Time's Enemy: A Romantic Time Travel Adventure (Saturn Society Book 1) (19 page)

Tony twirled the sheet between his finger and thumb. “Sounds familiar.”

“No one can say for sure, but it’s pretty much accepted in the Society that that’s how it happened. A hole in the fabric of time. Or between realities.”

Tony’d seen the news story, right after he returned from his warp back two years, where he’d busted Dora and Charlie. And changed his own life significantly. Was the emergence of that grasshopper, a hole in time, Tony’s fault? “What’s one little grasshopper?”

“No big deal, right? One insect can’t reproduce. But what if the holes get big enough to let more through? What if it’s something bigger? What if the holes get big enough that people disappear into them? Or what if technology from the future appears here, and people misuse it? Or animal or plant life our current ecosystem can’t handle?”

Tony stared down at the sheet while his mind tumbled around the possibilities. Killer mosquitoes. Bacteria. Viruses long eradicated, or stronger ones from the future. “Do these holes always happen when someone goes back? Surely people make unintentional changes all the time.”

“We don’t know. Like I said, most of these tears are so tiny, we don’t notice them.” He relaxed, crossed one ankle over the opposite knee in a square. “Look, I’m not trying to scare you. As far as we know, the big holes only happen when someone makes a big change. And that’s what the Society’s here for. To educate, help you learn how to deal with time travel in the safest way possible.” He drew a folded sheaf of paper from the inside pocket of his vest and leaned over to hand them to Tony. “I brought these in case you’d like to consider joining us again—especially in light of your recent experience.” He pushed the over-bed table across Tony’s lap, then laid a pen on it.

Tony unfolded the pages. The words swam in his vision, until Everly handed Tony his glasses.

Tony shoved them on and read. It was the same form Taylor Gressman had given him.

He skimmed the questions, then the provisions requiring his agreement, and reached for the pen.

Before he could talk himself out of it, he filled in his name, address, social security number, phone number and work information. Under income, he put “enough to pay the bills.”

As he completed the form, a sense of weight lifted from him, as if the sheets had been made of lead before, and had now metamorphosed into ordinary cloth. Though he didn’t look up at Everly, he could feel the man’s perpetual smile.

He needed this. Needed the help, the support, the guidance.

And the instruction. To help him learn—

He reached the signature line, then paused as the full implications hit him.

He couldn’t sign this.

Everly raised an eyebrow. “Questions?”

Oh yeah, he had dozens, all pushing forward in Tony’s mind at once. But he’d better bury the most important one in a bunch of others—which were also important. “When I was in 1913... why was I stuck there for almost three weeks? But when I went back two years, I was only there for a couple days?”

“The farther back you go, the longer it takes for the pull to hit,” Everly explained.

“The pull?”

“The force connecting us to our own natural present. Before you came back, did you start to see things from today?”

“Yeah... sort of like a double-exposed photo. And I had a hellacious headache.”

“That’s the pull.” The Cheshire cat grin spread across Everly’s face again. “You can’t stay in the past indefinitely. No matter when you go, the pull will eventually snap you back, even if you fight it. I take it you were around other people all the time?” Tony nodded. “That’s why you got the headache. The pull was trying to haul you back home, but you can’t warp when you’re in view of linear people.”

“What?”

Everly’s smile came back in full force. “People who experience time in a linear fashion. Normal people. If a linear person were to see you warp, it would jar the space-time continuum, create a difference in their perception and in the generally-perceived reality.”

“There were people around when they—” Tony had to bite the word out—“sacrificed me in Mexico.”

“That’s different. You died.”

Tony’s insides turned to jelly. “What?” He put the cup down on the over-bed table and dropped his hands to the sheet.

“Sure,” Everly said. “You die in the past, it instantly pulls you back to your own time, healed, at least partly.” Tony’s jaw went slack as he remembered Everly’s comment in the parking garage—
How can you die before you’re born?

In a weird way, it made sense. The idea was freeing, magical. An odd sense of relief mixed with anticipation trickled through Tony. “Let me get this straight. If I’m in the past and I find myself in a jam, I can die, and... come back?”

“As long as you’ve gone back to before you were born.” Everly pointed up. “But you still feel the pain. You still have all the...” His gaze fixed on Tony’s neck. “Unpleasantness.”

Tony slid his fingers around the neckline of his hospital gown. “Okay. So if I go to the past again, I take some medication with me... poison... or pack a gun, so if I get into another situation like in Mexico—”

“You can’t kill yourself.” Everly crossed his arms and let the silence sink in, along with his ever-present smile.
When he warps, does the smile stay behind?
“If you do, you’re dead. Permanently. Plenty of Society guys have had the same idea... an easy way to get through the Second Rite. Never works, not even if you try the old fall-on-your-sword trick. It’s the intention of taking your own life that seems to make the difference.”

Tony snatched off his glasses, and rubbed them with a corner of sheet before putting them back on. What was this Second Rite? He’d ask after he cleared up this death thing. “What if I go back and do something I know is dangerous, like uh... doing the tightrope act on the telephone wires?”

“That’s a gray area. If you’re doing something dangerous because you want to die, you probably will. For good. If you’re doing it for other reasons and get killed, you’ll come back.”

Not that it mattered to Tony. He wasn’t going to go back to the past again, except to save Bethany. Which reminded him of his most pressing question. “What if I start to warp... and I don’t want to?”

“That’s easy,” Everly said. “You warp by concentrating on how a place was at the time you want to go, right? How it looked, the sounds and smells, the feel of it.... So to stop a warp, you do the same thing—concentrate on the here-and-now, what you see right in front of you.”

Tony closed his eyes and let out a breath. It was that simple. No more unpleasant, unplanned visits to two years ago. Or any time. He met Everly’s gaze. “What about warping within my own lifetime?” Everly’s smile wavered, but Tony forged on. “A couple weeks ago, I went back two years, relived two days of my past... yet when I tried to do it again, I couldn’t.” He lay the pen down.

Everly’s smile flickered, then dimmed, but enough remained that it was still a smile. “Aren’t you going to sign that?”

Tony stared down at the paper, the non-intervention clause burning like a neon light.

He needed these people. Needed their help, their support. Their information. But he couldn’t sign that paper.

It would be a lie. Most people would probably go ahead and sign, even if they planned—as Tony did—to break the rules. But Tony couldn’t. “I don’t think I’m ready for this.” He pushed the forms across the table toward Everly.

Everly’s mouth drew into a hard line. “Tony... I know what you’re thinking. Don’t do it.”

“Do what?” Tony slid his hand under the blanket and clutched at a wrinkle in the sheet beneath him.

“Your daughter. You’re thinking about going back and changing—”

Tony smacked his lips, his mouth suddenly dry. “How do you know about my daughter?”

“The Society researches all prospective members.” Everly’s stare was relentless. “Don’t do it. Don’t change the past. Observe and learn. But don’t change anything. Hard as it might be. Believe me, the ramifications...”

A concrete ball formed in Tony’s stomach. All this mess of slipping back in time, and here Everly was, trying to take away the one good thing that could come of it. Tony’s baby, back in his life... He could feel the solidness of her slim body in his arms when he hugged her after a game, feel the cool skin of her forehead as he kissed her goodnight...

Everly’s voice softened. “Tony, if you do this, you’re playing God. Not to mention the dangers of the time-distortion holes. What gives you the right to determine what should and what shouldn’t have happened—”

Something snapped in Tony’s hand. He looked down. He’d picked up the plastic cup and squeezed until it cracked.

Everly rose and moved to the bed. “You’re not the first one who’s thought about changing the past, you know. Taylor said you saw Fred at the House—”

“The guy who was wandering around drooling?”

Everly nodded, his mouth pressed in a hard, straight line. “We make sure all his needs are met—”

Tony gripped a wad of sheet. “The guy’s a zombie! What did you do to him?” He let go of the sheet. Gripped it again. Let it go. Smoothed it. Rolled a wrinkle between his finger and thumb.

Everly faced the TV, his eyes unfocused. “A combination of surgery and medication.” He turned to Tony. “Those who did it, did what they felt had to be done. He violated the Code. And he would have done so again—”

“What did he do?”

“Influenced his ancestors’ investments back in the twenties. Then when everyone else lost their asses, Fred’s grandpa raked it in, thanks to Fred’s knowledge of the future. Bad enough to change the past at all, but for such blatant personal benefit...” His gaze hardened, its threat unmistakable.

Tony inwardly cringed under its intensity. He made a pretense of studying the cracked cup in his hand. Holy shit, what if they found out about his own investments? He hadn’t been greedy, just made a couple of wise decisions.

Resolve settled over him like a new fallen snow. He’d save Bethany. But he’d make sure Everly—and any other Saturn Society people—never found out. All he had to do was figure out how.

C
HARLOTTE FINGERED THE QUARTER ON ITS GOLD
chain around her neck as she hopped the trolley at Fourth and Main. Theodore had given her the necklace last week as a gift for her sixteenth birthday—and also in honor of her passing the First Rite. She’d drilled a hole through the coin, then secured it to the necklace with a wire loop. Somehow, putting the two together seemed fitting.

She’d had no difficulty escaping from that locked room in the Saturn Society house into 1901. The proprietor of the Smoke Shop had been surprised when she emerged from his attic, but luckily she’d convinced him she hadn’t stolen anything, and he let her leave.

Her trip to 1901 had been far less unpleasant than her childhood forays into the late nineteenth century, when she’d been chased by horrid, dirty tramps, then caught by the police who took her to the girls’ home where the matrons rapped her knuckles and worked the girls from dawn to dusk. Neither journey was one she cared to repeat.

She soon reached Mr. Pippin’s elegant Society House at 140 South Harrison Street. She always enjoyed going to the House and spending time with Mr. Pippin, ever since the day he’d shown up on Papa’s front porch when she was ten, claiming he was a psychiatrist, who’d read about her disappearances in the papers and thought he could help. After her three trips back in time, Papa was so distraught that he hadn’t even cared that “Doctor” Pippin was colored. Mr. Pippin later told her he wasn’t a physician, it was only a story he’d fabricated so Papa would let him “treat” her.

Mr. Pippin had told her all about how time travel worked, and most important, how to stop if she felt herself starting to jump when she didn’t want to. To this day, Papa believed something horrific had befallen Charlotte during her early disappearances (she’d once heard him and Uncle Curtis talking about “white slavers”), and she’d made up the time travel story to forget about what had really happened. On Mr. Pippin’s instruction, she’d stopped correcting Papa, and let him believe what he wanted. It was easier.

She flung the door open and burst into the House. As she expected, her mentor sat at his desk in the vestibule, poring over an album of photographs he’d compiled over the past several years—time criminals, men and women who’d committed selfish acts of change in the past. Although the green banker’s lamp’s light didn’t reach the elegant green and maroon striped wall paper, it reflected brightly on the mahogany desk and illuminated the tome before him. He glanced up. “Good afternoon, Charlotte.”

She returned his greeting. “Look.” She lifted the quarter on its chain out of her dress.

Mr. Pippin stood, squinting. “Ah yes, the coin from the future.” He was the only person she’d shown it to besides Dewey. He leaned closer. “Sensible way to keep it hidden.”

“Of course, Mr.— Theodore.” He’d recently told her to call him by his Christian name.

He gave her a thin, barely-there smile, the only kind he seemed capable of since the day his wife Nellie Mae had disappeared three years earlier. He patted the book. “Look through this new edition, and familiarize yourself with these miscreants, should you chance to happen upon any of them.”