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  Despite the protective field created by the peeps, he felt the g’s trying to mesh them into the metal walls, make them part of it in a way detrimental to their survival. Without the peeps, it would have worked. More than the last time, he sensed their efforts to protect them, felt their strain and an enhanced meshing with him. The bug spun around them as the anomaly tried to reach out for them. Then the bottom, quite literally, dropped out. Arms and peeps wrapped around Emily, he managed to twist so he was down when they thumped against a wooden floor. Above them the bug popped, like a balloon, in a flash of red light—taking—he had to assume though he shouldn’t—Twitchet with it.

  FIFTEEN

  Ashe backtracked the Constilinium trail and studied the branches, hoping for her instincts to give a kick, or maybe Lurch would get some insight from the exercise, but he seemed as puzzled as she was. There shouldn’t be any Constilinium in the Milky Way, let alone on Earth. In her time, in the history she knew, Earth and Keltinar had traded women, not Constilinium. The mineral deposits had been found back around the same time as Earth’s first excursions into space, but learning how to use it was a recent advancement—well, recent to her real time. And Keltinar kept the limited supply for their use. Limited supply. Had it been plentiful until someone had started shipping it to Earth in the past?

  The traces we are tracking don’t indicate large amounts, but shipped Constilinium wouldn’t show up as trace elements in the stream. So the mineral we’re tracking is being used as a power source.

  It’s being used as a power source before it was discovered and commercialized, she amended. In its natural form the substance was highly unstable. Not a lot of data available, but what she had indicated this problem had slowed commercialization. Her thoughts tracked back to the whole Garradian/Keltinar/Earth connection—or lack of enough connections would be a better description. How had that happened? She felt Lurch give a twitch

  Do you know something that you don’t think I need to know? Because I think I need to know it.

  Lurch hesitated and she could almost feel his bits running data. I have data that someone has interfered in the Keltinar time line on at least two previous occasions in altered time.

  Ashe didn’t ask for details. Altered time had been altered. It was enough to know someone considered the world fair game. That seemed to indicate all Constilinium trails were suspect. None of which told her which one would lead her to her quarry.

  The trails varied in intensity, but none of them seemed to vary in the same direction. There’d been considerable traffic across the time stream, further muddying things. The faint trails appeared to be older. She shifted closer, sniffing the one that had landed her in the middle of Roswell. It still smelled off in some way. She shifted to the others, giving them a sniff, too. Only the track heading away from Earth smelled different, smelled not off.

  What is not off?

  Not helpful, so she ignored him. Had something happened to alter the basic composition of the Constilinium after it reached Earth?

  It would take something substantial to alter Constilinium.

  For no reason she could produce, her thoughts drifted back to that thing she’d seen, the metal almost bug-like thing. That device had emitted steam, but it would take more than steam to make it vanish like it had, wouldn’t it? Steam. Do you have any data available on steam engines? He dumped a bunch into her brain, then helped her sort for the most pertinent. Yeah, the math didn’t add up. No way steam made it vanish like that. It had wheels, she recalled now. Might be enough to propel it forward if it hadn’t been inside that structure. It had vanished in what appeared to be some type of time jump if she had read the aura right, and could have arrived that way. No door big enough to bring it in that she saw during her quick stop there, though that didn’t mean there wasn’t one. She reran the data from her arrival. There had been a heat signature before it vanished, but not enough for a time jump.

  Commercial Constilinium, when it was stable, operated in a state of cold heat, with hot heat at the core, and cold heat wrapped around it—a process it had taken seasons upon seasons to discover and refine. They had no data to explain the formulas of cold heat, of course. The Keltinarian government had classified the technical data on Constilinium. But what they did know, it wouldn’t take a large amount of Constilinium to propel that thing through space and time, though they would need more than a power source to do it. It would also require a sophisticated time tracking system.

  What do you suppose it was?

  There is no match for it in the historical record.

  That didn’t mean as much as it should. They both had reason to know the record could and probably had been altered, but Lurch’s memory was better than the historical record. And it couldn’t be tampered with—that they also knew.

  They were defending it before I arrived. They were positioned around it despite taking heavy fire from the automatons. Or they were using it as shield. Hard to know which at this point. She considered the three men she’d seen before her jump back into the stream. An odd group, though she couldn’t put her finger on why. They hadn’t dressed like a military unit, but they’d acted and reacted like one. Lurch seemed to still inside her, a heads up he knew something about them? About the machine? Now that she thought about it, his “there is no match for it” was in the zone of a non-answer to her question. Anything to do with the altered time line made his prickles go up, well, it felt like they went up, even though he hadn’t any. She knew from experience he wouldn’t give until he had to, so she shifted mental direction.

  Why would any of them care about the machine? It was an anachronism, a curiosity, based on what she’d seen of it, even with the introduction of Constilinium. The exterior reminded her of an ancient cast iron pot. If it had been jumping through time, she was surprised it had held together. The Constilinium was a curious choice, if it had been the power source. Earth had more available, not to mention more stable power sources, and according to Lurch, in the time they’d landed, Earth had had access to the Kikk time/space portal, so why would they need a clunky time machine? Seemed unlikely they were after it for that, and that type of steam engine was old school, too. So, other than the curiosity factor, what was worth fighting over about it? And, the more important question in her mind, what was Smith’s interest in the machine?

  Smith must know that energy signatures could be tracked, so it was possible he was after people associated with the machine, not the machine itself. But he’d need to know that the trail would lead where he wanted to go, that the people he targeted were near the machine. Could their time tamperer be using Constilinium as a beacon, hoping to stay under the Service’s radar? Could the machine be bait for someone?

  The trail would lack precision. Lurch felt intrigued by the idea, though. It seems to be all over the stream. Difficult to track.

  Smith was the link, the key. Her gut kicked, confirming it. I need you to do a search for all encounters or briefings about Smith. Who was around during the briefings. Dates. Weird ass machines. Anything out of the ordinary. And in the ordinary. And that place, see if you can find out what and when it was.

  He jerked and she realized he had already looked, already knew. If she’d doubted he was holding out on her, she didn’t anymore.

  Why the cover up?

  Some things shouldn’t be undone.

  Okay, she could accept that the Time Council was not all wise, or all knowing, even before she met them. Cleaning up the time line was a fine goal, but like anything one did, there were consequences that rippled out from the clean-up. People got erased, others never met, or met the wrong people first. Crap happened.

  Smith caused it, didn’t he?

  That’s unclear, though he did make an appearance. His reluctance to talk about it dragged at her insides, hit at the basic trust that had to exist between nanite and host.

  Is the machine a side event or signpost? That was the question she couldn’t answer without following up. Lurch knew that. She si
ghed, or the equivalent of it in the stream.

  I won’t press it, but if it becomes need to know, you have to tell me. She felt something that might be agreement. It unsettled. It was the first time they’d been this out of sync since they integrated. Half angry with him, exhaustion pulling at her, she picked a trail at random and headed along it, feeling the discordance of time with all her senses. Whatever Lurch’s feelings about what he refused to tell her, someone was fubar-ing time. And time was fighting back. She paused, letting it flow in and around her, taking time’s pulse. Time wasn’t winning the battle. It wasn’t losing, not yet, but it wasn’t winning either. It was a bad time to be in the stream. It felt different, uncomfortable in ways her suit couldn’t completely filter out. The turbulence ramped up again, slowing her progress, which turned out to be a good thing. The trail went from thin to a huge splatter—as if something had entered the stream and exploded. The Constilinium pattern was both huge and wide and deep.

  What Ashe—and Lurch agreed with her on this—found even more disturbing, time had smoothed around the event. No eddies, no turbulence, no unhappy, nothing left to follow or track. In fact, if time could purr, it was. This was just a battle, but time appeared to have won it. Which led, inevitably, to the question of who had lost?

  * * * *

  Emily wasn’t sure how she’d ended up on top instead of on the bottom like they started, and hadn’t figured it out, when Robert rolled and sprang to his feet, taking her with him. She didn’t know how he did that either. It felt like he was on strings or something, he moved so fast. It wasn’t like she was a lightweight. Good thing he didn’t let go, because she’d have gone down again from what his swift move did to her equilibrium. A room—not the bug—spun past her bemused gaze before settling into place. Her stomach followed a few seconds later. She blinked. At least she hadn’t hurled. Yet. She should probably move away from him in case she did. Instead she eased closer and got a grip on his shirt. Because she liked being close. Not because she was scared or anything. When she was almost sure opening her mouth wouldn’t result in spewing, she offered, “We’re back at my museum.”

  He tensed. “No, we’re not.”

  If she asked questions, she’d have asked him what his problem was. She could see Uncle E’s desk, Olivia’s desk, the fake wood floor—her thoughts started to falter—but she pressed on. Smelled right. Workbenches, the staircase—

  Staircase? Shock hit, slowing everything but her hearing. The clop of horses’ hooves against cobblestone. The jingle of their harnesses. Wheel sounds? Chattering people?

  She liked where she was, with Robert supporting knees turned weak, so she limited her survey to what could be seen without moving anything but her head. It was all here, but more, so much more. In shadows wooden crates loomed in haphazard patterns. The workbenches were there, but not neat like in the drawings. Mounds of shavings dotted areas around the workbenches. The desks weren’t that neat either. Something else was missing.

  Emily angled her head one way, then the other.

  “The bug’s gone. Uncle E’s gone.”

  “I know.” Robert’s voice rumbled against the parts of her pressed against his parts and his breath puffed against her cheek. “We’re lucky we’re not gone with it. I think the anomaly intersected with the Abrams ball.”

  The fact that they were discussing any kind of energy ball, let alone an Abram’s ball, bothered her, but then a lot of things bothered her at the moment, the biggie, she might have to ask an actual question, which was as scary as blowing up, even though she knew it shouldn’t be. A question such as where are we? Only she had this awful feeling she already knew. It’s not that she had a problem with time travel, well, she did, but she also didn’t. It was possible to believe in time travel, but not believe in time travel. She’d certainly never expected to travel through time. Not that she had to believe it or expect it until one of them said it out loud. And Uncle E? She’d just started to get used to being in same place with him, okay used to wasn’t quite right, but she had gotten over some of the shock of it, and now he was gone again, possibly exploded. If she’d vaporized her dead great-great-great uncle, then she didn’t want to know.

  She almost frowned. Was it possible to explode a dead uncle?

  “Do you know where we are?” he asked the question in the same way one might approach a ticking bomb—and he’d done it in a way that put her dealing with the answer. It felt like a trap until she looked at him.

  The look in his eyes made the bottom drop out again. Her fingers dug into his back. He didn’t wince. He did offer a kind of crooked half smile. His half smile packed the emotional punch of anyone else’s mega-watt smile. Oh my darling. The snicker was so slight she almost missed it. She was staring at Robert, and mashed up against him, so it didn’t come from him, but if she looked for who did it, she’d have to take her eyes off him. Nothing was worth that.

  “Maybe.” If they were talking a walk into crazy, she didn’t want to go first.

  Now his grip tightened. “I can get us home, even without the bug. I—” He hesitated, as if what he wanted to say was harder to believe than what was currently on the table. “I just need to take a look around and then we’ll…go. Can you stick close while I do that?”

  She nodded again. Sticking close was good. She liked close. She could do stick, too. That was even better than close. One of his hands slid down her arm, the fingers meshing with hers, his grip just shy of painful. She let him turn them, though she stayed close enough to his side—purely in the interests of sticking—that walking was challenging for them both. He didn’t say anything, but the side of his mouth did that half smile quirk again. Thinking tried to happen inside her head. She didn’t have to be smart to know that would be dumb. Thinking could only lead to panic. He hadn’t said don’t panic, but the words were implied in the question. Besides the panic, thinking might lead to questions. She didn’t want to imagine the kind of answers she’d get with time travel on the table, even if neither of them had said it out loud.

  Leaving the thought inside her head didn’t help as much as she’d hoped. She let her mind cautiously approach the idea of actual, real time travel from her stuck position against Robert. On the one hand, she was into steampunk, so of course she believed in time travel. And alternate realities and universes, but—

  Believe or don’t believe, just don’t be wishy-washy about it. Words of her Grandma, words she’d had no trouble living by until today. Believe or don’t believe. He believed. Maybe she could believe in him and let the rest of it find its level or drain away. It was a sad fact, universally acknowledged by no one but her that she wanted to believe him no matter what crazy place they might be heading. But, and this was a big one, aside from her desire to not be gullible, there were some actual facts in the column of supporting evidence.

  Running into Uncle E in the desert topped the list, of course, though he seemed to have vanished with the bug. Not a happy line of thought, so she mentally returned to the time travel evidence. It felt very Law and Order to think of it that way. Robert had had the key to the bug. He knew the combination to unlock the bug and other things about it. And Carey talked like he knew stuff about it, too. Robert wasn’t at all surprised by being…here. The distant call of a newsie kicked at the legs of her precarious calm. A horse whinnied close to the double wooden doors. Light poked through a hundred breaches in the walls, enough to provide dim light as Robert headed for the filing cabinet again. He needed his hand, so she shifted her grip to his upper arm and looked down at the desk. Uncle E’s desk. His actual desk? A newspaper lay askew atop a pile of papers and other stuff. The headline was big and bold, but it was the date that caught her attention.

  May 3, 1894. Two weeks before Uncle E’s vanishing act. If one didn’t count his reappearance, and re-disappearance…if she’d had any doubt where she was, the newspaper did a lot to erase it—

  They didn’t sketch it the way they found it. Great-great-great grandma and her sibs had faked
it. It was kind of funny. And much easier to think about than time travel. When her body and thoughts unfroze she might just laugh. Those drawings were a cleaned up version of this. They’d edited out as much of the warehouse as they could, too. It must have embarrassed them that he lived and worked in a place like this. The heat, the smell, the sounds made it more…lowbrow—a place Emily had no problem with since she lived in lowbrow the same way she lived in sad. So much for their faithful accuracy. She soaked it in, a bubble of laughter rising in her throat and beads of sweat running down her back inside the duster coat. Sweat was real. The heat was real. The sounds were real, too. And just like that she felt her thoughts adjust. She was in 1894. She was in the past. She took a steadying breath. The world didn’t implode around her. Even felt a kind of glow of virtue at not melting down. Way weird. She looked around her because weird made her knees wobbly even if she didn’t melt down. It’s not like she was a stranger to crazy.

  She’d seen the bug appear.

  She’d traveled in it to Roswell. Had that been the past, too? Could she have seen, with her own eyes, the original Roswell alien event? That might be cooler than meeting her not-dead-then-dead-again great uncle.

  Even more amazing, had she seen it and failed to take a single picture with her cell phone? Time travel? No problem. Failing to record it? Stupid! She dug around for her phone, her fingers brushing against the Emergency Absquatulation Device. Felt a bit of unease about that now that they’d kissed and stuff, but not enough to give it back. Robert might be persuaded to let her keep it, but that not-Jones? No way. She moved on, her fingers closing around her phone, careful not to break contact with Robert, though she wasn’t sure why she felt it was critical to stay in physical contact, other than the whole hot-for-him aspect, and he’d asked her to, so she should, because he asked. It kind of balanced out grabbing the EAD. Maybe.

  “What are you doing?” He sounded amused and maybe a bit bemused?