Erasing Time (22 page)

He seemed to expect some sort of response from Sheridan at this point, so she nodded.

“While I was experimenting with the plasma stream,” he went on, “I accidentally caught myself in it. Very tricky business that plasma stream. Without DNA specifications, the QGP has a hard time distinguishing one piece of matter from the next. If I had been working with a colleague, he could have reversed the accident and changed my state from energy back into matter. It would have been so simple, but I was working alone. That was the first lesson I learned. No matter how much you want the credit, never work alone. It’s too risky.”

“Dr. Branscomb might argue it’s too risky to work with you,” Sheridan said.

Reilly didn’t flinch at her accusation. “I admit I killed him. I also admit it was a shortsighted thing to do.” He smiled at her, deepening the wrinkles around his eyes. “You’re surprised I’ve confessed my crime. That’s the nice thing about living in the twenty-fifth century. No one cares about a murder that happened four hundred years ago.”

Sheridan’s gaze cut over to Taylor. Her eyes were still shut, but her hands were clenched into fists. Sheridan forced her attention back to Reilly. “I suppose they also don’t care that you stole my QGP.”

“You admit to being Tyler Sherwood then?”

Sheridan felt herself trembling and tried to hide it by standing straighter. “Would my admission be more convincing if you had to beat it out of me first?”

He appraised her, unimpressed. “Well, Tyler Sherwood, the science chairman put me in charge of a project to replicate the QGP. So much of their scientific knowledge was lost during the twenty-second and -third centuries. All those plagues and wars and whatnot. They’ve been rebuilding everything for the last hundred years, starting from scratch on a lot of things. Scientists like us, we’re needed now. We’re appreciated.”

The twenty-fifth century was not a foreign place for him. He was talking about it casually. She looked at his face more closely. “How long have you been here?”

He ran a hand along the keyboard of one of the computers, stroking it as if it were a pet animal. “Back in the twenty-first century, when I was first testing the QGP and determining its parameters on living matter, I decided to transform a geranium for seventeen days—four hundred and eight hours. I had the QGP on a timer so that the energy flux would automatically reconfigure into matter. I wanted to see if the geranium would remain in its unchanged form or whether there would be a substantial energy loss during the transformation, which would affect its cell structure.”

Sheridan gulped. Pretty soon he would be throwing out unintelligible phrases and schematics, gibberish that only scientists understood.

Reilly gave a shake of his head, which made his jowls jiggle. “I was caught in the plasma stream myself, and reconfigured not four hundred and eight hours later, but four hundred and eight
years
later.” He smiled at her again, showing unnaturally white teeth. “Those are the types of glitches that just irk a scientist, aren’t they?”

“You don’t seem too bothered by it.”

“Oh, I was at first.
Sangre
, I couldn’t understand most of what anyone said for the first month I was here. I hated the tiny apartment they stuck me in and resented government officials always hovering around me—keeping me a secret. But I came to understand that they were guarding me from the Dakine.”

He ran his fingers down the corners of his mouth while he spoke, caressing a beard he didn’t have. “Once I convinced the science chairman that I could build QGPs here, everything changed. I’ve spent the last two decades working not only on that, but on building the Time Strainer. So I’m quite adjusted now. I even see the many benefits to living in the future.” He swept his hand toward the computers. “The lab equipment is far superior to anything we ever had. I’ve been able to make my QGPs one-twentieth of the size yours was. And scientists here are well salaried.” He pointed to the number on his badge. “Do you know what this means?” He didn’t wait for her to answer. “It means I can have anything I want. Food, entertainment, drugs”—his eyes ran over Sheridan, lingering on her curves in a way that made her shudder—“company. The more important the project is, the better salaried the scientists are. You, my dear, will be well taken care of.”

“What project will I be working on?”

“Didn’t I make that clear?” He pulled out one of the chairs by his desk and gestured for her to sit down. Reluctantly she did.

After she was seated, he sat down in the chair next to hers. He seemed to have forgotten not only that there were two Enforcers in the room but that Taylor was sitting, bleeding, not far from them.

“I haven’t been able to get my QGPs to work properly.” Reilly’s lips twitched in annoyance as he said this. “Right now I can’t keep the energy flux stable enough for any practical use. I can’t even get the plasma stream up to the efficiency that your prototype had. Virtual particles keep creating a repulsive field, and every so often I get gauge bosons popping up, causing the protons to decay. That’s why I needed to bring you here: to help me build QGPs.”

It didn’t make sense to Sheridan. If QGPs were just the freezers of time travel—changing people into energy waves that the Time Strainer could reconfigure again later—why build more?

“Aren’t you worried about changing the past?” Sheridan asked. “Even small changes could have disastrous effects—”

He didn’t let her finish. “This isn’t about tinkering with the past. Let the historians worry about that. This is about now. Think of the power the QGP will generate.”

The chair felt stiff and uncomfortable against Sheridan’s back. “The power? I’m four hundred years into the future, and you’re telling me the world still hasn’t solved the energy crisis?”

Reilly laughed as though she’d been joking. “I was talking about the power of a strategic weapon. A person can’t hide from the QGP. If you have his DNA signal, and he’s within range—then zap. You can change him into an energy flux wave. With modification, QGPs could be used to take out large groups of people. Think of it. Wars could be won without any physical destruction.”

The word
destruction
landed on her ears with a thud. She put a hand to her throat. “You want me to help you kill innocent people?”

Reilly hit one hand against the side of the desk with a loud slap. His eyes grew razor sharp. “That’s just the point. The innocent people will be spared. It’s a weapon that will kill only our enemies. You haven’t been here long enough to learn about our society, but there are divisive groups here: the Dakine and the DW. They could be completely eliminated with the QGP.”

A weapon. He wanted to use Taylor’s machine as a weapon. No, not Taylor’s machine. Sheridan couldn’t allow herself to think that way or she’d slip up. It was her machine, and she was brave and smart, and she wasn’t going to let some second-rate scientist intimidate her. “I’ve seen enough of this society to know how the government runs. I don’t think I trust their judgment as to who the enemies are.”

Reilly crossed his leg, another habit she hadn’t seen in the twenty-fifth century. “You realize what will happen if you refuse to help? You’ll be given a memory wash. It will take away your memories, but not your intelligence. When your memories are gone, you’ll have to be taught math and physics all over again, but in the process you’ll be indoctrinated to our ways. Then you’ll help us, and you’ll have no qualms about it. Why not save both of us the trouble? We will, as they used to say, make it worth your while.”

Sheridan let herself glance at Taylor. Her head was still leaning back against the chair, eyes closed. Where the blue swirls didn’t cover her face, red slap marks did.

“What will happen to my sister?”

“She’ll stay at the Scicenter with you. If you get a memory wash, she gets one too. If you work with us, she’ll be taken care of handsomely.”

Could Sheridan propose a deal? She could promise to help Reilly as long as he let Taylor go.

Before she uttered the words, she stopped herself. That sort of deal would only make Reilly suspicious. If she was really agreeing to help him, why would she want her sister to leave instead of sharing in the profits of her actions? Besides, even if Reilly agreed to free Taylor, Sheridan couldn’t trust him to keep his word about it. How would she know if they actually let Taylor go free or just took her away somewhere?

Think
, she told herself as harshly as Taylor had ever said the word.
Think your way through this
.

“You’re considering my offer,” Reilly said. “A wise decision. I trust you’ll come to the right conclusion.”

The only thing Sheridan could do was buy herself time. “I want to know exactly what I’m going to get. In writing. I want to know how much salary, how much equipment, and what living conditions the government is going to guarantee for the rest of my life.”

“Easy enough to work out.”

If it was easy, then she wasn’t putting up a good fight. “And I don’t want one of those crystals put in my wrist.”

His eyes narrowed. “Why?”

“I don’t like the idea of anyone tracking me.”

“Everyone has a crystal. If you didn’t have one, you wouldn’t have a way to buy anything.” He tapped the badge on his chest. “You wouldn’t be able to display your rank.”

He’d been here too long if he thought rank would sway her more than privacy.

“I won’t have one. Tell the government, if they want my help, then no crystal.”

Reilly shook his head, his jowls swaying like fish gills. “Being difficult won’t serve you.”

“Ideas are triggered by memories,” she said. “Perhaps if you put me through a memory wash, I’ll never be able to duplicate my success with the QGP. Perhaps great ideas only come to a person once in a lifetime. Think of that and talk to your government.”

His lips pinched together. “Fine. I’ll talk to them. In the meantime you and your sister will spend your time in detention cells—that’s
prison
in our language. You’ll have time to consider the reasonableness of your demands in there.”

“Fine,” she said. She had time. That was all she could ask for.

Sheridan sat alone on the floor of a dimly lit room no bigger than a closet. It was cold and smelled like garbage. She had hoped Taylor would be with her and they could devise some plan together, but the Enforcers had taken Taylor to a different room.

Minutes stretched into hours. She knew she couldn’t keep up the pretense of being Taylor for long. Then what would happen to her and, more importantly, to Taylor?

Sheridan lay down, curled up for warmth, still thinking about every possible scenario, contingency, and option she might have. Most of the scenarios had bad endings. Memory wash or death.

Sometime before she fell asleep, she decided thinking was overrated.

She awoke when the door slid open. An Enforcer stood in the doorway motioning for her to come out. She got up, stiff and cold from the floor, and trudged to the door. She still had no idea what she was going to say to Reilly.

The Enforcer took hold of her arm and pulled her out of the room. Her feet were clumsy with sleep, but he propelled her down the hallway anyway, whispering, “
Rápido
.” They took an elevator to another floor, then went down a colorless hallway. Sheridan expected to be taken into a room with Reilly or Helix or at least some schematics of the QGP. Instead, the man took her to a back doorway and hurried her outside the building.

A car waited nearby, humming as it idled.

This didn’t seem right. Where was Reilly sending her, and why hadn’t anybody explained what was going on?

Her steps faltered, but the Enforcer yanked her along, half dragging her to the car. The door slid open and she saw Taylor lying limply against the seat. Her face was swollen so badly that the blue swirls now made lopsided ovals across her cheeks and her eyes seemed to have shrunk. Sheridan climbed in next to her sister and only then noticed Echo and Caesar sitting across from them.

The door slid closed, and the car moved forward. Sheridan’s gaze ran over Taylor, checking for other injuries. “Are you all right?”

“Yes,” Taylor said, slurring the word. “But what in the world were you thinking by telling Reilly that stuff?”

“I was thinking that I didn’t want to see your face used as a punching bag anymore.”

Caesar broke into their conversation, his metallic bronze eyebrows rising as he spoke. “Echo has a talent for finding beautiful girls. It’s gripping to meet you.”

Sheridan didn’t answer. After all, Caesar didn’t know she could understand him. She turned to Echo instead. “Are you translating for Helix again? Is that why you’re here?”

“I’m rescuing you,” he said. “That’s why I’m here.”

“Rescuing?” She turned in her seat, looking out the window to see if Enforcers were pursuing the car. She saw nothing except for the building growing more distant.

Echo gestured toward Caesar. “My friend has connections in the detention system. He was able to have you sneaked out.”

Sheridan looked Caesar over more carefully. His chin jutted out confidently, all attitude and swagger. Although he smiled, there was something hard and calculating in his eyes that made Sheridan wary. Elise hadn’t liked him. Was Caesar one of the bad friends who had led Echo to become entangled in the Dakine? She gulped and looked away. Caesar must be Dakine. Who else would have connections in the detention system?