Straying From the Path (6 page)

She went all the way to the front doors before looking back. Ned wasn’t following her. She couldn’t see him at all, through the mob.

In the women’s room she found her doorway to Madrid 1880 where she’d stashed a gown and danced flamenco, then to a taverna in Havana 1902, and from there to her room. He wouldn’t possibly be able to follow that path.

Unbelievable, how out of a few thousand years of history available to them and countless millions of locations around the world, they kept running into each other.

Ned wore black. He had to, really, because they were at the dawn of the age of the tuxedo, and all the men wore black suits: black pressed trousers, jackets with tails, waistcoats, white cravats. Madeline rather liked the trend, because the women, in a hundred shades of rippling silk and shining jewels, glittered against the monotone backdrop.

Gowns here didn’t require the elaborate architecture they had during the previous three centuries. She wore a corset, but her skirt was not so wide as to prevent walking through doorways. The fabric, pleated and gathered in back, draped around her in slimming lines. She glided, tall and elegant as a Greek statue.

He hadn’t seen her yet. For once, she had the advantage. She watched behind the shelter of a neoclassical pillar. He moved like he’d been born to this dance. Perhaps he had. Every step made with confidence, he and his partner might have been the same unit as they turned, stepped, turned, not looking where they were going yet never missing a step. It always amazed her, how a hundred couples could circle a crowded ballroom like this and never collide.

He was smiling, his gaze locked on his partner’s the whole time. For a moment, Madeline wished she were dancing with him. Passing time had cooled her temper.

She’d already got what she came for, a few bits of original Tiffany jewelry. After a dance or two, she could open a door and leave. In a room this large, she could dance a turn and Ned would never have to know she’d been here.

But she waited until his steps brought him close to her. She moved into view, caught his gaze and smiled. He stumbled on the parquet.

He managed to recover without falling and without losing too much of his natural grace. “Madeline! I didn’t see you.”

“I know.”

He abandoned his partner—turned his back on her and went straight to Madeline. The woman glared after him with a mortally offended expression that Ned didn’t seem to notice.

“Been a while, eh?”

“Only a month, subjective.”

“So—what brings you here?”

“That’s my secret. I’ve learned my lesson about telling you anything. You?”

He looked around, surveying the ballroom, the orchestra on the stage, the swirl of couples dancing a pattern like an eddy in a stream. Each couple was independent, but all of them together moved as one entity, as if choreographed.

“Strauss,” he said at last. “Will you dance with me, Miss Madeline?”

He offered his hand, and she placed hers in it. They joined the pattern.

“Have you forgiven me for that comment from last time?”

“No,” Madeline said with a smile. “I’m waiting for the chance to return the favor.”

Step two three turn two three—

“Do you believe in fate?” Ned said.

“Fate? I suppose I have to, considering some of the things I’ve seen. Why do you ask?”

“It’s a wonderful thing, really. You see, we never should have met. I should have died before you were born—or vice versa, since I still don’t know when you’re from. But here we are.”

“That’s fate? I thought you were following me.”

“Ah yes.”

Madeline tilted her head back. Crystal chandeliers sparkled overhead, turning, turning. Ned didn’t take his eyes off her.

“Have you thought of why I might follow you?” he said.

“To reap the benefits of my hard work. I do the research and case the site, and you arrive to take the prize. It’s all very neat and I’d like you to stop.”

“I can’t do that, Madeline.”

“Why not? Isn’t there enough history for you to find your own hunting grounds without taking mine?”

“Because that isn’t the reason I’m following you. At least not anymore.” He paused. He wasn’t smiling, he wasn’t joking. “I think I’m in love with you.”

Her feet kept doing what they were supposed to do. The music kept them moving, which was good because her mind froze. “No,” she murmured.

“Will you give me a chance? A chance to show you?”

It was a trick. A new way to make a fool of her, and it was cruel. But she had never seen him so serious. His brow took on furrows.

She stopped dancing, and he had to stop with her, but he wouldn’t let go. There, stalled in the middle of the ballroom floor, the dance turned to chaos around them.

“No. I can’t love you back, Ned. We’re too much alike.”

For a long moment, a gentle strain of music, he studied her. His expression turned drawn and sad.

“Be careful, Madeline. Watch your back.” He kissed her hand, a gentle press of lips against her curled fingers, then let it go and walked off the dance floor, shouldering around couples as they passed.

He left her alone, lost, in the middle of the floor. She touched her hand where he had kissed it.

“Ned!” she called, the sound barely audible over the orchestra. “Ned!”

He didn’t turn around.

The song ended.

She left the floor, hitched up her skirt and ran everywhere, looking behind every door and every potted fern. But he was gone.

If Ned followed her, it stood to reason others could as well.

Her room had been trashed. The mirror over the vanity was shattered, chairs smashed, a dresser toppled. Powdered cosmetics dusted the wreckage. The wardrobe was thrown open, gowns and fabric torn and strewn like streamers over the furniture.

She didn’t have windows or doors precisely to keep this sort of thing from happening. There was only one way into the room—through a sideways door, and only if one knew just the right way to look through it. So how—

Someone grabbed her in a bear hug. Another figure appeared from behind her and pointed a bizarre vice-grip and hairbrush-looking tool at her in the unmistakable stance of holding a weapon. A third moved into view.

She squirmed in the grasp of the first, but he was at least a foot taller than she and he quickly worked to secure bindings around her arms and hands that left her immobile. All wore black militaristic suits, with goggles and metallic breathing masks hiding their features.

The third spoke, a male voice echoing mechanically through the mask. “Under Temporal Transit Authority Code forty-four A dash nine, I hereby take you into custody and charge you—”

“The what?” Madeline said with a gasp. Her captor wrenched her shoulders back. Any struggle she made now was merely out of principle. “Temporal Transit Authority? I’ve never heard of such a thing!”

“You’ve never stepped through to the twenty-second century, then.”

“No.” Traveling to one’s own future was tough—there was no record to study, no way to know what to expect. She’d had enough trouble with her past, she never expected the future to come back to haunt her.

“I hereby take you into custody and charge you with unregulated transportation along the recognized timeline, grand theft along the recognized timeline, historic fraud—”

“You can’t be serious—”

He held up a device, something like an electric razor with a glowing wand at one end and flashing lights at the other. He pressed a button and drew a line in the air. The line glowed, hanging in midair. He pressed another button, the line widened into a plane, a doorway through which a dim scene showed: pale tiled walls and steel tables.

He opened a door, he stepped through, and all he needed to do was push a button.

In that stunned moment, the two flunkies picked her up and carried her through.

They entered a hospital room and unloaded her onto a gurney. More figures appeared, doctors hiding behind medical scrubs, cloth masks, and clinical gazes. With practiced ease they strapped her face-down, wrists and legs bound with padded restraints. When she tried to struggle, a half-dozen hands pressed her into the thin mattress. Her ice-blue skirt was hitched up around her knees, wrinkling horribly.

“Don’t I get a lawyer? A phone call? Something?” She didn’t even know where or when she was. Who would she call?

A doctor spoke to the thug in charge. “Her catalyst?”

“Dancing.”

“I know just the thing. Nurse, prep a local anesthetic.”

Madeline tensed against her bindings. “What are you doing? What are you doing to me?”

“Don’t worry, we can reverse the procedure. If you’re found innocent at the trial.”

She lost track of how many people were in the room. A couple of the thugs, a couple of people in white who must have been nurses or orderlies. A couple who looked like doctors. Someone unbuttoned her shoes. Her silk stockings ripped.

Needle-pricks stabbed each foot, then pins of sleep traveled up her legs. She screamed. It was the only thing she could do. A hand pushed her face into the mattress. Her legs went numb up to her knees. She managed to turn her face, and through the awkward, foreshortened perspective she saw them make incisions above her heels, reach a thin scalpel into the wounds, and cut the Achilles’ tendons. There was no pain, but she felt the tissues snap inside her calves.

She screamed until her lungs hurt, until she passed out.

She awoke in a whitewashed cell, lying on a cot that was the room’s only furnishing. There was a door without a handle. She was no longer tied up, but both her ankles were neatly bandaged, and she couldn’t move her legs.

Gingerly sitting up, she unfastened the bodice of her gown, then released the first few hooks of her corset. She took a deep breath, arching her back. Her ribs and breasts were bruised from sleeping in the thing. Not to mention the manhandling she’d received.

She didn’t want to think about her legs.

Curling up on her side, she hugged her knees and cried.

She fell asleep, arms curled around her head. The light, a pale fluorescent filtering through a ceiling tile, stayed on. Her growling stomach told her that time passed. Once, the door opened and an orderly brought in a tray of food, leaving it on the floor by the bed. She didn’t eat. Another time, a female orderly brought in a contraption, a toilet seat and bedpan on wheels, and offered to help her use it. She screamed, batted and clawed at the woman until she left.

She pulled apart her elegant, piled coif—tangled now—and threw hairpins across the room.

When the door opened again, she had a few pins left to hurl at whomever entered. But it wasn’t an orderly, a doctor, or a thug.

It was Ned, still in his tails and cravat.

He closed the door to the thinnest crack and waited a moment, listening. Madeline clamped her hand over her mouth to keep from crying out to him.

Apparently satisfied, Ned came to the bed, knelt on the floor, and gathered her in an embrace.

“You look dreadful,” he said gently, holding her tightly.

She sobbed on his shoulder. “They cut my tendons, Ned. They cut my legs.”

“They’re bastards, Madeline,” he muttered, between meaningless noises of comfort.

Clutching the fabric of his jacket, she pushed him away suddenly. “Did they get you too? What did they do to you?” She looked him over, touched his face—nothing seemed wrong. “How did you get here?”

He gave her a lopsided smile. “I used to be one of the bastards.”

She edged away, pushing herself as far to the wall as she could. Ned, with his uncanny ability to follow her where and whenever she went. He didn’t move, didn’t try to stop her or grapple with her. She half expected him to.

“Used to be.” she said. “Not still?”

“No. It began as a research project, to study what people like me—like us—can do, and what that meant about the nature of space and time. But there were other interests at work. They developed artificial methods of finding doorways and stepping through. They don’t need us anymore and hate competition. The Temporal Transit Authority was set up to establish a monopoly over the whole business.”

“And you—just left? Or did you lead them to me?”

“Please, Madeline. I’m searching for a bit of redemption here. I followed you. I couldn’t stop following you. I knew they were looking for you. I found your place right after they did. I wish—I should have told you. Warned you a little better than I did.”

“Why didn’t you?” she said, her voice thin and desperate.

“I didn’t think you’d believe me. You’ve never trusted me. I’m sorry.”

No
, she thought, remembering that last waltz, the music and his sad face and the way he disappeared.
I’m sorry.

“You were following me all along. We didn’t meet by chance.”

“Oh no. It was chance. Fate. I didn’t know about you, wasn’t looking for you. But when I met you, I knew the Authority would find you sooner or later. I didn’t want them to find you.”

“But they did.”

“Once again I apologize for that. Now, we’re getting out of here.”

He started to pick her up, moving one arm to her legs and the other to her shoulders. She leaned away, pressing herself against the wall in an effort to put more distance between them.

“Please trust me,” he said.

Why should she believe anything he said? She didn’t know anything about him. Except that he was a marvelous dancer. And she needed to dance.

She put her arms around his neck and let him lift her.

“Come on, then.” He picked her up, cradling her in his arms. She clung to him. “Get the door, would you?”

She pulled the door open. He looked out. The corridor was empty. Softly, he made his way down the hall.

Then Ned froze. Voices echoed ahead of them, moving closer. Without a word, he turned and walked the other direction. If he had been able to run, he would have rounded the next corner before the owners of the voices saw him. But he held her, and he couldn’t do more than walk carefully.