“Slater, in Robert’s body, wants to destroy Abraham because he was the one who brought the galvanized together—will bring them together.” I took a deep breath. “This is all a little confusing for me too. But trust me, Abraham will be the one who sacrifices his own freedom for the rights and freedom of humanity.”
“Is he a hero? A great man?”
“A lot of people believe all the galvanized are heroes. They have saved so many lives and done so much selfless good. But Abraham thinks of himself as just a man.”
“I live to see this? Three hundred years?”
“Yes. But not before enduring a lot of pain. A lot.”
Foster walked to the far side of the room and picked up a towel hanging there and handed it to me. I dried my face and rubbed it over my hair, then wrapped it around my shoulders.
“What do we need to tell Alveré?” he asked.
We. He believed me. All the anger and panic washed away in a relief that almost made me feel like I’d forgotten how to breathe.
“I need the watch,” I said.
This time, he gave it to me.
I flicked open the back of it and pulled out the folded paper. “We think this is the formula that needs to be corrected. You’ll have to convince him to do so before the numbers on the watch reach zero.”
“We will convince him,” Foster said. “You are coming with me, Matilda.”
I shook my head. “He won’t believe an eight-year-old child. I won’t matter to him. What I say won’t matter. But he’ll believe you, though, because you’re a friend, a peer?”
“A friend.”
“Then you will be the best person to convince him. Please hurry, Foster. Please make him change the experiment. All the future depends on it.”
“I will,” he said. “But you must be there with me.”
“I can’t,” I said. “Slater is planning to kill people. Kill the galvanized. He’s going to turn this town upside down to find them and kill them. I need to stop him.”
“You are eight years old. How are you going to stop Rob— Slater?”
“I don’t know,” I said honestly. “But I will.” I snapped the watch closed again and checked the face. Three and a half hours. That was all the time the world had left.
Again.
“It’s Abraham, isn’t it?” Foster asked.
“What?”
“In the future,” he said, crossing his arms over his chest. “Do you love him? Is that the reason you came back into the past? To save him?”
I shook my head. “I came to stop Alveré from going forward with his experiment without changing the calculations. That’s all.”
“Then why don’t we tell him to stop the experiment altogether?” he said. “If it never happens, the disaster won’t hit, we won’t become galvanized, and the world will go on—changed, without us, without the galvanized.”
He was making sense. Changing time in any manner just seemed like a recipe for disaster. And, yes, I loved Abraham. I didn’t want him to die in the future when time ticked down and the explosion took out half the continent. I also didn’t want my brother, Quinten, to die, to be blown apart by the soldiers who had come to kill me. I didn’t want Welton and my grandmother, Neds, and, hell, Foster to die.
I’d been the cause of enough pain for the people I cared about. But this had all started with Alveré Case. I wanted the chance to make sure that when time mended in the future, those millions of people wouldn’t die.
“Millions of people will die in the future if we don’t change the experiment,” I said.
“Hundreds will die today if we do,” he said.
And that was true. No matter what we did, there were going to be a lot of deaths.
“I’m trying to save my world, Foster,” I said. “I have to try. Do you really think you can talk Alveré out of ever trying the experiment?” I asked. “Do you really think you can make him dismantle the machine? Can you promise me he will never be curious as to what would happen if he set it in motion?”
“No. I can’t guarantee that.”
“Someone, someday is going to stumble upon this research. And then they will break time. If this experiment is going to happen, and I fear that it will, then let’s make sure it is done correctly and controlled. With those calculations.” I handed him back the watch. “Agreed?”
He nodded. “Agreed.”
“Then please hurry, before it’s too late.” I ran past him, but he had a heck of a reach. Foster caught my arm. “I can’t let you go, Matilda.”
“What? No!”
He lifted me up and carried me out of the house to the wagon. I struggled, but I was an eight-year-old girl and he was a full-grown, very strong man.
“I have to save him,” I said. “I have to save Abraham. Slater’s going to kill him. I can’t let him kill him.”
“What will be will be,” Foster said grimly. “You aren’t going to do this world or yours any good by throwing yourself in front of a bullet meant for another. If Abraham is half the man you say he is, he will handle Slater on his own.”
“No,” I said. “Please.”
But Foster climbed up into the wagon and held me down with one arm while he urged the horse into a gallop, quickly putting the town behind us.
27
The day is coming soon. You were twenty-six when we first met, and I am twenty-six now. Your time was so short. I know mine will be too.
—from the diary of E. N. D.
We rattled down the street at breakneck speed. If I threw myself off the wagon, I’d either knock myself out or snap a bone. And there was no guarantee Foster would continue on to the tower and tell Alveré to change the experiment.
If we had only three hours before the experiment went off, Slater had only three hours.
But he had read my grandmother’s journal. There might have been something in there that said where Abraham had been during the experiment.
He could already have found him.
He could already have a gun on him.
Evelyn? I thought, reaching out gently through my mind, hoping the girl could still hear me.
Yes?
Do you know a man named Abraham Vail?
No. Why haven’t we gone to heaven yet? I want to see my parents.
You will, I promised. I’ll take you to your parents. But there’s something we need to do here first. And if we do it right, we will save a lot of other people from dying today.
Silence.
It’s a really good thing, Evelyn. You can help me help a lot of people. You can help them not be sad.
I can?
Yes.
Who?
My brother, for one. He’s very nice and very smart. And my grandmother, who knits all day long with the wool from tiny sheep who fit in her pocket. And a woman doctor who is brave and smart, and so many other very nice people.
I want to help them. She sounded tiny but brave.
Good. I want you to help. In just a few minutes, I’m going to be talking to a man about a machine he’s built. If there’s anything you know or want to say, tell me.
All right.
It made me feel a little better that she wasn’t behind that door, hiding away from me. I was the intruder here in her body, in her life. I didn’t want her to be frightened.
The road, if that’s what it could be called, changed, becoming nothing but rain-filled ruts that wound up the hillside.
If I continued on with Foster, Robert would surely kill as many of the galvanized as he could find.
If I jumped . . . If I tried to save Abraham . . . It would be foolish. Wouldn’t it? I’d spent all of my life trying to save others, help others.
Saving Abraham was choosing the one over the many, and that was never the right choice.
Or was it? Without him alive to lead the galvanized in their fight against the Houses, no one would have broken out of servitude. House Brown wouldn’t exist. There would be no place for freedom in the world.
House
Brown wasn’t recognized as a power in the world, but it was made of people who were determined to make their own way and do no harm. People who didn’t want to be owned. People who believed they could make their own paths, their own destiny.
They were my people, my family, my friends. I couldn’t imagine a world in which House Brown didn’t exist.
I like brown houses, Evelyn said.
I’d forgotten she was in my mind with me, listening to me.
I do too, I told her.
I didn’t have the watch, so I didn’t know how long we’d been traveling. Certainly more than fifteen minutes. Now that the horse was moving slower up the hill, it felt like it was taking hours.
“How much longer?” I asked.
“Just up a ways,” Foster said.
“But how far?”
“Not too much farther.”
I swear I could walk faster than this horse. “We need to hurry,” I said.
“We are hurrying,” he said. “How do people get around in your time?”
“A lot faster than this. Combustion engines really catch on. After that, a lot of other power sources will be used to make wheels go around.”
“And how did you get here?” he asked. “Into the past?”
“I don’t know, exactly. My brother . . . he’s brilliant. He knew he could catch the energy of this time event . . . the moment Alveré Case’s machine breaks time, and use it to step back in time.”
“Do you think you could you do it again? Go back in time?”
I wondered why he would ask that. Then I remembered. He’d just buried his wife and son. Maybe he thought there was a way to go to them. To change their deaths.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I really don’t know how to do it. I just know that I did it. My brother was fairly certain most humans wouldn’t have survived the trip.”
“I understand,” he said. Then he fell silent again, sorrow closing around him as sure as a shadow.
He still had one arm braced across the front of me. Maybe to keep me from bouncing out of the wagon on accident, but more likely to keep me from jumping out on purpose.
“Foster?” I said.
“Mr. Sanders,” he corrected.
“Mr. Sanders,” I said, “Thank you for believing me. About time. About the experiment. About everything.”
“You may have convinced me of this truth,” he said, “but I am not the one who matters.”
“You matter to me,” I said. “A lot.”
He looked down, sorrow and compassion warring across his features. Then he looked away. “Dr. Case is a very . . . focused man. He is willful. Proud.”
I took a deep breath. Let it out. “He’ll listen. We’ll make him listen.”
After what felt like hours, we topped the hill, and Foster pulled the horse to a stop.
A smooth road drew a straight line to the long brick building that had six proud, two-story windows and a columned porch that sat snugly among the trees.
Rising to the west of the building was the tower—a beautiful construction of brick and wood with small windows that rose a strangely dizzying eighteen floors, topped by a half globe covered with what appeared to be glowing copper tiles.
“How much time do we have left?” I asked. A drop of rain struck my bare arm; another. The storm was rising, clouds drinking down the morning light.
Foster pulled out the watch that glowed like a cup of moonlight. “An hour and ten minutes.”
“Let’s hurry,” I said.
By the time we had jumped down out of the wagon, it was raining even harder than before. We ran up onto the covered porch. Foster pounded on the door.
“Is he here?” I said. “Are you sure he’s here?”
Foster stepped away from the building, scanning the windows. I didn’t see any light behind them. No movements.
“This way.” He jogged off toward the tower, his boots splashing through the growing puddles.
I hurried after him. Alveré must be here. If he wasn’t, then there would be no time to find him, no time to stop the experiment.
No, I refused to give up. If he wasn’t here, I’d find some way to break into his lab and change the experiment myself.
I was freezing and soaked by the time we made it to the tower. The wooden door seemed modest and inadequate for the grand structure. Foster knocked once, then tried the latch.
The door swung inward.
He reached over and pressed his wide hand on my back, and I stepped into the tower. He shut the door behind us.
“Dr. Case?” he called out as he took off his hat and held it in his hand. “Alveré, it is Foster Sanders. I need to speak to you, please.”
The room was built a lot like an old-fashioned lighthouse. The walls were a crisscross of bare wooden braces and beams; the wooden floors polished to a soft glow; and a curved, darker wood staircase arced up along the far edge of the wall.
A man came walking down that staircase.
Lean, light skinned, with dark curly hair that stood up off his forehead. He wore dark trousers, a light gray tailored vest, buttoned, the gold chain of a watch fob hanging in two short loops into his breast pocket. His white buttoned shirt was rolled up to his elbows, and a gray bow tie sat under the starched, round-edged collar. His eyes were bright and brown in a thin face full of curiosity.
He looked so much like Quinten, he could be his sibling.
“Foster,” he said in a voice half an octave lower than my brother’s. “What brings you out on this terrible morning?”
“This young girl.”
Alveré Case, my very-great-grandfather, looked down at me.
“Who is she?” he asked.
“She tells me her name is Matilda. Matilda Case.”
He shook his head, one hand paused on the banister, one foot still on the bottom stair. “Matilda,” he said. “I know of no relation with that name.”
“She says she is from the future. And she has brought this device to prove it.” Foster crossed the room, his boots leaving wet, oblong marks behind. He handed Alveré the watch.
“A pocket watch?” Alveré’s eyebrows arched. “No. Not quite, is it?” He turned the timepiece in his hands, then glanced at the face of it again. “Why are the numbers counting down?”
“She says it is a countdown to the moment you will execute your experiment,” Foster said.
Alveré frowned at Foster.
“I believe her,” Foster added solemnly.
Alveré walked past him to me.
I stood by the door, dripping and shivering.
“Who told you about my experiment, little girl?” he asked.
“When you trigger that experiment, it will kill everyone in a fifty-mile radius. Except for a few people who will fall into comas, then be revived by scientists. I’m one of those people. Or I will be. And in my time, three hundred years in the future, the repercussions of time mending will kill millions.”
He shook his head, a curious smile on his face. “You’ve memorized those words very well,” he said, “for someone so young. This is a joke.” He turned to Foster. “Why are you playing a joke on me?”
“It isn’t a joke,” I said. “When time breaks, everyone you know will die. And when time mends, everyone I know will die.” I walked around in front of him. “This paper is what we believe will alter the experiment. Enough so that when time mends, it won’t destroy millions.”
I held the scrap of paper out to him. He shook his head again but wasn’t smiling this time. He took the paper and read through the formula. Then his head lifted and he glared down at me.
“Who sent you?” he asked, his voice growing louder. “Who knows this? Who has been spying on me and my experiments?”
“No one!” I said. “You have to believe me. This isn’t . . . I came a very long way to tell you this. So that you can fix the mistake you made. I lost everything trying to get this information to you. So many people’s lives depend on you, Dr. Case. The entire world depends on you. Please
, please believe me. Please change the calculations.”
He crumpled the paper in his fist and threw it across the room. “Go home and tell your parents or whoever sent you here to mock me that I will find them and bring them to task for their trespass.”
“Alveré,” Foster said calmly.
“No.” Alveré spun on Foster. “I will not tolerate being mocked. I understand you have been grieving, so I will forgive you this gruesome lapse in judgment. But I will not allow a child to make a fool of me.”
I jogged across the room and picked up the paper where it fell.
“This isn’t a prank,” I said. “This is the lives of millions you are throwing away, because of what—your pride? You are just the first domino tipped over in the cascade of disasters that befall this world. Wars, uprisings, social and political failure. Millions die. Millions.
“And you have a chance to make things better—you have a guarantee that this”—I shook the paper—“would make things better, save lives, but you refused to glance at it. Are you so afraid of being wrong? Of having made a mistake, that you would rather continue making it than to correct it? I’m ashamed to call you my family, Alveré Remi Case. And I wish the Wings of Mercury experiment was never built.”
At that last, he went very pale. “How do you know the name of the machine?” he asked.
I was so angry, I wasn’t following his question. “What?”
“The name of my experiment. How do you know it?”
“Wings of Mercury? It is written in my grandmother’s journal. And it’s a legend, a myth. The machine built by Alveré Case that broke time,” I said.
“I’ve told no one. No one.” He breathed.
“That watch isn’t anything I’ve ever seen before,” Foster said. “Nothing I believe you’ve seen before. I don’t think the child is lying, Alveré.”
I threw Foster a look of gratitude.
“This,” I said, carrying the paper to Alveré, “is a minor, minor correction to your calculations. Brilliant men have studied your experiment. Brilliant men who want to save lives. They believed enough in their work—in your work—to send me back in time to bring this to you. Please.”
I held out the paper again. “In all your studies, in all your research, you must have seen the possibility that someone from the future would come back in time.” I shrugged. “That someone is me.”