The River of No Return (34 page)

“The Guild hasn’t gone to war before? There’s never been a grand Guild-Ofan confrontation?”

Alva shook her head. “No, never. We haven’t been enemies, exactly. More like rivals. Sometimes even friendly rivals.”

“Friendly rivals? But Arkady hates you. And when I say he hates you, I mean he hates your guts. Says the Ofan killed his daughter.”

Alva winced. “Oh, Nick,” she said. “You don’t understand because you have joined us . . . after. After Eréndira died. After the future turned on itself and the Pale began moving toward us.” She pinched the bridge of her nose under her glasses and closed her eyes. “Everything is different now. Before, the Guild was the Guild and the Ofan were the Ofan. We were experimenting with the talent, they were insisting that we already knew enough. We stood for knowledge, they stood for stability. We were little, they were big. We were hip, they were stodgy. Blah blah blah. We disliked each other cordially, but we coexisted. Now . . .” She dropped her hand and her glasses readjusted themselves. Her eyes were wet. She looked at Nick and for just a moment she looked helpless and lost, this woman who lived her life on the edge of time.

“Just tell me,” Nick said gently. “Now?”

“It’s hard to say what ‘now’ is, when the Pale is coming closer and closer. I suppose I mean that now the battle lines are being drawn, all up and down the river. The rumors are flying—the Pale is the fault of the Ofan, there is a talisman that could save us, the Ofan are hiding it. . . . Everyone is desperate, and desperation is dangerous. The Guild is arming itself against us—as if we are to blame for what’s coming. Fools! Fighting us won’t stop the Pale.” She pressed her lips together, struggling with some strong emotion.

“How do you know the Ofan are not to blame?”

“Nobody knows who is to blame! Perhaps we are. Perhaps our experiments disrupted something. I doubt it, but I can’t say for sure. But that isn’t even the point. If we caused the Pale we don’t know how we did it, or when. It will be no good killing us all. The Pale will still come.”

“But Eréndira—”

“Died after the Pale began. She was trying to pierce it. Trying to learn about it. The Pale isn’t Eréndira’s fault.” Alva bit her lip and the tears spilled over her cheeks. “It was her killer. And now the Guild will go to war against us—they say it is to save the world, but Arkady’s grief is behind it. It is revenge.”

“Surely not,” Nick said. “War . . . it is not a game.”

“No, but it is a business. The Guild has always thrived on war.” Alva’s voice was bitter. “Now they are simply doing the work themselves.”

“I’m completely lost, Alva. The Guild
thrives
on war?”

“Of course! The Guild exists because of the wars Naturals fight. Wars of conquest. The Guild funds war, and it harvests war. Indeed, who can say which came first? Armies or the Guild?”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

She let out a long breath. In the firelight, her magnified eyes glowed with luminous intensity. “All right. I’m sorry. Let’s back up.” She opened her hands. “We endlessly say that time is a river. We describe it that way so often that we tend to forget it’s just a figure of speech. But what else besides a river is described as having
flow
?”

“Hair?”

The violet eyes blinked, once.

And Nick knew. It was that feeling, when understanding begins to trickle in, when you know that soon it will burst the dam and that in a moment or two more you will see the world entirely differently from the way you do now. “Money,” he said slowly. “Money flows.”

Alva nodded.

“The Guild is . . . a bank?”

“Yes. It trades in futures. Actually, the plural is wrong. It trades in future. In
the
future. In one, singular, unalterable future.”

“Okay,” Nick said, excitement taking hold. “I get it! So the Guild speculates on the uncertainty of future markets. Hedge funds. Hedging your bets.”

“Yes.”

“But the Guild doesn’t have to speculate, does it? It doesn’t have to hedge its bets because it
knows
the future.”

“Right.”

“And that’s why the past
must
stay the same. So that the future stays the same. I thought they were rich because they knew the past. But it’s because they know the future. They know every single thing that’s going to happen, right up until the end of the world!”

“But now the end of the world has changed,” Alva said, her voice very soft. “Do you see, Nick, why they are desperate? Why we are desperate? The end has turned around and is racing back toward the beginning.”

Nick looked at Alva and she looked back at him. Her face was as placid as if they were discussing the weather. For the first time Nick let himself really think about the Pale and what it meant. He gripped the table half a second before he felt panic blow through him full force, panic in the form of the river, cold and deep, and it was filling his lungs, his eyes. . . .

“Nick!”

Someone was shouting his name.

“Nick!”

He felt a tickle on his face, like the wing of a butterfly. And then a sharp pain, like a wasp sting.

He slapped his hand to his cheek and heard a chuckle. He opened his eyes. He was on the floor of the pub, and Alva was bending over him. “What happened?”

“I had to slap you, like I had to slap Henry,” she said, smiling.

Nick clambered to his feet and slumped into his chair. He put his head in his hands. “It’s getting worse,” he said. “The more I am aware of the river, the more it seems to drag at me. Thinking about the Pale just now . . .”

Alva put her hand on his shoulder. “It is because you aren’t trained,” she said. “They sent you back with no training and expected you to be safe. It’s as if a pilot had taken you up in an airplane and then handed you the controls and said, ‘Land it.’”

Nick groaned. “Then train me, for the love of God. I’m fit, I’m halfway intelligent, I’m a soldier—train me!”

“Training takes months, Nick. To learn to jump, and to learn to do it safely—”

“Yes, yes, I know. They told me. It takes too long. But there must be something I can do to keep from being swept away every time I think about the river.”

Alva sat down opposite him again. “When it happens, what does it feel like?”

“Like all of time is stampeding through me—like a wind or a . . . well, like a river. And I am like a little boat, or a leaf—clinging to my mooring by the most fragile of threads. . . .” Nick found that his hand was in his pocket. He drew out the acorn.

“What is that?”

Nick closed his fingers. He didn’t want her to see it.

“An acorn.” She answered her own question. “The fruit of unenclosed land.”

“Pardon?”

“That’s what
acorn
means. ‘The fruit of unenclosed land.’” She smiled at him.

He clenched the acorn tightly in his fist and drew a deep breath. “I am in love,” he said.

Her eyes opened wide, but she said nothing.

“And this acorn . . . it is . . . it reminds me of that love.” He found that confessing it felt good. “I don’t know why, but it is.” Nick felt calmer now. The rushing in his ears receded. He smiled at Alva. “There. That’s my secret. You have the Pale and the Talisman and time travel and these catacombs. I have an acorn.”

Alva nodded. “I understand.” She sipped her beer and he sipped his. The moment felt . . . brotherly.

“May I ask you,” Alva said after a moment, “is that acorn from here? I mean, is it from 1815? Not the twenty-first century?”

“Yes. It is from now.”

Alva sucked in her cheeks. “I wonder . . .” She tapped the tabletop with one finger. “I think your acorn might be your salvation. I can’t train you to jump in one day, but I might be able to help you anchor yourself firmly to this time. Do you trust me?”

“Of course.”

She smiled. “You say that quickly, you who are meant to betray me.”

“I think you know that I—” He stopped.

“That you are Ofan?”

Nick frowned. He didn’t know if that was what he had been about to say.

Alva shook her head. “No, never mind. I do not need you to swear allegiance.” She stood. “Come. Get up. I’d like to try something.”

Nick got to his feet.

Alva took his hands.

“Are we going to jump? This is what Arkady did when—”

“Don’t worry. You are in the transporter. At the very worst you’ll jump to some Ofan bar brawl in the fifteenth century and they’ll just bring you back to me here. But I think this will work. I’m going to begin to jump with you, but I will let go of you just as we enter the river. When that happens, I want you to think about that acorn. Use it to stay here. To resist the river. I don’t want you to touch it, for this exercise is about your mind, Nick, not about the acorn itself.” She squeezed his fingers. “Are you ready?”

“No! What are you doing?”

But she was already doing it. Jumping with Alva was not like jumping with Arkady. With Arkady the feeling had been located in the gut, but with Alva it was in the head. Vertigo . . . he was tumbling, his thoughts were flying away . . . and then Alva let go of his hands and he was lost, tumbling away down a long, dark tunnel. . . .

The acorn. She had said to think of the acorn . . . don’t reach for it. Do it with your mind. Do it with your mind. He pictured the acorn, its shiny pale brown flanks, its nubbly cap . . . Julia. Julia’s dark eyes. Julia’s soft hand cupping his cheek, her kisses, sweet and urgent . . .

He opened his eyes. He was in the pub, and he felt strong and alive and firmly planted. Alva was smiling at him. Nothing had changed.

“There,” she said. “The acorn will keep you here. That’s all you have to do next time.”

* * *

“Do
you
think it is possible to stop the Pale?” Nick was standing behind the bar, washing up their mugs in a bucket of soapy water. Alva sat across from him, eating a packet of lamb-and-mint-flavored crisps she’d pulled out of a drawer. She had described them as “the really evil ones, from the 1980s.”

“No,” she said. “I don’t think it. I believe it. But belief is more fragile than thought. I believe that the Pale can be turned back. But I might be wrong.”

“You can’t be wrong,” Nick said, his voice hoarse. “Surely there’s hope.” He set the two mugs upside down on a folded linen towel and planted his hands on the bar, his arms braced.

“I hope so. But all I base my belief on is human nature.”

“Then we’re doomed.” Nick plucked a crisp from her packet and popped it in his mouth. “Humans are the scum of the earth.”

Alva put her head on one side. “Maybe,” she said. “But we exist, and therefore we have to try to do good rather than bad.” She ripped the silvery bag along its seam and opened it out to make eating the crisps easier. “We have talents—ranging from perfect pitch to towering artistic or scientific genius. We usually celebrate these things as gifts from God. So by what right does the Guild say that your ability to manipulate time, which you share with a small fraction of your kind, is too dangerous for you to handle? Surely this talent—this gift—wouldn’t exist if we weren’t supposed to use it.”

“Maybe it’s a curse. Some people are driven to do unspeakable things and they do them well. We don’t encourage it.”

Alva rolled her eyes and ate a crisp. “Please. You know that having our talent isn’t the same as being a psychopath. If there is anything that unites the Ofan, that defines us, it is that we want to learn more about our gift. Now that the Pale is coming, we think we might be able to use it to help. But the Guild, with its vaunted tale of protecting the river, is slowly destroying our chance. Going to war against us—for God’s sake, it would be like going to war against the Island of Misfit Toys.”

Nick laughed. “The Misfit Toys band together and save Christmas.”

Alva touched her nose with the tip of her finger. “Bingo!”

“You’re mad.”

“I’ve already admitted that. But just because I’m paranoid doesn’t mean they’re not out to get me. The Guild’s money and their power—no, let me go even one step further—the very
existence
of the Guild depends upon war. Because that is their beginning, they cannot imagine a way out of it also being their end. Their omega must follow from their alpha. Trouble is, their
finale
is everyone else’s, too. They don’t give us a choice. They don’t even let us know about it!”

Nick shook his head and fished a particularly dark, extra-crispy crisp from the diminishing pile. “You’re foaming at the mouth, Alva. How the hell does the Guild’s existence depend on war?” He crunched the crisp between his teeth. There is nothing, he thought to himself, like trans fats.

Alva, meanwhile, was staring at him incredulously. “Surely you’ve figured that much out. War is the Guild’s recruitment machine.”

Nick swallowed and gave her back her look. “Rubbish. The Guild might be greedy and secretive, but they want to ease the suffering. They pick us up and dust us off and teach us medieval Finnish. . . .”

Alva threw up her hands. “Oh, use your head. You jumped from battle. I, too. I jumped from war—my village was sacked and I . . . well. It doesn’t matter.” Alva was quiet for a moment, making a line of crisps across the bar. When she looked up the passion in her eyes was banked and she spoke with quiet certitude. “What is the Guild without its thousands of workers, Nick? Without the drones who make it all run? Nine out of ten of us jump from war, did you know that?” She picked up a crisp from her line and broke it into pieces between her fingers, letting the crumbs fall. “War loosens our bonds to our natural time.” She broke another. “It sets us leaping like fish from the river. And the Guild is waiting for us with its nets. Some of us they keep, some they throw away.”

“What the hell do you mean? They take everyone they can find.”

“Oh, no, they most certainly do not!” Alva dusted off her fingers. “Think back to Chile. Who were your fellow inductees?” She sucked the salt and oil from her thumb. “Were any of them crazy? Homicidal?” She popped her forefinger in her mouth and gave it the same treatment. “Disabled? Maimed?”

“No.”

“Exactly. And those are the obvious things they weren’t. There are a lot of other filters, too. War traumatizes, and the Guild needs its members to be shocked and scared but not broken. Nor even breakable. Your run-of-the-mill Guild member isn’t an artist or a hermit or another lonely visionary type; the Guild wants team players. And they aren’t, for the most part, your ministers or your sea captains, either; the Guild doesn’t want too many inspirational or leader types. They fish the river for hard workers, followers, good-natured burghers. People who want to settle down and remake their lives as best they can.”