“It would have been wild if you did. Those dots were never connected for me until yesterday. And even now, are they connected?”
“And he took you on a pretty wild ride, I’m guessing.”
“Wild’s the word,” Bess replies. “One word, anyway.” We’re both looking for words when I notice a commotion coming from the barn–agitated voices getting louder. If Bess can hear it, she’s ignoring it. “Now tell me your version, Joad.”
Jenn bursts out of the barn door just long enough to say “need you,” then disappears back in.
“Can you wait here?” I say. Bess grabs my hand and steps closer.
“I want to hear it–your version,” she says, her eyes fixed on mine. I return her gaze momentarily then pull my hand free.
I overhear conversations and glean that someone has gone missing. Jenn, Gallie and Jim Chen are huddled and I join them.
“Arun Ramuhalli. He’s missing,” Jenn says.
“He’s been taken?” I ask.
“Maybe, but I don’t think so.” Gallie nods at Jim Chen.
“Arun was hyper agitated last night,” he says. “Kept getting up and pacing, muttering. I think he took it real badly ... what you told us about Asmus.” Gallie and I exchange glances.
“So he’s gone AWOL?” I ask.
Jenn looks at Chen. “For a while now he’s had a theory,” Jenn says. “A bit of a nuts one.” She nods at Chen again.
“Yeah. He was sort of convinced that if you follow the wagon track in the opposite direction from Leatown you’ll wind up in a city, or big town, or something.”
“I think he thought twenty-first century Philadelphia is that way,” Jenn adds. “Or something more civilized than Leatown, anyway.”
“Based on what?”
“The wagons and coaches we see coming from there, I guess. It’s not an airtight theory.”
“So a bearded, Indian guy in twenty-first century clothes is walking up the wagon trail. Oh, he’ll be fine. When did he go missing? Anyone see him this morning?” Heads shake. I stand and shout “did anyone see Ramuhalli leave? Anyone see him this morning?” No response. I sit back down and take a breath. “I’ll look for him.”
“Why you?” Chen asks. I lift my arms and look down at myself. “You’re not the only one who can wear those clothes.”
“You expect me to give up these fine threads? Besides, I’m clean and fed.”
“I qualify too,” Gallie says. “And I can take better care of myself.”
“Well thanks for that, but I think someone is going to notice Jane Austen en route to the debutante ball.”
Gallie grimaces. “Okay Darcy. You’re it.”
“Give me a minute.” I exit the barn to look for Bess but she has gone.
THIRTY-TWO
Strangulation is at the heart of my plan once I catch up with Arun Ramuhalli. This is a man who survived the meticulous and excruciating scrutiny of the TMA screening process, and yet he’d do something as fabulously wild as running off into the night of an alien era. I imagine him lying in a pool of his own blood that’s swelling with each dying heartbeat, and I picture a terrified young guy who could never have imagined his well-earned Ph.D. leading him there.
Setting out I have a sack containing a few supplies Gallie put together for me: a few bones and fat salvaged from the haute cuisine served to Asmus’s barn guests and a cloth-covered jug of water. At most, this is two days’ supply–one out and one back. I pick up the pace. To my right are open meadows so I’m likely to see trouble coming from way off, but on my left there’s forest that could conceal a multitude of dangers.
I walk throughout the morning and then ahead of me the road plunges into the forest. My fantasies of strangulation sharpen. I enter the forest and the temperature drops as I walk through patches of light and shadow. Do I need to be worried about wild animals, too? I have the thought that for a tackychemist with expertise in temporal acceleration, I’ve never bothered to learn much about other times, about history. But then, my job was to block acceleration, not ride it.
I take a bone from my sack and gnaw the threads of meat off it. I spit. Then my thoughts drift to Bess. She looked different yet the same; strangely unburned by the fire of time. And I think about my father who did what he did. Saving me from her. As if saving my mother from himself? That’d be a profound thought for my father. In Bess I see a woman who is front and center in the last decade of my life and in my plans for the rest of it, and she sees a man who was a single night out, a few drinks and maybe an awkward goodnight kiss.
It’s twilight and I need to turn back. Ramuhalli has sealed his own fate and I’m not going to kill myself over it. It’s then that I hear a new sound and I dive off the road, rolling down the slope into the foliage. It had sounded like the whinny of a horse. I lie on my belly looking up the slope and wait. The horse appears, mounted by a soldier, then another, and another, all in single file. I count about ten horsemen, all uniformed in the blue of the Continental Army. Following them is their infantry, some in the blue, others in ragged civilian clothes, and all carrying rifles. There are maybe thirty or forty troops on foot. I freeze until they pass. They’re headed to Leatown, is my guess, to give hell to the British garrison. Maybe give some to Asmus, too. That’s a nice thought.
The cold thing on my ear is a bayonet. I don’t risk moving my head but strain my
