God of Clocks

“Gods damn you!” Rachel cried. “You followed me here!”

“No,” the other Rachel said. “Well, yes, but not in the way you think I did. I'm not the woman you've just left behind.”

Garstone raised his eyes to the heavens and sighed. “The complexities of the Obscura Redunda…” he muttered. “This is not a good omen. Am I also with you, Miss Hael?”

The older Rachel smiled sadly. “Not this time, Eli. I came here on my own.”

“To avert disaster, I presume?”

“Perhaps.”

Rachel sat in the boat and stared at the newcomer. She had aged reasonably well, she supposed. Her bruises and wounds were gone, but she noticed wrinkles across the other Rachel's brow and around her eyes. Her hair had suffered, too; her skin looked tired, her breasts…

Rachel sighed.

“Don't be angry with me, sis,” the older Rachel said quietly. “I've walked a long, long way to be here. You really need me to be with you now.”

“Why?”

The older woman shook her head. “The less you know, the more chance we have of success. I need events to run as closely as possible to the way they did in my universe. There might be a moment when I can affect a change, but I don't know exactly when that moment might be. Much depends on it, though. That's all I can tell you.”

“But something must have gone wrong… something terrible. Otherwise you wouldn't be here.” Rachel's anger left her suddenly. She sensed an aura of sadness, even despair, coming from this older woman. As if she's harbouring painful secrets. “I fucked up, didn't I? By changing history I've only made things worse. The Hericans' rafts must have actually made a difference.”

The other woman said nothing.

Rachel swallowed and said, “Okay. What do we do to fix it?”

“You can start by giving me a lift.”

The three rowed west in gloomy silence. Rachel kept glancing up to find her older twin staring at her. Their gazes met often, but always parted.

“Isn't there anything you can tell me?” Rachel said.

Her other self smoothed the front of her white blouse. “I'd love to tell you a thousand things,” she said, “but I just can't risk it. Let's not corrupt this timeline any further. Let me just watch what happens. I'll know what to do when the time comes.”

“You can't even tell me if we manage to find Heaven and stop Menoa's arconites?”

The other woman thought for a long moment. “There are lots of universes,” she said, “and many possibilities are played out. But right now I'm only concerned with this one, sis.”

“Sis?” Rachel grunted. “Somehow that word doesn't seem as insulting coming from you. But why do you care what happens to this world if there are better outcomes elsewhere?”

“You know why.”

And Rachel did. If the decisions she made today led to immense suffering in this world, then wouldn't she try to come back here and prevent it? “Look at me,” she said, “the Spine's only philanthropic murderer.”

This world?

She had already begun to think of this place as a mere corridor in a much larger Maze: The labyrinth of Time, Garstone and Sabor had called it. She hoped this particular passageway wasn't a dead end.

“At least tell me how Sabor escaped Coreollis,” Rachel said. “I didn't get a chance to ask him.”

The older Rachel looked uncertain.

Garstone said, “He didn't escape, Miss Hael. Rys, Mirith, Hafe, and Sabor all died that day.”

Rachel frowned, but then she understood. “They must first have made temporal replicas of themselves?”

“Only Rys and Sabor have ever existed as multiple versions in one place,” Garstone replied. “Hafe and Mirith simply believed that they were replicas of their real selves. Sabor convinced them of that over supper one night. In fact those two gods were unique, the only two of their kind in the whole universe. They are quite as dead as their brother Rys, and will remain so unless Sabor returns to pluck them from history.”

“I'm surprised that even a copy of Rys agreed to sacrifice him self.”

Garstone smiled. “An astute observation, Miss Hael. A temporal replica believes himself to be the real person, the definitive one, and of course in a sense he is. They all are. Rys was not at all the magnanimous type-a character trait shared by his own replica-and each of them was quite incapable of sacrificing his life for the benefit of the other.” He reached for his pocket watch, but stopped himself. He smiled again. “My master found a way around the problem, however. On that fateful day, both temporally distinct versions of Rys were inside the bastion. Each schemed to betray the other, and thus secure his own escape. Sadly, the collapsing building killed them both while they fought each other inside.”

Rachel laughed. “I knew I'd seen two of him in there. There's more to your master than meets the eye.”

“He is used to thinking in parallels, Miss Hael.”

At last they reached Burntwater. Jetties and wooden buildings loomed out of the grey air. They tied up against a wharf at the easternmost end of the settlement and clambered up onto the muddy promenade flanked by old shingled houses. This waterfront street ran all the way to the warehouses at the center of the town's dock area. Rachel recognized the buildings from the earlier battle that had taken place there… would take place there. The fight, the mass evacuation-none of it had happened yet.

“You have a plan,” Rachel's older self said.

“I did, but now I don't know what to do. Anything I try might destroy the future.”

“Stick with your plan. I'll be watching for the instant that something may go wrong.”

“But you don't know what my plan is.”

“You intend to meet with Iron Head and warn him about what's about to happen. You'll plead with him not to attack Dill-and to keep all of this a secret from the version of yourself now approaching. And then you'll get him to pass a message on to Dill himself, so our giant friend knows exactly how to escape his enemies.”

Rachel gaped. “How did you know that?”

“Because it's exactly what I did.”

“But… you stayed in Herica and built decoys. You were never here.”

The other woman nodded. “I put the Hericans to work on their rafts, but did you really think I'd stay with them and merely chop wood when Burntwater was only an hour across the lake?” She lifted her blouse and withdrew a short knife hidden there. She examined the blade and then stuffed it back into her belt. “No, sis, while the Hericans laboured, I rowed across here and did exactly what you are about to do now. I was waiting here in Burntwater before you ever reached the town. Didn't you think it strange how Iron Head used your surname before he could have known it?”

So what's the truth, Miss Hael? Rachel recalled the captain's words.

“And didn't you wonder why he wanted to crawl inside Dill's skull?” the other Rachel added. “He was delivering the same message you are about to give him. He told Dill how to escape from Menoa's arconites.” She paused while Rachel took this in. “When you met me there on the lake,” she said, “I was actually on my way back to Kevin's Jetty.”

Rachel's thoughts spun. She felt somehow betrayed. “So now it's my turn to do what you did?” she said. “Except the only difference this time round is that I didn't contact the Hericans. There are no decoys out on the lake. You could have met me at Kevin's Jetty and just told me the truth. Why didn't you do that?”

Her older self said nothing.

“What are you hiding?”

She shook her head. “I'm sorry, sis.”

Garstone checked his timepiece. “Ladies, might I suggest-”

“I know!” both women said at once.

Rachel took a deep breath. “Where do we find Iron Head?”