Timeshares Part 23

"Duane will contact you about where to drop it off," Rick said.

I walked behind the reverend to the door and watched him. As he walked down the hallway, he pulled a handkerchief out of his pocket. He was wiping his hands when he disappeared down the stairwell.

The air seemed a bit easier to breathe with all that shine gone. "He's gone."

Duane whirled on Rick. "I'm not risking my-"

"Duane. Take it easy." Rick smiled, calm and cool as could be, like always. "All I agreed to was that he could claim credit for the Angels. I didn't say anything about who else might claim credit."

Duane whooped and slapped Rick on the back.

I couldn't meet Rick's gaze. I liked him. And I knew I was going to double-cross him.

A week later we had our explosives, and I had my plastic gun. It felt like a toy in my hand.

My friend Larry came back from his scouting trip and told me who built Stonehenge. Of course, he swore me to secrecy first, because he was expecting to make a big splash on the history reality shows. I couldn't look at him after that.

A week after that, we had our plan.

Dina, a friend who worked at the local coffee shop, took her Timeshares trip and didn't come back. Of course, Timeshares wouldn't have admitted that if anyone had asked.

There was failsafe on top of failsafe. Supposedly, no one could travel back and not return, the same way n.o.body could go back in time and change anything. The pretrip hypnotic programming prevented tampering. Supposedly it also prevented you from smashing your monitoring devices so they couldn't activate and bring you home. I guess Dina found a way around that.

Dina had wanted to see the world before it was spoiled. She had wanted to see the earth before it was overpopulated by humans and polluted by corporate greed. Now she was living in a green world without pollution, without crowding, without war or hatred, without Timeshares.

I was envious.

The night, the the night, we used a van Duane had "found" in another part of town. night, we used a van Duane had "found" in another part of town.

As we drove past Timeshares, past the elegant, U-shaped drive with its fountains splashing water from Lourdes, I tried to look at it as a first time visitor would, but I couldn't. The expensive, glittering elegance had turned lurid and gaudy for me. The lights were too bright, and the stained gla.s.s windows, imported directly from medieval England, were over the top. The Timeshares Travel Agency logo, supposedly painted with pigments from Lascaux, looked faded and tired.

We parked and Jo, Lu, and two others dispersed in different directions to find possible getaway cars and sit tight until they were needed.

Duane, Rick, and I headed toward Timeshares. We were dressed in silvery gray so that at first glance we looked like Timeshares employees.

As we walked, I thought about Rick. He and I were the only two of the group who'd been on a time trip.

There had been such an outcry when the company rolled out the red carpet for its zillionaire clientele, such fury that something like that was only available to the very rich, that a lottery system had been started. Every month, five were chosen out of the millions who'd signed up.

Rick had been one of the first TimeLotto winners. And one of the few people who'd chosen to go forward in time instead of someplace in the past.

It was surprising how most people wanted to go back in time. And it wasn't just a safety issue, though I was sure that played into it. Timeshares sent people back to scout in the past, but who could ever be sure of the future? Going forward was a c.r.a.p shoot. What someone scouted yesterday and found safe could be completely changed by the events of today.

Plus, Timeshares wouldn't let anyone go just a few years forward. They claimed there was a mental health issue involved in traveling to a time in which you were still alive, though that was c.r.a.p. I knew that after any important business decision had been made, one of the Timeshares execs traveled a few years forward to make sure they'd made the right decision.

Rick said I was the only one he'd told about what he'd seen of the future. What he'd seen was the reason he was walking beside me wearing a backpack with enough C4 in it to blow up a city block. It was the reason I was walking beside him.

As we approached the city block that housed Timeshares, Duane gave us a grinning thumbs-up and angled off toward one of the visitor parking lots.

Rick checked his watch. It was an old- fashioned one with hands that swept around and around, pointing to the minutes and hours.

I turned aside to look at mine, shielding it from him. My watch was a Timeshares Digital that showed time, date, temperature, and could be programmed to show the same information for five different continents. Or five different centuries.

Rick took a deep breath and blew it out. He gave a tiny nod and walked away toward the back of Timeshares.

I watched to make sure he turned the corner before I started off toward the front of the building. We were supposed to reconnoiter, then rendezvous on the opposite side of the block, near the delivery and service entrance. That's where Rick and Duane thought we were going to break in, after Duane's diversion had everybody's attention, after we'd called in a bomb threat for the building.

My plan was simpler.

At the employee entrance, halfway down the block, I stopped and took out the things I'd stuffed into my pockets-my Timeshares Security badge and my ID.

I held my badge up to the reader, then typed in my PIN.

The wrought iron gate, built by a famous gunslinger/ blacksmith during the period called the Old West, slid open.

I went through to a door that let me into a brightly lit hallway lined with walls of one-way gla.s.s. I could see the grounds outside, and the glittering lights from the fountain. The air was dry and overprocessed. The guard post was empty.

The door at the other end of the hall opened, and a guard came trudging toward me. Then he recognized me, and he straightened and quickstepped the rest of the distance.

"You need to send some guards along the fence," I snapped. "I saw a couple of people dressed in black walking toward the delivery gate."

He thumbed the headset in his ear and relayed my message.

A half dozen guards, all straightening their uniforms, came hustling down the hall. They breezed past me and jogged along the fence.

My guard made an officious pretense of scrutinizing the photo on my ID, then me, then the ID again.

When the explosion came, I started even though I was expecting it. The loud boom rattled the gla.s.s walls.

The guard jumped like the C4 had been set off in his pants.

Behind me, some time traveler's car went up in flames. The night sky lit up like sunrise. The reflection of red flames danced in the windows.

The guard rushed out the door, through the gate, and down the sidewalk, yelling for back-up as he went.

Another bomb went off, farther back in the parking lot, then another. That one was closer, but smaller, just like Duane had promised it would be.

I stepped outside. The smell of burning metal and synthetic fuel washed over me.

More guards poured out of the building and ran to the parking lot.

I walked back to the gate as Rick came running up. He'd made good time circling the block. "What are you doing here? What happened?"

Then he saw me. Really Really saw me. With my Timeshares Security badge and my glittering holographic Timeshares Security ID hanging from my collar. saw me. With my Timeshares Security badge and my glittering holographic Timeshares Security ID hanging from my collar.

I tugged my Timeshares cap out of my back pocket and pulled it on.

His face, so ruddy from running and from the reflection of the fire, went pale. "What-?"

"Give me the backpack."

"What-?" His mouth worked. He looked like a fish staring out through the gla.s.s of a watery prison.

"Give me the backpack. Now. Or I'll call the guards."

The hurt in his face was almost more than I could stand.

I had met Rick after the university had tossed out most of its books and made the library into a virtual theater showing vids of the past, before he won the Time Lotto. I'd heard him talking to a small group of people at a university vid premiere one night, and his voice had drawn me in. It was deep and smooth as caramel. It was a voice made for reading sonnets and poetry, not for recruiting people like Duane and me.

But maybe Rick would live to read sonnets again and make women sigh with his amazing voice. I knew if I stood there much longer, I'd try to explain everything that I was thinking, and I didn't have time for that. "Now!"

He slipped his backpack off.

I took it and slipped it on. The C4 in it was a lumpy weight in the bottom of the cloth bag. It felt like a rock against my spine.

"I'm sorry, Rick," I said. I handed him a custodian's ID that I'd pilfered. "Put this on. Walk like you're tired, but glad to be heading home. They won't pay you any attention."

I turned to go, and Rick pulled me back by my sleeve.

For a second, I thought he was going to try to stop me, but all he said was, "Why are you doing this?" His voice broke my heart. "I told you what I saw!"

I tried to smile at him, but I couldn't make my mouth move. "I mailed you a letter explaining everything."

If I was successful, the letter wouldn't make any sense, but I owed him an explanation. I whispered, "Forgive me," and I gave him a quick kiss on the cheek. Before he could protest, I shut the gate and walked back in.

The first floor was in an uproar. Guards were running to man the huge lobby with its rows upon rows of stained gla.s.s and its original, ancient Persian rugs. I had to go through a double line of guards around the main elevator system, but none of them questioned my presence. They expected to see one of the Captains of Security on a night when bombs had exploded nearby.

I got on the restricted elevator, pushed the b.u.t.ton for the lowest level, and stepped up to the retina reader when prompted. The computer recognized me. It scanned me and found no metal, nothing it would think of as dangerous. I could feel the gun digging into my hip, the weight of the plastique against my back.

The elevator went down so smoothly I barely felt movement at all.

I stepped out into a white hallway that had come straight from a nightmare. That's all there was, as far as I could see. Shivering white. Just white, disappearing into the distance. It was the most disconcerting thing I'd ever seen, and it hadn't gotten better with familiarity.

The walls were solid if you touched them, but there was a trick to the surface that made them look like they wavered and wobbled. There were no doors visible until you actually touched the entry to the lab you wanted to enter. That, it had seemed to Timeshares' corporate officers, was the best way to protect their priceless time travel equipment. No one could even find it unless they knew how to get there in the first place.

I knew how to get there.

I'd been working for Timeshares since I'd graduated from college, when I'd signed up, all eager and starry-eyed, with my brand new history degree. I'd started out as a tech, then graduated to scout.

Then Timeshares had developed the technology to make vids, and I'd become a vidhistorian, traveling into the past to film history for the virtual libraries. I'd loved it, and I'd been good at it. I'd been the best at capturing not just the pictures of the past, but the essence of the past, the smells and sights and sounds, the spirit of it. That was what I'd thought I would spend my life doing.

But then I'd met Rick. Then he'd told me what the world of the past was making of the world of the future. The week after he came back from his time trip, I'd made a lateral move into Security.

All I'd needed to complete my plans was to find someone who could help me get the C4, once called plastique, and create enough of a distraction that I could enter the bottom floor with it. The elevator scanners would have picked up any of today's metallic-based explosives. And I couldn't go into the past and bring it back myself. The scanners would have caught me coming out with contraband.

I didn't know how Reverend John's people had done it. I was fairly sure his C4 was from the past, not that it mattered. Duane's explosions had shown that the C4 worked. That's all I cared about.

I walked the required number of steps, and put out my hand. I pressed my face to the wall and tried not to blink as the computer scanned my eyes. The door appeared under my hand and slid open.

No matter how many times I saw it, the time machine took my breath away.

Even on this side that visitors never saw, it was sleek and shiny, but not shiny like the reverend's suit. Shiny like a s.p.a.ceship and crackling with blue static electricity. It was art as much as it was machine. And it was the worst thing that had ever happened to humanity.

The tech's expression was slack and bored. On the commercial side, the operators had a variety of travelers to keep them occupied. They had costumes to check, and they had to search whatever was brought back, which I'd always thought was one of the most interesting jobs in the building, because you could never predict what someone would pick up and try to bring back.

But on the employee side, there was nothing to do but check authorizations and push b.u.t.tons.

"What's going on topside?" he asked, as he scanned my retinas and my fingerprints.

"Nothing really. Somebody blew up a car in the visitor lot."

I took off my ID and my badge and put them into a safety basket. The laser field around it wouldn't let anyone but me take them back out.

"Oh." He seemed as disinterested, as lackadaisical, as the security guard had been. "Haven't seen you take a trip in a while, Captain. Where you off to tonight?"

I handed him the gold square with my destination encoded in it. He fed it into the reader, checked the authorization, then the picture that came up on the screen, and gave my clothes a quick once over to make sure I looked appropriate for the time period.

Then, with a yawn, he double-checked everything. He didn't even seem impressed that my destination was such a rare one. He did a desultory check with a metal detecting wand, then checked to see that my implant was still under the skin on the back of my neck.

"Step in when you're ready."

My heart thumped and started to race. Heat rose up my neck. I'd traveled hundreds of times, but I was more scared than I'd been the first time.

I guess that was why I fell as I materialized in another time. I stayed there on my hands and knees retching for several minutes. My tongue was coated with a taste so sweet it felt thick.

Bill, the PR guy who'd done the original advertising campaign for Timeshares, had told me he tasted vinegar. I'd have traded vinegar for this taste any day. It was like I'd taken a drink of perfume.

I wiped my mouth, wiped my tongue on my sleeve, and I still couldn't get rid of it. This had never happened before, but I'd never gone into the past so close to my own time.

Timeshares claimed that they restricted traveling into the immediate past because of the physical stress it caused. But they also said no one could disable the equipment and stay back in time. I thought of Dina, walking sometime, somewhere, in a pristine forest, breathing in air that had never been through a processor. Would what I was about to do send her back to our time? Or make it like she'd never been there at all?

The paradoxes of time travel, even after all the years I'd done it, could make you crazy if you started trying to follow the twists and turns.

I climbed to my feet and looked around. I'd seen this building so often, on posters in the Timeshares gift shop, in books, that I knew it as if I'd lived here. It was night, and the building was dark, but I only had to retrace my steps once to find the lab.

I eased through the door. The lab looked just like it did in Timeshares' orientation video. It had old-fashioned metal tabletops that looked like autopsy tables. Long lightbulbs cast a greenish-blue light over everything. Every surface was messy with books and papers and charts and snips of computer boards and pieces of oddly shaped metal. That kind of chaos would never be allowed in a Timeshares lab today.

And sitting there, bent over his work in concentration, was the man who'd started it all. The creator of the time travel technology, Dr. Ken Campbell.

I let the backpack slide off my shoulders and pulled the gun out of my waistband. Even though it was made completely of plastic, it pinched the flesh between my thumb and forefinger when I slid the mechanism back and let it go. A shiver of pain went through my thumb.

Dr. Campbell jumped and turned around. "Who are you? How did you get in here?"