In the fading evening light, Lexil could see that she had blond hair, swept casually behind her shoulders. A light jacket covered her sundress, and she moved purposefully as she shifted her position on the slidewalk. She was deep in thought. She had the expression of someone trying to solve a puzzle, a slight frown while she bit her lower lip, flickering glances skyward. Suddenly, she smiled, and her face lit up.
Lexil inhaled sharply. He wasn’t sure if it was the intelligence he saw in her expression, or the purposeful way she walked, or the genuineness of her smile, but he suddenly found himself hoping his next move would be in her direction rather than toward the house.
“Doc, is it the visitor or the Wallaces?” he whispered. “She’s about fifteen meters in front of the house, almost to the street.”
“Definitely the visitor,” Doc answered. “There’s a smaller disturbance in the house, but the main source is on the move. Go find out what you can. But remember, you’re an observer, not a participant!”
“I’ll try to remember that,” Lexil whispered. But as he hung up, he was already trying to forget. He considered the best way to introduce himself as he waited for her to reach the street. She’d be most open to the simple truth, he decided.
She turned away from him to make her way to the tube station. He followed, quickening his pace. She glanced behind her, curious.
“Hey,” he said. “You look like a person who could use some answers.”
“I do?” Good. She wasn’t running. She was waiting for him to catch up.
“You do. And I think I might be the only person who can help you find them.”
She stopped abruptly. “And who might you be? How would you know anything about my questions?”
“Lexil Myles.” He held out his hand, hoping she would respond.
She took it. “Danarin Adams.”
He liked her handshake. Firm, confident, totally competent. Or maybe that was his imagination.
“You haven’t answered me yet,” she prompted, waiting patiently. “How would you know anything about my questions?”
“Let me try to describe them. You can let me know how I do.”
She nodded.
“You’ve recently—let’s say 1:30 yesterday afternoon?—experienced a kind of time disturbance. Something huge has changed in your world. You might be the only one who knows it has happened. Besides me,” he added as an afterthought. And Doc, he thought silently.
Her astonishment made her even more attractive. Whoa there, he chided himself. This is field work, not a social event.
“Tell me.” It wasn’t so much an invitation as a command. “Tell me what you know.”
“Is there someplace we can talk? I’m not from the neighborhood,” he apologized.
“There are benches in the tube station,” she said. “We can sit there, if we need to. But start now.”
So he did.
22
Explanation
OUTSIDE WALLACE HOME, Lower Queen Anne, Seattle, WA. 1945, Thursday, June 8, 2215.
Dani was happy for the hugs as she left Kat and Marak’s house. She felt a little less alone. She was resigned, though, to walking this road by herself now. Tomorrow, at work, she would take one last look at the little boy she used to call “bud,” put the objects back with the others like them, and adapt to living in this new reality. It hurt more than she could say, but she had to trust that time would help her heal. Whether it did or not, she realized now that there wasn’t going to be any going back. This was it.
No, the problem to solve now was the blackmail issue. She thought about places in the institute where she might find Dr. Brant alone, and came to the conclusion that there were none. She would have to leave her a note in a place where she could read it without being observed, and arrange to meet her later somewhere. Leaving a note was risky, she realized. It could be kept and given to someone else, or it could be found by someone else before Dr. Brant ever saw it. Perhaps she shouldn’t sign her name, just in case. She could be “wellwisher” or maybe come up with a code name like “bud.”
She smiled at a sudden clear memory of the day she had first started calling Jored by his nickname. Most people thought it was short for “buddy,” but she and Jored knew the truth. They had been looking at the flowering shrubs that were starting to produce the beginnings of new leaves and flowers, with Jored up on a chair so he could see the ones up high. He had swatted at an branch that had tickled the top of his head, and she had said, “Don’t hit that; you’ll knock off the bud!” But as she said it, she had turned and knocked him off the chair. He had landed on his feet, giggling, asking her if he was the “bud” and whether she should be careful too, so as not to knock off the “bud,” and the name had stuck.
Still smiling, she considered whether she really wanted to let those objects get mixed in with the others in the supply room. Maybe not. If she was going to walk this road alone, she might as well have a place to find a little comfort.
Dani had just turned right at the street to walk toward the tube station when she heard the footsteps, walking almost fast enough to be a jog. She turned, curiously.
“Hey,” said a strange voice in the fading light. “You look like a person who could use some answers.”
Well, he was right about that. But she wondered how he would know. “I do?” She waited for him to catch up. He slowed as he neared her and flashed a very appealing smile. And big brown puppy dog eyes. She always fell for the eyes first. Stop that, Dani, she told herself firmly.
“You do. And I think I might be the only person who can help you find them.”
That was pretty arrogant. “And who might you be? How would you know anything about my questions?” She might have snapped at him a little. She wasn’t sure.
“Lexil Myles.” He held out his hand, oblivious to her irritation.
She couldn’t resist checking out his handshake. You could tell a lot about someone by the way he shook hands. “Danarin Adams.”
He had a great handshake. Firm, but not the kind that tried to take control of everything. She decided she’d give him another chance.
“You haven’t answered me yet,” she reminded him. “How would you know anything about my questions?”
“Let me try to describe them. You can let me know how I do.”
She agreed. He had a nice voice, too, she had to admit. Rich in timbre and, even when she was being so pushy, it held more than a hint of humor and happiness.
“You’ve recently—let’s say 1:30 yesterday afternoon?—experienced a kind of time disturbance. Something huge has changed in your world. You might be the only one who knows it has happened. Besides me,” he added.
Okay, this was either really creepy, like he’d been watching her for over twenty-four hours, or something she desperately needed to hear. She was hungry to know what had happened to her. How could he know the time when she hadn’t figured it out herself? She realized she was gaping at him. “Tell me what you know,” she said.
“Is there someplace we can talk? I’m not from the neighborhood.”
That meant he had traveled to find her. She was wary. She wasn’t about to take him to her house. On the other hand, what were the chances that the one person who knew the answers to her questions would actually live in this neighborhood? She decided to compromise.
“There are benches in the tube station,” she said. “We can sit there, if we need to. But start now.”
“You’re probably wondering how I found you,” he began. “We have time sensors running constantly, looking for disturbances. We can tell where they are and when they are, but we can’t tell who they are without coming to look.”
“Wait. You said ‘we.’ Who, besides you?” Was he part of some organization? Was he part of the institute, some secret branch that had found out that she was scanning things that weren’t on her assignment list? Did they already have Anders?
“Doc.”
“Doc who?”
“Okay, listen. When I first
saw you, I was worried you were going to run away from me. The truth is, we need you as much as you need us. We have data. You have the experiences that can help us match blips on a screen to actual occurrences.”
“Blips on a screen?” she repeated. She was mystified. Nothing at the institute showed up as blips on a screen. Then she realized how stupid that sounded. “What do they represent?”
He smiled. A great, big, beautiful smile. “Want to help us find out?”
“I have no idea who you are, other than your name and that you seem to have some mysterious source of information. You’re asking me if I want to help you with something that, apparently, is really important to you! But I don’t have a clue about who you’re working for, or if your purposes are for good or not. Could you give me a little background? Who’s Doc, for starters?”
He hesitated. “What do you know about the science of chronography?”
Dani started laughing. She couldn’t help it. The incongruity of being asked the same question she had asked the school kids just two days earlier, plus the relief at realizing he didn’t know all that much about her after all, melted her defenses.
After a few seconds of looking baffled, Lexil started laughing too. He had a funny laugh, and that made her laugh harder. Between snorts and guffaws, he finally got out, “What’s … so funny?”
“I work for RIACH,” she answered, still snickering. “I give presentations on chronography.” Then she started laughing again. “For a man with the answers to my most puzzling questions, you don’t seem to know a lot about me.”
“No,” he said, with a comical look, “I guess I don’t. But,” he added in a much softer voice, so soft that she almost didn’t hear it, “I’d like to, very much.”
The strained atmosphere was gone. In its place was a comfortable warmth that started seeping into all her worries and tensions. She wanted to melt into that. But first she had to get some of those answers he had promised.
“So … Doc who? Given my background, will I recognize his name?”
“Dr. Mitchum Seebak. He’s my employer and mentor. Used to be my guardian, when I was young enough to need one.”
Something clicked. Lexil, he had said. Suddenly, she was hearing again the conversation from the padlock scan, hearing Marielle Brant’s voice asking, What will happen to Lexil if Elena doesn’t wake up?
“You’re … you’re Dr. Howe’s son!” she blurted.
It was his turn to look startled. “Well. It seems you know more about me than I know about you,” he said pointedly.
She suddenly remembered, too late, that she wasn’t supposed to know that Elena Howe had a son, that his name was Lexil, that he lived with Dr. Seebak. She wasn’t ever supposed to have heard that conversation. Involuntarily, she clapped her hand over her mouth.
“There are exactly four people in the world who know that.” His eyes narrowed. “And you’re not one of them.”
“There … there might be more than that who know,” she said, humbly, desperately wanting that warm comfort back. “Um. Maybe I do owe you some help.”
His connexion signaled an incoming call. He answered, still looking steadily at her, willing her with his eyes to stay put, not move, wait for him to be done.
“Doc,” he said succinctly, then listened. “Yes, I made contact. Yes, she’s quite willing to help.” He continued looking at her, daring her to contradict him.
She just nodded, mutely. All her reasons for distrusting him had vanished when she found out he was involved in Dr. Seebak’s research. Unfortunately, he now had a whole lot more reasons to distrust her.
“To the lab?” Lexil sounded surprised. “Are you sure?” He looked over at her doubtfully. He listened some more and then hung up. Then he stared at her for a few moments. Finally, he spoke, but the warmth was gone.
“Ms. Adams,” he said formally, “Would you accompany me to our laboratory? It seems my mentor would like to meet you.”
Numbly, she said, “I’ll go.”
SEEBAK LABORATORY, Vashon Island, WA. 2030, Thursday, June 8, 2215.
“Welcome!” Dr. Seebak’s smile was genuine and friendly, Dani noted with relief.
“This is Danarin Adams, Doc. Turns out she works at the institute, and knows rather more than she should.”
“I hope those extra things you know will end up explaining some things for us, and we’ll all benefit! Do you have coat? No? Would you like some refreshment? Wine? Tea? Something fizzy?”
“Just a glass of water, if it’s not too much trouble.”
“Not at all. I have a dispenser in the break room over there. Filters and cools. Let me show you where, and then you’ll be able to get your own refills later.” Dr. Seebak turned to Lexil. “Lexil, while I show Ms. Adams around, will you check the sensor readings to see what they are doing now that she is here?”
Dani followed him to the break room. “Call me Dani, please. Everyone does. Wow! This looks more like a studio apartment than a break room!”
“Sometimes we have to sleep here, to monitor the equipment. We’re a two-man operation. A lot different from what you’re used to, isn’t it?” He smiled at her, with a fatherly look, then gestured toward the back corner by the sink. “There’s the water.”
He brought her a glass, and she thanked him. But as she turned to go, he said, in a much quieter voice, “What have you said to Lexil to get him so huffy?”
Startled, she almost spilled her water, but steadied herself quickly. She realized suddenly that she could tell Dr. Seebak everything. She wasn’t sure what Lexil knew and what he didn’t, but Dr. Seebak had been there.
“I recognized that he was Dr. Howe’s son.”
His eyes widened. “And how do you know that, exactly?”
“I scanned an object that showed you talking to Dr. Brant in a garden patio, back in September of 2206. Dr. Howe was unconscious. You talked about her. I heard Dr. Brant refer to Lexil. She was worried about him. You reassured her.”
“I see,” he said slowly. “I remember that conversation. I remember that there were some other things said that day too. Did you hear those as well?”
“Yes,” she said, miserably. “I know Dr. Brant’s secret.”
“Did you tell Lexil?”
“No! I haven’t told anyone!”
“Make sure you don’t. Actually, I have my doubts about her assessment of her condition that night. But that’s a topic for a later time.” He resumed his cheerful, fatherly expression, and turned to go.
“Dr. Seebak! Wait!”
He looked at her quizzically.
“Some of that conversation had been blanked. I only saw the later part.”
“Blanked? Ah. That explains a lot. Someone else has seen the first part, yes?” He didn’t wait for her answer. “Come back out to the lab now, please. Let’s get this mess straightened out.”
Lexil was waiting for them. He avoided her eyes completely. Dani could tell he was still upset.
Dr. Seebak invited them both to sit. “Here’s what we need to do. We need to put everything on the table, so we can all see where we stand. I think Dani has the missing pieces to a lot of our puzzles, and I think we can help her understand some things as well.”
They sat, with Lexil and Dani on opposite sides of a square table.
“We can take weeks, getting to know each other, becoming friends, deciding to trust,” said the doctor. “But we have a situation here, and we don’t know how much damage to the timestream it could cause in weeks. We need to learn everything we can in the next few days—hours, if possible. So.” He paused to make sure they were looking. “We’re going to choose to trust, right now. All three of us. Do either of you feel you can’t do that?”
“I can do that. But I don’t think we can ignore that she knew something no one is supposed to know,” said Lexil.
“You say that? You? Who was it again who interrupted my evening walk to tell me something nobody should know? Let’s see, how did that go again? Oh yes: ‘Something h
uge has changed in your world. You might be the only one who knows it has happened. Besides me.’ I would think you would be the first person to acknowledge that sometimes people know things through legitimate means!” Dani was not doing very well in the “becoming friends” department.
Lexil looked a little ashamed. “You’re right. I didn’t really give you a chance to explain.”
“And she has already explained to me, at least partially. I’m eager to hear more, later. But I can assure you, she hasn’t been spying on you. Can we get past this?”
“Yes,” they both said at the same time. “For now,” also in unison. Then they both smiled; they couldn’t help it.
“Let’s do it,” said Dr. Seebak. “Lexil, you first. Dani, as you hear a date and time, tell us anything you know that happened then. The disturbance we see on our sensors has been following you around.”
They compared notes. Wednesday, 1:30. Dani was in the observation box at the institute, but she didn’t know what changed. September 17, 2206. Kat and Marak didn’t meet when they should have. March 6, 2207. Kat and Marak didn’t get married when they should have. June 7, 2208. Kat and Marak did meet, when they should have already been married. There were some other dates that Dani couldn’t help with. She guessed that Kat and Marak must have been doing different things than they had done in the old reality, but she didn’t know them then and couldn’t be sure.
“You’ve been talking about disturbances,” she said, while Lexil was gathering more dates. “What is a disturbance, exactly? What triggers your sensors?”
“Anything that produces a difference in a timestream from what it was originally,” said Lexil.
“How can you know what happened originally, after everything is changed? I’m apparently the only one who remembers what the old reality was like.”
“How do you know that? Who else have you discussed this with?” asked Lexil.
“Just Kat and Marak Wallace, and Uncle Royce.”
A Chronetic Memory (The Chronography Records Book 1) Page 14
