Time's Echo: A CHRONOS Files Novella (9 page)

The music, however, is an upgrade.
The band itself isn't great, but the vocalist is really good. Simon seems to be
thinking the same thing, although his expression makes me think he's more
impressed with what meets the eye than what meets the ear.

His eyes keep moving between the
singer and the front door. When he catches me watching him, he grins and raises
his glass, shouting out a toast that sounds like "To New York's
finest!" before tossing back the rest of his drink.

My stomach sinks. The last time I
saw this expression on Simon's face was in Cincinnati. He's up to something.

The band shifts into a rendition
of "Fascinating Rhythm," and Simon pulls Elsie onto the dance floor.
She's sober enough to be embarrassed by his dance moves, none of which belong
in this half of the century and several of which probably violate local
obscenity laws, even in New York.

Tillie is too drunk to notice
anything. Her head of closely cropped curls is slumped against my shoulder and
her eyes are almost closed. I kind of feel sorry for her and I kind of feel disgusted,
but mostly I'm pissed that Simon is finally drunk enough that he might spill
something about Kate and we're in a dive too noisy to hear anything below a
scream.

Halfway through the second chorus,
the band screeches to a halt and then shifts to an entirely different tune. The
vocalist pauses for a beat, looking around at the patrons,
then
starts singing in a slightly louder voice:

I had a friend named Bill
Campbell

Who used to rob, steal, and
gamble.

He did most everything that was
low-down…

As soon as the crowd hears the
first line, it's like someone rang the
schoolbell
.
Everyone freezes and most of them dump the contents of their glasses onto the
floor. The seats empty as people dash toward the back of the room, pushing to
get through a small door that I'd have sworn wasn't there a moment ago. Most of
those on the dance floor don't even bother to grab the things they left at
their table.

The toast to
New York's Finest
suddenly
makes sense, although I'm guessing the men at the door are federal agents, and
not the local police. The band keeps playing, while waiters quickly scoop the
remaining glasses onto trays, rushing them to the backroom.

I told him
over'n
over again

To lay off the whisky, lay off
the gin.

He's in the jailhouse now.

Elsie abandons Simon on the dance
floor, grabs my glass, which is still full, and flings the contents into
Tillie's face.

"It's a raid!"

I don't know if it's the shock of
the liquid or the word itself, but Tillie staggers to her feet and they half
run
,
half stumble to the rear exit.

Simon stands in the middle of the
dance floor, the CHRONOS key in his hand, singing along with the music, until
the officers are maybe ten feet in front of him. I have no clue how he manages
to pull up a stable point in his current condition, but he does, flashing out
in full view of everyone in the room.

The next notes from the band are
off-key, and then the song fades into silence. With every sober eye in the
place still glued to the spot where Simon vanished, I pull the key out of my pocket,
crouch beneath the nearest table and follow him.

∞

New
York City

July
25, 1929 – 1:17 a.m.

 It was 1:17 a.m. when I left
the club. I locked in the date and the stable point we set back in our suite,
not bothering to change the time. Simon must have taken the same shortcut,
because he's there, cackling like a chicken, when I pop in.

"Damn it, Simon. You knew,
didn't you? You knew there was going to be a raid at that place. "

"Of course, I knew!
Tha's
why I picked September 10th. So we could see it, you
idiot.
Wha's
the point of having the key if you
can't—" His expression turns serious in mid-sentence. "
D'you
set a stable point back at the Epicure?"

"No."

He slumps down onto the sofa.
"Well
tha's
a royal pisser."

Unsure what realization has
brought his mood crashing to the
ground,
I latch onto
the only reasonable option. "I think the girls got out, if that's—"

"What? No. They were
prob'ly
hookers anyway. So what if they spend a night in
jail."

"Then…why?"

"So I could go back and see their
faces when I popped out. The
chica
who was singing,
did she—"

"Yes, she noticed you. She
looked like her jaw was going to hit the floor. Are you happy?"

"I'd be happier if she was
here. My room lacks the feminine touch, know what I mean? Maybe she's with the
house band. She could be
singin
' there tonight. Come
on."

"You're crazy."

"Why? It's only a year
earlier. And if not, we
c'n
get some other
girls." He picks up his jacket from the chair and pulls it on.

"I'm not interested in
getting a girl."

He snorts, searching around in his
jacket pocket for something. "
Anythin
' you
wanna
tell me, Kier?"

"No," I say. "I
just…I don't think Prudence—"

"Never
stopped you before.
In Paris, you
couldn
' keep your hands
offa
…
that…" Simon
trails off as his hand comes out of his pocket holding the pill bottle.

My brain starts spinning, trying
to cook up a believable lie, but Simon's too wasted to question why the pills
didn't work. Or maybe he's just happy to have the sensation of being drunk
again.

Seeing the pills does seem to have
taken a little of the wind out of his sails, though. Giving the bottle a foul
look, he pulls off his dinner jacket and tosses both the container and the
jacket into the trash.

He walks over to the window and
looks out at the skyline, which shines much brighter than the moon and stars
above it. "She's dead anyhow. Same goes for that blonde—Elsie?
The redhead, too.
All of them are what?
Maybe
twenty?
All dead.
Just a sack
of bones in a grave by our time."

I don't know what year Simon was
born. He runs on Saul's clock, so I'm guessing he considers 2030 to be
his
time. None of those girls have even been born in my own time, but I don't
bother to correct him.  He seems to be warming up to a rant, and that's
what I've been waiting for.

"Try
thinkin
' about that when you're
makin
'
out and see what happens.
It's a real
buzz kill. Every single person in this city, aside from you and me, is dead.
You ever think about that, Kier?"

"Sometimes.
We all die eventually."

He's wandered over to his room in
the suite before I finish the sentence. I hear him tossing a few things around,
and there are some muttered curses, then he comes back into the room holding up
a pint of Johnnie Walker Blue.

"Pack light, but never forget
th
' essentials."

He sloshes a bit into two water
glasses and hands one to me, even though he knows I hate scotch. Then he
resumes his place by the window.

"Yes," he says, in the
pompous, professorial tone that always makes me want to smack him. "We all
die. But they die after
seein
' only one slice of
life. They get this one itsy-bitsy sliver. We get to sample the whole
pie."

So, it's going to be
that
drunken rant, the one where Simon waxes philosophical about the boring lives of
ordinary people. The last time we had this chat, I said that given the choice
between bouncing around time and space, and being stuck in a single day with
Kate, I'd take the latter. I know exactly which day I'd pick, too—July 21, 1848
in a cabin on the Finger Lakes. Just me and Kate, the lake, and a wheat field
where we spent the better part of the afternoon. I could live an entire
lifetime in that single day and never complain.

Simon seems to have picked up on
the fact that my mind is wandering, because he comes back over and sits on the
sofa, leaning into my field of vision. "And I know what you're gonna say.
You've said over 'n' over that they get to fully experience that one little
slice, to savor every single boring monotonous bite. And while I still doubt
it, let's say I grant you that."

"Generous
of you."

He ignores the comment and pulls
the medallion out of his shirt, holding it in the palm of his hand. "Think
about this. A guy on the street pisses off some gangster with a machine gun,
and yeah, the gangster can end his life. If the gangster's caught, the state can
take the rest of
his
life away, too. But
tha's
all they can do. He still had twenty, thirty years, maybe more. If that same
guy pisses you or me off, assuming we
wanna
bother
with it, we could go back and make sure he never happened at all. He
never
happened
. You don't just take the rest of his life, you take his whole
damn existence, and there's nothing anyone can do about it.
Tha's
real power."

I lean back into the armchair,
keeping my tone casual. "So, a cashier gives you the wrong change. Do you
track down her parents and make sure they never meet?"

"No,
dumbass.
It's not worth the bother. The
point is
,
I
could
. So could you."

"We could also go back and
make sure Hitler's parents never meet, but last I heard, Saul doesn't recommend
that."

Simon shrugs. "Somebody else
would just come along and do the same thing he did. Stalin and Mao were right
on his heels. You need somebody in charge who sees the big picture."

"Saul?"

"Brother
Cyrus
,"
he corrects, tossing back the last of his drink and pouring another. He starts
to do the same to mine, and is annoyed to see that my glass is nearly full.
"Drink up. You're
makin
' me do all the work
here. How are you gonna follow my brilliance sober?"

I take another swig of the scotch,
bracing myself for the aftertaste.

Simon shakes his head in disgust.
"Remind me to pack a wine cooler for you next time. I swear, Kate has
better taste in—"

He stops and takes another gulp of
his drink, his eyes bugging out a little the way they always do when he's
nervous.

I'm sure he's kicking himself for
letting her name slip, but that's not what caught my attention.

Has
.
He said
Kate
has
.

"And who exactly is
Kate?" I try to keep the tone light, like I'm just asking out of idle
curiosity.

His
eyes narrow
for a moment, but apparently my poker face is
convincing. "Just a
piece I shacked up with down in Miami for a while. Don't think you ever met
her."

It's amazing that the glass I'm
holding doesn't shatter, because my hand tightens around it, as though it's
Simon's neck. I put it on the table and force myself to relax back into the
armchair.
"Another one, huh?
What happened this
time?"

"
Hmph
."
Simon
shakes his head and pours the last of the scotch into his glass. "What
does it matter? Like all the others, she's nothing more than bones in a grave
in my day."

It takes every bit of willpower
I've got to stay in that chair.
To keep my face neutral.

But I do, because no matter how
he's trying to spin it now, he said
has
.
Present tense.
Not
had
.

It's just one letter. And I know
he's drunk enough that he could easily have misspoken.

Either way, that one letter is the
only thing that keeps me from picking up the empty bottle and cracking it over
his bloody head.

∞8∞

Washington,
DC

April 06, 2015– 3:17 p.m.

I've no idea why we're at a
suburban subway station or what possible connection it could have to the
upcoming "adjustment." But I don't ask. I'm just ready to get this
over with.

At least it's not a bank lobby.
The platform is outdoors, it's a nice spring day, and I'm in comfortable
clothes again, rather than the variety of suits I've been wearing over the past
ten days. Last, and most certainly not least, this is the final set of
coordinates on Simon's list, and therefore this should be the final day I have
to spend with him, at least for the foreseeable future.

The bad news is that I'm stuck
waiting with Simon and he's been in a foul mood for the past two days. He
clammed up tight after our night on the town and hasn't touched a drop of
alcohol since. He hasn't pulled any more time-tourist stunts, either—it's been
strictly
business
. We marked the other two locations
in DC off the list, and he's even taken meals in the hotel room, something he
never does.

I'm guessing his disposition on that
first day was at least partly due to a massive hangover, but I think Simon also
remembers that he let something slip and he doesn't want any more close calls.
And while his mistake may give me hope, it doesn't bring me any closer to
finding Kate. Maybe I'll have better luck with Pru, if I can catch her in a
reasonable mood.

When the train arrives at the
platform, we wait until a couple of people get off, then board and move to a
seat facing the other passengers. The car is pretty empty—just a middle-aged
guy going over some business papers, a woman trimming her nails and listening
to music, and a teenager who's slouched down in her seat reading a book.

I glance at Simon as the train
begins moving. He's watching the girl, whose face I still can't see. He's
trying to be subtle about it, stealing an occasional peek in between scribbling
in his notebook. After once again crossing through the coordinates listed on
the page, he's now doodling in the margins—exaggerated female body parts, which
is pretty much all that Simon draws. And he keeps looking at me, too, like he's
waiting for something. Like the other night just before the speakeasy was
raided.

I realize the girl is Kate before
I ever see her face. I'm looking out the window, watching as the rows of shops
zip past, when I catch a familiar movement from the corner of my eye—the girl's
hand, holding a pen of some sort.

The hand is only visible for a
moment, but it's something about the way she holds the pen.

I'm not sure how long it is before
I remember to breathe.

The train enters a tunnel and
maybe it's the change in the light that causes her to shift slightly toward the
aisle. She's bending the corner of a page in the book and I can see now that
it's a CHRONOS diary.

Simon sees it, too. His elbow bumps
my arm as he starts writing in the notebook again. He's grinning, and tracing
over the word "BINGO," written in large letters. He underlines it
several times before looking over at me.

I stare out the window to avoid
catching his eye. None of this makes sense. Kate never lived in DC. She visited
twice, as a kid—once passing through with her dad on the way to visit his
parents in Delaware, and once on a school trip when she was in the eighth
grade. She never lived here.

I sneak another fleeting look and
then turn to Simon, who's still watching me.

"The girl over there," I
whisper.
"Thought she was Pru for a minute.
Younger Pru."

"Yeah, well she's not."

"It's not coincidence,
though, is it? Who is she?"

"Someone
who wouldn't be here if Pru had done her job.
Get your key out, I've seen what we needed to see."

Kate looks up just after Simon
speaks, and I see that she
is
younger, even younger than when we first
met at Estero. It's a subtle difference—her face is fuller, her eyes a bit more
innocent. She's wearing a school uniform of some sort—blue and green plaid.

And then her eyes lock onto mine.
I clutch the cushion of my seat, unable to look away. She doesn't look away
either.

It's almost like she recognizes
me.

Almost, but not
quite.
It's more like she's seen my
face somewhere, and she's trying to place it. She looks confused.
Frightened.
And I'm worried that she has very good reason to
be.

Simon digs his elbow into my ribs
and says, "Your key, Kiernan?"

Maybe Kate hears him or maybe
she's just reached the point where my eyes are making her uncomfortable. Either
way, she breaks our gaze, and looks back down at the diary.

What I want to do at that moment
is run to her, pull her into my arms and never let go. Of course, that would
just frighten her more, because she doesn't know me.

And Simon is watching. So what I
do instead is pull up the coordinates for the hotel and blink out.

Simon is eyeing the stable point
suspiciously when I arrive in our room.

"What was that about?"
he asks.

"She looks too much like Pru.
I'm still not sure it isn't Pru. What aren't you telling me, Simon?"

He shrugs.
"Doesn't
matter.
We're done, Kier. Let's get you back to Boston, back to where
you belong. And I think Saul is going to
be needing
your key."

∞

Estero,
Florida

May
30, 2030– 6:50 pm

People who have a CHRONOS
medallion can be tough to track down. It's not like they have cell phones and
you can just call. You can text them, sort of, thanks to something one of
Saul's guys rigged up, however, that only works if they're at Nuevo
Reino
. Prudence is notorious for ignoring messages, anyway,
and I've no idea where she went after Saul's meeting.

I do, however, know that she'll be
in the conference room at seven p.m. on May 30, 2030, so I can make a pretty
good guess as to her whereabouts just prior. Simon may have taken my official
key, but he doesn't know about the backup. And since I decided to hang out down
at the river the first time I jumped back for this meeting, I don't have to
worry about bumping into myself.

A few of the Templars are already
in the meeting room when I blink in, but they're deep in conversation and
barely give me a glance. Given how tense things are between Pru and Saul, I
doubt she's in a hurry to get there. I head down the corridor to the other side
of the building, hoping to catch her before she leaves Planetary Court—which
isn't actually a courtyard, or even a court, just the weird name for the house
where the female leaders lived back when the
Koreshans
were in charge. Pru adopted the place for herself a few years after Saul's
arrival in 2024 when she got tired of living under her daddy's nose.

Security will be pissed if they
come this way. Someone's propped the door open with a rock. Cigarette smoke
drifts through the opening and as I approach the exit, I see the source.

It's Younger Pru, sitting on the
bottom step. I can tell exactly how young because her hair is about six inches
long on most of her head and shaved almost bare on one side just above a heavily
bejeweled ear. There's a bead of some sort embedded in her nostril, some sort
of ring in her eyebrow, and a large Cyrist symbol on her left shoulder—inked in
red and black, upside down. It still looks a bit pink around the edges, so I'm
guessing this is right after her sixteenth birthday.

I didn't know her then other than
to see her around the Farm a few times, but she still had faint echoes of that
tattoo for the first few months we were together, before the removal treatments
were finished. She said Saul was livid when she got it, and from the pleased
little smirk on her face, I'd lay
odds that was
her
goal.

The last time I saw Pru this
young, I was twelve, maybe thirteen. And even though she's much closer to sane
at this age, I'm always leery of talking to her, scared I'll give something
away that she doesn't know yet. Spoilers, Kate calls them. I think I did that
once, because there's a day Pru and I spent together at the beach that I
remember. After I mentioned it to a younger version of her, however, I also
remembered that she
wasn't
with me that day. I think maybe she decided
not to go. I only have two or three memories like that, and they make my head
pound like a bloody drum, so I can only imagine what it's like for her.

But this isn't an ordinary
situation. I have to risk it.

I push the door open, leaving the
rock in place.
"Hey, Pru."

Her eyes dart in my direction for
a split second and then back over toward the barn. She seems confused.
"Thought you came in at the stable?"

"No," I
lie,
although I guess it's only a partial lie, since this
time I actually
didn't
jump in at the barn. Still, for her to know where
I came in either time, she must have been watching the stable points through
the key, waiting for me to arrive. That has me wondering why.

"Should you…you know,
be
here?" I ask
,
looking over at the house where I
suspect her older self is hanging out.

 She sniffs and stubs the
cigarette out on the steps. "The old lady won't be out for another ten minutes
or so. Saul's in his secret lair, meditating or eating babies, or whatever he
does in there, now that he's finished going over his grand plans with the Rat
Bastard."

I haven't heard that particular
nickname before, but there's no doubt she means Simon.

Prudence doesn't much care for
Simon. I get it—his personality issues aside, Simon has been her competition
for as long as I've known him. He's made sucking up to Saul his sole purpose in
life. And, in Pru's defense, it must be hard to feel maternal instincts for a
child you never wanted, never carried, never raised, probably never even saw
until he was ten and they began testing him with the key.

At sixteen, this Pru is still a
year away from pregnant, four years away from the whole egg donor thing. Even
though she has to know Simon is her biological son, there's no reason for her
to feel any connection to him.

As annoyed as my mum was when I
left, I know she never called me a rat bastard and despite everything, I feel a
tiny twinge of sympathy for Simon. Cyrist family relations are a long way from
normal.

Pru is up and headed for the door.

"You coming?" she asks,
still not looking at me.

"Yeah."

I follow her inside and down the
hallway. She walks briskly, taking a right at the first turn, away from the
conference room and back toward the kitchen and living area.

"Listen, Pru—I need to talk
to you."

"Not a good idea, Kiernan.
You know that." She keeps walking, looking down at the floor.

"Yes, but this involves you.
It's about your sister and—"

"God, Kiernan, how stupid are
you?" she hisses, barely above a whisper. "Shut up or they'll hear
you!"

She grabs my arm and pulls me into
the formal dining area. Two years back for me, maybe two forward for her, this
is where we'll sit together waiting for the family dinner with Saul that never
quite happens.

Once we're inside, Pru pushes me
up against the wall next to a large china hutch. Now she looks me square in the
eye, motioning with her head toward the door that leads to the kitchen.

Following her gaze, I take a
slight step forward to look around the hutch. I'm starting to pick up voices
beyond the closed door. They're growing louder, so they must be coming into the
kitchen from the other hallway. One voice is Simon's, but I can't place the
other.

"Who is—" I begin,
turning back toward her.

I'm too late. All I see is a brief
flash of green and Pru is gone.

I bite back a curse and debate
moving closer to the door. Pru seems to have gone to a bit of trouble to lead
me here. Assuming logic where she's concerned is sometimes risky, but I don't
think this was random.

Glasses clink against the counter.
I inch closer to the door so that I can hear.

"Whoa.
Easy
with that stuff.
I haven't eaten yet—" says the other guy. I think
his name is Ronald. He's not a jumper, so he must be one of Saul's staff in
this time.

"Then have a banana or a
sandwich with it. You really want to go into a conference room with Mother
Prudence when you're stone sober?"

Nervous laugh from Ron, but he doesn't
say anything. A few seconds of silence follow, and I wish there was a stable
point in the kitchen so that I could pull it up and see them, instead of just
listening through the door.

There's another clinking sound and
then Simon says, "Listen, I know you've got mixed feelings about this. I
do, too. We both know the sacrifices Prudence has made. I mean, aside from
Brother Cyrus, she's given more than any of us. She's just not thinking
rationally on this issue. I'm not sure she's thinking rationally about anything
anymore. Brother Cyrus has been concerned for some time, even though I doubted
for awhile."