He looks at me like I’m crazy. “No, to the last one. Yes, to the first two, although . . . it’s nothing like what you have around here. We have parks in our urban areas, trees on most of the large housing centers. Wildlife refuges scattered around the world, and controlled numbers of most of the species that were endangered—they’ve even restored many that went extinct. At least, the ones that weren’t dangerous.”
“Do people still have political rights—like free speech, free religion, democratic government?”
“Yes, yes, and yes—although there are limits.”
“What sort of limits?”
“Well, pretty much the same as here. No yelling fire in a crowded movie house. And even after we get past this racial nonsense, the U.S. isn’t really a true democracy—you have representatives, right? So do most countries in my time.”
“But are most people happy with the system? I’m trying to get a handle on why Saul and this club of his would be so dissatisfied with their situation that they’d be willing to wipe out half of humanity to change it.”
“What club?”
“They called themselves the Objectivists. Apparently spinning off from some group from my era.”
He laughs. “Those guys? They’re . . . they’re like a debate group or something.”
“Katherine seemed to think the leader, somebody named Campbell, influenced Saul. That maybe he was in on the plan.”
“Maybe, but I can’t see it. All I ever heard Saul and Campbell do was argue. I went a few times—CHRONOS historians have an open invitation, because we can fill in some of the blanks about history. When I was there, they spent most of their time talking about alternate history.” His voice takes on a pompous tone. “But what if the Revolutionary War had ended differently? If slavery hadn’t been abolished or if the Progressive Era never happened? If this president or that one had lived or had died? If 2092 turned out differently?”
There’s that date again. “So . . . what happens in 2092?”
Grant thinks for a moment and then shakes his head. “You’d be pretty old, but you could live that long, so I’m thinking that’s a spoiler.”
I narrow my eyes, but he’s probably right. “Fine. Have it your way. So you’re saying you’d go back there if you could? To your time?”
He looks at me like it’s a really stupid question. “Yes.”
“What if you’d been stranded in some time and place other than 1938 Georgia?”
“I’d still pick 2305. I have a life there. Someone who’s expecting me to return.” He glances over at the hospital. “Staying here isn’t what I signed up for. It’s an interesting time to study, but . . . I can’t live here.”
Grant could still be lying, but if so, he’s really good at it. I think back to my conversation with Trey in the cafeteria. Maybe it’s my golden-retriever personality coming to the forefront again, but Trey was right—I don’t want to be the kind of person who believes the worst of everyone. It’s bad enough to know that there’s one individual out there who thought nothing of killing an entire village of innocent people to test out a theory, who even reveled in their deaths. The evidence, at least what I have at hand, doesn’t point toward Grant being another one.
“If you have doubts about the Cyrists,” I say, “whether they exist, their numbers, or whatever—the university is less than a mile away. Find the library, check a few history texts. Or go back inside and ask the receptionist for a phone book. There’s a tiny Cyrist temple in Darwin, Australia, in 1942, so I’m guessing there’s one or two around here as well.
“But,” I continue, “if you’re wondering about Saul, you’ve been around him more than I have. And even if you can’t remember it, you were with him when he did a . . . test run. At the village—Six Bridges, God’s Hollow—not sure what Saul would have called it. All but one of those people are dead, Grant. If the university has local newspaper archives, you can find proof of that. The date they died will synch up with when you were there with Saul.”
He looks stunned. “How?”
“Something in the well. We’re pretty sure he tested the antidote on the girl who survived. He would have killed her, too, but . . .” I hesitate. “Let’s just say she got lucky.”
“Martha, right? The blond girl?”
“Yes.”
“She burned him, didn’t she?”
The question catches me off guard at first, until I remember that Grant would have seen the wound on Saul’s arm on their trip back.
“Something like that.”
“He killed them all?” Grant asks. “Even the kids?”
“Yeah. Some of the articles had pictures.” And, yes, I could show him with the CHRONOS key, but he’d also get a glimpse of me and Kiernan in biohazard gear, in addition to Saul, Martha, and the bodies in the chapel. If he finds out the role we played, it’s going to lead to a lot of questions I don’t have time to answer.
I stand and brush off my skirt. “I have to make a quick jump, okay? We need bail money, and I need clothes that aren’t blood splattered. I’ll wait here for Delia when I get back, if you want to go change or grab some lunch.”
“No lunch,” he says. “I’ve lost my appetite.”
BOGART, GEORGIA
August 11, 1938, 1:20 p.m.
I feel like I’m being watched.
I know it’s my imagination. The odds of anyone viewing this stable point at this exact moment are slim to none. But I keep picturing Prudence and her followers—or keepers or whatever they are—here in Kiernan’s kitchen earlier in the day. Well, earlier in the day for me. As far as I know, she hasn’t actually been here since 1905, but it’s still unnerving.
Someone else has been in the cabin since we left, however. A basket of peaches, cucumbers, tomatoes, and other vegetables is in the middle of the table, along with a half dozen Mason jars and a note from Mrs. Owens telling Kiernan to please let her know if he runs out of anything, because she has more than she knows what to do with. At least there are no religious tracts, so perhaps Owens decided to keep our presumed romantic adventures to himself.
I climb up the ladder and sit on the floor next to Kiernan’s bed, which probably hasn’t been slept in since 1905. It’s not that the room is dusty—Mrs. Owens must come in to clean when he’s away—but more that it just doesn’t feel lived in.
I dig around under the mattress for several minutes before I locate the large manila envelope wedged between the mattress and the bedsprings in the upper rear corner. It’s constructed of heavier paper and has one of those odd figure-eight string ties on the back, but it still reminds me of the envelope I left with Trey that held our collected memories from the other timeline.
It’s mostly money inside, about $300 in ones, tens, and fives. There are also three pencil drawings that tumble out with the bills. The artist is no Da Vinci—I’m sure if we saw these hanging in a gallery, Sara would note that the perspective and proportions are off. Still, the work is very good for an amateur, and there’s no mistaking the girl in each of these drawings, even in black and white. One of them was folded at some point, and there’s a pattern of weathered creases on the page. That one is clearly of me, this me, sitting on a grassy bank, my feet in the water, with the towering buildings of the Expo in the background.
The other two drawings are my face, my body, but unless he’s imagined the settings, they’re all of Other-Kate. They could also be of Prudence, but I don’t think so. The first drawing shows her in a boat that’s slightly larger than the canoes we saw at Norumbega. There’s a palm tree in the background, and I’m pretty sure the dress she’s wearing is the one that I saw hanging from the bedpost when I watched the video she made at Estero.