Time's Echo: A CHRONOS Files Novella (6 page)

Her face breaks into a smile instead. "Look, Kiernan.
It's one of the little stars we put on the ceiling last month.
Before we made love.
It was romantic, wasn't it?"

She peels the little star off her finger and then flips it
around, pressing the sticky side to her chest.

"I think I'll keep this. It's my lucky star."

∞5∞

Jess is behind the counter when I arrive at the store, a few
minutes before nine the next morning. He's in his usual suit and tie, but his
face looks as tired as I feel and I wonder if he got any sleep. I've been
thinking through what I should tell him the entire walk over, how much I can
say without making things worse or giving him false hope. I'm still not sure.

He glances up at the door chime when I walk in, his eyes
cautious.

"Morning, Jess.
Amelia
upstairs?"

"Nope.
She left for the market
about twenty minutes ago. I suspect she'll be out for an hour or more, since
Martha
Nellers
went along and they like to gab, but I
don't know. She was pretty nervous about leaving me. I told her you'd be along
shortly. Glad to see I was right about that."

"I told you I'd come, Jess. Did you really need help
stocking the Cavendish?"

"No. Already did it. But run in the back and grab some
soda bottles. You can stock the icebox while we talk."

I push aside a couple of boxes in the storeroom and grab one
of the empty wooden soda cases, so I can stock a few bottles of each variety. I
feel an odd tug in my chest as I stick in two of Kate's favorite
Clicquot
Club Ginger Ale, along with assorted colas, birch
beers, and four bottles of Moxie. That Moxie stuff is truly gross, but Jess
sells a lot of it. Kate was surprised that one of the ingredients is cocaine.
That's still perfectly legal in
1905,
and most likely
why people keep coming back for more even though it tastes like cheap cough
syrup.

I carry the case back out to the icebox under Jess's front
counter and kneel down to open the oak door on the bottom. Amelia uses this as
their personal icebox as well—no sense spending money for two or hauling an
extra block of ice upstairs—so I have to make room for the sodas by shuffling
around a few blocks of cheese and something wrapped in butcher paper. Judging
from the smoky scent, it's more of the bacon Amelia cooked for dinner last
night. That reminds me that I haven't eaten since the sandwich and cookie she
gave me. My stomach rumbles, but it can wait.

Jess leans against the counter, looking down at me, as I
reach over to grab a few bottles from the crate. "So," he begins,
"you want to tell me what the hell is going on?"

I sigh, trying to think where to start. "You remember
that medallion I wear?
The one that belonged to my
father?"
He nods, and I go on. "Well, it's not really what it
appears to be. He got it from his
da
, back in
Ireland. His
da
was…"

I shove the bottles in, a bit harder than necessary.
"Jess, I'm warning you this is gonna sound crazy. Bear with me okay?"

He doesn't say anything, just waits as I stash two more
bottles in the icebox. "My grandfather was a historian. He wasn't from
Ireland originally. He was from America. He went over in 1851 to study
an
Gorta
Mór
, the Great Famine. And he sort of got stuck
there."

"Why would a historian go over to study the Famine in
1851?" Jess asks. "Wasn't that smack dab in the middle of it?"

"It was," I answer. "He was there to observe
an
Gorta
Mór
as it happened. He'd only planned to stay a couple
of days. I know that sounds pretty stupid, since it would take weeks to get
there, but he didn't travel by ship, Jess. He traveled using that medallion.
And not just from Washington, where he lived. He was also coming from a
different time. Have you read that book by H. G. Wells?
The
Time Machine
?"

"No."

"Well, I know you've read all of Mark Twain, so think
about
A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court
. Or Bellamy's
Looking
Backward
. It's the same basic thing—"

"Yeah, I guess, except for the little part about this
being real life and those being bullshit."

I chuckle. "
It's
bullshit
alright, Jess, though maybe not in the sense you mean. I think I can prove part
of it pretty easy, but it's likely to make you feel a little uncomfortable. Not
as bad as last night, but it's not fun. Are you willing?"

He furrows his brow, thinking about it, and finally gives me
a nod.

"Hold on," I say, sticking the last few bottles
into the box. "Let me get the medallion out."

"Thought you said those thugs in the alley took the
medallion."

"They did. This is a spare.
Just a
minute."
I get to my feet and pull the medallion out of my pocket,
unwrapping
the handkerchiefs that I bundled around it before
leaving the apartment. If one of Pru's spies was strolling about the
neighborhood this morning, I definitely didn't want them to see it shining
through my pants pocket. It would've been even safer to leave it taped to my
leg, but Jess is a "show me" type of guy. I knew I'd need to do some
sort of demonstration and I'd rather avoid dropping my pants to extract the
key.

I center the medallion in my palm, and then glance up at
him. "I'm not a hundred percent sure this'll work, Jess—"

He interrupts me with a snort. "That's still about a
hundred percent more sure than I am."

"No, I mean, the key—that is, the medallion—it
definitely
works. I'm just not sure I'm in good enough shape to manage it again after
yesterday. But I'll give it a try…were you here in the store alone five minutes
before I arrived? Amelia had already left?"

"Yes…like I said, she left maybe twenty minutes before
you came in."

"Good." I run my fingers over the display and see
that it's 8:57:23. I set the current spot as a stable point and then pull up
the location in Jess's storeroom, a few minutes before I walked in the front
door. "I'm gonna disappear, but I'll be back in about a minute.
Maybe…maybe you should sit down?"

"I'm fine where I am, boy. Get on with whatever it is
you think you're doing."

I glance back down at the medallion, fix the location, and
blink. When I open my eyes, I'm looking at the cot where I slept for several
months last year. I turn around and push open the door.

Jess is behind the counter, arranging sticks of candy in the
jar by the register. He doesn't hear me until I say, "Hey, Jess."

He gives a quizzical glance at the bell over the door.
"Didn't hear you come in."

"I know, Jess. But you
will
hear me when I come
in the door, about three minutes from now." And then I pull up the stable
point behind the counter, set it for 08:57:30, and blink. It doesn't work the first
time, so I focus and try again.

I open my eyes to a rather flummoxed Jess, no longer back by
the candy jars, but near the icebox where he was standing before I made the
jump. He stares at me for a few seconds,
then
asks,
"You want to tell me how you did that? Just flat out disappear like
that?"

"It's the medallion. It's called a CHRONOS key. I went
back in time, Jess. Just a few minutes—that's probably all I'm capable of after
yesterday. I use the medallion in the magic act and between doing it over and
over out at
Norumbega
and then getting whacked on the
head, I'm worn out."

"So, you're saying
it's
magic?"

It would probably be easier to explain it to him if I did
say it was magic, but that would be a lie. "No. Look at it this way—if
your grandfather had seen a telephone, or an automobile, or a moving picture,
he'd have thought those were magic, right?
Even though
they're not.
It's like that—only this key is from about four hundred
years in the future.
In fact, almost exactly four hundred
years.
Like I was saying earlier, my granddad used his medallion to
travel back to 1851 from the year 2305. Just to observe, to witness history
firsthand. He was genetically…"

I don't think
genetics
is even a word yet. So I take
a different track.

"My grandfather was stranded. Saul, another of these
historians—well, he sabotaged the whole group. He's got this moneymaking scheme
and he's planning on changing history, rather than just studying it. That's not
a good thing, Jess, and some of us are trying to stop him. What you felt last
night was him changing something. I'm not sure what, but it must have been a
pretty big change. And it affected your family somehow."

"So you're saying that's why I remember Irene, and also
kind of don't remember her. The way I remember you walking out of that
storeroom earlier, and I also can remember that it didn't happen, that the
first time I saw you since last night was when you walked in through the front
door."

"Yes, that's about right. And it's not just Irene. I
suspect there are gonna to be cases where someone walks in this shop and you
know him—you've known him your whole life, but you'll also remember a past
where he never existed."

"Why doesn't Amelia remember? This change affected her,
too. This would be a whole lot easier if she didn't think I was losing my
wits."

"Sorry about that, Jess. You were helping me—the shift
happened when I stood up too fast. You grabbed me, and I guess you were in the
CHRONOS field, that is, in the range of the medallion. Amelia wasn't."

"So where
is
Irene?"

I shake my head. "I don't know. I'm not sure she exists
anymore. It sounds like something happened and your daughter only had two kids,
the boys, and not Irene."

"Then you have to make them fix it, change it back.
Tell your people that—"

I laugh bitterly as I get to my feet. "They're not my
people, Jess. I'm not part of this."

He grabs my shoulders. "Still, you know them, right? If
it's
money they want, I don't have much, but—"

"Jess, it's not like that. No one is holding her
hostage. The people who did this don't even know Irene. They just changed
something, at some point in history, and Irene—
well,
she just didn't
happen
in this timeline. If I had to guess, I'd say that
Mary got married a little later or married someone different, but I don't know.
Did she…um, do you know if Mary belongs to the Cyrists?"

He drops his hands from my shoulders and opens his mouth,
about to speak. And then he stops and just stares at me for a moment before
crossing over to the register. He leans over and runs his hands along one of
the shelves below the counter for a minute, then squats down, sticking his arm
farther back. I walk over to help him up, and he shakes my hand off, pushing
against the shelves with his palms to stand back up. "Damn things aren't
here," he says. "I know that's where I left them."

I start to ask what he's looking for, and then it hits me.
He's looking about for his pills, but if the glow stars Kate hung on our sky
are missing, Jess's medicine tin won't be there, either. The only things of
Kate's that are still around are those that were designed for time travel—the
diary, which has its own CHRONOS field, and the dress, which Connor rigged with
tiny booster cells that amplify any nearby CHRONOS field. The razor, her phone,
our stars and any other ordinary items Kate brought from her time are gone.

Kate watched Jess struggle with his arthritis for months
before she showed up with the little red pills, telling Jess they were her
uncle's secret formula, something he makes at his pharmacy in New York.
Although Katherine would've raised bloody hell if she'd known, Kate said the
timeline wasn't going to be altered any more than it already was just because
she made one old man's life a little easier with something his great-grandkids
will be able to buy in any corner store.

I know I should tell Jess that Kate is missing, too, and I
open my mouth to do just that, but the words won't come out. It's almost like
me saying Kate is gone will make it real. Telling Jess that Kate is missing in
this timeline won't make him feel any better—he's seen more of her in the past
year than he has his granddaughter. He's a shameless old flirt and his face
lights up like a beacon every time Kate walks in the store.

If I tell him about Kate, I'll break down. I'm pretty sure
he will, too.

I push myself up and sit on the edge of the counter.
"I'll get you some more pills, Jess, next time I see Kate. She's—she went
back down to New York to visit with her uncle this morning, so it may be a week
or so."

He shakes his head. "It's not a problem. They're around
here somewhere. Amelia probably moved the box when she was cleaning. She's
always moving my things around." He slumps down onto the stool behind the
register, and I can see his right hand tremble a bit in his lap, before he puts
the left one on top to steady it.

Jess looks back up at
me,
his pale
blue eyes narrowed, and finally answers the question I asked earlier.
"Yeah.
Mary joined the Cyrists. She's been a Cyrist for
twenty some years now. But if you'd asked me that
yesterd'y
,
I'd have told you 'no, she's a Methodist like me and Amelia.' And it would have
been the God's-honest truth. Does her being a Cyrist have anything to do with
Irene's disappearance, lack of existence, whatever you call it?"

"Almost certainly.
The
Cyrists—"

"There are more of them now, aren't there? More than
there were before?"

I nod. "And if you'd been under a CHRONOS field six
months back when they did the first one of these shifts, you'd have a memory of
Cyrists never existing at all. Think about it, Jess—starting a bogus religion
is a surefire way to get people to follow you without question, assuming you
can find a way to get them to believe in the first place. If you had a tool
like this key, you could do some mighty impressive miracles. Prophecy is as
easy as pie if you can just jump ahead to see what happens in the future."