Erasing Time

by C. J. Hill

  Sangre, Echo would miss his father. He hadn’t realized how severely until this moment. The thought of never hearing Jeth’s voice again—his continually cheerful voice—brought a sharp pain to the back of Echo’s throat.

  He swallowed hard, tapped his fingers against the keyboard, and ignored the pain the best he could.

  If only he knew for certain his father was safe. And then Echo realized he could know. The Dakine computers had a spliced link into the government ones. He could check the detention log to see if Jeth or Elise were listed as prisoners.

  Echo made the link quickly, half afraid someone at the compucenter would catch him but at the same time feeling justified in doing the search. Even if he hadn’t been planning to send a message to Elise, he would still want to know what had happened to her and to Jeth. The compucenter leader could only be mad that Echo hadn’t gotten proper clearance before he did it.

  The list came up on the screen. Echo scanned it. With each unfamiliar name, his hope rose. Jeth and Elise weren’t listed in the detention log, and a few minutes later he found they weren’t scheduled for memory washes either. They were safe for now.

  He would have liked to track Jeth’s and Elise’s crystals to find out where they were, but it was too dangerous. The government might trace the signal back to him.

  Echo spent a few more minutes searching recent Scicenter interlogs looking for either Sheridan’s or Taylor’s name—anything that would give him an indication of how much the scientists knew about them. Did they know for certain that Taylor was really Tyler Sherwood, and if they did, were they foolish enough to state that fact in their logs? Both the government and the scientists must know that the Dakine kept track of their doings.

  Echo found the classified Time Strainer file. He skirted around the encryption encoding it and skimmed through it. It listed medical statistics for Taylor and Sheridan, then gave a detailed record of the interviews the wordsmiths had helped with. Next came the mandate for Taylor and Sheridan’s arrest. The charge: withholding information.

  Someone had questioned the girls, and while he had found Taylor uncooperative, he indicated that Sheridan would be willing to negotiate.

  Echo moved the cursor over the words again, searching for any missed links. It didn’t make sense. Who had interrogated them? What had Sheridan been willing to negotiate about?

  The last entry recorded that Taylor and Sheridan had been taken from the detention cell by Dakine operatives, and a citywide search was under way to find them along with the missing wordsmith, who was presumed either in Dakine custody or dead.

  Pues, they certainly were getting closer to the truth. Luckily, there was no indication, at least from this log, that Jeth and Elise were in immediate danger of arrest.

  Echo unlinked himself from the government mainframe and tried to decide what to put in his message to Elise. As he wrote it, questions nagged at the corner of his mind. How had someone communicated with Taylor and Sheridan during their interrogation? There was no mention of a wordsmith being present at that interview.

  Echo coded his message as much as he could. He addressed it to Candy Cane. That had been his nickname for Elise when she first started working in the Wordlab. At the time, her hair had been striped red and white. She would recognize the term, but no one else from this century would. He added a few other references to convince her that it was really from him.

  He requested a meeting time, and in one final attempt to convince her of his genuineness, added, “When you meet us, bring Jeth with you.”

  Jeth wouldn’t go. He wouldn’t ever think of leaving the city. Still, Elise ought to know that Echo would never set a trap for her and tell her to bring Jeth. If she wasn’t sure about anything else, she knew he loved his father.

  Echo hit the Send button. It was done. Hopefully she would get it, hopefully he’d be able to get away from the Dakine when he needed to, and hopefully—pues, there were too many things to hope for.

  After putting in an hour on the Prometheus project so that no one would be suspicious of the time he’d spent in front of the computer, Echo headed back to the girls’ bedroom.

  Taylor and Sheridan were probably tired of repeating phrases by now.

  He was almost to their room when he realized that Taylor and Sheridan weren’t repeating phrases. Most likely, as soon as he’d left, Taylor had tried to computigate through the computer files.

  If he hadn’t been so preoccupied with sending his message to Elise, he would have thought of this before. He shouldn’t have left Taylor alone anywhere near a computer. Who knew what information she’d been accessing and what trouble she’d caused?

  She might have alerted the Dakine about her abilities, and all for nothing. The computer system was secure. He’d seen to that. It was just one more monumental regret in his life.

  chapter

  32

  Sheridan was standing in front of the mirror weaving a string of glowing white lights into her hair when Echo returned. She smiled at him in what she hoped was a pleasant and not guilty manner. “I got tired of imitating talking dolls and decided to do my hair.”

  Taylor still sat by the computer, obediently repeating dialogue from a show.

  He sat down on the top of the desk and flipped off the computer. “Were you two practicing the whole time I was gone?”

  “Well, I was,” Taylor said. “Sheridan keeps getting distracted by her hair. Her r’s aren’t nearly as trilling as mine.”

  “But now I look like I’ve got a halo,” Sheridan added, admiring her reflection. “Something Taylor has certainly never experienced.”

  Echo kept his gaze fixed on Taylor. “I’m glad you didn’t try to computigate. The systems on this computer are secure, and you’ll only get into trouble if you tamper with anything.”

  Taylor gave him a wide-eyed look of innocence. “Oh, really?”

  “Taylor.” He said the word softly. “Don’t do it.”

  She sighed as though giving in to his request. “I’ll be an angel while I’m here. Even if I don’t have a halo.”

  For the rest of the evening Sheridan and Taylor worked on pronunciation with Echo. He spent most of his time with Sheridan, although she wasn’t sure whether this was because he liked her or because she just needed more work than Taylor.

  He sat across from her on a couch, his knees touching hers. “If a d is between vowels, it’s soft. Almost like your th. Watch my mouth. Adult. Adding. Adopt.”

  She looked at his lips and could barely speak at all. It didn’t help that she could see Taylor out of the corner of her eye making kissy faces. Taylor was supposed to be working on some phonetic alphabet charts that Echo had downloaded, but she was obviously listening to them instead.

  Sheridan repeated the words, knowing she would probably forget to say the soft d the next time she used the words. Who thought about whether a d was between vowels while they were speaking? “How long did it take you to learn our accent?” she asked.

  “Over a year. In your era, English didn’t follow many pronunciation or spelling rules, so I had to memorize how to read and say each word individually. I still can’t think about the words psychology, rhythm, or hors d’oeuvres without wanting to kick something.”

  Sheridan nodded. “I never saw the point of having an apostrophe in the middle of hors d’oeuvres. That’s just putting on airs.”

  “I would probably agree with you,” Echo said, “if I had any idea what putting on airs meant.”

  She nudged his knee with hers. “You should agree with me anyway. It’s good policy.”

  “Let’s work on diphthongs again.”

  Sheridan didn’t want to work on diphthongs. “Why did you decide to learn our accent?”

  “The government ordered it about five years ago. They told Jeth to have the language ready to speak in six months. I guess it took them longer to finish the Time Strainer than they expected.” Echo sent her a smile. “I would have worked harder on learning the accent if I had known part of th
e project involved talking to beautiful girls.”

  She smiled back at him and then felt guilty. It seemed wrong to smile at him when she and Taylor were planning on escaping from this place, from him.

  Finally, it was time for bed. Echo had arranged for Sheridan and Taylor to be by themselves for a few nights. “Until you adjust to our society,” he said as he left. “I know you had all sorts of sleep taboos.”

  And thank goodness for them. After he’d gone, Taylor went back to the computer and finished installing her alarm-program change.

  Sheridan lay in her bed listening to Taylor’s fingers tap on the keyboard. Tomorrow the alarm would go off. Tomorrow they would run away. Perhaps Sheridan would never see Echo again. The thought shouldn’t bother her so much. He was Dakine. His friends wanted to train Taylor and her to be assassins. But when she thought of sneaking off, it still felt like a tear in her stomach.

  Taylor turned off the light and went to bed. Sheridan lay there in the dark, unable to sleep. Thoughts tumbled around her mind like clothes in a dryer. Echo. Reilly. Caesar. QGPs. Time Strainers. Dakine.

  “Taylor, as long as the government has both a QGP to turn you into an energy flux wave and a Time Strainer that can turn you back, they can strain you into the future, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, what’s to stop them from straining us right now? They have our signals.”

  “Reilly said he couldn’t get his QGPs to work.”

  “He said they didn’t work properly. He never said they didn’t work at all. What if he gets one functioning next month or next year …?”

  “Thanks,” Taylor said. “Now I won’t be able to get to sleep.”

  “Sorry. Think of horseback riding; that’s what I do.”

  “With my luck, I’d get trampled.”

  Sheridan turned on her side. “Not if you’re riding Breeze. She’s too gentle.” Sheridan imagined herself cantering along a trail, but this time instead of relaxing her, the memory made her feel sad. According to Echo, horses were extinct. Eventually her memories of horseback riding would fade, and then she’d have nothing left of Breeze.

  IN THE MORNING, Echo beeped Taylor and Sheridan on their comlinks to wake them up.

  Taylor took the beeping box from the side of her bed and chucked it across the room. “Stupid technology.”

  It didn’t stop beeping.

  Sheridan answered her comlink, happier than she should have been to hear Echo’s voice. The sound of him was comforting, like a blanket you could wrap around yourself. And after today, she would probably never hear it again.

  They had breakfast, then worked on reading and pronunciation. Then they had lunch and worked on reading and pronunciation. By dinnertime Sheridan’s tongue hurt from trilling her r’s. At last, Echo turned off the phonetic alphabet charts, and they went to the cafeteria.

  When they walked in, Caesar waved them over to the table where he sat with Echo. For the first time, Sheridan noticed the number on his badge: 651,205. She felt a sort of smug satisfaction that both Echo and Elise had better rankings. And then she felt bad that she’d even checked. Was ranking individuals so ingrained into human nature that you did it even when you didn’t want to?

  She turned her attention to her surroundings instead. Considering how big the building was, there weren’t many people in the dining room. Only a few groups of people sat eating at the tables.

  During a lull at dinner, Sheridan asked Echo about the lack of people.

  “The size of the room is for meetings and darties,” he said. “Most people don’t live here. The building has equipment that jams crystals’ signals, so while the government is looking for us, we’ll stay here.”

  Caesar immediately asked Echo what Sheridan had asked, and Echo repeated the conversation for him. Poor Echo. With all the translating he did at mealtimes, he hardly had a chance to eat.

  Caesar cut into his potato, then waved a fork in Echo’s direction. “Tell her we’re having a darty here after dinner. She’ll meet lots of people then.”

  Echo told her, and Sheridan noticed that Taylor’s face lit up with relief before he’d even started his explanation. Bad timing on Taylor’s part, but neither of the guys seemed to notice.

  Taylor’s relief was because the alarm program was almost to its next cycle, and it was imperative that Sheridan and Taylor be with people when it went off. That way everyone could see they hadn’t set it off.

  After the alarm stopped sounding, Sheridan and Taylor would know the doors were unlocked. Then it would just be a matter of timing. They had to find an opportunity to escape before the Dakine discovered and fixed the problem.

  Taylor spooned the last of her soup into her mouth. The swelling on her face had faded into a general puffiness, but she still didn’t look like herself, or like Sheridan. Purple-and-green bruises intermixed with her blue swirls. “Will there be dancing at the darty?” Taylor asked.

  Echo nodded.

  “How do people dance in the twenty-fifth century?”

  Caesar fingered one of his metallic eyebrows while he listened to Taylor. “What did she ask?”

  “How we dance,” Echo answered.

  Caesar stood up and held out his hand. “I’ll show her.”

  Taylor hesitantly took his hand and walked with Caesar to an empty space on the floor. He turned on music through one of the menu computers, and there between the tables he showed Taylor an assortment of dance moves—most of which looked like he was being electrocuted.

  Taylor laughed and imitated his moves, which only encouraged him to show her more elaborate ones, some of which involved rolling on the floor.

  And all this while, the people around the room ate, watched, and cheered them on. People here in the twenty-fifth century apparently had no sense of public embarrassment.

  “What do you think of our dancing?” Echo asked.

  “I wasn’t sure if that was really dancing or whether Caesar was playing a practical joke on Taylor.”

  “Meaning you don’t like it?”

  Sheridan tilted her head as she watched. “Does everyone roll around on the floor? Don’t people get stepped on?”

  “You can teach me how you dance instead.”

  How sweet. He was offering to learn her dance steps. Of course, she didn’t really have dance steps. At home she just danced like everyone else. How would she teach him that?

  “Okay,” she said.

  He stood and held out his hand to her.

  “You want to dance now?” she asked. “While the lights are on and everyone is watching?”

  He cocked his head in question. “Was dancing secret in your time period?”

  “No, it’s just that …” It wasn’t worth explaining. She took his hand and stood up. “Fine, let’s dance. I’ll teach you to slow-dance first.” Slow-dancing would be less painful to teach. There was less to watch, less to do.

  They walked to the same spot where Taylor and Caesar had been dancing before their rolling episode. Sheridan took Echo’s hand and placed it on her hip. She put one hand on his shoulder, then held on to his remaining hand. “This is the basic slow-dance position. Now we sort of rock back and forth slowly and take small steps to the beat of the music.”

  He watched her feet and matched his rhythm to hers. “Okay, now what?”

  “That’s it. This is slow-dancing from the old twenties.”

  “You’re joking.”

  “Well, there are other dances: the country swing, the waltz, that sort of thing, but most people didn’t know how to do those. So this was the average slow dance.”

  He paused and looked at their feet. “No wonder you didn’t want people watching. It was a silly dance.”

  “You’re one to talk.”

  “One to talk? What does that mean?”

  “It means rolling around on the floor looks even sillier.”

  “I wish I could understand your slang.”

  She was glad he couldn’t.

  Taylor and Ca
esar were now doing some strange step in which they half pulled each other up from the floor, and then fell back down like human jack-in-the-boxes.

  Echo took his hand from Sheridan’s hip and touched her hair, letting his fingers linger on a golden strand by her face. “At least you like our hair decorations. I was surprised last night when I came into the room and saw you’d put up your hair.”

  “Were you?” Not as surprised as he would have been if he’d seen what Taylor was doing instead.

  Almost as though he could read her mind, he said, “I meant what I said to Taylor earlier. It won’t do her any good to splice into the computers here. When it’s time to leave, I’ll take you.” He leaned very close to her, which wasn’t hard since he was already close to begin with. “I sent a message to Elise that we wanted to meet with her.”

  Elise would never go for it. “What if that doesn’t work?” Sheridan asked. “Then what will we do?”

  “Let’s plan on it working.”

  Sheridan slid her hand across Echo’s shoulder until her fingertips touched his hair. It felt silky, soft. Somehow she had expected it to be rugged like him. “Could we find a way to leave the city on our own? I mean, the government wouldn’t search for us outside, would they?”

  “It’s too dangerous.”

  “Dangerous how?”

  “Storms, freezes, heat, dust—”

  “Dust? What’s dangerous about dust?”

  “Shards, crevices, vikers—”

  “What are vikers?”

  “Just trust me, it’s too dangerous. We’ll depend on Elise.”

  Elise didn’t trust him, and he knew it. So why come up with this story about meeting with her? Was he trying to convince Sheridan that he still wanted to help her escape so she wouldn’t attempt to leave on her own? Did he think she was naive enough not to realize she was at a Dakine base, or that Echo himself was Dakine?

  Dinner must have officially ended. The remaining eaters stood up, and the tables sank into the floor. The room was suddenly one big dance area, and several people joined Taylor and Caesar in their wild gyrations.