Temporal gambit rematch, p.1
Temporal Gambit: Rematch, page 1
Temporal Gambit: Rematch
Larry A. Brown
Copyright © 2021 by Larry A. Brown
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Creative Arts Press
An imprint of Sienna Bay Press
P.O. Box 158582
Nashville, TN 37215
Cover design by Elizabeth Mackey
Temporal Gambit: Rematch/Larry A. Brown. - 1st ed.
Contents
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Epilogue
End Notes
About the Author
Prologue
Baden, Germany, 1629
“All hear the solemn pronouncement of this court. There being this day complaint made before us, we declare that Andrea, daughter of Johannes the blacksmith of the family Karlstadt, you are accused of committing sundry acts of witchcraft, as testified and sworn by these witnesses here present. Before the Almighty God and this court, how do you plead?”
“I am innocent of these charges.”
“You would do well, if you are guilty, to give an upright answer and confess before God.”
“I am as clear of guilt as a newborn child. I have committed no grievous transgression against Heaven or anyone in this community.”
At the front of the gloomy assembly hall, lit only with a few lanterns, the dark-haired young woman stood alone, manacled with irons, her head held high. Members of the town filled the rustic wooden benches to observe the proceedings and to confirm that justice would be done.
From his imposing seat at the front, the white-haired magistrate of the court gave her a stern look.
“Possibly you may apprehend you are no witch, but have you not been led aside by temptations that way?”
“I have not. I know nothing of witchery.”
The magistrate glanced down at testimony written on parchment, then gestured to a man in the audience, who stood. “Your neighbor, Herr Kappler, gives report that you spoke of his barn burning down two days before the event. How say you?”
“I told him it would happen, yes.”
“And you knew of this how?”
“I cannot say. I merely did. I thought it goodness to tell him and save his livestock. He did not heed my warning.”
The old man started to speak, but then shook his head and sat down.
The magistrate studied his papers again. “There is word spoken that you anticipated the death of a child, your youngest sister.” A woman on the front row began sobbing. “You told your mother that she would fall down an open well. Do you deny it?”
“I do not.”
“Confess now with an honest tongue. Did you not cause the death of your sister out of envy? Was she not favored by your mother over you?”
“I did not. I only spoke about it, hoping she might avoid the mishap.”
“Before the tragedy occurred?”
“I cannot explain how, but yes.”
For a moment, the hall remained silent, broken by a few coughs, while the judge pondered his next question.
“You have been reported as one who sees visions of peculiar things.”
“Indeed. I do have strange dreams. Strange and wondrous. I confess as much.” She turned slightly to address those seated in the front row, pleading her case. “This is no sin. In the scriptures, men like Joseph had such dreams.”
Someone in the back cried out, “Blasphemy!” while another spoke up in her defense. “Perhaps she has the gift.” The hall filled with whispered debate.
The magistrate raised his hand to restore order. Then he turned again to the accused with a mixed expression of awe and suspicion.
“Do you claim that these omens of future events are from God?”
She hesitated, considering her response. “In truth, I know not whence they come.”
“Tell this court. What see you in these dreams?”
“Things beyond understanding.”
“Tell us.”
“I have seen tall, gleaming structures of glass, reaching to the very top of heaven. Below in the streets, oddly dressed people ride in carriages without horses. The women wear indecent clothing, revealing their bare arms and legs. Music plays in the air with invisible instruments. Up in the sky, metal ships fly like birds.”
Those in the assembly murmured audibly in wonder at her words. The magistrate silenced them with a glaring eye.
“You mean to say that human beings transversed the heavens like angels?”
“They did not appear to be angels, no. Despite their peculiar dress, they resembled ordinary people like us.”
The judge placed his hand on a Bible, the translation by Martin Luther. “The Holy Scriptures teach that deceiving spirits may assume pleasing shapes. Are you certain these beings were not demonic in nature? Were they not, in fact, dark ministers of the Prince of the Power of the Air?”
“In my dreams they are ordinary people.” She paused, then spoke her mind. “No more demonic than those who accuse me falsely of witchery.”
At that comment, several of the witnesses rose up in anger, shouting out curses and calling for her immediate death. The magistrate instructed the officer of the court to quell the disruption. When the audience had calmed down, he continued.
“Andrea, have you never covenanted with the Devil?”
“I have not.”
“You stand before this court and before God, who sees all deceit. Profess now and give an upright response.”
“I speak from an honest heart. I know not the source of these dreams. I know not whether they be visions of an ancient past long forgotten or a distant future barely imaginable. But this I do know: they are not from the Devil. They bear the seal of truth.”
Tiring of these denials of guilt, he uttered his next words with harsh severity. “There is report that you did impugn the integrity of this court. Did you not say that God should open the eyes of this court and its magistrate? Did you not scoff and openly laugh at the heavy charge of witchcraft?”
She answered with a haughty smile. “I confess I laughed when first I heard of it. I did not take seriously the threat of such nonsense. I practice no witchery. I maintain my innocence.” She looked directly at her judge. “Those who see any blot of iniquity on my name are blind.”
At this final act of impudence, the spectators burst into an uproar. The magistrate pounded his wooden mallet on the table, calling for order. Once he had silence in the hall, he stood from his high seat and declared his sentence.
“Andrea, daughter of Johannes of the family Karlstadt, your insolence and refusal to confess your transgressions leave us with no other recourse. This court finds you guilty of certain detestable arts called witchcrafts and sorceries, wickedly and feloniously used, practiced and exercised within the state of Baden, and hereby condemns you to death by immolation at the public stake, to be carried out with all haste. May God have mercy on your soul.”
“May she burn forever in Hell!” someone in the gallery shouted.
Rough hands grabbed Andrea’s arms and dragged her from the judicial hall into the street where a small crowd had already gathered. The stake surrounded with kindling stood ready in the village square. Several men waited nearby, holding torches that shone brightly in the night.
Pulling her along, her captors scrambled up the pile of branches. They shoved her head roughly against the stake and tied a rope around it and her neck, which cut into her skin. No longer feeling so defiant, Andrea watched trembling as the men dropped their torches onto the pyre. She saw hatred in their faces.
The dry wood ignited quickly, and a wave of intense heat washed over her. Smoke burned her eyes and seared her lungs. Her heart beat as if it would burst from her chest. She fought the urge to scream, not wanting to give her hostile audience the satisfaction.
As the flames rose higher, a strange glow began to surround her — strange because it was a brilliant blue, not the color of fire. She wondered if she were experiencing one final, fantastic dream. The aura formed a circle in front of her, appearing to be an entrance into a tunnel stretching far into the distance. She felt the rope around her neck dissolve and her manacles fall away as some irresistible force summoned her into the mysterious void.
Having escaped the consuming flames, Andrea found herself standing in a long corridor made of rings of light. She saw stars between the rings. Is this heaven? she thought. Clearly not the pearly gates or streets of gold that the ministers described. Nor was it the torment of hellfire. She felt no pain or anguish, only uncertainty.
“The subject hesitates.” A voice in her head surprised her.
Another voice: “Her apprehension of the unknown does not bode well.”
A third voice: “Perhaps she is not suitable for our purposes.”
“No. Give her time.” This voice spoke with authority. “We should present ourselves in some recogniza ble shape to put her at ease.”
The air shimmered in front of her and formed a floating orb in which she saw the face of an elderly woman, the only person in the village who had listened to her explain her dreams without condemnation.
Andrea peered at the face in wonder. “Margareta?”
“Hello, Andrea.”
“Is that really you?”
“You can think of me as your friend. Let me reassure you. You are safe.”
“Margareta, what is this place? Have you died as well?”
“No, Andrea, you are not dead. This is not the afterlife as taught in your religion. Consider it a path between life and death, a passageway leading to many possible lives.”
Andrea’s eyes narrowed, her brow furrowed in confusion.
“Let us explain. Listen carefully. We perceive you are quite intelligent and can comprehend the situation, if you try.”
“So you are not truly Margareta. Why do you deceive me?”
“You seemed disturbed by hearing our thoughts in your mind. We assumed this visage to communicate with you in a more acceptable way.”
“Then who are you?”
“We are beings from another world.”
She cocked her head to one side. This idea intrigued her. “Angels? Or demons?”
“More like beneficent guardians. We mean you no harm.”
“Did you rescue me from the fire?”
“Yes.”
“Why have you brought me here?”
“To make you an offer.”
She straightened her shoulders in defiance. “What kind of offer? Men have made me offers before, but I refused their lewd advances.”
“You are unique, Andrea. We wish to utilize your special abilities.”
Shaking her head, she asked, “How can someone like myself assist wondrous beings of your nature? If you require women’s work, I have no gift for domestic chores. I never took an interest in sewing or baking. And without bodies, you seem to have no need of such things.”
“Your talent lies in a different area. You are a visionary.”
“You mean my dreams? How do you know about those?”
In the orb, the old woman disappeared, replaced by a sequence of dramatic scenes that Andrea recognized from her nightly visions. Some were pleasant, others fascinating. A few were terrifying. She shut her eyes and turned away.
“Did you send these to me?”
“No, we retrieved these images from your mind. However, they are not dreams, Andrea, but memories. Anticipatory recollections. They are memories of the future.”
She scowled in disbelief. “How can someone remember something that hasn’t happened yet?”
“As we said, your case is unique. You are a temporal anomaly. Most people remember the things they have done. You remember the things you will do. Moreover, your visions reveal many possible lives you may lead. The future is not fixed but open to various paths you might follow.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Picture your lifeline as a thread, stretching back to the past and forward to the future. An event in the future sends vibrations down the thread to the present, much like plucking a lute in one place causes the entire string to resonate.”
“If that be true, I fail to see the benefit of this ability. My dreams have caused me nothing but trouble. I almost died because of them.”
“On the contrary, we believe your talent will prove quite valuable to us and to you.”
Andrea contemplated their proposal. Could she trust them? They had saved her life for some reason, rescuing her from an existence to which she had no desire to return.
“What do you want me to do?”
“First, you must renounce your previous life. You will never revisit the time period in which you were born or see your kindred again.”
“They think me dead anyway. No one in my family ever understood me.”
“In exchange, we will train you for your new life, giving you the knowledge and resources to succeed in enterprises that were never open to you before.”
“What will I do for you?”
“You will become our agent as we compete in a most intriguing contest.”
“You mean some type of game? I’ve never enjoyed frivolous activity.”
“What we propose is not frivolous, but most serious indeed. The history of your world lies at stake. What do you say? Shall we begin?”
1
London, August 31, 1888
The time travelers materialized in a heavily wooded section of Regent’s Park under cover of night and the perpetual London fog. They had chosen this isolated location to avoid surprising any spectators who might witness their arrival from the twenty-first century. After midnight, the area was quiet and mostly deserted except for a few squirrels that scampered off at their sudden appearance.
Surveying his surroundings, Martin Chamberlain spied his colleague, Dr. S. P. Hewes, a few feet away, looking slightly dazed. “Make it okay, S. P.? How are you feeling after your first jump?”
“Remarkably well,” he responded as he checked his pulse, “considering the shock of going through that bizarre Corridor. Even after hearing your previous reports describing it, nothing could prepare one for the reality.”
“Yes, it takes some getting used to,” Martin said, recalling his first glimpse of the Corridor, made of rings of light stretching out to infinity.
“I wish we understood more about who created it,” S. P. said.
“Or if it’s a natural phenomenon in our universe, a nexus connecting all points of spacetime,” Martin added. “But at least it works. The Corridor got us here in one piece.”
Martin appreciated having someone else share this experience with him. Two years ago, when the Chronos Project had begun its explorations, the technology had limited journeys through time to one person. Martin had received the honor of being Earth’s first chrononaut, making several voyages on his own for some firsthand research. However, with recent advances in their understanding of the temporal distortion wave, the Project had now devised a way to send two explorers together to investigate the mysteries of ages past.
On the current mission, the team hoped to discover the identity of the infamous Jack the Ripper, whose gruesome crimes had captivated the city of London in the autumn of 1888. Over a three-month period, five prostitutes in the district of Whitechapel had fallen victim to the elusive assassin, most of them brutally butchered in ways that horrified even the most hardened investigators.
Preparing for this trip, Martin had examined the pertinent information carefully, pinning down the times and places. The first murder had occurred on the morning of August 31 before 3:45 a.m. when two men discovered the body, still warm.
The victim, Polly Nichols, had last spoken to a friend at 2:30, who remembered the precise time by the chiming of the church clock nearby. She described Polly to the police as “very drunk and staggered against the wall.” Polly had told her friend she was hoping to find one more customer to earn enough money for her night’s lodging and maybe another gin.
Unfortunately, she found her man but never got her drink.
Relying on this narrow window of opportunity, Martin planned to arrive at the scene prior to the assault in order to identify the culprit. He mentally consulted the cyber-chip implanted at the base of his skull to retrieve the map of Victorian London uploaded there. On command, directional arrows hovered before his eyes, guiding him out of the park and toward their destination of Whitechapel on the east side of London.
Martin stuck to the cobblestone path, not wanting to get lost in the fog. As they got closer to the park exit, he could hear the noise of carriages rattling along the main street.
“This way, S. P. We have a few hours and some distance to cover to arrive at Buck’s Row in time to solve one of history’s most famous crimes.”
“Yes, but I’d be more excited if we could tell anyone about it. As long as the Chronos Project’s trips through time remain a closely guarded secret, we can’t explain how we learned the information.” The doctor let out a sigh and hurried to keep up with his companion’s brisk pace.
