Free Time's Echo: A CHRONOS Files Novella by Rysa Walker Page A

like me. "
    "Yeah, that's what I told her. I'm guessing it was for
Cincinnati. I don't remember much of what happened, except you almost getting
me killed."
    Nearly got Kate killed, too , but I don't say that.
    "Never happened," he says, shaking his head.
"That whack on the head has rattled your noggin."
    I stop by the little market a few blocks from the apartment
and grab a bottle of milk, a hunk of cheddar and a loaf of bread, hoping Simon
will be gone when I come out. He's still there, with some sort of phone,
scrolling across a display. And he's not even trying to be discreet about it.
"Hey, wanna catch a Red Sox game? I was just
checking the schedule I saved—there's a double-header today I haven't seen
yet."
    Simon has been on a baseball kick for the past year or so.
It's one of the only things we have in common, but I'm not in the mood to sit
in the sun for three hours, and that goes double for sitting that long with
Simon. I open the bottle of milk and take a long chug before answering.
"They're not the Sox yet. The Boston Americans are on the road the
next two weeks—either Philly or Chicago today, can't remember."
    He shrugs. "So?"
    I don't say anything, just tap the bandage again. "I
can't travel. Remember?"
    "Fine. The Braves are in town,
right? They suck beyond measure, but since you're crippled..."
    I start to correct him—Boston's other baseball team, the Beaneaters , won't be the Braves for five more years.
They'll go through two or three other really stupid team names before then. But
why bother?
    "Go if you want, Simon. Me? I'm headed back to bed to
sleep this off. So if you're done playing errand boy you can trot back to Pru
and tell her I'll be along as soon as I can."
    He bristles at that, pulling his medallion out of his watch
pocket. "I'm not her errand boy. I've got other work to do. I delivered
that message as a favor."
    I'm not sure if he meant as a favor to me or as a favor to
Pru, but I'm not sad to see him disappear. I just wish he'd avoid doing it in
the middle of the sidewalk in broad daylight.
     
     

∞6∞
    Estero,
Florida
    May 30, 2030– 6:45p.m.
     
    Most of us still call Nuevo Reino the "Farm," but it isn't a working farm these days. What remains is
more for show than anything else. The Farm that I remember had four or five
dozen cows, a pigpen near the barn, along with chickens and pretty much every
other form of livestock. Snakes and alligators wandered around too, so you had
to be careful walking about at night.
    Only the horses remain now—not the same horses, of course,
but Pru has insisted on keeping a few in the barn since she took over after
Cyrus Teed's death a hundred and twenty-odd years
ago. While it's possible that Prudence rides these horses, too, I doubt it. The
tack hanging on the wall looks brand new and the only horse I've ever seen her
ride is the palomino stallion she bought the year I arrived at the farm. Pru
named the horse Wildfire, something Kate found hysterically funny when I told
her. She promised she'd find the song and play it for me, but we never got
around to it.
    Pru rode that horse almost every day she was at Nuevo Reino . And occasionally, Older Pru would use her CHRONOS
key to come back to the Farm and take him out for a run as well. Younger Pru
would always brush him down and feed him herself. Older Pru left him saddled
and tied by the barn door. She didn't speak to anyone on those visits—just
showed up, rode the horse, and jumped back to whenever she'd come from.
    I was there one afternoon when she popped in out of the blue
and snatched the reins away from her seventeen-year-old self. Her seventeen-year-old
self and I found something else to do, up in the loft. Thinking back, that
might have been Older Pru's plan all along.
    There are just a few wisps of
cloud in the early evening sky when I arrive, but the grass is damp, probably
from one of those afternoon thunderstorms I remember sweeping across the Farm
when I was a kid—storms that