Timebound (17 page)

He walked away without waiting for an answer, so I spoke instead to Katherine, placing the diaries on the desk beside me. “Civil rights? Like Martin Luther King?”

“Yes,” said Katherine, “and women’s rights. There are other categories as well, of course, but my research career focused on abolition—anti-slavery, that is—and women’s rights. I studied the movements in a broad sense, looking at changes over the course of several centuries. My very first research trip was to a Quaker village in the early 1700s. Are you familiar with the Quakers?”

“A little. I knew someone in Iowa who was a Quaker. He was in my karate class. One of the guys in the class thought it was funny that someone who was supposed to be a pacifist was into martial arts, but he explained that there was no contradiction, since karate is about trying to avoid violence, not about using violence to solve problems.”

Katherine nodded. “The Religious Society of Friends, often called Quakers, was the earliest religious group in America to both
oppose slavery and to promote equality for women. The fact that women often traveled as ministers of that religion made it fairly easy for me to observe a community without being too conspicuous. During my first two jumps—one to 1732 and a later one to 1794—I was paired with the senior historian whose place I was taking at CHRONOS. After that, I did a solo trip to the 1838 meeting where the Declaration of Sentiments was signed. Many of those who signed it were Quakers.”

“That’s the document you showed me that now has Prudence’s signature, right?”

Katherine nodded. “I took a few other solo jumps as well, but CHRONOS generally found that expeditions went more smoothly when historians traveled in pairs. The logical person to group me with was Saul Rand, since his specialty was religious movements. There were frequently overlaps between religious organizations and rights movements—not just among the Quakers but with many other denominations, too. Saul was only eight years older, so our traveling as a young married couple provided an effective cover. And eventually, the cover became very natural, because we
were
a couple.

“So” she continued, turning back to the computer screen, “we had twenty-seven jumps together, total.” She tapped the mouse and pulled up a list of cities with a date printed next to each. “These twelve seem to be the most likely candidates for when my murder might have taken place. We can’t really rule out my solo jumps either, although I’m not certain how much information Saul had about those.”

“Why?” I asked. “Not why these specific trips—we can discuss that later. Why is Saul doing this? Why does he want to change the past? Why does he want to kill you?”

“Why
did
he kill me is the more correct question—or, technically, why did he have someone else kill me,” said Katherine. “As I explained earlier, Saul is stuck in whatever time he landed and
I’d wager a great deal that it’s a point in the future, not the past. He’s using someone else—or, I’m beginning to suspect, several individuals—to change history for him. We know that there are two—the young men you encountered yesterday—but I don’t think we can safely assume those are the only ones. I suspect that Prudence is one of them as well. We have evidence that she has, at least, made small changes to the historical record.”

“I still don’t understand Saul’s personal motives. What does he hope to gain?” I could see Connor shaking his head in annoyance out of the corner of my eye and decided to address him directly. “You have to admit, Connor, if I’m supposed to help track down a murderer, it might be important to understand his reasoning.”

Connor turned his swivel chair to face me. “Take any psychopath, sociopath, whatever label you choose. Scrape off the details and the motivation is always the same, Kate. Power. As much power as they can get.”

“But why kill Katherine? Why didn’t he just have Pudgy kill me on the Metro? Katherine can’t use the medallion and she hasn’t exactly hidden the fact that she has a terminal illness.”

“That’s a good point, Kate. I suspect it’s personal,” Katherine added. “The first time Saul planned to kill me—the time I escaped to 1969—it was because I was in his way. And, equally important, because I had ceased to find him fascinating, attractive, brilliant—all of the things I foolishly believed him to be for the four years we were partners. He failed to kill me then, and Saul never accepted failure lightly. If he has the means now to finish what he started back at CHRONOS, I suspect that he would do it simply on principle.”

It was hard to picture Katherine as young and impetuous, and I still felt that we were missing some part of the overall picture, but I nodded. “What exactly made you change your mind about Saul?”

“I began to discover some… inconsistencies in his reports, and I observed several actions that were contrary to CHRONOS
protocol. This was about the same time I learned I was pregnant. Many of our colleagues assumed that Saul studied the history of religion because he was a devout believer. He was certainly capable of giving that impression to people of a wide array of faiths. I knew him a bit better than most, and I thought he was attracted to religious history because he was a religious skeptic. Neither was true.”

Katherine looked carefully at me. “Saul is a devout believer only in
himself,
and he was convinced that the religious faith of others, if manipulated skillfully, was an excellent path to the power he sought. He was studying religions of the world in order to pick up tips on how to build his own.”

“How do you ‘build’ a religion?” I asked.

“Many others have done it with less,” Katherine said with a wry smile. “Saul had an excellent tool at his disposal. I think his plan was to personally go back to various places and times in history and lay a trail of appearances, miracles, and prophecy—blending a variety of religions. Just as Christianity pulled in elements of pagan religions in order to attract followers, he would incorporate elements of Christianity, Islam, and other religions, laying the path for the reign of the prophet Cyrus… who would, of course, be Saul.”

“Wait… you aren’t saying he founded the
Cyrists
? That’s crazy. I went to a service at one of the temples a few months back. I mean, I really didn’t get into it, but they seem okay. Charlayne goes occasionally with Joseph, her brother. He’s dating a girl who’s a Cyrist.”

I didn’t add that Charlayne’s parents were a bit nervous about how serious the relationship had become. Joseph would be required to convert if they decided to marry, and most Cyrists married pretty early. From the age of twelve, Cyrists wore a small lotus flower tattoo on their left hand as the outward symbol of chastity. Members took a vow of abstinence—total abstinence—until their twentieth
birthday or marriage, whichever came first, and all marriages had to be approved by the temple elders.

I remembered a conversation with Charlayne’s mom after we’d attended the temple’s Sunday service. Her feelings were very mixed—she was suspicious of the Cyrists in general, but Joseph had always been her wild child, and after meeting Felicia he had totally straightened up his act. No alcohol, no drugs, and as far as she knew, no sex. His life revolved around work, college, and carefully supervised visits with Felicia, who at eighteen had two more years of abstinence to go. They had been dating for about six months and Joseph was ecstatic that he was finally allowed to hold her hand. Charlayne said Joseph’s transformation was creepy, in a romantic kind of way. I didn’t see how
creepy
and
romantic
could go together, but then Charlayne’s mind sometimes worked in mysterious ways.

“Are you sure?” I asked. “I mean, they do have some odd beliefs, but that’s true of a lot of religions. Isn’t the vice president a Cyrist? I remember Charlayne talking about how Joseph had seen her at the temple pretty much every week in the months leading up to the election. This isn’t some new cult that just appeared. The Cyrists have been around for centuries. Why would you think—”

Katherine gave me an exasperated look. “I don’t just
think
this, Kate. I know it for a fact. Saul created the Cyrists. And whether they’ve been around for centuries depends on your perspective. To those—including yourself, Kate—who have not been under continuous protection of a medallion for the past two years, the Cyrists were founded in the mid-fifteenth century.”

“Fourteen seventy-eight, to be precise,” said Connor.

Katherine walked over to one of the shelves and scanned the contents for a moment, eventually pulling out a fat book. “Your textbooks probably devote pages to the history of the Cyrists and their role in various eras. Pull any book from
these
shelves,
however, and you’ll find no mention of Cyrists, their beliefs or their history.”

She handed the book to me. It was a survey of American history written in the 1980s. I thumbed through the index and saw no mention of the Cyrist colony at Providence, which every history class I could recall studied along with the Puritans of Salem and the Pilgrims at Plymouth Rock.

“This is the correct history, then?” I asked.

“Correct is a relative term, but yes—that book gives a generally accurate depiction of the timeline before Saul started mucking about. We were very lucky to be able to preserve these books. If I hadn’t found Connor when I did, the entire library would have been corrupted. And while you’ll find no mention of the Cyrists in any of these volumes, Connor and I can give you a precise date for the
actual
founding of Cyrist International: May 2nd of last year.”

“Ah,” I said, comprehension dawning. “That’s when…”

“Exactly. That was the date of the first temporal distortion you felt, when you were still in Iowa.”

“That’s so hard to imagine, though. I mean, I can remember seeing Cyrist temples since I was a kid. They’re what, maybe ten percent of the population?”

“You’d have been close a week ago,” Connor said. “As of this morning, however, the
CIA Factbook
says 20.2 percent—they gained quite a few adherents in the last time shift. Oh, and you mentioned
Vice
President Patterson?” He typed a few characters into the search window on his computer and clicked a link near the top.

The White House website opened to display a photographic slide show of Washington scenes, most including Patterson’s trim figure at a podium or photo op. Connor tapped the screen lightly with the tip of his finger, partially obscuring Patterson’s face and her perfectly styled auburn hair. “As you can see, she’s had a promotion.”

My jaw quite literally dropped at that. Paula Patterson wouldn’t have been my choice for first female president by a long shot, but it was kind of cool to know that the highest glass ceiling had finally been shattered. “But how? Was the president killed, or…?”

Connor shrugged. “Nothing so dramatic. Patterson just won the primary instead. She was very well funded.”

I shook my head slowly. “That’s… unbelievable. You’re saying that nothing I remember, nothing I’ve learned in school, is real?”

“It’s not that your
memories
aren’t real,” Katherine said. “You just experienced a different timeline than we did after the temporal disturbances you felt. To be precise, you aren’t the
same
Kate that I would have encountered if I’d started this project eighteen months ago, as I had planned.”

I took a few moments to digest all of this. It was hard to imagine a different version of myself, with different memories. And the Cyrist Temple was on the periphery of my life. How different would the timeline be for people who grew up with that religion or whose entire families had been of that religion for generations?

“Okay,” I began. “Let’s set aside how recently the Cyrists were created. Why do you think they’re involved in your murder? I don’t know a lot about the Cyrists, but I know they don’t advocate killing people. I’m pretty sure they have specific rules against that.”

“Of course they do,” said Connor with a derisive snort. “All major religions have rules against murder. If they didn’t, there would be few converts. Well, at least few converts that you’d want to be in the same room with. But that doesn’t mean that there aren’t plenty of people willing to kill in the name of their faith—that’s true of most religions.”

“So why build a
religion
? You mentioned power—it would seem to me that there are much more direct routes to power than building a religion.”

“Perhaps,” said Katherine. “But a minister from the 1870s—not Saul, but someone he studied—once preached to his congregations that ‘Money is power and you ought to be reasonably ambitious to have it.’ The Cyrists have capitalized on his advice. Above all other rules of the church, members are required to tithe. They are promised that their ‘spiritual investment’ will be returned to them many times over.”

Katherine leaned forward, a sly smile on her face. “And it
is
returned many times over, if those members also follow the suggestions their leaders make for the
rest
of their investments. You can be quite sure that there are plenty of Cyrists who knew when to invest in Microsoft and when to dump their Exxon stock. They’ve managed to manipulate their portfolios wisely through every recession. Of course, the poorer members who can spare only the ten percent tithe are pretty much out of luck, but the others? They have, in their eyes, firsthand evidence that God will bring riches to those who believe.

“Cyrist International is a very wealthy organization, Kate. Much of the money might, admittedly, be under the control of other religious groups if the Cyrists hadn’t… emerged. But either way, it has resulted in billions of dollars in the hands of someone with the ability to manipulate that wealth even further, by interfering in the historical markets.”

“And Saul did all of this with just three temporal shifts?” I asked.

“We think that there were three major shifts,” Katherine said. “The three that you’ve experienced. The first was when the temple was formed. The second—well, we haven’t quite pinpointed the cause of the shift on January 15th. The third, of course, was yesterday. We originally thought it was a minor shift for the timeline as a whole, with a major impact on anyone whose life has been intertwined with mine since 1969, because it means I never switched places with Richard, never landed at Woodstock, and never gave
birth to my daughters. Therefore, Deborah never existed to meet Harry, and you were never born.”