Somehow, whether by chance or instinct, the boy had produced a model of the elusive time wave that had stumped the whole team the night before.
Lexil was breathing again. “Have you plugged in the numbers to see where they point?”
Jored’s discovery confirmed what had just been a hunch till now. With specific numbers, they could get coordinates for times and places.
Zaidee tore her gaze away from the screen. “Not yet. Haven’t had time.”
“Let’s see where they lead us.”
The others clustered around the screen, leaving their own projects to watch. Lunch was forgotten. The team’s whole raison d’être was to detect and track the source of temporal irregularities and to set the timestream back on track however they could. In theory, if such disturbances were left uncorrected, they would grow in ever-widening circles to the point of being catastrophic, possibly on a global scale.
But not at this stage. At this stage, they were mere ripples, small enough to be mistaken for random noise. Not by Lexil though, Dani thought. He pegged these early on. And now we’re going to see what’s causing them. Or at least where they’re coming from.
The modeling program swept through repeated iterations of the triangulation process, grinding through months of data, backtracking the ripples from tens of thousands of pockets located mostly west of the Rockies to a few hundred clustered around Seattle. The map zoomed in as the radius decreased. Streets became discernible. Even Jored was silent as the computer continued its analysis. Dani glanced at the calendar clicking backwards through dates: July 3. June 27. June 24.
And then, abruptly, the scale zoomed out to show two centers of activity, two points separated by a thousand miles of ocean. One in Seattle and one in the middle of the North Pacific Ocean. That formation lasted for about four days, just long enough to focus, before it whipped back to Seattle’s Alki Beach to settle finally, blinking, on their own doorstep.
Chali broke the silence. “A glitch. Must be.”
“Which do you mean?” Lexil asked, flipping a pencil back and forth absently through his fingers. “The dual points or where it ended up?”
Patyl answered for her. “The dual centers have to be a glitch. There’s nothing in that part of the Pacific.”
Murmurs of agreement surrounded him.
“Should I run it again?” Zaidee asked.
A nudge. Dani looked down to see worry in Jored’s big brown eyes. He tugged at her sleeve and she bent down. “Is there something wrong with my numbers?” He spoke low, for her ears only.
She shook her head. No. There was nothing wrong with his numbers. And it didn’t surprise her one bit that a disruption would be centered on the Institute. Everything filtered through here.
Patyl was seldom wrong, but—“I think there must be something out there in the ocean,” she said. “And I think we need to find out what it is.”
The solemn moment was interrupted by a small voice.
“Can we eat first? I’m hungry.”
Silas laughed, a big, booming laugh.
RIACH LOWER LEVEL, Alki Beach, Seattle, WA. 1230, Friday, September 8, 2215.
Jored skipped between Dani and Lexil. “I’m so hungry. I love this place! Can we do the synthwich machine? Please? And milkshake dip?”
“Milkshake dip! Who lets you have milkshake dip?” Lexil feigned horror at the thought.
“You do!” The boy poked Lexil in the ribs.
Lexil dodged with exaggerated motions. “Watch it, kid! You do stabby fingers at me and you’ll get a taste of it yourself.” He started jabbing back with both forefingers.
Jored shrieked and slapped at Lexil’s hands. A door in a nearby office closed.
“Shh!” Lexil put a finger to his lips and added, in a serious tone, “We’re being too loud. The wild office-dwellers are getting riled up. And you definitely don’t want to see them when they get angry.” He growled.
Dani spotted a glint in Jored’s eyes. With visions of the boy opening all the office doors to stir up the wild things, she hastily changed the subject.
“So, milkshake dips. Do you really?”
“Well, once in a while.”
“Ha! Every time!” Jored corrected him.
Dani shook her head. “You’re a terrible uncle.”
“You do realize that the title of ‘honorary uncle’ comes with an automatic Spoilage Permit, don’t you? That’s what we do, we honorary uncles.”
As they arrived at the cafeteria, Jored darted over to the synthwich maker, a sleek silver dispenser with a transparent front. He punched the buttons for his favorite sandwich, selected “crustless” and “X-cut,” and watched it take shape. Dani knew that almost all of the ingredients were synthetic food, but the results tasted just like the real thing, and the process was fascinating to watch. RIACH had installed the first machine in the city a few months earlier, but now there were twenty or so in West Seattle alone.
She punched in her order, and her sandwich started taking shape beside Jored’s.
“What do you want?” she asked Lexil, laughing at his furrowed brow and wrinkled nose. “Not this, I’m guessing.”
“I’m just going to have a salad. I know how they make those things.” He shuddered visibly. “I can’t think of them as food.”
“Your loss. They taste great.”
With a thunk, the machine sliced Jored’s sandwich in four identical triangles and spit out the plate. Another thunk a minute later produced Dani’s lunch. She reached around Jored for her plate and waved it under Lexil’s nose.
“Smells so good…”
“Stop that. Why don’t you two go get a table and I’ll meet you there?”
She nodded. Lexil headed off toward the serving lines muttering something about hoping they’d have finished by the time he got back.”
“Don’t forget the milkshake dip!” Jored called after him.
They settled quickly at one of the few open tables. The seats swung out to let them in. Jored put his plate on the table. Then he jumped up to meet the chair as it scooped in to seat him. He dug into his synthwich with relish. Dani took a bite of hers and was amazed again at the juicy flavor of the synthetic beef slices. Lexil didn’t know what he was missing.
“Can I ask you something?” Jored’s voice was so quiet, compared to the earlier whoops and giggles, that she almost didn’t hear him. His excitement had given way to a somber expression.
“Of course,” she said, bracing for a question about his mom’s visits to the prison.
“Do you ever have weird dreams?”
“Uh…yeah, sometimes. Why, did you have one?”
He nodded, slowly. “I was flying, but I couldn’t feel anything on my face. And it wasn’t just one dream. It was lots of them.”
“On your face?” Why would he feel something on his face? And then she realized—”Oh, no air currents? No wind?”
“Uh huh. And I could see forever, you know, but for only one person at a time.”
“You mean you were only looking at one person?”
“No, I mean I could see one person, but I could see their whole life. Forever.” He stretched his hands out to show her how much. “I could see when they were a baby, and a kid, and a grown-up, and then old and wrinkly. It was…” He stopped. His eyes squinted and his brows knit together.
“…weird?” she guessed.
He shook his head, tilted his chin up, and looked at her sideways. “No. Well, yeah. It was weird, but that wasn’t what I was gonna say.”
She waited, giving him her full attention.
Lexil thumped a tray with three milkshake dips and a big salad on the table between them. “Did you miss me?”
Dani still didn’t tear her gaze away. She saw Jored glance at Lexil, a quick, secret glance.
“It was him,” the boy whispered.
Interesting. Not so much that he had dreamed about Lexil—he’d been spending a lot of time at the lab over the summer, and he looked up to Lexil as a hero, so t
hat much was understandable—but his reaction to the dream was decidedly unusual. He was acting as if he had watched something forbidden, and was now ashamed.
But as quickly as his face had changed before, it changed again. Now he was chowing down on the sandwich that had sat forgotten a few moments before, eager to finish and scoop up the thick milkshake with snickerdoodle cookie sticks.
The conversation turned to school, and how Jored felt about his upcoming games, and how cool it was that he found the equation. Nothing more was said about his dreams.
I’ll be asking you later about those, young man, she thought.
And then lunch was over.
RIACH LABORATORIES, Alki Beach, Seattle, WA. 1620, Friday, September 8, 2215.
By the time Dani had neurolinked to the scanner and zeroed in on anything useful to the investigation, it was late afternoon. She connected to the institute’s private Nexus, glad it wasn’t restricted any more and could make outside connexions. Her call found Detective Rayes working a lead on another case.
“But I can finish this later. Did you find something?”
“Yes. It isn’t a lot, but it confirms your suspicions.”
“I was hoping I was wrong.”
“Since we can’t make recordings any more, you’re going to want to come listen to this through the neurolinks.” She remembered when recordings were a matter of course for police work or courtroom purposes, but not any more. Now they knew it could cause a timestream disruption, even if the recording was from something as innocuous as a button lost under a sofa.
“I’ll be right over. It’ll be about ten minutes.”
When he arrived, she didn’t tell him what she’d heard. She knew from experience that he’d hold up a hand and say, “Let me have a listen first. Then we can talk.” He liked his observations fresh, untainted by someone else’s interpretations. Instead, she helped him hook up to the link, watching his face and waiting for the quick nod that would mean he was in, seeing the underside of the sofa and hearing the footsteps that meant someone was moving around in the house. He’d be smelling the faint acrid tang of the nanobots ionizing dust particles around him, being the button on the floor, experiencing what it was experiencing.
She waited for the good part. She’d be able to tell when he got to it.
His eyes narrowed and he held up a finger, pointing at nothing and everything. Yeah. Now he was hearing it. From memory, she reconstructed the one-sided conversation.
“Morgan.” His name, in the tone reserved for answering calls. Gruff. A hermit who wanted to be left alone.
A pause, then, “You can’t threaten me, mister!”
A snort. “You think I have anything left to lose?”
A sharp intake of breath. “My family’s on another continent. They want nothing to do with me.”
Another pause. “You leave her alone, you hear? You’re demented! Decent people don’t—”
A long pause, during which Morgan’s breathing turned to a hiss. Finally, he spoke. His voice was hard, slow, deliberate, but his words were compliant. “Yes, I’ll come. When and where?”
And then the sound Dani knew all too well: the sound of the floor sliding back. The detective was watching intently, so she knew he would catch it through the narrow opening between the sofa and the floor. Legs, and then a torso, descending to the helicar waiting below, ending with a momentary glimpse of Drummond Morgan’s face before the floor closed once again.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Indignity
COTTAGE #5, Blake Island, WA. 1810, Friday, September 8, 2215.
“Sit up. I have some water for you. I know you’re not asleep.”
The prisoner groaned. His captor was right. He had tried to sleep, but sleep would not come, despite—or perhaps because of—the hours of relative immobility. At least the man had loosened the cord between his wrists so he could work himself up to a sitting position. If his hands weren’t bound behind him, he could bring them to his face and tear off the blindfold. He could have a face to put with the voice. But he’d found hours earlier that the cord was anchored to the floor, and he couldn’t raise his hands more than four or five inches off the hard surface.
His mouth was dry, and the water was good. He hadn’t had anything since the salty crackers he’d been given, one after the other until he could barely chew them, several hours before. He was thirsty.
“Drink it all. You don’t have your IV in any more, so this is all you get for hydration.”
He complied. Whatever the man’s purposes were, on this one thing they could agree. He needed food and water so he could guard his strength. The mention of the IV both alarmed and reassured him. An IV meant that his captor might have kept him unconscious for days instead of hours, as he’d thought at first, and might be planning to keep him a prisoner for considerably longer. But it also meant that he wasn’t planning to kill him, at least for now.
With the water bottle emptied, he turned his attention to finding out as much as he could about his surroundings. He’d need a bathroom soon. The man wouldn’t deny him that relief, and he’d have to release the bonds for that, or refasten them in front. Either way, if he was quick, he might be able to get the jump on him, once he tore off his blindfold to see what he had to work with.
He couldn’t tell, from his captor’s voice, whether he would be facing a young man in his prime or someone older. He didn’t have the kind of strength he had had in his youth, but he felt pretty confident that the instincts he had honed in martial arts back then would still give him an advantage. Even if his adversary had some skills himself, he wouldn’t be expecting a middle-aged man to be any kind of threat. He tensed his muscles, ready to make a move as soon as he had a chance.
“I have to pee.”
“Do you? Well, go ahead.”
Silence. No motion toward him.
“You can’t be serious?”
“Oh, but I am.”
Stalemate. And the game hadn’t even started yet. He had no intention of peeing his pants, not unless he got so desperate he had to. He shifted his position and squirmed.
The man laughed. “I guess you haven’t noticed you still have a catheter in. Easy thing to overlook. The pressure you have is from the bulb at the end, and you’ve got a fresh bag, which, by the way, you are filling nicely.”
A sick feeling swirled in his stomach. He felt violated. What else had this man done to him while he was unconscious? He shuddered.
The man laughed. “Yes. You are absolutely at my mercy. How does it feel?”
How did it feel? It felt invasive and offensive. And—he set his jaw—intolerable. There was no way this contemptible man would get the best of him.
If that plan wouldn’t work, he would think of something else.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Sensitivity
DANI’S APARTMENT, First Hill, Seattle, WA. 800, Saturday, September 9, 2215.
Dani allowed herself the luxury of a slow morning. For once, she had no plans with Lexil or anyone else. Her part in the kidnapping case was over, and Detective Rayes might not even tell them anything else until it was solved, weeks or months down the road.
The newly discovered anomaly in the Pacific was fascinating, and she couldn’t wait to find out more, but that would take weeks, and it could easily wait a few days.
It was going to be a nice, lazy weekend, and she was looking forward to it.
She padded out to the kitchen in her bare feet to rummage in the fruit bowl for an apple. She liked the sour ones, especially the Newspin variety that had replaced Granny Smith as her favorite. Idly, she activated her eyescreen and spoke a search command. “Newspin apple, hybrid components.”
Two images flashed on the screen. That was interesting. Apparently her new favorite was a blend of Granny Smith and Winesap. No wonder they were so sour. She took another bite, her teeth piercing the crisp juicy flesh of the fruit. The tart flavor reminded her of the first time she had tasted it.
“Have you ever had a
Newspin?” Kat had asked. “No? You’re in for a treat.”
Dani smiled at the memory. That was only one of dozens of favorite things that she and Kat shared. Top of the list was their affection for Jored.
She should check to see if Kat was free today. It had been too long. And Marak was clearly worried about her visits with Uncle Royce. Dani hoped her friend was okay.
Kat quickly picked up her call. “Yeah, sure! Come and join us. We’re just doing a little housework and playing games later.”
It was natural and easy, as if they had spoken just yesterday instead of several weeks ago. Good friendships were like that. Why had she even worried?
“Did Jored tell you about how he helped us at the lab yesterday?”
Kat laughed. “Did he ever. Couldn’t get him to talk about anything else. You coming right over?”
Dani quickly calculated. The Wallace house was about 25 minutes away on the shoreline tube train. She could just make the 0913.
“I’m still in my pajamas, but I can get ready fast. Should be there in less than an hour.”
WALLACE HOME, Lower Queen Anne, Seattle, WA. 0940, Saturday, September 9, 2215.
By the time the tube car arrived at the Lower Queen Anne exit, Dani was whistling. She and Kat could catch up on each other’s lives. Kat would tell her all about her reasons for visiting her uncle, and they’d be practical and reasonable, like everything else Kat did. They’d probably share a good laugh, and Marak would have his worries put to rest and feel sheepish for ever thinking he had anything to worry about.
Maybe she’d have a game of chess with Jored and he could tell her more about his dreams.
The irisscan announced her at the door, and soon she was in possession of one very feathery electronic hand duster.
Kat pointed toward the living room. “The tables are yours. I’m doing the windows in there, so we can talk.” She laughed. “I gave the boys the noisy chores.”
Down the hall, Dani could hear the clothes machine flipping clothes through the wash-dry-fold cycles. Marak was undoubtedly manning the sorting and setting. “What’s Jored’s job?” she asked.
A Chronetic Perspective (The Chronography Records Book 2) Page 4