A Place in Time (Rum Runner Island Book 1)

by JoAnn Ross

  The ecumenical translator had never failed him. Logic told him that it was operating properly. Still, Sebastian could not believe he was understanding her correctly.

  “What were your duties in Venice? When you were a detective third class?”

  “I worked in the rape and domestic violence section and spent a month undercover, which resulted in the arrest and conviction of the Venice Surfer Rapist, a serial creep who’d been terrorizing women on L.A. beaches for over a year. Okay?”

  “That sounds dangerous.” He wondered why her father, who obviously would have been alive at the time, would permit her to hold such a risky position.

  She shrugged. “So is running around in a blizzard in shorts. You might be all the fashion rage on the beaches of Venice, Blackthorne, but you were definitely underdressed for Maine. And speaking of last night’s little adventure, we probably should get you to a clinic for a checkup.”

  “I don’t want to go to a clinic.”

  “I don’t really care what you want,” she shot back in a way that no properly acquiescent female on Logosia would ever dare to do.

  He folded his arms and attempted to stare her down. “And if I refuse?”

  She lifted her chin and met his challenging glare head on. “I wouldn’t advise putting me to the test.”

  Gone was the blithe spirit who’d chattered on like a brightly plumed jabberkeet. In her place was a brisk, take-charge law enforcement official who could have held her own with any uniformed, stun-pulsar-carrying policeman on Logosia.

  “But you’re in luck,” she said. “For now. Because until this snow stops, there’s no way I can get you to the mainland.”

  Her obviously reluctant decision caused a cooling wave of relief to flow through Sebastian. He’d had no intention of allowing her to take him to the hospital, where they would perform a series of tests on him. What he hadn’t determined was how far he was willing to go to stop her.

  “Whatever you say.”

  His mild tone had Kirby shooting him a quick, suspicious look. “We need to unravel the mystery of what happened to the rest of your clothes,” she said. “It’s really strange. We never have muggings here on the island, and theft is almost unheard of.”

  The orange flames of the fire were warming the room. The coffee was spreading through him, soothing his body even as it stimulated his brain. He was relieved that although his body might be that of a terran, his mind had remained reassuredly Logosian.

  All the archival data described the residents of Earth to be a benign, if unpredictable and occasionally violent, race. Which was perfectly explainable when you considered that the planet itself was still in its adolescence.

  Eons from now, if they could avoid destroying their world with their careless pollution and unending territorial disputes, they would, as his own people had, evolve to a point that such problems as war and disease and poverty would be a distant memory. Something to be taught in ancient history classes.

  “Oh, my God.” Grabbing hold of the back of a chair, Kirby sank onto the rush seat.

  Sebastian recognized the name of one of Earth’s deities, but from her startled tone, he knew she was not praying.

  “What’s wrong?”

  She was looking at him, her gaze wide with shock.

  “I suddenly realized why you look familiar.”

  “Why is that?” Sebastian asked with a great deal of trepidation. What if he resembled someone she knew? Someone she disliked? Perhaps even someone she had arrested in Venice.

  What would he do if she threw him back out into that icy white stuff to fend for himself?

  “You’re the man in my fantasy.”

  8

  Her voice, which had remained as strong and steady as catonium during their crisis last night, was now soft and unsteady. “I was dreaming about you.”

  “Dreaming?”

  “Well, technically it was a daydream. Right before all the UFO calls.”

  So he had been seen. Sebastian had hoped that the lights of the aurora borealis would have allowed him to slip in undetected.

  “UFO calls?”

  “Don’t worry about that.” She brushed off the question with a wave of her hand. “We always get a few crank calls during a full moon. I’ve got a feeling that the solar flares are somehow involved, too,” she confided. “But I don’t know if there’s any scientific data backing me up.”

  He knew the answer, of course, but decided there was no logical way to reveal it without also having to explain that the definitive study proving solar flares intensified feelings of excitement and anticipation was still five solar revolutions in the future.

  Something clicked in Sebastian’s memory banks. “Did you say your brother’s name is Nathaniel Pendleton?”

  The benchmark study of solar flare arousal, which was still being taught in Logosian astrophysical psychology classes, had been developed by a scientist named Nathaniel Pendleton. Not only that, Galileo, Copernicus, Newton, Darwin, Einstein, Pendleton, and Pournelle were the only Earthlings who’d ever earned mention in the Logosian textbooks.

  And even then there were footnotes pointing out that these seven men were not considered representative of their species. They were, the textbook writers had felt it necessary to stress, highly exceptional.

  “That’s him,” Kirby said. “Is that what you’re doing here? Have you come to recruit him, too?”

  “Recruit him?”

  “Every university and think tank in the country—the world, actually—has been after my brother since he was nine. He graduated from medical school at fifteen,” she said. “Then he went to MIT and earned his doctorate in physics in two years. That’s when things got really crazy.

  “After weighing all the offers, he went to work at a famous think tank in Boston, but he didn’t stay there very long.”

  “What happened? Wasn’t the work challenging enough?” It would take, Sebastian knew, a great deal to challenge Nathaniel Pendleton’s remarkable intellect.

  “Nate would never tell me. All I know is that he left abruptly after an unpleasant disagreement with Dr. Defour, the man who ran the place. Something about twisting data to falsify results.

  “You’ve no idea how viciously competitive the scientific community can be,” she informed Sebastian earnestly. “Anyway, after Nate left Boston, he established his lab out here in the middle of nowhere. It gives him more privacy. And independence.”

  Sebastian knew firsthand exactly how brutal the supposedly lofty, idealistic world of scientific exploration could be. But his lingering frustration over his dismissal from the science institute was overridden by the discovery Nathaniel Pendleton was actually living here, on Maine’s Rum Runner Island. Being in proximity to such brilliance more than made up for his arriving in the wrong time.

  “I did not come here to meet your brother.” That was the absolute truth. No way could he have imagined such an opportunity.

  “Good. Because I’d hate to have to call him and tell him not to come to breakfast because another headhunter is after him.”

  “I’m not a headhunter.” Sebastian had no idea what such a man might be, but considering the propensity for violence of this planet’s inhabitants, he didn’t want to dwell on the possibilities. Especially not some of the ones currently being provided by the translator.

  “Maybe you were working at the lab with Nate,” Kirby suggested. “That might explain why you were dressed so weird.”

  In quest of a comfortable lap, the cat left the warmth of the fire and leaped onto Sebastian’s thighs, draping itself bonelessly over him.

  “Just push him down,” Kirby advised.

  “He’s fine,” Sebastian said, despite being decidedly uncomfortable with the idea of bringing wild creatures into the house. “Why would my clothing make you think I was working in your brother’s laboratory?”

  “Well, I certainly don’t want to hurt your feelings, in case you are working at the lab, but most of the people I’ve met from out there
are definitely living in their own little worlds.”

  Having devoted the past six years of his life to this particular project, Sebastian could identify with that. “Including your brother? Is he working in his own little world?”

  She laughed at that, a soft, musical sound that Sebastian liked. A great deal.

  “Oh, Nate’s the worst of the bunch. In fact, my twin brother lives so far out there he has to have his mail delivered by space shuttle.”

  Knowing that the first colony of terrans in space was forty-eight-point-six years in the future, Sebastian decided she must be speaking figuratively again.

  “Oh, damn,” she cried out as the cat suddenly dug its claws into Sebastian’s legs and catapulted onto the lighted tree. “I hate it when he does that!”

  The branches rustled as the animal appeared to be crawling to the top, where a small, blond, winged replica of a woman dressed in a glittery white dress stood. As he watched, a huge paw reached out and threw a small yellow wooden boat off the tree. It hit the floor with a clatter.

  “Darcy!” Kirby stood beneath the tree, her hands on her nicely rounded hips, and glared up at the cat. “Stop that! Now!”

  The animal’s response was to send a small red item flying.

  “Not my lobster,” she complained, ducking as it flew by her head. “That’s brand new.”

  She shook her head as what Sebastian recognized as a lighthouse was the next to go. She looked back over her shoulder at him. “This is why I had to buy all non-breakable ornaments this year,” she said. “Last Christmas it took him all of ten minutes to break every glass ball on the tree.”

  Even as the translator struggled to come up with an explanation, a memory stirred. His mother celebrating the solstice each winter. She’d told him that when she’d been a girl, they’d adorn a tree in the forest with ornaments, light a fire, and dance and sing around it. Apparently, before her time, residents of this planet had brought their trees indoors. He wondered if they’d ceased the practice due to the type of destruction currently taking place.

  “That must have been very distressing.”

  “At first. Then it actually became funny,” she said with a flash of that smile that brightened not just her eyes but something inside Sebastian. “My family was all here at the time, and we laughed and laughed.”

  Her smile fading had the effect of the sun going down. Despite the sparkling white lights on the tree that continued to be denuded by the demon cat, the room seemed to darken and chill a bit. “That was Dad’s last Christmas. Now he’s gone, and Mom’s painting in Tahiti, while Shelby’s working on a dig in Mexico.”

  “A dig?”

  “She’s an archeologist. They’ve found a Mayan village that she believes proves that earth was visited by beings from outer space around five hundred B.C.”

  In reality, it was closer to 750 B.C., but there was no way Sebastian could share that information without having to explain that the visit—which had brought the Mayans advanced knowledge and contributed to a building burst of monumental architecture—was common knowledge in the annals of intergalactic history.

  “But your brother and one sister are still here,” he said, wanting to bring back that smile.

  “They are,” she agreed. “And unless he gets caught up in work at the brain factory yet again, Nate and I will be having Christmas dinner at Emily’s. Fortunately, except for people who come over for Winterfest, we don’t get many tourists here on the island during winter, so she doesn’t have to lose any customers.”

  Desperately wanting to know exactly what Nathaniel Pendleton was currently working on but deciding that those questions could wait until later, perhaps when he met her brother, Sebastian brought his mind back to something else Kirby had said.

  “You said you dreamed about me. Or, more precisely, a man who looked like me.”

  “Yes. Well.” She sighed. “I was hoping you’d forget that.”

  “That wouldn’t be possible. Since my memory is both eidetic and semantic.”

  “I know the first is like photographic. What does the second mean?”

  “A long-term memory that retains concepts and facts. It requires a similar encoding process as episodic memory, yet semantic memory mainly activates the frontal and temporal cortexes of the brain, while episodic memory activity concentrates in the hippocampus. At least initially, until they’re consolidated and stored in the neocortex.”

  She surprised him by laughing at what he’d felt was a very simplistic answer to a complex process. “Yet more proof that you’re an escapee from the brain factory.”

  He was about to assure her that he had not escaped from any such place when she shook her head, breathed out a long breath, and continued her answer to his question.

  “It’s going to sound foolish, but I was sitting at my desk, watching the snow come down—as it has for too many days—and I was feeling a little sorry for myself, so I began fantasizing about being back on the beach, at Venice. The sun was bright and hot and the sand was warm and you—or at least some hottie who looked just like you—were rubbing coconut oil on me.”

  Sebastian’s first thought was that this explained how he’d gotten his coordinates crossed. When he’d been scanning minds, searching through the myriad random thoughts for a link to Venice, California, he’d accidentally stumbled into this woman’s romantic fantasy. As amazing as the mathematical odds must be against such an occurrence, Kirby had been daydreaming of a man who looked like him. That being the case, there had been no reason for his features to change.

  His third and most intriguing thought was the idea of spreading oil all over Kirby Pendleton’s curvaceous body. As Sebastian focused on the appealing mental image forming in his uncharacteristically unruly mind, he considered that perhaps his detractors were right about him being a throwback.

  “That sounds like a very good fantasy,” he said. He especially appreciated the definition his translator had finally come up with for hottie.

  “I don’t know why I’m telling you all this,” she said. “It must be the solar flares. I’m really going to have to talk to Nate about how everyone, including me, has been behaving so out of character lately…

  “Do you believe in ESP?” she asked, seeming to change the subject.

  “Of course,” Sebastian answered promptly. Finally, he thought with a great deal of relief, a common ground.

  “I never did,” she admitted. “Except for the sometime twin thing I share with Nate. But I never accepted the idea of telepathy. Of course part of that probably stems from the fact that I was born and raised in Maine, and Lord knows we’re a practical bunch. But how else do you explain the fact that I was thinking about you at the very same time you needed my help? It’s almost as if we’re connected, on some weird sort of mental level.”

  She risked a quick glance at him. “Boy, I really sound like I’m ready for the funny farm, don’t I?”

  The idiom had not been on Rosalyn’s data disks, but before the translator could sense his unfamiliarity with the colloquialism and decode, Sebastian got the general idea.

  “Not at all. There are a great many unsolved mysteries in the universe.” But now, thanks to him, intergalactic travel without a spaceship would no longer be one of them.

  “I suppose so,” Kirby agreed.

  She fell silent, immersed in her own thoughts, thoughts Sebastian could easily read but chose not to, deciding that after saving his life, Kirby Pendleton was entitled to privacy.

  Under normal conditions, he would never have intruded on another’s personal thoughts without first being invited. Such a breach of etiquette was highly un-Logosian. He had always struggled to keep his telepathic powers in check by his steely control. Sometimes too much control, his terran mother had worried. But despite Sebastian’s best intentions, occasionally the reins slipped.

  As they had with this woman. Writing such unpremeditated indiscretion off to his near-death experience, Sebastian vowed to maintain stricter control in the fut
ure.

  The warmth from the fire caused her fragrance to bloom in the room like his mother’s hothouse moonflowers.

  Sebastian sipped the hot coffee, drank in her alluring scent, and decided that although it definitely wasn’t California, Rum Runner Island, Maine, would do quite nicely after all.

  9

  A strident sound from somewhere in the woods shattered the morning silence.

  “That’ll be Nate,” Kirby said.

  She stood, walked over to the window, pushed aside the blue-and-white-checked curtains, and peered out into the falling snow. The cat, apparently having concluded his attack on the tree, used his huge furry paws to ruffle the red material beneath it into a pile, then curled up and promptly went to sleep.

  The sound grew closer. A moment later, two figures, one in bright orange, the other in black, seated astride a black machine that reminded Sebastian of a jetcycle, came to an abrupt stop outside the door.

  “Oh, beans.”

  “What’s wrong?”

  “He brought Whitney with him.”

  “You do not like this Whitney?” He didn’t need to read her mind—lines bracketed her rosy lips, furrowed her brow.

  “Not really,” she admitted with obvious reluctance. “It’s not really personal, but I just don’t think she’s the right woman for Nate.”

  “And you care a great deal for your brother,” he said.

  “I love him,” Kirby responded. “More than anything. And I honestly want him to settle down with a loving wife who’ll happily put up with his idiosyncrasies and have a houseful of little geniuses.”

  “But not with Whitney.”

  “No. Not with Whitney.” Kirby sighed. “Personally, even allowing for scientific eccentricity, I get bad vibes whenever I’m around her.”

  “Vibes?”

  “You know, vibrations,” Kirby elaborated. “Feelings. Like intuition.”

  “I’ve found that intuition can be a valuable tool.”

  “Me, too. And I’ve always had a pretty good sense of people. I mean, sometimes back in California, my work, and even my life, depended on it, you know?”