Red, White, and the Blues
Page 44
∞27∞
KATHERINE
NEW YORK, NEW YORK
JULY 3, 1940
The apartment is eerily quiet for a small space with six people. It almost feels like exam week when we were in training. Well, except for the risk of failure. There’s a very real chance that we’ll fail, and no one ever failed exams at CHRONOS. We were created to be good at the job, so flunking out wasn’t something that happened. Studying for exams was less a matter of fearing that we’d score poorly, and more a matter of wanting to come out on top. Every chair in the commons area would be occupied by students poring over the Log of Stable Points, reading from their tablets, or taking notes. Each focused, each very much in his or her own world.
We’re all in our own worlds this morning, too, working on our separate pieces of the puzzle, now that we’ve divided up the tasks. Madi is digging through everything she can find dealing with Einstein and putting together an argument for why he must follow through on signing the letter Szilard sends to Roosevelt. Tyson and Rich have just returned from a trip to set a few other stable points that they’ll need in order to intercept Tomonaga and disrupt the attack against the ambassador. Rich seemed unusually psyched when they got back, possibly because he never really expected arcane knowledge from one of his musical-history projects to be of much use. Their two quick jumps answered the key question hanging over us. The bombing in the Court of Peace wasn’t Team Viper. We were fairly certain of that after seeing the observers’ bodies last night, but Tomonaga and his friend were grabbed by the communist Rich suspected and two other guys. One of them was the Saul from their side, wearing an eye patch to hide his prosthetic eye. Apparently, he looked a bit too much like a pirate for comfort, and both of their intended victims seem to have had some martial arts training. Tomonaga, the physicist, clearly thought they were being robbed. He retaliated by jabbing his straightened hand into Other-Saul’s solar plexus.
Tyson is focusing on the attack on the Japanese ambassador, but he also plans to stop in and disable the recording of the explosion at Madison Square Garden. Clio is watching the stable points that all of us will be using, since she’ll act as the liaison point for all members of the team, both here and in 2136. When we all complete our assignments and meet up in 2136, Thea will enter one of the moves into the system, and Clio will enter the rest. That way, we’ll have the all-members-must-play element covered.
Sorting all of that out took over half of the six hours that we’ve been at it. Then we decided on our disguises, because we can no longer assume that Team Viper will abide by their agreement to target only observers, and we don’t know what else Saul might be doing. He could have already taken out one of their actual players, so a bit of precaution is in order. I hate wigs with a passion, but I’ll be wearing a dark wig, along with a maternity dress and a strap-on baby bump. On the plus side, I’ll be wearing rather sensible shoes, and I’m actually impressed with the pockets, which have openings that allow me to hide things inside the pregnancy pillow and still access them easily—like the laser device and one of the CHRONOS-field extenders that Tyson brought back for all of us from 2136 as a bit of insurance against someone snatching our keys. We wouldn’t be able to jump without a key, but at least it would keep us from instantly blinking out of existence.
With the various details nailed down, we’re now in final-check mode, watching the stable points where we’ll be jumping in to make sure we’re ready. The goal is to make all of our moves in rapid succession within a single hour and meet back at the library, but we’re leaving an extra hour on the clock as a margin for error.
All five of us were up and working even before the wake-up time we agreed upon. Looking around the room, it’s clear that I’m not the only one who slept poorly. I lay awake for well over an hour, staring at the ceiling. Each time I tried to close my eyes, I saw the mummified bodies, wrapped up like a sick Christmas gift. Or worse still, I saw Saul’s face. Felt his hands touching me. The only way I managed to get any sleep was by swiping another of Clio’s magic pills from the cabinet. One might not wipe you out the next morning, but it turns out that two will leave you feeling a bit zapped. Or maybe that’s just the aftereffect of discovering that the man you planned to spend your life with is, in fact, a psychopath who has killed not just the two men he left in the closet, but dozens more, according to Madi and Clio, by poisoning a village well.
The fact that the rest of us are so quiet is probably why the steady tap-tap of Kiernan Dunne’s foot against the leg of the coffee table is so unnerving. He clearly doesn’t like the idea of being restricted to the apartment any more than his daughter does. For the first few minutes after his arrival about an hour ago, he argued that him being at the Fair as extra boots on the ground in case he was needed would be worth a small bit of risk. His protests were fairly feeble, however, and I think they were mostly for show. Clio said she made it clear when she telephoned him that she’s fairly certain in this version of reality, as things stand right now, one of them doesn’t make it. Kiernan can’t see the stable points anymore, but she told him about the extra gravestone in their family cemetery, crossing her fingers that he’d decide to stay home. I don’t think she really ever believed that was a possibility, however.
Now he’s slumped at the end of the couch across from Clio’s chair, coffee in hand, foot tapping.
“Dad, just go back to Skaneateles,” Clio says. “I told you before you left that you’d be cooped up here with nothing to do.”
“You did. But your mum and I didn’t want you here alone. And there may be something I can do. Plus . . .” He waves a hand toward the coffee table, which is laden with three trays of cookies, brownies, and some sort of nut roll. “I had to make the care-package delivery. Even your brothers were saying she made too much.”
“We’re glad you’re here, Mr. Dunne,” Tyson says, taking a brownie from the tray. “It goes without saying that we wouldn’t have stood the slightest chance without everything your family did to prepare the way. And these brownies are really good.”
Kate Dunne is apparently a nervous baker. And this is Kate Dunne before she knows that something happens to someone in her family. Something that it’s entirely possible will still happen, despite our decision to place them under house arrest, since there are apparently still three graves on that hill in Skaneateles.
It’s irrational, but I’m very angry at CHRONOS today. Not just for the audacity of thinking something like this could never happen. I’ll admit that I shared that belief. We aren’t supposed to change the timeline, and there are extraction teams and other groups to correct things, if you screw up too badly. It’s more anger that they didn’t prepare us for the possibility—no matter how slight they may have imagined it to be—that something of this sort might happen. Maybe if we’d had that kind of training, we’d have a better idea of what to do right now. Rich says that we’re overthinking this. That you can’t see timeline changes until you embark on the specific action that changes them. I hope that’s true, because I’ve spent the past half hour combing through the various stable points at the Fair. All of the things we need to reverse still happen, right on schedule, despite the fact that we have decided they must be prevented. Is it because we are not yet certain exactly how we will prevent them? Because we haven’t taken a first decisive step in that direction? Or is it because we fail to prevent them?
In the case of the Court of Peace bombing, we’ve even taken a concrete move in the direction of prevention. This morning, Richard telephoned the police from a pay phone, noting that there is a bomb on the fairgrounds and even giving them our best bet for exactly where it is located and what time it will go off. The police dispatcher sounded bored, and Clio said we’d only need to comb through the past few years of New York City newspapers to understand why. Bomb threats were commonplace in the 1930s, and there was a general sense that the ones who telephoned to tell you they’d planted an explosive were almost always the ones who hadn’t actually done it.
Ten minutes later, at five p.m., the actual bomb went off in the park. And despite careful surveillance of stable points, we still have no clue who dropped it off, when they did it, or exactly where it’s located. And that’s why I’ve been cycling through these locations for the past few hours. I’ve seen no CHRONOS keys. No faces that look familiar. Also, not that many hiding places, aside from the shrubbed area where they found the decoy explosive.
I’ve been in one position for so long that my back aches. On the plus side, maybe it will make my pregnancy disguise more effective. I stretch and then go to the kitchen in search of caffeine.
When I turn back with my coffee cup filled, I see Kiernan standing in the doorway. He’s probably in his late forties, and still a very handsome man. That’s especially true when he smiles, and he’s smiling now.
“The first time I saw you, you were about the same age you are now, and I was eight. The last time I saw you, you were in your seventies, and Clio’s mum was nineteen. We never imagined you’d actually get to see Clio, let alone get to see her when you were damn near the same age. Time travel is a kick in the head.”
I return his smile, because in a few short sentences, the man has given me more information than anyone in the house. “So Clio is my granddaughter?”
He frowns, shakes his head, and takes a few steps back into the living room. “Damn it, Clio. You told me the woman knew her history. Or . . . future history, I guess.”
“No,” Clio says from her armchair. “What I said was that she knew about her relationship to Madi. Cat’s out of the bag now, I guess.” Clio leans forward so that I can see her face through the door. “There’s a reality in which you are my great-grandmother. But given what you now know about my great-grandfather, I sincerely hope you won’t repeat that mistake. I’d be entirely okay with that decision, since this medallion is my jewelry for life, either way.”
I sink down into one of the kitchen chairs. Kiernan does the same.
“Sorry about that,” he says.
“I already suspected something of the sort. She looks quite a bit like Saul’s mother. Nicer, though, thank God. And your daughter doesn’t seem to have inherited any of her great-grandfather’s homicidal tendencies.”
“That’s true now, perhaps. You didn’t see her as a teenager when she was pissed at one of her brothers.” He stares down at the tiles on the floor for a moment, then looks back up at me. “Clio told me about the two bodies in the British Pavilion. Based on her description, they match the ones that Kate—the other Kate—and I saw in a small village in 1911 Georgia.”
“How many were there?”
“Forty-seven, by most accounts. One said forty-eight, but they may have been basing that on the total number of people in the group, and there was one survivor who chose not to stick around for the inevitable questions. I guess you’d call the place a religious commune, but not one of the crazy variety. Quite a few kids in the mix, many of them orphans. The neighboring towns had another name for the village, but the people there called it God’s Hollow. The people there mostly kept to themselves, so no one realized anything was off until they didn’t come into town for their groceries a few weeks in a row. And the real pisser is that we couldn’t risk stopping Saul on his test run, because we needed to make sure we stopped his grand finale. So, those deaths weigh heavy on me. Not the kind of thing I ever wanted Clio drawn into, but those CHRONOS keys are cursed, and like she said, the medallion is her companion for life.”
He’s quiet for a moment, and then says, “Listen, I know none of this is easy for you to hear, and I’m not trying to make things harder with everything you’ve got on your mind right now. But I didn’t want you to head out with even the slightest thought that this might be a onetime act of violence by a man who’s justifiably angry at these off-world bastards. If he’s helping our side, he’s doing it to further his own personal goals. And he’ll stab every single one of us in the back, including you, if we give him a chance.”
“Yes. I know. The shriveled bodies at the stable point kind of tipped me off to that.” There’s a sarcastic tone to my voice that I really didn’t intend. I do think he’s trying to be helpful. Maybe he even has fond feelings for the person I might have become in some other reality.
“I’m certain that you know here,” he says, tapping his temple. “But in my experience, it’s the heart that tends to lag behind. Just . . . be careful if you cross his path.”
I pull out my personal death ray. “Killed a man in Memphis with this a few days ago. If necessary, I’ll do it again.”
Kiernan shakes his head, laughing softly, but his dark eyes are sad when he looks back at me. “Your head seems willing. Let’s just hope that’s what guides your hand.”
Back in the living room, the others are now discussing style points. I’ve been exempted from that, since there are dozens of lives on the line if that bomb goes off in the Court of Peace. If I can find a way to do something that will increase our total without risking those lives, I’ll do it, but I don’t plan to expend many brain cells on that.
“I’m just not sure what else we can do,” Madi says. “We’re going to be working backward, like they did, so we’ll get the chronological points and bonus. We’ll correct all of their moves at the World’s Fair, so it will be within the range to get full geographic points, plus the bonus. If we do all of that, we should get at least most of the style points they earned, right?”
“Maybe?” Rich says. “But we’re not sure how they got some of their other points. I’m just thinking that they barely got any of the probability points. And we didn’t do well on the initial predictions. We could recoup some of those points if we can think of quirky ways to achieve our objectives.”
Kiernan resumes his spot on the couch, and we listen as Rich and Tyson debate an idea Rich came up with for accruing style points.
“I think we could get the costume,” Rich says. “There’s a stable point only a few yards away from the restroom at Toyland, which is where the actor changes out of his street clothes on July 3rd, 1940. The only catch is that I really don’t have the build for it. You’re closer, Tyson.”
“Not by much,” Tyson says. “If any kids see me, their faith in Superman will be shattered. And can I just add this—the fact that we’re even semiseriously debating me dressing up as a comic-book character tells me that whoever invented this stupid game should be shot.”
“Drawn and quartered,” Clio suggests.
Madi shakes her head. “I vote battered and deep fried. I’m feeling vindictive.”
“Are you the one in charge?” Kiernan asks Tyson. “Because I’d like to make just one little suggestion.” There’s something about Kiernan’s clipped tone that tells me that this isn’t a little suggestion at all.
“Dad . . .” There’s a note of caution in Clio’s voice, so apparently she picked up on the same thing I did.
Tyson nods. “Officially, I’m the team leader. But I call a vote for any major decisions. And sure. Anything you want to add would be appreciated.”
“Your game was thrown out the window when Saul Rand left his grotesque little fuck-you present for Morgen Campbell. If this Team Viper ever intended to abide by the rules of The Game and the decisions of the computer judge they set up, you can be sure they won’t be following those rules now. Your only way to fix this, God help us, is to follow Saul’s lead. To hell with the style points, to hell with winning the game. Just fix the bloody timeline. All of it or as much as you reasonably can. Because unless you can find a way to block them, to s
lam the door in their faces, they’re going to be back. Saul just guaranteed that. The game is over. We’re at war.”
He’s right. I was thinking something similar a few minutes ago, although I hadn’t really followed it to its logical conclusion. Looking around the room, I can tell I’m not the only one whose thoughts have ambled at least partway down that path.
“It’s a fair point,” Tyson says. “We’ve been so focused on the game that we haven’t really dealt with the fact that Saul didn’t simply move the goalposts last night. He blew them the hell up. We could just dispense with any added complications. I mean, what are the odds that their cameras will even pick up the fact that I’m in a costume, or that we trick one of the Silver Shirts into stopping the guy aiming at the ambassador, and so on. We could say we did, and they’d likely have a hard time proving otherwise.” He pulls out his key to check something. “And yeah. Style points are the least of our problems. The utility closet in the British Pavilion is once again empty.”
“How did they get the bodies out of . . .” Madi begins, and then shakes her head. “Never mind. That’s the easy part. How Saul got them into the place is a bit of a mystery, but all Team Viper had to do to get the bodies out was pull their keys.”
“Or more likely just that one key in the center of that bow,” I say. “Which probably means Saul pocketed the spare.”
“Hold on,” Madi says. She scrolls through her key. After a moment, she nods. “One of the two men was with Alisa when she met Einstein. I’m guessing she now has some screwy memories, because he’s no longer in the picture when I look back at the stable point.”
“Good to know,” I say. “Unfortunately, however, we’ve been working on a game plan—or battle plan, if you prefer—where we take these moves in reverse order. With just under six hours to go on the timer, do we really want to toss all of that away?”