“Long story. Join me?”
“You’ll answer all my questions?”
“Of course.”
“I need to contact my ship.”
“Lauren and Farrell are safe for now, but again, time is running short. Your comset will be made available.”
A white gravcart whirred to the foot of George’s sleeper and hovered several inches off the floor. Like a rectangular box, its slab sides ended just above the seat bottom. On either side were cutouts for riders to board. There appeared to be no controls.
“The rest of you, please feel free to ask for anything you desire.” A bemused smile. “But, I would suggest you consider your condition before you do.” He looked to each man in turn, and drew nods from Baider and Don.
From the last sleeper, Owen’s whisper held an air of finality. “Coffee, black, and something sweet, preferably female...just kidding.”
He doesn’t know about Heather, George realized. He had been snoring fitfully until just before the cart arrived.
“Tut, tut, Owen,” Linda shot him a cross look that melted into a smile. “That won’t do.” With a gentle nod to George, she strolled to Owen’s side. “To tell you the truth, you worried us the most. How’s the shoulder?”
“My what?” Owen tried to raise his left arm, but a sharp intake revealed his injuries were far from healed. “Not good.”
“Let me have another look.” Linda pulled back his coverlet and inspected Owen’s bandaged limb. “We salvaged your arm and replaced the shoulder socket, but the left side of your face and chest are deeply scarred. That will require further dermal regeneration. To restate a time-worn phrase, you’re out of the woods, soldier, but you aren’t mobile yet. Best to stay here. I’ll have an aide bring you something to eat.”
“Yes, Ma’am. I’d like that.” Owen grinned, but winced when he tried and failed to rise. He squeezed his eyes shut. “Pain.”
“Keep in mind, gentlemen, the sonimed only lessens pain...it cannot protect you from further injury, so please keep your movements limited. No cart races.” Stern, with a hint of reproach, as if she were somehow aware of Owen’s habit of embracing his physical limitations by testing them. She turned to Don.
“I’m up to it.” Don sat up too quickly and fainted.
Linda caught him and gently laid him back. His skin paled and his breathing became shallow and rapid. A worried frown creased her brow. She checked the med vid on the wall above his head and noticeably relaxed.
“Maybe tomorrow.” She rested her palm on his forehead and touched his cheek, then pulled his coverlet up about his chest and turned to Baider. “How about you?”
“Sure.”
Hesitant, she checked his stats and smiled. “You’re surprisingly resilient. Do you thrive on adverse conditions?”
“I’ve...been around.”
She nodded and her eyes glistened. “Buck up, sailor. You’ll be with Heather again. Mark my words.” Over her shoulder she called, “Aide.”
The ward brightened. Linda moved aside when a med worker in blue scrubs and white smock appeared with an upright gravpad. Polite and considerate, he helped Baider from the sleeper, then whisked him from the ward. George watched in silence, noting the aide's vigorous efficiency.
“Your turn, George.” Linda offered him a hand.
He took it and rose cautiously. Uncomfortable yes, but he could manage the pain well enough.
Linda tucked her arm under his and lifted. A sharp pang shot through his side. He sucked in a breath and grimaced, but the hurt seemed far from debilitating.
When seated, a blue featherfiber blanket tucked up neatly about his torso, O’Brien joined him. “Arboretum,” he said, activating the cart. In seconds, they were hurtling down a well-lit, pale green corridor.
George shifted uncomfortably. No device, to keep him in place should the device make a sudden turn, presented itself.
The cart slowed to an acceptable pace when they traversed a large, lightly populated common area crisscrossed with chattahoochee pathways. Despite his still hazy vision, George noted an assortment of colorful plants and trees scattered among groupings of well-padded earth tone benches, loungers and natural oak tables. Huge vid screens consumed four walls, with two and three-dimensional works of art on display between the corridors intersecting the mezzanine. Mellow strains of a faintly familiar melody added a relaxing air. It seemed so homey, he wished he could spend a little more time there.
They glided into a corridor papered with landscaped patterns of greens, yellows and earth tones. He caught his breath when the cart resumed its headlong rush. A quarter kilometer on it slowed and turned smoothly. A hatch as wide as the tunnel whooshed aside. They entered an arboretum so vast the walls were lost to view. The cart slowed to a crawl. Redwoods, poplars, great gnarled oaks and tall, straight pines reached for the granite dome a hundred meters above them. Yellow grass and wildflower meadows ranged between red grape laden vines clinging to rickety fences of aged gray planks.
At a distance he heard rushing water and closer, a gurgling brook. A cacophony of insect passion rippled away as they drew near. Mildly humid, a gentle breeze bore sweet fragrances. Reminiscent of early morning, illumination emanated from a corner of the dome.
“Colonel.”
“Kaider will do.”
“Kaider, then. You and Doctor, uh Linda, both spoke of time being short, and she told Baider he would see Heather again. Can you elaborate?”
O’Brien regarded him with disconcerting intensity. “What I have to tell will seem absurd. But the fact that you are here, in a world profoundly different than you’ve known, should allay your suspicions. Let me assure you, we have nothing to gain by deluding you...and everything to lose.”
George met his eyes and saw in them a man who carried the lives of hundreds on his shoulders. Though his natural inhibitions layered his observations with doubt, George saw no reason to doubt O’Brien’s sincerity.
“In the past few days, since Slinker surfaced in this...this version of Earth, my faith in the accepted laws of time and space has been shattered. You are a highly decorated and respected officer, and the public vids show you to be a man of utmost integrity. But, but you won’t easily allay my doubts.”
“I didn't expect anything less.” Though he had practiced what he would say to George when this day finally arrived, O'Brien could not dredge from his memories all that he rehearsed. He decided to plunge ahead and pray he made sense. “Your father is here, but his health is failing.”
“Here!” George shot him a look of total disbelief. “My dad would be over three hundred and sixty years old! Providing this reality is, in fact, what it appears to be.”
“That would be correct.” O’Brien nodded. “I was in my mid-forties when the Cargans attacked Earth. A few of us escaped from Mars and crashed a Cargan spaceship not far from here. Over the past three centuries, we’ve gleaned much from their technology. Linda isolated an organism in the Cargan’s blood that impedes aging. We share it with our children when they reach a certain level of maturity. Your father could have arrested his aging then, but he and Gwyndolin chose to wait until they were much older. They’re considered Nayork’s grand old couple.” O’Brien smiled. For a fleeting moment, his thoughts dwelt on Jessica. “You may not recognize them. Your father’s infirmities have wasted him, and he’s hard to communicate with. Gwyndolin began fading shortly after your dad, though the med staff can't isolate anything more specific than old age. I wanted to prepare you for that.”
“You’ll take me to them?”
“Of course. But before I do, you need to know a few things.” O’Brien paused to gather his thoughts. “The opportunity to supplant this time line draws near.”
“You can do that?” Wildly relieved, it was all George could think to say.
“We hope so. As you know, I commanded Mars Explorer base...up to July 12, 2057, the day the Cargans came. I led a select group of scientists to an alien structure in the caverns that honeycomb Mars
. Turned out to be a beacon created by the Cargans to alert them when humans developed interplanetary travel.” O’Brien hesitated, remembering the scene with graphic clarity.
A tremor coursed through George and his throat went dry. He licked his lips and stared at the lush vegetation, so out of place in this mountain cavern. For a frightening moment, he half expected it to disappear, to be replaced by the antiseptic white of a snow bank. Instead, O’Brien coughed lightly and continued, bringing him rushing back to reality.
“We set it off. We brought on the Cargan bombardment of Earth and the near extinction of our race. Out of ignorance, rather blind arrogance, we tinkered with something that was best left alone.” O’Brien faced George and pierced him with a look that could shrivel the soul. “But you can set that straight, Captain Schumer. You and Slinker.”
“Come again?” George cocked an eye. He wanted desperately to believe, prayed he could believe him.
“You know you were guided here, don't you?”
“That’s obvious.”
Your father visited you hundreds of times to make sure that you were the one. He was afraid that he chose you because you're his son, but, he was not mistaken. He built a device from the Cargan drive that folds time. We’re counting on you and Slinker to replace this time line, save billions of lives.”
George stared at him in stunned silence. O’Brien stared back, implacable.
This wasn’t the fanciful musings of a deranged fanatic. Instead, George recognized in O’Brien the fire of purpose, the need to right a terrible wrong. George shook his head and looked away. What he heard was preposterous, but no more so than what he’d already been through.
“You just told me that my parents are over three hundred years old and now you want me to believe my father has built a time machine? You’ve got to admit that’s a lot to swallow.” Sweat beaded on his face. He thought of the countless times his father’s theories were met by derisive laughter. “After all the ‘crackpot’ slurs from dad’s colleagues, it would be just like him to figure out a way to do it. I’ve traveled three hundred years into the future. Now, how is that possible? Did he do that too?”
“No. Remember when Slinker passed through that anomaly and you found yourself off a different coast?”
“Yeah. Thought I was going nuts.”
“Thought you might.” Though O’Brien once deemed what he was about to say totally implausible, he steeped his words with conviction. “We forced a captured Cargan to fly us to Earth. He tried to crash the ship at the coordinates we gave him. There was a struggle and we lost control, but managed to exert some influence on the helm. The ship skipped off the ocean...coincidentally, right over Slinker. When the Cargan ship smacked into the ocean it was in temporal flux. Future time overlapped with what was then the present. Slinker ran right into the overlap and was thrown briefly into the past, then hurtled into the future.”
“And, using my father’s time-travel machine, I’ll take Slinker back in time and do...do what? Change history?”
“Precisely. The time envelope your father can access encompasses a period that began minutes before the Mars beacon was activated, and through tomorrow at sixteen-forty-three. We absolutely must have you and the time machine aboard Slinker before that or we’ll all be stuck in this future.”
George rubbed his smoothly shaven jaw, brows furrowed. He was conversant with his father’s theories, based on something called the Typler cylinder, but still found it difficult to accept what O’Brien was telling him. Could any of this really be happening, or was he trapped somewhere between life and death? Had Slinker indeed come through the anomaly unscathed?
“If I accomplish this, won’t all of this, your lives here, be erased? Isn’t that a lot to give up?”
O’Brien’s shoulders drooped. He looked away, his heart heavy, and George sensed deep despair.
“Yes, yes it will. We won’t remember any of it, but...but we have the ability for you to take back knowledge of this experience.” O’Brien smiled sadly and brought the cart to a stop. It settled gently onto the cobblestone path. He stretched his arms out and rested them on the seat back. “When we began to back step, only for minutes at first, history renewed itself. Everyone in Nayork sensed a subtle change, but had no idea what it meant. Only the crononaut, the person actually aboard Schumer’s machine, remembered what transpired during those lost minutes. Eventually the Professor learned how to back step and return to our present without altering the past. Once you successfully persuade me to bury the Cargan beacon, only you will retain all knowledge of the past few days. You’ll also have with you holographic and data records that contain Nayork’s history and technical accomplishments, including everything you’ll need to build weapons to defend Earth against the Cargans. If you fail, the events that led us here will repeat. Earth will again be devastated.”
“How will I be able to contact you...and if I can, what can I say to convince you to bury this...this beacon?”
“I’ll tell you something of my life that no one else knows. You must also promise, once this time line has been reversed, to dismantle and disburse the time machine. It cannot fall into the hands of those who would use it against others. And you absolutely must convince your father to abandon his greatest passion, for he just may succeed. Mankind isn't ready for the kind of power that knowledge of the Cargan drive will impart.
“The Cargan race is immensely old and powerful, yet their virtual omnipotence leaves them vulnerable. Their ability to perceive the nuances of every issue, every action, often keeps them from realizing the obvious. Thus, they see the development of interplanetary travel by other worlds as a threat to their very existence. They’ve planted beacons throughout the galaxy.”
“Shouldn’t we use the Cargan's technology to disable all the beacons or better still, use it to contain the Cargans themselves? Before they can destroy any more worlds.”
“Tough question, but since you’ll destroy the time machine and all data related to the Cargan drive, my hopes are that the World Parliament will use our technology to build a line of defense that the Cargans dare not face. It would be best if few learn this time line existed, so we’ve concocted a story that explains how your father acquired this technology.” O’Brien chuckled, then grew serious again. “I’m not sure anyone would believe us if we told the truth anyway. As to hunting down the Cargans, that would only be possible if the drive technology survives. Personally, I’m against it because the Cargans inhabit hundreds of worlds. It could ignite a war that would last for eons. I wouldn’t want to be remembered as the fuse that lit that powder keg. Nor as the man who ushered in the near extinction of human kind.”
“What about the anti-aging?”
“That’s an easy one. The data I give you will help people live much longer, maybe as long as three hundred years, but the Plebs, the organisms that give the Cargans their vast age, can't be replicated. We drained every milliliter of blood from the alien cadavers, but used up a lot of it trying to make more Plebs. We did save a small quantity for you to take back with you. Consider it a gift.”
“Your research notes will be included, to continue replication efforts?”
“Everything we have on it.” O’Brien looked away, his sense of pending loss heavy on his heart. Except for the snippets George would carry back, all that they lived and loved would be wiped away. To know, but never to remember. How many times did he doubt the wisdom of starting over, worried if tampering with time on such a grand scale was wise? No point in refighting that old battle. George and Slinker were here.
O’Brien straightened and slapped his knees. “At any rate, you and your companions have already been inoculated. But remember, the gift of semi-immortality comes with grave responsibilities.” He studied George dispassionately. From his research, he knew the scientist to be a fighter, a survivor, and a stable, fair-minded individual, capable of serving mankind with great distinction. “You with me so far?”
“Uh, huh,” George answered absentl
y, thinking of his parents. Dad had a way of simplifying the complex. His perspective would be welcome.
Overhead the natural appearing illumination dimmed, as if a cloud passed over the sun. The insect passion play that had resumed once the cart stopped, quieted.
“Are you up to taking a walk?” O’Brien stretched and yawned. “My legs get cramped sitting.”
“Sure. Not that I need the exercise.” With a sardonic grin, George bunched up his blanket and pushed off the seat. He gingerly placed one foot on the cobbled pathway, then the other, and stood, using the cart for support. Oddly, his injuries seemed less intrusive. The kinks and sharp pains were gone. He squared his shoulders and stood away from the cart, reassured.
O’Brien joined him and pointed to a chipped wood path angling off to their right through a clearing peppered with knee high wildflowers and reed like yellow grasses. It led through a stand of spindly poplars shedding thin sheets of white bark. From that direction, came the sound of rushing water.
George noticed O’Brien’s slight limp, but he said nothing as they strolled down the path. They came upon a wide, close-cropped grassy ledge, and beyond, a magnificent waterfall easily eighty meters top to bottom, tumbling over an irregular series of seven steps. Bordered by lichen and mica streaked granite boulders, crystal clear water cascaded from each overhang, the last at their feet. Though wildflowers and ferns grew in abundance, there were no rotting tree trunks, plant debris or rubbish gathered in the eddies.
At the bottom was a wide, deep pool with pockets of churning water. A hemp rope hung from an oak limb with knots every quarter meter. A fawn stared at them from the far bank, and a pair of gray and white rabbits skittered from sight at their approach. It reminded George of bucolic summers when he and his dad would go stream fishing at the Lake of the Woods in the ‘stove pipe’ region on Minnesota’s northern border.
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