Fifth Intermission
Alpha Rose started her now-habitual swing to the monitors, but then caught sight of Jared's face. Just as the Swedish Rose had flashed out, he'd drawn breath to speak, his expression suddenly slightly panicked.
"Jared? What is it?" a little panicked, herself.
"Nothing," he muttered, wiping his face blank as he turned around to watch the dimension cannon's readouts. "I think I programmed that right."
Jack pounced, already swinging his arm up with his personal time jumper. "Should I go back and help?"
Jared shook his head. "No, it's..." Even as he spoke, the vivid green traces of Swedish Rose's parallel world flickered into existence alongside the other four. "... already too late," Jared finished through the relieved grin splitting his face. "Guess I was right, after all."
He turned back to Jack. "It only takes a couple of seconds, subjectively to us here, for the changes they're making in history to catch up to us. You wouldn't have had time to even make the jump – let alone find out where and when to go to. I didn't have time to tell you – as you saw. I wouldn't have had time if I'd been wrong, either."
Jack's arm sank back down, while he continued giving Jared a level look – a hair below a glare. "So let's take just a little more time beforehand, OK?"
Rose's eyebrows shot up at the idea of Jack Harkness advocating careful planning before any action, but forbore making any comments, as did Jared, who only nodded absently.
There were now only two parallels left to be established, their own Beta and Reich World. Jared picked up one of the remaining paperbacks and turned around, sighing. Reich Rose was still across the room, sitting slumped on the edge of the platform, elaborately ignoring the activity around the cannon's controls. In the last few minutes, their dog Tock had wandered over to her, and was now lying beside her with his head on her knee, gazing up soulfully at this mirror image of his own mistress and thumping his long tail on the floor while she absently stroked his fur.
Jared shared an apprehensive glance with his Rose. She shrugged and bobbed her head back at him, apologetically indicating he probably had a better chance than she did at talking the other woman out of whatever funk she was in. So he took a deep breath, tucked the book under one arm, and "casually wandered" over to sit on Tock's other side, dangling his feet likewise over the edge. Alpha Rose and Jack leaned against the console side-by-side to watch, arms identically crossed.
"I'm not doin' it," Reich Rose stated flatly before Jared could say a word. She didn't turn to look at him, staring obstinately across the Hub instead.
"So how've you been?" he asked, innocently conversational. She just shot him a disgusted glare, and didn't deign to reply. "All right," he acknowledged, nodding, then returned to the subject with one word. "Why?"
Reich Rose's face scrunched up, a tremor creeping into her voice. "All those millions of people dying... all the suffering..." She sniffed, blinking back sudden tears. "What's the point?"
"What about all the billions of people who lived – who would continue to live on into the limitless future? Countless individuals, spreading throughout creation in your universe?"
She shook her head. "If I don't even create the split, they'll never be born. They'll never know. You can't hold me responsible for preventing their births."
Jared thought a moment. "And what about you?" he asked gently. "The cannon is protecting you for the time being, while the situation is in flux, but pretty soon that's going to run out. You'll..." He stopped for a moment, looking for a word, then settled for the unsatisfactory, "... disappear." Then, stronger, "You'll die, Rose."
"Well, I won't exactly care, then, will I?" she said defiantly, oozing hurt. "No more pain or disappointment sounds pretty good to me."
Jared didn't know what to say, so for once, kept his mouth shut. Alpha Rose, though, couldn't stay still any longer. She padded softly over and melted down on Reich Rose's other side, putting her arm around her doppelganger's shoulders. "Been having a rough time?" she prodded gently.
Reich Rose bit her lips, a pair of stray tears escaping her blinking eyes. Finally, she nodded. "Things didn't exactly work out the way we'd hoped," she whispered simply.
Alpha Rose squeezed her shoulders in sympathy, nodding, remembering the rough time she and her stepfather, Beta's Pete, had gone through just getting used to the idea of each other being around. And she hadn't been responsible for her own mother's death. She could only imagine the other woman's situation – let alone the troubles attendant on escaping a hostile foreign occupation and immigrating to another country. She didn't know what kind of reception the Greater Americans had given the former Resistance fighter and his former Collaborator daughter, or whether they'd enlisted the pair in their own continuing fight against the Nazis, but it was fairly obvious that the girl had not found a fairy-tale ending to her sad story. Hopefully further betrayal on top of all that she'd suffered before hadn't been part of it.
Jared may have caught a sense of the situation, but he couldn't let it go without a bit more of a fight. "Rose..." he began softly. "How many people died in your world wars? All together?"
" 'World wars' ?" Reich Rose was befuddled. "You mean the Great War?"
Jared blinked, then caught on. "You only had one? One massive war?"
She nodded. "You had more?"
"Yeah." He pointedly turned her back to his question, though. "How many?"
She shrugged. "I don't know... I think in school they said it was over fifty million." Her voice oozed pain, saying without words how can you think that's a small number?
He nodded back. "That's probably about right." A pause, then he took a breath to begin again. "I'd set up our dimension cannon, back in Beta before this happened, to try to do a survey of the parallels, comparing the twentieth century deaths from major wars and famines in each – totaling up the clusters of deaths over a certain threshold. It looked like that was the bloodiest century for all of them, but with greatly varying totals. Beta was about in the middle. You know which one was the worst? Alpha. This one right here, the main one. It had over two hundred and three million deaths due to war and man-made famine. All of the other parallels did better than this, one way or another. But you know which one was the best?"
He paused, and she shook her head, though she had a clue where he was leading.
"Yours," he said simply, confirming her fear. "You had only seventy million, total."
Reich Rose was bewildered all over again, the Great War so fresh in her own history making that assessment seem completely false and illogical. "How? With the Reich taking over the world? And nuking London?"
"Less than a million people actually died in the bombing of London. And the Great War was the ONLY major conflict of the entire century in your world. The rest were staved off and conflicts settled – relatively – peacefully, or at least they weren't allowed to spread across continents and suck in a lot of other combatant nations, keeping the damage – and the body count – relatively contained. And that," he continued, staving off her obvious next question, "was arguably largely due to the influence of one single man. The man whose life you need to go save. It's ironic," he added as if in a side note, "that in some ways, you have the easiest job of all. All you need to do is prevent a single assassin from pulling the trigger."
Reich Rose was trying not to care, holding on to her own misery, but Alpha Rose asked for her, leaning forward to peer around at Jared. "Who?"
Jared's mouth gratefully twitched at his partner for feeding him the line. "Archduke Franz Ferdinand of the Austro-Hungarian empire, of course, whose assassination sparked World War One in our world."
Reich Rose was still obstinately shaking her head.
Jared was curious about something in particular, which he hadn't of course been able to pick up through the cannon. "What happened to the Jews in your world, Rose?"
"What do you mean?"
"Well, did anything... in particular... happen to them that you can think of from your history lessons?" He was trying not to ask too leading a question.
"There was a... mass migration of them to New Israel in the twenties and thirties, I think. Now the majority of the Jews in the world live there."
"New Israel? In Palestine?"
"No, it's in Africa. I forget what they used to call it." Diverted, she tried to remember. "Um... it's southwest of Morocco?"
"Western Sahara?"
"That's the place," she agreed. She sighed, exasperated. "Why are you asking?"
Jared paused before he replied, leaning forward to emphasize it. "In Alpha, in the second of our great wars, the Nazis – the same guys you fought later and are still fighting – murdered over six million Jews. And almost as many more Gypsies, so-called 'defectives', and other people." Her face showed her horror, and he nodded. "That's right, murdered. Put them into death camps and shot or gassed them en masse. And that was only one of the genocides in Alpha that apparently didn't happen, or didn't happen to the same scale, in your world.
"Rose..." he pressed on, attempting to sway the reluctant, wounded young woman. "Of all the parallels here, even with the horrible situation you're currently in, you came closest to getting it right. And you have the best chance of solving those problems now and going on, to make the best possible world. If you're given the chance. If all those billions of people, right on the cusp of being right now, are given the chance."
Reich Rose's face crumpled, and she covered it with her hands, sobbing. But her head was still shaking violently, No.
Jared backed down immediately, nodding his head and patting her back. "I understand. Of course. And it's totally your choice." He hesitated a moment, then went on. "But before you make your final decision, there's one more thing you need to know."
And what he told her then... changed everything.
Dance Six: Viennese Waltz
Preparations
Rose stumbled out of the transport flash, finding herself in a narrow street lined with two-story houses. The roadway was cobbled; the ruts worn into the paving stones betraying their great age. She turned on her heel, gazing all around, caught for a moment by the serene, simple view. The houses were whitewashed stone, with wrought-iron bars on each window above flower boxes overflowing with riots of colorful midsummer blossoms. The place oozed old world charm, even as it obviously wasn't exactly a prosperous neighborhood – as attested to by the clothes hanging between the buildings to dry.
And speaking of which... Rose looked around carefully, but still not a soul was in sight. So she edged over to one of the lines, reached up, and snatched a plain peasant-style blouse and a long, dark skirt. Swiftly skimming them on over her plain white Tshirt and jeans, she found they gave her instant camouflage, and tamped down sharply on the twinge of guilt at the theft. The next line yielded a kerchief to hide her distinctive blonde hair, and her local disguise was complete. (Well, except for her trainers, but she wasn't fussed about them.)
Back in the Hub, Jared had begun to program her time jumper with the target: Sarajevo, Bosnia, on the morning of the assassination, June 28th, 1914. She stopped him in mid-program. "A few days before then, please. So I have time to get acclimated and make a plan." So he'd sent her back five days before, on the 23rd. The handsome Captain had volunteered to come back with her, but she'd refused with a wordless shake of her head. She'd learned to depend on herself, and herself alone, and certainly wasn't going to rely on any strangers she'd only briefly met. Besides, Jared had said the job was an easy one.
She walked slowly through the town, just looking and listening. Most of what she heard she didn't comprehend, figuring it was the local Bosnian language (whatever that was called), but she did catch some snatches of German, familiar to her from her life under the Nazis – and since then. After the American CIA had wrung her dry of information (which happened disconcertingly quickly – she'd thought she would have known more than that), they'd put her to work translating stolen documents and other communications, which had the unexpected side effect of making her even more proficient at that language.
She had to admit, when she stopped for a minute to gaze at the view from one of the many little bridges crossing the Miljacka River that ran right through the center of town, Sarajevo was gorgeous. Nestled into a steep-sided valley, protected from the harsh winter winds by the surrounding mountains, the town's whitewashed houses and many small mosques spread high up the sides of the hills on either side of that river, forming a natural amphitheater that was teeming with happy, relaxed inhabitants. Rose could not remember EVER seeing so many people smiling and laughing freely in her life. She certainly never had – and suddenly she was swamped by a wave of envy for these free spirits, secure in their place in the world.
She was strolling slowly through a lively marketplace when it happened. Right in front of her, a well-dressed man was purchasing a bag of coffee from an open stall, turning away with it while stuffing his fat money clip into an outside pocket. He turned too quickly, however, and almost crashed into a pair of young men walking the other direction – and nearly stepped on Rose's foot when he bounced back. In the confusion, Rose darted her hand into his pocket before she even consciously formed the impulse, and his money clip was into her own pocket in an instant. Then she turned and fled, her cheeks burning in shame for what she'd done – even as she knew she needed some money to survive the next few days. Was this what she'd become? A common thief? Well, it's not that far to fall, according to some people.
Her father's face loomed in her mind, staring at her accusingly, mingled pain, guilt, and she couldn't decipher what all clouding his eyes, before he looked away, like he always did. He can't stand the sight of me, even now. No, things hadn't worked out for the two of them at all.
Well, we'll see what happens when I get home. One more job to do, and then, things will change, one way or another.
Coming to herself again, she found she'd come quite a ways up the hill. It was heading on towards evening, and she needed to find some place to hole up. The hillside above beckoned in the afternoon sunlight, so she kept walking that way, figuring there should be some abandoned shed or something a little ways out of town.
And there was. It wasn't much, a little one-room hut with a dirt floor and a few pieces of rough, rickety wooden furniture, tucked into the corner of an overgrown pasture – probably only used by some shepherd during the winter, when the flocks she could barely see up in the distance on the mountainsides were down in the valley rather than up there. But the view from the door was spectacular – looking down on the town and across towards the sunset.
But now she was hungry. Sighing, she pulled out the money clip, took off the top couple of bills, and found a hiding place for the rest in the hut, tucked behind a loose stone under the bed. (From the looks of it, the hole was regularly used for such safekeeping.) Then she hiked back into town, managed to purchase a loaf of bread and a few other things, including a blanket and some candles, and a wineskin which she filled at the water fountain, and got back to her hut before dark.
She'd brought the book with her, tucking it into her waistband at her back, so she spent that evening and the next two days reading it, catching up on the tangled stories of the various countries and their rulers (both the public, titled rulers, and the officious, power-hungry bureaucrats and secretive spymasters hidden in their grubby lairs), and the interwoven treaties and promises that had all led into Alpha Universe's First World War. She poured over and over the few terse pages that detailed the assassination which would happen on the coming Sunday, until she could have told it in her sleep – and in fact, she did dream about it: dark, violent dreams where the killer's grainy photographed face morphed into Jimmy Stones, laughing while he branded her neck with his cigarette, and then she pulled the trigger of Schultz's gun twice, and the man in the fancy mustache folded over, trying to protect his dying wife, and the car they rode in exploded into a mighty conflagration, and so did the world...
She jerked awake to the sound of thunder. Two days to go, and a downpour was imminent. And she was out of food. Sighing, she wrapped herself in the thin blanket like a shawl and started to let herself out the door to return to town, then stopped, thinking about her hideout. The time jumper was still on her wrist – she wouldn't take it off until she was home again – and on impulse, she unlocked the keypad, then captured the current time – plus ten minutes – and location and locked them into its memory. Then she took a few more bills off the money clip, put it and the book into the "safe", and set out towards town.
She made it just before the rain, and spent two hours sitting in a cafe near the train station, sipping coffee as slowly as she could and staring out the window at the pedestrians. After a while the rain eased and she left the cafe, walking the route the Archduke's car would take along the riverside, and then spent almost an hour at the spot where the fatal shots would be fired, just looking at it from all angles. The town was alive with people after the stormy morning, getting ready for the festival also on Sunday, concurrent with the Archduke's visit. She stumbled on an outdoor cafe overlooking the river, with a menu in German and a waiter who spoke the same, and on impulse treated herself to a good meal, watching the water and the people both, wishing she could relax – but the ever-present knot in her chest, below her heart, would not unclench so easily. Something that had taken a lifetime to build would not be seduced into giving up in an afternoon, no matter how brightly the sun shone from above or how many strangers smiled at her in passing.
After paying for the meal – she wasn't sure what the standard procedure for tipping was, but others had left a few coins on their tables, so she did, too – she got up and walked back through the market again, buying several days' worth of food, then lugged it back up the hill to her hut.
When she went to put the rest of the money away, she found the clip was undisturbed, but the book was gone. She sat on her heels, looking at the empty space, then shrugged. Apparently she had needed the escape hatch after all, and had reason to have removed the book. Nothing to do but wait and find out why. Her excellent memory, honed by those years of spying on her German lover and passing on the information to the Resistance, had settled the coming scenario into her brain as well as if the book were still in her hands.
There didn't seem much that she could do other than station herself outside the little store where Gavrilo Princip would stop for a sandwich, in front of which was the spot where Franz Ferdinand's car would stop, giving the assassin a completely unexpected second chance after the morning's initial disappointment. At least, that's what would happen in Alpha. Rose's plan was, quite simply, to grab his arm and prevent the shots from striking their targets.
What could go wrong?
Chance
At last, after a Saturday that seemed to last at least a week, the fateful Sunday had arrived. Rose had spent a restless, sleepless night on the little cot, and was up with the dawn, even though she knew the shots would not be fired until almost eleven. She forced herself to eat some breakfast, washed her face with the last few drops of water from the wineskin, pulled the skirt and blouse back on over her jeans and Tshirt, covered her hair again with the kerchief, and walked down the hill through the morning drizzle, trying to keep her heart from beating out of her chest. As she knew it would, the rain suddenly stopped an hour later, and the sun came out to shine gloriously on the coming small parade. She mingled with the crowds along the riverside route to see the Archduke's procession go by, standing a half-block from where the bomb would be thrown, and watched the first part of the drama unfold as scripted: the bomb missed the Archduke's car in front and landed under the second one, everyone foolishly stopped to see what was happening, then rushed off to the hospital and their further appointments, respectively.
Rose caught a glimpse of the young Serbian whom fate had fingered for the final act, Gavrilo Princip, recognizing him from the photos in the now-lost book, and slowly followed him up the street as he left the parade route. He turned into the little store for his sandwich, and she stationed herself just outside the door, leaning casually against the wall, to wait.
Half a century later – or was it a few seconds? – he came walking out the door again, and was hailed by another young man, apparently the friend mentioned in the book, and they stood for several minutes chatting, not four feet away. Rose could hear them perfectly well, although the language was still a mystery. She kept her eyes on the pavement, watching Princip out of the corner of her eye for movement.
The friend finally moved off with some cheerful parting words, and Princip stood for a moment, gazing morosely at nothing. Suddenly a roar of motors from their left caught the attention of both Princip and Rose, and they, along everyone else on the street, turned to see the unexpected sight of two of the Archduke's caravan of magnificent touring cars, tops down in the sunshine, turning the corner towards them.
Rose took a swift glance, then forced her attention back on Princip, her nerves stretched to pinging. He was staring openmouthed at the cars, the second chance for "glory" that he hadn't dreamed he'd get thundering down upon him. She saw his arm twitch for the bomb she knew he was carrying, but then the second car, the one carrying Franz Ferdinand, screeched to a halt right in front of them, the man in the front yelling something at the driver.
Princip visibly changed his mind about his choice of weapon, and his hand darted to the back of his waistband, coming out a split second later with a small pistol. The world instantly narrowed for Rose down to that one pinpoint, and she launched herself off the wall at Princip, grabbing his wrist with both hands and forcing the gun skyward.
The pistol fired, gathering screams as well as the attention of the fifty-or-so people in the immediate vicinity; the street had hardly been deserted. Everyone started yelling at once, though to Rose it seemed as if they came from a great distance. Princip was wrestling with her for the gun, his skinny strength seeming to double or triple in his rage. She was jerked around in front of him, then he suddenly pulled his hands down and between them, then shoved her away – right into the side of the target car.
To Rose's instant horror, the gun was now pointed directly at her chest, his furious face behind it an ugly purple mask of rage. Time slowed to a crawl, as out of the corners of her eyes she saw other civilians reaching for Princip from both sides, and felt the car at her back begin to move backwards, away from the danger at last. But his finger was tightening on the trigger.
Perhaps he was also aware of his chance slipping away, because at the last instant, his eyes, and the gun, moved left towards the passengers in the back seat. Rose's hands had been flung out sideways as she'd been thrown back, and automatically grasped the top edge of the car's sides. Now she twisted around, letting the car's movement pull her sideways, reaching with her left hand for the car, too.
She heard the pistol fire again, and felt a searing pain in her shoulder, and she gave a gasping little scream through springing tears. Her eyes fastened on those of the Duchess, Sophie, gaping in terror beside her husband two feet away. Rose's feet were still on the pavement, the car's backwards movement pulling her off of them. A vision of herself tumbling to the ground and under the front wheel flashed through her mind. Then, inexplicably, Sophie's hands were on hers, clutching them tightly, holding on for dear life, and Rose's feet were moving faster than they ever had, as she managed to get them onto the running board.
Time sped up to normal with an almost audible crunch. Behind her, the crowd had reached Princip and were wrestling him to the ground at last. Everyone in the car was yelling, the General in front screaming at the driver, the man standing on the other running board brandishing his sword (sword? In the twentieth century? flashed irrelevantly through Rose's mind) at her. At her!
Franz Ferdinand began adding his two cents, and Rose seized on the comprehensible German with something close to relief. "Sophie! What are you doing? Push her away!" Reaching across the Duchess, he tried to pry her hands off of Rose's.
"No!" his wife returned. "Franzl, she just saved your life! And she's been hurt in doing so!"
It took him a second, apparently startled at her contradicting him, then he focused on her shoulder, and between his look and the continuing, searing pain there, it finally dawned on Rose that she had been shot. He changed his mind in an instant, and added his own hands to Sophie's in holding her arms, keeping her on the running board, then, turning his head, he shouted at the driver to get to the hospital as fast as they could, then telling the man on the running board to shut up.
"No!" Rose gasped out. "Please, you need to listen to me! There's so much you need to do!"
But of course it was useless. How could she ever get through to him in this chaos?
And as soon as that thought struck her, the solution came on its heels. She let go of the car with her left hand, feeling both of the royal couple tighten their own grips on her in response, flipped open the leather cover of the time jumper, and hit Recall and Activate in two lightning-fast stabs of her finger.
The car disappeared in the usual flash of light, and the three of them went tumbling in a heap.
A Tuck in Time
Rose pushed her face and torso up off the dirt floor and groaned – landing on a gunshot wound isn't a good way to make it feel better. She managed to twist around and sit, then looked over at her two unwilling "guests", just struggling to the same position themselves. The looks on their faces would have been comical if they had been in a movie: utterly flabbergasted, and not a little fearful, their huge eyes darting around the little hut – for that's where she'd brought them, using the "escape hatch" she'd programmed into the jumper two days before.
The Archduke's mouth worked, but no sound came out. Duchess Sophie merely gaped.
"Your Majesty," Rose began using her best German, holding up one hand. Both their eyes snapped to hers. "Please be calm. I brought you here – "
"You brought?" Finding his voice at last, he managed to imbue it with a truly impressive amount of imperiousness in just a few words. "How? Where are we?" he demanded.
"We're still in Sarajevo, on the hill outside of town." Rose picked herself up off the floor at last, coming to slightly unsteady feet. She thought of offering a hand to the couple, then thought better of the impulse, and merely motioned towards the hut's door. "Please, have a look."
Franz Ferdinand lumbered to his feet, stopped to pull his wife to hers, as well, then stomped past Rose to fling open the indicated portal. And stopped dead, jaw hanging, at the sight of the town he'd just been riding through the middle of spread out below his feet.
"Notice anything different, Your Majesty?" Rose asked innocently.
"Highness!" he snapped without turning.
"Excuse me?" Rose turned to look at Sophie, confused.
"Highness, not Majesty," the Duchess informed her, and then Rose caught on: she had the wrong form of address for the stuffy, hidebound noble.
Rose swallowed a grin, sliding what she hoped was an appropriate note of contrition into her voice. "Forgive me. Your Highness."
Sophie was still staring at her. "Fraulein...?"
"Tyler, Your Highness. Rose Tyler."
The Duchess shook herself, then motioned towards Rose's shoulder. "You're wounded. Please, sit, and let me take a look." Telling her husband to face away, she sat Rose down on the bed, then gently folded back the shoulder of her peasant blouse to find that the bullet had only grazed the top of it – impressively bloody, but not life-threatening.
"Just a scratch," Rose commented, peering at it out of the corner of her eye. Then she grinned. "I've always wanted to say that."
"Fraulein?" Sophie was mystified, and a bit apprehensive.
Rose shook her head. "Nothing, Your Highness. Forgive me." She carefully pulled the blouse the rest of the way off with Sophie's help, then her torn and bloody Tshirt, and handed the latter to the Duchess. "Use this."
A short time later her shoulder was bandaged as well as it could be under the circumstances, and her blouse was once more in place over it. Sophie stepped back, and Rose tried the previous line again, directing her words towards the Archduke's back as she stood. "Notice anything different, Your Highness?"
He finally turned, giving her a confused stare. She opened her mouth to explain – and at that moment, thunder pealed almost directly above the hut. Rose shut her mouth with a pop, and merely pointed a finger upward as the rain rebounded on the roof, pouring even harder than it had been the minute before.
"It wasn't raining a minute ago in the town," Sophie put in, wonder tinging her voice.
"That's because it isn't a minute ago," Rose told her. "It's two days ago."
"I beg your pardon?" Franz interrupted stiffly, not at all amused.
"I didn't just bring you to another place, Your Highness. I brought you to another time. It's now Friday, the twenty-sixth of June. We've come back in time two days." She waved her hand out the door again. "If you knew exactly where you were at this time, you could go take a look at yourself. But that's really not recommended..."
Disbelief warred on his face with the evidence of his senses, then he put it aside. "What do you want?" he asked her straight, his brusque manner making his opinion plain: if she'd kidnapped them, she must be dangerous.
"Only to talk for an hour, uninterrupted. I give you my most solemn promise, Your Highness, that when we're finished talking, I will return both of you not only to your car, but to the precise moment we left it, safe and sound."
"The moment...?" Sophie repeated. She turned to her husband, shaking. "Well, I suppose we'd better listen," she told him, her voice quavering with the effort of grasping a straw of common sense in the situation.
"Please sit down," Rose said as graciously as she could. "I'm sorry the accommodations are so rough." The two royals looked around, taking in the furnishings for the first time, then moved together to sit gingerly on the two rickety chairs. Rose waited till they were settled, as she thought good manners indicated, never having dealt with royalty before, and then sat herself again on the edge of the bed.
And then suddenly found herself at a loss for words. How do you begin this kind of conversation? Her visitors gave her no help, merely staring at her warily.
"I'm sorry, Your Highnesses. I don't exactly have anything prepared to say. I brought you here to... to convince you of the grave danger that you're in – that the world is in. Your deaths here today would have kicked off a war, one that would sweep across the world and involve everyone, at the cost of millions of lives..." She trailed off, knowing she was making a fool of herself. This really isn't going well.
"Our deaths?" the Archduke said icily.
"Yes," she replied. "You would have died down there today, both of you, if I hadn't gotten in the way."
"And how do you know this?"
She stared at him a moment. "Because you did. It happened, in history. In one history." She was babbling and she knew it. She took a deep breath, let it out, and simply told the truth. "I'm from the future. A hundred years into the future, in fact. And I've come back to correct history, to change history, to split the timeline in two, so that what was supposed to happen, what did happen in one stream, doesn't happen in another – in mine. So that I can get back home to my timeline, in the future – a future where you didn't die today, where you went on to do all the things you are supposed to do. The things the world so desperately needs you to do."
His eyes were bulging. "You're speaking utter nonsense, Fraulein!"
And that's when it hit her. She held up a finger, "Please wait one moment, Your Highness." Kneeling down by the bed, she reached under it for the loose stone, and pulled out the paperback, then sitting down again, she held it out to him. As he took it, cautiously, she explained, "This book is all about the war that's going to start, how it came about, how everything that's happened over the past few decades has been leading up to it, how you died on Sunday, and how that kicked everything off." As he studied the cover, she suddenly remembered. "Oh! I'm sorry, Your Highness. It's in English."
"I can read English," he informed her stiffly, then proved it by providing the German translation of the book's title.
"Forgive me," she murmured. "Then, Your Highness... start on page five. Just a few pages." The book jumped right into the assassination, before backing up to give the background.
He shot her a fierce glare under his eyebrows, his waxed mustache twitching. Then he opened the book, flipped the first few pages, and began to read, silently. Sophie and Rose merely sat and watched him for several minutes as he turned the pages. His eyes gradually became wider and wider, his breath coming in occasional gasps as he remembered to breathe, and finally all color drained out of his face.
Reaching the end of the intro, he slowly raised his eyes to Rose's again, staring.
"Franzl?" Sophie whispered fearfully. "What is it? What does it say?"
"That young man," he started, his voice shaking, "... Princip? … was going to shoot both of us. And we both would have died. Sopherl... you would have died." He tore his gaze from Rose to look at his wife's dear face instead. Rose could tell fro his anguished voice how deeply the thought of her death had cut him – much more deeply than his own.
Sophie shook her head, denying it all. "But it's just a story, isn't it? How could it tell what didn't happen?"
Rose caught his attention again. "But the first part of what it said, right up till he fired those shots, told what you'd already been through, didn't it? Word for word?"
He nodded, silently, unwillingly.
"How could anyone possibly have written that down already, let alone printed it and bound it in a book?" She let him consider that for a moment, then added, "Take a look at the copyright, Your Highness."
He flipped back to the first page. "Nineteen sixty-two..." he whispered hoarsely, staring at it.
She nodded. "That book is from the future. From one possible future, I should say. I'm trying to get it back on track to what it's supposed to be. I'm trying to correct history." She'd decided on impulse that putting it that way probably sounded better to two people who were "supposed" to die in the other, Alpha timeline.
Finally, finally, the Archduke nodded. He turned back to Sophie. "I believe her," he said simply. "There's even a picture of us walking down the steps of the city hall ten minutes ago – or, ten minutes before..." he added, flipping back to that page and showing it to her. "How could anyone have processed that picture and printed this book so quickly?" Sophie took the book from him and stared at the picture, proof of everything, her face ghostly.
He turned back to Rose at last, capitulating. "All right," he said quietly. "We... are in your debt, Fraulein. But I still do not understand... I still do not see how our deaths could precipitate a 'world war'," he quoted the book's title, obviously not believing the implied magnitude.
"Do you know what dominoes are, Your Highness?" she asked on impulse. He nodded stiffly, surprised at the non sequitor. "You've seen them set up in rows, standing up? And then when you knock one over, the next falls, and the next, until they're all down?"
He nodded again, now seeing where she was going with it. "Yes."
"You know that all of Europe, every country, is connected to others with treaties, and agreements, and fears. Here's what would have happened. The Austrian government would have blamed the Serbians for your deaths – and they wouldn't have been completely wrong – and sent them a list of almost impossible demands. When the Serbians couldn't meet them all, they would declare war. Then Russia comes in to back the Serbians, and France with Russia, then Germany comes in on Austria's side, attacking France first, then England, and Italy, and Turkey, and on and on, until even the Americans are involved. Dominoes. And then we've got a war on our hands, raging across Europe, that will cost tens of millions of lives. But that's just the beginning... this war will open up the bloodiest century in all of human history, Your Highness." She paused, licking her lips, then leaned forward for emphasis. "If it happens. If it isn't stopped. If you don't stop it."
"And what am I supposed to do?" he hurled back at her, the product of a thousand official slights embittering his voice beyond recognition from the haughty man who'd entered the room. "How am I supposed to stop an entire continent from tearing itself apart? I am nobody! Less than nothing! A laughingstock!"
The words rang in the silence for a moment, while both women stared at him. Then Sophie laid a gentle hand on his arm, dragging his anguished gaze around to her again. She spoke quietly, with such intensity and sincerity that no one hearing it could fail to be moved.
"You are not nobody, Franzl. You are my husband. And I believe in you."
His mustache twitched, his fierce dark eyes filling with unshed tears. Covering her hand with his, his gaze then dropped to the floor, abashed at her devotion.
Sophie glanced back at Rose, almost as if only then remembering their audience, but Rose merely nodded silently, giving her the tiniest supportive smile.
Eventually, he looked back at his hostess again. "And what am I to do?" he repeated quietly, all wounded defiance gone.
"Take the book," she said. "It will tell you everything – all the names, of all the people who are really in charge in each country, and what they're doing. Use it, and work to dismantle the machines that are driving each government to war."
His head was shaking. "I have no power. I can do nothing."
"Officially, no. Not right now. But..." She bit her lip, unsure how far she could push him. "How old is your uncle, the Emperor?"
He jerked slightly, shocked, but then answered levelly. "Eighty-four."
"If you read far enough in that book, you'll see he's going to die in two years – from natural causes," she hastened to reassure him, but then plowed on to state the obvious. "And then you'll be the emperor. And you'll have the power to put your own men in place, instead of men like General Conrad and Count Berchtold," she named off from memory the two men who – in Alpha – would have been the primary drivers of the war with Serbia, and had the satisfaction of seeing his eyes widen again in shock at her inside knowledge of his own government's workings.
"But then... you need to go even further, Your Highness. You need to not only dismantle war machines, but you need to – you must – work to create a framework for peace, instead."
He wasn't following her. "You mean the Hague Tribunal? It's already there..."
But she shook her head. "It's not enough. There must be something stronger. Something that will let – that will demand – that individual nations come together to discuss their conflicts with each other, and resolve them peacefully." She stared at him intensely, somehow knowing that he needed to come up with the idea himself, or he would never get behind it.
And at last he did. "A league of nations..." His eyes were wide with wonder, as he whispered the answer. She nodded conspiratorially, and he went on, admitting, "I have been dreaming of such a thing."
And Rose let loose her supernova smile then at the man who, in her history, had been the founder of precisely that – one of the few things she remembered from her high school history classes.
"Yes. I know. That's my history you're talking about." She sighed then. "It doesn't last forever, not more than a few decades. But while it does, it – they – prevent dozens of wars, and send aid after countless disasters, and save the lives of a hundred million people." It had been nice of Jared to give her the figures, something her own timeline's historians had of course never been able to do definitively.
Then she sighed. Their hour was almost up; she didn't want to run the risk of staying too long. So she stood up, saying, "It's time to go, Your Highnesses." She nodded at the book still in Sophie's hands. "Keep the book – but put it away for now." Franz Ferdinand took it and slipped it into a large pocket in his uniform coat.
"How do we get back?" Sophie asked.
"The same way we came," Rose told her, not elaborating, but she began to reach for their hands. "And back to the precise same moment in the car, as I promised."
"Wait!" the Archduke broke in, holding up his hand. He looked straight at Rose. "Thank you, Fraulein Tyler," he said simply. "For saving my life, and for telling me all of this – for giving me the direction to go in. But most especially.." He paused, a tear lurking in his eye. "Thank you for saving my Sopherl's life. I am in your debt."
"Franzl," his wife demurred, blushing. But she looked at him adoringly.
Rose grinned at both of them, then reached for their hands again, and they both reached out willingly, grasping her forearm as they had before. Then she flipped open the time jumper, recalled the last jump and reversed it, and punched them back to the car.
They came out of the transport flash, ears ringing from the explosion of air that always accompanied it, and found themselves back in the touring car, surrounded by chaos. Rose somehow landed inside the car this time, and blown apart from the royal couple by the blast, bouncing hard on her rump on the little rear-facing jump seat behind the driver. The General and said driver were yelling, ducking away from what they thought had been another bomb exploding just behind their heads. The driver had just finished backing the car frantically away from the gun-toting madman and back around the corner, and threw it into forward gear, jamming his foot on the accelerator to zoom off.
Count Harrach, still on the car's left running board, and holding on for dear life, also yelled in shock and fury, and reacted instantly to the perceived threat from this strange woman, leaning over to grab Rose's arm in a tight grip.
"STOP!" roared the Archduke. "STOP THE CAR!" The driver jammed on the brakes again, bringing them to a screeching halt. "HARRACH! Let her go!" He glared at the Count with a steely gaze, not repeating his command.
Harrach took a breath to argue, then thought better of it, and released her.
"Rose! Go!" Sophie cried urgently, reaching to swing open the car door. Rose didn't wait for it, though, and simply vaulted over the car's side, skirt and all, darted into the gaping, shouting crowd, and was lost to sight in an instant.
Journeys
Well, of course it wasn't going to be that easy, Rose reminded herself the next morning, as the time jumper's backlight remained pristine Alpha white. With a world this unstable, as the book had outlined it, any number of things could push it over and send the dominoes tumbling. If she understood Jared's explanation correctly, the inertia of the timestream was probably still seeking a way to light the fuse and send the world to hell. But she didn't see what else she could do at the moment; she was going to have to wait and see. The ball seemed to be firmly in Franz Ferdinand's court, at least for now.
She had no television to keep up with things (had they even been invented yet? she wondered idly), or even a radio, but from what she could determine when she walked cautiously into town, the royal couple had left Sarajevo as planned the day before, via train. She went back to the same cafe she'd eaten at on Friday, and carefully pumped the German-speaking waiter for information – not that it took much pumping to get the loquatious man going. His vivid descriptions of the various attacks on the Archduke seemed to leave no detail out – except for any mention of a woman who had tussled with the gunman and then briefly hung on to the royal car during the second phase. The town was abuzz with speculation about the conspirators now in custody, after their pitiful failed attempts at suicide by cyanide capsule. All indications were pointing towards a loose confederation of young Serbian Nationalists suffering from testosterone poisoning and lack of sense, but nothing seemed to tie them to any larger group – or the Serbian government. Rose, not normally one to let perpetrators off the hook, breathed a sigh of relief that their back trail had apparently gone cold; war between Austria-Hungary and Serbia would not break out over this incident, at least.
But now she was completely at loose ends. She had no way of getting home – "home" hadn't been "invented" yet. But she had nowhere else to go and nothing to do, and zero idea how long she would be here. And this little back corner of nowhere wasn't enticing her to stay, especially in the dreary, primitive accommodations on the hill – she was getting tired of going to the bathroom in the bushes and lugging water up from the fountain.
Besides, if there WAS anything else she needed to do, any further assistance she might render to the Archduke, for instance – as ludicrous as that might seem – she sure wasn't going to get it done here. She needed to be where the action at least might be. And that was in the capital of the Austro-Hungarian Empire: the fabled city of music, Vienna.
She waited a couple more days for things to calm down a bit, and spent a bit more of that thick wad of money she'd pickpocketed on a couple of changes of clothing, as well as a small carpetbag to carry her things in. I'm going to have to watch out, she thought ironically. A few more possessions and I might start thinking I've got roots here or something.
Finally, on the Wednesday following the fateful day, she folded up her clothes and the blanket and put them into the bag, on impulse adding the water/wineskin and the remaining candles, then, on the First Principle of Hiding in Plain Sight: Give Them Something Else to Focus On, she also took off the kerchief for the first time in town, letting her distinctive, shoulder-length blonde hair swing freely. Firmly closing the door of the hut for the last time, she walked down into town and across to the train station, then waited in line behind several men at the ticket window until it was her turn.
And, for the first time, she ran into rampant chauvinism. The ticket seller, who had quite happily been chatting in German with the man directly before her, suddenly turned deaf and dumb in the language when it came to serving a mere woman. He kept looking right through her, as if expecting someone else to step up, his arrogant black eyes dismissing her as nothing. She was getting quite ready to reach through the bars and throttle him, when suddenly the scene was interrupted.
"Sonia?" The utterer of that thunderstruck name loomed up beside her, then, as she turned to stare at him, his face immediately cleared. "No, I'm sorry, forgive me," he went on in German. "I thought you were someone else."
He was about to step back again, graciously, making as if to get into line behind Rose, when suddenly the ticket seller perked up. Here was a man to do business with! "Bitte, mein Herr?"
Rose crossed her arms and glared at the agent; if looks could kill, by rights the worm should have been smeared on the floor. The new arrival looked back and forth between the two, somehow divining the situation. Perhaps he'd seen it played out before.
"Ja," he replied. "Two tickets to..." he turned to Rose, asking quietly, "Where are you going?"
"I'm trying to get to Vienna," was her arch, clenched-teeth reply, still glaring over the counter.
"... to Vienna," he finished. He paid the fares, then turned away, placing a light hand on Rose's arm and pulling her along, too – by that time more passengers had joined the line, waiting.
"Here you are, Fraulein," he said kindly, handing her one of the tickets. He tried to refuse her repayment, but she insisted stiffly. She wasn't going to be beholden to anyone, even somebody with such dancing blue eyes, friendly, easygoing smile, and curly dark hair... STOP that, she told herself firmly. Nothing doing. I'm not interested. Clutching her ticket firmly, she thanked him kindly one last time and turned away towards the platform.
She didn't see his amused eyebrow as he stood and watched her go.
^..^
The ticket turned out to be for First Class – something she hadn't noticed until the train came rumbling in to a stop. Poking through the First Class cars, she found an empty compartment and settled in, sighing, tossing her light bag up on the overhead rack. The train rattled out of the station ten minutes later, and she sat back to watch the gorgeous scenery.
Just then, the compartment door slid open again, and in came her benefactor. "Forgive me, Fraulein; there are no other empty seats." Which was a bald lie, but he said it so disengenuously, and she did owe him... He heaved his rather heavier case up onto the other rack and sank into the seat opposite her, sighing theatrically, then held out his hand.
"Alex Toller, Fraulein."
Rose hesitated a split second, before she remembered that it was going to be at least a century before her name meant anything to anybody. "Rose. Rose Tyler." She shook his hand.
"Charmed... You're English?"
"Ja. Who is Sonia?" She asked to divert him.
He grinned. "My cousin. She looks like you from the back – same hair, same build. She lives in Salzburg – which is why it startled me so to see her in Sarajevo – I thought. But tell me, what brought you to that beautiful city so far from your own shores, Fraulein Tyler?"
She looked at him levelly for a moment. "My own business."
His eyebrows shot up, then both his hands darted to his chest, and he groaned dramatically, slumping over sideways, feigning a wound in a fencing duel. "Ooooh! A touch, a touch!"
Rose couldn't help smiling at his antics, and he straightened up again, smiling back. "That's better. All right, Madame Mysterious, keep your secrets. I won't pry."
Yeah, we'll see about that. In the interests of staving him off, however, she turned to the tried and true method of interviewing him in return. And as she suspected, talking about himself was no problem at all for the animated extrovert. Alex Toller was a writer, it seemed, living in Vienna on a small inheritance – "God grant it holds out long enough to see me established" – and had in fact already made a bit of a name for himself selling stories to various magazines. He had been in Sarajevo at the invitation of a friend, to see the festival, and had written a piece on the attempted assassination of the Archduke and his Duchess, and already mailed it off to an interested editor back home. Naturally, the talk turned once again to the topic of the week, although Rose "couldn't" tell him anything new – only repeating what the German waiter had told her two days before, which was the word on the street.
An hour or two thus passed pleasantly. Suddenly Alex bounded to his feet. "I'm hungry! Let's eat! Shall we share lunch? What did you bring?" he asked Rose enthusiastically, as he pulled his bag down to the seat beside him and started taking out what looked like an entire picnic.
"Bring?" she asked faintly.
He looked at her sharply. "You didn't bring any food for the journey?"
She was lost. "I didn't know I needed to," she admitted softly.
Alex was flabbergasted. "How in the world did you get to – Never mind, Madame Mysterious." He sighed theatrically again – apparently his favorite method. "You know," he went on, picking up the loaf of thick, chewy bread and pulling off a large chunk, then holding it out to her across the aisle. "It's a good thing for you that I like my Cousin Sonia."
Glimpses of Happiness
Over their shared picnic lunch, Alex suddenly changed the subject. "Tell me, have you ever been to Budapest? Or am I allowed to know that, Madame Mysterious?" he added, airily disingenuous.
She bit her lips to smother a teased smile. "No, I haven't been."
"No? Well, here's your chance, then! We have to change trains there – and in fact, I'm stopping off for a few days to visit some friends. Would you care to join us? I can show you the city – you won't find a better tour guide anywhere!"
She raised an eyebrow at him. "And what would it cost me?" she inquired.
Alex spread his hands wide, radiating innocence. "Nothing at all! No cost – and no strings," he added pointedly, showing that he knew exactly what she meant. "I give you my word, Fraulein Tyler, that my intentions are purely honorable. I am enjoying your company, and wish to prolong it, as well as introduce you to one of my favorite cities in the world." He quirked an eyebrow back at her. "Or do you have an appointment in Vienna?"
She looked out the window, biting her lips again, blushing, suddenly shy again. "No, no appointment," she said softly. Nobody's waiting for me anywhere skittered through her head, dragging a tinge of sorrow behind it. Firmly banishing both thought and feeling, she turned back to her new friend. "I'd be delighted to join you."
His answering smile lit up the compartment. "Excellent!"
^..^
The train finally slipped into the Budapest main station well after midnight, and they were met by Alex's Hungarian friend, Mark, who bundled them into a waiting car and drove them to his house in the suburbs through the deserted streets of the sleeping city. Speaking in whispers so as not to wake his family, Mark showed them to a pair of bedrooms, with a bathroom just down the hall, then stumbled off to his own bed. Rose gratefully stepped out of her clothes, leaving them in an ungracious heap on the floor, slipped in between heavenly clean, crisp sheets, and had sunk into deep, dreamless slumber before she could have counted to ten.
She woke very late the next morning, having slept almost without moving for a good ten hours straight. Raising a bleary head, she stared around until the inevitable temporary confusion dissipated, then she sat up and studied the small, pleasant bedroom. An antique dresser was topped with a large lace doily and an array of crystal bottles under the oval mirror on the wall, while the rag rug on the floor and the thick, comfy quilt on the bed gave it a welcoming, homelike atmosphere. Then she grinned: someone had crept in while she was sleeping, and left a pile of fluffy towels on the chair. She took that as an invitation, and accepted it gleefully, luxuriating in a long, hot, soapy bath down the hall, the first time she'd really been able to get fully clean since her arrival in the past.
Choosing the least dirty of her three pitiful outfits, Rose wandered down the stairs and followed her nose and ears to the huge country kitchen at the back of the house, finding Alex dawdling over coffee and chatting with their hostess, who jumped up over Rose's protest and whipped up a truly amazing and delicious omelette for her on the spot.
Renata was a large, buxom woman with a friendly face ever-ready to break out in smiles and laughter, who showered affection and food on all who came within her sphere, family and visitors alike. The couple's four well-scrubbed young children kept her on her toes as they swirled through and around the house, entertaining the newborn baby – the excuse for Alex's visit – whenever he was awake and could be prized out of his mother's protective arms. Their father's return from work each afternoon was cause for a mini-celebration, complete with ritualistic recountings of childish adventures and plenty of affectionate embraces all around. Rose wasn't sure whether she'd stepped into a Renaissance painting or a television family drama, but she loved every minute, and squirreled away memories of the happy family life like touchstones for future use.
All told, they spent over a week in Budapest, and Alex made good his promise to show her all the sights, spending the days touring the castles and cathedrals, islands, parks, and the vibrant street scenes. He delivered her for one entire afternoon into the hands of the attendants at one of the city's world-famous hot spring spas, a glimpse of such decadent, sybaritic delights that she thought she might forgive him anything thereafter. The evenings were filled with talk and laughter, as Mark and Renata's wide circle of friends, all of them literary, artistic, and politically-minded, had the habit of dropping by their house to visit, sitting around the huge kitchen table sipping wine and eating Renata's delicious – and substantial – offerings, often staying until after midnight when the subject under debate was particularly engaging. The talk was mostly in Hungarian, and Rose found herself on the periphery, just listening to the sounds of the speech and watching their faces while she sipped her wine, or took her turn holding the baby. Alex and others would occasionally turn to her and apologize for excluding her, and try to switch to German, but she shook her head, waving them off self-deprecatingly. "I don't mind – I'm used to being invisible," she said.
Alex gave her a long, sympathetic look and then shook his head. "You're not invisible," he told her quietly, taking her hand, which made her smile shyly.
Of course, they tried to find out more about Alex's new companion, but all she told them was where she'd grown up: Southampton. When asked what she was doing in eastern Europe, all she would say was "Traveling. Just... traveling." After that, Alex's puckish title for her, Madame Mysterious, was spread about and used affectionately, but they let her be. They understood privacy, and the keeping of secrets, in Budapest.
The first evening, she caught Mark studying her from across the table, a look of puzzlement on his face. After a bit, he hooked an eyebrow up and commented softly, but with an odd emphasis, to Alex, "She reminds me of Sonia." Alex shook his head sharply as if denying it, then deliberately changed the subject. Rose was puzzled by the exchange, as he'd admitted the resemblance the very first moment they'd met, but let it go, distracted a moment later by the decadent chocolate dessert being passed around the table.
She could have happily stayed there forever, but finally, Alex admitted it was time he was getting back to Vienna. "And after all, we don't want to overstay our welcome!" he exclaimed graciously, bringing out the old saw about visitors and fish both stinking after a week.
"Three days, you mean?" Mark asked disingenuously, then grinned to show he didn't mean it. The deep affection the whole family had for their Viennese friend was genuine and obvious, and Rose felt immeasurably warmed by how easily they had extended it to her, and was forever grateful to them for it.
Nevertheless, all things must end, and so they reluctantly packed their bags again, let Renata pack a picnic big enough for an entire train car – or so Alex said, laughing – and Mark drove them once more to the station.
^..^
Sitting side by side, sharing a compartment with several strangers – the train really was full, this time – Alex turned to Rose, strangely hesitant. "Rose... do you have a place to stay in Vienna?"
"No," she admitted.
"No one is expecting you?"
"No," she said again. "Why?"
He took a deep breath. "I would very much like to invite you to stay with me," he finally admitted. "But... there is a small problem."
"What?" she laughed. "A wife and six kids?"
Alex snorted. "No," he said emphatically, then turned concerned. "Although... that could also be a problem later on." Now Rose was really getting confused, especially when the usually ebullient and confident man actually blushed. "The problem is," he finally admitted, "that I live in a garret. A very small one. With but a single bed. One that... I would like very much to share with you," he finished earnestly, making his meaning plain.
It was Rose's turn to look away, blushing. But she was also smiling, which gave him a bit of hope. She started to reply, then suddenly stopped, shaking her head, diverted. "What did you mean about a wife being a problem later on? Are you engaged or something?"
"Um... actually... I meant the opposite... um... that it's not part of the equation. And won't be. I'm just... not the marrying type."
"Good," she laughed, attracting attention to them. She lowered her voice again. "Because it's not part of my equation, either." She shook her head, sighing. "That is just not in the cards for you and me. In any possible world..." she added, her voice drifting off.
Alex's eyebrows shot up, and he nodded, surprised. "Excellent. Then we understand each other on that score." He paused, uncertainly licking his lips, then leaned over, conspiratorially. "Does that mean yes, then?"
She glanced away again, blushing once more, then finally looked back at him and nodded. "Yes. I'd like that," she accepted the invitation, and a slow, relieved smile spread across his face.
"Excellent," he repeated in a soft, happy whisper. And then he leaned over and kissed her, a short sweet kiss, short because of their glancing, grinning audience, but full of promise; promise that was borne out not only that night, but many nights thereafter. Alex was a tender, considerate, and exciting lover, in stark contrast to her only two previous: the sloppy, egocentric Jimmy Stones, and the autocratic Nazi General Schultz, who had literally bought her for a song by sponsoring her short-lived singing career. Alex, however, not only coaxed a warm, natural, enthusiastic responsiveness out of Rose, but over the next few months slowly began to convince her that she actually deserved the attention and the happiness it brought.
And gradually, she started to feel alive again.
A Child's Story
Alex hadn't been kidding about his garret room: it really was small. Perched in the attic of a huge, groaning old mansion - long since subdivided into apartments - in the middle of a run-down, artsy district, the room was divided in two by virtue of the back half of the floor being raised two steps above the front, an oddity introduced by differences in the ceiling levels below. A very large mattress was simply laid on the raised floor and covered with a wildly mismatching assortment of pillows and blankets; the resulting bed doing double duty as a couch during the daytime. An old wooden door, propped across sawhorses and set against the back wall, served as Alex's desk, while a massive, beat-up old wardrobe for his few belongings, a Welsh dresser standing in for a dry stoveless "kitchen", and a small, square table with two mismatched chairs completed the furnishings. The closest bathroom was two floors below, shared between several apartments.
It was a private, heavenly retreat, up away from the noisy street far below. Two curtainless gable windows, one in each section, showing a view mostly of rooftops, treetops, and – further away – the taller monuments and buildings scattered throughout the city, also let the afternoon sun stream across the room in lazy beams. The house had benefited from the ongoing electrification of Vienna a few years earlier, and the garret boasted both an overhead light and a lamp on the desk, although Alex still kept candles around for the evening, finding the new electric bulbs too harsh for the end of the day. One night making love by candlelight turned Rose into a True Believer.
The next morning Alex introduced her to the routine of a poor Viennese writer. He took a large basket lined with a dish cloth down from the Welsh dresser, laid two huge empty ceramic mugs inside, and led her down the stairs to the street below, making a pit stop on the way. The cafe on the corner filled both mugs with fragrant Viennese coffee, and the basket with a couple of pieces of fruit and a pair of flaky croissants, which, it being a beautiful sunny day, they consumed a block away in the city park. Then they visited the market, reloading the basket with fruit, cheese, greens, smoked sausages, and freshly-baked bread, picked up a couple of bottles of wine and some local newspapers, then returned to the garret.
There, Alex turned to her, apologetically. He did need to work, after all, and planned to write up a story about the festival in Sarajevo, which the attempted assassination had only briefly interrupted, for one of the magazines. As he did all of his writing right there at his desk, he wouldn't be leaving her alone, but could she entertain herself quietly for a few hours?
"Of course!" she laughed. Between the newspapers and the dozens of books lining the edges of the room where the floor met each wall, most of them in German, she would be quite content. (Later on, she would let herself quietly out the door and explore the nearby neighborhoods of Vienna on foot.) That established the pattern for the coming weeks: breakfast at the park, the cafe, or back in the garret as weather or whim dictated; a few hours for Alex to write; then they would eat the morning's finds from the market before venturing out for the evening.
^..^
The first day, Alex leaned back in his chair after filling up several sheets of paper with his neat handwriting and stretched hugely, joints cracking – almost tipping over backward. He jerked upright again, catching the chair and causing the front legs to land on the floor again with a sharp crack, a move that looked suspiciously practiced, then turned his head and smiled at Rose on the bed.
"There. Finished. Would you like to read it?"
She would. And it was an amazing piece of journalism, for any time: pulling the reader in with vivid descriptions of the town, the festival, the several meanings behind it, and some of the people caught up in the celebration. Rose stood up with it again when she'd finished and stepped over to the desk to hand it back. "That was incredible, Alex. You really are a very, very talented writer!"
He grinned up at her for the praise, stretching his neck up to ask for a kiss, which she shyly gave him. Then, as he took the papers back to fold them up and tuck them into a pouch, she reached for another pile sitting on one end of the desk, curious. "What is this?"
"Oh..." he replied, shrugging nonchalantly. "It's nothing. Just a silly little project I've been working on. But I can't seem to get it to come out right."
"What is it? What kind of project?"
He glanced up at her as if to check her reaction. "It's a child's story book." Shaking his head deprecatingly, he added, "Just a fairy tale. It's not very good."
"May I read it?"
"Suit yourself," he shrugged again, pretending not to care. "Maybe you can tell me where I'm going wrong."
She took the papers back to the bed and settled in again, starting at the beginning. The first words leapt out at her: "The Tale of Little Wolf". As she read the first few pages, she got more and more confused.
"This is the story of Bad Wolf!" Glancing up, she looked at Alex across the room, setting out their cold afternoon meal on the table. And that's when it hit her, swimming up from her own childhood memories. She gasped. "Alexander Toller. The creator of Bad Wolf."
The gasp attracted his attention, and he looked over his shoulder at her, bewildered in turn. "What?"
"Uh..." she floundered, then recovered. "Think how great that will sound, when they call you that!"
"But it's Little Wolf, not Bad Wolf."
"That's what I mean!" she shot back, surer now. "Bad Wolf is catchier. Anybody can write a story about a Little Wolf, and nobody will remember it. But they'll all remember Bad Wolf!"
"But she's not bad, she's good!" He wasn't getting it.
"But that's the whole point! That's the inside joke, the secret!"
He scoffed. "Not much of a secret, if it's right there in a book that everybody can read."
She shook her head. "You don't understand how kids' minds work, Alex. You give them a secret in a book or a..." Oops. She'd almost said 'TV show', and had to recover. "... a fairy tale, and they'll think they're the only ones in the world who know it – or one of the few. They'll become members of an exclusive club."
Alex had stopped fiddling at the table, standing up straight and staring at her. "Really?"
"Trust me." She bit her lips to hide a knowing smile, full of amusement at seeing – helping – the birth of the most famous fairy tale in her world.
He stepped over to the bed, holding out his hand for the papers, which she handed to him. He scanned the first couple of pages, thinking hard. "Bad Wolf?" he checked with her, and she nodded, smiling that supernova smile.
"Now you're getting it."
Lost in the story, planning out the hundred ideas that blossomed instantly in his creative mind, he turned wordlessly back to his desk, sitting down and reaching for a fresh sheet of paper without looking. Within seconds, he was once again hard at work, writing furiously, chasing the inspiration she'd given him.
Rose laid back and smiled dreamily, drifting off to sleep to the sound of his pen scratching across the paper.
Three-Quarter Time
One of the two best things about living in Vienna, Rose decided, was the free Sunday afternoon concerts in the parks – plural. At least half of the green spaces in the city had their outdoor bandstand and rows of wooden benches, and most of them were filled each week with various orchestras, bands, ensembles, or solo artists – many of the latter impromptu performances by an enthusiastic amateur. The starting times for each concert were somewhat staggered, so a dedicated citizen could catch two or three each Sunday, and they lasted well into the fall, until it became simply too cold to sit for more than a few minutes, and even the musicians' fingers began turning blue.
When Alex discovered that Rose knew nothing about classical music, he made it his weekly mission to educate her, seeking out the "best" programs and introducing her to the works of Beethoven, Bach, and Brahms – and Haydn, lest she forget the other letters of the alphabet. Under his tutelage, she could soon speak reasonably knowledgeably about forms, styles, tempos, and rhythms; her former life as a one-time pop singer at last coming in handy and providing some background info.
The other best thing about Vienna, of course, was the cafe culture. Each afternoon, after Alex was finished writing for the day, and they had consumed the morning's finds from the marketplace, they indulged in that most Viennese of traditions. Alex had a surprisingly wide circle of friends from all walks of life, who perambulated without discernible pattern between more than half a dozen cafes within walking distance of the garret. Each evening the pair would pick a cafe almost at random, and go see who else had appeared. There, they would pull the tables together to make one huge circle, and talk about every subject under the sun until past midnight, sipping wine or coffee and nibbling on whatever snacks the cafe had to offer.
Vienna was a cosmopolitan, polyglot city, but the conversations at "their" cafes were usually mostly in German, so this time, Rose could follow along, and as the weeks went by, with Alex's gentle encouragement, she started becoming confident enough to occasionally join in. Alex's friends were of course curious about his new "companion" – more than one remarked at their surprise; apparently she was the first woman he'd been publicly paired with, at least for some time – but she answered no questions about her past, and they soon simply accepted her (somewhat mysterious) presence.
The conversations often became lively debates, and even friendly – and occasionally heated – arguments, but Rose only witnessed Alex actually lose his temper and become truly angry a handful of times. Always, they were when some of the more outspoken of the circle started in with their harsh anti-Semitic views. Rose had been taken aback when she first encountered that part of Viennese life, and never became comfortable with the open racism. Alex refused to engage in arguing about it, however, preferring – on the few times when he didn't manage to change the subject – to simply take Rose's arm and depart the cafe for another more congenial atmosphere.
"I've got a few drops of Jewish blood myself," he admitted to her the second time they beat a silent, dignified exit, "but even if I didn't, I have no patience for that kind of hatred."
"I'm glad," she sympathized, tucking her hand in his arm.
Whenever they switched venues like that – and on other occasions – he would steer her to the furthest cafe on their route, one whose portion of the circle of friends didn't circulate like the others, preferring to stay in place. Unsurprisingly, they were Jewish scholars and businessmen ("Don't worry," he whispered to her the first time they went, "they're not Orthodox; they'll let you in," and they did, welcomingly), and as often as not, Alex and Rose would walk in to find them engaged in the endless debate over bits of the Talmud. Alex could often coax them into a change of subject – and just as often, it would turn to the second most popular subject: the eternal wish for a Jewish homeland. The debate swirled around the feasibility of establishing – or re-establishing – one in Palestine, or one of the many other locations around the world which had been proposed at one time or another. But always, the others were dismissed, and talk returned to Jerusalem and the Holy Land.
"Why not Western Sahara?" Rose put in suddenly one evening, when she realized she hadn't heard that name once.
"Where?" one of the scholars asked sharply. "You mean Uganda? No, Herzl and the Congress already turned it down," he informed her, referring to the World Jewish Congress and its famous (now deceased) Zionist leader, meeting a few years before. He started to turn back to the others, dismissing her, but she interrupted again.
"No, not Uganda. Western Sahara. Southwest of Morocco. You know...?"
No, they didn't. But then one of them called for an atlas, which the owner of the cafe had behind the bar along with many other reference books (one of the hazards of running a meeting place habituated by scholars), and they poked their fingers at the map.
"It's all desert!" one cried.
"And Palestine isn't?" Rose asked sardonically.
"True, true," came the grinning reply.
It was just dawning on Rose that no, actually, that area hadn't ever been discussed before as a potential homeland for the world's scattered Jewish population. Then two of the scholars volunteered to find out more information about it, and the group agreed to discuss it further, and Rose went home with Alex that night wondering if she'd just witnessed – just caused – the beginning of a new country. If so, it would blossom in her parallel, not Alpha, and the thought made her feel as if the future was just a tiny bit closer that night.
^..^
It took several weeks, all together, for Alex to re-write his children's story to his satisfaction, working at it in between his regular assignments ("I do still have to earn a living," he reminded her). Rose read his progress at his request each day, and continued making small suggestions, nudging it closer and closer to what she remembered. He joked that he was going to have to put her name as co-author, but she protested strongly at that, and he let it go. Finally, it was ready, and he took it to a publisher friend tied in oiled paper for protection.
He came back from that meeting walking on air. "He liked it! He said it was very good – they accepted it for publication! And they want me to write another one!"
The celebration that night at the cafe was loud and jubilant, with everyone congratulating the author, plying him with champagne. (He was useless for work the next day from the hangover, but she babied him through a quiet day in bed instead, which arrangement satisfied both of them.) The collaboration on the next story, about a grown-up Bad Wolf and how she found her mate, whom Rose suggested should be named Blue Wolf for his blue-tinged grey fur and piercing blue eyes, commenced immediately.
A few weeks later, Alex came home from another meeting with the publisher with a surprise for Rose: a copy of the first book, beautifully bound and illustrated by an artist contracted by the company. Alex grinned at her, opening up the volume to the dedication page. It read:
For Madame Mysterious
Rose was momentarily speechless.
"Thank you," she finally managed to say. "I'll treasure this always."
Then she grinned back. "But you know what you ought to do now? Send this out to publishers in other countries. I'm positive you could get this printed in England, for instance, and the United States, as well."
"But we'd need to translate it to English first!" he protested automatically. "Who could we find..." His voice trailed off as he noticed her crossed arms and sardonic expression. "Oops. I forgot. You're English."
"Yeah. And I think I remember how to speak the language, even." She grinned at him again, her tongue peeking out from between her teeth, and let him off the hook.
And so they worked side by side for several days, Alex working on the next story while she carefully translated the first, always keeping the language simple enough for children to read. Even though she knew the story as well as anyone, she didn't try to remember the actual words in her old child's book, but instinctively tried to simply tell it in her own words, keeping as close as she could to the German original. Then they wrote out several copies, and mailed them off to various publishers in both countries, with a letter of introduction supplied by Alex's original publisher in Vienna. "Now we just wait and see if anyone bites," he sighed.
^..^
December had arrived, and Christmas was approaching. Rose was excited about the holiday for the first time she could remember, looking forward to the festivities and the many musical concerts (indoors this time). Even the atmosphere in the cafes each evening was lighter and more joyful, the arguments fewer and farther between.
Until the evening that a young man burst through the cafe doors, his face white with shock, yelling the news at the top of his lungs.
"The Emperor is dead! They've assassinated Franz Joseph!"
Distant Drums
Instant pandemonium reigned in the cafe, until somebody shouted everyone else down. "What are you talking about?" the young man was asked.
Before he could reply, though, the cafe owner simply flipped on his newfangled radio, and turned the volume up as high as it would go. Everyone crowded around, listening to the wrenching broadcast, the details as they trickled in relayed in hushed and disbelieving tones to the shocked and grieving audience.
…Emperor Franz Joseph, ruler of the Austro-Hungarian Empire for the past sixty-six years, dead at eighty-four...
...a bomb exploded under his car en route to his home...
...another tossed in immediately through the broken windows before the police escort shot the assailants dead...
...the Emperor killed instantly by the second bomb, along with his aide and driver...
...heir apparent Archduke Franz Ferdinand rushed to the palace to oversee the investigation...
...the assassins believed to be Serbian ultra-nationalists, yelling irredentist slogans as they threw the bombs, possibly the same ring which attempted to assassinate the Archduke the previous June...
The entire cafe remained utterly silent for an untold time, huddled around the radio. Finally, they announcer said no more news would be forthcoming that night, and signed off by asking the nation to say a prayer for the soul of the late Emperor, and for divine guidance and protection of the new one.
The patrons looked at each other, seeing their own shock reflected on every face. Conversation consisted only of a few murmured, broken words. Soon people began drifting silently away towards their homes, and Alex took Rose's arm to do the same.
Out in the street, he stopped and turned towards her, concerned. "Are you all right, Rose? You're as white as a sheet!"
She looked at him, dazed, feeling the earth ripple under her feet, the air by turns freezing and searing her lungs. Her hands crept to his chest and she huddled close, wordlessly asking for him to hold her – and he did, his arms circling her firmly, anchoring her to reality.
Finally, she gathered enough wit to whisper, "I'm afraid of war. I'm afraid of seeing the whole world go up in flames."
He scoffed, gently. "There's no talk of war... Where did you get that from?"
She pushed back a few inches so she could look directly into his face. "Alex... think. If those were Serbian nationalists, if they were from Serbia, what will happen? What will Austria do?"
He hesitated, floundering a bit. "Make demands for restitution, justice..."
"And if Serbia can't, or won't, agree?"
He shook his head. "We'll probably attack. But only a limited, punitive engagement. That's hardly involving the entire world, Rose."
"So Austria and Serbia will be at war – and do you really think it will stay a limited engagement, with both sides looking for an excuse ever since Bosnia was annexed?" She shook her own head back at him. "No, it will be a full-out war as soon as it starts. They murdered our Emperor, Alex. The army won't hold back. They'll be out to slaughter the enemy in revenge. And then Russia will join in because they have a treaty with Serbia, and then France will start making noises because they have one with Russia, and Germany will step in on Austria's side and attack both France and Russia, and the British, and the Italians, and the Americans... Alex, the entire world is interconnected, with treaties, and secret agreements, and national interests..." She stopped suddenly, biting her lips. "They'll all fall like dominoes..." she ended in a prophetic whisper, bereft of hope, echoing her words to the Archduke so many months before.
Alex's face had slowly drained of blood at her recitation, the truth of her words dolefully tolling in his mind like a cathedral bell. He stood silently for a full minute, absorbing it, then took a good, close look at his companion again, his eyebrows knitted together. "Why do I have the strangest feeling, that you actually know what you're talking about?" He winced, giving his head a quick shake. "Sorry, that came out wrong – "
She cut him off with a dismissive wave of her hand. She knew what he meant. Still looking earnestly, deeply into his eyes, she told him with quiet emphasis, "Because I do."
He stared at her a moment longer, then finally took a deep, painful breath. "Well," he said, searching for a way out. "I pray God you're wrong, and that our new Emperor – God save him – can chart a course between the dominoes, so that they do not fall." Reaching up between them, he took her hands in his and squeezed them.
She nodded agreement, squeezing his hands back, then letting go of one and turning with him to continue down the street towards home. "Pray God he can – he's the only one who can stop the machinery of war."
^..^
After they reached home and silently went to bed, holding each other close for comfort, Rose waited until he was sound asleep and then crept softly back out from under the blanket again. Opening the door of the wardrobe, she carefully dug into the pile of clothes at the bottom, located her old blue jeans, and reached into the pocket for the time jumper she'd hidden there months before. She held her breath a moment, almost in prayer, and then flipped open the leather cover and unlocked the keypad.
Just as she knew it would be, the backlight was still white – although it was a dull, clouded white now, seeming in the reflected moonlight to be pulsing in time with her heartbeat, the tiniest, barely perceptible tinge of color trying to infiltrate the snowy field – and failing. She was still in Alpha. Preventing Franz Ferdinand's assassination hadn't stopped the tide of history; the inertia of the timeline, struggling to return to its rightful channel, was impelling the continent toward the war it needed to continue, but that so few of its inhabitants wanted to see.
She sighed, and locked the keypad up again – but instead of returning the jumper to its hiding place, she strapped it back onto her wrist, hiding it with her winter-long sleeves from that moment on.
^..^
"Rose..." Alex said hesitantly the next morning. "I've been thinking about something, a phrase you said last night. I can't get it out of my head. 'The machinery of war...' "
"Well, it is a machine," she replied. "Not just the army itself, and every man in it – though that's huge enough – but every part of the government that oversees it; the vast, interlocking industries that support it, arm it, supply it; all the so-called diplomats that work behind the scenes in every country to keep it going..." She paused a moment to let that vision sink in. "Once it gets started, once it's in motion, it can't be stopped – not very easily. Maybe not at all."
He stared thoughtfully across the room. "I never though about it that way," he admitted softly. She could almost see the proverbial wheels turning in his head, as he considered his world from an entirely new angle.
She gave him a moment, then nudged his side. "Come on. Let's go get breakfast, and find out what's new."
^..^
One week later, they joined what seemed to be the entire population of Vienna on the street, lining the route of Franz Joseph's funeral procession in silent, still, respectful masses tens of thousands strong. They lined each street, packed in elbow to elbow, and stretched back down the cross-streets for a block on either side. Rose would not have thought so many people could be so quiet, but the horses drawing the military caisson bearing his ornate casket clopping down the cobblestones, and the slow, measured, unison tromp of hundreds of boots from the military escort, were literally the only distinct sounds aside from the occasional muffled sobs from the crowd as the body passed.
Immediately following the caisson and the Royal Guardsmen surrounding it came the long procession of imperial and international mourners who had gathered to lay the Emperor to rest: a glittering collection of kings, emperors, tsars, presidents, and every rank from every country on the continent and beyond. They rode to the Cathedral on row after row of pacing horses, interspersed with old-fashioned, ornate horse-drawn carriages, each vehicle's top respectfully folded down even in the cold. The heavens had blessed the late Emperor with a perfect winter day for his funeral: a brilliant but distant sun shone in the pale blue sky, keeping the temperature above freezing – though not by much, while the air was not stirred by even the tiniest breeze.
The first carriage, of course, carried the new, as-yet-uncrowned Emperor, Franz Ferdinand, and his wife, the Duchess Sophie, both staring regally straight ahead, their faces expressionless, but their mournful dignity almost palpable. The slightest, tiniest murmur swept through the watching crowd in their wake, only barely enough to register in anyone's hearing until it reached them. The second they were past, Alex leaned over and breathed into Rose's ear, "Oh, my, my. That will set the cat among the pigeons."
"Why? What...?" She was genuinely perplexed, having seen absolutely nothing that struck her as wrong, but instantly aware that Alex would not have broken protocol – let alone the thousands around them likewise murmuring – for anything truly trivial.
"She's riding with him. That's not been allowed."
Rose was shocked. "But she's his wife."
"Morganatic." When that word obviously meant nothing to her, he went on. "She's not of royal blood. She was given a title, though not a royal one, and she's never been allowed to take any precedence. He had to swear an oath that she would never be Empress, and their children would never be in the line of succession, before he was even allowed to marry her. Up until today, she's always had to be at the back of the line, while he was up front."
"But she rode with him in Sarajevo."
He shook his head. "That was different. That was a military visit, so the normal rules didn't apply." Alex tipped his head at the first of the Austrian nobles in the carriages following the royal couple, their faces stony – but angry-looking. "He's upset a whole lot of apple carts today. Looks like he's setting some new precedents."
"Good for him," Rose replied emphatically with a small, approving smile, seeing in her mind's eye how much the couple had obviously loved, respected, and depended on each other, back in the hut on the hill above Sarajevo.
Then she sighed, quietly. He's going to have to do a whole hell of a lot more than elevate Sophie if we're going to get out of this mess – and I'm ever going to get home again.
The General
The days following Franz Joseph's magnificent funeral had passed in a blur for Rose, who kept feeling as if she should be doing something, but hadn't a clue in the world what. The time jumper weighed so heavily on her wrist that she could have sworn she was dragging her arm down the street behind her, but she couldn't seem to sit still for more than a few minutes at a stretch. Eternally restless, she took to taking long walks around Vienna by herself while Alex took his paper and pen with him to the cafes every day, by turns soaking up the news and attitudes of these historic, chaotic times, and distilling them onto paper.
More often than not, Rose found her feet had taken her near the vast, sprawling, magnificent Hofburg Palace, the official residence of the Emperor, the headquarters of various parts of his government, and – currently – the temporary lodgings of the royal visitors who had come for the funeral. Each day saw more of them depart in state and style after meetings and conferences, both private and public, with each other and the new Emperor. Franz Ferdinand himself was often spotted in courtyards or through windows, walking with the German Kaiser or the British King or another head of state, speaking earnestly, listening intently, his new status as one of the highest rank in the world seeming to cloak him visibly with an unfamiliar assurance and dignity. His subjects hadn't been very fond of him up to this point: the strange, moody, difficult man with his lower-status wife, but they were coming to accept him now, watching as he quietly, unassumingly took the stage and somehow made it his own.
Finally, a long week later, all the guests had finally departed, and life in Vienna was poised to return to normal – except for the question hanging shroudlike over the once-vibrant city, of who had been ultimately responsible for the late Emperor's murder. All signs pointed to Serbian involvement, and the world waited and watched to see what the Austrians were going to do about it.
The next day, Rose simply could not sit still. As if needles were being jabbed into all parts of some voodoo doll of herself simultaneously, she jerked and twitched repeatedly as she tried to sit beside Alex at their favorite cafe for their usual breakfast. "I don't know what's wrong with me," she told him finally. "I just have to be moving. I'm sorry. I'm going to go for a walk and try to calm down. Will you be here?" Alex agreed that he would likely stay put, or go back to the garret later, and she tossed him a kiss, then slipped out into the street on feet that were tingling as if their circulation had just been restored.
Drawn unerringly to the Hofburg once more, she found herself in front of the Amalienburg wing, transformed in the last decade into the offices of the Austrian military headquarters, including its greatly influential Chief of Staff. General Franz Conrad von Hotzendorf had performed the same duties for the late Emperor for many years, and although the word on the street said his days were likely numbered, the new Emperor hadn't gotten around to replacing him quite yet. The man himself, known now to Rose from his pictures in the recent newspapers, appeared at a large second-story window as she watched, gazing down with a blank, courtier's expression on the small, subdued crowd pausing beyond the gates – then he suddenly swiveled around and bowed stiffly, as his new monarch appeared beside him in the window. A few words were exchanged, then the General bowed again and departed on some mission. Franz Ferdinand glanced out the window for a long moment – Rose could almost have sworn he looked straight at her, but she was likely too far away and lost in the crowd for recognition – then turned and walked away from the window and out of sight.
Driven suddenly by an overwhelming impulse, Rose turned too and walked across the street to a covered walkway, tucking herself behind a pillar. She didn't know why, but she knew she had to get into that building. Peeking out, she used every bit of concentration to try to estimate the distance between her spot and the window, nervously added a dozen more feet, and punched coordinates into the time jumper, leaving the time alone. Closing her eyes, she held her breath, and punched Activate before she could change her mind.
The odd, stretching-squeezing sensation that always accompanied the transport gave way to an equally smothering, closed-in feeling at the other end. Opening her eyes, she panicked for a moment at the utter blackness of whatever space she'd jumped into, bumping her head on an unseen object and feeling heavy cloth brushing her shoulders on either side. A hand darting out before her met solid wood, then, turning her head swiftly, she caught a hint of light near her feet out of the corner of her eye. Turning fully to look, she discovered a horizontal bar of light a few inches behind her, and suddenly things fell into place. She'd jumped into a coat closet.
Furious, exasperated and relieved all at once, she leaned against the back wall and made herself take several deep breaths as quietly as she could, trying to slow her panicked heartbeat. Then, getting control, she leaned forward, felt for the knob, and slowly, quietly eased the door open a crack.
She'd actually done it perfectly: a few feet to her right Franz Ferdinand sat behind an enormous desk, silently perusing some documents before him. Her closet was on the opposite side of the room from the window she had seen him through moments before. A winter's fire was crackling softly with appropriate decorum in a huge, ornate fireplace behind him on that end of the room. Easing the door open an inch further, she saw two heavy, brocaded armchairs sitting canted on the wide Persian carpet before the desk for visitors, then an empty space yawned between their backs and the door to the office on her left.
Should she step out and speak? Surely there was some reason she'd been drawn to this spot, this time. There had to be something here she had to do.
While she debated with herself, the door to the office opened, readmitting General Conrad; a tall, impressive man who oozed military precision, the haughty, imperious expression in his eyes the perfect counterpart to his white walrus mustache. Rose caught a glimpse of a uniformed, armed man on guard at the portal, as well as a small number of civilians busy at their desks in the outer office, as the General smartly clicked the door shut, then marched across the room, his face carefully blank, and stood stiffly at attention between the two chairs, waiting for his superior's acknowledgment. Rose only then noticed the name plate on the desk: "General Conrad". She bit back a grin at the carefully contrived, subtle show of power by the Emperor: the casual commandeering of the Chief of Staff's private office. When the Emperor at last looked up, Conrad gave him a snappy salute with one hand and held out the papers he was holding in the other. "The proposed demands to the Serbian government, Your Majesty," he announced formally.
Still expressionless, Franz Ferdinand nodded release of the salute, then mutely took the papers and began to read them, leaving the General standing at attention like a private. Rose watched as a red tinge crept up the General's neck, but he remained stock still, staring over the Emperor's head at the mantel, waiting; the very image of formal military courtesy.
About halfway down the first page, Franz Ferdinand took up the pen on the desk and scratched out several lines, writing other words in between them. Conrad's eyes slid down to the page to watch, and his back stiffened even further. The process was repeated several more times on the three pages, then finally the Emperor gathered them up again and held them out.
"You will make these changes, General."
Rose thought Conrad's eyes were about to bug out of his head. He didn't immediately move to take the papers, but instead took a sharp breath and began, obviously choosing his words of protest with as much delicacy as he could manage, "Your Majesty, the demands were most carefully crafted – "
"I'm aware that you wrote them, Conrad. And I'm aware of your motivations. I am countermanding them. The demands were too harsh, and not meetable by the Serbians. They were a thinly-disguised prelude to war – war which I will not rush into." Although his voice was calm and level, Rose could hear the steel behind the words, and knew that Conrad did, as well.
The red had made it onto the General's face. "Your Majesty," he choked out between clenched teeth. "The swine murdered your uncle."
Franz Ferdinand slowly lowered the papers, which Conrad still had not reached to take, back to the desk, and rose majestically to his feet, never breaking eye contact with the other man. His voice dropped several degrees in temperature. "I am aware of that. And they will be punished – severely. But I will not rush headlong into military action, for which we are unprepared, and which will inevitably drag every country on this continent into war through their interlocking treaties." Rose gave a tiny knowing smile at this – her royal pupil had learned the lessons of the book she'd given him very well indeed.
The proud, patriotic General could not believe what he was hearing. He struggled silently for a moment, then rasped out, teeth still clenched, "Since Your Majesty has so little confidence in my counsel, and my military leadership, then I will tender my resignation immediately."
"No, you will not," countered the Emperor flatly. "It will not be accepted." He paused a moment, then relaxed his voice the slightest bit, inviting reconciliation. "I do not completely trust you, Conrad; we both know that is true. But you are a valuable servant to the crown, whom I would be a fool to release over a minor disagreement such as this."
Conrad was in no mood to take the olive branch. "Yet you ignore my counsel, my experience. This is hardly a minor matter, Your Majesty. What we do now will reflect upon us all. If we do not act swiftly and harshly, and squash the Serbian insect, then everything your uncle worked for – everything all of the Habsburgs worked for since the establishment of the Empire – will all be lost, along with every wisp of our national and personal honor. I will not stand silently by while you throw all of that away."
Franz Ferdinand's eyes narrowed. "I will be the guardian of my honor, General, and the honor of my Empire. And I say again, I will not rush into a dangerous, debilitating war, not when the entire continent is teetering on the edge."
"Then let me resign," Conrad said flatly, "since you do not trust me."
"No. You will not resign. What you will do, General, is follow your orders, until this crisis has passed. After that, then you may resign. But not now. For now, I want you where I can see you." He paused a moment, tilting his head back imperiously and considering the slowly-purpling face of the man before him. "In fact, I will have your oath of loyalty, today. I will hear you swear that you will follow orders faithfully until I relieve you of duty."
Conrad was speechless. "You... my oath?" he spluttered.
"Before witnesses." Franz Ferdinand countered calmly. Raising his voice a notch, he called out a name – presumably one of the men in the outer office.
Conrad didn't seem to hear. Fury contorted his handsome features as his head began shaking No, this ultimate insult to his honor – as he saw it – ringing in his ears. "No, I will not..." Even as the door began to swing open behind him, he suddenly opened his coat, and reached for a pistol holstered at his hip.
The instant she saw the gun, before she could consciously choose to react, Rose was in motion. Flinging the door wide, she launched herself out of the closet with a foot on the wall behind her, and lunged for the General, grabbing his arm with both hands. Dimly aware of the deja vu from Sarajevo, she pushed desperately, forcing the pistol out of line with the Emperor. Conrad gaped at this woman who had suddenly appeared out of nowhere for a long, frozen moment, then instantly pushed back with that arm, tearing her pitifully weak grasp off his arm and shoving her violently across the intervening chair, where she tumbled to the floor beside the desk. Rolling swiftly back over, Rose froze for a moment, gasping in horror as he re-aimed the gun, holding it out at arm's length towards the Emperor, who, incredibly, hadn't moved an inch, staring wide-eyed at the man he wisely hadn't trusted.
The General's finger tightened on the trigger, and the pistol's roar filled the office.
But the Emperor didn't fall.
Instead, it was Conrad who jerked, whose face transformed, whose mouth slipped open, dribbling blood, whose arm wavered and fell, whose eyes turned glassy then rolled up into his skull, before he toppled bonelessly to the floor...
...revealing the guard behind him, his own eyes wide and unbelieving at what he'd just done, peering past his own pistol at his superior on the floor. He'd reacted instantly to the scene, without thinking, drawing and firing his sidearm in a flash to save his Emperor.
Silence reigned in the little office as the echoes slowly died, everyone staring in utter shock, from the Emperor behind the desk to Rose on the floor, to the guard at the door, to the men crowding behind him, peering into the room with jaws agape at the former Chief of Staff and almost assassin, lying dead with his unfired pistol in his hand.
Finally, Franz Ferdinand got a hold of himself, taking a deep breath and thanking the guard simply, who merely nodded stiffly, swallowing hard and shakily reholstering his pistol. The Emperor pointed to the men clustered at the door, telling them to take the body away, then he immediately stopped them again. "Gentlemen, the General has had a sudden, fatal stroke. You understand? There is no reason to besmirch his good name, his lifelong loyal service to the Empire, with taint of treason after his death."
The men looked at him, and nodded, agreeing to the implicit conspiracy of silence, before picking up the body and carrying it out the door.
"And the woman, Your Majesty?" the guard spoke up after they had gone.
"What woman?" the Emperor returned flatly, staring hard at the guard, not glancing at Rose. "There is no woman."
The man's eyes slid quickly to her once more before he jerked them back and nodded, and backed out of the room, closing the door behind himself once more. Rose realized only then that the other men hadn't even noticed her there on the floor, their view blocked by the chair she had been thrown over.
Franz Ferdinand let his breath out in a long, silent sigh of relief, wilting down onto his chair at last. Only then did he turn to Rose. "Mein Gott in Himmel," he breathed. "Are you now my guardian angel? Do you intend to jump between me and every bullet?"
"Don't count on it," she said, before breaking into a helpless, hysterical giggle.
He joined her a beat later, his face cracking into the first smile she'd ever seen on it, before he quickly got control of himself again. She began to push herself up off the floor, and he jumped back to his feet to offer her his hand and help her up. Then he stood there, holding her hand, gazing into her eyes.
"Thank you again, Fraulein," he said simply. "I don't even want to know how and why you are here."
"You're welcome, Your Majesty," she replied with her supernova smile. As there was nothing more to be said, she shook his hand, then lightly released it, stepped back, raised her arm with the time jumper, and punched herself back out to the street.
The Long Road Home
After that, the rest of the story seemed almost anti-climactic to Rose. The Serbian government acquiesced meekly to most of the harsh demands, and the few they had reservations over Franz Ferdinand allowed to be hashed out in a conference in neutral Athens, sending his hand-picked representatives there with strict orders to be as punitive as they dared without backing either side into a corner that would precipitate military action. He also took advantage of the sudden, unexpected death of the Chief of Staff, General Conrad, to make the needed changes at the top, and appointed several trusted, able men to key positions in his new government.
Within days of the signing of the resulting Treaty of Athens, the new Emperor stunned the world again with a series of pronouncements: first forcing his vision of a federalist Austrian empire, granting semi-autonomy to the various regions and ethnic groups within the Austro-Hungarian borders, past the resistance of those in power under him who still clung to the old totalitarian methods; then proposing talks towards forging an actual independent Pan-Serbian country from the recently annexed Bosnia-Herzegovina and independent Serbia, to be named Yugoslavia; and most astonishing of all, the signing of the first tentative agreements between his government and those of several of the other major European powers towards the creation of a new supra-national body of arbitration which would supersede individual treaties. The League of Nations was struggling to be born.
Finally, about a week after the last, with the time jumper still trying to change its color every time she checked, came the announcement that the last major continental holdout to the League of Nations, the Russian Tsar Nicholas II, had tossed his wild-eyed, dubious adviser Rasputin out into the cold and signed the agreement.
The cafe they were sitting in – indeed, the entire City of Music – erupted in wild cheers when the word came over the radio. Many who had reacted doubtfully to the new Emperor's ideas at first had over time come around to support them wholeheartedly, disavowing their former resistance avidly. Rose and Alex joined the toasts and singing with tears in their eyes, giddy with joy.
Rose didn't even think to check the jumper again until they straggled home, long after midnight, and she stopped off at the bathroom below the garret. There she held her breath, slowly pulling up her sleeve, opened the jumper, and unlocked it.
The backlight was glowing vivid purple. Her own timeline had been split off from Alpha, for good and for certain. She could go home again.
And Alex? came the question. A wistful, tender smile crossed her lips. No. Oh, she was very fond of him, and grateful for all he'd done, but she wasn't in love with him, nor he with her, she knew. They had both lived up to their promises on the train: that wasn't in the cards for the two of them.
Slowly climbing up the last flight of stairs, she opened the garret door and discovered Alex standing stock still in the middle of the floor, reading a piece of paper – a letter had been slipped under the door while they were out. She couldn't see his face, as he was facing away, but it struck her, hard, that his hand was trembling.
"Alex?" she asked softly. "What is it?"
He jerked, gasped, then swiftly folded the paper up and stuffed it into a pants pocket. "Nothing," he mumbled, then turned and slipped past her before she could get a good look at his face, muttering about his turn in the bathroom. She stared at the now-empty doorway, gaping for a moment, then shook her head. Whatever it was, it was his secret, and she wouldn't pry.
Looking around the room she'd grown to love, and come alive again within, she smiled wistfully. She kicked off her shoes and padded around the room, lighting all the candles, then flicked off the electric lights. Then she got undressed, and slipped under the covers to wait.
He took a very long time in the bathroom, but finally the door opened again and let him in. He stopped in the middle of the room, looking at the candles with an unreadable expression, and she held out a hand to him. "Come here," she whispered. He looked soulfully at her, then seemed to make up his mind, slipped out of his clothes and dropped them in a heap on the floor, and joined her. They made love slowly, tenderly, bathed in combined candlelight and moonlight. Rose knew she was telling him goodbye, but somehow... it felt like he knew it, and was replying with the same.
She didn't figure out why until much later, after he'd fallen asleep. Alex was lying on his back, one arm around her as she laid with her head on his shoulder, watching his chest rise and fall with each soft, slow breath, prolonging the inevitable. Then he slipped into a dream, twitching and moaning softly. And finally his mouth opened, and he moaned a name.
Not hers.
"Sonia. Sonia!" he cried softly, longing soaking through the words.
Sonia? His cousin? Rose raised her head off his shoulder and gazed at him, perplexed. Then, remembering, she slipped gently out from under the covers, scooped up his pants where he'd dropped them, and poked her hand in the pocket. The letter was still there. She pulled it out and carried it over to the window, the full moon shining through it giving ample light for reading.
The words scrawled crookedly across the paper seemed breathless, desperate; thoughts skittering across the surface of a mind driven to distraction like cold water droplets on a hot skillet.
Alex, my darling:
Fritz is dead. The foolish, foolish man thought he could handle the motorcar, even on the icy mountain roads. Am I wicked for thinking only that now I am free? He was not a bad man, he always treated me kindly, but I should never have let them bully me into marrying him.
Alex, I don't care what anyone thinks any more, I don't care what they say or do to me. You are the only man I have ever loved, the only man I will ever love. Please tell me it is not too late. Tell me that you haven't found someone else. Tell me I still have a chance for happiness in this world. Tell me that you forgive me for being too weak to stand up to Papa and Mama in defense of you – of us.
Write to me, Alex, and tell me you still love me! If I do not hear from you soon, I don't know what I will do. Yes, I do: I will come to Vienna myself, and win you back from whatever floozy thinks she can love you as well as I. No one ever can, no one ever will.
Forgive me, my darling! I am only yours, forever more!
Sonia
By the time she reached the end, tears were slipping down Rose's own face, feeling the desperate love of this other woman she apparently partially resembled. She looked back at the now-silent form of the sleeping man on the bed, smiling fondly at him.
"Alex, old buddy," she whispered, much too softly to disturb him, "I think you just became the marrying kind."
She laid Sonia's letter on the little table, opened up so he would know she had seen it, and fetched a blank sheet of paper from the desk for her own note.
Alex:
You're on your way, and I must be on mine. Consider Blue Wolf my wedding present to you both. Thank you for rescuing me, and for teaching me how to laugh again.
Rose
She silently skimmed on her old blue jeans and her favorite blouse, and shoes. She looked at her little carpet bag and her other clothes and shrugged. She wasn't usually a skirt-wearing person, anyway. She did pick up the precious book, however, the first edition of the original The Tale of Bad Wolf, and tucked it under her arm.
Then she blew a kiss to her gallant, slumbering savior, opened the time jumper, found the proper destination in the memory banks, and sent herself back to the future.
