“No,” I say. “Although in fairness, I’m not sure we had much of a plan at all.” Gallie is finally looking at me, but only to say yes, embarrassing Prasad and Abioye is the best way to go. I don’t really care about that at this point, although trying to embarrass the great Prasad in this room would be like trying to embarrass someone in front of his dog.
“So his armory is in the mansion?” Prasad asks.
“Pretty sure. Nothing to indicate it’s elsewhere,” Gallie says.
“Yeah,” I agree. “They were offloading crates from his accelerator and loading them onto an elevator that went straight down. We never saw anything being taken away from the mansion.” Prasad nods.
“So,” he says, addressing Abioye, “dealing with Asmus and his arsenal, and getting the TMA staff home are the two principal objectives.”
“Can we send in a force?” Abioye asks in her near-whisper.
“His detection precision is impressive. They must have had our arrival venue pinpointed,” I say. “Our security detail didn’t stand a chance. To have that level of accuracy based just on the tachyon bow wave is phenomenal.”
“It is mid-21st technology,” Prasad says. “Maybe not too surprising. Is it possible to posture our team for a reduced reaction time?”
“It was almost instantaneous. I heard the gunfire the instant the ambient light changed,” Gallie says.
“We could have our security initiate fire as they accelerate,” Zhivov says.
“Arrive with guns ablaze?” Abioye says. “A little irresponsible don’t you think, Boris?”
“Just a little,” Prasad agrees.
“They’d have to be shooting up your accelerator cylinder on this end,” I add. There’s a silence.
“And Mrs. Asmus is a complication,” Prasad says, turning to me. I look at Gallie whose face is stony. “We were not expecting you to bring back a guest.”
“She’s the reason we could escape,” I say.
“We understand that,” Abioye says, “but she needs to go back to her place on the timeline.” I look around the table.
“What does that mean?”
“How long have you been with TMA?” Zhivov asks. “You know she needs to be sent back.”
“To where?”
“Wherever Asmus plucked her from.”
“Just how much more do you think the timeline could be screwed up if she wasn’t sent back?” I ask.
“You know better than that Dr. Bevan,” whispers Abioye. “We need to minimize the damage.” I’m preparing to answer this stupid point when I turn to Gallie and see an almost imperceptible shake of the head. I lean back in my chair. Seconds pass with the clicks of the old electronic wall clock. A question comes to me.
“Where do you focus the detection field for your array?”
“What do you mean?” Zhivov asks. “It’s global.”
“At ground altitudes?”
“Yes.”
“Yeah, same where I’m from.”
“So?” Zhivov says.
“Well, that’s always made sense,” I say. “There’s not likely to be much acceleration going on at 30,000 feet. Best detection efficiency if you focus the array on where accelerations are likely to be happening, right?” I seem to be the center of attention, and for the first time it’s not in a bad way. “Do you think Asmus follows the same logic?”
FORTY-TWO
Gallie and I are by the barn, or at least where the barn had once stood. There are no remains of it although the ground has somehow retained a faint memory through the subtle shading of the pristine grass. The cloudless midday sky is an unrealistic shade of dark blue. We stand where we had stood over two centuries earlier. The forest is no longer there, although we can see trees in the distance, and has been replaced by well-kempt meadows. Prasad is talking to a man in military fatigues who had been here when we arrived. Behind them is a grand building that is, according to the ornate signage over the archway leading to its grounds, The Leatown Retreat and Spa. The building looks larger than the mansion that once stood there, and in the front grounds there are cafe tables under umbrellas where guests are being served by white-coated waiters. On a gazebo, a brass quartet is playing show tunes and a small audience is gathered around them.
“My, Leatown has moved on,” I say. We had walked down earlier to where Leatown once stood; where we had narrowly escaped a beating or worse. There was no metropolis in its place, and not even the ruins of a colonial town. It seems Leatown had not been destined to be the seed of a great American city. Any residue of it now lies beneath the 5th and 6th holes of a golf course, and the town’s only monument is a spa for the wealthy.
It was within a few hours of our debrief that we found ourselves back in Leatown. “The air’s different, isn’t it?” I say. “It just smells and feels different.”
“No unwashed TMAers to stink it up,” Gallie replies.
“Not that. Do you think each age has its own air? Two hundred and some years of history has to leave its mark, doesn’t it? Industries, technologies, wars, just generations of life. It can’t leave the air unchanged.” Gallie doesn’t reply. Maybe she has no opinion on the matter, or maybe she won’t break a streak of not looking at me today. Zhivov returns from his circuit of the building
