Time's Echo: A CHRONOS Files Novella (7 page)

Jess sits there for a moment, staring at the wooden floor.
"I'm not going to pretend I understand any of this. But I don't think
you'd
lie
to me, boy, and
even if you were the type, I can't imagine what you'd gain from lying about
something like this. So I've really just got one question. Can this be fixed?
Or should I just get my grieving over with?"

"I wish I could answer that, Jess. I don't know. I'll
try. I can promise you that much. But there's no guarantee that
things'll
go back the way they were, even if I can stop
Saul—the guy who's behind all this. A single change made way back has these
ripple effects…" My stomach rumbles again, loud enough for Jess to hear
this time.

 "You can't do anything on an empty stomach.
There's some biscuits left over from breakfast upstairs. Or grab something from
the shelf."

I shake my head. "I'm fine. But you need to be careful,
okay Jess? You can't be talking about this to anyone. Just tell Amelia you're
better, that you must have been half asleep or something." I lift the hair
off my forehead and tap the bandage Amelia applied last night. "The
Cyrists did this. They don't know about the spare medallion and they wanted a
quick and easy way to erase my memory. Talk too much about all of this and it
might attract attention. I don't want you or Amelia to be in any danger."

"You won't get any argument from me. Amelia's worried
enough as it is. She'll be calling in doctors if I say much more about Irene. I
just wish there was something I could do other than sit here and wait."

Another rumble from below, even louder.
A ghost of a smile tugs Jess's mouth up on one side.

"Okay, okay," I say, sliding off the counter.
"I'll grab some cookies or something."

I walk across the store to where Jess stocks the packaged
foods and look over the half dozen brands of cookies—
Uneeda
Biscuits, Sugar Wafers,
Zu
Zu
Gingersnaps. Fig
Newtons
sound good, so I grab a box.
On second thought, they sound really good. I'm just reaching for another box
when the little cow-bell over Jess's door rings, signaling a visitor.

A husky guy in a dark suit steps over to the counter.
"Two packs of Duke's Cameos, please."

The man's back is to me, but something about him is
familiar. Jess has already found the brand and is ringing him up before I
realize the customer is Simon.

I clench my fists hard, because my first instinct is to
pummel him until he tells me what he knows. That may have worked when we were
kids, but it's probably not the wisest move right now.

Simon gives me a look out of the corner of his eye when I
approach the counter.

As Jess hands him his change, I reach into my pocket and
pull out two dimes.
"Just these two boxes of cookies,
Mr. Jessup."

Jess is about to tell me to put the money away, as he always
does. But between my expression and the fact I haven't called him Mr. Jessup in
ages, he just nods and sticks the money in the register.

"Tell Mrs. Jessup I'm sorry I missed her. I'll stop
back by in a day or two. You take care, okay?"

"You do the same," Jess says, as I follow Simon
out the door.

∞

"
Hubba
hubba
,
look at the
gams
on this sexy mama." Simon leans
against the side of the building, staring at the card he's just pulled from one
of the cigarette packs.

No one says
hubba
hubba
in 1905, or
gams
.
Or
sexy mama
, for that matter.
Simon prides
himself on being a walking anachronism.

"Why are you here, Simon? And since when do you smoke
cigarettes?" He'll puff the occasional cigar when he wants to act like a
big shot, but smoking is one of the few vices Simon actually avoids.

He drops the pack of cigarettes to the sidewalk and crushes
it under his heel. "I don't. I just buy these for the old-timey porn."
He holds up the card so that I can see a woman, who could easily make two of
the skinny actresses from Kate's time, clad in tights and a leotard.

He smacks his lips. "Now that's a woman you could
really sink your teeth into."

I don't think Simon actually bites the women who are
desperate enough to have sex with him, but I couldn't guarantee it. Not
something I want to think about, either way.

"And I could ask what
you're
doing here,
Kierney
, since Prudence said you were too injured to be out
and about." He nods at bandage on my head. "Looks like someone
whacked you good."

"Looks like," I reply amiably, while imagining how
his head would snap back if I punched him in the jaw. "No food at my place
and I was hungry. Jessup usually has a few sandwiches that his missus makes up
for sale, but she's still at the market. So I'm stuck with these."

I wedge one of the boxes of
Newtons
under my arm and open the other one, then start walking down the street toward
my place while I eat the cookies. Simon follows.

"You walked over half a mile to get cookies? Yeah, well
gimme
." He tries to pull the other box out from
under my arm. "You don't need two boxes."

"You sure as hell don't need them. Back off. I said I
was hungry."

He grabs two cookies from the package that's already open
and shoves them into his mouth. "These things are gross."

Of course, being Simon, he's talking with his mouth full,
and I hear Kate's voice in the back of my mind saying
Pot.
Kettle.
Black
.
That brings a tiny smile, which is quickly wiped away by the memory of last
night and the fact that the asshole who just swiped my cookies probably had
something to do with it.

"You don't like my cookies, don't eat them."

"So, you're walking all the way back to your
apartment?"

I nod. "Someone stole most of my money last night along
with my CHRONOS key. I'm not gonna catch a cab for less than a mile."

"Oh, right. That's one reason Pru sent me." He
pulls a medallion out of his pocket. "I'm supposed to give you this and
tell you to get to Farm nineteen
hundr
—"

"Yeah, yeah."
I take the
medallion and pull the chain over my head. The grease smudge is still on the
key. "Pru already told me the coordinates."

He grabs another handful of cookies. "Well, anyway,
she's expecting you at the Farm, ASAP. Just thought I'd let you know. She says
your memory got a bit wiped?"

"Yeah.
A
bit.
I thought she was sending June to patch up my head."

"She didn't mention it," he says.

"Fine.
Whatever.
Tell her it will be at least tomorrow, Si."

"She's gonna be pissed."

"There's no way I can use the key to travel before
then. My head is killing me. And what difference does it make to her when I go?
I'll be there at the same bloody time whether I leave Boston 1905 today,
tomorrow or next year."

"True, but this is Prudence. Just like her daddy, if
she says jump, you're supposed to jump right that second. You haven't forgotten
that
much I hope."

I crumple up the empty cookie box and stuff it in my pocket,
then open the second carton. "No, I haven't forgotten that. I just don't
understand why she didn't leave me the key last night. She's acting
weird."

"Who knows? She's crazy as a damn bedbug, especially if
you end up talking to her after age thirty.
Sister
Prudence had half a
brain, but I make it a habit never to question Mother Prudence."

"I hope you don't let her hear you call her that,"
I say.

"God, no."

"She said you apologized, by the way, and that I
accepted. I don't remember any of that, so maybe you could run it by me
again."

"Apologized? Doesn't sound like
me.
"

"Yeah, that's what I told her. I'm guessing it was for
Cincinnati. I don't remember much of what happened, except you almost getting
me killed."

Nearly got Kate killed, too
, but I don't say that.

"Never happened," he says, shaking his head.
"That whack on the head has rattled your noggin."

I stop by the little market a few blocks from the apartment
and grab a bottle of milk, a hunk of cheddar and a loaf of bread, hoping Simon
will be gone when I come out. He's still there, with some sort of phone,
scrolling across a display. And he's not even trying to be discreet about it.
"Hey,
wanna
catch a Red Sox game? I was just
checking the schedule I saved—there's a double-header today I haven't seen
yet."

Simon has been on a baseball kick for the past year or so.
It's one of the only things we have in common, but I'm not in the mood to sit
in the sun for three hours, and that goes double for sitting that long with
Simon. I open the bottle of milk and take a long chug before answering.
"They're not the Sox yet. The Boston
Americans
are on the road the
next two weeks—either Philly or Chicago today, can't remember."

He shrugs. "So?"

I don't say anything, just tap the bandage again. "I
can't travel. Remember?"

"Fine.
The Braves are in town,
right? They suck beyond measure, but since you're crippled..."

I start to correct him—Boston's other baseball team, the
Beaneaters
, won't be the Braves for five more years.
They'll go through two or three other really stupid team names before then. But
why bother?

"Go if you want, Simon. Me? I'm headed back to bed to
sleep this off. So if you're done playing errand boy you can trot back to Pru
and tell her I'll be along as soon as I can."

He bristles at that, pulling his medallion out of his watch
pocket. "I'm not her errand boy. I've got other work to do. I delivered
that message as a favor."

I'm not sure if he meant as a favor to me or as a favor to
Pru, but I'm not sad to see him disappear. I just wish he'd avoid doing it in
the middle of the sidewalk in broad daylight.

∞6∞

Estero,
Florida

May 30, 2030– 6:45p.m.

Most of us still call Nuevo
Reino
the "Farm," but it isn't a working farm these days. What remains is
more for show than anything else. The Farm that I remember had four or five
dozen cows, a pigpen near the barn, along with chickens and pretty much every
other form of livestock. Snakes and alligators wandered around too, so you had
to be careful walking about at night.

Only the horses remain now—not the same horses, of course,
but Pru has insisted on keeping a few in the barn since she took over after
Cyrus
Teed's
death a hundred and twenty-odd years
ago. While it's possible that Prudence rides these horses, too, I doubt it. The
tack hanging on the wall looks brand new and the only horse I've ever seen her
ride is the palomino stallion she bought the year I arrived at the farm. Pru
named the horse Wildfire, something Kate found hysterically funny when I told
her. She promised she'd find the song and play it for me, but we never got
around to it.

Pru rode that horse almost every day she was at Nuevo
Reino
. And occasionally, Older Pru would use her CHRONOS
key to come back to the Farm and take him out for a run as well. Younger Pru
would always brush him down and feed him herself. Older Pru left him saddled
and tied by the barn door. She didn't speak to anyone on those visits—just
showed up, rode the horse, and jumped back to whenever she'd come from.

I was there one afternoon when she popped in out of the blue
and snatched the reins away from her seventeen-year-old self. Her seventeen-year-old
self and I found something else to do, up in the loft. Thinking back, that
might have been Older Pru's plan all along.

There are just a few wisps of
cloud in the early evening sky when I arrive, but the grass is damp, probably
from one of those afternoon thunderstorms I remember sweeping across the Farm
when I was a kid—storms that disappeared so quickly you could almost believe
you'd imagined them.

Instead of following the path to
Founder's House, where Prudence, Saul, and the others are gathering
,
I hang a right and head down to the river. The only things
that I still like about the Farm are the gardens and the trail that winds along
the river, because those are the only places that are the same as when I lived
here. When you're near the river, you can forget that over a century of change
has happened, unless a plane or a delivery drone happens to fly over.

I pass Bamboo Landing and walk a
little further down the path, finally stopping at a spot overlooking the water.
The mimosa tree that used to be here is gone now and the boat tied to the
landing today is a lot smaller than the one that I used to ferry along the
river, carting visitors in from Ft. Myers to hear the weekly concerts. Although
the
Koreshans
were the ones who started the whole
concert thing, Prudence decided it was good public relations, so I was on the
river by ten o'clock most Sunday mornings. It was one of the chores I never
minded, especially after the Machine Shop rigged up an outboard motor so that I
could do it without Simon or one of the others tagging along to help row.

I ferried two celebrities on that
boat—Thomas Edison and Henry Ford. But the trip that is burned into my memory
took place on April 3, 1902. It was hotter than usual that week and so humid
that my shirt was stuck to my body before I'd even buttoned it up. Once the
boat got going, however, it could hit five miles per hour and I'd catch a nice
breeze.

On that particular morning, there
were maybe a dozen people waiting at the dock, all in their Sunday best. The
first to step into the boat was a middle-aged man clutching a cornet case to
his chest.
Driggers
never missed a Sunday. He was so
shy that he'd get this scared rabbit look if you spoke to him, but once he slid
into place with the small
Koreshan
orchestra, he was
a different man, his face all lit up like a lantern.

Directly behind him was Kate.

I knew it was her long before I
took her hand to help her step into the boat. Long before I saw the bracelet with
the jade and pearl hourglass charm—the bracelet I'd yanked from her arm as she
lay in the middle of the Midway Plaisance, hoping it would convince her
grandmother to rescue her.

It wasn't just that Kate looks
like so much like Pru, except for those green eyes. It wasn't just her smile or
the way she wrinkled her nose when she accidentally dragged her skirts through
the water at the edge of the pier. It was—everything. It was Kate.

She must've thought I was simple,
or else insane, but it took every bit of restraint I had to keep my reaction
down to that silly grin. I felt like lifting her off the pier and spinning her
around—ill-advised when you're in a boat. Finally knowing, after all this time,
that she made it out, that she didn't die in that awful place, that I hadn't
imagined the entire day, lifted this huge weight I didn't even realize I'd been
carrying. And while it stung at first that Kate didn't recognize me, that
wasn't a realistic expectation when I was all of eight years old and maybe half
my current height and weight the last time she saw me.

My eyes kept drifting back to her
as we waited for the other two passengers, a doctor and his wife who always
came, but always ran two or three minutes late.
Driggers
was watching Kate too—a nervous glance in her direction, then back down at his
feet. No doubt he was wondering if she was Prudence, who attended two or three
concerts a year.

Once the doctor and his wife
arrived, we headed back down river. We were maybe a mile and a half in, close
to where the Caloosahatchee meets Estero Bay, when the doctor's wife turned
around and started talking to Kate about how much she enjoyed the last concert,
never even realizing she wasn't talking to Pru.

Kate smiled and nodded, but she
started running her fingers over the cord around her neck, the one that held
the CHRONOS key. I could tell she was spooked and I was pretty sure she was
just waiting until we reached Estero to duck out of sight and jump back to her
own time.

There was no
way
I could let that happen
.

We docked at Bamboo Landing and
began walking toward the settlement. Just as I suspected, Kate veered off the
path almost instantly. I usually led the visitors to the Arts Hall, but I
turned those duties over to
Driggers
, and took off
after her.

I grabbed her hand just as she was
pulling up her location on the key. A second later and she'd have been gone.
The only way to keep her from jumping away was to answer her questions. So
that's what I did. I spent the next three hours spilling my guts, telling Kate
everything I knew about the Farm, about the Cyrists, about Prudence, trying to
persuade her to trust me.

It didn't help that she had no
memory of the 1893 Fair, no memory of running through a burning hotel with a
killer on our heels. We eventually decided it must be something in her future,
even though I'd have sworn on everything holy that the Kate who stood in front
of me on the banks of the Estero that day was older than the girl from the
Expo.

Before Kate stepped into the boat
that day, I'd nearly convinced myself that my mum was right about the Cyrists.
That
Da
had been wrong. That the Cyrists were just
trying to avoid the greater evils coming down the pike if someone didn't take
action. That the eight-year old kid inside me who'd believed they were evil was
naïve, too young and innocent to realize that social change is rarely bloodless
and never without sacrifice.
That the end justified the
means.

Talking to Kate about the Cyrists
violated the trust of everyone I knew. It also made me a traitor to the religion
my mother embraced.

None of that mattered now.

I don’t know if I loved her then,
but I do know that seeing her gave me hope. The little piece of my soul that
died when my mum dragged me back to the Cyrist Farm came roaring back to life,
and I didn't want to snuff it out again. From the moment I saw Kate on the
landing at Ft. Myers, I knew I'd do whatever it took to keep her from pulling
out that CHRONOS key and vanishing out of my life.

Now here I am nearly eighteen
months later and she's done just that—vanished. But it was through no choice
of her own
. And what was true back then is doubly true
today. I'll do whatever it takes to get her back.

∞

Franklin and Edna, two of the regional
Cyrist leaders, are waiting in the conference room when I enter. Pru is between
them, her back toward me. I can tell from the way she's standing that she's
furious, and the other two look uncomfortable.

They transfer the coordinates to
Prudence's key and she vanishes.

This is standard protocol for any
meeting with Saul. I've only seen him face to face twice, and both times,
someone entered the coordinates into my key. The first was when I was about
ten. I traveled with three other likely prospects about my age, so that we
could demonstrate our skills with the CHRONOS key before the Great Leader. The
other three kids were, like Simon, children of Prudence, probably carried to
term by a surrogate. I'm two generations removed from CHRONOS and only on one
side, so it's probably no surprise that my abilities were the weakest of the
lot. Saul barely looked at me before moving on to the next kid in line.

I'm more than happy to be ignored.
Saul's favorites have a way of becoming dead when they cease to amuse him. One
of those kids who lined up with me at ten years of age isn't around anymore.
Rumor has it Saul or maybe one of his bodyguards, snapped the guy's neck during
an argument, once he was old enough to have opinions of his own. Simon seems to
think the rewards for sucking up to Saul are worth the risk, but then he's
always had more ambition than sense.

The second meeting was just me and
Pru, supposedly a family dinner with Saul. Pru was nineteen and coming out of
her rebellious phase. It was here at the Farm, but she didn't tell me the date.
She entered the coordinates into my key and deleted the stable point as soon as
we arrived. Saul came out of his suite for all of five minutes. He glanced at
me once, tossed a few harsh words in Pru's direction that had nothing to do
with me, and slammed the door.

Pru has always known where and
when to locate Saul.
Always.
If she doesn't have his
coordinates, there have been some major changes within Cyrist International.

After Pru jumps away, Franklin
enters the location into my key and I blink in. The conference room I arrive at
is almost identical to the one we just left. I step away from the stable point
and two more people pop in, followed a few moments later by Franklin and Edna.
I guess the gang's all here now.

Prudence is at one end of the long
black conference table, her back to the wide glass wall with a pleasant view of
the sun setting over the ocean. That narrows the location down to the west
coast of some place near some ocean, so not exactly helpful.

Saul—or maybe I should say
Brother
Cyrus
, since he's in his white temple robes—sits at the other end of the
room, his eyes closed like he's praying or something. Simon's on his left and
the five regional Templars are seated around them, each in the dark suit and
gold scarf they wear when they preach. Conwell's daughter, Eve, sits to the
right of her father. I don't much care for Eve. She acts much too superior for
someone who has even fewer abilities with the CHRONOS equipment than I do.

I'm closer to Pru's end, along
with six others, all jumpers I remember from when I lived here. I can't attach
names to the other faces in the room. They're definitely not jumpers, however,
so I'm guessing maybe senior staff at Cyrist International in 2030.
Or bodyguards.
Saul always keeps a few of those around.

There's a strong family
resemblance among almost everyone at the table. Even the staffers and
bodyguards are Saul's grandkids or great-grandkids. They may have missed out on
the CHRONOS gene, but they still find work in the family business. It's a
complicated family tree, since most of them were born to surrogates and raised
communally. Simon once told me he has a kid
who's
maybe ten years older than him, but Pru said he couldn't know that for sure.
She says Saul's the only one who really knows who's whose. Still, we all make
guesses based on skin tone, eye color, and whether they have Conwell's nose.

Simon, who seems to have been
tasked with running the meeting, calls the group to order. I'm not sure that
was necessary, since there's none of the idle chatter you might expect before a
meeting. Even with ten yards or more between Saul's end of the table and Pru's
end, the tension hangs in the air like a thundercloud. Everyone in the room
seems nervous, except Simon, but then I'd wager he's been egging both of them
on behind the scenes.

Twenty minutes into the meeting,
Saul has spoken only three times, each remark laced with a bit of poison aimed
at his daughter. Twice, Prudence responded in kind. Saul's third comment—a very
pointed reference to the fact that the Prudence here today is at least the age
of her dear old dad—seems to have shut her up, but the look she gave him spoke
volumes.