by D. N. Leo
A man in an officer’s uniform stood, counting gold coins in a pouch. A younger man approached in a hurry, and the man in uniform quickly slid the coins into his pocket.
The younger man said, “We shouldn’t allow those French ships to dock at Dorset port, sir. They’ve been to the East before coming here. They might be carrying unwanted goods, sir.”
“Frenchmen? I don’t think so, son. They have only silk on board.”
“They’ve told you so, sir?”
“No, I checked myself. Now, you go and check on the ones coming from up the coast. I am worried more about them.”
“Are you sure?”
“How long have you been working here?”
“Four weeks, sir.”
“All right, I’ve been here five years. Do you understand?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Get out of my sight.”
The younger officer scurried away.
Arik ground his teeth and reached for a butcher knife. Madeline grabbed his hand.
“What is it, Arik? Talk to me.”
“This is Dorset in 1348. For a few gold coins, that greedy bastard is going to let the French boats in. One of those boats launched the beginnings of the Black Death—the plague that wiped out more than half of England’s population. If I shove this knife down his throat right now, it will save half of England.”
25
Ciaran nearly bulldozed the door. He stormed into the room, but Arik and Madeline were nowhere to be found. Dinah knew the two had time traveled. Ciaran was calm compared to the time when Madeline had almost died and he’d had no hopes of saving her. Maybe it was because she was with Arik, and Arik had apparently made it back to this modern time before without fail. Ciaran paced the room even though he knew it wouldn’t help.
“One signal from her. That’s all I need. I could trace that.”
“Are you talking to me?” Dinah asked.
“I beg your pardon?”
“Were you talking to me?”
“I’m sorry, no. Well actually, yes. You were at Arik’s place. Did you see anything I could use to trace where he might have traveled to?”
“I might—”
Ciaran’s wrist unit beeped, and he engaged instantly.
“Your guest from New York has arrived, sir.”
“I’ll be right there.” Then he looked at Dinah. “That’s Jenny, Arik’s sister.”
“Right…sure. We can talk on the way,” she said and strode out of the room. In the corridor, she slammed into Cooper.
“Ouch. Watch where you’re going, lady.” He grinned, and his eyes sparked recognition as he saw Ciaran.
Before Cooper could say anything, Ciaran cut in, “I didn’t know you were Dinah’s friend. You bounced signals from Xiilok to her device, and you carried a package. Next time, before you travel the multiverse, take care that you don’t look like a multiversal terrorist. Fake muscles won’t be able to save you from my advanced weapons.”
Cooper ’s eyes widened. “Y-you’re Eudaizian? You’re—”
“Cooper,” Dinah warned.
Ciaran shoved his hands into his pockets, raising an eyebrow in challenge.
“I know weapons,” said Cooper. “You shot me with a Eudaizian gun. Without authorization, no one can operate their advanced weapons. And authorization works on individual IDs. Even spouses in Eudaiz don’t share IDs.” He moved closer.
“Stop it, Cooper,” Dinah warned again.
“No, let him,” Ciaran said. “I’d like to see how good of an investigator your partner is. You have three minutes, Cooper.”
Cooper grinned. “The gun you use fires nine round beams simultaneously at a speed faster than light. You can control the damage it inflicts by deducing the density of the beam and whether you would add other damaging sources to it. What you gave me was pure laser beams, the lowest dose. If you had combined it with your natural energy, I would have been dead. Most importantly, that gun is only available to people of councillor rank in Eudaiz.”
Ciaran smiled. “A level one hacker could extract that information from the multiversal database. A private investigator with a specialized license could gain access to the information at an even higher level. We’re leaving, Dinah.”
Cooper nodded. “Fair enough. You’re a high-ranking Eudaizian councillor. Based on your shot accuracy, you must be in the combat group. But to get my bounced signals, you also have to be comfortable with intelligent technology. So you also have to be in the brainy group. You’re an all-rounder, and that’s what propelled you to the top of the Eudaizian council.”
Ciaran shrugged, still walking away.
“The majority of the council, especially those at the Sciphil rank, have British and Irish origins,” Cooper continued.
Ciaran turned around. “What does Sciphil stand for?”
“Scientist Philosopher—derived from Earth English. Obviously! Just like Iilos tries to be like Ireland, the Eudaizian council tries to put as many memories of their time on Earth in their chamber as possible.”
Ciaran advanced toward Cooper. “What else do you know?”
Cooper stepped back but continued. “Native Eudaizians have light hair color. Even though they can change their profiles and appearance, your appearance isn’t a profile—it’s a natural look. And that makes you the one and only person I can think of—you’re Ciaran LeBlanc.” Cooper had backed into a wall and couldn’t move back any further. “You’re Ciaran LeBlanc, king of Eudaiz and one of the two Irish bloodlines running in the council.”
Ciaran pulled his knife and held it to Cooper’s throat. “And what’s the other bloodline?”
“The Flanagans. They’ve finished, of course. It dated back to the 1500s, Earth time. But they were in the council.”
“You’re a hacker. Who do you work for?” Ciaran growled, pressing his knife harder. A drop of blood from Cooper’s neck beaded at the tip of the knife.
Dinah darted in front of Cooper. “Cooper barely remembers his passcode, Ciaran. He’s an excellent investigator, but he’s harmless. Trust me. We’re freelance. We don’t work for anyone.”
“Information about the Flanagans is only available in one databank. No one of any caliber could hack it.”
“I didn’t hack anything.” Cooper’s voice was a bit shaky now seeing the tenacity in Ciaran’s eyes.
“Ciaran, he doesn’t have that skill. Hacking is my department,” Dinah said.
“You don’t read minds, do you, Dinah?” Ciaran asked.
“No.”
“So you don’t know what he really knows.”
“Trust me, technology doesn’t agree with me at all, and I didn’t have to hack. That’s public information.”
“What?” Ciaran snarled.
Cooper raised his hands. “I apologize. I’m sorry if that information is sensitive. I’ve always wanted to emigrate to Eudaiz, so I did my homework. The dynamics in your council and the bloodlines come from my deductions. I searched a public network for common surnames that originated from Earth and put that together with a few other bits and pieces. But all of that is free, public info from the network.”
“What network?”
“Toogle.”
“What?” Ciaran exclaimed.
“You Toogled this?” Dinah chuckled.
“Yes, you can find a lot of information there. You should try it sometime. But it takes a talented brain to make sense of the information. Otherwise, it’s just an ocean of mumbo jumbo.”
Ciaran withdrew his knife. “What is Toogle?”
Dinah said, “It’s like the Earth system they call the Internet. But this one is multiversal. It’s not a databank. It’s an open-sourced information portal.”
“Are there many networks like this available? Can you identify them?”
Cooper grinned. “There are a handful. I use them often. They’re my bread and butter. I can’t hack or use a formal databank like Dinah.”
Ciaran nodded. “Good. You can come with me.” He st
rode away.
Cooper grabbed Dinah’s elbow. “Is that a job offer I just heard?”
She chuckled. “In your dreams, Cooper,” she said and scurried after Ciaran.
26
Diana opened her eyes, feeling a bit groggy, and saw the back of the man who was holding her captive. He was tall and looked strong. But she was sure he had a weak spirit. No strong man would hold an old woman like her for ransom. She knew her son wouldn’t give in to whatever this man wanted. He must have drugged her. Coward! She felt embarrassed for his parents, whoever they may be.
She missed her son terribly—not just the twenty-something Arik, who was born to be free and wild, but the whole of him. He was her son, and she accepted him no matter how he had changed or what he had become. If only he had told her what trouble he was dealing with.
He loved music and travel. That was his life. She would never forget the day he’d come back after his trip to Europe. Something terrible had happened, and it had changed him. He’d abandoned his music and delved into serious studies of subjects she had never heard of. Then he’d moved to England. The fact that he turned into a serious academic didn’t rob Diana of her son, but the distance he had put between them did.
He made a new friend over there—Ciaran LeBlanc. She was glad he had someone he could confide in. Ciaran dropped in to visit her whenever he had business in New York. The strange thing was that there was a period of time when Ciaran had visited her more than her own son.
She loved Ciaran like a second son. But there was a secret corner in his mind she could never get to—one he wouldn’t let anyone get to. There was something dark and broken in him. She thought one day she would like to get both Arik and Ciaran together, clear the air, and get them to behave like her good sons. But the next thing she knew, Arik and Ciaran were fighting over a girl, and that ended their friendship. She hadn’t seen Ciaran since then.
The man turned around, and she instantly closed her eyes and pretended she was still unconscious. She heard him dial the phone and talk to someone in a language she didn’t know. The voice of this man was the weirdest thing she had ever heard in her life. It was hollow, and it echoed as if he was making noise rather than speaking.
She had heard that noise before. Yes, it was when Jenny had had friends over for her eighteenth birthday. They had been watching the classic Arnold Schwarzenegger movie, Predator. The slimy green-black alien in that movie made the same sound. But that was just a movie. In front of her was reality.
She heard his footsteps outside the room. She moved her arms, which were tied loosely behind her back. The man must have thought she was a defenseless old woman and tied her up for precaution only. She easily pulled her hands out of the rope. She hadn’t reached her sixtieth birthday yet, so she was effectively still a very proud fifty-something-year-old woman.
She had retired, but her years as an aikido sensei had not been wasted. She was still as fit, strong, and agile as she had been when she was younger. Arik had gotten his musical genes from his father, not from her. Now she was about to break the bones of those who were trying to hurt her son.
She lay still and waited. The kidnapper returned to the room. She opened her eyes and looked at him. She smiled. He didn’t smile back. How rude! She sat up from the floor, keeping her hands behind her back so he didn’t know she had broken loose from the rope.
He approached and crouched in front of her. As soon as he got within range, she swiveled her legs, stood up in a flash, and pivoted so that she stood behind him.
He jumped up to his feet and turned around. She pivoted again to position herself behind him. He was very tall and bulky around the shoulders, but that was no problem for her. The stronger he was, the heavier he was, and the harder he was going to fall if he attacked her. That was the key principle of aikido defense.
He turned around again to face her and moved his hand to his side to get his gun.
Now that was a situation she referred to as the last drop. When a coward cheated, there was nothing to redeem him in her eyes.
“Stop, I don’t want to have to hurt you,” Diana said.
He continued to reach for his gun. Before his hand touched the barrel, she whirled around to his side and grabbed a couple of his fingers.
She heard cracks, and he roared in pain. That was about right—the sound of broken bones in the fingers. She pulled his gun and pointed it at him as he was about to charge at her.
“This is your second warning. If you move, I’ll shoot.”
He ignored her warning.
She didn’t shoot. She didn’t like guns, and she didn’t need them. She lowered her body and topped him over her shoulders. He tipped over to the back of her, head first. His body weight became the lethal weapon she used against him. She heard another crack. This time, it was from his neck.
She stood over the dead man. “I would have given you a chance to apologize for kidnapping me, but I doubt you know any etiquette.” Then the dead man started to melt, and his body turned into a puddle of swimming worms right before her eyes. She yelped and jumped aside.
Soon there was nothing left but worms on the floor.
Figuring the cops wouldn’t be able to identify the man—or the thing—she decided to leave the remains. She saw the package that had been sent to Arik on the table. They must have snatched it at the same time they kidnapped her.
She grabbed it and left the room.
27
Dorset—England, 1348
Madeline pulled on Arik’s elbow to stop him from heading around the corner to confront the officer who had just received a bribe to allow the French ships into Dorset. He was tall and strong, and he slid out of her grip twice. He was so angry she could feel the rage ebbing out from him in waves. This was so much like Ciaran’s rage—primal and uncontrollable. But Ciaran had a way of redirecting the energy of his rage into his mind blades. The blades directed by his mind could dig up a hillside and kill hundreds. Arik didn’t seem to be able to control his anger.
“I have to kill him. I have to stop this! I can stop the Black Death,” Arik growled, pacing back and forth.
Madeline shook her head. “You’re talking about two different things. Yes, you can kill this man, Arik. But that doesn’t mean you’ll stop the plague. The plague is—it was—something that happened. It’s a fact we know. If you kill him, the plague will still happen, but by causes unknown to us. Or a pandemic worse than the plague might occur. Do you want to be responsible for that?”
“I time traveled for a reason. I was sent here for a reason, Madeline. Millions of people will die if I do nothing. True, something worse might happen if I stop this one. But that’s just speculation, isn’t it? What if whatever happens in place of the plague is a lesser threat?”
“To repeat your point, Arik, that’s speculation. So we either deal with fact, or we deal with speculation. I prefer to stick with the facts. We know what happened in the past, and we’ll find a solution to deal with it in the future. I don’t like the idea of us taking chances shooting at moving goal posts.”
“So you expect me to do nothing? I’m sure I’ve killed before. I’m sure that whenever I traveled to the past, I was sent to places at exactly the times when significant things were about to happen. I know I would have done something about it.”
“And then what?”
“When I come back to the present, I remember nothing. I think I forget for a reason.”
“Oh, so now you think you’re some kind of vigilante who can take matters into his own hands and doesn’t have to face the consequences of what he does?”
“For your information, I cop the consequences big time. Whenever I come back, I don’t remember what I did or where I went. But I always know I have blood on my hands, regardless of whose it is. You tell me—remembering or not remembering… which one is worse?”
He slammed his palms against the wall outside the trading station.
“You were alone before. But this time, you’re with me. And I
can remember.”
“How?”
“I’m only half human. Ciaran must have told you that.”
“I know now.”
“I’m a psychic, a mind reader, and a mind tracker. Now you know that, too. My mind doesn’t work the same way as yours. I do remember, and I’ll tell you when we get back whether you killed someone or changed the course of history. I’ll tell you if you’ve caused something worse to happen.”
“Really?”
“Yes. So do you think you can you stop yourself from killing this time?”
He nodded.
They heard a crash and then a cry from inside the station. Madeline peeked through a small gap in the wooden wall and saw the old officer grabbing a poor young female peasant’s breasts. The girl cried, but her cry was quickly muffled by the man’s hand.
“Easy. Don’t cry. I’ll pay you. You don’t have to go to the market with this stale bread today.”
“Please, sir…please let me go. The bread is freshly baked, sir. My mother made it. I need to take it to the market.”
The man brushed his fingers across the girl’s face. “You could be quite pretty if you cleaned your face.” He tore the front of the girl’s dress. The girl cried out and begged him to stop. A shadow moved past the hole through which Madeline was looking.
It was Arik.
He snatched the officer away from the girl and slammed his face into the wall.
“Go!” Arik said.
The girl didn’t wait for a second invitation. She hurried out of the room.
Madeline entered. “Don’t. You promised me.” She wasn’t sure using his name in front of this man was wise.
“Do you know who I am?” the officer said.
Arik lifted his face from the wall and slammed it forward again, breaking his nose. “Yes, you’re the broken-nosed officer!”
“I know people in high places. You don’t want to hurt me.”
“No, I don’t. I want to kill you.” He slammed the man’s face into the wall again. Broken teeth fell to the floor.
