Class Fives: Origins (42 page)

Quickly he stepped to the passenger’s side of the car and quietly opened the door.

He clicked open the glove compartment and pressed the small button within.

The trunk gave a dull pop and raised an inch before catching.

John closed the glove compartment and the door, then felt his way along the side of the car to the back and raised the trunk lid.

A small light came on within, casting a thin spray of illumination on a wide tool shelf at the rear of the garage.

John scanned the inside of the trunk, then twisted to closely examine the trunk latch.

He needed something to push the flange aside, he thought.

Turning to the tool bench, he quickly scanned it and saw a screwdriver, which he swept up and tested on the lock. It pushed the flange easily.

Okay, he thought, this is it.

Without stopping to consider whether or not he was doing the right thing, he stepped up into the trunk, maneuvered himself around, reached up for the trunk lid and pulled it down, hearing it lock.

He fumbled around in the pitch blackness until he had the radio raised in front of him. He felt around and managed to switch it on. Wish I had the damned earpiece, he thought, then pressed the talk button.

“Hello,” he whispered harshly. “Anybody there? Anybody listening?”

“We read you,” a flat, tinny voice said from the small speaker.

“We got a big problem,” John hissed back. “White’s dead and I’m in the suspect’s car, in the trunk.”

The voice hesitated before responding.

“Copy,” it said. “Provide location, if possible.”

“Never mind,” John hissed back. “He’s about to leave. I can’t follow him so I’m hitching a ride. I’ll come back when we’re on the road. I got a shitload of questions to ask you guys.”

“Copy,” the voice responded. “Standing by.”

John quickly fumbled for the power switch and flicked it off, lowering the radio to the carpeted surface on which he was lying and maneuvering the gun until he had it gripped tightly, his finger curled around the trigger, the barrel pointed vaguely at the trunk lid.

Please, he thought to himself, don’t let this guy pack anything.

A minute later he heard the door to the garage open. A few seconds after that he heard the dull thunk of the car door opening and closing. Then the engine roared to life around him.

Well, John thought, like it or not, here we go.

The car started to roll. In a few minutes John was quietly back on the radio, trying to find out what in Hell he was supposed to do.

Dr. Henry sat, sipping the cold cup of coffee he’d managed to fumble out of the dispensing machine, and glancing around the stark, sterile medical center cafeteria. He still couldn’t process everything he’d witnessed in the last few days, or the collected reams of data gathered over the day of testing.

Granted, his tests on Roger had proven utterly useless, and the results obtained from John seemed to indicate he was a perfectly healthy, average human male. And that was all. Despite having seen with his own eyes perhaps history’s first demonstration of time travel, it seemed to produce absolutely no data whatsoever. He just willed it, it happened and that was all.

It was breathtaking. It was amazing. It was infinitely frustrating.

As a physicist, he knew that there was so much about the functioning of the universe that human beings hadn’t even started to realize enough to formulate the questions, let alone go looking for the answers. But it all seemed to be hidden in the nooks and crannies of creation. Now he’d had two dropped squarely into his lap, and he was feeling very much like a monkey being handed a Rubik’s cube. His only response might just turn out to be stupidly jamming it into his mouth and sucking on it. Because like an ape, he couldn’t even begin to understand the concepts.

He noticed Dr. Patel standing with a tray of some bland substitute for real food they tended to serve in such places, notice Marvin and begin moving toward him across the almost deserted space.

He trudged over, slid the tray onto the gleaming table top and sank into the cheap plastic chair.

“Hello again, Dr. Henry,” he said. He sounded worn out, and Marvin couldn’t blame him.

“Dr. Patel,” Marvin responded, taking another sip of the grayish, bitter liquid from the rapidly softening paper cup.

“So,” Patel said, raising a plastic forkful of some beige mash from the plate, “What are your impressions?”

Marvin grinned tiredly.

“I do a mean Werner Heisenberg,” he responded.

Patel froze a moment, pondering this, then seemed to dismiss it. Marvin couldn’t blame him. The joke was as worn out as he felt himself.

“Seriously,” he continued, “I don’t know what to think. I’ve seen it, I’ve touched it. I’ve poked it with a sharp stick, but as to what it is or how it works, I haven’t got a single clue.”

Patel chewed absently, speaking between bites.

“What about your theory? The nuclear forces?”

Marvin managed a shrug.

“I’m just guessing. Without any workable data I might as well say they came out of a cereal box.”

“But you believe you’re right,” Patel challenged.

Marvin sighed, considered and gave a faint nod.

“So what are you going to do now?” Patel asked.

Marvin considered this a moment.

“Back to the hotel, catch some sleep, get a flight out in the morning.”

“Back to the real world?” Patel asked, grinning slightly.

Marvin pondered this as well. Was that the real world? Spending the majority of his time in a darkened room watching monitors tracking the meaningless bits and pieces of cosmic stuff that wheeled and circled out beyond the sky, watching for one of them to misbehave? Or standing in a half-empty lecture hall attempting to cram the rudimentary basics of how the galaxy ties its shoes and combs its hair, and performs a thousand other mundane chores with matter and energy, into the heads of kids who were only looking for a science credit on their transcripts? Was that the real world?

“Back to work, anyway,” he finally responded.

They sat silently for a while before Marvin fixed on the other man.

“Let me ask you, Doctor,” he said, “What do you think about this? About what you’ve seen. What are your impressions?”

Patel chewed, his eyes fixed somewhere in the distance, then lowered the fork and turned his attention on Marvin.

“I think it gives me hope,” he said quietly.

“Hope?” Marvin replied, a bit startled.

“Yes,” Patel responded. “Hope. For what we are. For what we might become.”

He sighed deeply.

“Life is such a mystery,” he said. “It puzzles us so. What does it mean? How did it happen? You and I, we are each trying to find an answer to that, in our own ways. And that is good. That will lead us onward. To what, I don’t know, but something.”

He leaned back in the chair, casting his eyes around the large, sterile room.

“Every day I come here. I see people when they are sick. I try to help. Sometimes I have to watch them die. There is so much we don’t understand. Diseases that anger us and make us feel helpless. Injuries we simply cannot fix. So much is still so far beyond us. And maybe it always will be. Maybe that is what is meant to be. I don’t know.

“But I see those two men, and my rational mind tells me there is a system behind it. It was caused somehow. And if I am diligent, and work hard, I will know what that is.”

He turned to fix on Marvin.

“But the rest of me, the human being looks at such things and doesn’t care why they are as they are. What matters to that human creature is simply that they
are
. That they are incredible. Miraculous. And for that part, just knowing they exist is enough.”

“For what?” Marvin asked.

Patel smiled.

“For me to hope there really is something more. Something greater.”

Marvin stared at him a moment before giving a small shrug.

“The most incredible phenomenon in all of human history,” Marvin responded. “The thing that could win you a Nobel Prize. That could change the direction humanity goes from here on out. And you wouldn’t kill to know how it works?”

Patel smiled.

“Not if it makes me feel hopeless,” he replied quietly. “Everything I learn about people and this world, how it all functions, is so cold and mechanical. It’s just some huge mechanism that goes rolling along with no meaning that can be found. Everything new I learn just seems to strip a little more wonder from life, and makes it a meaningless organic machine with no real purpose.”

He leaned forward suddenly.

“But these two men, what they can do, not knowing how or why, gives me hope that there is meaning behind it. And perhaps I really don’t want to know what that meaning is. I don’t want it to turn out to be another mindless clockwork thing that accidentally happened. I would much prefer to simply believe in that meaning, whatever it is, and wonder at it.”

Marvin smiled quietly.

“Maybe you’re right,” he said.

They savored the silence briefly before Marvin’s gaze fixed back on the Doctor.

“We can’t tell anyone,” he said. “It would change the world forever, and we can’t tell anyone.”

Patel nodded thoughtfully.

“Yes. A pity. But there is a bright side.”

“What’s that?”

Patel grinned mischievously.

“We know someone who can loosen those stubborn, tight bottle caps.”

Marvin chuckled, beginning to feel relaxed after the long, frustrating day.

Dan raised the beer to his lips, angling his head so he didn’t have to take his elbow off the bar. Beside him, Jim took another sip of his shotglass.

“It sure makes you think,” Dan said slowly, after swallowing the bitter liquid.

“About what?” Jim responded.

“About all of it,” Dan replied. “About the universe, life, all of it.”

Jim grunted.

“We are out there every day,” Dan said, “Working the streets, putting it on the line, and maybe we make a tiny little dent in it. Maybe we stop something bad from happening once in a while. But those guys. What they can do.”

“I’m not drunk enough to believe it yet,” Jim interrupted. “I’m still in the ‘shock and awe’ part of it.”

Dan turned to regard him.

“Would you want to be able to do that? What they can do?”

Jim’s expression turned thoughtful.

“I donno,” he mused. “Which one?”

“Roger,” Dan answered. “Infinitely strong, invulnerable to injury.”

Jim pondered this a moment.

“I donno,” he said at last. “Can I control it?”

Dan smiled.

“No.”

Jim seemed to consider this a while, then his expression grew puzzled. At last he fixed his eyes on where Dan sat, staring back.

“Really? He can’t control it?” Jim said.

Dan shook his head.

“Wow,” Jim said slowly. “That sucks.”

Dan nodded.

“Tell me about it.”

Jim considered the uncomfortable thought, then seemed to shake it off with a slight shrug.

“In that case, I’ll take the other guy. The time-jumping guy.”

“John,” Dan interjected, turning back to the bar.

“I know his name,” Jim complained. “I mean, I’m just thinking about them as… guys who can do that stuff, you know? Not Rog and John. Just these special guys. But could be anybody.”

“I know what you mean,” Dan said. “I mean, I talk to them, hang around with them, but when I think about them, they’re not guys I know. They’re… something else.”

“Exactly,” Jim concluded. “So I’ll take the time thing. That’s kind of cool.”

“It makes him sick as a dog,” Dan said.

Jim pulled a sour face.

“Right, I forgot that. In that case, to Hell with it. I wouldn’t take either one of them.”

“Me either,” Dan said thoughtfully. “It’s like they’ve got the power to protect things, fix things, help make the world safe and all that… but they can’t ever participate in it, you know? Because I don’t think we’d want that.”

He turned to Jim sharply.

“Would you want that?”

“Want what?” Jim responded.

“Want either of them to hang around all the time. Or like, try to do normal stuff with them. If everybody knew what they were, what they could do. ‘Oh look, there’s that invulnerable guy. I wonder if he’s going bowling.’ Doesn’t sound right somehow. Them, being what they are, living a normal life. Going to work. Paying a mortgage. Shopping for groceries. Just normal stuff.”

“But that’s what they were doing,” Jim said, a little unsure.

“Yeah,” Dan said sadly, “Until some dumb-ass cop shoved himself into their lives. No more normal for ‘em now.”

Jim considered this, unable to respond for a long time. Then he spoke quietly.

“Then you owe it to them not to treat them that way. Like freaks. Especially if everybody else will now.”

Dan grew still for a moment, then slowly cocked his head to glance sideways at his partner, his mouth welling up in a smile.

“I knew there was something about you I liked,” he said.

Senator Julian Marcos walked off the stage to a rousing ovation, the formally clad attendees to the thousand-dollar-a-plate fund raiser showing their appreciation. He favored them with his most sincere smile and his crispest wave as he reached the side of the dais, practically hopped down the small flight of stairs and strode out the door being held open for him by his two security men.

His assistant fell into step beside him as he strode forcefully toward the door. It was, he thought, the stride of a leader.

“Great speech, Senator,” the assistant said. “Got all the points across nicely.”

“Thank you, Thomas,” he responded magnanimously, thinking the little prick was only saying that because he had written the damn thing. But if it got him another million or so for the war chest, it was worth it. He was already thinking of the future. There was a Presidential election in a couple of years.

“So, are we done for the night?” he said crisply.

“Yes, sir,” Thomas replied.

“Then I’ll see you in the morning,” he responded dismissively and passed out through the front of the hotel where his limo was already waiting, door open. He ducked straight into it without breaking stride and slid into the seat. He managed to jerk back before he slid directly into where Crawford was sitting calmly, his back pressed up against the opposite door.