Next Wren locked her gaze with Nicola’s. “You’re turn. Sorry, but there’s no time. In third-grade you yanked Peter Bushnell’s pants down at lunch because he took your social studies project and handed it in as his own. It was a popsicle stick Indian village, and he received an A while you got an Incomplete. The pantsing resulted in you getting a week-long detention. Peter Bushnell got off scot-free. Later, in high school, you told all the girls he had a little —.”
“Stop!” Nicola held out her hands in surrender. “I believe you.”
Wren turned her attention to Mattea, her eyebrows raised in question.
He held out his hands as well. “Not necessary. I believed you the first time, when you …” He glanced at Coru. “You know …”
She nodded her head with finality. “Good. Back to you, Coru.”
He smiled at her, and she smiled back, surprised at how much relief came with her confession. What a load it was keeping this damned ‘special ability’ a secret.
“Before I start,” Coru said, “I want you to know Wren has been scanning minds almost constantly, reaching out, trying to detect if there are any intruders in our area, and then what their true intentions are. You don’t know it, but when Nicola and Jarvis were missing, we met up with two intruders, on their way here. They were within an hour of coming out onto D.O.A.
“Wren scanned them, learned who they were and what they were after. We had no choice. We… we had to eliminate them. We agreed not to say anything, not wanting you to be frightened, but, this is important. Wren saw into their heads and what she saw was unspeakable. We are all here, safe because she scanned ahead and found them before they found us. We’re very lucky to have her. This skill takes its toll, however, and she’s near the point of exhaustion many days. We should try to lighten her load, without being obvious.”
“Okay,” Catherine replied, absorbing what he’d just told them. “Okay.” She picked up her mug again, her hands shaking only a little, and drained it. “Okay. Who else knows?” she asked, ever practical and able to cut to the chase.
Wren answered her, “All of us here, Sean, Sandy and Bill. The fewer the better, honestly. While it’s easier for me not to keep it a secret, people might feel strange around me if they know, and then, I’d feel bad as well. This is better. You need to know. I need you to know.”
Catherine nodded, satisfied.
Nicola just stared. Wren could hear her mentally going back, reviewing what she’d thought of since she’d met Wren. After a moment, she gave it up. Then she sat up and thought. Can you hear me now, Wren? Could we send you messages?
Wren smiled. Nicola was quick on the pick-up. “Yes, I can, and yes you can.”
Nicola’s face fairly bloomed with joy, bouncing back to Wren, At last, something in our favor in all this mess. She rose from her straw bail and hugged Wren, the action bringing Wren to tears. To be accepted as she was, meant everything to her. “Thank you,” she whispered to Nicola.
Nicola returned to her seat wiping her own eyes and laughing self-consciously. “What?” she said to Mattea. “We’re girls — we sometimes cry. Get used to it.”
“I hope I never ‘get used’ to you girls crying. I hope to get used to hearing you laugh.”
The look that passed between Mattea and Nicola almost stole Wren’s breath away. These two cared for one another. It had snuck up on them, but was very real. Neither knew the other had feelings for them yet and each was fumbling their way, cautious, hopeful. Love among the ruins indeed.
Catherine interjected. “Okay — sorry, I know I’m saying ‘Okay’ a lot, but this is huge. A lot to process. Let’s get back to Coru’s time-travel story.” Her efforts to remove doubt from her tone was not successful, but Wren could read how hard she was trying.
Coru began, ever watchful as he spoke, looking for believers and naysayers, Wren could hear. Will they believe me? Would I believe me in this situation? If the Time Bore hadn’t blown up in front of my eyes, would I even believe my own story? “In WEN 2341, the earth is not like your earth, here in WEN 2136. In WEN 2341, the earth is an ecological disaster.”
Any joy that had been in their circle drained away. They had been warned for years that if man did not change his ways, there would be no going back. To hear Coru confirm this was a blow, to Wren and Mattea, at least, because they believed that Coru spoke from a position of authority. Coru actually knew.
“In my world, Society has divided into two. The privileged live up in the clouds, where everything is sanitized and they can go on believing their world is just fine. The rest live on what we call Surface, scraping out a life.”
“Where do… did you live?” Nicola asked, watching him for signs of duplicity.
“I lived in the clouds, referred to as Cloud Rez. I am from what is considered a high-ranking family, with a ‘bright future’ in Cloud Rez society. My father, Cyprian Wisla is first councilor; my mother is almost royalty, if you can believe it. But it meant nothing to me. I lived their life until six years ago, when I decided it was my responsibility to try to recover what we could of the earth. I’ve spent the last six years working reclamation alongside the Surface dwellers. It’s an ugly job, an ugly existence, but we’re making headway.”
“Are you here to warn us about the future?” Again, this was Nicola asking.
“I wish it were that simple, but no. Well, yes, I can tell you—stop what you’re doing with fossil fuels, pipelines, the plastics, the throw-away consumerism … the trees.” He looked up at the rafters and blinked. “My God the trees. When I first came here, I was shocked by the beauty all around you, unseen, unloved. The air is filled with the scent of fresh pine, but you don’t smell it. The forest is healing, the forest is spiritual….” He didn’t go on, his thoughts tumbling over one another, making it impossible to express how overwhelmed and in love he was with what was all around him.
Wren reached out and touched his arm. “Coru.”
He pulled himself together. “No. That’s not why I’m here. Like Wren, I don’t have the time to give you the long version, not now—maybe someday, if we’re lucky.” He drew in a deep breath and shook himself. “Let’s start again. In the future, there are historical archives. I attended university with a man named Moses Zhang. Moses and I became friends, good friends, I thought. Moses found Charles Wood’s old research notes in an obscure archive.” He waved toward Wren. “Wren’s father, Charles Wood, in fact. In the notes, he found Wood’s design for a Time Bore, which he — I mean Moses — immediately wanted to build, so he could go back and right the wrongs that had been visited upon our world — your world. That’s where he and I parted company. I thought we should get down to Surface and fight our way out, fix what was broken. He wanted to go back and make sure it didn’t get broken in the first place.”
Catherine tilted her head. “Sounds reasonable, if you leave out the time travel part. Aren’t there problems with time travel, like move a pencil on a desk and a hundred years later millions die…” Recognition washed her face white. “Oh, my God… Did this Zhang…?” She raised shocked eyes to Coru.
“No. No, nothing like that. After the Bore was built, he jumped through it, sabotaging it before he left to ensure we didn’t come after him and bring him back. He never intended for anyone but himself to use it. As near as we could tell, within one day of his arrival here, our world began to come apart in WEN 2341. My brother, also an archivist came up with a plan. We jumped through the Bore before it totally collapsed, our intentions being: find and bring Zhang back before he does any more damage and find Charles and, or Wren Wood to prevent Charles plans from falling into Zhang’s hand in the first place.”
“So where did he go?”
“As far as we could tell, his coordinates were set to WEN 2036 in the area of Seattle or Vancouver in Old Canada—”
“Old Canada!?” Mattea protested, half standing, his entire body poised in shock. “Wait, wait, wait. What’s this about Old Canada?”
Coru’s expression ch
anged from stressed to appalled, his eyes widening at the mistake he’d made. He glanced away, looking down and to the side, considering his next move. He started slowly, “The States and Canada joined together after the Clone…” He stopped and closed his eyes, silent for a moment. “No. I can’t tell you this, foreknowledge is… is dangerous.”
Mattea stared at Coru, struggling with his friend’s refusal to explain. Finally, he let go of the air he’d been holding in his chest with a noisy sigh and relaxed his body. He sat back down, swept his hair back over his shoulders and nodded his head. His expression was a mixture of both regret and reluctant acceptance. “I get it. I do. No one should know the future.”
Coru looked back at him glumly. “If the future is what it was when I left it. I have no idea what’s out there now. I don’t even know if there’s a world for me to return to.”
They all stared into a middle distant place, their thoughts turned inward, facing the uncertainty that was the future, both here in WEN 2046 and back in WEN 2341. None of them knew if what they were fighting for would exist in a year, or in three hundred years.
“Just a minute,” Nicola said, her expression mystified once again. “If this Zhang character came back to WEN 2036, why are you here in WEN 2046?”
“Damned good question.”
“So, your brother… what’s his name?”
“Payton.”
“Where is he?”
“Another good question.”
Nicola pressed on, annoyed now, “What do you know?”
“I know I arrive ten years too late, that Charles Wood, as far as I can tell, never made the scientific discoveries he was supposed to have made. My brother… My brother was lost somewhere in the Time Bore.”
“Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to —.”
“Don’t concern yourself. I’m asking you to absorb a lot in a very short time.”
“So, you’re trying to find your brother?” Catherine asked, her expression sympathetic.
It was Coru’s turn to look frustrated. He raised his arms in bewilderment, shaking his head. “Where do I look? What location? And WEN? What year? Did he survive the transfer at all?”
Wren could see all the pieces of Coru’s, and now their situation dropping into a strange but weirdly logical whole in Catherine, Nicola and Mattea’s minds. They’d gone from disbelieving to shell-shocked to dazed, arriving finally at accepting.
Nicola ventured, “So, you’re here to find Charles Wood and Wren, then?”
“Yes, but, like I said, ten years after the fact. Charles’s work is nowhere. It never happened. Why? What did Zhang do? My world in WEN 2341 is coming apart because Charles Wood’s world fell apart when Zhang came to WEN 2036.”
Wren frowned. “My father changed over the last few years. He and my mother split up, a total surprise. He was… with someone else, and had a whole secret, second life, according to my mother. She… she wasn’t your best source for accurate information, however, so I never really believed that part.” Wren didn’t like talking about her family situation. “My mother became an unhappy alcoholic; he a discredited stooge in the scientific community—to paraphrase his own thoughts. It all went to hell in a handbasket.”
“When did they split up?” Coru asked.
“When I was sixteen.”
“And you’re…”
“Twenty-five.”
“So, nine years ago. While Zhang was here. After he’d had a year to set himself up.”
She whispered, “Yes,” realization that everything they were talking about was true, had effected worlds, societies, millions of people. The pure scale of it all was monstrous.
Then Coru startled her by falling to his knees before her, and gripping her hands in his. “Is there any way you can get your hands on your father’s research here in WEN 2046? Please, Wren, this is so very important.”
She shook her head. “What you’re asking is impossible. Ten years of research that didn’t happen, according to you. Ten years in which we barely exchanged a civil word. It wasn’t like he and I confided in one another. God. He was so difficult after — ” She stopped. “Oh, my God. The visitor’s center in Rushton! Father left dozens of tablets in the back of the Beast. When I went into Rushton, and learned what had happened while I was out here, missing it all, I remembered the old homestead stuff the visitor’s center museum used to display. They kept all that stuff in the basement, because no one was interested in it anymore. But I was. So, I swapped out Father’s tablets for homestead, survival equipment, things I thought I could use out here.” She looked beseechingly at Catherine. “Like the oat roller you use to make oatmeal. The wheat grinder to make flour.”
She pulled her hands free of Coru’s and dropped her head into them, rocking it back and forth in denial. “Oh, my God. I had no idea. They were just plastic tablets, taking up space!”
“Is there a chance they might still be there?” Coru’s voice cracked, raw with hope. “Any chance at all?”
She looked up at him, brushing back her snarled hair. “If anyone found them, would they even care? They’re meaningless. Just old tablets thrown into a wooden box in a corner of a museum basement.”
“We’ve got to get them back. Everything depends on us finding your father’s work. Everything.”
“It’s dangerous there. Bill and the kids and I were lucky to get away, and not bring anyone back here on our tail. That’s why we came north, then swung around to the south. To keep D.O.A. a secret.”
Catherine said gently, “And that’s the reason we all found each other.”
“Are you saying, like it was meant to be?” Nicola looked skeptical.
“Why not? It was Wren who found us.” Catherine asked Wren, “You doubled back for us, right?”
“Yes.”
“Why? What made you come back, to that very spot, to find us?”
“I heard Coru’s thoughts. He was desperate. He was calling out in his head, “Where are you Wren Wood!?” I had to come. We were past that place, almost home, but I knew I had to come to that place, answer that call. I’ve never heard a mind from that distance. I knew it was important.”
Satisfied, Catherine looked at Nicola. “Some things are beyond us, Nicola. We have to accept that there are powers at work here. I pray God is with us every day. I believe he is here with us now, in the form of Wren and Coru.”
Mattea stood, and looked at the group, his gaze finally settling on Coru, who was still on his knees in the straw. Mattea’s expression was unreadable. He hitched his hands onto his hips and said, “Here’s a question for you.”
They all waited him out, almost too stunned by what was happening here in the barn on this rapidly disappearing night, to look away.
“In any of those archives you’ve got up there in WEN 2341, does it say anywhere there’s a pandemic in WEN 2046?”
23
NOT A GAME
It had been hours since Coru’s bombshell, hours of walking around, behaving normally on the outside while they were fairly vibrating with the aftershocks on the inside. By mid-afternoon, Mattea knew they had to talk it all out — away from Coru, and away from Wren. As agreed upon, Nicola and Catherine met him in the garden, each carrying baskets, ostentatiously here to pick off the first offering from the bush beans for tonight’s supper. Alone in the garden, they spread out along the neatly planted rows and began to pick.
Catherine opened the covert meeting. “So, what’s our next step?”
Mattea glanced at both of their expressions then back down at the beans. “I know Coru didn’t bring the virus with him. He was brand spanking new, right off the turnip truck when I met him in Hope. There’s no way he’d been in our time the weeks necessary to spread the virus. But the fact there was no pandemic in WEN 2046 before Zhang arrived? That’s another whole can of worms. I can’t help wondering what else is different, or will be different with Zhang here.”
Nicola grimaced. “You’re assuming he’s still alive.”
Mat
tea lifted his brows at that. She was right, of course.
“Not if there’s a God in heaven, he isn’t,” Catherine answered.
Nicola pasted on a happy smile and announced, “I’ve decided to assume he is dead—dead by his own sickness, having now reached the end of my ‘what the hell else can go wrong’ rope I’m hanging onto.”
“Works for me,” Catherine muttered.
Nicola and Mattea both nodded as they picked.
Nicola added, “Besides, Wren confirmed it, and I believe Wren.”
Mattea frowned. “When were you talking to Wren?”
“At breakfast.” Nicola looked determined as she filled her basket.
“You were on opposite sides of the table.”
“In our heads. I asked her if she could hear me. She nodded. I asked her if she liked her pancakes. She nodded again. Then I asked her if she could stand Annie’s incessant whining about how she can’t sleep anymore. She laughed and shook her head.”
Catherine burst out in a laughing, “Halleluiah. Some days I just want to punt Annie to the curb. You’d think she was the first woman to give birth on the damned planet.”
Mattea did a double take at Catherine’s remark. Catherine was the picture of patience, or so he’d assumed. Funny. Same take he’d had about Annie—that girl could talk a guy into a coma. And he did remember Wren’s strangely placed laugh at breakfast, but had dismissed it, more interested in what Dan was saying about getting another elk and smoking the meat.
Nicola tossed a handful of beans into her basket. “We decided after that to make a code. One blink for yes. Two blinks for no. So, I asked her the elephant in the room question—did Coru bring the Boy Scout Virus with him to WEN 2046. She blinked two very firm blinks. So, no, Coru is innocent of all charges.” She sat back on her haunches, sighed and looked around the garden. “She did a good job planting, for her first time. Oh, by the way, she will know what we’re doing down here.”
Lost Sentinel: Post-Apocalyptic Time Travel Adventure (Earth Survives Series Book 1) Page 26