Paradox Bound

by Peter Clines

  The smaller faceless man stood in the middle of the street, a mere forty or fifty yards away. His mask swung to the left, to the right, and back as he studied the buildings on the far side of the street. Eli could see the thin elastic and the gleam of translucent plastic on the side of the man’s head as it tilted in their direction.

  Eli held out his arm to block Harry. She caught her breath, stopped her leg in midstride. She shifted her balance and stepped back. Eli followed her.

  “How close?” she asked.

  “Really close.”

  She half turned and took a few quick steps, trying to keep her eyes on the corner as they retreated. “Close enough to be certain?”

  It took Eli a moment to process the question. “I…I thought so. He didn’t seem to notice me, though.”

  Harry guided them between buildings. They passed piles of trash, a small stable, and then they were back out on another street, glancing over their shoulders as they went. She went half a dozen steps and changed direction, dragging him to a nearby building. Eli looked for a sign, but the window and the door were both bare. “What’s this?”

  “Hopefully a chance to save our lives.”

  A chiming bell and warm air welcomed them into the office. A counter split the room in two. Their side had nothing but the door, a small stove, and a neat pile of gray, gnarled wood accented by a few white pieces. Across the counter stood two sets of shelves. Small jars and bags filled one, all tagged and spaced out. Sheaves of paper and rolled-up maps spilled across the opposing shelves. A few of the longer rolls of paper leaned in the corner between the shelf and the wall.

  Someone, Eli decided, needed to invent the file cabinet soon.

  Harry took a step to the side and revealed the set of scales on the counter. Its brass arms caught every flicker of light in the room. A tray of weights sat next to the scales. Each of the lead blocks had been arranged by size, largest to smallest.

  She cleared her throat. “Good afternoon,” she said, keeping her voice calm.

  In the back of the room, a thin man closed a safe with a heavy clang and spun the dial. He had round spectacles with frames so thin they could’ve been actual wire. His collar stood up straight, and his necktie looked like a silk handkerchief tied around his throat. His thick mustache would’ve fit well in any ’70s movie. “Good afternoon,” he said, setting his palms flat on the counter. With his slumped shoulders, the man’s pose made Eli think of a Muppet.

  “I’m wondering if you could help us,” Harry said.

  The clerk’s gaze drifted up to the tricorne, then back to her face. “I can try.”

  “You know the town well?”

  The man gave them a polite smile and gestured at the map on the wall. “Every square mile and measured acre.”

  “Where’s the nearest train track?”

  He shook his head. “Afraid the railroad’s not quite here, ma’am. Hopefully by next year.”

  “But surely they’ve set down some track?”

  “Station’s just south of town.” He pointed at the left-hand wall without hesitation. “About half an hour’s walk. Nothing more than a platform right now, and not even a mile of track.”

  “Is there anything closer?”

  The clerk smiled again. “Just the one station, ma’am.”

  “I didn’t ask about the station, sir. I asked about tracks. Is there anything closer? An abandoned line, maybe?”

  “If it’s abandoned, it’s not going to do you any good, is it?”

  “It’s a bet,” interrupted Eli, pulling his gaze from the window. “A wager. I told her there wasn’t anything closer and she didn’t believe me.”

  “Please,” Harry told the clerk, not missing a beat, “I’ve got a half dime riding on this.”

  “Well, I am very sorry, young lady,” he said, “but there’s nothing closer than the station, and nothing running closer than Kansas City.”

  She sighed.

  “See,” Eli said, “I told you.”

  The clerk gave her a pitying look. “Hopefully this will be a lesson to you about the evils of gambling.”

  “It will,” said Harry, bowing her head. “Oh, one more thing. The post office?”

  “One street over, two streets down.” His finger pointed out at the road and swung to the left.

  “Thank you,” she said, pushing Eli back outside. The little bell over the door rang again as they left.

  Her boots thumped down the wooden sidewalk, dragging Eli behind her.

  “Post office?” he asked. He heard a sound and wrenched his neck around, expecting to see the faceless men a few doors down.

  “Believe it or not,” said Harry, “I’m still trying to save our lives.”

  They dashed across the snow-and-mud-swirled street, peered cautiously around the next intersection, and then headed down along the wooden walkway. They passed more people. Another coach rumbled by them, this one dragged by a pair of enthusiastic horses.

  It took a few minutes to reach the post office, a small cabin with delusions of grandeur. A wooden sign hung out front with meticulous letters and a picture of a man on horseback. They stepped onto the porch and pushed the door open.

  Inside, another counter divided another single-room structure, although this one gave far more space to the area behind. Mismatched stones made up a chimney, and three different shades of crumbling mortar bound them together. Another pile of wood sat by the fireplace, and a single bench, not much bigger than Eleanor’s rumble seat, sat under the front window.

  The man behind the counter kept his head down, his nose mere inches from the book on the counter. Eli could see a lot of scalp through the man’s hair. An array of at least fifty cubbyholes flanked him on one side, three hanging sacks on the other.

  Harry tapped her fingernails on the counter. The man sighed, set a string across the page, and closed the book. He looked up at them with watery eyes. His back stayed hunched over. “Yes?”

  “I need to mail a letter,” said Harry.

  “Mail won’t go out till tomorrow afternoon,” the postmaster drawled.

  “I’d still like to mail the letter.” Her fingertips tapped on the countertop again, four quick strikes.

  Eli looked out the window at the snow and mud. Every figure that strolled into his field of view made his stomach churn. A pair of linked memories tickled his mind—being chased through town by Zeke as a kid, and the gut-churning anticipation of getting caught.

  The hunchbacked postmaster let out a wheezing, attention-demanding sigh. He stepped back, reached below the counter, and came back with a jagged sheet of brick-red stamps and a small pot of glue. “Your letter?”

  “I also need an envelope,” she said. “And paper.”

  The man’s watery glare shifted to Eli. “Is your wife familiar with the procedure of mailing a letter?”

  “I am,” Harry said, “and I’m standing right here.”

  “Sir,” said Eli, “it’s been a really stressful afternoon for us. If you have pen and paper we could use, it’d be appreciated.”

  The postmaster wheezed again. Then he shook his head, muttered something to himself, and ducked below the counter again. He returned with a sheet of rough paper and a square envelope. “That’ll be ten cents for the stamp, the paper, and the envelope.”

  She nodded.

  He turned to another table behind him and returned with a small black pot and a carved wand of ivory or bone. One end held a brass nib.

  “This is my good pen,” the postmaster said. “Don’t dip it deep or you’ll stain it.”

  “Of course,” said Harry. “Thank you.”

  The man shuffled a polite step or two away while Harry scratched out a message on the paper. Eli stood next to her and read as she wrote. She made no attempt to hide the words.

  URGENT! Calling in my second favor. Independence, Missouri. November 19th, 1853. I require passage for myself and my partner. We shall be on the train platform at

  She looked up and her ey
es found the postmaster. “Do you have the time?”

  “Time?”

  “Yes. What time is it right now?”

  He let out another wheezing sigh. “The mail won’t go out until tomorrow.”

  She nodded impatiently. “Yes, but the time at the moment is…?”

  The man rolled his watery eyes and pulled a silver pocket watch from his vest. “Five past four.”

  “Thank you. Again.”

  at 4:15 in the afternoon. Please be there.

  Harry signed the letter with a flourish and blew on the page. She scratched out the initials JH on the envelope and an address in Kansas City. She blew on that as well, then folded the letter in half, and in half again.

  Her hand vanished into her pocket and Eli heard a muffled set of clicks. She drew out a handful of round tokens. Most had red, blue, and black edges, although he glimpsed a yellow one too. Each one had a set of lines and curves scratched and inked across the face.

  Harry used a finger to swipe through the tokens and selected a blue-edged one. She held it between her fingers as if she were examining a gemstone. The lines across the wood surface formed a glyph, and just as she flipped it back into her palm, Eli recognized it as stylized initials. The back of the J and the side of the H shared a common line.

  Harry slid the token between the folds of the letter and pulled the coin purse from her other pocket. She shook some coins into her palm, plucked two small ones, and pushed the dull pieces across the countertop to the hunchbacked postmaster. “Acceptable?”

  He held the coins close to his eyes, and for a moment Eli was convinced the man was going to set them on his own eyelids like a corpse. “These are old,” he said. Accusation didn’t drip from the words, but it brimmed up and trembled at their edges.

  Harry fastened the purse and dropped it back into her coat pocket. “Still acceptable, though, yes?”

  The postmaster studied the coins, then wheezed out another breath and set them down on the counter. “They are,” he conceded. He folded the sheet of stamps back and forth until two came loose in his hand. He wiggled the cap off the glue and smeared a small blob on the corner of the envelope. “It’ll go out tomorrow on the afternoon coach.”

  “Please make sure it does.”

  He waved a hand, dismissing them as he pressed the stamp into position.

  The two of them stepped outside. Eli scanned the town, dread rumbling in his gut. Snow still drifted down, maybe a little heavier than before. Fewer people seemed to be out and about.

  Harry checked the streets. “Come on,” she said.

  “Where?”

  “The train station.” She quick-stepped across the street.

  Eli caught up with her. “Didn’t the other guy say the trains aren’t running yet?”

  “ ‘Yet’ being the important word.” At the next corner she looked, decided, and pointed them on their way. They strode side by side, checking every doorway and intersection. Now and then one of them wove around a pile of droppings or a thick patch of near-frozen mud. Eli kicked a stone hidden by the thin coat of snow and the tremor echoed in his shoe.

  “So what was that thing?”

  “That?” Harry glanced at the road behind them. “Mule droppings, I believe.”

  “The thing you put in the envelope with the letter.”

  “Ahhh.” She froze as a tall, dark-suited man walked across the street in front of them. He turned to reveal bright eyes and thick muttonchops. “It was a favor,” she told Eli.

  “A what?”

  “A favor.” Harry led them back up onto the wooden walkway and down the street. “When you’re in someone’s debt—I mean, really and truly owe them—you give them a favor. They can call it in at any time, and you can’t say no when they do. Refuse to honor a favor, word will get around, and then no one will honor one you try to call in. So it’s no small thing to give one, and you don’t use them lightly.”

  “Seems like an odd way to keep track of things.”

  “Not when you travel through history,” said Harry. She paused at the next intersection to glance around the corner, then they hurried across, sticking close to the buildings. “It’s not often you meet people in the same order they’re meeting you,” she continued. “So we all have our own marks, something we’ll recognize even if we haven’t made that particular arrangement yet.”

  Eli glanced back, reassuring himself they weren’t being followed. “Couldn’t somebody just fake one if they needed it? They’re just wood and paint, right?”

  Harry shook her head. “No one would risk it. Creating a false favor would be worse than failing to honor a real one. Once people found out, the counterfeiter’d be ostracized. They probably wouldn’t even be allowed in the iteration or the paradox.”

  “What’s that?”

  “What are they,” she corrected him. “If we can stay alive long enough, Mr. Teague, you may get to find out.”

  The homes and shops began to spread themselves thinner. The wooden sidewalk came to an end. A carriage passed them going the other way. Harry took four stomping steps. The clinging snow lost its grip and tumbled from her boots. “We’re running out of cover. I’d hoped the station would be closer to town.”

  Eli looked up ahead. A half mile or so down the road—not much more than a broad trail at this point—stood a wide platform with a small cabin on it. “About that,” he said.

  “Yes?”

  “If there’s only a mile of track, how’s a—”

  “Hello,” called out a voice behind them. “Mrs. Pritchard. Mr. Teague.”

  Harry launched into a sprint, her cloak flapping out behind her. Eli threw himself after her. After a dozen strides, his shoe slipped on a muddy rock and he clawed at the air to keep his balance. He slid, caught it, ran again.

  A pair of cracks echoed behind them and the ground ahead of Eli spat up two little tufts of snow.

  The clearing opened in front of them and Harry veered to the right. The field behind the platform was gouged with dozens of wagon tracks that showed through the light snow cover. The path itself curved toward a set of stairs that mounted the platform.

  A man in a long charcoal coat and stubby round hat stepped from the shack up on the platform, a long cane tucked under his arm. He waved and called out a few words Eli couldn’t hear. Then his gaze settled on something behind them.

  Eli glanced back.

  The two faceless men marched down the path, side by side, arms and legs moving in perfect sync. They each had a pistol out, aimed at the runners. “Please, Mr. Teague,” shouted the larger one, “let’s not make this unpleasant.”

  They were too close, he realized as he turned back to the train station. Less than two hundred feet away. Close enough to be certain.

  “Keep running,” snapped Harry.

  “Where?” he gasped.

  She pulled ahead in response, her boots pounding the dirt and snow. Another crack echoed from behind them and a spiky flower burst open on one of the platform’s wooden legs, right by the point of Harry’s hat. She flinched away and kept running, right past the stairs and along the tracks.

  Eli slipped in the snow again but kept after her, putting a few trees between him and the faceless men.

  The man on the platform, the station guard, swung his long cane up and braced it against his shoulder. He didn’t have it aimed at them. He shouted something that might’ve been Hold it right there, but the wind and exertion took his words away from Eli’s ears.

  They kept running. The man passed from view. Eli heard a series of gunshots and a wail of pain. He looked at the sloping ground ahead of him, alongside the tracks, and risked a glance back.

  The station guard stood at the top of the stairs clutching his shoulder, his body twitching. The two faceless men had almost reached the platform. Just over a hundred feet at most. They had a clear shot again, but the larger one was turning his head the other way.

  Beyond them, a hundred or so yards down the track, the gleaming cylinder o
f a steam engine chugged toward the platform. Eli could hear the pulsing hiss of steam and oiled pistons. Smoke billowed up from its stacks, black against the falling flakes of white.

  The train pulled alongside them as they ran, a massive bullet of steel studded with lines of rivets. The brakes hissed and squealed, a scream of metal on metal, but sheer momentum kept the engine moving past them. Eli counted four more cars that rolled by even as he and Harry kept sprinting. It felt like a football stadium sliding past him, yard by yard.

  Then the shrieking stopped. The brakes gave a final, coughing hiss and fell silent. The train rolled on, slower but still moving at a good ten or fifteen miles per hour.

  A few yards ahead, a figure reached down from the engine, grabbed Harry’s upraised hand, and pulled her aboard. Eli heaved, threw his legs forward, and a bullet rang off the train next to him. Another one tugged at his sleeve. He staggered, lost his pace, and heard a third shriek through the air near his head.

  Harry leaned out from the engine cab, a pistol in each hand. “Come on, Mr. Teague!” The Colts fired off three-four-five-six rounds at whatever was running up behind Eli. Then the pistols spun down into their holsters and she stretched her fingers out to him. “Run!”

  Eli ran. He threw himself forward, kicked at the ground, tried not to think of the huge steel wheels grinding on the track next to him. The cold air scraped his throat, ripped at his lungs.

  Harry gripped a long handle with one hand and leaned out to him. A bullet sparked against the side of the engine near her. She winced but didn’t flinch away.

  Eli stretched, reached, brushed her fingers. Harry grabbed at his wrist. He felt her grip drag him forward, toward the wheels. He panicked, almost fought her, and then Harry gritted her teeth and pulled.

  Eli got his other arm up on the edge of the engine’s platform. Together they heaved him up high enough for him to get a foot on the metal platform. “He’s on!” she shouted over her shoulder.

  Steam hissed around the wheels as the train lurched forward again. Eli kicked at the side of the engine as Harry hauled him up onto the trembling deck. By the time he was on board, their speed had almost doubled. He risked a cautious peek back, but the station and the faceless men had vanished beyond a curve.