Grantville Gazette, Volume 71

by Bjorn Hasseler

  But I also had, still unused, a copy of the latest patch set Mustafa's crew had brought directly from Ceres. That patch set was newer than mine—and, I found, included a fix for a very recently discovered operating-system bug. Reverse-engineering that patch, I characterized the underlying bug and found my way into Les's comp—

  Wherein a couple terabytes of personal stuff needed wading through.

  ****

  The company didn't give miners—or auditors—much in the way of personal space. No strip searches, Buck Buranek's complaints notwithstanding, but to call the company's security measures intrusive remained industrial-strength understatement. The encrypted data on your personal comp and a camera-free room were pretty much the extent of any privacy. And, because the law required the company to respect the confidentiality of medical records, and hence, of people's pharmaceutical needs, printers accepted personalized inputs for pretty much anything organic. That's how I'd been able to fill a bulb with C8H7N3O2: luminol.

  Food printers also made intact cells, everything from live-culture yogurt to yeast for fresh breads (and beer) to bleu cheese and steak tartare. That's how I got my sushi. And that, almost certainly, was how Les concocted the plague I'd seen digesting everything plastic on the Rock.

  Computer code, I could reverse-engineer with the best of them. Genomes, not even close. I homed in on a particular recipe file only because it turned out to match one of two large attachments to an email date-stamped about three months earlier: it had to have been from a hand-carried message-cube delivery when the last auditor stopped by the Rock. That message's second large attachment was a vid.

  "Dad, I'm in trouble," a frightened and bedraggled young man, maybe twenty-five, began without preamble. He had a black eye, a split lip, and had been handcuffed to a sturdy chair. No matter the bruising, I needn't have seen the holo in Les's room; the family resemblance was unmistakable. "They've got me. If you don't do as th-they say, they'll k-kill me."

  Who they might be wasn't clear, apart from someone in a ski mask who strode into view to slap duct tape across the kid's mouth. (The few, non-bouncy steps suggested the vid had been shot on Earth. In standard gravity, for sure, and nothing in the background looked like a spacecraft.) "A slow death, I might add, unless you do as we say. We'll know in due time whether you've cooperated. And we're very serious."

  Most of the vid, with Les's son quavering in the background, consisted of an admonition to tell no one, a bomb-building lesson, a timetable, and instructions on deploying the final attachment: a trojan. Among its tricks, that malware could splice loops into camera feeds, exactly as I'd encountered on the Rock.

  The vid attachment ended on a close-up of the young man's terrified eyes. I wondered how many times Les had watched it.

  ****

  "There you have it. You now know what I do."

  With nothing more to add, I stopped recording. The vid was for insurance, for the record. For—were anything even remotely akin to the plague on the Rock also loose on Ceres—the possibility I won't get to report personally on all I'd encountered. Pressure suit, ground vehicles, airlocks . . . even after I touch down, there'll be a plastic-and-rubber gauntlet to be run.

  I'd never been as relieved as a few hours ago, when a console LED lit to report Ceres had come into range. Autopilot put me into a parking orbit, from which a short-range company tug—with, you know, radar, lidar, and two-way radio with traffic control—will deliver me for inspection to a company facility. And then I'd never been as relieved as when the bored-sounding human pilot aboard the approaching tug drawled, "Folks kinda wondered when you'd get here." Her complacency meant Ceres was safe. My honey was safe. I was safe.

  Caveat to those rosy sentiments: safe for now. The overcrowded crew ship left the Rock a few days ahead of me; that hamster's plastic water bottle took a few days to dissolve.

  I'm trying my best, with limited success, to focus on a joyous homecoming. The company has suffered one employee killed and another driven to suicide. They've had an epic security breach and a platinum mine taken indefinitely out of commission. Just to be clear, that's my priority order, not theirs.

  Whether or not, in a moment of humane weakness, the company will care that the son of an employee remains kidnapped and imperiled, the clues to this disaster all appear to be on Earth. Clues that someone will follow up: it surely must be untenable not knowing who drove Hodges to set the bomb, and why, and if they plan to attack again somewhere else. Perhaps they already have! And when the company does investigate, they'll want to disclose as little about the fiasco (including the crime scene!) as possible, and to as few people as possible.

  I foresee my joyous homecoming being cut short by a trip Earthward.

  ****

  Chapter One

  "There are eddies in the slipstream of time and refugees among us, borne on desperate currents." –John Roberts

  Van Meer stood still, staring at a strand of wire stretched hip-high across his path. He stared intently for a long while. Morning dew settled on his shirt and chilled his shoulders, gathered in his beard and sparkled like jewels in the sun's first rays. He stared, as thoroughly unmoving as a yam. There was something about that wire.

  His thin shirt gave little protection; he couldn't remember the last time he'd taken it off. His woolen pants were stiff with filth and old blood. He'd taken them from a corpse weeks ago. He could have taken more; there had been several corpses. But his mind shied away from the carnage; he lost conscious awareness, and when next he found himself he was fishing, stretched by a stream where water ran clear and shallow across a sand bar. His hand and forearm were numb with cold but a fish investigated his slow-moving fingers. When its fins touched his palm he scooped it out with a practiced flip. He had a knife, but he'd lost flint and tinder, so he ate the fish raw. God provides.

  Now, his last meal was so long forgotten, hunger ceased to concern him. His belly was flat against his spine. His bare feet were purple, swollen with bruises and cold. Raw scratches festered on his arms. He had a stout stick and carried a large oilskin pouch on a strap across his shoulder. He was shivering but knew the day would warm. It would be winter soon. He would not survive another winter.

  None of these petty concerns tarnished the exalted miracle of existence for Van Meer. He was weightless as a breeze, bright as polished bronze. He floated, he beamed, he glowed. He stared, motionless, stretched as taut as the wire. Morning dew made it precious. He reached out to touch it. A shock of pain and surprise jolted him all the way to his shoulder and completely out of his transcendent state. He was again just a man dying from starvation and exposure. His feet were agony, his knees cracked when he bent them, his teeth began to chatter. Was it the wire or some trick of his mind? He reached out again to touch.

  The electric jolt was immediate and relentless. How it was possible he had no idea. But then, how anything was possible he had no idea. There were impossible miracles everywhere. His mind turned abruptly clear. Around him the world bared itself in sharp precise detail, distinct and guileless. Every truth and secret of nature seemed revealed in an apogee of wonder. He ascended once more to the state of grace brought on by privation. Starvation was a saint’s gambit, but Van Meer was not a saint. He was an angel. He folded to the ground to wait patiently for the sun, for warmth, for death.

  He reached into his oilskin pouch and pulled out his Comfort, a tattered collection of papers that had once made a drawing pad. He shuffled complacently through them. They were nearly all black with ink sketches done on top of ink sketches. Later he’d used berry juice; raspberry and currant and some kind of red berry that birds could eat but people couldn't. He used little split sticks or sometimes crows' quills. The layers of drawings filled in every notch and corner and left no sign of paper white. They overlapped and ran together, threaded through each other in a wild profuse tangle that made it impossible to separate one image from another but it didn't matter, he could see them all, separate and perfect. He touched them lovingly w
ith his fingertips one by one and was content. His shivering eased.

  He must have dozed. The sun was striking bright bold lances through shadowed trees when a woman found him. He opened his eyes, uncurled slowly, and sat up. Yes, there was an old woman on the other side of the shocking wire, saying something. It had been a long time since he'd heard a voice. The responding words in his head were thick and slow. He looked away, glanced sidewise at her, and looked determinedly away again. She was too painfully bright, shining with the white light of purpose stronger by far than any he’d seen. It swelled and pulsed around her head and shoulders. Angry flashes of red intermittently occluded the white around her hips and knees. He could sense too, hiding beneath the light, a deep and abiding sorrow.

  He did not wish to see but it was too late. His fingers twitched and trembled and he mourned for one small scrap of virgin paper. He did not look at her again.

  "Are you all right?" the woman asked. The words approached him slowly then sped up and fled on by. "Can I help you? Can you get up? I can call for help."

  Van Meer tried to duck into himself. He understood the words; he just wasn't sure what to do with them. The solid sure presence of the woman pressed against him. It was like standing with his hand on the dikes feeling the pressure of the sea beyond. He swayed back. He squeezed his eyes, blocked his face with his forearm. "Please. Not so close. Please."

  The woman stepped back two paces and did something unexpected. Nothing. She did nothing. She even tamped down her aura and the considerable force of her personality. She was still too bright but she waited. Always before, people were impatient with him. They became louder, closer, more insistent. "Listen to me! Look at me! Answer me!" And the wounds in their souls would torture him. He longed to curl up again but it was too late, and his compulsion was upon him. He heard a strange voice, his own shaky voice say, "Please, could you find me a bit of paper? I seem to have run out."

  ****

  Ella Roberts recognized the signs right away; the unwillingness to look directly at her, the precise, meticulous, somehow loving way he gathered up and arranged his pile of blackened papers, the oblique timeless way he had of speaking and responding. Of course starvation might do that to any rational man so she couldn't be sure. But it was plain he could be easily spooked.

  He may be autistic. He might have post-traumatic stress disorder, PTSD. He might have some kind of physical trauma or be mentally ill, but he may not be stupid. None of that means he's stupid. Ella lowered her aching hips to the ground and spoke gently. "I can bring you paper. But if you come with me you can get warm, get something to eat. You can get clean. Can you stand up? What are you doing here? Oh! My name is Ella." She let the unasked question hang between them for a time and finally he responded.

  "Van Meer. My name is Van Meer. I’m an angel." I walk the straight and narrow on God’s bent path, he thought but did not say. He pulled his knees up and hugged them and his Comfort tightly to his chest. "I like to draw." He began to rock just a tiny bit. "There are people up there, I can feel them." He jerked his chin in the direction of the house. "They're all damaged. I'll have to draw them all. Could I please have paper?"

  ****

  The cool fall morning became bright clear and brisk, the kind of day that swells your heart with delight, the kind of day that no mere memory can fully contain. Children unable to prevent themselves did cartwheels in celebration. Cooks and housewives stepped to the back door to breathe sweet air. Carpenters and masons downed their tools and lifted their heads. Men strolled on their way to work, swinging lunch pails and whistling. Farmers in the fields laughed and sang. Ella hurried across the yard as fast as her old bones would let her. Both the fine fall day and the pain in her joints were eclipsed by her need to make a difference. "God’s hairy knuckles," she grumbled to herself and snorted back a laugh. She’d adopted the expression from one of her boarders.

  Ella was a widow. The death of her husband John Roberts marked a pivotal moment in her life. She still carried his memory like a cactus plant on a saucer. The wasted tread-water years of her life without John seemed a pale thing, a purposeless time, but she had a new life now and a new job rehabilitating time refugees because John had been right! John Roberts, her heart, her gentleman farmer, her extraordinary temporal theorist, had been absolutely right! Together they had bought the property where he’d calculated his ‘time refugees’ would wash up.

  Ella remembered asking, "Why do you call them refugees?"

  "Because," John had answered, "The only way you can leave your timeline is if you’re leaving anyway."

  "What?"

  "Leaving. About to die unremarked and unremembered, having no more influence or effect in the world. If the right rare circumstances occur they may fall cross-time, into another timeline. Ours, hopefully, where historians and scientists ought to find them fascinating." He smiled the idiot lopsided grin that had first attracted Ella so many years ago. John’s theories were scorned as nonsense by all but a few theoretical physicists. Lord, how she missed that grin. The memory singed her heart, and she shoved it away.

  Ella had adoptive family and friends now—and resources, skills, and uppity notions. She was a force of nature is what she was. John had told her so. She’d simply forgotten for a while. She had work and purpose but especially purpose. The time refugees had changed her; changed everything. She intended that change for the better if she had to do it one refugee at a time. But first she had to save them, if she did that one at a time. And now there was another kitten on her doorstep. Okay. Ragged old tom. She hurried.

  She burst into the kitchen at a near-gallop. Bru stood by the stove spicing a large pot of ham and beans. Fritz sat at the kitchen table with a cup of hot tea, the dust of the day's labor already upon him. They both stared in surprise.

  Bru was the first refugee Ella had taken into her home and she’d become an integral part of the family. Life had been difficult for Bru. She knew what survival took. "Trouble, Missus?" The large cast-iron spoon in her hand was suddenly a weapon.

  "No. Fritz, say goodbye to your old boots and give them to me. Your socks, too, then run and get me your winter coat. Move!"

  Fritz, bless his heart, bit his figurative tongue and hopped to it. Ella called after him. "Bring extra socks! And a hat! Hell." She turned to Bru. "I want some of that," she said, pointing at the pot on the stove, "and some loaves of your bread. Find something for me to carry it in but do it quick!" She tore from the room. A minute later she was back carrying a sketchbook, a six-dollar tin box of unused watercolors and several brushes, pens and pencils. Bru gave her a rueful knowing smile. She’d stand shoulder to shoulder with Ella no matter what but she had a more practical point of view.

  "You can't save them all, Missus." She nodded at a lunch pail on the table. "Ham and beans in there. Beans need more time." She laid two loaves of homemade bread on top. "I should maybe go with you? Just in case." Refugees could be dangerous. Bru paused, unable to stop herself entirely, and blurted, "Going to draw a picture?"

  "I think this is a solo mission, Bru. I'll be careful. In fact, get somebody to spread the word. No one is to go near the south end of the farm today." She added her art supplies to the pail and turned to Bru. "No, we can't save them all, but we've got to keep walking in the right direction. And I won't let anyone starve on my doorstep!" She nearly growled that last part. She didn't explain the sketchbook.

  Fritz entered carrying his winter coat. He'd stuffed socks and a stocking hat into the pockets. He placed them on the table next to the pail and added his best boots. In the surprise and activity of the moment his usually lurid wit apparently failed him. He flogged his brain for an appropriate dirty remark. "Did your lover get cold feet?" he signed lamely.

  Ella laughed. "Is that the best you've got? You had nearly two minutes to invent something really clever." She laughed again. All those years, she’d never noticed how seldom she laughed. Bru helped her into the coat, it was easier than carrying it. She nodded at the lunch pai
l and tried again, "I could carry that for you, Missus, or Fritz could."

  Ella picked it up and stuffed the sketch book beneath her arm. "Stop worrying. I'll be fine." She turned to Fritz, who had given up his boots and his coat without question or complaint. At this moment she was terribly, terribly proud of the young man. She reached a long way up and patted his cheek. "You're too young for me to marry. Maybe I'll just bed you for the winter." She winked at him, picked up the boots and turned to leave.

  Even with no tongue, it was the first time Fritz had ever been truly speechless. Ella banged out the door. From outside they heard her call back, "And turn off the blasted fence." Fritz was another of Ella's projects. How he'd lost his tongue was a story he’d yet to tell but desperation seemed a necessary component for time travel. So John had theorized. "If they are about to die there, they’ll be desperate here. We need to be ready to help." Again he was right. The only part he got wrong was the timing. He was gone before their first rescue. The irony of a temporal theorist with bad timing would have made him grin.

  How Fritz thrived under Ella's wing was a story of a different sort. Ella taught him American Sign Language and proceeded to teach every able mind within range of her influence so he’d have people to sign with. For that alone Fritz could have loved her. That he'd lost his own Mam early on had nothing to do with it.

  Bru guffawed out loud to see him at a loss for words. She gestured with the spoon, "Follow her. Don't let her see you but keep her safe!" Fritz nodded. Security was just one of the many hats he wore on Ella's behalf. He took his crossbow from its station above the kitchen door and slipped out. His feet were bare. He was still speechless.

  ****

  Ella dearly wished she’d been able to coax the broken man back to civilization and comfort. This hurried return trip to their serendipitous meeting place could have been avoided. She hustled through the thinning trees bitching about her hips, her knees, the unfairness of life, and barbarous, uncivilized, brutal, empathically bankrupt people that left a stricken soul like Van Meer lost in the woods. She prayed he would still be there.