Timecachers (70 page)

“We’ll go talk to them first,” said Tom, “and see how they react. With a son who’s an officer at the fort, they’d be likely to know about any policy changes, but we should make sure they wouldn’t feel obligated to report you.”

The farm was nestled in a tiny valley in the foothills. John Carter and the team paused at the crest of an overlooking hilltop, where John would watch as the team made contact. If the team got a positive response, they would signal John to join them at the farm.

Adam led the way as the team made their way over the rolling landscape, the farmhouse appearing and disappearing from view as they crested each hill. At the top of the final hill, he stopped abruptly, nearly causing Sal to crash into him.

“Hey, dude! What’s the big idea?” Sal bawled at Adam.

Adam had gone pale. “Look,” he said, pointing ahead.

Sal, Alice, and Tom nervously looked in the direction of Adam’s gesture, fearing he had spotted a detachment of militia. There was no threat, but what they saw was certainly disconcerting and completely unexpected. The farmhouse was gone, replaced by a black line of highway and a modern service station. They peered in disbelief as cars sped along the road.

“My god, we’re back,” said Alice.

“Apparently so,” said Tom, looking down at the road as if it were an illusion.

“But what about…” said Adam. He didn’t need to complete the thought. All four turned and looked back at the hilltop where they had left John Carter. The hilltop was deserted.

“What the heck?” Sal said. “Now what do we do?”

The only answer he received was blank stares. The shock of the twenty-first century panorama suddenly appearing left them spellbound. Adam pulled out the LANav and looked at the screen, expecting some suggestion of what had just occurred, but the display showed only a single blinking light indicating their present location. He almost dropped it when it emitted an electronic ringing sound.

Recovering from the shock, Adam remembered the sat-phone capabilities of the LANav. The display indicated an incoming call, and a soft key appeared labeled “ANSWER.” He touched the button and placed the LANav to his ear.

“Hello?”

“Adam? Thank goodness I finally reached you. It’s Edward Odan.”

“Uh, hi,” Adam said. “It’s Dr. Odan,” he whispered in answer to the others questioning stares. “How are you?”

“I’m much better now that I’ve reached you. I expected to hear from you before you began backpacking, you see. Are you and your team okay?”

“Okay? Sure, we’re doing okay, I guess.”

Adam realized he sounded foolish. The facts were, they were hardly okay. They had been beaten and battered, and probably were now on the verge of shock from the sudden time transition.

He needed to inform Odan about the experience they had just been through, and wondered how he was going to do that without sounding incompetent, if not mentally ill. He pulled himself together and attempted a more professional tone.

“Actually, okay may be inaccurate. We’ve had a most unique experience with your device that I need to brief you on. I believe it would be best to do that in person rather than over the phone. It will take us a while to get back to our vehicle, but we should get together as quickly as possible.”

“That’s quite fine, Adam. I will get together with your entire team right away. The most important thing is that you are all safe. I see that your three engineers are with you.”

“You see? How…” Adam wasn’t aware that the LANav had video, although that would hardly be amazing considering its other capabilities.

“No mystery, Adam,” Odan said with a hint of dry, Bostonian amusement. “Look down at the road below you, if you please.”

Adam did as he was asked, and saw the SUV that had pulled off onto the shoulder of the road. A man standing next to it, holding another LANav, was waving at him.

“Why don’t you and your team come on down and we can have our meeting right now,” Adam heard through the earpiece.

Adam pointed out the man and vehicle to Tom, Alice, and Sal and said, “Looks like our ride is here.”

He had no answers for the team’s questions as they headed down to the road. “I’m more concerned about how we’re going to tell him what happened to us without him driving us to the nearest insane asylum.”

“The dude’s going to think we’ve spent the last few weeks tripping on acid,” said Sal.

“I wish we had some time together to put together a reasonable sounding explanation,” said Adam.

“A reasonable sounding explanation?” Tom shrieked. “How could we possibly give him a reasonable sounding explanation when we can’t even give ourselves one?”

“Good point,” said Adam. “Something tells me that he might not be as surprised as we think, though. Anyway, we’re about to find out,” he said as they approached the vehicle. He extended his hand to Odan. “Dr. Odan, it’s nice to finally meet you in person. How did you know we’d be here?”

“I was able to track you on my LANav, you see. Your path has been interesting, to say the least, for the past few days since we last spoke. Goodness, you covered quite a bit of territory.”

“The past few
days
? You mean
weeks
, but more importantly, we need to tell you about our experience since then, and I hope you can keep an open mind while we do.”

“Not to worry; that will not be a problem. I’m anxious to hear your report, but why don’t we get off the side of the road and you can talk while I drive.”

They piled into the SUV, seeing their own gear and realizing that they were in the vehicle they left at Fort Mountain Park. “Fortunately the SUV was rented in my name, you see, so they let me have a spare key,” Odan explained. He pulled the gearshift lever into drive, and accelerated onto the highway.

“Well, Dr. Odan, I guess the good news is your LANav is a pretty awesome navigational device,” Adam said, handing his LANav to Odan.

Chapter sixty

O
dan listened without interruption as Adam relayed the events of the last several weeks, his only response an occasional nod or “Mm-hmm.” He remained poker-faced, keeping his eyes on the road, showing no sign of disbelief or astonishment at the story.

Adam stuck to the facts. He described how they had first met John Carter at the location of the first beacon and explained how they had gradually come to accept that they had been transported to 1838. He described the landscape and the events that occurred concerning the Cherokee removal. He did not reveal the personal relationships they had formed with the people or try to describe the tragedies and abuses they had witnessed. He didn’t believe those to be pertinent to his description of the LANav’s function, and he believed that speaking of them would only stir his and the rest of the team’s emotions and sidetrack his report. Tom, Sal, and Alice remained silent for the most part, only responding when Adam asked them for help to confirm a particular fact or timeline. Needless to say, they had all ceased taking written testing notes after meeting John Carter.

Odan’s emotionless responses and seemingly casual acceptance of the report began to annoy Adam. “I can’t tell if you simply don’t believe any of this or what! Why do I get the feeling you’re not surprised by what happened?”

Adam’s sudden outburst startled Odan. He gave Adam a sheepish look and said, “Well, you see, we did in fact have some suspicions that…”

“What? Don’t tell me that you
knew
what would happen to us! We faced great personal danger at times, not to mention the shock of…”

“Oh, goodness no! We certainly did not know the device would actually transport you back in time! Our suspicions were only that the anomalies may be related to events of some historical significance. In fact, none of our hypotheses suggested that you would actually be transported back in time. My dear Adam, I would never have knowingly sent you into such a dangerous situation!”

“Well, Dr. Odan, I think you need to come clean with us. After what we’ve been through, we at least deserve that much. Exactly what sort of ‘hypotheses’
did
you come up with?”

“Yes, of course. You are most correct. I agree that you deserve some honest answers. Firstly, I must say that I don’t believe I have been dishonest with you—don’t mistake my subdued reaction to your report as evidence that I intentionally misled you. I was simply controlling my responses to allow you to continue uninterrupted, you see. As a scientist, I’m usually not prone to, uh, outbursts of emotion. Believe me; I am, in fact, very excited by your report. Incidentally, the length of time you were out of contact was only several days, not weeks. Had you been missing longer, there would have been rescue teams searching for you. Not that I doubt your account of the time, of course. To me, you see, it indicates a difference between the time frequencies; apparently a day in the present is not equal to a day in the past.”

“Okay, but I suspect you knew more than you told me. I remember you telling me that knowledge of American history was something that we might need. At the time, I didn’t see the connection, but now…”

“You remember that I told you we detected several anomalies?”

“Yes, you told me you suspected they were ripples caused by a disparity between earth-time and space-time.”

“Most correct. What we determined, in fact, was that at the site of each beacon, some major historical event occurred. I left that out before, not wanting to influence your findings. I did not want you making assumptions about what you found at the beacon site, you see. If you knew they were related to a particular historical event, you would look for evidence of that; which is one of the reasons we wanted someone who was not connected with our project and had no pre-conceived ideas about the nature of the anomalies.”

“I guess that sounds reasonable. So the historical event at our beacon site was the Cherokee Removal of 1838. What were you expecting us to find there?”

“We honestly had no idea. As I said, there were several hypotheses. One was that the ripple was just an echo of the event, a sort of ghost, if you will, and no visible artifact existed. Another was that the site would reveal some previously unfound archeological evidence to be studied. My goodness, being transported back to the time of the event was too farfetched to suggest, although I’m sure it crossed the minds of some of our more imaginative engineers.”

“Well, now what? Now that you know the LANav’s capability to transport people back in time, I suppose you can consider the device a huge success.”

“On the contrary. The enormity of the discovery is astounding, of course, but it is a disaster as a commercial enterprise. A device with such power could never be made available as a consumer product, you see. We have no idea what effect a visit to the past may have on our current timeline. Changing something that already occurred could be more devastating than nuclear weapons!”

“We considered the possibility of time-paradoxes. In our situation we were more concerned with our immediate survival than changing history.”

“That’s because you weren’t prepared to suddenly find yourself transported back in time, you see. If someone went back with the intention of making a change, well, who knows what the outcome might be. As you can imagine, this will require years of careful scientific study. And the discovery will have to be kept in the utmost secrecy, of course. We will not even be able to announce our findings for fear that someone else will make reckless or unethical use of the technology! My goodness, your adventure was history making, but none of us can go public about it, at least for now.”

“That’s something I hadn’t considered. But my question is still valid—now what? Do you intend to turn this over to the government? I’m not sure that’s a good idea either.”

“Nor am I. At the moment I don’t have an answer for you. Private research may be the best alternative, but the type of funding required for such long term analysis may be out of reach for anyone except the government. And I have my current investors to consider, of course. In fact, with this revelation my only choice may be to report that the project was a complete failure, and likely ruin my reputation by doing so.

“If I may, I suggest the four of you accompany me back to Boston. I will put together a small core of key engineers that can be depended upon to remain discreet, and they will want to talk to you folks as the pioneers of this technology. Together we can discuss the options and determine how to proceed, you see. I believe if you are willing, there will be long-term involvement in this project for your team.”

“I don’t think any of us would object to a meeting in Boston,” Adam said, getting nods of agreement from his team. “We need to take care of a few matters down here first, though.” That statement brought quizzical glances from the others. “Our departure from 1838 was abrupt, and while it may not be important to the technical nature of your device, we were all intensely involved with people’s lives while we were there. I believe we’d all like to do some research of our own, of a more personal nature, to see if we can determine what became of them.”

“I certainly understand,” said Odan. “If you please, you can drop me off at the Atlanta airport, and meet me in Boston tomorrow. Will that give you enough time to complete your research, my friend?”

“A day of searching historical records should tell us what we need to know.”