A Chronetic Memory (The Chronography Records Book 1) (20 page)

She turned toward Lexil, “You say my responses are the first main factor. What is the other one?”

“We have a hypothesis—supported in every test we’ve done—that the disturbances are caused by objects being physically removed from the timestream. If that’s the case, then the more significant disturbances are the ones where more significant objects have been removed.”

“That’s where we were hoping you could help us,” the doctor interjected. “We would like to find out what might have been removed, in this case.”

Dani thought about that. This was the first time she had heard the idea that something could be removed from the past, and she still wasn’t clear on how that was done. But the question was what might have been removed to make the difference. There was only one object that could be. “It was the padlock,” she said.

“How can you be sure?” asked Lexil.

“First of all, I scanned it. I know the institute is working on it. Secondly, it made a big difference in the events that followed.” She thought about Marak being able to go inside the garden, not meeting Kat that day, not being married when Jored was supposed to be born. “Thirdly, it resulted, finally, in someone not being born.”

Both men looked up at that statement. “An entire person was removed from the timestream?” asked Dr. Seebak.

“Yes.” Dani blinked back tears.

“Someone you knew, evidently,” Lexil said, gently.

Dani could only nod.

Dr. Seebak had turned to move some numbers around on the viewwall, constructing equations with a practiced hand. “How old would this person be today?”

“He would be seven. He was supposed to be Kat and Marak’s son, but they didn’t meet—in this reality—until after he was born.” She was trying to be objective, emotionless, but it wasn’t working. Her voice dropped to a whisper. “I miss him so much.”

Lexil reached over and put his hand on hers. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”

They sat in silence for a few minutes. Dani wished someone would talk, because she was fighting back tears again. She was getting so tired. It was much easier when she wasn’t thinking about him, when she could distract herself.

Dr. Seebak cleared his throat. “Well, that would certainly fit the parameters for a significant disturbance: the removal of a whole person.”

“You make it sound clinical, Doc. Can’t you see she’s hurting?”

“Our whole existence is hurting, Lexil. Dani is strong. She will have ample time to grieve later, and do it right. As hard and unfeeling as it seems, we need to act now, or the effects will amplify. Can you help us, Dani?”

Dani nodded. Strange, she thought, that Lexil should be so angry on her behalf. “Can you show me how you found out that objects were vanishing?”

“Come with me,” Lexil said. “Doc, excuse us for a minute?”

“Of course. Going to the library?”

“You guessed it.”

SEEBAK HOME, Vashon Island, WA. 2230, Thursday, June 8, 2215.

The walk to the library took them outdoors. Dani inhaled the fragrance of fir trees and madronas. She was amazed at the persistence of natural surroundings on the island. The demonstration hologram she used in school presentations could have been recorded here, with no need to go back a hundred years.

“Peaceful, isn’t it?” Lexil asked.

“It really is. If I lived here, I don’t think I’d ever want to leave.”

“I don’t, not often. Hey, about the way I was acting …”

“It’s okay. I was suspicious of you, too.”

“The thing is, we know there is a person at the institute who is getting private information and blackmailing people with it. Or a group of people,” he added as an afterthought.

She caught her breath. “You know about that too?”

“What do you know about it?”

So she told him about Anders, and what the two of them had found in the financial records, and how she had linked it to the blanks in the scanned objects. He asked intelligent questions, and seemed to have a knack for getting to the heart of the matter effortlessly.

She skimmed over the specifics of the scene she had witnessed, but mentioned that it concerned one of the main three scientists.

“Dr. Brant,” Lexil said, and it wasn’t a question.

“Yes!” Dani was startled that he knew. Hadn’t Dr. Seebak told her not to tell him anything? “How did you know?”

“She came to see us; told us she was being blackmailed. I really want to get her free of those crooks. She’s constantly monitored, afraid to even send messages to us because she can’t trust anybody there to be a messenger.”

At the same time, they both stopped and looked at each other. It was obvious they were thinking of the same thing. “I could do that,” said Dani.

“Yes. You could do that,” said Lexil.

They discussed the details. Dani would have to find a place to contact Dr. Brant that wouldn’t be seen. She would need a code word to tell her that the message came from them, and that Dani could be trusted. They dare not use their names, but the institute wasn’t aware of the location of their lab, so the word “Vashon” would tell her all she needed to know. They had covered a lot of ground, both physically and metaphorically, by the time they got to the house.

“The library is around the corner there, to the left,” he said as he opened the door.

Dani found it easily. She was astonished at the number of old-fashioned books that lined the shelves. “Anders would love this,” she said.

“This Anders guy. He’s important to you?”

She glanced at him, wondering at his interest. “He’s important to the investigation,” she said, noncommittally.

“And to you too?”

“Does it matter?” she countered.

“It might. I was just wondering.” He looked at her steadily.

Those puppy dog
eyes
again. She wished he would just say it, if he was interested. But then she realized she didn’t wish that at all. This was not the time to think about romantic entanglements. She needed to change the subject. Refocusing her attention, she examined the books on the shelf in front of her and asked, “So, did you have something to show me?”

“Yes, I did. Remember that outfielder who caught the ball back in the 2089 World Series? His name was Ansell Buckton, and he wrote about that moment years later. I read his account a while back. I was just curious; those photos have always fascinated me, and I wanted to know more. But when I read it, I noticed something. Here’s what I want to show you.” Lexil reached over to the bookshelf on the wall and took down a thin hardbound volume.

By the careful way he turned the old pages, Dani knew this book was no recent reprint. “How old is that book?” she asked.

“It’s the real thing,” Lexil answered, “and you can’t find this volume anywhere any more. Here, look at this passage.”

She skimmed two paragraphs, then caught her breath. It couldn’t be, but there it was. Why hadn’t anyone noticed this earlier?

“He smashed the ball deep into the outfield, going up, up, up and to my right. I raced toward left field, running desperately to cut off the ball high above my head. Suddenly, it grew eerily silent. I knew the crowd was yelling, but I couldn’t hear it. I ran, just keeping my eye on that ball, and letting my feet find their own way.

At exactly the right moment, I leapt high into the air, reaching up, and I could tell it was going to hit the webbing of my glove. For a moment—no more than a fraction of a second—I couldn’t see the ball, and I thought I had misjudged it. But then there it was, just where it was supposed to be, and I squeezed my glove around it. My momentum carried me to the wall. And then I heard the crowd again.”

“So it’s
true.”

“Yes. For some objects, some recordings, things simply stop existing for those moments when they were used as a source. They pop back into being immediately afterward, of course, and usually their absence isn’t noticed. Usually their absence has no effect on anything. Buckton still caught the ball. Chef Solveig still made her blueberry sauce. The anonymous fiddler continued fiddling. Who looks at a floor tile when there’s a fiddler playing? In fact, it’s very rare that we notice a disturbance, indicating something, however subtle, has changed. That’s how we found this old book. Ansell Buckton wouldn’t have written those words if the ball hadn’t disappeared for
1/200 of a second
—the shutter speed on the camera that snapped the photo.”

“You monitor everything?”

“Well, our timestream sensors monitor everything. There’s too much, way too much, data for us to put eyeballs on all of it. But the reports point us in the right direction, and we look at the things we need to.”

Dani thought that through. “So this—this meeting we are having right now—will show up on your reports?”

Lexil laughed. “You’re quick. Yes, this meeting would never have taken place if Buckton hadn’t written those words.”

“Or if Jored hadn’t disappeared.” She suddenly realized that the missing padlock was her fault. It was her recording, converted to a form that could be played, that had stolen Jored.

His smile gone, Lexil nodded solemnly. “That was the biggest disturbance we’ve seen. I had to come myself.”

“But why come? What can you do, once the damage is … done?” Dani had some trouble getting the words out. It still hurt, so much, missing him and being the only one to mourn. And now she felt like a murderer, only worse. Murderers take what is left of a lifespan. She had taken the whole thing, all of it, from the moment of his conception to the end, whenever that might have been. It barely touched the surface of her grief to remind herself that she hadn’t meant to. That she was just following through on an assignment.

Lexil didn’t answer. She wasn’t really expecting an answer.

Preoccupied with her thoughts, it took her a few minutes before she looked up at Lexil and found him studying her carefully. His expression wasn’t the resigned, sympathetic look she would have expected. It was more contemplative, as if he were trying to make a decision. “Why are you looking at me like that?” she asked.

He cleared his throat. “It might be possible …” he started.

“What might be possible?”

“We have a method—and you have to understand it is completely untested—that might let us replace objects that have been removed.”

She caught her breath. “Like the padlock?”

He nodded. “It would take some time to prepare. We’d need to test it out here; remove an object, replace it, see if it is stable. We’d need exact parameters for the padlock. The location will be relative to where the padlock was, so as long as we have the current padlock, setting the time and duration will be enough. Our scanners here are little portable ones. They can only reach back a few days. They’ll work for testing, but not for the actual procedure.”

“So we would need to use the scanners at the institute.”

“Exactly. But Doc can’t go back there; it’s part of his
agreement
.” His tone of voice made it obvious what he thought of the agreement. “I don’t want anybody else knowing who I am, so I can’t go there either. It would be up to you.”

“I can do that.”

“Yes, but you don’t know how to set it, and the settings have to be exact. We’re going to have to give you something you can plug in there at the institute, after you get to a scanner and retrieve the padlock. Is there any difficulty getting things inside?”

She thought about the bag check at the security gate. “It would depend on what it looked like, I guess.

“It’s just a memory rod.”

“I should be able to get that past security okay. How long will it take?”

“Most of the day tomorrow, I’m guessing. We’ll only get one chance at this. We have to make sure it will work correctly the first time. I’d send a program with you tonight, except there’s a little boy’s life at stake.”

“Lexil?”

“Yes?”

“Thank you.”

SEEBAK LABORATORY, Vashon Island, WA. 0730, Friday, June 9, 2215.

“So I think it would be an ideal platform for an experiment, besides helping put the timestream back into place.” Lexil was hoping Doc would see the benefits. He was already realizing he might have been a little premature in his conversation with Dani the night before.

She had cast a lure and was reeling him in. Everything had been fine while he was mad at her, but as soon as Doc had reassured him on that count, he was hooked again. The walk to the tube station in the evening moonlight had just made it worse.

He must have sounded stupid, asking about that Anders guy. But she’d made it pretty plain it was none of his business, and hadn’t given any indication of any kind of return interest when he’d hinted so broadly. He had pretty much told her he was smitten. And now he felt foolish for it.

“How certain are you of your procedures?”

He’d almost forgotten he was talking to Doc. “I know the procedure. I’ve just never tested it. That’s why I want to use our scanner today. Also, our VAO converter.”

“Tell me again exactly what you plan to do.” Doc was rubbing his eyebrow, which was both a bad sign and a good sign. It meant he was worried about the results, but at least he was considering it.