Under A Velvet Cloak (32 page)

He shrugged with affected nonchalance. “Travel back in time, Nox, and verify it for yourself.” He faded out.

“I am not malign,” Jolie said angrily.

“I am sure you are not,” Kerena agreed. “But I must check.”

She checked. She phased down and moved back in time to check what she had not thought to check before: the connection between one of Jolie’s alignment nudges and the slaughter of the vampires. She attuned to the closest such change before the event, then traced the alternate timeline-the one not taken.

It was a routine meeting of Kerena and Vanja. Kerena, as Nox, was away from the warren most of the time, but she tried to check in with both Morely and Vanja frequently. In this instance, Vanja was out seeking a sheep for her necessary token taste of blood. The day was overcast, with rain threatening, so she was comfortable in the light. Kerena appeared, before her, solidified, embraced her, asked after Morely, then remarked that she had seen a sheep nearby.

Jolie stepped in and erased that as a deviance. So Kerena did not mention the sheep, and they parted. Vanja quested farther out, found another sheep, and returned to the warren in
good order.
That was all. All that had changed had been her harvesting a few drops of blood from a different sheep. No one else had been affected.

Meanwhile the hunter had stumbled upon the entrance to the warren, observed it, and in due course roused the villagers to their mayhem.

This time Kerena followed the other timeline: the one she had deviated from. In that one, Vanja went to intercept the closer sheep, tasted its blood, and moved on. The sheep hardly noticed, and went on grazing. Vanja headed for home.

And intercepted the hunter. Realizing that he was ranging awkwardly close to the warren entrance, she did what came naturally. She pretended to be an innocent wood nymph, which wasn’t difficult because she was already nude and shapely. She acted timid, retreating from the hunter in maidenly caution. He pursued her, and when they were fairly distant from the warren, she let him catch her for a fast crude plumbing, which she discovered she liked, once she experienced it. He was, she indicated in her silent nymphly way, a truly manly man. Well pleased with his conquest, the hunter soon recovered enough passion to do it again, before going on home to his compact wife. Naturally he did not mention the forest encounter to her, and his associate menfolk did not believe him on the following day. Everyone knew that forest nymphs could not be caught unless they wished to be, and why would such a creature ever want to be caught by him?

And he never found the warren entrance. It had been pure chance, which chance Vanja had distracted him from. She had unknowingly saved the warren from destruction.

Kerena did not follow the timeline farther. She knew it would end in destruction somewhere down the line, perhaps in centuries, but inevitably. The cost of saving it had, in some devious manner, been the murder of all the other vampires.

All because Kerena had said or not said a thing that put or did not put Vanja in the way of the hunter at the right moment. It was really Kerena’s fault. The afreet was painfully correct.

She suffered another siege of grief for Morely and the others, for the moment not regretting her vengeance against the villagers. Then she resumed time traveling.

This time she moved all the way back to the deviance closest before her conversion to vampire. That was the act that had introduced the taint. Sure enough, it was a dialogue wherein she said something that caused Morely to think of a possible consequence to her baby. Jolie had erased it, and the matter had not come up. Kerena could have waited for her conversion until after birthing her baby, had she considered that aspect. But Jolie had steered her into the other course, and the major horror of her early life had happened.

“I didn’t know!” Jolie protested. “I meant you no mischief.”

Kerena understood that. She also knew that had she not started her long quest to save her baby, she would not have become the Incarnation of Night, and acted in ways that helped save the timeline. Gaw~Two’s Taint was the price of that.

Yet if she had known, and avoided it, she would have been a far happier mother. How would she have chosen, had she seen the alternate consequences at the time of decision? She didn’t know. After all, her life would have probably have run its course before the end of the timeline came. She might have had nothing personal to lose.

“I have paid serious consequences for saving the timeline,” Kerena said. “I am not sure I want to continue that. Who else in the world even cares about my sacrifices?”

“I’m sorry,” Jolie said lamely. “It’s the only way we know. I didn’t think it would cost what it did.”

Kerena didn’t answer, but she doubted that was enough.

A few days later there came another divergence. This time Kerena did not simply accept it. “I want to know what the consequences of each choice are.”

“Salvation versus doom,” Jolie said. “Not immediately, but inevitably in the future.”

“The short-term consequences,” Kerena said grimly.

The point of divergence was seemingly innocuous, as they all were. Kerena was about to pay a routine visit to Vanja, who had settled in Kilvarough with a male vampire she had encountered, and was working as a night clerk. She had made a decent half-life for herself, and had largely recovered from the horror of the massacre. The two of them remained close friends, and Kerena often spent the night, giving extra pleasure to the husband. He resembled Morely, surely not entirely by coincidence; she closed her eyes and pretended. It was something they understood.

She phased in to Vanja’s day room, in the early evening. “Hello,” she said. “Is anyone home?”

Vanja appeared, garbed in a fetching nightie. “Kerena!” The two came together for a hug and kiss-and the lines blurred. Jolie immediately jumped it back to just before Kerena spoke.

“Hold,” Kerena told her. “I need to know.”

She held herself still in time and traced the course of the timeline she had been about to take. It proceeded to a hug by the two women, followed by a friendly dialogue, then a session where the two of them tackled the husband to see how often they could make him climax in exactly one hour.

Kerena slept with them, and departed in the morning, satisfied with the friendly outing. No problems there.

Then she followed the alternate timeline. In this one she paused a moment, then spoke. “Hello. Is anyone home?”

Vanja appeared. “Kerena!” The two ran together, embracing and kissing. “I was just about to get it on with Hubby. Come join us.”

Kerena did, and Hubby was highly appreciative. It was almost like old times with Morely. Kerena loved relaxing with folk of her own nature, keeping the necessary secrets. No one else in Kilvarough knew they were vampires, and Hubby did not know that Kerena was Nox. That was for his own safety, so that he could never inadvertently betray his knowledge of her and attract dangerous interest. He thought she was merely a vampire friend with traveling magic.

Nothing untoward here. Kerena tracked it farther-and saw that Vanja and Hubby got arrested two days later, charged as vampires, and slated for execution.

“That can’t be!” she told Jolie, who kept quiet. “Vanja is my last ancient friend.”

Kerena rechecked the first timeline. There there was no arrest. So the short term consequences were clear: the lives or deaths of her friends.

But why should such a trifling difference, a mere pause, change the realities so painfully? Kerena went back to the divergence point and extended her Seeing. And there it was: there was a neighbor woman who happened to glance in the window at just the moment that Kerena passed it. The neighbor evidently wondered how such a visitor had arrived without being seen at the walk outside. The neighbor was working in the adjacent garden, and would have noticed. Curious, she investigated-and discovered that there was something about her neighbor. That led to the query to the police, their checking of records, and discovery of Vanja’s background.

That pause doomed Vanja.

“No,” Kerena said. “I refuse to let any action of mine doom my last old friend.”

“But the alternate leads to doom for the timeline,” Jolie reminded her.

“We can’t be sure of that.”

“Check it.”

Kerena did, and found that the survival of the vampire couple did deviously lead to the destruction of the timeline. But she still refused to accept it. “If a small deviance from my natural timeline leads to the deaths of my friends, a small deviance from the other timeline should lead to its salvation. I just need to find the way. We are now so close to your ‘present’ that there should be many avenues to salvation.”

“I don’t advise this,” Jolie said. “I understand why you want to save

Vanja; I have known her as long as you have, in my fashion. But to trade her life for the whole timeline is unthinkable.”

“I’ll risk it,” Kerena said. She blocked Jolie’s effort, and proceeded to the first timeline, saving her friend. She said nothing of this to the vampire couple; it was just something she had to
do.

When she returned to her home, she had a visitor.

“So you finally did it,” the afreet said.

Kerena was not totally pleased. “What do you know?”

“That you refused a deviation. Now you have doomed, this timeline.”

“I have done nothing of the kind! I’ll find a way to change it back, with my friends alive.”

He smiled, again with no more than his mouth. “When you are satisfied that you can’t save it, call me.”

“Why?”

“Because there may be a way after all, if you have the gumption.”

“I have the gumption.” She was annoyed by his presumption, but that did not change the fact that he was her best of lovers. “Now is that the extent of your interest at the moment?”

“Such a lovely invitation.” He swept her in, and proceeded to the kind of passion that only he could generate.

Thereafter Kerena searched for ways to save the timeline. She discovered that key divergences were few; most accomplished nothing worthwhile. The course of the timeline was surprisingly stable. It proceeded slowly, subtly, but inevitably to its ultimate destruction.

There had to be a way! The destruction was not immediate; it would take a century for the subtleties to become obviously damning. So she proceeded with her other project, hoping that she could discover a world-saving avenue along the way. If that failed, well, she would ask the too-knowledgeable afreet. She didn’t want to do that; he was a great lover, but his attitude irritated her. It was as if he thought that a woman could not accomplish what a man could.

Jolie stayed out of it. She agreed with Kerena, and sympathized with her desire to save her friend. But she feared very much for her timeline. She sincerely hoped there was a way to get back on track It seemed that while every person on the globe was constantly making decisions, only those of Nox, and of Kerena before she assumed the Office of Night, affected the timeline in this manner. The hidden powers of Night were awesome, and invisible to others, even the Incarnations.

“I mean to emulate your timeline as closely as possible,” Kerena told Jolie. “I may no longer be exactly on it, but if I follow it closely I may be able to discover a way to cross back to it. I hope you will let me know where I deviate.”

“I will try,” Jolie agreed. It did seem sensible, in the circumstance. As it happened, her active part in her own timeline was just about to commence; that should facilitate this. But there was a tricky aspect.

Niobe’s granddaughter Orlene had lost her baby, Gaw~Two, and committed suicide. Orlene was Jolie’s friend, and she had come immediately to try to help the young woman. That meant that the Jolie of this second timeline was here with Orlene, and Jolie of the first timeline would be interacting with her other self.

“It’s not hard,” Kerena said with a passing trace of amusement. “Think of it as dividing into two selves. You both have similar minds and experience, so she should understand readily enough.” Then she reconsidered. “But will that foul the alignment?”

“If it does, I’ll know it.” But as she spoke, Jolie realized it wasn’t true. The timelines were no longer perfectly aligned. “No, I won’t know it. Maybe I should hide myself from her, so as to avoid affecting her.”

“No need. Since we are out of alignment, the worst you can do is put it further out-and if it is already doomed, that shouldn’t make much difference. Maybe your interaction will bring the timelines closer together. That could spare us both some serious mischief.”

So it might. But Jolie decided to remain clear for the time being. They joined the just-formed ghost Orlene, undetectably.

Jolie Two was there. “Orlene, let go! You will float directly to Heaven!”

Orlene’s soul writhed. “No, no, I must not go.”

“Orlene, it is Jolie, your dream friend. I would not guide you falsely. You are good; you have nothing to fear from the Afterlife.”

“I must not,” the soul protested, clinging.

The skeletal Death appeared. He spied Jolie and paused, surprised. “You know this client?” Jolie, having served as Gaea’s messenger, knew all the Incarnations.

“She is my friend, almost my child. I don’t know why she died.”

Thanatos clarified that Orlene’s baby had been tainted, and died early. Orlene wanted to recover him, even in death.

“Let me try to help her, Thanatos,” Jolie Two said. “Does she have to go to Heaven right away?”

“She does not,” Death answered. “Her balance is close. She was born illegitimate, had an extramarital affair, and committed suicide. Those three sins would have been enough to send her to Hell, were she not otherwise almost completely good. I leave the matter in your hands.”

“Thank you, Thanatos.”

The cowled figure nodded, then walked through the wall. Jolie Two had charge of this soul.

Jolie One nodded too. “I remember,” she told Kerena. “This is almost identical. The alignment is perhaps close enough to be restored.”

Kerena extended her Seeing. “That baby is now in Purgatory. I must fetch it.”

“You would deny a grieving mother her baby, even in death?” Then Jolie remembered. “Oh, of course. You’re Nox1″