Timebound Read online

  I rolled my eyes at that lame bit of witticism and settled back in the seat. I wasn’t sure why Kiernan thought I was in danger, but there was no mistaking the fear in his eyes. I touched my hand to my lips, remembering his kiss. It wasn’t just our first kiss, but my first kiss ever. Even with my total lack of experience, I could tell that there was strong emotion behind it. He knew me, somehow, from somewhere or some time, and he cared about me. As confusing as it was to think that I had a past (or was it a future?) that I didn’t remember, I couldn’t doubt that Kiernan was desperately afraid for me. I clutched the edge of my plaid skirt as the cab inched a bit closer to Katherine’s house and, hopefully, toward some answers.

  I was out of the cab before it came to a full stop. I ran to the door and banged on it frantically. Connor’s face appeared moments later.

  “Where is Katherine? Let me in.”

  “Yes, of course!”

  “Can you pay the cab? He stole my bag.”

  Connor looked confused. “The driver?”

  “No—a guy on the Metro.” Daphne was barking loudly, and Connor held her collar to keep her from dashing out the door.

  “Yes, yes, I’ll pay him. Take Daphne.” He grabbed shoes from the hall closet. The driver began honking, inciting Daphne to ratchet up her noise level as well. “Katherine! Come down!” Connor called as he headed out the door. “Kate is here.”

  Katherine appeared at the top of the stairs a few moments later, pulling a robe over her nightgown as she hurried down to greet me. “Kate! Why aren’t you at school, dear? You look frightened. What on earth? Sit down, please.” She motioned toward the sofa and slapped her hand against her thigh. “Daphne! Outside!”

  She led Daphne to the kitchen door and I sat down, trying to catch my breath. I peeled off my shoe to inspect the toes that had been crushed by… Simon, Kiernan had called him, although I still thought of him as Pudgy. Two of the toes were a deep angry red, and one toenail had been squished so badly that it was ripped down to the quick. I gritted my teeth and pulled off the nail fragment to keep it from snagging on my sock.

  Connor reentered the house just as Katherine came back in from the kitchen. I saw a soft blue glow through the threads of his jeans pocket and was relieved to know that he had a medallion. It hadn’t occurred to me that he, too, might be in danger.

  He sat down in the armchair across from the sofa. “Did you find out who robbed her?”

  “Robbed?” Katherine exclaimed. “Kate, what happened? Are you okay?”

  “I’m fine,” I said, pulling my sock back on carefully. I slipped off my other shoe and slid them both under the coffee table. “Some guy on the Metro now has your diary, however—and my iPod and textbooks. I’m sorry, Katherine. I would have tried to fight him off, but the Metro was crowded and… he had a gun. Or something that felt like a gun, poking into my side.”

  “Don’t be silly,” she said. “You did the right thing. I have several other diaries here and that volume is backed up in the computer system.”

  Connor nodded. “We can track the original, too—so we may be able to get it back. I doubt a mugger will be too concerned with looking at an old diary, anyway. And he won’t be able to activate it.”

  “Does this happen often on the Metro?” Katherine asked.

  “What?” I shook my head. “No—I mean yes, people get mugged occasionally. I never have—the Metro’s safe, really. But this wasn’t just somebody grabbing a random backpack. He knew what he was doing. He wanted the diary. He saw me with it yesterday. And I think he had a medallion—like yours.”

  Katherine looked at Connor skeptically, then back at me. “Are you sure? I don’t think—”

  “No, I’m not sure about the mugger. But he did vanish into thin air—twice. And I saw a medallion under Kiernan’s shirt—” I stopped as Connor and Katherine simultaneously drew in sharp, startled breaths.

  “His name was Kiernan?” asked Connor. “How do you know that?”

  “Yes. Kiernan… Dunn or Duncan, I think. But he was not the mugger. He’s the one who told me to run. Dark eyes, dark hair, tall, and…” I trailed off, sure that I was blushing. “Why? Do you know him? He wanted to know why I wasn’t wearing a medallion. He told me to get here, to your house, as fast as I could, that something was about to happen, but he would stall them if he could, to give me time.”

  Connor and Katherine exchanged another look. “Kiernan Dunne was my great-grandfather,” Connor said after a moment. “And I find it unlikely that he would be doing anything to help us.”

  I had forgotten that Connor’s last name was Dunne, and I can’t say that there’s much resemblance between the two of them, except perhaps around the nose. And Connor was at least thirty years older than Kiernan—or, at any rate, at least thirty years older than the Kiernan who kissed me on the Metro. I sank farther into the couch.

  “Maybe you should start from the beginning,” Katherine suggested.

  I recounted my steps from the time I left Katherine’s house on Monday morning until the cab brought me back to her doorstep. I glossed over a few bits—I wasn’t sure how she would feel about Charlayne reading the diary and our experimental efforts to determine its composition, and I most definitely was not ready to share the kiss. It wasn’t something I wanted to discuss in front of my grandmother, or for that matter, in front of someone who claimed to be the great-grandson of the guy who had kissed me. Things were weird enough without complicating matters further.

  When I finished my summary, I turned to Katherine. “Whether you believe Kiernan’s information or not, there’s a lot going on that I need to know about. And I think perhaps my dad should be in on this. Or mom…”

  I felt a bit like the accused claiming my right to an attorney, but maybe that wasn’t so far off. I didn’t know either Katherine or Connor well enough to feel that I could completely trust them, and Dad—well, he’s my dad, and I know whose interests he’d put first. And while my relationship with Mom is a little more complicated, she would do the same.

  “Kate…” Katherine hesitated, apparently looking for the right words. “I admire you for wanting to keep your parents informed—and yes, Harry would be far more likely to understand than Deborah—but perhaps you should wait until you’ve heard my story. Then, if you want to talk to Harry… that’s fine.”

  She reached up and pulled the chain around her neck, allowing her medallion to fall in front of her dark red bathrobe. The blue light altered the color of the robe near the medallion to a peculiar shade of purple. “But you must keep in mind, Kate, that your parents will never see this pendant as anything other than an odd piece of jewelry. If either of them held it for more than a few moments, they might feel a strange sensation—as Connor or anyone else with the recessive version of the gene does. They might notice a slight change in the color. But neither of them will ever see this as you or I do. And it would take time to convince them of what we can see and experience directly.”

  Something about that statement nagged at me, but I focused on her key point that pulling Dad into the discussion would take time. I couldn’t shake the sense that time was short—the urgency in Kiernan’s voice had made that clear—and I wasn’t entirely sure that we could afford to wait until Dad was there and had been filled in on everything. And even though Katherine and Connor seemed to doubt the sincerity of Kiernan’s warning, I did not. It might have been my first kiss, but I trusted the instinct that told me Kiernan was on my side—whatever side that might be.

  4

  “I was born in the year 2282,” Katherine began. My face must have shown doubt because she quickly added, “I’m not going to waste time trying to convince you of what you already know, Kate.”

  “Before my birth,” she continued, “it was decided that I would be a historian. My parents had saved a bit and, as I understand it, my grandparents and a childless aunt also contributed some funds, so there were several chosen gifts from which my parents could select. Everyone is allowed one—and only one�
��chosen gift. Initially they were distributed by lottery, but money has a way of opening doors in any society. All things weighed together, I’m not unhappy with their purchase.”

  Connor returned from the kitchen with three mugs of black coffee that looked much too strong for human consumption and a large box of cookies, which he clearly would have eaten all by himself had Katherine not nodded in my direction. He gave up three gingersnaps—grudgingly, I thought—and propped his feet on the short table positioned between his chair and the couch.

  Katherine continued. “Had my family been less well off or less inclined to invest in my future, I might have been given special aptitude for healing or for music, or some other trade or craft. My father’s chosen gift was chemistry. My mother’s chosen gift was logic, and she worked for many years at CHRONOS—programming the computers that were used to track historical missions and analyze the data they collected.”

  I took a sip of my coffee, wishing for some milk to cut the burned taste. “What exactly is CHRONOS? I saw that in several diary entries.”

  “Chrono-Historical Research Organization and Natural Observation Society,” Connor said through a mouthful of cookie. “Proving that future Americans are just as willing as their ancestors to contrive a title in order to get a good backronym.”

  “At any rate,” Katherine said, raising an eyebrow at him, “my mother loved her work at CHRONOS—no surprise, since she and everyone else of my time are, quite literally, born to love their jobs. But I think there was some small element of wanderlust in her soul. The chosen gift she selected for me meant that I would see different times and places—”

  “But,” I interrupted, my voice a bit hesitant, “what about free choice? I mean, what if you’d rather have been a chemist, like your dad? Or a baker? Or…”

  Katherine smiled, but it was a tired smile. I could see that it wasn’t the first time she’d dealt with these questions. “Yes. But there is much to be said for making some adjustments before birth. How much time is wasted today training children to perform a variety of skills that they not only will never use but would never even consider using? I remember your mother complaining that she would never need to know the square root of anything, and while I forced her to do the math homework nevertheless, we both knew she was correct.

  “Don’t get me wrong—people still learned about subjects beyond their occupation. We still had hobbies and avocations. But we all knew the general route to our primary destination when the journey began, and we didn’t regret the destination, nor did we have any desire to change it. After all, our genetic makeup ensured that we would be far better at our jobs than anything else we attempted—and far better at our jobs than others, who did not have that chosen gift, could ever be.”

  “So everything you are was determined before you were born, by this… enhancement?”

  “No. The only thing that was changed before my birth was my chosen gift. I have some natural gifts from my parents—my mother could sing beautifully and I can carry a tune quite well. Like you, I have my father’s eyes, although you’re lucky—Harry’s eyes are far more striking.”

  Connor leaned forward and squinted a bit, staring me straight in the eyes. “Very… green.” Unsure whether it was intended as a compliment, or whether Connor even bothered with such niceties, I simply nodded.

  “I also have some residual effects from the chosen gifts my parents received. Like my mother, I’m good with computers.” Connor snorted derisively and Katherine amended the statement. “Or rather, I’m good with computers that are not centuries before my time. I am more than happy, however, to let Connor handle the archaic piles of nuts and bolts that he refers to as a computer.”

  Katherine stopped to take a sip of her coffee and turned back to me. “I do understand your… concern… about free choice, but let’s set that aside for the time being, okay? I didn’t devise the society in which I was born any more than you devised this one, and I’m perfectly willing to admit that it has its flaws. The point I wanted to make is that the gifts of the parent—all gifts, chosen and natural—are passed along to the child. I inherited some from my mother, some from my father, and I acquired one specific, chosen gift that I passed on to your mother and that she clearly passed on to you, given your reaction to the medallion.”

  I was getting increasingly confused. “But Mom can’t see the light on the medallion.”

  “That doesn’t mean the trait isn’t there. It’s just recessive. It might not even be the reason she’s interested in contemporary American history. She was exposed to it enough through Jim. He was one of those professors who always had historical anecdotes on the tip of his tongue. In your case, however, the trait is dominant.”

  “Why do you think that?” I asked. “Just because I can see that blue light? I mean, I like history, but I like a lot of subjects. I haven’t decided what I want to do. I could just as easily settle on math, you know—or a foreign language. Or law.”

  “It’s not just a matter of interest, Kate. For many of the specialized trades and professions, a chosen gift—the genetic ‘enhancement,’ as you call it—carries with it the ability to operate specialized equipment used in that profession. I saw you in the kitchen yesterday. You were born a CHRONOS historian, whether you want to be or not, just as I was.

  “I won’t bore you with all the mundane details of my job,” she continued, “but unlike your mother, who must study her field through documents and artifacts, I traveled to the sites where history was made. I specialized in women’s political movements, mostly American, mostly nineteenth century, although I took a few side trips into the twentieth century to follow long-term trends. I learned history by watching Susan B. Anthony, Frederick Douglass, and Lucy Stone argue, both publicly and privately, while I was disguised as someone from their era.

  “In order to ensure”—she glanced at Connor and made a wry face—“or at least try to ensure the sanctity of the timeline, CHRONOS allowed only a limited number of historians. There were thirty-five active historians when I joined in 2298. I took the place of the thirty-sixth, who was retiring. This key is the portable unit that allowed us to return to headquarters when our research was complete. And the diaries were our link in the field—a quick way to get an answer to any question that hadn’t been answered in preliminary research.

  “The important point for now,” she said, “is that the altered gene structure allowed me—and through inheritance, allows you—to activate the CHRONOS key. Or the medallion, as you call it. When I was in training, I would hold the key and eventually ‘see’ the surroundings of the set coordinates to which I would be transported. There are a certain number of destination points on each continent, established in areas that we know have been stable points throughout the period we’re examining. For example, one stable point in this area is a corridor in the Senate wing of the U.S. Capitol that escaped destruction in the War of 1812—it is a geographic stable point between 1800 and 2092.”

  “What happens in 2092?” I asked.

  Katherine’s mouth tightened into a firm line. “The corridor ceased to be a stable point.”

  “Don’t even bother to push on that,” Connor interrupted. “She’ll go all ‘need-to-know’ on you.”

  “To get back to the medallion,” Katherine said, “it allows the user to scope out the territory, make minor temporal adjustments if needed, and determine the best time to make the jump.”

  “So how did you wind up here—now? Did you just decide to stay in the past? Or was there an accident of some sort?”

  “It certainly wasn’t an accident,” Katherine answered. “It was made to look that way, however. Your grandfather—Saul, your biological grandfather—sabotaged CHRONOS and stranded the teams at their various locations. I was scheduled for a jump to Boston 1853, but… let’s just say I was forced to make a last-minute adjustment. Saul had…”

  Katherine paused, phrasing her words carefully. “Saul had fallen in with some bad elements in our society, and I’m
quite sure he planned to follow me. He was always a black-and-white sort of person. Either you were friend or you were foe, with no gray area in between. He considered me a traitor, and he would have killed me and—although he wouldn’t have realized it—your mother and Prudence along with me, if I had not ducked into 1969 at the very last minute.”

  Over the next hour, I learned how Katherine had started a new life in the 1970s. She emerged in an abandoned barn about a mile outside Woodstock, New York, in mid-August of 1969, taking the place of a music historian friend who had hoped to see Janis Joplin and Jimi Hendrix at the festival. Dressed in the height of fashion for the 1853 destination for which she’d been scheduled, Katherine was somewhat overdressed for a rock concert. Hoping to get at least some usable data for the friend whose slot she had taken, she removed the pins from her hair, stashed the elaborate gown, gloves, and button-up shoes in her carpetbag, and headed for the concert in just her silk chemise, pantalettes, and a black lace choker. She was still a bit more fully covered than many of the young women at the concert, but after a few hours in the mud and heat, she said, she managed to blend into the crowd.

  “I returned to the stable point—the barn—several times over the next few weeks and tried to contact headquarters. But I could see nothing—just a black void with occasional bursts of static. I tried to correspond using one of the diaries that I had packed, but it vanished. It was as though everything from my time no longer existed.”

  “So why didn’t you go back to the day before you left?”

  Connor nodded. “I asked that, too.”

  “You’ve both seen too many movies, I’m afraid. I couldn’t just zip from one location to any other point in time. The CHRONOS key allowed me to emerge at one preprogrammed stable point and then return to CHRONOS headquarters when my work was done. No side trips allowed.

  “Fortunately,” she continued, “CHRONOS historians followed the Boy Scout motto: ‘Be Prepared.’ If we could not contact headquarters, we were to find a way to blend in and lie low for a year or two. And, after that point, if we still had no contact with home, we were to give up and try to create normal lives in our new time and place.”