by Shawn Jones
“Why didn’t he sync?”
Cort could hear Kim sigh. “He said he wants to avoid paradox. But that’s crap. He won’t tell me his real reason.”
“He must have one, so let’s move forward. The only tool we have is fire. Incendiary rounds work, but some of the enemy are so small, you have to be right on them.” Cort sighed himself. “I fucked up, Kim. The only way we thought of to kill them created the pieces they invaded Threm with, and those pieces broke apart as they entered the atmosphere. Now the whole Threm society is in jeopardy. I just wanted to protect the little shits, but I created this mess instead.”
“Don’t do that! You do that every time. You made the best choice you had available to you, so you can’t feel guilty about doing the best thing… Godsdamn you Cort! Don’t try and get me to defend you leaving me alone again!”
Cort smiled inside his helmet as the shuttle landed outside the command post. “It was worth a try.”
She sighed again as she walked off the shuttle to him. When Kim got inside the printed Quonset hut that was used as a command post, she told Rai to give them some privacy. Once they were alone, she said, “Listen, Cort. I’m not here to fight with you. I’m here to fight in your stead. You don’t have any more time. You have to go back to the medical bay. That means I’m taking over here.”
“I need you to take over for Schwartz then. You handle…”
“No, Baby. You have to stop. You’re killing yourself.” Tears formed in Kim’s eyes. “Stress is causing more strokes. Ceram can’t stop it. But there is a human abductee who was a neurosurgeon. Ceram wants her to try and help you.”
Cort touched his ear. “Ares. Go.”
Kim looked at him, recognizing the change in his demeanor that meant something significant was happening.
He looked at Kim and apologized. “This has to wait. George found something about the jump to this time.
Kim touched a wall panel and said, “Lieutenant Rai, you’re going to have to monitor the battle a little while longer.”
--
Clem was on the bridge when Cort and Kim arrived. George’s avatar was there, too. Cort asked, “How are you gramps?”
Clem looked at Kim in her FALCON, and Cort’s mind was suddenly filled with an image of his great-grandmother in black leather, holding a paddle. As soon as he realized Clem’s memory had been triggered by Kim, he touched his inhibitor and said, “You realize I can read your mind, right? That woman made me apple pie and taught me how to play dominoes. I didn’t need to know she spanked you. Gods! How do I bleach my brain?”
Clem was clearly embarrassed as Kim asked what Cort was talking about.
“You don’t want to know. Gods. I didn’t want to know.”
Clem disappeared through the door as Cort turned to George and said, “What did you find?”
Kim and Cort both sat down across from George as he began to explain what he had learned.
“The transitions to and from the Gryll universe coincided with tachyon bursts from Earth. Based on my calculations, they both coincided with events related to Project Jumprope.”
George paused as if the name should mean something to both of his parents. For Cort, it did touch some deep memory, but he couldn’t place it. “Jumprope?”
“The project that sent you forward in time, Father.”
Cort remembered. Jumprope was the codename for the project that was studying the Nill transit medallions. Cort was recruited into the project when the scientists in charge of the experiment decided that a human was needed to complete transition. The U.S. government hoped Jumprope would lead to some sort of instant troop deployment, using the medallions that had been discovered in several places around the world. Cort still had one of the medallions, but the core computer on Nill that controlled them had been destroyed during the Tapon war.
“Ben Natsumo,” Cort spat.
Ben Natsumo had been Cort’s handler, when Cort defended the U.S. Constitution outside of its self-imposed restrictions. But according to George, the tachyon burst originated nine years before Natsumo had joined the project.
“Who then?” Kim asked.
“I cross referenced the people who worked on the project at the times of both significant tachyon bursts. Only one member of the team fits the criteria.”
Cort’s mind was racing through the names of the people on the project. It couldn’t have been Amber. Kevell-whatever his name was? Barr? No. Not Barr. What was the mousy woman’s name?
Kim asked, “Who was it, George?”
“A man named David Brinner.”
Brinner? Who was Brinner? Cort said, “I don’t know that name.”
“He was the project leader for Jumprope. He spent 63 years working with the medallions.”
Cort remembered something about someone who had died before he was brought into the project. “Did he die before I joined the experiment?”
“Yes, Father. He died hours before you arrived in New Mexico, at a military base in the United States.”
“I know where it was.” Brinner. Cancer or something. “Tell me about Brinner.”
“He was a refugee from a conflict in Europe. His skillset was such that he went to work for a physics department at a university in the United States.”
“What about before that?” Cort asked.
“There is no record of him prior to his arrival in the United States in 1939. But that is not unusual for refugees of the European conflict of that time. He also discovered the first medallion.”
“Too many coincidences,” Cort said. “There’s more to it.”
“I agree. The odds are magnitudinally impossible. Therefore, I looked into the ship he apparently used to escape Europe.”
“And?” Kim asked.
“I do not believe he was on the ship when it left Russia. According to the records I have been able to access, the vessel arrived in Vancouver, British Columbia, with nine more passengers than when it left Asia. Two of those I can account for as stowaways, and I believe that to be the case with two more of them, leaving five that cannot be verified, including Brinner.”
“What about the other four you can’t verify?” Cort asked.
“One was killed in a robbery in 1942. The other three also eventually became a part of Project Jumprope. And all three died within hours of you becoming a part of the project, but before you met them.”
Kim said, “That’s too much. How did they die?”
“Two of them, who were technicians at other project sites, died in automobile accidents. The third was crushed when a machine called a forklift failed while she was working under it. Brinner died the same day, of cancer.”
“So all five of the scientists on the project were unknown before they arrived, undocumented, on a boat from Russia. And the four who worked on Jumprope died hours before I arrived in New Mexico.” Cort looked back and forth between George and his wife. After tapping on his flexpad, a map of the Bering Sea appeared on a wall-mounted viewscreen. He stood and went to the screen, studying it for a moment.
He touched his flexpad again, and the map zoomed in. Finally , he touched a point on the viewscreen that was about halfway between Provideniya, Russia, and Gambell, Alaska. Holding his finger on the screen, he looked at the other two and proposed that the ship had passed over that point.
George accessed historical files only he could see, and projected a plot on the viewscreen that went over the point Cort had highlighted.
“How did you know that?” Kim asked.
Cort remembered how cold the water at the bottom of the Bering was. Even in his heated diving suit, his toes had been numb. He told them that point was where he had found one of the Nill medallions.
George had to be right. Brinner and the other people who appeared on that boat were responsible for what was happening. Or at least for the tachyon bursts that were interrupting the normal relationship of time between the two universes.
“And how did that even work?” Kim added.
“Both u
nknown,” George said. “To have known the exact moment in another timeline, and to act in such a way that would affect our future timeline, indicates a knowledge to calculate and predict that is far beyond the ability of even my full planetary core.”
Time. Everything had to do with time. Every moment of Cort’s life, since he first entered Matt Barr’s transition chamber in that underground bunker, had to do with time.
“Unless they knew in hindsight,” Cort said. “What if it is their past that they are altering?”
“They don’t care about paradox?” Kim asked. “That’s taking a catastrophic risk.”
Cort changed the image on the viewscreen to one of Threm’s surface. “Unless for them, the catastrophe has already happened, and they are trying to prevent it. What if this is their Hail Mary pass?”
“Hail Mary pass?” Kim asked.
Cort stopped George from explaining the history of the phrase, and told her it was a last ditch effort. Something had happened that was so horrible, so finite, that risking the natural timeline of the universe was worth it to their species.
Talking through the scenarios they could imagine, two possibilities came to the forefront: Either Brinner’s people were using Cort to accomplish some unknown goal, or they were trying to prevent Cort from saving Diane. Cort told George to ready the jump shuttle. George suggested using the HAWC instead, and Cort agreed. He was going back to Earth.
When George’s avatar left, Cort took Kim’s hand and said, “We are safe and Dalek is safe. Everyone on this ship is immune from paradox. But there might be a lot at risk for the rest of the universe. If it’s about Diane, I can deal with that; if it’s about more than her, we need to know what’s going on.”
Seven
Cort’s next trip to the surface was much easier. George printed a PSR cannon to strap to the back of the HAWC. Because Cort didn’t intend to bring anyone back, he could use the suit as a shuttle, controlled by the two of them, and the HAWC would land a few miles from where David Brinner was working on Project Jumprope. Using old records, Cort located Brinner’s quarters, and prepared to interrogate him.
Cort had conferred with his senior staff, and decided that it would probably be safe to approach Brinner honestly, since the man had as much or more to lose than Cort did, by being exposed. If they were right about his motivations, Brinner would welcome Cort and do whatever he could to facilitate the human’s safety. If they were wrong about it, Cort could simply leave. Theoretically, it seemed to be a reasonable plan.
But Cort’s theories changed in the solitude of space. Who or whatever he was about to meet, had manipulated his life. It was easy to see logic in the Remington’s conference room, with a half dozen friends gently nudging his train of thought. In space though, alone with only the thoughts inside his warrior’s mind, the sense of betrayal by a man he had never met, was mixed with anger.
An idle mind plagued Cort. His journey from the dark side of the Moon to Earth’s orbit was a long and peaceful one, as George’s instruction piloted the HAWC along a route that may well have been traveled by Neil Armstrong and his fellows, decades before.
Brinner had somehow emerged from an ancient ship at the bottom of the Bering Sea, and set about to carefully manipulate Cort, and possibly mankind, across centuries, for some as yet unknown reason.
The Bering Sea. Cort realized he had visited that ship long before he met or married Angela. He wondered how long Brinner had been calling the tune that Cort’s life had danced to. If he arranged Diane’s death, I’ll kill him.
Approaching Earth, he thought about what opposition he might face. It was easy to say Brinner would probably be happy to see him while safely in a meeting light years from Earth. It was quite another to land advanced technology in one of the most heavily guarded military bases on the planet, itself in the middle of a heavy weapon testing site.
There was nothing at White Sands smaller than field artillery, or an experimental U.S. Navy railgun, that could harm the HAWC. And the railgun, which was being tested nearby, was by no means smaller than field artillery. The FALCON was another story. It was impervious to small arms fire, and nothing smaller than a .50 caliber bullet would penetrate the carbon fiber. While Cort knew that none of the Jumprope security team was armed that heavily, he also knew that there were MPs at the White Sands base who were. If anything happened that disabled him, George’s AI would take control of the HAWC and rescue his father. George also hacked into the railgun, and could prevent its use against Cort.
“When we get home, George, I want more people qualified for HAWCs, and I want these engines available to all of them.”
When he entered the Earth’s atmosphere, the only thing missing was the feel of the wind on Cort’s face, or he might have felt like a dog with his head sticking out of a pickup window. His descent was controlled, and his active camouflage was on, so he was completely invisible to the world around him. At one point, he moved to within fifty meters of a passenger jet, and smiled when he saw a small child in a window seat look right through him. He wanted nothing more than to turn off his camouflage and show himself to the little girl, until Kim spoke in his ear.
“No, Baby. Stick to the plan.”
“Party pooper.”
“You can’t take the risk.” Kim added.
Cort sighed and did a barrel roll over the plane, before continuing his descent. “Nevermind.”
He landed, without pomp or ceremony, in a small clump of trees near an abandoned mine shaft. It was too small to hide the HAWC, but that wasn’t his plan anyway. Instead, he put the suit one hundred meters in front of the mine opening, activated its camouflage, and walked away.
The sun was just dipping below the western horizon when he saw the perimeter fence for the underground cavern Addison would enter in a few more years. He jumped the fence with ease, thanks to his FALCON’s enhanced strength, and walked silently to the small house they had determined to be Brinner’s private quarters. Sensors showed Brinner was inside, alone, and eating at a small table.
When Cort opened the door and walked into the living room of the house, Brinner remain seated and called out, “You’re early. I’m in the dining room.”
Cort locked the door behind him, deactivated the FALCON’s camouflage, and walked to the dining room of the small house. Brinner was just standing up as he saw the black specter of Cort’s image.
In the mask of Cort’s FALCON, he saw a message from George. Heeding it, he closed the laptop Brinner had near his plate. Then he spoke.
“I don’t think I’m who you were expecting, but in your position, I think I would have expected me to pay you a visit.”
Brinner stood and reached out to shake Cort’s hand. He was considerably shorter than Cort, and thicker than he should have been for his age. His gray hair was thinning, and there were bags under his eyes that indicated a man who was used to long hours and little rest. The eyes weren’t those of a cruel or hard man. Cort felt at ease almost immediately. Some of his anger abated, but it would not go gently into the night.
“No, I thought it was someone else. But I thought you might visit at some point. You are Mister Addison, I presume?”
“Yes. Tell me why I shouldn’t kill you, and why you have manipulated my life.”
“I did not. We did not. At least not in the sense you mean.”
Cort looked at Brinner’s unfinished meal on the table. “Sit down and finish your supper, Doctor Brinner.”
Brinner sat back down and pushed his plate away. “I was nearly finished. You are much more exciting than too many vegetables and not enough meat. Are you going to save your daughter?”
“Yes. Thank you for asking.”
“She’s a wonderful girl from all we have learned about her. What about her mother? Will you save her as well?”
Cort realized he couldn’t read the man. He’s not human. He’s some sort of alien I can’t read. “Yes. My wife convinced me to, though I was against it.”
“Hm. Perhaps that wi
ll be best. It will make Diane’s future a bit more docile than the one I know of.”
“So you are from the future,” Cort stated.
“Yes. And that you are here means we have finally accomplished our goal. I knew you would succeed, to be honest.”
“How? And what was your goal, Doctor Brinner?”
“Might I ask a small indulgence, Mister Addison? Will you call me by my real name? It’s been a very long time since I have heard it. We couldn’t risk it, you see. I am Dvok.”
Cort sat down across from Dvok. “What was your goal, Dvok?”
“I knew you were here, because you somehow knocked an orbital telescope out of alignment. I have seen the telemetry from your first trip to Earth. NASA is currently trying to find out what happened, but I will make sure they do not learn the truth. My goal though… Sometime in the past, a species on the other side of your wormhole began harvesting from our planet. Then the species you call the Gryll took the planet from its original occupants. The Gryll were much more adept and ruthless in their endeavors to feed on species from this side of the singularity. We had no other way to protect ourselves, except to manipulate the timeline in this universe.”
