The Time Roads (15 page)

It did. It will. It does.

He paused and looked back the way he had come. A short distance behind him, the path split in two, each branch leading to a different future. With a chill, Síomón could make out threadlike strands beside each branch, signaling further confusion in time.

I’m not too late,
he told himself. If he intercepted Paul before the crisis, time would heal itself, or so Gwen had insisted. Even now, the worst would be a blurring of the past. Events doubled. Contradictory memories. Nothing fatal.

His pulse beat an irregular rhythm. Down each strand of time, another of his selves existed. He was doubled and tripled, each self bound to the other through a tenuous connection. When he glanced back, he could swear the strands grew more numerous. Was time unraveling toward the future and Gwen?

He hurried on. With every step, the air turned thicker, pressing against his lungs. Voices whispered in the paths beside his. No, it was a single voice, speaking different words, depending on which direction Síomón tilted his head.

Time fractures.

He could reenter time at the next intersection. Ó Dónaill’s calculations predicted a narrow crack, corresponding to the prime number pair. Twin primes, he called them.

But Ó Dónaill had stolen his theories. Borrowed them for his own research, he called it. Or had he simply refined the formulae and shared them with Síomón and Gwen? Síomón found it harder to remember which version was true. The voices distracted him, and the pressure had grown almost unbearable, drilling into his temples.

Panicked, he stumbled forward. He heard a roaring ahead, a cataract of time, spilling through the cracks into the world. If only he could reach it before he died from the agony. That was how Úna had died. And Paul. And …

He fell through the tunnel’s diaphanous walls into a muddy clearing. A cold wind swept through his clothes. His hands stung from the fall. Strange noises and images assailed him. Raucous cries echoing overhead. Misshapen shadows blotting out the sun. Then, in the midst of strangeness, a human voice.

“Síomón? Is that you, Síomón?”

Síomón twitched and spun around. He saw her as a stranger might, a fair young woman, so lean that her bones seemed visible through her skin, her hair a tumble of gold, her eyes like the bluest of summer skies. She took another few steps toward him and spoke again, but all Síomón could think was that her skin must be warm to the touch. He wanted, needed that warmth, more than he could express. With an inarticulate cry, he rushed toward the young woman and tore at her clothes. She fought back, tearing at his face with her nails, but he was stronger than she was.…

Gwen. Oh dear God and Mhuire and Gaia. What have I done?

When he came to, he was stumbling along a muddy path. Stars winked overhead between the budding trees, and a heavy watery scent filled the air. He was cold. Hungry. Terrified and bruised. Someone had attacked him. Síomón had fought off the man and snatched away his knife. What came next was unclear. He only remembered that he came across a different man, walking alone by the river. Memory flickered. He recognized Paul Keller. Must stop Paul. Must.

He blinked and saw a knife flashing through the darkness. He blinked again, and a woman’s shriek reverberated in his skull.

No!

He opened his eyes, the word still echoing in his ears. For a moment, he could not focus on his surroundings. Gradually he took in scattered details.

Crows taking flight overhead. The craggy trunks of the oak trees. The gamekeeper’s hut. The scent of wood smoke and approaching snow. Leaves crackled in the distance. Someone was coming.

“Síomón? Is that you, Síomón?”

Gwen.

Lines radiated from the point where he stood, shimmering in the cold clear winter light. He saw himself walking toward Gwen, in three, four, a dozen directions. One future to invent a new machine so that he and others might travel through time. One to …

“One to heal,” he whispered. He glanced up, and across the wavering lines of the future, he saw a solitary red balloon, gliding through the gray skies. Síomón’s fingers closed over the knife hilt. He set the blade against his throat.

“One,” he whispered. “Exponent one. Minus…” His hand shook. “Minus one.”

A quick strong movement.

A spray of blood.

0

*   *   *

Síomón. Where are you, Síomón?

Here. Oh, Gwen, I nearly lost you. I nearly lost myself.

Hush. It’s all right. I’m glad you came back from the university. I have some new equations to show you.

But Gwen, we have to be careful—

Yes, my love, I know that now. Come with me.

She took him by the hand and led him along the woodland path.

ARS MEMORIAE

APRIL 1904

Years ago, during his mathematical studies—studies broken off, or discarded, he no longer knew which—Aidrean Ó Deághaidh had proposed certain theories involving time and its equations. The modern scholars were wrong, he declared, when they talked about measuring time in discrete units. The ancient philosophers had touched closer to the truth when they described time as a continuous ether, its flow rising and falling like a river’s current.

Ah, but I was wrong, too,
he thought. Time was like sunlight pouring in all directions, susceptible to prisms and mirrors, or even a child’s hand.

An automobile horn bleated in the streets below, penetrating the leaded windows of Doctor Loisg’s private study. Off in one corner, a grandfather clock ticked away the seconds, its muffled rhythm a counterpoint to Loisg, who spoke in hushed tones about trauma and its effect upon memory. It was an old topic—one they had often discussed over the past year.

“Commander Ó Deághaidh? Are you well?”

Loisg was studying Ó Deághaidh closely, a look of mild concern on his fair round face.

“My apologies,” Ó Deághaidh said with a smile. “My attention wandered. You were asking?”

“About your dreams, Commander. Specifically, the nightmares.”

You asked about them last week,
Ó Deághaidh thought.
And the week before.

He was being unreasonable, he knew. Loisg was an expert in disorders of the mind. More important, Loisg had treated Ó Deághaidh since the beginning of his illness, when nightmares had consumed his life, and they had needed restraints and strong sedatives to conduct these sessions. Loisg did not repeat these questions from mere curiosity.

And so Ó Deághaidh dutifully answered him. Yes, the nightmares had stopped entirely. No more violent, bloody images broke his sleep, and he was no longer plagued by a sense of vertigo, as though reality had shifted beneath his feet. Throughout, the clock ticked on, dividing time into miniscule bits that dropped away into the past.

The clock’s machinery whirred; chimes sounded the hour. Loisg finished off a last note and smiled. “Once more, we are at the end of our session, Commander Ó Deághaidh. Until next week?”

Ó Deághaidh stood and smoothed out his frock coat. “Until next week, certainly.”

There must have been something amiss in his tone, because Loisg glanced up sharply. “And yet you do not sound so certain yourself. Is something wrong, Commander?”

Careful,
Ó Deághaidh thought.
He is a clever man.
“Nothing, Doctor Loisg. Why?”

The doctor’s pale eyes narrowed. He appeared about to ask him more, but then shook his head. “We can talk about it later,” he said, half to himself. Ó Deághaidh did not disabuse him of the idea.

Outside, it was a brisk, cold day, and gusts of wind carried along the scents of wet earth and melting snow. A tall hedge screened the house and its gardens from the boulevard. A walkway led off to one side to a private lane, also sheltered from view. It was all very discreet, but then Doctor Loisg treated many wealthy patients in Awveline City.

Ó Deághaidh glanced at his pocket watch—ten o’clock. Over an hour remained until his train departed. He decided to walk to the station. As he emerged from the lane onto Tulach Mhór Street, his eye caught on Aonach Sanitarium, a high, handsome building, which stood on a rise overlooking the boulevard. Ó Deághaidh shuddered, remembering its stark corridors, the terror no amount of drugs or electricity could banish.

That was one set of memories. He also remembered the sanitarium from a different perspective, as a representative of the Queen’s Constabulary seeking clues to a murder.

Both were true. Both were subject to time’s distortions.

Why did I lie to Loisg?
he wondered.

A profitless question. One might as well ask why he remembered a past that did not exist.

He crossed the boulevard, threading his way between the automobiles and horse-drawn carriages, to a pathway that led through a pleasant green park and down to the Blackwater River. It was against Loisg’s warnings about indulging in false memories—it was against his own instincts—to walk beside that river.

I’ve changed,
he thought, as he turned into the park.

*   *   *

Once more, he stood in the examining room. Once more, all the details were wrong. He clearly remembered the telegraph had come shortly after sunrise. He could not have arrived in Awveline City before midmorning, and yet before him lay a room washed in moonlight, all colors faded to black and gray.

A stark, silent room, bereft of scent and movement and life.

In the center of this emptiness stood a single, raised pallet, draped in a coarse white sheet. Ó Deághaidh drew the cloth back and felt an involuntary shock, like a fist thrust into his gut, even though he had known what to expect. The assailant had strangled his victim first, then slashed her face with a knife. The indentation of the man’s fingers around her throat stood out livid against the young woman’s gray skin.

“Her name was Maeve Ní Cadhla,” the medical examiner said. “Lord Ó Cadhla’s youngest daughter.”

*   *   *

The concierge knocked on the compartment door. “Ten minutes to Osraighe Station, sir.”

Ó Deághaidh drank down the last of his tea and glanced over the papers in his lap—reports from the Queen’s Constabulary, which had arrived by royal courier the day before. They were incomplete, which piqued his curiosity. Or rather, they were carefully edited summaries of what had to be longer, more detailed accounts from agents in the field. Still, they proved a good introduction to the current situation throughout Europe, western Asia, and the Mediterranean colonies.

… Frankonia’s king facing opposition within his council from those who favor a partnership with the Prussian Alliance …

… sources from the Turkish States confirm the official heir’s recent death was the latest in a series of assassinations conducted between Koptic and Muslim factions …

… Serbia appears to be maneuvering to take control over the Balkan States. Austria still maintains its sovereignty over Hungary, Slovakia, and portions of Croatia, but we have reports of Serbian militia units engaging with Austrian troops in the eastern provinces, while Montenegro’s Prince Danilo II continues to press for kingship …

Delicate times
, Ó Deághaidh thought. Especially for a prominent nation like Éire, which had to negotiate a careful path between these many conflicts. He stowed the reports in the case at his feet, then touched a hand to his coat to reassure himself, once more, that the envelope was there. The queen’s personal courier had delivered the packet and letter to Ó Deághaidh late the night before.

Do not fail me, Aidrean,
she had added at the end.

But I have failed you before,
he thought. Or had he?

Doubts continued to pursue him for the next hour, as he made his way out of Osraighe’s busy train station and summoned a cab to the palace. It seemed, if he could trust his recollections, that more guards patrolled the grounds outside Cill Cannig, and the sentries examined his papers more closely. A pair of runners escorted him from the gates to a suite of rooms within the Royal Enclosure. He noted that they glanced him over as soldiers might, and that they carried weapons, some obvious and some hidden.

Servants had already fetched his trunks from the station and laid out his clothes. There was a valet assigned to him, but Ó Deághaidh dismissed the man. He wanted a few moments alone before he faced his queen and her ministers.

He washed his face, changed into a new gray suit, and brushed his hair smooth. The mirror showed him a thin brown face, made sharper and thinner still from the events of the past eighteen months. Well, he could not help that.

The same runners waited outside to escort Ó Deághaidh to the audience chamber. It was one of the smaller rooms in this wing of the Enclosure, long and narrow, with windows set high in the walls. Below, a series of portraits alternated with centuries-old tapestries depicting Éire’s rise from Roman colony to independent kingdom to empire. Ó Deághaidh recognized the queen’s coronation portrait among those of her ancestors.

One person had arrived already and sat at the far end of the table—a middle-aged man in a dark blue suit, with iron-gray hair swept back in waves. Lord Ó Cadhla.

Ó Deághaidh paused.

Lord Ó Cadhla’s eyes were like dark bruises against his paper-white skin. He had wept in private, of course. Like all the men of his generation, he would display his grief to no one outside his family. Perhaps not even to them.

They tell me a lunatic murdered my daughter, Commander Ó Deághaidh. Find him.

I promise, my lord.

Ó Deághaidh blew out a breath. There was no help for it. He would have to face these false memories as they came. “My Lord Ó Cadhla.”

Ó Cadhla glanced up. For a moment, his face went still. Surprise? Dismay? The change in expression was so brief Ó Deághaidh could almost believe he’d imagined it, because the next moment, Ó Cadhla was on his feet. “Commander Ó Deághaidh. I had not heard you would be present at this meeting. I am … I am so
very
glad to see you.”