Timebound(126)

I knew he was right. One half of my mind was screaming that I needed to get back, to see what had happened, to find out if Katherine was there, to find my parents, to find Trey. The other half was completely terrified of the prospect because there were so many ways that it could have gone wrong. Here and now was safe; the calm after the storm. There and then was simply unknown.

“Are you sure you can get back?” I asked. “You were worried about doing another jump…”

“I’ll be fine, love,” he answered. “If I can’t make it right away, I’ll rest up a bit. Going back home is never as hard as trying to leave. I feel like there’s a physical… anchor, I guess, dragging me back there.”

“Then I should go.” I met his eyes for the first time since we kissed and tried to muster up a smile. “But—you spoke about a resistance. Are you still in? I mean, even if Prudence gets Saul to back off and they don’t go after Katherine again, this isn’t over. I don’t know exactly what it is they’re planning…”

“I have a pretty good idea,” Kiernan said, leaning back to rest his shoulders against the bare wood of the cabin wall. “They refer to it as the Culling, necessary to save humanity and the planet. It will be pitched as an environmental accident of some sort. They’ve floated the idea of both airborne and waterborne, so I’m not sure.

“There’s no specific date, as far as I know—the general plan is to wait till they have about one-quarter of the population under their thumb and they’ll do whatever tweaking of the timeline they need to in order to make that happen. Cyrist members—or at least a good portion of them—will be given the antidote, along with a select few outsiders. People whose skills their experts have targeted as being vital for rebuilding.”

“So—it’s like the Creed they chanted at the temple,” I said. “‘As humans have failed to protect the Planet, the Planet shall protect itself.’ Except the Cyrists assume the role of ‘Planet’ and kill off those they consider unworthy?”

“Yes,” he said. “But don’t dismiss the appeal of their message so quickly. They make a compelling argument when you’re in the fold, y’know. There was a time when what Saul said made sense to me. You take someone from my time, a young kid who’s just learned to use the CHRONOS key and show him select scenes from say, the 2150s. Jump him around and give him a firsthand view of a nuclear disaster or two. Tell him about a society where your future is planned before you’re even born—written into your very DNA. Give him a few glimpses of modern war and the full extent of man’s inhumanity to man and the Cyrist solution doesn’t sound quite so evil.”

“So you think they have a point?” I asked.

“Don’t you?”

I didn’t answer for a moment. “Yes—okay,” I eventually admitted. “There’s a valid point somewhere beneath the layers of insanity. But most of the things you described are… incremental evils, if that makes sense. The mistakes of one generation build upon the mistakes of the next and you get a society that no one really wanted. Saul is talking about massive, planned evil, however, and assuming that you end up with a better society as a result. Morality aside, how is that logical? It seems to me that they’re gathering the greediest and most power-hungry of all, and I don’t think they’ll play nice together when the smoke clears. Prudence is one of those designing this brave new world and she actually told me I could either join them or line up with the other sheep to be fleeced and slaughtered.”

Kiernan snorted. “She could at least try for originality. That line is one she stole straight from her papa. But yes, it was precisely that kind of callous disregard for those who chose not to follow the Cyrist Way that caused my dad to leave.” For a moment he sounded like his eight-year-old self—my dad was almost me dad, and the same anger simmered beneath his voice.

“So you ask me if I’m in?” he said. “Of course I’m in. I’ll do anything I can to bring them down. But Kate, I was serious when I said that my abilities are limited now. They’re much weaker than they were just a few years ago, especially when I’ve been using the key so regularly. I doubt I’ll be able to do much more than a short hop out of my timeline for the next month. Maybe more.”

“But you have knowledge that we lack, Kiernan. You can give us the information we need to get started. Let me know how to get in touch with you,” I said, squeezing his hand. “You don’t have to go anywhere. I’ll come to you.”