Hallows Eve

by Bob Mayer

  But Roland wasn’t wondering about that. He was making sure that the Naga dagger was secure in its sheath in his belt and squinting to see whether who had poked him was a threat.

  All he could make out was a man dressed in what the download informed him was a ‘foul weather uniform’ consisting of a bulky waterproof oilskin jacket and trousers with a ‘sou-wester hat’. Which meant Roland couldn’t make out any details at all.

  “Get dressed.” The man shoved a similar set of outer garments at Roland. He spoke with an accent that Roland found oddly familiar, but couldn’t place.

  Roland automatically began gearing up, assuming the man was going to take the rack he was vacating, but the man made no move to take off his outer garments. Oilskin pants and jacket on, Roland followed as the man gestured. They went down the passage between bunks hanging from the ceiling—overhead, the download corrected—from chains. Roland was rocking back and forth as the ship rode the waves .

  Roland didn’t like being in the water, and he wasn’t fond of being on water either.

  The man opened a hatch and they stumbled through to a passageway. He shut the hatch behind them and then turned to face Roland.

  Roland’s only excuse could be the unique sleeping arrival because before he could react, the man had a blade against Roland’s neck.

  It is 1941. In July, Roosevelt orders all Japanese assets seized in the US; Pearl Harbor is attacked six months later in December; in September, the State of Maine ‘declares war’ on Germany; Hitler orders a stop to the T4 program, but those still alive are sent to concentration camps so . . . .; the Siege of Leningrad begins and will last until 1944 with over one million civilians dying; Charles Lindbergh testifies before Congress that the US should negotiate a neutrality treaty with Germany; Lend-Lease is passed and Churchill tells the US: “ Give us the tools, and we will finish the job”; Dumbo is released; the Bismarck is sunk; plutonium is discovered; Hitler breaks his neutrality with Russia and Operation Barbarossa is launched; commercial TV is authorized by the FCC; the British SAS, Special Air Service (Who Dares Wins) is formed; the slogan V For Victory is initiated by the BBC; Zyklon B is introduced at Auschwitz; the keel of the USS Missouri is laid at Brooklyn Navy Yard and four years later the war will end on its deck on the other side of the world; Bob Hope performs his first USO show—it will be far from his last; an Enigma machine is captured off a German U-Boat.

  “Who are you?” the man put pressure on the blade.

  “Roland.” Roland slowly moved his left hand toward the handle of his dagger.

  “Are you friend or foe?”

  Some things change, some don’t.

  Since Roland had no clue who this guy was, he had no clue how to answer. “Friend or foe of who?”

  “I was told one out of time would come. I felt the disturbance of your arrival. Why are you here?”

  Another question Roland didn’t quite know how to answer. He want to Roland default mode; the truth. “To make sure everything happens as it should.”

  The man laughed without mirth. “What should happen? You know? What do you know?”

  “This ship sinks.”

  “’This ship sinks’?” The man was incredulous. “Who cares about this ship? It’s the other ship, the submarine, that we have to worry about. That’s the one we have to destroy.”

  The accent finally clicked into place in Roland’s memory. “You’re a Jager. Where are the Aglaeca and Grendels you’re hunting?”

  “You are not only responsible for what you say, but also for what you do not say.”

  Martin Luther

  Wittenberg, Germany, 31 October 1517 A.D.

  SCOUT WASN’T THERE, and then she was there, but she’d sort of always been there, but she was really tired of going to places that didn’t have hot, running water. And where people were waiting to kill her. It was the best way to explain how she arrived, becoming part of her current time and place and immediately having to dodge a surprisingly slow knife thrust.

  Surprisingly slow given who held the knife, that is.

  Her training, muscle memory, and the Sight saved her life. She was ‘aware’ of the attack before she was consciously aware of her surroundings. She whirled away from the thrust, drawing her Naga dagger and assumed a defensive position. She was in a cathedral, dimly lit by sputtering candles; good lighting also lacking in places with no hot, running water.

  Her opponent was as surprised by his lethargic attack as much as she.

  “Do not interfere!” he screamed.

  “Who you talking to?” Scout asked, her eyes adjusting. He was of average height, average build, dressed in black pants, tunic and with a black scarf across the lower half of his face—he was Legion; seen one, seen them all it seemed.

  “The old bitch,” Legion said, adjusting his position, getting ready for a real fight since the ambush had failed

  “Fate?” Scout asked. “Or Pandora?”

  “You reacted well,” Legion said. “What is your name? Are you the one they call Moms?”

  “Do I look like a Moms?” Scout asked.

  “Scout then. Your blood will be sweet on my blade. ”

  “Seriously?” Scout said. “Did you make that up or do you guys study saying crap like that? Do you have a script? Do you practice in front of a mirror?”

  He came at her and once more, she was surprised how slow he was, although it was quicker than the previous attack, as fast as a normal person. However, Legion were anything but normal. She was able to parry his thrust, his secondary thrust, and, being Legion, the third backslash, all done in one, continuous flow.

  “This is not fair!” he called out, not quite as vigorously as before.

  “Who else is here?” Scout asked, not daring to take her eyes off him, because if he got exponentially faster, up to full speed, she was going to be in trouble. Of course—

  He came in dagger held high, then unexpectedly dropped, sliding along the marble floor. Scout narrowly avoided having the artery on the inside of her thigh sliced open. She escaped with only a shallow slice just above the knee as she threw herself up and to the left, tumbling, hitting the hard floor. She took the landing on the flat of the back of her shoulder as trained and rolled over, spinning about, coming to her feet at the ready.

  “Now it’s fair.”

  The voice echoed in the cathedral. Dry, cracking at the edges, female, at a conversational level. Not particularly interested in what was developing, other than to make the observation. Not Pandora—Scout knew her voice.

  Scout shut out her worry about whose voice it was. Shut out everything but the man in front of her. The threat. The blade. Her own blade.

  And time. Most of all time.

  Legion drew a second dagger, a concession to upgraded respect for his opponent. Scout shifted her feet, adjusting.

  Legion put one blade to his lips and licked it. “Your blood is indeed sweet. Are you a virgin?”

  “Are you serious? I think—“ and she darted to her right, jumping onto a pew, and continuing up into the air.

  No one ever looks up , Nada had always preached.

  Scout’s Naga dagger drew a thin red line along the side of his scalp starting at the temple, slicing through his ear, and ending at the back of the neck .

  Scout landed on her feet. “That was pretty cool. Didn’t know I could do that.”

  It is 1517 A.D. The world’s population is roughly half a billion people; Grand Prince Vasili III of Muscovy conquers Ryazan; Maria of Aragon, Queen of Portugal, dies; Sir Thomas Pert reaches Hudson Bay; the first burning at the stake of Protestants in the Netherlands (it won’t be the last).

  Legion turned to face her. No pain evident on his face, although blood seeped from the wound, particularly the split ear.

  Some things change; some don’t.

  “Do you think this is fair?” Scout called out to the unknown voice. She took a step back and addressed Legion. “Are you here for Luther?”

  “I am here for you,” he s
aid.

  “Lucky me.”

  “And then Luther.”

  “Unlucky you,” Scout said.

  Legion called out to the unknown observer once more. “You must let this play out.”

  There was a dry chuckle. “’Must’? Who are you to tell me what I must do? But, I have stopped interfering, as you call it. The fight is between the two of you.”

  Legion took a step back. “That was you?” he said to Scout.

  “You got it,” Scout said.

  “That should not be,” Legion muttered.

  Scout saw the moment of doubt in his eyes and attacked, feinting for the face, then slamming the point into his chest. He was too shocked to use his blades, even though she was pressed up against him.

  “Someone once told me there’s only two types of knife fighters,” Scout said. “The quick and the dead. That’s a Nada Yada.” She twisted the blade, shredding Legion’s heart. She watched the life go out of his eyes, then let him slide off her blade.

  The Possibility Palace

  “In a timeline there are billion of lives,” Sin Fen said. “The reality is that few of those lives make a significant impact on the timeline.”

  “Ya think?” Angus said. “We’re all just wee little specks of sand on a big beach. Some getting washed up, some getting washed away, most getting tumbled about aimlessly but overall, it doesn’t matter, does it now, lass?” He pointed into the Pit. “This pretty much says that, does it not?”

  “It does,” Sin Fen agreed. The two were alone on the spiral ramp, not far from the door to the team room. “If any of the vast majority of people in a timeline never existed, the course of history wouldn’t change. It is not a value judgment on that person or the life they live. To those who are close to them, those they love and who love them, they have a great impact.”

  “Are you gonna tell me something I don’t know?” Angus asked, not with anger or frustration, but with curiosity.

  “I’m telling what I’ve told every prospective member of the Time Patrol,” Sin Fen said. “A preamble to a question.”

  “Be getting to the quick of it,” Angus said.

  “You have to make a Choice,” Sin Fen said. “To be a member of the Time Patrol, one must be a person who will never use time travel to go back and change something for personal reasons. Every one of us has something in our past, some point, where we wish we had chosen differently. For many it is a moment we look back on with profound regret.”

  “I’ve got no regrets,” Angus said .

  “Everyone has regrets,” Sin Fen disagreed. “Unless they are a psychopath, and you are not.”

  “Some might say I am seeing as I was in the Super-Max for the rest of me breathing days according to the judge who sent me there.”

  Sin Fen ignored that. “A team member can never use time travel for personal reasons. And that is the reason the Choice is made up front. You must now choose one of three paths. The first is to do nothing. To walk away.”

  “Go back to prison?”

  “It is the life you came from as a result of all your previous choices.”

  “Let’s move on to curtain number two,” Angus. “Ye remember that show, don’t ya?”

  “If you make that first choice,” Sin Fen said, “we will wipe your memory of this place, of this Team.”

  “Will you wipe Orlando’s ugly mug too? Let’s be moving on. I be intrigued now. And I won’t be going back.”

  “The second door,” Sin Fen said, “is to go back to a key moment in your life and change that moment.”

  “I’ll go back,” Angus said. “I know the exact place and time.”

  Sin Fen sighed. “It’s a moment in your life. Where you were present.”

  Angus folded his arms over his chest. “Why not elsewhere? You be saying we can travel in time. Why can’t we go wherever we want in the past? That’s what this whole Time Patrol thing is about, is it not? Why is it limited to my life and where I was? If I’d have been there, then there’d be no regretting.”

  “That’s the way it is,” Sin Fen said.

  “Lots of bugs in ya system here,” Angus pointed out.

  “We’re doing the best we can. If you chose to go to the moment I tell you that will be the end of you in the present. You will also have no memory of how you got there except for knowledge of what is going to happen very soon in that moment. The third door, as you call it, is to accept being a member of the Time Patrol, to accept your past completely, and go through that door to your gate and on your mission. Do you understand?”

  “I ken ye words.”

  “The day you killed the—“

  “You think I regret that? ”

  “You wouldn’t go to prison,” Sin Fen said.

  “I have no regrets over what I did that day,” Angus said. “The only reason I’d chose to go back is to kill that bastard slower, with more pain.”

  The Metropolitan Museum of Art

  New York, New York

  Frasier normally wore aviator glasses to cover his orbital implant, but it was night and the Met was closed, so Fifth Avenue wasn’t packed with pedestrians. Traffic rumbled by, but this late, the honks of irritated taxi drivers were notably absent.

  At the edge of the street he raised his hand and a taxi pulled up. Frasier slid inside.

  The driver waited for an address.

  Frasier remained silent, until the driver turned.

  “Where would you go?” the driver asked in a Pakistani accent. The man noted Frasier’s solid black eye, but it was New York City and he’d seen stranger. But Frasier always wanted to be noticed.

  “Cosmopolitan Hotel Tribeca,” he said.

  The Possibility Place

  “What do you think of Angus?” Dane asked Sin Fen.

  “He’s solid.” The two were standing on the edge of the Pit, looking down into the spiral of known history.

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means he’s stable,” Sin Fen said. “He’s suffered terribly in his life, but he’s made a sort of peace with it.”

  “Frasier doesn’t think he’s suitable,” Dane said.

  “Why?”

  Dane turned to face her. “He thinks he’s too old, too bitter, and his thinking is too narrow. ”

  “Frasier’s wrong,” Sin Fen said. “He’s old. He’s bitter. But he’s not a narrow thinker. I believe Angus will be a welcome addition to the team. I think the concerns there are a bit misplaced.”

  “How so?”

  Sin Fen answered his question with a question. “How do you feel about Frasier?”

  Dane considered that. “I’ve been snapping at him a lot. Irritated. I don’t know why.”

  “Perhaps you sense something is off with him?” Sin Fen asked. “He hasn’t been able to figure Lara out. That bothers him. He ignored your order to stay out of the team room, upsetting the delicate balance we must maintain with our Agents.”

  Dane looked back into the pit. “Lara heard a voice come out of the Pit. It warned her ‘here there be monsters .’ Perhaps—“ he stopped, considering what he was about to say. “Perhaps we should take that a bit more literally?”

  “As in monsters among us?”

  “Let’s say problems among us,” Dane said. “Frasier lied to me.”

  “About?”

  “He said he had nothing further on Lara. Yet he’s going to meet someone about her.”

  Sin Fen said nothing, knowing Dane and waiting for his decision.

  “We’ll have to keep a watch on him,” Dane finally said.

  The Missions Phase II

  ZERO DAY; ZERO YEAR

  “I told you,” Ivar said. “I was just out for a walk.”

  “I have nothing to lose,” Victor said. He nodded his head toward the body. “One dead or two dead, it’s the same. The cleaners will take care of this.” He shoved Fedex off the chair. The body hit the floor of the van with a thud.

  “Have a seat,” Victor invited.

  As Ivar went
past, Victor reached out and stopped him, doing an efficient pat down. He pulled the dagger and placed it on the console, then allowed Ivar to sit. The gun was in his lap, casually pointing at Ivar, who knew this man did nothing casual. He could see the barrel and it was pointed right at one of his eyes, although he couldn’t tell if it was the left or the right, not that it mattered.

  With his other hand, Victor drew the dagger. “Interesting. Our facility in the Negev was attacked by one man. All he had were two knives. Not the same as this but similar. He killed everyone there while infiltrating the facility. Heavily armed, well-trained men, with just knives. And he appeared like you. The security footage we recovered shows it. He moved very fast and the images are not consistent. There are times he simply disappears. Even on thermal.

  “Since you appeared like him and are armed in a similar manner, please do not waste my time any more. How did you get here?”

  “I can’t tell you that.”

  “I should just kill you,” Victor said, “since your group attacked my country and killed my comrades. I think— “

  “That wasn’t my group,” Ivar said. “He wasn’t from us.”

  “So there is an us. What group was he from, if not yours?”

  “His name is Legion.”

  Victor nodded. “Yes. That was the name he called himself on the surveillance. Biblical in a way. Who are they?”

  “Killers.”

  “Obviously. And you are not. I would have killed you in the park if you were like him, because you would have known I was coming up behind me and reacted. The only reason you’re not dead is you didn’t react. And I thought you might be the man I’m supposed to meet.”

  Ivar was relieved his lack of martial skills had saved his life. It was a small victory, but an important one.

  “What country is this Legion from?”

  Ivar didn’t say anything.

  Victor reached out and gently placed his free hand on top of Ivar’s right forearm. Then he squeezed. Ivar screamed as incredible pain blasted along his nerves.