by Keith Hughes
His vehicle's GPS told him he had only a couple hundred feet until he reached his destination, the arrow pointing toward the forest. He saw no movement ahead, but the couple might have made it there before him. The concealed camera in Relevont's apartment had been quiet, so Karl knew the fugitives had not returned to access the safe.
He ensured that his gun had a full clip before exiting the car then popped the trunk and rooted around briefly before grabbing a folding camp shovel. The woods were good places to bury things, and if the Relevonts were indeed there, he might have need of it.
Karl closed the trunk and followed the path of the feminine apparition into the woods. The shadow offered by the trees reminded him of childhood hunting trips in the hinterland beyond his family farm, but now he was a much different type of predator. For an instant, he envisioned himself as a cougar or a cheetah stalking the ultimate prey but realized they were the wrong animals for the setting. As another memory from Karl's youth surfaced, he grinned with menace. Look out, little piggies. The big, bad wolf is on his way.
CHAPTER NINETEEN: Success
Tuesday, June 8, 2010, 8:32 a.m.
The encircling trees created a sense of detachment from the outside world, a sensation heightened by the gloom as the interleaved branches largely excluded the sun’s illumination. As Ness led Angie among the trees, he watched for fallen limbs and other obstacles.
The directional needle on his watch pointed out their path among the trees. The occasional broken twig or rustling leaves sounded loud in the hushed setting. Traffic occasionally whooshed by on Dequindre Road, an incongruous reminder of mankind in the natural location. Ness saw a bloom of light ahead and knew they were getting close.
“Ness!”
The naked fear in Angie's voice brought his attention sharply to her. Her eyes were wide as she stared at his mad counterpart a few feet away. The pistol pointed at Angie's head shook in the doppelganger's unsteady hand. His inability to keep her in the gun's sights likely explained why he had not shot her already.
Reacting immediately, Ness placed his body between his older self and his wife and brought his own gun to bear on the murderous copy. His hand remained rock steady, a counterpoint to the other man's shaking weapon.
“Angie must die,” the madman pleaded.
“Not today,” Ness growled back.
“She's not safe,” the other hissed. “I must save her.”
“Putting a bullet in her head is not saving her!” Ness barked in exasperation. He would gain nothing arguing with the specter of who he could be. That version of himself had been pushed too far. Cold fingers of dread gripped his heart. To protect Angie, he must kill his older self, a line he had never wanted to cross. Ness had never imagined the face of his first murder victim would be his own.
The disheveled man gave a wail. As if he could read Ness’s intentions, he pulled out his PDA, tapped the screen, and disappeared.
Ness spun in a slow circle, expecting his mad duplicate to reappear from some other vector. After a minute of watchfulness with only the unconcerned tweeting from nearby birds, he finally relaxed and put his gun away. He glanced at Angie, and she gave him a weak smile. Her face looked a bit pale, which he understood, given the circumstances. A madman repeatedly popping out of nowhere to kill you would be a bit unsettling. He took her hand and gave it a squeeze before pulling her forward.
A small clearing interrupted the forest’s gloom. A dozen or so trees ringed a space twenty feet across with rough-hewn edges approximating a circle. Sunlight streamed through the open sky, illuminating ground covered by a collection of varied greenery. Ness hiked out of the trees and into the daylight, with Angie following. He reveled in being out of the gloom.
“What's with that?” She pointed at one of the trees surrounding them. On its trunk, the number 5 was carved deep into the bark.
Ness pointed at several other trees. He watched as she turned in a full circle, taking in each of the numbers he had carved two years ago. In no discernable order, he had etched digits from one to twelve indelibly in the tree trunks. Angie turned back to him with curiosity plain on her face.
“Getting here is half the trick,” Ness told her. “The rest is tied to these numbers. They point to the location of what I have hidden here.”
Angie looked at the trees again. “OK,” she said, “what's the key to this riddle?”
Ness opened his mouth to respond, but the answer came from behind him.
“Three-one-eight,” someone said with a heavy German accent.
Ness spun and saw a stranger with a small shovel in one hand and a gun in the other, pointed at Angie. The intruder dropped the shovel and assumed a two-handed stance with his matte-black revolver.
“This is correct, ja?”
Ness agreed reluctantly.
“My birthday,” Angie whispered.
“Who are you?” Ness demanded. He managed to make his voice sound much calmer than his mind, which wildly strove to reason some way out of the situation.
“You do not need to know my identity. I believe you are both armed, ja?” the mystery man said. “Throw them to me. You first.”
Ness reached back and gripped his gun, his finger slipping onto the trigger. He briefly contemplated attempting his quick-draw technique, but their captor's gun moved to cover him. The cocky grin on his face seemed to say, “Try it.”
His B-movie bravado drained away, and Ness declined pressing his luck. Their captor’s easy movements spoke of a lifetime in the company of firearms, while his experience could be measured in mere days. Ness’s grip on the gun shifted, and when he slowly pulled it from behind his back, the weapon dangled from two fingers. He tossed it away, and it landed inert at the intruder’s feet.
The focus of the German’s aim shifted to Angie. She gave him a grimace, but her gun soon lay in the grass next to Ness’s, equally useless. The gunman’s attention returned to Ness, and he threw him a plastic restraint.
“Bind her,” their captor ordered. “And if you don't make it tight enough, I will.”
Ness gave Angie an apologetic look, but she frowned at him. As someone who knew her well, Ness could discern the signs of her anger at being caught. He gave her a pleading look. They had to go along with their captor’s demands for the moment, if only to buy some time. In a silent answer, she held out her hands with a resolved expression. He tightened the plastic strap around her wrists, trying to prevent the edges from biting into her flesh too deeply.
The unknown man waved at Angie with his gun. “Come here, Liebling.”
Angie glanced at Ness, and he gave her a small shrug. Their captor held all the advantages, and until the situation changed, they had to play along. She crossed the clearing to stand before the man. After examining the job Ness had done binding her hands, the gunman grunted his approval.
“Turn around and get on your knees.”
Kneeling in the grass, Angie faced Ness with fear in her eyes. The German placed the barrel of his gun against the back of her head. Her eyes widened as her fear turned to panic.
“Now, Mr. Relevont,” the German said, “let us see how this code of yours works.” He picked up the camp shovel with his free hand and threw it near Ness.
The sight of his frightened wife, gun to her head, spurred him to action. He retrieved the implement.
“Three-one-eight,” the gunman reminded him, as if Ness would forget.
He hesitated, and their captor cocked his gun with his thumb. Angie jerked, clearly startled. The German gave Ness a cold smile.
“One way or another, you will be digging here today, Mr. Relevont, either to retrieve what you have hidden, or your wife's grave. It is your choice.”
* * *
John strode into Dix's lab as if he were far too busy to be bothered visiting the little scientist, but the reality was far different. He'd been having trouble concentrating on the more mundane aspects of his position. Instead, his attention bent to the task underway in the lab. When the scientist
had called and asked him to come to the lab, it had taken an extreme application of John's discipline to not run pell-mell down the stairs and arrive wheezing and disheveled. In fact, he had made himself sit at his desk for an interminable, restless five minutes before leaving. Now he strived to seem busy and only moderately interested in what Dix had to say, but all the posturing was wasted on the younger man, as he stared intently at a hamster on the lab table.
“When does this one jump?” John asked, which caused Dix to look at him over his shoulder with a big grin.
“It already did, three hours ago.”
“Three hours...” John whispered, slightly confused. “So the problems you were having with the accelerated borrowed time have been resolved?”
Dix nodded enthusiastically. “These notes we have from Dr. Bertrand are from his early work on his device, and as such, they do not include the many discoveries and revisions he went through to finish his prototype.”
“Why is this significant?”
The small scientist pushed his glasses to the top of his nose and peered seriously up at John. “It means we have to rediscover solutions to problems he already overcame. Our only advantage is we know for a fact he found a solution.”
John comprehended the difficulties Dix faced but kept a serious expression. He hoped his grave demeanor would impart to Dix the importance of leaping such hurdles as expeditiously as possible. “So how much longer until the hamster's borrowed time expires? Another twenty hours or so?”
Dix's smile reappeared in full brilliance before he turned to check a computer screen. “By my calculations, Strickland has about forty-five hours left before his borrowed time expires,” the fetid man reported proudly.
“Forty-five?” John looked at the beaming scientist and considered whether the little man had finally lost it. “What happened to the twenty-four-hour limit?”
“I determined that processing power requirements were the deciding factor,” Dix lectured. “When the handheld device is computing the new frequency associated with a jump in time, there is a limit to its precision. The PDA's calculations are less accurate than the more powerful computers we have access to here, so any frequency it uses is an approximation. Because of this differential, the amount of borrowed time lessened. Since our computers here are made for scientific work, the exactness of the calculated frequency allows for a longer period of borrowed time.”
“Could it be eliminated entirely?”
Dix made a noncommittal noise. “If we had a bank of Cray supercomputers working on it for a few days, maybe.” He shrugged. “No matter how powerful a computer is used, I suspect the result will be like pi, never coming to a precise end. We're messing with molecular frequencies here. My hypothesis is that a small part of the body knows the traveler doesn't belong there. At any rate, if you want something portable like Dr. Bertrand’s PDA, there will always be a trade-off in accuracy, resulting in a lessened amount of borrowed time.”
John again indicated his understanding. The danger of borrowed time could be managed if Dix could make the technology workable. “Can you make a portable model? Something smaller than this?” He waved at the stacks of machinery covering the lab table.
The scientist considered the equipment as if he had never seen it before and tapped his chin with a finger as he stared at the components of his time machine. “Yes, I should be able to,” he said finally. “Not as small as Dr. Bertrand went, but maybe I can fit it in a standard laptop PC. With the better processor, it should be able to provide about thirty to forty hours of borrowed time.”
John smiled, sensing his success was finally attainable.
“Do it, as quickly as you can,” he said then turned and left the lab. Now with Dix finally achieving some success, he mused, maybe I don't need the Relevonts after all.
It seemed fitting that the troublesome Ness and Angie Relevont become the first victims of his new regime. They would serve as a warning to anyone with the impudence to obstruct his plans. The personal satisfaction he would obtain from their passing would be a nice side benefit. After all, I always try to enjoy my work.
CHAPTER TWENTY: Raising the Stakes
Tuesday, June 8, 2010, 8:47 a.m.
Karl snarled at Ness. “Get busy. It would be a shame to ruin her face with an exit wound.”
The gun tapped against the back of Angie's head, causing her to wince. Ness unfolded the small camping shovel and approached the tree with the number 3 carved in it. He cleared away some of the brush at the base, uncovering a three-inch-high vertical notch cut in the trunk where it met the ground, then put the edge of the shovel against the mark, perpendicular to the trunk, and traced a line with the blade away from the tree. Ness stopped the shallow furrow a few feet beyond the middle of the clearing.
He tramped to the tree bearing the 1 in its bark, a quarter of the circle away from the previous tree. Once again, he uncovered the deep-set notch at the base of the trunk and dragged the shovel behind him, etching a sharp trail in the ground. He intersected the furrow he had made before and passed it, the intersection of the two lines in the dirt a perfect ninety-degree angle. Once he had gone a few feet beyond the previous line, Ness moved to the 8 tree. A minute later, he was tracing another track, keeping an eye behind him to keep it straight. That line crossed its counterparts from the other two trees, etching a small triangle somewhat away from the center of the clearing.
The German snorted, and Ness looked over at him. Angie was watching him intently, as if to forget the gun to her head.
“You have made a mistake,” their captor said.
“No, I haven't,” Ness responded coldly. “But most people would assume so since all three lines don’t converge.”
Several combinations of lines from the trees matched perfectly in a classic three-point triangulation. One of them even met in the absolute middle of the clearing. But the small triangle resulting from the off-kilter intersection of the three lines a couple of feet off-center from the absolute middle of the clearing gave him exactly what he needed. He put the point of the shovel's blade in the center of the triangle and pushed it into the earth.
With the stony soil and such a small shovel, progress was slow. Several times, he hit something solid, only to discover a rock. At about four feet deep, the shovel gave another thump as it hit something hard. Ness abandoned the shovel and knelt on the ground to finish his excavation by hand. He leaned in and scooped away a couple of handfuls of dirt until he could see transparent plastic and the dull sheen of metal. The clear covering bore a scar where the shovel had hit it, but otherwise, it looked just as it had when he had buried it two years ago.
Ness dug with his hands until he had unearthed all four corners of a metal box. After pulling out handfuls of dirt from along the sides, he finally lifted the buried treasure into the sunlight. It was slightly smaller than a shoebox, with a small button to release the clasp holding the top closed. Thick, clear plastic covered the entire box, protecting the contents from moisture, bugs, and other undesirable elements.
“Open it,” the German said, making a hurry-up motion.
Using the edge of the shovel, Ness sliced at the cover. In seconds, the plastic lay to the side, still formed in the shape of the box, like a discarded snake skin. He pressed the button on the side and lifted the lid.
Inside was a Ziploc bag with two PDAs in it. He opened the bag without lifting it from the container and removed a yellow sticky note labeled Decoy from one of the PDAs then brought his hand into view, clutching the unmodified device. The screen glinted in the sunlight as Ness showed it to their captor, who made a motion with his free hand for him to throw it. Ness carefully tossed it underhand, and it landed in the grass near his wife's knees.
“Pick it up,” the gunman said, giving Angie a small thump against the back of her head with the gun.
She closed her eyes, releasing tears. Her lip quivered as she tried to keep from sobbing outright. Her dread clawed at Ness’s heart, and his anger blazed. You'll pay
for that.
Ness only half watched as she leaned over, grabbed the device, and held it over her shoulder for the German to take. Most of his attention remained on his other hand, which he kept in the bag. He turned on the PDA, Dr. Bertrand’s time machine, and noticed the blinking battery indicator. After two years in the box, it desperately needed a charge. He froze when the German's cell phone went off, playing a polyphonic version of “Edelweiss.”
Their captor’s ability to transfer his weapon from his right hand to his left without taking the barrel away from Angie’s head impressed Ness despite himself. The gunman pulled his phone from its belt clip and flipped it open, Captain Kirk style. He grunted after looking at the caller ID and pressed the phone to his ear. “Ja?”
Ness risked a glance down and tapped the Borrowed Time application. When it filled the screen, he pressed the small calendar icon next to the date. The calendar displayed a date in 2008, but at the bottom was a small button that read Set To Today. He tapped it, and the device returned to the main Borrowed Time screen with the current date and time filled in. He glanced up to check that their captor remained distracted by his phone call.
Next, he pressed the time, and an adjustment screen displayed with the time split into hours, minutes, and seconds. Vertical glyphs appeared above and below each element. Ness tapped the down arrow below the minutes, and the number decreased by one. He pressed the button hard, causing the numbers to decrease rapidly.
How long have we been here? Ten minutes? Fifteen? He kept pressing the arrow until he had given himself a half-hour window. Then he tapped the OK button. His thumb hovered over the launch button as he heard the call ending. The German slipped the phone back into its holster before giving him an evil grin. Ness did not like the look of it at all.
“It appears your digging is not yet over.” Their captor grinned with obvious satisfaction.
Ness tapped the launch icon, and the confirmation window appeared. His thumb moved toward the yes button, and he stared at his captive wife and willed her to be strong for a little longer. He suppressed a grin when he saw movement in the German's shadow.