THEY WENT ON FOR a long way, through corridors and colonnades, past pillars and frescos and carvings. In one wing of the palace they saw a row of open doors and beyond them craftspeople at work, women and men spinning thread, beating metal, painting unfired pottery.
Finally they came to a wide staircase. They headed down and down, four or five floors, through a part of the palace that must have been carved into the hill. Then they were shown into a nearly empty room, with silk cushions scattered across the benches and over the floor. Frescos showed a flowing green river with fish and turtles, lilies and reeds.
The guards sliced through their bindings and left them. They heard the sound of a bar being dragged across the door and they ran to slam against it, but it held firm.
They dropped down to the cushions in the center of the room and started to take off their disguises: pulling out padding, taking off toupees, rearranging their clothing. “I want to know how they found us,” Walker said. “No one knew where we’d be, except the Minos.”
“Well, that’s it then,” Elias said. “He must have talked.”
“Why would he do that?”
“He takes drugs, doesn’t he? And he drinks a lot, too. He must have let something slip.”
“You think so?” Da Silva asked. “This was his moment, his rebellion against the queen. Do you really think he’d jeopardize that, even drugged?”
“I don’t think he’s a very strong character, if that’s what you mean.”
“I’m with Amabel,” Walker said. Amabel? Ann wondered. Right, Da Silva. “I don’t think he would have said anything. So who did?” She looked at Ann and Franny. “Are you two sure you didn’t say anything to Meret?”
Ann felt anger rise within her and take her over, so strongly that for a moment she couldn’t speak. She’d told them about seeing Meret—she had squealed, as they said in the foster homes—and yet Walker still suspected her.
“Of course we’re sure,” Franny said. “And we couldn’t have told her anything anyway—we didn’t even know the Minos’s plan when we met her. All we knew was that he wanted us to disable the lookouts, not when or how to do it.”
“You could have seen her later, after we talked to the Minos again.”
“When?” Ann asked scornfully. “We were cooped up in that room the whole time. Anyway, we wouldn’t have mentioned seeing her if we were plotting in secret all this time.”
“I’m sorry, but it’s the only explanation. If the Minos didn’t say anything—”
“Of course the Minos said something—” Franny said.
“Oh, who cares?” Ann said. “How are we going to get out of here, that’s the important thing. You do realize that what we did was treason? That they’re going to kill us? How many other agents were killed on their assignments?”
“I don’t know if we can get out of here,” Elias said. “You escaped from them once—they’re going to watch us carefully from now on.”
“And we don’t have our bags, or we could have—” Walker said.
“God, that’s right,” Da Silva said, interrupting. “If they track us back to the inn they’ll find our bags. The drugs and stun guns and computers—”
“Well, but everything is pretty well hidden,” Elias said.
“But what if they find them?” Da Silva turned to Ann and Franny. “You know the company’s policy on this, don’t you?”
Ann remembered a lecture on it, but the other woman didn’t wait for her answer. “Tell them nothing about anything,” she said. “Not the drugs or the technology, not the company, not our meetings with the Minos and what we talked about.”
“What if—what if they torture us?” Franny asked.
“Don’t worry, they won’t. This isn’t the kind of culture that tortures.”
Was that true? How could Da Silva know something like that? She didn’t remember anything about torture in Strickland’s lectures.
“Wait, what did you mean about the bags?” she asked. “What could you do if you had them?”
“Any number of things,” Da Silva said. “Send a message to the company, use the drugs somehow—”
“You can—you can contact them? From here?”
“Well, of course. We can send them messages, if we need to be extracted without a key. We don’t do it very often, and we can only send small bursts of text data—it uses a huge amount of energy. But this is an emergency.”
Why didn’t they mention that before? Why did the company have to be so secretive? Suddenly Ann couldn’t bear to listen to them any longer; she felt trapped, suffocated. She stood and walked over to a partition and looked behind it. There was a toilet on the other side, and a large basin—it was the most luxurious prison she had ever heard of.
“Well, but they have to know where we are, don’t they?” Franny said. “I mean, they’ll come and get us sooner or later.”
“I don’t think—” Elias said slowly. He didn’t want to tell them, Ann saw, and she felt ill with disappointment. “They know which inns we were staying at—that much was worked out ahead of time. But there’s no way they’ll guess that we’re at the palace. I found you that first time because I knew that prisoners stayed in private houses—all I had to do was ask around and find the right one. But as far as I know, no one was ever jailed in the palace itself. They’ll have no idea.”
“Well, but they have all the time they need to work it out, right?” Ann asked. “They could figure it out in 2050 or something, and still come back for us.”
“That’s the problem,” Elias said. “If they were going to extract us they would have done it already. They would have stopped us on the way to the lookouts, someplace where we were alone.”
“So that’s it. We’re going to die here.” No one said anything. “I wonder how long they’ll go until they give up.” She pulled her legs up and laid her head on her knees, feeling hopeless.
“They might send someone to look for us, I suppose,” Elias said. He sounded dubious. “Time travel uses a tremendous amount of energy, though.”
“So, what—they’d rather save a few bucks than rescue us?”
Elias looked at her with impatience, and she realized how stupid she’d been. It wasn’t a question of money, she saw. The world the travelers came from had depleted most of their energy; they could not help but hate the way her tace had wasted all of its resources.
“They’ll be doing everything they can,” Da Silva said.
“But you don’t think it’ll be enough.”
“There’s no point in being pessimistic. We can’t know what will happen.”
A part of Ann wanted to believe her. She looked so much like a mother, the sort of kind, concerned parent who put you to bed when you were sick, and cheered when you got the lead in the school play, and commiserated when the boy you were interested in turned out not to be interested in you. But at the same time she knew that that wasn’t true, that she had conjured up a mother out of a comforting smile and warm, compassionate eyes.
It was still afternoon, but she felt suddenly tired. She went to one of the benches and lay down, and in a short while she was asleep.
SHE WOKE TO A loud scraping noise, and then the door opened and what seemed like a crowd of people walked into the room. For a moment she could make no sense of any of it— the sounds, the people, even where she was. Then she realized that someone had drawn back the bar on the door, that they had visitors, and she got up quickly.
The queen stood in the center of the room. She wore a purple frilled skirt and a white open blouse, and her hair was twined with gold and beads and jewels. A circle of her women orbited around her, and surrounding them, like distant, outer planets, were servants with trays of food and guards holding spears.
“I thought we’d have breakfast together,” Queen Ariadne said. If she noticed that they all looked slightly different, that they had removed their disguises, she gave no indication of it. “And I want to apologize for that trick I played on you yesterday, making you believe I’d send you into the bull games. I was angry with you, and it affected my judgment.”
She motioned to the servants, and they set down plates of hot bread and dried fruit, and mugs filled with some kind of juice. She sat on one of the pillows, spread her frilled skirts around her legs, and gestured to the others to join her. The servants and guards moved back to the walls and waited.
“This was my daughter’s room, when she was a child,” she said, as Ann and the others gathered around her. “I want to show you the Goddess’s hospitality, even though I don’t truly understand what you hoped to accomplish here. We defeated your army, you know. The Achaeans had landed from the mainland, ready to invade the palace and take command while everyone was at the games. And what I want to know is why. Why would someone from Egypt send the Achaeans against us?”
No one said anything. The queen looked puzzled, as though one of her children had lied about something unimportant. Ann couldn’t help feeling sorry for her: they had come into her country, taken advantage of her hospitality, plotted with her enemies, and she would never know the reason for it.
Ariadne took a sip of her drink. Ann brought her mug to her mouth. Her drink was dark red, like blood. She tasted it cautiously. Was it pomegranate? Would she be forced to stay here, like Persephone in the myth? She shuddered.
“We know much of it already, of course,” Ariadne went on. “We know the Minos has been talking to the Achaeans, that he wants to rule here.” She shook her head. “He’s not a very strong person, you know—he didn’t take much convincing to tell us everything. He would have made a terrible ruler. So help me understand, please. Why did you want to set him up here as queen?”
No one answered her. “He’s a strange one,” the queen said. “I’ve had two Minoses before him, and both of them lived their lives here without complaint. They know, when they begin their term, that they’ll be sacrificed at the end of seven years, and they accept it. The fruits and flowers die each winter, and are reborn in spring. And the Minos is reborn too, though not in his own person. If he is not sacrificed to Our Lady of the Waning Moon at the proper time, what would happen to the fertility of the land? What would happen to us if the crops die within the earth?”
“Why do they have to die for that, though?” Ann asked. “Why is she so bloody, that waning moon lady?”
Elias and Da Silva and Walker all turned to stare at her, scowling in a clear warning not to talk. But she wasn’t giving anything away, she just wanted to know.
The queen smiled. “As well ask why fire is hot, or why we take pleasure from eating and making love. People die, you know—you can’t stop it. She is the mistress of birth and sex, but also of death.” She paused. “Was that it? Do you think it’s unfair that the Minos has to die?”
“No,” Ann said. “I just wondered.”
“Then what? Help me understand here. Was it money? A chance to trade with us, on better terms than I would have ever given you? Or did the Minos simply bribe you?”
Ann shook her head, wishing she hadn’t said anything. The queen was still looking at her with that warm and understanding smile. She had thought Da Silva was motherly, but this woman seemed something beyond that, the pattern for all mothers everywhere. She remembered that Ariadne had said that this room was her daughter’s, reminding them of a mother-daughter relationship from the very beginning. Be careful, she thought. She knows exactly what she’s doing.
She drank the rest of her juice to avoid looking at her. None of the others touched anything; they thought it was poisoned, probably. She was willing to take that chance, though. One of the first rules of foster care was to eat while you can; you never knew when you might get another meal.
“Or did you truly think the Achaeans would make better rulers?” The queen looked at each of them in turn. “You’re women here, most of you—you know how bad men are at making decisions, how they’re ruled by their emotions. There’s too much anger there, too much love of violence. I acted like a man when I got angry with you, and I’m sorry for it.”
She finished her drink and stood up, and her women stood around her. “All right then. I’ll be busy tomorrow, but some of these women will come and take a meal with you.”
Ann had thought the women were ceremonial, ladies-in-waiting or something. Now she saw that they were part of a council, helping the queen make her decisions. They left the room, the queen first, and the bar slid into place behind them.
The servants had not taken the food, and the others seemed to realize that they wouldn’t be poisoned while the queen still wanted information. “What are we going to do?” Franny asked, taking a slice of bread. “They’ll keep asking us questions until we answer them. And after a while they’ll stop being so polite.”
“People die, you know—you can’t stop it,” the queen had said. And they knew more about death than Ann ever had, these people who had once seemed so untroubled and carefree. Was Ariadne saying that they wouldn’t hesitate to kill if they needed to?
“What if we told them the truth?” she asked. “Would that really be so terrible?”
“Well, the problem with that is that they wouldn’t believe you,” Da Silva said. “I mean, think about it. What are you going to tell them? That you’re from far in the future, come back to make things better …”
“I could tell them to look in our bags, at our technology. That would prove it.”
“You’d change the past drastically if you do that,” Elias said. “Imagine Kaphtor with an industrial revolution.”
“They won’t be able to figure out anything from our stuff. It’s much too advanced.”
“You can’t know that.”
“We can tell them we’re gods,” Franny said. “Show them the flashlights, the stun guns.”
“They have their own gods,” Da Silva said. “And we don’t look anything like them.”
No one said anything after that, each of them thinking their own thoughts, preparing themselves in their own way.
The time passed achingly slowly. There were no windows, no sight of the sun moving through the sky. Every so often someone would ask what time they thought it was, but no one ever answered, though once Walker snapped at the questioner and asked what difference it could possibly make.
Finally, around mid-afternoon, they heard the bar being lifted on the other side of the door. Franny grabbed Ann’s hand. Ann didn’t move away, though she couldn’t remember the last time she had held onto someone for reassurance.
The door opened, and Meret came inside.
Everyone exclaimed at once. “Meret!” “What the hell—” “What are you doing here?”
“So you’re working with the queen now?” Da Silva asked.
“I’m rescuing you, you idiots,” Meret said. She was wearing a long Kaphtoran robe over her shift. “Get up, let’s go.”
They hurried outside, then rushed after her down the hallway.
“Just what are you doing?” Walker asked as they ran. “Whose side are you on?”
“Yours, right now,” Meret said.
“Ann already told us you’re part of Core. So why are you helping us?”
“Maybe I don’t want to see you die here.”
“How did you know where we were?” Ann asked.
“Stop asking questions—we have to hurry.”
They ran through the maze of the palace, passing rooms and lightwells and staircases. They started through a long room lined with frescos of graceful dancing figures, and then Meret cursed and turned back. A ballroom?
Finally, after Ann was thoroughly lost, Meret stopped at a door and peered outside. “Come on,” she said.
They went through and found themselves in the bull court. It was empty, but Ann remembered the crowds, the noise, and she felt anxious, as if the queen was about to enter and the games start up again at any moment.
“Hurry up!” Meret called to her.
They ran through the court and out onto the road. “All right,” Ann said, slowing down. She was panting, unable to catch her breath. “How did you know where we were?”
“I made myself useful around the palace.”
“So you were working for the queen!” Walker said. “Were you the one who told her we were at the lookouts?”
“Don’t be stupid. If I was the one who betrayed you, why would I come and rescue you later? And keep running—we’re not safe yet.”
There was an answer to that question, Ann thought, but she was too exhausted to concentrate. They passed houses and taverns and shrines; then the path started heading down the hill, away from Knossos. “Where are you taking us?” she asked.
“To the key you buried, of course. You’re going back.”
“You aren’t coming with us?”
“What do you think? They know I’m with Core—they’ll question me every bit as hard as the queen would have questioned you.”
“Oh, come on,” Da Silva said. “You have a very strange idea of the company if you think that.”
Meret said nothing. She ran out ahead of them and then jogged back. “There’s someone coming, but she won’t stop you. Stop running, pretend you have every right to be here.”
They slowed to a walk. Ann took deep breaths, trying to calm the pounding of her heart. A shepherd passed them on the road, driving her sheep in front of her. “We could make you come back with us,” Elias said.
Meret laughed. “Not really.” She reached into her robe and drew out a small gun. “I took all your weapons.”
The sight of the gun was enough to silence them. They continued down the hill, passing more people heading into the city. Finally they reached the small stream and the valley floor she remembered, and came in among the fields and vineyards.
“Where did you get the gun?” Da Silva asked. “Did you take our bags from the inn?”
“Yeah. I can use some of the things you brought with you.”
“So you’re really staying hern?”
“Of course. Where else would I go?”
“You could come home with us. We won’t penalize you, I promise—we just want to know why you’re doing this, what you hope to gain by it.”
“I want to see the Kaphtorans survive for awhile longer, that’s all. I’m sure the company will send in more agents in a generation or so, but I’m going to see that they’re safe for now.”
“Of course we will—we get what we want eventually. But it’ll be harder the next time—the Kaphtorans will have had time to build up their navy again, and strengthen the lookouts along the coast. And who knows what else you’ve done hern, blundering around like this? You’ve interfered with years of careful calculations, snarled up the timelines. For all we know you’ve made things worse.”
“I doubt that.”
“I could show you what you did, on the computers.”
“I told you, I’m not going back.”
The trees ahead were starting to look familiar, and a short while later Ann saw the place they had landed. It was an olive grove, she realized, noticing for the first time the twisted brown trunks, the dusty green leaves. She’d been too anxious to look at it closely, the first time she’d been here.
“Where did you bury the key?” Meret asked.
Walker made her way through the trees. “Here,” she said.
She stooped and dug up a round piece of metal about an inch across. It looked a little like a gyroscope, Ann thought— there were oddly-shaped pieces cut out of the outer layer, revealing another layer with more holes beneath it, and yet another layer underneath that.
“Okay, good,” Meret said. “All of you, go stand over there with her.”
Walker manipulated the key, twisting it like a Rubik’s cube. “Hurry up,” Meret said, waving the gun at them.
It was at that moment, as she went to join Walker, that Ann understood Meret’s riddle. “You betrayed us because you were trying to keep the Kaphtorans safe, like you said,” she said. “And then you rescued us because you didn’t want to see us die.”
“But how could I have possibly known that you’d be at the lookouts?” Meret asked. She was smiling again, almost laughing, as if Ann had told her a good joke. “You know none of you told me that.”
The air wavered around her. Everything began to blur together, the brown of the trees, the green of the leaves. The sun skipped in the sky like a stone over water.
Meret’s voice came from far away. “Don’t worry—you’ll figure it out,” she said. Or did she? A dreadful ringing sounded in Ann’s ears, drowning out everything else. Her stomach clenched and she nearly vomited.
Then lights blazed out in front of her, so bright she felt as if she was being stabbed to the brain. She fell down onto a flat surface, the platform that had launched them back in time. Somewhere there were people applauding, whistling, someone calling “Welcome back!” in English.
The nausea was gone, and she looked around. The launch room seemed exactly as they’d left it, as though no time at all had passed. She pressed her hands to the platform and stood up. How long had it been since she had felt anything truly smooth, anything not handmade?
A man walked up to them, smiling broadly, holding out his hand. He was pale, very pale; she wasn’t used to men who weren’t some shade of red or brown. “Good to see you,” he said, shaking hands with Elias and then Da Silva. “But we didn’t feel any timequakes here—what happened to your assignment? And where’s Haas? And Gregory Nichols?”
“We couldn’t do it,” Elias said. “I’m sorry.”
The man frowned, then smiled again. “Well, don’t worry,” he said. “Everything will turn out all right, I’m sure. Right now you’re going to the infirmary, and then we’ll start our debriefings. Anyone need medical attention? What about some food or drink before we start?”
“Water,” Franny said.
Pomegranate juice, Ann wanted to say. “I’d like some water too,” she said.
08092014
109575
Assignment 17 to Kaphtor, Supplement: Some Notes about Core, Along with Recommendations Emra Walker
In addition to the problems we encountered during our assignment (see “Assignment 17 to Kaphtor,” attached, for my full report), there were several disturbing incidents that might shed some light on the problematic group known as Core. To begin with, Francine Craig and Ann Decker were supposed to meet me at a prearranged location after drugging their jailers, but I later learned that they did not do this. Instead, Decker brought Craig to the cemetery at Craig’s request, to show her where Gregory Nichols was buried. While at the cemetery they met Meret Haas, who was in the process of digging up Nichols’s grave.
Craig and Decker’s account of what happened there made it clear that Haas had joined Core. Decker also mentioned that Haas had wanted to inspect Nichols’s body because of her suspicions that the company had somehow killed him. When Decker asked her why the company would do such a thing, Haas admitted that Nichols might have been another member of Core. Craig and Decker denied that Haas had used the word “Core,” though, or given any description of that group’s workings.
We tried to bring Haas back with us, but, as I stated in my report, we were unsuccessful. It is possible that she was not working alone, that she had help from other members of Core. Certainly her actions seemed too coordinated to be the work of one person.
My recommendations are as follows:
First, we must review all of Haas’s previous assignments for possible sabotage. (See Table 13, attached, for a list of those assignments.)
may have to send more agents to the past to erase these efforts.
Third, we must continue to monitor this tace, to see if Haas manages to effect any important changes thern.
Fourth, we need to review the files of all of the agents who took part in Assignment 17. Craig and Decker’s exposure to Haas is troubling, especially in connection with the indications of antisocial behavior I saw earlier. (See the report, “Strengths and Weaknesses of Cohort 14, Along with Some Recommendations,” attached.)
Decker is scheduled to go on Assignment 21, to Alexandria. (See Table 14, attached, for a full list of agents on that assignment.) As you can see, Haas was sent on another assignment thern earlier, and will be in Alexandria at the same time. My fifth recommendation would be to give Decker an additional assignment, that of getting close to Haas and finding out more about her plans, and those of Core.