Not quite. But he's still serving time." Her body shifted a little. By now, they were both suffering from long immobility, and she had an aching wound to boot. But Elaine was still being careful. No one outside the wrappings would have noticed the slight motion-and their bodies were shifting back and forth anyway, because of the swaying of the litter. "I'm not a fairy-tale princess, born and raised in Disneyland. My family's just one generation away-thanks to my dad, who got a decent factory job and then worked his ass off-from dirt poor Cairo black people. That's not Cairo, Egypt, neither. It's Cairo, Illinois. You ever been there?" "No. I know where it is, but I've never visited." "Don't bother. Unless you got a thing for rusted out old cars and cheap trailers on cinder blocks." This time, he did chuckle. "Not much chance of that, these days." "Tell me about it.
That leads to my next question. Do you have a girl?" "Inprison? Look, whatever you may have heard, not all convicts-" "I didn't mean it that way. Sorry. What I meant was, did you have… Is there anybody you're pining after, so to speak? You know, the girl you left behind."
He couldn't figure out where she was going with all this. "No. I broke up with the girlfriend I had-well, she broke up with me-not long before the fight. Part of the reason I was in such a bad mood, that Friday night." Again, her body shifted a little. Impossibly as it seemed, she was pressing against him even more closely. "Good. That makes everything easy. Well, James Cook, you got a girl now. And I'm giving you fair warning. I catch you fooling around with any other woman, you'll wish you'd never been born." He stared at nothing. There was a little open shell around their faces, but the blanket wasn't more than an inch or two away at any point. Bostic had wrapped the entire thing around their heads. It wasn't quite what you'd call pitch dark, but almost. That was too bad, because he really wanted to be able to look at her face. Badly. "You don't even know me, Elaine."
"That's true. But if we survive, I'll have plenty for time for that.
Right now, I'm concentrating on the basics." James didn't know what to say. For one of the very few times in his life-the only time, actually, that he could remember-he was literally struck speechless.
He didn't even entertain the possibility that the woman might be joking. He didn't know Elaine Brown, either, but somehow he knew she wasn't kidding at all. Which… Was pretty basic knowledge, now that he thought about it. In a world full of rampaging felons, conquistadores and giant reptiles. "I spent eight days down there," she murmured. "The worst eight days of my life. Not even that. Days that were worse than anything I could have imagined, before it happened. I never really thought I had a chance, all that time, but I just set that aside. And every day-every hour-I promised myself that if I did survive, I would never again, not ever in my life, waste a single moment on bullshit. And I was never much of one for bullshit in the first place." He still didn't know what to say. She giggled. And didn't try to suppress it, this time. "Speaking of bullshit, are you really going to tell me that's a gun in your pocket? I might even believe it, almost. Seeing as it's now been solid as a rock for longer than any hard-on I ever saw. Or even heard about from my girlfriend Sara, who saw a lot more than I did." Incredibly, he felt a stab of jealousy, at the thought of her and another man's- Was he going as nuts as the girl? "Well. Answer me." There was something relentless about the little woman. "Isit a gun in your pocket?" He probably flushed. And, for a very brief moment, was thankful for the darkness.
"No, it's not. But look, lady-Elaine. You can't make… I mean, I've been locked up for…" He was fumbling all over the place. And the more he fumbled, the more he realized he was fumbling in bullshit.
He'dnever had this reaction to a woman. Not even when he'd been a teenager with his tongue hanging out at every pretty girl who walked by and had gone without sex for a lot longer than he had since he got in trouble in the bar brawl. "I intend to stay alive, James Cook. Do my very, very best. And help anyone else I can to do the same who deserves to. I've got no time any more for fooling around. I need a man, in a world full of monsters. I want a man. And you're him." "You don't know me-" "It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter whether you're the perfect man for me. You probably aren't. I can tell you right now I'll ride herd on you about the liquor. I'd hate liquor even if my church wasn't against it. I've seen way too many people get fucked up that way." That wasn't a problem. James hadn't had a drink since the fight. And had promised himself he never would again, either. He'd seen way too much of that himself, starting with his father and two of his uncles. All of whom had spent some time in prison, and always for something involving booze. "But it doesn't matter what faults you have, James. We all have faults. As long as there isn't anything just plain twisted inside of you-that's why I asked the first question, just to be sure-I'll deal with whatever else I have to." "I don't actually have too many faults, I think. No more'n usual, anyway. My temper's fine when I'm sober." Honesty made him add: "Okay, I'm probably too jealous. That's why my girlfriend broke up with me, and… Well. She had at least some right on her side." "Won't be no problem. I never played around even as a girl. And I get pretty possessive myself. Now, in this world…" He could feel her head shake a little. "You really don't understand, James. I don't think anyone could, who didn't go through those eight days. It wouldn't matter if, tomorrow, I did meet my 'perfect man.' The handsomest man in the world, smarter'n Einstein, sunnier than the sun, you name it."
She nuzzled him softly. "All the things you aren't, exactly." He would have chuckled, except the nuzzle paralyzed him. Sent a spike right down from his skull to his toes. She shook her head again. "They still wouldn't be the man who came down to hell and got me out. No man ever will, except you, even if I live to be a hundred. Which I might, if the dinosaurs don't get me. Women in my family live a long time, if they stay away from liquor." From the feel of her head, he thought she was looking at him. He couldn't wait until he could finally look into those dark eyes again. The feeling was almost scary. Except it was too exhilarating. "You ever hear where little ducklings-or maybe it's chicklets-get imprinted by the first thing they see when they come out of the shell? Whatever it is, that's momma." "Yeah," he said. "Don't know if it's true." "Well, it's true with me. Like it or not, fella, you done went and imprinted yourself on me, down in that basement of hell. James Cook. My man. Way it is. Get used to it." He laughed outright, then. They had to be far enough away from the prison, by now. And he couldn't possibly have contained it anyway. *** Danny Bostic was genuinely fascinated, by the time they got well into the woods and could stop to set down the litter. Had Cook managed to getlaid in there? It sounded like it, between his laughter and the happy little noises the girl was making. Apparently not. At least, when they cut away the tape and unwrapped the sheets, all the clothes seemed to be in order. And he'd forgotten about the girl's stab wound. As passionate as she might be, there was no way she'd have been able to have sex. Not and be smiling at the man like that afterward. Still, it was impressive. For at least twenty seconds after the blanket was removed, the two of them just stared each other in the eyes, both smiling from ear to ear, as if they'd met for the first time and fallen instantly in love. Cook's smile was the first honest-to-God expression he'd ever seen on the Indian's face. And Brown's smile… He had to look away. The temptation to break the deal and snatch the girl got almost overwhelming, for a moment.
Because he looked away, he saw the expressions on the faces of Boyne and the other Boomers. They were staring at their boss, with their eyes almost bulging. Who would've guessed he was this much of a ladies' man? "Does anyone know the location of the nearest jewelry store?" Brown asked brightly. She finally took her eyes off Cook and looked up at the other men standing around. Still smiling from ear to ear, even if the smile didn't have the same laser intensity. "We need engagement rings. Mr. Cook proposed to me in the course of our little journey, and I accepted." "Well, Jesus," said John Boyne. "Jesus H.
Christ." He shook his head, as if clearing away confusion, and looked at Cook. "Is that true, boss?" Cook was still looking at Brown.
"Yeah," he said. Then, like a startled rabbit, he looked up at his lieutenant. "By God, it is true." With Cook, of course, sentimental moments couldn't be expected to last long. Less than a minute later, he was back on his feet. Back in charge, with that inscrutable Injun look on his face. He and Danny studied each other for a moment. "Which way are you going?" Danny asked. "I don't know." Cook looked down at the girl on the litter. "Elaine?" She seemed uncertain. "Well, it's hard to explain easily. The directions I have are a little complicated." "Never mind the complications," Danny said. "Which waynow?" "Oh." She pointed a finger at one section of the woods.
Which didn't look any different from any other. "That way." "Fine.
Then I think it's best if we head the other way. We don't have a specific destination in mind, so it really doesn't matter." Danny gave Cook a little salute and started to turn. But a stray and ridiculous thought bloomed into focus. Maybe not so ridiculous. He hesitated.
What the hell. If nothing else, it was a little funny. Not much, but a little. And while it had seemed like a good idea, at the time, to bring a back-up pistol, he was loaded down heavy as it was. With each step he took, the idea seemed less and less bright. He drew the pistol from his waistband. With his left hand, not his right. Then, he shifted it so that he was holding it by the barrel instead of the grip. No point in setting off tight nerves at the very end. "Here, Cook." He extended the gun, butt first. "Take it. It's got a full clip." Cook came over, and took the gun. "Why?" he asked quietly.
"First, a deal. Give us ten minutes before you leave. I'd just as soon know we're well out of sight. It's not that I think you're a double-crosser, it's just…" "I understand. 'Good fences makes good neighbors,' as they say." Cook nodded. "No problem. You can have twenty. It'll take us that long to adjust the litter so it's comfortable for Elaine on a long trip. Second?" Danny shrugged. "To be honest, I'm not sure. But you never know. We might meet up again someday. If and when we do, remember this." For a few seconds after he was gone, James stared at the pistol Bostic had left behind. Boyne came over. "Funny damn thing for him to do." "He's thinking ahead, John," James said, almost musingly. "Way, way ahead." He understood, he thought, Bostic's plans. He wasn't thinking like a con. Most cons would go out there figuring to rob. Bostic was figuring to rule. Find some tribe of primitive Indians, kill or intimidate the existing leaders, and take over. So far, most hardened criminals could have followed the logic. But Bostic parted company with them here. He knew that a tribe-call it a gang, call it whatever-needed rules. They might be tough rules, for the ones on the bottom, but they were still rules.
Not caprice, not whimsy, not just whatever struck the Big Man's fancy come Tuesday morning or a spot of indigestion. Rules. Then, give it some time, he wouldn't have to watch his back every night and day.
He'd have men doing it for him, because they damn well thought it was the right thing to do. He was the chief-maybe, someday, even the king-not just a thug running things until a tougher thug could do him in. In the end, it had been that as much as James' threat that had kept him from taking Elaine. Whether the man understood it consciously or not, he'd sensed that starting his new life by breaking the rules would send him off at a tangent. The same reason he'd given James the gun. He didn't really need it, the Boomers sure as hell did-and he'd just laid the basis, maybe, for an alliance someday. A truce, at least. "Smart man," James murmured. "Hard and cold as nails, but smart. Even ethical, in his own way, if you're willing to stretch the term. Too bad he wasn't running the show instead of Luff." Boyne looked skeptical. "I dunno, boss. For all his fancy talk about honor among thieves, he double-crossed Williams, didn't he? In a heartbeat.
I betcha he shot him in the back, too." John was wrong, but explaining why would be difficult. It was a subtle matter, and James could only grope at the edges himself. That Danny Bostic had his ethics, he didn't doubt any longer. But they'd be razor thin, without any of the plush and comfortable padding that people in a law-abiding society gave each other. That was mandated by law, in fact. The way Bostic looked at things, Williams had double-crossedhim when his lust and stupidity had almost triggered off a deadly brawl. The moment he did that, Bostic would have removed the man's protection. He'd gone instantly fromone my loyal vassals toa problem to be removed. James smiled thinly. Removed his lord's grace, you might better call it.
Yes, it was too bad that Bostic hadn't been running the show instead of Luff. But James still wouldn't want to live under his rule. It'd be like walking on thin ice from dawn to dusk, and egg shells through the evening until the lord went to bed. But there was no point debating the matter with John. Not now, for sure. He shoved the pistol into his waistband. Later on, they'd have to figure out who was the best man to carry it. That wouldn't be James himself. He'd never been into guns, the way some people were. He knew how to use one, but that was about it. One of the Boomers was bound to be good with a pistol. He was a little startled, then, when he realized that he'd given no thought at all to keeping the gun just to make sure his authority wasn't challenged. He didn't need to. That was just a fact, by now. So thoroughly engrained that he hadn't even thought about it. He looked around, at his men. Three of the Boomers were fussing over Elaine, giving her water, asking her how she was. But it was the actions of loyal men tending to the lady, not guys angling for her themselves. He realized that he also hadn't given any thought at all to how the Boomers would react when they realized that the one and only woman among them had just been separated out-and by the boss himself. That could have easily triggered off deep resentment. Instead it had done the opposite. It seemed to settle them down a little. He knew his uncle had been wrong. There were lots of men behind bars, hiding the fact beneath animal masks. Boomer had known it too, on some level, and known how to select them. These were men who, deep down, wanted nothing so much as a place of their own. Being part of a society again instead of a pack of wolves that you had to watch every moment. You might sleep alone, at night, for a while. But at least you could sleep. This might be the best day of his life, he realized suddenly.
Between Elaine and this… It was sure as hell the best day since three cops showed up at his apartment one morning, with handcuffs and an arrest warrant. He'd forgotten what it was like to look forward to the future. Okay, it had dinosaurs in it too. Big fucking lizards. Who cared? He clapped his hands, quite cheerfully. "Okay, guys, listen up!
In twenty minutes, we're gone." He pointed at Elaine. "And we're going to need all twenty of them to get her ready. Her, not just the litter.
She has to be completely wrapped back up in the sheets. Head to toe, with just her face clear." He hesitated, torn between new-found anxiety and common sense. "Well, that's a little much. We should leave her hands and arms free too. And then we're going to have to move her very carefully, all the way along, making sure she doesn't ever get spilled out of the litter. We'll spell each other, carrying it, so nobody gets worn out." He looked at the ground cover he was standing on, which was nothing he recognized. "We've got no idea what's down there." Elaine frowned. "James, I'm not a porcelain doll. Okay, I'm not in great shape, but-" "I'm not worried about breaking you, sweetheart. I'm worried about infection. That wound hasn't really healed yet, I don't think. I'm not positive and I can't be, without taking off the bandage. Which is the very, very last thing I'm going to do. Right the way it is, it's the best protection you've got."
"Oh." After a moment, she smiled up at him. It was a great big smile.
"Thank you for thinking of that, James. I knew I could count on you.
Sweetheart." He wondered if a throat lump could be surgically removed.
Probably not, as fast as it seemed to be growing. He'd just have to get used to it.
Chapter 34 Margo Glenn-Lewis sat at the large conference table in the center of the underground site's main chamber and silently berated herself for being an idiot. Worse still, a confused idiot. That she was an idiot, was now a given. It was the confusion that annoyed her this afternoon. She was fifty-two years old, for Pete's sake, a highly respected and well established physicist. So you'd think that if she found it damn near impossible to concentrate on the discussion in a critical meeting because she kept finding herself thinking about one of the men around the table, she'd at least know the reasonwhy. Did she really find Nicholas Brisebois that attractive? Answer: shestill didn't know. Well… That was nonsense. Twaddle produced by a confused and befuddled brain, such as had no business residing inside the skull of a teenage pom-pom girl, much less a woman who'd been able to make a successful career-no, even a quite distinguished career-in a notoriously male-dominated branch of science. Of courseshe found Nick attractive. Very attractive, in fact. If she didn't, she wouldn't be fidgeting like this in the first place. The problem was that in the course of the week he'd spent in the research facility in Minnesota, she'd gotten to know him well enough to understand that any relationship with Brisebois would not be a casual one. Assuming any relationship got started at all, of course. She still had no idea if he found her attractive. The man was very self-contained, in some ways. To start with, he was a devout Catholic. Not ostentatious about it, but he was. Margo was a devout atheist. True, not ostentatious about it, either. She'd never do something like sue a school board or a city because their Christmas pageantry included scenes from the Nativity. Who cared? If the dolts wanted to wallow in their tribal superstitions, let them. Any kid who wanted to figure out things for herself could do it easily enough, when she got a little older. It wasn't as if you had to pry lose anything from the government using the Freedom of Information Act to figure out that any creed which thought that a Being capable of creating an entire universe gave a rat's ass whether you ate fish with scales or lobsters was no more sophisticated than hunters and gatherers somewhere who refused to eat rats because rats were their totem. That'd be a problem. On the other hand… She also knew Nick well enough by now to know that he was extremely good in the mind-my-own-business department. For that matter, so was she. If they had kids, the religious thing would become an issue-and she couldn't believe she was scatter-brained enough to even be thinking about stuff like this at a critical professional meeting-but that was a moot point. She'd never wanted kids, was too old now to have them anyway, and Nick already had plenty of his own.
Five, no less. Besides, he'd said once, in that slightly sardonic way of his that she found very attractive, that it would take a direct intervention by God with the divine finger pointing right at him to get him to go through child-rearing again. That brought up problem number two. "-what we've tentatively concluded," said Leo Dingley.
He turned away from the display on the far wall. "The time spike isn't simply stuttering and wobbling, as it keeps driving back in time, it's reverberating. That's what we've decided to call the effect, anyway, for lack of a better term. If you want the math, Malcolm can give it to you, but prepare to have your eyes glaze over. Me, I like to think of it in acoustical terms. The spike is emitting time bongs like a bell every time it stutters-and every time it does so, the time effect sends an echo ahead of it." "Excuse me, Leo," said Esther Hu. She was one of the paleontologists who'd come to the conference. She wasn't connected with the museum in Montana, though, as most of them were.
She had a faculty position with SUNY and worked on the side as the expert adviser for the man she was sitting next to at the table. That was Alexander Cohen, a New York financier who'd nurtured a lifelong interest in paleontology through a foundation he'd sent up that dispensed grants. "Yes, Esther?" "Is this stillhappening? You keep speaking in the present tense. What I mean is-" "I understand what you mean. And it's a good question, too." Leo looked at the display on the wall and puffed out his cheeks, then blew the air out and said: "The answer-yes, I know you're probably getting sick of it-is that we simply don't know." "Leo's fudging," said Malcolm O'Connell. "It's true that we don'tknow, but the math really only allows for one solution that I can see." He pointed to the display. "What we're facing here is the chronoletic version of the uncertainty principle that's been bedeviling particle physicists for over half a century. We can analyze the raw data that comes in across only one axis, so to speak. We can tell youwhen it is-where it stopped, so to speak-or we can tell you where it's reverberating, or we can tell you where it's stuttering, or where it's wobbling. But we can't put all four of them together without removing the first axis." Cohen had a trim beard much like the one Morgan-Ash favored. And, like Richard, he had a habit of stroking it. He was doing that now. "Yes, I can understand that. But what would it look like from the viewpoint of someone inside the phenomenon?" He nodded toward Tim. "Let's posit, for the moment, that I'm Officer Harshbarger's friend Joe Schuler. What would I be seeing?
Or have seen?" Leo looked uncertain. Margo leaned forward a bit and said: "Again, we're not positive. But the likelihood-the great likelihood-is that for anyone caught in the radius of the time spike's effects, everything would happen simultaneously. And, for all practical purposes, instantaneously." She gave O'Connell and Morgan-Ash a gleaming smile. "I will leave it to these two mathematicians-later, gentlemen, later-to debate the issue of whether the word 'instantaneous' has any real meaning. For a lowly physicist like myself, it means way faster than I can flag down a cab in Manhattan, and if that were an Olympic event, I'd have a real shot at the gold medal." Nick Brisebois took advantage of the round of laughter to study Margo, rather than having to pretend he wasn't. And, as had now happened many times over the past week, his resolve to let the matter slide because it obviously wouldn't work flew south for the winter. And, as so often, it was the smile that did it. That quick gleaming smile with the crinkled and intelligent eyes above it that that made telling himself he could just walk away seem utterly ridiculous. As the conference returned to business, he chewed on his thoughts. He had to leave the day after tomorrow, since he'd almost used up the week he'd taken from his vacation time. So he'd better start nailing down whatever conclusions he could. Conclusion number one. He could live with her political attitudes, even if some of them set his teeth on edge a little. Like almost all military officers, active duty or retired, Nick was politically conservative. In his case, as with many if not all, that was not due to any attachment to any particular political party. He simply had a deep skepticism about the human race's ability to do more than muddle through, and was generally of the opinion that the old maxim "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" applied in politics just as much as it did anywhere else. On the other hand, he wasn't oblivious to the fact that whether something was broken or not was often in the eye of the beholder-and the beholder's viewpoint was heavily influenced by where they stood. From the standpoint of many people at the time, Jim Crow worked just fine.
So it wasn't as if the issues that Margo would occasionally express pungent opinions about weren't real issues. He could even see-quite easily, in fact-her side of the matter. The problem was the attitude that usually lay beneath, for him. He'd found most people with liberal or radical political views to be glib and cavalier in the solutions they advocated, and it was that more than anything else he found so irritating about them. Measures and policies that seemed clear and simple in a Manhattan cocktail party were not clear and simple at all, if you were the poor bastard in the trenches who had to carry them out. On the gripping hand-he was a science fiction fan, and particularly liked Niven and Pournelle'sThe Mote in God's Eye -it was difficult to imagine Margo at a Manhattan socialite's cocktail party.
She'd been born, bred and raised on that most peculiar of America's islands, and in most ways shared its inhabitants' unique mix of hyper-sophistication and abysmal insularity. But there was nothing flighty about her at all. As he brooded and pondered, giving only half his attention to the discussion at the table, Margo flashed the smile at some jest made by Karen Berg. Nick, quit stalling. Just ask the lady out. If you leave without even giving it a shot, you'll be cursing yourself the rest of your life. Everything finally came into focus. That left the problem, of course, of where you went out on a date in an iron mine. "-world they'd be in would be predominantly early Cretaceous, but there'd be elements from every time and place the spike stuttered and wobbled-including, of course, their own-and every place in time periods still earlier where what we've called the reverberations struck." Cohen paused in his summary, for a moment, and stroked his beard. "You'd have everything in that mix, from modern plants and animals and people to animals and plants from-possibly, at least-as early as the Devonian. Am I right?" "Yes, Alex, you are."
That came from Morgan-Ash. "How big would the geographical area be?
What I mean is, at whatever time the spike finally stopped and… dropped everything off, how's that?" A little laugh went up.
"At that specific place in time-let's assume for the moment that the center of the estimate is valid and they wound up in the year one hundred and thirty-five million BP-how big would the area be in which this incredible time jumble applied? I'm assuming, at least, that it couldn't possibly cover the entire planet." "Oh, God no." Dingley looked startled, for a moment. He'd obviously not considered this aspect of the problem. "I have no idea what sort of energy figures you'd need to carry through a complete time jumble that covered the whole surface of the planet, but…" He looked at the display.
"Karen, go back to image ten, would you?" After she did so, he studied the new display for a moment and shook his head. "Not a chance, Alex.
Even with almost all of the energy striking along the time dimension, that sort of energy would have left a crater in southern Illinois the size of…" He peered at one of the paleontologists from the museum, Fred Gibbs. "What's the name of that damn thing in Yucatan?"
Gibbs smiled. "Chicxulub. The best way to learn to pronounce it"-here he gave Margo a theatrically apprehensive look-"but make sure there aren't any radical feminists around-is 'Chicks Who Lube.' If you say that maybe ten times in a row accompanied by any serious use of your visual imagination, I guarantee you'll remember how to pronounce it."
That brought a big round of laughs; Margo's, louder than anyone else's. Once it died down, Leo shook his head. "I'm afraid-again, alas-that we can't give you a precise answer. But I figure the radius of the… okay, guys, what do we call it?" "Blast zone," said Brisebois. "Call it that, why not? I'm sure from the standpoint of the people caught in the spike, that's what it must look like." The somewhat grim note quieted everyone for a moment. Then, Leo nodded. " 'Blast zone' it is." He pursed his lips, studying the diagram. "I figure the radius of the blast zone has to be at least fifty kilometers. At the upper limit… figure two hundred kilometers. If I was placing a bet, though, I'd probably plunk it down on a radius of somewhere between seventy and eighty kilometers." "And-assuming you were in position to explore at all-if you traveled beyond the perimeter of the blast zone," said Cohen, "you'd find yourself in the normal conditions of the early Cretaceous." "That's right." The elderly financier leaned back, his hands on the table. "I have to tell you, I am deeply impressed with the work you've done here. It exemplifies, I believe, the reason I've been so devoted to the pursuit of science my whole life." A wry smile came to his face. "Perhaps some of that is compensation, I suppose, for a lingering feeling of failure. You'd think someone who can play the stock market as well as I do would have managed to get better than a 'D' in high school math and a 'C-minus' in physics and chemistry." Another little laugh went up. It was a bit hushed, though. All of the scientists around the table, if not perhaps the policemen, understood that they were on the verge of that precipice that all scientific projects were forced to skirt. The great yawning chasm called "money." Cohen understood it also, of course. He smiled serenely. "I think I can spare us all a lot of awkwardness, at the cocktail party you've gone to such lengths to organize this evening-no small feat, I imagine, in such an isolated area. I will have my people running the foundation start funneling every dime we can manage to The Project. We do have many existing commitments, of course, which I feel obligated to sustain. But I'm quite prepared to tap deeply into the foundation's capital, if necessary, not just use the interest and dividends." The scientists at the table seemed frozen. That would be their way of maintaining decorum. Otherwise, they'd be leaping around the room making war whoops and whatever pitiful attempts they could at dancing. The Cohen Foundation had alot of money. "There are some conditions, though. The first and most important is that I want someone running this show. I mean no offense, but the sort of relaxed and collegial way you've managed The Project's work thus far simply won't do any longer." The scientists were not entirely pleased with that, of course. But they'd half-expected it, assuming Cohen had proved interested. "Yes, of course," said Morgan-Ash firmly. "That sort of funding needs careful handling and accounting for." "I'm not particularly concerned about that," said Cohen. "Yes, obviously, we'll need serious bookkeeping and accountability. But I've done quite a few inquiries since I arrived.
One of the things I discovered-not to my surprise-is that every scientist attached to The Project undoubtedly suffered some damage to their career prospects as a result of it. I hardly think people who'd do that voluntarily are people I need to watch like hawks to make sure they don't pilfer the till." He shook his head. "The problem lies elsewhere. As much as I'm fascinated by the science involved, my personal attitudes are far closer to those"-he nodded at Harshbarger and Boyle-"of the policemen sitting at the table." Grimly: "I also think a crime is being committed here. And quite possibly more than one. As I'll explain in a moment." He looked at the display. "The point is, I want someone in charge who isn't quite as… detached, so to speak. And, even more importantly, has a completely different mindset. I believe The Project is the most important-critical, at least-scientific project since the Manhattan Project. I will let you scientists choose your own equivalent of Oppenheimer. But I want my equivalent of General Groves." Nick Brisebois shook his head. "Alex, I think you're going way over the top. I'm not sure I even agree with Tim that you can call the government's policies with regard to these time events a 'crime' in the first place. National security run amok, sure. But that's not the same thing." "Isn't it? I believe I can make a good case that, in a democracy, what you call 'national security run amok'is a crime." Cohen waved his hand. "Leave that aside for the moment. It's public knowledge that I am sharply critical of the current administration. They have no love for me; nor I, for them.
But, being fair about it, it's not as if I think the previous administration would have handled the problem all that much better.
Some, yes. I believe they would have, at least, avoided the absurdity of labeling the Alexander Disaster a terrorist incident-and, by the way, I can tell you from my sources that they will soon be announcing that they have finally concluded the Grantville Disaster wasalso a terrorist attack." "What?"said Margo. "Oh, yes. Wait and see if I'm not right. But don't put money on it, betting against me. My sources are very good. Yes, it turns out that Grantville was Osama Bin Laden's test run, so to speak, for 9-11. And if that strikes you as risible beyond belief, you will soon be part of a club numbering in the billions." Nick was the only one not joining in the sarcastic laughter. "Look, I'm not going to defend blithering stupidity. Believe me, I've seen plenty of it, after spending my whole adult lifetime in the military and the Defense Department. I still think you're overreacting. Dealing with a government abusing its authority-and doing it stupidly, to boot-is not the same thing as being at war. The Manhattan Project was a wartime project. And we're not at war."
"Aren't we?" said Cohen, lifting an eyebrow. "You may well be right.
But I think you're overlooking something." He turned to Karen Berg.
"Go back to image seven, would you please? I think that's the one I want." When Karen did so, and the results were displayed. Cohen shook his head. "Sorry, my memory was amiss. I need the one before that.
Image six." The display that came up was the final-so far, at least-plotting that The Project had done of the time spike's chronoletic trajectory. It showed, in three-dimensional relief, every stutter and wobble and reverberation. "Thank you. Now please zoom in at the top. I only want the details of the spike's trajectory while it was still traversing historical times. Human history, I mean." Karen did as he asked. When the image settled, Cohen turned to Tim Harshbarger. "You grew up in the area, I understand?" The policeman nodded. "Yup. Born there, lived there all my life." "Are you familiar with the area's history?" Harshbarger shrugged. "Pretty well." He hooked a thumb at his partner, sitting next to him. "Bruce here's more familiar with the subject. For a while, back there, he even did some civil war reenactments." "For three years, that's it." Boyle shook his head. "I enjoyed the reenactments, but I got tired of the traveling involved. The closest big battle was Shiloh, and even that's a little bit of a haul." "There were no major civil war battles in southern Illinois?" Cohen posed it as a question, but it was obviously a rhetorical one. Boyle chuckled. "Oh, hell no. I was born and raised in the area too, just like Tim. The truth is, southern Illinois falls into the category of a nice place to live-if you can get a job, anyway-but a lousy place to visit. I mean, honestly, there's not much there and never really has been. The reason we make such a big deal about the Trail of Tears and the Mounds people is because those are about the only big events, you could say, that ever happened in the area's history." "There was one other, actually, although I'm not surprised you overlook it. The man's exploits-using the term loosely-are more often associated with Florida, Arkansas and Texas.
But Hernando de Soto passed through the area at one point, in the course of his famous expedition. The exact date is unknown, but it would have been sometime in the year 1541." He turned his head, examining the display. "Only three dates, then, of any real significance in the history of southern Illinois. Using the term 'date' a bit loosely. Going backward, the late 1830s, when the Cherokees were forced onto the Trail of Tears and passed through the area on their way to Oklahoma. The year 1541, when de Soto came though. And a period that can't be defined anywhere nearly so closely, when the Mounds culture was at its peak. But we can use the dates 800 to 1200 as a benchmark." He paused a moment. "Now, consider that image. The spike stutters very abruptly at some point between the fall of 1838 and the spring of 1839. Stutters again, very sharply, somewhere between the spring of 1540 and the summer of 1542. There's a wobble at that point also, as if it shifted a bit geographically. As you've noted, the farther back the spike goes, the larger becomes the uncertainty. Then there's big stutter somewhere in the decade between 1185 and 1195. Followed by a series of short stutters-accompanied by a lot of wobbling-all the way back from there to around the year 600.