Borrowed Time (20 page)

Joan’s eyes were shining despite the nearness of death in them. “My fate . . . my reward . . . is a great one . . . my voices tell me . . . I shall see my Lord soon . . . Take my sword . . . Kate, my sister . . . live . . . ”

Kate knelt there, shaking, as Joan’s breath stilled, her eyes still lifted upward and a smile fixed on her face. “Goodbye,” Kate gasped.

Another section of the floor collapsed, and Kate shrank back against the stone wall as the flames burst out closer to her. The wood floor under Joan’s body and Kate was hot and would surely explode into flame at any moment. The cries of the English seemed faint as they kept back from the inferno the tower had become. Kate gazed on Joan’s body, the floor around it smoking now, then picked up Joan’s sword and gripped it tightly. Every other defender was dead, no one else had known who Kate was, and so no one would carry the tale of Lady Kate into history. “Goodbye, Joan,” Kate repeated, then pulled back the cuff of her gauntlet and finally punched in the return code through eyes blurred with tears as fire flickered to life on the floor around her.

#

Kate moved in a daze through the pre-dawn campus and to her apartment, not really aware of her surroundings, and never afterwards able to understand why she hadn’t been spotted by campus security on her way out or stopped by police on the walk home. Maybe anyone seeing an armored knight walking through the dark had not wanted to find out what was going on. But at some point, Kate found herself at the door to her apartment, and managed to dig out her keys.

She paused as the door swung shut behind her, staring at the pictures on one wall. Walking stiffly, Kate moved toward that wall, studying the pictures.

The one which had shown Joan being burned at the stake now depicted a fully-armored knight rescuing Joan from the site of her planned execution while bursts of smoke and flame cast by St. Catherine and St. Margaret dazzled the English soldiers on guard. Next to it hung a print of a Medieval picture Kate had never seen, one showing Joan fighting on the top of a tower while flames rose around her, angels hovering ready to take her to heaven as Joan’s attackers cowered in fear below.

Beside that was a photograph of a monument near a small, ruined stone keep, Joan standing in her armor atop a pedestal, gazing heavenward. On the pedestal had been carved the images of knights standing ready to fight to their last with Joan.

Kate just stared at the pictures for a while, then staggered into the bedroom and sat down heavily on her bed, laying the sword carefully beside her and looking at it. She had no idea how long she had been there when a soft knock on the door was followed by a key turning in the lock.

“Hello? Kate?” Cylene’s steps sounded softly in the living area, then she peered around the side of the door into the bedroom. “Hey, you weren’t on campus this morning and you didn’t answer your cell so I wanted to check . . . What’s the matter?”

Blinking her way back into thought, Kate shook her head. “Nothing.” It came out in a hoarse whisper which even Kate knew didn’t sound convincing.

Cylene came closer, bending down to look at Kate’s face, then wrinkling her nose. “I smell smoke. Have you been near a fire? Your armor is all beat up. God, that SCA stuff can be a little scary if you ask me.”

“Don’t use the Lord’s name in vain,” Kate whispered.

“What? Kate, are you okay?” Cylene snapped her fingers in front of Kate’s face. “Do you need a doctor?”

“No. I’m fine.”

“Sure you are.” Cylene sat down next to Kate, on the opposite side from the sword, looking at the weapon curiously. “You got another sword?”

“Someone gave it to me.” Kate reached out to touch the blade. “She belonged here, Cy. In a time when a woman could be smart and lead knights into battle and be herself. But she was needed then.”

“Are you talking about Joan?”

“Yes.” Kate took a long breath, then finally focused on Cylene. “Joan wasn’t what I thought. I mean, she was in some ways. But she wasn’t any of the things people think about with her. No, that’s not right. She was all of those things and different things and most of all just herself. Strong and smart and brave. She was Joan.”

“Okay.” Cylene looked away. “You know who Joan was now. What did you do, go back in time and talk to her?”

“Uh –“

“Because you’ve talked about that so many times. ‘If only I could be that mysterious knight! If only I could be the one to rescue Joan from execution by the English!’” Cylene smiled teasingly at Kate and tapped her armor. “So, was it you?”

“Yeah. It was me.”

“
What?
Kate, this is
not
funny because you don’t sound like you’re joking!”

Kate made a major effort and tried to look normal. “I’ve really always said that I wanted to be that knight? Not that I wanted to keep Joan from being burned alive at the stake?”

“Yes. You’ve said it a million times, that and about how you used to pray you could be one of the knights with her at the keep. But she didn’t burn at the stake because that one knight rescued her, so that’s the same thing, isn’t it?”

“Not exactly.” Kate smiled, feeling a sense of wonder breaking through the numbness. She really had changed things.

Cylene was still talking. “It’s not like Joan didn’t get to die fighting. How many women has that inspired over the years?”

“It has?” Kate asked. “I mean, yes, it has. Although, if she had died being burned at the stake it would been harder for her, Cy. Facing the fire alone, and never crying out in pain or for mercy. It would have been the bravest and strongest thing she ever did.”

“Uh, sure, I guess. You never talked about it that way before.”

“I never really understood before, how strong and brave and amazing she was.” Kate ran one hand through her hair, feeling the ashes still clinging there. Ashes from a fire which had burned more than six centuries ago.

Cylene spoke hesitantly. “So, what have you been crying about? Seriously, Kate, you look like hell.”

“I’m a lot better off than the others.” That really sounded wrong, even though it was true. “I mean, I just had some very stressful experiences, and I don’t think I’m ready to talk about them.”

“All right.” Cylene made an uncertain gesture. “Do you want to keep sitting here or go into the living room where it’s more comfortable? I can make you some lunch. When’s the last time you ate?”

Over six hundred years ago, Kate realized. “It’s been a while. I could use some wine. Red wine.” Cylene helped her get her armor off, unsuccessfully trying to hide her reaction to the state of the clothes under the armor which Kate had been wearing for days. Kate managed to stand up despite her entire body feeling stiff and sore, then walked into the living room behind Cylene, but once there hesitated, staring once again at the picture of Joan on the flaming tower. “I didn’t see angels,” she heard herself saying, “but maybe Joan did. Maybe she heard them. She was so calm, so content when she died, so sure she was going to heaven.”

“You’re scary again,” Cylene said. “And since when do you believe in heaven?”

“I don’t anymore. No, maybe now I do. I don’t know, yet. But Joan believed, and maybe that’s what’s needed, like a spiritual Schrödinger’s cat. If you don’t really believe in heaven and angels, they’re not there. But if you do . . . and Joan made you believe.”

Cylene was looking at Kate with a baffled expression. “Where have you been, and what did you do there, and what did you do with Kate?”

“Kate is still here. I’ve just learned a few things. It’s a long story.” Should she tell Cy?
Listen to your heart. Live.
Kate reached a decision. “There’s probably only one person on earth I could tell it to, and I want to tell you. You may decide I’m crazy, but I’ll tell you. I swear it’s true.”

“You’ll tell me? Only me?” Cylene smiled with delight. “Okay. Long story? Maybe I should order pizza delivered. You want mushrooms, right?”

Visions flooded Kate’s mind, images of a night distant in time now, a small fire, figures in armor sitting around it roasting wild mushrooms on sticks, Joan’s eyes in the firelight as she laughed, a skin of raw red wine being passed around, the dark sky above brilliant with stars more numerous than the modern world could now see. The memory could have brought tears, but instead Kate found herself laughing at the joy of it all. “Yes. With mushrooms.”

Author's Note on
Betty Knox and Dictionary Jones in The Mystery of the Missing Teenage Anachronisms

I don’t know why, but the idea of building a time travel story around an early 1960s “kid detective” tale came to me one day. Like most story ideas, this combined more than one concept. Sure, these are “kids” trying to fix problems. But what if the kids were not exactly typical? And what if the problem was a very big one? In most time travel stories, the travelers are worried about doing anything that might change the past. Even the smallest thing they do could cause big changes up the line. But suppose you wanted to change the past, and it was in fact very, very hard to do?

Betty Knox and Dictionary Jones in The Mystery of the Missing Teenage Anachronisms

In faded photographs, fifteen year-old Betty Knox had worn not just the usual modest skirts and blouses, but also the usual barely-concealed teenage uncertainty visible in eyes behind dark-framed glasses that hadn’t really been fashionable even by the questionable standards of the mid-1960’s. She looked like she should be carrying a book even when she didn’t have one.

Now, fifteen year-old Betty had a wariness well-hidden in those same eyes as they glanced from side-to-side at her classmates. Unlike the rambunctious teens around her, she moved surely, carefully, more aware of what she was doing. She also moved, James Jones thought, like someone unaccustomed to her neat blouse, mid-length skirt and sensible shoes.

While the other teens leaving school streamed off in various directions, Jim sidled close to Betty as she briskly strode down the sidewalk. “Uh, hi.”

Her eyes shifted to him. “Hi.”

“I’m Jim.”

“Dictionary Jones. I know.” Betty was really giving herself away now. She should be getting a little shy, a little giggly, nervous at being approached by a boy of the same age whom she knew only because they shared the same school. Instead, Betty seemed amused, the veteran of decades of clumsy come-ons who thought this one not just lame, but also cute.

It annoyed Jim, so he cut to the chase. “And I know that after Johnson, Richard Nixon is elected president. Then Ford. Who comes next?”

Betty’s amusement vanished, the wariness back and intensified. “Carter. Jimmy Carter.”

“Then Reagan. So now we both know who we are.”

“What the hell are you doing here?” Betty demanded, her nicely-permed hair flouncing prettily. “Why are they sending new people down right after we got here? Those stupid bastards should have –“

Jim cleared his throat loudly and Betty shut up with a guilty look around. “Long story short, they sent us as close to your arrival time as they could manage because the first wave disappeared.”

“Us? First wave? There’s –“ Betty’s voice caught. “Disappeared?”

Maybe to any adults watching from a distance they still looked like two kids strolling down the street, encumbered with school books, talking about the latest “music” from that new foreign singing group with the outlandish name The Beatles. But up close Jim could see the Betty in much more recent images, the Betty usually addressed as Doctor Knox. “Within a few months of the aimed arrival dates,” he explained, “every single one of you vanishes, usually with no record of what happened. Removing a few documents before old newspapers and records were digitized and data-based could get rid of whatever happened to you as long as it was low profile. But they found nothing you guys did to alter things, and only a few items saying that two of you were reported as runaways soon after your projected arrival times, and there’s nothing on any of you after this October.”

“What about our bodies? The original ones?”

“The older bodies you left behind? Nobody came back, if that’s what you’re asking. The bodies are still there, but there’s nobody home.”

“Slabs of meat,” Betty murmured.

“You don’t have to get all poetic about it,” Jim said, stung by the image that also might now apply to his own much older self.

“I’m a geneticist, not a poet, Jim,” Betty snapped, sounding very much like Doctor Knox. “When are you from?”

“2040.”

“The year after we were sent?”

“It took a while to find people who might know you, who could find you as teens, and then to evaluate and train us.”

Betty detoured to a vacant bench at a bus stop and sat down, staring outward. “Why exactly are you here? To find out what went wrong? To try something different? To find out if the time patrol bagged the first group of us to keep us from altering history?”

Sitting down next to her, Jim shrugged. “All of the above. This is by far the longest trip into the past that has been attempted. Did it make you unstable? Did you actually arrive? Okay, you’re here, and you don’t seem unstable.”

“No more so than any other fifteen year-old girl.”

“But no one really believes in a time patrol. How could that work?”

“It couldn’t.” Betty looked down at her legs stretched out in front of her. “What happened to the others? To me? I’m still trying to adjust to this. Look at my legs. I’d forgotten how good my legs looked when I was fifteen. At the time, I thought they were too short and too stocky. Which they were, compared to Barbie’s legs.”

Jim felt his own midsection, flat and even. “Yeah. It’s really strange. I keep expecting to be over ninety years old. I think I was in pretty good shape for that age, but compared to fifteen . . . ”

“What does the process do when someone is sent back this many decades? Maybe it does create some kind of instability. Have they even discovered how it works in the time since I left?” Betty asked. “Even though it’s only been two weeks for me.”