Timelines

by Bob Blink

  There had been guests the previous night. They were the reason for the feast. It had been planned before my arrival and knowledge of the events at the control center. These were contacts that were important for establishing the new merchant family into the business community. Some were local and had returned home after the feasting, but a number of others were recovering in rooms in the opposite second floor wing. I noted the stairs opposite the ones I was descending that led to the guest quarters.

  A large fire was blazing in the common room, and seated in one of the chairs nearby sat Dave, our historian and local chief resident, the only other participant in the evening’s festivities that had made it down from the rooms thus far. He held a steaming mug in his hand, and was staring into the fire as I approached. As I passed behind his chair I caught a whiff of his drink, and surprised I exclaimed, “coffee!”

  Dave smiled and looked up at me. “Contraband,” he admitted. “But some things one should not do without, and I learned after you brought some along last time that coffee is an essential part of the travel kit. This is my special brand by the way.”

  He motioned to the serving girl who had stuck her head in at the sound of our voices. He pointed at his mug, and then at me, and she scurried off to the kitchens. “I’m surprised to see you down already. I figured you and Naiya would want to sleep in.” He winked at me knowingly.

  “She’s a late sleeper, and I’ve got too much on my mind to sleep.” I took the mug offered by the young girl and nodded my thanks. “This is quite a place you have here,” I noted. “I didn’t think any of the downtime ‘offices’ were quite this impressive.”

  “It’s more than necessary,” he admitted. “Money isn’t an issue, of course.” And it wasn’t. Some items could be brought from uptime as trade goods, and often everyday items from our time were in great demand. Usually, however, gems were used as the basis for establishing ourselves and obtaining sufficient local funds. Uptime, a couple of hundred years later than my own time, the means of artificially manufacturing all types of gems became commonplace. Gems lost all real value, and could be obtained in quantity. Those same gems when brought downtime regained their value. They were every bit as real as the gems taken from the earth, and we didn’t carelessly flood the market. It provided us the means to readily establish ourselves in different eras. He looked a bit embarrassed as he admitted, “I expected to spend a lot of time here, and the merchant cover is very effective at letting us poke around. Might as well do it right. People are more willing to talk when they think there might be an advantage for them.” He hesitated, and then continued. “Besides, I have toyed with the idea of retiring here later on. Not going back uptime after all this is over. This is an era I have studied and loved all my life.”

  I wasn’t completely surprised. I had caught hints of his decision the previous day when I warned him of the risks. Even then he had indicated it wouldn’t be so bad to spend the rest of his years here. “Naiya and I will be going back later this morning,” I told him, verifying the plans agreed to the previous day. “Have you changed your mind?”

  He took another long sip of his coffee, and then shook his head. “You’ll have to ask the others, but I think you’ll find they feel the same. We still have the work we set up here to finish. Nothing’s has really changed. Not really. Think about it. We knew the aliens existed. We knew they would visit eventually. We suspected they would continue with whatever they were doing, and that when they arrived we would end up at odds with them. Now it has happened. The decisions we made years ago, and the motivations behind them, haven’t changed. If anything, based on the information you gave me yesterday, we have even more reason to continue.”

  “What about the meeting tomorrow?” I asked.

  “You can relay my feelings. If I am needed for anything, it’s easy enough to come back. Just to vote on how to proceed, forget it. You know how I feel. If any of the others want to go, they can voice their own opinions.”

  “And you think we should be ready to fight them when they return,” I questioned. “Attack them before they have a chance to take any further actions?”

  “I wish we had more time to verify the validity of the bits and pieces we have been gathering of late, but I have long felt the aliens were taking actions we shouldn’t allow to continue. I guess it would also be nice to know what times the new tunnels are targeting. It might change the decision, at least temporarily. If they were targeting far uptime, then any changes might not affect any of us directly. That would give us some time to learn more before taking action.” He stopped for a minute and then changed his mind. “Damn it, no. Even then, their mucking around will be affecting our descendants, and if we can, we should stop them.”

  I had to agree with him. At first I wanted to think about buying some time. If it looked like their actions wouldn’t affect us, and we could buy another eight years to further study their actions, we might be better prepared. Naiya had been adamantly opposed to this approach, and had argued effectively for action. I knew where Carol would land on this issue. Tomorrow we would see about the rest of the team.

  “If the last group was any indication, it doesn’t appear that taking them down would be that difficult.”

  He smiled. “I suspect Carol won’t share your optimism. She has long suspected they are protected somehow and not that easily stopped.”

  Carol and I had talked yesterday about the shields she had seen. The element of surprise might give us the edge we need against any protection they might have. If we had a number of the rifles she had used so effectively against the alien she had killed, the matter might be simple. But the rifles were only available in her home era, which had been closed off by the aliens years ago. Her rifle had only one full charge left, with a partial charge for a second shot or multiple weaker bursts. She had doubts anything other than a full charge would be effective against the alien enemy. Then that rifle would be useless as well.

  “Have you thought about the possible consequences of attacking the group that visits the center?”

  It was one of those issues we simply lacked the information we needed to make a studied decision. Were the aliens part of a much larger group, backed by full military might, or were they a small group that we might be able to attack without fear of retribution?

  “I think we have to assume that an attack will bring others. Maybe it will take some time, but eventually they will come.”

  “Then,” and he looked closely at me. “Are you prepared to destroy the time complex?”

  “To deny them access,” I agreed. “But how? And wouldn’t they just build another?

  “Good questions. No matter what we do, there remains the possibility they could build another system, and go back far enough to undo everything our group has put in place to defeat them. I remembered the unexplained key. I hoped that it did belong to a complex far from earth and didn’t imply another system already existed here somewhere. There is no way to kill them all. We don’t know where they are from, nor have the means to go there, let alone fight them under those conditions. So we can only hope they are unable or unwilling to follow up if we take them on within the complex itself.”

  There were no answers yet. And far too many questions remained unanswered. I thought of another question that puzzled me. “Do you have any idea why the aliens would seem to be interested in the far uptime tunnel. The two spent more than an hour in that empty, deserted era.”

  “I would guess they are looking for something. Perhaps their efforts are directed at causing a change in that time. A change which thus far they haven’t been able to implement. It’s only a guess.”

  We were interrupted as some of the guests from the previous evening made their way downstairs for breakfast. I left Dave to his duties as host, and made my way upstairs. I didn’t speak the local language, something that had been easily hidden the previous evening, but which would be exposed if I stayed with the group downstairs. I made my way back upstairs with a couple of warm loa
ves of bread and some coffee for Naiya. It was time to get moving anyway.

  Chapter 29

  Friday, 1 September 2006

  Ottawa, Canada

  Another series of bumps from the frequent turbulence that had plagued the flight all day woke Sandy from the half-sleep she had managed to drift into. She checked her watch, and decided there was no point in trying to go back to sleep. The short hop from Toronto to Ottawa only lasted a bit over an hour, and now the plane should be landing in Ottawa in another fifteen minutes. Actually she was surprised there hadn’t been an announcement informing the passengers of the impending landing, but she might have missed it. Stretching, she thought back to boarding the flight in Seattle earlier this morning. She had needed to get to the airport early, as her Air Canada flight left at 6:30 and there were the usual airport delays that plagued any air traveler these days. She had actually arrived at 5 AM, which explained her tiredness now. While her watch indicated it was almost four o’clock in the afternoon, her body clock knew it was only just after lunch. But flying was tiring. With nothing to do, and the constant turbulence that made getting any real rest impossible, she was wrung out. The first leg of her trip had taken her to Toronto, where she had cleared immigration. That had been a snap, leaving her free to wander the terminal for a little over two hours until her connection to Ottawa was ready for boarding.

  Now she could see the green Canadian landscape pass beneath the plane as it prepared for landing. The flight attendant had made his final pass down the aisles to collect papers, drinks, and anything else that passengers wanted to toss before touching down. Anticipation had her fully awake now, as she eagerly contemplated the task ahead of her. She was lucky to have been given the assignment. Yesterday she had been downtime when the aliens had arrived. She hadn’t seen them, but the video they had shown in the short meeting had really spooked her. That had surprised her a little. She had always thought of herself as brave, and ready to face any challenge. But this was so unexpected. Even though they had all talked about the possibility for years. Everyone else seemed to take the arrival of the three alien visitors more in stride, but she had been uncomfortable with the possibility of being trapped downtime at the main base, unable to ever get back to her own time. When Ed had asked her if she would be interested in running this errand she had jumped at the chance. She knew Ed was familiar with her background, and knew she was from Montreal, just an hour’s drive from where she would be landing today. They had often talked about Canada, and both had visited Ottawa a number of times. She had frequently gone camping in the wilderness areas to the north of the city.

  The best part was she wouldn’t be going back to the base when this task was complete. Ed wanted her to be part of the up-front team that coordinated the facility in western Canada, just outside Vancouver. She would be good at that. A people person, she was a wiz at organization, and it looked like a lot of pre-planning would be required to handle the number of people that it seemed would be relocating uptime. It would be good to be back in the twentieth century again for a while anyway. At least until this all settled down. She had spent the better part of the past two years working and living in those caves. Sometimes she wished she could tell some of her friends what she was involved with. But they didn’t need to worry about her. She wasn’t about to tell anyone the secret the group shared. Who would believe her anyway?

  The arrival at Ottawa was easy. It is a relatively small airport, and her baggage was among the first to come down the conveyer belt. She walked out the front entrance, turning right to walk down the front of the terminal building to where she could pick up her rental car. She used the Emerald Aisle from National, and was able to simply walk up, jump in a car, and hand her credit card and National card to the person at the exit. In less than five minutes she had merged with the other traffic leaving the airport and was on her way down the turnpike that would take her into Ottawa and the Westin Hotel.

  Her task was really simple. Tomorrow, she would drive about an hour and a half north of Ottawa. The country turned into wilderness pretty quick going that direction out of town, and would lead her into the mountains and to the location where another of the time tunnels had existed at one time in the past. The highway changed from a multi-lane freeway into a small country road about thirty-five minutes out of town. She would follow the smaller road to a turn-off, which would lead her back to into the foothills where the tunnel cave lay. The time tunnel wouldn’t be there now, of course. It had never existed in the 21st century. Actually, it didn’t exist in any era any longer. The tunnel had been closed by the aliens during their recent visit, trapping the team that had gone through just a few days before. She had liked Tina, and had actually considered trying to be assigned to a team that explored some of the different periods, rather than simply working the computer system at the base. Now she was glad she hadn’t pressed the issue with Tina, who had been willing to see if she could come along with them.

  Locating the tunnel entrance would probably be the hardest part. She had rough GPS coordinates entered into her unit taken off maps of the area, as well as a number of pictures that had been taken of the entrance. Early on, photo surveys had been taken of all of the existing tunnel entrances and maintained on file. None of the studies had produced anything useful, and enough variation existed between the various tunnels that no pattern developed that could be used to search for similar structures that might have been used at some time in the past. The pictures showed the tunnel as it existed over two hundred and fifty years ago, and might have changed significantly over the centuries. No one had had a reason to search out the present day location of the entrance cave until now. Once she found the tunnel area, she was to look in a specific location where the team would have left one of the special message tubes. The tubes, a couple of inches in diameter, were designed to survive the long years of being buried, so that a message could be sent from a team in the past, should they somehow become trapped as this team had.

  She had drawings of the area inside the cave. Finding the spot where the message was supposed to have been left wouldn’t be that hard. Sandy knew it was the subject of some debate whether a message would be there or not. After she searched the site, she was to contact communications immediately. Arrangements had been made to have someone available to receive her call. If she found something, then she would return to Ottawa and take the evening flight back to Seattle with the package. Otherwise, she would take a flight the next day to Vancouver to join the others in the advance team to start preparations for the people being relocated there. She realized she would be missing the big meeting scheduled tomorrow that would decide a number of things, most importantly whether a plan would be put in place to fight the aliens when they returned. She didn’t mind. She knew what the outcome would be anyway.

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  Sandy was getting close. It was only 8:45 A.M., but she had risen early, unable to sleep because of the excitement promised by the search ahead of her. Even the fact it was three hours earlier by her body clock had been unable to help her sleep. She guessed the nap she had taken the previous evening had worked against her as well. So after several warm muffins and a cup of coffee, she had gathered up her gear and headed down to her car. Leaving the parking garage, she had been forced to circle the hotel to get on the road headed the proper direction. After that it had taken only ten minutes to cross the river that ran behind the Parliament buildings, and then only a little longer to leave Ottawa behind. Very little traffic was going in her direction, with more people going the other way and headed into central Ottawa this Saturday morning.

  She saw a pullout on the road a short distance ahead and slipped the car into it, putting it in park with the brake on, but leaving the engine running. The GPS unit said the entrance was only 2.6 miles northeast of her current location. She pulled out the map and tried to locate her position. The topographic map was very detailed, and after a couple of minutes she was confident she knew precisely where she was. Tra
cing a line with her finger in the appropriate direction, she found contours that would be appropriate for the location she sought. It also looked like the road crossed her intended path around the next couple of bends that would shorten her walk by another half-mile. Satisfied, she put the map in the passenger seat next to the GPS and moved back onto the road. Matching the road to the map, she pulled off to the side after driving a little over a mile. She would have to leave the car here on the side of the road, but there wasn’t any traffic. She hadn’t seen another car in the past half-hour since turning onto this road, and it was far enough off to the side to not pose any danger to traffic. She turned off the ignition, grabbed the map and GPS unit, and got out of the car. In the trunk she pulled out her day pack and slipped the gear into a side pocket before slipping it over her shoulders.

  There was no trail, but the hills were not thickly forested, and she was able to walk mostly unhindered in her chosen direction. A couple of times she had to work her way around small ravines, but it was easy hiking, and a short time later she thought she saw the entrance. It looked different than the picture, probably due to erosion of the hillside and the collapse of one side of the adjacent hill. Nothing else nearby was a likely candidate, and the GPS had her within a tenth of a mile. Just so long as the entrance is still passable.

  Getting inside hadn’t been a problem, although there had been a series of small landslides that had closed off the once wide entrance. There was also a great deal of water running in the frontal area, with several small rivulets that gathered the water that covered the rocky floor of the entrance everywhere to a depth of a quarter inch or so. Once she had worked her way back from the entrance fifty feet, the rock sloped upwards slightly, and the wet slippery floor changed to dry stone making walking less precarious. She switched on her flashlight and made her way back into the cave, taking the left fork that appeared as the upward walk crested. The left passage was the larger opening, and if the map was correct, the old entrance should be just around the corner. Another twenty feet and she found the large blank wall that the complex entrance used to pass through. She walked up to it and placed her hand on the stone.