Now, Then, and Everywhen (Chronos Origins)
Page 43
All of the chairs are taken, so I join a small group pressed back against the beige tile walls. Most of the questions asked so far have been about their music or their upcoming album. The questioners have all been proper young professionals, for the most part, although you could tell that quite a few of them were nervous, and one poor girl froze for several seconds when the emcee pointed to her. One of the budding journalists has now ventured into dangerous territory, however, by asking about John’s recent remarks on Christianity.
A chorus of boos fills the room.
“I don’t agree with them!” the girl says, clearly hurt by their reaction. “I only want to know how it’s affecting the tour.”
Lennon waves for the others to settle down. “Cut the girl a bit of slack, okay? It’s all been blown out of proportion, really. I didn’t mean it as disrespectful, or anythin’. Jesus had some really good ideas. My point was that most people aren’t listenin’. Otherwise we wouldn’t have wars and those KKK people chanting out front. We’ve got our rights, you know.”
I came in through a stable point, so I didn’t actually see the cluster of protesters outside the building. Unless something has changed dramatically since Jarvis and I researched the event, there are a few people carrying signs—Beatles Go Home, Memphis Does Not Welcome Communists, and God Forever, Beatles Never. There’s also a small cluster of robed KKK members, just as one of their leaders had sworn there would be in an interview with a TV reporter a few days before. It seems like a pretty pitiful showing for the Ban the Beatles movement.
Paul McCartney jumps in. “When you’re a celebrity, they come at you with all these questions, and they want to know your opinion—on war, and religion, and things like segregation. Then they get angry when you tell them what you think. We’re entitled to have views on these things. It’s not really fair to expect us to lie.”
Just beyond McCartney, I catch a brief flash of orange light. A boy of maybe twelve, with dark hair and eyes, is standing off to the singer’s left, just behind a uniformed police officer. His key is tucked inside his shirt, but otherwise, no attempt is made to shield the light. He’s focusing mostly on Lennon and the other members of the band, but he occasionally turns to glance at the others inside the room.
The boy is the first traveler that I’ve spotted so far, but I know from listening in on Tyson’s meeting with Katherine and Rich that they’ve seen three others. One of them is the woman who’s with Saul, because Katherine said the girl she saw “looked a bit like a younger, red-haired Alisa.” The faint sniff she added after the woman’s name makes me think Saul and Alisa have been companions in this timeline, too. Tyson tells them about someone he saw at the bar, someone they know who shouldn’t be able to use the key.
“Okay, we’ve got time for just one more question,” the emcee says. This is met by a disappointed sigh, and then he points to a girl near the back who begins to ask the group about plans for their next album.
The dark-haired boy, who has moved back a few steps, taps his ear and then turns his head to look directly at me. I hear a ping and then his voice in my ear.
“You interfered in Montgomery,” he says. “That’s against the rules.”
“Our timeline is not your playground,” I reply, keeping my voice as low as possible. “We play by our own rules.”
The boy’s mouth tightens in a disappointed frown, and he taps his earpiece again. Guess our conversation is over.
I’m tempted to contact Tyson to ask what he wants me to do about the kid. But I can’t think of any other option aside from following him. The room is too crowded to confront him here, and, truthfully, I feel a bit odd even following a child, so I hope he leads me to his parents. But when the press conference ends, the kid simply takes out his key and vanishes.
And I’m not the only one who sees it happen. One girl in the front row near McCartney rubs her eyes and blinks a couple of times, looking baffled. The police officer, who would have had the boy in his peripheral vision, seems a little confused as well, but he shakes it off.
We’re asked to clear the room so the next group can enter. As soon as the door opens, the sound blast gets louder, including what sounds like thunder. Then the girl group on the ticket, the Ronettes, begin singing “Walking in the Rain.” Katherine and Rich are in the line waiting to get in. He has a large camera around his neck, and she’s wearing a spiffy little suit, complete with a hat. Katherine’s back is to me, but Richard is looking right at me, and I’m now certain that he saw my CHRONOS key in the hotel this morning. For a moment, I think he’s going to come after me, but when I glance back, he and Katherine are heading inside.
I try paging Tyson, not really caring if anyone thinks I’m crazy for talking to myself. He doesn’t respond immediately, which isn’t surprising, given that he’s undercover.
What I really want is to find a secluded spot so that I can scan that location in the balcony and see if anything has changed with Saul and his companion. If Nora’s point about butterfly wings has even the slightest bit of truth to it, there are several people in this building, including myself, who really aren’t supposed to be here. We’re a lot bigger than butterflies, so I’m expecting at least a few changes.
I could blink home to do this. That’s really, really tempting on several levels. But the place is beginning to fill up, and I’m worried about finding a good time to jump back in. The ladies’ room is up ahead, and—potential privacy issues aside—a bathroom stall would be a perfect location for a stable point. Close the door, blink out. You’d have at least a few minutes before anyone would think to peek under the door to see if it’s occupied. But the line stretches halfway back to the press-conference room.
Anyway, Jack is already on edge. He doesn’t need me bouncing to and fro. Assuming we can wrap this up fairly quickly, I’d love to be able to just go home and stay home.
It occurs to me that another option would be to stay here but leave now. Finally, I spot a block of vending booths hawking shirts, posters, and albums. I step behind one of them, glance around to be sure that no one is watching me, set a return point, and then roll the time back to early this morning. A cluster of girls hurries past, probably on their way to the bathroom, and then I jump into the empty balcony where Saul, Alisa, and about fifty Beatles fans will be later tonight.
The silence is heavenly. Even the darkness is nice, after the intense glow of the fluorescent lights and the incessant pop of flashbulbs. I sink down into one of the seats and begin scanning the stable point. For the most part, everything is the same. The only difference is that the girl that Other-Saul bumped into is standing slightly to the right this time. She still looks annoyed that the two of them are blocking her view, but she doesn’t get a chance to smack him, and Alisa doesn’t snarl at her. I have no clue what caused that to change, but here in the dead silence of the Mid-South Coliseum at a little before seven in the morning, I can almost hear the sound of butterfly wings.
I’m about to blink back to this evening, thoroughly dreading the noise and lights, when a movement across the auditorium catches my attention. It’s a door opening in the blue section of the balcony almost directly below the press box, three columns over. I tuck my key into its pouch, slide down behind the row of seats in front of me, and peer through the gap between the chairs. Two people, one CHRONOS key. Both are men, and neither of them looks like Saul. The one without a key is too short, and the other is way too beefy. Could be Campbell, but Tyson said he’s not supposed to interact with anyone. The man without the key—or at least, without a key out in the open—is holding a large flashlight, and his face is the only one that I can see right now. He looks bored and sleepy. I can’t see much of what he’s wearing, but it looks like a uniform.
The one with the CHRONOS key bends down to stash something under the seat. Then he follows the guy with the flashlight back through the entranceway. I wait until their footsteps disappear and then begin creeping slowly, crouched down, toward the first row of blue chairs.
Since I really don’t want to stress Jack or myself out with another goodbye, I jump to the attic stable point in Montgomery, where the rifle Campbell’s team intended to use is still on the plywood floor, now covered with a thin coat of dust. I put this one down next to it. At some point, when the owner of this place decides to clean out her attic, she’s going to have a rather interesting mystery to solve.
I really didn’t think through the creepiness of being in the dark attic where I recently killed a man and disposed of his body, however. My feet are almost exactly in the spot where he fell when I shot him, and I take a reflexive step backward. But if there are any ghosts here, they don’t seem to be restless. The only things stirring are the dust motes dancing in the amber light of the medallion. And since I have no clue whether the house is currently occupied, I need to get out of here before I sneeze.
When I arrive back at the vendors’ booths in the Coliseum, I hear Tyson’s ping over the noise of the music. The bathroom line is still massive, but there’s a bank of phone booths up ahead. I step into one and lift the receiver, then tap the eardisk. When Tyson answers, I report on the past half hour.
“The thing with the kid is weird,” he says. “But yeah, sounds like the same boy I saw at Antioch. As for the gun, that explains a lot. Crocker gave me a map. I’ve been looking all over for the damn thing, trying to figure out what purpose Crocker could have had for lying about it.”
“Should I go back and stun him? It’s just one guy with a key and a guard. I think he was building security.”
“It’s probably the same guard Katherine and Rich bribed to get into the building last night. He’s making a bloody killing off this. But no. If we intercept them, I’ll have double memories from when I met Crocker at the bar. Plus, it might alert Saul to the fact that we’ve removed the gun.”
“Here’s what I don’t get. Why convince the guard to let you stash a gun? Why not do what Katherine and Rich did, since they have CHRONOS keys, and just get him to let them set a stable point so they could return later? Seems like they were opening themselves up to a lot more potential trouble.”
“Yeah . . . but also, more potential points. The guard would count as a historical accomplice, just like Billy Meeks or anyone else would if they agreed to shoot Lennon. Not as big as swaying a major historical figure, but the points add up. That’s why Campbell pulled in Shelton and the other Klan members in Montgomery, although he left a lot of points on the table when he decided to have one of his own team do the actual shooting. Guess he decided having control was better, so that he wouldn’t be docked for unintentional consequences. Those can wreck you.”
“I need a rule book for this goddamn game.”
He snorts. “You’ll need several to fully understand it. Anyway, you removing the gun is good. This way, we know Saul will have to take the shot on his own, even if it costs him the style points. And we know where he’s going to be. Now all we have to do is stop him.”
Neither the matinee nor the evening performance was sold out, thanks in part to the negative publicity from the Klan and other activists. The evening show did still manage to set an attendance record for the Coliseum, though. Most sections of the auditorium are full, with the exception of the tier behind the stage, which is fairly empty, and four sections—two on the left, two on the right—where you only have a side view of the performance. After I ended my call with Tyson, I jumped forward to just before they let the audience in for the second show and claimed a seat close to where Saul and Alisa will enter. I scanned through a couple of times, and at least for now, nothing has changed aside from the mini confrontation with the girl in the third row. And I have a lot less sympathy for her now than I did watching through the key. She’s bumped into the people seated in front of her on several occasions, and while she’s jumping around like water on a hot skillet, she gets mad anytime someone blocks her view in the slightest. Maybe she deserves a little scare.
Thanks to a tip from Tyson on reducing background noise, sitting through the opening bands has been much easier. The music comes through clearly, and the roar of the audience is reduced to a mellow buzz. If I could close my eyes and block the flashing lights from the cameras, it would be almost pleasant.
But that’s not an option. I’m scanning for amber light. More specifically, I’m scanning for five amber lights together. I want to know what those people are doing here. As it stands, this will be two on two, with Rich nearby for backup. I have no clue where Katherine will be, although I got the sense they’re tasking her with some distraction until we have Saul subdued, at which point they’ll page her to join us. And at which point I’ll be making myself scarce.
The plan is fairly simple. Tyson will join me here around 10:20. Rich will be one aisle over. When Saul and Alisa arrive, I’ll wait until they pass my seat, follow them to the end of the aisle, and stun them. Rich and Tyson will drag them into the entranceway. It may not attract much attention. True, I haven’t seen a man faint yet, but several young women have been carried off to first aid stations. If there’s too much focus on the incident, however, Richard will use the neural-disruptor thing to knock out witnesses. I don’t really like that part. There are a bunch of kids here, and it would be all too easy for one of them to get hurt. But we may not have an alternative.
A little after 10:15, the Cyrkle finishes the last chords of “Red Rubber Ball.” The band is apparently a pretty big deal right now, because they get more screams and squeals than the other opening acts from the girls in this section. When the applause ends, the lights go down and the audience goes wild with anticipation as the crew begins moving things about. One of the crew bumps the cymbal as they’re setting up Ringo’s drums, sparking another frenzy. The Beatles finally take the stage for the opening song, “Rock and Roll Music,” at 10:24. By that time, the roar is so loud that it’s almost impossible to make out the song.
The second song, “She’s a Woman,” is a little more low key, but I’m beginning to get worried about Tyson. At 10:27, I check the key one more time, shielding it below one of the programs scattered about on the floor. I skip forward in ten-second increments, just like I did before, but now when I get to the part where Tyson and Richard are supposed to grab the bodies, they’re nowhere to be seen.
Tyson should be here by now. He’s supposed to take up position on the other side of the aisle across from me. I wait another minute and tap the eardisk.
It pings, but all I can hear is a roar. I sit up in my seat to see if maybe he’s just in the wrong spot, but I don’t see him. I don’t see Rich, either.
But I do see Katherine. She’s alone, standing at the entrance tunnel two sections over, watching the back wall where Saul and Alisa will soon appear. Someone spilled the beans, or she’s been watching this stable point, too.
Katherine tucks her key inside her blouse and begins making her way over, looking carefully up each row as she walks. I slump down in my seat. This is bad. If she’s been watching the stable point, and I have to assume she has, she’s seen me approach Saul. She’s seen him go down. Hell, she may even have seen the device in my hand.
She’d also have seen the gun he pulls, and it wouldn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that he’s part of this. But I have no idea how she’ll react. Is she going to help me stop him or try to stop me?
A flash of orange light reflects in the cement floor. I force myself not to turn around, not to look back at them, and keep my eyes pinned on Katherine. She’s not trying to get out of sight, but rather just standing against the railing in front of the balcony. Several people shout for her to get out of the way.
Alisa and Saul pass m
e. Both of them can see Katherine, but neither of them pays her the slightest heed. They simply look straight past her. And now they’re almost to the end of the balcony, so I have to make my move. I push my way through, bumping into the girl in the third row. Her rolled-up magazine whacks my shoulder this time, and I really want to turn and snarl at her exactly as Alisa did.
On the other side of the auditorium, in the section directly across from this one, five orange lights blink into view.
Saul turns toward Alisa and whispers something, and she laughs.
But he doesn’t reach into his coat. He doesn’t pull out the pistol. Instead, he snakes an arm around her waist, and they move toward the tunnel.
I glance over my shoulder at Katherine, and she looks as baffled as I am. So yeah. She’s definitely here because she watched the stable point and saw him pull the gun.
Is it still inside his jacket? I don’t know. Truthfully, I don’t care at this point. He’s part of this and we have to stop him.
I aim the device at Saul’s back and press the button. The popping noise isn’t even audible over the cacophony in the auditorium, and the bright light is simply another flashbulb. He jerks once, grabs at the railing, then begins to sink to the concrete floor. Alisa’s mouth flies open, but before she can scream, I aim at her and fire again.
When I turn toward Katherine, she’s yelling something at me. Pointing.
And then there’s a noise that does cut through the music, but only just barely.
A single gunshot. And now I’m the one falling to the floor.
FROM THE NEW YORK DAILY INTREPID (JUNE 26, 1995)
An Explanation for Mass Fainting?