“You always do, Tobias.” Smoke curled up from the cigar clasped in one hand, circling the containment field in lazy spirals. The edges of it rippled when he shifted in his chair. The tone was still mild, but it sounded like a threat.
Before he’d been “acquired,” he’d never taken a life he could save. He’d been a soldier. He walked, he talked, he dealt death, but he valued life. The master, he valued the lives that served him, deleted those that didn’t. He liked killing. He liked dealing death. If death had a face, then this man was it. Not that he cared much for those who did serve him.
His other hand rested lightly on the control panel that delivered the pain and the death, his fingers caressing one button, then the other, as if he couldn’t decide which would please him the most. Smith felt the master’s hunger, his need to inflict something, but Smith also felt his control. If he needed Smith, then it would be pain. If he didn’t, he would die soon. Neither would be pleasant. Deletion was prolonged and agonizing, based on the ones he’d observed.
The master liked an audience almost as much as liked dishing death.
He should want death, but it wasn’t the control device in his head that fueled his longing to live. The will to survive could trump common sense. He knew this, had seen men fight to live against all odds and logic. He didn’t want to live. He wanted to live long enough to find a way to kill the master. That he couldn’t call him anything other than master, made him want it more.
Somewhere the master had a life, a name, but it wasn’t known here when one of them could be captured, or break free of the controls. Instead, Smith memorized the face, so he’d know him if he found him somewhere in time.
Tall, cadaverous, his small movements were contained, and almost graceful, but when he stood, one saw he was ill formed, graceless. A compelling gaze looked out of a sad, sunken face. They pulled the unwary in. At first Smith had been fooled by the eyes, almost fooled into believing the bland, reasonable voice. His smile had some charm to it, if you didn’t look at his eyes, or realize he only smiled when inflicting pain. If he had a heart, it was dark and corroded.
He frowned slightly. “You say there wasn’t a time pause?”
Smith didn’t hesitate. “No.”
Time pausing authority came and went in the Service, so he didn’t see how it helped.
“Did you notice anything else about the tracker?”
Smith searched his memory, sweat beading across his forehead. “He stumbled when he landed. Messed with his aim.” Lucky for him. It missed his head by inches. He frowned, replaying the scene. “The machine was shaking everything. I had trouble staying on my feet.”
Gonna need some cover, Chewie.
“One of them closed the machine. I fired on it, but it flashed out.”
“Someone was inside. Someone who mattered to the time stream? Possible. The guestbook I showed you is still fluxing. This team could be why.” The master straightened, tapping ash into a tray. The field was cloudy with smoke now. “Nothing of the incident has popped up in the historical record.”
Smith felt ice track down his back.
“Someone is very good at hiding their tracks.” He lifted the cigar and inhaled, then exhaled a stream of smoke. “They’re watching for you.”
Smith knew better than to relax. This might be his death sentence.
“We’ll need to retrieve the ’tons or—” he paused to inhale smoke and exhale it, before continuing. “Perhaps we’ll try a more direct approach. Secure the machine at the source. Then your visit will have never happened.”
Smith blinked. He could think of several protests, but he kept them to himself. Protests weren’t popular with the master.
“It increases the uncertainty,” the master said, as if Smith had protested. “A pity Twitchet became so suspicious of you there at the end. But if it doesn’t work as advertised, it can serve another purpose.”
Smith got it then. “Bait.”
“And that is why I keep you, Tobias. You are one of my more clever acquisitions.”
As always, there was no warning. Tobias didn’t see the finger applied to the button, but he felt the result. He dropped to his knees, a grunt jerked out before he could grit his teeth.
“So strong, too.” The pain stopped as abruptly as it began. “Just don’t be too clever, my friend. I’d miss you.”
* * * *
The only thing Emily loved more than steam engines were alien conspiracy theories. She could not believe it was Roswell out there. She’d hoped to get to Roswell one day, and here she was and Robert just stood there staring off into space. Of course thinking had its place when weird things were happening, but this was Roswell.
“There’s a museum in town.” Emily felt herself starting to bounce, so she stopped, though it wasn’t easy. She wasn’t in the guidance counselor’s office trying to explain why she wouldn’t be going to college, she reminded herself. She was outside Roswell with the cutest crazy geek on the planet. “We could go see it. When it gets light.”
“I don’t think we should leave the machine unmanned.”
He was so cute when he got all serious and professor-ish. “The bug has wheels. I’ll bet we could drive there.” She didn’t bounce, but she did vibrate in place. She could tell he wasn’t wild about that either. Okay, so the machine was old to be driving. She could be flexible while she worked on changing his mind. “Then let’s go out and look at the stars over Roswell.” She waved her hands around a bit, because she talked with her hands when she was jazzed and she was so jazzed. “Roswell. Roswell sky. Roswell ground. Roswell air. Roswell cool in every direction.” She threw in a hopeful look because it had worked on him already today.
He thought for a few seconds. “What are the gauges doing?”
She spun on her heels and studied them without seeing them. All she could see was Roswell, even though she couldn’t see it. “What gauges do. Gauging stuff.” She shot him a mischievous look over her shoulder and was rewarded with a brief smile. He should charge a fee for those puppies. He stepped in next to her, the smile still twitching the edges of his mouth. Who knew twitching could be so sexy? She wanted to look at him, but she could accept that what the gauges were gauging could impact their excursion. Based on the peek out the periscope they’d landed somewhere in the desert, though she couldn’t figure out how it got to be night. It had been around ten in the morning before her world went weirder than usual. With a casual that didn’t feel casual, she propped her elbow on his shoulder and leaned in, studying the gauges with the part of her brain not focused on the warmth seeping into her from the contact, while she inhaled something that was, predictably, yummy. He smelled like what he was: a sweet, smart geek, though she was glad she didn’t have to explain how smart smelled. That would be why it took her well into a minute to realize the gauges weren’t doing anything.
No grumbling to send a tremor through the metal. Not even a spiteful hiss of steam. It seemed the machine had flat lined.
“Why aren’t the gauges moving?” He tapped one of them with his finger, as if to nudge the needle back into movement.
He thought she knew? Oh my darling and a double sigh. An odd something tickled her brain, but since that wasn’t possible and the question was a real one, she proffered, “Maybe it only does its thing when the Emergency Absquatulation Device is on. Or it’s out of juice.”
His chin lifted, like hound scenting prey. “We should go outside.”
She didn’t say why didn’t I think of that because even though rhetorical, it was a question. If one inched up to that line, one could cross it, if one weren’t careful. And one was always careful. She looked at her surroundings and amended that to: one was always careful with questions. Apparently one was freaking casual about other things.
She followed him into the parlor, a bit frustrated when he turned toward the engine room, though she did understand why. Gauges only told part of the story. The Abrams ball was part of it, too. He touched the door with the tip of a finger,
checking it for heat, before opening the hatch with a decided air of caution.
Emily peered past him at the silent steam engine. It shouldn’t have been able to get from steamed to zero so fast. Steam pressure built. Steam pressure had to be released. Of course, jumping a lot of miles would release a lot of pressure, but all the way to zero? Cool air swirled out the open hatch. She wished she’d watched the gauges during the trip. She had been distracted by getting pulled and stretched and all those lights…she had to stand on tip toes to see the Abrams ball. It looked…duller than before. Maybe it was out of juice. Robert angled his head, studying the walls, so Emily strained to see as much as she could. The scorch marks appeared unchanged. That was unexpected. Maybe. Scorches implied heat, but the room was close to refrigerator cold now. It had been hot, now it was cold. Light and now it was dark. It was odd and should be scary, and it was, but scary was balanced with a trip in the bug to Roswell with Robert-oh-my-darling. Might be shallow, but who said everything had to be deep or complicated?
“Could the hits we took during the firefight have depleted the power supply?” Robert’s voice was a murmur likely meant for him and not her. Because he had to know she didn’t know. This close she could feel him thinking. Too bad she couldn’t hear his thoughts. Unless he wasn’t thinking about her, which he probably wasn’t, if she judged him by his questions so maybe she didn’t want to hear his thoughts.
She sighed.
He turned, the movement fast enough to catch her out, putting them face to face and almost chest to chest, if one counted the height difference, which one had to so it was more like her chin to his chest. Not that one minded that. She felt torn. She wasn’t used to having enough options to feel torn. She wanted another kiss, but she also wanted outside. His hands settled on her shoulders, and outside became less interesting, except he used them to shift her to the side, so he could get back into the hall. It seemed she’d had the illusion of choice, not actual choice.
Double sigh. She followed him out—stopping to scoop up her coat where it had lodged under a weird machine—and following him was, you know, inspiring. It warmed her a bit, but not so much she didn’t need her coat again as the chill from the engine room followed them into the parlor.
He got the hatch opened while she was still admiring his tush and donning her coat. She took pride in her ability to multitask.
The night was dark, the moon either waning or ready to show. Stars winked against velvet blue. Kind of looked like a postcard. Romantic if the guy had been heading toward her instead of away. Robert eased onto the first step as if he thought the machine would up and leave him. Then he sort of braced and dropped onto the ground. The sky didn’t fall. He didn’t vanish. The bug didn’t give a twitch. She dug in a pocket—she had a lot of them, all with something in them—extracted a flashlight, and followed him out. She flicked on the light, its narrow beam stabbing into the dark. Emily directed it down first, identifying cacti locations. This was the desert.
“What don’t you have in your pockets?” His tone was less professor and more guy.
“The kitchen sink.” She handed him the light, taking a position on his five o’clock, getting a grip on his tee shirt—needed to leave one hand free to, you know, fight off anything that jumped out of the dark. Cacti weren’t the only things to worry about. From the bug, it had looked romantic. Out in the night, it kind of edged into horror category, not helped by the not-distant-enough wail of a coyote.
He lifted the beam, sending it through a circuit starting with the bug and ending back at the bug, about chest high, almost as if he was looking for someone. Then he shone it at the ground, this survey slower, but still with a searching aspect. The beam passed something white, paused and then tracked back. It took Emily about thirty seconds to realize what it was. Thirty more seconds to still the sound that wanted to crawl out her throat at the sight of the human skull partially buried in the ground.
* * * *
The energy trail left by the Constilinium traces branched several times as the stream took Ashe closer and closer to Earth—it spun through the stream, a huge blue and white sphere, its track, land and seas constantly in motion. Though the track multiplied the closer she got, it still bent consistently in one direction. Several times she passed through eddies that felt off, like spoiled food. Whoever was messing with time had included Earth in the messing—though, and this troubled her the most—which was interference and which was time trying to heal? When she’d flashed into the fracas with Smith, she’d thought she felt a paradox tremor. Those happened when a tracker came close to people or events important to their future. If it had been a tremor, it had been slight, though it and/or the machine’s shaking had been just long enough to ruin her shot at Smith. She needed to find out who had been there, something they couldn’t find out while off the outpost and since they couldn’t go back…this left them back at fubar.
Smith could be the source of the tremor.
I am aware of that. She frowned. Was there someone he didn’t want her to track who had been there? Can you keep me on my feet when we catch up with him, if he is the problem?
A nanite could fix a lot of human ailments, but she didn’t know what he could do in the midst of a paradox.
I can protect you from most of the effects. He seemed reluctant to admit it, but it was need to know.
You’ve done it in the past.
On the job training. His tone edged into wry and well into cryptic, something starting to annoy.
Still, she shouldn’t let it distract her, not when the stream could be mined with traps—the object came at her from her three o’clock, a brief shadow in her peripheral vision before the impact.
* * * *
Robert was impressed she only squeaked at the sight of the human skull. He’d wanted to scream like a girl—though he was glad he hadn’t. Be embarrassing if the girl didn’t and he did. He felt concurrence from the peeps. It was possible she hadn’t realized this could be her uncle, so perhaps that helped her keep the scream down to a squeak.
With Emily tight on his six, he approached the skull, making a slow pass over the area with the light. No question it was human. Was this, could this be what remained of Emelius Twitchet? Emily bumped into his back when he stopped. She followed him into a crouch, though she had to adjust her position against his back. He liked having her pressed in close against him. She was warm and…quite wonderful.
Don’t go all mushy on us, dude.
Dude? For a second his eyes almost twitched, but he didn’t have time to figure out what was going on with the peeps. He moved the flashlight to his left hand and brushed at the soil where the rest of the body should be. The ribs showed up an inch or two under the baked earth and near the lower right rib, he uncovered a dirt-crusted piece of jewelry, a timepiece, an old pocket watch, he realized.
He felt Emily’s questions, beating in the air like the insects attracted to the light, but she didn’t ask. Maybe she never would. He held up the pocket watch, rubbing the dirt off the main body and the chain links. He had to hand the light to Emily to work the latch. It popped open. The watch had stopped working, but even in the uncertain light he could read the inscription:
To Emelius from your loving sisters. 1890.
FOURTEEN
Neither one of them said anything, just retreated to the machine, to the parlor. Robert lowered and turned on the chandelier, surprised, and yet not, when it worked, despite the dead engine. It helped remove the gloom of the half-light that he assumed was Twitchet’s idea of emergency level. Emily sat on the chair he’d lowered for her, her feet planted, her knees together and her clasped hands resting on those knees, though he had the impression she huddled in her long coat, despite the ultra straight shoulders. Several times it looked as if she might speak, but she didn’t. He knew why. All roads led to questions and she didn’t do questions. Robert wanted to say something that would make it better, but even the peeps didn’t know what that something would be. He cleared his throa
t and managed, “Are you all right?”
Her head turned his direction, not fast, but not slow. Her nod was at the same pace. Her turn to clear her throat. “I knew he was dead, because, hello, a hundred plus years, but…I had theories about where he went. None of them included Roswell.” Her hand lifted in an ill-defined gesture. “If he’d gone cruising in the 40’s instead of 1890’s I’d almost blame him…” Her voice trailed off.
Robert felt a tensing, sourcing from instincts not entirely his. “Blame him for what?”
“Roswell. The crash.”
Funny how all thought roads seemed to lead to aliens of one sort or another. He’d been mulling the aliens when he latched onto the thought thread that Twitchet might be waiting outside. Except the machine was too late. How far too late, he wondered, wishing Twitchet’s crazy GPS tracked more than where. He remembered his cell and extracted it, but neither date nor time had updated, probably because of the “no service” notification where the bars were supposed to be. The only thing he knew for sure, they weren’t in 1894. That was good news for them, since the machine appeared to have died, though not good for Twitchet, who was dead. Had he hoped for a better outcome? Time is persistent. Was Twitchet supposed to be dead, supposed to be missing in the past? Not a forensic expert, he didn’t know how to estimate how long he’d been there. It could be any time between 1894 and 2010. Never assume. Okay, he assumed they were somewhere between those two dates. Couldn’t be earlier, because Twitchet couldn’t die before he lived, could he? That thought almost gave him a headache, so he pushed past it. The homing beacon brought the device to Wyoming. He could postulate, with some confidence, that the Individual Discovery Velocipediator brought the bug here with the anomaly playing spoiler on the when. He examined the hypothesis and liked it. The transmogrification machine sent the device through space, but something was propelling it through time. Something? Or the anomaly? Or the anomaly impacting the machine? His instincts told him that the next stop would have been Twitchet’s warehouse, had the power not run down, but that didn’t tell him when it would have arrived there.
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