Crossover Earth '98
TILL THE END OF TIME
BY LISE MENDEL AND MICHAEL SURBROOK
"So, Lord du Lac," the dark haired woman said, "we meet again."
Avalon slipped the khanjar into his coat pocket. "Again?" he asked. "When would that have been? I'm afraid you have me at a disadvantage, Miss...?"
"Netherland," she nodded curtly, but didn't offer her hand. "Limbo casts long shadows, and yours and mine have met there before." As she spoke she zipped her parka up over the turtleneck sweater she wore.
There was a long moment of thoughtful silence.
"So you say, Miss Netherland, but I do not recall us ever having met before." Avalon turned to look at Cassandra, "Are you then from my future?"
She closed her eyes and sighed, leaning back against the dilapidated building as if she might fall. "Not your future. Not your past. Not your Limbo. But one that was close enough to tell me who you are."
"I see." He put a world of meaning in that statement. "Well, Miss Netherland, what is it you wish from me? I do not want to seem rude, but there is a rather frightened young woman who needs attending to."
She nodded. "I'll try not to take too long, then. I need to speak to you about the end of the time stream." She opened her eyes and stared at the remnants of what had once been a beautiful courtyard.
He made no move to break the expectant silence, so she continued. "It's coming, soon as such things are measured, and I need your help in deflecting it."
"Returning the victim to her family will take a bit of time, Miss Netherland. Are you planning to wait here?"
"I could, if you wish, or I could meet you somewhere."
"That, perhaps would be best. Where would you recommend?"
"There's an all night Denny's down that road. Do you know it?"
"Denny's?" Avalon looked dubious. "I know of it."
"I'll wait for you there, then," she said, and, without waiting for acknowledgement she strode off.
"Not again," he sighed, shaking his head.
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Some time later, Avalon and his dragon entered the brightly lit Denny's. He spotted Miss Netherland at a corner table, eating a sandwich and drinking coffee. He seated himself, allowing Herrick to arrange himself on the back of his chair.
"Herrick?" the woman asked, seeming genuinely pleased to see the little dragon. "You're here too? And still smoking like a chimney, I see."
*growf?*
"Thank you for coming, Avalon," she said, putting down her food. "I hope the girl is well and sound."
"She is as well as can be expected," Avalon replied grimly.
She nodded. "That's all any of us can ask for."
"And now, Miss Netherland, you wish to speak to me about the end of time."
"I believe it's the end of time I've seen," she shrugged. "Or I may have misinterpreted the flow, in which case it's simply my own death, and I apologize for the intrusion."
Avalon merely blinked at this pronouncement. "When may I ask, is this end of time supposed to occur?"
She shook her head. "My visions don't come with time stamps. I know it's soon as time marks itself, but not so soon as preparations can't be made, or so soon that the stream can't be turned."
"What do you mean, then, by the end of time? For an apprentice of mine has had a number of visions regarding events thirty years from now, and these visions are such that I believe the events she sees will come to pass."
She sighed, and the tension flowed from her body. "That's a relief, then," she said. "It probably just means that my own time here is strictly limited."
"You believe you have forseen your own death, then?" Avalon wasn't quite sure what to make of the woman's attitude. It seemed a mixture of despair, anger and fear...
"Death, leave taking, or a burp in the timestream which will cast me adrift. I can deal with these again if I have to. Any one of them is better than being responsible for saving the world." She took a gulp from her cup of coffee, and offered a bite of sandwich to Herrick.
"Perhaps, Miss Netherland, you might explain to me then what it is you have seen."
"The timeflow stops. Soon. In all forward going directions. I haven't seen any triggering event, or particularly significant endpoint, it just doesn't go far."
Herrick stretched his neck out cautiously and took a bite of the proffered sandwich.
"What has your apprentice seen?" she asked.
"A dark future," Avalon replied. "She speaks of towering sky scrapers, acidic rains, desperate overcrowding, constant incursions of demonic entities. But she tells me that all is not lost, for that an organized 'police force' exists, using both sorcery and technology to fight these creatures. She, in fact, sees her own daughter in command of one of these 'police squads'."
As she listened to him speak, Cassandra's demeanor once again turned grim. "Then what I've been seeing might mark the turning point," she concluded.
"Yes, and I have made it clear that there is little I would not do to prevent this future's outcome."
She nodded in agreement. "If I expected anything different of you, I would not be here," she said.
"What about your colleagues?" she asked. "Have other sorcerers seen omens or had visions like this?"
"I will have to ask. No-one aside from Katsumi has spoken to me about such things."
"Good. You ask questions in the mystical world. I'll build a force to call on in the mundane one. Whatever is coming, we'll need to fight on many fronts."
"So you say. Tell me, Miss Netherland, how is it you are so certain this will come to happen?"
"I told you. My vision goes so far, and stops. Time stops."
"Meaning what? That we are all frozen in temporal stasis? That we will continue to relive the same event over and over and not notice?"
"I don't know what it means. I've never seen anything like it before. It's not a standard time travel look - the signature's all wrong."
"Do you have these dreams often, then?"
"Dreams? Who said anything about dreams?"
"Your visions, then?" he asked with an exasperated sigh.
"Not 'visions'. Vision. I look at you, and I know you're the present one -"
"Present one what?"
"Present you. As opposed to the young one with the curly black hair, for example."
He glared at her, "How do you know this?"
She stammered slightly. "It's what I see when I look at you. Not every moment, but you carry your past and your futures around with you. This is a lot simpler to understand than other time streams I've been in where you'd also carry around near past, almost present, and unlikely future."
"How many time streams have you been in?"
Her gaze drifted past him and out the window to where cars occasionally went by. "I'm not even sure how to count them at this point."
"I suppose then this is when you tell me that you are not from this world."
She closed her eyes and buried her face in her hands. "I am, and I'm not."
"Then I suppose asking for some proof of what you say would be futile?"
She shook her head without lifting it from her hands. "What do you see when you look at me?"
Avalon shifted his perceptions to view the structure of magic around her. "More concentrated magic than I care to speculate upon."
"I don't know what proof I could give that would possibly satisfy you. I am what I am." She looked up and met his gaze. "I do not willingly deal with magicians."
"I can see why."
"Your shadow, which I met in a timeline not completely different from this one, was the only Magician I've ever dealt with who did not destroy me in the end."
"I see."
"Maybe I just had to give you a chance to remedy that oversight."
"Presuming then that I do learn something about the end of time, how shall I contact you?"
"Are you on the 'net?"
He paused, momentarily, as if mentally switching gears. "Yes."
"Here's my e-mail address," she said, pulling a pen from her parka's pocket and jotting a series of arcane characters and symbols on a napkin, and pushed it over to him. "May I have yours?"
He produced a pen and wrote his down, giving it to her.
"Alright, then. We'll pool information as we get it. You work the mystical side, I'll work the mundane. As we get closer to the nexus point, you'll be doing more of the work. By the end, I don't think I'll be able to see anything at all, but by that point, I should have built up enough contacts to co-ordinate whatever has to be pulled together on the non-magic side of things."
"Agreed, then, Miss Netherland. I shall do what I can." He got up and walked out of the restaurant. She watched him go, then gradually picked up her sandwich and kept eating.
Outside he paused, looked at Herrick, and said "I think it's time for us to pay a visit to Hawaii."
Herrick nodded in approval.