by DG SIDNA
"I don't think it was his," I say. "He wore it on a chain around his neck. I assume he stole it."
I see a thought flash across her face. "I wouldn't be so sure. A ring like this doesn't have much value in the future. Unless it's sentimental. And if it's sentimental, it could be..." She trails off.
"Could be what?"
She doesn't answer.
"Careena, could be what?"
She turns to me. "Blondie, I think we just found a clue."
FOURTEEN
Blondie. I hate it when she calls me that. My hair is more sand colored—and fake regardless. But I can't ignore the light bulbs going off in her eyes. She's thinking. Which is probably dangerous. I'm not sure the gears in her head are as well-oiled as I'd like.
"A clue to what?" I finally ask.
"Well, it's really more of a hunch."
"About what?"
"Maybe nothing."
"Just tell me," I demand.
"Alright." She holds up the wedding band. "This ring had a trajectory through time, yeah? It started off somewhere and ended up here. Now imagine we could follow that trajectory backwards, that we could see all the places it's been."
I put on my detective hat. "Assuming you could do that, follow it backwards I mean, and assuming that creep carried it with him everywhere he went, then you'd know where he was prior to the heist."
"Exactly! And that heist took a lot of planning. I'm willing to bet the Red Man has a base somewhere and that this blockhead has been there. We find that base, we find the Red Man. And if we can find the Red Man, he can lead us to Patmos."
I look at the ring. "So how do we follow it backwards?"
"That's the tricky part," she tells me. "We can't. But like everything else, we can cheat a little. Are you familiar with the concept of an isotopic tracer?"
I think back to my AP Biology class with Mrs. Zeitvogel. "I think so. It's when you inject a patient with special radioactive molecules. They're harmless, but as they travel through your bloodstream, machines can record their path. This way you can map out blood flow and stuff like that."
"Aye, now just imagine that on a larger scale. For about twenty years, the ministry has been installing these secret satellites all over the place. It's a big project, all very hush-hush. But these satellites continually scan planets for a particular isotope of a molecule called illatium phasrex. When they detect it, they send this information back to Tegana."
"So where do these isotopes come from?"
She pulls a tube of lipstick from her overcoat pocket. "From here!"
"From lipstick?"
"No, idiot. We're spies, remember? This is a disguise. Point is, with this I can go back in time and mark anything I want with illatium phasrex. Then the marked object will continue through time as it normally would. Nothing much happens, until it gets to the era of our satellites. After that, we know where it is. Normally we use this to find where something in the past has ended up in the present. Something like stolen artwork."
"People steal artwork?"
"Yes, all the time," she says. "In a world where any luxury can be created at the push of a button, original artwork is one of the few things of real value. And the smarter art thieves know they can't just bring a famous painting into the future, it wouldn't scan as old enough to be authentic. So instead they go back in time, steal what it is they want, stash it somewhere, and collect it later."
"That makes sense, I guess. But we already know where the ring ends up. It ends up here." But then it hits me. Maybe the ale really does help. "Wait, I think I get it. Your satellites will basically have a record of an object's movements over the last twenty years. So it's like you said, a map that we can follow backwards. We'll be able to see where that man was just before the heist."
"You got it, kiddo," she says.
I see one problem. "Isn't all of this assuming that we can find the ring in the past and mark it with your lipstick, or whatever that is?"
She takes a deep breath. "Well, that's the tricky part, to be sure. And we also have to hope that the ring is older than the blackout dates, otherwise this plan is moot. But I have reason to think it is. Both the custom of wedding bands and the use of this type of metal went out of favor centuries ago."
"So how do we find it?"
"We have the inscription to help us. Two names. That's our clue, freckles! We just need to find these hapless lovers, tag their ring, and then we can locate the Red Man's lair in the present."
She takes a big sip of ale, pleased at her own ingenuity.
I'm a little more doubtful. "Careena, the names we have are B and Ian. And we don't even know what century they lived. There must be millions of couples with those names. We'll spend the next five hundred years checking them all out."
"Normally, yes. But let's assume that tosser kept this ring for a sentimental reason, yeah? I saw his file, he was a war orphan. His parents had been killed during the Second Khelt War. It's not unusual for orphans to be given keepsakes from their families. If this is all he had of them, it would have been important to him."
"Don't make me empathize with that monster, Careena."
She holds my hand. "I won't, luv. But follow with me. Maybe this ring is a family heirloom, one of the few things from Old Earth that made it out to the frontier centuries ago. A lot of early colonists couldn't bring much with them. So what we do is cross-reference B and Ian with the family tree in his personal records. That really narrows down the search. And if we find a match, then bang! We're in business. Beckett will have no trouble locating the Red Man's base."
"But even if she finds it," I ask. "Isn't all this pointless if he's already given Patmos the RGMs?"
She frowns. "We are under something of a time crunch, unfortunately. The one bit of good news is that those RGMs have to be processed before they can be used in a jumpvest. And that much material will take a week to finish. That's our window, luv. Once Patmos has functional jumpvests, I'm not sure anything can stop him. Hell, I still don't even know what he intends to do, but somehow I doubt it's going back to save the hedgehog from extinction."
"When does that happen?"
The old woman just shrugs.
"If we know all this about the ring," I tell her. "We should inform Story."
"Can't do that without alerting Soolin."
I consider this. "Alright. Then we should tell Soolin. It's irresponsible to keep this to ourselves."
"We can do that if you want, deary. But it's not going to change anything about our situation. She's still going to execute me and send you head-over-heals back to Brooklyn. Is that how you want the story to end?"
"I guess not."
Careena leans into her pint of ale. "Look, how's this. We will tell her. After we find the ring. I promise. It'll take an another day or two before the ministry can produce any new functional QDDs, so there's really nothing she can do now anyway, even if we did tell her. Right now, you and I are all the world's got."
I acquiesce. "I suppose you're right. But we don't have any records on this guy. And it's 1939. I don't even think they have the internet yet."
"I might have the records we need." She leans over. "Is that geezer still reading his paper?"
"He's napping."
She swipes her hand over Hecate. A floating screen appears before us—made of nothing but light like a hologram. She keeps it below the bar, waist level, in case the barman looks over at us.
I see the face of my attacker on the screen. My ears go hot. How can there be free will in the universe if I can't even control the anger and terror that takes me at the sight of a stupid photo? I try to calm my nerves. Finally, I look at the long rap sheet under his picture, before commenting, "I'm surprised they let you access all this stuff, seeing how you're, like, wanted for treason or something."
She clears her throat. "I may not have acquired all this, shall we say, legally. Remember that fake ring I gave Soolin? When she placed it in the ministry scanners, it hacked the system, sent me all the
files they had on the heist, the Red Man, Patmos. I thought they might come in useful."
It dawns on me that Careena is a more skillful spy than I sometimes give her credit for. "You wanted to get caught. That's why you went back to Tegana without a fight. But there's more to it, isn't there? You didn't go back just for these files. You wanted the files on your own case. About the friend that you lost."
"She was more than friend," Careena bites backs. But then she nods. "I had to know what they know. I had to know what happened. But that wasn't the only reason. Beckett may have inadvertently given us an ace in the hole. I just had to make sure it would work if we needed it."
I find this comment rather cryptic. "What does that mean?"
"It's not important. Look here." She points to names in a family tree. "Ian and Barbara Hynfol. Our chap's great-great-grandparents. Married 2480 on 51 Kryten b."
"Odd name for a planet."
"It is, now that you mention it." She pauses for a thought, but it doesn't come to her. "Kryten... that name sounds familiar but I can't remember why."
"You can't look it up?"
"No. If I use Hecate to access the mainframe, they'll track us down in half a second. And just because Soolin doesn't have any QDDs, doesn't mean she won't resort to using a jumpvest to bring us in. All I have is the biographical data I downloaded."
"So what do you think?"
Careena repeats the name of the planet. "51 Kryten b. It's not a colony world. The b denotes a bio-reserve. It's an alien world."
"So maybe they went there on a honeymoon?"
"Doubtful. Alien worlds are off limits. No one should be able to touch foot on one. And certainly no one should be able to get married on one. This is damned peculiar."
"Maybe not," I suggest. "Don't they ever have research facilities on these planets?"
"Yeah, I suppose sometimes."
"So there you go. Researchers. Think about it, a pair of scientists on a remote world, studying the flora and fauna, stuck alone in some dreary research base on those cold, cold alien nights."
She almost laughs. "So we have ourselves some romantics. Great. I hate romantics." She reads through what little other information there is. "It seems Barbara and Ian leave Kryten in early 2482. Travel in stasis, for nearly a century and a half, to the Perseus Frontier. Talk about wanting to get away from it all. One child is listed. Born in the frontier. Terrible records out there. Looks like Kryten is our best bet. By the time they reach the frontier, they're already in the blackout dates."
"Which only I can jump into, because I'm special."
"Something like that."
I rub my hands together. We're making progress. "So what's the plan? I assume we jump to this weird Kryten planet, find our lovebirds, and mark the wedding band with your magic lipstick?"
"Yes, that about covers it. But we won't be able to take this ring with us. I'll have to release it back to the present."
"That's fine." I sort of understand the logic here. I recall that we don't actually travel back in time; all we're doing is temporarily rearranging the molecules in the past to match their configuration as they are now. But it's the same molecules, then and now. One is simply controlling the other like puppets on a string. Which means if I take this ring back with me, it will vanish from wherever it was before I arrived and appear in my possession. And once I leave, it will snap back.
No problem, except that our dear Barbara is probably the one wearing the ring, and if she comes to think that it's haunted—and who wouldn't if it has a habit of vanishing right off your hand before reappearing again—then it may not end up where it needs to be in the future. It may end up hurled into the bottom an ocean.
"Careena," I ask. "Assuming our lovers are at a research base a billion trillion zillion miles from civilization, aren't they going to be a little freaked out when we show up out of nowhere? I mean, I doubt we can just disguise ourselves as Mormons and go knocking on their door."
"Aye, we'll need to be stealthier than normal," she says. "I have the coordinates of their departure. I'm going to assume that's the location of the research base. So what we'll do is jump in a kilometer away, sneak in while they're sleeping, and tag the ring. In and out. They'll never know what hit them! Hah! Now finish your drink. Clocks ticking."
I'm also eager to get this over with, but I'm concerned about jumping in blindly. I ask her, "Shouldn't we check first if we can breathe the air? I don't want to be breathing acid or something, you know."
She seems to dismiss the concern. "Convergent evolution. You'd be surprised just how often nature lands on the same general blueprints for life. Turns out the window for self-replicating molecules is pretty small. They fall into one of four general types. Three of which are carbon based. As I recall, there are around twenty or thirty worlds out there with completely breathable atmospheres."
I find that very interesting, but I also seem to remember that she told me once there were more than six hundred alien worlds currently known. Those don't sound like particularly good odds for us. But maybe she knows something that I don't. "So this is one of them?" I ask.
"No clue."
I want to smack my forehead. "Maybe this isn't the best thought out plan."
"Bah, alright, here you go."
She reaches into her pockets again, rummaging around. What she keeps in those pockets, I have no idea, but she ends up placing a pair of pliers on the table, a small pouch of candies, two hair scrunchies, an arcade token, a crayon, and finally an eyedropper, which seems to be what she was looking for. "Ah, here we are."
She puts one drop in my ale and then one in her own. "Drink up."
"What is it?" I ask.
"Nanites. Not as powerful as the babies I had before, God rest their souls, but these'll work a treat. If the air is a little off, they'll do some work in your lungs and compensate."
"And what if the planet is a million degrees?"
"Then obviously it couldn't support life, genius." She pauses. "Unless it's like Venus. But look, if you're worried, I'll set Hecate to hop us right out of there if there's a problem. But I remember Kryten. I just can't remember why. Maybe from my school days? A documentary on Galactic Geographic that I caught once? I don't remember. But I'm sure it will be fine."
Famous last words.
But alright.
While the old barman is snoozing, we make the jump more than five hundred and forty years into the future, to the alien world known only as 51 Kryten b.
FIFTEEN
I had never considered the possibility of life on other worlds before. Sure, I grew up watching Star Trek with my dad, but that was his show, his thing, some bit of nostalgia from his own youth that he wished to pass on to me, an endeavor that netted questionable results.
Not that I minded all that much; I wasn't one of those girls who played down her intelligence or curiosity just to placate the egos of the boys at school. But I did have other, more earthly pursuits than the voyages of some corny TV crew in forehead makeup. One of those earthly pursuits was photography. I gave it up, of course, after only a year of snapping photos. It was another disposable hobby in a long list of throwaway pastimes afforded a girl born to a middle-class family.
I'm hesitant to even think about them all now. Viola, gone. Iguana, gifted to a cousin. Ballet shoes, lost in the closet. Jujitsu, never the time. Camera, sold. I did end up sticking with crew, which is something I suppose, though the truth is, I was never sure if I'd row in college or not—I thought maybe I'd enjoy joining the debate club instead.
But, man. What I wouldn't give to have my fancy retro camera now—with its silvery steel dials, manual lever, and pop-out film compartment. I'd capture everything I see here. A foreign sky some other color of blue. An impostor sun, burning at the wrong temperature, casting off wrongly-hued rays. A strange air that tastes like cotton. And—
"Peanuts," Careena says, interrupting my thoughts.
"Is that a euphemism?" I ask her.
"No, the ground. It's
like walking on bloody peanuts."
I take a few steps and the rocks crumble under my feet. She's right. The pebbles are hollow inside. Looking around, it appears we've materialized at the edge of a mountain range. The peaks behind us aren't tall, but they're sharp, like jagged knives, broken and haphazard. We're high enough on the mountainside to have a view of a landscape below us.
And what a view it is.
There are swaths of forests bisected by several thin rivers. But the trees are unlike any I've ever seen. The trunks and limbs are smooth and white, like ivory, like skeletal fingers reaching up from the earth. Their sinewy branches grow from orbs inside circular sockets. Is that so they can rotate with the sun? Are there cellulose ligaments inside the trunk, acting like muscles? Each of the alien branches ends in a single spherical disc, bluish-green in color, with the same texture as dried moss. Light twinkles through spongy pores. Perhaps to maximize surface area inside? To wick moisture from the air? I have so many questions.
"Told you we'd okay," Careena says.
"I guess so. Strange trees, though."
"Eh? A tree is a tree."
Despite what she says, I can tell she's as curious as I am. She's surely studied alien worlds in school, just as I was taught about the Galapagos and the Amazon, but I have the feeling this is her first time actually stepping foot on one.
And I suppose something like a tree would end up fairly common throughout the galaxy. I was always a good biology student. I remember Earth was thought to have been covered in simple, single-celled life that didn't require the sun at all for energy. Nor oxygen, of which there was little in the early years of the planet.
But once photosynthetic bacteria evolved, capable of producing energy rich sugars from water and carbon dioxide by cleverly utilizing the energy of the sun, everything changed. This chemical process released oxygen as a byproduct, and these organisms were so successful, and took over so much of the lands and the oceans, that they changed the composition of the atmosphere nearly overnight, filling it with oxygen and leading to the near total extinction of all the organisms that came before them; the old, torn down to make way for the new.