by Bob Mayer
“It is late to be visiting a tomb.”
Doc slowly turned to face the man who’d spoken.
“I am Lieutenant General Serge of the Russian Federation.” He was in dress uniform; the epaulets on his greatcoat had two stars, and the bill of his military cap was decorated with the “scrambled eggs” indicating a senior officer. He waited for Doc to respond, and when he didn’t, asked, “And you are...?”
“I am Professor—”
“No, no, no.” General Serge smiled and shook his head. “It is a good cover story. The passport you use is even real. But you and I know, you are not the man you pretend to be.” He pointed at the pages in Doc’s hand. “May I?”
Doc hesitated.
The General seemed disappointed. “I have soldiers outside. I prefer to be civil.”
“I’m an American citizen who—”
“You are a secret agent,” Serge said. “I could say you were here to spy. Our President is not fond of American spies. Perhaps you’ve read that in the papers.”
“I’m not here—”
“To spy.” General Serge nodded. “I know. You are here to pay your respects. The papers, please.”
Doc handed them over. He waited while the Russian read them.
“Ah,” Serge said when he was done. “So sad. Anastasia, of course?”
“Yes.”
“Should I ask how you have these? And why the pages seem fresh, not a century old?”
Doc had no answer that would make sense to the General.
In that, he was mistaken.
“I did not expect an immediate answer to that. How about this: Did you meet my brother in your journeys?”
Doc blinked. “Excuse me?”
“Did you meet Major Alexie Serge? From the Vympel Group of Duga.”
Doc took a step back in surprise.
“I take that as an affirmative. Is he well?”
Doc knew it was pointless to lie any further. “No.”
“I suspected as much,” Serge said. “They were all badly irradiated by Chernobyl. Then they disappeared. In time. No?” He did not wait for an answer to his negative inquiry. “Where did you meet him?”
“I can’t tell you that,” Doc said. “I was treating him when he died. He wasn’t in pain.”
“That is good,” General Serge said. “But did you kill him?”
“No. He died of the radiation.”
“It took a long time,” Serge said. “Or did it? That is an interesting question which I’m sure you will not answer. I know, and you know, that he was from our Russian Time Patrol. They were irradiated when Chernobyl went critical, and then disappeared. That is a long while ago as we measure time. We have not reconstituted the Patrol since we no longer have the technology, as it disappeared with them. I assume your American Time Patrol still has the technology. That is how you have this.” He waved the papers from Anastasia’s diary.
Doc knew he’d made a big mistake coming here. Too late, of course. He could hear Nada listing all the mistakes he’d made.
It was a long list.
General Serge indicated the papers again. “This is the property of the Russian Federation. Of the Russian people. You will agree?”
It really wasn’t a question, but Doc nodded anyway.
Serge read the last page aloud: “‘‘When she died, she was only sixteen. There was a boy somewhere who loved her, without ever having met her. But he knew her very well. He would never be able to tell her that he loved her, because now she was dead. But he thought, and she thought, that in another life, whenever that will be, that they might meet and fill each other’s heart. Goodbye. Do not forget us’.’” He shook his head. “So sad. And so prescient.” General Serge slid the pages from Anastasia’s diary into his coat. “Did you see them die?”
“No.”
“But you saw them?”
Rule one of Time Patrol seemed rather thin right now, given that the Russian had brought it up first. “I saw them.”
“I am curious. What was your mission?”
“To make sure history remained the same. That is always our mission.”
“And what was this Shadow, which my brother spoke of, trying to change in history?”
“Save the Tsar.”
General Serge snorted. “An impossible task. Nicholas was doomed from the start. He had not the strength to rule Russia, and Alexei would never have made it to adulthood. The monarchy was doomed. A stupid plan.”
If that was actually the plan, Doc thought, going back to his wonderings about Rasputin and the Shadow’s possible influence.
Serge reached out then tapped Doc on the chest with a powerful finger. “I want you to take a message to Mister Dane. Tell him the Russian Federation is ready to take our place once more in the defense of humanity. In the defense of our timeline.”
Doc remembered his teammates tracking down Colonel Serge and his men in the Space Between. They’d been reaping people for the necessary body parts to stay alive, one step ahead of the radiation they’d absorbed when the Shadow opened a Gate into Chernobyl. But in doing so, they were affecting the timeline, causing ripples. They had to be stopped. And were. Serge continued. “We know you have managed to finally shut the Rifts.”
Doc nodded. “The Nightstalkers did that.”
“And now you Nightstalkers are Time Patrol. Ever wonder what happened to the Time Patrol team before you? The American team?”
“I don’t know,” Doc said.
Serge shrugged. “We know you’ve recruited a graduate student from the University of North Carolina. And a young girl. What is special about this young girl that you allow her on your most secret team?”
“She was just there in North Carolina,” Doc lied. There was also the fact that he couldn’t explain what was special about Scout. He didn’t quite buy into the whole ‘“Sight”‘ thing, but on the other hand, there was something very different about her.
“I don’t believe you,” Serge said. “We have learned here that certain people have special talents. You tell Dane we have found some people he would be interested in. Most curiously, one of them is--” he paused—“let us say special also.” Then he abruptly shifted directions. “One of your people was just running some computer simulations in New York City. Very complex. We couldn’t get access to all of what he was doing, but it appears the threat from the Shadow is greater than ever. Dane will need our help.” General Serge stepped up beside Doc then slipped an arm around his shoulder. “I miss my brother. He was a hero of Russia. A hero of the world. As are you, my friend. You will take my message, no?”
“I will.”
“Good. Good.” Serge was gently escorting Doc to the door. “My men will take you to the airport and—”
Doc’s satphone picked this awkward moment: Send Lawyers, Guns and Money.
Austin, Texas
“Beloved son,” Mac read, coming up behind the old man sitting in a folding chair in front of a tombstone.
The man was half-asleep, more half-drunk, with an empty bottle of scotch on the perfectly manicured grass next to the chair.
Mac held up a six-pack of Pearl beer. “Why you drinking the hard stuff, Dad? Not our bread and butter?”
Mac’s father shook his head, swirling the alcohol around inside his brain, trying to get a glimpse of reality.
“Beloved son,” Mac repeated, pointing to the inscription at the top of the tombstone. Then he pulled a beer off the plastic holder and tossed it to his dad, who fumbled it, dropping the beer.
“Scotty wouldn’t have approved of that, Dad. Dropping a pass, dropping a beer.” Mac picked it up. He popped the top, spraying both of them as it exploded. He handed what remained to his father, then opened one for himself. He squatted next to the chair.
“Miss me, Dad?”
“What do you want?”
“Ah, hell, Dad, I ain’t wanted a dang thing in a long, long time. I left, remember? Never asked you for nothing.” He took a deep drink out of the can, grim
aced, and then put it down on the grass. “Not as good as I remember. I’m kind of tired of drinking, anyway. You can have the rest.”
“Get the hell out of here.”
“I will,” Mac said. “Don’t worry. I will. Mom said you were out here. Said you come every day. She didn’t want to talk to me, either. Didn’t even open the door. Like I had some sort of disease.” Mac laughed. “Now that’s funny, considering where I just was. I stopped a disease from killing a whole bunch of people. Millions. Hell, Dad, you wouldn’t even be here if I hadn’t done what I done. Strange how things work. Course if you weren’t here, I wouldn’t have ever been born and then, well, that does get a person’s head spinning, don’t it, Dad?”
His father was sobering up, his bloodshot eyes narrowing. “You weren’t at the funeral. You have no right to be here now.”
“You didn’t want me at the funeral.” Mac stood. “You told me that in no uncertain terms. Don’t you remember?”
By the befuddled look on the old man’s face, Mac knew his father couldn’t remember. But it didn’t matter. It had happened when it happened. There were some things you just ’couldn’t take back.
“That’s good you don’t remember, Dad. Because that means you won’t remember what I’m telling you now.” Mac leaned over, close to his father. “I know you won’t believe me, but it’s true. Not long ago, I was given a choice. A true choice. Whether I would go back in time and prevent Scotty’s accident, or help a lot of other people. Strangers.” He pointed at the tombstone. “You can see the choice I made. You might think that was wrong, but I know it was right. You want to know why? Because Scotty was going to grow up and be just like you. A no good sonofabitch. He had a black heart, just like you.”
“Why, you—” Mac’s father struggled to his feet, knocking the chair over in the process. He was too inebriated to see the dark light dancing in Mac’s eyes, the lust of anticipation for the confrontation.
Mac’s satphone rang: Send Lawyers, Guns and Money.
Mac laughed. “Damn, Dad. You’re not only no-good, you’re damn lucky.” He turned then walked away.
The Possibility Palace, Headquarters Time Patrol
Where? Can’t Tell You. When? Can’t Tell You.
“‘‘I will conclude my narrative by simply recording my gratitude, heartfelt and inexpressible, to God, and to many of my fellow-men, for the vast improvement in my condition, both physical and mental; for the great degree of comfort with which I am surrounded; for the good I have been enabled to effect; for the light which has risen upon me; for the religious privileges I enjoy, and the religious hopes I am permitted to cherish; for the prospects opening to my children, so different from what they might have been; and, finally, for the cheering expectation of benefiting not only the present, but many future generations of my race.’”
“An unbelievable story,” Edith Frobish commented when Eagle finished reading.
She was sitting in a plastic chair at the side of Eagle’s hospital bed. His left shoulder was heavily bandaged, and he held the Kindle in his right hand. A trip to the Space Between, and surgery by one of Amelia Earhart’s people using a Valkyrie suit and Atlantean technology, gave a prognosis of a full and speedy recovery. While the rest of the team had dispersed back to their present for a little off time after the Ides mission, somehow it had fallen upon Edith to be the one to take care of Eagle. She’d even escorted him, along with Sin Fen as guide, into the Space Between, her first journey there.
The room they were in was on the outer rim of the Possibility Palace, with a view to the world outside through a large bay window. It was early morning and raining, water pelting down onto the grasslands that stretched into the distance. There were mountains on the horizon, but the low clouds precluded seeing them at the moment.
Eagle didn’t know when or where the Possibility Palace was located, but the suspicion was very far in the past, since time traveling into the future wasn’t possible.
“Josiah Henson was a slave for forty-one years,” Eagle said, “and a free man for fifty-three.” And Eagle had insured Henson would be born and write the book he’d just quoted, a book published in 1849, and on which Uncle Tom’s Cabin would be based in 1852. But the price had been high: convincing Henson’s mother to return to slavery in order to conceive and bear a child into slavery.
Eagle could tell that he didn’t have Edith’s complete attention; she was worried about what she’d witnessed in the Met. “Dane will take action when he knows what to do. They haven’t pinpointed the date being attacked yet.”
“Oh!” Edith’s face flushed red. “I’m so sorry. Really, I am. I know you almost gave your life to make that book a reality.”
“It was a reality,” Eagle said. “I made sure the reality didn’t change.”
Edith was even more flustered. “You’re right, of course. I’m sorry. I’m just having a hard time waiting.”
“‘Hurry up and wait’ was pretty much a motto in the regular Army,” Eagle said.
“But the art is disappearing!”
“Only to you,” Eagle said.
“And Ivar.”
“Okay. And Ivar. In fact, only to Time Patrol agents. I’ve been thinking about that. How we all noticed Cleopatra’s Needle was different, but no one else could see it. I think it has to do with the fact that traveling through the Gates, traveling in time, makes us different. Skews our perception of reality. We can see possibilities in time that are caused by ripples before they become permanent.”
“What if it is lost forever?”
“We lost Kirk when we first went into the cavern containing the HUB below the Met,” Eagle reminded her. “But he’s alive now. With his family, back in Arkansas. The timeline can be reset. Ripples can be smoothed out. Once Dane and the Analysts figure out what’s causing the art to fade out, what date and which years are being attacked, we’ll fix it.”
“It’s so strange, though.” Edith got up and began pacing back and forth. “The fading isn’t era-specific. It’s across the spectrum. Paintings, sculptures, artifacts. All disappearing. Some faster, some slower. But there’s no way to pinpoint a break point in the timeline. The start of the ripple. We’ve always been able to do that before.”
“Then think differently,” Eagle said.
She continued back and forth.
“Edith.”
She stopped pacing.
“Come here,” Eagle said, beckoning from the hospital bed.
She came over and stood next to him.
Eagle tapped the side of his head. “We have to think differently if this is something you’ve never seen before. How would you end all art?”
Edith was shocked at him evening mentioning that possibility. “To end something so big, you’d have to stop it at the beginning.”
“And when was the beginning of art?” Eagle asked.
Edith spread her hands. “No one knows that. Art is, well, it’s the way humans express our creativity. Our imagination. It’s usually visual, but it can also be sensual in terms of touching a sculpture, or auditory, in terms of music. The key is that we are expressing something inside of ourselves to others in a way that touches us emotionally. Dance is art. Film.”
“But how did it start?” Eagle pressed.
“No one knows,” Edith repeated. “We just assume art evolved. As mankind evolved. Diffusionist theory.”
“Which means what?”
“It spread from multiple sources.”
“All at once?”
“Over time,” Edith said.
“But what if art started in one place, at one time, with one person?” Eagle asked. “A single point in evolution.”
Edith was so startled by the idea, she sat down on the edge of Eagle’s bed. “But even if one person was the first, others would eventually have come up with the concept. The desire to put something inside their minds out there in a way to get others to feel what they felt.”
“True,” Eagle agreed. “But there is always a first.
And if the first is delayed, perhaps, that could cause a big enough shift that everything afterward is affected. That could explain what’s happening. Remember, the Shadow tried to stop the first Internet message. That didn’t mean there wouldn’t have been another Internet message, maybe even the next day, but perhaps the true first is important.”
Edith reached out to his good hand then took it. “It’s scary, isn’t it? I’m not sure I ever really appreciated what we do here until I went with you to the Space Between. Met Amelia Earhart, even if she’s not from our timeline. And now, the thing I was most afraid of, the art disappearing, is happening. And I realize how small my fear was. Is.”
“Most of us have small fears,” Eagle said. “The ability to see—”
Edith’s satphone played: Moon River.
Eagle looked at Edith. “Breakfast at Tiffany’s? Is that your version of a Zevon?”
Edith stood. “I’m afraid so.”
Then Eagle’s phone Zevoned Lawyers, Guns and Money.
Ravenna, Italy
“This is the spot,” Roland said.
Neeley didn’t ask if he were sure, despite a millennia and a half passing since Roland had buried the two men. He wouldn’t have said it if he weren’t sure. Men like Roland didn’t deal in guesses; nor did women like Neeley.
They were in the middle of a field on the outskirts of Ravenna, on the northeast coast of Italy. The dirt had recently been plowed, and they stood on top of a furrow.
Roland shrugged off a backpack then opened it. He removed a six-pack of bottled beer, a leather pouch that jingled, and then a hand trowel. He dug a hole, deep enough to avoid being plowed up during the next crop cycle. He opened the leather pouch and emptied the ancient coins into the hole.
“What you would have won, Eric,” Roland said. He pushed the dirt back into place.
Then he grabbed two beers, handing one to Neeley. He opened another then poured it on top of the fresh dirt. When it was empty, he put it back into the cardboard carrier. He opened a fourth beer.
“To fallen comrades,” Roland said.
