by Nina Croft
“As I said, part of the agreement was that they hand over all the time machines. But their main facility was destroyed by a Bhaxian missile before they had the chance. This was just before the immunity agreement was ratified. It occurred to me that maybe not all the machines were there when the attack happened. Maybe one was actually on some sort of mission and never got back.”
“You think that’s where Kane’s machine came from?”
“Well, it had to come from somewhere. It’s a long shot, but I’m hoping they might have an idea about why someone was trying to stop my mission. If we know why, we might work out who, and that should lead right back to the traitors at the Bureau.”
“You think they’ll tell us?”
“Probably not. If they knew something, and were willing to talk, they would have come forward. But there is always the chance that you can read them. The Tel-group can read both the Bhaxians and the Krellians.”
“So at least we’ll know if they’re telling the truth.”
“Yes. And that reminds me.” She reached into her bag and pulled out the things she’d collected yesterday. “At the moment, they might take one look at you and think you’re part of the Tel-group and refuse to talk with us. You’re quite distinctive.”
“If they’re such good guys, why should they care?”
“They probably wouldn’t, but there is always the chance they’re hiding something.” She handed him the bag and he peered inside.
“What’s this?”
“A wig and colored contact lenses.” He raised an eyebrow and she shrugged. “Sometimes we need to change our appearances when we go on a job. There’s a stock of these things at the Bureau.”
He looked at the blond wig but then gave a shrug of his own. He placed it on his head and she smiled. After unfastening her harness, she got up and went to stand in front of him. She settled the wig in place, tucking his hair up under it. It changed his appearance dramatically, though it didn’t look entirely natural. Hopefully, they wouldn’t scrutinize him too closely. She stepped back as he inserted the contact lenses and blinked a couple of times. They turned his eyes to a dark brown.
“Good. You’ll do.”
He stared at her for a long time and she could almost hear his mind working, trying to make sense of things, no doubt hunting for a way forward, somehow to make things work in a way he could live with afterward. And her heart hurt, because she couldn’t help. She could see no way out of this that would make him happy, and she wanted him to be happy.
He reached out and took her hand. “Hey, don’t look so serious. We’ll find a way through this.”
She bit her lip, but she owed it to him to be honest. “I’m not sure there is a way. At least not to help your friends.”
“But you understand I have to try?”
She swallowed and then gave a quick nod. “Yes, and if there’s anything I can do to help, I will. Just not at the cost of the rest of the world.”
“That will have to be enough.” He pulled her closer, so she stood in the V of his thighs, then gave a sharp tug and she fell into his lap. For a second, she closed her eyes and just relaxed against his strong body. She loved the feeling of being held. Her father had never been a hugger. Now she rested her head against Quinn’s chest and listened to the strong, even thud of his heart. “I can’t just stand by and do nothing,” he said in a quiet voice. “That’s not who I want to be. But I need you to know, that if we come through this, I’ll be happy anywhere, anytime, as long as I’m with you.”
Her eyes pricked. She turned slightly and kissed his chest, then raised her head and stared into his face—she wanted his blue eyes back. She loved his eyes. She kissed him, and he stayed still beneath her soft caress. “I love you,” she said. “Before you, I never even believed love existed. I thought it was gone from the world and all that was left was duty and survival and doing what was right.”
His hand slid behind her neck and pulled her close for a fleeting kiss. “I love you. And we’ll get through this or…”
Or die trying, she supposed. Just hopefully, without taking the rest of the world with them. “If we do, I’m going to have the implant removed. I want you inside my head.”
His eyes widened. “Really?”
“Yes. I want you to know how I feel.”
“And you’ll just have to trust me.”
“I do.” She pushed herself upright. “We don’t have much time. You want to learn how to fly this thing?”
“Hell, yeah.”
Chapter Thirty-One
No way!
He was flying a goddamn space shuttle. He could sense Melody tense beside him, no doubt twitching to take back the controls. But he wasn’t giving them up. This might be his one and only chance, and he was making the most of it, though there wasn’t a lot to do. Apparently, they were locked into destination coordinates and the ship would take them there. But he had his hands on the wheel, and he was loving it. For a little while, he forgot the seemingly insurmountable problems, the fact that all his friends were apparently long dead, as well as the rest of the world.
She’d said they couldn’t change the past. That it could have ripple effects that would likely destroy the universe. He didn’t want to do that, and anyway, what was the point in saving his friends if they were all just going to vanish as the world imploded?
He hated fucking time travel. It did his head in.
Hopefully these Krellian guys could cast a little light on the subject.
The front viewer screen was filled with the Earth now, and closer up, it looked a goddamned mess. The land was bare, nothing living, just rock and sand and crumbled buildings.
“Is everywhere like this?” he asked. “Where are we, anyway?”
“Actually, close to where we first met. Just outside Boston.”
“Jesus.” He searched the land looking for anything he recognized, but it was like something out of an end of the world movie.
“But not everywhere. It’s thought this was close to the main blast. The radiation levels are still too high for human life.”
“So why here?”
“The Krellians are working on lowering and even eliminating the radiation. They’re immune to it, so working here is no problem for them. They’re also trying to increase immunity for some of the indigenous species.”
“Humans?”
“Eventually, but first some of the plant life. So they can remake a world where people would want to live.”
He had to admit, this was pretty grim.
A huge dome appeared in front of them, silver-gray and maybe a hundred feet high and at least a mile in diameter. “Is that where we’re going?”
She gave a nod and waved a hand at something on the screen. “They’ve picked us up.” One of the panels was sliding back. “The dome is free of radiation, so we’ll be okay without suits.”
The ship lowered itself through the open side of the dome and into what looked like a large warehouse. While he wasn’t paying attention, Mel switched control back to her position, and she brought them down the final few feet, landing lightly. “Come on.”
She was out of her seat before he’d even unfastened his harness. He followed her to the door and then down the ramp. Someone waited for them at the bottom. And if he wasn’t mistaken, that was a real honest-to-fucking-God alien. The man was about Quinn’s height, but that was the only similarity. He was slender and blue—his skin the color of a summer sky, his hair dark blue, his eyes so pale, they were almost silver.
Mel stopped just in front of him and Quinn came to a halt beside her, doing his best not to look as though he’d never seen an alien before.
“Special Agent Lyons?”
Mel held out her hand and the two shook. “And this is my partner, Special Agent Sutherland.”
He stepped forward and took the proffered hand. He was shaking hands with an alien. Could his life get any weirder?
“I am Toril, the superintendent of this facility. You said you wished
to discuss an agency matter. How can I help you?”
“A couple of things,” Mel replied. “First we’d like some background information. Then some details about a specific matter.”
Quinn reached out with his mind, almost expecting to meet a blank wall, but he slipped inside the Krellian’s head with ease. For a moment, he got lost in the intricacies of that alien brain, so different from any he’d come across before. Unfortunately, the language of Toril’s thoughts was alien as well. Ha. Of course, it was. This was going to be harder than expected. He cleared his mind and looked for images rather than words. For emotions rather than thoughts.
He almost jumped when Mel touched his arm. “Let’s go,” she whispered.
…
Quinn appeared totally zoned out. He’d presumably been trying to read Toril’s mind. Had he succeeded? That might make things considerably easier. She looked into his face and raised a brow.
“Yes and no,” he said.
Very cryptic. But an explanation would have to wait. Toril was disappearing down a tunnel, and she hurried after him, Quinn at her side. Toril finally stopped at a door in the corridor which slid open, revealing a meeting room of some sort with a table and chairs. It had no windows but she guessed they were deep within the facility. That made her a little twitchy. But she’d always believed the Krellians were the good guys, and while Quinn had planted the seeds of doubt, there was no reason for her to change that opinion. They’d always been totally cooperative, and their humanitarian work was unparalleled. Maybe they felt a sympathy for the people of Earth, having lost their own planet so completely.
She took a seat opposite Toril, while Quinn sat on her left.
“Would you like some refreshments?”
“No, thank you,” she answered as Quinn shook his head. He still didn’t appear quite with it.
“You want some background information on time travel?” Toril asked.
“Just so we understand a little better.”
“We don’t totally understand the phenomenon ourselves. We were just beginning to realize its potential when our research was halted.”
Did he sound bitter about that? “Were you happy with that decision?”
“Not happy, no. But resigned. Our people have often been persecuted for our search for truth and our denial of all those things that cannot bear the scrutiny of science.”
“You mean religion?”
“I do. We would have been happy to study the theory rather than the practice, but the Federation believed we knew all we needed to. But that is the past. What specifically do you wish to know?”
She gave a shrug. “How does it work?”
He gazed at the space beyond her head for a moment, no doubt gathering his thoughts. “Think of time as running parallel beside us. An infinite number of times. We just needed to find a way to jump between the two.
“How did you even know that?”
“We were doing experiments into the nature of matter. Here on Earth actually, which we have made our home in the hope we can, in a small way, help the planet recover. We started to see echoes of what we originally thought were parallel dimensions. And in fact, that’s one way of looking at it—but it was actually the past we were seeing.”
“Not the future?” Quinn asked.
“There is no future. Not yet, not in this time. We are on the edge—we only see time in one direction. Backward, as it were.” He looked thoughtful. “I suppose if you went back in time and had the equipment, you would see the parallel dimensions on both sides. We had planned such experiments but…” He gave an exaggerated shrug.
“Time travel was banned because of the destruction of the Rixen system,” Mel said. “Can you tell us a little about that?” She’d read the historical account of what had happened, but she was interested to know the Krellians’ take on it.
He was silent for a moment. His features seemed to draw together in what she was guessing was the Krellians’ expression of displeasure. He hadn’t liked the question. After a few moments, they smoothed out. “You must understand. We are a poor race. Our world and most of our people were destroyed by the Bhaxians. We’d planned ahead and escaped on our mothership, with databases of all the DNA needed to reproduce our world. But the Bhaxians harried us across space, destroyed our mothership, and the DNA databases were lost. We had nothing, and now we must survive any way we can. We didn’t comprehend the dangers of time travel back then. We had done some limited trips with little or no effect. When we were approached for a loan of the technology, the price they offered was too high for my people to resist. It would allow us to stay here and help the people of Earth.”
He was laying it on a little thick. “So you sold the Rixen people a time machine?”
“We loaned them a time machine for a fee. The balance of the fee remains outstanding and the machine was never returned.”
“Well, that would have been a little difficult when the whole Rixen system imploded in on itself, turning a once-prosperous star system into a black hole.”
“They were warned. They ignored our warnings. As a consequence, we were banned from our studies.”
Quinn snorted. “It’s a shame you can’t go back in time and not rent out your time machine.” There was more than a hint of sarcasm in his voice, but Toril didn’t react. Maybe the Krellians didn’t do sarcasm.
“What’s the furthest back you sent anyone?” she asked.
“Successful trips—a year at the most. And they were purely exploratory. No changes were made.”
“Nothing any longer?”
“Only one and we failed.” His gaze flicked from Mel to Quinn. “I am guessing we come to your specifics now.”
Mel smiled, though she was sure it didn’t reach her eyes. “Yes. When the ban was put in place, you were requested to hand over all time machines for destruction.”
“And we complied.”
“According to your records there was one missing.”
“That was accounted for.”
“Tell us.”
His lips thinned. He wasn’t happy with the line of questioning, either. What secrets were they keeping? She cast a glance at Quinn. She hoped he was picking up something more from Toril’s mind. He caught her gaze and gave a little shrug. It didn’t look hopeful.
“We planned to go back and discover the cause of the initial explosion here on Earth, find the source of the resulting radiation. We believe that if we understand what happened, then we can find more effective ways of solving the issues facing your people.”
Quinn leaned over and spoke quietly in her ear. “He’s lying.”
Shit. And she couldn’t call Toril out on it because then she’d have to reveal how she knew. But why would he lie about this particular part of the puzzle? Was it important? What other purpose could there have been?
“You sent a machine back to 2020?”
“That was our plan, but it failed.”
Christ, this was painful—he was cooperating but hardly offering up information. And she needed something, anything, so she could make sense of this. Right now, she had no idea where to go next. “How did it fail?”
“As you are no doubt aware, our facility was attacked. The place was completely destroyed and the time machine with it.”
“It never went back?”
“We believe not. The attack coincided with the launch time. Presumably, they had spies and wanted us to fail.”
Quinn touched her lightly on the arm, and she glanced toward him. He spoke quietly. “The group you mentioned—the telepaths—can you ask about them.”
It was a good question, she should have thought of it herself. “Did you work with the Tel-group?”
Toril shook his head. “No. We requested their services, gave them the details of the mission, but we were turned down.”
“Why did you need their help?”
“We believed that they would be less likely to cause a stir in 2020 if they were seen. And that they could pick up information from an
y humans they came in contact with.”
“That makes sense.”
“But they refused us, and we decided to send our own people and attempt to keep a low profile.”
“Could the Tel-group have been your spies?” Quinn asked.
Toril’s eyes widened. “Of course not.” He sounded shocked, which was understandable.
“My colleague hasn’t worked with the Tel-group,” she told Toril. Then turned to Quinn. “While they seem to have no moral compass for the jobs they accept or refuse, they have a reputation for…incorruptibility. Their motto is a world without lies.” Something flickered in his eyes at that. “What is it?” she asked.
He shook his head. “Just something Kaitlin used to say. That’s what she wanted. Why she went back to work with the government, even though she held them responsible for the death of her brother.”
Toril was listening closely, a small frown between his blue brows.
“You lost people when the facility was attacked?” she asked.
“Yes. The scientists and the technicians working at the time. It was a huge loss.”
“Do you know for sure that the time machine was destroyed? Could it have made the shift?”
“Where are you going with this? I assure you we have no knowledge of any existing time machines, other than those built for your Bureau of Time Management.” He put his hand to his ear and listened for a moment. “You’ll have to excuse me for a moment. We have…unexpected guests. I’ll be back to escort you to your ship when I have dealt with the issue.”
He rose and left the room, the doors closing behind him. Unexpected guests? She had a bad feeling about this. It felt like time was running out faster than she’d anticipated.
“What did you get?” she asked Quinn. “Anything?”
“Not much. His thoughts were all in his own language—total gibberish. I had to rely on visual images and emotional responses, but I got some stuff. And I could tell when he was lying.”
“Any other lies?”
“Nope, just the part about why they were sending people back.”
“Bugger. So he believes the time machine was destroyed?”
