Just in Time: Portals of Time (8 page)

Jess stood and held out his hand. “Hello, David.”

David, the pastor. In the time Dorian had been here, they’d told her about him, but she hadn’t met him.

The men shook hands, another odd custom, which surely transmitted germs. “Jess.” David moved to Helen and touched her shoulder. “Helen, what’s wrong?”

Alisha stepped forward. “Jess, Helen, I have to insist you keep what we’ve told you to yourselves. Please ask this person to leave.”

David spun around and faced her. “There is no way on God’s earth I will leave this house until I find out why my friends and parishioners called me.” He sat down at the table and grasped Helen’s hands. “Do you want to talk to me alone, Helen? Without these people to intimidate you?”

“No, it’s nothing like that.” Her grip on David tightened. “It’s just…”

When she didn’t finish, David glanced at Jess.

“Dr. Cromwell,” Alisha warned. “Please, don’t say anymore.”

Jess looked to Dorian with pleading eyes. Dorian said, “Alisha, we’ve shocked Helen and Luke, too. From what Jess has told me, this man’s job is to help with problems. Maybe he can make everybody feel better. Helen’s been leaking tears since she came out here.”

“Pregnancy makes women of this time period emotional.” Alisha made the statement matter-of-factly.

Helen’s head snapped up. “What did you say?”

Silence in the room.

Dorian cleared her throat. “We think maybe you’re pregnant, Helen.”

Horror suffused Helen’s face. “Pregnant? I don’t get pregnant. I can’t. We tried for years.” Now she started to sob. “How could you say this so carelessly? Do you have any idea what it’s like to not be able to have a child?”

“Yes,” Dorian said gravely, “we do.”

“You
could
be pregnant now, honey.” Jess leaned in close. “Or you will be soon. I saw it on their computer thing. We have a daughter in the future.”

Helen wept even more.

The minister just watched them all, taking in the scene. But he didn’t say anything, and Dorian admired his restraint.

“This is too much for her to digest,” Jess said angrily.

“I know.” Dorian gave a little shrug. “I seek your forgiveness.”

Finally, the minister spoke. “What’s going on? Please, tell me. As a minister, I’m good in crisis situations. And if it’s a matter of confidentiality, I’m bound by my position not to reveal anything.”

Alisha said, “No,” just as Dorian spoke, “All right.” She faced her colleague. “What can it hurt?”

“Only about a million things.”

Jess straightened. “I’m deciding this. David, these women came from the future to save their world. As crazy as it may seem, because I don’t finish my research on fracking safety measures and methane emissions, there are huge ramifications for the coming generations. And I don’t finish it because I’m going to be killed by the end of the summer.”

Dorian watched the minister’s brow furrow. He waited a long time before he spoke. “Hmm,” he said, calmly. “What are we going to do about that?”

From the doorway, Dorian heard, “They’ve got it all figured out.”

She turned to see Luke Cromwell had come in from the sunny day, but with thunderclouds on his face.

“YOU CAME BACK.”

Luke was surprised at Dorian’s pleased tone.
He
still wanted to strangle her and her buddy there. He wondered where the other one was. Hell, she could have beamed back to wherever the fuck she came from. “Of course I did. I just needed to cool off.”

Her expression was confounded, and now he knew why. Yet it was so hard to believe…

Jess said, “I’m glad you’re here. We need to work together on saving my life.”

“I still can’t internalize what you’ve told us.” Luke ran a hand through his hair. “They could be feeding you a bunch of bullshit, Jessie.”

“Your crude reference is not appropriate here.” Alisha faced down Luke. “We’re telling you the truth and your brother’s life is at stake.”

“Why would we lie about this, Luke?” Dorian asked.

“Who the hell knows? To sabotage Jess’s research maybe.” He sighed. “But on the unlikely chance that this is true, I’m ready to be convinced.”

David sighed. “I believe it’s possible.”

“Without proof?”

“Yes. But what I meant was I believe it’s possible to travel in time. Maybe even change the past. They could be who—from when—they say they are.”

Dropping down on a chair, Luke watched Alisha pull out a computer that resembled a BlackBerry.

“Brace yourself for this, Helen,” Jess said gently.

The computer screen grew. That was the only word to describe what happened. Luke knew he was agape, but, what the hell?

Alisha talked to the machine. “Call up chips on the theories of time travel.”

“Greetings,” the woman who appeared on screen said. “My name is Rhea Hart and I’m one of the ten Guardians of the world in 2514. If you’re viewing this, Celeste, Dorian and Alisha have arrived in 2014 and are trying to convince you of their mission.”

“She looks like the other one, Celeste,” Luke said. “Same hair and eye color. Same build.”

“She was Celeste’s donor.” Dorian’s tone was matter-of-fact.

“Her what?”

“We’ll explain all that later.”

Dorian asked, “Should we call Celi to participate in our explanation?”

“All this turmoil has affected her greatly.” Alisha shook her head. “Let her sleep.”

Rhea continued, “I’m going to give you some theories of time travel that were the basis for our experiments. I’ll explain the first with an illustration.”

On a flat-topped surface, she laid out several twelve-inch-long threads. They were thick and comingled with each other. “The Institute’s research theorizes that time is a continuum, existing all at once.” She gestured to the threads. “The first third of these is the past, the middle the present and the rest the future.” She marked off each third with her hand. “Given this theory, it’s believed that travel among all three dimensions is possible.”

No one spoke.

“There are two distinct theories on traveling to the past. The most accepted one, and the one we’ve based our calculations on, is that it’s possible to backtrack into the past”—again she placed her finger on the last third of the threads and drew an imaginary arc in the air to the first—“and change only one thread.” She plucked out a silvery strand as an example. “The future will be altered for this particular aspect of society.” She gestured to what was left on the table. “These threads remain the same.”

“That makes sense.” This from David, the pastor.

“So if we go back to change one thing in the past, the future will be altered but not the entire future. Other threads, as I said, would remain intact.”

Again, silence

“But, of course, there’s the opposite theory of time travel—that the threads of time are weaved too tightly and no change can be brought about.”

Luke raised a brow. “If that’s true, you can do nothing if Jess is really in trouble.”

Alisha froze the chip. “The computeller predicts a ninety-nine point one percent probability that the past can be changed.” Her tone was hopeful. When Luke nodded, she started the video.

The explanation began again. “There’s a final point that needs to be made. Some researchers contend there are paradoxes in time travel. One purports that if a person of the future goes back to change the past, and succeeds, he or she was meant to make the changes all along. That’s called the fatalist theory.”

Alisha stopped the chip again. “Any questions?” she asked.

“Uh, yeah! But keep going.” Luke’s tone remained skeptical.

The recording began once more. “The computeller pinpoints the location of a portal. Picture it as a small break in the threads of time. This was part of the Institute’s discovery yearlings ago. Once again, video chips and some of the speculative fiction of your century show openings like this in time.”

The presentation ended and a collective silence settled over the room.

Alisha spoke again. “There’s more.” To the computer, she said, “Call up data used to show what happened originally.”

“Affirmative.”

The machine spun into a remarkable tale. Luke was prepared not to believe. But holy hell, if this was a hoax, it was pretty damn good. He gasped at one of the pictures. It was of him, holding…Lord, holding Jess and Helen’s daughter, Jessica. A beautiful baby in a tiny pink dress. Then it hit him. Jess was not in the picture with Helen and him.

Jess was dead?

He glanced at his brother, and his hardened policeman’s heart stuttered in his chest. He and Helen were both crying openly as they stared at the screen. Helen reached out and touched the face of the child she thought she’d never have.

Was it possible to believe in miracles?

Shaking off the sentiment, he focused on Dorian. He couldn’t risk Jess’s death under any circumstances. He’d work with the devil to prevent it. Besides, this explanation put together some pieces of the puzzle that was Dorian Masters. “It makes sense now. Your distaste of our food. Your misuse of words and unfamiliarity of little things.”

“Believe me,
hotshot?”

She’d learned another new word.

David said, “Can I ask something?”

Alisha nodded.

“What happened with religion in the future?”

“History chips show that in the twenty-second century, people began building the Domes before the pollution they knew was coming became untenable. Just as they finished, a cyber war broke out among a myriad of countries, and chemical weapons were released into the air and spread throughout the world. Sixty-nine percent of the population was destroyed. The Domes saved civilization, but all people were confined inside. Later that century, a fertility factor threatened the population. Though endangerment of our very existence caused the world to unite by 2300, it also erased hope. And faith.”

“Your language?” Luke asked. “You use the word Nord.”

“A negation of your concept Lord.”

“The godheads?”

“Reducing your god to a figurehead.”

“Hellor?” Luke asked. Dorian had slipped and used it in front of him.

The women looked at each other. Alisha shrugged. “I have no idea.”

“That is so sad.” David’s expression made even Alisha squirm. “All of it was lost?”

“I seek your forgiveness, yes.”

He was thoughtful. “So, you say if you keep Jess alive, the future will change?”

“Not necessarily. There’s another factor we must address in conjunction with this one.”

“The other one’s working on it—Celeste, right?” Luke asked.

“Yes. She has a different mission.”

“Does it have to do with the fertility problem you mentioned?”

Alisha’s face grew stern. “We’re not discussing this. Suffice it to say, we’ve narrowed down the end of the human race to two causes. One is climate change. There’s another, and yes, it has to do with fertility. But that’s all I’ll say.” She glared at Dorian. “All any of us will say.”

“You expect me to just accept part of the story and not get all the information?” Luke’s anger increased.

Dorian seemed uneasy.

Alisha didn’t. She said, “In fact, we’re going to have to insist.”

SITTING IN THE
huge sleeping room, awash with green-and-blue walls and accents, the sleeping bed plump and fluffy, Celeste stared at the likeness of Alex Lansing on the computeller. He was very appealing. His hair was the color of wheat fields she’d seen in the Ancient Galleries. His eyes were as blue as the water bodies in this era, which she’d viewed in preparation for coming here and hoped one day to visit in person. But it was the younglings that mostly affected her. She’d encountered some real live ones when she walked out of inside, but she wasn’t able to examine them. The Lansing younglings were all fair-haired, blue-eyed and beautiful.

She thought back to the
Star Trek
chips she’d watched after Alisha remarked on the resemblance of Alex Lansing to James T. Kirk. Dr. Lansing was taller and with lighter eyes, but the resemblance was remarkable. And they had the same…magnetism. She’d enjoyed watching the predictions in the show that had come true—the unification of the world, though it didn’t seem theirs came out of desperation. Equality of men and women. Friendship among men. Alien species. Often Celeste had wondered if other worlds did exist. Earth’s society was never able to pursue contact with extraterrestrials because people were too busy securing their own survival.

She looked up. Someone was at the door. A gentle knock followed the precognition. “Come inside,” she called, setting the device on the night table.

Helen entered. Red-rimmed eyes testified to water leakage—tears, she must remember to call them. Even from across the sleeping space, Celeste could feel the woman’s acute pain. Her posture, petite to begin with, seemed shrunken under the weight of what she carried—a serving tray with containers, which she set down on the high thing called a dresser. “Hello, Helen. Did you want to talk to me?”

Crossing her arms over her chest, Helen shook back all that hair. Would Celeste’s grow that long? In her time, everyone kept theirs short, but here, people seemed more concerned about appearances, and long locks were considered appealing.

Helen said, “Maybe. Mostly, I wanted to get away from the powwow going on up there.” She angled her head toward the stairs.

Native Americans had come to the Cromwell’s home? Celeste’s expression must have betrayed her confusion because Helen continued, “Jess, David and Luke are in heated discussions with Dorian and Alisha, and I couldn’t take it anymore.”

“David?”

“My pastor. That’s um, a person who heads our church.”

“We have no church in our time.”

“I feel bad for you. No God, no religion is almost impossible to take in. Everything about your situation is.”

For a moment, Celeste studied her. “You’re exhausted. Sit down.” She indicated a place next to her.

Helen sank onto the chair without wincing at its hardness. “I am tired. And upset.”

“I can feel it.” She wanted to help this woman. “Give me your hand.”