Now, Then, and Everywhen (Chronos Origins)

by Rysa Walker

  That doesn’t make sense to me. “Then why don’t splinters continue to exist?” I ask. “They’re under a CHRONOS field.”

  “Because . . . they don’t actually come from a stable reality, maybe? And quantum Darwinism . . . I think. I’m not claiming to understand it. Even Alex doesn’t fully understand it, but that’s what I’ve been able to piece together from what he told me. It wasn’t just that one example, either. There were a few other cases, too—they’re why I decided to try pulling that guy’s key, to see if his body would vanish.”

  “Speaking of, do you have the other key with you?”

  “No. Like Alex said, it’s powering the shield around my house.”

  “Um . . . Angelo’s going to want it when I go back, in order to test out your theory. That’s the one thing that he was kind of pissed about. Me not bringing it back, I mean.”

  Madi looks a little perturbed at that. “We might be able to loan you the key, briefly, but we need it. We’ve got two erased people to protect. One is a baby, and I’m pretty sure that CHRONOS will never exist without the other one. And since Angelo isn’t the one who had to kill a guy to get it . . .”

  I nod. “Understood. I’m just telling you what he said.”

  “We’ll see. So, now that science class is out of the way, I need to see if you can identify someone. The easiest way would be for me to transfer the stable point back to you, rather than you wading through to find the right one.”

  Once we make the transfer, she waits for me to pull it up and then says, “Is that him?”

  I see the person—or rather, persons—in question a moment later. A man and a woman. The guy is definitely Saul.

  Although, as he comes closer, I amend that. He’s a version of Saul.

  “Yes,” I say. “But unless he’s had some major plastic surgery, that’s not the Saul I know. That scar, for one thing. And he’s got one of those eyes like Sutter, the head of security at CHRONOS.”

  “Maybe it’s a future version of Saul?”

  “I don’t think so. If anything, he looks younger here. So, I’m kind of coming around to this whole visitors-from-another-dimension theory.”

  “The gun looks a lot like one in my great-grandfather’s desk. His had pearl grips, though.”

  I shake my head. “Do you have any idea how many of these were made? A huge proportion of police officers carried that model during the first half of the twentieth century. It’s really, really common.”

  “Okay. What about the woman? Is she a historian?”

  “I know her, too.” What I don’t add is that I know her in the biblical sense. Even once when she had her hair this exact shade of red. “She’s not a historian, though. That’s Alisa Campbell, Morgen’s daughter.”

  “But if Morgen and Saul are opponents, why would she be on Saul’s team?”

  I laugh. “If you knew them, you really wouldn’t have to ask that question. What’s the time when they arrive?” Glancing down at the display, I see 10:33:21. “A little less than five minutes before the shooting. This is a good find, Madi. At least we have a backup option.”

  “Backup option? Why? Not only do we know where he’s going to be, we know he has a gun out a few minutes before Lennon is killed.”

  I raise my eyebrows and wait.

  She sighs. “And . . . it’s in the middle of over twelve thousand people. Plus a massive security battalion. But . . . there will be security around all day, right? From the moment the Beatles arrive.”

  “Yes, but not as many as there will be for the evening show. If we can catch them before the Coliseum fills up, that’s the goal. If not . . . well, hopefully my Timex can buy us a few minutes to get the two of them out of there. Also, I’m not convinced yet that it’s Saul pulling the trigger. I definitely think he will do it if no one else does, but . . .”

  “Style points,” Madi says.

  We’re both silent for a moment, and then she says, “So . . . what’s the plan?”

  “Rich and Katherine are out at the airport where the Beatles’ plane should be landing soon. We’re supposed to meet up at five thirty, just before the Beatles finish their set for the afternoon show, over at the press entrance on the north side, to discuss anything we’ve seen or heard. The two of them will then head to the press conference between the matinee and evening concerts, keeping an eye out for people with keys. This”—I reach into my pocket and pull out another press pass—“is for you.”

  “So I’ll be in the same area as Katherine? Bad idea.”

  “It’s just to cover you if anyone asks why you’re backstage. But there’s a separate event for school journalists and fan-club leaders that starts at six. Maybe check that one out? Those rooms were locked when Katherine and Richard came in to set stable points, so we didn’t have any way to scan them. Other than that, circulate and look for Saul, Alisa, or anyone else who might be wearing a key.”

  “How am I supposed to let you know if I spot one of them?”

  She has a point. Rich, Katherine, and I have a short-range communicator inside our eardisks. About a square mile range. Standard protocol is that it’s for emergencies only, up until 2010. By that point, no one thinks twice if someone starts walking around talking out loud. Everyone else just assumes they’re talking on a device.

  “Hold on,” I tell her. “Let me check something.” I pull up my display and search for available communicators. There’s one listed for Katherine. While it’s possible she has an extra disk in her luggage, it shouldn’t show up unless it’s currently activated. Which I’m pretty sure means that Madi’s disk once belonged to Katherine. I send her a little ping.

  She jumps and then laughs. “Oh. Okay. So it’s kind of like my comm-band.”

  “Yes. Tap behind your ear to talk. Tap again to cut the transmission. Try it.”

  We test it out, and then I tell her, “I’ll let you sit in on my conversation with Rich and Katherine through the disk. Likewise, you can use it either before or after to let me know if you have anything to add. One other thing. I doubt Campbell will show, since this is Saul’s round of play. But it’s not explicitly forbidden, as long as he doesn’t interfere. So he might be in the audience. You said that gun of yours has a stun setting?”

  She nods. “I don’t know how effective it is. And for all I know, the CHRONOS field might block it, too, just like your watch gadget.”

  “Hopefully not. If you get a chance to disable either of them, especially before the concert, do it. Just be discreet. Then tap the eardisk and let me know what section of the building you’re in.”

  “Should I pull their keys?” she asks with a slightly sick look.

  “Not unless you have to. We need to get answers, and that’s not going to happen if they literally vanish into thin air. Plus it could be hard to explain, if someone happens to be watching.”

  “What will you be doing? Just pretending to be security?”

  “Not exactly. I’ll be spending the afternoon with Billy Meeks and his racist friends who are plotting, at a minimum, to terrorize not just the band, but an entire auditorium full of fans. I have a security pass, so I told them my uncle has a friend who got me a temp job. I’ll probably let them think I’m keeping the actual security at bay by being on lookout, but it’s them I’ll be watching. As long as they stick to the cherry bomb and other low-level harassment, I won’t do anything. But if they’re doing anything beyond that, the plan is to use the disruptor”—I tap my Timex—“to knock them out and disarm them. Then I’ll get actual security people in there to deal with them. And hopefully blink out before they decide to start checking my credentials too closely.”

  “What a fun way to spend an afternoon,” she says dryly. “But they should be fairly easy to outwit, right?”

  “Maybe. Ignorance isn’t stupidity, though. Yes, there are some Klan members who are dumb as the proverbial stump, but many of the ones I’ve met are far from stupid. That’s especially true of the leaders of the movement—men like Robert Shelton, Bo
b Scoggin, Bob Jones—”

  “That’s a lot of Bobs,” she says.

  “No kidding. Every parent with Klan sympathies must have named a son after Robert E. Lee. Anyway, all three of them have been savvy enough to make a comfortable living from dues paid by local members, along with the occasional bit of extortion. It’s not so much that they’re stupid as it is that they’re hampered by the ideological blinders they’ve been wearing their entire lives and a pervasive fear that their position at the top of the food chain might be slipping away. Billy Meeks didn’t strike me as stupid, either. I didn’t even get the sense that he was all that angry. But he’s barely eighteen, and I haven’t met his buddies yet. Peer pressure can be a powerful drug at that age.”

  My cab arrives outside a dive called the Hubcap, about a half mile from the Coliseum, around two fifteen. Traffic has already begun to pick up around the Coliseum. A small cluster of fans was waiting outside for the afternoon show, which begins at four, when we drove past. The cabdriver said his wife and daughter are going. His daughter had asked for tickets for her birthday last month, although God help him if he could understand what she liked about that racket. But he guessed most parents felt that way.

  Billy Meeks had referred to this place as a diner when his dad was within earshot, but it’s clearly a bar. He waves me back to a booth in the rear, where he’s seated with three other guys working on their second pitcher. Luckily for my still-lurking headache, it’s early afternoon and no one seems interested in feeding coins into the jukebox.

  Two of Billy’s companions seem to be about his age, maybe even a little younger, which leads me to think this place doesn’t bother with piddling things like ID, although the drinking age is eighteen in many states. The third guy seated with him is in his twenties, tall and beefy, with red hair and skin that would burn to a crisp after five minutes in the August sun. He looks vaguely familiar. I don’t think he was at the meeting in Collierville, though.

  It’s clear that some sort of argument is going on. Billy doesn’t pause for introductions, so I pull a chair over from a nearby table.

  “I don’t see what the issue is,” the redheaded guy says. “You said last week the only thing stopping you was getting a weapon past security. I solved that problem. Now you’re backing out. I took you at your word, on your oath.”

  “I never took no oath,” Billy says.

  The redheaded guy stares down into his beer for a moment and then says softly, “A Klansman’s word is his oath. Our nighthawk went to a lot of trouble to get that weapon in place. He coulda been caught.” When he finishes, he glances over at me for the first time, and his face finally clicks. His name is Corker, or something like that. He’s a CHRONOS tech. Not a historian. I can’t see his key, though, so he must have it inside a pouch or something.

  If he recognizes my face, he doesn’t let on. He just asks Billy if he’s vouching for me.

  “Yeah. He’s from North Carolina. Uncle Lenny knows him.”

  “Your uncle’s word any better than yours, or is your whole family a bunch of chickenshit liars? Maybe your whole damn klabern.”

  Billy clenches his fist. The kid next to him, who looks a bit like a French bulldog took human form, says, “Damn, Billy. You gonna let him talk about you like that?”

  “Troy is cool,” Billy says through gritted teeth. “He’s the one I told you about who’s working security today. Uncle Lenny says he worked with Dynamite Bob on that church thing a few years back.”

  That’s such a massive overstatement of my fake credentials that I very nearly laugh. Even Glen didn’t claim to have been in on the Sixteenth Street bombing. I think there’s a good chance Billy is inflating my reputation on purpose, hoping the other guy will back down if he believes Billy has connections to the inner sanctum of United Klans. But it wouldn’t be the first time that something has been blown way out of proportion by the time it made the rounds of the Klan grapevine, especially when you’ve always got people bragging about who they know and what they did.

  So I don’t correct the record. I just nod and extend a hand. “Troy Rayburn.”

  “Nelson Crocker,” he says, pumping my hand once. “What you think about your little buddy here . . . goin’ back on his word to take out that . . . Jesus hatin’ faggot?”

  “I wasn’t here to witness what you said or what Billy said, so I don’t actually have an opinion on the matter.”

  Bulldog chugs the last of his beer. “He said it.”

  The other kid says, “Shut up, Turley. Billy was drunk! You know it. So does Crocker. You want somebody holdin’ you to account for every single stupid thing you say when you’re drunk?”

  “No exceptions in the Koran . . . about mouthin’ off when you’re drunk,” Crocker says.

  I’m beginning to think Crocker is drunk, himself. That’s two words he’s mispronounced—klavern and Kloran. And he keeps pausing in the middle of his sentences. They’re not long pauses, but they give his speech a sort of singsong effect.

  “Billy told me that if he had a way to get a rifle . . . into the Coliseum . . . he’d gladly shoot John Lennon. Said he’d never see the inside of a jail . . . because his daddy and his uncle have both got friends . . . in Memphis. When I told him I thought I could . . . manage the rifle, he said fine . . . ‘You set it up, and I’ll do it.’ I think that is what they call a verbatim quote.” Crocker ends with a slow, mean smile, tipping his mug toward Billy.

  Billy’s face turns so red that I have no doubt Crocker’s telling the truth.

  I shrug. “Even if he said it, he’d have to clear it with his klavern. And I can promise they’re not gonna authorize anything like this right now. There’s too much focus on Shelton and the others with this whole HUAC thing. It’s fine to give the bastards a little scare, but there’s no way they’d approve an assassination right now. No way.”

  There’s an extralong pause, then Crocker says, “I don’t give two shits about . . . HUAC or the UKA leadership . . . You think those old men are the future of this country?” His eyes narrow slightly each time he pauses, like he’s listening for something. “They’re makin’ compromises while the government gives rights away . . . rights that white men like me have fought hard to protect . . . If Billy wants to back out, fine . . . but at least he can admit he’s a fuckin’ coward.”

  Someone is feeding this guy his lines. I have a strong urge to reach behind his ear and yank that disk. Or just yank his key. But maybe tipping my hand isn’t the best idea. He doesn’t seem to recognize me, so playing along to find the ventriloquist behind this dummy is probably a better idea.

  “No need to be so hard on Billy,” I tell Crocker. “He’d have been stupid to take on something like this on his own, but now he has backup. His buddy here”—I nod toward Bulldog—“seems eager, and I haven’t had a bit of excitement in a while. You’re right. The guy—hell, the whole band—needs to be taught a lesson. So if you’ve got a weapon stashed away and we can actually get to it and I think we stand a reasonable chance of getting out alive, we’ll do it.”

  The look Billy gives me lands solidly between fear and gratitude. Bulldog, on the other hand, looks like he’s about to crap his pants.

  “That’s a lot of conditions, but it’s better than I was gettin’ from Billy.” Crocker smiles broadly and reaches into his jeans pocket. “Here’s the map. It’ll take you right to the gun. It’s . . . near an exit with a clear shot at the stage.”

  He drops the folded paper and a five-dollar bill onto the table. “You boys have another round on me. Not too much, though. One of you needs to be able to shoot straight.”

  FROM TEMPORAL DILEMMA USER’S GUIDE, 2ND ED. (2293)

  Team Play: Temporal Dilemma teams may be composed of up to eight players. The strongest and most successful teams are those that include players with a wide array of skills.

  There are many strategies and techniques involved in creating a winning team, but the most important thing to remember is that the team cannot win withou
t the leader. This is similar to the game of chess, where the king must be protected. It does not matter how many players remain in the game or how many points have been accrued. A team loses by default if the leader is no longer in the game at the final tally.

  ∞28∞

  MADI

  MEMPHIS, TENNESSEE

  AUGUST 19, 1966

  John Lennon has changed quite a bit in the last nine years. He’s still rather gangly, but his hair is longer, and he’s wearing tinted glasses. In Liverpool, he didn’t wear glasses at all when he performed. Glasses weren’t cool back then, I guess, but today, he’s setting the fashion.

  I’m having less luck in that regard. Women do wear jeans in the 1960s, although they were often called dungarees, for some reason. Jarvis pulled up dozens of pictures when I was researching. But I’ve yet to see a single jean-clad female. Only one of the girls seated in the rows of folding chairs is in pants. Most are wearing skirts or dresses, in brightly colored plaids or florals. I’m half wishing I’d done the same, because it is wicked hot, despite the air-conditioning.

  The first press conference is strictly for teen journalists and fan-club presidents. Apparently, I look young enough to pass, or their security just doesn’t give a damn, because I pushed through the door with the rest of the teens, a little over half of whom are female. There are a lot of photographers, including one wielding a contraption that must be a reel-to-reel movie camera. Even more of them have audio recording equipment, although I suspect they’re going to have a hard time hearing the proceedings. The door is closed, but the music of the opening acts currently performing in the auditorium still makes it a little hard to follow some of what’s being said.

  The band sits at a long table covered with a white cloth. John Lennon is at one end, Paul McCartney at the other, with George Harrison and Ringo Starr in the middle. All four are dressed neatly in sports jackets. Paul and Ringo are both smoking, which I find a little amusing, since they’re seated right in front of a massive wall-mounted fire extinguisher. Paul keeps idly running his thumb across the edge of a paperback in front of him. I don’t know what the title is, but I get the sense he’d rather be reading.