“I don’t get it,” Ann said. “The company isn’t this evil monolith. They’re trying to save the world, to stop climate change and nuclear war.”
“Look,” Meret said. “Say you had a time machine. Say you started by helping people, preventing a war, like you said. And then, little by little, you saw ways you could help yourself, get some more power and resources for you and your friends. Wouldn’t you do that if you could?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know who’s in charge of all of this.”
“Well, that’s the thing. We don’t know. They might be great humanitarians, it’s true. But we’ve been watching them for a while, and we’re starting to wonder.”
“We can’t stay here,” Ann said, suddenly restless. “We have to find Professor Walker, and Franny still wants to say goodbye to Gregory.” She drew Meret away from the grave, far enough so that Franny would have privacy.
“I hope—well, whatever you think, I hope you won’t repeat this to Professor Walker,” Meret said. “Or even tell her I was here.”
“No, of course not,” Ann said.
The words had come automatically, but to herself she thought that she would probably have to report this conversation to Walker. Meret seemed like a wingnut conspiracy theorist, but she might still be able to cause trouble for the company.
“Good. And remember what I told you.” Meret smiled again, with that same look of amusement, almost complicity.
Franny turned away from the grave. “Okay?” Ann asked.
“Yeah.”
They said goodbye to Meret. “Goddess show you your path,” Meret said.
“Well, that was pretentious,” Ann said to Franny as they left the cemetery. “Does she think she’s one of the timebound or something?” She looked back to see Meret bent over the grave, returned to her digging. “So what do you think?”
“About what she said? It sounds crazy, doesn’t it? There’s this conspiracy, only she doesn’t know who’s in it, or how many people it has.”
“Maybe it’s just her.”
Franny laughed. “Still, she’s not the only one wondering about Greg’s death,” she said, looking thoughtful. “He seemed fine to me, completely healthy.”
“But they wouldn’t—they wouldn’t kill him. Not like that. They’d court martial him, or put him in jail or something.”
“Yeah. Yeah, I guess so.”
“She told me not to tell Walker she was here, but I think I’m going to have to. If she hates the company so much she could do some real damage.”
“It’s weird that she trusted us so much, though. Why would she tell us all of that without making sure of us first?”
“Maybe it’s some kind of test, to see if we’ll report her to the company. And if it is, we’d sure as hell better say something to Walker.”
There was a final reason Ann didn’t believe Meret, but she said nothing to Franny about it, knowing that it wasn’t logical. She had come to love the company, to feel a strong loyalty to it no matter what. How could she not, when it had rescued her from her boring wage-slave existence? And it had shown her marvels here in Knossos, with more marvels to come. She had all of time ahead of her.
They found Walker waiting impatiently at the shrine. “Where have you been?” she asked.
“We saw Meret,” Ann said.
“What? Where?”
“At the cemetery.” She told Walker about their visit to Gregory’s grave, and Meret’s questions about his death.
Walker drew in a breath. “So she’s joined Core!” she said.
“What’s Core?” Ann asked. “Is that the group she was talking about?”
“Lunatics is what they are. They believe in pretty much everything Meret told you, that the company leaders all have secret agendas, that they want to take over the world.”
She seemed sincere, not at all like someone who had just set her a test. Ann continued to press her anyway. “So it’s a real group? How many of them are there?”
“Oh, I don’t know. No more than a dozen, no matter what she said. We try to find them and weed them out of the company, but they’re clever, they keep slipping past us. And they recruit more people all the time.”
“Do they do anything, though, or are they just talk? Could she—”
“Never mind about them,” Walker said impatiently. “I have to tell you what we’re doing next. Remember Yaniel Elias, the agent the company sent to Kaphtor in advance of us? He went to our inn, and the innkeeper told him we’d been arrested. So he asked around and got the names of people who act as jailers, and he found me at the house where I was staying. He told me a disturbing rumor—that the queen’s displeased with some visitors from Egypt, so much so that she wants to, well, he thinks she wants to kill us.”
“Kill us?” Franny said. “So what do we do?”
“Well, as I see it we have two choices. One is that we simply abort, go back to our own tace. But there’s always some blame attached to agents who don’t complete their assignment, even if what happened wasn’t their fault.”
“And the other choice?” Franny asked.
“We could stay hern, hide somewhere, and do what the Minos asked us to do. Drug the lookouts, so his allies can invade.”
“Okay, then,” Ann said. “I’m for staying hern.”
“You misunderstood me,” Walker said. “This isn’t a democracy—I’m the Facilitator, I give the orders. I just wanted to explain my decision, so you won’t have any questions.” She looked meaningfully at Ann, making sure she understood. “And I say we stay hern, carry out our assignment. The company would expect it of us. And it looks bad if your first time out is a failure.”
“So where are we going to hide?” Franny asked. “And how are we going to keep away from the queen’s forces?”
“I don’t think that’ll be a problem. We’ll just find some other inn, and we’ll stay away from the palace.”
“But we’ll have to talk to the Minos again, won’t we?” Ann asked. “Someone has to find out what his plans are, and tell him we’ll do what he wants.”
“That won’t be a problem either,” Walker said.
Really? she thought. She wondered how Walker was going to manage it.
“Looks like the sun’s coming up,” Walker said. “Let’s go find a place to stay.”
IT WAS DIFFICULT IN the dark to make out which of the buildings were inns and which were private houses or taverns or temples. They wandered around a while, Walker growing more and more impatient, until the sun rose fully and people started coming out onto the streets, and she was able to ask one of them for a recommendation. They found some new lodgings, went to their room, and fell asleep.
The sun was blazing through the high windows by the time Ann woke up. The others were still asleep and she stood quietly, trying not to disturb them. There was no partition in this room for a toilet, and when she went out into the corridor to look for one the innkeeper told her to use the hole in the field outside.
When she got back she noticed for the first time how shabby this inn was compared to their last one. The stone floor in their room had worn to dirt in some places and buckled unevenly in others, and their bedding was thin and tattered. The windows in the Inn of the Pear Garden had been covered by netting to keep the insects out, but in this place they were open to the air.
It was funny, she thought, what you ended up missing. She didn’t care that she couldn’t have a shower every day, that they had to go down to a creek to wash—or to a bathhouse, though they hadn’t had enough time to try one. But she craved coffee and chocolate, and several times a day she found herself reaching for her cellphone, to check the time or take a picture of something. On the other hand the air in Knossos, even when the days were muggy, even when she caught a whiff of offal in the streets, was astonishingly clear, untainted by chemicals; taking a breath was like drinking a glass of pure water.
The inn didn’t serve breakfast, so after they had all gotten up they went outside and looked
around. This neighborhood was not as good as the others they had seen, the houses lower and smaller, the people dressed in plainer clothing, without as many frills and colors. Even here, though, attempts had been made to brighten the houses, and many of the doors were painted in different colors: a pale sky blue, a dark pink like strawberries blurring into cream.
A few people gave them unfriendly stares, as if wondering what they were doing there, or how much wealth they had on them, but most ignored them. Two women came down the street stumbling and laughing; prostitutes, Ann guessed, and drunk as well. Walker stopped them and asked about restaurants.
“Restaurants!” one of them said, laughing. She turned to her companion. “She wants to know about restaurants!”
“Well, where do you eat around here?” Walker said stolidly.
“At the palace, of course.”
“The palace?” Walker asked. She regarded the woman with that imperious expression Ann had grown used to, clearly wondering if she was being made fun of.
“Sure. They give us grain every week, and wine, and whatever fruits are in season.”
Ann remembered seeing pictures of the grain jars that had been found at the palace, a tall as a person. Historians hadn’t been sure what their purpose was; one guess was that they had stored provisions in case of a siege. Now she realized that they had been used to give food and drink to the poor. Maybe, she thought, if the twenty-first century was as generous as the Bronze Age, they would have figured out what the jars were for.
The women tottered off, arms around each others’ waists, leaning heavily against each other. They weren’t prostitutes but lovers, Ann realized—historians weren’t the only ones who saw what they expected to see. At least she had gotten the drunk part right.
“All right,” Walker said in English, after the women had gone. “We have to see Yaniel anyway—he’ll know where we can go eat.”
“Why are we seeing him?” Franny asked.
“There you go asking questions again,” Walker said. “You need to learn to trust me.”
The more Ann saw of Walker’s incompetence the less she felt like following her. But she said only, “Let’s hope he can find us a better place to stay.”
Walker said nothing, and they continued along the streets. Ann noticed that even here people had built shrines to the goddess, though they were much simpler and filled with smaller, less expensive things, shells and feathers and stones.
They came to a different neighborhood, a better one. A few moments later Walker knocked at a door, and Elias stepped out. “Emra, good to see you!” he said in English.
“Hello, Yaniel,” Walker said. “Any idea where we can get some breakfast?”
“Of course.” Elias led them down a few streets and into a building painted with swimming fish and squid and seaweed. An octopus flicked a tentacle over one of the windows.
They sat down and were given bread and lentils, and some beer that tasted like honey. “Glad to see you got away,” Elias said.
“So are we, believe me,” Walker said. “But we still need a place to stay, and we need your help with this assignment.”
Elias frowned. “What kind of help?”
“We talked to the Minos and found out what he wants— we’re supposed to disable the guards at the lookouts for him somehow. Unfortunately that’s when we were arrested, while we were talking to him. So he doesn’t know we’ve agreed to his plan, and we don’t know any of the details, like when he wants us to put it into effect. But we can’t contact him again—they know what we look like at the palace.”
Elias continued to frown; Ann had the feeling that the company’s assignments didn’t usually go as wrong as this one. “Do you know where Meret went?” he asked. “She disappeared yesterday morning and hasn’t come back.”
“I have some news there as well,” Walker said, and repeated what Ann had told her. She ended with, “We should go to the cemetery, see if she comes back.”
“We can’t spare anyone to wait for her,” Elias said. “We’ll put a camera there.”
A camera? Right, one of those insect things. Ann hadn’t realized they’d brought any with them, though.
“What’ll you do if you find her?” she asked.
“We’ll take her back with us to the company,” Elias said. “They’ll ask her questions, try to get more information about Core. And if we don’t find her—well, if she doesn’t join us at the pickup location she’ll have to stay hern.”
“People do that?” Ann asked. “Decide not to go back?” What would that be like, to live in Kaphtor? Her mind ran through a quick list of things she would have to give up: antibiotics, air conditioning, cars and planes and computers and books …
Still, there had been times when she had felt almost at home in this tace, more so than in the twenty-first century. A country where women ruled, where they chose their own lovers. Where the majority of people seemed happy and confident, and no one starved. Of course, as she’d said to Meret, there was the Minos; probably he wasn’t very happy with the way things were arranged.
“It’s happened once or twice,” Walker said. “Not very often. Of course we know more or less whern they are, and we keep a close eye on that tace, just in case anything unusual happens.”
“Can’t the company—well, they know where she was, or they will know, when we tell them. Can’t they send someone else back in time and find her at the cemetery?”
“If they’d done that, we’d have seen them already,” Elias said. “They probably don’t care, or they won’t care, if she stays hern. They might have run all the calculations, realized that she can’t possibly do any harm in such a distant tace.”
“And extractions are expensive, if they’re done without a key,” Walker added.
“They could still pick her up, though, right?”
“I guess so, if they think it’s important,” Elias said.
Ann looked over at Franny, wondering what her reaction to all this would be; she had complained often enough that no one ever told them anything. She didn’t seem to be paying much attention, though. “So Greg—” she said, slowly. “Greg wasn’t killed?”
“Of course not,” Walker said. “All this is someone’s paranoid fantasy. I told you—his death was an accident. An unfortunate accident.”
“Are you sure Meret didn’t say anything more about Core?” Elias asked. “Didn’t try to get you to join?”
Ann and Franny shook their heads.
“Did you tell her about our assignment hern? What the Minos wants us to do?”
“She knew about the Minos, that we’re supposed to contact him,” Ann said. “But she didn’t know anything beyond that.”
“All right, good,” Elias said. “We need to think about how to get into the palace.” He looked at Walker. “I can’t go—your host has already seen me, and she might have given them a description. Probably not, but we can’t take that chance. And of course we can’t count on Meret. That just leaves Da Silva.”
“Where is she?”
“At the inn. Still asleep, probably.” He looked around the table. “And you three—you’re going to have to keep off the streets, at least until our assignment. We’ll see if you can get rooms where I’m staying.”
“Look, none of this is my fault,” Walker said. “Gregory died, and it all went downhill from there.”
Sure it’s your fault, Ann thought. You should have known the queen would take an interest in us after Gregory died, and been more careful. “How long are we going to have to stay there?” she asked.
“I don’t know,” Elias said.
They went back with Elias to his inn and rented a room. It was a lot like their room at the Inn of the Pear Garden, with benches, rattan beds, high windows, and stone floors. They all looked around them, realizing that this would be their home for a while.
Walker seemed to understand their boredom, though, and even sympathize with it, and she lent them her computer to play games on. Elias and Da Silva had
gone to the cemetery and planted a camera, and in addition to playing games they were able to watch the feed from the camera on the computer. But whenever they checked they saw only the rocky plain of the cemetery, and within it the half-dug grave.
The computer would let them do only those two things, though; probably Walker had programmed it to block everything else. Ann waited until Walker wasn’t watching and searched for other folders or drives, but it resisted everything she tried. It was too bad—she would have loved to program one of those cameras, watch it zoom across Knossos.
Elias brought them dinner and they went to bed soon afterward, still tired from their missed sleep the night before. It seemed to Ann she had just fallen asleep when she heard Walker’s voice.
“There she is!” Walker said. “I knew she’d come back.”
Ann opened her eyes and saw the glow of the computer across the room. She made her way over to it and peered sleepily at the screen, trying to focus. Meret was bent over the grave, shoveling dirt.
“Let’s go,” Walker said. She stood up; like the rest of them she had gone to sleep fully clothed.
Franny was up now, and coming over to the computer. There was something unsettling about spying on Meret like this, watching her while she worked, all unaware. It seemed a deep invasion of privacy, though Ann knew Meret had to be caught before she could do any more damage.
“Are we going to get Elias?” she asked.
“I suppose we should,” Walker said.
They went to Elias’s room and roused him and Da Silva. “We’ll go,” Elias said. “You should stay here—someone might see you.”
“No one goes outside at night,” Walker said. “We saw that yesterday, didn’t we?”
Ann and Franny nodded. Still, Ann thought, Elias was right to be cautious. Was this another one of Walker’s poor decisions? But she was feeling desperate to escape the closeness of their room.
“All right,” Elias said. “But stay behind Da Silva and me.”
They headed toward the cemetery. Elias and Da Silva were carrying lit torches, and Ann studied the other woman by their wavering light. She was plump, with a round face, dark hair, and kind-looking dark eyes. There were certain people, Ann knew, who fit some motherly archetype, and she had a tendency to look for comfort from them, sometimes with disastrous results. She would have to take care to put boundaries between her and the other woman.
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