Susan Squires - [Da Vinci Time Travel] (25 page)

“You have a flashlight in here?” Diana asked.

Gawain nodded, fumbled in a side pocket in the back, of the Range Rover and came up with a yellow flashlight, which he stuck in his jacket pocket. “Come on,” he said as he hustled Mordred across the parking lot, the older man stumbling beside him.

“I don’t have a key anymore. I’m persona non grata
here, remember?” she hissed as she hurried behind them.

“Don’t worry. I can get us in.”

Oh yeah. His “power.” She swallowed. This was all pretty tough to get used to.

“What I need from you is to keep that gun on him while I get through.” He didn’t even look back to see her nod. He apparently just trusted that she was bold enough to hold a gun on her own father and bluff Mordred into thinking she would pull the trigger. Which she couldn’t. Not if she didn’t want to just blink out of existence. Okay. Maybe she could wound him. Could she actually shoot a man of flesh and blood, who was her father, even if he was Mordred? She didn’t think she was the woman Gawain thought she was.

“We’ve only got twenty minutes or so until Clancy gets back,” she reminded Gawain.

“You, stay there,” Gawain said to Mordred, leaning him against the wall by the side of the big glass doors. Mordred hung his head, but his bloodshot eyes never left Diana as she pulled up the gun with both hands and tried not to let it shake.

“Just be quick about it.”

Gawain put both hands on the glass doors and leaned against them. Diana could feel him go calm. Sureness and a certain . . . serenity poured off of him. Then he began to disintegrate. It looked like he was fading away just like she almost did. Fear fluttered in her belly. What if he was somehow doing something that made him nonexistent? What if he left her alone here, with Mordred? In only a moment Gawain was just a body of mist shaped vaguely like a man. And then the mist was sucked down under the door.

“He’s his father’s son, all right.” Mordred’s voice was low and venomous. “I always thought he didn’t get his father’s powers. Maybe he didn’t get much. But he got some.”

It was almost reassuring that Mordred didn’t think Gawain was dead or disappeared.

And sure enough, the mist formed into human shape inside the Exploratorium, and then the mist coalesced into Gawain. He hit the metal bars and the door opened. “Stand back, Diana. Mordred, you first.”

Both Gawain and Diana held guns on Mordred. Diana was glad the responsibility of shooting him wasn’t hers alone anymore. “Lead on, Diana. Where’s the machine?”

“Behind another locked door,” she whispered, hurrying ahead through the dim lobby. Work lights were on back in the maze of exhibits, but otherwise the place was dark.

“Move it,” Gawain ordered, and Diana glanced back to see that they were following, Mordred dragging his heels.

“What are you going to do with me?” Mordred asked as if it were a casual question like,
Do you think it will rain?

“Send you back where you belong,” Gawain said. “You are about to fulfill your destiny.”

“I rather like it here.”

“I’m sure you do. But the fifth century is calling.”

Diana stopped in front of the door marked:
Danger. Keep out.
“It’s in here.”

Gawain took a breath. “Okay. Let’s get to it. You.” He gestured with his gun at Mordred. “Sit on that bench.” Diana raised the gun.

Then Gawain put his palms against the door and the process started all over again. Diana found herself fascinated. He was a miracle in so many ways. The mist fell to the floor and seeped under the door. Out of the corner of her eye she saw movement. Mordred was up and coming for her. Her throat closed. Even though his hands were still tied, he looked murderous.

“Stay where you are,” she choked. He kept coming and she backed up. One step. Two.

“Or you’ll what? Shoot me? Takes a hard woman to do
that to a man.” Mordred lowered his head and butted her. She sprawled on the floor. Mordred turned to run for the front. The door shot open and Gawain came through with a growl. He grabbed Mordred’s arm and twisted him back. Gawain hit him in the chin so hard that he went flying across the room and landed with a thud.

Gawain went to her. “Are you okay?”

She nodded. “He . . . his hands were tied. There was nothing he could do. I couldn’t just . . . shoot him.” Gawain was peering at Mordred. Even Diana could see he was out like a light.

“We’d better get a move on. He won’t cause us any problems now.” Gawain heaved Mordred over his shoulder and stalked to the now-open door. He held Mordred’s limp form with one hand as he fumbled for the flashlight.

They heard a noise from the lobby.

“Clancy,” she hissed.

Gawain ducked into the corridor beyond the door and she hurried after him, easing the door shut. They stood still in the dark and listened. The whistled notes of “When Irish Eyes Are Smiling” receded. Diana heard Gawain let out his breath just as she was sighing in relief herself. The flashlight popped on and they hurried down the corridor with its nearsighted cone of light dancing over the dark passageway.

Gawain reached the chamber under the Rotunda of the Palace of Fine Arts first. His beam shot over the jumbled struts that had been used to earthquake proof the Palace and caught the gleam of Leonardo’s machine. The brass gears, big and small, were revealed as the flashlight explored them. The glint of the huge jewels shot red and blue and green and clear diamond white from their facets. Gawain let out a low whistle.

“This . . . this is what you used to come back in time?”

“Yeah. Even I can’t believe it.”

“How does it work?”

“Beats me. The book tells how he made it. I can’t say I understand it, even though I’ve read the translation a hundred times. He says time is a vortex and with enough power you can jump from one place to another in the whirl.”

“How do you get where you want to go?” He hauled Mordred through the maze of girders, the beam of light bouncing here and there.

“You just think of it.”

“Hmmm,” they both said at the same time.

Gawain shot a look over his shoulder. “He can’t think anything, and wouldn’t even if he was conscious,” Gawain muttered.

“So we’ll have to do the thinking for him,” Diana said. “I’ll start the machine.” She went to kneel beside the lunch box–sized power module. “Can you shine the light over here?”

Gawain dumped Mordred in a heap and gave her a beam of light over her shoulder. She started the power sequence, flipping switches. “Okay. I’ll wait to hit the last switch until you’ve got him tied to that lever.” She watched as Gawain hauled Mordred up and bound his hands to the three-foot-long control stick topped by the huge glittering diamond.

She pressed the final chrome button with her palm. “Let him go. His weight will pull the lever.” Then she scrambled up and pulled Gawain away.

Mordred hung by his hands and the lever slowly dipped. Power hummed in the room, stronger and stronger until it felt like a weight on her chest. The gears began to whirl. She threaded her way back through the steel struts like pick-up sticks to the far wall, pulling Gawain with her
as beams of colored light began to crisscross over the ceiling.

“Think of that time!” she yelled to Gawain as they pressed their backs against the cool concrete of the wall. “That day that Camelot fell. Think only of that, no matter what happens.”

He nodded and they turned their attention to the machine. The gears slowed. Time itself seemed to slow. As hard as she could think she thought of the day she’d seen Camelot fall. Then everything seemed to move all at once. The gears once again whirled madly. Space seemed to be flowing into the machine from everywhere, as though the universe were collapsing in on itself. Even their bodies seemed to have an aura that was being sucked into the machine. What if they were sucked back with Mordred? The pressure was unbearable. Her mind was about to explode.

And then the tension snapped.

She and Gawain fell to their knees, gasping. Diana looked up. The machine was gone.

“Gods of water and leaf,” Gawain murmured. “I’ve never . . . seen . . . anything like that.”

And then, quick as it had disappeared, the machine wavered back into sight. But Mordred was nowhere in sight.

“We did it,” she breathed.

Gawain reached for her and gathered her into his arms. “And we never have to go back to that time or see Mordred again.”

She smiled up at Gawain, relief washing through her. But she could feel her smile go crooked. He had been protecting her against Mordred. Now that Mordred was gone, what reason had Gawain to stay? He might be the next to disappear from her life.

It was over an hour until Clancy made his next rounds and left the building. They heard him whistling. Kind of strange for an Irishman to be whistling “La Cucaracha.” They had waited in dark and silence, lest he hear them just behind the door marked:
Danger.
That was a lot of time to think. Gawain was feeling . . . lost. The battle was over. The adrenaline washed from his system, leaving him almost listless. He had done his father’s bidding. He had protected Diana from Mordred. He had fulfilled his life’s purpose. She would go on to be important to the world somehow. He didn’t know quite how. Did it have to do with her ability to find lost things? But what of him? He was thirty-six and suddenly his driving force was gone. Did that mean his useful life was over? There couldn’t be much use for a person who could turn into mist and seep through doorways, unless he wanted a career in crime. And Gawain didn’t.

A quick run to the car after they heard Clancy pass and they were driving home through the dark of San Francisco. Gawain glanced to Diana. Her face was alternately cast in stark light and shadow from the street lamps they passed. She was abnormally quiet. Her face was pale, her gray-green eyes big. Here he was thinking of himself when she must be feeling . . . what? That she would never have a chance to know her father, rotten as that father was? That she was less because she came from genes that were tainted by something akin to madness?

“You okay?” he asked.

She cracked a broken smile that made his heart clench. “I guess. We did what we had to do. Mordred is now back fulfilling his destiny. And we saved the world from a monster. So . . . why doesn’t that feel great?”

“We’re just coming down off an adrenaline rush,” he said. But he didn’t believe that was all it was. Something
felt . . . wrong. “We’ll be okay when we get some dinner and some sleep.”

She looked up into his face, as though she was trying to puzzle something out.

Then her head snapped around. “Hey—wasn’t that the corner with the Indian restaurant?”

“I don’t know,” he said, peering into the rearview mirror. “Was something wrong?”

“I didn’t see it there. Oh, never mind,” she sighed, turning back and slumping into her seat. “I’m just tired, like you say.”

“I’ll pick up some dinner from the
taqueria,
” he said. “That okay?”

“Sounds great.”

Gawain turned in to the little stand with the world-class handmade tortillas and the
carnitas
to die for. “You stay in the car. I’ll order.”

“I’d like . . .”

“The usual?” She always ordered a
carnitas tostada.
Girls and their salads. They even had to get salads at a
taqueria.
The difference was that this one came with that roasted pork, crisp with basted orange sauce.

“I forgot. You know way too much about me.” She gave a tiny smile.

He stood in the cold with a dozen others, mostly Hispanic, some apparently speaking Russian or something, and ordered in Spanish. He was glad for the heat of the bag when they finally handed it out the little sliding window. This place always had a line, but the food was worth waiting for. He handed them a twenty and the guy looked at him like he was crazy.

“Tarjeta decrédito?”
Since when would they rather have a credit card than cash? Whatever.

He slid into the car and handed Diana the bag. “I got
you a Diet Coke, but we’ve got some red wine at home if you’d rather.” Actually, the Oakwood apartment wasn’t home. He had no home, if it came to that. In this time, he’d lived at a mental hospital, two jails, a dirtbag apartment in Chicago, and Oakwood. But if Diana was there, home or not, he was fine.

He glanced across to Diana as the Range Rover sprang to life. It occurred to him that
she
was home, in some ways. She was his destination, his purpose, his past . . . and last night, as he cradled her after their lovemaking, she had felt like the future he longed for. He was in love with her. But could she ever care for him in return? A man from the fifth century, an ex-con, a man who no longer had a purpose? Had he any right to ask it of her?

He turned into the driveway to Oakwood’s parking garage. The gate slid jerkily to the right in response to his key card. If only he had the key to his future. What was a knight without a quest? His quest had been finished. He had protected Diana.

Now what?

Diana had the strangest feeling as they rode the elevator up with several Hispanic men and two others she thought were speaking Russian. Oakwood apartments always had a transient population, but Russians were out of the ordinary. The neighbors she’d encountered on her way in and out with Gawain recently had been predominantly Asians. San Francisco, as a center of technology companies and a hub of trade for the Pacific Rim, was always full of Japanese and Chinese and Indian businesspeople. This seemed . . . wrong.

She’d had the same feeling all the way home in the car. She couldn’t put her finger on it. Unless it had to do with how distant Gawain seemed.

She had the worst feeling that he was going to tell her he was moving on to some other mission, some other destiny, now that Mordred was vanquished. She could feel that stone-cold loneliness and the dreadful disappointment coming a mile away.

She should be glad she and Gawain had had one night together. He had been such a generous lover, who could ask for more? Not someone like her. Not from someone like Gawain.

She kicked off her clogs as he set out the food from the
taqueria
in its crimped foil tins with clear plastic tops. Besides her tostada he had a wet burrito that looked like it could feed a family of four. He’d gotten a side of guacamole, and the dinners always came with great salsa and loads of big, crisp corn tortillas that were deep-fried. You broke them into your own corn chips. She hated to waste the Diet Coke he’d gotten her, but if she had caffeine this late she’d be up all night, so she opted for wine, and got out some utensils.