Mym turns away and brushes something from her arm. “Maybe. I don’t know what he really feels. He doesn’t like to talk about that very much. I just know that this research is important to him. It’s personal. He’s been working on it ever since I was born. Obsessing even. It’s not something he would hand over to the academy without good reason.” I pull the globe of green fluid out of my bag and balance it on my outstretched hand. She touches it tentatively. “Now it’s part of a chronothon.”
“What do you want me to do?” I ask. “I don’t have to give this to them. We can make a new plan. You’ve been evading Traus and the committee so far. I could go with you. We could—”
“No. I shouldn’t even be near you right now. We’ve already gotten too close. I don’t know what I was thinking.” She walks toward the edge of the building where she stares at the illuminated skyline around us. She removes her degravitizer and a cube shaped anchor from her pocket and sets to work with them. When she’s finished she stands back up, but lets the little cube roll around her fingers.
I step closer to the edge than I want to. “Mym. I don’t want to lose you.”
She looks back, her silhouette outlined against the bright lights of the city. She watches me, reading my face. “I don’t want to lose you either.”
I slip the gravitan stabilizer back into my bag, take another step until I’m even with her, and stare out over the depths of the city below us. I let my fingertips find hers in the darkness, and we stay that way for a little, letting the wind blow between us.
When Mym finally speaks, it’s barely audible. “I don’t know where they’re sending you next.”
“You can’t track Traus?”
She shakes her head. “Wherever he went after this, it’s not on the Grid or any timestream chart I’ve seen. It could be a fringe stream somewhere or a new stream that hasn’t been documented. Wherever it is, it’s too far for me to follow you.”
“Will you be safe? Will Traus be able to sneak up on you when he comes back?”
“Unless he found a way to remove the trace, he doesn’t come back from wherever he went. I don’t know what’s going to happen, but I have this feeling like it’s something big. Something awful. I have this fear that I’m not going to see you again and I can’t shake it.”
“So I don’t go. We make a run for it.”
Mym looks at the bag hanging across my shoulder and then up to me. “I wouldn’t know how to run from this. Whatever that thing is they’re having you bring them, it has something to do with Dad, and if they have something planned concerning him, it involves me, too. We can’t run without knowing what that is.”
I shift my feet and put my hands into my pockets. “So it’s on me then.”
Mym studies me from under her hood. “Do you think I’m selfish? Asking you to go through with this? I was the one who told you not to, and now I’m the one who needs you to finish it.”
I look at the stars blinking and fading with the passing clouds. “No. It’s not selfish to fight for the people you love. Sometimes you have to make sacrifices.”
Mym rests her hand on my arm. “Come back to me. Don’t let them win this.” She slides her hand down my forearm till she can lace her fingers around mine. “We still have a lunch date in New York remember? You promised me calzones and roller disco.”
I smile at this. “I was kind of hoping you forgot about that last part.”
“A promise is a promise.”
“I’ll make it back then.” I reach up and lift the veil from her face till just her chin and the tip of her nose are showing. I press my lips to hers and hold her against me. When she lets go and steps back, she’s smiling. I reach out and tug the veil back into place. “How will I find you?”
Mym has her chronometer in her hand. She reaches into her pocket with her free hand and holds something out to me. I take the metallic disk from her and study the string of numbers imprinted on one side. “If you find anyone with a tachyon pulse transmitter, use those time coordinates to try to call me. I’m going to see what else I can find out about why the academy is dealing with gravitans. Try to reach me with the TPT. If that doesn’t work, just come home. I’ll be waiting for you.”
A particularly strong gust of wind makes me squint, and when I reopen my eyes, Mym is gone.
23
“There are reasons we were born when we were. I won’t cite cosmic significance or divine reasoning because I’m a scientist and I shy away from the abstract, but I won’t deny that a time traveler can only cease to be a traveler in their home time. The essence of us knows to when we belong.”–Journal of Dr. Harold Quickly, 2008
I curse the wind that threatens to abscond with Abe’s chronometer schematics when I open his tool kit. I stuff the instructions into my pocket to keep them safe and locate the tiny screwdriver I need to get Mym’s magnetic anchor apart. Once the anchor is in a dozen tiny pieces, I walk the perimeter of the roof, flinging them over the edge. I leave the last piece in a bird’s nest I find under the eaves of the stairwell exit for good measure.
If anyone catches up with Mym, it won’t be because of me.
Once I’m sure Mym’s evidence is disposed of, I search for a place to hide the objective while I go back for Viznir. An air vent on the side of the stairwell is roughly the same size, so I stuff the gravitan stabilizer inside and take care to screw the vent cover back down. I do a few calculations in the back of Dr. Quickly’s journal, then set my chronometer for 12:36 local time. Tucket answers my call immediately once I’m back.
“Let me talk to Viznir,” I stare into the tablet and Tucket does something that causes Viznir to show up too.
Viznir wastes no time. “Did you get it?”
“Yeah, but it’s on the roof later tonight. We need to get it down somehow.”
Viznir frowns. “Is it fragile?”
“I think a hundred and fifty story fall would probably put a good dent in it. I can find something else to throw down if you want an anchor to get up here.”
“You’re on top now?”
“Unfortunately.”
“How did you get up there?” Tucket asks.
“I’ll explain later. Let’s just concentrate on getting this thing down.”
The process takes longer than I had hoped. It takes Tucket and Viznir six attempts to locate and retrieve any of the things I attempt to lob off the roof to use as anchors, as most of them either drift into the river or land on some indiscernible balcony below. Finally a piece of air conditioner tubing lands in the plaza where they can see it and Viznir makes it up to the roof. I lie about when I first climbed to the roof and take Viznir to a time of night after Mym has departed. Tucket, not having achieved time traveler status, is obligated to wait the ten hours for our return but makes excellent use of the time to locate us a sort of anti-gravity jacket that is for use on toddlers who fall down a lot, and it turns out to be the perfect means of slowing the descent of the gravitan stabilizer.
The transfer of the jacket to the top of the roof is managed by creative use of a helium party balloon and some high-test fishing line. Getting the helium balloon all the way up the building in the wind is a feat that requires Tucket to navigate most of the plaza at the far end of the string, but since it is by now the middle of the night, hardly anyone is around to notice. Those who do, fail to comment on the man and his balloon, though from Tucket’s account, one woman does attempt to record him while laughing.
Once I have the balloon, I reel up the anti-grav jacket and use it on the objective. By the time the three of us are safely on the ground and back in a car, it’s well after midnight.
“I think it’s safe to say we won’t be in the top ten this round,” I say, noting the time on my bracelet. “But at least we’re done. Next stop: time gate.” I lean my head against the cushion in the rear seat of the cab and let my eyelids close.
Tucket is still full of energy. “I think it’s great you guys came up with that. I mean, balloons. It’s so creative. When
I graduate from the ATS program I’m definitely going to look you guys up. Would that be groovy with you? We could see the twentieth century together, maybe visit your favorite hip places. I’ve always wanted to see Marilyn Monroe. You guys know her? She was pretty gnarly, right?”
I let Tucket continue his recounting of twentieth century highlights until we make it back to London. Viznir is quiet, even when Tucket takes the rare break for a breath. The time gate is in a dive bar five stories below street level. The bouncer at the door gets one look at my bracelet and lets us into the back room. The gate has been creatively wired into the perimeter of a pool table. When I deposit the gravitan stabilizer into a cubby behind the bar, the pool table lights up and my bracelet blinks an eleven.
Viznir pumps Tucket’s hand once and climbs a chair to the top of the table. He disappears into the shimmering surface of the table without a word. I use my remaining seconds to consolidate my bags and give Tucket a high five. “Good luck with school, man. You’ll do great. I really appreciate all your help. There’s no way I could have done it without you.”
Tucket beams at this. “I’ll have the Academy Acclimation Division send you a service survey. If I get all good reviews I can graduate earlier and then I can come visit your century!”
“I know you’ll like it. I’m from 2009, so when you get there, look me up.”
“I definitely will.” Tucket waves as I climb the chair to the edge of the pool table.
I give him a salute and jump into the time gate. The next moment I’m spinning end over end toward a white floor, but it feels like it’s happening in slow motion. As I rotate through the air, I spot Viznir stuck to a corner of the ceiling like a spider. That’s not right. The floor rushes up to meet me and I bounce, ricocheting off in a new direction. My pack collides with a wall and I’m rotating again until I land spread-eagled across a Plexiglas window, staring at a view of a million stars.
“You have got to be kidding me.” I look up and locate Viznir in the corner above me. Only now do I realize the room is rotating slowly around a door in the wall. Or the door is rotating and we are sitting still. The sensation is odd either way. I drift weightlessly away from the wall toward the doorway.
“Dude. Where are we?”
Viznir is clinging to the handle of a storage cabinet. “Far.”
I collide with the wall the door is in and wait till it rotates around to the proper orientation before trying the handle. The door swings open freely, but when I push myself through, I get an unpleasant tugging on my face and arms and finally my whole body as I crash to the floor, stuck once again by the force of gravity. After weightlessness, I feel like a walrus, struggling to push my heavy body off the hallway floor.
Viznir flings himself through the doorway at the next rotation and manages to only stumble to his knees before getting back up. There is a window in the hallway and I pull myself over to it, inching closer to the view of the universe outside. Only this time I don’t just see stars. A red and green planet looms out the window, its atmosphere swirling with angry gray clouds.
“Viznir, that is definitely not earth, right? How far into the future are we?”
Viznir has his tablet out. “It’s not earth. We’re not in our solar system. The sun here is red.”
As the hallway rotates, I see what he’s talking about. Beyond the planet, a massive red star is lighting the side of what I now understand to be a space station. My bracelet is still flashing an eleven, but finally reverts back to its clock mode. I look around for our objective boxes. I find mine hanging on a hook at the far end of the hallway. It’s the last one left.
“We must have lost a little competition somewhere. Only eleven teams still in it.” I point the hooks out to Viznir, but he only grunts.
The box opens and at first I don’t see anything inside. I trace my fingers along its interior but find nothing. It’s only when I lower the box that I find the point of color hovering in midair. It’s about the size of a pea and almost the same color, only translucent. Amazed, I touch it with a fingertip and it expands, enlarging itself to the size of a beachball. Now the three dimensional image shows a diagram of the space station. A title block at the corner of the image labels the station as “Terra Legatus” and has a date of May 13th, 2230. A path through the interior is highlighted and terminates at a row of bays in one branch of the six-armed station. The bays each contain a pod that I interpret to be a form of transportation.
“So I guess we need to go here.” I reach out and touch the hallway with the pods, and the image suddenly expands again. “Crap. What did I do?” The image is now the size of a small car and occupying the entire hallway. “Do you know how to shrink this thing back down?”
Viznir steps over and reaches for the sphere, but nothing happens. He makes a few gestures with his arms and I try to imitate him, waving and compressing my hands and trying various combinations. Something I do makes the image expand farther and it engulfs both Viznir and me, and the entire corridor. “Son of a—” I mutter continued curses as I try to compress the image back to a manageable size. Finally I give up.
“Okay. I think I saw where we were going. Did you see anything about our objective in there?”
Viznir shakes his head.
“Dammit.” I study the bits of diagram that I can see and try making a beckoning gesture with my hand. Surprisingly, it has an effect and the entire image shifts toward me. “Ooh. I’m onto something.” I make more of the gesture till I can move around the image. I’m zoomed-in much too close, but eventually I’m able to scroll my way over to the surface of the planet, and after a lot of wandering around the trackless topography, finally alight on a bit of settlement. The outpost is partially subterranean, but the diagram still shows the features that are below the surface. I spot our objective symbol blinking in a corner of one of the lower silos. I try to zoom in closer, but now I can’t. I curse at the image again and finally resort to pulling the tablet from the last level out and taking a picture of the image.
“I still can’t see what we’re after, but it’s right here. Maybe we can figure it out when we get to it.”
Viznir does not seem especially concerned about the problem. He’s staring out the window at the planet’s surface again.
“You okay, man? You’ve been a little quiet today.”
The question shakes him from his reverie and he turns his attention back to the hallway. “I’m fine. I’m just ready to go home.”
“I hear you on that one. This is pretty cool though, right? I never in my life thought I would see something like this.” I stare at the green and red planet rising through the window again. “It’s beautiful.”
Viznir leads the way through the airlock doors at the end of the hallway. They open automatically with a pleasant whooshing sound and close the same way behind us. I smile, thinking about every sci-fi movie I’ve ever watched and how the doors all sounded just like that. I wonder if they designed these that way on purpose?
After the initial feeling of gravity returning I had felt heavy and sluggish, but now, having acclimated, I realize I’m lighter than I was on earth. The sense of lightness is enjoyable, almost as if the physical weight being lightened has lifted some of my stress. Viznir and I travel a series of catwalks and finally end up in our designated leg of the station. A long row of pod doors line the right wall. Ten pods have been deployed, leaving only one remaining.
Just off the main corridor is a second hallway with a row of lockers. I notice Jettison’s name on one and go inside to investigate. I run my fingers past names on the nameplates till I find the one belonging to Viznir and me. Opening the locker, I jump back in fear at the figure inside, then laugh and calm myself. The space suit hanging in the locker has a round helmet with a shiny reflective dome. I reach in and pull the first one out. “I guess this one’s yours.” I hand the suit to Viznir and then reach in for the second one. I shrug out of my pack and let it fall to the floor.
The space suit is made up of seven par
ts. The baggy pants are roomy enough to go over my clothes, and the boots they lock into are made to go over shoes. I step into the whole assembly and let Viznir help me get the torso part over my head. The upper half is bulky with pockets and what I guess to be small canisters of compressed oxygen on the back, but I get it over my head and manage to fasten it to the waist of the pants without too much trouble. I assist Viznir with his torso piece, but he seems to be quicker at it than I am. He gets his helmet mounted, snatches up our packs, and deposits them in the escape pod while I’m still fumbling with the gloves. I kick my helmet gently out to the hallway where Viznir is looking at the controls for the pod.
“You think we’ll be able to fly that thing?”
Viznir merely nods and continues to look at the controls.
I turn back to my task and, once I get my gloves attached, waddle my way over to my helmet. My fingers feel bulky and awkward inside the space suit’s gloves. I grasp vainly at the slick glass twice before finally picking up the helmet by the base instead. Viznir made it look so easy. I place it over my head and try to lock it into place, fiddling ineffectually with the latches. I feel the first couple click into place after multiple attempts, but the third one is defeating me. I turn around to get some help.
“Hey Viznir can you get this—” I stop when I realize he can’t hear me. He’s closed the airlock door to the capsule and is facing me from the other side of the window. His face is stoic. “Hey!” I exaggerate the words so he can tell what I’m saying. “Can you come back out and help me with this?” I gesture to the latch at my neck. He shakes his head a fraction of an inch from side to side. I try the handle but can’t move it. “Hey, c’mon, man. I need some help out here!” He doesn’t move. I jiggle the handle harder this time. I hear him throw a latch on the other side and I step back, expecting the door to slide open. Instead, a hiss comes from around the door seal as the airlock pressurizes the capsule. Red warning lights illuminate around the door and a buzzer sounds. I step back just in time as the outer doors slam another barrier between us. No. This can’t be happening. I pound on the new set of doors and yell. “VIZNIR!” The shout echoes around the inside of my helmet. The window to the capsule has fogged up from the sudden change in pressure and I can no longer see inside, but as I try fruitlessly to pry open the barrier door, a gloved finger begins tracing letters on the condensation of the capsule window with slow but deliberate movements. Transfixed in shock, I watch the successive appearance of each of the letters. THEY MADE ME. I’M SORRY. As the last line of the Y is completed, the fingertip disappears. I stare mutely as the locks release with loud clunks, and after one final flash of the warning lights, the capsule is ejected from the side of the station. It barrels into the darkness, arcing its way toward the planet’s surface till it’s just a glint of light entering the atmosphere.
In Times Like These Boxed Set Page 87