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Do you need me to require your presence
, she sent back. Hel had less patience with diplomacy these days and she was happy to require his presence at any time. She knew General Halliwell still didn’t understand how she could like Hel, let alone marry him. If he knew all the ins and outs—and time shifts—of her courtship, he’d understand it even less. Fortunately, it wasn’t need-to-know. Doc may have fallen in love, but that had only increased her instinctive caution, not lessened it. There was no circumstance she could think of where it was a good idea to tell anyone that if she or Hel got too far apart they’d die. It had been need-to-do, but it made life awkward sometimes. Not that Doc regretted the deep bond with the man she loved. Granted it might make the General hesitate to kill Hel if he knew, but Hel’s enemies would see it as a win-win, since they hated her only slightly less than they hated Hel. Her husband knew how to influence people, but he didn’t do it by making friends with them.

Not yet.
The answer to her question was wry, a bit edged with impatience. Hel had relinquished his role as Leader of the Gadi people to oversee the Kikk Outpost—and because they both knew Doc was unsuited to being one of the Leader’s mates. She’d already “accidentally” kicked his cousin’s ass. Hel didn’t like the man, so he’d “accidentally” not noticed, but it had hastened the transfer of power to the newly elected Leader, Hel’s former aide, Naman. He was a good man and was the only one of the contenders for the position who hadn’t hit on her. While Doc could see the logic behind allowing the Leader’s strategic mates to transfer their loyalty to a new Leader, she hadn’t enjoyed the “courting” process the contenders had engaged in—though it had stopped when Glarmere hit the deck. The Gadi had issues about being beat up by a girl.

She was in the building, so she just had to take the lift down to the portal level. Its speed was the same as always, but it felt slow. The peeps agreed. They’d bonded with Robert during the info dump. And he was infused with peeps, too—the same peeps she had, though her “them” was a them from an alternate reality. There were differences, there had to be, because the realities were subtly different. Both sets of peeps had formed three, distinct personalities as they achieved sentience. Robert’s had chosen Wynken, Blynken and Nod to differentiate themselves. Hers were still working on their names—or afraid to tell her what they’d picked.

The doors slid back and she was there. Most of the portal  rooms on the other planets throughout the galaxy had antechambers, but this one didn’t, so she knew as soon as the doors slid back that Robert hadn’t arrived yet. The portal itself was active, lights and patterns forming and dissipating inside the opening. Her stomach gave a slight lurch as it recalled what it felt like inside there. The four consoles, two on each side, twitched as she passed them, though Dr. Evans, the lone geek manning the portal controls, didn’t notice. Doc wasn’t surprised. Evans was brilliant but a walking cliché of clueless.

Thanks to Colonel Carey’s test flight of the portal, they knew a bit more about how the portal worked. The peeps knew more than she did, but there was still a knowledge gap between what they knew and what she could understand despite her ridiculously high IQ. For the first time in her life, she felt like a first grader. She didn’t mind it until today. Today she wanted to know when her brother would pop out of that portal.

Robert was her big brother, but when she’d used the portal to go back in time and heal his psychotic break, he’d lost nine years of his life and she’d become six years older. Added to that was the reality that if he’d had his break when he was sixteen and spent the years he hadn’t lost, he’d have lost them anyway. She hadn’t, she realized now, considered the impact on him of all those changes. She’d wanted her brother back. It was that simple, only it wasn’t. Robert hadn’t just lost the years, he’d lost the learning, the living, the knowing. He’d lost the progress, the education and degrees he’d have earned. She’d downloaded her progress into his head, but knowing couldn’t give him back the living of those lost years.

While he’d struggled with his new reality, she’d gotten a new reality to deal with, too, one beyond adapting to life as the wife of an alien from another galaxy—she refused to think of herself as a mate, even a bond mate.

Robert understood the Garradian knowledge base more than she did. He was smarter than she was. She hadn’t had to deal with sibling rivalry for twenty years. Back then her parents’ world had revolved around Robert and she was the spare brain, in case Robert didn’t work out. He’d warned her, saved her and fallen into the abyss that was
them
. It was only when he was back in her life that she’d realized how angry that little girl had been that he’d left her behind, left her alone with their shattered parents, left her alone with them and her guilt that she hadn’t fallen, too. And then her parents left, too. Okay, so they died, but she’d been fifteen. One could be smart and still be a child.

Lots of issues on her side, lots of issues on his, but still a deep gratitude he was back in her life—and an unexpressed hope that he was glad as well.

Despite birth order, Doc felt protective enough of her brother to send him out with lots of support. Richard Daniels, the resident alien expert from Area 51 had been an obvious choice, as was Colonel Carey, since he’d seen and been inside the machine they hoped to use to track down Dr. Smith. Fyn—Doc grimaced—he’d been chosen for the “expect the unexpected factor.” The evidence that Dr. Smith could arrive on the heels of the machine concerned her, despite the protective download of her black ops skills. It was the alternative to her going, though she’d much rather have been there, too. Getting permission for Hel to go to Earth with her was a level of impossible she hadn’t managed to make possible yet. And it was an uncomfortable fact that Robert had a better chance of figuring out the transmogrification machine than she did.

With outward calm, and an internal sense of relief, she watched the active portal. If Carey’s return was typical, it shouldn’t be long now—

It went dark. Shut off as if someone had flipped a switch.

Hel felt her fear, read her thoughts, across the island.
We’ll find him.
He sounded confident, but then he always did.

“What,” Doc had to clear her throat before she could finish the question, “just happened?”

“I’m not sure,” Evans said, his focus on the science, not her lost brother. “There is power.” He turned to a console, frowning down at what it showed. “According to this only Professor Clementyne’s beacon activated.” His frown deepened. “This can’t be correct. I need to go to control and run a diagnostic.”

“Go.” Her peeps were already running one, would finish before he got where he was going. Hel had jumped onto the island’s transport system and would be here soon. They’d do better without Evans. She felt the bond heighten and sharpen as he closed on her position, bringing comfort and strength. As Evans disappeared up the lift, she paced to a console, not because she thought it could help, but because she needed something to do. She pulled up the readings that had troubled Evans. According to them, Robert had requested retrieval from…not where they’d sent him—

She felt something she’d hoped not to feel again, no, it wasn’t quite the same something, but it was close, too close. She was pretty sure time didn’t stop this time, even though she was alone in the room, but she felt it pull and pulse. She pulled two of the weapons she always wore hidden on her body and got her back to a wall.

The freaking lying time creeps seemed to be back.

* * * *

Ashe spotted the distinctive trail of portal transport cutting through the time stream and paused to study it, found the now familiar traces of Constilinium in the track, no, traces of the
wrong
Constilinium, the appeared-to-be-altered stuff. Since time tended to cross back over itself, this seemed like a better lead than her current one. She shifted course. She didn’t have to follow it to know where it headed, though
when
it was headed could be tricky. She could spike into the edges of it, let it pull her along until she had a fix, a trajectory that would give her a when, then she’d jump just ahead and, if all went well, be waiting for Smith to arrive.

You do not know Smith is riding that transport stream.

Lurch had a point, but anyone connected to the wrong Constilinium should provide clues, or at least a better lead to the source problem. While no one on the Council liked to admit it, much of what they did was with a certainty based on fragile hope. It felt weird to be heading to the Kikk Outpost before it became a base, weirder to be able to tell the difference in the portal transport trail from one in her time. She wasn’t sure if the knowledge came from her instincts or from Lurch, though it seemed likely to be Lurch. How could she instinctively know this transport was pre-Service when she’d never seen a pre-Service transport trail?

She shot toward the trail, easing into position next to it, then hooking in. There was a jerk, then it yanked her with it, the increased velocity more unpleasant than she’d expected. She rode the turns—waiting for just the right moment to spike out. She used its velocity to shoot her ahead of the trail, coming in hot but on course for the portal room on Kikk. She landed hard, but Lurch helped her take the hit, stay upright and deploy her protective fields—

Certain she’d arrived ahead of the traveler, she wasn’t ready for the sight of the dark portal. Or for the woman with her back to the wall and weapons ready—weapons pointed at Ashe. She felt Lurch’s shock to her core, a shock mixed with delight. It was a bad time to feel a paradox tremor hit her, too.

* * * *

Smith was relieved to leave Angeline’s house, though it felt as if he’d left a piece of his soul behind—if he believed he still had one. He’d closed his eyes and thought of Olivia, apparently managed to satisfy Angeline enough to give up what she knew about her brother, which wasn’t enough for what he’d done to get it.

She hadn’t seen Twitchet for several weeks, Olivia either. So he headed back to the warehouse, using the time on the elevated train to get Angeline out of his system. Once there, he let himself in. No sign of the machine, but his senses kicked with a feeling of being watched. He’d deployed the wormhole tracker and got a hit, then felt the air shift of someone flashing out. It was possible that it was another version of himself. It wouldn’t be the first time he’d ran into a version of himself. He was tempted to hang around, but his gut told him it was a bust. Time to return and face his master with another failed mission. His last? Part of him hoped.

SEVENTEEN

Robert thought he had achieved progress in expecting the unexpected, but it felt like he’d lost, not gained ground. Perhaps it was the quality of the unexpected that was the problem. He had activated a beacon that was supposed to deliver them to the portal on the Kikk Outpost. It was not unreasonable to expect cause to lead to the right effect in this instance. The unexpected in this case would be arriving in the wrong time, not the wrong place.

The unexpected can’t be expected.

Wynken liked to point out unpalatable truths and though it had a point, it was a point that failed to help him in his current dilemma, nor could it help with the overall conundrum of trying to expect that which can’t be expected. His head would ache if it were possible. Thankfully the peeps made that impossible, even when every other thing was awry. Which brought his thoughts circling back to the unexpected he hadn’t expected.

The grimy door in front of him appeared to be the entrance to an apartment of some sort—a very sad sort. A very old sort, he concluded. A wider survey confirmed that the building was tall and grimy from top to bottom. The smell was beyond indescribable, though there were “notes” of sewage in there.

“Oh. My. Gosh.”

Robert braced for her castigation as he tried to parse her tone.

“You
so
know how to show a girl a good time.”

Two tries and he couldn’t squeeze the word “what” out of a throat tightened by shock.

Perhaps you are looking the wrong direction.

It was true that Emily’s view was over his shoulder, since he continued to hold her clasped in his arms, the only “good time” in his estimation about their current situation. She was close enough that he could hear her over the roar from a variety of steam engines—steam engines? He did a mental double take on his own words.

“Roswell. Time travel. This. You so
so
completely rock. ”

Reluctant to relinquish the peculiar delight of holding the delighted Emily against his pounding heart, Robert chose to reverse their positions, rather than release her. Besides, if he had to meet the unexpected once again, it helped to do it in close proximity with her. He did note, in the process, that she continued to meet expectations by not asking questions. None of which prepared him for the sight before him. He blinked and wondered, in a semi-dazed way, what would get her to ask a question if this didn’t.

They appeared to have arrived in an old city, based on the tenements that marched along both sides of the less than salubrious street. What disputed the time frame evidence was the airship traversing a polluted skyline above them. Nor would any time he was familiar with have had, instead of horse drawn carriages, steam driven conveyances puffing past on the trash littered street, also contributing to the steam engine noise. Some had the look of altered hansom cabs, with function dominating form. Others were bastardized versions of wagons, again propelled by steam. Something—other than everything—felt wrong about the scene before him. He mentally flipped through all the wrong, looking for the most wrong.

Lightning danced across the murky skyline—did the horizon bend down, like a lid contained it? As if in sympathy with the sky, the ground beneath shuddered, visible objects flickering out of view and back in so fast he wasn’t sure he’d seen what he thought he saw. Had he seen a “right” version of the city behind this one? And why didn’t he see any of the few people on the street react to events? One could conclude that they existed differently from him and Emily. Or he and Emily existed in two places? There was no one to dispute either hypothesis.