughts. It was a rare thing, these days, being alone.
But even as he stood drawing the cold night air into his lungs, he heard the chink of stone on stone as someone moved nearby on the rocky ground. He turned to peer into the inky blackness, blinking his eyes to make them adjust quicker.
“You’re safe enough, highlander,” came the soft drawl. “Even you could best me tonight.”
Christian’s voice. From the sound of it, he was drinking.
Rob moved toward the darker shadow crouched on the flat white stone, a few paces away. Christian sat with his arms resting on his knees, a flask dangling from one hand. His dagger lay on the stone next to his hip, proving he hadn’t lost all sense of self-preservation.
Rob pointed to the flask. “That doesn’t look like one of your fancy future concoctions.”
Christian peered up at him. “You know, you don’t sound anything like the bog-trotting highlander you did when I first got here. You’ve lost most of your brogue already.” He lifted the flask. “We did that.” He drank.
“Are you trying to pickle your guilt?” Rob asked. He sat down next to Christian. “I can tell you from my own experience, it doesn’t work.”
“Not going to let me off the hook, are you?” Christian held up the flask. “Pure Scotch whiskey,” he said. “Your local firewater.” He drank again and breathed heavily. “Rot gut,” he exhaled.
“I grew up drinking it,” Rob pointed out. “My belly is just fine. You only get to drink when you’re back in time, so I could probably out-drink your lily-white belly even with the head-start you’ve got.” He reached for the flask and felt the weight of it. It was nearly half empty. Christian wasn’t quite the light-weight Rob had assumed.
“Stop changing the subject,” Christian objected. “And give me the damned bottle back.”
Rob handed the flask back.
Christian drank and exhaled harshly again. After a moment, he turned to study Rob. His movements were precise. Controlled. “I keep needling you. And you keep sliding away. Why is that?”
Rob frowned. The words Christian were using didn’t quite make sense to him, but the general meaning was clear enough. “I don’t like to fight drunkards.”
Christian smiled. “Oh, I’m not drunk,” he said. “I’m not even close to drunk.” He lifted the bottle. “When I’ve finished this, I’ll be getting there. Right now, all this is doing is keeping me warm and letting me speak.”
“You need whiskey to let you speak?” Rob asked. “That explains much.”
“Explains what?” Christian demanded hotly.
“Tally says you are a hard man to understand. If you do not speak much, that would account for her puzzlement.”
“Goddamn it….” Christian muttered. “I need the whiskey to talk to you.”
Rob let his surprise wash over him and pass on while he considered the matter. “What could you possibly have to say to me that you could not say sober? There is no business between us that we have not already settled.”
Christian sighed. “You’re so blind, highlander. You think you see it all, but there is so much more.”
Rob shifted impatiently on the hard stone. “You think I’m a fool, an ignorant savage? You think I don’t know that you and Tally were lovers, once? I know that, vampire. I see the way you h
ave been watching her.”
Christian drank silently.
“You wish the child was yours,” Rob added.
Christian spluttered and coughed over his mouthful and had to thump his chest to clear it. His voice was hoarse when he finally spoke. “I don’t wish the child was mine. I merely wish I could have children. It is a different matter altogether.”
Rob shook his head. “You wish you could give Tally your children.”
Christian became still for a moment. “Fuck, highlander. Even without a sword, you go straight for the heart.”
Rob shrugged. “I don’t have the luxury of time like you do, to endlessly waste it walking around the edges of a problem.” He picked up the flask. “But the matter of children is solved for you now, isn’t it? Your Tally is with child and the child must have a father. I will not be there for her. You will be.” He drank, letting the whiskey burn the back of his throat, his gullet and his heart. It gave him the excuse he needed for the burning in his eyes, too. He cleared his throat as the whiskey worked its way down.
Christian was staring at him. “You’re giving the child to me?”
“Not I,” Rob said. “I think Tally would have a say in the matter. I think she would prefer it this way.”
Christian sat up and gripped Rob’s shirt. He leaned close. “You told Tally you would find a way. That nothing would stop you from making her yours. Was all that just pretty words to bed a bit o’fluff, highlander?”
Rob’s guts tightened. “She told you that?”
Christian let go of his shirt, like Rob was so much dirt Christian was glad to unhand. “She didn’t have to.” Disgust was rich in his voice.
“You stole it from her mind.” Rob could hear disgust and anger in his own voice now.
“I did not steal it,” Christian replied, offended. “Damn it, man, she lives on you fulfilling your promise! It is at the forefront of her thoughts. Night and day! I barely have to dip into her consciousness and there it is. Even when Tally is busy with other concerns, your promise is sustaining her, giving her hope. Letting her go on with this, even though she can see no way for it to end happily.”
Bannockburn Binding (Beloved Bloody Time) Page 9
