Now, this better be the same number. I shield my mouth with a cupped hand and look back at the pixie who still has me in her glare. Add calling TMA on a nonsecured line to my list of charges. A woman answers. “Hello.”
“I need to speak to the onshift director,” I say.
After a pause, “I’m sorry, what did you say?”
“I’m TMA and I need to speak to the onshift director.” Again, a pause, this time longer.
“Hello,” a different female voice says.
“Are you the onshift director?”
“Who is this?”
“My name’s Joad Bevan. I’m with TMA.” I turn to the pixie. “This is very private, sorry. I’ll be off in a minute. Really.” The pixie gives me a theatrically cynical look then walks back among the hanging clothes bags.
“I don’t know a Joad Bevan,” the voice replies. I might as well go for broke.
“No, you wouldn’t. I’ve accelerated back from 2021 and I have a problem.” Then the longest pause yet. If that didn’t get her attention, what would?
“Where are you?” she asks. I read her the address stamped on the generic drycleaner’s calendar. “Are you safe?”
Although I knew I was lost, it hadn’t occurred to me until now that I might not be safe. “I think I am.”
“Stay there.” She hangs up.
NINE
Almost an hour passes before a red Chevy van pulls up outside. I step out and the passenger window opens to reveal a shiny, pink-faced man with military cut ginger hair who looks me up and down. The back door slides opens and he beckons me. The driver, a wiry older women in a leather security windbreaker walks arounds the van and puts my case in the back.
Without a word exchanged, we pull out. After a few minutes the pink-faced man turns back to me and asks for ID. I hand over my TMA ID.
“What’s this?” he asks.
“TMA credential,” I reply. His stare is a potpourri of suspicion, contempt and militaristic efficiency.
“No it isn’t,” he says.
“Not yet.” He keeps the credential and turns away. The ride out of Risley is familiar yet alien. Someone once said that the past is a foreign country. They were never in my particular situation but they had it right. I lived here–live here–in 1996. With force, it suddenly hits me that I’m a few miles from here–a ten year-old me, that is. How can that be? You can be in the time acceleration business a long time, but you don’t experience the full bewilderment of it until the ten year-old you is a few miles away.
Once out into the semi-arid wastelands, the landscape becomes more familiar, less changed. The driver speaks inaudibly to the site gate guard and we travel on. So here is TMA circa 1996. Same building but maybe a little newer and shinier. Other than the old model cars in the parking lot, it could be where I arrived this morning. I shiver.
The cigarette fumes are what I notice first, then the conversations. There’s chatter within cubicles, chatter across cubicles, and a gathered group laughing. They all seem quite talkative, even friendly, very un-TMA. And it looks like plaid shirt and jeans is the uniform. I’m led to the meeting room, which now contains a battered metal-framed, Formica-surfaced table surrounded by a dozen school chairs. The pink-faced man who I now see is no older than his late twenties points me to a chair. The driver brings in the case and shuts the door to our windowless conference room. She unzips it and puts its contents on the far end of the table. An accelerator and an automatic pistol. Pink-face stares at the pistol and then at me. It seems I’m expected to answer a question he hasn’t asked. I wonder if that type of gun doesn’t yet exist. I know zip about guns. Or maybe it’s just a matter of, why the hell do you have a gun? The door opens, a woman and a man enter. The woman dismisses my escorts with a thank you. They whisper something to her, hand her my credential, then take the accelerator and the gun with them. She smiles once they leave. Her smile is a small thing but it warms me. Someone who doesn’t have contempt for me–yet.
“We spoke on the phone,” she says in a voice that’s husky yet precise, with a touch of the South. She pours a glass of water from a jug and places it in front of me. She’s lean and outdoorsy looking–a cyclist or climber maybe. About my age, a face that relaxes to a smile, freckles, intelligent blue eyes and light brown hair tied back into a tight bun.
“So tell me,” she says, sitting down across from me.
“Starting where, when?” I ask. She shrugs. “It’s your story.” The man who had entered with her had no intention of going along with the patient approach.
“What’s your name again?” he asks sharply. He also looks about my age, heavily bespectacled, with unkempt, black greasy hair. He has a sardonic expression that promises whatever I reply will be a setup for him.
“Joad Bevan,” I say.
“And where are you from?” he asks.
“Here.” I reply to the woman. “Born and raised in Risley.” They exchange a glance.
“Yes, we looked you up,” he says. “You’re ten years old.” She places her hand on his arm in the way that says shut up.
“You can imagine we’re a little confused,” she says.
“I need your help,” I say. I’m not used to being so direct when I’m not talking about matters of science, but I had breathed in and that’s what had come out. The woman leans forward, puts her palms down
