Steamrolled (16 page)

He lifted the beam, sending it through a circuit starting with the bug and ending back at the bug, about chest high, almost as if he was looking for someone. Then he shone it at the ground, this survey slower, but still with a searching aspect. The beam passed something white, paused and then tracked back. It took Emily about thirty seconds to realize what it was. Thirty more seconds to still the sound that wanted to crawl out her throat at the sight of the human skull partially buried in the ground.

* * * *

The energy trail left by the Constilinium traces branched several times as the stream took Ashe closer and closer to Earth—it spun through the stream, a huge blue and white sphere, its track, land and seas constantly in motion. Though the track multiplied the closer she got, it still bent consistently in one direction. Several times she passed through eddies that felt off, like spoiled food. Whoever was messing with time had included Earth in the messing—though, and this troubled her the most—which was interference and which was time trying to heal? When she’d flashed into the fracas with Smith, she’d thought she felt a paradox tremor. Those happened when a tracker came close to people or events important to their future. If it had been a tremor, it had been slight, though it and/or the machine’s shaking had been just long enough to ruin her shot at Smith. She needed to find out who had been there, something they couldn’t find out while off the outpost and since they couldn’t go back…this left them back at fubar.

Smith could be the source of the tremor.

I am aware of that.
She frowned. Was there someone he didn’t want her to track who had been there?
Can you keep me on my feet when we catch up with him, if he is the problem?

A nanite could fix a lot of human ailments, but she didn’t know what he could do in the midst of a paradox.

I can protect you from most of the effects.
He seemed reluctant to admit it, but it was need to know.

You’ve done it in the past.

On the job training.
His tone edged into wry and well into cryptic, something starting to annoy.

Still, she shouldn’t let it distract her, not when the stream could be mined with traps—the object came at her from her three o’clock, a brief shadow in her peripheral vision before the impact.

* * * *

Robert was impressed she only squeaked at the sight of the human skull. He’d wanted to scream like a girl—though he was glad he hadn’t. Be embarrassing if the girl didn’t and he did. He felt concurrence from the peeps. It was possible she hadn’t realized this could be her uncle, so perhaps that helped her keep the scream down to a squeak.

With Emily tight on his six, he approached the skull, making a slow pass over the area with the light. No question it was human. Was this, could this be what remained of Emelius Twitchet? Emily bumped into his back when he stopped. She followed him into a crouch, though she had to adjust her position against his back. He liked having her pressed in close against him. She was warm and…quite wonderful.

Don’t go all mushy on us, dude.

Dude?
For a second his eyes almost twitched, but he didn’t have time to figure out what was going on with the peeps. He moved the flashlight to his left hand and brushed at the soil where the rest of the body should be. The ribs showed up an inch or two under the baked earth and near the lower right rib, he uncovered a dirt-crusted piece of jewelry, a timepiece, an old pocket watch, he realized.

He felt Emily’s questions, beating in the air like the insects attracted to the light, but she didn’t ask. Maybe she never would. He held up the pocket watch, rubbing the dirt off the main body and the chain links. He had to hand the light to Emily to work the latch. It popped open. The watch had stopped working, but even in the uncertain light he could read the inscription:

To Emelius from your loving sisters. 1890.

FOURTEEN

Neither one of them said anything, just retreated to the machine, to the parlor. Robert lowered and turned on the chandelier, surprised, and yet not, when it worked, despite the dead engine. It helped remove the gloom of the half-light that he assumed was Twitchet’s idea of emergency level. Emily sat on the chair he’d lowered for her, her feet planted, her knees together and her clasped hands resting on those knees, though he had the impression she huddled in her long coat, despite the ultra straight shoulders. Several times it looked as if she might speak, but she didn’t. He knew why. All roads led to questions and she didn’t do questions. Robert wanted to say something that would make it better, but even the peeps didn’t know what that something would be. He cleared his throat and managed, “Are you all right?”

Her head turned his direction, not fast, but not slow. Her nod was at the same pace. Her turn to clear her throat. “I knew he was dead, because, hello, a hundred plus years, but…I had theories about where he went. None of them included Roswell.” Her hand lifted in an ill-defined gesture. “If he’d gone cruising in the 40’s instead of 1890’s I’d almost blame him…” Her voice trailed off.

Robert felt a tensing, sourcing from instincts not entirely his. “Blame him for what?”

“Roswell. The crash.”

Funny how all thought roads seemed to lead to aliens of one sort or another. He’d been mulling the aliens when he latched onto the thought thread that Twitchet might be waiting outside. Except the machine was too late. How far too late, he wondered, wishing Twitchet’s crazy GPS tracked more than where. He remembered his cell and extracted it, but neither date nor time had updated, probably because of the “no service” notification where the bars were supposed to be. The only thing he knew for sure, they weren’t in 1894. That was good news for them, since the machine appeared to have died, though not good for Twitchet, who was dead. Had he hoped for a better outcome?
Time is persistent.
Was Twitchet supposed to be dead, supposed to be missing in the past? Not a forensic expert, he didn’t know how to estimate how long he’d been there. It could be any time between 1894 and 2010.
Never assume
. Okay, he assumed they were somewhere between those two dates. Couldn’t be earlier, because Twitchet couldn’t die before he lived, could he? That thought almost gave him a headache, so he pushed past it. The homing beacon brought the device to Wyoming. He could postulate, with some confidence, that the Individual Discovery Velocipediator brought the bug here with the anomaly playing spoiler on the when. He examined the hypothesis and liked it. The transmogrification machine sent the device through space, but something was propelling it through time. Something? Or the anomaly? Or the anomaly impacting the machine? His instincts told him that the next stop would have been Twitchet’s warehouse, had the power not run down, but that didn’t tell him
when
it would have arrived there.

And nothing changed the fact that they were stuck some
where
and some
when
. The peeps could activate a beacon that would yank them through the Kikk portal, but he didn’t want to be yanked until he knew more. And he didn’t want to leave until he could be sure he’d be the first one back to get the machine. Had Smith followed the paper trail or the energy trail? Or both? And if the machine was offline, would there be an energy trail to follow?

“I wish we knew if the machine was out of power or—” What? Taking a break? The red ball appeared dormant, but the peeps weren’t eager to take a chance it wasn’t and he didn’t blame them.

Thank you.

“It does seem to have flat-lined.” Emily’s subdued tone felt wrong.

As if it didn’t like her assessment, the machine gave a twitch.

Her chin lifted, her body stiffening. They might have been connected to the same thought as they scrambled for cockpit. The gauges were twitching, too.

“It’s trying to power up again,” she said, her tone calm, excitement beginning to thread into her voice again.

A trickle of unease made its way down his spine. There was a pattern to the twitching, but a different pattern than the one that had brought them here. His body shifted into Delilah mode. He liked it. Her mode was way cooler than his mode. Way cooler? Where had that come from?

“What’s it doing?”

“Something new.” She met his look of worry with, “If it powers up, maybe we can drive the bug closer to town.”

He had not thought of that. She was…he didn’t know what she was, but he liked it, though the way she thought reminded him somewhat of his time in crazy.
In a good way.
He felt the peeps shake their heads, and possibly roll their eyes, even though he knew they didn’t, couldn’t without heads or eyes.

“Should we lock down the machine?” Robert wanted to slam the hatch. Robert didn’t want to leave Emily alone on the bridge. If something happened, she could be flung against any of a hundred sharp corners. Before she could answer the gauges gave a major twitch. He grabbed her close and braced as a blur of motion left him feeling like he’d left his stomach in another dimension. It stopped and his stomach was still with him, though it wasn’t happy about that. “What just happened?”

It felt a bit like portal transport, but was too short.

She peered over his arm at the GPS without breaking his hold. Frowned. “We’re still in New Mexico. So…nothing.”

“That wasn’t nothing.” He didn’t want to let go of her, but he needed to see. He compromised by taking her hand and towing her after him to the access hatch. The door had banged into place, though it wasn’t locked, since they hadn’t locked it. They were lucky the machine hadn’t gone further—unless the unsealed hatch had limited the range? Olivia had believed the machine wouldn’t do anything with the hatch unsealed. She’d been wrong about that, though it could be a side effect of the malfunction and have nothing to do with the door.

He pushed it open and found it still night, though one devoid of stars. Fast moving clouds covered the sky as far as he could see. He’d intended to shine some light on where Twitchet’s body had lain, but something else caught his attention. Directly across from him, starting close to the ground, a light arced up, then shot across the sky, passing over his head, before dropping down into the opposite horizon. Robert frowned. Could that be one of the intergalactic squadrons doing maneuvers out of Area 51? That seemed faster than what he’d been told they could do in atmosphere, but looks could be deceiving in the desert at night. Lightning flared against the sky. The patterns were intricate and appeared to cover half the sky for a brief instance. One of the fast moving lights shot out of what appeared to be a smaller lightning strike and moved parallel to their position. It stopped, a glowing disc pausing for what seemed a long time before leaping forward again.

“That’s so—” Emily broke off as more of the fast moving lights appeared in the sky, mingling in and out of the distant lightning storm.

There’d been no storm or lights when they’d been out here before the shift. He had to presume they’d shifted through time, if not space. Emily went to move past him. He gripped her hand, holding her back.

“We need to stay with the device.”

“Our planes and military craft can’t move that fast.” She gave a half laugh, half gasp. “It’s happening again.”

“What’s happening again?”

Her head tilted a few degrees. “The Roswell incursion. Aliens. It has to be aliens. They’re back.”

She sounded too delighted by an unknown alien incursion. Or perhaps she was happy to have something besides her great uncle’s skeleton to focus on.

“Did it happen like this before?” Robert knew the Garradians’ had had craft that could do this, or might be able to do this. Could they go that fast? Stop that fast? This could be something other than
their
aliens. That wasn’t what chilled him to his core, though. If they were shifting through time, this might be the
original
alien incursion. She’d probably love that, but he didn’t know how to tell her they were traveling through time.

“Depends on who you ask.” She reached across him and aimed the light he forgot he still had toward where they’d last seen Twitchet. The rib cage was still visible but now the hip bones and part of the legs also stuck out the dirt. Robert wanted to check it out, but if the machine moved again… “You said something about the gauges?”

It was part distraction, part need to know. She did a quick check.

“Twitching again. Not as much as the first time, but more than last time.”

“We should lock down.” If it were getting ready to do something—well, he didn’t know what would happen if they were standing in the doorway, but he didn’t think it could be good for them or the device.

“We could use the Emergency Absquatulation device to anchor the bug,” Emily suggested, leaning against his back with an easy familiarity as she pushed up on her toes to see the lights making patterns in the sky. “That is so cool. Kind of looks like how they described it before the crashes.”

Could they anchor it? Or would Smith use it to track the device? The multitrack function of his brain allowed him to ponder and play with various theories and outcomes, and the peeps helped his brain not melt down— “Crashes?” No known reason to feel uneasy, except he did. “There was more than one?”

“According to some accounts.”

One of the bright discs sped across the horizon parallel to their position. It was almost on top of them, though distances were deceiving over flat terrain, when it flared so bright they both flinched back. It sounded like an explosion, but sometimes thunder sounded explosive. Senses Robert hadn’t had before screamed alerts as the disc hurtled right at them. Robert grabbed the hatch handle and yanked it in into place, spinning the handle with speed enhanced by his upgrade and adrenalin. The whistle of something coming—he spun and grabbed Emily, pushing her down and covering her with his body—

The impact sent the device sideways. Together they slid down the tilting floor. Robert swung his body around so his feet took the jolt just as the machine shifted. Whatever almost hit them affected the trip. It felt like the device kept rolling, but this time in slow motion. Robert felt the peeps straining against it as the device spun one way and time spun another…