“Roswell?”
Her brows arched. “Color me dumbfounded, sweetie.”
Sweetie. She called me sweetie. That’s good, isn’t it?
The peeps seemed to agree, while admitting it was outside their experience paradigm. “I don’t get out a lot.” He tried to come up with a non-priggish way to ask. Had to settle for a prompting repeat of, “Roswell?”
“July 1947. The Roswell saucer crash and cover-up. The birth and beginning point of all alien conspiracy theories. Area 51?”
Area 51 was the only thing he recognized. Nineteen-forty-seven? Olivia and Cary’s collision had occurred in 1944. Was there a connection? He frowned. Case could be made for or against—
The other dent.
Could there have been two collisions? Neither Carey nor Olivia had mentioned a second impact or noticed the other dent. Of course, Carey had been inside the device, but hadn’t ridden the device while it was in motion. It could have hit something during unmanned travel.
Alien conspiracy theories.
He thought he knew about aliens, but he might be wrong about that.
* * * *
“What went wrong?” The tone was mild, the chill in the air pronounced.
Smith stared directly into a gaze as mild as the tone. He didn’t fool himself it meant anything good. “Everything.”
The gaze tracked to the single automaton. A brow arched.
“The machine is traveling through time.” The master’s inscrutable became briefly less than. Smith took encouragement from it, though he didn’t let it show. “At first I thought we’d gone back to the Twitchet’s warehouse, but there was a team there. Well trained. One armed with an energy weapon. One of them from my last encounter. He knew my name.”
The other brow rose. “Interesting. It is possible you visited the museum I spoke of.”
The sense of menace eased somewhat, but Smith didn’t relax as he described the firefight, the arrival of the tracker. That brought the brows down and close together. He didn’t ask Smith to provide a description. A tracker, with gear deployed, was a silver blob, and then he’d activated his camo and blended with the Earth team. Smith didn’t comment on the snares or asked if someone had been missed. Not his job.
“They were deployed in teams,” the master said, more to himself than Smith. “But those who eluded the traps should have headed for the stations. Would one of them disobey orders?” He sighed, as if weary with the details.
Smith knew he wasn’t.
“When they arrive, I’ll know if anyone eluded the snares.” The frown returned. “There shouldn’t have been anyone capable of challenging your team left.”
Smith tensed. “I followed procedure.”
“You always do, Tobias.” Smoke curled up from the cigar clasped in one hand, circling the containment field in lazy spirals. The edges of it rippled when he shifted in his chair. The tone was still mild, but it sounded like a threat.
Before he’d been “acquired,” he’d never taken a life he could save. He’d been a soldier. He walked, he talked, he dealt death, but he valued life. The master, he valued the lives that served him, deleted those that didn’t. He liked killing. He liked dealing death. If death had a face, then this man was it. Not that he cared much for those who did serve him.
His other hand rested lightly on the control panel that delivered the pain and the death, his fingers caressing one button, then the other, as if he couldn’t decide which would please him the most. Smith felt the master’s hunger, his need to inflict something, but Smith also felt his control. If he needed Smith, then it would be pain. If he didn’t, he would die soon. Neither would be pleasant. Deletion was prolonged and agonizing, based on the ones he’d observed.
The master liked an audience almost as much as liked dishing death.
He should want death, but it wasn’t the control device in his head that fueled his longing to live. The will to survive could trump common sense. He knew this, had seen men fight to live against all odds and logic. He didn’t want to live. He wanted to live long enough to find a way to kill the master. That he couldn’t call him anything other than master, made him want it more.
Somewhere the master had a life, a name, but it wasn’t known here when one of them could be captured, or break free of the controls. Instead, Smith memorized the face, so he’d know him if he found him somewhere in time.
Tall, cadaverous, his small movements were contained, and almost graceful, but when he stood, one saw he was ill formed, graceless. A compelling gaze looked out of a sad, sunken face. They pulled the unwary in. At first Smith had been fooled by the eyes, almost fooled into believing the bland, reasonable voice. His smile had some charm to it, if you didn’t look at his eyes, or realize he only smiled when inflicting pain. If he had a heart, it was dark and corroded.
He frowned slightly. “You say there wasn’t a time pause?”
Smith didn’t hesitate. “No.”
Time pausing authority came and went in the Service, so he didn’t see how it helped.
“Did you notice anything else about the tracker?”
Smith searched his memory, sweat beading across his forehead. “He stumbled when he landed. Messed with his aim.” Lucky for him. It missed his head by inches. He frowned, replaying the scene. “The machine was shaking everything. I had trouble staying on my feet.”
Gonna need some cover, Chewie.
“One of them closed the machine. I fired on it, but it flashed out.”
“Someone was inside. Someone who mattered to the time stream? Possible. The guestbook I showed you is still fluxing. This team could be why.” The master straightened, tapping ash into a tray. The field was cloudy with smoke now. “Nothing of the incident has popped up in the historical record.”
Smith felt ice track down his back.
“Someone is very good at hiding their tracks.” He lifted the cigar and inhaled, then exhaled a stream of smoke. “They’re watching for you.”
Smith knew better than to relax. This might be his death sentence.
“We’ll need to retrieve the ’tons or—” he paused to inhale smoke and exhale it, before continuing. “Perhaps we’ll try a more direct approach. Secure the machine at the source. Then your visit will have never happened.”
Smith blinked. He could think of several protests, but he kept them to himself. Protests weren’t popular with the master.
“It increases the uncertainty,” the master said, as if Smith had protested. “A pity Twitchet became so suspicious of you there at the end. But if it doesn’t work as advertised, it can serve another purpose.”
Smith got it then. “Bait.”
“And that is why I keep you, Tobias. You are one of my more clever acquisitions.”
As always, there was no warning. Tobias didn’t see the finger applied to the button, but he felt the result. He dropped to his knees, a grunt jerked out before he could grit his teeth.
“So strong, too.” The pain stopped as abruptly as it began. “Just don’t be too clever, my friend. I’d miss you.”
* * * *
The only thing Emily loved more than steam engines were alien conspiracy theories. She could not believe it was Roswell out there. She’d hoped to get to Roswell one day, and here she was and Robert just stood there staring off into space. Of course thinking had its place when weird things were happening, but this was
Roswell
.
“There’s a museum in town.” Emily felt herself starting to bounce, so she stopped, though it wasn’t easy. She wasn’t in the guidance counselor’s office trying to explain why she wouldn’t be going to college, she reminded herself. She was outside Roswell with the cutest crazy geek on the planet. “We could go see it. When it gets light.”
“I don’t think we should leave the machine unmanned.”
He was so cute when he got all serious and professor-ish. “The bug has wheels. I’ll bet we could drive there.” She didn’t bounce, but she did vibrate in place. She could tell he wasn’t wild about that either. Okay, so the machine was old to be driving. She could be flexible while she worked on changing his mind. “Then let’s go out and look at the stars over Roswell.” She waved her hands around a bit, because she talked with her hands when she was jazzed and she was so jazzed. “Roswell. Roswell sky. Roswell ground. Roswell air. Roswell cool in every direction.” She threw in a hopeful look because it had worked on him already today.
He thought for a few seconds. “What are the gauges doing?”
She spun on her heels and studied them without seeing them. All she could see was Roswell, even though she couldn’t
see
it. “What gauges do. Gauging stuff.” She shot him a mischievous look over her shoulder and was rewarded with a brief smile. He should charge a fee for those puppies. He stepped in next to her, the smile still twitching the edges of his mouth. Who knew twitching could be so sexy? She wanted to look at him, but she could accept that what the gauges were gauging could impact their excursion. Based on the peek out the periscope they’d landed somewhere in the desert, though she couldn’t figure out how it got to be night. It had been around ten in the morning before her world went weirder than usual. With a casual that didn’t feel casual, she propped her elbow on his shoulder and leaned in, studying the gauges with the part of her brain not focused on the warmth seeping into her from the contact, while she inhaled something that was, predictably, yummy. He smelled like what he was: a sweet, smart geek, though she was glad she didn’t have to explain how smart smelled. That would be why it took her well into a minute to realize the gauges weren’t doing anything.
No grumbling to send a tremor through the metal. Not even a spiteful hiss of steam. It seemed the machine had flat lined.
“Why aren’t the gauges moving?” He tapped one of them with his finger, as if to nudge the needle back into movement.
He thought she knew?
Oh my darling
and a double sigh. An odd something tickled her brain, but since that wasn’t possible and the question was a real one, she proffered, “Maybe it only does its thing when the Emergency Absquatulation Device is on. Or it’s out of juice.”
His chin lifted, like hound scenting prey. “We should go outside.”
She didn’t say
why didn’t I think of that
because even though rhetorical, it was a question. If one inched up to that line, one could cross it, if one weren’t careful. And one was always careful. She looked at her surroundings and amended that to: one was always careful with questions. Apparently one was freaking casual about other things.
She followed him into the parlor, a bit frustrated when he turned toward the engine room, though she did understand why. Gauges only told part of the story. The Abrams ball was part of it, too. He touched the door with the tip of a finger, checking it for heat, before opening the hatch with a decided air of caution.
Emily peered past him at the silent steam engine. It shouldn’t have been able to get from steamed to zero so fast. Steam pressure built. Steam pressure had to be released. Of course, jumping a lot of miles would release a lot of pressure, but all the way to zero? Cool air swirled out the open hatch. She wished she’d watched the gauges during the trip. She had been distracted by getting pulled and stretched and all those lights…she had to stand on tip toes to see the Abrams ball. It looked…duller than before. Maybe it was out of juice. Robert angled his head, studying the walls, so Emily strained to see as much as she could. The scorch marks appeared unchanged. That was unexpected. Maybe. Scorches implied heat, but the room was close to refrigerator cold now. It had been hot, now it was cold. Light and now it was dark. It was odd and should be scary, and it was, but scary was balanced with a trip in the bug to Roswell with Robert-
oh-my-darling
. Might be shallow, but who said everything had to be deep or complicated?
“Could the hits we took during the firefight have depleted the power supply?” Robert’s voice was a murmur likely meant for him and not her. Because he had to know she didn’t know. This close she could feel him thinking. Too bad she couldn’t hear his thoughts. Unless he wasn’t thinking about her, which he probably wasn’t, if she judged him by his questions so maybe she didn’t want to hear his thoughts.
She sighed.
He turned, the movement fast enough to catch her out, putting them face to face and almost chest to chest, if one counted the height difference, which one had to so it was more like her chin to his chest. Not that one minded that. She felt torn. She wasn’t used to having enough options to feel torn. She wanted another kiss, but she also wanted outside. His hands settled on her shoulders, and outside became less interesting, except he used them to shift her to the side, so he could get back into the hall. It seemed she’d had the illusion of choice, not actual choice.
Double sigh. She followed him out—stopping to scoop up her coat where it had lodged under a weird machine—and following him was, you know, inspiring. It warmed her a bit, but not so much she didn’t need her coat again as the chill from the engine room followed them into the parlor.
He got the hatch opened while she was still admiring his tush and donning her coat. She took pride in her ability to multitask.
The night was dark, the moon either waning or ready to show. Stars winked against velvet blue. Kind of looked like a postcard. Romantic if the guy had been heading toward her instead of away. Robert eased onto the first step as if he thought the machine would up and leave him. Then he sort of braced and dropped onto the ground. The sky didn’t fall. He didn’t vanish. The bug didn’t give a twitch. She dug in a pocket—she had a lot of them, all with something in them—extracted a flashlight, and followed him out. She flicked on the light, its narrow beam stabbing into the dark. Emily directed it down first, identifying cacti locations. This was the desert.
“What don’t you have in your pockets?” His tone was less professor and more guy.
“The kitchen sink.” She handed him the light, taking a position on his five o’clock, getting a grip on his tee shirt—needed to leave one hand free to, you know, fight off anything that jumped out of the dark. Cacti weren’t the only things to worry about. From the bug, it had looked romantic. Out in the night, it kind of edged into horror category, not helped by the not-distant-enough wail of a coyote.