The Mammoth Book of Time Travel Romance (30 page)

He heard the water shut off. There was one more door, at the end of the hall. He opened it and stumbled back. It opened on to a black hole, a void, and for an instant he thought that he had come upon another wormhole. He realized that he had stopped breathing, and forced himself to take a breath. He fumbled at the wall, but there was no light switch. So he turned on his torch and pointed it downwards. Now he could see stairs going down.

“What are you looking at?” she said from behind him. He turned, absurdly relieved that she was there. She still smelled faintly of gasoline, but she was in a clean sleeveless shirt and drawstring trousers, and towelled at her hair. His heart stuttered again but not from fear. He tried not to stare at the way she filled out her plain white shirt.

“What’s down there?”

“The old cellar. The foundation of this house dates to the 1800s, and they gutted it and modernized it, oh, about sixty years ago. That’s the root cellar.” She wrinkled her nose self-deprecatingly. “It creeps me out. I don’t go down there much.”

Funny how he knew exactly what she meant without knowing the words. He nodded and closed the door and they both breathed a sigh of relief.

“All right. It looks all clear. Sleep sound. I’ll take the downstairs.”

“Thanks.” She hesitated, and a bit of colour touched her cheeks. “I mean. I don’t know how to thank you.”

“It’s all right. I’m glad to help.”

He watched her go, and shook his head. Merritt, don’t even think it, he told himself. But it was too late. He was already thinking it.

Sam Grenady holed up in a swale off the road. He was covered with dried foam and blood, and smelled of the gas he had used to douse her truck. Crazy bitch, he thought. He shivered in the night air, and tried to cover himself with leaves. She had found herself another guy in record time, and he had some kind of taser thing. It had glared in Sam’s eyes, and he couldn’t see, couldn’t think. Well, if she thought she could get away with dumping him and taking up with someone else, bitch had another think coming. It was time to finish the job he started.

He’d have to do it quick though. He heard the police cars screaming up the road after he drove off into the underbrush near her place. Come daylight, they would be able to find his tyre tracks easy.

“Don’t underestimate Sam Grenady,” he muttered. This was his town, his mountain. He’d been hunting on Crane land ever since he was a boy, and he knew its secrets. Sam kicked his feet at the end of the hollow. They banged against wood, and he kicked again and again until he smashed it in.

There were tunnels and caves all over this mountain, some natural, some man-made from the days when the locals ran moonshine. Sam slid inside one of these as cold wet air rushed at him from under the earth and wormed his way through the low tunnel into the pitch-black underground. He’d teach Edith Crane a thing or two about her family history.

Birdsong and sunlight woke her. Edith got up and dressed quickly in jeans and a tank top, then threw on a plaid work shirt to ward off the morning chill. It was already eight o’clock. She never slept in this late. She paused before going downstairs, looking out of the window. She loved this view. Beyond the barn and her forge, the green mountain rose up over the homestead, culminating in the bare granite mountaintop. From here she could see her meadow, blanketed in low morning mist, and dotting her land were the sculptures that she had made of iron and steel. Some she meant to sell, and she was starting to get clients from the big cities, even a few museums interested in her work. Others were just for this place, and had meaning only for her.

Her gaze fell on the skeleton key and she picked it up. Someone had hammered it out of pig iron. Not a method she would have used – she would have gone with an alloy and moulded the molten metal into the right shape. It was made out of old iron, heavy and anachronistic. A mystery, she thought, part of a bigger one downstairs.

She padded down the steps as quietly as she could. Her spaceman dozed in the chair by the window, the gun lying in his lap. He didn’t wake, and she just took him in for a minute. Tall and lean, with dark hair, stubble on his face. Not classically handsome – someone had broken his nose at one point and it had set a little crooked, and she bet he had been teased about his ears when he was a kid – but oh, nice just the same. She took another step down the stairs, hitting the plank that always creaked. He jerked awake, handgun up, then relaxed as he remembered his surroundings. He looked at her.

“Damn it,” he said. “The stim wore off. I didn’t mean to sleep.”

“It’s OK. We both needed it.” She bit her lip. “Look, if you want to wash up, the bathroom’s through there. I’ll make breakfast, but I have to tend to the animals first.”

He went off to the bathroom and she waited, wondering if he was going to need help with her old-fashioned bathroom. Hmmm, that might be kind of fun, she thought, then scolded herself. Bad girl, Edith, but she was grinning as she went out to feed her horses. Katahdin had his nose out the door of his stall, neighing furiously at her, kicking the walls of his box for good measure, irked at his late breakfast.

“Get over it,” she told him, as she shook out flakes of hay and freshened their water. She left their stall doors open. When the horses were finished eating they knew enough to take themselves out into the meadow.

She stood at the split-rail fence, breathing in the clean mountain summer air. It stayed cool up here even in summer, and the birds sang their hearts out in the crisp sunshine. It was so peaceful, she could pretend that nothing had happened last night. Only the faint smell of gas told her otherwise.

Instead of tears, anger welled up. She was through crying. The police had better find Sam first, because if she did, she was going to make him pay.

Her kitchen door opened and Merritt came out. He looked freshly washed, his hair wet. Her mood rose.

“Figured it out?” she said.

He nodded. “I haven’t washed with water for a long time. Felt good.”

She couldn’t help it; she laughed. “Merritt, are you bullshitting me?”

He laughed too, but a little uncertainly. “I don’t—”

It didn’t matter. She was suddenly happy. Sam had done his best but he hadn’t broken her spirit. She put a hand on Merritt’s arm, and nodded at the barn. “Watch.”

He followed her gaze. Led by Katahdin, the horses filed out of the barn, their heads nodding peacefully as they walked out to meadow. When they reached their pasture, they began to trot and then to canter and buck. Merritt tensed. “Watch,” she whispered. Katahdin moved in a floating trot, the big bay horse lifting each hoof as if he were in a dressage test, his neck arched. The horses circled the pasture, disappearing down the hill and then they could hear the thudding hooves as they galloped back up.

When they settled to graze, Edith finally stirred.

“Gets me every time,” she said.

For a second a flash of sadness shadowed his eyes. “That was . . . That was incredible.”

She still had her hand on his arm and blushed. She turned the caress into a comradely slap on the shoulder. “Come on, I’ll make you breakfast. We have a full day ahead of us.”

She made him scrambled eggs, grits, toast and strong coffee, and they sat at her kitchen table. Earth food tasted pretty damn good, Merritt decided after the first few cautious bites. He hadn’t had a home-cooked meal in pretty much for ever. He was so deep into his breakfast, he was almost surprised when she spoke.

“That key you gave me last night. How did you get it?”

“I doubt you’ll believe me,” he said. “I hardly believe it myself.”

“Try me.”

She listened as he gave her the whole story, and when he was finished, she was silent for a long time, swirling her spoon in her grits. “You ’re right,” she said at last. “I don’t believe you. But that key you gave me last night? In the Great Depression, when my family left Tennessee for California, they brought that key with them. It was a symbol of this place. That key went missing in my grandparents’ day.”

He thought of how the key landed at his feet, with the wormhole behind him and closing fast, drawing him towards the attacking madman. At first he thought it was a figment of his brain, trying to make sense of the collapse of space-time. Had he conjured that key out of the past – their past? But his past was her future, and maybe in more ways than one.

“I told you I was Crane, right?” he said. “Well, I’m part of the Crane clan, though I doubt we share much of the same DNA.”

“Distant cousins,” she said, her voice dry.

He laughed. “Really distant. Yeah. In my time, the Cranes became one of the greatest clans in the galaxy. Three hundred years ago, the Cranes built the arks to take humanity off Earth, and we settled the known worlds, terraforming and transforming as we went.”

She looked puzzled. “What? Why would we leave?”

“Because Earth died. The sun became an unstable red giant, way sooner than anyone expected.”

Watching her absorb the news was like watching someone get kicked in the stomach in slow motion. She looked out of the window and he knew what she was thinking. This beautiful country with its horses – her home, her land – consumed by an angry sun.

“All of it?” she said. “I mean, it’s all gone?” She turned to him. “How do you stand it, knowing that Earth is gone?”

He surprised himself with his own answer, because until she asked him he never knew that it was something he had to stand.

“We spend our lives looking for her,” he said. “No matter where we live, no matter what station or what planet, no one ever stops looking.”

She looked stricken. “I wish you hadn’t told me. I wish I never knew. I’ll never be able to stand it, never.”

Merritt got up and went to her. He meant only to comfort, and he put his arms around her, but she lifted her face to his and they kissed. Her lips were soft and he pulled her close, letting his hands fall to her waist, smoothing over her hips. She put her arms around his neck, and their kiss deepened.

Somehow they made it upstairs to her bedroom, scattering clothes along the way, and in the cool breeze from the open window they made love on her rumpled bed.

It was afternoon before Edith woke from her doze. The room had gotten chilly. Merritt had both his arms around her as if he didn’t intend to let her go, but he dozed too, and when she stirred, he muttered a protest.

She kissed him. “Not going anywhere.” She didn’t want to. It felt good, lying in his arms, their legs entwined. The iron key lay on the bedside table where she had put it the night before. She sat up to pick it up. It was cool and heavy in her hand.

Merritt sat up behind her, wrapping his legs around her, nibbling along her neck. “What is it?” he said, between kisses, keeping his hands around her waist. She shivered, losing her concentration for a moment.

“I think this key is the crux,” she said. “Somehow this key got lost so it could bring you here. But a key is nothing without a lock.” Edith pulled away and started to get into her clothes. She tossed Merritt’s to him. “If this is my grandparents’ key – where does it fit?”

They both hesitated at the top of the stairs to the cellar, shining their flashlights into the dark. The stairs weren’t steep but they were in darkness by the bottom. Merritt got the impression of an earthen room, supported by timbers. Old ceramic jugs and rusty washtubs, and a tangle of copper tubing in one corner.

“What’s all that stuff?” Merritt asked.

Edith laughed. “It’s our sordid past. The Cranes were bootleggers back in the day. You’d never believe it by my grandmother, but the Cranes ran on the wrong side of the law now and again.”

Merritt gave a short laugh. Some things never changed.

They picked their way through the room, brushing away cobwebs. At the far end of the cellar was a wooden door, its threshold dull with dust. Edith put the key in the lock. It fitted but resisted her attempts to turn it.

“Damn,” she said. “Here, hold this.” She handed him the key while she rummaged through the junk piled up by the stairs, her flashlight shining wildly. She held up a can. “I knew I saw some down here. WD-40. This and duct tape – keeps the universe together.” While Merritt kept the light steady, she sprayed the lock and tried again. Sluggishly it turned. They both pulled on the door and it shrieked on stiff hinges as it came open.

With a scream of fury, Sam Grenady burst out of the open doorway.

For a second Merritt was back on the
Godolphin
, watching the wormhole close in, the figure of the man rushing towards him. It was
him
, he thought dazedly. The cycling of the
Godolphin
had brought him here, through time and space, to this moment, and sent him the key to save himself.

He realized all this even as Sam threw himself at Edith. Merritt jumped on Sam’s back and pulled him off, then grabbed him under the arms and held on. The flashlights rolled away, illuminating useless corners of the cellar, so the only light came from the stairs. Sam screamed and fought, and Merritt wished he had brought his gun.

Light began to grow from behind them, and Merritt heard a familiar noise, the gathering sound and energy of a ship’s mechanics. He could see the dawning wonder on Edith’s face and he knew what was happening behind him. The airlock had returned, and behind it was the
Godolphin
corridor. He probably even had time to get to his ship and cast off from the freighter, bolting before the
Godolphin
’s final destruction. He could pull Sam through too, and the man would remain in the stasis, forever on the edge of the wormhole exactly as Merritt found him.