At the table next to Rafe’s sat Marit and Veris. They were not alone. There was a slender man there, with a big, folding tablet computer in his hands, talking swiftly and softly. Veris looked as though he was paying attention, yet Rafe thought his gaze was glassy, as if his thoughts circled an entirely different subject.
Marit wore sunglasses. She was older than the sixteen year old who had jumped them here.
This was the future, then.
Rafe studied the skyscrapers and towers around them. Some of the buildings were familiar, which told him where they were. This was downtown Los Angeles. The buildings he didn’t recognize were all taller than the ones he knew. The older, smaller buildings had big screens on the top of them, filling in the gaps between their taller cousins. Rafe looked at the flashing images on the screens.
“Advertising.” He shook his head. “Shit, it never goes away!”
“How far in the future are we?” Taylor asked quietly, leaning forward so that only Brody, Rafe and Alex could hear her.
Brody nodded toward Marit. “Darling daughter looks as if she might be late twenties or early thirties. About fifteen years into the future, then, and on our own timeline, or Veris and Marit wouldn’t be looking as though they are trying to fake their way out of a speeding ticket right now.”
“Who is that with the tablet, talking to them?” Alex asked. “Anyone know him? He’s talking about advanced genetics. Listen.”
They extended their hearing.
“…the potential of the human genome is completely untapped,” the man was saying. He had brown hair that was gray at the temples and a tanned, thin face. Rafe had never seen him before. He would remember him again, if he ever met him. The man put the tablet in front of Veris. “Manipulation at the gene level at these locations would increase brain function. Think of it.”
“I am,” Veris said. It was a safe, neutral response.
Marit leaned forward, looking over the man’s shoulder. “Those are the genes that affect the cerebral cortex, cerebellum and basal ganglia.” She sat back at looked at Veris. “The three parts of the brain that work together to produce the human perceptions of time.”
Veris glanced down at the tablet again, startled. He looked up at the man again, his interest patent. “And you think that manipulating genes will…?”
“Increase mental abilities in genes derived from donor subjects with high psychic ratings,” the man said, with the tone that said he was repeating himself.
Veris nodded. “I’m just making sure I’m clear on this. You’re talking to me because…?”
“Because of your work on theoretical time travel.”
Veris’ gaze went blank again. He was shocked and was hiding it.
“My brother isn’t involved in that work anymore,” Marit said. “Our father was the real time travel expert.”
“Naturally.” The man gave an easy smile and put his hands on the table, the fingers spread.
Coming-clean time, Rafe guessed.
“I understand how funding can be affected by a soiled reputation,” he said softly. “I’ve also done my research. You’re still working with time travel, Dr. Gerhardsson. It’s not a theory anymore. You have found people who can actually move through time. At least, that’s what the underground tells me.”
Veris got to his feet, almost ramming the table off its central post as his thighs connected with the edge. “And we’re done here,” he said.
The man jumped to his feet and snatched up the tablet. “Your time travelers, doctor, combined with my psychics. Think of the long-term effects on society! Crime would be reduced almost overnight to nothing. Investigations would become routine questioning sessions. Psychiatrists would be able to resolve traumas with a simple reading of a mind. Doctors could diagnose without instruments. It would revolutionize nearly every industry and profession. With time travel, those psychics could go back in time and establish the true events of a crime. They could arrest the guilty before they do the deed.”
Veris flicked out his hand, moving too quickly for human perception. He grabbed the man’s shirt and yanked him forward so his face was inches from Veris. “I. Said. No.”
The man grinned nervously. “You don’t even want to consider my proposal?”
“You have no idea what you’re tampering with, when you screw with time,” Veris said. Rafe could tell he was just holding his temper in check. “The untold misery a simple mistake can make is beyond your puny mind’s understanding.”
“I know you’re the expert. That’s why I’m talking to you.”
“I’m no expert,” Veris said bitterly. “No one is. Time is beyond comprehension. Every time you think you are starting to understand, it expands on you. The complexity, the danger, never ends. Go home, doctor, and burn your files. Forget about fucking with human potential.” Veris let him go.
The man stepped back and straightened his shirt. “You are not the only physicist I’m going to ask.”
“I’ll warn every single one of them to run you off with shotguns,” Veris replied. “Understand me well, doctor. I am not only opposed to being involved in your research, I am opposed to your research going ahead at all. I will scuttle it, in every way I can.”
The man finally got it. His thin cheeks seemed to draw even thinner. “You’re quite mad,” he said. “They warned me you were strange.”
“Well, we agree on something,” Veris said, his smile dangerous.
“This isn’t the end of it,” the man said, turning away.
Veris watched him blend into the crowd and disappear. He looked at Marit. “Brother?” he said, sounding affronted.
She took off her sunglasses and gave him a brilliant smile. With the glasses gone it was easy to see she was even older than Rafe had first estimated. “You look too young to be my father in this here-and-now,” she said sweetly.
“I’m still your father in any here-and-now,” he said flatly. “Get your ass over to the other table and start explaining yourself.”
Marit got up and walked over to their table. Alex pushed out one of the wire chairs for her and she sank into it with a smile of thanks.
“What are we doing here, Marit?” Brody asked, before Veris launched his own spray of heated questions. “Why aren’t we in Egypt?”
“Why stop off in Neven’s timeline?” Taylor added. She was sitting next to Marit and it was easy to see Taylor’s genetic heritage in this older Marit. Their different coloring disguised similar facial lines and bone structures.
“That was a mistake,” Marit admitted, her voice low. “It was such a huge bookmark for me…it has been since I was, well, since I jumped there the first time, when I was five.”
“You’ve held on to that since you were five and not told anyone?” Rafe asked, appalled.
“I had help,” Marit said, with a small smile. “An older me, I think even older than I am in my personal timeline, came to help me when I was little. She—I—helped my younger self understand what had happened, that what I had seen was just one possible future and not the only one. She also taught me how important it was that I not speak of it to anyone.” She gave everyone a small, effortful smile. “I was upset when we jumped. That’s why the bookmark sucked me there. I knew I was going to go back there one day. I didn’t know it would be on this jump, though.”
“And why aren’t we in Egypt?” Alex asked. “I realize that we could take years to get there from this end and still arrive when we need to, so I’m not frothing at the mouth over the delay. At the same time, I’m anxious to know why you went off course a second time.”
“She didn’t,” Veris said, in his signature growl.
“You brought us here deliberately, Marit?” Brody asked. “Why?”
Marit looked at her father expectantly, her mouth pulled into a small grimace.
“She wanted to avoid taking us to Egypt,” Veris said.
Rafe saw and felt Alex stiffen with unpleasant surprise. He squeezed Alex’s arm, warning him to hold it i
n. They were in a public place, in roles they didn’t fully understand. Having a meltdown right here was dangerous. Although, just because this was a public place, any outburst Alex made would be naturally damped down. Even when he was blowing his temper, he would still worry about appearances, about what others might think.
Rafe leaned forward. “Why can’t we go to Egypt to help Sydney?” he asked, straining to keep his own voice civil.
Marit sighed. “Any of us can go. None of us were there in the first place. Uncle Alex can’t go, though. Yet he is the one who is most insistent that he does.”
“Why not?” The question came from Veris, Brody and Taylor.
“Because he’s already there,” Rafe said. The shape of it was forming in his mind. “You know exactly where Sydney is, don’t you, Marit? You let us think you didn’t have it nailed down.”
Marit looked down at her hands.
Alex gripped his hands together on the glass table top. His knuckles were white. “I can’t go back, because when I do, the contemporary version is put into hibernation, or whatever it is that happens to us when a future version takes over our bodies and minds. The contemporary version has to stay conscious and aware. Yes?”
Marit nodded.
“I don’t remember anything differently,” Alex said. “I’ve reviewed all the years from before I met Etienne, to four years after the siege, when I left Palestine. Sydney wasn’t there. Not anywhere.”
“The changes won’t come through until she leaves,” Veris said quietly. He looked at Marit. “That’s where she is, right? Somewhere in that time?”
Marit sighed again. “It went wrong. She got Etienne killed, before you even spoke to him, Uncle Alex. Now, she’s trying to be Etienne.”
A cold hand gripped Rafe’s heart and squeezed. “Christ on a pony,” he breathed.
Alex rubbed his temples with both hands. “It’s next to impossible,” he said, his voice strained. “You don’t understand what my life was like then. How I thought about things…I was a bigoted, misogynistic fool who thought he owned the world. She could no more convince me to leave Al-Qāhirah than the camel that carried my tent could. I paid both women and camels the same amount of attention. If either of them tried to speak to me, I would have been equally shocked.” He dropped his hands. “She will fail,” he said bleakly.
Fear shrouded Rafe at the flat certainty in Alex’s voice. This was exactly what Rafe had been afraid of, from the very beginning. This was the scenario he had spewed and vented at Alex only days ago. Except, he had never imagined it would be so impossible. “You couldn’t have been that intractable,” he said. “You would never have left Egypt at all.”
“Etienne worked on me for months,” Alex said. “God knows what he saw that gave him the idea his time would not be wasted. In the end, I left Egypt not because I wanted to go to Jerusalem to see Peter, but because Egypt had nothing left to offer me. It was a mild intellectual curiosity that made me stop to listen to Peter’s lectures when he arrived in the holy city…and then I understood everything Etienne had tried to tell me. I would never have considered leaving Egypt because a mere woman suggested it.” His voice was harsh.
Everyone stared at him. Taylor looked like she might cry. “I refuse to believe that is all there was to you,” she said.
“I agree,” Brody said shortly. “The capacity to change had to have been there all along.”
“Sydney is people-smart,” Veris said. “If Etienne saw a chink, she’ll find it, too.”
Alex gave a stiff smile. “I thank you for your belief in my essential goodness. However, when Sydney returns, I fully expect the timeline will wipe me from existence because I really was that man.”
Rafe shook his head. “Nope. We’re not discussing it any further,” he said flatly. He didn’t care that his voice was shaking. “Fuck speculating. It’s useless. I refuse to entertain the idea that you’re going to get ripped out of history like that. I won’t do it, you hear?”
Alex’s eyes were warm, although he didn’t move, because of his stupid we’re-in-public thing.
“And fuck appearances, too,” Rafe said hoarsely and hugged him. The whole situation sucked but what made it worse was that Alex held him just as tightly. Goddam it, he was shaking in his boots.
Rafe let him go and cleared his throat, then glared at everyone else. “Change the subject,” he said firmly.
Veris crossed his arms. “Very well. Marit, you were feeding me information, enough to bluff the asshole doctor, although technically, you shouldn’t have known who he was, either. Have you been here before?”
Marit nodded. “Well, sort of,” she amended. “A different timeline, only it plays out the same on all the timelines. No matter which version of you is sitting in the chair, you still send Kraka off with a flea in his ear.” She smiled. “Thank god.”
“There’s something I don’t understand,” Brody said. “Why bring us here at all? I don’t for a moment think you’re that scared of Alex you lied to keep him happy.”
“Thank you,” Alex said dryly. “I would prefer to think I instill awe in all women with the strength of my personality.”
Taylor laughed.
Alex glared at her.
Rafe could see the effort Alex was making to shift the mood and loved him for it.
“Brody is right,” Taylor said. “Why not just talk to us? Explain why we can’t go back? Why this odd jumping about?”
“I told you,” Marit said patiently. “The first stop, in Neven’s world…that was a mistake. The bookmark was too strong. This here-and-now, though, you had to come to. Don’t ask me why, because I can’t tell you. The future works the same way as the past. If you know too much about either of them, your behavior and reactions will change and that will change time.”
“So…we just sit here?” Veris asked. Rafe couldn’t tell if he was angry or amused. His arms were still crossed. Veris wouldn’t be enjoying the out-of-control feeling this jump was generating, for Marit was at the helm and not him.
“We won’t have to wait for long,” Marit told him. She dropped the sunglasses back into place and sat back.
So did everyone else. Rafe watched the people going past the café tables. He didn’t know how far into the future this was, although the clothes didn’t look much different. People still wore jeans and sneakers, sunglasses and baseball caps. The cars weren’t flying in the air. They still had tires, too. Although they ran with almost complete silence and were more aerodynamic than ever.
He looked up at the moving billboard screen when the same image repeated itself. He had seen it from the corner of his eye a few times while they had been talking. Now he watched it more closely.
It was a digitally built image of something in space, floating over Earth. It looked like a long worm, just hanging there in coils and loops. The image shifted into animation. The end of the worm bent down toward the blue surface of Earth. The image scaled up so that Earth was a smaller curved edge on the bottom of the screen. The end of the worm snaked down to the surface, while the majority of its length hung in outer space, weightless.
“Wow!” Rafe breathed. “It holds itself up!”
A tiny dot rose from the surface of Earth, following the worm up into space.
“Space elevator,” Brody said softly. “I’ve read about them in science fiction novels.”
“Are they actually building one?” Taylor asked.
The line drawing changed, to show a typical emergency. Red, blue and orange lights were flashing everywhere. Official looking yellow tape sectioned off areas to keep the public out. People in uniforms that looked nothing like any uniform Rafe had ever seen were bending over cots, treating bleeding and wounded patients.
A caption came up at the bottom of the silent screen.
Nearly completed Macapa Space Cable destroyed by terrorists.
“Guess they’re not building it anymore,” Veris said.
“Dr. Gerhardsson?” The voice was behind Rafe. He twisted to look
.
Five men in suits and sunglasses. Big men. Rafe’s instinct was to run. These guys oozed menace.
Veris still had his arms crossed. He didn’t move. “Who is asking?”
Rafe leaned back as far as the uncomfortable chair would let him. It put him within range of the men. He took a breath, sampling scents. Usually, that gave him all sorts of information, but not this time.
“They’re Blood,” he said softly.
Marit got to her feet.
“The queen would like a word,” the spokesman said.
Veris looked up at Marit, who was already threading her arm through the strap of an oversized handbag.
“I guess we’re coming with you,” Veris said.
Chapter Sixteen
The five enforcers marched them through closed off, shady avenues where only pedestrians walked. Rafe remembered these streets being clogged with traffic.
At the far end was another standard street. Two low, black cars with darkened windows waited.
“Guess limos don’t change that much,” Rafe whispered to Alex.
Alex didn’t smile.
The five escorts opened the back doors of all the cars.
Veris spun to face them. “Split up,” he said. “Taylor, Rafe, you’re with me. Brody, Alex, Marit in the other one.”
No one argued with him. They got into the dark limos and the doors shut with a solid, muffled thud. Rafe was tempted to try opening the door again, to see if it would actually open for him. He resisted the impulse. According to Marit, they were here for a reason that hadn’t happened yet. Plus, the enforcer had said “queen”. Rafe wondered if Alex had remembered Marit, when she was little, calling Sydney “Morrigan”, an old Celtic word for queen. Were they about to meet a foretold future?
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