The Pimpernel Plot (TimeWars 3)

“I had a feeling something strange was going on when I. walked through the door of the Chat Gris,” said Finn. “Talk about your Mexican standoffs. Everybody in that place with the exception of Chauvelin, Brogard, and Lady Blakeney was from another time. And from two different timelines.”

Mongoose grinned. “You should have seen your face when they all pulled out their weapons.”

Finn shook his head. “I imagine it was something like Brogard’s expression when he came up from the cellar to find his inn full of dead bodies. If he had come up several moments sooner, he would have seen twice as many corpses, half of which would have disappeared before his eyes. He was shocked enough as it was; I don’t think he could’ve handled that.”

“What happened to Chauvelin’s soldiers?” Forrester said. “You decoyed them away?”

Mongoose nodded. “That’s where old Lafitte came in. He met them as they were approaching and told them he was one of Chauvelin’s agents and that Blakeney had ridden out of town, trying to escape, with Chauvelin hot on his heels. The soldiers took off down the road to Amiens at full gallop. Chauvelin was to lose his head in Paris. He just died a little sooner.”

“Whatever became of old Lafitte?” said Lucas.

“I never saw him again,” said Mongoose. “I told him that he would have one final service to perform for me and then he would be on his own. He died soon afterward. He was an old man.”

“That still left you with some cleaning up to do,” said Forrester.

“Not much, really. We had to bring Pierre Lafitte back from England. Simple enough. Then we had to take care of Jean and Lady Blakeney. Pierre and his uncle never knew anything that would be a threat to temporal continuity, but Brogard, Jean, and Marguerite had seen things they should not have seen. They had to be conditioned to forget that they had seen them. A man from Relocation was sent back to take Finn’s place as Percy Blakeney and I imagine that they lived happily ever after. The relocation assignment was about as easy and pleasant as they come. Life in the upper crust of London society as an extremely wealthy man with a beautiful and adoring wife. We should all be so lucky.”

Andre glanced at Finn and their eyes met for a second; then he dropped his gaze, staring down into his glass. He did not look up again for a long time.

“As for Jean,” Mongoose smiled, “I was almost sorry that he had to undergo conditioning. I really developed quite a liking for that kid.”

“How extensive was the conditioning?” said Forrester.

“In Jean’s case, fairly minor. He would remember Monsieur l’Avenir and his peripheral involvement with the League of the Scarlet Pimpernel, but he would forget all about the… untimely things that he had seen. After that, well, it seems he had always hated Paris. He and his brother used to dream of going to sea and becoming sailors. After their uncle died, they signed onto a merchant ship as cabin boys. They had a fascinating future ahead of them.”

“What actually happened to create the split?” said Andre.

Mongoose shook his head. “I can only guess. Perhaps Blakeney, our Blakeney, was killed by Chauvelin in the Chat Gris and the fact that it was a substitute Blakeney, which already worked against temporal inertia, was enough to cause the split. But then, Armand St. Just and the Comte de Tournay were due to arrive shortly. They would have been arrested, in spite of Chauvelin’s promise to Marguerite, no doubt. Possibly Ffoulkes and several other members of the league would have been caught as well. Whatever it was, that one moment in the inn was obviously the catalyst, because when it occurred or rather, when it did not occur, the alternate timeline ceased to exist.”

“Having never existed in the first place,” Forrester said.

“But of course it existed,” Andre said, frowning. “Why else was all this-”

“It never existed in the first place,” Forrester said, emphatically. “It was a shadow, a dre

am. What happened to the bodies of those agents from the alternate timeline? They disappeared, because they were never really there.”

Andre stared at him, perplexed.

“What he means,” said Mongoose, gently, “is that we changed reality. For a time, our reality was that which we knew, prior to the split. Then, we were dealing with another reality altogether. We changed that. We restored reality to the way it should have been, the way it was, the way it is. At this moment, as we sit here now, the incident that created the alternate timeline never occurred. That timeline, along with everyone in it, never existed. It was like a dream.”

“A nightmare,” said Forrester, drinking deeply.

Andre shook her head. “No, you can’t play tricks with logic to change what was. For a time, however brief a time from where we sit now, that timeline existed. Those people were real. There was another world, another universe!”

“If we accept that,” Forrester said, “then we must also accept that you helped kill them all.” He held her gaze. “You understand?”

She remained silent. She glanced at Finn and Lucas, but they wouldn’t meet her gaze. Both men stared down at the floor.

“I need another drink,” said Finn.

“So do I,” said Lucas.

Forrester refilled their glasses.