“We did practically the same thing in front of the murderers at the Tower of London last night,” Jonah said. “Er—last night in 1483.” They could not possibly be in 1483 anymore. The lights were too bright, the room too clean and angular and antiseptic. “Why didn’t you pull us out of time then?”
“That wasn’t a violation because you were in the dark then, and the so-called murderers didn’t notice anything different,” JB said. “And remember—they weren’t murderers after all. They didn’t kill anyone.”
“Not yet,” Katherine muttered. “How do we know they’re not sneaking up on Chip and Alex right now?”
“You mean, right at the moment you just left?” JB corrected. “Look.”
He pressed a button on the wall beside him, and the wall slid back to reveal a view of Chip and Alex with their mother and sisters. The view was so clear and distinct that it was like looking through a window.
No, Jonah thought. Clearer than that. It’s like a window without glass. Just an opening. It looks like I could walk right back into the room with them.
No, that was wrong too. If the medieval room were really that close, the division between them really that nonexistent, the bright light of the room Jonah was in would be illuminating every corner of the sanctuary room at Westminster. And that room was just as dim and dusky as it had been moments before, lit only by candlelight.
TV, Jonah concluded. Really, really, really good TV.
“One second after you left,” JB said. “Two seconds after you left.” On the screen, or through the window or whatever it was, Chip and Alex continued to eat strawberries. The queen and princesses watched them from across the room with great relief and love written all over their faces. “Three seconds after you left. Four—”
“Okay, okay! We get it!” Jonah said grumpily. He squinted up at JB. “But why are you here?” The last time they’d seen JB, he’d been in a cave with thirty-two other kids he intended to return to history. “What happened at the cave? What’d you do with the other kids?”
“To your way of thinking, they’re still in the cave,” JB said. “And so am I.”
“Huh?” Jonah said at the same time that Katherine muttered, “What?”
JB laughed.
“If you’re going to do much time traveling, you’re going to have to stop thinking of time as a line,” he said.
Jonah thought about telling JB how many time lines he’d had to draw in school over the years—all his social studies teachers had certainly acted like time was a line.
“And,” JB continued, “you’ve got to stop thinking of your experience of events as the only sequence.”
Jonah knew the expression on his face was dead blank.
“Come again?” Katherine said.
“Exactly!” JB congratulated her. Then he did a double take. “Er—you weren’t demonstrating your understanding of the Principle of Simultaneous Time?”
Katherine rolled her eyes and shook her head.
“I knew I should have spent more time boning up on bizarre twenty-first-century American expressions,” JB muttered to himself. He cleared his throat. “Look. To your way of thinking, you were in the cave. Then you were in the Tower of London. Then you were on the barge. Then you were at the coronation. Then you were in sanctuary at Westminster. Then you came here. Right?”
Jonah shrugged.
“Sure,” Katherine said.
“But if you remove the element of time, then you could be in all those places in any order, even simultaneously,” JB said. “To quote: ‘Time is what keeps everything from happening at once.’ And if you mix up time with time travel, it can seem like everything is happening at once. I stayed in the cave with the other kids. But I also left the cave to contact my fellow time protectors, and we’ve been doing everything we can behind the scenes to keep the fifteenth century on course.”
“So you, like, stopped time in the cave to deal with us?” Katherine asked doubtfully.
“Time wasn’t moving in the cave anyhow. Remember?” JB said. “What actually happened, if you want to be technical, is—”
“Can we just think of it this way if it makes us feel better?” Katherine asked. “Because I want to talk about the really important questions. And then we can get back to Chip and Alex before they completely forget who they are.”
“But …” JB stopped and seemed to be reconsidering. “Okay. Fine. I’ll dispense with the technicalities for now.”
Jonah shifted in his chair. Oddly, the chair seemed to shift with him. It figured that he’d have a funky, futuristic chair to go with the futuristic TV in front of them. Focus, he thought. Past, not future. He narrowed his eyes, watching the queen on the screen watching her sons so carefully.
“So, what’s the deal with 1483?” Jonah asked. “You say Chip and Alex are safe right now, but … I know they weren’t when we first got here. I mean, there. To that time.” He pointed at the dim scene in front of him. “Those guys who came into Chip and Alex’s room in the Tower of London—you can’t tell me they were some brave heroes who the queen sent in to rescue her little boys. You can’t tell me Chip and Alex would have been fine if we hadn’t intervened. I don’t believe it.”
JB nodded slowly.
“That’s very astute of you,” he said. “You’re right about that. Somewhat.”
Jonah stared at JB. Now he was confused.
“But Chip and Alex were supposed to survive being thrown out that window?” Katherine asked, sounding baffled too.