A Twist in Time

by Susan Squires

  Galen turned to Casey and Brad, nodded once.

  Casey made a gesture toward the door with a smile that did not reach his eyes.

  “Somehow I thought,” Casey said conversationally as they moved to the back of the building, “that we would have to come to you.” The doors opened to a long corridor. “The horses were a nice touch, by the way. And the way you sent them away? How exactly did you do that?” Galen glanced back to Casey and saw that his eyes were alive with thoughts. He wanted Galen now, too, as well as the diamond and the machine. Galen did not answer. Beside him, Lucy was wound tighter than the lines that held the sails on their boat. Brad seemed as though he were about to burst with anger like a rotting pig’s bladder. That one was dangerous because he was not in control of himself.

  The men from the outside came into the building. Galen could feel them behind him. Again he glanced back. They were shadows in the shadows behind Casey. No swords. But they carried long, heavy metal clubs oddly wrought and ungainly, swinging from straps on their shoulders or held at the ready. Galen did not know what these were, but he recognized the ready stance, the brandishing. They were weapons of some kind. Of that he was sure.

  Chapter Twenty-two

  They were walking into the mouth of hell. At least that was what it felt like to Lucy. The lab doors opened. Leonardo’s time machine sat glittering on the platform of the two-story lab.

  It was really beautiful.

  “I’ll take that diamond,” Brad said through gritted teeth.

  Galen held it out.

  She wanted to shout that they should never have come, that this was all wrong. But it was no use now. Even as Brad snatched the huge diamond from Galen’s palm, a dozen men in military gear crashed into the lab behind them. Lucy whirled. They carried machine guns. She wished she’d told Galen about guns, how easy it was to kill from a distance. He mustn’t think his sword was any protection.

  He didn’t move a muscle at the entrance of these ominous reinforcements. It was as though he wasn’t surprised.

  Brad muttered to himself as he strode across the lab to the machine. He fitted the diamond into the newly repaired prongs at the head of the control lever. One of the lab-coated guys handed Brad what looked like a giant jeweler’s pliers. They must have been made specially, because they fit right over the diamond. He clenched the prongs tightly around the diamond.

  He stepped back looking triumphant. Relief and anticipation coursed through the room.

  Casey turned to Lucy and Galen. “Now, if you will give me your shoulder bag. That square outline means you’ve brought the book as well.” When Lucy hesitated, Casey gestured impatiently. “It’s not as though you have a choice here.”

  She swung the bag over to him. He picked it up and fished out the book. That smile again. He glanced over to the machine. “Steadman, I have an urge to try it out. Just to see if your repair job worked. Ahhhh, but with whom? Our little bookseller isn’t trustworthy.”

  This was it. This was her test of character. Could she embrace the tragedy for Galen’s sake? “Send Galen,” she said, her heart contracting. “He’s got to go back. The fact that he’s here has probably already changed things.” She refused to look at Galen. If she did, she’d cry.

  Brad pushed past Casey, his eyes flashing. “You think I’m stupid? He takes it and brings it back to somewhere else in a month and you’ve got control of it again. If anybody is going to try the machine out, it’s me. It should have been me in the first place.”

  Casey raised his brows at this outburst. “You didn’t have the guts the first time, Steadman. As I recall.”

  Brad’s face was mobile with emotion.

  “Not our Viking, either. I have some . . . questions for him.”

  “Me, too.” Brad’s eyes were a little wild. “And I’d like to beat the answers out of him, twice a day, for a long time.”

  “Steadman, you surprise me. You’re getting a backbone. A little late, maybe.”

  Brad wheeled on Lucy. “And you, you slut—”

  “Will you use the machine or nay?” Galen rumbled, cutting off Brad’s tirade.

  “Okay, you.” Casey gestured to one of the assistants, a slight Hispanic guy. “You’re our lab rat.” The guy looked like a rat. A cornered rat. Panic surged into his eyes. He didn’t move.

  “Casey, it’s got to be me. I want to go.” Brad looked to Lucy in triumph, as if that proved he was a better man than she was worth.

  Casey looked disgusted. “You we need in case it doesn’t work. You’re the expert, the one who can fix it, remember?”

  Brad stood, his chest heaving. His glance darted around the lab. Then he stilled. “Okay. Yeah.” He seemed to get some control back. “Get over here, Rodriguez.” Brad turned to face the machine. When the assistant didn’t move, Casey gestured to the military guys. Two moved up and pushed Rodriguez forward with the butts of their machine guns.

  “This is going to change the world,” Brad said. “And I provided the power.” He knelt and flipped switches on the lunch box– sized power source. He didn’t seem to recall that it was Leonardo who built it. “Jensen never gave me credit for the quality of my research,” Brad muttered. “Fuck him. I’ll have his job.”

  Brad stood in front of the machine. “Christ. I won’t need his job. I’ll have my own institute. ‘Multiphasic Research.’ That’s catchy.” He pulled the lever down. The machine began to whir. He grabbed Rodriguez. “Now where shall we send him?”

  “You could see Alfred the Great change the world,” Galen suggested. The gems began to throw colored beams around the ceiling. Behind Lucy the military guys gasped.

  Brad’s eyes lighted up. “The event that made us what we are today . . . the fall of the Danelaw to Alfred . . .” The machine seemed to pause. “Yeah, Rodriguez. Think about that.”

  Casey tossed a gun he took from a holster under his jacket. “Just in case.”

  Rodriguez didn’t catch it; Brad did. The assistant looked paralyzed with fright.

  “Think of the twelfth day, fifth month of a.d. 912,” Galen called above the hum of power in the room. “The hill to the south of the plains outside Whitby.”

  “Yeah,” Brad murmured. “Bet those cretins have never seen one of these.” The sound of his voice was almost lost in the hum. Whether he meant a time machine or a gun Lucy didn’t know. Galen took her hand. His calluses grounded her against what was about to happen here. Didn’t Casey see it? Brad was going back. Maybe he’d take Rodriguez with him, or maybe he’d shove the assistant out of the way at the last minute. But apparently everyone in the room was too ignorant of history to know that Alfred was already dead in 912. The battle between Alfred and the first King Guthrum was long won, and it had not eliminated the Danelaw, just controlled its spread. Brad was going back to the battle where Galen had fought Egil.

  Suddenly the machine snapped into action. The gears all whirred into a blur. Casey darted forward, realizing Brad’s intent too late. Brad shoved Rodriguez, who stumbled back.

  Brad and the machine both disappeared.

  There was a long moment when the only sound in the room was the gasping of lungs and the click of weapons being readied against a foe that wasn’t corporeal but time itself.

  Galen put his arm around Lucy’s shoulder. Casey looked around wildly. Rodriguez lay on the lab floor, gasping in relief.

  “God damn it!” Casey yelled. “The fucking idiot.”

  “What . . . what happens now, Colonel?” The lead military guy was lost.

  “We wait,” Casey snapped.

  They waited. If Brad was successful, he would be back within minutes, and even if—

  The lights went out in the lab. What sounded like thunder boomed all around them, as if lightning had struck the building.

  And then the machine was sitting on the platform once again.

  Alone.

  The lights blinked on. No Brad. But the machine’s bright surface was splashed in several places with red-brown. Lucy put her hand o
ver her mouth.

  Casey strode to the machine and examined it. “Looks like Steadman bought the farm.” Casey didn’t seem concerned.

  Lucy’s imagination was working overtime. Brad set down in the middle of Galen’s battle. Slashing swords and swinging axes, the smell of blood and smoke—all as she remembered it. Brad would start shooting wildly. He’d kill people, but the clip would run out sooner or later. Then those left standing from both sides would fall on him. . . .

  “At least it works,” Casey said, turning to them. “And Steadman was really no longer useful.” Casey’s pale blue eyes still roved over the glinting brass and jewels of the machine, possessively. “He was unreliable.”

  Brad had just been a little insane. Casey was major insane, the cold kind, not the hot kind. He’d made a mistake, letting his chief scientist and bottle washer get killed, and now he was justifying it, making it seem as though it weren’t a mistake at all.

  “So that’s the second man who died for this machine. The first one you killed.”

  “Honey, I’ve killed more men than I can count.” He glanced over his shoulder at her. “Oh, you mean Lowell. Yeah.” He shrugged. “Guy had a bad heart. He sneaked out on our little party early. Knew it, too, the bastard. But we got the guy who did your IDs. He would have told us where he delivered them. Now we don’t need him, of course.”

  Why did she think that meant the forger was a dead man, too? She glanced to Galen. He was tight, about to burst it seemed, maybe . . . waiting for something.

  “And anyone can run the machine at this point. So,” Casey said, as if deciding. “Time for a little cleanup.” He picked up Lucy’s bag and rummaged around until he found the gun. He held it up. “Thought Lowell would make sure you had something like this. Glock nine. Bet you don’t even know how to use it.”

  Casey snapped it up and put bullets in the foreheads of Rodriguez and the other lab assistant. Lucy gasped in shock. Galen jumped back, dragging her with him. The military guys behind them took a step forward, brandishing their guns as if to hold Galen and Lucy in place.

  “What weapon spits fire and kills from a distance?” Galen muttered.

  “A gun,” Lucy answered. “You saw them in the western and just didn’t know what they were.” She’d begun to tremble as she stared at the lab assistants, collapsed on the floor, gaping holes in their heads. Funny. There wasn’t much blood.

  “Jake gave you this weapon?” Galen sounded outraged. “You had it always?”

  “Sure beats a sword, doesn’t it?” Casey had turned the gun on them. Galen pulled Lucy behind his body.

  “Come on out, honey. No use putting this off.” Casey motioned with the gun.

  “Kill me,” Galen growled. “You let Lucy free.”

  “No, no, no, no. You I want to keep for a while. I want to know how you can talk to animals like that. You might even know where some Viking hoards of silver are buried. She’s the expendable one.” He motioned to the guys wearing camo. Two came up and grabbed her while three tried to seize Galen. He twisted a gun out of the hands of the nearest soldier and used it as a club. The stock part of it came up and caught the guy under the jaw, dropping him in his tracks. Galen was already swinging for one of the guys who held her. She twisted away, but the soldier had her arm. For a minute, and then he went down, too.

  Galen pulled out his sword and sliced at another one, who clutched one hand to a spurting neck and fell to his knees. A gun went off in a short burst. It caught one of the remaining soldiers bailing into the melee. He bloomed with blood.

  “Don’t fire in these close quarters, you idiots!” Casey shouted.

  Another soldier hit Galen with a baton from behind. Galen managed to duck and spare his head, but the blow caught his shoulder. He staggered and then there were four of them hitting and hitting. He sank to his knees.

  “Galen!” she cried, pulling her remaining captor off balance as she lunged toward Galen.

  Another gun went off. A single shot. “Enough!” Casey yelled. All motion stopped. Two of the camo guys were groaning. One lay still in a pool of blood from his slashed neck. One of the guys still standing around Galen kicked his sword away. It spun toward Lucy and the guy who held her by both elbows from behind.

  “Cuff him or tie him up or something,” Casey said, disgusted. “Before you let him cut you to pieces with that sword.” He walked over to Lucy. “You want to do her, or shall I?” he asked the guy who held her. He was a black guy, with dead eyes and a white scar on one cheek.

  “Be my guest, Boss,” the black guy growled.

  Galen had gone still, kneeling on the floor, his hands jerked behind his back. Casey came up and held Jake’s gun to Lucy’s head. The muzzle was cold at her temple.

  “Say good-bye to your girlfriend, Viking.”

  “You will freeze in Hel’s kingdom,” Galen growled. That wasn’t the only growl in the room. From a distance a powerful grinding sound thrummed up through the floor. It buzzed in her chest, coming closer.

  “Shit,” one of the camo guys said. “I know that sound—”

  But before he could say what it was, the whole place was shaking like Vandal shook Galen’s socks, sharp and fast. The men around her staggered.

  “Earthquake!” one shouted.

  Casey fell backward. The gun went off and skittered from his hand. Glass shattered and tinkled. The floor heaved like someone was shaking out a rug. Men scrambled toward the exit.

  “Get out. Get out!”

  Galen crawled toward her. Ceiling tiles crashed to the floor and broke over the gears of Leonardo’s machine. Galen covered her with his body as a rending sound squealed through the lab. A broken girder poked through the wall toward the machine.

  Galen had recovered his sword. “Lucy, come away!” he shouted over the din.

  They staggered to their feet, reeling. The grinding sound was passing on. “We can’t leave Casey with the machine!” she shouted.

  They looked around and saw that Casey was staggering toward one of the abandoned machine guns just in front of the machine. Would he rather kill us than save himself? It was as though someone else from far away was thinking that. The west wall of the lab leaned slowly in.

  And then it was still. The grinding sound was gone. The silence was deafening. Casey got to his feet. Galen shoved her behind him and readied his sword, his face grim. He’d be cut down by that machine gun.

  But there was Jake’s gun. At her feet. The one she swore she’d never use because she wasn’t that person.

  But she was all they had. She reached for it. Casey was turning, machine gun in hand, his face a mask of hatred and greed. She stepped out from behind Galen and brought Jake’s Glock up. She pulled the trigger again and again and again. She braced her feet against the kick, but it was so much more than she expected. Her shots went wild and high and then she wrestled the gun down again and—

  Casey’s face disappeared. It just shattered in blood and white splinters of bone.

  The machine gun clattered to the floor. Casey toppled forward.

  Lucy was heaving sobs. She didn’t remember starting to cry. Galen held her, whispering soothing sounds.

  “You are dor, Lucy. Brave.”

  “I . . . I just killed a man.” She couldn’t get her breath. There was so much dust in the air.

  An aftershock ripped through the lab. The west wall buckled. This whole place was going to come down. It might destroy the machine. Leonardo’s lifework. The key to time itself.

  But what if it didn’t?

  “Boss?” The camo guys were making their way back into the building.

  She looked up at Galen. “We’ve got to get the machine out of here. And there’s only one way to do that.”

  “It will gewend back here as it did for Brad.”

  Debris crashed behind them. Casey’s men would be through the wreckage any minute.

  “Yeah.” She chewed her lip. “Leonardo said it comes back to where it left because time is bent too far and boun
ces back into its track.” She looked up at Galen. “But what if you didn’t take it far in time? Just to the next second? But to a different place. Maybe it would stay where you took it.”

  She picked up her bag with the book in it and ran to the machine without waiting for an answer. “Okay, okay,” she reassured herself. She flipped on the power. It whined up the scale.

  She positioned herself in front of the lever. Galen came and put his arms around her. She pulled the diamond down.

  Where to take it? Where was there room for fourteen feet of time machine, where no one would find it? The lights began to play across the wreckage, coloring motes of dust. The gears ground to a halt. In seconds they would slingshot forward.

  “You okay, Boss?” More crashing from behind them. She couldn’t think. Where?

  And then she knew. Why it should come to her like that she didn’t know. The Palace of Fine Arts. Her favorite place. The place she had shared picnics with Brad. In the empty, secret room they’d found under the Rotunda. Now it was sealed again. Would they be sealed in, too? But the Chronicle had said there was a passage into the Exploratorium.

  She smiled up at Galen as the momentum of the machine threw them into the vortex.

  Lucy sat up, coughing. Galen stirred beside her and shoved himself up to hands and knees. She felt the machine looming above them, though she couldn’t see it.

  Are you okay, Lucy?” He felt for her in the darkness. His hands skimmed her face. They were trembling.

  “Yes. Yes.” She was just a little breathless. “And you?”

  “I am sore from where they bateth me, no more.” He paused. “Where are we?”

  “Under the Palace of Fine Arts in San Francisco. No one will find the machine here.” He gathered her into his arms. “You knew the quake was coming, didn’t you? That’s what you meant when you said the earth would help us.”

  “Ja. I can feel the earth, Lucy. I speak this to you before.”

  “Your mother was right after all.” Lucy thought about his connection to animals. “I think you had it in you all along.” He could now be to his people what they expected of him. He could take his brother’s place. It was what Galen had wanted all his life. And she must not keep him from his happiness. This was his story, after all, not hers. She was just along for the ride.