The Cutting Room: A Time Travel Thriller (28 page)

"I'll meet you," she told me, "but you need to understand what this is."

"Which is?"

"A formality for Georg. No one goes to Skald."

"I'll change your mind," I said.

"You won't," she laughed. "Meet me at Tripaldi Fountain. Now."

She cut the connection. I took the elevator to the basement and hopped a zipcar to Mezzonar Plaza, one of the city's many parks/markets/public squares. This one was loosely Roman in style and attracted a great deal of citizens to its gardens, trattorias, and osterias, which smelled of fresh bread, steaming tomato sauce, and grilled fish. I glanced around, snapping pictures of faces with my eye-cams and running them against known Central agents, but there were no matches. Then again, if they were watching me, they'd have no need to send a live body.

Tripaldi Fountain was one of three in the plaza. It was made of terraced stone and crowned by a white stone statue of an old man carrying a lantern and peering down into the square. His cynical expression appeared unconcerned by the fact the fountain's water was flowing directly from his penis. Dido Williams waited for me at the fountain's base.

She made a flicking gesture. "Say your piece so I can tell you no and we can both get on with our lives."

I took another glance around the square. A pigeon trundled up to me, head bobbing. "What is Skald for?"

"Existing, I imagine."

"You can do that anywhere. What's the island's purpose? Why go to all the trouble of creating it?"

"Because it wasn't there. You get one more question, Socrates. Then my obligation to Georg is fulfilled."

I smiled. "What's Skald's interest in stories?"

She cocked her head, blond hair hanging straight down. "Stories?"

"Don't play dumb. It's right there in the name."

"Which everyone assumes is as meaningless as every name." A sharp light entered her eyes as she examined me anew. "We like them. They're one of the few things that are truly infinite. And when you tie that to the experience of them, that's when things really get interesting. Some of us wonder whether experiencing a made-up story can seem as real as living it for yourself. If that's true, then you could make magic real. Live forever. In any world you please."

"I know there's no point trying to bribe you with money," I said. "I don't have any political favors to offer. Can't help you with your legal troubles. But I can give you stories. Secret ones. Things no one else has ever heard."

Dido grinned, crocodilian. "In exchange for a visitor's pass to Skald?"

"That's the deal."

"We've already got millions of stories. Hundreds of people inventing new ones every day."

"But this one is true," I said. "And it's from another world."

Her eyebrows twitched. "Are you with Central?"

I shook my head. "Cutting Room."

She bit her lower lip, showing her fangs. "Let's hear it."

I had chosen my story carefully. Everything I did in other worlds was highly classified; disclosing off-world intelligence could get me imprisoned. And virtually everything I'd done for the CR was in their internal records—and Central's. If what I told Dido got back to anyone there, it could destroy me.

But the real story of six-year-old Stephen Jaso wasn't on record. My report had been a cleaned-up version with my malfeasance expunged. I could use the actual events without fear of it getting back to Central; if it did, I'd simply call Dido Williams a liar, or tell them I'd fed her a false story. Even if they sent the inquisition for me, the investigation should be messy and long enough for me to bring down Davies first.

"We have strict rules of chrono-sanitation," I said. Water splashed in the fountain. Sun gushed down from the sky. "In an ideal mission, that world's people never know we're there. But few missions are ideal."

Dido smiled in anticipation. I may not be a natural storyteller, but when you spend your life thinking about causality, you learn how things fit together. What's vital and what can be cut. So, changing only the names, I told her about Stephen Jaso, a kid whose future had been altered by a Primetime predator. The entity tasked with noticing changes noticed. The man tasked with undoing those changes was sent back to undo the boy's death.

But every avenue the man tried hit a dead end. Every lead died a quiet death. As time ticked down, he grew increasingly desperate. In just a few days, the predator would win. The boy would die. And the man would go home knowing the death was his fault.

So I explained that I had made the choice to break our most sacred commandment. I had approached the boy. Told him I was from the future. That he was in danger. And I needed his help.

Even then, it had come down to the wire. But I tracked the killer down. Erased him. Yanked the boy's life back from the brink. And gone home knowing I'd given him a second chance.

People milled around us, laughing, enjoying the sunshine, drinking red wine. During my story, Dido had watched me with scorching intensity. Now, although she stood in place, she seemed to step back, withdrawing from the world of the tale to look at it from afar.

"So what happened to him?" she said. "How did his life turn out?"

"I don't know."

"What do you mean, you don't know? How can you save a little kid's life and not go back to see how he used his second chance?"

I gazed up at the statue of the old man, who peered right back at me. "It's not that I don't want to know. But if I go back, I
will
see what happened. And lives are like missions: rarely ideal."

Dido bulged one of her cheeks with the tip of her tongue. "Whereas now the story of his life could be anything. Infinite."

I nodded.

"That's stupid," she said. "No deal."

"We had a bargain. A story for passage to Skald."

"The deal was for a
good
story. You copped out on the ending. Give me triumph or tragedy, not some wishy-washy in-between."

"The boy died in a car crash," I said. "Eighteen years old. There, now it's a tragedy. Happy?"

She lifted one finger and made a tick-tock gesture. "Nope. Too late, the spell's broken. You ruined it."

I bit my teeth together. "I could erase your little island from the entire timeline."

Dido rolled her eyes. "Don't be like that. I've thought of a way for you to make it up to me. It's not fair that cops and criminals are the only ones who get to experience other worlds."

"No." I drew back my chin. "Absolutely not."

"I won't break anything. I just want to see whether the reality is better than a story." She stared me down with every drop of authority in her cold-ocean eyes. "This is the only way you'll ever get to Skald."

I had the feeling I'd been played. I was angry enough to wring her neck. I knew how to make bodies disappear.

Wherever she went, Dido would alter the timeline. Change the lives of everyone there. Some for the better, some for the worse. But Mara thought Jeni Sept could help us break the case against Davies. The sanctity of everything we stood for was at stake. I didn't have a choice.

I took Dido to the backup facility. She wanted to go way, way back, but I held firm. Instead, I searched out a world where an early plague had shredded the Mediterranean, crippling Greece, Persia, early Rome, and the many seafaring North African peoples. It had set the Western world back by centuries. Even now, at the present edge of the timeline, they were still in a Renaissance-like era of a highly sophisticated medieval society that hadn't yet begun to automate its labor.

After warning her that she could well die, I sent Dido back. Just a week before the present time. A taste of the past without undoing too much of the world's history.

For me, of course, just a couple minutes passed between when she entered the Pod and when she returned (blessedly intact). For her, a week had gone by. She looked different. Grimier, but her dark blue eyes were aflame with memory.

"How was it?" I said.

"Wonderful experience," she said. "Bad story. No resolution. That's the problem with real life, isn't it?"

She wouldn't say more, but the trip had sealed the deal. We took a zipcar to a private airport and climbed into a jet that didn't have a single straight line to its frame. Skald was the better part of 8000 miles away, but in less than three hours of suborbital flight, I gazed down on a permanent bubble rising from the shining blanket of the Catholic Ocean.

The jet switched to a hover, bleeding height and speed. Ominous weapons platforms stood vigil around the bubble. The dome walls held back the sea; the land sat a couple hundred yards below the enveloping waters, lush and green.

And incredibly hot. Stepping off the jet was like entering an open mouth. The palms at the airfield stood in perfect stillness. There had been some chop on our vertical descent to the field, but down here, there was no wind at all.

The heat didn't seem to trouble Dido. She smiled airily. "I'm guessing you're here to find someone. Good luck."

I swabbed sweat from my temples. "What do you mean?"

"There are no public records of Skald's citizenship. You won't get any info out of our government, such as it is. We treat our privacy as seriously as you treat the timeline."

"Then how am I supposed to find her?"

She shrugged her elegant shoulders. "If you don't have an address, I suggest you ask around."

She strode across the spongy grass toward a waiting car. I grimaced and fetched a sock from my luggage to wipe off the sweat. This was beginning to feel very much like a mission to one of the other worlds. A trip to a strange land with no contacts and almost zero resources at my disposal.

Which meant I had plenty of experience at my back.

A settlement rose from the grass a quarter mile from the airport. On the assumption that Skald had no underground zipcar network, I went inside the small terminal to ask about transportation. Travel to and from Skald was entirely private and apparently rare—the travel desk was a kiosk staffed by a lone woman who was perfectly happy to pull double duty as concierge. She offered to call me a car service, but after learning I might need to travel extensively, she advised me that much of Skald wasn't easily accessible by car, and suggested I take advantage of one of their free bikes instead.

I was skeptical, but the vehicles were fat-tired off-roaders with piezo-electric engines and rugged carbon frames. Skald was just a few miles across. I mounted up and rode into town.

It wasn't exactly a metropolis. A few hundred homes and stores. Most had wide windows or open walls and roofs thatched from palm leaves. Probably artificial, but they added a nice look. Solar-powered fans stirred a breeze through the streets. I took a walk around. Plenty of restaurants, but with more of a neighborhood vibe than a touristy one. Several grocers with attached cafes, like a small supermarket or a large bodega.

I had expected it all to be ultra-ritzy, luxurious offerings for the elite investors who had the cash and the pull to be a part of Skald, but instead the town was simple and practical. It wasn't here to leech money from wealthy tourists or locals. It was here to serve its people.

Which made it easier for me. I'd drop by everywhere that saw a lot of traffic, starting with the bodegas.

The first was little more than a wide roof shading the stacks of fresh produce and packaged food. Rolled up canvases could be lowered to close it up in case of storm, but given Skald's unique geographic position, I expected the rain mostly fell straight down. Men and women sat in the shaded cafe, hair tousled by the ceaseless fans, sipping iced coffees. I headed to the counter, where a middle-aged man with a deep tan operated a brightly polished old fashioned espresso maker.

"I'm looking for a woman named Jeni Sept," I told him. "Friend of a friend. Do you know her?"

The man frowned, thought, and shook his head. "Never heard of her."

I held up my link, which displayed a picture of her face. Mara's most recent picture of her, anyway, which meant it was years out of date. "Recognize her?"

"If I did, would she be in some kind of trouble?"

"Not at all. I'm just here for advice. It's very important."

He shook his head. "Never seen her."

I didn't think he was lying, but I would have killed for a dose of Josuf Yount's little green pills to help read the patterns on his face. Should have had the Pods gin me up something similar. Such things were highly illegal in Primetime, but Skald didn't seem to have much in the way of customs or security. Given its invite-only exclusivity, there was probably no need.

I left the man my contact info, a printout of Sept's face and name, and tried the next grocer/cafe. No luck there, either. At the third, a woman stood in a dirt circle at the edge of the cafe. At first I thought she was preaching, but she was reciting a story of some kind. Possibly an old poem, given the references to Ancient Greece. As I spoke to the proprietor, the storyteller wrapped up and was rewarded with a smattering of applause. Figuring such people were well-traveled, I waited for the small crowd to finish congratulating her, then approached the woman, who was brown-skinned, sun-wrinkled, and equally capable of deep gravity and soaring levity.

"I'm searching for someone," I said. "If you can help me find her, I'd be happy to swap stories with you." I grinned. "Maybe give you something a little more recent than Odysseus."

She smiled, eyes crinkling. "Sounds like this is a story in itself."

"Not one I can tell now. But once I can, it'll be big."

The woman tipped back her head and pursed her mouth. "Promise me you'll tell me it before anyone on Skald. If your woman's here, I'll find her."

"Deal." We shook on it. Her hand was dry and strong. I fed her Jeni Sept's name and photo.

The sparkle faded from the old woman's eyes. "You're sure she's here?"

"My friend spoke to her just the other day."

"Well, I never have. And after thirty years of spinning yarns for a place to sleep each night, I've stayed in just about every home on the island."

"The offer stands." I gave her my contact info. "If she turns up, please reach me at once."