Unhappenings (46 page)

I whispered to my left forearm, “Tell me you’re still there.” It tingled. The module implant was still in place. As long as I had that, I was free to go any time I wanted. But, without knowing why I was here, and what the new timeline entailed, escape might hold even greater dangers for me. I chose patience.

My greatest concern, obviously, was Helen. The immunity our relationship held to these unhappenings would protect her, I hoped, but without knowing why I was here, and where she was, it was difficult for me to imagine her being safe.

I only had to endure two hours of fear and misery before I was told I had a visitor. Specifically, my “sister.” As expected, this turned out to be Athena.

“What kept you?” I asked as flippantly as I could. It was a struggle.

“Don’t,” she said. “It took us three days to find you. This is bad, and you need to listen carefully. Got it?” I nodded. “Good. You are presently awaiting execution for a homicide. That is scheduled to happen in two days, so you need to be out of here by then.”

“Who?” I asked. It was the only piece of this that mattered.

“Wendy,” she said. “I am so sorry, Nigel. Please don’t ask me anything else about the crime until we get this sorted out.”

I felt faint. “Did I do it? Can you tell me that much?”

“You did not,” she said. “Please don’t ask any more questions. I have instructions, and I need you to follow them.”

“Okay,” I said numbly.

My arm tingled. “I am sending a jump course to your module right now,” she said. “It will activate thirty minutes after lights out tonight. I will bring you up to speed on everything at the rendezvous.”

“Understood,” I said. “Is there anything I should do until then?”

Her eyes bored into mine. “Don’t. Get. Killed.”

I didn’t get killed. Thirty minutes after lights out, and very much awake, I flashed out of my cell. I was on the roof of an unknown building, in the middle of the day. Athena handed me a bundle of clothing, and I stripped out of the jumpsuit.

“Can you save her?” was all I asked.

“I don’t know,” she said. “And you should know right now that saving her isn’t the assignment. My task is to provide you with an alibi. I am exceptionally good at that, so this will be over for you very soon.” She kissed me, and added, “I will try. I promise you I will try.”

For just over an hour, I waited for Athena’s return. When she did reappear, her forehead was bleeding, but not enough to explain the quantity of blood on her clothes.

“Find Helen,” she said. “By now you’ve been missing for two days. Do not travel back those two days. Just go home.”

“My God,” I said. “Are you all right?”

“No.” I reached for her. “Don’t touch me!” she shrieked. “I don’t have another change of clothes for you!”

I wanted so badly to comfort her, and her only allowable priority was not covering me in suspicious blood. As badly as I did not want to ask this, I had to.

“Wendy?”

Athena looked away. “I was able to save her from being murdered,” she said. “But not from being raped.”

With that, she vanished.

ow long have we known each other?”

“Oh! God!” said Helen. “Stingrays! Get in here!” She pulled me in the door to our house, and held me. “Where have you been? Athena said she had to get you out of prison? What happened? Are you okay?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “I guess so. Better than some, anyway.” Helen did not ask me to elaborate, and I did not volunteer. What happened to Wendy was now on my conscience, but as far as Helen was concerned, it was already part of the timeline. Old news. I did not want to admit to her that in the proper timeline, it had never happened.

“You’re safe now,” she said. “Can I get you something to eat? Do you want to take a bath? What can I do?”

“Those both sound good,” I said, but mostly for her benefit. She made me a grilled cheese sandwich.

If I couldn’t negate the unhappening effect, this was how our life was going to go from now on. I would have some crisis Helen would never see, other than that I would be slightly more broken.

Unhappen. Fix. Repeat.

I saw the flash of Athena’s arrival. Helen had a hushed conversation with her, which I did not attempt to hear. Athena sat down next to me.

“He’s getting more creative,” she said.

“I noticed. Are you okay?”

She hesitated. “That was ten weeks ago for me,” she said. “But no, not really.”

“Did you…” I wasn’t sure how to ask. “…do something that caused someone to die?”

“Yes,” she said. “Specifically, I stabbed him. Many times.”

“Oh,” I said. “I’m sorry.”

“I know.” She took my hand. “I’ll always know. You won’t ever have to say it.”

“But I will.”

She nodded. “Yes, you will.”

“We need a better strategy than damage control,” I said.

“Believe me, we are working on that. The trick is not to make things even worse, and we don’t have the best track record on that count. Right now, it looks like your work with the standing wave jump field might be our best bet.”

More weight.

“I’ll try not to let you down.”

“You need to take care of yourself right now,” said Helen.

“Of course,” said Athena. After a pause, she added, “Mom told me your theory about the older version of you bringing you back here just to meet her. I may ask you to come with me when I follow that lead.”

“Lead?” I said.

“We’re still trying to get a bead on his home time, but I’m going to try to find the version of you that recruited you in the first place.”

“Yes,” I said. “I would like to speak with him, I think.” I thought about this man, whom I had not seen in three years, and the damage he had wrought on an entire planet with his selfishness. And I thought about how if I had it to do over, I’m not sure I would make the right choice.

elen and I did our best to maintain our normal routines during that time. For me, that meant spending my days in the basement workroom trying to solve the problem of the standing jump field wave. With the contemporary Dr. Walden still several years behind where I thought he was, his insights turned out to be no more useful than my own. So, my routine was research. For Helen, it meant going to work in the library.

Around noon, I heard the door chime. “Identify,” I said without looking up from my work.

“New visitor,” said my home computer. “Checking facial recognition database. Match confirmed. Identity: Carlton Ivan West. Shall I admit?” At this surreal news, I dropped my work and bolted upstairs. “Shall I admit?” the computer repeated.

“No,” I said. I had no idea what he could possibly be doing here, but there was no way I wanted him strolling into my house on the authority of a machine. “I’ll get it myself.”

The words seemed extremely courageous coming out of my mouth. Standing now in front of the door they seemed idiotic. Carlton West was a madman, a mass murderer, and my fiancée’s ex-boyfriend. None of that could possibly bode well for me.

I opened the door, and there stood the man I had seen in Helen’s photograph, nearly a year earlier. He looked shorter in real life, but no less striking.

“Hello,” he said. “You must be Dr. Walden. You’re younger than I expected.” He held his hand out. I took it, more from social training than desire.

“It’s not Doctor,” I said. “You must be thinking of my uncle Nigel. My name is Graham.”

“Indeed.” He frowned. “I was certain she said Nigel. Either way, it’s a pleasure to meet you.” He poked his head in the door. “Is Helen in?” He spoke in a very slight, and obviously affected, French accent.

“I’m afraid she’s not.”

He offered another frown, ornamented with just the right kind of insincerity.

“Most unfortunate. May I come in?”

“I don’t mean to be impolite, Mr. West, but why are you here?” This was a lot of spine for me. I hoped I would be able to brag about it later.

“I see I’ve gotten off on the wrong foot,” he said. “Mr. Walden. Graham? Do you know what power is?” I did know what power was, but he didn’t wait for a reply. “This is a lovely house. If I made two calls right now, in twenty minutes this house and everything in it would be my property. So please understand when I say, ‘May I come in,’ it is really only a courtesy.”

That’s not what power was. Power was the ability to strangle this man as an infant, thirty years before this conversation took place. I had that. He had nothing. Unfortunately, for all that I had that power, there was no way I was going to wield it. I let him in.