by Megan Crewe
“We must have made another shift at the museum, right?” I say, but even as the words are coming out, I frown. What shift could we have made that would have entered the Enforcers’ records somehow? The only person we encountered was that guard, who didn’t even see us. And yet the pale woman seemed to know exactly where—and when—to find us. “What else could it be?”
“I don’t know,” Win says, his voice tight. “They shouldn’t be able to unscramble the signal on the cloths after what Isis did. We should be okay. I just thought it was better to take precautions. If they do figure out how to track us, jumping to your house would lead them straight there.”
The thought of the pale woman standing at my front door sends a chill through me. “We can still go there; it’s only a small chance,” Win continues, but I shake my head.
“No.” Seeing my room for a few minutes isn’t worth even a tiny risk. This will have to do.
“Let me know when you’re ready to move on,” Win says. Preferably soon, I can tell he’s thinking. With the idea of the Enforcers following us hanging over me, coming home isn’t quite as comforting as I’d hoped.
“Why don’t we dox the Enforcers, or them us?” I ask as we step out of the cloth into the alley.
“The group looking for me, they’re from the same present I am,” Win says. “Our timelines match up, for the most part. There’s a little wiggle room: if it takes them half an hour to notice a shift we accidentally made, they can’t show up there at the same moment we made the shift, or the half-hour difference in our ‘bubbles’ will push them away. Which is why they didn’t show up the second we walked into the coffee shop the other day. And why we’ll want to avoid staying anyplace for very long.”
Right. I touch the backs of the buildings as we walk toward the street. The bricks and concrete are reassuringly real, but not too real. I peer out onto a shopping strip that’s vaguely familiar. I think it’s near Mom’s gym . . . Ah! When I went in with her for Take Your Children to Work Day a few years back, we ate lunch at that cafe down the street. It had that Black Forest cake she swooned over.
The memory settles me more firmly into place. The people walking by are a blur of jeans and modern jackets, running shoes and stiletto heels, cell phones in hands or at ears. The air I breathe in is laced with exhaust and a salty-greasy smell from the fast food restaurant next to us. The tension in my chest eases slightly.
This is my world. Still here, just like it’ll still be waiting after wherever we go next. I reach into my purse, curling my fingers around my phone. I could call Angela, or Lisa, or Bree—Mom or Dad, even—if I wanted to. But I don’t know what I’d say, or if I might make some inadvertent shift that would definitely bring the Enforcers this way. Still, it’s nice knowing I could.
Win shifts his weight from foot to foot in silent impatience. I only asked for a few minutes here, but now that I’m back, surrounded by the sights and smells and sounds that tell me I belong, the thought of leaving this all behind again is painful.
I could stay here after all. I could just walk away.
And leave Win to face the Enforcers alone. And go back on my word. We’ve still got my planet to save. Who knows if this city will even be here tomorrow if the other Travelers keep making their experimental shifts?
I press my hand against the side of the restaurant, letting the sense of my city wash over me. The sense of the world I’m defending. Then I turn back to Win.
“Okay,” I say. “I’m ready.” And this time I believe it.
We duck back into the shadows, and into the time cloth. As the folds close around me, I remember those first halting jumps when we were trying to leave the Louvre.
“They didn’t do something to damage your cloth, did they?” I say.
“What?”
“The Enforcers. It didn’t really jump the first couple times.”
“Oh,” Win says. “No, it was just being finicky. Like . . . a car stalling. I just had to get it going and then it was fine. We made it here, didn’t we?”
I’d rather we’d made it with a brand-new, top-of-the-line time cloth that didn’t stall. I’d guess that’s what the Enforcers are working with. At least Win doesn’t seem to think it’s a problem that’ll get worse.
He must already have programmed our next destination in, because he only has to tap the panel before we’ve lifted off. I’m almost relieved to feel the shaking, spinning motion that says we’re really Traveling. Bracing myself, I squeeze down my nausea.
It feels like a while before we hit the ground. Trees stand around us, banding the sides of the tent.
“The hills over Vietnam’s Bach Dang River, 938 AD,” Win announces. “On the eve of the great rebellion. The battle takes place on the river, so whatever trail Jeanant’s left us to the next part of the weapon, it’s probably down there.”
“Why didn’t we go straight there?” I ask, and then realize the answer on my own. “Because if the Enforcers trace the jump, that would lead them right to us and Jeanant.”
“They shouldn’t be able to,” Win says, like he did before. “Just a precaution. But we should still get moving.”
He whips back the cloth to reveal a dirt road mottled with hoofprints and wheel ruts. The breeze is cool and damp, with a smell like the park back home just after a rain shower, but muskier. Win heads down the road, folding the cloth as he walks. My boots squelch through patches of gooey mud as I hurry to catch up. Massive ferns line the road around the mossy trunks of the broad-leaved trees, their twisting branches heavy with loops of vine. The buzz of insect life quavers around us. It presses in on me, and for a second I can’t breathe. I curl my fingers into my palm, trying to bring back the feel of the buildings back home, then train my eyes on Win’s satchel, on the rounded edges of the brass buckles, the scuffs on the smooth leather. The suffocating presence of the jungle recedes.
The road veers up a slope scattered with chunks of lichen-splotched rock. We’re just nearing the top when twigs crackle somewhere behind us. I recoil, stepping toward the shelter of the trees. Win turns. No one’s in sight, but a low thudding is carrying toward us. Like many sets of feet treading over the packed earth.
The alarm band around my ankle is still. “It’s not your people,” I say.
“Then that’s most likely more of the army arriving,” Win whispers. “Let’s get out of the way. If they see us, we could shift something.”
I was on board as soon as he said the word army. He squeezes through the heavy underbrush, me behind him, droplets of water dappling my shirt and dress. The jagged fronds scrape against my arms. As I push them away from my face, shivers slide over my fingers. I jerk my hands away.
Win has stopped. He grabs my wrist and tugs me down behind a particularly large fern.
The tramping sound is getting louder. From where we’re crouched, I can make out slivers of the rutted road. There’s no noise other than those footsteps and the insect hum.
Then they sweep into view: a stream of figures marching in rows four across, their plated armor and rounded helmets glinting, swords swaying at their hips. They stride past, perfectly in sync. Despite the muddy road, each soldier’s uniform looks polished and clean.
Well, this appears to be a much more effective revolutionary force than the scattered locals we saw in Paris. Organized, disciplined. In a few minutes, they’ve tramped out of sight over the crest of the hill.
“They’ll be going to join the battle that’ll take place along the river in the next couple days,” Win says quietly. “The Chinese army is coming to meet them, to put down the Vietnamese insurgents. But this time the Vietnamese are going to win their freedom.”
He motions me onward through the jungle. “There might be more coming. We’ll be safer staying off the road.”
We weave between the trees and stumble onto a narrow trail running nearly parallel to the road. I study the back of Wi
n’s head, its slight bobbing in time with his strides, trying to imagine the massive databases he must have had access to on his home planet. Catalogs of thousands of years of history from all across Earth. I’ve never even heard of this battle. He knows so much more about my planet’s history than I do, and I’m the one who lives here.
The one big question that’s been gnawing at me rises up.
“Why did your people start doing this in the first place?” I say. “Studying Earth, experimenting . . . Your science is light-years ahead of ours; you don’t care about art; you have to cross the galaxy just to get here—what did you all expect to learn from a bunch of humans?”
“Ah . . .” Win glances back at me, looking as if he’s swallowed a fly. “That’s pretty complicated.”
“As if everything else you’ve told me wasn’t? Try me.”
There’s silence as we haul ourselves up the steepest part of the hill, gripping the coils of vine and disturbing flowers that expel whiffs of a thick, cloying fragrance into the air. Win’s breath rasps with the effort, so loudly I start to worry the soldiers up ahead will hear it. He wobbles a little, but keeps going as the trail slants downward. Still not answering.
“Win,” I say. “Why can’t you just tell me? It’s not like I’m ever going to give away your ‘secrets’—no one would believe me if I tried.”
“I don’t see why it matters,” he says.
“I want to understand why you did this to us,” I say, and he grimaces.
“It’s not a good story,” he says. “No one really talks about it, except to remind ourselves . . . A long time ago, some of our people made an incredibly huge mistake. A mistake so big it destroyed our world.”
“Just like that?”
He nods. “A new technology was introduced, and implemented widely, without quite as much testing as should have been done, and— Imagine if every nuclear plant on Earth simultaneously melted down and then exploded, multiplied by a hundred. We had just enough warning to evacuate some people to what you’d call a space station that was orbiting the planet before the atmosphere below was completely poisoned.”
“Oh,” I say, a trickle of horror running through me. Every nuclear plant times a hundred.
“We’ve all lived on that space station ever since,” he goes on. “Expanding and improving it as necessary. And supposedly making plans for moving on. When the disaster happened, our scientists had already been scouting out planets to establish a colony on. But then, after the accident, everyone was scared of rushing in too quickly and making another mistake, losing the little we’d managed to hold on to. You have to understand, in the beginning—it was the fate of our entire people at stake. Once we set a course, we were only going to get one chance.”
“Earth was one of those planets?” I venture. “To colonize—”
“Obviously that didn’t happen,” he says quickly. “They wanted to run a few experiments somewhere, to see what sort of challenges we might face, and how the inhabitants might deal with it. Use a time field so we could have them do things over, and check what factors influenced the outcome. They picked Earth. The original idea was that they’d run a relatively brief series of tests and then move in, but after a few years of trials and Traveling, the scientists started noticing discrepancies in the readings. They realized the shifts were degrading the planet.”
Ah. “You didn’t want a planet that was already starting to fall apart,” I say. It was good enough for the Travelers to escape to and play around with, but not good enough to be a home.
There’s no way I want Win’s people moving in with us, but it hurts anyway. The thought that they used us and would keep using us until we’re not fit for anything except being thrown away. How long will it take after we’ve stopped them for the world to recover?
“We should have ended it a long time ago,” Win says. “I know that. Lots of us know. It’s just, the scientists, especially the ones doing the time work, they’re respected, and they like the way things are. And when you’ve been so cautious for so long, it’s hard to even think about doing something risky. No one knows what will be waiting for us on another planet.”
“But you’re all stuck in that space station—you said the people who aren’t Travelers never leave at all.”
“We’ve gotten by for so long that way, no one knows any different. Most people don’t see any need to hurry.” He pauses. “But Jeanant, and Thlo, they suspect the longer we keep delaying, the more likely it is the station’s engines will fail when we finally do leave orbit.”
The breeze licks under my scarf, the cool moisture it carries making the wool cling to my neck. “So they’ll put us through hell, destroy our planet, and maybe even screw up your own people’s chances, just to avoid a little risk.”
“You’d understand better if you grew up there,” Win says. “But I hate it too.”
The trail curves around a spire of craggy rock jutting from the soil, and as we come around it, the trees fall back, giving us a glimpse of the land below: a wide blue river snaking through the jungle, sandy banks shimmering in the sunlight piercing the gathering clouds. The circular walls of a town stand farther to our left, brown roofs rising into sharp peaks.
Win draws in a breath, gazing at the view. The awe on his face is almost painful to look at. It chokes off my anger. It makes sense now, his comments about the lack of room, about trees and sun. He doesn’t even have an outside where he’s from.
He turns and hurries on. My vision seems to ripple as I follow. The trail narrows, the jungle pressing closer, and then slants more steeply downward.
My feet skid on the slick soil. I grip the branches of a nearby sapling to catch my balance. The feel of the moist bark sends a shudder through my fingers. The trees drown out the view, trunks and vines and leaves twice as big as my head crowding around me. I hold out my hands, snatching at stems, twigs. They seem to slip through my grasp. My skin is too thin.
I shake my head, but the sensation lingers: the world around me expanding and contracting as if I’ve stumbled into a fun-house mirror maze. My legs wobble, and I cling to a fern, feeling as though my hands are about to pass right through it.
It’s not like Paris. Or maybe it is, just . . . more.
A thousand years of shifting, of distortion and degradation, that the atoms making up my body have experienced and this jungle hasn’t.
Ahead of me, Win still stands out against the jungle with his alien presence, but I have to stare to see it. Because it’s not that I’m fading, only that this past world is more solid than the one I was in before.
I fumble in my purse for my bracelet as I scramble on down the trail, trying to count the points on the leaves, the pebbles on the ground. Everything I look at echoes that solid thereness back at me. The jungle sways, or maybe it’s me.
The smooth surface of the beads meets my fingertips as my heel lands on a loose rock. I don’t even have a chance to catch my balance before my feet are shooting out from under me.
16.
I grope for something to steady myself. My free hand finds only air. I hit the ground hip first, a yelp jolting from my throat.
Saplings and shrubs claw at me as I tumble down the hillside. My ankle bangs against a tree trunk and pain stabs up my leg. I roll over, flailing until my fingers catch a loop of vine. My arm wrenches, but I jerk to a stop. I drag in a breath, my heart and head pounding.
“Skylar!” Pebbles skitter as Win scrambles down the trail. He comes to a stop by my left and picks his way over. “Are you all right?”
“I don’t know.” My shoulder throbs as I prop myself up on my hands. My ankle, the one that hit the tree trunk, is radiating a stinging pain. The tongue of my boot is bent to the side, and a wide scrape runs from my anklebone halfway up my calf. Blood’s beading on the raw skin.
I wiggle my foot, and the pain stings only a little deeper. I think I should be ab
le to walk. Just won’t be running any races today.
“It doesn’t look that bad,” Win says hopefully.
Too bad the rest of me still feels like crap. I glance up, and the jungle presses in with a rush of dizziness. I close my eyes. Then I realize what’s really wrong with my ankle.
“The alarm band!” I twist around, searching the damp soil beside me. It must have been scraped off by the impact. I peer through the trees, trying to figure out which one my ankle hit. They blur together.
Win’s gone still. “It came off? But then— Here.” He tosses down a small pad of tan fabric that he’s taken from his satchel. “Put that on the wound. I’ll look for the band.”
He clambers up the slope without waiting to see if I caught the pad, shoving aside stems and fronds to scan the ground. I’d be annoyed if I didn’t want so badly to get up there and help him look. I pick up the square of fabric and set it over the bloodiest part of the scrape. The second I apply pressure, the pad seems to fuse with my leg. The line between its edge and my skin smooths away. I flinch, and then reach to poke at it. I can’t even feel the edge. How am I ever supposed to take it off?
Above me on the slope, Win swears.
“Isn’t it there?” I say.
“It might have . . . disintegrated,” he replies, wrenching aside another sapling. “Traveler tech is programmed to do that in Earth’s atmosphere, in certain conditions, to make sure nothing’s left behind accidentally that the locals could study. Your fall could have set something off.”
My stomach sinks. “So we’ll have no warning if the Enforcers show up.”
He shakes his head.
That . . . isn’t good. My thoughts are still swimming in my head as if it’s full of water. I reach for my purse, panic flashing through me when I see the flap’s open. But both my phone and my bracelet are still tucked inside. I drag the bracelet out and hold it against my palm, sliding my fingers over the beads. Slowly, the weight of history recedes.
