The Time Roads (7 page)

And remembered.

Breandan
.
Breandan, what have you done?

Except I knew. Or thought I knew.

My hands shook as I set aside the paper. I glanced upward to the darkened ceiling, half expecting a rain of papers to descend upon me, describing an unknown past and future. Memory pricked at my brain, reminding me of days and months I had forgotten.

(Forgot. Or never lived.)

I took up a second page from the middle of the set. Glanced over a description of a failed experiment. Once more the name Breandan Ó Cuilinn made my brain ache with half-remembered events. He had demonstrated a machine to my father. That much I was certain. But the rest … a balloon, a diary of experiments conducted here, at Cill Cannig?

I took the balloon and the papers back to my private chambers. It was strange, but their presence gave me a stability I lacked and had longed for this past month. Over the next few weeks, I compared Breandan’s journals against papers from other nations and other universities concerning recent findings about time fractures. I also pored over newspapers, searching for more clues about inconsistencies in present times. The more I investigated, the more I remembered from that other time, that other past. Someone had closed the fractures over Osraighe and Awveline City. Murders were undone, the past rewritten. Because of that, Lord Ó Cadhla’s daughter lived, and Breandan had died.

(Perhaps. Or if he lived, it was in a different time. In a different world from the Éire I knew.)

And what if I could travel into the past, forbid Breandan to make his fateful journey? Would he listen to me, a stranger? Or would he nevertheless press onward, to be the first of all scientists to breach the walls of time?

He would go. No matter what the risk.

I knew that because he had done so already. He had launched himself forward to a future that had vanished. No, not vanished. According to the many treatises I had read, his future had jumped to a different path, severed from mine.

Now I understood the choices my father had faced when my mother died. It was not merely an acceptance of death. It was the knowledge that our duties and our path lay with Éire, not with any other person who happened to share our lives.

I picked up the miniature balloon and ran my fingers over its delicate tracery of wires, over the perfect sphere, now marred and blunted by its impossible passage through time. I would keep it, and its companion record of the vanished past. Ah, but that was all.

Wherever you are, Breandan Ó Cuilinn,
I thought.
Wherever you travel. Fare thee well.

A FLIGHT OF NUMBERS FANTASTIQUE STRANGE

SEPTEMBER 1902

Like every other visitation room in Aonach Sanitarium—and Síomón Madóc knew them all—this one was painfully bare. No chairs. No carpet. The plaster walls scrubbed clean of any character, their blank expanse interrupted only by a single metal door and a row of narrow windows. In spite of the brilliant sunlight, a rare thing this September day, the air felt chilled, as though the thick glass had leached away the sun’s vitality, and a faint astringent smell lingered, a hospital smell that Síomón associated with having his tonsils removed when he was twelve. He shivered and wished he had kept his frock coat with him.

Across the room, his sister sat cross-legged on the floor, her gaze fixed upon a corner of the ceiling. “141955329,” she said. “Times two. Exponent 25267. Add one.”

Gwen spoke slowly, enunciating each syllable with painful care. Even so, her voice sounded furry—a side effect of the drugs, Síomón knew.

“1031980281. Times two. Exponent 25625. Subtract one.” She paused a heartbeat and her normally tense mouth relaxed, as if savoring the number, before she started the next.

The bleating of a motorcar horn filtered through the windows from the avenues bordering the sanitarium grounds. Síomón rubbed his forehead, trying to massage away an incipient headache. When his sister had first begun these litanies, he had immediately recognized the numbers for simple primes. As the months and years passed, however, the numbers had swelled to fantastical lengths, surpassing all the known tables. Síomón could only guess, but he suspected these were primes as well.

Gwen Madóc. Twenty-three. Her age too was a prime number, as was his.

Sit quietly with her,
the doctors had advised.
Your presence serves to heal.

He saw no sign of it, however. Four years had passed since Gwen first came to this sanitarium in Awveline City. Four years of weekly visits, in between his studies at the university. He could barely remember Gwen outside this whitewashed room, where even the floors were sanded to eliminate splinters. Formerly, they had allowed him a stool, but one day his sister had seized the stool and flung it at Síomón’s head.

“1031980281. Times two exponent 25625 add one, Síomón. Add one.”

Síomón snapped up his head. Had she really said his name?

“353665707. Times two. 25814. Minus 1. 353665707*225814
+
1. 1958349*231415–1. 1958349*231415
+
1.”

The numbers poured out so fast that Síomón could barely distinguish between them.

“1958349 times two exponent—”

Gwen broke off, her face stricken as she groped for the next number. A moment’s hush followed, so profound Síomón could almost hear the sunlight beating against the windows.

“Gwen?” he whispered, hoping she might hear him today.

His sister’s eyes went blank, and she began to rock back and forth, keening. That too fit the pattern of their visits—numbers, confusion, grief, then anger.

Still keening, Gwen lifted her hands toward the barred windows, which cast blue shadows over the floor. In the sunlight, the silvery scars on her wrists and palms stood out against her pale skin. There was a theory associating particular numbers with certain colors. So far there were no practical applications, but several recent papers from Lîvod University in Eastern Europe claimed to support the theory—

Without warning, Gwen launched herself at Síomón. They crashed against the wall and rolled over, he grappling for her wrists while she tore at his face with her fingernails, shrieking, “Síomón Síomón Síomón Síomón.”

The door banged open, and five attendants burst into the room. Four of them dragged Gwen away. The fifth helped Síomón to his feet, murmuring in concern, “You’ve taken a cut, sir.”

He dabbed at Síomón’s forehead with a cloth, but Síomón pushed the man’s hand away. “It’s nothing. Just a scratch. No need to trouble yourself about me.”

“It’s no trouble at all, sir.”

Meanwhile, Gwen shrieked and cursed and sobbed as the other attendants wrestled her into submission. Her pale blonde hair fell in snarls over her face, ugly red blotches stained her cheeks, and her mouth looked swollen. Síomón could not tell if one of the attendants had struck her, or if she had injured herself in the fight.

I was right here. I should have heard a slap.

Before Síomón could say anything, the four attendants bundled Gwen out the door. The remaining man gave one last dab to Síomón’s forehead before he too departed. Síomón drew a long breath. He flexed his hands, which ached as though he’d been clenching them.

“Mr. Madóc.”

Doctor Loisg stood in the doorway. Unlike the other doctors, he wore a plain tweed suit and not the white jacket they so often favored. His placid gaze took in Síomón’s bleeding forehead and rumpled clothes. “A difficult session,” he observed. “But not unexpected.”

“I should not have come. We were too optimistic.”

“Hardly too optimistic. Hopeful. Yes, we had a setback today, but I would urge you to continue your visits. Minz and Gerhardt speak of the soothing effect of familiar faces, and their latest research shows great promise.”

“Of course,” Síomón said, but his thoughts were still on Gwen. Had she sounded more desperate today? And, yet, she had remembered his name. That had to be a positive sign.

Still distracted by that possibility, Síomón only half listened as Loisg escorted him through the sanitarium’s broad and well-lit halls, speaking in general terms about Gwen’s condition. It was a familiar topic, this discourse on madness and obsession, and how a brilliant mind often shattered under unbearable pressure, only to seek refuge in that which had driven it mad.

For Gwen was mad, mad from too many numbers, and the damage appeared irreversible. However, they were trying kindness, as far as that went, and with Síomón’s permission, they employed some of the more exotic cures—combinations of music and drugs, the newest electrical therapy, and other techniques Síomón didn’t want to examine too closely. Loisg spoke of finding the root cause, as though Gwen were a complex number whose illness they could calculate.

They came at last to the staircase that wound down to the sanitarium’s foyer, a grand airy room decorated with opulent couches and rugs, and hung about with enormous paintings from masters in the previous century. Bowls of fresh-cut roses were placed about on marble stands, giving off a sweet scent. Several visitors clustered about the windows, waiting their own turn to speak with the doctors. Síomón recognized their look of painful expectation as he and Loisg came down the stairs. A lone man occupied a couch by the empty fireplace, apparently absorbed in a book. As Doctor Loisg took his leave from Síomón, the man stood and approached.

“Pardon me,” he said. “I’m told you might be Mr. Síomón Madóc.”

He was a tall man, with a lean tanned face that certain women might call handsome. His eyes were warm and brown, his gaze direct. He wore a well-cut black frock coat and silk vest. Obviously an educated man, though his accent was hard to place. There were traces of shadows underneath his eyes, as though he had slept badly, and an air of tension beneath that polite expression.

“I am Síomón Madóc,” Síomón said slowly. “But you have the advantage of me, sir.”

The man smiled, one that vanished as soon as it arrived. “Perhaps I should start over. My name is Aidrean Ó Deághaidh. I’d like a few words with you, if I might.”

He spoke politely enough, but there was something in his manner that told Síomón the question was a perfunctory one. “Concerning what?”

Another of those ghostlike smiles made its appearance. “Let us talk outside, Mr. Madóc. There’s a park nearby, and a pathway along the Blackwater, if you would be so kind as to indulge me.”

At once the clues shifted—Ó Deághaidh’s manner, the way his gaze absorbed every detail—and though the man had not mentioned any official title, Síomón knew why Ó Deághaidh had sought him out.
He’s come about the murders.

He studied Ó Deághaidh with greater wariness. “I’m happy to assist you in whatever way possible, but if you’ve come with questions about the cases from last spring, I’ve remembered nothing new.”

“I didn’t say you had, Mr. Madóc. Please. Come with me.”

Síomón consulted his watch. An hour until his next lecture remained. Unless this man Ó Deághaidh wanted more than a few answers—and Síomón had none to give—he could easily make the university grounds with time to spare. He nodded his agreement.

They exited the foyer and set off along the sanitarium’s pathways, winding down the sloping lawn toward the gates below. Síomón had expected Ó Deághaidh to begin his questions at once, but Ó Deághaidh remained silent, glancing from side to side as they passed the masses of late-blooming lilies, their rich scent hanging heavy in the warm air. Though it was still early afternoon, the grounds were nearly empty, the lawns rolling in smooth emerald waves, with stands of ancient oaks here and there, and a thicker wall of shrubbery and trees that concealed the iron gates. From certain angles, Síomón could almost imagine himself at home at Gleanntara, up north in County Laingford. It was for that reason, as well as its reputable doctors, that he had chosen Aonach Sanitarium for Gwen’s confinement.

“You are a man of impressive wealth,” Ó Deághaidh said.

Recalled abruptly from his reverie, Síomón nearly stumbled. “And you are a man of abrupt turns, Mr. Ó Deághaidh. Or do you have a title I should use?”

Ó Deághaidh shrugged. “My title is Commander Ó Deághaidh, if you prefer a more formal address,” he said. “And I apologize for trespassing into your private concerns.”

“Of course,” Síomón said automatically. He felt an immediate spark of irritation, then, at himself and Ó Deághaidh both, and added, “But then, trespassing on private concerns is your trade, is it not?”

It was a direct jab. Rude, even, but Ó Deághaidh seemed unperturbed by the comment. “It is, sadly. We come to our jobs with a natural curiosity about the world, and our work encourages it. You might say the same for you and your fellow students, no?”

So the commander came well armed and ready to use his weapons. Síomón covered his reaction with a shrug of his own. “So they tell me. As the poet once said, ‘The tools of mathematics are a curious set—the eye, the hand, the pen, the brain. It is with these instruments, we cast our net. And bring to earth a flight of numbers fantastique strange.’”

Ó Deághaidh nodded in recognition. “Henry Donne. The famously obscure Anglian poet of the late sixteenth century.”

“An obscurity he earned,” Síomón replied. “And yet, worth studying. His meter falters, but I find his sentiments ring true.”

They had come to the outer gates, which opened onto Tulach Mhór Street, a broad avenue filled with carriages and the occasional motorcar. With Ó Deághaidh leading, they crossed between the horses and cars to the farther side, then into the park, where a series of well-tended footpaths soon brought them to the Blackwater, a dark and sluggish river that wound through Awveline City’s heart. The sun shone like a diamond in the September sky, bright against a lacework of silvery clouds, and other pedestrians strolled the walkways—women in silk-lined pelisses, their faces hidden beneath sweeping hats; men in high-collared shirts and bowlers. The air was summer-warm, but then a gust of wind rattled the trees, sending down a shower of brown and crimson leaves.