by Glenn Smith
“How would you like to go shopping with Regina while your father and I talk?” he heard Mirriazu ask his daughter.
Her smile faded as she grew a little disappointed. “Oh, um... I was hoping I could spend a little more time with you.”
“I shall see you again after. I promise.”
“Okay. Um...” She turned to her father, pleading with her eyes, and asked “Is that okay, Dad? Can I spend some time with her after your meeting?”
“Sure you can,” he answered. “Go have some fun.”
“Thanks,” she said, smiling again.
Mirriazu called Regina into the office, asked her to take Heather around to the numerous shops surrounding the complex and to lunch if she wanted to eat, and then gestured toward the three antique high-back chairs in front of her desk when they left. Nick took a seat in one of them as Mirriazu sat back down in her own chair, and then noticed for the first time that the little porcelain cup she always used when she had her morning cup of oriental green tea, which she’d pushed over to one side at some point during the morning, was still half full. That was not a good sign. If she’d been so busy this morning that she hadn’t even had time to finish her tea, she was certainly not going to be in any mood to let him push her into anything. Old friend or not, he was going to have to be very tactful.
“So, Mister Hansen, you believe you should remain involved, despite having retired from the service,” she remarked as she made herself comfortable.
“So formal, Madam President?” he asked in return. “You used to call me Nick.”
“We used to be friends,” she threw back at him, glaring.
Yes indeed. He was going to have to be very tactful. She was obviously still very angry with him... or hurt... or whatever. “I’d like to think we still are, despite my having disappointed you in a big way recently.” What else could he say? He had disappointed her. He couldn’t blame her for feeling the way she did. “At any rate,” he went on when she didn’t respond, “as you know after having seen that holophoto, Dylan Graves has signaled that he arrived in twenty-one sixty-eight. Whether we still need it to succeed or not, the Timeshift mission is underway.”
“Yes, and as I told you, I am discussing that issue with agency personnel.”
“Have those personnel pointed out how uncertain everything is now?” he asked her.
“What do you mean?” she asked him in response.
“We survived the Veshtonn invasion, but with Dylan Graves operating in the past, how do we know he won’t inadvertently undo that? He might make things worse again.”
“Or, he might make things a lot better,” she countered, “which was the whole point of his mission in the first place, was it not?”
“As I told you on the comm, the immediate point is that I believe, given the depth of my prior involvement, I should remain fully engaged in this matter. Without my involvement you’ll have no way of knowing if or when anything connected to Graves’ mission changes in the here and now as a result of something he does back then... or doesn’t do back then.”
“What are you talking about?” she asked. “To what changes are you referring?”
Should he tell her? Should he give her all the specifics, knowing that if he did she might decide that he’d armed her with everything they needed and that they didn’t need him involved at all? Yes, he decided. He should tell her. He owed her at least that much.
“All right,” he began. “As you know, Graves’ mission is to prevent the destruction of the starcruiser Excalibur. The pertinent events resulting from that destruction, as we know them, are as follows: Excalibur was destroyed. Lieutenant Robert O’Donnell, a member of the Excalibur crew, was taken prisoner and held somewhere in Veshtonn space.”
“We still do not know that for sure,” the president pointed out, interrupting.
“But we’ve proceeded from the beginning based on the assumption that that’s the case,” Nick countered. Then, when she let it go, at least for the moment, he continued, “At any rate, the Veshtonn then occupied the Caldanra system and discovered bolamide, which has given them a distinct tactical advantage over our forces ever since—an advantage that might have been ours rather than theirs, had the Excalibur not been destroyed. One thing led to another after that, like links in a chain. The tide of the war turned and our defeats grew worse over the ensuing years. Commander Royer and I sent her brother through the Portal on a mission that violated the Brix-Cyberclone Cessation Act. Marines in combat in the Tor’Kana system discovered Lieutenant O’Donnell’s message. Word of that message got back to Crewman Stefani O’Donnell, his daughter. She went AWOL to assemble a rescue team to bring her father out of enemy space, but was abducted by persons unknown. Commander Royer and I were arrested and Commander Royer was killed trying to escape. Dylan Graves went back in time through the Window World Portal shortly before the Veshtonn destroyed it. The Veshtonn destroyed Mandela Station as well and now here we are, on the back side of an invasion we never expected to survive, hoping that Graves doesn’t affect any changes after all.”
“I am not so sure about that,” Shakhar interjected. “We are still at war.”
“And none of what I just covered even begins to address the mystery surrounding the Albion or the untimely deaths of all the Mandela personnel from that era,” Nick added as though she hadn’t even spoken.
“If there is a point to all of this, would you care to guide me to it, please?”
He was beating around the bush, he realized, and she was in no mood to put up with that. The time had indeed come to get to the point. “You asked me what changes I was referring to. That’s a very good question, and the answer is, I honestly don’t know. As was pointed out in the Timeshift briefing, there’s no way to predict with any measure of certainty what might change. We need to maintain around the clock observation of... well... of everything. We need to closely monitor current events and look into all the important events of the last twenty years and identify any changes we might discover, and then be ready to take whatever actions might be necessary to ensure our situation gets better rather than worse as a result of those changes.”
“That sounds like a very tall order, Mister Hansen,” Shakhar opined.
“It is a very tall order, Madam President, which is why you need my help. Actually, you need all the help you can get.”
“If what you say is true... if all of that monitoring and research truly is necessary, then you are correct. We do need all the help we can get. Help from people like you, who are familiar with the pertinent events of the last two decades.”
He’d done it. He’d convinced her. “I knew you’d understand,” he said with relief.
“Do not get ahead of yourself, Mister Hansen,” she warned him. “I said if what you say is true, meaning if changes made in the past will in fact have any effect our timeline. I seem to recall Professor Verne and Chairman MacLeod discussing a few different theories of time-travel and its potential results. What makes you think that any changes Mister Graves might cause will affect changes in our timeline, or that we will even recognize them if they do occur?”
“Do you recall the conversation you and I had right after that briefing, after MacLeod and Professor Verne left this office? I told you that my nightmares had returned, and that they had changed in a very strange way.”
“Yes, I do remember,” she told him. “You told me that you saw Mister Graves in your nightmares—that he replaced the security team sergeant who was really there.”
“Right,” he confirmed, “and I think I finally figured out why.”
“Oh?” she asked curiously, prompting him to go on. “Why?”
She might have been angry at him, but he had obviously peaked her interest. “Because he really was there,” he answered point-blank, betting that she’d ask him for more.
“What?” she asked, clearly confused.
A single word, but that word was as good as asking for more as far as he was concerned. “Consider this, Madam P
resident. S-I-A Special Agent Dylan Graves is living and operating in May of twenty-one sixty-eight right now, as an adult, posing as a security police sergeant. For him the ‘Harkam Incident’ hasn’t happened yet. It’s not beyond the realm of possibility that his meddling with the timeline might alter certain circumstances, or that those altered circumstances might somehow result in his being assigned to my vice-presidential security team.”
“That is an interesting theory, Mister Hansen,” Shakhar commented noncommittally, “but I believe you are overlooking one very important flaw.”
“What flaw is that?” he asked her, knowing full well what she was referring to.
“You saw Dylan Graves in your nightmares for the first time before you ever met him—long before he went back in time—long before he could have changed any of the circumstances to which you refer. Explain that if you can.”
“I can’t,” he freely admitted. But then he added, “But neither can I come up with another possible explanation... except maybe one.”
“Oh? And what possible explanation is that?”
“That someone subjected me to a memory-edit at some point, and that my seeing Dylan Graves in my nightmares is some kind of bizarre side-effect of that memory-edit failing.”
“That would make for one very strange coincidence, Nick,” Shakhar opined.
Nick. She’d called him Nick. He was finally beginning to bore through her anger, so he asked, “Have I ever been subjected to a memory-edit that you’re aware of, Mirriazu?”
She stared at him for a moment, not quite glaring but clearly not at all pleased, either. Her calling him ‘Nick’ might only have been a slip. Maybe calling her by her first name so quickly in return hadn’t been such a good idea.
“To the very best of my knowledge... Mister Hansen... you have never been subjected to a memory-edit,” she replied, being very clear and deliberate in her choice of words, leaving no room for doubt.
“All right, Madam President” he responded. “I accept that.” And he did. Completely. He still couldn’t be sure that he’d never been subjected to one, but he believed her absolutely. If he had been, she had no knowledge of it. He asked her, “So am I in? May I continue to be involved in tracking the fallout of the Timeshift mission?”
President Shakhar drew a deep breath and exhaled slowly, gazing at him as she thought it over. Then, after a few moments’ silence, she told him, “No. As I said, if what you say is true then we do need people like you. People like you, Mister Hansen,” she clarified, “but not you specifically. You are retired from the military service. You have your retired rank and all of your benefits, but your security clearance is no longer active. Go home. Leave all of this behind you. Finish raising your beautiful daughter and live out the rest of your life in peace.”
“Madam President...”
“You may wait for Heather outside, in the reception room. Send her in when she returns so that we may say a proper good-bye.”
Nick sighed. That was a ‘get-out-of-my-sight-now’ dismissal if he’d ever heard one. He stood up and gazed at Mirriazu for a moment. “I have always valued our friendship over any disagreements we might have had,” he told her. “I’m sorry you no longer feel that way.”
He turned his back on her and walked out, probably for the last time.
Chapter 22
“Do it, sir,” the sergeant repeated.
Hansen closed his eyes and turned his face away. “Forgive me,” he whispered. Then he drew a long, deep breath, and squeezed the trigger.
Nick’s eyes snapped open and he gasped for air as he awoke abruptly... again. He exhaled slowly to relax as he took a moment to figure out where he was... again, and as he did, he shook his head in frustration. The nightmares... again. He was really getting tired of the nightmares.
He lay staring up at the ceiling. White, or perhaps off-white. He couldn’t recall and the room was still too dark to tell. At the moment it looked more like a medium to dark gray, like a part of the surface of the moon. Textured rather than smooth, also a little like the moon, like the ceilings of any number of old buildings he’d been in over the years. Old buildings. Yes. He was in an old building right now. He was in the hotel. The Hotel Eden in Geneva, with Heather.
He rolled his head across his sweat-dampened overstuffed pillow and looked to his right, past Heather’s bed and across the room to the balcony’s sliding plastiglass door. Judging by the way the thin burgundy curtains closed across it seemed to be glowing slightly, the sky beyond must have been beginning to lighten, but the sun obviously hadn’t risen yet or their eastward-facing room would have been a lot brighter. Nor had Heather risen. She still lay sleeping soundly on her right side facing away from him, breathing slowly and regularly, her blankets pulled up over her shoulder and gathered snugly around her. She would likely sleep for at least a few more hours. She’d had a full night out last night.
Nick had waited alone in Mirriazu’s reception room for more than three hours yesterday for Heather to return from her impromptu afternoon of shopping with Regina. When she finally did return, with three or four shopping bags hanging from each hand, talking and laughing with Regina as though they were old school friends who hadn’t seen each other in years, he’d told her to go say her good-byes to Mirriazu. Disappointed by having to leave so soon, she’d set her bags aside and hurried into the president’s office while Regina engaged him in conversation to keep him occupied. By the time she emerged again, about ten minutes later, Mirriazu had invited her to dinner and to a play being performed in one of the city’s live theaters by the Geneva English Drama Society, just the two of them, as long as he gave her permission to go. He had, of course. She’d had been so excited to see Mirriazu again that it would have broken her heart if he hadn’t allowed her to go. And quite honestly, he’d had no cause not to let her go. Mirriazu was angry with him, not her, and was a responsible adult who had raised six children of her own, after all. So he’d collected Heather’s purchases—clothes, of course, as she was a teenage girl—and had taken them back to the hotel for her. He’d spent the rest of the afternoon and evening there, sitting out on the balcony, relaxing and reading some old fantasy comic that he’d found loaded onto a handcomp that he borrowed from the hotel’s mini-library—The Realm, if he recalled. Comics weren’t really his thing—they never had been—but he hadn’t felt like doing any heavier reading and the story synopsis had seemed interesting.
He’d finished reading the comics around 2200 hours and had enjoyed them for what they were. The last page of the last issue had advertised a sequel series, Legend of the... something or other, but he hadn’t bothered looking it up. He’d set the handcomp aside to catch the local news on virtuavid instead. The damn war had dominated the headlines, of course. They’d survived the invasion, but out there in deep space the war raged on.
After the news he’d gone back out onto the balcony and had still been out there, watching the road, waiting and worrying the way fathers of teenage girls always waited and worried, when Mirriazu finally dropped Heather off at the hotel, shortly after midnight. Heather had had a great time and had taken the time to sit down with him and tell him all about the delicious meal she’d had at the fancy restaurant Mirriazu had taken her to for dinner, and to review the incredibly fun and entertaining performance they’d attended—a musical version of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet of all things. A tragic love story filled with joyful music. Apparently, there was no limit to what people would do to put their own spin on the classics, even if their spin ruined them. Oh well. Heather had enjoyed it. That was all that mattered.
After Heather had finished telling him all about it, she’d stood up and said, “Good night, Dad,” and then walked over to her bed, stripped down to her underclothes—she’d worn one of the new outfits she purchased that afternoon, so she took the time to hang everything up—and climbed into bed completely exhausted. She’d drifted off to sleep within minutes, and with his daughter safely back in his care, Nick had then gone
to bed as well.
He hadn’t slept well, which was nothing new, of course. But even before the nightmares had returned to rob him of his rest, before he’d even fallen asleep, tumultuous thoughts had filled his mind. Mirriazu’s insensitive dismissal had troubled him more than he’d known, he’d come to realize. She had essentially, if not entirely overtly, thrown him out of her office on his ass. Just when he’d thought he was starting to bore through that stone exterior and get through to her, too. They’d been friends for a lot of years and the idea that she could so easily cast that friendship aside disturbed him. No, more than that. It left him wondering if his holding back the truth from her was the only thing bothering her. If it wasn’t... if there was in fact something else in addition to that... then what was it? What else could have her so bent out of shape?
He tossed his sheet aside—because he and Heather were sharing the room, he’d worn his pajama pants and a tee shirt and hadn’t needed the rest of the blankets—and rolled out of bed as quietly as he could, pulled his pajama shirt on over his tee shirt, and then crossed to the counter dividing the main room from the small kitchenette to make a fresh pot of coffee in the antique percolator. The hotel hadn’t been able to provide him with his favorite Columbian blend—he’d inquired, but the manager hadn’t been able to find it anywhere—but as one of the more popular commercial brands, what they had been able to provide would be good enough. It was certainly better than having no coffee at all.
He heard Heather beginning to stir behind him as he dumped three heaping spoonfuls of the dark, powdery grounds into the filter, so tried to work even more quietly than he already was, but then, when she moaned long and loud—she was most likely stretching—he looked back over his shoulder at her to find that she’d rolled onto her back and was watching him.
