Twin Speex: Time Traitors Book II (49 page)

Odette’s expression was unfocused and inhuman. She looked at the other woman with supreme disdain. She raised her hand in a gesture Ettie immediately recognized, one used to reduce the Temporatus to rubble. Ettie moved in protest, but Evelyn was before her.

“Mother, don’t!” her voice was choked with tears. “Whatever you are going to do—don’t! You don’t… you can’t know what was done to her!”

Odette stood still as stone, her raised arm hesitating.

“It’s not an excuse, I know,” Evelyn implored through gritted teeth, her tears practically blinding her. “Can’t we stop it here, though? Please! Can’t it just stop?” She blinked and her vision cleared as tears cascaded down her face. “Papa needs you
now
…
we
need you now!”

Those in the room watched frozen in place as Odette’s arm wavered and finally dropped to her side. She turned slowly and looked at her daughter with an anguished face. Released from her rage, she ran to them and knelt down beside Evelyn, asking gently, “May I?”

Evelyn nodded and moved over so her father’s head now rested on Odette’s lap. His eyelids flickered and opened, and he looked up into his wife’s face.

“I knew it must be you.” His voice was barely a whisper. “I’m feeling warmer.”

Odette was crying silently, but was able to say, “I’ve been gone too long. Can you forgive me?”

His laugh was a weak huff of air. “For saving the world yet again, my dear? I think I can find it in my heart…”

“As always, Gabe, you overstate my accomplishments.” She smiled tenderly down at him and kissed his forehead, her tears wetting his hair. “I am but one of many, among whom you stand very, very tall, my love.”

He reached his hand up to grasp one of hers with an air of desperation.

“Have we really done it then? Have we really remade the world?”

She nodded, almost unable to speak. “Yes,” she said simply.

He sighed and closed his eyes. “Then it will be all right, my dear. Everything will be fine…” his voice trailed off.

The space around Odette and Gabriel began to glow and waver. She looked at her daughter and said, “I will be back soon. I promise.”

Evelyn nodded as she stood and stepped away from them.

The shimmering grew brighter and more intense until no one in the room could look at them straight on. Gabriel opened his eyes again and gazed up at Odette in confusion.

“What are you doing?”

Odette pulled him more securely into her arms. “I’m taking you to see the world.”

Thirty-Four

HISTORY RECORDS AN infinitesimal fraction of human endeavor. Only the truly great or truly infamous remain with us over the centuries. Left behind are the every day and ordinary, those who strive for the little things, and even, sometime, those who accomplish the monumental.

Such was the case with the founding of the Republic of America. Many of the names remained the same: Washington, Franklin, Adams, even Thomas Jefferson, who did not die on the Wright’s parlor floor that terrible night long ago. He survived what was declared a British assassination attempt, significantly diminished physically, but greatly enhanced in compassion for those deemed less worthy. His denunciation of slavery in the Declaration of Independence became the most quoted passage of that famous document, and his were the first slaves freed to take up arms against the British.

While Virginia fought with the colonists, the Carolinas and Georgia remained loyal to the Crown. Benjamin Franklin was known to comment that they fought two wars in one: a war of independence, and a civil war for the very soul of their new nation.

Six long, bitter years the war raged. Two years in, the economies of the southern colonies collapsed; their agrarian infrastructure was decimated by slave revolt and desertion. About that time, the French threw their money and military might behind the colonists. With the freedmen regiments fighting in the south and the native alliances holding strong in the north and east, it was a testament to the tenacity of the British that the war lasted another four years. Not surprising some would say, given the character of the people who now called themselves Americans.

Other names emerged from the battlefield of revolution, less well-known perhaps than the Founding Fathers, but honored and famous nonetheless. Joseph Louis Cook, Hugh Harris, and Jonathon Sinclair were but a few to reflect the diversity and expansive vision of this new nation.

No matter the good intentions of many toward the goal of inclusiveness, it seemed that the mantle of “other” must fall upon at least one group. Obscured by the biases of the time were the contributions of women. It would take several more decades of determined campaigning for their rights to be realized and enshrined in the Constitution. And yet more time would pass before scholars recognized the indispensible spy craft of Verity Turner and Cara Gordon, their courage, innovative techniques, and brilliant intelligence gathering hidden for years behind the codename of Three-Five-Five.

One name that stood out, even among the greats, was that of Gabriel Wright. An Englishman coming late to the colonies, his writings were often considered the philosophical underpinnings of both the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. His eloquent plea for a nation of collective cultures, all equal and acting as a system of checks and balances against the worst excesses of the other, was a rough roadmap for the new nation. He had died suddenly before the official start of the war; the exact cause of his death was never recorded. His writings were compiled and published posthumously by his daughter, Evelyn Wright Reynolds. The book, titled,
Pluribus et Concordis
, was a staple in any good library.

But not even the most diligent scholar would ever detect any significance in the presence of an obscure Wright relative and his Negro servant in those heady months before the Second Continental Congress would declare independence. The passionate words on slavery that influenced Washington, Jefferson, and Adams were attributed to an escaped slave by the name of Wendell Johnson. They were delivered in a meeting that was recorded by Benjamin Franklin to have taken place at his home in the sick room of the recovering Thomas Jefferson.

Anonymous to history and her name erased from all places save one, a madwoman of no consequence was institutionalized at the Pennsylvania Hospital. The cost of her care was covered by the charity of one of the city’s most prominent citizens. Her suffering and heinous crimes unknown to the good doctors and nurses who cared for her, she was, in her old age, deemed quite harmless and allowed to help care for the sick and abandoned children in the pediatric wing.

When she died at the age of eighty-two, she was interred in an all but forgotten grave in the churchyard of Saint Peter’s. Her name was etched on the tombstone with that of the grave’s other occupant:
Here lie the mortal remains of Lillian and Sewal Brandon, mother and son
.

Epilogue

IT WAS A clear autumn night and the city lights had been dimmed to allow its residents a view of the stars. Odell was but one of many who sat or stood out on balconies, stoops, and sidewalks to watch the constellations rise over the rooftops from the eastern horizon. Like the rest, he observed and honored this first day of the changing season. It was a ritual he had known all his life, adopted, he believed, from one of the many native cultures that infused his world.

He stood on a balcony that projected out from one of the tallest buildings in the city. The beautiful room behind him, once used for evil, was his study and laboratory. It was Ettie who had found it as she had traipsed about the city years before, seeing what changes history had wrought.

Unlike the last time he had traveled to a restored future, Odell retained conscious memory of his time travel and various alternate incarnations, as did Ettie. With Odette’s help, they were able to access the
Liberi
part of their brains to effectively mesh divergent timelines, at least in their own minds. This was not the case for Ava or Charlie. It was determined by the
Liberi
that they would retain no memory of their time travels.

The hardest thing he’d ever done was set the Temporatus for the future, knowing that when they returned, Ava would remember nothing, or worse, not even exist in his time. She swung herself on behind him and wrapped her arms around his waist. Her wet cheek pressed against his neck, she had whispered, “Find me.”

He shook his head in an effort to dislodge the memory and brought a pair of powerful binoculars up to his eyes. He aimed them for a spot just over Orion’s shoulder and found a faint and obscure cluster of stars.

“Do you see them?” her voice came from just behind him, and he nodded his head without turning around.

“Yes,” he answered and then slowly lowered the binoculars as she came up beside him.

“I buried him there,” she repeated the oft-told story. “I wanted a spot of unparalleled beauty with a clear view of our blue earth.”

Odell laughed. “Only someone with Hubble-like telescopes for eyes could see the blue earth from there.”

He always laughed the same way and said the same thing. It was their old, familiar joke. It helped ease any awkwardness from the many months of separation. For Odette visited but once a year on the Autumnal Equinox.

“Nothing mysterious,” she had explained when their little custom first began, “I just like this time of year.”

He turned to look directly at her. She always wore the same thing, the outfit when he had first seen her. When she had come to his room at the university and found him nearly out of his mind, a victim of time distortion sickness. That altered dimension seemed like several lifetimes ago, but seeing her in the boots and cape brought it all back to him; the shock of seeing a sister he had believed long dead.

He tugged playfully at the hood of her cloak as they turned to walk back into the room. “Where do you keep these clothes?”

“What do you mean?” she reprimanded. “This is what I wear… my uniform, so to speak.”

He pulled down the corners of his mouth in mock disapproval. “But that starry, flowy thing.” He waved his hands around his waist to indicate a skirt. “It was much more suited to your position as Master Time Traitor.”

She wagged a playful finger. “That term is not accurate, Odell, as you well know.”

He laughed. “As a matter of fact, I don’t. Not really. I stopped trying to understand how you do what you do long ago.”

“Is that why you do what you do?” she asked looking around the laboratory which was a perfect study in organized chaos. The room was stocked with all sizes of tables and benches, among which were scattered various computers, mechanical prototypes, and glass aquariums in which things both aquatic and terrestrial lived.

Odell was the preeminent inventor of his time. His creations had done much to improve the lives of people all over the world and help preserve the environment for future generations.

He nodded. “You have to agree, it’s a better use of my skills and energy,” he replied. “I couldn’t get away with another time incursion anyway. Not with your little minions lurking everywhere and in between.”

“They are not
my
minions,” she scolded. “In fact they are not minions at all, as you well know. The Feralon are
Liberi
, albeit ones we cannot completely explain as yet. Ambrosius is determined to solve that particular mystery. Though I’m not so certain we will ever have the answer.”

He smiled, but said seriously, “I’m grateful they just are. They allow our better selves to flourish, although there have been some notable slips.”

She shook her head with resignation. “No world is perfect, Odell, because people aren’t. And time is a crafty adversary. Still, you are masters of your own destiny. The
Liberi
just try to level the playing field.”

Odette had walked over to a desk. It was pushed up under a large bow window that looked out over the lush rooftop gardens that dominated the skyline. She glanced down at the framed photograph of a large family, one where she was conspicuously absent. They were grouped together on a mountain trail. Behind them a spectacularly clear lake reflected a blue, cloudless sky.

“They are all well,” he told her gently. “Ettie, especially, would like to see you.”

Odette shook her head sadly, still staring at the photograph. “My way is better. It is harder for me when there is too much… too much emotion.” She gave an odd little chuckle and added, “Ettie also asks too many questions. She always wants to know about her friends.”

“Who can blame her?” he asked, lifting his eyebrows questioningly. “There are a few I’d like to know something of as well.”

“No,” she said firmly, “their stories are their own. You… you both must be content with that.” But then she looked at him with sad eyes, as if to say she was sorry not to give him what he wanted.

Odell felt the immediate prick of his conscience. She had so much responsibility… so much riding on her. He stepped close to hug her tight and felt her slowly yield against him. It wasn’t often that he initiated physical contact. It clouded her mind and slowed her reflexes and was something she rarely allowed. But this time, she put her arms around him and rested her cheek against his shoulder.

“We know it was you…” he finally said, “…you who brought Ava and Charlie back to us.”

He could feel her smile against his shirt, and then pull away from him. “As if I would do such a thing…”

Odette had always insisted that her role wasn’t to play God, only to keep the temporal byways open, to allow for greater connection and community. But seeing her smile, for the first time, Odell began to wonder if the
Liberi
used humans as time did. Maybe they actually exploited their better selves. Certainly he, with his science, and Ettie, with her art, did their small part.