“You really don’t want to fight this?” I ask.
“Fight it? And then what? Go back to our TMA careers having violated all it stands for?” She strokes my cheek. “Yes I want to fight it. I want to fight it like hell because I love you.” She shakes her head. “But then we’d be different people.”
The next two weeks are spent planning. This time, I’m inside the tent, but this time, I’m not sure I want to be. Priority 1, the plan has it, is to neutralize Asmus and his arms business. Priority 2 is the rescue mission for the TMA team, provided they haven’t been annihilated by Priority 1. It’s a plan that TMA can’t pull off by itself. The only room secured for videocons with our collaborators is in the accelerator facility, and so each day I have a commute. I get back to the detector facility late in the evenings and Bess, by then aching for company, seeks me out. I do feel sorry for Bess. She, Gallie and I are stuck here, the thought being that we can’t rule out Asmus coming after us. After all, if Asmus would try to take me out just because I agreed with the many who thought he was a weird little shit, imagine what he’d want to do to me for kidnapping his wife.
So there’s a lot of time to fill with Bess. I tell her about her would-be life in Risley, but avoiding her would-be life with me. Bess enjoys that she was emerging as a world-class winemaker in that other world, because this Bess knows nothing of wine. l tell her about the Dog Star Winery and Vineyard. Den isn’t part of my story.
Abioye had asked me to be the one who tells Bess about TMA’s plans for us. I do and Bess takes it poorly. “There’s nothing for me in 2030. No, I’m not going back there. Not a chance.” Maybe I’m not the one to make the argument to her.
“I hear you. Not a hell of a lot for me where I came from, either.”
“Then fuck them, Joad. You and me. We go where we want to,” Bess says. I want to be right here is what I’m thinking. “I’m alone there. No, fuck them. I’m not going back there.” So that went as well as it deserved to. But her anger inflames mine. These rules that are stealing our lives are rules based on a hard vacuum of comprehension. Someone thinks it’s the safest way to go, but no one really understands a damn about temporal logic. So Asmus alters the timeline–the British beat the Americans and so there’s no American nation. Who’s to say that’s better or worse than our version. So we’re governed by a fuckwit parliament instead of a fuckwit congress? So the Vikings have their asses handed to them and that’s a disaster? What are we trying to preserve? Our own little version? Why? Why should Bess and I be victims of that? There’s no logic behind it. There’s no logic behind anything. So the British win because of the weapons Asmus supplies, and it’s the Second Amendment that helps him get his hands on those weapons, and the Second Amendment is part of the American Constitution. How does any of that work? And this thin comprehension of what’s actually going on is behind the stubborn need for me to be flung back to 2021? No one knows how to stir up a rage in Joad Bevan like Joad Bevan does. And Gallie is always the one who soothes the pain for me. But Bess has only me to lean on. She has been dealt a crappy hand.
FORTY-FOUR
We drive in the night between TMA facilities. I’m with Zhivov and in the car ahead is Prasad, Abioye and Gallie. I’m as cold as ice and shivering. We may be about to kill people–a lot of innocent people–if something goes wrong. We drilled this three times over the week. The confidence I felt after the last drill has now drained from me. What’s about to happen is the real thing. It’ll be alright on the night is an expression I’ve heard over the years, yet in my experience the night can innovate screw-ups that the rehearsals just didn’t have the imagination to think of.
The first drill was a disaster. The accelerator aircraft completely missed its target, accelerating nothing but fresh air, and a missile buried itself at Mach 3 into wasteland ten miles north of the TMA site. That shook us all up and the plan was nearly dropped on the spot. The missile we’re about to launch tonight, the one with a high explosives warhead, won’t be hitting wasteland if it all goes pear-shaped. I open my window to get a breath of night air.
The second drill had gone to plan, as far as we could tell. The fighter launched its missile, the accelerator aircraft fired its beam and hit its target, and the missile popped like a bubble. If our programming was right, a few protomammals likely got a shock. The third drill went about the same. But these drills couldn’t validate the full parameter set. Did the missile retain orientation? Did the homing system successfully reset? There’s too much that needs to happen on the far side of the accel–too much we didn’t test–to be confident.
This is the room we’ve sat in for the past week–drilling, analyzing, anguishing, arguing, reanalyzing. Tonight there’s silence but for the hum of the air conditioner. We wait. We keep waiting. The analog wall clock reaches eleven PM and the large monitor at the foot of the table comes to life to display the US Air Force crest. We’re streaming the Kellerman AF Base.
“Good evening. Kellerman here.” It’s the voice of Colonel Ahmed.
“Roger that,” Zhivov replies.
“We’re counting down 5 minutes and 20 seconds. Stand by.”
We
