The Paradox Initiative (22 page)

“This is the Intergalactic Space Force,” a mechanical voice came through the door. “Jack Johnson, you are
under arrest for violation of Time Travel Restrictions. Both of you, put your hands on your heads and stay where you are. Any disobedient movement from either of you will be considered an attempt to escape—we are authorized to use deadly force. You have until the count of ten. One…Two…Three…”

Kestrel stood up, feeling like she was
balancing on the edge of a precipice. Wolfe stared at the door. Icily-calm. Settled.

“What are you going to do?”
Kestrel demanded, reaching up and gripping the hair on the back of her head with both hands.

“
Six…seven…”

“
I know who he is now, and where he is,” Wolfe murmured. “I’ll find my way back.”

“
Nine…Ten.”

The
door flew open.

Kestrel clamped down on her hair.

Five tall, broad, numbered security androids rumbled in like tanks, leveling their cannon-like weapons at Wolfe. His eyes blazed—but Kestrel saw it instantly in his stance: he was still weak. Pale. And had no strength to resist.

He
lifted his hands to his head.

“
Jack Johnson, fall in between units one and two,”
the lead android commanded, his red eyes blinking. Wolfe stayed where he was. His jaw clenched. Finally, he stepped forward, and allowed them to surround him. Kestrel couldn’t do anything but watch.

“
Keep pace with us or we will stun you
,” the leader warned. Wolfe didn’t answer. They moved toward the door…

Wolfe glanced
over his shoulder. Captured Kestrel’s gaze.

“
Thanks for sticking with me, Brown Eyes,” he said. “Left hand pocket.”

Tall androids
blocked her view. They forced him out through the door. It shut behind them. And the edges of his medals bit into Kestrel’s palm.

Quiet fell. Kestrel stood as she was for a full five minutes before absently lowering her hands. The medals jingled together in her right palm. She stared down at them.

She
pressed her hand over her mouth and closed her eyes. Then, she squeezed them shut as a terrible shudder ran from the top of her spine to her heels, and pain jabbed every corner of her ribcage. She tried to suck in a breath, but the center of her breastbone panged, as if it was fractured, and every muscle turned to stone.

“That’s where I met Adelaide. I thought she was the prettiest thing I’d ever seen. Hair like sunshine…She and I both hated city life, even though she’d been born there. We wanted some fresh air. Different scenery. So we got married and headed west. Bought a claim in Kansas…”

Kestrel’s left hand fumbled for the back of the chair. She leaned against it, her legs turning to water as she closed her right hand.

“Now all I have to do is find Jakiv and force him to send me back, before the time he arrived. I’ll get Ada away from that place, and when they show up neither of us will be there. And she’ll be alive again.”

Kestrel opened her eyes as tears fell and burned her face. She gasped, and it tore through her lungs.

She slowly leaned sideways and sat heavily on the armrest of the chair. Bowing her head, heedless of her tears, she watched through blurred vision as her thumb wandered back and forth across both medals.

And finally, for the first time ever, she addressed the only other entity on the ship able to answer her honestly.

“Cabin Computer 301,” she
said, her voice quaking. “What is your designation?”

“
Hello, April Johnson
,” a calm female voice answered as a green light blinked to life over the door. “
My name is Kith
.”

“Hello, Kith,” Kestrel
said, clearing her throat and closing her eyes again. “Sorry we’ve neglected you.”

“No need for apologies, April Johnson
,” she replied. “I am here at your service.”

Kestrel drew in another careful breath. She shivered, then blinked her eyes open.

“Can you answer a few questions for me?”

“Certainly, April Johnson.”

Kestrel weakly held up the medals.

“What medals are these?
What age are they?”

“Scanning,” Ki
th told her. A moment later, she spoke. “The star-shaped medal, surrounded by a laurel wreath, is the Medal of Honor in its oldest format. First initiated by President Abraham Lincoln of the United States during the American Civil War. Issued for conspicuous heroism and gallantry under fire. This particular medal dates to circa 1860’s. The other is a Purple Heart, issued for wounding or death sustained on the field of battle in the service of the United States Military. This particular medal dates to circa 1960’s.”

Kestrel steadied herself as she put her hand down.

“Thank you, Kith. A few more questions.”

“Certainly, April Johnson.”

“Was there ever an American Civil War Medal of Honor recipient named…” She swallowed hard, then made herself go on. “Named Jack Wolfe?”

“Searching…” Kith said. “Affirmative. Would you like the details?”

Kestrel’s brow knotted.

“Yes. P
lease.”

“
Please direct your attention to your entertainment console.”

Kestrel stepped toward it as the
room’s lights darkened and a floating screen popped up from the console.

It showed a
large black-and-white picture of a group of men standing outside sagging cloth tents. They all wore weather-beaten, dark wool uniforms with high collars and bright buttons. Hats sat crookedly on all their heads. One row of men squatted on the ground. Another row stood behind them. And one man stood taller than all the rest.

“
This man, highlighted for you
,” Kith said, brightening the tallest man and dimming the others. He stood with his arms folded, a very long gun cradled carelessly between them. He lifted his chin at the camera. He had a close-shaven mustache and beard and a hard set to his mouth—but Kestrel would recognize those flashing eyes anywhere.

“Lieutenant John Angus Wolfe, known as Jack the Giant, of the First Massachusetts Cavalry.
Shot in the battle of Cedar Creek while saving the lives of four men whose horses had been killed by cannon fire. While wounded, he rode directly into enemy fire and, by rifle, pistol and saber, eliminated the Confederate soldiers manning three cannons, providing his unit with the opportunity to capture vital ground.”

“Any
further information?” Kestrel whispered, stepping as close as she could, unblinking.

“Yes. After cessation of hostilities, he married Adelaide Barnes in Boston, Massachusetts, bought a claim in eastern Kansas and traveled west
with her. No other record of this man exists beyond that point.”

“Nothing?”

“No, April Johnson,” Kith said. “No record of children, purchases of any kind, employment, census results or obituaries in that century.”

“Wait—so there’s record of him in
another
century?” Kestrel clarified.

“Yes, April Johnson.”

The picture changed to a color photo of a young, blonde man in a very antique suit, ducking into a vehicle—and just behind him bent Wolfe’s tall, powerful form. He wore his leather jacket, now.

“In the year 2050. A bodyguard to Robert Conrad, successful businessman
and landowner.” The picture changed again—to one of Wolfe straddling a lean but very classic motorcycle as a pit-stop man handed him a helmet. “Again in the year 2142, as a driver employed by an Edward Conrad, owner of BlitzBikes International Racing—a company that soon branched into weapon making. Again in 2234, as part of a security detail in seven different night clubs, all owned by an Ethan Conrad, entertainment tycoon.” In this picture, Wolfe stood with several other burly men in the shadows of a crowded bar.

“Again in 2326,” Kith went on. “As advisor to David Co
nrad, and co-founder of Project Unfettered, an anti-human-trafficking organization.”

In
this
picture, Wolfe wore much finer clothes—sleeker, more expensive, black—as he stood, hands in pockets, next to a shorter, earnest-faced young man at a mirror-topped table. Wolfe’s head tilted thoughtfully, and he watched the other young man.

“The latest information about him dates to 2814 when he entered
the intensive care unit of Hospital B-864 in Atlanta, Georgia following a near-fatal vehicle collision involving two motorcycles and two multi-passenger vehicles. He underwent surgery, stabilized, then disappeared without checking out.”

Kestrel did nothing for a moment—then pressed both hands to the sides of her head.
For a very long time she stayed motionless, the last picture glowing in front of her. Her eyes unfocused as the room faded into the background.

“Will you be needing me further, April Johnson?”

Kestrel’s head came up.

Her eyes narrowed.

“One more question…” she decided. “What did Jack say to me before he left?”

“His last phrase?”

“Yes.”

“’Thanks for sticking with me, Brown Eyes,’”
Kith quoted. “’Left hand pocket.’”

“L
eft hand pocket…” Kestrel mused. She turned around, hunting…

The sleeve of his leather jacket stuck out from under his bed.

Kestrel stared at it—then put the medals on the chair, hurried to his bed, knelt and tugged it out. His book bumbled onto the floor, but she hardly noticed. She wrestled the heavy coat around, found the left side pocket and stuffed her hand into it.

Nothing. Not even lint.

She opened the coat up, groping for an inside pocket. There wasn’t one. Gritting her teeth, she stuck her hand into the outside left pocket again and pulled it inside out.

She blinked.

Two ink-written words stained the lining.

DIARY DOTS

“Diary dots…” she whispered. Her head came around—her attention fell on the book. She dropped the coat and snatched it up. She opened the cover and turned past the first blank page, and arrived at the initial Shakespearian sonnet.

Let me not to the marriage of true minds

Admit impediments. Love is not love

Which alters when it alteration finds,

Or bends with the remover to remove:

O no! it is an ever-fixed mark

That looks on tempests and is never shaken;

It is the star to every wandering bark,

Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.

Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks

Within his bending sickle's compass come:

Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,

But bears it out even to the edge of doom.

If this be error and upon me proved,

I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

-William Shakespeare

She slowed, reading the words much more carefully this time…

And caught sight of something she hadn’t before.

Dots. Light dots, made with graphite.

“There’s marks underneath certain letters,” she said aloud.

“Perhaps it is a cryptogram,” Kith suggested. “A code in which certain letters in a selected work of unrelated—”

“I know, I’ve read
Sherlock Holmes
,” Kestrel waved her off, staring at the letters marked out by the dots. “Put these letters up on a screen for me,” she instructed, getting up and walking back over toward the entertainment console. “And bring up the lights.”

“Yes, April Johnson.”

The lights came up, and Kestrel scanned the lines painstakingly, careful not to miss a single mark, and told her findings to Kith. When she came to the end of the sonnet, she lifted her eyes to the screen.

stationlevelone

threesickslawsonbrandandwilliam

“Station level one,” Kestrel read under her breath. “Three sicks…Six! The number six! There wasn’t a
n X, so he had to use the ‘sick’ in the word ‘sickle’…Three- six-Lawson-Brand-and-William.”

She stared. Then, her heart began to speed up. She flipped to the next sonnet.

No, Time, thou shalt not boast that I do change:

Thy pyramids built up with newer might

To me are nothing novel, nothing strange;

They are but dressings of a former sight.

Our dates are brief, and therefore we admire

What thou dost foist upon us that is old,

And rather make them born to our desire

Than think that we before have heard them told.

Thy registers and thee I both defy,

Not wondering at the present nor the past,

For thy records and what we see doth lie,

Made more or less by thy continual haste.

This I do vow and this shall ever be;

I will be true, despite thy scythe and thee.

“Okay, are you ready, Kith?”

“Certainly.”

Kestrel read the next letters she found.

levelto

tentheodorefourten

“Level to…To what? Oh—level
two.
There wasn’t a W. Okay, Level two: ten-Theodore-four-ten.”

She paused—and suspicions
broke loose in her head. Quickly, she turned to the next poem…

Her golden hair in ringlets fair,

her eyes like diamonds shining

Her slender waist, her heavenly face,

that leaves my heart still pining

Ye gods above oh hear my prayer

to my beauteous fair to find me

And send me safely back again,

to the girl I left behind me.’”

“’The bee shall honey taste no more,

the dove become a ranger

The falling waters cease to roar,

ere I shall seek to change her

The vows we made to heav'n above

shall ever cheer and bind me

In constancy to her I love,

the girl I left behind me.

Nothing. Only ink. Not a single graphite mark. Kestrel hesitated. Was that the end of the code? Biting her lip, she turned the page…

Job, chapter three. ‘Let the day perish wherein I was born, and the night in which it was said, There is a man child conceived. Let that day be darkness; let not God regard it from above, neither let the light shine upon it. Let darkness and the shadow of death be upon it; let the bl
ackness of the day terrify it.’