“Doc? I’m catching a close one here. Present-time, over in Lower Queen Anne. Still causing ripples, and they are big ones.”
The doctor came over to look. “If we can get a stable one that doesn’t break down in a few hours, we can see how sensitive it is to outside influences. It would do a lot to help us determine what kind of causes we’re looking at for these.”
“If we can get a stable one,” Lexil repeated, “I will go over there myself and find someone to interrogate. I will find out exactly what caused it.”
“Not in the institute.”
“These aren’t in the institute. They’re across Elliott Bay. I can still get there by tube, though.”
“Look for details. Can you fine-tune it to a street and number? Find out what business or residence is at that address?”
“Yes, working on it.”
They worked silently for a few minutes, with each man monitoring a half-dozen of the sensors. Each device consisted of two main parts. Half of it was surrounded by a chronetically-sealed enclosure, which blocked temporal quantum entanglements and would thus be impervious to changes in the timestream. The other half was left outside the enclosure, and fully subject to any changes. They were connected by thin strands of a chronetically sensitive alloy. The first device had been set up in 2199, the second and third at six-month intervals. All three were needed before any details about time and place could be determined.
Lexil remembered learning, as he worked with Doc in the early years, that the sensors resembled ancient seismographs, which had to be located some distance apart to be able to determine epicenters of earthquakes with any degree of accuracy. With the seismograph, the extra dimension had been depth. With chronetic sensors, of course, the extra dimension was time.
He leaned back in his chair and stretched. It had already been a long night. They should start setting the automatic recorders to track changes while they slept, but neither of them wanted to leave the lab. All the other events they had had the good fortune to note from the origin were tiny drops compared to this one.
Finally the calculations were completed. “Here’s the address, Doc.”
The older man came over to look. “That looks familiar. Is it a residence?”
“Should be, in that neighborhood. Hang on, let me look it up.”
A few more swipes with a finger, a few more taps on the screen, and Lexil displayed the names.
“Are you sure?”
Lexil was startled by the intensity in his mentor’s voice. The names were unfamiliar to him. “Who are they? Do you know them?”
“Marak and Katella Wallace? I know them. I’ve known Marak for longer than Kat. He interviewed me once for story he was working on.”
“A story? What is he, a journalist?”
“Yes, and a very thorough one. But one of the most honest and honorable ones I’ve met. He always checks his quotes, and he doesn’t go searching for dirt. He hardly has to track a story any more. People come to him now, most of the time.”
“What does Katella do?”
“I believe she organizes protesters outside our own favorite institute.”
Lexil turned sharply to look at him. “She might not mind helping us with our research, then.”
“No, although …” he paused.
“Complication?”
“Kat’s uncle has been involved with the institute since its beginning, when I was there. He’s still marginally associated with it.”
Lexil whistled. “I’ll bet that makes for some interesting conversation at family gatherings.”
Suddenly, Doc snapped his fingers. “I just remembered. You’ve met them too. You were with me the day Marak met Kat on her uncle’s boat. It was back in 2208. You were eighteen. It was June 7. That’s today, actually! Seven years ago today.”
“Say that date again?”
“June 7, 2208.”
“Doc, that’s one of the first blips that appeared. That exact date.”
Once more Doc came over to check his figures. “That is more than a coincidence. Has to be. Where was the blip located?”
“Elliott Bay Marina,” Lexil answered.
“That was where they met. Definitely not a coincidence.”
“But that would mean their meeting is a result of this disturbance. What then? They wouldn’t have met otherwise?”
“Check it out. Look at the data from the enclosed devices.”
Lexil combined the readings and ran the figures through some algorithms. “It’s flat at June 7, 2208. So without the disturbance, there was no meeting that day. But look here. This was the first effect, the center of the first set of ripples, from this event.”
“The characteristics are the same.”
“Right, but on the other side, the inside, of the enclosure. Doc, I think in the original timestream, they met back in September of 2206. Is that what you see here?”
“I can’t say for sure. We’re scientists, and all that. But it’s clear that something that happened in 2208 in our timestream occurred in 2206 in the original, and it could very well be the date they met.”
“If that’s the case, this would be an amazing opportunity. To be able to pinpoint the inciting event and be present when—if—the third force starts nudging things back into place … wow!”
“I think we should plan some field work for you tomorrow.”
“Should we call them first?” Lexil asked.
“That might corrupt our data. This contact will need to be under very controlled circumstances. You’ll need to influence it only in certain very specific ways, if we want to follow through on the measurements before and after.”
“Okay, so the first meeting should be mostly data gathering.”
“Are you ready for this?” The older man eyed him carefully.
“I am so ready for this.” An idea occurred to him. “Doc, there’s that other thing I’ve been working on.”
“The insertion experiment?”
“Yes. Could we use this as an opportunity to test that?”
Doc laughed. “You’re getting ahead of yourself, Lexil. Let’s see what we’re facing first. Other plans can come later. Are your analysis programs set for the night?”
“All set.”
“Then I think, young man, that we should get some sleep. It sounds cliché, but I’ll say it anyway. We have a big day tomorrow. Especially you.”
Lexil saw the sense in that. He excused himself to walk to the house. “Big day” was an understatement. It was not just a big day. It was like being present when the comet fragment hit the moon in 2116. Not just watching it from earth, but actually on the moon. A once-in-a-lifetime event, to use another cliché.
He wondered what tomorrow would hold. He couldn’t wait to see.
16
Deductions
WALLACE HOME, Lower Queen Anne, Seattle, WA. 2230, Wednesday, June 7, 2215.
Dani opened her eyes to see a circle of concerned faces, Kat’s, Marak’s, and a square-jawed one, trimmed at the top with a fringe of gray hair, belonging to an older man she didn’t know. She didn’t remember how she got on the sofa, but she remembered what came before that. Jored was gone. It was like he had never existed. And her best friends, his parents, didn’t even know who he was.
That didn’t feel as horrifying at the moment as it had earlier. It felt disturbing, but in a fuzzy and comfortable way. Had somebody—had they—
“We had to give you a sedative,” Kat said. “Are you feeling any better?”
Dani considered. Yes, she felt better. But she didn’t feel good that she felt better. It felt wrong and skewed and overwhelmingly off. Or maybe that was what the world felt like.
“I’m calmer. And a little giggly. But I’m still screaming inside,” she finally managed.
Kat exchanged looks with the others. They had obviously been talking while she was out. “This is my uncle, Royce. He’s a doctor.”
“Nice to meet you, Dr. Royce,” Dani mumbled.
He la
ughed. “Royce is my first name. Just call me Uncle Royce. From what Kat says, you’re part of the family. I’ve heard a lot about you.”
“We didn’t know who else to call when you wouldn’t stop screaming,” said Marak. His eyes held only concern.
They seemed like the Kat and Marak she knew.
“Okay. I’m not screaming any more,” she said.
“Do you feel up to talking about it, or will you get all worked up again?” Kat asked.
Dani tested herself, thinking about all the things that were different, reminding herself that Jored was gone. The panic stayed safely down in the fuzzy zone. “I think I can talk about it.” She sat up, moving over to the left end of the sofa to make room, and also, she admitted to herself, to give her an armrest to lean on. Her head was woozy. She definitely didn’t want to stand up yet.
“Can you tell me when you started feeling something was off?” asked Uncle Royce.
“Um, no. Well … I was over here last night. Played chess with Jored.”
He turned to Kat and Marak. “What do you remember about last night?”
“She was over here last night. We talked about investigating RIACH, and suggested she make some friends in the institute,” Marak offered.
Dani looked up, alarmed.
“Don’t worry, Dani,” Kat said. “He’s on our side. One of the main reasons I started protesting and educating visitors.”
She relaxed. Well, really, she was already relaxed. But she felt reassured by Kat’s confidence.
“Do you remember that part, Dani?” Uncle Royce asked.
“Yes. And I brought some things to show you.” She gestured toward her bag and looked at Kat and Marak. “I almost forgot.”
“So when did this Jored come into the picture?” the older man persisted.
“Seven years ago,” Dani blurted. “When he was born.”
“But yesterday, he was here? Forgive me, my dear, but I’m trying to help you get to the bottom of this.”
“Yes. Kat and Marak and I cut up meat and veggies for shish kebabs, and Jored put them on skewers. He had all that energy, and all the pure childhood joy, just like he always does ….” Her voice broke as she remembered. “We played a matching game, all of us together, and then he and I played chess, just before he went to bed,” she finished lamely.
“Kat?” her uncle prompted her.
“Yes, we had shish kebabs. And yes, we played the matching game. But we don’t even have a chess set in the house.”
“You had to help him brush his teeth, because he always forgets when you don’t!” Dani objected, almost accusingly.
“No.” Kat shook her head.
“Nothing to correspond with that,” Marak added.
Uncle Royce sat back, putting his fingertips together and tapping them on his mouth while he thought. “The way I see it, it can be only one of two things.” He paused.
They looked at him expectantly.
“Either Dani had a very lucid dream last night, so vivid that it seems real …”
“A dream that goes back seven years?” she protested.
“Well, it’s a definite possibility, because of the way their memories of what is real are interwoven with your account.”
“What’s the other possibility?” Marak asked.
“There’s been some sort of reality shift.”
Marak snorted. But Kat’s uncle wasn’t laughing. Not, in fact, even smiling. “Wait, are you serious?” Marak asked.
“Dead serious. Dani, you work in the chronography laboratory in our reality. Do you in yours?”
“Yes.” She grasped on to the possibility like a life raft. He made it sound perfectly reasonable, no matter how unbelievable it was.
“So let’s just hypothesize, for a few minutes, that time has diverged somewhere. Two paths, both leading to a slightly different version of this moment. It would seem that our first order of business is to determine where they diverged, would you agree?”
“This all sounds wacko,” said Marak frankly. “But in my line of work, I’ve heard all sorts of crazy stories, and sometimes you have to submit to what we call a ‘willing suspension of disbelief’ and see where it takes you.”
Kat had been sitting back silently, thinking. Now she spoke. “Okay, let’s go with this. If it diverged, it would have to be longer than seven years ago. Dani, in your reality, when did Marak and I meet?”
“September 17, 2206.”
Uncle Royce pointed at her. “And that’s what makes me believe this is possible. People who have had dreams, even detailed dreams, can’t answer questions like that.”
“We actually talked about this last night,” Dani explained. “Well, not we exactly, but …”
“Yes, we know what you mean,” said Kat. “Go on.”
“Marak—the other Marak—was wanting to go through a gate.” Abruptly, she looked over at Uncle Royce. “A gate to your estate. Unless Kat has another uncle somewhere.”
“No, he’s the only one,” said Kat.
“Interesting.” Uncle Royce pondered this new information. “But I didn’t know Marak in 2206.”
“No, he didn’t know you either. He wanted to interview you about something.”
“I actually did go to your estate to interview you about something, back in 2206,” Marak interrupted, “but I never found you. I can’t remember the exact date. What happened, Dani? In your, uh, reality, I guess?”
“You tried the gate, but it was locked. You tried to climb the fence, with absolutely no success, and that was when Kat came by and saw you. She laughed, and that’s when you met.” Dani thought about mentioning that she saw Marak rattle the padlock in the lab, but decided that would just further complicate something already too complicated. The goal was to find where the realities diverged. She guessed, anyway. But Uncle Royce seemed to take this whole thing matter-of-factly, and it had gotten them a lot further than her panic had.
Uncle Royce turned to Kat. “Do you remember where you were on September 17 that year?”
She thought for a minute. “I was twenty. I would have been on a break between summer quarter and fall quarter at the University of Washington. I suppose it would have depended on the weather that day.”
Dani flashed back to an image of a garden with a pleasant breeze on a sunny day. She knew what the weather was on September 17, but that was in her reality. It might not have been the same for Kat. For this Kat, anyway.
Marak stood, too intent on finding the answer to sit, Dani guessed, and starting piecing together clues. “I remember the day I was going to interview you, if that was the same day. It was a nice enough day that I decided to park several blocks away and walk. You had quite the garden back then; I remember flowers and even a few birds.”
“My garden’s still there.”
“That’s right. You had us out for a luncheon on the smaller patio last summer.” Marak snapped his fingers suddenly. “Now I remember. I actually went through that gate to your estate. The reason I didn’t interview you is because I happened on a private conversation taking place on that same patio, and I backed off as quickly as I could. Neither of the two people were you. But then I got stuck, because when I went back to the gate, it was locked. It must have had an automatic latch or something, because I couldn’t get back out. I was literally trapped.”
Kat started laughing. “You were actually trespassing?” she teased him.
Marak looked uncomfortable. “It was extremely awkward, to be honest. I couldn’t go past the couple talking on the patio. I couldn’t go out the gate. I finally worked my way around front and rang the bell. A maid answered and took pity on me. She buzzed me out the front gate, and I walked all the way around to get back to my helicar.” He focused on some distant point, trying to remember the details.
“That would have been Randa. She was like a member of the family. She left us to get married in 2210. I still send her gifts on her birthday, and on her kids’ birthdays,” Uncle Royce said. “Curious, though. If
you came to interview me, why didn’t you just ask for me at the front door when the maid answered?”
Marak’s gaze snapped back. “I remember now. I did ask for you. She said you were out on your boat. Which would probably be the same one I met Kat on seven years ago today, right?”
And that put the rest of the pieces together for Kat. “That’s right. I remember now.” She turned to Uncle Royce. “You had invited me to go sailing with you. I walked. I would have passed right by your side gate on the way to the marina.”
Dani took a deep breath. “In my reality, after you met Kat, she invited you to come with her to meet her uncle on his boat.”
A thick silence fell as they all processed the facts of the two different realities.
“I think,” said Uncle Royce, “that we have found the time the two realities diverged. In one reality, Marak went through the gate. In the other reality, he didn’t. But there’s something else.”
He paused. They all looked at him intently, waiting.
“The thing is, that gate did have a latch, about 2 meters up. Higher than usual for a lock, Marak, so you might not have seen it. But I always, always kept it locked.”
There was another pause. This time, Dani broke the silence. “And you used a padlock, which you’ve since replaced, I’m guessing.”
“I did! And I have! And I have to ask: How did you know?”
“Because the old padlock,” she answered, “is in the object library at the institute. I scanned it two days ago myself.”
“In your reality,” Marak pointed out. “I wonder if it’s there in our reality.”
This “your reality, our reality” distinction was beginning to make Dani uncomfortable. She so wanted to think of these two as the friends she had met and become so close to over the last six months, but they didn’t share her love for Jored, so how could they be the same? She would trust her Kat and Marak with her life. She had no reason to doubt the people that faced her across the room, but they had had almost nine years of different experiences. Different experiences could change you. Look what had happened to her in one day!
A Chronetic Memory (The Chronography Records Book 1) Page 10
