Time's Enemy: A Romantic Time Travel Adventure (Saturn Society Book 1) (11 page)

That was a good way to describe the fatigue that had fallen over him as soon as he’d gone back two years, when he’d noticed Dora’s suddenly-different clothes. Mexico had been worse, although he’d attributed that to his injuries. “I guess so.”

“So when you go back in time, or come back to the present, do it here and we’ll take care of you. Handy, huh?” She opened the door opposite the alcove.

“You mean this is something... other people can do?”

She gave him a patronizing expression, like she was explaining something to a small child. “Well, yeah.”

Tony followed her into the room. She motioned to the round, wooden table in its center and four accompanying, straight-backed chairs. “Have a seat.”

“So, uh...” So many questions. “When I go to the past, how do I come back—” Tony began.

“Unnnngh!” A groan came from the hallway.

“Oh crap.” The woman jumped for the door, but not fast enough to keep the moan’s source from Tony’s view.

“Unngh! Uhhhh!” The man lurched around the doorframe, his vacant eyes unfocused, his mouth slack. Wispy, gray hair covered his almost-bald head. “Huhhhhhh-uhhh!” A string of spittle slipped from the corner of his mouth.

Tony recoiled. Good God, what kind of research did they do?

Taylor grabbed the man’s gnarled hand. “Come on Fred, let’s get you back to your room. It’s almost time for
Jerry Springer.
” She dragged him away. More groans, higher-pitched. “I’ll be back,” she called to Tony, pulling the door shut. The moans grew more insistent as they faded.

Pressure built in Tony’s chest. Was that what happened to their research subjects? He folded his hands at his waist, gripping the left tightly with the right. Maybe he should leave. He could sneak out while that girl was taking care of Fred—whoever he was.

No.
He’d come for answers, and he was going to get them. The suspicion that the girl was up to something was only him not wanting to admit that there was something to this time travel stuff. If she tried to pull anything funny, he could force his way past her if he had to.

He studied his surroundings. It wasn’t much of a conference room, lacking the lush appointments of the entryway. Scratches marred the table and credenza along the side wall. The desk lamp on the latter did little to illuminate the windowless room.

He took a chair, hoping the woman would return soon. There wasn’t so much as a year-old copy of
People
to read. Above the credenza hung a silver relief image of the planet Saturn, flanked by three stars. Above it, a banner proclaimed Learn—Observe—Preserve.

Across the room, an institutional wall clock broke the expanse of wall where the bricked-in windows were, and beside it hung a plain calendar turned to March of the current year. The only other decoration in the room was a trio of framed, old-fashioned photographs on the wall opposite the credenza. In one, a stolid gentleman in a derby hat handed a paper to a white-haired, black man in similar attire. The middle photo showed the exterior of the house, before the two second story windows had been bricked over. In the third, two men posed in front of a frame building with “Goodwin’s Smoke Shop - 140 Harrison Street” painted on the plate glass window. An antique car stood in front of it. Someone had scrawled a date in spidery, old-fashioned script across the bottom: 26 February, 1913. The little store must’ve been what was there before the Saturn Society house.

“Hey Chad, it’s Taylor,” the woman said from down the hall, her voice loud enough Tony didn’t have to strain to hear. “I wanted to let you know that Tony Solomon just showed up. I’m going to go ahead and give him the test, so call me when you get this... bye.”

She appeared a minute later with a sheaf of papers in hand, and sat in the chair across from Tony. “I couldn’t get hold of Chad, but I know he’ll want me to go over this stuff with you.” She slid the papers across the table, along with a pen.

Tony picked up the top sheet. The heading read “Saturn Society,” with “Membership Application” below it. “What is this Saturn Society, anyway?” He flipped through the papers. “I’d never heard of it until Everly came up to me in the parking garage.”

“Not surprising. We keep a low profile.”

“What hap- who was that man who came in here a few minutes ago? Is he—”

“Don’t worry about him.” She dismissed Tony’s question with a wave. “He’s... a ward of the Society. Nothing to concern yourself with.”

Tony frowned at the door, then at Taylor. “I thought this was a research organization.” The more he thought about it, the less scientific the place looked.

Taylor chewed her lower lip. “Well... sort of. That’s our public face, so we can do stuff like own property and have bank accounts.”

“You don’t research time travel, then?”

“We
do
it. As for research, we keep records and stuff, like what we see when we go into the past, what happens there. Ways we die, how we heal—”

“You what?” He stared down at his hands. Could his sacrifice and death have been real? “You mean... I really died? This shit’s for real?”

“As real as you and me sitting here.”

“You can do this?”

“Sure. Though the farthest back I’ve ever been is 1927. Way cool. I tell you, people back then knew how to party—”

“How far back can you—can other people go?”

“Depends on the individual. Some people can go back centuries, others only decades.” She crossed her legs, bumping one of his. “There’s a limit, of course. Something to do with the expansion of the universe—jump back too far, and the earth’s orbit will have been different enough that you’d warp into empty space. If your destination isn’t habitable, you don’t warp at all. Prevents us from warping inside of a wall or a mountain, stuff like that.”

“Habitable” wasn’t a word Tony would use to describe the world of the ancient Mayans, though perhaps if one weren’t being sacrificed... “So you warp into the same physical location you are in the present?”

“Exactly.”

“What about the future?”

She pressed her lips inward. “Can’t be done.”

“How do you know?”

She turned her hands palms-up. “How can you go somewhere when you can’t visualize it? Sure, we get visitors from the future every now and then, but they don’t tell us much. Don’t want to take the chance they might change something, you know.”

“But surely someone’s tried.”

“A lot of people have. Most of them don’t go anywhere. The few who managed to jump never returned.”

Which didn’t worry Tony. He wasn’t interested in visiting the future. All he wanted to do was warp into the past a few years and keep Bethany from getting in that car. “So how many people are in this organization?”

The girl’s eyes rolled up to her left. “Maybe nine or ten thousand, world wide. Several hundred here in the United States.”

“How long has this organization been around?”

She settled back in her chair, as if relieved he’d finally asked an easy question. “The Society was founded back in the fifteenth century. By Spanish missionaries in Mexico, I think, but no one’s sure since most of the records from back then were destroyed by the Church, and most of us now aren’t powerful enough to go back that far.”

“Powerful enough? What do you mean?”

“The farther back you go, the more brain power it takes.”

“Huh?” Tony’s brows drew together. The power of your own mind, Everly had said.

“Well, yeah, how do you think it works? You know, we only use something like, what, ten percent of our brains? And all time is, is perception, isn’t it? Anyway, the Society—”

“So what you’re telling me is that the farther into the past you go, the more mental energy it takes.”

She cocked her head. “Well yeah. Isn’t it that way for you?”

“I don’t even know how I got this... this thing. How—”

“You died, right?”

Tony’s eyes darted to the credenza, to his lap, to the door. He remembered what Dora had told him in the hospital.
You lost your pulse.
“I guess I might have for a second.”

“Did you have a near-death experience? You know, the tunnel, the bright lights...?”

“I might have.” It wasn’t just a dream. Hell’s bells, he’d died. Died and come back. With something...
extra.

His eyelids itched. His tie was too tight. He ran a finger around the inside of his collar. “What’s that got to do—”

“People usually get it during a near-death experience. Something to do with the brain impulses and chemicals released when the body’s about to shut down and then doesn’t, or something happens so you live after all. If someone who can time travel touches you at that moment, boom. You’re one of us.”

One of them? Good God. “You make it sound like... vampires, almost.” The thought made him queasy, though he wasn’t sure why. It wasn’t like he’d developed a sudden urge to suck blood.

The girl drew herself straighter in her chair. “Vampires? I never thought of it that way. That’s cool!”

Who could’ve passed him the ability? Dozens of people had touched him as he lay on the side of the pyramid. Keith. Violet. Other people from the office. Dozens of strangers. Could one of his coworkers be keeping a tremendous secret like this?

He’d probably never know. It wasn’t the sort of thing one brought up over chili at lunch, or at the bar after work. “So what makes you... go back in time then? Everly said something about...” He felt stupid saying something so absurd. “The power of the mind.” She leaned her elbows on the table, her chin propped on her hands, so he went on. “The other day, I was just thinking about some time in the past, and then, next thing I know, it’s two years ago, whether I wanted it to be or not.”

She put her hands down and nodded. “It gets easier.”

“And I got really dizzy for a few seconds.”

“Right, that happens when you warp in time. Anyway, the Society was formed back in the 1600s to be like, a support group or something. Because you couldn’t talk to just anyone about time travel, you know. They got executed, burned at the stake and stuff. People thought they were witches, or heretics.”

“I can imagine.” Tony pushed away the memory of the ancient Mayans slashing his clothes off.

“Yeah. But with the Saturn Society, they could band together, protect themselves, share knowledge and so on. We’ve got houses like this one all over the world, so we can help each other. And find new people like you.”

Something like relief settled over Tony’s insides. Everly was legit. Now all Tony had to do was find out how he could go back three years and prevent his daughter’s murder. But as he opened his mouth to ask, Taylor rose. “Listen, I have some stuff I need to do for Chad, so I have to get back to my desk. Why don’t you go ahead and get started on this, okay?”

“Yeah, sure.” He read over the top page of the stack in front of him and started to skim through it. Standard stuff—name, address, birthday, where he worked. “Hey, I have another question.”

Taylor paused in the doorway.

“I heard you say something about a test. Is there some sort of initiation for this thing?”

She waved at the floor. “Oh, it’ll be easy for you. I wouldn’t worry about it.”

“But—”

She left, pulling the door shut behind her.

“Wait!” Tony jumped up as the doorknob clicked. He grasped it, but it wouldn’t turn.

She’d locked him in.

“H
EY!”
T
ONY YELLED.
“O
PEN THE DOOR!
I’m locked in!”

Not so much as a footstep echoed in the hall. “Hey! Let me out!” He banged on the door.

No response.

Taylor Gressman hadn’t locked him in by mistake.

Further pounding and shouting got him nothing but sore knuckles and a scratchy throat. Even threats of a lawsuit got no response.

He walked across the room. He’d seen no one else in the building besides the severely disadvantaged Fred. If she didn’t let him out, he was screwed.

He sat at the table and skimmed over the rest of the form. Questions regarding his income and assets. He didn’t like where that was going.

No thank you.
The group was probably a scam, one of those white-collar cults who fleeced members out of their life savings, then disappeared. But the idea that time travel was possible, and others could do it...

No, it had to be a con, and the woman a clever actress. They’d probably read the account in the
National Weekly Star
.

The last page of the forms listed a series of provisions with a line below for him to sign, indicating his agreement to abide by them.

Agreement to maintain silence.
Pretty simple. The Society wanted their members to keep this time travel stuff hush-hush. No problem there, Tony didn’t exactly want to be tossed into a rubber room.

Political and religious neutrality.
When visiting the past, he was supposed to blend in with the society and culture—and if their beliefs didn’t mesh with his own, he was to keep his mouth shut.
Makes sense.
God knew how many throughout history had died for practicing the wrong religion, or claiming allegiance to the wrong king. He could deal with that. He hadn’t so much as stepped inside a church or temple since Bethany’s funeral. He continued reading.