How Do I Love Thee? (19 page)

‘By whom?’ Burnett wondered.

‘By the law of temporal-dimensional, or TD, physics.’

‘Isn’t there a Julia Scott on Earth Two?’

‘There was. However, she and Robert Burnett were killed in 1991 when their F-14 was shot down over Iraq.’

Burnett snorted and his lips twisted into a grim smile. ‘I seem to recall you and I had a few close shaves there, but for the grace of quantum physics, huh?’ His expression turned serious as he added, ‘So, you’re from some other Earth. How come you paid us folks over here on Earth One a visit?’

The limousine took the corner sharply, prompting Wilkie to curse as the rum splashed over the lip and onto Julia’s hand. ‘Damned driver,’ Wilkie muttered. ‘Sorry.’ He yanked a starched white handkerchief from his coat pocket and offered it to her.

Until then, Julia had managed to keep her hands hidden in the shadows. As she accepted the cloth all eyes fell to her fingers, three of which were still bandaged. The others looked like they’d been through a meat grinder. ‘Touch of frostbite,’ she explained, dabbing the alcohol. ‘Just minor.’

Wilkie’s expression said otherwise. Julia folded her hands away while Admiral Prado answered Burnett’s question. ‘Commander Scott came here to warn us of the consequences.’

‘Consequences?’ Burnett’s eyes narrowed.

‘Your Commander Scott will return here to Earth One because the second TD law ensures all jumpers will be returned to their Point of Origin,’ Julia explained.

‘Terrific,’ Anderson chirped happily, ‘ from the shit into the POO.’

She’d never again been able to use the acronym. Clearing her throat, she continued. ‘She will discover that history has altered and assume she did something to mess up 1995.’

‘But she didn’t, right?’ Burnett shook his head. ‘Because she was on Earth Two. Which can only mean that someone
from another parallel Earth must have been responsible for messing with our history.’

Anderson shot her a childlike smile of delight, inordinately pleased with himself for figuring it out. Years of listening to her explanations had, despite his best efforts, leaked through his admittedly thick skull, and stuck. It was in those moments that she caught glimpses of the man, not her commanding officer. And they were beguiling.

‘Captain Anderson from Earth Two. Here on Earth One, Anderson was killed in the Gulf War in 1991. As with Julia Scott, this is his first time jump and he has no idea that he’s landed in 1995 in a parallel world. Anderson, too, will return to the present on Earth Two to find his history altered.’

‘Because of something our Commander Scott did.’ Burnett pinched the bridge of his nose with his thumb and forefinger. ‘Gives a whole new meaning to the term “crossed wires”.’

‘Gives a whole new meaning to the term “howling migraine”,’ Minister Wilkie muttered, swirling the ice in his glass.

Julia stared at it.

Months of scratching away at the ice, trying to dig out the Elthoran ship, then along comes Shadrak in his humongous great ship, hovers over the ice lake like an overdone
Independence Day
movie prop, sticks his butt-ugly red alien head out the
More Than One Life force-field, and casually mentions there’s a little problem and would they mind coming home to fix it?

‘Sure, Shadrak, glad to see you too, buddy,’ Anderson said, his voice dripping with sarcasm. ‘Didn’t think to drop by sooner, like maybe
three friggin’ months ago
when we got trapped on this frozen dirt-bag of a moon?’

Shadrak’s nictitating membrane flickered myopically. ‘Why?’

The alien’s cluelessness was so normal that Julia burst out laughing.

‘Gods,’ Anderson muttered, tossing one hand in the air and using the ice pick to climb out of the hole. ‘All the damned same. Never write, never call, never pull your butt out of the fire—or freezer—until they want you to fix something
they
screwed up!’ His voice grew louder with every word. ‘You’re worse than politicians! Well, what is it this time?’

Shadrak shot Julia a blank look, then, using the colours of his multifaceted eyes, silently asked her why in the name of the Origins Captain Anderson was so cranky.

‘MREs,’ Julia replied with a knowing smile. ‘He hates the US Military-issued Meals Ready to Eat. Especially the ones with spinach.’

‘Do you realise what three goddamned months subsisting on a diet of spinach MREs, some funky cave mushrooms, and an alien polar bear does to a guy?’ Anderson demanded.

Blame it on the mushrooms.

‘What was our Commander Scott’s mission?’ Burnett asked.

Wilkie’s normally cherubic face darkened to an unhealthy puce. ‘Your President wants to stay in the White House, and our lap dog Prime Minister is all for it. I may be his Defence Minister, but that doesn’t mean I have to like where he’s taking us.’

‘I apologise if I’m repeating what you well know, but it needs to be placed in context,’ Julia explained. ‘In late 2007, John Howard was elected for a fifth term as Australia’s Prime Minister. Meanwhile, in the US, following Al Gore’s two acclaimed terms in office, George W. Bush mysteriously won the single electoral college vote to become the forty-fourth President, snatching victory from Senator Hillary Clinton, who won the popular vote hands down.’

‘As we’re all aware,’ Admiral Prado said, ‘the scandal surrounding rigged votes could result in President Bush being impeached. What you may not know, Commander Burnett, is that his team have devised a two-pronged strategy to prevent this. First, muckrake something from President Bill Clinton’s era in order to cut the Democrats—and, specifically, Hillary—off at the knees.’

‘And the second?’

‘The standard diversionary tactic employed by unpopular leaders,’ Julia said. ‘Start a war.’

The scowl crossing Burnett’s face told everyone what he thought of that.

The limo slowed and stopped, and Prado touched a button to lower the window. The guards on duty spent a few moments scanning the vehicle before allowing them to continue down Middle Head Road to a familiar, unremarkable stone building.

As they drove, Wilkie smiled grimly, and said, ‘Even better. They found something that would do both. There was just one little hurdle to overcome.’

‘The evidence was destroyed in 1995,’ Julia said.

The car came to a halt, and she waited for the Chief Petty Officer to open the door before extending the fold-up cane Shadrak had given her, and stepping outside. Pre-empting any comments, she added, ‘Broke my leg recently.’

Prado frowned. ‘My doppelgänger sent you on an assignment with a gammy leg and frostbitten hands?’

‘Not … exactly.’ Shadrak had hardly given her time to shower and change.

‘You look like you got yourself caught up in an avalanche,’ Burnett said.

The ’quake had hit with such force that it knocked her to the ground. Before she could stand, an agonising crunch ripped
through her leg and tore up through her spine. The drill rig she’d been packing had collapsed on her, pinning her to the ground. She screamed in agony and looked up—directly into hell. The moonquake had dislodged the leading edge of the ice sheet and it was tearing down the mountainside. They should have been well clear of it, but a chunk the size of a football stadium had broken off. The sheer force of the moving ice sheet had spun it around. It was headed for her and Anderson with the speed of a bullet.

She was dead and she knew it, but Anderson was inside the Elthoran ship futzing around with the engines. She screamed into her comunit to warn him—but the comunit had gone, knocked off her head when she’d fallen.

Julia craned her neck around. A heartbeat later, Anderson’s face appeared in the cockpit window. His gaze took in the wall of ice bearing down on them and then he saw her. In that one breathtaking moment, his raw emotions lay naked before her, a confession more compelling than any words in any language on any planet. His eyes screamed despair as his mouth cried a denial. She held out her hand in farewell just as the avalanche engulfed her.

Julia was fast losing patience with herself. This entire train of thought was distracting, unprofessional, which is exactly why there were regulations about fraternisation. ‘I’m
fine, sir,’ she said, meeting Prado’s intense gaze as he held the entryway door open for her.

Two checkpoints and five armed guards later, they arrived at the preparation room. ‘Perfect,’ Julia said when she spied several Oklahoma City fire fighters’ uniforms on the rack.

‘The original plan was to send a team back to 1995, but Commander Scott insisted that going alone would minimise the odds of impacting history,’ Prado explained.

While Burnett changed, Julia completed his mission brief.

‘Just one question,’ he said as he tugged on the jacket. ‘What makes you think Scott will listen to me? And what if I kill a roach or something, triggering a chain of events that changes history again?’

‘You’ll arrive three minutes earlier than Commander Scott, at a set of coordinates we have predetermined is safe,’ Julia replied, hoping that Shadrak had got it right this time. She set the numbers on the fob-watch-sized temporal device before attaching it to his dog tags. ‘There’s a minimum turnaround time of three hours. So long as you follow my instructions exactly, the timelines will be restored.’

Shadrak had
better
have got it right this time or god or no god, she’d personally jam one of his articulated callipers up his evacuatory orifice.

‘That will give you sufficient time to brief Scott. And Commander,’ Julia added with a reassuring smile, ‘she’ll believe you. I have it on good authority that she’s been waking in a cold sweat for months.’

When Burnett vanished, Wilkie said, ‘That’s it? No sirens, no fanfare, no flash of smoke? No banks of monitors to track him through time?’

‘That’s it,’ Julia said. ‘Same way as I arrived.’

Admiral Prado led the way down the corridor to his office.

‘There are no words, Admiral,’ Julia said to him when he closed the door behind them. ‘I wish I could be here when Commander Burnett returns, to accept some of the burden of responsibility.’ Explaining the fate of Burnett’s wife and kids had been tough enough. Dealing with the reality would be much harder.

‘Three hours, you say?’ Wilkie looked at the clock on the wall.

‘Yes, sir,’ she replied, and following the Admiral’s gesture, sat back in one of the leather chairs.

Prado reached behind his cluttered desk and opened a cabinet. ‘Another drink, Tom?’

Wilkie nodded and pulled a lucky charm from his pocket, a red chess piece.

Julia stared at it in disbelief. It was the king.

The first thing she could remember after the avalanche had struck was the bliss of warm water. It took her a few moments to realise Anderson was bathing her in the hot springs inside the cave. By the time she was fully conscious and able to speak, he’d dressed her and was tenderly wrapping her in a sleeping bag.

‘How?’

‘I extended the ship’s force-field,’ he replied. ‘Couldn’t get it deployed before a lump of ice clipped your head. Sorry.’

It was a miracle that he’d freed her and got them clear. The force-fields on Elthoran ships were skin-tight. Extending it a hundred metres to hold back a small mountain of ice would have drained the power supply in minutes.

She looked around. Until shipping out for winter, the survey team had used the cave as a base. ‘How deeply is our ship buried?’

‘I’m guessing it’s under about a hundred metres of ice.’

As if reading her mind, he added, ‘It’ll take six months before the engineers get a second ship operational.’

They’d been in worse situations. Much worse. The cave had a month’s emergency rations, each MRE with its own heat pack, for a four-man survey team. There was barely any fuel for fires, although the thermal springs would provide them with unlimited hot baths. She wasn’t even in that much pain, although she was certain her leg was broken. She looked down,
surprised to see that he’d already set it, and that there was an IV drip in the back of her hand.

‘On the upside,’ he added with a rueful grin, ‘I found a gallon of morphine.’

Nevertheless, shock was setting in and she began to shiver. Then his arms were around her, his body gently, firmly pressed against hers. Nothing unprofessional. On the contrary, it was survival training 101 because the temperature was plummeting like a stone. But sleeping that way over the following weeks fostered its own intimacy.

Between blizzards, he’d gone outside and chipped away at the avalanche, hoping to tunnel down to the ship to recover the solar cells. An hour in the sun would reboot the engines and the force-field would take care of the ice. An hour after that and they’d be home. Except that the storms raged for days, sometimes weeks at a time, filling the partially dug tunnel with snow drifts that he’d barely been able to shovel out before another storm hit.

At the end of their second month, a white furred bear-thing tried to make a meal of Julia. Out of habit, she kept her sidearm nearby, and the animal had made a welcome, if gamy, addition to their scant diet.

Twelve weeks after they arrived, Anderson removed the cast from her leg. The bone seemed to have healed well and they celebrated with a half-bottle of contraband Scotch that she’d
found in one of the survey teams’ kits. The following three days the weather held, and she insisted on working beside him as he tunnelled down to the ship.

The next day was Christmas Eve. That evening he gave her the chess set. Fashioned from the soft, alien rocks, the red-and-black pieces were intricate, each a work of art lovingly carved over the months. She laughed aloud when she saw that the red king bore an uncanny resemblance to Shadrak. Then, for some unaccountable reason, tears came to her eyes. ‘I’ve never … no-one’s ever given me anything so beautiful before.’

Confused, he gently brushed the tears from her cheek. She took his hand and kissed it. She had meant it to be a chaste thank-you, but it shattered five years of emotional walls and the constraints that bound them finally gave way.