Time Travel Omnibus, page 952
All right. Here goes.
Like I said, I was down in Jackson the day Clayton got shot. I watched him go down, saw the flecks of blood on his wife’s face, the bits of skull on the trunk of that open-top Tucker he was riding in. Jesus, I’ll be having nightmares about that till I die. If I die. If I last that long.
Sorry, I’m getting ahead of myself.
After the shots, the motorcade took off. Men in dark suits and sunglasses everywhere. One pointed a gun in my face, then moved on. No one knew what the hell was going on, not the people, not the cops, not the Feds. Everybody scattered. We all thought we might be next, like a presidential assassin would stick around to pop random civilians. We weren’t thinking straight. And I’m not proud to say it: I ran. Ran crying, even before they broke out the tear gas and fire-hoses to quell the riots. I just had to get away. It was chaos.
I made it half a mile before the adrenaline started to fade. I don’t even remember most of that. I was in a part of town I didn’t know too well. I’ve only lived in the area three months, and I stay home with my wife most evenings. Christ, my wife. She hasn’t stopped crying over Clayton. The woman cries in her sleep.
I don’t have the heart to tell her the other thing.
There was a bar there, and the door was open. I thought, yeah, I could use a drink right now, so I went in. The place was close to empty—just a couple of coloreds at one of the tables in the back. Colored bartender, too. That part of town. I got nothing against them, though—I’m pro-Full Rights—so I sat down, ordered a drink. They had Kraft on tap. I got a shot, too. Good whiskey, from Lower Canada. Smooth going down.
The TV was going. Ben Lambert, old stone-face from FBC news, was on, and he was crying and saying Clayton had been pronounced dead at 2:43 PM, Monday, November 14, 1966. May God rest his soul. I watched a bit of it, but it didn’t say much new. No one seemed to know what was happening. I let it fuzz out, ordered another shot, and nursed my beer. I didn’t even see the bartender when he went over and shut the door. I just heard it when he shot the bolt.
I set down my beer, looked around. The other coloreds had gotten up too, and were closing the windows. One went and turned off the television. I stood up, getting scared for the first time. I thought these people might be some of King’s Avengers, looking for a white man to hang from a tree. Shit, I liked Martin Luther King. I broke my radio when I heard he’d died when that nut blew up that bus in Memphis. That lunatic had three names too, but damned if I can remember the middle one. Dick Something Nixon.
“What the hell is this?” I asked.
“Easy now, mate,” the bartender said. He didn’t sound like any colored I’d heard in the South. Fellow sounded like he came from overseas. British? Australian? I never found out.
“Easy?” I asked. “You’re not gonna make pale fruit out of me?”
The guy frowned, like he’d never heard the phrase before. “Pale what?”
“White lynching,” said one of the others, an older woman with the same accent. “I read about it in Cimino’s last report. Happened all over the South in this fork.”
“It was going on in last fork I was in,” said the third colored. He sounded more normal, but he wasn’t from these parts. Minnesota, maybe. That weird, sorta-Swedish accent. Coulda been Upper Canadian, I suppose. “It’s why they sent us, instead of Nelson’s crew. We’re safer here.”
“Look!” I snapped. “Would someone just tell me what’s going on?”
“Easy,” the bartender said again. “We ain’t gonna hurt you. We just want to ask you some questions.”
“See,” said the woman, “we’re kind of lost.”
“Why don’t you sit down,” said the bartender. He held out a hand. “I’m Paul. Paul Clayton.”
That put a shock through me. “Like the President,” I said, shaking his hand.
“Who?” he asked.
The woman rolled her eyes. “The President, Paul. Just got shot. Weren’t you paying attention to the tube?”
“Oh,” the bartender said. “Yeah, him. Sorry.”
“Jesus,” said the other guy, the Canadian-sounding one. He headed toward the front door. “I’ll keep watch. You two handle the Q&A.”
“My name’s Emma Truman,” said the woman. “Also like the President.”
I frowned. “I don’t remember a President Truman.”
They all looked at one another. Paul grinned, then shook his head.
“Doesn’t matter,” said Emma. “Over by the door, that’s Tom Mansfield. What’s your name?”
“Jeff,” I said. “Jeff Wilcox.”
“Pleased to meet you, Jeff.”
“Look,” I said. “I’m not sure what’s going on. The President’s been dead for an hour, and now you three abduct me. This is weird, you know?”
“Honey,” said Emma, her eyes very serious, “I’ve seen weird. This is nothing.”
And left it there.
“This ain’t an abduction, mate,” Paul said. “It’s more of a . . . detainment. You’re safe, don’t worry. We just need some help. Like Emma said, we’re lost. We need to get our bearings.”
“Lost?” I asked. “You work here.”
“Will you sit down?”
Paul’s voice didn’t change much, but there was a tightness to it that scared me a little. And for the first time, I saw the bulge under the sweater he had on. Christ, I thought, he’s got a gun.
I sat down.
“Thanks,” Emma said. “Just a few minutes, and we’re out of your hair. Promise. What do you do for a living, Jeff?”
“I work over at Davis High. I’m a history teacher.”
The guy by the door, Tom, broke out laughing. Paul cracked a smile too. I think I even saw a flicker in Emma’s eye. “That’s . . . convenient,” she said.
“You get the day off because the President was in town?” asked Paul. “This president with the same name as me?”
“Yeah,” I said. “It was going to be a big thing for the students. Most of them came into town with their families. A lot of them were probably there when . . . oh, man.” I hung my head. It was really starting to sink in.
“It’s rough, I know,” Paul said. “You wish you could go back and change things. Make it like it never happened.”
“Yeah,” I said. “That’s exactly it.”
Emma scowled. “That’s a bad wish, Jeff. You don’t know how bad.”
I looked at her, hard. “That’s about the fifteenth really weird thing you’ve said since I met you, Emma.”
“It won’t be the last. What are you doing?”
I’d pulled out a cigarette, had the match out. “Smoke?”
“They still do that in this fork, Emma,” said Paul, and waved a hand at me. “Good on you, mate. Go ahead.”
I lit up. The smoke calmed my nerves a little. “You keep mentioning forks,” I said. “What’s that about?”
They looked at each other. Emma shrugged. “Don’t see the harm in telling you,” she said. “But we go first, all right?”
I was pretty sure she had a gun too, so I nodded.
“Okay,” said Paul. He pulled out a pad of paper and a pen. “Quick quiz, mate. About history, so this should be easy. First question—is America at war right now?”
“Of course,” I said. “In Korea. We’ve been over there since 1951.”
“Korea,” said Paul. “Hm. Good, that’s a start. Against the communists?”
I blinked. “Are you kidding me?”
Paul stopped writing. He didn’t look happy. “Maybe . . .”
“Jeff,” Emma asked, leaning in. “Who are we fighting in Korea?”
“The Japs,” I said. “Who else?”
“Ah, shit,” said Tom from the door. “It’s one of those.”
“I thought we’d dealt with that tangle,” said Emma.
“We did,” Paul said. “Wang’s crew, a while back. Something must have re-tangled it.”
I sighed, taking another drag. “I suppose I’ll figure out what a ‘tangle’ is later, too.”
“Probably,” said Paul. “What happened at the end of World War Two, Jeff? Who won?”
Seriously. He asked that.
“Nobody won,” I said. “Hitler took most of Europe, but we kept him out of England, and Trotsky’s Reds pushed him back before he could storm Moscow. It was the same with the Japs. They kept some parts of Asia, we took back others. Then they dropped a nuke on Kauai.”
“Nuke . . . on . . . Kauai,” said Paul, writing fast, his eyebrows rising.
“America had nuclear weapons too, though, right?” asked Emma.
“Yes,” I said. “Enough to hit Okinawa, then threaten to drop more on Tokyo and Berlin. But the Nazis had them too, and so did the Reds. Hence the truce.”
“Four-way cold war,” said Paul, impressed. “That’s a new one.”
It went on from there. I stopped thinking it was a joke pretty quick. These guys really didn’t seem to know much about history. I mean, they had it all wrong. They’d never heard about half the presidents, they didn’t know that Lenin named Trotsky his successor over in Russia—they asked about some guy named Stalin, whoever that is. They seemed to think there was some kind of economic depression, back in the ’20s. They thought Canada was still one country instead of three, that the Italians were Germany’s allies during the war instead of ours, and that there was this place called Vietnam, somewhere in the Greater Jap Empire. I think they even mentioned America having fifty-one states, at one point. It was by far the strangest hour of my life—and this is on the same day Clayton got killed.
Then it got stranger.
“Fine, then,” Paul said, taking a puff of his smoke and coughing a little. He’d bummed one from me; so had Tom. Emma was completely appalled. It was pretty obvious that neither of them had smoked before, and while Tom had turned green and put his out right away, Paul was enjoying his, kind of like I’d enjoyed sneaking my first beer when I was twelve. “World War One. How did it start?”
“Archduke Ferdinand got shot. A Serb did it, named Gavrilo Princip. Only two names—he was one of the rare ones.”
Paul stopped writing and gave Emma a look. She raised an eyebrow. I thought they wanted more, so I kept going.
“I think it would have happened anyway, though—most of Europe was just waiting for a reason at the time. The Russians—”
“That’s all right, Jeff,” Emma said, as Paul closed his notebook and put it away. “Was the president at the time Woodrow Wilson?”
“Yes,” I said.
“How long did he stay in power?”
“Until 1916,” I said. “Then John Gavin beat him when he was up for reelection.”
“There it is,” said Tom.
“We got our divergence,” Paul said.
Emma held up a hand, stopping them. “What happened at the end of the war?”
“Gavin got us involved right away,” I said. “That was the platform he ran on—helping friends in their time of need. Bulgaria surrendered early. We drove the Germans and Austrians back, and they capitulated in the summer of 1917. The Ottomans held out for most of another year, but that was more of a footnote, really.”
“There . . . it . . . is,” Tom said again, peering out the window. “We’ve got what we need, Em. We should go. There’s police coming—they’re probably looking for the guy shot this Clayton.”
“Yeah,” said Emma, standing up. “Paul, go down and get the pod warm. We’ll be along.”
“On it,” said Paul. He stubbed out his cigarette. “Thanks for the smoke. It was . . . interesting.” He clapped me on the arm, then headed toward the stairs that led down to the bar’s basement.
The others started getting ready to go. “Thank you for your help, Jeff,” Emma said, all business. “You got us pointed in the right direction.”
“Hold on,” I said, reaching out to grab her arm.
As I did, I heard a click, and glanced across the bar. Tom had drawn his gun. It didn’t look like any weapon I’d ever seen. It was sleeker, made of what looked like ceramic, with a red light on top. But none of that matters with guns, really. What matters is the hole in the end, and whether it’s pointed at you. Tom’s was.
“Get back from her,” he said.
“Whoa,” I said, raising my hands and stepping away from Emma.
She shook her head, her eyes locking with mine. “Put it away, Tom. You think a history teacher’s going to take me hostage? Besides, he’s unarmed. You saw the scan when he came in.”
Tom pursed his lips, giving her a look that said you never know. But he holstered his gun under his jacket anyway. She was definitely the one in charge. It seemed weird, watching a woman order armed men around.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I didn’t mean to startle you.”
“Don’t worry about it,” Emma replied. “Besides, it’s my fault. I promised you answers.”
“We don’t have a lot of time,” Tom said, looking outside again.
Emma turned back to me. “I’m sorry, Jeff. I’ll have to make this quick.” She paused, her brow furrowing. “You ever read science fiction? Any H.G. Wells?”
“Sure,” I said. “War of the Worlds. Fellow made a radio show of it, caused a riot.”
“Yeah,” Emma said. “I’m talking about another story, though. The Time Machine.”
It all went click then. I stared at them. “You’re telling me you’re from the future?” Because they sure didn’t look like they were from the past.
Emma nodded. “A hundred and fifty years from now. Or rather, not from now. You see, time’s kind of like a tree. It’s constantly forking into different branches. In one time, the French come to the colonies’ aid during the revolution, and you get America. In another they don’t, and you get something else. In one, D-Day works out fine. In another, the Germans find out in advance, and it turns into a bloodbath.”
“What’s D-Day?” I asked.
“Never mind. What I’m telling you is, the world I grew up in lay in a different fork from yours. Or so we thought, anyway. It’s more complicated than that.”
“You can change a fork, by messing with shit in the past,” Tom put in.
I blinked at them. “You mean, if you went back, say, and stopped that bomber from killing Hitler in ’47, everything now would be different?”
Tom snickered.
“Uh, yeah,” Emma said. “Something like that. So you can see how what we do got very, very dangerous. Fortunately, people understood it was a bad idea to go back and mess with history, so the powers that be worked out an arrangement. A temporal détente.”
“Yeah, that worked,” muttered Tom.
Emma shrugged. “It did, for a while. But then something went wrong. One day the world woke up, and nothing was the same. The Soviet Union was still around, but America had broken up. Most of Europe was a radioactive wasteland. It was a mess.”
I’d been nodding up till now. Now I squinted at her, dragging on my cigarette. It had burned down, so I put it out. “How did anyone know things had changed?” I asked. “I mean, the world they knew must have been normal to them, right?”
“It was,” Emma said. “But some of us were out in the flow when it happened. When we came home, everything was different. My parents never even met, and Tom’s and Paul’s never existed. Don’t try to think about how that’s possible, it only hurts. I don’t know the answers. I just know that our world’s gone, and we don’t know why.”
“Terrorists,” Tom muttered.
Emma waggled her hand. “It could have been a lot of things. An accident. Some country broke the treaty. None of us were sure. But we didn’t like the world as it was, so we got the hell out, and came back to fix things.”
“Ah,” I said. “That’s why you wanted to know about history. You need to find out where things changed.”
“Yes. So we can change them back.”
“And you think it has something to do with President Gavin.”
She shrugged. “Maybe it does, maybe it doesn’t. It’s not the first thing we’ve fixed. Every time we think we’ve set things right, the divergence shifts further back. We first thought this whole thing started because someone tried to stop some buildings being blown up in 2001. Now the fork happens almost a whole century earlier. All I know is, there was no John Gavin in our election in 1916, and Wilson got re-elected. So that’s where we’re headed.”
“Sounds like someone’s one step ahead of you. Or behind, I guess.”
“No shit,” said Tom, chuckling. “I’m telling you, Em, it’s terrorists.”
“Whatever it is,” she said, rolling her eyes, “we’ve got other teams searching the flow for the cause. Paul, Tom and I, we’re strictly recon and containment. We fix time when it breaks.”
There was a hammering outside, and shouting. Men were pounding on the door of the barber shop next door. Tom looked out and sucked a breath through his teeth. “Out of time, Em. School’s out,” he said, drawing his gun once more. “We’ve gotta go.”
Emma looked at me. I looked at her. “One more question,” I asked. “When you go back to 1916—when you make sure Wilson wins—what happens to this?” I waved at everything, all around.
Really meaning, what happens to me.
She shook her head. “I don’t know. This world will probably still exist somewhere, in another fork. Maybe in a lot of them. But as for this fork, things will change. You’ll wake up one day, and everything will be different. But that could happen anyway, if whoever’s causing the trouble goes back and, say, makes sure Custer survives Little Big Horn. It’s probably inevitable, so you’d best make peace with it.”
The noise next door stopped. I could hear footsteps crunching on gravel.
“Out,” Tom said. “Now.”
Emma nodded, then leaned in and kissed me on the cheek. I remember she smelled like rain.
“Good-bye, Jeff,” she said. “And thanks.”
With that, she turned and went downstairs after Paul. Tom followed, stopping only to point at the floor, his eyes heart-attack serious. Stay here.
