The Omega Point

He kept moving the portal, trying to find north based on the glow on the western horizon. From the foliage he had seen when it was light there, he knew that the season was the same—early summer. So…

“What the hell is Draco doing there?”

“Dray-who doing where?”

“The constellation Draco… it’s way north. There’s Eltamin, and… Thuban. Thuban is the North Star!”

“Goddamn it, will you get your ass in gear?”

He lowered the portal. “Del,” he said, “this is just a damn amazing thing.”

“Well, duh!”

“No, you don’t understand what this is. Because this isn’t just some kind of window, like, into China or somewheres. Some kind of wormhole or whatever. Del, the polestar in that sky—” He tapped the edge of the portal, being careful not to touch its lethal surface. “The polestar is not Polaris, it’s Thuban. Thuban, man!”

“Look, do you remember how interested I was in the telescope, which was not at all? So I am not going to know what the fuck that means, am I?”

“What it means is that this thing is a damn time machine!” He held it up. “Thuban won’t be the polestar for another twenty thousand years. When Timmy went into that thing, he crossed thousands of years into the future, Del. It’s the future in there!”

“Oh, yeah, what about the little matter of the fact that Earth is gonna be a burned-out cinder in the future?”

“The dinosaurs got torched, and we’re here. So it’s not gonna stay, like, a cinder forever.”

“Oh, man, somebody is gonna be very pissed off at us, because this thing is unbelievably classified, it has to be. The general was taking it back to the Blue Ridge for, you know, the Family, the politicians, all those rich people, the senators—”

“I know who’s down there, I seen ’em go in same as you.”

“Okay, then, we are criminals. Big-time. The whole fucking army is gonna be after us, plus the FBI, the CIA, and all’a that shit.”

“Except that doesn’t matter a shit anymore and I am not gonna stop until I get my brother back, and that is the line in the sand here, Del, so if you want to go back, that’s fine by me. Personally, I wouldn’t sell those scumbags shit on a platter, much less give ’em this thing. Find me some good folks—decent, you know—and let’s get ’em through. And get us through, and find my brother.”

Del ran a hand along the top edge of the thing, which now gleamed purple as the supernova spread its rising light.

“It’s gonna be a brave fucking guy goes through this thing first. I mean, it’s a damn miracle your brother didn’t do like the rest of ’em.”

“Drop the gun and step away from it, please.”

Del did exactly as the voice from inside the house instructed. To Mike he mouthed the words “told you.”

“Now face me. Come up onto the porch, please.”

Mike started to lift the portal, but the unmistakable snicker of a bolt being thrown on a very proficient- sounding weapon froze him. Turning slowly, he held up his hands. Side by side, he and Del walked onto the porch. After a moment, a flashlight shone in their faces. It lingered on their patches. Whoever this was wanted to identify their unit, obviously.

“PFC Twine, please come forward.”

Del took another step closer to the door. Behind them, Mike heard movement. Somebody was taking the portal! He reacted immediately, turning to stop them.

“Freeze!”

Which Mike did. But he had seen a woman in the violet light, her long legs striding, her hair flowing back, carrying the portal like the damn thing was her own personal possession. But Tim was in there. He had to get his brother back!

“Hey, look, we come here to bring it to you,” he said. “But you gotta understand, my brother’s in it. He’s lost in there!”

There was no reaction. He could hear the woman’s footsteps fading away. He dared not try again to look. He focused his attention on the flashlight.

“We’re twins, see. So we are real close and I gotta get him outa there or go in—go over—with him. That’s what I gotta do.” He said nothing about the time machine part of it. That was probably the most secret thing about it. Guys were getting shot right and left these days. Forget the court-martial, the brig. Nowadays, you got your head blown off by a psycho general and nobody gave the slightest shit.

“Okay, Specialist Pelton, please come forward.”

Del was shaking like a terrified Chihuahua or something, which was not like Del Twine, who could chew the beard of a Taliban for lunch.

“Now what’s going to happen is I want you to come into the building. I am going to be standing aside. You will not see me. Then you will go where you’re directed.”

Del was shaking so much he looked drunk, and Mike was about to wet his pants. Maybe there was another Blue Ridge here, full of even more rich shitkickers, and they were gonna end up getting their asses tortured.

Then a match was struck ahead of them, and Mike saw that they were in a ruined hall that had once been really, really beautiful, with a sweeping staircase that led up to a mass of blackened beams where part of the roof had come in. Delicate fingers touched the match to a candle, and Mike saw a beautiful girl in the yellow light, with big eyes that looked him over dispassionately and frankly.

“Hello,” he said.

She turned and went through a dining room full of upended tables and toward a big black door. So this was it, the inner sanctum.

The windows were draped with blankets, and there were many candles. And, in their light, many faces.

Mike’s first thought was, These are civilians. His second was that they were hurt, some of them. Then that there were a whole lot of them, maybe over a hundred, and they had to be the quietest people he had ever seen in his life.

Then, from the back, the woman who had taken the portal came in. Del sucked an awed breath, and even in flickering candlelight, Mike could see why. There was just very little question—this was about the most beautiful woman in the world. She carried the portal, which was glowing softly with starlight from the other side, and put it on an easel.

Mike said, “Lady, my brother is in there. I want you folks—” He looked around the room, tried to smile, but his smile collapsed and he was all of a sudden not a soldier. That all just went out of him, all the hardness, the long, cold nights ducking Taliban mortar shells and hating the bastards, all of that and all the misery he had endured as a virtual slave guarding the Blue Ridge, and the terror of this day—all of it just melted away.

What was left was his truth—he was a scared nineteen-year-old boy in an impossible situation, who had lost his twin brother and with him half of his own soul. He let out a long sob, then choked it back.

A man came to him, a guy in his thirties, the kind of guy who was born to command. When the guy’s arm came around his shoulder, he wasn’t embarrassed, not even in front of all these people. He was just tired and scared and alone.

“Come on, you two, I want to introduce you to our head of security. There’s work for you here.”

The two young soldiers went with David Ford, watched by many eyes, and in the candlelight, there gleamed many tears. Before them, the portal, back where it belonged, glowed with soft and beautiful light.

From his careful place of hiding, Mack also saw this. As he calculated his odds, he fingered the safety on his gun. He was sick and his burn hurt like nothing else he had ever known, but mostly he was filled with a rage that was beyond any emotion he had ever felt, a great, fiery darkness that boiled up from the center of his soul, and would drive him, he knew, both to feats even beyond his own great skill, and to death if it was necessary to fulfill his aim, which had become very simple.

Alone, he could not get the portal to Blue Ridge, which meant that the people who deserved it were not going to get it.

So nobody else would, either.