Now, Then, and Everywhen (Chronos Origins)

by Rysa Walker

  When Katherine heads to the shower, Rich immediately looks away from whatever he was reading and asks in a low voice, “So what did you leave out? You were holding back in Angelo’s office. It’s something to do with the girl, isn’t it?”

  I consider lying, not because I don’t trust him, but because I’d rather not put him in the situation of having to lie, too. But he’d know I wasn’t telling the truth, and I don’t want that, either.

  “You’re better off not knowing, Rich.”

  Of course, he just stares at me, eyebrows raised. And since I know he’s not going to let it go . . .

  “Fine. When the shots rang out, I pushed Toni to the ground. To protect her. Problem is, the CHRONOS key was in my suit pocket.”

  “Fuuucck,” he says after a moment. “She was inside the CHRONOS field? You’re certain?”

  “Yeah. She felt the time shift, same as I did. Like a kick straight to the stomach. But I guess you felt it, too, right?”

  He shakes his head. “Not anything like that. It was more of a twinge than a kick. Angelo said the same thing. He only knew what had happened because of the alert from the TMU.”

  The Temporal Monitoring Unit, or TMU, is on the same floor as the jump room. It’s where we report immediately after returning from the past. They cycle us through a med pod to check vitals, run our blood work to make sure we didn’t bring back anything contagious, and make sure the change in our cellular age roughly matches the amount of time listed in the research plans we filed. Once we pass medical, we report to Timeline Consistency for a group debriefing. In every single instance since I began at CHRONOS, this has taken less than a minute. As soon as we’re all seated, the technician, usually Marcy Bateman, who I dated briefly during my field training, pushes a key. She stares at the screen for a few seconds, then calls each of us by name, in alphabetical order. After calling a name, she says, “You’re free to go.” I’d always thought she was running the report in real time, but now I suspect there’s someone—or maybe many someones—in the back room checking for anomalies the entire time we’re gone.

  “You were a lot closer to the precipitating event than we were,” Rich says. “That’s probably why it hit you so hard. How do you know this girl felt it? Maybe it was just shock from the shooting?”

  His voice rises hopefully at the end, but I shake my head.

  “She was talking about things changing. And she was pretty distraught about it. She mentioned Selma, said people died at Selma. Which is true, but I guess she meant more people died. I didn’t make the connection until—well, until now, to be honest. I’m familiar with Dr. King’s speech at the end of the march, but I hadn’t researched the concert the night before in much detail. But Toni lived through it. Saw it on the news. She’d have known if people died there.”

  Rich is quiet, but I can tell what’s on his mind.

  “You think I should have told Angelo.”

  “I do. But it’s not my decision. Unless . . .”

  “Unless we can’t fix this. I know. And I will tell Angelo if I have to. But it wasn’t Toni’s fault, and I don’t know what a retraction team might do to her or her family. You heard what Katherine just said.”

  He makes a dismissive noise. “Saul Rand lies more often than he tells the truth. I’ve never heard that story.”

  “Neither have I,” I admit. “But he’s been around a lot longer than either of us. And the point is, we don’t know. I have an obligation to protect them if I can.”

  “You do realize Angelo isn’t likely to accept that as an excuse for lying to him, don’t you? And it’s not like you can credibly claim it slipped your mind that the girl was inside the CHRONOS field.”

  “Credible or not, that’s exactly what I’m going to tell him. If I have to tell him anything. He may not believe it, but I’m not going to put them at risk if I can help it.”

  Rich gives me a knowing look. “You mean you’re not going to put her at risk.”

  I get exactly what he’s saying and shake my head. “That’s completely ridiculous. She lives nearly three hundred and fifty years in the past. And I just met her.”

  He glances toward the bathroom door, where I can hear the faint hiss of the sonic shower. “It can happen fast, man.”

  “You met Katherine when the two of you were ten, Rich.”

  “That’s completely irrelevant. When she walked in on orientation day, that was it for me.” He mimes yanking his heart out of his chest and tosses it toward Katherine, who’s still behind the closed bathroom door. “Doesn’t matter that it’s hopeless—and yes, Tyce, I know it’s hopeless. I’m not stupid. My point is that any decisions I make regarding Katherine aren’t rational. I’m incapable of being rational where she’s concerned. So I’m not judging you. That would be the height of hypocrisy. All I’m saying is, don’t fool yourself into thinking that you’re making strictly logical decisions here. You’re thinking with your heart as much as your head.”

  FROM THE DIARY OF KATE PIERCE-KELLER

  COPIED FROM OTHER-KATE RE: CYRISTS

  Fort Meyer 040302

  Okay, I’m writing this out in the hopes of getting everything straight in my mind before I discuss it with Katherine and Connor, especially since Katherine told me not to bother with this jump. She said that Saul gobbled up dozens of tiny cults when he started the Cyrists, and that we already know that the Koreshans were one of them. That I could waste months tracking them all down and my time would be better spent focusing on getting the keys from Dallas, yada, yada.

  But this group felt different to me. Heaven’s Gate, the Order of the Solar Temple, and the others don’t have as many points of overlap. The name Koresh is actually Cyrus in Hebrew. The Koreshans started in Chicago, around the same time that Saul and Katherine were there for the World’s Fair. In this timeline, they moved to Florida earlier and were better financed. Their commune at Estero is much larger in 1902 than it should be, according to the protected files in Katherine’s library. There were nearly a dozen people waiting at the dock when I arrived this morning, eager to visit the community and listen to the small orchestra they’ve formed. That’s not the sort of thing you put together if you only have a tiny cluster of people.

  Unfortunately, all conversation stopped when I arrived at the dock. I thought at first that it was because I was a stranger. While Fort Myers isn’t a small town for this era, everyone else seemed to know each other. But the man who showed up right after me, carrying an instrument of some sort in a brown leather case, acted as though he recognized me.

  Katherine is going to be livid that I didn’t walk away right that second, as soon as something felt off. But I couldn’t shake the sense that I was onto something.

  And then when I stepped into the boat, the guy driving it grinned at me so wide that I thought his face would split in half. He’s about my age, maybe a little younger. Very good looking, with hair that seems a little long for 1902, but it looks right on him.

  He stared at me the entire trip. It should probably have felt creepy, but it didn’t.

  The fact that everyone else kept looking at me, however, was making me nervous. About ten minutes in, one of the women turned around and started to say how much she and her husband had enjoyed the last concert, and how happy the Koreshans must be that I’d be able to attend today. Had I been traveling? Was I staying long? And it was just so heartwarming to see the wonderful work the group was doing with all those orphans.

  I was half tempted to dive over the edge of the boat and swim for shore at that point, but it didn’t seem like a wise course of action while wearing an ankle-length skirt. And I couldn’t really blink out with everyone staring at me. So I just smiled and gave vague answers, nodding in what I hoped were the right places as she continued talking. I decided to wait until I reached the shore and then find a spot where I could safely blink home.

  That didn’t happen, though. The boat driver followed me and grabbed my hand before I could pull up the display. I yanked away and debat
ed screaming, but then he said, “Kate, Kate—no, it’s me. It’s Kiernan. Kiernan Dunne.”

  Then he reached into the collar of his shirt and grabbed the black leather cord around his neck. There was a tiny leather pouch, but I could see faint rays of blue shooting out through the stitching at the seams.

  I didn’t recognize his name at all, but somehow, this guy has a CHRONOS key.

  And over the next few minutes, I discovered that somehow, he knows Aunt Prudence.

  While some of the kids taken in by the Koreshans are actually local orphans, this Kiernan guy claims that most of them are, in fact, Prudence’s offspring. That’s why I need to be careful how I break this news to Katherine. Telling her that the Koreshans really are integrally connected to the Cyrists is the easy part. The part I’m dreading is telling her that her long-lost daughter isn’t just helping Saul. She’s making him an army of time travelers.

  ∞16∞

  MADI

  NEAR LIVERPOOL, UK

  NOVEMBER 12, 2136

  “Madison Grace!” Nora grips my upper arm with surprising force. “No. Absolutely not.”

  I didn’t even have to say what I was thinking. She knew from my expression alone. And probably because deep down she was thinking exactly the same thing.

  “I’m serious, Madi. Even a minor change like saving this teapot had you rubbing your forehead and looking like you were going to upchuck your curry. You need to wipe that notion right out of your head.”

  She’s right. I know she is. But the idea still hovers at the edge of my mind, taunting me. What’s the point of having an ability like this if I can’t do something constructive with it? My father was a good man who died far too young, and so many things would be different if he’d lived.

  “It wouldn’t work, anyway,” Nora says. “You’d find yourself in a conundrum. If Matthew was still alive, you’d never have been digging around in my father’s godforsaken backyard, and you’d never have found that device at all. So if you go back and try to save him, it will just backfire.”

  She says this with a great deal of confidence—far more, in fact, than I’m feeling on the subject. The part about me never finding the medallion is almost certainly correct. But the rest feels like a rather convenient rationalization.

  “You don’t know that,” I say. “You can’t know for sure.”

  “Well, no. I’m not an expert. But neither are you. Just because you can use the thing doesn’t mean you understand how it works. And as much as I would dearly love for Matthew to still be alive, I’m not willing to risk losing you, too. The wisest course of action would be to bury that damn thing back in the garden. Or better yet, let’s take a walk on the shore and toss it into the sea.”

  “I’m not going to do anything stupid, Nora. And . . . you’re probably right about saving Dad creating a conundrum, even though I really wish you weren’t. But I’m not getting rid of the key. This research is going to happen anyway. It’s already begun. And I think there’s a very real chance that people will eventually uncover my genetic background. The test Lorena ran was more detailed than the average blood work they do at a physical exam today, but how long will that be true? Her lab equipment could be standard-issue in five or ten years, and you know what the penalties would be. I’d barely be employable with something like this on my record. I’m going to need some major leverage in order to have any sort of future at all.”

  Nora opens her mouth to protest but closes it again. She knows that part is true. Everyone has heard a story of someone who cheated, who either didn’t have their embryonic offspring restored to baseline when the new rules went into effect or bought an enhancement on the black market. The penalties aren’t quite as harsh in the US as they are in the rest of the world, but it can still ruin your life and livelihood.

  “And, anyway, I think it’s already been decided.” I pull out the Brief History of CHRONOS and show her the part with my name.

  “Was this in his library?” Nora’s nose twitches slightly when she mentions her father, just as it always does. “My father’s nonfiction works were even less factual than his novels. This book is probably just one of those alternative-history pieces he wrote. You shouldn’t put too much stock in it.”

  “It has my name in it, Nora.”

  “He could have written that after you were born,” she said. “You never met him, but he certainly knew you existed.”

  “Except”—I tap the other two names—“I know both of these people. One is a temporal physicist. The other is a technical writer for research grants. He’s married to the geneticist who did the test. And like I said, she’s positive that the markers show alteration on both sides. That’s why she wanted to get blood samples from both of you—so that she could maybe narrow down who was altered and who simply passed the gene along. Mom refused.”

  “Well, I can’t say I entirely blame her on that front. This is a bit of a shock to the system, even leaving aside the possible legal ramifications. What will it mean for your studies? Are you sure you can trust these people to keep the secret?”

  I shrug. “They’re friends. I haven’t known them long, but . . . Jack, the guy I mentioned before? He’s known them longer than I have, and I trust him. So, yeah. I trust them.”

  And I do trust them. Even if Jack seems a little distant, I don’t think for a moment that he’d turn me in. He was there this morning when I left. In fact, the last thing I saw before I blinked out was his smile, although his eyes still seemed worried.

  I reach into my bag again and pull out the diaries of Katherine Shaw and Kate Pierce-Keller. Nora is silent for a long time as she stares at the names, and then begins to flip through the pages of Kate’s diary.

  “You’ve read this? You can make sense out of it?”

  “I haven’t read much. They’re both really long. But yes, if I use the little pencil thing tucked into the spine there, I can scroll down.” She starts to tug the stylus out of the binding. “I don’t think it will work for you, since you can’t use the CHRONOS key.”

  It doesn’t. She tries a few more times and tosses me the diary. “I suppose you’ll have to read it to me, then.”

  “Like I said, it’s long.” I flip through the pages, about fifty in total. “Each of these pages holds a lot of data.”

  “Well, then, I guess you’ll have to stay the night, won’t you, dear?”

  “Jack will worry if I’m not back.”

  “I thought you said he was just a friend.”

  “Friends can’t worry about each other?” I can tell from her smile that my blush has given her the information she was looking for, even though I’m not sure it’s fair at this point to say what we have is more than just a friendship.

  “And Jack doesn’t actually have to worry. You apparently have a time-travel device. I think you can figure out how to get home on time and still keep your old gran company for a few hours.”

  So Nora and I both spend the evening with our grandmothers, in a sense. Mars curls up in her lap, and Mercury curls up in mine.

  It’s an odd role reversal. I remember many nights spent sipping chocolate in front of this fireplace while Nora or my dad read to me as a child. My mother was always more practical, arguing that I would learn to read more quickly if I read along with the narration myself. But then she never was particularly keen on reading. There just weren’t all that many books from her childhood that she was eager to share with me. Nora had dozens of favorites, though, and when we visited, she’d pull me into her lap each night for story time to share one of her treasures.

  And now I’m reading to her.

  Judging from the glimpses of her face that I catch when I look up between sections and her occasional nod or slight chuckle, I think Nora gets more out of the diary than I do. Perhaps she’s hearing her grandmother in the words. To me, the diary feels cryptic. It’s clear that Kate kept it for her own remembrance, rather than as something she intended to pass down for posterity. Otherwise, she’d have spent a bit more time
explaining things. Most of the entries were made when she was in her early to midthirties, during her two pregnancies and the years that she was raising James and his older brother, Harry. There were occasional anecdotes about family life, but most of the diary was devoted to national and international events. She seemed to hold an almost-personal grudge against Paula Patterson, who was the first Cyrist (and first female) president. She worried quite a lot about someone named Simon. She also mentioned a woman named June a few times. Probably not the same person I met in 1906, but . . .

  While most of the entries are written out, there are several links that look like video or audio files. The clear disk is still in the hollow behind my ear, but there’s no point playing them now, since Nora wouldn’t be able to hear or see them. I make a mental note to check them out later, although I’m a little hesitant after seeing that last video of Katherine Shaw.

  After several hours, we reach the point where Nora’s eyes are drooping and my voice is raspy from reading aloud too long. We’re nowhere near finished—I flipped the page only four times—but Nora puts her teacup on the sofa table and reaches out her hand for the diary.

  “That’s enough for now. Thank you, Madi. This answered a lot of questions.”

  “Really?” I hand her the book. “I didn’t think that anything in here was exactly a smoking gun. She doesn’t say anything about time travel, and it’s possible that she was able to operate the diary, but not the key. Even in Katherine Shaw’s case, the fact that her name is in a diary isn’t proof of anything. As you noted with the History of CHRONOS, this could just be some alternate-history series that your father was working on. Maybe he just used family names for the hell of it.”

  I don’t believe a word of this, of course, but I know Nora well enough to realize that playing devil’s advocate is often the best way to get her to come around to your way of thinking. She likes to argue. My grandfather often said that she would have made an excellent barrister.