The past sucks, p.21
The Past Sucks, page 21
“Do not fool yourself that it is a small matter,” said a Boris. “Members of diametrically opposed philosophies will murder each other without compunction. If there is a word that captures the culture of the 34th century, it is intolerance.”
“We’re getting sidetracked,” said LaFratta. “We need more information about TDR.”
“What you need is a doctor,” I told him. The man looked dreadfully pale.
“One way or another,” he replied, “this will all be over in 48 hours. I’m not going to die before then.”
“But Yanto could,” said Rose. “He is a traitor and” — he pointed at me – “is gonna screw you up, my friend. Even if we don’t know exactly what he does. If we kill him, he can’t do it. Why can’t anyone else see that? As for Zeitzler, we kill him too.”
Boris Three waved for silence. “On your first loop, it was Yanto who returned you home. None of you others have been trained in temporal recall.”
“Not yet,” I said. “Twiddle some divining rods. How difficult can it be? Tell you what, you teach our earlier selves, after we kill Yanto.”
“Yeah.” Rose was bursting with enthusiasm. “We can say that the Kennel sent you Borises back to rescue us. Make you seem perfectly legitimate.”
“That is a good plan,” agreed Boris Two.
“But it is not our main reservation,” said Three. “Yanto got you back, which means if your Loop-1 selves return by a different route your Loop-2 presence in this timeline may be compromised.”
“I knew it!” I cried. “You can muck around in the past to your heart’s content,” I added, mimicking the Ox’s voice. “I knew it wasn’t true. At some point someone was bound to use phrases like temporal paradox to stop me doing what I want. I know you didn’t say those actual words, but that is what you meant, right?”
“He’s got a point,” said LaFratta. “Give us the truth, Borises.”
They explained. In detail. I didn’t understand all of it, but the basics came down to this. The fabric of reality is like troll skin: tough, stretchy, and regenerates. But not to an infinite degree. The bit of reality that we were looping through for a second time had been so severely damaged that mucking around here was more likely to screw up the 34th century. Brussels in 1848 should be declared a forbidden zone for time travelers.
That much matched what the Ox had told me.
And here was the interesting part that I did understand. The time segment we were currently looping through was a rancid mess, but it wasn’t our doing. Other time travelers had caused the damage long before I’d ever heard of the name Marx.
I bunched my fists, but I knew they weren’t going to get satisfaction. Not today. “Okay, so I can’t kill Yanto until we’re home. But I have to do something, and I know what.” I made for the door.
“I’ll come with you,” said Rose.
“No. Thank you, but what I have in mind will be easier to do alone.”
“We admire your decisiveness,” said both Borises in perfect unison. Now, that was freaky. “Nonetheless, you should tell us your plan. We may be able to advise.”
“Okay. Here’s what I’m thinking. At this moment, Loop-1 me is out exploring Brussels with a dirty hot binta. When we get back in an hour or so, my clothes – that I’m assuming really come from Alfred Zeitzler – are waiting for me on my bed. I’m going to walk into De Swaene, go into my room, and take a look at my clothes to see what’s special about them. Maybe rip them up. And no one here or there is gonna stop me.”
I waited a moment and was surprised when no one did.
“You should first verify your assumption,” said Boris Three.
“Huh?”
“Your earlier selves may not be following the exact sequence of events that you remember. You should first verify that you and DeSalle are indeed where you think you are.”
“Don’t listen to them,” said Rose. “Just do the damned business at De Swaene.”
I froze. Then whispered, “I think I have to do as the Borises suggest, William.”
“Why?”
“Because I already have,” I muttered. “I’m caught in a loop of time.”
The others all looked at me, demanding an explanation.
I didn’t reply for a while, too busy soaking in my stupidity. One of the reasons my observation corps had been successful was because the well-off didn’t pay close attention to the poor. In many cases, they looked away and pretended not to see them.
Odense was like that in the 23rd century, and 19th-century Brussels was no different. Naturally, I’d considered myself to be one of the poor.
Well, guess who just figured out that in 1848, he was a fully paid-up member of the bourgeoisie that Marx was always banging on about.
I’d already met Jennike on our first loop through, but I hadn’t really registered her as a person. She’d been too poor. Just background detail. But now I remembered her.
And the only plausible explanation for encountering her in Loop-1 was that my current Loop-2 incarnation had told her to spy on my earlier self. My future actions were already locked in because I’d already experienced them.
Welcome to the time loop, Stiletto.
Chapter 44
I gave Jennike the chance to get her breath back after running from the stallholders. She was still clutching the two parsnips.
My gaze caught on the blue ribbon she’d used to tie her long hair. I remembered noticing it when I’d first been here with DeSalle.
“I asked you to tell me who was in the Grand-Place,” I said gently, “not bring me ingredients to make a broth. I had a whole warehouse of vegetables a few days ago.”
“I’m sorry.” She sniffed. “I have failed you.”
“No.” I gently lifted her chin and when her eyes could meet mine, I told her, “You have not.”
“It was you, Monsieur. I panicked. I mean… Not you, but the person who so resembled you with the woman in the Grand-Place. You are so alike that I stared. Then your twin who is not a twin caught me staring and so I did the first thing that came into my silly head. I stole these stupid parsnips and was almost caught.”
Was that how it had happened? I grimaced when I tried to remember those first hours with DeSalle. The memories were fractured, and it hurt to think on them in any detail.
“Thank you, Jennike. You have told me that someone who looks very much like me is currently in the Grand-Place. That’s all I needed to know.”
“It was you, Monsieur DeSalle. Other than the hair, which was not a wig, I could not tell you apart. And your twin was with a woman.” Jennike sighed. “She was a goddess. Even dirty and in ill-fitting rags, she was beautiful beyond compare.” Her head dropped. “I could never be like her.”
I tousled her hair, but she shrugged me away. Sometimes, especially around Baetken and her kids, Jennike enjoyed behaving like a child. This was not one of those times.
“I do not wish you to be like her,” I told her. “You have a beauty of your own, Jennike. You don’t see it yet, but others do. And as for the woman you saw, her face radiates beauty but it is poison that fills her heart. No one would wish to be with her, not if they could help it.”
The words tasted harsh, but they cheered Jennike. In any case, Monique DeSalle wasn’t here on my second loop because she’d refused to help me. So the cold spacer could go suck the Devil’s teats.
Jennike’s eyes glazed, and she looked away. “Monsieur, how is it that you know this woman’s heart?”
The air chilled ten degrees.
Busted!
“Who is she?” Jennike asked, and then looked me in the eye with intense scrutiny. “And who are you?”
Kids aren’t stupid. Teenagers even less so. I don’t know why people find that difficult to understand because we were all kids once. And kids who survived growing up on the streets are a lot less gullible than those raised in a nice, warm house. I wasn’t about to insult her intelligence with any more pathetic stories about disguises.
“You caught me out,” I said.
She tensed.
“I’m from the future. A traveler in time.”
She nodded cautiously but didn’t seem surprised. “And that woman?”
“Her name is Monique DeSalle.”
“DeSalle!” Jennike gasped. “Your wife?”
She said that as if an accusation, though I wasn’t sure what the girl was accusing me of.
“No. I temporarily borrowed her surname because it sounded French. My real name is Stiletto. I traveled to this time and place once before, and that’s why you saw my earlier self just now.”
“And your first visit did not end well. So now you have returned and wish to learn why and how your earlier trip was ruined.”
“You’re a smart woman, Jennike. You do know that, right?”
She nodded.
“And now you know my secret too.”
Jennike laughed. “I’m smarter than you. Don’t worry, Monsieur Stiletto. Your secret is perfectly safe. If I told anyone outside our philanthropic society, they would box my ears and tell me to stop speaking such nonsense. If I persisted, they would lock me in an asylum.”
“Yeah. Sometimes the truth is a toxic burden.”
We were stuck in an awkward silence. I wondered if she was angling for more francs, but I’d already been generous to the point of spoiling her.
“Stay alert,” I told her. “I may need you later.”
Oh, who was I kidding?
To these youngsters, I was their favorite Uncle Stiletto. Mysterious, spiced with a little danger, and definitely from the wrong side of the tracks. Of course, I spoiled them.
At least, that was how I hoped they saw me.
I took Jennike’s hand and gallantly kissed its back.
She liked that very much.
And when she closed her hand, she squealed when she realized I’d left a twenty-franc coin inside. Yeah, she liked that even more.
* * *
I crept up the stairs, hoping to be in and out of our rooms at De Swaene without being noticed. No such luck. LaFratta heard, intercepting me as I was about to open the door to the room I shared with DeSalle.
“Why are you back so soon?” he demanded.
“DeSalle left something behind.” I rolled my eyes. “Specifically, a lady’s something. Naturally, she sent me back.”
He raised an eyebrow. “Your clothes are improved.”
Death and torment! I’d forgotten about that. “Just a temporary upgrade.” It wasn’t much of an explanation, but it was all I had. I went into my room and shut the door.
Temporary clothing upgrade. Idiot! As for what he thought DeSalle had left behind, I had no idea. None of us had exactly arrived in 1848 burdened with luggage, but it was too late to change my story now.
My new clothing was lying on my bed exactly as I remembered it. This time, though, I knew it had come from Zeitzler.
I checked the hat first. It was eight inches tall, but when I looked inside, there was only six inches between the brim and the lining. Was that normal? It could be a secret compartment.
The blue frock coat came next. I shook it out and, remembering how it had hung with a weighted hem, I felt along its hem and my fingers discovered hard lumps. At first I thought it could be a chain, but a chain would be smoother. This was jagged, like miniature metal vertebrae.
Vertebrae…
I returned to the hat, upending it and ripping into the lining. I would have noticed if my hat’s insides had been torn out, and I didn’t remember spotting that on my first loop. It meant that I was changing the sequence of events that had gone before, but I had to know. Beneath the lining, concealed behind wads of soft cotton was a crosshatch pattern of the same metal vertebrae I’d seen stitched into the time suit Laz Cohgun had shown me.
Time anchors.
I folded the clothes and piled them as neatly as I could, but there was nothing I could do about the hat lining.
Time to go.
I snuck back down the stairs. I had reached the main entrance from the Grand-Place when someone in the saloon bar called my name.
“Stiletto!”
There’s a special pull when you hear your name. A primitive and powerful magic. Even though I desperately didn’t want to do this, I turned my head to see who had spoken that magic word.
It was Yanto, standing there with confusion on his face. Behind him, sitting at his favorite table, I glimpsed the cause of all this. Karl Marx was taking a sip of his cheap wine, his brow furrowed in concentration as he worked on his manifesto.
I shrugged, as if I had made a mistake in thinking I’d heard my name. I walked out into the Grand-Place without a backward glance.
If anyone followed me, I was not aware of it.
I looked in every direction with suspicion.
And trusted no one.
Chapter 45
Showtime.
We took seats in the saloon of De Swaene and surveyed the scene.
The place was just busy enough that the other drinkers blocked a clear line of sight to Marx’s table, but we could see the earlier versions of our other selves watching DeSalle flirt with the bearded revolutionary.
It felt like I was seeing the same collection of mainly working men and a few tourists and gentlemen that were here before. But with every passing moment, my memory of that first loop grew more jagged and I was getting flashes and pops in my head.
The barman with the heavy moustache looked pleased, as well he should do. Custom was unexpectedly good this afternoon. I wondered how he would react if he knew that half his patrons were time travelers, and the bait that had ultimately drawn us all here was the scruffy German scribbling away every day, fueled by the tavern’s cheapest house red.
For all our efforts, we appeared to have changed precisely nothing, because now I was watching a rerun of Marx’s murder.
Weirdly, although my memory of that first loop had fractured, the individual shards were becoming ever sharper.
I didn’t need to see Marx to recall his jacket and the worn material at the elbows. Nor the gouge in the floorboard beneath his feet.
I could clearly see the old man in a blue and white striped jacket sitting two tables from Marx, contemplating his own glass of wine. I remembered the urge I’d felt to search out some scissors to tame the thick growth of his nostril hair.
There was one difference, of course. One way in which we were not passively watching a replay of earlier events. The five of us were here and would prevent whatever shenanigans were about to ensue. That was our plan.
For now, we let events play out. My loop-1 self was getting drinks from the bar while DeSalle worked on Marx. Loop-1 versions of LaFratta and Yanto were upstairs, the latter presumably hiding from the events he knew were about to unfurl.
Rose version one was sitting across the way with his back to the wall, beneath a mirror with an ornate brass border. He was watching not only Marx, but the rest of the room too.
So it was inevitable, I suppose, that he would notice us.
I had harbored a fear that if we met our earlier selves – not just glimpsed from afar but properly met — then there would be an earthquake that would send tremors through reality. And if we physically touched then the universe would self-annihilate.
Fortunately for all concerned, the world didn’t explode, and my admiration for the old army sergeant grew. When he spotted the future version of himself, his only reaction was the merest widening of his eyes.
He was an uneducated man born in the 18th century, but he was handling the complexities of time travel better than most of us from his far future. Go figure.
My Rose put a finger to his lips. His earlier self looked away and pretended we weren’t there. Simple as that. What a guy.
“What we should have done,” said LaFratta. I mean my LaFratta, not the one upstairs. “We should have asked Stiletto’s spy network to denounce our enemies as gendarmerie informers. If we come back for another go at this, we could circulate a sketch of Alfred Zeitzler. Your street kids can search the city for him and follow. Learn who else is with him too. Now we know where and when Yanto meets Zeitzler, they could both be taken out.”
I considered my shy and softly spoken colleague. “You mean murder them.”
“Yes. I haven’t forgotten that the Borises say we need Yanto to get us home. But there are poisons that stay in the body for a week or so before taking hold. Why? Do you disapprove, Stillo?”
“I’m not complaining. Just making sure we’re clear, because I never saw you as a killer, Sandro.”
“I’m not.” He gave me a pained look. “That’s why I need friends like you to survive.”
“Was that just spit and bluster?” asked Rose. “Or are you seriously suggesting we abort and loop back for another go at this?”
“To do so is out of the question,” said Boris Two. “This time and this place is already severely disrupted.”
“Has anyone other than Stiletto noticed the symptoms of time scarring?” asked Boris Three. “We’ve felt it since our arrival in 1848, and it’s getting worse.”
“Typical symptoms include brief whiteouts and blackouts,” said Boris Two. “Imaginary noises, often loud bangs. In extreme cases, short-term chrono-amnesia, flashes of time that you may feel that you have forgotten. However, proper testing would prove that you, in fact, never experienced these moments because you aren’t fully in phase with this timeline.”
Seriously?
I knew the Borises had their crypto-psycho thing, but surely even they should have mentioned time scarring earlier.
I ground my teeth but didn’t shout at them. I knew they weren’t trying to be unhelpful; they were just the worst at being helpful. It wasn’t only that they didn’t care what others felt, they couldn’t imagine what others were feeling, or what they wanted.
With less empathy between them than a lump of dried clay, you had to provide a constant commentary to explain the implications of what was going on around them.
I didn’t feel much empathy myself at the moment. I just wanted to slug them for being so annoying.
