“Yeah. You’re right. Time is moot for us.” Morris smiled wearily. “And that’s the glitch. Just by being back there this length of time we change the environment. It’s too much exposure.”
“We only went back to watch them bury something,” Jimbo said. “As long as we don’t interact with anyone or leave something behind, it’s all good.”
“No. No, it’s not. By the simple act of observation, we alter the reality we’re observing. It’s not even a theorem anymore, James.” Morris could not bring himself to call the man Jimbo. “It’s proven science. The Condensed Matter Physics Department at the Weizmann Institute in Israel confirmed it on a quantum particle level. Observation alters reality, and it’s not even about perception. It’s a real, physical change.”
“Yeah, well...”
“That’s why we have to make this the last trip,” Morris said. “Each manifestation in the past messes with the building blocks of reality on a level I can’t understand and don’t even want to think about. After we find Caroline and Dwayne and yank them the hell out of there, I’m going to sell the Tube for scrap and go back to teaching.”
“First we find them,” Jimbo said, rising to leave. “Then you do what you have to do, Doc.”
Each field opening pushed the next Tube manifestation forward by an indeterminate time. The opening Morris made following Jimbo’s return moved their window back, or forward, by at least twelve hours-time in The Then. Jimbo couldn’t get back to Dwayne and Caroline until the day after the message about the boat sighting was received. It could be longer. The Vestergaard Equation was subject to forces that Morris had not yet fully worked out. There were variables to time travel that he could not account for or anticipate. All he could do was dial in the field as close as the Chronus program would allow.
Three days after Jimbo awoke from his long nap, the field was powered up and open for business.
“You ready for this?” Jimbo said.
“Fuck, no.” Boats grinned.
Together they shoved the gear-laden inflatable down the steel rollers set in the floor of the platform. They leaped aboard as the craft entered the icy mist that enshrouded the Tube rings.
The raft dropped hard into warm water. Jimbo tumbled across the decking to collide with a stack of equipment sacks. He fought down his gorge and pressed his eyes shut to fight off the crushing vertigo of the field effect. Boats clambered back on all fours to the twin motors and fired them up. He manned the tiller with a hand clapped over his mouth to keep breakfast down.
“Tasted better the first time,” Boats said as he piloted them out of the low-hanging mist.
The island was in sight, a black hump against the gloom of dusk as the sun sank behind it. The sky along the horizon to the west was streaked with orange clouds. Stars were already visible in the eastern sky.
Jimbo broke out their weaponry. His own modified M4 for him and a Mossberg Mariner shotgun with extended magazine for Boats. He sat at the prow and leaped from the boat as soon as they reached the shallows of the beach that ran along the shore of the neck that connected the main island with the archipelago of rocky spires. They pulled the raft up onto the sand before running across the strip of sand with weapons extended. There were prints of sandals and bare feet everywhere on the beach.
Jimbo held up a fist, and both men took a knee. Boats raised an eyebrow and pointed up to the promontory where the hide lay. Jimbo shook his head and removed a pair of night-vision binoculars from a pouch on his Molle vest.
He scanned around them, starting at the rocks above and moving across the water to the north.
“Shit,” Jimbo breathed.
“What is it?” Boats whispered low. “A sail. Bearing north-northwest.”
“Coming or going?”
“Going, goddamn it,” Jimbo growled and stood up to watch the sail grow smaller against the sky.
37
Meet the Phoenicians
The Lion of Ba’al, as they now knew the bireme was called, was far from the sight of land when Dwayne and Caroline were freed from their bonds the following day. Xinba’al, the man who had taken ownership of the ax from the man Dwayne shot, explained their situation to them through Praxus. They were free to move about the ship since there were many eyes to watch them and nowhere to escape to.
“Are you okay?” Dwayne asked.
“I’m not dealing with this well,” Caroline said. She cast her eyes at the deck.
“Don’t let them have control.”
“How do I do that, Dwayne? I’m scared. I’m stressed. I’m in the same situation I was six months ago. We’re prisoners.”
“Don’t think of it that way. You give in to that and you become passive. Most people go that way, so they’re not noticed, so they stay out of trouble. We’re already in all the trouble we can handle. We can’t afford passivity.”
“What’s the alternative?” She met his eyes.
“Watch for opportunity. Be ready for the first chance we have to change our situation,” Dwayne said and brushed fingers through her hair.
“What if we make the situation worse?”
“That’s a possibility. But, we have to take the shot. The way I see it, any change is good.”
They climbed up past the empty oar benches. The oars were pulled in shipboard, allowing little room for passage. They emerged into the sunlight to find most of the crewmen lounging on the main deck eating meals, playing with dice, or napping atop heaped cargo secured to the deck under hemp tarps stiff with tar.
The ship had a company of almost two hundred men. There were one hundred and twenty places at the oars and just shy of sixty fighting men. Dwayne suspected that everyone on board was expected to fight when the time came. Almost all of them were taking the sun, and there was little open space on the center deck.
An awning
