Bista thought for a time. “Some of the things we discuss can only be understood in broad terms. You were born when? Twenty-Second Century?”
“No, Twentieth. I was born in 1992. I stepped through the door in 2019.”
“The door?” Bista seemed puzzled for a moment, then said, “Ah, of course. What you call a door, we call a portal. Either works perfectly well. Which is more than I can say of that technology itself, which was a great failure.”
Alex filed that comment away to come back to later, as it seemed important to him.
“As to what a rejection field is, I can tell you that it makes it nearly impossible for any organic material to pass through it. As to the how, that’s difficult to explain. If you had stepped through the portal and ended up fifteen hundred years earlier, you could have explained what a cellular phone was, but could you have told someone from that time how it worked? So they could understand it? Of course not. It will be the same with many of the things we will discuss. I can tell you what they do, but we won’t want to take the time to get into the how of the thing. Please, let’s sit down and thank you for the pleasant memory you gave us to build.”
Alex took a few steps to the camp, reached out and touched one of the camp chairs, which was exactly like the ones he and his dad had when he was young. He could even smell the distinct, musky smell the chairs had after a winter in the garage. It had exactly the right texture and give. Nostalgia filled him.
“Sanda-eh, you come sit next to me,” Alex said, pulling one of the chairs close.
“I like this, Dadda.”
“I liked it too. Wait,” Alex said, tilting his head. “Do I hear water running? I remember this camp being alongside the Snake River, but there is no running water near this hill.”
“That’s all pulled from your memory,” Bista said. “But it’s just for effect. It doesn’t actually create a river.”
“I wouldn’t be surprised if it did,” Alex said.
Alex sat in the camp chair and winced a bit as he accidentally hit his left hand on the arm.
The man introduced as Limda took a step toward him and said, “Do you mind if I scan your hand? How did you hurt it?”
“I hurt it trying to get Lanta-eh up here on the last day. The day she died.” Alex chose not to explain any more. “You can scan it if you’d like. There’s not as much there to see as there used to be.”
Limda pulled an oblong silver object out of his breast pocket and moved it slowly over Alex’s hand.
I stepped through the door into Land of the Lost and now ended up in Star Trek.
Limda looked at the device in his hand, nodded to himself, then sat down. He took the same stiff paper as before and entered notes into it. Oddly, Alex noted that for the first time since his run-in with godat-ta, there was no pain.
“Pretty nifty device you’ve got there,” Alex said.
Limda only smiled.
“I know you have many questions. Lanta-eh told Marta much of what you have been through. We know you lost your wife a few years ago to what the Winten-ah call the curse.” Bista looked at his companions before he said, “We—or at least our ancestors—are responsible for both the door and this curse.”
“Then that means you are responsible for the death of my wife.” There was a hard edge in Alex’s voice as he leaned forward. He wasn’t about to leap at these people as he had once done the warriors of Lasta-ah in this very spot, but he wanted to convey his feelings.
“Not us, specifically, but our ancestors, yes. We are here to make it right, as best we can. We cannot undo what has been done. Our ancestors attempted that, and that is what brought you here in the first place. All we can do is make things better going forward.”
Alex leaned back, told himself to relax. He knew that every question he’d had over the previous ten years could be in the offing. He just needed to wait for it to come to him.
“Tell me what I need to know,” Alex said.
Chapter Thirty-NineA Brief Future History of Earth
Bista took a seat opposite Alex and, assuming the air of a professor, said, “The world changed on July 16, 1945.”
“What? Almost fifty years before I was born? I should have seen what was going on, then.”
“I’m sure you did. Much of what I am about to tell you has been examined and reexamined by what you would call artificial intelligence millions and millions of times. In the end, the greatest mind ever created in the universe decided two things were certain. One, that mankind would develop nuclear weapons. That development might have come sooner, or later, but it was inevitable that they would be created. Some possible scenarios had one country or another beating the country which actually developed it.” He turned to the bearded man known as Pandrick. “That was The United States of North America, wasn’t it? That developed the bomb first?”
“The United States of America,” Pandrick corrected him.
“Ah, right.” Bista turned to Alex. “I am no historian. That is Pandrick’s role. I’m sure he will want to ask you some questions before we leave. We know so much about key events, but there’s nothing like the perspective of someone who lived through things. In any case, every possible scenario showed that humanity would eventually create nuclear weapons and that those weapons would soon grow powerful enough to destroy the world many times over. It was inevitable.” He cleared his throat and looked slightly uncomfortable. “Though our ancestors didn’t have access
