by Jaxon Reed
He handed over a small blue book with an embossed picture of the Alamo on it. Rick opened it and found his photograph and name inside.
“Thank you, Ambassador. I appreciate it.”
Rick turned toward Smitty, who nodded back at him. Then Smitty sniffled and said, “Got something in my eye.”
He turned away and walked off, holding his hand over his face.
Finally Rick turned to Angela. She smiled at him, although with a hint of sadness in her face.
She said, “Well, I guess we have proven once and for all you really are from another world, Rick Strickland.”
He looked over his shoulder at the open doorway and the two people waiting for him in the new Wildflower Room.
He turned back to her and said, “Listen, things are about to really heat up over here. The Brits need to make sure Winston Churchill gets into power. You and the Ambassador should do what you can to help that happen. Don’t trust the Japanese. They intend to take over the other half of the world if you let them. In most alternates we end up nuking them to avoid a prolonged invasion of Japan.”
“What’s ‘nuking?’”
“Never mind. You’ll find out soon enough. Finally, don’t trust the Soviets. Hitler usually makes the classic mistake of starting a land war in Asia. The Soviets will decimate his army, but when it’s all over you’ll find yourself allied with communists. Nobody will like that very much, and alliances will shift again. The ultimate goal of communism is to take over the world, and the Allies will be the only thing standing in their way. That’s probably going to lead to other conflicts in the decades ahead, until communism fails. It always fails, on every alternate.”
He thought about what else he could tell her that would help prepare her for the days ahead. Through the open doorway Booker said, “Come on, Rick!”
He shrugged, giving up trying to think of anything else. Instead he hugged her. She hugged back, and wiped away a tear when they let go.
He waved at the marines and said, “Go kill some Krauts for me, boys!”
They yelled and whooped, raised fists and hollered. Rick smiled, turned and walked through the door. It shrank and popped out of existence behind him.
10
When the rowan door opened, Nancy Chance rushed forward and fell into Rick’s arms. She showered him with kisses and hugged him as tightly as possible. He gasped in pain as the gunshot wounds compressed in her embrace, and she let up the pressure with a look of concern on her face.
She said, “Oh! I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”
He smiled at her with a good-natured grin and said, “Don’t worry about it. Felt worse getting shot.”
Booker smiled and stepped around them. His face fell when he did not see Tiff in the foyer.
Toya gave him a sad wave from the desk and said, “Welcome home.”
He and Cait walked over to the desk. Toya moved out of the way and let Cait sit down at the virtual terminal in her old spot.
Booker said, “Tiff isn’t back yet? Where is she?”
Toya said, “We can’t find her.”
“What do you mean you can’t find her?” He turned to Cait and said, “Have you been able to look for her?”
Cait said, “I am almost fully operational on all alternates. It is feasible she is somewhere I have not yet regained all capabilities.”
“Great. Isn’t there any way to speed things up?”
“I am resuming operations in all realities as fast as I can.”
Rick and Nancy walked over to the desk area. He slumped as he moved, one arm around Nancy’s shoulders. She held him up with an arm around his back.
Rick said, “Man, I would love to help you all out, but I am beat. All these wounds are catching up to me.”
Nancy said, “I’m going to give him some more tea and put him to bed.”
“Hope I can make it that far. I’m winding down fast. Might just lie down right here. The floor’s looking awfully good right now.”
“Oh no you don’t. Come on, let’s get you there.”
They shuffled down the hall toward the living quarters, Rick walking slower by the minute.
Booker turned back to Cait and said, “Tiff can’t just disappear, right? I mean, she has to be somewhere.”
Cait said, “That is correct. The vortex that destroyed the Wildflower Room sent all who entered into different realities. She exists on one of them. There are only a handful of possibilities that could prevent me from finding her.”
Toya shared an apprehensive look with Booker then said, “What are some possibilities that could prevent you from finding her, Cait?”
“The simplest explanation is she is on a planet with few if any of my sensors. With sufficient magic, fae could prevent me from seeing her on such a world.”
Toya shared another glance with Booker. She said, “Okay, that’s the simplest. What are some more complex explanations?”
“Feasibly, the fae could be porting her to different locations quickly and in such a pattern as to evade my sensors. Less feasibly, they have figured out how to carve out their own location outside of time and space like this one.”
Booker said, “Why is that less feasible?”
“Because, as far as I know, such a feat is beyond their magic. I have never seen a spell that complex in all the time I have been observing the alternates. That does not mean it is outside the realm of possibility. It is, however, outside the realm of probability.”
“So she’s almost certainly somewhere your scanners can’t reach, right?”
“There are some worlds on which I do not have any sensors. It is possible she is in one of those places.”
Booker said, “Okay. So, how many of those are we looking at?”
“In universes in which there are earths with environments capable of sustaining human life . . . 6,547 exist where I do not have any sensors. I must qualify that statement with ‘that we know of’ because there may well be other realities we have not discovered yet.”
Booker’s face fell. Toya reached over and wrapped a comforting arm around his shoulders.
Cait said, “Most of that total have not yet developed sufficient advancements to be of interest. Many are currently in an antediluvian state.”
“Antediluvian?”
Toya said, “She means pre-flood. Don’t worry, Darius. We’ll find her.”
“That’ll take forever, going to each one of those,” he said
“I’m sure we can pop over and drop at least one scanner on each. That shouldn’t take too long.”
Cait said, “It will take approximately 108 man hours if we spent one minute on each alternate. Unfortunately, many will take longer than that to line up the proper coordinates to open a door, then present the door in the best location for which to drop an initial sensor. Many will take more than one to provide adequate coverage. My current estimate is 212 man hours to cover them all with at least one sensor.”
Booker said, “Why haven’t you done this before? Fae could be hiding out on any one of those alternates.”
“They fell out outside my algorithm of likely places.”
“Algorithm?”
“Yes. Jason developed a sophisticated metric to help pinpoint locations of likely fae activity. Over the centuries I have tweaked it as new data accumulated. Most of the unmonitored realities display very low likelihood of fae interference.”
Toya said, “That still leaves us with over 6,000 possibilities.”
A newcomer interrupted the conversation.
“Hey everybody, look who I found completely resurrected!”
Niko walked into the reception area. The shortest person in the room, and the thinnest, lightest, and perkiest, she smiled brightly at Toya and Booker. A young-looking girl, she was of Japanese descent, having died in the mid-1800s on her alternate several hundred years ago.
Behind her, an older man with sallow skin and a woefully dated brown suit followed.
Toya said, “Eb! You’re back!”
&nb
sp; The librarian computer’s human interface nodded in confirmation, without emotion.
He said, “I am fully recovered from the first attack. Fortunately, I have suffered no data loss except a record of what transpired just before the attack.”
Toya said, “Well, that’s good news at least.”
Niko said, “Possibilities of what?”
“What?”
“You were saying when we walked in that there were over 6,000 possibilities. Possibilities of what?”
“Oh,” Toya’s eyebrows rose. “We don’t know what alternate Tiff got sucked into. She’s not showing up on any of Cait’s scans. We were asking how many alternates don’t have any sensors.”
Booker said, “So, we were talking about porting to each one and dropping off a sensor or two. Or however many it takes to get her an adequate presence on those worlds.”
Niko said, “Couldn’t you narrow it down a bit so you didn’t have to go to each one?”
She turned toward the librarian’s human interface and said, “Could you help, Eb? Maybe you and Cait could come together and figure out a way to narrow down the possibilities.”
Eb and Cait looked at each other silently for a moment. Nobody said anything. Niko held her breath.
A moment passed and Cait turned toward her virtual terminal. She said, “I will prepare the doorways. I presume Darius will want to depart immediately.”
“Depart to where?” Booker said. “What’s going on? What did you two come up with?”
“It takes a bit longer to explain in words,” Eb said. “But I will elucidate as simply as possible. You were taken to Alternate 4102b, Mr. Booker. Mr. Strickland was taken to 4102a with precisely 900 years separating you.”
Booker’s eyes grew wide in realization. He said, “You’re saying there’s a pattern!”
“Correct. Based on the alternate he ended up on, then Mr. Strickland, then you, we think we can narrow down the potential alternates Tiff is on to six. Three have no sensors.”
Booker said, “Let’s go. Open a door!”
He hurried to the weapons rack mounted on the wall and grabbed a long iron spike. It shrank down to half a foot in length. He stuck it in his back pocket and grabbed more spikes, iron nets, and spheres the size of ping pong balls.
Cait said, “It would be unwise for you to venture out on your own, Mr. Booker. You have very little experience fighting fae, and you are heading blind into an unknown situation where I can be of very little help.”
“Don’t care. Gotta find Tiff.”
Niko said, “I’ll go with him.”
Toya said, “Well that settles that. Niko is our most experienced hunter, outside of Jason himself. Tiff is the only one better.”
Cait said, “Very well. That is an acceptable arrangement. Before you go, I want you each to don iron undergarments. This is an innovation from Rick’s recent alternate.”
Booker felt added weight around his body, and unbuttoned his shirt to look at a suit of very fine iron mesh under his clothing.
Recalling something Rick had mentioned, he said, “No Star of David?”
Cait said, “No. The emblem itself has no special power. The iron covering most of your body will ward off spells without any particular pattern woven into the design.”
“Okay.”
Booker watched as Niko gathered several weapons and shoved them into a bag. She zipped it close and looked up at him.
She said, “Ready.”
They both glanced back at Cait, Eb, and Toya.
Toya said, “Well, I’ll try not to be totally useless while you’re gone. Maybe I can check out one of the other alternates or something.”
She flashed a wide smile at them.
Impatiently, Booker turned to the rowan door and opened it, then hurried through.
On his way out he shouted over his back, “Open that door, Cait!”
He disappeared quickly over the knoll and down the path.
Niko and Toya exchanged amused glances.
Niko said, “I guess I’d better go catch up with him.”
She went through the door and jogged over the slight rise after Booker, the bag of weapons strapped around her back.
-+-
Angela grimaced as the airman crunched through forest leaves and stumbled through undergrowth in the darkness.
He’s making enough noise to wake the dead, she thought. And if he doesn’t quiet down we’ll all be joining the dead soon.
Six months had passed since Germany’s surprise attack on London and their failed attempt to wipe out the allied diplomatic corps. Six months since the mysterious visitor from a parallel universe had appeared, saving Ambassador MacGraw and the others from that fate, and killing the fabled Fae of Eden.
She still could scarcely believe all those events happened, and might have been more skeptical had she not lived through them herself. Wiser heads in Austin agreed, apparently. Her report of what happened with Rick, ENIAC, and everything else was labeled “Top Secret” and disappeared into bureaucratic labyrinths along with the other reports mentioning those events.
So far, no one had leaked it to the news. What reporter in their right mind would believe such a tale, anyway?
Just as Rick had warned, Germany seemed hell-bent on war. Despite controlling a large chunk of Europe in one way or another, Hitler moved by force and deception to grab the rest. For a while, the Blitz was on. He pounded London and other parts of England with wave after wave of bombers. Britain held strong, putting up an amazing effort against extraordinary odds, especially with the help of a new invention called “radar.” It was an acronym for something, but she could not remember what. It gave a warning before each wave of bombers arrived, letting England scramble fighters to meet them in the sky.
Every day Germany lost more airplanes than the Brits, despite their superior aircraft. Finally Hitler turned his attention elsewhere. He headed east, annexing Poland and the Baltic States. This summer he would advance toward Moscow and try to take over Russia, too, if current reports were true.
The Texans wasted no time and moved to help Britain, immediately establishing supply lines for food, ammunition and armaments. Under something called “Lend-Lease,” the republic shipped untold numbers of guns, trucks, planes, boats and other equipment to Britain and Russia so they could effectively mount a strong defense against the Germans. The idea was to send the allies materiel now and they could pay Texas back for it later. By the time the Blitz ended, Texas had introduced thousands of B-24 Instigators to England, their first generation of modern bombers. Now the Texans and Brits flew daily raids into Germany, reaching Berlin and elsewhere with regularity.
Meanwhile, the Japanese made a sneak attack against the naval base in Honolulu. But the Texans were waiting for them. Tipped off by credible intelligence from Ambassador MacGraw (who, true to his word, acted on the information Rick had provided), most of the Texan carrier group waited patiently offshore for the Japanese to make their move. Then they attacked the attackers, sinking or capturing all the Japanese ships and taking out most of their airplanes and mini-subs.
Texas was now at war in two hemispheres simultaneously. But the republic seemed up to the challenge, with all domestic factories turned to wartime production and churning out equipment and weapons for herself and her allies.
As for Angela, multilingual and skilled in firearms as well as hand-to-hand combat, she was given a new assignment, and found herself parachuting into Normandy one cold winter night. She was tasked with meeting the French Resistance and helping to repatriate downed allied airmen.
The system worked fairly well, so long as they avoided the SS patrols scouring the countryside every night. The team recovered the airmen, dressed them in civilian clothes, gave them counterfeit papers, and put them on trains bound for Calais or other coastal towns. There, local members of the resistance hid them until a British ship dropped anchor offshore at night. Quietly, a fisherman would row them out to the ship, transfer the airmen, and slip
back into dock under the cover of darkness. The men returned to England and rejoined their units where they could continue the bombing runs on Germany.
Angela felt happy to do her part in helping to find the men in the woods who made it down alive. Her French was passable, and the small team of men she worked with each night acted very professionally. Neither Pierre, nor Robert, not even the hopelessly romantic Luc had made one unwanted pass at her.
Of course, she reflected, part of that may have had to do with the Nazi SS officer she killed shortly after hitting the ground.
Evidently the officer became suspicious of the airplane flying over at a low altitude in the middle of the night by itself, and he must have caught a glimpse of her descent in the dark. He came upon the clearing she landed in while she was busy rolling up the parachute. Her plans were to bury it, leaving no sign of her arrival. But, trying to gather back together what once had fit into a relatively small backpack had proven to be no small task. He surprised her showing up in the dark while her back was turned.
When Robert and the others found her half an hour later, they also discovered the corpse of the SS officer lying on the ground, his neck slit and blood drenching the front of his uniform. Angela looked up at them holding his ID card in one hand and several hundred Reichsmarks in the other.
No one dared lay a hand on her in the weeks since.
She had been fearless in helping to rescue downed airmen almost every night, sleeping in the daytime at a remote cottage deep in the woods that the team shared. On occasion, someone from a nearby town would show up with food and supplies. The airmen they rescued stayed in the cottage too, returning with the couriers when their forged papers were ready.
It’s a good life, Angela thought. At least I’m making a difference.
She jolted back into the present when the airman stepped on a stick and a loud crack echoed through the darkness. Pierre, standing to her right, whispered a soft oath in French. He was the shortest of the trio, and the only one accompanying her tonight. The anti-aircraft guns along the coast, not far from here, had successfully downed a handful of Instigators. From the cottage, the team spied chutes dropping from both the north and the south, so they split up. Robert and Luc headed north while she and Pierre went in the other direction.