One of them, a more expensive looking place with a barrel tile roof, was for sale. On impulse, Logan called the sales agent. The house was unoccupied and she agreed to come right over and open it for him.
When the woman arrived, she looked calculatingly at Logan. It was apparent that she was trying to decide if he was a serious buyer. He knew he didn't look the part. Too young, dressed in jeans and a tee-shirt, but then her eyes locked on the Mercedes.
“Yours?” she asked, glancing at him from the sides of her eyes. He nodded.
She turned towards the house, walked quickly onto the porch and opened the front door, then turned and ushered him in with a hand motion and a toothy smile.
He walked through the rooms, stepping around the furniture. The house might not be the best he could now afford, but after living in his dad's place, an apartment, and numerous trees, it looked like a palace to him. The current owners had inherited the property from a deceased uncle. They lived up north somewhere, had no plans to move to Florida and wanted to sell quickly. They didn't want to have to maintain the place any longer than necessary.
The agent wrote the contract on the kitchen island. Logan agreed to send proof of funds and an escrow deposit the next day. He had her state in the offer that the contract would be closed as soon as the title was cleared. He didn't want to fool around with negotiating, so he offered full price with no contingencies.
The real estate agent left, practically licking her chops. She'd promised to have an answer from the sellers by morning. But, she implied, she couldn't imagine them turning his offer down.
He moved in two weeks later. The house was still furnished. The deceased owner's family hadn't wanted to deal with the furniture, and Logan had offered them some extra cash for everything. It wasn't decorated to his taste, but it was convenient. He'd deal with changing things eventually, when and if he got around to it.
That evening, he walked over to the dig site. It was a little over a mile away. He worked his way through the rough ground, moving between palmetto clumps and through scrub oaks and brush. Once at the dig site, he faced the sun and sat down in the middle of the old campsite.
The breeze blew softly. There was a woodpecker in a tree away off over somewhere and a squirrel chucked in the scrub oaks. The sun descended, until it was nearly down. Night approached softly.
He didn't stir. He felt close to Serensaa here, and there was no reason to move at the moment. He could walk back to his house after dark, following the road rather than pushing through the brush.
The evening star made its appearance, then some other stars showed up. He was daydreaming about Serensaa. Lost in his thoughts.
Unnoticed at first, a small tingle moved over his back, gradually increasing in intensity until he noticed it. It was hard to see in the dusk, but the fox had returned. It was looking at him expectantly.
He stood, and the small canine yapped. It was maybe about twenty yards away, near the palm trees. He seemed to float through the dusk as the trees drew closer.
He couldn't see where the fox had gone, but there was a lighter area in the stand of trees. The illumination grew gradually brighter, forming a rippling, translucent effect, as if the air had become semi-solid.
Logan stopped and watched. There was something moving through the rippling air, growing gradually larger, traveling towards him from a far distance. He watched as the figure became clearer...clearer...then he saw that it was his lost Serensaa.
She halted, looking fearfully around, then seeing him, she started forward again. She stumbled over something at the edge of the rippling air and fell forward into his arms.
She drew a deep breath as he wrapped his arms around her slender body. She pushed back until she could see his face. When she saw that it was Logan, she let out an inarticulate cry of joy, and grabbed his head, pulling him down for a long, passionate kiss.
They broke apart a little after awhile. She looked at him, smiled tremulously, then linked her fingers together, and softly asked, “Logan, Serensaa, here?”
He linked his fingers solidly together and answered, “Serensaa, Logan, here now.”
She signed, and stepped forward into his embrace.
The End
LIST OF CHARACTERS
Professor Berensten - Logan's adviser and head of the archaeology department
George Dameron – archaeology professor
Janice Dameron – George's wife
Cheryl and Chelle – Larry and Logan's father's girlfriends
Samuel Friedholm – administrator of Student's Democratic Assistance Fund (SDAF) charity
Mark Schmitzke – attorney and trust administrator
Steve, Randy, Eddie – Logan's video game-playing roommates
Rick, Tim, Shawn, Toby, Ralph – Logan's tent mates and team members at the archaeological dig site.
Serensaa – Clovis girl fleeing from marauding enemy clan members.
Mandi Thompson – Student dig supervisor, brown belt in Tae Kwon Do
Ulfa – high ranking Clovis warrior
Logan Walker – slacker with potential
William Walker – Logan's father
Ruth Watson – Assistant Dean of Students and Hearings officer
Larry Wilson – Roofer and Logan's father's friend
Professor Wolf – Physics professor and member of the university ethics committee
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Eric Martell has a doctorate in experimental Psychology. He says that the primary benefit of his graduate degrees is that he learned to learn.
The author of several books and a longtime student of the human condition, he holds a black-belt in Tae Kwon Do, is a Heart Math™ provider, a Quantum Energy Healer, and medical intuitive. An outdoor enthusiast and keen observer of the natural world, Eric also plays the electric guitar. His taste in music ranges from Country through Reggae and Rock to Jazz and New Age. He has taught psychology, the law of attraction, computer programming, and scuba.
After working as a software designer, corporate technical officer, and consultant, he has made his living for the past thirty years selling real estate with his wife. He is a member of the RE/MAX Hall of Fame. Working in sales has given him an excellent understanding of human motivation.
BLOG INFORMATION
If you enjoyed , please follow Dec's Blog at: Dear Reader: Paradox
for information about my other books, free short stories, and general musings. You can also find my books on my Amazon Author page: DeclanDunham.Com E. S. Martell - Author
If you enjoyed Paradox,
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HEART OF FIRE TIME OF ICE
REVIEW
Physics yes, but adventure, romance, murder and intrigue are everywhere! 5.0 out of 5 stars
This is my first book by this author and I found the premise interesting and, unlike a recent reviewer, the physics lessons very much needed if you are to understand Kathleen's predicament! She must master control over the positive and negative aspects of her discovery from years of research. Her life, and Cadeyrin's depend upon it. I am not sure that the author is done with one book. When you finally reach the end of the book, you are wondering, how will the future be for her? Can she carry on functioning this way and be safe from further problems in the present and past?
I don't want to give away anything as it is a book for discovering the characters as well as the plot. But I do hope the author is going to bring us another one. I would like to follow along as Kathleen follows her dreams!
More please!
Read on for the first two chapters.
CAN A MODERN WOMAN LEARN TO SURVIVE IN THE ICE-AGE?
Physics doctoral student, Kathleen Whitby, is a pathetic figure around campus. Completely focused on her research, she fears and actively avoids all social contact. Her difficult past has led to an extreme distrust of other people and the ingrained fear that her physical scarring would make it impossible to develop a relationship.
Kathleen's quantum physics research guides her devel
opment of mathematical formulas and leads to the conclusion that time-travel is possible. Her discovery inexorably sets off a horrifying series of events that results in her temporal displacement into the Pleistocene. She translates into the time of the Younger Dryas – a period where the global temperature abruptly cools an average of ten degrees and causes the advance of glacial ice sheets.
She must now learn to survive in a hostile and cold wilderness. The ice-age environment forces her to confront her worst fear as she finds that trust in a handsome, primitive hunter becomes paramount in order to survive.
Can she overcome her fear? Will the harsh climate and fierce beasts of the Younger Dryas force her to ignite a carefully suppressed, internal fire, or will she be able to return to the safety of the present?
Chapter 1 – KATHLEEN: A CHILLY MORNING
Kathleen was awake but trying desperately to pretend she wasn't. Her dream world was always so much better than reality that she hated mornings. In her dreams, she could imagine that she was confident, loved, and perfect. Reality always insisted otherwise.
Her sense of duty finally made her so anxious that she opened her eyes, sighed tiredly, and kicked off the covers. The weather had changed during the night, but she hadn't wakened. Now the room was cold, making her shiver.
There was no help for it. The radiators were still turned off. Her landlord didn't believe in firing up the boiler until everyone in the building had complained at least three times.
Cold or not, she had to get up. Her desire to please Professor Mackleroy wouldn't allow her to sleep in. She had to finish her research before it was too late.
She felt stiff, the scar tissue around her waist, hip, and thighs inflexible in the Minnesota cold. It forced her to limp as she moved to the cheap mirror screwed to the back of the bedroom door. She rubbed the sleep out of her eyes and scanned her reflection, just as she did every day.
Still the same. She saw a young woman with intense dark eyes looking back at her. Her face was, even if she did think it herself, beautiful, save for the streak of small scars along her right jawline. Her upper body was muffled in a shapeless flannel nightgown that was too short. Her legs stuck out, pale and white, with just the tip of the scarring showing on her right inner thigh.
She sighed again, then stretched as much as she could against the pulling flesh and pulled the nightgown over her head. It was cold in the room and she gasped, regretting getting up. She continued to scan her body. Not bad, except for the scarring. There had been a time when she had expected it to get better on its own, but it hadn’t. The only improvement she had seen came from hours of painful stretching. She’d found that yoga helped a little. She hadn’t missed an opportunity to take classes since that discovery.
Pulling her mind back to the present, she inspected the scarring around her thighs. It was no better. She’d hoped that two years of yoga would have had some effect by now.
she thought. I shouldn't even wish for better, I’m lucky to be alive. If my mother hadn’t gone into labor and delivered me almost immediately after receiving the saline, the scarring would have been much worse.
She knew that she had been lucky in more than one way. The attending nurse had hustled her out of the room instantly and had been moved to care for her, an act that had gotten her fired. The quick delivery and post-natal care had allowed her to survive, despite her mother’s intentions. She had also been lucky that her birth mother abandoned her as soon as she learned the abortion had produced a viable, if severely scarred, premature baby.
That opened the way for her adoption by the older couple she knew as her parents. They'd overlooked her physical deformities and inability to walk without pain and had provided her with as much as they could. They hadn't been well-off, though, and things had always been difficult for them and for her.
Now they were gone, and she was alone except for Professor Mackleroy, whom she counted as both a mentor and friend. Her scars, both physical and mental, had always seemed too large a barrier to overcome, and she instinctively shied away from developing friendships with anyone near her own age. It had been too painful during her childhood. The other children had rejected her harshly, and the memories still hurt.
She sighed and turned to get ready. Would she ever outgrow her problems? She looked over her shoulder and spoke aloud to the mirror. “You idiot. You're twenty-four years old. How long are you going to carry it around, anyway?”
Her reflection only returned an enigmatic gaze out of a tired-looking face.
Last night had been a late one. She'd stayed in the lab working on her research project. Professor Mackleroy had left his office at about seven clutching his old briar pipe in his hand. He had stopped smoking it months ago, but somehow couldn't give up the pipe. As a result, he carried it everywhere, unconsciously turning it over and over in his hand.
Sometimes, he'd inadvertently raise it as if to insert it into his mouth, but then he'd realize what he was doing and self-consciously try to use the stem as if he'd intended to punctuate something he was saying. This resulted in him making a series of ineffectual stabbing motions with the pipe during his conversation. She'd been alarmed by this when she was introduced to him, but now found his mannerism to be a charming eccentricity.
Kathleen was driven in her research. Professor Mackleroy had gone out on a limb for her and used all of his influence to find a small amount of funding for her work. She was terrified that she'd lose the grant and even more afraid that she'd let him down. The professor was sick and getting sicker by the day. She wanted to give him the satisfaction of knowing he was correct in supporting her before it was too late.
At most, he had eight months. He'd smoked his pipe until he'd gotten a cough that wouldn't go away. An x-ray showed a black mass that was entwined with part of his pulmonary artery. By the time they'd discovered the thing, it had metastasized, leaving him with little choice but to wind up his affairs.
She didn't think she could stand the thought of disappointing the only living person who'd shown that he cared for her, and she was determined to finish while he was able to enjoy publishing the discovery.
She'd remained at her computer until about one-thirty in the morning. She'd been too tired to ride her bike home, so she'd called a cab. Now she didn't even remember getting out of it outside her apartment.
As for her own inclinations, she found research fascinating and that it gave her a perfect excuse to avoid other people. As a third year doctoral student, she had stumbled onto an interesting phenomenon having to do with sub-atomic particles that seemed to violate the normal time sequence.
Using a variant of the classic double-slit experiment paired with modern technology, some researchers had shown that a particle could decide whether to present itself as a wave or a particle after it had passed through the screen holding the two slits.
In order to do this, the particle seemingly received information from the future. This contradiction got her thinking about time-travel in general.
With the professor's help, she'd carefully written up a proposal for a small amount of funding that would allow her the leisure to acquire and analyze data produced by the large hadron collider at CERN. Unfortunately the funding had proven to be inadequate, and she was constantly worrying about running out. She wasn't at all confident that the sponsoring corporation would advance more without some positive results as encouragement, and so far, positive results had been slow in coming.
Her professor was worried about her line of inquiry, and she knew he had reservations about it. Even so, he encouraged her and insulated her from the skeptics in the Physics department. They would never have allowed her to work on the topic if he hadn't been her mentor. She suspected that the other members of the group, both professors and students, thought she was crazy and that her research was an embarrassment for them.
Mackleroy had used a corporate connection to secure funding for her research. The only requirement was that she prepare periodic reports on her progress to be forwar
ded to interested parties. They'd mostly left her alone beyond that, although she'd recently received an inquiry relating to her theory of time travel from them.
She'd worked diligently and now thought she'd have enough of the CERN data analyzed within the next week or so to commence writing her dissertation. The only thing giving her trouble was trying to find a pathway forward with her math. There was plenty of speculative work already in place, most notably that of Cramer, but she had encountered some sticky problems that were seemingly irreconcilable. She knew she was a good mathematician, but the answers refused to fall into place without a great deal of work.
This morning she had her first year physics class to teach. It was something she usually enjoyed, but the students were so slow and knew so little. She really wanted to get back to her own research. She felt that a little more analysis would somehow allow her to finalize the formula she was developing in her mind.
Paradox: On the Sharp Edge of the Blade Page 29