Homeward Bound

"You didn't finish the story."

We've been on the way back to town for at least a quarter of an hour already, and neither Lamb nor myself have been willing to break the somber spell the Culloden Battlefield cast over us. But eventually, my curiosity wins out.

"Where did I stop?" Lamb asks, still slightly abstracted.

"You had just discovered the importance of palm reading."

"Ah yes, the scrying."

Even so, he doesn't start talking again right away. The road he's chosen for our route home is a different one than we used to get to Culloden. The trees are thicker and taller along this path, with less underbrush. We're closer to the coastline too - between the stands of trees, I've caught an occasional far away glimpse of that haunting, impossible blue. At first I thought it was a distant misty hill, but the sun is too bright for any fog to settle, all the clouds too caught up in the late-morning breeze. Then Lamb opened the window glass, to let in the good air, and I caught the tang of salt in it, and realized what the blue thing was. I'm still not used to the changed color of it, so alive and alluring, even far away enough to be mistaken for a blue hill.

"Scrying, simple as it seems, was in fact the key - or rather one of several keys. It brought us success at once," Lamb says finally, with an inexplicable sigh.

"So you sent the four pilots back at last?"

"Not quite," he quirks a wry smile, "You see, by that point, only one wanted to go back, and even he was wary of us. Small blame to him - decades of an official government program hadn't brought him any nearer to returning home, and now a tiny independent group was telling him they had figured it out? I'd have been just as suspicious of us, to tell the truth. And we had changed the entire ritual by then, too. Originally, the selected Traveler just walked up to the central stone - no fanfare, no ceremony. The rest of the project team watched from wherever they had a good vantage point, recording systems were placed all throughout the stones, and no thought was given to the weather, the time of day, the season, or what state of mind any of the participants were in. Naturally, many of those things had already changed under my predecessor, but by the time Mrs. Graham and I had an updated ritual worked out, we could only attempt to send a Traveler during two three-week windows at opposite ends of the year - it had to be done at or near dawn - the weather must be clear and not too windy - the stone circle must be clean of everything but flowers and grass - the sun, the moon, and the Big Dipper must be in the sky - there must be a flowering or fruiting rowan tree growing within sight of the central stone - no less than seven trained ritual-dancers must perform the Firedawn rites - no observer was allowed within five paces of the stone ring - there could be no mechanical recording devices - and everyone, including the scryed Traveler, must be freshly bathed, dressed in natural fiber clothing, and carrying a token of focus or beauty."

My head is spinning, all of the requirements and details running together into noise. I can't keep the disbelief out of my voice, "But. . . why would all of that to-do even be necessary? The four people you knew for certain were time travelers managed to do so by accident. And they certainly weren't doing an elaborate song and dance routine to try and. . . bribe the Earth Goddess or whatever. So what's it all for?"

Lamb chuckles wryly, "We still don't know."

I gape at him, wide-eyed, "Not even the Druid people?"

"Them least of all."

"And you do it anyway?"

He shrugs, "If it works, why not? And it does. We have a 75% success rate now."

I sigh, bemusedly, "Alright. What happened to this justifiably wary fighter pilot?"

"Well, Mrs. Graham read his palm, we did our song and dance routine," here he grins at me for a second, "The sun came up, the wind blew. . . and he disappeared."

"That's all?"

"Yes, it did carry the flavour of an anti-climax about it at the time too. He was there, and then he wasn't. It hardly seemed worth it. We had made a man disappear! Cheap conjurors can do as much. But the feeling rapidly dissipated when we all realized we had in fact sent a man through time. Unlike sending a man to the moon, we were unable to send cameras with him, so a mere disappearance was all we could realistically hope to see. But we had finally done it. That was the main thing."

"Very satisfying for you."

"Yes," he says, thoughtfully, "It was. Until he reappeared two weeks later."

I laugh, feeling almost incapable of containing any more shock, "Does this story ever end, Lamb?"

"I am beginning to think it doesn't, my dear."

"Okay then. Why was he back?"

"Because he wanted to be. You see, he hadn't actually gone back to his own time, he had jumped another 70 years into the future."

"Oh."

Lamb smiles tightly, "Yes, that was our reaction. He said he had spent four months in 2321, couldn't stand it, and decided to come back to us, if he could. We could understand that part, but the reason he didn't go back in time completely baffled us. That was when we started refining the scrying methods - figuring out each prospective Traveler's destiny, signs of their probable time-traveling course, etc."

"So he came back. . ."

Lamb nods, sympathetically, "Yes, he lived out the rest of his life here, and never Traveled again. In the end, I think he was as happy as anyone could be who'd had his experiences of life."

"Did he tell you how he got back?"

"Yes, he did. Apparently it was a matter of walking up to the stone and letting it take him whenever it would."

"Without all the fancy-dancing?"

"Indeed."

I click my tongue, "I don't like it. It's inconsistent."

"Mm, that's what I used to think too. But it was a sample size of one then. We have a considerably larger sample size now."

"So now what do you think?"

"Now, I think there is definitely a pattern. A complex, intricate pattern, with many more conditional elements we haven't yet discovered."

"You mean there might be more requirements and things you have to do?"

"Yes. Because you see, he wasn't a fluke. Everyone who has come back through the stones since then, has told us they got into the future. Only the future. Never the past."

"Except when traveling back to you."

"Except when traveling back to us."

My mind is buzzing, dredging up all the statistics courses I've ever taken.

"How many people have you sent through?"

"Since adding the scry, we've successfully transported twenty-four individuals, but most of them have made more than one trip."

"Okay, then how many successful trips?"

"Just over sixty."

"Out of how many attempts?"

"Eighty-three."

"Is it always the same time interval they travel forward, or is it variable?"

"It is highly variable. Anywhere between ten years and three hundred years have been reported."

"How about the time they appear to be gone? The time that passes here between their leaving and returning. Is that variable too?"

"It is, but not by very much. They're almost always gone between ten and nineteen days."

"And have there been any anomalous trips?"

"Well. . ." he shrugs one shoulder, ruefully, "One."

"Lamb? What happened?"

"That's just it. Nothing. She never came back."

His voice is heartrendingly sad.

"Oh. . . Lamb. . ."

"She showed all the signs of being able to get into the past, not just some. Her scry, I mean. It was the first one to do so. And she was eager to try. But it's been three years, and she hasn't come back yet. We've all of us pretty much stopped hoping she ever will."

I know guilt and regret when I hear it. I also know how they tear at your insides, making a growing void you can never fill. I reach over and grip his shoulder for a second, just like he did mine on the trip out. I want to say it isn't his fault.

But I know it is.

Oh, not that a girl might be trapped, or dead, in a time or place such that she'll never be found. Not that she volunteered to go. And not that she hasn't come back. But that she was ever in danger of being lost like that in the first place. That's on him, and he knows it.

"Did. . . you. . ." he says, slowly, "Did you hear Mrs. Graham and me arguing this morning?"

"Partially, yes."

He nods, sadly, "You. . . your scry. . . shows all of the signs too."

A cold pit opens up in my stomach. And here I thought I was becoming immune to shock. . .

"Mrs. Graham wanted me to explain everything to you right there and then. I didn't want to do it at all. I've just found you again, my dear. . . the last bit of family I have. . . I can't lose you too. . ."

He grips the steering yoke hard, his knuckles whitening.

I've got my breath back, but the cold adrenaline is still coursing through me. It makes my next words sound much harsher than I mean them to be.

"What makes you think I want to time travel, Lamb?"

"Well, I. . ." he gives me a double take, "I thought. . . but of course, I shouldn't have assumed. Feel free to disregard the fears of an old man, then."

"But regarding them is exactly what I am doing."

He gives me a stern look, "Claire?"

I do my best to match his tone, "Lamb? Think about it for a minute. I know what it's like to lose someone you care about to sudden and unfortunate circumstance - more than once, in fact."

He flushes a dark, forbidding red. "Of course. My apologies, dear. Of course you know. . ."

"Which is why, Uncle," I say, emphasizing every word, "I am the least likely person to deliberately subject you to another such loss."

The expression he turns to me now is strange. Thankful, but disappointed. Contemplative, but at a loss.

"I'd been hoping for years we'd find another one who might be able to. . . and now. . . it's you. . ."

"Lamb, why is getting into the past so important?"

"Because in the past we might CHANGE things!" he explodes, pounding the dashboard mercilessly with one fist, while the other has a death grip on the steering yoke.

The car swerves sharply. He calms at once, steadying the vehicle.

"I'm sorry dear. But living here. . . seeing how the Earth used to be. . . what once might have belonged to everyone, not just a chosen few. . . Clean water. Clean air. Trees. Animals. Flowers. Ground that isn't scorched and poisoned. Food that doesn't have to be processed to hell and back before it contains the proper level of nutrients. Pure colors and healing light. And all the while. . . knowing. . . knowing that we. . . we made the choice to destroy it all. And for what? Nothing, in the end. We chose senseless oblivion! If there's a chance, just ONE chance. . ." he breaks off, and swallows hard a few times.

"But you're right, of course," his tone is so mournfully sardonic it scarcely sounds like him anymore, "The government didn't reinstate the project just because there's a chance we might prevent nuclear Armageddon. That's my dream. They did it because that first pilot who came back brought a highly advanced bit of radio technology with him. And the Council saw a chance to finally compete with the Skycities in terms of technology production. And trade deals."

His bitterness is intensely palpable. I put on as much halfhearted cheer as I can muster. "Well, you know what they say. Capitalism is a hell of a drug."

"Yes." He sighs, visibly shrugs off the great depressive mood that's come over him, and forces a dreary smile. "It hasn't been all bad, of course. Few things ever are, really. Nine years ago one of the Travelers brought back a device that could suspend AR gel in a force-field grid, while harvesting the free energy to maintain the field generator. Somehow he managed to convince the Council that just reverse-engineering it and selling it to the Skycities would be a waste of its potential. I don't know if you noticed flying in, but we've reclaimed hundreds of square miles of open ocean with it."

I smile, remembering, and say softly, "Yes, I noticed. That's too tame a word, but, I noticed."

"We've reintroduced fifteen species of scaled fish, eight sea plants, three bottom feeders, and two mollusks. All of them seem to be thriving. We've even opened a pearl fishery, of all things."

"That's far and away more than I ever thought would happen in my lifetime. . ."

"Well, it's not saving the world, but. . . it's something."

"It's saving part of the world. That's pretty amazing, if you ask me."

He doesn't respond, but eventually, his grip on the steering yoke relaxes slightly, his knuckles no longer white.

The trees along this stretch are taller and darker-skinned than those I've seen so far today. They also seem to grow in more orderly rows than the normal forest does, and strangely, every so often, we pass a large rectangle full of nothing but tiny saplings, all a meter tall or less. There is no undergrowth at all through here, the ground is cleanly swept, and all the full-grown trees have their branches trimmed up so high they seem less like giant plants and more like the great structural piers that support a Skycity Core.

Nothing about this stretch of forest feels like the natural wildness I've so quickly come to expect from Cold Island 12. No, this feels more like a. . . farm.

And then, we pass a roped-off section where half the trees have been cut down, their long columns stacked off to the side, and there are half a dozen men, busily cutting down more.

"No!" I shout, aghast, "What are they doing?" I twist in my seat, unable to look away from the horrible scene until it disappears behind a curve in the road. Then I whirl back to stare my dismay at Lamb.

He glances back at me, slightly bewildered, "It looked like they were clearing a tract that's ready to be sent to the sawmill. What's wrong with that?"

"Why. . . they. . . I mean. . ." I'm incoherent with rage, sorrow and confusion, "Why are they cutting down the trees?"

Lamb shrugs, indifferent, "For planks, boards and other construction lumber, for firewood, paper, animal bedding - there's all manner of things trees are used for."

"Oh. . . I. . . didn't know that meant cutting down the big ones. . ."

"Only the ones growing on tree-farm land. Except for the few wild ones that must be cut to maintain a healthy forest, of course."

My sudden panic eases, "I thought it looked like a farm though here."

"Yes, quite. They only grow a special fast-growing hybrid tree. . . I don't know what it's called, actually. . . And here's the mill itself."

Two great cubical buildings heave into view, one on either side of the narrow road, both sheathed in metal siding, and painted stark white. A slender bridge of some kind, attended by a myriad of pipes of all sizes joins the two buildings halfway up - at least five meters above the roadway. The twin yards are stacked with piles upon piles of sawn planks, heaps of scrap and sawdust, and everywhere there are cars on dedicated tracks that crisscross the shared enclosure. The smell is sharp and antiseptic, mingled with the grease and hot metal of well-used machinery. A dozen or so men labor in the yards, loading up cars, shoveling scrap, manoeuvring loads of raw logs.

All this I absorb in the few seconds it takes us to pass by, and one more thing too - a sign at the far end of the right-hand yard, painted a sullen yellow and green, neatly, but somewhat faded and peeling now, reading, "Cocknammon Sawmill & Lumberyard".

It all seems regular and innocent enough - a factory for wooden boards, what could be so bad about that? - but something about the place strikes me as impossibly evil, though I don't know why.

"What a terrible place," I say, unable to shake off the feeling, and unwilling to let it go unremarked upon.

"Well, it's a much better place now than it used to be, my dear."

I wind my arms around myself to keep from shivering. The wind is cold through the open windows, and though the sun is bright, it has only a wintry force behind it.

"What did it used to be? An abattoir?"

Lamb looks uncharacteristically grim, "For souls, maybe. The buildings used to be the main checkpoint along this road during the British Cold War, occupied - or should I say laired in - by a squad of Her Majesty's Peace Agents. Peace!" He laughs at the word, hard and humourlessly, "They rounded up anyone and everyone they thought might be of English or other foreign descent and deported them. They issued arrest warrants for all manner of people, and punished them without trial - or a bare show of it, which was worse - and generally went about the countryside stealing, wreaking havoc, and beating people up, innocent or not, helpless or not, legitimate Scot or not."

I don't wonder I felt residual evil from the place, but. . . "I don't understand. Why would they do such things?"

"It is not for us common folk to understand the forms that systemic revenge can take."

Now that's a word I didn't expect. "Revenge? But I thought Queen Victoria wanted Scotland to be independent. She wanted every part of the United Kingdom to be independent, even the territories. That's why the British Cold War even happened to begin with, right? In Scotland, it was the Clan Lairds that pushed things to the point of battle. . . wasn't it?"

Lamb sighs, "They say history is written by the victors, but that isn't always the case, my dear. And sometimes, it's difficult to know who the victors even were."

"But. . ."

"Listen, on the Skycities we still use the terms "Second Scottish War of Independence" and "British Cold War" interchangeably, don't we? Like one was just another part of the other?"

"Y-yes. We do."

"Well the war in Scotland was anything but cold. In Wales? Or Jersey? Or Gibraltar? In those places, the dissolution of the United Kingdom happened without bloodshed. Slowly, sometimes. Bitterly, quite often. But not bloodily. Here, on the other hand, well. . . here, only Sassenachs ever call it the "British Cold War", for very good reasons. You might as well sit down in a pub today in Glasgow and say loudly just how much you love it here in England. They'll punch you in the face and throw you out as fast as look at you."

I look about me at the soft, muted colors of late autumn, and the sunny, mild sky, and imagine the ancient cruelties, done by people I don't know, to a country I've never seen before, during a time I was powerless to stop.

"Lamb?"

"Yes, dear?"

"Is that sort of thing. . . the Peace Agents abusing their power, I mean - is that. . . what you hope to send people back in time to prevent?"

A look of inexpressible longing spreads over his face, and I know his answer before he says it.

"Yes. Improve the past to improve the future. I don't mean changing anything grand, or doing anything self-sacrificially heroic, and I certainly don't expect any time traveler to risk their lives for something they aren't certain they're completely committed to, but. . . well. Any reduction of evil has to be an improvement."

"That being the case. . ." I look at this newfound bit of family of mine, and try to say my next words as gently as I can, "Don't you think. . . I. . . we. . . should re-think whether or not I should. . . try and. . . well, try?"

He presses his lips together, and doesn't say anything as he steers the car smoothly into the yard of the manse. He hands me courteously out of the car, into the house, and down the hallway to the kitchen before responding.

"You'll need to observe a ritual first - before participating as a. . . possible traveler. It's procedure."

I nod, afraid to interrupt.

"Tomorrow night is Samhain - the opening night of our second three-week window for this year."

I sit down at the kitchen table, and he bustles about, cobbling together a lunch of this and that, artlessly uncaring about flavour pairings or presentation.

He pauses before handing me a thoroughly indescribable sandwich, and a tall glass of cold milk.

"I'll. . . tell Mrs. Graham. She'll make sure you're ready."

I sip at the milk, wondering if, in context, "ready" is even possible. . .