by E. C. Tubb
“That commute must have a hell of a carbon footprint.”
“MSDs will destroy the world before global warming.”
“So tell me about this bridge.”
“I already told you too much. Can I borrow your car?”
“Don’t have one: global warming. Where are you going?”
“Mount Tabor.”
“Isn’t it closed this late? I should go with you.”
She shook her head.
“I’m not sure it’s safe to be walking there alone.”
She opened her purse and flashed what might have been a gun. Or perhaps a toy. It looked like a ray gun.
He raised an eyebrow. “Do you have a permit for that?”
She batted her eyelashes. “What do you think?”
“I think you’re like Trinity in The Matrix. You know ten ways to kill me without breaking into a sweat.”
“I’m harmless, Justin.”
“You said you didn’t have any money. Is that how you plan to get on the bus?”
“Of course not. I’m pretty good at panhandling.”
“Why don’t you wait till daylight?”
“Because day three starts at 12:47 AM.”
“That’s when you sacrifice a goat on Mount Tabor?”
“I doubt they allow goats on the bus.”
“At least let me give you bus fare,” he said.
She took his money. He told her which buses to take and walked her downstairs. She headed for the bus stop.
Justin ran upstairs, grabbed his jacket and helmet, and raced back downstairs to unlock his bike by the back door.
Once and for all, he was going to find out what she was up to. Buttercup had two buses to take, and they were infrequent this time of night. But Justin could bike to the light rail stop, take it across town, and bike from there to Mount Tabor before Buttercup arrived.
* * * *
Hiding in bushes a near the Mount Tabor bus stop, he felt foolish. Nervously, he picked through stones in the dirt. Maybe Neanderthal Portland Man can defeat Cro-Magnon Michigan Woman by chipping an arrowhead out of flint.
He heard the bus approach. There were only a few people on it, and Buttercup got off alone. She walked around the closed park gates and hiked toward the summit. He’d half-expected her to hop on a hover-board. But with the peak at 600 feet, it wouldn’t be much of a climb.
Careful to stay out of sight, Justin retrieved his bike. An unpaved bike trail led through the forest, and he walked along it, rear wheel clicking quietly. He’d switched off the lights on his bike when he arrived at the park. Buttercup stayed on the roadway, and he caught occasional glimpses of her passing beneath streetlights.
Near the summit, Buttercup left the roadway and entered the woods. Justin held back so she wouldn’t see him, then lost track of her. He stood still, listening. He looked around uneasily, afraid she might sneak up on him. The girl with the ray gun.
He moved cautiously to where he’d last seen her. A walking path crossed the bike trail. He turned his bike onto it. The trees and clouds overhead made it nearly pitch black in the woods. Justin began to have second thoughts about trailing Buttercup.
A faint light appeared ahead, moving. She’d had the sense to bring a flashlight. He knew where she was now.
She stopped.
Justin froze.
Her light was moving around a little, but not aimed back toward him. He quietly laid his bike on its side by the path. Crouching down, he advanced toward the light.
Buttercup was in a small clearing. Her flashlight shone on an upright bundle of sticks bound together with string. It looked like a ritual artifact from The Blair Witch Project. He breathed shallowly, his heart pounding.
Rain fell softly. The time was getting close: Day three. Why 12:47 AM? Mount Tabor was Portland’s extinct volcano. Was that significant? Maybe he hadn’t been too far off the mark when he’d joked about a sacrifice.
Buttercup began chanting, barely audible.
No, she was counting backwards.
A crack like a gunshot startled him. In the light of her flashlight, a sphere of darkness smaller than a basketball briefly appeared above the bundle of sticks. The sticks scattered, the sphere vanished, and something dropped to the ground.
Buttercup stepped forward, crouching to retrieve it. He couldn’t see what it was as she put it in her purse. He looked up, half expecting to see a mother ship hovering.
She might leave at any moment. He turned and hurried back toward his bike. In the darkness, he wandered off the path into a branch. He cursed silently.
“Who’s there?” she called out.
He found the path and continued toward his bike. Walking in a crouch, he saw the flashlight beam flickering in the branches over his head. He breathed shallowly, hoping she couldn’t hear him.
A vehicle roared on the roadway. The park was closed. Had she called for backup? No: he heard her curse. It must be the park police, thinking they’d heard gunfire.
He found his bike by nearly tripping over it. Buttercup’s feet pounded on the path behind him. He jerked the bike upright and ran forward with it. He couldn’t risk mounting it until he reached the bike trail.
Headlight beams entered the forest as the vehicle neared. He reached the bike trail and jumped on his bike. Buttercup was right behind him, breathing hard. Her light illuminated his bike. He turned his head, and her light was in his eyes. He froze.
“The dragon lord!” she gasped, then laughed.
She held her flashlight steady, clutching her purse. No gun in her hand.
“Justin,” he said. “Only Justin.”
The vehicle screeched to a halt, headlights flooding the forest. A truck door opened and slammed.
“Go! Go!” she said urgently.
“Get on!”
She hopped on the rack behind him, wrapping her arms around him. A man shouted behind them as Justin pedaled down the trail. He switched on the bike light.
The trail twisted through the forest, up and down with the natural terrain. His was an urban bike, not a mountain bike, and he fought to keep balance for both of them as it skidded on bark dust and pine needles.
“Why were you running from me?” she shouted in his ear.
“You’ve got a gun.”
He felt the spasms of her laughter as she clutched him.
Justin focused on getting them to the base of Mount Tabor. It would be quicker and safer if he left the trail and got onto the roadway. Except for the truck.
Nearly to the bottom, the trail dipped into a gully. The front tire hit a tree root. He lost control.
The bike left the trail and they tumbled, bike going one way, he and Buttercup another. He slid to a halt, the front of his helmet plowing through mud and pine needles. She lay partly on top of him. He heard her panting.
He spit out pine needles. “You O.K.?”
She groaned. “Let’s do that again.”
“No,” he said. “Let’s go home.”
* * * *
On the morning of day three, Justin fixed his bagel. Buttercup was unwrapping a granola bar.
“I thought food was poison. Where’d you get that?”
“CARE package from home,” she said, and took a bite.
“I thought you ate food pills. Can I see the wrapper?”
She tossed it to him.
CalValley Organics. Product of California.
“Which California?” he asked. “North or South?”
She gave him an odd look.
“Want to watch me feed the dragons? It’s cricket day.”
“No, thanks. It’s day three. Time’s running out.”
“I’d help if I could.”
She shook her head. “You’re not supposed to know.”
“Is this like the Prime Directive? If you tell me what’s going on, it changes history?”
“Maybe.” She screwed the cap on her water bottle. “See you tonight, eh?”
When she left, he started researching th
e connections between Michigan, Antarctica and the Einstein-Rosen bridge.
Einstein-Rosen bridges were spacetime wormholes. Purely theoretical and inherently unstable, because there was no way to hold the throat open long enough for anything to pass through, even light. Plus they required a black hole. There was no black hole on Mt. Tabor nor—as far as Justin knew—in Antarctica. At least in this century. But dragons were extinct by Buttercup’s time. Things change.
* * * *
The door buzzer sounded earlier than he’d expected. It wasn’t even nine PM yet.
He opened the door.
Buttercup stood propped against the doorframe. Her right hand was pressed to her left shoulder, where her sweatshirt was soaked with blood.
“Justin,” she gasped. She sagged forward, and he caught her.
He carried her to the couch where she’d slept the last two nights. She was breathing in shallow, ragged gasps, and he felt her shaking. He covered her with a blanket. “I’ll call 911.”
“No! Justin, for God’s sake! I can’t stay. 12:47 AM. Mount Tabor.”
“You need a doctor!”
“Justin, that’s the way the world ends!” Her tear-filled eyes were pleading with him.
“Jesus.” He gingerly pulled her hand away from her shoulder. She winced. There was a bullet hole in the middle of the stain. He let her press her hand against the wound again. He raised his head and listened. No sirens, no feet pounding up the stairs.
“You need a doctor,” he said.
“If I don’t get to Mount Tabor tonight, Portland will have a crater just like Beijing’s.”
“There’s no crater in Beijing.”
“There is, in—” She stopped.
“Michigan’s Beijing?”
“Just stop the bleeding. Please.”
“I don’t have any gauze or anything. I’ll run to the store.” He started to get up.
“Don’t leave me!” She tried to grab him and cried out in pain.
“O.K. Relax.” He looked at his workbench. “I’m just getting scissors to cut away your sweatshirt.”
He got them and began cutting through the fabric.
“How did this happen?” he asked.
“Forbidden places. The lab where Justin worked.”
“Did you use your gun?”
“No.” She struggled to control her breathing. “I’m not that kind of person.”
He had to move her hand again, and she clenched her teeth. He began pulling away the cut fabric. Her shoulder was covered in blood, with a ragged, bleeding hole. “Did it go all the way through?” he asked.
She nodded. “I was running away.”
“They shot you in the back?”
She nodded, swallowing.
“I guess you’re not Trinity. This bra would be made of Kevlar.” He raised her gently, cutting around the back of her shoulder, then eased her back down. She groaned, squeezing her eyes shut.
“Sorry,” he said.
“I’m sorry, too,” she whispered.
“For what?”
“The blood. Your couch.”
He got towels and hot water, cleaning her wound front and back. He cut more towels, using them to pack the wound. He had to use duct tape instead of medical tape. He tried to be as gentle as possible, but she was obviously in pain.
“Do they have acetaminophen here?” she asked.
He nodded. “Welcome to the twenty-first century. But what you need is nineteenth century morphine.”
He brought her Tylenol and a bottle of water.
She counted out half a dozen caplets.
“Aren’t those poison, too?” he asked.
“No. Maybe. It’s complicated.” She swallowed the pills. “Can I see your dragons one last time?”
He released all four from their cages, and they flew through his apartment. Norberta landed on her blanket, peering at her curiously. The dragon’s hind claws dug in, and Buttercup’s leg jerked.
“They’re beautiful,” she whispered hoarsely.
“Did you find what you needed in Justin’s lab?”
“No.” She looked sad.
“You said there was a Plan B.”
She gave him a pained smile. “A bake sale.”
“What?”
“The people I’m with are like the rats under the bridge. We need to sell something to finance another trip.”
“Like extinct dragons. Won’t your food poison them?”
“I don’t think so.”
“As you wish,” he said.
“Eh?”
“You can take my breeding pair back with you.”
“That’s…that…”
“Makes up for getting shot?”
She started to laugh, and grimaced from the pain.
“No. Generous,” she said. “What time’s the bus?”
“I’ll call a cab. You’re in no shape to hike.”
* * * *
The taxi driver put the blankets in the trunk, but gave a curious frown at the folding stepstool. Justin didn’t know why Buttercup wanted it, either. He helped her into the back seat. Her left arm was in a homemade sling.
He got in on the other side, holding the plastic bin with the dragons on his lap. Smaug and Norberta were scratching inside it.
“What’cha got in the box?” asked the driver.
“Puppies,” said Justin.
“Can I see?”
“You don’t need to see his puppies,” said Buttercup.
The driver shrugged. “I don’t need to see ’em.”
He started the engine.
“These aren’t the dragons you’re looking for,” Buttercup whispered.
For someone from the future, she’d watched a lot of old movies. Her eyes were closed, and Justin squeezed her hand.
The taxi took them to the other side of town, driving through the entrance of the park just before closing time.
“Not a very romantic night,” commented the driver. It was raining. “But hey, none of my business.”
He dropped them off at a shelter near the summit, and Justin paid cash.
Buttercup was shaking from the rain and the cold. He helped her to the shelter and bundled her in blankets.
“Now we just wait for your ride home,” he said.
Buttercup’s eyes were closed. She was still shivering.
“How do you know you’re not a time orphan?” he asked.
“Eh? Who do you think I am?”
“Some sort of Time Lord. The Justin you were looking for was the guy who figured out how to build an Einstein-Rosen bridge. But if somebody screwed up the timeline so I don’t invent the bridge, how do you get back to the future?”
“I’m not from the future.”
“But your gadgets…and you came looking for me.”
She didn’t answer.
Justin listened to the steady hiss and patter of rain on leaves and the shelter roof. The dragons were scratching inside the bin again. He covered it with one of the blankets piled around Buttercup and rearranged the others, pulling one up over her head. She leaned against him with her good shoulder.
“There are infinite Earths,” she murmured. “My Justin didn’t invent wormholes. He had a theory about how to close them. Except he tested it from another world to be safe, and he didn’t return.”
“And now you don’t know how he did it? What about the gorillas from the future? Or was that to throw me off?”
“A bridge is a wave function: One big transfer out, a smaller one back, another small one out, then a large one back. With a chance of tidal waves.”
“Your granola bar surfed the wave last night.”
She gave a weak smile. “Yum.”
“And the night before, you sent the USB drive with the files you stole. What do the tidal waves, the MSDs, do?”
“Beijing and Sydney are craters. Austin, Bangalore and Lyon are each buried under a mountain. That’s why I work from Antarctica instead of Michigan.”
“There’s mo
re than one Einstein-Rosen bridge?”
She nodded. “They drive our world’s economy.”
“What?”
“Corporations find the best each Earth has to offer and make it their own. That’s where my gadgets came from.”
“You’re the hunter-gatherers. We’re the agrarians.”
“A small group of us are trying to save the world.”
“You’re the veggie-hunting rats among the guys with spears. What about the food-is-poison thing?”
“The amino acids on one Earth were the mother of all poisons. It’s never happened on another world. So far.”
“Will you try an experiment for me with the dragons?”
“Eh?” She looked in his eyes.
“Use the money from the sale to hire another genius like Justin. Stop hunting before you kill yourself.”
Over the next two hours, Buttercup drifted in and out of fitful slumber. He woke her after midnight. She could barely walk, so he carried her. She held the flashlight.
“How do you find it in the dark each time?” he asked.
“I have a locator, but I know where it is by now.”
“What’s the stepstool for?”
“The wormhole mouth is centered 120 centimeters above the ground. The wave center is spherical, so I crouch at that level. Sometimes I make a platform out of branches.”
He carried her into the woods, following the flashlight beam. Water shaken from branches showered them.
The clearing still held the scattered sticks from the last transfer. Justin set up the stepstool where Buttercup directed him.
“Undress me,” she said.
He raised an eyebrow. “Is this like Terminator?”
“No. We think differences in mass exchange are one of the MSD causes. And unfortunately, this Terminatrix got her sweatsuit and bandages wet, which isn’t the way I arrived.”
“Plus you’ve got two dragons.”
“Minus blood loss and three days of starvation. Extreme Dieting 101: what women do best.”
Justin cut off the rest of her sweatshirt, removed her bra, and pulled down her sweatpants. She kept only the bandages and her panties. Her purse was on the ground, and she tossed some things out of it before picking it up with her good arm.
He got Smaug and Norberta out of the bin. They were leashed together to hinder escape, but they made no attempt to. Their arched their necks toward the sky, flicking tiny pink tongues to taste the rain. He tied both leashes to Buttercup’s right wrist. She had goosebumps.