by Rachel Ford
“It’s not?”
“Of course not. How else would we get back?”
Alfred blinked. “I don’t know.”
“We built a portable version. A field generator. There are a few limitations – it can’t transport as many people or objects at one time, and so on – but otherwise it’s the same tech.”
“And you’re saying you have one here? Why not use it?”
“Half of one,” Garrity sighed. “We’re missing the key.”
“You can’t operate at half capacity?”
“It’s not capacity. They’re separate pieces. They’ve got be synchronized, and used together, or they’re both useless.
“Useless for travel, anyway. But it’s synched to the main generator. So when someone uses the main generator, we get an alert.”
“So…that’s how you knew we came over. You got an alert on your field generator?”
“That’s right.”
“But you got another alert? After we came through?”
“Yes. At least, we’re not sure if it was after or before. We’re assuming after.”
“Why?”
“Two reasons. The first, because you said the lab was in standby when you entered. Meaning no one else had been there in a long time. We got the alerts within an hour of each other; the lab wouldn’t have gone back into standby in an hour.
“And second…we think your crossing changed something. In our time – in our timeline.”
“Changed something? What?”
Garrity shook his head. “Isn’t that the sixty-four-thousand-dollar question?”
“What makes you think something changed at all, though?”
“Because it’s too much of a coincidence that you showed up, and and hour later, so does a second visitor. It’s been six years – over six years – and nobody has stepped foot near our device.”
Alfred acknowledged that it did seem an unlikely coincidence.
“Yeah. So the question is, what did you do – what did you change – before you came here?”
“Nothing,” he protested.
“You didn’t bring anyone else with you? You didn’t radio in about the lab?”
“No.”
“And yet, we’ve got a mystery visitor.”
Alfred frowned. “Speaking of that…you’re afraid of him. Why?” Then, he remembered Nancy’s hunch. “He had something to do with the oasis disaster, didn’t he? ‘The accident’ you people talk about?”
Garrity’s face paled, and the taxman found himself impressed anew by Nancy’s deductive powers.
“Well?”
“The thought had occurred, yes.”
“What happened? What was this ‘accident’?”
Garrity swallowed a mouthful of coffee, then sighed. “We were double-crossed.”
“By who?”
“Someone we worked with. He traveled back from the future, to six years ago. He thought…he thought we had taken too many precautions. We didn’t move fast enough, we squandered too much. We sacrificed too much progress in the name of ethics.”
“A nutjob,” Alfred decided.
Garrity smiled wanly at the description. “Perhaps, Mr. Favero.”
“So he tried to kill you all?”
“Not exactly.”
The taxman frowned. He was quickly tiring of these evasive answers. “Well then what, exactly, happened? And who is this nutjob, anyway?”
“He tried to kill one of us.”
“Who?”
“My wife.”
“Angie?”
Garrity nodded. “He caused a failure in the containment circuitry of a bunch of the research lab cages. That’s why we evac’ed everyone. We couldn’t risk the visitor center employees seeing dinosaurs. They had no idea what we were doing.” He shook his head. “It would have been a disaster.”
“As opposed to what actually happened?” Alfred asked pointedly.
“Hindsight, Mr. Favero, is twenty-twenty. We did what we thought was best at the time.”
“Alright. And then what?”
“He found us. And he tried kill to Angie. He chased us into the lab. Or, the ‘lair’ as you like to call it. We went through the portal.” Garrity spread his hands in the fashion of a man who had revisited these details too many times already. “Brad had the key. He was supposed to be right behind us. I don’t know what happened to him. We heard shots. He must have got hit.”
“He was eaten,” Alfred said. “One of the dinosaurs must have got him.”
“Eaten? There were no dinosaurs in the lab.”
“There were teeth marks on his bones.”
Garrity shivered. “That must have happened after death. There were no dinosaurs down there then.”
“So…if I’ve got this right…your whole team was running from one guy?”
“You don’t understand. He wasn’t…he wasn’t working with regular weapons. He wasn’t working with weapons from our era – or our reality. He’d been to the future. He’d been to alternate realities. And he’d picked up hardware along the way.”
“Oh. But why run to the Cretaceous period?”
“We had a base, weapons…we had a chance, at least, to defend ourselves.”
“Well what happened?”
Garrity laughed, a dry, hollow sound. “Well that’s the best part, Mr. Favero. He vanished.”
“What?” Alfred blinked.
“He ceased to be as soon as he followed us here.”
“Ceased to be? How?”
“Because he’d changed the past. He’d written himself out of a future.”
Time paradoxes were not Alfred’s specialty. In fact, he found that the more he considered them, the more his brain ached. Still, he was given to understand that David’s colleague and Angie’s would-be killer had somehow altered the past when he attacked the lab, and prevented a future in which he existed.
“So you’re saying,” he concluded at last, “that whatever he did, we undid? That he exists again, because we – somehow – fixed his error.”
Garrity nodded. “Exactly.”
“Well fudge muffins.”
Chapter Eighteen
Nancy listened with rapt interest as he told what he’d learned. “Who the hell is this guy?” she demanded as he got to the attacker.
“I don’t know. Garrity wouldn’t say. Neither would Angie. They said he’s a colleague, and they don’t want to tarnish his legacy.”
Nancy scoffed. “That’s a lot of loyalty for a guy who tried to kill you.”
“Yeah.”
Still, when he was done, she fixed him with an admiring gaze. “I can’t believe you did that,” she said. “I was half afraid they were killers themselves. That was really brave, Alfred.”
He felt himself flush. “You were right,” he said, “we needed answers. And I couldn’t think of a better way to get them.”
She smiled at him, then nodded. “But the real question now, I guess, is what the hell did we do to bring this guy back?”
Alfred shook his head. “I don’t know. He obviously didn’t die six years ago – unfortunately. That would have made things a lot simpler.”
She laughed. “Yes. But what would he have done that stopped him from having a future? Other than die, I mean, since that one is clearly beyond our powers.”
“Maybe it wasn’t a future,” Alfred mused. “Maybe he did something to cut off his access to the spacetime generator thingy.”
Nancy nodded. “So if he couldn’t access the generator, he couldn’t travel through time – in either direction, forward to get his weapons or back to kill the Garritys.”
“Yes. But what could he have done? And how in heck did we undo it?”
She frowned. “What if we focus on that part?”
“What part?”
“The what-we-did part. We have no idea what he did. If the Garritys do, they’re obviously not sharing. But we know what we did. So if we think of all the things we did when we were in the oasis, maybe we can fi
gure out which one of them undid whatever he did.”
“And if we know what undid his mistake, we’ll know what his mistake was,” Alfred concluded excitedly.
“Exactly!”
It was a good plan, in theory. Putting it into action, though, proved rather more tedious and difficult than anticipated. They had done very little in the oasis – and certainly nothing remarkable.
“We booted up a few computers. Or tried anyway.”
“What about that one in the demo lab? We got into that, and looked at some emails and stuff. You think that triggered any kind of cascading ripple through time?”
“I don’t see how,” Nancy sighed. “We weren’t on the net. It was all offline, all local to that device. Nothing we did would have had any impact, anywhere else.”
This seemed to be a dead end. “Other than that, what did we do? We got chased by that damned Tyrannosaurus,” Alfred said, scowling at the memory.
“We took pictures of the dead dinosaurs too,” Nancy agreed.
“Yeah but that was on our own phones. I didn’t send them to anyone.” He was waiting until he was back at the office, to prepare his case in full, before sharing anything. “Did you?”
“Nope.”
“So that shouldn’t have changed anything.”
Nancy, though, wasn’t convinced. “What if it did, though? What if, when we disappear, the branch pulls our phone backups?”
“Our what?”
“Phone backups. You know, where your pictures and stuff are backed up to the cloud?”
Alfred blinked. He didn’t know. “Oh. Right.”
“What if they saw the pictures we took? We’re thinking of this in a linear fashion, Alfred, but maybe this guy didn’t actually follow an hour later. Maybe he jumped into the Cretateous period an hour after we did – but he could have actually followed years after us. Years later in our time period, I mean.”
Alfred’s brain was hurting again. “I still don’t understand how pictures would have helped.”
She shrugged. “It could be anything. Maybe they sent the police in, after we disappeared. Or the FBI. Maybe they found the lab.”
This, now, made a little more sense. “You mean, maybe the killer got access to it again?”
“Exactly.”
He frowned. “That still doesn’t explain how he lost access in the first place.”
“No,” she agreed. “It doesn’t.”
They spent the rest of the day mulling the topic, but came to no breakthroughs. They were no closer to understanding what had happened six years ago or a week and a half ago – in their time period – than they were when they started.
They were, however, distracted from the topic the next morning. “Oh,” Nancy told him at breakfast. “I forgot to ask you…are you free today?”
He shrugged. “More or less. Why?”
“Because Josh got one of the rovers. He’s taking us to the Western Interior Sea.”
“He is?” Alfred could feel his face scrunching in an expression of distaste. He hadn’t had any definite plans for the day, except that they definitely didn’t include spending his time with the marine.
“Yeah. If you want to come with us, anyway.”
He hesitated. He didn’t want to, but the phrasing seemed to indicate that Nancy was going regardless of what he did. “Uh,” he said, stalling for time, “what’s this western sea again?”
“Western Interior Sea. It’s the one that split the continent –”
“Into Laramidia and Appalachia,” he finished. “That’s right.”
She nodded. “Yup.”
“But…won’t that be dangerous? I mean, going out at all, much less with a killer from the future on the loose?”
“Josh doesn’t think so. We’ll be in a rover, and they’re pretty much invincible.”
“Oh.”
“It should be really interesting, Alfred. He says the aquatic life is unlike anything we’ve got in our time.”
He wasn’t particularly interested in the aquatic life of any time, but there was a hopefulness in her tone that made staying impossible. That, and he didn’t like the idea of sending her off by herself with the marine. He didn’t trust Stevenson, after all. “Alright,” he said. “I’ll go.”
She smiled. “I’m glad.”
She might have been glad, but the marine was decidedly less so. They headed to the hanger bay right after breakfast, and Stevenson was there, fueling up the rover. “Mornin’ Nance,” he greeted, smiling broadly as he poked his head up from the vehicle. Then, he saw Alfred, and his expression fell. “Oh. Are you coming too?”
“It’s alright, isn’t it?” Nancy said.
“Oh, sure,” Stevenson said, plastering a smile across his square features that was so forced it almost made Alfred laugh. “Of course. This’ll be new for both of you.”
“I’m excited,” the taxman declared.
“Great,” the marine grimaced.
Chapter Nineteen
The Western Interior Sea was about a three-hour ride from base. Probably, Alfred thought, longer, if he didn’t drive like a maniac.
Alfred was in the backseat, strapped in and still feeling beaten about, like an egg being scrambled in his safety harness. Nancy was in the passenger seat next to Stevenson, which, apparently, was a more comfortable ride than the backseat. She didn’t seem to mind the bumps and dips, the hair-raising rises and falls as they sped over uneven terrain.
Whereas the taxman would shriek in terror when the rover sped over a bump, and he could feel the wheels leave the ground, the only shrieking she did was with laughter at these incidents. Her excitement only seemed to egg the marine on, and he’d grin and speed up.
Alfred’s heart was in his throat the entire time. Stevenson’s, he thought with a grimace, was in the palm of Nancy’s hand.
And as for what direction hers was leaning? Well, he couldn’t tell. And, for reasons he couldn’t quite explain to himself, that worried him.
Eventually, the hellish journey ended. Alfred hadn’t seen much of their approach – the backseat didn’t offer the best views, especially with the marine’s oversized frame in the way – but Nancy was exclaiming delightedly in the front seat. “Oh my God, Josh. It’s beautiful.”
The marine seemed pleased. Alfred scowled, craning his neck to get a view. At first, he got only glimpses of pale blue water. Then the vehicle rolled to a stop.
Josh flashed Nancy a grin, and said, “Come on, Nance. Let’s take a look.”
“I thought we were supposed to stay in the rover?” Alfred protested.
The marine shrugged. “Feel free. We’re going to get some fresh air.”
She glanced between them. “You’re sure it’s safe?”
“Of course. We won’t go far. And you want to see this in person. Trust me.”
“You won’t get in trouble? The Garritys said we had to stay in the rover, didn’t they?”
“I won’t tell if you won’t.”
She grinned. “Alright then.”
Grumbling to himself, Alfred worked his way out of the safety harness and followed. Nancy and Stevenson were already a ways ahead by time he was out of the rover. The marine was pointing something out, and the taxman scowled at the nonchalant way the other man’s hand touched Nancy’s shoulder to direct her attention. He scowled at the way she didn’t seem to mind. He scowled at himself because he did mind.
So busy scowling as he was, Alfred was unprepared for the sight that awaited him as he left the vehicle.
A great, shimmering horizon of blue stretched out before him. It was pale, like a winter morning sky, and clear. Light rocky formations jutted out of its still surface here and there, peppering the shallow coast in tiny islands. The sky overhead looked richer, the greens and browns of the coast fuller, next to this body of water. For a few minutes, anyway, Alfred forgot his other concerns as he stared out into the Western Interior Sea.
It was idyllic, like something out of a painting or a dream, a kind o
f a natural masterpiece. It was huge, too, and the taxman found himself floored by the enormity of it. Such a thing, he thought, would last forever. And yet, of course, he knew well enough that it had not. And that his were a select set of human eyes who had ever glimpsed this surreal sea, with its quiet waters and unreal colors.
He started at the sound of Nancy’s voice, and realized with surprise that she was at his side. “It’s gorgeous isn’t it?”
He glanced from the coast to her, and saw the blues of the water reflected in her eyes, the richness of the earth in the chestnuts of her hair, and the vigor of life in the flush of her cheeks. “Very,” he said, and if he was talking about the sea or her, he couldn’t be quite sure.
She nudged him. “Aren’t you glad you came?”
He nodded. He was glad.
“Here,” Stevenson was saying, “let’s go down to the shore.”
They spent some time exploring the shoreline. Nancy dipped her fingers in the water, and, satisfied with the temperature, her feet as well. With a little coaxing, she convinced Alfred to do the same. It was warmer than it looked, and he might have enjoyed himself if he could have kept from wondering what kind of prehistoric pathogens were floating around in that water.
Stevenson pointed out a few mollusk shells, and though he didn’t know much about the creatures, he knew enough to answer her questions.
“I’m glad you got the Garritys to let you borrow the rover, Josh,” Nancy told him.
“Any time,” he said.
“How did you wangle that?” Alfred frowned. It seemed unlikely that a couple of billionaire scientists would readily hand over their expensive toys to the help – much less when they didn’t have the means of building new ones, should the help do something stupid.
“I still work for them. I’ve accrued a lot of R-and-R time. Haven’t had much cause to cash it until now.”
“They let you take the rovers out?”
He nodded. “Sometimes, the only thing that keeps you sane is getting the hell out of base. And they want us coming back alive, so the rover’s the best way to do it.” He shrugged. “Anyway, they might own ‘em, but we maintenance them. We keep them running.”