I wish I had a good book to read.

by Lea Carter

Times 2

  (2013)

  Helen smoothed her short brown hair and put her hand back on her lap. She felt as though she could either hold perfectly still or start climbing the walls.

  A young man with a pleasant smile and a forearm monitor approached her. “The Ministers are ready for you now,” he nodded at the closed door at the end of the hall.

  Helen smiled tightly as she rose, tucking her cap under her arm. She was ready, too. Her head was up as she entered the small room and stayed up even as the doors shut behind her. She’d saved the life of a man who would go on to influence generations of people for good. That was nothing to be ashamed of.

  “Agent Rasmussen?” asked a plump old fellow with more laugh lines than actual wrinkles.

  Helen nodded. When he indicated the empty chair near her, she seated herself. She found a place for her cap beside the tabletop monitor before her.

  “You have been summoned to this disciplinary council, Agent Rasmussen, to give your account of the events which took place on March 15, 2043.”

  As a group, the elderly gentlemen turned expectant gazes in Helen’s direction. Most of them were ex-military, so she felt a sort of kinship with them. Minister Harris frowned a little as he looked at her. He had been part of the original committee that selected her for the mission and probably felt personally affronted by how she’d handled things.

  “As you know from my report, I arrived safely at the refugee encampment three days before the attack.” Helen disciplined a grim smile as she remembered how their tidy little plan had been shattered by a pickpocket. “It took longer than anticipated for me to reach the battle site and required me to assume the guise of a soldier recently discharged from the Royal military. By the time I located Patterson, it was less than twelve hours before the attack.” She paused, her stomach dropping when a photo of Patterson appeared on the tabletop monitor. He was just as devastating in real life.

  “You were sent as an observer, Agent Rasmussen. Your report indicates,” Minister Walters tapped his monitor, “that you actually met Patterson. Did this in any way affect your decision to intervene?” There was something strangely penetrating about the way he looked at her.

  A page from her report stared up at Helen from her monitor. “Amiable and surprisingly optimistic” were such pale words to describe the man she’d met.

  “Yes,” she answered the question as stated. “Because,” she added, “as my report also states, he informed me that he intended to lead the attack himself.”

  A wave of frowns made its way around the table.

  Minister Harris leaned forward, folded his hands together, and said, “The history books clearly state that he did not lead the attack, Agent Rasmussen. If he had led the attack, he would have died along with his men when the Royal military detonated its fail-safe device to keep the monitoring installation from falling into rebel hands. Why did you feel that you had to intervene?”

  “At first, I didn’t,” she answered this question more slowly. “I took pictures, made notes, and waited to see what prevented him from following through. An hour passed, then three, then seven. Patterson was still at the camp, planning to lead the charge.” Frowning a little herself, she scrolled down in the report to where she had documented her disclosures regarding the installation’s defenses. “According to the history books, they had detailed maps of the installation. Some mysterious source of information that allowed them to come within seconds of successfully capturing the installation.” Her hand dropped back into her lap and she shook her head. “There were no maps. There was no spy. I needed to stay in range of Patterson in order to observe him, but I had no excuse unless I created one. So I became the spy.” She ended with a small shrug.

  “What was their reaction to your detailed information?” asked Minister Jackson, a lean man who still carried himself like a Major General despite his twenty-five years of retirement.

  Helen allowed herself a smile at that question. “They were suspicious. I spent an hour in a holding cell for believing the historian who wrote that Patterson’s brief capture was common knowledge.” She felt more than a little foolish at that memory. Once she’d gotten past revealing her “former connection” to the Royal army, she’d thought it was safe to refer to Patterson’s escape from the Royal prisoner of war camp. “They would have held me longer, but Patterson made a forceful speech about why he hated the Royals and tossed me the keys.”

  Minister Harris’ frown deepened. An enormous digital library of history books, official papers, news reports, medical records, and so on, was kept in a protected vault by the History Department of the Time Travel Division. An exhaustive review of those records had revealed no difference between history before her assignment and history after, not excluding a distinct lack of new rumors about Patterson’s capture. Had it been otherwise, Helen would already be in a modern jail cell.

  “Agent Rasmussen,” Minister Walters spoke again. “What happened? Why did you interfere?”

  “I had no choice. At thirty minutes to time, Patterson was issuing orders and checking his weapons. According to the history books, he never even left the camp that day.” She clenched her hidden fists until the nails dug into her palms. “I waited until he was getting in the jeep before I acted. It took considerable persuasion to get him back in the tent. His driver, Irish, assured him that he could ‘get him to the war in plenty of time,’” she slipped into Irish’s accent without thinking. “Patterson knew something was terribly wrong but it was almost more than I could do to convince him to stay.”

  “You told him,” surmised Minister Walters.

  Helen looked up. After a moment, she nodded somberly. Ignoring the angry mutters that began circling the table she explained, “The history books state he had no injuries at all. I would rather have knocked him out with something, but I couldn’t change history, could I?”

  Minister Walters chuckled. Then he laughed aloud. “Gentlemen,” he turned from Helen to the rest of the committee. “Observe.” Tapping his tabletop monitor, he brought up a holographic display of items that made Helen gasp.

  “That’s me!” she exclaimed, staring at the photos on her side of the slowly rotating display.

  “That,” Minister Walters said, “is Patterson’ wife. You see,” he permitted himself a broad smile, “we were so focused on answering a military question that we never looked at the civilian records. In fact, we were so focused on not altering history that we neglected to review what happened after the battle.”

  Minister Harris’ interrupted, “Rubbish. You manufactured these!”

  A hush fell over the room. Minister Walters’ smile faded into a hard glare.

  “I got these photos from the digital library you protect so zealously,” he replied coldly.

  “I move that we adjourn to consider this new evidence,” Minister Jackson said mildly.

  The move was seconded. All the screens went blank. Helen sat a moment longer than necessary, staring at her darkened monitor. It wasn’t every woman who got to see her future. Dazed, she allowed a pleasant usher to guide her out of the building. Somehow she even managed to give her correct address to the automated transit cab. She couldn’t eat though, or sleep. Every time she closed her eyes she saw the pictures again. Patterson with his arms around her. Patterson with a baby in his arms. Herself with a young child and a baby. The pictures had gone on and on, documenting Patterson’s life – his life with her.

  A persistent pounding on her door jarred her out of an unsatisfying sleep. She stumbled to the door, yesterday’s clothes rumpled and skewed from sleeping on her living room couch. Luckily she caught sight of herself in the black, polished dispenser face as she passed it.

  “Hot pancakes and eggs,” she ordered as she quickly straightened her blouse and smoothed her hair. She left the plate where it was and hurried to answer the door. “Minister Walters!” she greeted cheerily. “Come in, won’t you? Y
ou’re just in time for breakfast.”

  “Thank you, I’ve just had my lunch,” he smiled kindly.

  She blushed but stepped aside to let him enter. “You have news?” she asked.

  “It’s official,” he held out a small epad. “You’ve been cleared of any wrongdoing.”

  Helen took the epad and read carefully. Her smile slipped when she scrolled down to the second page.

  “I don’t understand,” she looked up at him. “I’m being reassigned?”

  “Let’s sit down, shall we?” he gestured towards the couch she had just vacated. He noticed that she left the pancakes in the dispenser and that there was a pair of shoes under the coffee table, but he said nothing. “Determining your innocence was relatively easy once we realized you went on to become a part of our timeline. A terribly important part, too. Patterson’s sons went on to form the Continental Alliance.” He paused and smiled in almost paternal pride as she blushed again. “However, we then had to determine our role in your future in our history.”

  She blinked and the corner of her mouth quirked up in a half-smile.

  “In short, my dear,” he leaned forward and winked, “you’re being transferred home.”

  ICU

  (2013)

  It was cold in the cafeteria. Idly, I wondered why. The military had plenty of money, if one went by the allocation reports. Might be that this base was just on the edge of nowhere, understaffed and underfunded. Taking another sip of the hot chicken broth, I stood up and wandered over to the nearest window. The sun wasn’t up yet, so there was nothing to see but my reflection. The borrowed military jacket made me look lumpier than usual, and I wondered vaguely if lipstick would help or hurt my presently washed-out complexion. Not that I had any…

  My laryngitis was almost gone, but just the same, I was glad for some time to myself. Since the Captain had shown up on my doorstep two days ago, the only privacy I’d found was in the bathroom – after the Captain checked for windows.

  “General said to keep an eye on you,” he’d told me with a straight face.

  The “General” had been a Colonel when we met four years ago. A lot must have happened since then. I’d known they ‘d come for me someday, but I never imagined that they would bring me to a secluded place like this. Laboratories and psychologists, that’s what had periodically jarred me out sleep in a cold sweat. I bit my lip and tried the equation with the new variables.

  Unless he had changed from Dr. Jekyll into Mr. Hyde, having General Clark involved was a good sign. Restraining straps and sodium pentothal weren’t his style. That only left one thing – another crash site. It was the only way the scenario made any sense. This desert area would have avoided by the indigenous tribes, and just didn’t exist as far as land developers were concerned. Which left the modern military, always hunting for some new challenge to throw at its people, as I knew from personal experience. My window reflection laughed a little. Maybe I was glad the cafeteria was cool. Tin boxes have a way of becoming ovens with a little added sunshine.

  I heard a click and stopped laughing. There was nothing funny about being locked in. Frankly, I’d had about enough of it. Without turning, I watched the General’s reflection enter the room. He stopped a few feet away from me and waited.

  “What did you tell that Captain of yours?” I asked, skipping the pleasantries. He looked calm on the outside, but I could feel the tension on the inside. I’d always been able to sense his emotions better than anybody else’s. “Always” being since the day I started being able to sense anything.

  “I told him you were special, and not to let anything happen to you.” From someone else, that would’ve sounded false, but I knew he meant it.

  “So,” I turned to face him. “Who told the guards not to let me happen to anybody else?”

  He ignored the question. His hat was in his hands, and he looked more like a middle-aged suitor than a tough, demanding General. “I’m glad you’re here,” was all he said. He radiated things he couldn’t seem to find words for. It made me feel shy, having someone feel that way about me. After a few moments of non-verbal communication, he dropped his hat on the table with one hand, and set his briefcase beside it with the other.

  “It’s another site, isn’t it?” I asked, my mouth suddenly dry.

  “Yes,” he answered, popping the briefcase open.

  “Well, what are we waiting for?” I asked, as he reached in for a manila folder. “Let’s go.” With the last site, I’d sensed something every time my squad jogged past it. Nothing concrete or familiar, like smelling a hint of cigarette smoke and knowing someone was nearby…it had been more like a whisper of thought that had gradually intensified. If I could change one thing in my life, it would be the day I decided to run PT through there alone.

  “You’re sure?” He asked, frowning a little. At my nod, he dropped the folder and snapped the briefcase shut again. “Follow me.”

  There was a jeep waiting outside. It must’ve brought him, because it hadn’t been there before. I waited while he handed his briefcase off to an aid and checked the water reservoirs. That was like him, too, checking everything himself. It had nothing to do with distrust and everything to do with a healthy respect for the environment around us. A court-martial might rule that it was the Motor Pool’s job to make sure everything was in working order, but that wouldn’t make any difference to a couple of corpses.

  The ride was short and painful, for we bounced over some pretty rough terrain. He was projecting urgency now, and I was hung onto that to avoid the bad feelings that were coming from…somewhere. Whoever this race was, whichever planet they came from, there were some significant differences between us and them. We use diamonds for decoration or industrial drilling. They use diamonds as external hard drives. I’d made the mistake of picking up a handful of them at the last crash site, and had spent weeks in the ICU recovering from having an encyclopedia set downloaded into my brain. I’d been lucky. Of the three idiots who’d gone into an alien ship armed with nothing but curiosity, I’d been the only survivor.

  “Stop.” I had to shout it, but he heard me. The seatbelt dug into my torso as we jerked to a halt.

  “Are you ok?” He asked, dropping his goggles so that he could see me better.

  “Sure,” I lied. It was growing, the closer we got to it. It was like…walking up to a landfill or a food garbage can that had been left in the sun all day. I felt like throwing up, or skipping that and just curling up in a corner somewhere. “Do you feel it, too?” I was surprised when he reached for my hands, which were clenched in my lap.

  “Yes,” he said, “I feel something. And I think it’s bad. That’s…why you’re here.”

  I stared at him, amazed as he dropped a mind-wall and let me see what was really going on.

  “You’ve gotten better,” I said irrelevantly. “Let’s go.” Better was the understatement of the decade. He’d concealed it all from me, and if he could do that…I’d have to sift through our reunion later, when I had time to be embarrassed by what I hadn’t been suppressing.

  The site was just over the next hill. The site he’d found. The site he’d come to repeatedly before telling anybody it was there. The site where he’d learned to shield like that. I carefully built my own wall, the kind with wallpaper on the outside so that it doesn’t look like a defense. What was it I’d thought earlier, about Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde? I hoped it wouldn’t come true. I was somewhat reassured by what he hadn’t been shielding earlier. He might’ve said he was glad, but I had detected a reluctance that puzzled me at the time.

  Now that I had all the pieces, though, the puzzle made quite a picture. The military had started out in low gear, thinking it was just anther false alarm. As the reports had trickled in, though, it began picking up speed. By now, against *his advice, they were heading full-tilt for disaster.

  He slowed, pulling over just as we
reached the peak. Our dust plume might have gone unnoticed, as the site was at the bottom of the gulley, but it was time to go quietly.

  “Leave it,” I told him when he reached for the rifle he’d brought. “Leave it all.” Reaching over, I released our seat belt buckles at the same time. He had a clear mental image of the cliff behind the wreck, and I didn’t plan on rappelling down it. Taking his hand, I concentrated. There was a flicker of fear from him as we began to rise, but it was instantly replaced with confidence, in me. “I’m going to have to shut down as much as I can,” I told him as we glided towards the cliff edge. “So if you need to communicate something to me, find the basic emotion and project it, alright?”

  “The guards might see us,” he said, still operating under old habits.

  I smiled. “They’re not going to see us.” And they didn’t. I kept us a few inches off the ground to avoid leaving footprints, but the guards all had suddenly become very bored. Baseball season had just started, which was much more interesting than their current assignment, and they were happily standing around the water reservoir swapping stats.

  The entrance to the site was a hole that a meteor had knocked in the wall of the ship. During its years as a lump on the desert floor, a lot of sand had blown in through that hole, and around inside, and…well, it was a proper mess. I got that from his memories, for our continued contact had stepped up our communication abilities considerably. I almost ducked to avoid hitting my head on a metal beam that was no longer there.

  I could barely breathe. Less-sensitive human beings had cleaned up most of the debris, but the negative emotions were incredibly intense now. Gripping his hand like a life-line, I made my way over to a closed storage bin. It was all coming from there… Tentatively, I reached out with my mind and touched the handle. It took some effort, for what hadn’t been damaged in the crash had deteriorated over the centuries, but I forced it open.

  Instantly I had a raging headache on top of the nausea I’d already been fighting. I fought back as best as I could. Something else was fighting, too. I fumbled my way over to what was left of a desk. What looked like a perfectly smooth surface parted to reveal a small compartment with a single blue diamond inside. My fingers shook as I reached in after the diamond, but I finally had it clenched in my fist. A tiny piece of the information that came flooding out from it included a solution to the problem.

  General Clark helped me as I mentally hunted through the wreckage. There it was – a small switch waiting to be flipped. Even as I gripped it with my mind, General Clark’s arms closed about my waist. My feet left the floor as I began moving the switch and we were safely out the door by the time the compartment of evil diamonds exploded.

  Are you alright? the General thought as he held me.

  Yes, alright. I looked down at the blue diamond in my hand, its shape temporarily embedded in my palm.

  We ignored the soldiers who rushed around us, heading towards what was left of the ship. They didn’t see us for we were safely wrapped in a mental screen.

  I glanced back at the ship. All that was left was a pile of smoldering metal, mere debris now.

  Let’s go, I thought at the General. That won’t harm anybody else now.