Rewinder

CHAPTER ELEVEN

The note is in the pocket of the trousers I’ll be wearing on my mission. I initially think it’s a piece of rubbish that somehow was missed by the support staff, but when I pull it out, I find it’s not all stuck together as if it’s been through the wash. It’s folded into a small square. Curious, I open it.

There are four lines of machine-printed type: my name on the first, a Chaser location number on the second, a date and time — MARCH 16, 1982, 4:30 PM — on the third, and the words COME DISCONNECTED ONLY on the last.

I’ve no idea what the final line means, but it’s obvious someone wants me to travel to the coordinates.

As to who might have left it for me, the first person that comes to mind is Lidia. Perhaps she’s still furious with me for not telling her about our confinement and wants to take it out on me somewhere outside the institute’s grounds. But the last time I saw her, she was more in a state of resignation than fury.

Perhaps the note is some sort of institute test to see if I’m willing to make an unauthorized jump. We’ve been told that doing so without the knowledge of the mission staff is grounds for immediate reassignment.

I hear the door start to open so I slip the note back into my pocket, just as Johnston enters the room. Ten minutes later, we leave 2015 behind.

As we work, my mind drifts now and then back to the note in my pocket, but at least I’m smart enough not to pull it out. When we come back to our home time, I slip the note from one pair of trousers to the other as I change.

Back in my room, I sit at my desk, staring intently at the note. I can’t deny I’m more than a little tempted to make the jump. But even after putting aside the questions of who gave me the coordinate and why the person wants me there, I’m confronted with a third unknown: If I were to make the trip, how would I do it without anyone at the institute knowing?

Any time I use my Chaser, my companion Palmer feels it and those who monitor him know I’ve gone somewhere. If I travel at an unscheduled time, Sir Wilfred will be informed and security will be waiting for me when I get back. Or, quite possibly, based on the fact we’ve been told our destination can be tracked, the guards may even come after me.

So, as tempted as I am to go, I see no way to make it work without putting my position in danger. I tuck the note away and try to forget about it.

Exactly one week later, I receive a second message.

Like the one before, the new message is machine printed.

If you want answers, go. Disconnect. It’s safe.

This is followed by a short list of instructions.

Disconnect. There’s that word again. I try to recall if I’ve ever heard anyone at the institute use it, but nothing comes to mind. When I read the instructions, however, I finally understand what it means. The instructions concern making adjustments to my Chaser, but it’s the last line that explains it:

5. Once done, enter the coordinates and go. You are disconnected from your companion and cannot be traced.

My skin tingles from both fear and excitement. Thoughts of do it and go are matched in strength by ones like the note is a lie and it can’t be safe.

Even if I want to go now — which I’m not sure I do — I can’t. My next mission is about to start and Johnston’s already waiting by the door.

Today, our work takes us to Pittsburgh, 1971, in the business district near where the rivers meet. Johnston, as he often does, has told me to stay where I am while he checks ahead, so I’m blending in by leaning against the side of a building and reading a local newspaper I found on the ground.

It’s a nice day and a lot of people are out, walking along the sidewalk. None pay me the slightest bit of attention. That is, not until someone tugs at my arm.

I keep my eyes on the paper and pretend I haven’t noticed, hoping whoever it is will go away. But there’s a second pull, followed by a young boy’s voice saying, “Excuse me.”

Thinking he’s looking for a handout, I say, “I don’t have any change.”

This isn’t the first time I’ve talked to someone in the past, but the encounters are always unnerving, and, per training, I do everything I can to end them quickly.

“Who’s asking for money?” he says.

I move the paper to the side and take my first look at him. Though his clothes are not new, they’re relatively clean and there’s no dirt on his face or hands. Not a street kid.

“I’m busy,” I say, and start to open the paper again.

“I have a message for you. You want it or not?”

A message? “You must have the wrong guy.”

“You’re Denny, right?”

I lower the paper all the way to my side. “Yeah.”

“So, do you want it?”

Johnston must be in trouble, I realize, and this is the only way he could reach me. “What is it?”

“They can’t track you if you go farther than ten years.”

I stare at him, dumbfounded. “What?”

“They can’t track you if you go farther than ten years.”

“Who told you to tell me that?” When he doesn’t answer, I say, “Who?”

I reach out to grab him by the shoulder but he jumps back.

“Hey, leave me alone.”

I step toward him. “I just want to know who it was.”

As he turns to run away, I notice we’re beginning to attract attention. My need to know who gave him the message struggles with my training to blend, and it takes all my will to move only a single step after him.

That’s when the boy stops and looks back. “Oh, yeah. One more thing. Disconnect and go!”

My feet sink into the cement sidewalk as he disappears down the street.

Perhaps, if I really want to play the fool, I could dismiss the first part of the boy’s message as coincidence. But there’s no way the last is.

Whether it’s true or not, I don’t know.

What I do know now is that I’m going to make the trip.

I can hardly wait to get to my room when we return.

After I finally close and lock my door behind me, I dig out the note containing the instructions and set to work disconnecting my Chaser from my companion. It’s not difficult. Only two wires need to be decoupled and a third rerouted.

I check my work several times to make sure I did it right. The only way to know for sure, though, is to make the trip.

I enter the date and location information from the first note, key in an adjusted time, then stare at the device, my confidence wavering.

Should I really do this? Is it worth the risk?

My answer vacillates with every second, until, with yes still in my head, I press the GO button.

As always, the world around me winks out and I’m shrouded in gray mist. What’s missing this time is the faint but ever-present sense that Palmer is there, too. As quickly as I register this, the mist is gone and the world of March 16, 1982 appears. The note told me to arrive at 4:30 in the afternoon, but, per my training, I’ve arrived thirteen and a half hours early at 3 a.m.

A trip of thirty-three years would typically result in nothing more than a headache that might last a few minutes. What I experience is a spike of pain more reminiscent of a hundred-year jump. It forces me to a knee as I ride out the sensation.

Once the pain has abated, I look around and see that I’m not, as is usually the case, behind a building or in an alleyway or some other hidden spot in a city. In fact, there are no buildings in sight. I’m at the edge of a forest in a grassy meadow where boulders stick out of the ground here and there like skullcaps of buried giants. The only sound I hear is a gently flowing river somewhere to the right.

It’s a perfect place for an out-of-the-way meeting.

Or ambush, the cautious part of my brain thinks.

I choose a spot just inside the woods, use the Chaser’s calculator to refigure my arrival location, and pop to 4:30 p.m.

As soon as my eyes adjust to the tree-filtered daylight, I creep up to the edge of the meadow and look around. At first I think something must be wrong. No one’s waiting for me near the spot where I’m supposed to appear. I scan the meadow, wondering if this is someone’s idea of a joke, perhaps Lidia trying to get me into trouble. But then I spot someone sitting on one of the rocks about fifty yards away, back to me.

By the time I’m halfway there, I’m pretty sure I know who the person is, and when I’m near, I know I’m right.

“Gorgeous here, isn’t it?” Marie says.

I take a look around. “It is.”

She motions to a spot beside her. “Join me.”

The rock is easy to ascend, and within seconds I’m sitting next to my old instructor.

“If you’re hungry, I have some snacks,” she offers. “Water, too.”

“I’m fine, thanks.”

After a quiet moment, she asks, “When did you come from?”

I give her the date of my home time.

“Took you a whole week, huh?”

“When did you come from?” I ask.

“I put the note in your pants ten minutes before I got here.”

“Which note?”

She raises an eyebrow. “Well, I guess it would be the first one. I take it I needed to give you another.”

I nod and reach into my pocket to get the second note, but she lays a hand on my wrist.

“No. I still have to give it to you, so let me surprise myself.”

I pull my hand back out, empty.

“Since we’re not surrounded by security officers, I’m guessing you figured out how to disconnect.”

“Not on my own.”

She raises an eyebrow but says nothing.

“Are you sure we can’t be traced here?” I ask.

She nods. “It’s a hole in the system the institute’s science department hasn’t been able to plug. Any jump more than ten years, with or without a companion, doesn’t even show up on their scanners.” Her eyes narrow, assessing me. “You already knew that, too, didn’t you?”

I shrug.

“I tell you that in the second note?”

“No. You had a boy tell me on one of my missions.”

She chuckles. “Still more work you’re making me do, I see.”

I hear the cry of a bird. I look up and spot it soaring above the far end of the meadow. When it disappears in the trees, I ask, “What did you want to see me for?”

“You’ve got it backwards. You wanted to see me.”

“So you knew I was looking for you.”

“Of course I did.”

“Then why wouldn’t you see me back at the institute?”

“Because I have a feeling what you want to talk about would be best discussed elsewhere.” She gives me a sideways glance. “Was I wrong?”

“No.” She’s given me an opening but I hesitate. “You won’t report what I ask you about?”

“Would I have brought you here if I was going to do that?”

I shake my head.

The original questions I wanted to ask her were about Harlan Walker, but in the time since I first started looking for her, more important ones have surfaced. “Are we really not permitted to leave the institute in home time?”

“You’ve had the talk, huh?”

I nod.

“I’ve been with the institute for fifteen years, and can tell you that since we started using the Chaser, I’ve only set foot outside in our home time twice. Both were as part of recruiting missions such as the one that brought you to us.”

“They really should have told us that ahead of time.”

“If you’d known, would you have refused the offer?”

“I didn’t even know what I was coming to.”

“But you did know it was going to be a hell of a lot more interesting than the life you would have had otherwise.”

“You’re right,” I say after a moment. “I would’ve still come. But I don’t think Lidia would have.”

“Lidia?”

“She was in my group. Trained in the room next to ours.”

“Ah, right. Lidia Hampstead. She was a…placement.”

“What’s a placement?”

“Rewinders typically come from families who are Threes, Fours, and Fives. Now and then we’ll get the occasional Six.”

“I’m an Eight,” I say.

“You were a Eight. Yours was a…rare case. The institute’s only taken two other from that far down, but they couldn’t ignore your test scores. Still, Lady Williams had serious doubts. That’s why you were tested again and why she was personally there. And it took Sir Gregory to convince her to take you. It’s good to see his belief in you has paid off.”

I never even considered that I was the lowest caste member in my training class. That’s probably why most of the others ignored me, and a few — Lidia at the lead — did nothing to hide their contempt.

“Why would Sir Gregory do that for me?”

She looks at me as if I should already know the answer. “Why would you think?”

A potential answer comes to me, but I find it hard to believe so I say nothing.

Before the silence stretches too long, Marie continues. “There’s a certain prestige among the elite for having an offspring at the institute. Those with eighteen-year-olds who achieve a certain score level on the tests can request placement within the program. Usually these candidates come from large families who have children to spare. Per the institute’s royal charter, names of new institute members are sent to the king. By offering one of their own, a family can gain favor with the Crown and receive advantages such as tax breaks, knighthoods, and even the possibility of moving into the nobility if they aren’t there already.”

“I’m on the list?” I asked, surprised.

“Of course.”

I can barely get my head around the thought that the king has seen my name.

Marie looks at me. “Is this what you wanted to discuss?”

I push away my thoughts of the king and shake my head. “Not just that.” I tell her about Harlan Walker, the adjusted family report, his death, and the mention in the paper of the donation to the Upjohn Institute. “I wanted to get another copy of the paper so I tried to go outside. That’s how I ended up talking to Sir Gregory.” I frown. “If you don’t believe me, you could find a copy of the paper.”

“I don’t need to.”

“Hold on,” I say. “You’re the one who left the paper for me, aren’t you?”

“No.”

There’s nothing hidden by her demeanor so I’m pretty sure she’s telling the truth. “Do you know who did?”

Her shrug is less convincing than her no.

“Who do you—”

“Situations such as Mr. Walker’s happen all the time,” she says, refocusing our discussion. “Though not everyone kills themselves.”

I want to push her on the point of who left the newspaper, but I know it’d be a wasted effort so I say, “Then it wasn’t a heart attack.”

“I don’t know for sure,” she said. “I haven’t looked into this case, but what do you think?”

“Suicide. What I don’t understand is, why?”

“What do you think the institute really does?”

The words come automatically out of my mouth. “We trace family histories.”

“We uncover family histories,” she says. “The good and the bad. What the institute usually reports is only the good. The bad is kept for other things.”

“Johnston said something similar, that the bad just gets filed away.”

“That’s the company line, and Johnston is nothing if not a topflight company man,” she says, not hiding her disdain. “Let me tell you how things probably went with Walker. First, Lady Williams presented him with a clean but inaccurate family history. All smiles and thank-yous and respect. A few days later, Sir Wilfred pays Walker a follow-up visit, in which he presents the true facts, ones that could destroy the family’s social standing and spell disaster for its business. Several options will be laid out, the important part of each being a ‘sizable donation’ to the Upjohn Institute.”

“Blackmail.”

“Yes.”

“So they told Walker to kill himself?”

“I’m sure that was one of the possibilities covered. In which case, those who inherit would be brought into the discussion. It doesn’t matter to the institute which direction is chosen. Its only concerns are the size of the donation and that the institute never comes under any scrutiny.”

“So when we receive payment, the bad goes away?”

She shrugs. “Until it’s needed again.”

“That’s…” I don’t know which word to use — terrible, disgusting, unbelievable. None fully conveys the revulsion I feel. “I can’t believe the institute would do something like that.”

“Oh, Denny,” she says. “You’ve spent nearly your whole life hovering just above the bottom of society. Surely you realized long ago that everything in the empire is corrupt.”

We’re taught from a very young age that to degrade the empire is to degrade the king, so saying the words out loud is treasonous. But she’s right. I’ve seen my share of corruption and learned early on to turn a blind eye to it. The difference here is that this is on a scale much grander than the daily graft I’ve been exposed to.

“You’re saying our job is to feed the corruption,” I whisper.

“Only if you always follow regulations.”

I look at her, apprehensive. “What are you talking about?”

“You and I have spent a lot of time together. I could tell early on you know the difference between right and wrong. We wouldn’t be having this discussion otherwise. All I’m saying is that sometimes it’s okay to ignore what you’ve been taught. Maybe you come across something you think the institute might use in ways you’re not comfortable with. You can choose not to report it. As you get a sense of those you’re tracing, you can decide how much or how little the institute learns.”

These words are treason on a slightly smaller, institute-related scale, and would certainly result in her being locked up in some deep, dark dungeon at Upjohn Hall.

She must be reading my mind, because she says, half smiling, “You’re free to turn me in if you want, but I would appreciate it if you don’t. At the very least, give me some warning.”

“Of course I won’t turn you in.” How can I when everything she says makes sense?

“All I’m really trying to tell you is that when you’re unsure of a situation, you should take however long you need and then do what you think is right. If you’re not true to yourself, this job will kill you.”

The part of me that remembers growing up as the son of a laborer — constantly reminded to “know your place” and “don’t make waves” and “do as you’re told”—is waging an all-out war with the part of my mind that wants to embrace the path Marie is offering me.

“I’m only telling you to do what you think is right,” she says.

“Is that what you’ve been doing?”

She looks across the meadow, whatever’s left of her smile disappearing. “Not as much as I should.”

“How am I supposed to know what’s right?”

“You’ll know.”

Will I?

As the sun nears the mountains to our west, the temperature drops noticeably. Marie rubs her arms. “Is there anything else you wanted to know?”

A million things, I think, but what she’s already told me has overloaded my mind. “Not right now.”

“Then you should head back.”

“What about you?” I ask.

“In a bit. Go on. I’ll be fine.”

Once I’m off the rock, I ask, “If I have more questions, can we meet again?”

“We’ll see.”

It’s not exactly the answer I’m hoping for but at least she doesn’t say no. I turn, intending to put a little distance between us before I travel home.

“It’s Roger, by the way,” she says.

I pause and look back. “I’m sorry?”

“The student I hadn’t met yet who watched Dawson Tower go down. His name’s Roger. I’m training him now.”

“Is he your last?”

She shrugs. “I don’t know. Haven’t planned on stopping.”

“Maybe you can take future students somewhere else. The roof is getting a bit crowded.”

“Maybe.”

I detect her uncertainty and wonder what she’s thinking.

“Go home, Denny,” she says before I can ask. “You’ll do fine.”