“It’s a point we’ll never agree on, I’m sure,” Tegan smiled and folded her napkin.
“Now don’t go getting all serious on me. Y’a don’t really know what I do.”
“Destabilize governments, wasn’t it?”
“No… that’s the CIA. They wouldn’t trust me with that. I just look at trends and mediate between parties. My special gift is communications and getting enemies to see their commonalities.”
“And it took you a whole week to think that up.”
“No. It just is what it is. You just heard ‘Lockheed’ and ‘Defense’ and think you know what I do and ran with that.”
“Okay… fine.” She went for a change of tack. “As your newest client, I want to know what you’ve learned. Spill the beans.”
“I’ll first need ta’ see your clearance, ma’am,” he played along. “Some form of identification and an idea of the currency for our transaction.”
The way he smiled at her made her belly do that inside-out thing again.
“I confess,” she opened her palms and bowed her head. “I have little to offer. Only my frail aging self.”
And she saw his Adam’s apple do the same maneuver that her stomach had just done. She felt giddy and reckless, and the student of science in her knew that the oxytocin love-pheromone was doing its very human animal thing between them.
“I’ll take it,” Pete said jokingly, but his eyes confirmed he was serious.
“Shew, hey…? I’ve never had this before … this… connection, if connection’s not too clichéd a word. Is it even okay for me to talk out my feelings?”
“I usually don’t,” Pete said. “But I’m prepared to make an exception.”
“Alright—this is getting too crazy Mr. Gun Runner. Tell me what you’ve got.”
“It’s off the record.”
“Hello Pete… I’m Tegan and I rather fancy you. Do you have a short memory perhaps, darling? Does it seem like I’ll turn you in for pointing me in the right direction?”
He closed one eye very tight, did a strange wrinkled thing with his nose and shook his head vigorously.
“Okay. Good. Now spill the beans.”
“Following The Incident, there was obviously an emergency meeting of top brass…. All the President’s men... and woman. Pentagon beasties and other lovelies in the diplomatic core. Seems there was,” and Pete looked around, leaned in and dropped his voice, “a secret NASA experiment of some kind.”
“Really…!” Tegan’s voice was lyrical with excitement.
“Well, the hammer came down on the project’s science advisor, an astrophysicist…”
Pete took out his phone and fiddled with it a moment, then read the contact he had saved.
“…Daxton Cronner.”
“What did he do wrong?”
“Took a job he shouldn’t have.”
“Seriously…”
“I’m not sure… there’s his story and then there will be other stories.”
“You’ve spoken to him?”
“Through an intermediary only. I daren’t directly. Not yet.”
“And…?”
“He’s not exactly in a talkative mood.”
“Can I be in touch?”
“It’s up to him. I’ll give you the details.”
Pete quietly read the info and Tegan saved it.
“You know anything more?”
“Just that he’s persona non grata right now.”
“I mean about why he has that status.”
“My feedback is that he’s taking the fall because someone has to. There were two experiments, ten minutes apart. I’m guessing that we felt the first one in that clear air turbulence, that was about ten minutes before The Incident, wasn’t it?”
Tegan agreed.
“Cronner told my source that he advised them to abort the bigger second experiment, but his boss, the Director, Lincoln O’Something-or-other overruled him.”
“So why didn’t he get the chop?”
“Because he’s the boss and a survivor.”
“And the nature of the experiment? What went wrong?”
“That’s for you to find out. I’m just a facilitator, darlin’.”
“Ahh, yes…. Gun runners don’t get their hands dirty, I almost forgot.”
There was jocular warmth in her voice now, not the peevish tinge that she’d first conveyed.
She was getting used to the idea of associating with a man who peddled war—or perhaps she was slowly buying into him peddling peace, as he advertised it to her.
“National conflicts are inevitable, Tegan,” he’d insisted. “Disarmament is a process, not an event. It’s a pipe dream to expect conflict and the means and weapons of conflict to disappear at a decree. To deal with conflict, the responsible governments of the world need to carry a big stick. The bigger the stick, the more obvious the advantage, the less conflict we get. It’s like a parent figure who has real authority and only has to speak softly.”
She’d argued about the arrogance of self-appointed developed countries elevating themselves on the strength of the weapons systems to be the world’s policeman, but to no avail. Pete’s counter arguments were overpowering.
“We can all be supremely grateful that the countries that hold sway—the ones you argue against—are secular democracies where the government and judiciary are driven by reason. Almost without fail, the countries in opposition to them are driven by one or another form of despotism or other noxious ideologies that trample human rights and undermine progress. I’m a small cog in the wheel of the defense industry that helps keep the balance in favor of reason.”
“So, I mean… you’re really a saint then?” Tegan gestured sarcastically, her shoulders around her ears and the corners of her mouth pulled down to meet them. “St. Gunrunner… It has a ring to it.”
“Yeah, well…” Pete had nodded sagely, considering the compliment. “I get paid well enough for it too, if that counts against me.”
“No doubt.” She reached over and took that sun-licked hand of his. It felt meaty and rough enough to suggest he did more than talk. “Doubt we’ll ever agree. No matter…”
They were both still staring at their hands, their fingers entwined.
Those fingers had smoothly and without thought slid of their own accord into the embrace. It was warm and comfortable, and there was no urge to withdraw.
“Sure you wanna do this?” Pete asked after a long pause.
“This…? I presume you mean… intimacy?”
“Goofy…” he smiled. “No. Chasing your tail after a story. Intimacy I’ll just do… like this.”
He pulled her hand across the table to him and she followed, mesmerized. Their lips were locked and he tasted good. When his tongue passed gently between her lips, she squeaked with surprise and a small hiss of disdain came from the elderly woman at the only other table nearby.
It was a long kiss. Not an overwhelmingly passionate one, but utterly enveloping. She found herself on her elbows leaning in, and the timing was just right to break it off.
When her backside fell back onto the seat, Tegan’s head was swimming and she felt like she may keel to either side in a dead faint.
This was weirdly familiar territory, yet something she knew she had never experienced in her life. It was a peculiar sensation, as if all of the fantasy and hope built up as a girl and abandoned as a woman was suddenly crystalizing before her very eyes.
“You do that well,” her voice spoke her truth in a husky tone.
“It’s easy when it’s right, you’ll agree.”
She nodded like a little girl, butterflies flitting within.
“You sure you want do this?” he asked again, this time low and hypnotically slowly.
“I’m a big girl,” she answered slowly and warmly. “And I appreciate your care.”
“It’s a very deep pond.”
“I can swim.”
“Maybe not with crocs.”
“Come on,
Mr. Gun Runner. You’re making it sound like a war zone.”
“It might well be.”
Dinner came and went, and they were still holding hands when they stepped out into the darkened street.
“And… I’ve missed my flight,” Pete said mournfully, checking his watch.
“What’s a gentleman to do?”
“Follow his damsel?”
“Full of good answers, you are.”
Her bottom sashayed as she turned toward the car that blip-blipped in response to her remote.
“Coming?”
They checked into Le Méridien Cambridge-MIT hotel and Pete ran his card.
“Now you own me, you terrible man,” Tegan protested and he winked, slapping her rump playfully.
The desk clerk’s eyes flitted from his typing for a second at the yelp and giggle she emitted.
When Tegan came out of the shower in a robe, Pete had the news on, his feet on the coffee table and a nightcap in a thimble waiting for her.
The now-standard crimson capital letters and scrolling updates screamed their obligatory ‘BREAKING NEWS’ summaries along the lower third of the screen.
“This Incident thing’s just not going away,” he gestured to the screen.
“I told you.”
“But it’s out of hand. The loons are connecting some pretty far-flung dots. Somehow poor Tesla and Greenland and Australia and the Antarctic are all in a stew… missing planes and boats in the north, America in a standoff down south, Korea dragged into it to the East. Crazy stuff. You’re gonna clock some air miles trying to grab this moonbeam.”
“I have plenty to burn,” she assured him.
“What you doing in the Big Apple?” he quizzed, knowing it was futile to try dissuading her, and the urge to dissuade her was suddenly such a heavy weight within him.
“Meetings,” she winked.
“With….? Anyone I would know?”
“Ooooh…” Her hair wrapped in a fluffy white towel and something in her regal bearing made him involuntarily swallow. She folded her legs away under her like a foal. “Very curious, aren’t we?”
The smell of her freshly washed hair cast its spell, amplifying the concoction of lust and protective instinct rapidly burgeoning within him. She could see it in his eyes, and instinct told her that he was fighting it.
“Okay, baby… you have me. You know it and I know it. I’m getting hooked right into this thing and it’s uncomfortable… I…”
He said no more, but she read him and nodded. She put her arms around him and his nose went to her neck, his breath under her lapel and down toward her silken breast.
“Shhhhh…” she said it quietly, feeling strangely in control. “You’re a brave man to speak your thoughts.”
“It’s easy when it’s right.”
She nodded her agreement.
And they began to kiss, long and slow, easily and delicately, their hands exploring with the patience and respect that comes with a legacy of spent promiscuity and confidence of age.
Tegan could feel that Pete was aroused; it was in the breathless octave of his voice when he whispered low and gently in her ear.
“You’re killing me.”
“La petite mort,” she replied, all inhibition having fled.
“It’s a mort I so wish I could….”
He was hard alright, this she could feel when she’d brushed close, but he kept it away from her. It was a gesture of respect and she could sense that something special was happening.
“I don’t think we dare, Teegs,” there was regret in his voice.
“I…”
But he put his finger gently to her lips. “I want to like you cannot believe, but…”
He was searching for the words and her eyes expressed that she was fearing the worst… He’s married, he’s gay… he’s just not interested. A thousand voices at once.
“You’re off on an adventure, I have commitments that will take me who-knows-where. When we’ll meet up again, I don’t know. It’s been a while for me and I… I’ve really found myself, he sighed with the frustration of the moment, it’s been a long journey. I want to do my next relationship right for once.”
She understood, and they spoke no more.
The passion slowly wound down to contentment, and they lay easily in one another’s arms.
When morning came, Tegan found herself alone and her heart sank.
In the bed next to her was a package.
She opened it and inside was the same crypto phone that Pete carried.
His number was the only one listed in its contacts.
Chapter 13
New York City, 6th Ave, Midtown
Latitude: 40°45'17"N
Longitude: 73°59'03"W
“Spacetime,” Daxton Cronner spoke with a distinct nasal twang, “is one thing, one indivisible reality. The four dimensions that we live in. There is no time without space and space cannot exist without time.”
He was an odd man, his eyes rheumy with allergy or emotion, Tegan couldn’t tell.
He was balding; the pate of his skull emerging like an iceberg through scraggly remnants of hair that lapped about it at ear level.
The skin of his cheeks was heavily pocked and his long and drawn face was worn with worry. His shirt was un-ironed under the sports jacket he kept donned.
He wore sneakers without socks.
His eyes seemed to dart toward the door with each new customer, and Tegan wondered again if that was his nature or a symptom of his recent troubles.
They were sitting opposite one another near the window at a long table that was filling fast with the New York deli lunch crowd.
Odd couple that they were, they fitted right in with the eclectic set of diners. Nobody paid them a second glance.
“We, uhhmm…” his voice was hushed and he was choosing words carefully. “Well, I was against it to be honest.”
“Why did you take the job then?”
“Quite right,” he nodded in agreement. “At first, I must admit, I was excited. Very excited. But after that first test…”
He was a man who thought in immediacies, Tegan realized. She understood what he meant… that the instant that first satellite, Time, had triggered tectonic anomalies outside of parameters, the experiment was over for him until they had buttoned down the mechanism of the fault.
He’d already explained to Tegan how he’d argued to abort the Bandit experiment scheduled ten minutes after Time… The Bandit experiment that had caused The Incident and so much ruckus.
He was a brilliant scientist—Pete had briefed her—though rather a stranger to the mundane.
His state of dress and startlingly unkempt appearance would have told her that anyway without Pete’s input.
However, she reminded herself, it was worth remembering that Daxton’s style of vague and imprecise communication belied a razor-sharp mind. A mind too obsessed with superstring theory to be bothered with the protocols and realities of civil function that make humanity tick.
And this had been his undoing.
He hadn’t considered the budgetary realities of aborting Bandit, hadn’t followed procedure to distance himself from the decision to proceed, and had left the door wide open to become the scapegoat that these sorts of catastrophes needed.
Now he was an unarmed man in the academic wilderness; disgraced and under mortal threat to not dare defend himself.
The only way to mount a defense would be to breach his Top-Secret clearance and declare the facts behind a project that officially didn’t exist.
“May we start with what you were trying to achieve?” Tegan thought to get him onto the firm territory of his passion.
With his confidence restored, she hoped she could slowly draw out the clues she was after.
“Well,” he suggested, as if tracking a miniature Ping Pong game, his head minutely bouncing side to side with the question of where to start, “it’s complicated.”
It’s going to be a long day, Tegan rem
inded herself.
“It’s about causality. Let me back up. The speed of light… you’d know about it. But light doesn’t impose any speed limit, it only reveals one, you see. It reveals the speed of causality. That is a fundamental property of this universe… that nothing can communicate infinitely fast. There’s a limit. In a universe where there is no limit, everything could and would happen simultaneously, and that just wouldn’t do. So… time… that thing we call time, is really a measure of causality within space, and the next big leap for humanity is to manipulate space and causality in such a way that we might mitigate this law… You follow me?”
His face looked pained, as if boiling it down to such simplicity took an inhuman effort for him.
“I think… yes.” Tegan said it with as much confidence as possible, wanting Daxton to relax into revealing all he would.
“Good.” He sipped his water and watched a couple with undue suspicion as they settled in just one space away at the long table.
“We’re talking multiplee-connected topologies in physics. The possibility of alternative routes between two points in a multiplee-connected space. I’ll make it simple—we put energy into a region of space, buckling that space… Hang on…”
He halted, looking toward the ceiling as if downloading a better thought, and nodding to it in agreement.
“Yes… a river. Don’t think of time as a trajectory; don’t think of it as an arrow shot in one direction through the volume of space. Think of it in a more fluid sense.”
Tegan wasn’t sure she’d ever thought of time as more than an opponent that had to be beaten in small daily battles.
“Think of time as a river, a river that can accelerate in some circumstances and slow in others. You understand?”
Tegan nodded.
“Good. And a river can have eddies and whirlpools. Most of the water can continue to flow along its normal trajectory, but when some obstruction is introduced, it can turn around and flow backward, back up-river—albeit for only a short run. Got that?”
“Yes.”
He was becoming confident.
“That’s what we were doing. Disconnecting space, bunching it together and determining if, say, a leaf on the flow of the river of time would skip over the distance. That’s what T-1 did, skipping over the gathered space behind Time, and B-2 did with Bandit. Does this make sense?”
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