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  Lurch may have shrugged. She wanted to protest the pairing but on its face it made sense. She was the least experienced. He was, on data screen, the most experienced, though she wouldn’t put it past him to try and lose her in the stream and then blame it on her.

  Let’s hope he does.

  Lurch had a point. If he lost her, then she could go do what the Council should be asking them to do: find the source of the time instability. If she could get to the time station ahead of Selnick, she could check the data—

  Ashe felt her insides jerk. If I was going to remove a tracker—

  —a station is the only place someone would know for sure where they would be.

  It was standard procedure to check in at the nearest station upon arrival in a zone. It was the fastest way to get updated time data, not available when one was in the stream.

  Lurch managed to sound both pleased at her insight and grim at what it meant if someone was deliberately targeting trackers and using these safe stations to do it.

  It was close to impossible to find a place or a time, to locate a specific person, in the morass that was the time stream. Trackers followed disruptions, unnatural eddies, they followed wrong time and tried to fix it without triggering a reset. A tracker could know a name, a history, and the time they lived in, but it was still close to impossible to make a pinpoint arrival without a beacon already in place to ride in, or a time disruption to follow—which still had a plus or minus factor that varied with the expertise of the tracker. Even the original Garradians had worked in plus or minus one-to-one-hundred year increments. Sometimes observers, sometimes time pins, were inserted into a trouble spot. They might wait years in place before being able to enact their “fix.”

  The outpost used special beacons that sent out a dedicated signal for trackers and wardens to use to get back to the right time and place, but even with beacons, it was challenging to arrive on square. As far as Ashe knew, she was the only tracker who could come in hot and then do a sideslip so she’d arrive just off her mark. She liked to get there early and watch them watching for her. Her supervisor thought she was just sloppy about her arrivals, but what if someone else realized it was with intent? Could the breach have been intended to trap her? But how would they know which way she’d slip? She never made the same move the same way. And every now and again, she arrived exactly where she was supposed to just to mess with her supervisor’s head.

  A thread of bitch runs through your family.

  That truth didn’t hurt as much as it should have.

  The time breach might not be all about you.

  Got a bit of bitch in you, too. But he did have a point. What if it had been her fault? What if her sideslip had somehow pierced the alternate reality? It had appeared to be a slice of life, not a whole scale alternate reality. Or worse, what if someone had created it and she’d accidentally landed inside it?

  If someone can do that—

  Ashe didn’t blame him for not knowing a word to describe how bad that could be. How dangerous. We don’t know what research has gone on here, or is going on or will go on. The fact that it involved the base seems to indicate sanctioned research.

  Or someone is trying to take over the base.

  Aren’t you cheerful and optimistic this morning? Not that she could fault his pessimism after what they’d seen and felt in the stream, or what she sensed now. Took a delusional Council to go for optimistic at the moment.

  “You will activate your emergency beacons and keep them activated for the duration of the drill.”

  Ashe didn’t like that, didn’t like being tracked for any reason, but she did it—for now. It’s not like they all wouldn’t rejoice if she managed to get lost. And she could shut it off as soon as she was off the base.

  The Controller walked the line of trackers, checking the integrity of each signal with his gear before stepping back with a nod.

  Carig glanced at Ashe, unable to hide his distaste. Not only was she a woman, and a descendent of people he hated, but her blood was “tainted” by several generations of Earth intermarriage—and a couple of other planets from other galaxies. Too bad for him her family had the influence to get her in. They’d always been loaded with pretty and power.

  In some way, she believed the chemistry of her “tainted” blood heightened her sensitivity to time. Time tracking could be taught to some extent, but if one didn’t have the instincts for it, they ended up like Selnick—in it, but only able to do the most pedestrian tasks. Time sent up warnings when it went off true, but the resulting wake could muddy the trails, hiding the epicenter. In all her senses, she felt the trail, saw the slight differences in the threads, heard it like the out of tune notes of a harmonious, even smelled the nuances in time’s flow. The Council couldn’t know how she could track without being her, something they’d hate with every fiber of their beings if they did know. Living out of time hadn’t ended their girl issues.

  The more things change, the more they don’t. Lurch’s thoughts were tinged with wry humor. Prejudice is a constant, just the object of it changes. And as challenging as it sometimes is, it is good they don’t know what you can do.

  Ashe homed in on a flicker of something he hadn’t said. Do you think one of them is involved?

  If someone is manipulating time, it would require a high-level cover-up to manipulate records and sensors.

  It was true that the sensor logs did not reflect what she’d felt in the stream prior to her arrival, but it was hard to see any of the five as a mastermind. It was possible one of them was being played by a mastermind. Or, like her, someone was hiding who they were and what they could do. If I were an evil genius, would I hide in annoying or bland?

  You would have to hide in annoying.

  Funny. Through her lashes, she studied Glarmere, Carig, and Faustus, the three members that Lurch knew from the past.

  Their records are impeccable.

  But one of them bothers you. She felt a kick of something. That alternate time line again?

  I have known Glarmere and Carig when they were less impeccable. But it would be unfair to judge either by behavior they did not, and have not done.

  Ashe wasn’t required to be fair, but he did have a point. Ashe let her attention drift to Faustus, though she took care to make sure he didn’t see her looking. If bland had its own center of the universe, it would probably be him. Despite his ugly mug, he looked bland, sleepy even. He shifted as if he sensed being watched, so she moved on to the last two Council members, the ones Lurch didn’t know. If they were hiding in bland, they were doing a really good job of it.

  No quivers about those two? Lurch mentally shrugged.

  Did that mean they had checked in from the future, or just that he’d never met them? The one on the end looked meek enough to be Keltinarian—

  Ashe tensed as she felt her sense of off time heighten, felt the clarity of the track she needed to follow, and knew that it wouldn’t last. Like ripples on the water’s surface, the disturbance would fan out, getting wider and bigger, and harder to follow.

  Time and tide wait for no man.

  It didn’t help that she felt odd, almost itchy, in this time that wasn’t quite real time. Her time senses didn’t like the slower base time. Her expression stayed neutral even as her instincts insisted that this disturbance threatened her, that she had to go now. If a paradox formed in the midst of an instability of this magnitude—the complexity of time, having the past, the present and the future rubbing together, settled an ache behind her eyes. Even as Lurch acted to ease the pain, Ashe smoothed her thoughts. One of the real dangers of time tracking was becoming overwhelmed by the complexities of it and falling into a time spiral.

  Carig finally fell silent. That helped the headache, too.

  Selnick came in on her five o’clock and hissed, “Keep up or be left behind, woman.”

  Yeah, he joined the service from the past.

  Another, bigger shock wave hit the perimeter, which was bad, but also go
od since it kept her from responding in a manner sure to be bad for her career. The tremors couldn’t reach into the Center, but they rocked against the edges, creating eddies in time within the shield. Being out of time wasn’t total protection, not when the threat intensified with each occurrence. No one seemed to notice but Ashe. They needed to act—

  Patience.

  Only when two of the Council members shifted restlessly did Carig finally nod to the Controller.

  “Trackers.” The Controller paused. “Deploy.”

  SIX

  Black ops and geek battled for dominance as the shaking intensified. It was simple good manners to steady Emily. Good manners had never felt so excellent. Did she crowd in close as dust showered them from the old beams? Fyn was the only one not flattened against the wall, though he had positioned himself under a sturdy wooden beam. There was a blinding flash and when Robert’s vision cleared, there it was, a hissing mass of bug-like metal squatting in the center of the museum.

  “That’s it,” Carey said, as if the question might be in doubt.

  The Emerg—the EAD buzzed like an angry fly. He started to shut it off, but stopped. If it had summoned the machine, and evidence suggested it had, would shutting it off send it away again? Until he knew where it had been, until he could gain control, might be better to let it buzz.

  Emily’s mouth opened, the shape right for an almost question, then closed. She wobbled once, giving him a chance to steady her before he turned to the device, using caution he had no problem admitting to himself. It appeared to be an annoyed bug at the moment. Other than the angry hissing, bigger and louder than the EAD, it was much as Carey had described it during the initial debriefing.

  Somewhat oblong in shape and metallic in appearance, it looked like a mutation of a car and an upside down train, with a little rocket ship stirred in. An inverted fan of dark metal at the front could be rolled back to reveal a view port or window shield. The wheels resembled those on an old stagecoach, but were metal and black. The surface was also black and a bit dusty. It appeared to be made from sheets of metal fastened together with rivets. In addition to the wheels it had a series of fins along the side and front. The wheels were retracted, the bug-like legs weren’t. There would be a hatch on the other side.

  He took another step toward it. Emily did too. She reached out as if afraid it was a mirage, and poked it with her finger.

  “It’s real.”

  “Yes.” He felt like the moment called for more, but didn’t know what that more might be.

  The edges of her mouth curved up. One finger became five, and then both hands made white fans against the dark surface. She leaned in and hugged it. Robert felt a stab of jealousy that made his nanites snicker.

  “I’m going to need a bigger museum.” The words came out on a delighted sigh.

  He looked at Ric and Carey, and peripherally, Fyn. Carey shrugged. Ric looked away. As if she sensed the attempted plot against her right of ownership, Emily turned, her back against the machine now, her posture defensive and unafraid of facing four guys, all of them bigger than she was. Not that she was in danger from them, but she didn’t know that. The angle of her chin told him she didn’t care.

  “It’s in my museum. It belongs to me.”

  “She has a point,” Carey said, not helpfully. “Though you are going to have a tough time explaining how it got here.”

  “I’ll think of something.” She turned back and hugged it again. It hissed steam, though whether it was a positive or negative response was unclear. Her hands swept up, started down. Stopped. She looked up. “Someone bent my bug.”

  Robert studied the spot, then looked at Carey.

  He shook his head, indicted the other side with the jerk of his chin.

  Robert touched the surface now, surprised to find it warm. He’d expected hot, with the steam still venting from the rear of the machine. He spread his hand across the surface, processing the sensation of touching, feeling an impossible machine, his fingers sliding into the indentation. Despite the veracity of the witnesses he had not, until this moment, believed this thing was real. His nanites dived in, as curious as he was, deploying drones. The nanites had, on occasion, been able to seize control of various ships’ systems in the Garradian Universe, and the hope was that they could do the same with the transmogrification machine. His link with them was active and easy this close, but thanks to his mental ability to multitask, he could continue to process other data, and watch Emily. He didn’t mind admitting that he liked watching Emily more than processing data.

  Her eyes widened. Her brows pulled together. Had she seen the brief flash of light that indicated nanite movement? Surely now she’d ask? Instead she stared. In some ways, it was more effective than a question. Did she do it on purpose? Her need to not ask warred with his need not to tell. She had more practice, but they had an audience that didn’t know about the nanites. That trumped her need to not ask, but still get answers. Or should have. He turned from the imperative he wasn’t sure he could resist and headed around the machine to the hatch.

  Emily—and her imperative—followed. So did his team.

  Robert studied the surface, looking for evidence that disputed Carey’s story about his original encounter with the bug. Instead he found the dent. Right where he said it would be. Size fit the bruise that almost took out Carey’s portal tracking device during his accidentally aborted test flight through the Garradian space-time portal.

  Emily reached up and touched the dent, her hand too small to fill it, her brows drawn together, but no question passed her lips.

  “There’s the way in,” Carey pointed out, again not necessary, though it did break up the uneasy silence a bit. A very small bit. That too was as described. Seven locks, six that looked and acted like combination locks. The seventh needed a key.

  “You knew.” Emily looked at Robert, her expression stuck somewhere between two emotions.

  He could make a reasonable guess which two.

  “No.” It hadn’t even occurred to him the machine would come here. “I think the Emergency Ab—the EAD summoned it.” He felt sure she’d start asking questions now. It wasn’t natural, it wasn’t normal not to ask questions. Not that he knew that much about natural or normal. But he did know about questions. “I suspect it acts like a homing beacon for the machine.”

  First reports from the nanites were troubling. They dealt in technology, primarily computer driven technology. This machine was from the 1890’s. No computers. Not their kind of technology, though they’d found much that made no sense to them. Not that he or they could think of anything that would make sense to them in a transmogrification machine from the 1890’s that had just traveled through time…again. Rather than engage in fruitless speculation, Robert asked, can you find out what’s wrong with the transmogrification drive?

  The what?

  He ignored the mild attempt at sarcasm. Or perhaps humor. Hard to know when neither they nor he was good at it. Look for something that doesn’t fit with basic steam engine design, he suggested, though he wasn’t sure that would work. A lot could be not standard in a steam engine designed in the 1890’s by an eccentric genius.

  Emily reached for one of the locks.

  “Don’t—” Robert caught her hand. “There’s a sequence to opening them.”

  “That only we, well, he knows,” Ric pointed out.

  “And it will disappear again if we don’t get in there and stop it,” Carey tossed in.

  Robert didn’t correct him, because he was no longer sure he, with or without the nanites, could get control in time to stop the drive from kicking on again if it were malfunctioning. His only hope was that the EAD would anchor it in this time and place.

  Her lips formed a suspicious pout, her gaze shifting between Robert and Carey several times. What was she thinking? How could she not ask the obvious? Instead, she nodded and gave him a couple of inches of room to work in. The scent he’d thought was hers drifted around him, confirming his hy
pothesis. He lacked the necessary data to break down the notes into flowers or girl, but it was pleasing. He had to force himself to focus on the locks and shunt her scent to a side thought track. In this case it was a positive to be able to focus on more than one thing, so he enjoyed the girl smells while he studied the locks.

  Twitchet had adapted each lock himself. All seven were different and required special handling. The order they were manipulated mattered, too. One had letters, two used numbers—natural and Roman—and the others used a variety of themed symbols. The sequence began with the hieroglyphics lock. Robert handed Emily the EAD. She gave it a doubtful look, shook it, held it up to her ear, then shrugged and tucked it in one of her many pockets.

  Robert worked the first lock before moving to the second lock from the top. He wouldn’t know if he’d done it right until it opened. Or didn’t.

  “No rush, Professor,” Ric said, looking over his shoulder like he expected to get jumped.

  “I could shoot them,” Fyn offered.

  Emily’s eyes narrowed when Robert shook his head. Four locks out of way. He did the last two, then extracted the key Olivia had entrusted to him with an understandable reluctance. She’d wanted to come with them, but no one else thought it was a good idea to have a woman from 1894 walking around 2011 Wyoming. The general didn’t like her walking around in the present on the Kikk Outpost. Carey liked her walking anywhere he was. He’d also resisted leaving her behind, but he had to follow orders.

  The key was big, ornate and still smelled of the lavender Olivia had used prior to her leap into the future. He inserted it in the lock, inhaling sharply as it flared into an eerie green. It was a good sign that he’d done the locks right and when he turned it there was a grinding, then a whirring sounded through the metal. Slowly, with a predictable hiss of steam, a crack appeared in the metal side, quickly widened by his companions. A small ornate step folded down with the widening of the opening.