“It had to be done, for the Institute if not for the old man,” he said harshly. “The Anarchists understand a counterstrike. They thought we couldn’t track them down, and now they know differently. They’ll think twice before they try to infiltrate us again.”
“I see,” she said coldly. “You’re going to continue to delude yourself. Very well. Then I have no choice but to—”
“What is all this?” he broke in heatedly. “Another test? Is this another reason to keep me kicking my heels around here? When do I get another assignment? When am I going to—”
“When are you going to stabilize?” she said.
He felt like he’d been punched in the stomach. He backed up a step, frowned, and couldn’t find anything to say. “I…am. I need to work and get over this—”
“You’re still frightened of reentering the time stream,” she said without mercy. “Don’t deny it. The analysts have verified that.”
“Well, wouldn’t you be?” he retorted, stung.
“It’s quite understandable.” She paused a moment, then her expression softened. “Why don’t you sit down, Noel, and stop looking like that. I’m not trying to wound your ego. I want you to face facts, cope with them, and progress onward.”
He looked at the chair she indicated and massaged the tense muscles at the back of his neck. Inside, he was starting to boil. It was bad enough going through one of these sessions with the shrink, but for his own boss to try amateur probing was too much. Still, he couldn’t tell her off, not if he wanted to keep his job…not if he ever wanted to travel again.
With a sigh he swung around and dropped into the chair. “Look, let me travel again. It’s like getting on a horse after you’ve fallen off. I’ve got to face the time stream, go through it, and come back. Then I’ll know I’m all right.”
She shook her head and even managed to look almost regretful. “I’m sorry. That kind of casual solution won’t work with the time stream. You can’t fear it. Not the kind of fear that’s inside you. It would keep you from focusing. It would interfere with your LOC and cause…no, you have to work through your problems independently of the time stream. Then you can return.”
He didn’t believe her. “And how am I going to convince you I’m ready?”
“When you stop having nightmares. When you stop interfering with Bruthe’s work by having him track your nonexistent counterpart. When you stop babbling about time distortions that haven’t occurred.”
Noel shot to his feet all his good intentions shattered. “How the hell—”
“Mr. Heitz reported your observations of last night before he left on assignment this morning. He said you would be coming in later to file a report, and he wanted his support on record.” She also rose to her feet, calm against his anger. “And you made quite a spectacle of yourself upon arrival, running down to Laboratory 14 and trying to enter when the time portal was engaged.”
Chagrined, Noel thought of his argument with Rupeet in the corridor. There were surveillance cameras in the ceiling. He always forgot about them. And even if they weren’t working, Rupeet would have lost no time in filing a complaint.
Noel set his jaw. “I’m not crazy,” he said. “There was a distortion. I don’t care if no one else felt it. I don’t care if it didn’t register on the equipment. There’s something wrong with the time fabric. Maybe only for me. Maybe for no one else. But I don’t believe that.”
“Exactly how far from you was Mr. Heitz when the distortion occurred?”
Her question heartened him for a moment. Maybe she did believe him. Maybe something had registered that they weren’t telling yet.
He said, “About thirty yards, forty perhaps. I was running when it happened.”
“Mr. Heitz said you were shot and fell.”
“No. I was shot earlier. While I was chasing the Anarchist, the distortion caught me. I ran right into it. When it faded, I fell, and the Anarchist escaped. It must have happened in seconds. I’m not sure.”
She cocked her head to one side. “Time distortions are theoretical only. We know they are caused when two travelers attempt to visit the same point of time. We believe they may be caused when—”
“When there is a disruption in the time stream, or if an anomaly causes the time fabric to shred.”
“Not very precise terminology, Mr. Kedran.”
“Never mind about how I phrase it!” he said. “The anomaly is Leon. It has to be. We left him back there, where he doesn’t belong.”
“Leon is at best a ghost, to use the imprecise definitions of the past,” she said impatiently. “This duplication has no physical substance. There are a few particles left in the time stream, but no actual entity remains. Why do you refuse to accept that?”
Noel thumped his chest. “Because in here I know differently.”
“Oh, a hunch. Really!”
“Yes, really!” he retorted. “He’s not just a duplication. He’s part of me. You didn’t get all of me back. And it’s causing the stream to split. The two of us, separated, are pulling it apart.”
She slammed her hand down upon a stack of files. “This is ludicrous. You are postulating hypotheses without any scientific basis whatsoever.”
“I don’t need a rationale—”
“I do, however. This institute is run on sound scientific principles, not harebrained guesses. You are letting your paranoia consume you. You are becoming irrational.”
He glared at her. “Is that a professional opinion, Dr. Rugle?”
She turned bright red. “You will report to Morven now, and be assigned to quarters. You will go to them and remain there until further notice.”
“This isn’t the military. I can quit.”
“You can,” she said icily. “But until the police have terminated their investigation into the incident of last night, you will remain here at the Institute, in the quarters assigned to you. Once that matter has been resolved and no substantiated connection is traced to the Institute, then we can determine whether it is desirable to sustain your employment here.”
There was nothing left to say. A pulse throbbed in his head. His hands were shaking so hard he clenched them at his sides. Noel turned and strode out so fast the door barely opened quickly enough.
As he paused for it, he bumped the doorway with his shoulder, and his shoulder passed right through solid matter into nothing. Even as he cried out in surprise, the corridor lights rushed at him, blinding him, and the corridor itself twisted around him in a knot. For an instant he was nowhere at all, then he heard screaming and confusion and the rush of thousands of office workers and marine biologists trampling each other in a stampede to escape the building that was falling down upon them. Noel hurtled down several stories, falling with the debris of ceiling tiles, twisted metal, and broken wires. He was falling and falling, tumbling past the waterfall in the reception lobby of the complex. His screams mingled with the tortured groan of metal sheering apart.
He fell forever, then he hit and shattered and came to all at once, finding himself on the floor in the corridor with the alarm shrieking and people surrounding him. The lights were too bright. The sounds were too loud. He winced and tried to put his hand over his face to shield his eyes.
“Everyone, stand back,” said a voice of authority. Something sharp pricked his arm, and it all faded.
Chapter 3
Noel came out of sedation fighting mad. He sat up on the infirmary cot with a flurry of blankets.
“Hey, hold on there,” said a soft voice. Dr. Ellis, as beautiful as she was competent, hurried over just in time to stop him from getting out of bed. “You stay right where you are.”
“The hell I will,” said Noel. “What’s happened? How long have I been out? Who knocked me out?”
She smiled and tilted her head to one side. “Which question do you want me to answer first?”
Her own serene, unruffled manner calmed him down. He drew in a deep breath and felt some of the tension relax in his body. His fa
ce was wet with sweat and he wiped it with the sheet. At least he still had his clothes on, which meant they didn’t intend a long stay for him. That was a relief. When he’d first opened his eyes to these white, sterile surroundings, he’d been afraid he was already in the rubber room.
“How long?” he said.
“You’ve been unconscious for four hours, more or less. The sedative was very mild, but I guess your body needed the rest.”
He scowled and swung his feet to the floor.
“I don’t want you to get up just yet,” she said, and her tone was a bit sharper than before. “I’d like to check you out first.”
“Why?” he snapped. “Have I been screaming at spiders on the walls?”
“No.”
“Did Dr. Rugle order you to keep me here?”
“No.”
He glared at her, feeling the wildness clawing up inside him. “I’m not crazy. I’m not!”
She put her hand on his shoulder in quick reassurance. “The distortion registered. We all felt the walls shake. It was a strange, very disconcerting experience.”
Noel looked up into her eyes, searching for the truth or a trick. What he saw in her gaze convinced him that she was telling the truth. His nagging fear vanished. With a soft moan, he slumped and buried his face in his hands.
“The lab people are outside clamoring for a chance to get at you,” she said after a few moments. “I’d like to keep you here a while longer until I’m sure you feel up to facing them.”
“What do they want?” asked Noel.
“Can’t you guess?”
He sighed and dropped his hands. “Questions. Like I’ve got all the answers.”
“Don’t you?” she said, but with a smile. Her hand slipped from his shoulder to his throat. It could have been a caress, but he felt her fingers upon his pulse, and loosed a mental sigh. That was Angela Ellis. She looked and acted like a peach, but her mind was all business.
“What?” he said belatedly.
“Don’t you have all the answers?”
He frowned and pulled away. “No.”
“It was just a rhetorical question. If you don’t make an effort to relax, I’ll have to give you another shot.”
He looked up to see if she was teasing and decided she wasn’t. “Okay,” he said, running his hands through his hair. “I’ll relax. Just keep them out for a while.”
“I get you first,” she said in a sultry voice, but it was a medical scanner she ran over him. “Hold still.”
He sat on his hands to hide the tremors. He was beginning to see them as a warning sign of a coming distortion, and he didn’t want to go through another one. The last had been a little too real for his peace of mind.
“How about the travelers who were out?” he asked. “Everyone back okay by now? I mean, they didn’t send out Rupeet or anyone scheduled for this afternoon, did they? Not after what happened.”
She hesitated just a few seconds too long. Noel stiffened, and he felt his heart grow icy cold.
“No,” she said quietly, “no one else has gone through the portal.”
He jerked away and stood up, turning around to face her. “Did everyone come back?” he asked, his voice unsteady. He gripped her by the arms and shook her. “Are they okay?”
She said nothing. She didn’t have to. Her face gave it all away.
He shoved her aside and stumbled forward, already running before he reached the door.
Intensive care lay at the rear of the infirmary. Seldom used, it now had the small medical staff bustling quietly in and out. A huddle of technicians stood outside, whispering and comparing data.
Noel hurtled through them, heedless of what they said or the hands that tried to snag him.
“Noel, wait!”
“Kedran, you can’t—”
“Just a moment!”
He fought them off, too angry and scared to care what he did, and plunged through the ICU doors.
Inside, he stopped, his heart hammering at the muted wash of light over the beds, the monitors beeping softly, steadily, the medics glancing up to stare at him without expression. He gulped, his head going suddenly light as though it wanted to float far above the rest of his body. His knees had gone to water, but he refused to let them sag beneath him.
Not Trojan, he thought, letting the pain and grief fill him. Not his hairy giant of a pal, his best friend, the man he’d give his arm for.
The door to the unit opened behind him, letting in a slice of stronger light. One of the doctors raised his hand, and whoever entered behind Noel stopped. In silence they all watched while he pulled himself together and walked to the first bed.
Talia Baker lay there, her petite face drawn with pain, her skin so gray and lackluster she didn’t look human at all. Her eyes were closed, and monitor clips were stuck to her temples, chest, and arm. Noel looked at the readouts and sucked in his breath. He didn’t understand all of them, but what he did comprehend looked bad. Talia had been a traveler for sixteen months. She was the youngest, the newest of their number. This had been her third or fourth assignment. It looked like it would be her last.
Gordon lay in the next bed. Tall, blond, gentle—he was more scholar than man of action. He was on complete life support. The brain activity line registered nothing at all. Noel’s eyes stung. He wanted to do something, say something, but there was nothing to do or say, nothing at all. Gordon was a dead man. If they turned everything off, he would lie there as still as the grave, never to make his quiet jokes again at the cafeteria, never to stay awake through Dr. Rugle’s boring briefings again, never to walk up in his diffident way and ask a question about LOC function. His specialty had been mid-twentieth century and the Second World War. He had come back from travels with bullet holes in his uniform but otherwise unscratched and unruffled, always smiling, his soft, singsong voice unique among the others.
Now there was no Gordon, nothing but this shell of him breathing artificial air, dead blood pumping through a dead body, caught and crushed in who knew what kind of hell as the time stream failed around him.
Noel blinked back tears and realized he was gripping the bar at the foot of Gordon’s bed, gripping it so hard his knuckles were white and his hands aching. He felt locked there. He couldn’t move, couldn’t make his head turn, couldn’t force his feet to step to the next bed, and yet somehow he found himself at Trojan’s side. His fingers closed around Trojan’s cold ones. He steeled his jaw, but his mouth quivered at the emotions he could not hold back. His friend…he had lost his friend…
Someone touched his shoulder, and a voice said quietly, “He isn’t dead, Noel. He’s stabilized, holding his own. There’s a chance…”
It took a while for the words to register inside Noel’s brain. Finally he wrenched his gaze from Trojan’s still, slack face and looked into the eyes of the doctor. “What?”
“I’m afraid he’s in a coma. There’s no telling how long its duration will be. Being the last to step into the time stream this morning, he was the farthest away from the whiplash effect of the distortion. It caught him last, after most of the force had dissipated. We have strong hopes of saving him.”
Noel’s gaze wandered back to Trojan. Trojan was the lucky one; the big, hairy one who always emerged unscathed from trouble. He pretended to be careless, yet he was organized, methodical, neat, and prepared. He claimed to work at the Institute strictly for fun. He was independently wealthy and had become a historian as a hobby, yet no one on staff was more diligent. He looked like a barbarian with his red beard, unruly long hair, and burly shoulders, yet he held several degrees from prominent universities. He was all the things Noel would never be, and now he lay here, far away and unreachable.
Noel drew in a ragged breath and stepped back. As long as he lived, he would never forget the haunting sight of Trojan lying there with the support machines around him, helpless and hurt.
Outside, the infirmary lights seemed too bright. The technicians surrounded Noel, battering him wit
h questions. He ignored them all and walked to the coffee machine on feet he could not feel. The liquid was hot and bitter. He hated coffee, but he drank it fast, burning his tongue, wondering how Trojan could crave the stuff. It felt hot and oily in his stomach. For a moment as he crumpled the cup in his hands, he wondered if he would vomit it up.
“Everyone, please,” said a clear voice, a voice that made him cringe, as though it flicked along a raw nerve. “Let Mr. Kedran have some space. Please. He’ll answer your questions later, but now isn’t the time.”
Standing with his back to the room, Noel heard them shuffle out, still muttering to each other about equations and formulas and physics far beyond his comprehension. But the person who sent them away remained.
Noel bottled his rage and turned slowly to face the psychiatrist—a sleek, middle-aged Englishman. “Dr. Filingby,” he said in as neutral a tone as he could manage.
“Noel,” said Filingby with a nod. “Some unpleasant things have happened, haven’t they? Why don’t we step along to my office?”
Noel stiffened and tried to hide it. He had to hide everything, had to fool those brown, observant eyes. “I have another appointment. Could I drop by, say, in an hour or so?”
As soon as he spoke he knew he’d done it wrong. He’d been as sleek and civil as Filingby, something he never was.
The psychiatrist shook his head. “I know this has been a great shock. We’re all very sad about Mr. Heitz and the others. You and I should sort this out immediately before the technicians come at you again. Don’t you agree?”
“Dr. Rugle sent you.”
Filingby’s brows shot up. “Hardly. I came as soon as I learned you’d regained consciousness.”
“You put me out,” said Noel in sudden realization. “You sedated me.”
Filingby made a deprecating gesture. “I know you hate it, but really you were in a bit of a state, rolling and screaming on the floor.”
“I could have warned them. I could have told them what to do, but you knocked me out,” said Noel furiously, unable to hold back the accusations.
“Nonsense. Neither of us could have helped these people. They were already caught in the distortion. By the time any of us knew what was happening, it was already too late for them. You can’t blame yourself, Noel. You can’t blame anyone.”
Restoration Page 3