The Curiosity Killers (7 page)

And yet here was a page out of a history book showing a woodcut of a woman with short hair who looked all too familiar.

“Is that me?” she murmured. Her stomach felt heavy and yet empty at the same time, as if she’d been filled with air. “Oh, my God, that’s supposed to be me.”

Vere snatched the paper away. “It isn’t you, Ms. Fallon. Of course it isn’t you.” He cleared his throat and drew a pair of half-moon spectacles from his shirtfront pocket. “It seems there’s an old legend amongst the Iroquois of a sorceress who served as a kind of portent of the Roanoke disappearance.” He lowered the paper. “And of course, that would have been centuries ago. So it couldn’t be you.”

Fallon’s eyes darted to the corners of the room.

Exit, exit, where the hell is the exit?

Just as she spotted the door, a hand clamped down on her wrist. She shrieked. “Let go of me!”

“I think not.”

Fallon struggled, but then a piece of hard plastic pressed to her temple.

“What is that thing?” Fallon asked.

Vere turned his hand over and studied the device now resting in his weathered palm. “This?” He scanned the dark plastic and small white buttons. “This is for our memory erasure, which you’re already aware of as a stipulation of our services.” He turned his hand around so that Fallon could see the buttons. “Can you read that?”

Fallon squinted. One of the buttons said “Restore.” Another said “Revert.” In a row beneath the other buttons, a third said “Delete All.”

“This is what I use to erase the memory of your adventure. You know we do this with all our clients, though perhaps in a slightly nicer manner. Because it’s the gaining of the knowledge that’s important, isn’t it? Not so much the keeping? The keeping, well…that’s too dangerous. That’s what our whole business model is run on. Knowledge gain for its own sake, the retention of which is immaterial.”

“I wanted to know what happened,” Fallon said, “and I knew I wouldn’t get to keep the memory, but…
delete all
?”

A wicked grin split Vere’s face, and he let his thumb move to the “Delete All” button. “Yes. Activating this command…”

“Deletes
all
?” Fallon whimpered.

“As in every memory, not only your trip, but everything.” He stared at her. “The sentimental falling of leaves on your first day of kindergarten, your first kiss, your graduation, your parents’ funerals.” He leaned even farther over the table, his face inches from Fallon’s, so close she could feel the heat of his breath. It held a whiff of peppermint tea, stale enough to be unpleasant at this distance. “I mean the memory of how to walk, talk, read…dare I say function. You would be a baby in an old woman’s body.”

Tears fell from Fallon’s eyes. “Please, no.”

Vere squinted hard. His eyebrows knit into a long, steel-gray caterpillar. “You won’t try this again.” It was as much a statement of fact as a command.

~

The woman who left Jonson’s Exotic Travel that evening seemed serene. In a freshly pressed pair of jodhpurs and a gauzy white blouse that buttoned down the front, she looked pristine and put together, if a bit confused.

Fallon could swear she’d been on her way to the library, but this building…this wasn’t it, was it? She glanced back up at the unmarked townhouse, gave a shrug, and sauntered down the sidewalk.

The front windows, they’d looked like eyes in a way, and Fallon felt them boring into the back of her neck.

A slender man approached her. “Ms. Fallon, I’m sure you don’t remember me,” he said, “but we met once, long ago.”

Fallon stopped walking and studied him. He wore a dark gray suit, Victorian in style though not like the retro fashions that were popular today. No, these clothes looked vintage, looked dusty and worn and battle-scarred.

“I suspect we share similar political leanings,” the man went on. “May I buy you a drink?”

Thursday, August 5, 2100, Avon, Vermont, NBE

The lobby looked like a nineteenth-century drawing room, though this was not a private residence. A stack of parchment-printed brochures sat on a table near the entry. “Jonson’s Exotic Travel,” the front of the brochure proclaimed. “Services available by referral only.” The room was silent and smelled of eucalyptus, a sweet, heady scent that made it seem as if the dwelling were always on the cusp of Christmas.

Deeper inside the building, a clerical assistant filed pieces of mail into slotted trays while her employer—the very Mister Jonson of the agency’s title—dabbed a spot of spilt tea from his shirtsleeve. The pyramidal ebony nameplate twelve inches in front of him revealed his given name to be Benoy. A cat slept on a crimson cushion in front of the unlit fireplace. Downstairs, an older gentleman in a white laboratory coat fussed with beakers and wires and keyboards, muttering to himself about quantum theory and transistors.

All in all, a normal afternoon. That was, until young Mister Jonson sat up straighter in his chair and got a faraway look in his eye. “Shit,” he said, rubbing his bushy eyebrows. “Kris, we got trouble.”

“We do?”

“It’s Tuesday afternoon,” Ben informed her. “Look at the appointment book.”

The girl’s heart-shaped face grew ashen. “Damn,” she exhaled, her smile melting into a frown. Her bob of shiny black hair fluttered as she turned to look at the wall clock. “It’s way past time.”

Ben and Kris stared at each other, eyes wide. The unthinkable had happened—Brimley Wheaton failed to appear for his retrieval.

Ben felt an uncomfortable moistness that he knew from experience would overwhelm his carefully applied cologne. When Ben was experiencing the very heights of panicky stress, which was more frequent than he cared to admit, he had the embarrassing tendency to sweat through all his layers of cotton, silk, and velvet.

Since giving up his dissertation, Ben’s stresses were minor, to do with getting the paychecks out on time and being impeccable in his customer service or attempting—and usually failing—to chat up an attractive lady at the local tearoom. It was years since he had broken things off with Lily, and there was no one serious since.

At the agency, problems had arisen before, but not this specific one. Doctor Vere was reticent on the matter, but several weeks earlier, a client had some difficulty returning from Roanoke. Vere had still been able to retrieve her, but the debriefing session was cancelled. Kris, in particular, voiced her disappointment.

“Trust me, Miss Moto,” Vere had instructed, “what our client was endeavoring to do was unpleasant. She has no more information about the mystery than we do even at present.”

But that was the only hiccup in several years of providing services. To have another—perhaps more serious—glitch was dire. If this one involved a botched retrieval, anything could have happened to the missing Mister Wheaton.

Ben’s mind raced with the possibilities. Death? Death in an era without medicine, when leeches were cutting edge, when people drank from the same rivers they let their cattle excrete in?
This
was the kind of danger they’d subjected an innocent civilian to.

What the hell am I doing with my life?
What right do I have to endanger these people?

~

For the next twenty-four hours, there was a flurry of panic and yelling and sleeplessness. No one went home. No one ate. It was all full of stress and bloodshot eyes and half-finished cups of coffee. Telephone receivers were lifted and put down without numbers being dialed. There was no precedent for this level of disaster, nothing in the company manual. What to tell the next of kin? Ben dreaded the conversation that might follow. A new flash of sweat beaded up on the back of his slim neck. He fished out a handkerchief from a trouser pocket and mopped under his collar.

“You’ve got to get him back,” Vere said. “Son, there’s nothing else for it.”

Ben was just beginning to make the preparations for installing himself in the machine, much to his reluctance, when a whooshing sound came from the direction of his office.

At first, it was a great relief to Ben when his client appeared in a puff of soot and cinder. What surprised the agency’s director were the man’s location—the top of Ben’s desk—and his state of dress, which was something resembling either a very short monk’s robe or a very long potato sack. Wheaton’s feet were bare and dirty, and Ben cringed at the thought of twelfth-century detritus being smeared across his fresh ink blotter. Ben’s cat looked from Wheaton to Ben and then gave a disgruntled hiss.

“Well, that’s a weight off.” Ben said. He tisked the hissing cat. “Hush, Bodhi.” He urged the feline away from the desk, strode to the older man, and held his hand out to him. “We’d given you up for dead.” Ben hoped the client read his coldness as casual, even as a strangling panic seized his body. What could have happened to delay Wheaton?

Wheaton’s eyes darted, rabbit-scared, around the room. “Where am I?” His gaze fell on Ben. “Oh, Mister Jonson, thank goodness.” He took Ben’s hand and let himself be helped down from the desk. Once on the floor, Wheaton bounced from spot to spot, his gait springy despite his size. He beamed at the younger man. “My, but that was a heart-stopping turn.” Wheaton was filthy, covered in muck and dust and God knew what else, and for a moment Ben felt pristine by comparison in his sweat-soaked business finery. Wheaton grinned at Ben. “It was exhilarating, that’s what it was.”

Ben looked at his client. “You know in a bit I’ll have to suppress the memory,” he reminded him. “We can discuss the events at length, and we’ll replace it—”

“I recall the sales pitch,” Wheaton interrupted. “I’ll think I had a restful spa weekend or some such.” He nodded. “I know, but blimey, the things I saw.” He elbowed Ben in the ribs. “The
ladies
. I know I wasn’t there for the ladies, but what a lovely surprise.”

Ben’s face grew hot. At a loss for words, he gestured to the outer room. “Let’s have a chat, then.”

After a short rest, Wheaton was much more appropriately attired in a loose white dress shirt and mock equestrian breeches. He lounged by the enormous fieldstone hearth for his debriefing. The rest of the staff of Jonson’s Exotic Travel was there as well. Doctor Vere joined Ben on the settee opposite, cups of tea placed into their waiting hands by their assistant. After serving, Kris proceeded to splay her lithe form out on the rug, half-reclined into something resembling a modified
supta baddha konasana
position, legs tucked to her sides. Bodhi nestled beside her and began to purr.

Ben marveled at Kris’s impossibly bendy young form, but then quickly shoved the thought away. Not only was she his employee, the young ladies who occasionally squired her away to mid-afternoon tea made it clear to Ben that he was decidedly not her type. Still, he loved the beauty of how her hair shone blue-black in the firelight.

“So did you find out whether the kids were aliens or not?” Kris asked Wheaton.

Vere allowed his foot to swing into her arm.

“Ow! I was just asking what we were all thinking.”

“Young lady, that was impertinent,” Vere said.

“Miss Moto doesn’t care about being impertinent,” Ben pointed out to his colleague. That was what they all loved about her, after all, even Vere, despite his gruffness toward the young woman. “Mister Wheaton, please,” Ben continued. “In your own time.”

Wheaton sat up straighter, squaring his shoulders and putting his teacup down. “As you know, I grew up near Woolpit. I lived with the legends of the green children my whole life, and when I came into my inheritance, I wanted nothing more than to find out the definitive answer, once and for all.”

“But you went out on the town with a bunch of old-timey chicks instead?” Kris asked. She slid out of Vere’s reach when it looked as if she would be kicked again. “I swear, man, you’re gonna lose a limb,” she warned.

Vere waved a hand at Kris. “My dear, I could earn a Nobel Prize in Physics without the use of a single finger.”

“I’ll give you a single finger,” Kris muttered.

“Sir, please continue,” Ben said to Wheaton. “If you don’t, I’ll have to listen to more of this and worse.”

Wheaton chuckled and went on. “Right, well. I found out what I wanted about the mystery.” He grinned, flashing a mouthful of tea-yellowed teeth. “And here I am, back safely to the twenty-second century, inquisitiveness fully sated.” He picked up his tea and took a long sip. “You’re welcome to do your bit erasing this knowledge, as I know is your process.” He sighed, gazing off at the ceiling as if examining constellations. “For it’s not the end
result
, you know, so much as the
hunt
for the
knowing
.” Another sip. “And now I do know, much to my immense satisfaction.”

Wheaton looked proud and inhaled the scent of his tea. “Ah, very good, Miss Moto. What
do
you put in this? Very fragrant.”

Ben cleared his throat. “It’s customary before we begin the process to at least, well—”

“Tell us,” Kris interrupted. “All the clients, they get mindwiped so it doesn’t get out into the world, all the conspiracy theories, cryptids, cults…but
we
get to know, usually.” She looked at Ben. “I mean, I guess it’s not a
rule
that we get to know, but I just always thought…”

“No one hasn’t wanted to tell us before,” Ben said.

Vere tapped the side of his head. “Our minds are steel vaults, young man. We’re master secret keepers.” Vere didn’t meet Ben’s eyes but continued to look at Wheaton instead. “Rest assured we don’t divulge anything.” He leaned back in his chair. “Personally, I only care about the physics of time travel, so whatever unsolved mystery you unraveled is of no consequence to me.”

“Regardless,” Wheaton said, “it’s not a matter of trust. It just seems a bit unfair, you getting to keep the memory while I don’t. I mean, do I
have
to tell you?”

“Of course not, sir,” Ben immediately assured him. He rose. “If you’re ready, then, we’ll get on with the erasure.”

Wheaton put his teacup down and got to his feet. He sighed and got a faraway look in his eyes. “The legend said the green children came out of the wood and startled the village with their strange appearance, odd manner of speech, and gifts of precognition. Over time, theories changed from angels to aliens to visitors from another dimension.”

There was a sudden change in his movements, a shifting and turning and then a terrible clicking accompanied by a flash of metal. “They were
green
, after all.”

Wheaton trained the gun on all three of the agency’s employees in turn.

“I’m going to leave here with everything intact,” he said. His voice was even and his face relaxed, but there was a hint of hardness in his eyes. “And none of you will stop me.”

It was true. None of them did stop him as Wheaton sprinted out, still in full possession of the key to a piece of unresolved—if unremarkable—history.

Probably unremarkable
.
Hopefully. Yes, most likely totally insignificant. Still…

“That gun…did anybody else think that looked a little weird?” Kris asked.

“Kind of,” Ben agreed. “Well, yeah, weird. Not like any kind of thing we see these days.”

“I search everyone’s belongings upon check-in and -out,” Vere confirmed. “I can’t imagine where he was hiding it.”

Kris shuddered. “The green children gave it to him.”

“From their home planet?” Ben asked. “Kris, that’s just a legend. Research indicates those children were Flemish, not Martian. The citizens of Woolpit didn’t recognize their features or dialect so the kids only
seemed
alien.”