“I thought you were dead,” he choked.
Aesop’s eyes widened, the green rings darker against the yellow. “I missed you,” she said in a very small voice.
Ruthven took an unsteady step forward. Aesop crouched, and leaped. He should have braced himself, but instead he went down in a cloud of fur and grass. The wind was knocked out of him, not leaving enough breath in his body to laugh for joy.
His cat — a beautiful, terrifying futuristic feline who was also, miraculously, his cat — repeatedly butted him gently in the face with her own. Her nose was still as cold and wet as ever, and he could feel the outline of her claws against his ribs.
“Do you look different?” he managed to say. “I hadn’t noticed.”
“I don’t know how much you remember about our last trip to Ancient Rome,” said Aesop, a short while later. Ruthven sat in the thick grass, his back against a birch tree, with a lap full of cat. So much more cat than he was used to. She spilled over his knees and on to the ground.
Oxford withdrew to the house, claiming he couldn’t spend more time in real sunshine without a boater hat. Really, he was giving them privacy for their conversation.
Once again, Ruthven had too many questions to fit inside his head. Most of them could be summed up as how? and why? and when?
“Very little,” said Ruthven. “I know what was supposed to happen.”
“Ha,” Aesop said, her head nudging against his hand until he got the message and started to scritch behind her (now rather large) ears. “Standard mission, except that while we were looking for mushroom facts, there was an Anachronaut sabotage-and-extraction planned at the same time, to recruit the Emperor Claudius to their side. It’s the only time in known history that Melusine’s spreadsheet failed us. You and I were nearly out — I was a few seconds behind you, leaping into the time hoop — and in that moment, 54 CE became an Event.”
“You were trapped?” Ruthven felt a wave of guilt, even if he couldn’t remember any of it. Why hadn’t he been carrying her? Why hadn’t he checked she was keeping up?
Aesop blinked at him. Her eyelashes were even longer than they had been in her old body, and that was saying something. “You know about Event Space?”
“Spent some time there on my summer holidays. Not a fan.”
“Understandable. I found myself stuck in 54 CE. In the palace where the Emperor had just disappeared into thin air.”
“Wait, was he poisoned by mushrooms or a feather?”
Aesop rolled her eyes. “I don’t know, Ruthven. In the timeline I witnessed, he was abducted before the entrees were served.”
“Right, fair enough. How long were you stranded?”
“Fifteen,” said Aesop grimly.
“Fifteen what?”
“Fifteen separate rounds of 54 CE. Believe me, by the end of it, I wanted to poison the Emperor Claudius myself. Not to mention, every other member of that wretched family. I only found my way out because I ran into a scattered version of Cressida, and she showed me how to use the time aisles.”
“Viking hat Cressida, or tie-dyed Victorian bustle Cressida?”
“If we’re talking purely costume, I’d go with Lancashire Witch Trials Cressida.”
“Oh, that’s new.” Ruthven wondered how many other Cressidas were out there.
“I finally happened across one of those self-congratulatory dinner parties the Anachronauts love to throw for themselves, at Versailles.”
“1664, Louis XIV’s Party of the Delights of the Enchanted Island?” Ruthven asked. According to Boswell, Oxford and the others had spent some time at that particular party recently.
“1685, Reception of the Doge of Genoa,” said Aesop. “Anachronauts are way too into the Sun King.”
“They share a love of parties.”
Aesop leaned her large purple head against his knee, closing her eyes. Ruthven continued to stroke her fur, wanting her to feel safe. “I was in a bit of a state by then,” she said in a small voice. “Too long in Event Space. Too long in the time aisles. I got all my memories back and it was rough. I learned a lot about myself I didn’t like very much. And… I’d lost my shape.”
Her whole body scrunched up, as if in misery. Was this it? The reason she didn’t want him to know she had survived?
“I think you’re beautiful,” he assured her.
“Not like I was. Not a real cat.”
“You look real to me.”
“I scared the hell out of Nero in 1685, anyway,” Aesop said, rolling on to her back and lolling around so he could pat her belly. “He dragged me home to Basic Time, and made Oxford smuggle me here in his flyer so I could recover.”
Ruthven’s hand stopped moving. “Oxford brought you here? How long ago?”
Aesop gave a whole body shrug, her eyes still closed. “A few months.”
“A few months? It’s been three years for me.”
“That’s time travel,” said Aesop, sounding a little sulky. “Oxford promised he wouldn’t tell you until I was ready.”
“Did you think this —” Ruthven scratched at her purple fur, “Would really matter to me?”
“Not the body,” Aesop wailed. “Me. I was not a good cat, Ruthven. I was complicit in so much corruption. The Founders, and everything they did. We put that power in their hands, because their money made things easier, and time travel was fun. We thought no one was getting hurt. When Burbage and Banksia spoke up about ethics and accountability, I stayed silent.”
