by Smith, Glenn
“Maybe.”
Dylan’s grin faded as quickly as it had appeared.
“What’s the matter now?” Benny asked.
“Beth. My fiancée. What if...”
“Every theory of time traveling I’ve ever studied says that you should retain a complete memory of your entire life before, during, and after your trip into the past,” Benny explained. “If she’s not your fiancée when you return then you can pursue her all over again. Or, if you prefer, you can look for Diane.”
Dylan considered that, but only for a moment. He still wasn’t sure that any of it made sense, but one thing he did know. Diane had married and started a family of her own years ago and he wouldn’t take that away from her, even if he had the chance. Nor would he rob her or her husband of the opportunity to have that with each other again, should he successfully complete his mission and return to an altered world. Besides, he loved Beth and he wanted to marry her. Diane would always hold a special place in his heart, but their time together was passed, a happy and painful memory. Happy, because theirs had truly been a loving, caring relationship. Painful, because it had ended so abruptly, thanks to the enemy—and to his own stupidity, he reminded himself. He’d joined the fleet of his own free will after all, despite her having given him every reason in the world to stay with her instead.
“What about you, Benny?” he asked, changing the subject.
“What about me?”
“Have you thought any about how my mission might affect you, should I succeed?”
Benny sat up and turned the pilot’s chair back toward the controls console and started making minor, possibly even unnecessary adjustments to the skiff’s systems, then answered, “To be honest, I prefer not to think about it. Whatever is going to happen is going to happen and there’s not a thing I can do about it. Besides, there’s a whole lot more at stake here than my remaining years. Now why don’t you go back and get some rest. Like you said, you’ve been up a good twenty-one hours already, and it’s a long trip.”
“Yeah, okay. I am pretty tired.” Dylan got up and started toward the back, wondering what tender chord he’d inadvertently struck. Then he turned to ask one more simple question. “Hey, Benny?”
“Da?”
“What’s this Portal planet of yours called, anyway?”
“Its code name is ‘Window World’, but your Admiral Hansen assures me that it’s still classified, so you can’t ever tell anyone about it when you get back.”
Dylan chuckled. “No problem there,” he agreed with a shake of his head. “Everyone I know would think I was crazy if I told stories like the one you’ve been telling me.” He turned his back and headed aft. “Good night, Benny.”
“Good night.”
Chapter 58
The Next Morning
Wednesday, 8 December 2190
Professor Min’para had told Miss DeGaetano and her fiancé the Solfleet lieutenant that he enjoyed a good mystery, but he’d had no idea then, he’d since come to realize, what he was getting himself into. He’d been at it for more than four rotations of their world below. What did the Terrans call them? Was it days? Yes, days. He’d been digging through the records for more than four Earth days. More than ninety-six of their hours, and he was finally beginning to feel exhaustion overtaking him.
Not to mention a certain amount of apprehension, as his suspicions grew ever stronger.
After a long and exhaustive search, the necessity of which alone was enough to add a measure of credence to those suspicions, he finally found and called up the decades-old issue of “Technological Sciences” online magazine he’d previously flagged for quick recall. He scanned forward to the article on advances in cybernetic and biotronic technologies, then switched his handcomp back on and called up the copy of that same article that he’d downloaded from the magazine to the device four nights earlier, right after the session with the lieutenant. He sat back in his chair to carefully reread and compare the two versions, but he’d barely gotten comfortable before his suspicions were finally and positively confirmed. The two versions no longer matched one another. The online original had been modified since the first time he read it. Someone was altering the records.
They were onto him.
But who were ‘they?’ He suspected that the S.I.A. leadership, specifically Vice-Admiral Hansen and Commander Royer, were involved in one way or another, though he hadn’t figured out exactly how yet. But if not them, then who? Someone who could hurt him, to be sure.
So why was he even getting involved? He had no stake in it. He was Cirran, not Terran. He was a master mentalist—a university professor. What did corrupt Terran government officials and high-level military conspiracies and cover-ups within their Solfleet have to do with him? Absolutely nothing. Besides, Lieutenant Graves had left the station more than thirty Earth-hours ago and Miss DeGaetano had gone not long after.
Why was he getting involved? Because he’d given Miss DeGaetano his word and he could not go back on that. That was why, and that was all there was to it. Period.
With any and all second thoughts permanently brushed aside he refocused on the task at hand. Whoever ‘they’ were, they were obviously trying to mislead him, probably to protect some hidden truth that reached far beyond what they’d done to the lieutenant. But what truth? What were they hiding? He had a couple of working theories, but so far those theories were still based almost entirely on his probe of the lieutenant’s mind. He hadn’t yet uncovered any real proof of anything, one way or the other.
Yes, Admiral Hansen and Commander Royer were clearly involved somehow. They had to be. In fact, they were probably right in the middle of everything. They ran the agency after all. This kind of thing couldn’t possibly go on right under their noses without their knowledge. But were they acting alone? That was another question entirely, and the answer was...probably not. In fact, they couldn’t possibly have been acting alone. To do what he now strongly suspected they’d done, they would have needed the help of a variety of scientists and specialists.
He was tired. He was having trouble thinking straight—trouble concentrating.
So who was working with them? Who were their co-conspirators and how far did the conspiracy reach? And most importantly of all, if and when he did find sufficient, significant evidence against them, to whom could he safely voice his suspicions?
What in the gods’ and goddesses’ names was he thinking? Voice his suspicions? Solving a mystery from the outside was one thing—he’d given his word, he reminded himself again—but getting personally involved in it was another thing entirely. The more he dug the deeper he went, and he was in way over his head already. Voice his suspicions? Absolutely not. What he needed to do was get off the station and go home. Now. Besides, now that he knew someone was altering the records, there wasn’t any point in continuing his research. Not only could he not count on any additional information he might find to be authentic, he couldn’t even be sure of the accuracy of what he already had anymore.
Still. Corrupt government officials, high-level conspiracies and military cover-ups... All the makings of an intriguing mystery novel were there, and he did so enjoy a good mystery. He wanted to solve this one, if only for himself.
He downloaded the altered version of the article—not the most conclusive evidence by itself, but still not a bad place to start—giving it a different file name so it wouldn’t overwrite the four day old copy, then reached out to shut down the terminal. But it occurred to him before he did so that whoever was altering the records might also be monitoring his use of the computer. That being the case, his wisest course of action would be to hide the fact that he knew he was being misled. So, rather than shutting down, he called up the next page to make it look like he was still reading, then programmed the terminal to automatically flip to each successive page every two to three minutes, and then to close the file when it reached the end and pick the next article at random.
He stayed put for several more minutes to ma
ke sure the program worked, and despite having already determined his wisest and most logical course of action, not to mention his safest, he spent that time reconsidering again what he should do. But heading for home right away was still the only plausible answer he could come up with. He didn’t particularly like the idea of running away, but he liked the idea of inadvertently walking into the hands of the co-conspirators even less. So he had no other choice but to take the information he’d gathered, along with what he’d learned from the lieutenant, and do just that. And he probably had very little time.
The last page faded. The file closed and another opened. The program appeared to be working perfectly. The time had come to leave.
* * *
Commander Royer leaned back in her chair with a sigh and flipped the hair out of her weary, bloodshot eyes for about the hundredth time. She hadn’t cut it since before her trip to Cirra, what...three and a half months ago already? Karen had told her the longer hair made her look even younger and sexier than she already did and had asked her to let it grow for a while longer. She’d colored out the silver streak in her bangs a few weeks after returning home, and she had to admit, as objectively as she possible could, that the woman who’d been looking back at her from the mirror lately was pretty hot stuff. Karen was right.
But longer hair could be a real pain sometimes, too.
She gazed across the shadowy room at her lovely wife’s indistinct form—the light from the screen glowing in her eyes made it hard for her to see into the relative darkness—sound asleep in their bed as she had been for hours. Lying naked on her stomach with the sheet barely covering her bottom, she was at complete peace with the galaxy. Lucky her. Liz wanted so badly to join her. She wanted to strip off her panties and pajama top and climb into bed with her wife and wrap her arms around her and make love to her and then sleep with her until morning.
Nothing but catnaps and no lovemaking at all for the past five nights. She was exhausted and horny as hell, all at the same time.
The display changed, drawing her attention back to the screen. Another article. “Doesn’t this guy ever take a break?” she whispered under her breath.
“Please restate your question,” the terminal instructed, startling her. She’d switched off the audio three times already. Hadn’t she? She was sure she had. She’d have to have a technician take a look at the damn thing.
“Disregard,” she said quietly.
“Muh?” Karen mumbled as she rolled onto her back and kicked the blankets away.
“Nothing, sweetheart,” Liz answered. “Go back to sleep.”
“Hmm.” And that was it. Karen apparently drifted off, back into the dark abyss.
Liz stared longingly at her, licking her suddenly dry lips as she gazed into that shadow-veiled place between her thighs. She spread her legs and slid a hand down into the front of her panties and started slowly, gently, massaging herself. But then she decided that she just didn’t have the energy, so she stopped.
She stretched her arms up over her head and yawned, then brought her feet up onto the chair and hugged her legs to her body. She glanced at the chronometer in the upper right corner of the screen but it only confirmed what she already knew in her tired, aching body and in her mind. It was past 3:00 A.M. The professor had been working, apparently non-stop, for over a hundred straight hours, and she’d been doing her best to mislead him for well over the last thirty, barely managing to stay one step ahead of him all the way. She hadn’t even taken a shower, and since Karen had been tied up at work for most of that time—something to do with irregularities in the inventory—her meals had consisted of nothing more than whatever she could dash into the kitchen and grab during the professor’s all too brief search queries. Mostly toaster pastries, dry cereal, and cheese crackers. She was exhausted, disheveled, and grungy. She felt even worse than she had at the end of her long voyage home from Cirra.
The article currently on her screen, the same article that Professor Min’para was at that very moment reading in his own stateroom, suddenly disappeared and the familiar laundry list of reference materials began scrolling by as it had so many times before, each line rolling up the screen much too quickly for her to read in its entirety. Then it stopped abruptly. Once again the professor had known right where to find whatever it was he was looking for.
Okay. So he was an accomplished mentalist. Still, over a hundred hours? How could he possibly be so alert after so much time?
Royer barely focused on the title before the first page of the new article replaced the list, but when it did she recognized it immediately and felt relieved. It was an article the professor had called up before. At least twice before, in fact. It was an article that she’d anticipated he would want to read when he started all this. It was an article that she’d been able to make the necessary changes to before he ever saw it. Good. Now she had a minute to grab another cup of coffee and a stim.
She dropped her feet gently back to the floor and quietly stood up, then grabbed her mug and headed into the kitchen, reaching up behind her and peeling her sweat-dampened pajama top away from her back as she walked. The environment was perfectly controlled. She and Karen always kept it at seventy-four degrees, so why was she sweating?
She set her mug on the counter and took her top off—that felt much better—and tossed it over the back of the nearest chair, then dumped the cold remains of her last cup of coffee, at least two hours old, into the sink and picked up the half-full decanter. But the comm-panel above the counter top started flashing the bright blue-green words “INCOMING COMMUNICATION” before she could even begin to pour. She sighed, then flipped her bangs out of her eyes again. Who the hell would be calling her at this hour?
“Receive incoming communication and open a two-way channel,” she said. Then she glanced down at her bare breasts as she suddenly realized that she hadn’t specified audio only. “No! Belay...”
“Incoming communication is audio only,” the panel advised her. “Security encryption is engaged. Please provide decryption access code.”
She sighed with relief, and even grinned. Good thing it was security encrypted. Otherwise those next moments might have been pretty embarrassing. “Royer, Elizabeth,” she said, lowering her voice. “Commander. Beta five dash six one one alpha gamma. Return audio only.”
“Positive match. Access code accepted. Audio channel open.”
Royer poured her coffee, then set the decanter back in its place and took a careful sip—oh, that was good—then said, “This is Commander Royer. Go ahead.” She took another sip.
“Sigma one-seven here, Commander,” the caller said first to identify himself. Sigma one-seven. The agent in charge of the surveillance on Min’para. “I’m sorry to disturb you at such an ungodly hour but subject-one is finally on the move. He signed out of his guest quarters and bought a ticket for the oh-five-thirty flight to Cirra.”
Min’para? “That can’t be right. He’s...” Then it hit her. “Oh, that clever son of a bitch.”
“Ma’am?”
She let go another heavy sigh, shaking her head, not caring that her bangs fell back across her eyes again. How could she have let herself be fooled so easily? “He knows we’re onto him, Mister Preston. Damn it all! He must have programmed his terminal to keep calling up research materials at random. That’s why it’s been scrolling down the list so damn fast.”
“Say again, ma’am.”
“Never mind. Put someone on that flight with him. Someone he couldn’t possibly have seen yet, even in passing. But have him hang back as much as possible. Apparently, subject-one isn’t as naive as I thought he was.”
“Understood.”
“And, Mister Preston.”
“Yes, ma’am?”
She drew a breath to speak, to give the order, but hesitated. She’d given a lot of thought over the past several hours to the choices she might have to make and to the orders she might have to give, should the professor make a run for it. She was painfully aware of ho
w dangerously close to insubordination some of those choices might bring her—how close some of them would bring her, but one question had lingered in her mind the entire time. How was her disobeying Admiral Hansen any worse than the both of them disobeying the president?
She sipped her coffee again and then chose her next words very carefully. “Whatever happens, we cannot allow subject-one to visit our embassy when he gets home. Or any of our other governmental or otherwise sensitive facilities for that matter. He claims to be Cirran and his documents support that claim, but he could just as easily be a Sulaini spy, and we’re still not exactly sure why he’s here or what he’s up to. He may very well be a C-U-F terrorist, or even a professional assassin.”
“Understood, Commander. For the record, is use of deadly force authorized?”
She closed her eyes. There it was, the question she’d known she would eventually have to answer. The moment she’d been dreading, the moment when she had to decide whether or not to act on her own in direct violation of the admiral’s explicit orders, was at hand.
“Ma’am?”
She opened her eyes and drew a deep, deep breath, then exhaled very slowly.
“Commander? Are you still there?”
“Yes, Mister Preston, I’m still here.”
“Did you copy my question?”
“I heard you.”
“And?”
Another deep breath. Another sigh. Her hesitation only served to prolong the inevitable and she knew it. Preston needed an answer and he needed it right away. She sipped her coffee and flipped the hair out of her eyes one more time. “And, Mister Preston,” she began, “if you find yourself in a situation where you have no other choice, you and your team are authorized to use whatever force might be necessary to protect Federation and allied personnel and resources from potential harm. Royer out.”
