Flying in the Heart of the Lafayette Escadrille (21 page)

“Thank you for that grim assessment,” Rye said.

“Not grim—the truth. I’m not into denial. What surprises me is that you can get out of bed at all. Sheesh. Your days are numbered, but you not only keep working, you seem
happy
most of the time.”

“That’s true,” said Rye, cutting her off. “That’s true, but it’s always been that way. It’s just lately that I knew approximately the number of my days. There’s always been a number for me, though, just like there’s one for you. In fact, I think I’m luckier than you because I don’t know the exact date for me.”

“I do,” said Gretta. “I scanned for it when you first came down. It’s . . .”

“Don’t!” Rye backed away from her, breathing hard. “I don’t want to know the date.”

She wrinkled her brow. “Why not? We can’t be into denial down here, can we? Why wouldn’t you want to know?”

Afraid that she would blurt it out, Rye felt like covering his ears with his hands and yelling at the top of his lungs. Instead, he backed into his room.

“Let’s end this conversation now,” he said. “I’m tired. I think I’m going to take a nap.”

“Oh. Sure, if you want. Just so long as you’re not upset about what I said earlier. Martin, he says I talk too much too soon. I’m working on it. It’s just if a thought pops up, I generally say it right away. I don’t see it as a character flaw or anything.”

“Gretta, I understand. But I’m tired now, honestly.”

When she left, he flopped face down on his bed and tried to enjoy his good news. The monitor had been empty of any report of a plane crash. When he had looked at today’s news yesterday, that was the main story. Now, nothing. Annie must have not only not gone on the flight, she prevented it. Rye smiled. He should have known. There’s no way she’d let a flight go without her if she thought anyone was in danger.

“The future is changing! The future is changing!” yelled Gretta.

Rye craned his neck around from his tiny desk. He’d been fighting off nausea by trying to figure out how he could tweak the equipment to gather information faster. There was no reason beyond the limitations of the computers that they couldn’t download the future at better than real time. The problem was how much information there was and how well they could handle it. In the meantime, his stomach hurt, and he kept getting dizzy. Some combination of the meds was bouncing his blood pressure all over the place.

“The future is changing?” parroted Martin as if he were an elderly Chicken Little.

Rye almost ran into him as they rushed into the VR room. Gretta sat underneath the headset, knuckles white, frantically punching keys with her left hand while jockeying the joystick with the right. Suddenly woozy, Rye leaned against a wall.

“The end isn’t there,” she said.

“What do you mean?” Martin checked her setting. “Of course it isn’t. You’re too early.”

Gretta entered new coordinates. “I went to see the end, and it wasn’t there. I thought I’d watch from France, where it would be dark.”

She changed the coordinates again, typing automatically.

“It’s prettier in the dark. The sky glows for a second first.”

She typed in new coordinates.

Martin stood at the console, confused. “How did this happen? It’s not there?”

“My settings were right. It was dark. I thought I was in the right place, but the fire didn’t come. I waited five minutes.”

Rye partially sat on the edge of a desk. He’d broken the closed loop by sending an e-mail to Annie. She’d not only stayed off the plane, she’d somehow stopped the flight. Is this what happened? Some kind of butterfly effect where her changed ripple in time lapped up on a future shore and prevented the end of the world?

Sweat prickled his forehead, as if a cold breeze passed him. Had he done it accidently? Had he somehow saved them all?

“”Where is it?” gasped Gretta. Her fingers flew over the keyboard.

“Maybe it will never happen,” offered Rye.

Dr. Martin said, “What are you seeing? I can’t follow your changes that fast.”

“Still not there. Still not there.”

“You’re just jumping a week at a time.” Dr. Martin checked a monitor, running his finger down the screen. “Try one month jumps.”

“Jump by years,” said Rye. “Maybe there’s
years
of change.” He hoped there was no end, that whatever series of events that ended the world would never happen ever.

“God, I hope not,” Dr. Martin said. “We need to find it soon.”

“No,” said Rye. “The longer she takes to find it, the better, right?”

Dr. Martin didn’t say anything, watching the screen intently.

Rye didn’t get it. Where was the jubilation? The end of the world was gone, and Gretta couldn’t find it. Their job was done, and he could go home. By sheer chance, he’d done a heroic thing. He’d saved humanity. He could go see Annie.

“Whoops,” said Gretta, holding her hand poised above the keyboard. “There it is.”

Rye sagged against the desk. “Is it the end?”

Martin checked figures on the screen. “Could be worse,” he said. “Could be a whole hell of a lot worse.”

Gretta flicked the joystick, then tapped the same key several times in a row, backing herself up or moving forward in smaller increments. She sat still for a minute, then she said, “Here it comes,” and she arched back as if watching something that towered over her. “There it goes.” She tapped twice and ran it through again. “Looks the same. Nothing different.”

Rye said, “How much time did we gain? How much longer have we got?”

Martin looked up from his monitor; his face dragged down and muscleless, as if the bones behind them had gone soft.

“Not gained,” he said. “Lost.”

Rye didn’t move. Gretta didn’t move. Rye knew she must be watching the turbulence after the end: clouds of electrically charged dust flashing back and forth at each other and boiling in fury.

“What?” Rye’s voice sounded very tiny to him.

“We’ve lost three-and-a-half years,” Martin said. The words came slowly and flat. “The end is that much closer.”

Rye stood up, reached for the two of them, then the room did a deep swoop and he knew no more.

He awoke to laughter. For the longest time, he kept his eyes closed and didn’t really listen to the conversation. The floaters bothered him least before he opened his eyes for the first thing in the morning. He couldn’t see them then. In the darkness of sleep, his vision regained its clarity.

“Now we’ve got some direction,” said Dr. Martin.

“Oh, yes,” said Gretta. “I can start tracking the branches of possibility; you can go after biographies.”

They were in the room with him. Slowly, Rye guessed they were in
his
room. He could smell the astringents and alcohol wipes.

They would hate him, wouldn’t they? He scrunched his eyes tighter. Adolf Hitler couldn’t measure up to the crime I’ve committed, thought Rye. He didn’t kill everyone on Earth.

Dr. Martin laughed again.

“He’s awake, I think,” said Gretta. “Rye. . . Rye.”

Someone prodded his arm.

“Gretta!”

Offended sounding, she said, “He’s got to wake up sometime.”

Not able to put it off any longer, Rye opened his eyes and sat up. Everything swirled, and he lay back hurriedly. “I’m sorry,” he said.

Gretta snorted, “Isn’t that rich. He doesn’t know what he’s done.”

Confused, Rye eyed them warily. Gretta leaned toward him, her elbows resting on her knees, and her chin in the cup of her hands. Dr. Martin sat beside her, one hand draped on the back of her chair.

Rye took a deep breath. His lungs felt papery thin and his skin transparent, but he didn’t feel sick to his stomach, and his sight didn’t seem any worse. But a heaviness pressed him down into the bed. Three-and-a-half years less time for all of humanity. And for what? So Annie could die with them at the end? So Annie could look up the second before the flame hit and join the mass exodus?

Rye turned his head away.

Dr. Martin said, “You’ve done us all a great favor, Rye. I checked the computer records. I know about the message to your sister.”

The metal wall beside his bed had a long scratch in it. Rye stared at that. Underneath the sheets, he dug his fingernails into his palms.

“Rye, you have to understand. For months we’ve been looking for clues about the end, but there’s never been anything. No clues at all, Rye. Nothing. And the more we looked, the more I’ve feared that there was nothing we could do. That the end wasn’t caused by human actions.”

The words didn’t make sense, but the tone did. Dr. Martin wasn’t angry. Neither was Gretta. Rye looked at them.

Gretta said, “Come on, bruise-head. Don’t you see? Your sister didn’t die, and neither did anyone on her plane. Now the end has changed. Something someone does or doesn’t do because that plane didn’t go down causes the end of the world to happen sooner.”

“Human action caused it, Rye. And if it’s human, we can find it and prevent it. And not only that, but you’ve given us a place to start, your sister’s flight.”

Rye sat up again, this time much more slowly. The room tipped only slightly.

“We can stop it?”

Gretta said, “See, even a game boy can figure this stuff out if you give him time.”

Dr. Martin frowned at her, then rubbed her shoulder as he stood.

“We will, but not you. I’m sending you topside. You can get better medical treatment there I think.”

Bed sheets tangled around his feet, and it took a second to get them free and put them on the floor. “But what about the closed loop of information? I’ve seen the future. Going topside will affect it in unpredictable ways.” Rye’s voice rasped. Gretta offered him a glass of water and a handful of pills, his daily dosage.

“Oh, the loop’s busted now, and we haven’t done much investigating yet. So this is the only reasonable time to let you go. Once you’re out and can’t look at the future, you can’t change it. You won’t change your actions based on any
new
future you see. You’ll be out of the loop.”

Gretta said, “And you can be with your sister.”

Dr. Martin and Gretta loaded most of Rye’s baggage into the elevator for him.

“The guarantee for medical treatment is still good,” said Dr. Martin. “NSA has it arranged for you to check into a clinic in Sante Fe. They have new techniques.”

Rye shook his hand. “Thanks, but my condition is way advanced. It’ll be like painting the barn after it’s fallen. I’m going to get to go home though. I’m going to call Annie.”

Reaching past him, Dr. Martin pushed the elevator button. “You’ll need to bail her out first.”

“Excuse me?” said Rye. He braced his hand against the door to hold it open.

Dr. Martin grinned, his eyes looking less watery now and more like they glistened. “She stopped that flight by calling in a bomb threat. They’ve got her on a terrorism charge, but they don’t know what to do with her. The bomb squad didn’t find any explosives, of course, but they did find a fatal mechanical flaw. The press got the story, and no one’s sure if she’s a criminal or a saint.”

“I don’t suppose,” said Rye, “that you could get someone from the NSA to intervene.”

“Consider it done.” Dr. Martin put his arm around Gretta. “Now, you’d better get going. We have work to do here.”

Gretta solemnly shook his hand also, pressing a slip of paper into his palm. “Be sure you go to Sante Fe,” she said. Her eyes locked on his intensely, and she didn’t release his hand until he nodded.

The door slid closed, and the elevator began to rise. Rye struggled to read Gretta’s note through the floaters and the graying of his vision.

It read, YOUR DATE CHANGED TOO.

The
Road’s End

S
o close to the road’s end, the traveler couldn’t remember the beginning. The trail climbed the mountain, and all he could do was to lean into the slope, one hand resting on his sword’s grip, the other hooked behind the leather strap that held all his belongings on his back. His thighs burned, but he’d climbed so many mountains, walked so many miles, he knew how far he could go before rest. Every day presented more miles. Every day the horizon changed but remained as unreachable. Still, he walked.

The fingers of his sword hand stuck together. He raised them absently to his mouth and licked the wolf’s blood. Sweat flavored it, and dust. The wolf itself lay dead in the leaves at the trail’s foot. Of course, it was another legendary wolf he’d been warned about at the last inn. “Beware the Darkwood Killer,” said the innkeeper, a young man with stout arms and no hint of a beard. “A hundred men have tried their luck. Don’t go that path,” he’d said.

“Only a hundred?” said the traveler. He finished his meal, thanked the innkeeper for the courtesy, then continued on.

How many wolves had fallen in the past years? How many years had it been? The traveler didn’t know. When wolves didn’t guard the way, other barriers arose: Bridges hid trolls. Ghosts haunted castles. Beautiful princesses with hearts of black hemlock waited in court. Caves held dragons. Rivers flowed and gurgled and whispered seductively in the moonlight, waiting for him to bend for an instant to listen. Roads possessed plans of their own, changing their turns, and they led him down evil ways. Or magicians cast spells.

The traveler sighed. One more step planted in front of the other. One more climbing effort up the mountain. Would a corrupted king wait at its top? Or a giant? Or a minor god?

A biting wind dropped from the heights. He pulled his cloak closer about his shoulders, and on the distant peaks, gray snow merged with gray clouds. Already he’d passed beyond the grain fields and vegetable gardens below, all the mundane farmers and villagers who hardly waved at his passing.

If they knew his name, they would crowd the way before him because his stories traveled much faster than he did, sometimes so changed he hardly recognized himself in them. “Tell us about the witches at Coverst Crest,” one would say. “Did you really quell the beast of Fordham Falls?” another might ask. “Can I see your sword?” a child with quivering lip would say. The fathers pointed him out to their sons or hid their eager daughters behind them. Other men, valorous men, nodded or raised an open palm when he passed. Gates opened. Lanterns lit. Musicians played. They pushed close for the stories. If they knew his name.