Red, White, and the Blues

by Walker, Rysa

  Months?

  I’m supposed to meet Richard at the four-hour mark, which is less than half an hour from now. It’s not a huge deal if I miss that, though. We established a fallback rendezvous at the Manhattan apartment at hour five in case either of us needed more time. And Saul is right. It’s freezing.

  I follow him to an odd green vehicle that’s shaped a bit like an avocado. “Do you know how to drive this thing?”

  “Of course. It’s not that different from the truck I just drove in 1911. And like I said, I’ve had a bit of time to acclimate to the 1930s.”

  The second I pull the door closed behind me, I’m hit with the sudden conviction that this is a mistake. This can’t be my Saul. He couldn’t possibly have been under a CHRONOS field when the shift happened. Other-Saul must have had his scar repaired and his bionic eye implant replaced with a more realistic model. And that means this mistake is probably a fatal one, even though Team Viper isn’t supposed to harm actual team members.

  As he slides behind the wheel, I grab the door handle. This could be my only chance to get away.

  But then he turns my face toward him and kisses me, and I know. Doubt evaporates like the clouds of my breath in the cold morning air, and the tears I’d managed to keep at bay spill over. Saul holds me, smoothing my hair with his ghost-cold hands.

  It’s him. But I still have questions. Many questions. And so I wipe the tears on my sleeve and nod toward the key in the ignition. “We should go. I only have a little over an hour.”

  “There’s a diner a few blocks away. How long has it been for you since the shift?”

  “About twelve hours. I think.”

  Now it’s his turn to look surprised. “How did you figure out all of this in twelve hours?”

  As he drives, I give him a basic overview of my day, omitting the information about Madi. I’m not sure why, except that it feels like telling him would put restoring the timeline into even greater jeopardy. Saul has casually mentioned having children, maybe, in the distant future. I’m not sure, however, how he’d take the idea of a baby within the next year or so, when both of us are still in the middle of our field research. To be honest, though, I can’t see how the stars could possibly align in exactly the right way to re-create that pregnancy and whatever it is that strands us in the past. Even if we restore CHRONOS, there will be minor changes to our timeline. Given where Angelo was headed when the shift happened, it’s entirely possible that we could fix this aberration only to have the Solons decide to erase all of us anyway.

  When I tell Saul about watching Angelo vanish, he reaches over and squeezes my hand. “Ah, babe. It’s no secret he wasn’t my favorite person at CHRONOS, but I know how much he meant to you. I’m sorry.”

  “Was that you that I saw at the OC?” I ask. “About an hour after the shift. I convinced Richard to go with me, and we both thought we saw you . . . or at least some version of you. But Sutter was interrogating us, and we had to get out. Richard set a stable point so that we could go back and look, but then the countdown was starting, and . . . I simply didn’t see how it could have been you. How were you under a CHRONOS field, Saul?”

  He parks in front of a squat trailer labeled S & C Coffee Car and gets out without answering my question. I know his expressions too well to be fooled. He’s trying to figure out how much he wants to tell me. Saul is the master of partial truths. To be fair, I just did the same thing by deciding not to tell him about Madi and the pregnancy that may or may not be in my future. But I have a very good reason for being selective in what I tell him.

  Once we’re seated in a booth, warming our hands against the smooth ceramic cups of hot coffee, I repeat the question. “How were you under a CHRONOS field?”

  “Morgen,” he says simply, as if that’s an answer. I stare at him for a moment, and then he adds, “Money couldn’t buy him the CHRONOS gene, but it could buy him a key. You might wonder why the stupid gox would even want a key when he can’t actually use it. I’ve definitely wondered that. He kept the medallion in the side drawer of his gaming table. Took it out and showed me one night when he was skunk drunk. I don’t know if he even remembered telling me about it later, and I sure as hell didn’t mention it. And, no, I didn’t report it. We both know that given my relationship with Morgen, I’d be the first person they’d suspect of getting him the contraband, and even though they wouldn’t be able to make it stick, it would be a pain in the ass. Plus, it’s not my fault if security is so lax that they lost a key. Or maybe two. I know he had his tech people build a field extender for his quarters, but I don’t know if that was powered by a key or a diary, or just something they managed to build on their own. Anyway, we were in Morgen’s private game room in his quarters when the shift hit. We were playing an early twenty-first-century election scenario, and all of the constants just . . . readjusted. The graphics changed, as well. A quick computer check made it clear that something happened that kept us out of World War Two—exactly as the message on all of the TD consoles had said. But we didn’t need a computer to tell us how much had changed. Looking outside, the entire city was altered. It was . . . jaw dropping.”

  Morgen Campbell’s penthouse suite is round. It sits atop the rectangular main building of the Objectivist Club like a slightly off-center screw cap. His sleeping quarters are in the middle, and the living area that encircles it has a 360-degree view of the city. Those windows are one of the few things I like about his apartment.

  “Half the damn city had vanished,” Saul says. “The Washington Monument was sticking up out of the reflecting pond, for Christ’s sake. Then I looked down K Street and HQ was gone. Completely gone, with that old library in its place, although you could barely see anything through the smog. I didn’t know if you were under a key, but I thought there was at least a chance, given that you were mentioned in the message, and um . . . well, I’ll get to the other part in a minute. So I ran the scenario through Morgen’s system and came up with seven or eight different possibilities. Which I actually had to write down,” he says as he pulls a sheet of paper out of his pocket, “since my comm was connected to CHRONOS, which no longer existed.”

  “And Morgen allowed you to take his key?”

  “I think he probably would have. Eventually. If I’d argued with him long enough. But I really wasn’t in the mood for his games. I sort of . . . incapacitated him and took it.”

  “That must be what Sutter’s guards were talking about. They said Morgen didn’t show up for a meeting or something. Do you think he’s okay?”

  “I don’t know. And I’m not sure that I care, to be honest. Take a look at this key.” Saul flips the key over to the back. Instead of the word CHRONOS, which is printed on a normal medallion, it reads CHRO-NOS. “That’s from the other group, isn’t it?”

  “Yes,” I say. “I’ve seen several of their keys. But how did you know that?”

  He sighs. “Okay, babe . . . this is the hard part, because I’m pretty sure you’re going to be pissed. And maybe you have a right to be. I lied about the burn on my arm. Well, it wasn’t a complete lie. I was supposed to meet Grant at our stable point, which was in an alley behind a bar in Atlanta 1911. Only I found Grant inside the bar, completely shit-faced. But that wasn’t the full story. I managed to get Grant out of there and around back to the stable point. He jumped back to HQ, and I was about to do the same, but then I saw myself standing a few yards away. At first, I thought it was a splinter. Maybe I was coming back to tell myself to leave Grant in the bar and let him face the consequences of an extraction team. Only this version of me had a weird scar along my cheek and an eye that looked an awful lot like Sutter’s.”

  I debate whether to mention that I’ve seen this other version and decide that can wait. “Why did he seek you out?”

  Saul colors slightly, something that is highly unusual for him. That’s not an indication that he’s lying, though. Based on my own past experience, when he’s lying, even a white lie, he keeps his face almost motionless and h
olds my gaze. He almost never blushes.

  “Mostly it’s just a thing that my other self does,” Saul says, “when he visits a new timeline. Hunts down his other self to . . . say hello.”

  “Oh. That’s very neighborly.”

  “Indeed,” he says wryly, and again, I’m tempted to push, because I’m quite certain that there’s something he’s not telling me. But I hold my tongue.

  “My doppelgänger showed me his CHRONOS key, only the back was like this one I swiped from Morgen, with the word hyphenated. My other self also showed me a copy of The Book of Cyrus. I don’t know if it was one of . . . I mean, if it was my copy. I don’t think so. The symbol on the front seemed a bit different, but I only caught a glimpse of it. Then he said he had an invitation for me. He explained the nature of playing off-world Temporal Dilemma, and how it was several orders of magnitude better than the computer version.”

  “So . . . is his version of CHRONOS engaged in historical research? Or do they just use the medallions for gaming?”

  “I don’t know for certain,” Saul says. “If I had to guess, I’d say the latter. Anyway, the other me told me that the opposing team had been picked because the four of you interfered in a previous game set in the 1960s, which I’m guessing was Rich’s project that they didn’t really want me on in the first place. He said this was a rematch of sorts. And then he asked if I was interested in helping him take Morgen down.”

  “Which Morgen, though? There are two of them. I don’t just mean one Morgen in our reality and one in theirs, but two in their reality. Campbell apparently cloned himself. And both the clone and Alisa have the CHRONOS gene.”

  “I don’t know which one he meant. He just said Morgen. And he said that I couldn’t be an actual team member. I’d have to be an observer, whatever that is, but he’d let me handle Coughlin, since that would be well within my area of expertise. I’m not entirely sure what their game plan was with him, but he mentioned him explicitly. And he said that if I helped him, he’d leave me with an open key when the game was over—that is, a key that wasn’t tied to HQ’s system. That I’d have carte blanche to do whatever I wanted. Go wherever I wanted. Start the Cyrists for real if I wanted.”

  “What did you tell him?” I ask when he falls silent.

  “I told him no, of course. What did you think I’d do? Even if I’d been tempted, what would be the point if outsiders have already screwed up the timeline, you know? Who knows what sort of mess they’d leave behind? And the whole thing sounded crazy, to be honest. I mean, I joke about playing The Game for real, but it’s mostly just to mess with Morgen, since I could do it, at least theoretically, and he can’t. So of course I told him no.” He lets out a long, shuddering breath. “And then he said he couldn’t have me warning everyone else and pulled a fucking gun.”

  “Oh my God.”

  “Fortunately, I’ve got quick reflexes. The bullet careened off the bricks and grazed my arm. That’s the wound you bandaged, and that’s why I didn’t want to go to the med unit. They’d have known the difference between a burn and a groove caused by a bullet. He was about to fire again, and I’m pretty sure that he’d have killed me, but another guy—the dishwasher for the bar, I think—stepped outside when he heard the shots. Dumb move. The other me shot him, but that gave me enough time to pull up the stable point and blink out.”

  “So you knew the time shift was coming before the message even arrived. Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “I didn’t know anything, Kath. Not for certain. In fact, I’d convinced myself that I might be the prankster. That I could have gone crazy at some point in the future, and this was insane me’s twisted idea of a joke. When I mentioned the message to you and you said you didn’t know anything about it, that made me wonder even more. And it didn’t make sense that he’s part of this game where he and Morgen are supposedly on the same team, and yet he’s wanting me to help him take down Morgen. Plus, Morgen can’t time travel. Neither can Alisa.”

  “Like I said, though, it’s the younger Morgen who is on Team Viper. Four players and five observers. The older Campbell runs the show, and I literally mean show, as in with an audience. He said something about millions of viewers. And . . . I don’t think it matters whether we flip the timeline back or even how quickly, because they maxed out the style points. They even got a double bonus in the geographical category, which I didn’t know was possible. The bonus for that one is that all moves have to be within the same city, right?”

  “Yes. But . . . are they using the exact same rule book? In version 1.6 they had subunits for geographic. They were dropped when they streamlined the categories. One player got a triple bonus—so a total of one hundred and fifty bonus points—on the geographic category for having all moves made within a one-kilometer radius. All at the US Capitol. She lost points in other areas as a result, but with a bonus like that, who cares? A five-kilometer radius would earn a double bonus on top of the regular bonus. Did any of your initial predictions hit?”

  “One partial hit. The attempted assassination of the Japanese ambassador.”

  “Where?”

  “In New York City. We think all of them are in New York.”

  “Yes,” Saul says with a face that means I’m trying his patience. “But where in New York City?”

  “I was going to say Hotel Astor, but that’s just where Tyson and Max were thinking about going to see if they can get background information. Maybe see if they can spot anyone in the crowd that we can keep an eye out for the next day. The actual attempt was on Japan Day at the World’s Fair. June 2, 1939.”

  “Then you should assume that all of them are at the World’s Fair. That’s not one I’ve attended, but I’d guess that the fairgrounds are within a five-kilometer radius, which would get you the double bonus you mentioned.”

  “But all of the moves can’t have happened at the Fair. We were thinking New York, yes, but the Fair doesn’t even open until April of this year. And Coughlin is giving a speech today announcing that he’s joining the Cyrists.”

  “Yes,” Saul says. “But trust me when I say that you shouldn’t enter his conversion into the system as one of their moves.”

  It takes a moment for that to fully sink in. “Damn it, Saul. Please tell me you didn’t?”

  “But I did. Coughlin was delighted to be out from under the thumb of the Vatican. He’s mostly interested in the political and economic side of things anyway. Thanks to the popularity of his radio show, he has a lot of influence among the isolationists and just plain nationalists. He could have even more if he’d tone things down a bit, and he’s . . . malleable. Instead of taking money from Hitler, he was perfectly happy to take it from me, especially when I threw in the prospect of a shiny new temple that would put his current shrine to shame.”

  “Where did you get that kind of money?” Even as I say it, I know the answer. It’s the same thing that Clio’s parents did, although I’m guessing Saul was far more aggressive. I’m pretty sure that about a dozen years back, there was a very savvy investor who bought some stocks and knew to bail just before the market crashed in 1929.

  I rub my forehead and then stare at him over my clasped hands. “This isn’t good.”

  “Why? Why isn’t it good? We need some sort of advantage in this game, or we are royally fucked. Your team is undermanned and underskilled. You don’t have even one senior agent in the bunch. Did it occur to you that maybe that’s why they chose this particular lineup to be their opponents? I mean Cham is great for blending in and getting comparative data on racists and their targets. But he’s hardly the best we have. I’ve never even heard of this Max person, so I’m guessing he’s a first-year. And Richard . . . well, seriously. A music historian?”

  “The same could be said for religious history.” Even though I know it’s going to piss him off, the words tumble out, probably because I’m annoyed about the stock market stunt. And Coughlin. They both will cause ripples, and in the case of Coughlin, they could be major. We’re try
ing to fix the timeline, not spin off some different version of it.

  “No,” he says. “It really couldn’t. And you’re smart enough to know that, so stop playing games with me. A song generally doesn’t make people willing to fight wars or cough up more than a few dollars to own a copy, and then only if they can’t find a way to get it for free. Religion, on the other hand, is a powerful motivator. A catalyst.”

  We’ve argued this point before. It’s not uncommon for historians to think that their subfield is the most important area of study. In fact, it’s pretty much the norm. But Saul generally takes this to extremes. His insistence that religion was the prime mover for almost all historical change borders on obsessive. And if he has had a few drinks or is in the middle of one of his squabbles with Morgen, he’ll add that society could have been managed far better if someone who understood that fact had consciously used religion as a tool for shaping social and economic change. That makes him a bit of an anomaly at the Objectivist Club, given that it traces its roots to a debate club organized around a pseudophilosophy that began in the late 1950s, which viewed religion as a habit of the weak. Saul likes to goad Morgen by claiming the woman who founded it is one of his distant relatives, even though he told me he was certain she’s not.

  “But leaving all that aside,” he continues in a more conciliatory tone, “you need my expertise on The Game and, most of all, on those players. I know what makes them tick—all four of them—assuming their personalities are reasonably similar in the other timeline. Esther and Morgen will both cheat. It’s practically their signature move.”

  “So you don’t think Morgen will keep his end of the bargain? Even if we somehow manage to win, you think he’ll renege?”

  Saul is silent, taking a long sip from his coffee before he answers. “It depends. He’ll probably keep his word if his reputation is on the line. You said they’re recording portions of this, right?”