me. All those nights at Mcllroy, we laughed at nutty old Mike Teagel… and now what you find yourself in the middle of is a prime bit of exotic news.'
Laura laughed softly. 'Maybe I'd better reconsider all those tales of aliens living secretly in Cleveland, huh?'
'I guess what I'm trying to say is… life is full of wonders and surprises. Some of them are nasty surprises, yeah, and some days are as dark as the inside of the average politician's head. But just the same, there are moments that make me realize we're all here for some reason, enigmatic as it might be. It's not meaningless. If it was meaningless, there'd be no mystery. It'd be as dull and clear and lacking in mystery as the mechanism of a Mr. Coffee machine.'
Laura nodded.
'God, listen to me! I'm torturing the English language to come up with a half-baked philosophical statement that ultimately means nothing more than 'keep your chin up, kid.''
'You're not half-baked.'
'Mystery,' Thelma said. 'Wonder. You're in the middle of it, Shane, and that's what life's all about. If it's dark right now… well, this too shall pass.'
They stood by the car, hugging, not needing to say more, until Chris ran out from the house with a crayon drawing he had done for Thelma and that he wanted her to take back to LA with her. It was a crude but charming scene of Tommy Toad standing outside a movie theater, gazing up at a marquee on which Thelma's name was huge.
He had tears in his eyes. 'But do you really have to go, Aunt Thelma? Can't you stay one more day?'
Thelma hugged him, then carefully rolled up the drawing as if in possession of a priceless masterwork. 'I'd love to stay, Christopher Robin, but I can't. My adoring fans are crying for me to make this movie. Besides, I've got a big mortgage.'
'What's a mortgage?'
'The greatest motivator in the world,' Thelma said, giving him a last kiss. She got into the car, started the engine, put down the side window, and winked at Laura. 'Exotic news, Shane.'
'Mystery.'
'Wonder.'
Laura gave her the split-finger greeting from
Thelma laughed. 'You'll make it, Shane. In spite of the guns and all I've learned since I came here on Friday, I'm less worried about you now than I was then.'
Chris stood at Laura's side, and they watched Thelma's car until it went down the long driveway and disappeared onto the state route.
6
Dr. Vladimir Penlovski's large office suite was on the fourth floor of the institute. When Stefan entered the reception lounge, it was deserted, but he heard voices coming from the next room. He went to the inner door, which was ajar, pushed it all the way open, and saw Penlovski giving dictation to Anna Kaspar, his secretary.
Penlovski looked up, mildly surprised to see Stefan. He must have perceived the tension in Stefan's face, for he frowned and said, 'Is something wrong?'
'Something's been wrong for a long time,' Stefan said, 'but it'll all be fine now, I think.' Then, as Penlovski's frown deepened, Stefan pulled the silencer-equipped Colt Commander from the pocket of his lab coat and shot the scientist twice in the chest.
Anna Kaspar sprang up from her chair, dropping her pencil and dictation pad, a scream caught in her throat.
He did not like killing women — he did not like killing anyone— but there was no choice now, so he shot her three times, knocking her backward onto the desk, before the scream could tear free of her.
Dead, she slid off the desk and crumpled to the floor. The shots had been no louder than the hissing of an angry cat, and the sound of the body dropping had been insufficient to draw attention.
Penlovski was slumped in his chair, eyes and mouth open, staring sightlessly. One of the shots must have pierced his heart, for there was only a small spot of blood on his shirt; his circulation had been cut off in an instant.
Stefan backed out of the room, closed the door. He crossed the reception lounge and, stepping into the hall, shut the outer door too.
His heart was racing. With those two murders he had cut himself off forever from his own time, his own people. From here on, the only life for him was in Laura's time. Now there was no turning back.
With his hands — and the gun — jammed in his lab-coat pockets, he went down the hall toward Januskaya's office. As he neared the door, two of his other colleagues came out of it. They said hello as they passed him, and he stopped to see if they were heading for Penlovski's office. If they were, he'd have to kill them too.
He was relieved when they stopped at the elevators. The more corpses he left strewn around, the more likely someone would be to stumble across one of them and sound an alarm that would prevent him from setting the timer on the explosives and escaping by way of the Lightning Road.
He went into Januskaya's office, which also had a reception area. At the desk, the secretary — provided, as Anna Kaspar had been, by the secret police — looked up and smiled.
'Is Dr. Januskaya here?' Stefan asked.
'No. He's down in the documents room with Dr. Volkaw.'
Volkaw was the third man whose overview of the project was great enough to require that he be eliminated. It seemed a good omen that he and Wladyslaw Januskaya were conveniently in the same place.
In the documents room, they stored and studied the many books, newspapers, magazines, and other materials that had been brought back by time travelers from scheduled jaunts. These days the men who had conceived of Lightning Road were engaged in an urgent analysis of the key points at which alterations in the natural flow of events could provide the changes in the course of history that they desired.
On the way down in the elevator, Stefan replaced the pistol's silencer with the unused spare. The first would muffle another dozen shots before its sound baffles were seriously damaged. But he did not want to overuse it. The second silencer was additional insurance. He also quickly exchanged the half-empty magazine for a full one.
The first-floor corridor was a busy place, with people coming and going from one lab and research room to another. He kept his hands in his pockets and went directly to the documents room.
When Stefan entered, Januskaya and Volkaw were standing at an oak table, bent over a copy of a magazine, arguing heatedly but in low voices. They glanced up, then immediately continued their discussion, assuming that he was there for research purposes of his own.
Stefan put two bullets in Volkaw's back.
Januskaya reacted with confusion and shock as Volkaw flew forward into the table, driven by the impact of the nearly silent gunfire.
Stefan shot Januskaya in the face, then turned and left the room, closing the door behind him. Not trusting himself to speak to one of his colleagues with any degree of self-control or coherence, he tried to appear to be lost in thought, hoping that would dissuade them from approaching him. He went to the elevators as quickly as possible without running, went to his third-floor office, reached behind the file cabinet, and twisted the dial on the timer as far as it would go, giving himself just five minutes to get to the gate and away before the institute was reduced to burning rubble.
7
By the time the school year began, Laura had won approval for Chris to receive his education at home, from
