Gaspery reached out his hand, and touched Edwin’s shoulder. They stayed like that for a moment, Edwin staring at the hand on his shoulder, then Gaspery removed his hand and Edwin cleared his throat.
“What I experienced in Caiette couldn’t possibly have been real,” Edwin said. “It was a derangement of the senses.”
“Was it? I believe you heard a few notes of violin music, played by a musician in an airship terminal in the year 2195.”
“An airship…the year twenty-one-what?”
“Followed by a sound that must have seemed quite strange to you. A sort of whoosh, wasn’t it?”
Edwin stared at him. “How did you know?”
“Because that’s the sound that airships make,” Gaspery said. “They won’t be invented for some time. As for the violin music…a kind of lullaby, wasn’t it?” He was quiet for a beat, then hummed a few notes. Edwin gripped the armrest of the bench. “The man who composed that song won’t be born for another hundred and eighty-nine years.”
“None of this is possible,” Edwin said.
Gaspery sighed. “Think of it in terms of…well, in terms of corruption. Moments in time can corrupt one another. There was a derangement, but it had nothing to do with you. You’re just a man who saw it. You were helpful in my investigation, and I believe you’re in a somewhat delicate state, and I thought perhaps it might ease your mind just a little to know that you might be saner than you think. At that moment, at least, you were not hallucinating. You were experiencing a moment from elsewhere in time.”
Edwin’s gaze drifted away from the man’s face, to the mild decrepitude of the September garden. The salvias were bare now, for the most part, brown stalks and dried leaves, a few last blooms wisping blue and violet in the failing light. He was struck by an understanding of what his life could be from this moment: he could live here quietly, and care for the garden, and that might eventually be enough.
“Thank you for telling me,” Edwin said.
“Don’t tell anyone else.” Gaspery rose, brushing a fallen leaf from his jacket. “You’ll get committed to an asylum.”
“Where are you going?” Edwin asked.
“I’ve an appointment in Ohio,” Gaspery said. “Good luck.”
“Ohio?”
But Gaspery was already walking away from him, disappearing around the side of the house. Edwin watched him go and then remained on his bench for a long time, hours, watching the way the garden faded into twilight.
2
Gaspery walked around the side of the house, and in the shadows at the base of a weeping willow, he stood staring at his device for a moment. A message pulsed softly on the screen: Return. He had exhausted the limits of his itinerary. The only possible destination was home. For just a moment he entertained a wild notion of staying here in 1918, burying his device in the garden and cutting his tracker out of his arm, taking his chances in the flu pandemic and trying to find some kind of life for himself in a foreign world, but even as he thought this he was already entering the code, he was already leaving, and when he opened his eyes in the harsh light of the Time Institute, he was unsurprised to see the figures gathered there, the men and women in black uniforms waiting with weapons drawn. What was surprising, though, was that Olive Llewellyn’s publicist was standing next to Ephrem. They were the only two out of uniform.
“Aretta?”
“Hello, Gaspery,” she said.
“Stay where you are, please,” Ephrem said. “There’s no need to leave the machine.” His hands were clasped behind his back. Gaspery stayed where he was. At the back of the room—he had to crane his neck to see around the black uniforms—Zoey was being restrained by two men.
“I never guessed,” Gaspery said, to Aretta.
“That’s because I’m competent at my job,” Aretta said. “I don’t go around telling people I’m a time traveler.”
“That’s fair.” Gaspery felt a little unhinged. “I’m sorry,” he said to Zoey. “I’m sorry I tricked you.” But she was already being escorted from the room, the door closing behind her.
“You tricked her?” Ephrem asked.
“I told her I was going to 1918 as part of the investigation. I was really there to try to save Edwin St. Andrew from dying in an insane asylum.”
“Seriously, Gaspery? Yet another crime? Does someone have an updated bio?”
Aretta was frowning at her device. “Updated bio,” she said. “Thirty-five days after Gaspery’s visit, Edwin St. Andrew died in the 1918 flu pandemic.”