All the Colors of Time (17 page)

Okay, I thought, that was another possibility. Ian didn’t
die; he abandoned Mary out of fear for his own life.

Right. And dragons fly daily out of LAX. Who was I kidding?
Ian would never leave Mary. Not while there was still life left in him.

Ultimately, as I sat huddled before my Grid comp, bathed in
the colored backwash from its uninformative display, I could see only one way
to assure both Ian’s existence and my own and I was sitting on it.

oOo

“Captain,” I said, “we need to talk.”

The
Essex
rolled
into a long trough and wallowed there momentarily, challenging my sea legs. He
hesitated with her, then turned from the helmsman to face me.

“Ah! If it isn’t the guardian angel.”

“I’m not an angel, Charley, and I’m about to prove it.”

He eyed me suspiciously. “What are you about, lad?”

I sighed. “I wish I knew. Come below with me a moment. We
need to talk.”

He glanced at the helmsman, who squinted dispassionately
ahead, clutching the wheel in gnarled hands.
Essex
charged up another long wave and teetered at its top.

What the passengers don’t know, I thought, would definitely
make them sicker.

“I belong on deck in heavy weather, boy. But, here . . .”
He moved to the fore side of the mizzen mast and beckoned me to follow him.

I didn’t see any errant blocks dangling about, so I did.
Then I went on the offensive. “You’re trying to kill Dr. Mac,” I accused him.

He gazed at me steadily. “You think that of me, boy?”

“I
know
that of
you. It’s got to stop.”

“Oh, has it? And can you thwart destiny, then? Is that
within your powers?”

“Charley, look. If you and Mary—Maureen—are destined, then
you don’t need to be doing this to Ian.”

“She is currently a married woman, Arthur. I can’t wed a
married woman and her husband shows no inclination toward abandonment. In fact,
he’s a most loyal and responsible fellow. Under other circumstances, I’d find
him quite likable.”

“There are alternatives, Charley.”

He nodded. “Aye. I suppose he might sicken and die when we
reach Bombay or suffer amnesia in a fall from bed. But why should I wait? What
difference how he dies?”

“The difference is, if he dies from natural causes, my an—er . . .
you won’t go down in history as a murderer or at least a suspected one. More to
the point, you won’t, in fact, be a murderer.”

“But I’ve already murdered Ian MacCormac in my heart several
times o’er, lad.” He shrugged. “Damage is done.”

“Look, if you could rewrite history as you wanted, what
would you have happen?”

He frowned. “You mean history . . . between
me and Mary?”

“Yes.”

“Well, I’d meet her before he could. Sweep her off her feet.
Marry her and carry her off to sea before young Dr. Mac even figured in the
story.”

“Then Ian wouldn’t have to die and you wouldn’t be a
cold-blooded murderer.”

“No, I suppose not. And I’d never be a
cold-blooded
murderer.” He grinned wickedly.

I took a deep breath. “What if I told you you could do
that—go back in time and meet her first?”

“I’d say you were tetchy from all the pitching.”

“The
Warren Hastings
,”
I said. “Maureen Llewellyn. Need I say more?”

“I believe you can see the future, lad. I don’t believe you
can travel to the past.”

“I can. I’ll prove it.”

“Right and well. Show me a sign. Make the lightning strike
the ship and knock me dead.”

“Don’t tempt me,” I growled. “Come below with me. I’ve got
something to show you.”

“What? More little flashing baubles invented by your uncle?
A whole trunk full of ’em?”

I chilled. Reardon had told him. No, I realized as his hand
slid surreptitiously to his coat pocket, Reardon had given it to him. I smiled.
Two birds, one stone.

“Something much bigger and better than that,” I said. “Come
down and take a look.”

“Ah, so you can rap my melon and throw me overboard?”

“Gee-zoo, Charley! What an imagination! I wouldn’t harm a
hair of your mustache. Not with a ship full of loyal crewmen to tear me limb
from limb. That’d be about the stupidest thing I could do. I just want to show
you something to convince you I can travel in time.”

“Show me here.”

“Charley . . .”

As Providence would have it, we received, at that very
moment, a lurid manifestation of that phenomenon known as Saint Elmo’s fire. I
could not, in my wildest sea-dreams have conjured up anything so perfect. The
helmsman called out above the hiss and rattle of wind and rigging and pointed
aloft, looking incredibly archetypal. Every man on deck looked up into the
darkening sky and smiled. Their patron Saint had blessed them—Bombay, look out.

Charley looked at me suspiciously. “It’s beyond the powers
of men to bring on Elmo’s fire.”

“Yes, it is,” I agreed cheerfully. “Or travel in time,
either, I suppose. Or foretell the future.”

“All right. Show me your miracle in the hold, Arthur Dunbar.
But it had better convince.”

We went down into the
Essex
’s
forward hold via the aft-most hatch. I had no intention of making my way down
an open rolling, deck with Black Charley Dunbar on my heels. I sent him down
the stairs first and directed him all the way to the forward hatch through O’Hara’s
carefully ordered cargo.

Halfway to our goal I told him to take out the “bauble” he
had in his pocket and use it to light our way. That rattled him a little and I
felt a moment of giddy power.

“I don’t know how it works,” he complained.

I heard him fumbling for it and removed it from his
possession, then unleashed a flood of soft pink-white light on our
surroundings. Shadows loomed and crouched. A few scuttled. They were small
enough to ignore, so I did . . . assiduously.

Behind the forward steps we came face to blank face with my
Crate. Charley stopped.

“It’s a shipping crate,” he informed me.

“Is it?” I felt for the palm plate (a crudely stenciled palm
tree, no less). It recognized my imprint and activated the door. “After you,” I
said.

He peered at me intently in the skewed light, then
hesitantly slipped into the big box. “Blessed saints and angels!” he muttered
as the lights, dimmed in my absence, came full on.

The interior of the Crate carried no semblance of
crate-ness; it was an ergonomically designed, state-of-the-art piece of
machinery with all the attendant frills and furbelows of same—blinking
indicators showing time and space coordinates, temperature, barometric
pressure, life support readings, oxygen mixture adjustments for the additional
passenger and, of course, the onboard computer console and tactical display. The
actual muscle of the thing—the Temporal Grid itself—was tucked out of sight
under the flooring. All very impressive, I’m sure, to a man whose idea of
hi-tech was a particularly well-oiled capstan and a few extra sails.

“This is—is . . . What is this?” he
stammered, making an all-inclusive gesture.

I tried not to let the growing sense of power go to my head.
“This is my time machine.”

He gazed around the tiny chamber, his eyes lighting on the
lettering on the face plate of the Field Generator. “Tegren? Sounds like some
sort of mythological beast.”

“Temporal Grid Enclosure. Time machine to you. Do you
believe me now?”

“Where are you from? Are you an angel or a devil?”

“Neither. I’m an historian.”

“Ah. A little of both, then.”

I ignored the quip. “Do you believe me?”

“How does it work?”

I sighed. “Reader’s Digest version: We call it Shifting the
Spectrum. It takes advantage of the fact that light behaves both as a wave and
as a particle.”

He stared at me blankly.

“Look, that branch of science hasn’t been discovered yet. In
fact, the word science hasn’t even been coined. Let’s skip the explanations.”

“What’s Reader’s Digest?”

“Look, do you believe me? Come on, Charley. Do you want to
marry Mary without resorting to murder, or not?”

“How will it work? How can I meet Mary before he does?”

“By making sure you’re in the right place at the right time.
Are you ready to try it?”

He glanced around again, then nodded uncertainly.

“All right. Now, they met five months ago yesterday morning
in Manley Park, right?” I settled in over the Grid comp.

“Aye. She fell from her horse.”

“All right. Where were you that morning?”

“In town at . . . at an hotel, as it were.”

“And you spent the night there?”

“Aye.”

“I need an address.”

“Very well. Four Dunne’s Cottage.”

I repeated the address to the computer and was rewarded with
a map of the area, its houses and businesses marked as accurately as possible.

“Spatial coordinates drawn from Four Dunne’s Cottage,” I
ordered. “Temporal Coordinates: April 10, 1805—twenty three hundred hours.”

“It was the eleventh,” said Charley. “They met on the
eleventh.”

“I want to have a head start. You’re so bull-headed it’ll
probably take you all night to convince yourself to go along with you.”

“Beg pardon?”

“I’ll explain later. Sit down.” I pointed him to a spot on
the floor.

“I can see this contraption wasn’t made for comfort.”

I ignored him, crossed my fingers and began a pre-Shift
systems check. It was completed in seconds. I sent an emergency-Shift blip to
my Shift-Eye and engaged the Field Generator.

It hummed. Charley looked concerned.

“Close your eyes,” I warned him. “Otherwise you might
embarrass yourself.”

First-timers often neglected to close their eyes out of a
desire to see the pretty colors generated as their physical reality responds to
the Spectral Field. They also often lose the contents of their stomachs. For
some reason, I’ve never done that, but then I’m of particularly hardy stock.

Charley closed his eyes and did not lose his lunch, but he
was surprised as hell when I asked him to open them again bare moments later.

“That’s it?” he asked. “We’re back in London? Back in time?”

“Yes, sir. We are.” I scanned our immediate surroundings.
Not pretty. We were a couple of inches deep in water of an unhealthy hue and
surrounded by general refuse—broken boxes, stove-in barrels, splintered
carriage wheels. We blended nicely into the contents of the alley next to Four
Dunne’s Cottage.

I wrinkled my nose in anticipation. “Not a good
neighborhood. Geez, Charley, can’t you afford better than this?”

“I don’t need to afford better than this.”

I rose and cautiously opened the door. The alley was empty . . .
of humans, at any rate. I will not bother you with what it smelled like.

Together, Charley and I leapt the ankle-deep flood and made
our way to the street. I looked up at Four Dunne’s Cottage, then turned to my
very great grand-scoundrel.

“This isn’t a hotel, Charley. It’s a brothel.”

oOo

I convinced him that he had to be the one to go in and
bring himself out. He knew his own habits, I argued. Knew which lady he
favored. Besides which, what could be more convincing to him than meeting
himself face to face?

“If I came to you and told you this wild story, you’d think
I was crazy, wouldn’t you? But if you appear and tell, well—him—”

“I’d think I was crazy.” But he was nodding. “All right,
Arthur. Your point is well taken. Are you sure there will be no deleterious
effects?”

“Hollywood stuff,” I promised. “No one has ever expired upon
seeing their own past. It’s not recommended, but hardly deadly.”

He gazed at me, brow furrowed, then squared his shoulders
and marched purposefully to the front door of the house.

“Don’t get lost in there,” I called.

He emerged only ten minutes later with himself in tow.
Thank God
, I thought,
they’re wearing different clothes.
At
least I’d be able to tell them apart.

They were arguing—I should be surprised?—and gesticulating
wildly, almost in unison. It was like watching a synchronized mime team. I
shook my head and trotted over to meet them at the bottom of the front steps.

“Here, this is Arthur,” said Charley-Is. “He can explain
about the time box, if you really care so much to know. The important thing,
Charley Dunbar, is the woman. You—I—we—must meet Maureen Llewellyn before that
upstart MacCormac.”

“But I don’t want to marry,” argued Charley-Was. “I treasure
my freedom, thank you, and I’ve no intention of chaining myself to one woman.”

“This is no ordinary woman, dammit. This is Mary.”

“I’ve yet to meet a woman—”

“If you come with us, you will meet her. The very woman.
Dammit, man, you have to meet her. Meet her before she’s wed to someone else.”

Charley-Was smiled crookedly. “I’d say that’s the perfect
time to meet any woman—after she’s married someone else. Married women make the
finest mistresses . . . I’m told,” he added, glancing at me
uncertainly.

“Charley Dunbar, you mutton-brain!” Charley-Is exploded. “This
woman should be no man’s mistress! She’s an angel! Incomparable! Divine! I near
sold my soul to get her. Truth is, I’m not sure I haven’t done that anyway.
But, to the point—she’s married to some spineless doctor, a man completely
unworthy of her. She—”

Charley-Was looked at me blandly. “He do go on, don’t he?”

Charley-Is threw up his hands in exasperation. “Mule
stubborn! Arthur, you talk to him!”

I was finding it difficult to maintain my composure. “Me? He’s
you—you ought to be able to handle him. You know how he thinks.”

“Aye, like a mule-stubborn mutton-brain!”

A movement at one of the facing windows above us caught my
eye. “Look, people are staring at us. Let’s go someplace a little more private.”