Now, Then, and Everywhen (Chronos Origins)

by Rysa Walker

  Rich nods. “We did—all eleven of them. The closest jumps prior to that were a 1933 jump to Germany by Wallace Moehler to observe the Reichstag fire, and a 1924 jump to Paris by Paddy Dunne, to observe Ireland’s first team in the Olympics. Neither of those seemed like logical candidates to us, and the simulator seemed to agree.”

  “Before that,” Katherine says, “we have Saul and Grant’s jump to 1911 Atlanta, Georgia. Grant is doing some research that’s race related, but Saul is just there for some religious conference looking at evolving views on . . . predestination, I think? It’s closer in location, but further back in time. And the other seven jumps were, like Tyson’s, after the events.”

  “Do you need more time? There’s another isolation unit. I can send you back twenty-four additional hours.” Angelo looks a little queasy at the prospect. It wouldn’t be a big deal for us, as long as we didn’t cross our own paths, because we wouldn’t be changing anything we did over the past twenty-four hours. Our earlier selves would just be working away in here, oblivious to the fact that there are duplicates working in the unit next door. But that would mean not just double, but triple memories for Angelo, since he’s not time traveling, but rather undoing things he did before.

  “I don’t think that will help,” Rich says.

  Angelo heaves a sigh of relief. “Good. Double memories suck. Triple memories, though? They will flatten you.”

  “We tried various combinations of changes on those dates and locations,” I tell him. “The death of Dr. King alone has a miniscule chance of extending the Vietnam War. It’s only when you add in Lennon that it goes up into double digits—a twenty-seven percent chance. We had to drop the deaths at the 1965 rally in Montgomery. Since those were before my jump, it caused the simulation to throw an error. The system says the chances of anything I did in Ohio resulting in Lennon’s death are . . .” I glance over at the display. “Well, you can see it there. A tiny fraction of one percent.”

  “And that’s only when we factored in this.” Rich taps the display to pull up the picture of the seven men, six hooded men and one in a business suit, standing outside Mid-South Coliseum. He points toward the two guys in the periphery of the picture. The shorter and chubbier of the two is in typical Klan garb, but the taller man is dressed in a suit. “Tyson thinks the one facing the camera is a man named Lendell Phelps. He’s with the klavern that had the big Beatles bonfire we visited on our first leg of this project.”

  “I can’t tell for certain,” I say. “But they weren’t in the original photo that was taken, and it looks like him. The guy in the suit standing next to him, the one with his back to the camera, could easily be Scoggin, the South Carolina Klan leader. I don’t know why he’s not wearing his regalia, but it could be because the green robe would stand out a bit with all of the others in white. And maybe they don’t want anyone to know that one of the leaders is participating.”

  Angelo rubs his eyes. “So do we start with the attack on Lennon?”

  “We don’t have full consensus on that,” Rich says, giving me a slightly annoyed look. “My view is that if we find out who killed Lennon, and stop it, that should prevent the time shift, or at least minimize it. Then we can work our way backward and stop the other deaths. But Tyson thinks we should start with Baldwin and Travers.”

  I pull up an image of the field where the attack in Montgomery happened. “Part of my reasoning is the crowd size and spacing. Estimates say there were between two thousand and ten thousand people camped out with the Selma march. At the high end, that’s not significantly different from the twelve thousand at Mid-South Coliseum to see the Beatles, but they’re more spread out. Plus, with Baldwin and Travers, we know with a reasonable degree of certainty where the shots came from, based on witness accounts. There are only about a dozen buildings where the shooter could have been hiding. It will be a lot easier to isolate the location than trying to figure out where a shot is coming from inside a crowded auditorium. But Rich is right that if all of these are connected to the Klan, we might give them advance warning. Working backward means they can’t see us coming.”

  Angelo sighs. “My inclination is to start with the first event. How well coordinated are the actions of the Klan in 1965? I mean, do you think this is something that would have been planned from the top?”

  “United Klans of America, the group I was researching, was not the only Klan operating in those states at that time. There were a number of offshoot groups, and from what I’ve heard they’re barely organized at all. The United Klans branches were fairly well coordinated in terms of overall strategy. But they usually picked targets of opportunity.”

  “You have two leaders of the South Carolina Klan at a protest in Tennessee,” Angelo says. “Assuming that’s them in the photo. That seems pretty coordinated.”

  “Some things were planned in advance, but most were spur of the moment, like the killing of Viola Liuz—” I stop and go back over to the computer.

  “Who?” Katherine asks.

  “Viola Liuzzo,” I say as I enter the name. “A white woman from up north who volunteered with the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. Killed by the Klan the very next night, after the march was over and they were ferrying people back to Selma. The black kid who was in the car with her played dead. I can’t remember his name, but he was only nineteen. He was covered with her blood, so they assumed they’d killed him, too.”

  Rich looks up at the display. “Not in this timeline. She lived to be ninety-three. But . . . she doesn’t show up as a significant alteration.”

  “Which is weird. They were driving back to Montgomery to pick up another carload of people when some Klansmen chased her off the road and shot her. One of the men in the car was an FBI informant. There was a lot of bad press for the FBI, but the guy’s testimony is what resulted in the other three being convicted. That’s the case that put the spotlight on the Klan. A key reason Scoggin and several of the others would eventually spend a year in jail for contempt of Congress. This was the first time a white female civil rights activist had been killed. Some of the pictures the newspapers used weren’t recent, and Liuzzo actually looked a little like Katherine when she was younger. The photos showed a blond, petite woman, standing next to her young children. And given the prevailing racist views of the time, her image on the news galvanized public opinion in a way that the killing of a black woman probably wouldn’t have. It pushed the government to crack down. A lot of people believed her death was the reason the Voting Rights Act passed, so yeah, she was definitely significant.”

  Rich switches back to the previous display, with the pictures of the five people killed, and points to Mary Travers. Not petite, but very pretty, with long blond hair and bangs. “I’m guessing she became the rallying point, instead.”

  “And maybe these two, as well.” Katherine points to two of the others killed. “Also blond women. Which is odd, given that there were far more African Americans in the crowd than whites.”

  “So the Liuzzo woman survives because they killed five people the day before,” Rich says. “I guess they decided a little caution was in order the next night.”

  “And if we stop them on the 24th, they’ll still be in a killing mood when they see her driving back from Selma.” I try to keep the bitterness out of my voice, but it’s no use. Liuzzo had five kids, one of them only six years old when her mother was killed.

  “Hers is a necessary death, though,” Angelo says firmly, and unnecessarily. “You can’t stop it.”

  “I know that. Someone apparently has to be the sacrifice that wakes up the middle-class suburbanites. And I’ll take one death over five any day of the week. Doesn’t mean I have to like the idea of some dumb gox putting a bullet in her head.”

  Angelo gives me a little nod of admission. “Fair enough. Back to the issue of the itinerary, though. There’s only one of these attacks where, at least to my mind, there’s much doubt that the Klan was involved, and that’s the Beatles concert. I mean, it’
s probably the Klan, but we don’t know that for certain. The person who eventually shot this Lennon guy wasn’t connected to the organization, so . . . it could just be a random lunatic.”

  I’m less certain on that point. “The same could be said for the attack on the Selma marchers. Someone who lived in the area might have just decided to engage in some lethal target practice.”

  “True,” Angelo says. “But both are directly connected to the civil rights movement and to Dr. King, so that seems like a stretch. Basically, these first two jumps are intelligence gathering. We need to plan our steps carefully. Set up a base of operations in Memphis 1966 and find out whether that killing is connected to the Klan. Then one of you report back and let me know what you’ve learned. Same thing for Montgomery, although we’re going to need to be extra cautious there. Three historians from previous cohorts researched the events surrounding the Selma march. Two of them—William Burke and Mary Margolis—will be with the marchers when they arrive in Montgomery.”

  Rich gives him a concerned look. “The changes could trigger some major double memories for them.”

  “It would if they were still alive. They were with the first and second cohorts. But they’ll be in the crowd, so you need to avoid interaction. I’ll send images of them so you’ll know to steer clear. The more pertinent problem is Abel Waters. He did two jumps connected to the Selma march about twelve years back. One jump was actually in Selma, investigating the kid who was shot by the police. The other jump was a day trip, to witness the speech when they finally reach the Alabama State Capitol. That’s the only reason he’s not going with the three of you, or, more likely, instead of you. Having a twelve-year overlap of memories . . .” He shakes his head. “It’s going to be bad enough for Tyson when it’s a couple of days. That’s why I say we save the Antioch jump for last, and you need to keep toward the periphery. I’m really hoping when you get back there you don’t see those five CHRONOS keys in the crowd waiting for the shooting to start. They complicate the hell out of things. But either way, we do whatever we have to do to stop those four deaths.”

  “Eight deaths,” I say. “There are eight total. Two at Antioch, five in Montgomery, and then John Lennon in Memphis.”

  Angelo nods. “But only four that seem to have had any effect on the timeline. If you stop those four deaths, you’ll likely save the others, too, but those four are your priority.”

  “Exactly how are we supposed to stop them?” Katherine asks. “Leaving aside the possibility of other CHRONOS agents in the crowd, the Klan members are using bombs and rifles. I don’t think they’re going to respond well to us showing up and politely asking them to change their plans.”

  “We won’t be asking politely.” Angelo reaches into his bag and pulls out three wristwatches. Katherine’s has a thin gold band, and the other two are black leather. Mine says Timex across the front, just below the notch for twelve o’clock. “Pull out the button on the side. The one you’re supposed to use to wind it. Point at your target, then push the button back in.”

  “And it does what?” Katherine gives her watch a wary look.

  “It sends a short signal that will stun the person you’re pointing it at. Should last five minutes at the very most. Enough time for you to disarm and bind someone. Just be aware that it’s not precise. There will be some peripheral fallout.”

  “Define peripheral,” Rich says.

  “Anyone within twenty meters or so. The original purpose was to disorient witnesses during an extraction, so precision wasn’t really a priority for the design. The CHRONOS field blocks it, so you’ll be fine, but using it in a crowd could be problematic.”

  “If the field blocks the signal, that means it won’t work on those people I saw in Ohio,” I say.

  “You’re probably right. But this will.” Angelo pulls something else from the bag. Katherine and Rich both recoil instantly, and even Angelo doesn’t look too happy about holding it.

  “I’m not using that,” Richard says. “I don’t have any training.”

  “You’re right.” Angelo hands the pistol to me. “The gun is for Tyson, who has been trained. And it is a weapon of absolute last resort. Shoot to wound. If possible.”

  I take the pistol, which I’ve held many times before. It’s one of the two weapons I used during my field training with Glen, along with a deer rifle. The system in the klavern wasn’t exactly like earning Boy Scout badges, but there were certain things they expected anyone around them to be fairly adept at. In the Pitt County klavern, anyone who showed up who didn’t know how to shoot would have been instantly suspect. Most of the members had been hunting and doing target practice since they were little kids. It wasn’t at all unusual for a father to start teaching his sons to shoot before they started school. Most of the guys in the Pitt County Klan had been hunting together since they were, in the parlance of the day, knee-high to a grasshopper. We weren’t exactly newcomers—or “aliens,” in Klanspeak—since Glen transferred in from another branch of United Klans of America, located in Birmingham, Alabama, where he’d been studying the Sixteenth Street Church bombing. He came to Pitt County in 1964 with an actual letter of reference from “Dynamite Bob” Chambliss, and later that year, he vouched for me as his nephew. Bob Chambliss and the others connected to the Birmingham bombing were legendary in Klan circles, so we were accepted pretty quickly. But we still weren’t local, so we had to prove ourselves in some ways. We took part in regular training drills, learned how to construct a rudimentary bomb, and even joined them on a few hunting trips. The fact that I was able to bag an eight-point buck on our first outing went a long way toward proving my bona fides.

  So, yeah. I know how to use a gun. And thanks to enhanced reflexes and perfect eyesight, I was easily the best shot in our klavern, at least after Glen left. I’d always miss one or two on purpose, though. You don’t want to draw too much attention to yourself when you’re in the field.

  Angelo has read all of my reports. So when he tells me to shoot to wound, he knows that my accuracy is such that I can absolutely choose to wound rather than kill. Those last two words—if possible—mean something else entirely. He’s asking for a judgment call.

  Shooting tin cans, paper targets, and even deer isn’t the same thing as shooting a person, though. There has never been any reason for me to take a stand on that issue, to draw my own moral line in the sand, because the oversight committee would have a collective aneurysm at the mere thought of a CHRONOS agent using a weapon against a person during a field exercise. Glen and I weren’t even allowed to be physically present at any event where the Klan used violence. And moral concerns aside, wounding or killing someone of little historical importance in the mid-1960s probably wouldn’t cause the sort of rift that we’re seeing right now, but it would definitely cause a few ripples.

  Are extraction teams usually armed, though? It’s not something I’ve ever thought about, and Katherine’s story about the rumored killings in that French village comes rushing back. I definitely want to know the answer to that question now, given my worry about Toni and her family, but asking seems like a very bad idea. It might lead the conversation down paths I’d rather not travel.

  So I nod, and pocket the gun. “I take it I should dress accordingly?”

  He clearly picks up on the wry note in my question. A white man carrying a gun isn’t a problem during most of the twentieth century. For a black man, on the other hand, carrying a gun might not be a wise move. It isn’t just a situation where the authorities might shoot first and ask questions later. In 1966 Memphis, there’s a damn good chance they might shoot if they so much as suspect you are armed and never bother to ask any questions at all.

  “Yeah,” Angelo says. “You’ll have a security pass for all three events. Rich and Katherine will have press credentials. I’m thinking you go in the day before to get set up and check things out. Get acquainted with the situation. Tyson can touch base with local Klan leaders. Maybe call Glen and see if he has any contacts in t
he area, since he did a trip to Memphis during this era a while back. But . . . be discreet, okay?”

  I nod. Contacting Glen was already on my list of things to do, but I was holding off until just before we left, since it’s likely to trigger a double memory for him.

  “We need to get this right the first time if at all possible, because . . .” Angelo shrugs. He doesn’t really need to finish the sentence. We all know the drill. Going back in at the same location and time period carries the risk of crossing our own paths, and then we’ll also be sorting through double memories. “Set a lot of stable points so that if we do need to send you back in, you can observe the area and make sure we keep any overlap to a minimum. I will also be instructing Aaron to modify the security settings, in case you can’t get back to a stable point. You’ll be cleared for jumps back to here from any local point you set, but, again, please try to be discreet about it.”

  I exchange a look with Rich and Katherine. Judging from their expressions, they didn’t know that was possible, either.

  “That is strictly confidential,” Angelo says sternly, looking at each of us in turn, although his eyes linger a bit longer on Katherine. “I didn’t clear this with the board, because we’re trying to affect as few people as possible, and I’m not even sure they would clear it. Treat it as an emergency exit only, because I may have to justify any deviations from standard procedure. And none of this goes beyond the four of us and Aaron. Not even to other historians, or romantic partners. Are we understood?”

  We all agree, including Katherine, although she looks a little taken aback by the last stipulation.

  “Okay, then,” Angelo says. “Any questions?”

  Rich says, “I have one. What about the other CHRONOS keys Tyce spotted in 1965? If there were observers around for that event, I’m guessing they’ll be at this one, too.”

  “Avoid them just like the ones from the earlier cohort,” Angelo says, but I can tell from his voice that he’s winging this. “I’ll have costuming give you something to shield the light from your keys, so they shouldn’t be able to spot you. And if you can’t avoid them . . .” His eyes shift to me.