Zane only nodded.
“Not sure I’m ready for much, but willing to learn,” Belle said.
“First, Dr. Russell,” Duster said to Belle, “When you did the research into genealogy that you have already started, you said you found more dead-ends such as Dawn and Madison here as your grandparents?”
Zane had no idea what she was being asked, and she seemed confused as well.
“Let me put this a different way,” Bonnie said. “You could find no evidence at all of any existence of Dawn and Madison as your grandparents before they appeared at the lodge. Is that correct?”
Belle nodded. “Yes.”
“So have you, in your preliminary research, found many others like that?”
“Oh, sure,” Belle said. “More than ten thousand, but I always assumed, as I did with you two, that it was just my inability to track back into the rough records of that time in history.”
Zane had no idea where this line of questioning was going, but his stomach felt twisted, which means the founders had a hunch about something, and they were after some sort of confirmation.
Bonnie nodded to Belle’s answer, but Duster sat forward even more. “Would you even have a rough percentage of genealogy lines that ended in that sort of dead-end? Or better put, a sudden start.”
“It wouldn’t be accurate,” she said, “but give me a few years with the equipment and resources you have talked about and I’ll be able to give you that number. Plus I am sure it will depend on the time period involved. Finding records in 1900 is much more difficult than finding records in 1950.”
“Have you run across such sudden starts of lines in 1950s and forward?” Duster asked.
Belle glanced at Zane. She looked as puzzled as he felt.
“Sure,” she said, turning back to face Duster. “From 1950 forward about five percent of all lines I have tried to trace had such sudden starts. But again, more than likely, I did not have the right equipment or the right records.”
With that Duster sat back.
Zane could tell he did not look happy.
“Why?” Belle asked.
“Because I’ve been afraid,” Duster said, “that our mine entrance is not the only entrance into the crystal caverns. And we are not the only group traveling in time.”
“Oh,” Belle said, sitting back against the couch.
Suddenly Zane understood exactly why he was sitting here.
“So we’re going looking for more openings?” Zane said. “From the inside of the big caverns.”
“We are,” Duster said, nodding.
“And what are we going to do if we find them?” Zane asked.
“Block them before anyone can start using them,” Parks said, his voice intense.
“Not sure if that will be possible,” Duster said.
Parks just shrugged. They clearly had had that discussion already.
“So that means we’re going back to 1880,” Zane said.
“From here we’ll jump to 1900,” Duster said. “We’ll get supplies and pack horses and such and get them into the cavern. Then we’ll jump back another twenty years from there.”
“Sort of a small step,” Zane said, liking that idea. “So we don’t always reset to here.”
“Exactly,” Bonnie said.
“How big are these caverns?” Belle asked.
“We don’t know exactly,” Bonnie said.
“I believe they circle the globe along the 42nd parallel,” Duster said.
“We don’t know for sure,” Bonnie said, looking at her husband.
“But that’s what the math says,” Duster said.
Zane had one problem. “I can’t imagine a complex of caves stretching that long would not have been discovered in my time, or two hundred years into the future, for that matter which you would have known about as well.”
Both Bonnie and Duster nodded.
Then Duster said, “The complex of crystal caverns we believe exists in a dimension just off of any normal dimension. We tried to plot them with ground penetrating equipment at one point and couldn’t even see our main cavern.”
“But entrances are the links,” Bonnie said. “When Duster’s distant relatives broke through into the big crystal cavern, he basically anchored that part of the cavern system to our timelines.”
“The math backs it all up,” Duster said.
Zane sat back, trying to wrap his mind around what he had just heard. So he was going to explore a complex of massive caverns in the past, caverns that actually didn’t exist in any real time. That was damn hard to believe or imagine.
But he also couldn’t imagine sitting in a big cavern one hundred years in the past either, talking with people who looked his age, but who had lived many, many thousands of years.
So he figured anything was possible.
CHAPTER TWENTY
June 16th, 2020
Boise, Idaho
AFTER TALKING WITH the founders for a few more hours about the coming project, Zane and Belle walked downtown along Warm Springs Avenue in the warm evening air, shaded under the large trees that lined both sides of the street. The walk was just about as comfortable as any walk Belle could remember taking.
She and Zane just seemed to fit together, and the more time she spent with him, the more she really liked him and admired his quick mind and fearless nature when it came to things that just scared her to death.
They were walking hand-in-hand, as they tended to do the last few days, and she loved the feel of his skin against hers. The slight breeze smelled of hot sagebrush and as they neared the Brooks Garden Restaurant the smell was joined by garlic and fresh bread.
They had eaten here three times over the last week together, and they both loved it. The young hostess wearing a dark blouse and black pants behind the counter recognized them and showed them to a private table near the back, surrounded by plants and high-backed booths.
Belle hadn’t realized just how hungry she was until they walked in and sat down. Before the hostess could leave, Belle asked her for a basket of the fresh bread.
“I was thinking the same thing,” Zane said, smiling.
The bread seemed to just appear on their table a moment later and as Belle was smothering a piece with honey butter, she asked Zane, “So what is it going to be like exploring a cave complex that large?”
“Honestly,” Zane said, working on his own piece of bread, “more than likely impossible. But I won’t know until I’ve seen it.”
She nodded. “Sounds like the problem is going to be food.”
“Among thousands of other problems,” Zane said. “Tomorrow, I plan on having Bonnie and Dawn describe the main cavern as closely as possible. Then I’m going to have Director Parks do the same thing. After that, I’ll be able to at least start to form a plan and get ready as much as I can.”
“I’d like to sit in on those discussions,” Belle said and then took a bite of her bread, letting the wonderful soft taste of butter and freshly baked bread melt in her mouth.
Before Zane could even answer, the waiter showed up and they both ordered their favorite salads. She went with the Cobb salad and he ordered the chef’s salad. And they both ordered iced teas as well.
After the waiter left, she turned to face Zane across the table. “And not only do I want to listen in on the description of the cave, I want to go with you.”
He frowned. “I would love that, but don’t you have a massive project to start?”
“We’ll only be gone for a few minutes, remember?” she said, laughing.
He almost blushed, then smiled. “Forgot, and if we start from the institute, we can go back a hundred times into the caverns and yet still only be gone from here for a few minutes one day.”
“Exactly,” she said. “And besides wanting to spend all that time with you, I can really get to understand what I am facing on my genealogy project.”
“I would love to have you along,” Zane said, smiling. “It might be dangerous, but again, I suppos
e that won’t matter.”
“I am willing to take that risk of some pain,” she said. “And I love caves.”
He nodded. “I would love to have you along.”
“Thank you,” she said. Now that was decided. Now she had one more thing to get out of the way.
“You know,” she said, smiling at him. “You have never invited me to see your apartment.”
He sort of opened his mouth, then closed it, shaking his head and smiling. “I would be glad to show you my apartment at any point.”
“How about right after dinner?” she asked, enjoying the stunned look on his handsome face.
“Any specific area of the apartment you really want to see?” he asked, trying not to smile.
“I was thinking that since you spend most of your time there in the bedroom, that would be the most interesting place.”
He laughed that wonderful, deep laugh she had come to love over the last week.
“I also spend time in the shower,” he said.
“We can start there,” she said.
“Right after dinner?” he asked.
“Right after dinner,” she said.
“How fast can you eat?”
“Damned fast,” she said, laughing with him and enjoying the smile on his face. “But don’t ask for the check just yet. I’m hungry.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
June 17th, 2020
Boise, Idaho
ZANE AWOKE SLOWLY to the morning sun streaming in his bedroom window. Belle lay stretched out naked beside him, one hand touching his chest, her other arm covering her eyes from the light.
The sheet was only pulled up to just above her waist and her dark nipples were slightly hard. Her skin was fantastically smooth and soft and seemed flawless.
Last night they had barely made it to the shower before they made love for the first time. It had been intense and fast and hard, and he could never remember ever feeling like that with any woman, ever.
Then they had finished their shower, making sure the soap got a great workout as they explored each other’s bodies. That was going to be an hour he would remember fondly, and vividly, for the rest of his life.
Then they had crawled onto his bed and made love for the next hour, going slow and easy and again ending with an intensity that he could have never imagined before.
They just fit together in all ways it seemed.
“Enjoying the view?” she asked without moving her arm away from covering her eyes.
“Very much,” he said, easing the sheet down even more so that she was lying there basically naked.
Her body was stunning. Trim and in shape, with narrow hips and skin that felt almost like silk to him.
He stroked her stomach, moving his hand gently from her crotch to her breasts and then back again.
She moaned slightly after a moment, and then without warning, she swung over and on top of him, kissing him harder than she had done last night.
Fifteen passionate minutes later, they were once again headed back to the shower.
And forty minutes later they were dressed.
While she went to her apartment to get fresh clothes, he had managed to cook them both a small breakfast of eggs, toast, and summer fruit salad.
When she came back in she was laughing. “I love that almost no one is here in this complex. The walk to my apartment didn’t even feel embarrassing.”
“So you took a walk of shame in college, huh?” he asked, laughing.
“Only once,” she said. “Hung over, wearing a dress completely out of place for where I was at, mad at myself for sleeping with such an idiot. How about you?”
“Only once as well,” he said. “And as with yours, alcohol poisoning fogged my judgment.”
“I hope nothing was foggy last night,” she said, smiling as she sat down at the counter and he slid a plate of food toward her along with a glass of orange juice.
“Nothing foggy about that at all,” he said, moving around the counter and kissing her hard again until she pushed him away.
“Hungry,” she said. “And you keep that up, these wonderful-smelling eggs are going to get cold.”
“A price eggs must pay at times,” he said. But he moved around and served himself some eggs and fruit salad before sitting down across the counter from her. He was hungry as well.
After a moment he looked up at her. “Does this mean we only need to pack one tent on the excursion into the caverns?”
She laughed and he loved the sound of that. “So because you don’t want us to carry two tents, you are asking me to move in with you after just one week of knowing me?”
“Yeah, pretty much,” he said. “Damned tents can get heavy.”
Again she laughed. “I guess I’ll suffer for the expedition.”
And he loved the sound of that as well.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
June 25th, 2020
Boise, Idaho
FOR A WEEK, Zane and Duster worked on the plans for the expedition into the caverns and how they would do it over the next week while Belle worked with Dawn and Bonnie to try to track down as many of the family starts as they could trace with the information they had to try to find a pattern.
Belle had figured that since the pattern of the sudden starts of genealogy birth-lines around this entrance to the caverns was in the West, mostly focused in the Pacific Northwest, that other sudden genealogy starts might also be clear given some data.
She stayed focused on areas along the 42nd parallel as Bonnie and Duster suggested, and found one clear start-up cluster of genealogy lines in North and South Dakota.
When they told Duster and Zane, all Duster said was, “That’s a hell of a hike underground.”
Belle had to agree with that.
“One other thing,” she said. “If an opening there is similar to the mine here, you may not find it in 1880. The lines don’t really start until the 1940s.”
They talked for a few more minutes in the kitchen area when Belle finally decided to ask the question that had been bothering her about all this.
“Why is it so bad that others know of time travel and the crystal caverns?”
Duster glanced at Bonnie who nodded.
“Time is very much like a river,” Duster said. “In the overall sense of things, it is almost impossible to divert beyond a few alternate timelines. But it is possible, given enough time and focus.”
“Are you saying something has happened in the future?” Belle asked, suddenly scared more than she wanted to admit.
“Besides all the normal events through history,” Duster said, “2120 is fine, as you saw and Zane grew up in.”
Zane was looking very worried, but he was too far away down the counter for Belle to take his hand.
“So what happened?” Zane asked.
“We screwed up,” Bonnie said.
Duster nodded. “We published our findings on time travel in every journal and magazine that would take our articles about the nature of time and energy and matter being connected.”
“We are quickly going back and pulling those research papers from timelines,” Bonnie said. “We were foolish.”
“But we will never get them all,” Duster said. “And by 2320, a dictator using time travel through cavern crystals is controlling the world. It is not a pretty place to live.”
“Boise was leveled in an attack looking for the institute,” Bonnie said. “Millions died. In 2320, we never emerge from the caverns here. And there are only a few hundred of us left, doing our best to travel back in time to figure out how to reverse what happened.”
“So that’s why the importance of the genealogy project,” Belle said. “To find and track those starting points.”
Duster nodded. “Just as you gave us a lead to the Dakotas. Those crystals need to stay protected. And the theory of time travel needs to remain controlled and only a theory to the general population.”
Belle looked at the worried look on Zane’s face.
; And there was not a thing she could say.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
July 10th, 2020
Boise, Idaho
TWO WEEKS LATER they were all finally ready to go. Zane stood beside the table in the Step One crystal room as Duster hooked up the wires to a crystal that had never been used before. Belle stood beside him, holding his hand.
Duster was in his long coat and cowboy hat and boots. Bonnie and Belle and Zane would dress in time-appropriate clothing in the big supply room when they got to the other side.
Zane was both excited and scared to death. The caverns and being underground didn’t worry him much, but being in 1900 sure did.
And that’s where they were headed first, to July 10th, 1900. One hundred and twenty years in the past.
Bonnie and Duster would be with them headed to the old mine. But then Bonnie and Duster would wait in 1900 in the crystal cavern as Zane and Belle jumped back ten years in the crystal cavern to explore deep into the caverns on a first trip.
Duster had wanted to go along on the expedition, but all the founders had forbidden it. He and Bonnie were just too important to saving the world four hundred years in the future to risk.
And when Zane had asked in one dinner meeting what the risk was, since they couldn’t die in the past, both Bonnie and Duster had looked worried and then said, “There are aspects about the crystal caverns we don’t yet understand because we believe they exist in other dimensions of a sort.”
“So we don’t know about this not dying stuff inside the caverns is what you are saying?” Zane had asked, glancing at Belle.
Belle looked worried as well at that moment.
“We can’t take the chance,” Madison said, “of losing the math brains.”
Zane understood that completely and had said, “Don’t worry. Belle and I will figure out what can and can’t be done in there.”
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