Laughing Wolf

by Nicholas Maes

  “You’re about to visit a highly classified facility,” he revealed. “No one can know about the secret it contains, because in the wrong hands it could lead to disaster.”

  “And this box …?”

  “You’ve just sworn an oath that you’ll reveal nothing about the things you’re going to see. If you disclose the smallest detail to any unauthorized person, I will see to it you end up in a very dark corner of our solar system.”

  “I understand. I’ll keep this secret to myself.”

  “In that case,” the general said, “please secure your g-force pods.”

  Without further ado, the general walked to the front of the ship. Like Carolyn, Felix closed the membrane on his pod: as soon as he had, the fusion thrusters ignited and the craft leapt forward at an impressive speed.

  “Where are we going?” Felix asked, over the pod’s speaker.

  “You’ll find out soon,” Carolyn said. “I’m glad you passed the Latin test. Would you believe I’d never heard of Latin until my dad found out about your story on The Angstrom Show?”

  “The Angstrom Show? Is that why I’m here?”

  When Carolyn didn’t answer, Felix engaged the craft’s external monitor. A screen came to life and revealed a view of the globe. He had to shake his head in wonder: its surface was so beautiful, with its sweeping curves and mix of luscious colours. At the same time, against the empty backdrop of space, the earth seemed ridiculous and puny-looking. When one pondered the world in relation to the universe, did it matter humans were faced with extinction? Stars, whole galaxies, had come and gone, so what importance could events on such a crumb of a planet have?

  His father came to mind. Felix could picture him standing in his garden, reading a book with heartfelt satisfaction and reveling in the sun’s comforting touch. He was wrong. It was in fact the tiny things that mattered. Never mind the universe’s size: it was people like his father who gave it meaning.

  “Dad,” he whispered.

  The scene on the monitor changed abruptly and its screen showed a Class 9 station floating in the distance. Felix was impressed. Shaped like an H, it was fifteen stories high and at least a hundred metres across. Its surface was covered with solar panels, signaling equipment and powerful antennae. And despite its obvious ungainliness, the structure was almost graceful as it rotated slowly against the glittering starlight.

  A panel opened on the landing port. Felix felt the mildest jolt as a sea-green beam caught hold of the ship and guided it toward the station’s lowest deck — like a trout being reeled in on a fishing line. A wall of electromagnets held the craft in place and an air lock enclosed the Medevac’s door. The pods opened automatically. While Carolyn hurried off to the back of the craft, Felix stood as the general approached.

  “I’m glad you’re with us,” he declared. “But I must remind you not to disclose any aspect of this station.”

  “Of course, sir.”

  “And now I’ll escort you to someone you know.”

  “Someone I know? Here in outer space?”

  “This way, please.”

  The general led him through the air lock into a hallway. The air tasted strange — as if it came from a package. Felix felt less heavy than he had on Earth and realized this was due to gravity’s weaker pull. As his legs bounced upwards of their own accord, he was tempted to see how high he could jump, but this wasn’t the time for any such nonsense.

  They entered a small elevator. After climbing four stories, the Vacu-lift opened on a figure in a lab coat. Felix gasped when he spied the man’s tidy features.

  “Dr. Lee!” he cried. “Why are you here?”

  “Hello,” the doctor replied, shaking his hand. “I’m afraid I owe you an apology, Felix. I was wrong to doubt you. It turns out you were right about everything.”

  “You mean…?”

  “Aceticus’s virus is the same one that is threatening to destroy us.”

  “I’m glad.” Felix smiled. “I mean, I’m happy you believe me.”

  “And it appears,” Dr. Lee continued, leading Felix and the general down a maze-like corridor, “that the lupus ridens is a genuine flower.…”

  “Then all we have to do —” Felix cried.

  “Not so fast,” the doctor cautioned him. “It isn’t so easy.”

  By now they’d reached an imposing metal door that was equipped with several security scans as well as BISDMs to prevent unwanted “guests” from entering. Stepping ahead of the doctor and Felix, General Manes placed his hand on a scanner and spoke his name and title aloud: “General Isaiah Manes, commander of the Temporal Projection Matrix.” Instantly, the metal door slid open.

  Felix followed the men across the threshold. The sight that greeted him took his breath away.

  The room he’d entered was the size of a large stadium. The floors extended the width of the station and from the floor to the ceiling was a height of six stories. In the middle of this cavern stood a shining dome — it was twelve feet high, completely transparent, and contained coloured gases spiralling about its centre. Encircling the sphere was a totalium pipe a metre wide and hooked up to an array of oscilloscopes and signallers. The space outside the sphere was packed with processors, channelers, and flashing consoles, all of them positioned round a house-sized mainframe whose interior contained a colorless plasma. This substance was hypnotic as it swirled in the most complicated patterns.

  “What am I looking at?” Felix finally whispered.

  “Believe it or not,” the general said, “you’re looking at a transportation device.”

  “Transportation to where?” Felix asked.

  “We’ll answer that soon,” Dr. Lee broke in. “Let’s talk about our problem first. As far as we can tell, the lupus ridens hasn’t been seen on earth for five hundred years.”

  “You mean it’s extinct?”

  “Exactly. And because we don’t know its structure, it can’t be replicated.”

  “So we’re back where we started,” Felix wailed. “Aceticus is useless.…”

  “That’s not quite true,” the general mused.

  “Tell me,” Dr. Lee inquired, “have you studied Clavius’s particle theories?”

  “Just recently, yes, but I don’t see …”

  “Think. What do they imply?”

  “That some particles travel faster than the speed of light.”

  “And …?”

  “Well, in theory, that their time coefficient can be ‘bent’ at will.”

  “Precisely,” the general and doctor spoke together.

  “Wait, you don’t mean …?”

  “That’s precisely what we mean,” Dr. Lee said with emphasis. “This equipment can transport people back in time. In point of fact, we wish you to travel to 71 BC when we know for certain the lupus ridens still existed.”

  Felix almost laughed. These people were talking gibberish. The past was gone, over and done with. Aceticus, Spartacus, Marcus Crassus — these figures had been dust for two thousand years and any attempt to visit them would be like attempting to bring the dead back to life.

  But Dr. Lee was talking. He was saying the TPM was like a Dispersion Portal, only in addition to mere spatial coordinates, the passenger would enter a precise date as well, past, present, or future.

  He also explained how they knew the TPM was functional. One month before the virus erupted, a rat had been placed in the TPM and the coordinates set for London in 1665. Before entering the device the rat had been healthy; upon emerging it was carrying the bubonic plague. There was only one possible explanation: because the plague had existed in seventeenth-century London, the rat had been projected back in time.

  “If we can send a rat,” Dr. Lee concluded, “we can send a human being as well, although we haven’t actually done this yet.”

  “But … why me?” Felix gasped.

  “Two reasons,” the general broke in. “First, it requires too much power to send an adult back. The TPM can handle a separate mass of maximum
seventy kilograms.”

  “More important,” Dr. Lee continued, “your Latin is excellent and you can speak to the locals.”

  “Why not send someone with an auto-translator?”

  “Impossible!” Dr. Lee exclaimed. “The TPM can’t handle metal or plastic. These substances would reflect the high-speed particles and trigger a thermonuclear explosion. If you agree to this mission, your equipment will be minimal.”

  “Normally we wouldn’t ask you to run such risks,” the general said, “but frankly, we’re desperate. We’re far from discovering a cure for the virus, and it’s just a matter of time before everyone comes down with the plague. If you don’t find this flower, and I mean soon, as a species, we will vanish from the face of the earth.”

  “The mission should be simple,” Dr. Lee added. “We’ll send you to a temple near Panarium — that’s the town Aceticus mentions in his book — you’ll venture outside, find the lupus ridens, hurry to a portal and return to the present.”

  “And you won’t be alone,” the general declared, “My daughter Carolyn will tag along. She doesn’t speak Latin but she has certain … skills.”

  “When would I leave?” Felix asked.

  “Our device is powered by the sun,” the doctor answered. “As temporal projection requires vast quantities of power, it must occur when the sun is at an angle of optimum impact. This will happen in twelve hours and eighteen minutes.”

  “Will you help us, Felix?” the general pleaded.

  Aware he had no choice in the matter, Felix nodded his assent.

  Chapter Six

  The deadline was looming. General Manes was giving the TPM a last inspection; Dr. Lee was prepping medications in a lab; and the professor was looking after “travel arrangements.” Because Carolyn had vanished without explanation, Felix was left to wander the station on his own.

  As he walked about aimlessly, his thoughts turned to their mission. How much danger lay ahead of them? Would the TPM roast them to cinders? If they reached the past, would they make it back alive? Most important, would they find the lupus ridens? Billions of people depended on their efforts, yet their chances of success were just about zero.

  To distract himself from these depressing thoughts, Felix paused before a large, sliding door. From behind it there came the sound of … cracking, followed by the pattering of feet. Curious, he opened the door and walked onto a “halo” court.

  “Duck!” Carolyn cried.

  Instinctively he dropped to his knees and a cringed as a “halo” ball whistled past him. Rubberized, three inches wide and containing circuitry at its core, it was programmed to “attack” any figure in the vicinity. The purpose of the game was to avoid the ball by bouncing off the padded walls and employing a series of complex gymnastics. Felix was pretty good at the game and could usually last well over a minute. But that was nothing compared to Carolyn’s performance.

  Instead of one ball, she had five in play. Each was set on maximum speed. The game should have been impossible, but Carolyn was dodging all five “halos” with ease, by contorting her limbs, climbing the walls and performing flips, cartwheels, and jumps — twice she leapt eight feet in the air. When she scaled one wall, dropped to the mat, rolled across the room and hopped to her feet, Felix raised a hand in disbelief. His gesture caused two balls to attack.

  “Ow!”

  “Stop!” Carolyn yelled. The halos fell to the mat.

  “Are you okay?” she panted. She was dressed in a Zylex suit whose light green shimmer matched her eye colouring.

  “I’m fine,” Felix replied, massaging his arm. “Those balls pack a wallop.”

  “Personally, I find them slow for my taste.”

  “Have you undergone alpha-wave adjustment?”

  “Of course. How else do you think I could move so quickly?”

  “And did I see signs of combat training …?”

  “I’ve mastered fifteen martial arts.”

  She said this matter-of-factly, as if her skills were commonplace. Felix had more questions to ask, but a voice addressed them on the room’s intercom.

  “Felix and Carolyn,” Doctor Lee spoke up. “Could you come to my office? We have some details to go over.”

  “We’re on our way,” Carolyn replied, stepping to the exit. As she crossed the threshold, she yelled, “Attack!” Instantly the balls came alive and, if Felix hadn’t leaped outside, they would have pummeled him senseless. Carolyn smirked.

  A minute later they joined the doctor. A quiet man by nature — his ERR only heightened his shyness — he led them over to two “treatment” stations. As soon as they were seated, their blood chemistry was scanned. A robotic arm with needles appeared and injected them a dozen times over — with anti-viral compounds, blood-coagulants, vitamin supplements and other chemical “boosters.”

  With these meds dispensed, they followed the doctor to a glassed-in cubicle. At his command, three chairs rose up from the floor. And then a glowing, twelve-inch sphere rolled beside them and floated in the air until it reached eye level.

  “Italy, 71 BC,” the doctor announced.

  The sphere projected a 3D map, which filled the room. Felix recognized Italy’s boot-shaped outline; but instead of the Common Speak names for its cities, the ancient Latin ones appeared — Roma, Tarentum, Neapolis, and others.

  “Panarium,” the doctor spoke, causing the globe to project two maps this time. One showed Rome with its famous seven hills and, farther to the east, a town named Panarium. The second showed a town with the exact same name, only it was a hundred miles south of the first.

  “As you can see,” the doctor said, “There are two Panariums. While Aceticus is precise in most regards, he doesn’t state which Panarium the flower can be found in. We’ll hazard a guess and dispatch you to the one nearest Rome. If we’re wrong, you’ll return to us and we’ll send you to the second one, or the town closest to it. Okay?”

  They nodded.

  “This brings us to the time portals. Temples,” he called out.

  Again the sphere projected a map, only this one showed most of Western Europe. Numerous points were flashing on its surface, in Italy and other countries as well.

  “Each flashing point,” the doctor explained, “is a temple that we know about from ancient times. Some were built after 71 BC, but that doesn’t matter. We’re establishing portals in each of these temples — including the one Mr. Taylor discovered. The second Panarium doesn’t contain any temple — that’s why we’re sending you to the one near Rome — but there are temples not too far from it, in Paestum or Pompeii. The point is, once you enter any temple’s inner recess, the portal will deposit you here.”

  “But can’t anyone be transported?” Felix asked. “What will stop some Roman from being whisked to the present?”

  “We have programmed bio-protocols in your DNA. Only you will be able to move through the portals.”

  “How long will the portal stay open?” Carolyn asked. “Will we be working against time?”

  “No. The portal has a half-life of two hundred years. And if it’s covered over, I mean, if it isn’t exposed to the elements, its “charge” could last indefinitely. Now do you see that blip in the Panarium near Rome? That’s your point of entry. It is a temple of Minerva — the goddess of wisdom. Let’s hope her wisdom rubs off on us.”

  Again they nodded. Because the doctor had “unplug-ged” the sphere, they assumed he was done with them and rose from their seats. But he motioned them to sit again, as his face assumed a grim expression.

  “Have you heard about the butterfly effect?” he asked.

  “I have,” Carolyn volunteered. “It’s the change you can trigger in the present or future by travelling back in time and altering events. So if you killed my great-great-grandfather, say, his descendants would vanish, including me and my father.”

  “That’s right,” the doctor said, nodding. “Now, our calculations tell us that you can change our present only if you harm someone or re
veal some hidden aspect of the future — if you teach them about nuclear fission, for example. That is why, no matter what, you will not kill or injure anyone, even as a matter of self-defence. And you must not talk in any way about our future. The survival of our world depends upon your vigilance. Do you understand?”

  The doctor glared at them. Understanding the gravity of his words, they promised to follow his instructions exactly.

  “In that case,” he concluded, “I wish you both the best of luck.”

  The trio stood. Shaking hands with them, the doctor revealed that the professor was in a room across the hall where he would provide them with some “travel” information. Without another word, he exited the cubicle and joined the general in his inspection of the TPM.

  Carolyn and Felix crossed the hall and, sure enough, found the professor seated in a cubicle. In front of him were two bundles of cloth. Surrounding him were several stacks of books, many of them with Latin titles. At the sight of these, Felix grinned: books always made him feel optimistic.

  And then there was the professor himself. He was peculiar-looking. He was bald and wrinkled and frail and stooped over: clearly he had rejected all revitalizing treatments. To judge by his vivid and lively expression, he had also turned his back on ERR. Finally, his glasses were so thick and clumsy — the frames kept slipping off the bridge of his nose — that they gave him a decidedly comical air. There was nothing comical about his gaze, however: his eyes radiated a vast intelligence.

  “All right,” he began, motioning them to sit. “Our first task is to determine who you are. In the unlikely event you get stranded in the past, the ancients you encounter will ask where you’re from.”

  “Tis pothen eis andron,” Felix murmured.

  “Precisely!” the professor declared with delight, “I didn’t know you were trained in Greek! My, my, you are full of surprises.”

  “What did you just say?” Carolyn demanded.

  “It comes from a poem called The Odyssey,” Felix said. “It means ‘Who are you and where do you come from?’”

  Chuckling still, the professor said the locals would ask about their Common Speak and why Carolyn didn’t know any Latin. They would inquire about their status too — were they peregrini (foreigners), slaves, or citizens? Finally, their relationship would stir their curiosity, as well as the fact that they were travelling solo.