Read Online Timebound by Rysa Walker - Free Book Online

historian, whether you want to be or not, just as I was.
    “I won’t bore you with all the mundane details of my job,” she continued, “but unlike your mother, who must study her field through documents and artifacts, I traveled to the sites where history was made. I specialized in women’s political movements, mostly American, mostly nineteenth century, although I took a few side trips into the twentieth century to follow long-term trends. I learned history by watching Susan B. Anthony, Frederick Douglass, and Lucy Stone argue, both publicly and privately, while I was disguised as someone from their era.
    “In order to ensure”—she glanced at Connor and made a wry face—“or at least try to ensure the sanctity of the timeline, CHRONOS allowed only a limited number of historians. There were thirty-five active historians when I joined in 2298. I took the place of the thirty-sixth, who was retiring. This key is the portable unit that allowed us to return to headquarters when our research was complete. And the diaries were our link in the field—a quick way to get an answer to any question that hadn’t been answered in preliminary research.
    “The important point for now,” she said, “is that the altered gene structure allowed me—and through inheritance, allows you —to activate the CHRONOS key. Or the medallion, as you call it. When I was in training, I would hold the key and eventually ‘see’ the surroundings of the set coordinates to which I would be transported. There are a certain number of destination points on each continent, established in areas that we know have been stable points throughout the period we’re examining. For example, one stable point in this area is a corridor in the Senate wing of the U.S. Capitol that escaped destruction in the War of 1812—it is a geographic stable point between 1800 and 2092.”
    “What happens in 2092?” I asked.
    Katherine’s mouth tightened into a firm line. “The corridor ceased to be a stable point.”
    “Don’t even bother to push on that,” Connor interrupted. “She’ll go all ‘need-to-know’ on you.”
    “To get back to the medallion,” Katherine said, “it allows the user to scope out the territory, make minor temporal adjustments if needed, and determine the best time to make the jump.”
    “So how did you wind up here—now? Did you just decide to stay in the past? Or was there an accident of some sort?”
    “It certainly wasn’t an accident,” Katherine answered. “It was made to look that way, however. Your grandfather—Saul, your biological grandfather—sabotaged CHRONOS and stranded the teams at their various locations. I was scheduled for a jump to Boston 1853, but… let’s just say I was forced to make a last-minute adjustment. Saul had…”
    Katherine paused, phrasing her words carefully. “Saul had fallen in with some bad elements in our society, and I’m quite sure he planned to follow me. He was always a black-and-white sort of person. Either you were friend or you were foe, with no gray area in between. He considered me a traitor, and he would have killed me and—although he wouldn’t have realized it—your mother and Prudence along with me, if I had not ducked into 1969 at the very last minute.”

    Over the next hour, I learned how Katherine had started a new life in the 1970s. She emerged in an abandoned barn about a mile outside Woodstock, New York, in mid-August of 1969, taking the place of a music historian friend who had hoped to see Janis Joplin and Jimi Hendrix at the festival. Dressed in the height of fashion for the 1853 destination for which she’d been scheduled, Katherine was somewhat overdressed for a rock concert. Hoping to get at least some usable data for the friend whose slot she had taken, she removed the pins from her hair, stashed the elaborate gown, gloves, and button-up shoes in her carpetbag, and headed for the concert in just her silk chemise, pantalettes, and a black lace choker.