Nick paused, studying the President’s face. He looked unconvinced. Nick had only one other card to play, and it looked like this was the time.
“Sir, what has happened was predicted—but not by those psychics Ms. Hawthorne rounded up. It was predicted by a man called Zorastrus …”
“The Prophet of Babylon,” the President said, surprising Nick and the others at the table.
“Yes, sir. Even in his day things did fall from the sky, or strange animals appeared. He documented them and measured the time between events. He knew something would happen, and he predicted it, unfortunately he was executed before he could finish his calculations, otherwise we might have had some warning.”
Nick paused again, waiting for some response from the President. When it came, it surprised him.
“I know of Zorastrus, but I never connected his prophecies with what has happened. It gives the theory a certain credibility.”
“I’m not so sure,” Gogh interrupted. “Time displacement is not a part of any theory I’ve heard of, ancient or modern. Time travel has been speculated on, but the conditions for time travel are not met in this instance.” As he habitually did, Gogh talked only to the President, then occasionally remembered others were present and made a quick head sweep to include them. The President seemed interested in Gogh’s opinion and encouraged him with a nod.
“Time travel can be accomplished in only two ways, neither of which is practical. One way is to travel through a wormhole, but wormholes exist only at the center of black holes, since they require conditions of infinite density and gravity to warp space.” Gogh waved his hand as if to sweep the idea away. “The second theory of travel in time involves cosmic strings— infinitesimal thin strings of pure energy left over from the big bang. These strings would need to have a density of a thousand trillion tons of mass in each cubic inch. Two such strings moving past each other would warp space/time and allow an object, say a spaceship, to loop around the nearer string and arrive in the past of the farther string. You may or may not understand the theory underlying what I am saying, but you can note that none of the conditions for time travel are met with Dr. Paulson’s theory.”
“Dr. Gogh,” Nick cut in, “there is a common thread in your time travel theories. Both theories require dense matter, either a black hole or a cosmic string. An uncontrolled fusion event does condense matter. Some have theorized that such explosions create black holes.”
“There is insufficient mass to create a black hole.”
“There is insufficient mass to create a cosmic black hole, but what mass there is may be condensed to a level similar to that of a black hole or a cosmic string. You need a black hole for a wormhole, but this is something short of a complete breakdown of the laws of physics. There may be other effects produced by dense matter.”
“Dr. Paulson, if such effects were possible then cosmic explosions, say a supernova, should produce these time waves. We have no evidence of such effects. And what of the big bang itself? Shouldn’t it have produced such a wave?”
“Dr. Gogh, I think the evidence is there … has been there. We just didn’t have a theory that properly accounted for it. For example, take the lumpy universe problem and the problem of missing mass.” Nick paused and saw the President and the rest of the council staring at him blankly. He turned to the President and tried to explain in simple terms.
“The big bang theory hypothesizes that at the beginning of time, all matter was collected … existed in a state so dense that the laws of physics as we know them would have no meaning. Then, for a reason we cannot know, this mass exploded, creating the universe as we know it. If we accept a big bang beginning, we explain much of what we observe in our universe, like the intense background radiation, and the expanding nature of the universe. But the big bang theory has weaknesses. One of these is the problem of missing mass. One version of the big bang theory hypothesizes that the expansion of the universe is slowing and that gravity will eventually pull all matter back together. The problem is that there is insufficient mass for either the big bang to have occurred, or for the universe to pull itself together again, and we can’t find the missing mass.”
“There is dark mass—” Gogh began, but Nick cut him off,
“Yes, Dr. Gogh,” Nick said turning back toward Gogh. “But even that is insufficient.” Nick turned again to the President. “The second difficulty with the big bang theory is the lumpy nature of the universe. If the universe did begin with a big bang, then why isn’t mass evenly distributed throughout the universe? Instead we find lumps, galaxies and solar systems. Why the uneven distribution? Our theory offers an explanation. If the big bang created a time wave, mass could have been time displaced. The lumpy universe could be created when mass that is time displaced suddenly appears in a region of space occupied by matter traveling in normal space time. These clumps would then coalesce into galaxies and solar systems. The missing matter isn’t really missing, it has only been time displaced and has been, and will continue, to appear. What we have experienced is a smaller version of what is a natural cosmic event.”
Gogh frowned darkly, immediately rejecting a theory he had considered for only a few minutes. “The mass is insufficient to produce the effect you claim.” He shoved his yellow pad across the table toward Nick. It was covered with computations. Nick ignored it but Gogh continued, “There are theories to account for both the lumpy universe and the missing matter.”
“But no unified theory that takes into account both, plus the unexplained historical events and the time displacement we have experienced. As to the insufficient mass to produce the effect, you’re looking for enough mass to produce a black hole and a complete disruption of the laws of physics. My theory doesn’t require a wormhole, only a ripple in the space/time continuum … a black ripple,” Nick argued.
Silence returned as every mind in the room tried to digest the ideas presented.
Then the secretary of defense leaned forward to make eye contact with the President. Natalie Matsuda was a listener, not a talker, but when she talked, she used such force and seriousness that her few words had enormous impact.
“Mr. President, I’ve read reams of reports on what has happened, but I’ve seen only two theories to explain it. One is supernatural punishment, which I’m not prepared to accept. So I suggest we accept Dr. Paulson’s theory as our working assumption and move on from there.”
“I agree, Natalie.” The President looked relieved and seemed anxious to move on. “Arnie, I appreciate your input. It’s important for us to get all perspectives on a problem, but please put aside your concerns for now and work with this new theory. I want all of you and your respective departments to go to work on a way of reversing what has happened. Let’s get our people back.”
As the President broke up the meeting he whispered to Elizabeth, who moved to Nick and held him back until the others left. This time the President spoke without waiting for a whisper from Elizabeth.
“Nick, when time displacement takes place, what happens to the people displaced? Where do they go?”
“I’m not sure, sir. 1 believe they are displaced into the future or the past.”
“The past? I thought everything was pushed forward. We don’t have any reports of people from the future appearing, do we?”
“No, sir. But if we assume that the sections of land displaced are swapped with sections of land in the past or the future, and this happens in a predictable way, then in the future we would avoid building on these sites. We should be able to determine this by examining the flora and fauna, but it hasn’t been done yet.”
“So one of our cities could have ended up in a prehistoric period?”
“Yes, sir.” Nick wanted to add there was a seventy percent chance the city had ended up in an ocean, but the President seemed pained enough.
The President thanked Nick and urged him to get to work on a solution. Nick didn’t bother to protest. As they were leaving, Elizabeth turned and slipped Nick another
worried look.
40. First Kills
The extinction of the Cretaceous terrestrial vertebrates was one of the five greatest extinctions in history. The cause of such a mass extinction, and its nature, has long been debated, yet remains a mystery.
—K. Carmen Sontag, Nature’s Lost Species
Forest, former site of Portland, Oregon
PostQuilt: Tuesday, 7:03 A.M. PST
The sun was peeking through the trees when something moving through the ferns woke John. He bolted upright and carne face-to-face with a dinosaur, its head about half the size of John’s and its mouth full of greens. When John screamed with the shock, the dinosaur’s mouth dropped open and the half chewed ferns dropped in John’s lap. Spinning around, it took off in the opposite direction, its long tail whipping around behind and toward John’s head. He rolled with the blow, but even so the tail knocked him sideways and out of the fern patch. He jumped to his feet and looked around wildly, scanning for other dinosaurs, but saw only the tail of the little one disappearing into the underbrush. Then he heard Cubby laughing.
“Jeez, John. You kill a tyrannosaurus one minute and then you’re running from a baby the next. My hero!”
“I was just surprised, that’s all,” John argued lamely. Then trying to hide his embarrassment said, “Anyway, I don’t think that was a tyrannosaurus last night. It was too small and its front legs were too long. Besides, I didn’t kill that dinosaur, I just made it mad.”
“Maybe. But a needle in the eye ain’t bad. Maybe it’ll die of infection? Maybe it’s on its way for a tetanus shot right now,”
Cubby laughed at his own joke and John joined in.
“Wait’ll its mom finds out what happened, I can hear its mama now. ‘I told you not to play with sticks, and if I’ve told you once I’ve told you a hundred times you’ll put your eye out.’ “
Cubby and John laughed together. It was the first time John had felt good since Ripman disappeared. Sitting in this weird forest, and laughing at stupid jokes, John understood why he was friends with Cubby and Ripman. This was the feeling they had shared riding in Cubby’s van, sipping Big Gulps, and insulting each other. They were too different to be lifelong friends, John had always known that. Someday Cubby would follow his dad into the ministry, John would go off to college, and Ripman … well, Ripman would be Ripman. They would keep in touch for a while, but eventually, John thought to himself, we’ll be so different that we’ll even stop sending Christmas cards. Knowing that made John even more determined to enjoy the feeling while he could.
Cubby and John still had their packs, so they ate the last of their energy bars and emptied their canteens, then took stock of what they had left. There was still a little trail mix but it wouldn’t last the day. They both had their hunting knives and packs and John still had the snake-bite kit. John had been so afraid the night before, his hand had frozen around his bow, and they found it in the fern patch. Cubby’s bow and their quivers of arrows, however, were back in the forest.
“I’ll tell you what, John,” Cubby said, pulling a coin out his pocket. “We’ll flip to see who goes back for the arrows. Heads, I stay here and you go back, tails, you go back and I stay here.”
“Screw you, Cubby. Maybe we can make some arrows?” John pulled out his hunting knife and started looking for a straight branch.
“Maybe Ripman could, but you and I will be lucky to keep ourselves off some dinosaur’s menu,” Cubby said. They both knew it was true. “Even if we could make some arrows, you saw how much good my arrow did with that one last night, and it had a steel tip. What do you think a sharpened stick would do? Besides, do you want to sit still long enough to make some arrows? We’re almost to Portland, and I say we keep going. Hey, we get to my house and my mom will cook us up hash browns and eggs, and some of that thick bacon you like. Ripman’s probably already there laughing at us because we’re taking so long.”
Cubby was sniffing at a make-believe plate and rolling his eyes. John had eaten at Cubby’s before and it was always a feast. His mother, a transplanted southerner, was the best cook in Portland. John’s mom was a good cook, but her beans tasted like beans. Cubby’s mom’s beans had bacon bits and two or three spices, making them a full meal. Now John’s stomach was doing his thinking for him.
They left the useless bow behind and started off through the jungle. As John followed Cubby the good feeling was lost, replaced by fear. The arrows hadn’t been much more than a security blanket, but now even they were gone. They had already been chased by dinosaurs twice. He wondered what the odds were of getting away three times. They walked on in silence, working their way downhill and to a creek bed with pools in it. From the look of the banks, the creek was once a foot or two deep.
“Wonder what happened to the water?” John asked.
“Maybe some dino got thirsty and slurped it up.” Cubby meant it as a joke, but that started both of them looking around cautiously.
They found a clear pool and dipped their canteens in, watching the bubbles break on the surface. Cubby ran his fingers around the edge of the pool a couple of times, then his eyebrows went up and he jerked his canteen out of the water and fumbled the cap back on.
“What’s up, Cubby?”
“Take a look at these pools. Notice anything?”
To John, they seemed just ordinary water. Then it hit him. The pools were in pairs, two straight lines, one on each side of the creek bed. He saw Cubby disappearing into the trees and followed, nearly running into him. John looked down and saw Cubby’s footprints—two impressions in the grass side by side— and remembered those in the creek bed. The boys kept running.
Ellen and Angie met Coop’s “off-road recreational enthusiasts” early the next morning. The group turned out to look like a backwoods motorcycle gang—the five men besides Coop all looked as if they made their living with their hands. Only Coop had bothered to shave, and their clothes looked as if they had never been washed. All of them were wearing leather work boots, jeans, and flannel shirts topped with sweatshirts or down vests. When the women approached some of the men started clapping and howling at Angie. Even in a coat and jeans Angie had an aura of sensuality. Coop stepped forward as they approached and introduced them.
“These are the ladies I was telling you about. This is Angie.” Two of the men whistled in appreciation, “And this here’s Ellen. Ellen has a young progeny somewhere in the Portland vicinity, and she needs assistance in reconnoitering the area. I said we would facilitate.” Ellen didn’t mention that her little boy was seventeen years old.
As Coop spoke Ellen noticed two things that bothered her. First, the group was heavily armed. The motorcycles were fitted with rifle sheaths, and every sheath had a gun sticking out of it. Two of them were also wearing holsters. Why would cross-country motorcyclists need weapons?
Second, one of the men wasn’t staring at Angie, he was staring at Ellen with the kind of look the other men were giving Angie. Angie may be used to that kind of look, Ellen thought, but I don’t like it. Coop had introduced the man as Carl. He was as tall as Coop but muscular, with dark hair slicked back on both sides of his head and curls hanging down covering his forehead. His face was covered with a dark stubble and his eyes were staring at Ellen.
Looking straight back at Carl she asked, “What do you need all those guns for? Expecting to run into a gun show?”
Carl smiled. “The big city’s a real dangerous place, right guys? Country boys like us can’t go into town unprotected. Besides, we’ve got you women folk to look out for. Right guys?”
The others snickered.
“The guns are for hunting,” Coop said. Then he paused, as if he were thinking about telling them more, but he merely shrugged and muttered, “You never know what you might run into.”
There was something going on here that the “guys” weren’t telling the girls, making Ellen uncomfortable. But the only remaining option was walking into Portland, which could take days, and she was concerned about her son.
Angie and Ellen followed the motorcycles in their Jeep, winding through the small residential section of the town. Officer Peters had been right. Cars packed the streets, parked in every nook and cranny. They came to what looked like a dead end but instead of stopping they drove down a long driveway around a house and to a dirt road. That road led up over a hill and down into another patch of forest. At the bottom of the hill they came to a small one-lane bridge that crossed a creek. Before crossing, Carl and the guys stopped and gathered together talking. Finally, Carl and Coop returned to the Jeep. Ellen noticed that Coop came to Angie’s window and Carl to hers.
Coop said, “You’ll have to abandon your vehicle here. We’re going to follow the creek bed. You can go double with Carl and me.”
The thought or riding with Carl made Ellen shudder. “What about the road? Why don’t we just stay on the road and follow it?”
Carl leaned in Ellen’s window to speak. When he did, she smelled stale beer on his breath and flinched back in revulsion. Her reaction made Carl smile. Carl was missing an eye tooth, and from the brown crust between his other teeth, she judged he’d be missing more soon.
“Hey, what’s a matter? Don’t you trust us? We’re gonna get you to your boy. There just ain’t more road to use. Coop and I been down there,” he said nodding over the bridge. “You can get another half mile and then nuthin’ but forest. You’d never get this mother through those trees,” he said as he banged the door of the Jeep with his knee. Carl smiled sweetly and then turned serious. “Better to come with us. We’ll follow the creek bed and use it like a road. It’ll get us closer to where we’ll jump off and head through the forest.”
“Okay,” Angie said, “we’ll get our stuff together.”
Carl and Coop drifted back up with the guys and started talking with them. The guys kept looking back at the Jeep and laughing as Carl gestured obscenely. Angie then turned to Ellen.
Footprints of Thunder Page 29
