“Aesop… I liked rampaging irresponsibly through time with you,” he said softly.
“Me too, my dear,” said his cat. “Let’s never do it again.”
Ruthven and Oxford travelled in silence for the first hour or so of the flyer trip back up to the space station that they knew as Chronos College.
Ruthven had a lot to say, but couldn’t bring himself to get started.
A few times, he saw Oxford twitch, then force himself to stay quiet.
“Okay,” Ruthven said finally. “Go on. You first.”
Oxford took a deep breath. “I know it’s not fair to ask for forgiveness. I always knew that Monterey and Tunbridge and everyone would despise me when they found out how much I’d collaborated with the Founders and their bullshit. I should have resisted, I should have told you all what was happening, and I didn’t. That’s on me. I still can’t stand the thought of you hating me.”
“I don’t hate you,” said Ruthven honestly. “I have too much going on in my head right now to hold resentment about how you handled a horrible situation. Also I don’t think I’m the one whose job it is to forgive you.”
“I didn’t tell you about Aesop.”
“Yeah, and if it had been years, if it had been the whole time… but it wasn’t. She wasn’t ready. I get it.” Ruthven nudged Oxford, wanting to get their easy friendship back, wanting to see him smile. “You’re so dramatic.”
“I wonder what’s happening back home,” Oxford muttered. “If Zadie still has control of the Violet Sunflower.”
“If she has any sense, she’ll destroy it,” said Ruthven. “Of all the Artefacts, that’s the most dangerous. All these secrets. It has to stop.”
“My mothers always say that information is only power when you’re the one who has it.”
“You have been so messed up by your upbringing,” Ruthven said flatly.
“Yeah,” Oxford agreed. “But we got talking cats out of it.”
“Indeed we did.” Aesop was alive. She might not look the same, but Ruthven had her back. That made everything feel less hopeless than before. “There should be a better way,” he said.
“To do time travel?” Oxford gave him a wild sort of look. “Time travel is over. It has to be. Right?”
“Chronos College is over,” said Ruthven. “The Founders can’t be trusted with this kind of power, not again. But surely it could be done safely, now we don’t have to worry about the thirtieth century Feline Cops tracking us down.”
Oxford gave him a wary look. “Safely, like with rules?”
“Absolutely with rules,” said Ruthven. “With ethics statements, and open communication. No more secret experiments or Anachronauts running around behind everyone’s backs. No deliberately creating Events.”
Oxford blinked a few times. “Time travel without terrible consequences? Is that possible?”
“With consequences,” Ruthven corrected. “Terrible or otherwise. And a new mission, a real mission, none of this bobbing around to measure hedges and meet historical celebrities. We only have four hundred years to save humanity.”
Oxford was giving him an awed sort of look. “Do you think Time will allow us do that?”
Ruthven shrugged. “I think Nero and Banksia and Aesop probably couldn’t be involved, because it would be changing their past. But I refuse to believe we don’t have the power to change our future.”
Oxford smiled in a way that Ruthven hadn’t seen in a long time. It warmed him all the way through. “It’s amazing, the lengths you’ll go to make sure Cramberleigh survives a few extra centuries.”
“Yes,” said Ruthven, deadpan. “That is exactly why I want to save humanity.”
Oxford’s brows drew together as he thought about it. “How would it even work? I don’t want to rain on your parade, but everything’s such a mess up on campus. I don’t think we can start time travel from scratch without the Jade Pineapple.”
Ruthven smirked.
“No.”
“Yep.”
“You know where it is? Aesop erased that memory from her head!”
“True. But Banksia still remembers what it looked like. That was enough for me to figure out the location.”
Oxford’s hands twitched on the helm of the flyer. “I’ve never seen it. I don’t think anyone has, except for the Founders…”
“And the cats who stole it in the first place. According to Banksia, it looks small and innocuous, like the other Artefacts were a mug and a chronocle. Aesop was able to hide it in plain sight.”
“It’s still on campus?”
“In the Museum of Lost Things.”
“We have to go get it right now!” Oxford’s eyes were bright. “What sort of something ordinary?” he asked after a moment. “Gum wrapper? Pocket lint.”
Ruthven continued to smirk.
“Are seriously you not going to tell me?”
