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“This man seems very ill,” she noted. “Not related to the bullet wound. There’s something else going on with him.”
“He’s ill, yes. But it’s nothing you can treat, believe me.”
“Why do I get the feeling something very strange is going on here?”
“Maybe you’ve got good instincts. By the way, do you have any aspirin in that bag? I’ve got a bitch of a headache.”
Gail handed her a bottle of aspirin. “You can keep that.” She put her tools in the bag and snapped it shut. “Dani, you know I’m supposed to report this.”
“I know. But before you do that, have a seat and let me show you something.”
Gail sat in the easy chair and Dani handed her the page from the magazine.
She scanned it rapidly. “One of my articles?”
“That’s what I want you to tell me.”
Gail read the article, pausing more than once to look up at Dani in disbelief. When she had finished, she placed the page in her lap. “I didn’t write this.”
“You’re sure?”
She looked uncertain. “I’d remember if I had, wouldn’t I? Besides, I’ve never seen beetle beans before this week. This was to be my first look at them. I haven’t done any work with them, nor has anybody else.”
“But you don’t seem convinced you didn’t write it.”
“The thing is, it sounds like me. It’s my writing style. It’s exactly what I would write if I had made such a finding.”
“Putting aside the validity of the byline for a moment, what do you think of the facts? Does it make sense?”
“Without seeing any data, all I can say is that it could be sound. The MRV virus mentioned in this study is not used very often as a test case. In fact, I think I’m one of the few researchers who uses it. It doesn’t interest people that much because it’s nearly harmless. You would never go about looking for a cure for it. But it’s a tough little critter. It’s hard to kill. That’s why I use it. If I find something that works on this bug, it has possibilities for other applications that are more practical. But according to the article, whoever wrote this didn’t find any other real-world application for the beetle bean anti-viral agent.”
“Then why publish these results at all?”
“Because you can’t test a substance on everything, so you rely on the work of everybody else. You publish everything because the information could be of use to somebody, somewhere.”
“Some time,” Dani added.
“Yes. You just never know.”
“Is it possible that this virus could mutate in the future and become more deadly?”
“Of course. It happens all the time.”
“And if it did happen, if it became a serious threat to human life, your…I mean, the information in that article would become very valuable?”
“Yes. And that’s exactly why Genepac and companies like it preserve plant biodiversity. We don’t know what might someday yield miracles, so we can’t afford to lose anything.” Gail looked troubled. “I just don’t understand this. Why would somebody publish something under my name?”
“Look at the date at the top of the page.”
She did so, then looked up with her mouth open. “That’s next year. I don’t understand. Is this some kind of mock-up for a future issue? But it doesn’t make sense. Nothing about this article makes sense.”
Dani sat on the end of the bed, careful not to disturb Darius. She recalled Gemma’s reaction when she’d tried to explain how she’d been to the future. There was no reason to think Gail, a scientist, would be any easier to convince. But she did at least have a tangible piece of evidence in her hand.
“Now I’m going to explain to you why I didn’t take Darius to a hospital. And if you think I’m nuts…” Dani threw up her hands. “Hell, I think I’m nuts most of the time the last few days. I just don’t know what to do at this point. I don’t know whether to give you the beans or give them to him. If I give them to you, next year you’ll write that article, which might have the potential to save millions of lives in the future. If I give them to him, he’ll take them into the future and possibly destroy them and you’ll never write that article because you’ll never have done the experiments. But it’s already happened because the article exists in the future. And that’s where I lose track.” She sighed heavily.
Gail looked askance. “Dani, why don’t you start at the beginning and I’ll do my best not to think you’re nuts because up until a minute ago, I thought you were an incredibly cool-headed and rational person.”
Chapter Twenty-One
“You were really hungry, weren’t you?” Gail observed, watching Dani scarf up her cheeseburger and fries.
Dani nodded, her mouth full, then glanced at Darius. He was lying in bed, no longer handcuffed to it, awake but silent. He had eaten only half a piece of bread and some water. He’d had nothing else all day, but he said if he tried to eat more, it wouldn’t stay down. Relishing her burger, Dani couldn’t help thinking about next week when she might look like him and be unable to eat solid food. All the more reason to enjoy this, she decided.
“Thanks for getting it,” she said, squeezing the rest of the ketchup packet onto her fries.
Gail sat in the easy chair, her long legs crossed at the knee. What a strange little dinner party, Dani thought. “You believe me, don’t you?” she asked.
“I’ve never been one to judge too quickly. A good scientist doesn’t prejudge; she waits for the proof.”
“I don’t really have any proof.”
“No, you don’t. But neither can I disprove your story. You know, Dani, a lot of scientists really, really want many of the incredibly improbable science fictions to be fact. I don’t know anything about temporal mechanics.” She glanced at Darius. “But time travel is just too cool not to believe in. I hope it’s true.” She picked up her bag. “I’m sorry Gemma doesn’t believe you.”
“She’s got a more personal investment. And apparently she’s dated a lot of psychos, so I can understand why she thinks I’m just another one.”
“What are you going to do now?”
“Give him the beans and then we both go back to the future.” She wiped her mouth with a napkin. “I sure hope they have cheeseburgers there.” She glanced at Darius, who gave a slight shake of his head. “Apparently I’m going to be a vegetarian after all. Gemma would love the irony of that if only she were in on the joke.”
“I know you aren’t thrilled with leaving,” said Gail, “but I envy you so much. I wish I could go in your place. Unlike you, I don’t have the interpersonal connections here. I have my work, and I think it would be fabulous to see what changes, inventions and discoveries have been made in my field two hundred years from now.”
“Don’t despair, Doctor,” Darius chimed in. “I’m acquainted with your biographical data, and I believe you will be more than happy with how your life unfolds in the next several years. If I come back a decade from now and offer to take you into the future, believe me, you won’t want to go.”
Gail’s face broke into a wide and genuine smile.
Dani finished her fries and collected the take-out boxes, dumping them into the trash. She returned to the front room and said, “Gail, thank you for coming. And thank you for helping me decide about him.” She jerked her chin toward the bed. “I think it’s time for us to say good-bye.”
Darius propped himself up on an elbow. “Dr. Littleton, thank you for tending to my shoulder. Despite my little ruse this morning, I’m actually a great admirer of your work. And of course we’re all indebted to you for the beetle beans.”
“You’re welcome. If any of this is actually happening, then I’m a great admirer of your work too, Dr. Darius.” She stepped over and shook his hand. Then she moved toward Dani, pulling on her coat. “Good luck. I hope you have a magnificent life in the future. Are you sure I can’t watch?”
Dani shook her head. “My guess is that I’ve violated protocol a bunch of times already.”
Gail nodded. “I understand.” She leaned in to kiss Dani tenderly on the cheek. Then she smiled wistfully at each of them in turn before leaving.
“What was that about protocol?” Darius asked. “We don’t have any time travel protocol yet. We’re still writing that book.”
“I just said that to make her leave.” Dani picked up the transporter beacon and the bag of beans from the table where she’d left them. “I don’t want her around for the next stage.”
“What next stage? We disappear, poof. That’s it.”
Dani approached the bed and tucked the beans and beacon into his right palm. “I won’t be coming with you. I’ve lost my beacon.”
“Oh, dear,” he said, looking at the items in his hand. “That’s bad. You’ll have only another week or so before…”
“I know. It’s okay. I don’t have a life in the future anyway. Everything that matters to me is here.”
“It’s suicide to stay. One of us has to take these back. It could be you.”
Dani shook her head. “Obviously, it should be you. You’re clearly a brilliant scientist, a top man in the field of temporal mechanics and in charge of a super-important project. I’d be completely useless in your world.”
“That’s very generous of you.”
She shrugged. “My beacon might turn up. If not, at least I’ll be home at the end. If I make it long enough, I’ll go to my sister’s wedding. I was supposed to be maid of honor. Now I’ll just be an anonymous person in the back with tears streaming down her cheeks.” Dani never thought she would be sorry to miss out on that role, but now she really was. “The only thing I regret about dying is that nobody’s going to mourn me. Not my family, not even Gemma.”
“I’ll mourn you, Officer Barsetti. I’ll make a legend of you. You will be the woman who saved the world.”
“That’s very kind, but whatever happens two hundred years from now won’t be of much comfort to me here.”
“I was hoping to cheer you up. I’m really sorry you’ve lost your beacon. If you had it, I might be able to help you return to your time permanently.”
Dani perked up. “What do you mean?”
“It’s purely hypothetical, because I’ve never had anyone from the past to try it out on. But I’ve been experimenting with the concept that if you transport someone back to their own time at a very precise moment, they might resync with their original timeline. The precision is important. You have to know the exact second when they left their time.”
“I wouldn’t know that, not to the exact second.”
“No, no, but it was recorded when you came through the transporter. It’s in the logs. If I removed the temporal signature for the future, which would take some reconfiguring of the equipment, and then you were sent back to that precise moment, you might be able to resume your life as if none of this had ever happened.”
“Swenson didn’t tell me about that.”
“No, she wouldn’t because she doesn’t know about it. This is my idea, all theoretical. It’s untested. It might not even work. But I’ll tell you, I would love to test it out.”
“So would I, but the darn thing just isn’t here. I’ve looked everywhere. It must have fallen out somewhere around town. I don’t suppose you could beam me another one when you get back?”
He smiled faintly. “I wish I could. The device has to travel with a person or it will be rendered inert. The same thing holds true if somebody tries to bring two of them through. Only one will be operative.” He shook his head dejectedly. “I’m very sorry your life has been stolen from you.”
“If the plague is cured, it’s not in vain, right? Logic clearly dictates that the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few.”
A light switched on in his eyes. “Star Trek, right? The Wrath of Khan.”
Dani laughed. “I can’t believe you know that.”
“Oh, yes. The Star Trek legacy is alive and well, part of the human collective consciousness. Chaucer, Shakespeare, the Beatles, Star Trek.” He smiled to himself, then his smile faded. He looked at Dani with a pained expression, then he made a move to get out of bed. Dani took hold of his arm and helped him. He stood shakily, his injured arm motionless at his side.
“You will recover from the temporal…what’s it?” she asked.
“Asynchrony. I’ll recover. The degradation stops immediately after transport. Then it’s just a matter of natural healing.”
“What about Hale and Swenson? Will you be in danger when you return?”
“No. I’ll be able to deal with them. Don’t worry.”
“Okay.” She nodded. “Then I guess this is it.”
Darius held the silver tube in his hand. “Thank you for believing me. All of us in the twenty-third century are indebted to you, all six billion of us.”
Six billion? Did she hear that right? There were almost seven and a half billion now. But she wouldn’t have a chance to ask about it because Darius had already twisted the top of the tube. The three blue lights lit up.
“Good-bye, Dr. Darius.”
Smiling sympathetically, he placed his thumb over the top of the tube. Immediately, there was a bright flash of light. Dani turned her head and shielded her eyes until it was over. When she looked back, Darius was gone. So was the page from the magazine that had been lying on the table. Because Darius had taken the beans, Gail Littleton would never get her hands on them and would never write that article. Now it had never existed.
“I hope he made it,” she whispered, glancing around the empty room. “But I’ll never know.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
Gemma picked up the throw rugs in her bedroom, then ran a dust mop around the floor, resorting to housework to put herself in a calmer frame of mind. It sometimes worked. But she was skeptical this time. Though she had sat still for the previous hour staring at the TV, she had no memory of the show. It had passed before her eyes without seeping anywhere near her brain. Dani and her preposterous story had taken up all the space in her thoughts.
She was angry, really angry, because she had liked Dani so much. Their courtship had been short, but oh, so sweet. She wondered if the police would catch up to her and put her away. She felt sorry for going to the cops, but it was the right thing to do, to stop Dani from going on with her delusion. It had taken an hour and a half to file that report and give them a detailed description of “the suspect.” She had hated doing it and felt horribly guilty.
Dani had seemed so sincere, telling her story about being zapped into the future and then back again. Dani really believed it. She seemed genuinely alarmed that she couldn’t find her communicator or whatever the thing was that was supposed to zap her back to the future again. If she did get arrested, maybe she’d get treatment like Miko thought. That was certainly more humane than leaving her wandering around suffering from her delusions.
As Gemma reached under the bed, the mop hit something that skittered across the floor and into the baseboard on the other side of the room. She went to see what it was and picked up a silver metallic object about the size of a lipstick tube. It wasn’t hers. She’d never seen it before. It had a seam around the middle and a bluish window under that. She was about to twist it open when she remembered Dani looking for her lost device. Was this what she had been looking for?
Maybe it had fallen out of her clothes Tuesday night. They hadn’t been particularly careful during the removal of clothing. Gemma decided not to open it. There was a small lingering doubt in her mind, the nearly impossible chance that Dani was telling the truth. According to the bizarre story, Dani had picked up one of these things and been flung into the future, erasing herself from the present.
What would that be like? Gemma wondered. What if none of your friends or even your family members had ever known you? What if your wife had never known you? That would be unbearably sad.
She sat on the edge of her bed, tears forming in her eyes, and stared at the device in her hand. It blurred as her tears fell. Even if Dani had hallucinated the entire scenario, in her mind, she believed it all. She believed nobody knew her, even her most beloved person, even her dog. What a miserable hell to inhabit.
She rolled the tube between her thumb and forefinger. The phone ringing caused her to jump. “Hello,” she said, wiping the tears off her cheek.
“Gemma Mettler?” asked a female voice.
“Yes.”
“This is Sergeant Rhonda Tyler from the SFPD. You filed a report about Daniella Barsetti yesterday.”
“Yes. Have you found her?”
“No, not yet. This case is of special interest to me. I was wondering if you could come in and answer a few more questions.”
Gemma changed her clothes and went down to the station, not at all happy to be spending her Saturday selling out Dani yet again. She wondered if she’d be put in one of those interrogation rooms with a two-way mirror and a recording device. She wondered why she had gotten herself into this. She had to wait in the lobby for ten minutes before a young uniformed officer escorted her through a security door and into Sergeant Tyler’s office.
“Thank you for coming in, Ms. Mettler,” Tyler greeted her, standing and extending her hand. She was a thin, outdoorsy sort with straight blond hair, freckled cheeks and fine wrinkles across her upper lip.
Gemma shook her hand while the police officer left, closing the door behind him.
“Sit down,” Tyler said, indicating the chair across the desk from her.
Gemma sat, holding her purse in her lap with both hands. The sergeant smiled reassuringly, then opened a folder on her desk and picked up an ink pen.
“Are you nervous?”
Gemma nodded.
“There’s no need. You’re not in any trouble. When I heard about your encounter with Daniella Barsetti, I was really excited, I have to tell you. So far, we’ve had no luck finding her.”
“Have you been looking for her?”
“Yes.”
Gemma leaned forward. “So you do know her?”
“I’ve met her a couple of times. She showed up at the Genepac building two days in a row. You’ve heard of that incident?”
