by Bob Mayer
“He lied to me?”
“He covered for you to the end of his life,” Sin Fen said.
“And if I go back?” Neeley asked. “Is his cancer treatable? Will he live?”
“That I can’t tell you.”
Neeley hung her head and thought. Hard. Then she looked up at the other woman. “He didn’t die in combat, which is what he would have wanted.”
“He died in your arms,” Sin Fen said. “Isn’t that what he truly wanted?”
Neeley swallowed hard. “All right. I’ve made my choice.”
Neeley disappeared into the gate.
“Roland.”
The big man walked across the sand. “I’ll go where she went,” he said, before Sin Fen could even give him a choice.
Sin Fen stared at him. “You’ve never questioned your past, have you?”
“Nope.”
“Do you worry about your future?”
“I didn’t,” Roland said. “But now, maybe.”
Sin Fen smiled. “Go. To where she went.”
And then Roland was gone.
“Scout.”
Moms and Nada were the only ones left as Sin Fen talked to Scout.
“What the frak does she have to feel bad about?” Nada muttered, gesturing at Scout.
“What makes you so sure it’s something you feel bad about?” Moms asked.
“Would you change something good?” Nada asked.
Moms had no answer to that.
Scout walked toward the gate, waved at both of them, and then was gone.
“Moms.”
“The note,” Sin Fen said.
“What note?” Moms was confused. “I thought this would be about the man. The man my mother was supposed to marry.”
“It is,” Sin Fen said, “but only tangentially.”
“What note?” Moms repeated.
“The one your mother left when she hung herself.”
“How do you know all this?” Moms demanded, buying time.
Sin Fen touched the HUB. “We can time travel. We can see. This is why you have to make a decision now. A decision you will take with you the rest of your life.”
“What was on the note?”
“First,” Sin Fen said, “you need to understand that the man who was engaged to your mother left because he read the note. He left because he hadn’t protected her and he believed there was nothing more he could do. And he was angry. He lived with that guilt the rest of his life. Guilt is a terrible, terrible thing to live with. It was so powerful, it led him to actions that actually saved a lot of his soldiers’ lives in Iraq. He died, but many lived. And he left you his allotment from guilt.”
“So I don’t change that,” Moms said. “I don’t make him stay and marry her?”
“That’s not the choice,” Sin Fen said. “The note.”
“Tell me what was on the note.”
Nada was alone, except for Dane, who was standing by the water, watching it all play out.
“This was all a test?” Nada asked.
Dane sighed. “Mostly. Joining the Time Patrol would be a bit overwhelming if someone just sat across a desk from you and tried to explain it. And you still really have no idea what it entails. This is just a taste of what’s going on.”
Nada nodded. “Scout’s a good person.”
“She has the sight,” Dane said.
“I don’t care about the frakking sight,” Nada said. “She’s a good person. That’s pretty rare in my experience. Remember that.”
And then Nada was summoned as Moms disappeared. He walked across the sand, each step heavier than the next.
“My wife and daughter,” Nada said. “Can I save them?”
“Yes. But it will be painful for you to remember it all.”
He ignored that warning. “What about the team?” Nada asked. “Scout?”
“You’ve already lived that,” Sin Fen said. “And so have they. They’ll be fine. You’ll be gone from this moment forward to them.” She reached forward and touched his forehead. The memories came in a torrent. Of pain.
Nada cried out, went to his knees, head bowed. He remained like that for almost a minute. Then he got to his feet.
“I’ll go back.”
“Good.” Sin Fen nodded. “Because you are the one who reboots all of this.”
* * *
Nada found Carl Coyne behind the ammunition bunker. The SEAL was leaning back against the bulkhead, eyes tightly closed, lips moving either in prayer or silent exhortation. Nada paused for a second, staring at the man, recognizing the paralysis that overcame men, even the best, but more often with the worst, when faced with the prospect of combat.
Nada grabbed Coyne’s combat vest, startling the man. “They need every man they can get on the rescue bird!”
“Who the—” Coyne began, but Nada wasn’t listening, literally pulling the SEAL around the shipping container toward the landing strip. Blades were turning and two Apache gunships, two Black Hawks, and two Special Operations Chinooks were powering up.
Nada had no sympathy for Coyne as he pulled him toward one of the Chinooks, checking the tail number to make sure he got the right one. It wasn’t like this was an immediate response and Coyne hadn’t had a chance to consider it. After getting a report about the four-man recon team getting attacked, it had taken precious hours to receive permission from higher headquarters for a rescue force to be launched. Coyne had had plenty of time to get over his paralysis.
He’d made a decision not to go.
Which Nada knew from the future.
A possible future.
As they got closer to the rear ramp of the helicopter, swirling dirt and debris filled the air. Coyne shrugged off Nada’s hand, straightening up and moving forward. He ran up the ramp, Nada right behind. Coyne’s fellow SEALs welcomed him on board.
They ignored Nada.
Which was what he counted on.
Nada’s uniform was unmarked, but his gear was top of the line, and he’d configured it exactly the way he remembered from his time in Afghanistan with an elite unit that had no designation. They’d worked directly for the in-country commander and carried out the dirty missions for which no trace could be left behind. The SEALs had seen his like before and ignoring was as much policy as reality. People like Nada went where they wanted and did whatever it is they did. No one got in their way.
The SEALs were simply glad to have an extra weapon on board.
The Chinook lifted. Nada settled onto the red web seats along the port side of the cargo bay. Manned by the correctly designated Nightstalkers of Task Force 160, the Army’s elite helicopter unit, the chopper banked hard and headed toward the last known location of the four-man SEAL team.
Nada reached into a pocket and pulled out a worn photograph, unfolding it carefully along the crease to maintain its integrity.
He smiled grimly: There was no need to worry about that.
He stared at the images of his wife and daughter, posed in front of The Mad Hatter’s Tea Party, feeling them in his heart. Joy blossomed because they were images of people who were living, not long dead. He’d kept them in his heart so long, buried so deep, the feeling caused him to sit back against the bulkhead of the chopper gasping for breath.
As he got his breathing under control, he looked across the cargo bay.
Coyne was sitting there, staring at him.
Nada met Coyne’s eyes and nodded, giving him the thumbs-up. Coyne had a puzzled look on his face, then the SEAL also nodded and returned the thumbs-up.
Everything’s going to be all right now, Nada thought.
He tried to do that math: How old was Scout now in 2005? Was she living in the gated community in North Carolina?
One of the crew members was shouting something, a time warning to the objective. The SEALs were locking and loading their weapons, pulses quickening. Fast ropes were readied near the ramp in case they were needed for a quick exit.
Nada did nothing except hold the picture.<
br />
Everything’s going to be all right now.
A Navy Lieutenant Commander, the man in charge of the SEAL element, staggered down the cargo bay and leaned over Nada, yelling to be heard over the double turbine engines above their heads and the roar coming in the open ramp in the rear. “My men go in first. I don’t know why you’re here, but stay out of our way. We’re getting our people out.”
Nada nodded. “Roger that,” he yelled.
The LCDR looked at him oddly for a moment, and then headed for the ramp, to be the first off.
A good leader.
Nada twisted in his seat and looked out the small round window. They were flying low, up a valley, high ground on either side.
Nada saw the puff of smoke from the backblast of an RPG—rocket-propelled grenade—firing on the hillside.
Everything is just right.
Nada tracked the rocket as it sped toward the chopper and then disappeared above. There was the roar of explosion, the shudder of the aircraft. Pieces of shrapnel from both the grenade and the destroyed turbine engine ripped through the cargo bay. Wounded men screamed, others were shouting commands.
Everything is just right.
Nada was an island of calm amidst turmoil as the helicopter dropped like a stone without engine power, the blades ripping off from the sudden stoppage.
Nada saw Carl Coyne cross the bay. Nada smiled at him.
The ground came rushing up.
Everything is just right.
* * *
The Keep was sweating, beads collecting on her forehead, rolling down her face.
“How much time?” Foreman asked.
“Two minutes,” the Keep answered.
“You can turn it off,” Hannah said.
“We have to contain—” the Keep began, but then the gate snapped out of existence, leaving the HUB sitting in its place on the top of the ramp.
“I’d turn the bomb off, if I were you,” Foreman said.
“Where are the people?” Hannah asked. “Neeley? The Nightstalkers?”
“They’ve rebooted,” Foreman said. “I hope.”
When it changed back, Mac hung from the wall of the mineshaft by one hand. “Where the frak is Kirk? They said we’d reboot!”
Eagle looked up. “It doesn’t work that way.”
“Frak that!” Mac said. He leapt off the wall and grabbed the rope, sliding down as fast as he could. “She told me Kirk would be okay.”
“She told me that too,” Eagle said. He put a hand on Mac’s shoulder. “Let’s go. We take care of our own.”
When it changed back, Doc and Ivar were in the massive Archives at Area 51 arguing, which wasn’t unusual. Doc was sitting on the bottom stair of the large rolling steps and Ivar was in front of him, pacing back and forth on the concrete floor.
A box was on the floor, one they’d just managed to find, buried deep on a top row, shoved well to the rear.
They didn’t understand how they’d found it, but they accepted it was part of things changing back. They’d begun going through the material and immediately launched into an argument over what they were reading: Odessa’s last notes.
“Everything is the same, but it isn’t the same,” Doc said. “Things must be self-consistent in the universe. There are rules to physics.”
“I know there are,” Ivar said. “But there are rules we haven’t even begun to realize exist. Conservation of mass and energy might not be what we think it is. We’ve rebooted, so where is Kirk?”
“If a single person represents a measure of order in the universe,” Doc said, “then there has to be some sort of balance. If Kirk is gone, something must be taking his place. We’ve seen some weird stuff, but there are rules!”
“Not the time to go into higher theory,” Ivar said.
“There have to be rules to this,” Doc insisted.
Ivar laughed. He was a long way from the university.
“You know, of course, it’s entirely possible that twenty penguins all farted at the same time and that brought the universe into existence and time travel along with it.”
“Why can’t you take anything seriously?” Doc demanded.
“I can,” Ivar said. “But my question again to you, oh genius, is where is Kirk if we rebooted? That means he didn’t die, right? So where is he?”
Doc’s phone rang. He answered, listened, and then put it away. “Let’s go. Eagle has the same question, and he thinks he knows the answer.”
When it changed back, Moms was driving down a two-lane road in Kansas with the faded yellow lines and raggedy asphalt that’s a testament to a road way less traveled and even more forgotten. If a road could be homeless and pushing a grocery cart full of worthless, tattered treasures, it would be this road. She’d been on it so many times, from trips in the bed of a pickup to a schoolbus to her last visit, that she remembered every pathetic inch.
Moms could see to the horizon in all directions and wondered, not for the first time, how any place could be so flat; and more importantly, why anyone would have stopped here on their way across the country to put down roots. Had they come from some place east that was worse? Had they not heard of the sunshine and beauty of California, which lay ahead?
Seriously.
The dark circle of a gopher hole to the right stuck out as much as one of those flailing balloon men in front of car dealerships because it shattered the monotony. As she drove on, she thought of all the places she’d been in this part of her life. The mountains of Afghanistan. The deserts of the Middle East. The high plains of South America along with its lower jungles. The cities of Europe. The job, however, had always been similar. She wondered what it said about her to come from this flat land, this place which is such a nothing. Nothing to see, nothing to amaze, and certainly nothing to inspire.
She paused at the battered mailbox, the victim of too many bored boys swinging a bat at the only thing vertical near the road. The numbers had been faded in her childhood, and now they were gone. As she started up the long drive, her tires crunched on the remnants of gravel and her stomach lurched. “Car Wheels on a Gravel Road” was a poignant song to Moms. Nada might have his Zevon, but she had her Lucinda Williams. But it didn’t grab her heart. It gave her a dull ache in her forehead, a reminder of how your head can get so sad and lonely that a sound can make your hair feel like crying.
The house was in view. People round here said it was on a hill. “You live in that house on the hill,” they would say. Now, she wondered what could be under that house to raise it the mere couple of feet so that anyone in Kansas would happily call it a hill.
A door to hell, perhaps?
Moms had just been through a gate that was close to that, where monsters, and men worse than monsters, abided. But this place wasn’t even high enough for a gate, or a Rift, and Moms found some dark humor in that as she stopped the car.
She didn’t get out. Not yet.
Moms knew what was beneath it. A root cellar with a dirt floor and wood beams and rotting ropes to hold the bags of onions, and whatever else was grown during the nauseating hot summer, to tide them through the brutal cold of winter. Everything here was extremes.
Moms got out of the car, but she didn’t start for the house. Not yet.
Everywhere else a bag of onions is a bag of onions, but under this house it was a ghost in burlap creaking as the drafts blew through the gaps in the crumbling rock and mortar foundation. Everything about this was a nightmare when she left, and not one thing had improved in the decades since. The paint that was once peeling was now completely stripped. The porch where no one had ever drunk iced tea and rocked and tried to make small talk about the weather was half collapsed, taking part of the overhang with it.
But the half-finished wooden dollhouse was still there.
All Moms’s life it was an old, neglected house that reflected the small and neglected family that it housed.
Moms was startled to realize she’d never called it home. It was never a home. She felt
tears on her cheeks, sliding down. Because if you can’t say home then you never had one. She’d run away so fast and so far, she’d forgotten that. But standing in the drive, feeling the heat coming off the car engine, she began to remember.
Moms walked around and hit the little button. The trunk popped open.
She retrieved the shovel and one of the jugs of water and ignored the other contents. She walked to the porch, and then did an about-face. Army training. She paced off twenty steps and began to dig.
She dug for hours, stopping only to drink some water or pour it over her head. Before long she had to get another jug. But she was prepared; Nada had taught her well. As she got the next jug, she looked into the well-stocked trunk and thought of how much more she brought back with her now than she’d taken with her when she left.
She hadn’t brought gloves. She’d known Nada would have chided her for not purchasing a pair when she got the shovel. Her hands were calloused from her work, but the incessant shoveling began to dig through the rough skin, tearing through and bringing forth first blisters, then blood.
Moms relished the pain.
She kept digging, arcing the cleared space around to the side of the house. She paused for a moment to wipe blood off her hands and the shovel handle, and noted the broken glass in the window that was over the sink in the kitchen. The room where her mother spent all of Moms’s life sitting there in the same old kitchen chair, hair lank and gray far too early, her face weathered by alcohol and cigarettes, and carved into permanent creases of brittle disappointment.
Moms resumed shoveling, a mindless activity that allowed her mind to roam. Every day she’d come home from school and the only things that had moved were the pile of cigarette butts and the cracked teacup that had once been part of a glittering tea service for someone else. The cup, like the woman who held it, had long ago slipped down the ladder of life and found itself here, alone and bruised and lacking even its saucer. Her mother had been empty for all of Moms’s childhood.
