Steamrolled (26 page)

The admiration in his tone kicked her into defensive mode.
I can be dangerous. I just don’t choose to.

If a nanite could snort, then he did.
Don’t fool yourself, little one. You are more like her than any of her descendants.

Was she flattered or insulted? Her gaze collided with the man’s. It was a bit freaky gazing into the perfect match of her eyes. Even the expression was almost the same.
He has nanites, too, doesn’t he?
It was seriously weird to sense, but not be allowed to hear, the below-the-surface conversation. It flowed like an undercurrent to the silence that had settled over them as they’d seated themselves, a conversation layered on top of the paradox eddies that created an odd and uncomfortable soup for Ashe. She assumed that everyone but her was getting brought up to speed.

“We all seem to have reached the end of the same page,” the man said, breaking the silence, confirming her hypothesis—and boosting her annoyance at being out of the discussion. “What I do not grasp is how you found Smith. From what I understand, it is difficult to find and follow anyone in time. Smith was in place for several years before…intersecting our lives.”

“You’re both a bit paranoid about names, aren’t you?”

“I call it natural caution.” Chameleon’s smile veered back to creepy.

Ashe turned back to the man, considering her options. “I didn’t ‘find’ Smith. I found an energy trail and he was at the end of it.” She considered some more, while she pondered what to tell them. “It would be easier to show you my encounter, than try to explain it.” Even Lurch couldn’t help the wince of near pain as they recalled the “meeting,” in the midst of a firefight. She frowned. Where had that phrase come from? While there had been a fight, what she knew of fire, she’d seen nothing remotely like flames.

It is an exchange of shots. With weapons. The flare of fire when they discharge.

Oh.
Lurch had sounded over patient, rather like the Chameleon, which annoyed her and gave an edge when she asked, “Will you allow the memory?”

The question was a nanite ritual courtesy and a necessity when it was so easy to invade another’s thoughts. Not for the first time Ashe was grateful for basic nanite ethics. She braced for it, but Lurch didn’t tweak her for trusting his ethics while not trusting him. Nanites had a lot of personal restraint.

The man looked at Chameleon and she nodded assent. Lurch fed it to them through the nanite link. It was her first chance to rerun the encounter, so she watched it with interest, wincing at her missed shot. Still couldn’t tell if it was a paradox or the machine. No way to tell who or what could threaten her future. The whole room had been shaking just before the machine checked out. Would be nice to know if there was a paradox in there somewhere since it was her posterior on the line. Lurch didn’t play the whole encounter, just zoomed in on Smith. The sharing complete, the two looked at each other, Chameleon showing real worry that Ashe sensed was out of character for the “most dangerous woman” ever.

“That is the man we know as Smith,” Chameleon agreed, her tone tense.

“He must have been inside the transmogrification machine. Those were his orders,” the man said, his hand reaching for hers.

He?

Her missing brother.

Oh right.
Ashe was glad she hadn’t asked out loud.

“Maybe I should try to retrieve him from our end.”

Lurch flinched, but Ashe was the one who had to tell her. “If Smith and your brother,” she hesitated, but there was no tactful way to say it, “crossed paths, Smith could follow that signal here.”

“Follow my brother, you mean.”

The sense of menace in the room bumped up several notches. “If Smith diverted him, then no. All you would “retrieve” would be a path straight back to you.” It seemed a logical assumption, based on the traps she’d seen. And it is what she would do.

Chameleon started to puff up.

“What happened to it?” Her man’s question was probably meant to be diversionary and it worked.

Before Ashe could speak, Lurch fed them the view of it vanishing following the “fire” fight. Her memory, her head, but she wasn’t bitter.

“Smith didn’t get it,” the man said.

“You don’t know where it went?”

Ashe thought about the odd, smoothed, yet exploded place, heavy with Constilinium traces, that she’d observed in the time stream. She didn’t know it was the machine, though she had a sense that it was. It had retained traces of the same scents from her first encounter with it and it had looked like it might explode at any minute. If her brother had been inside when it left, it didn’t mean he was in it when it exploded. If it had exploded. Whatever it was, the explosion could be years in the future. Or part of the past. It could have nothing to do with the machine. Seemed better to focus on the positive. Less chance of getting shot.

“It might have gone to Roswell,” Ashe admitted, thinking of the trail she’d followed there. If this woman knew her history—and Ashe was sure she did—it would be a good distraction. A phantom pain from the impact she’d experienced twanged her ribs. She rubbed the spot, then wished she hadn’t when the woman’s gaze narrowed. She hadn’t connected with the machine, but it was interesting that Keltinarian craft had been headed there as well. During a time period when it shouldn’t be there. Her head tried to hurt thinking about that.

“Roswell.” Chameleon blinked. Her man blinked, too, but he didn’t appear to recognize the name. “You went to Roswell. Any particular date?”

Ashe didn’t like feeling called onto square, didn’t like being looked at like she made a mistake. She wasn’t a rookie tracker, okay, so she was just barely out of rookie status, but this woman wasn’t her supervisor, and she had better instincts than skilled trackers. She wasn’t sitting in some time trap somewhere. Odd how none of that helped while staring at the Chameleon. “It was a historically relevant time.”

“Please tell me you aren’t the alien from the crash site.”

Not telling her worked for Ashe.

“But the legends, you look nothing like—”

Lurch just had to adjust her holo-camo.
You are supposed to be a mature Older.
He switched it back, with a flicker of something that was equal parts humor and apology.

“Oh dear.” Chameleon’s sigh ruffled Ashe’s hair across the table.

It seemed a good time for another distraction.

“Why were Smith and the automatons after the machine?” She paused. “Why were your people after the machine? Those were your people I saw protecting the machine and they were after it, weren’t they?”

Chameleon tensed, her face closing with an almost audible snap, even as her brows arched. “Automatons? Show me.” So Lurch showed her, again without waiting for Ashe. The brows didn’t come down. “Automatons.”

She sounded, well, something like winded. Ashe had a feeling that didn’t happen that often. Her man frowned.

“What is an automaton?”

“Something that shouldn’t be.”

Ashe had a feeling there’d been another nanite linked information exchange. And she was still the only one not on the channel.
You’re using my head here. Be polite to include me.

Wrong time.

“Wrong time?” If she wasn’t supposed to say it out loud, Lurch shouldn’t be shutting her out of the private confab.

“Wrong time?” Chameleon’s expression stayed in the severe range. “You mean time that is wrong, right? Not that it was the wrong time.”

“Yes.” Ashe assented, but considered the statement for a few seconds to be sure. She was weary from time in the stream and the paradox tremors. Lurch’s presence restored her in many ways, but stream travel had been rough and she was new at it. It didn’t help that there was much to ponder, more to unravel. Her gaze collided with the Chameleon’s and she stiffened. She would not show weakness in front of her. “Yes, I mean time that is wrong.”

After a pause that felt odd, the Chameleon spoke. “Do you need anything? Food? The loo?”

Did you tell her?
Then,
what’s a loo?

Lurch seemed to sigh as he fed her a translation.
I do not know which of you is more difficult.

Ashe had to struggle for several seconds before she could manage a semi-polite, “Both would be welcome, thank you.”

“Outside, second door on the right.”

When Ashe returned to the room, a tray of something she assumed was food waited at her seat. She sank into her seat, eyeing it with both suspicion and interest. It smelled all right, pleasant almost, though different.

“Roast beef and potatoes,” Chameleon said. “The green stuff is beans and there’s cake.”

“I like cake,” her man said, giving her a slashing, charm intensive smile.

Ashe smiled in response, noting that time around him appeared fixed. Seemed to indicate he’d held, or did hold a leadership position. A relative and a leader. She should know his face, but didn’t.
Interesting.

There was considerable chemistry between the two. The air between them crackled almost as much as wrong time. A bond that strong would be hard to sever. Even time might have trouble, though the way it moved between them was also interesting. He and his time were able to penetrate her time boundaries. Almost it seemed they meshed in a way she’d never observed, even between mated couples.

They have a special link.

Looked dangerously special and Lurch’s resounding silence upped that impression. She offered both a polite smile, a bit more warmth going his direction, before scooping up some of the white mass. Potatoes, she’d said. The texture was odd, a bit on the bland side, but not awful.

“You mentioned wrong time,” the Chameleon said.

Ashe nodded warily. Even eating here probably violated Service regulations. Unless she was the last? That thought killed her appetite. She set the eating utensil down, a slight tremor in her hand that wasn’t because of a paradox.

“How bad is it?”

If she’d asked, Ashe might not have answered, but he sounded sympathetic.

“Bad.”

The Chameleon’s expression blanked in a way that was not comfortable. “You mentioned these time pins and that it was serious if they were pulled?”

Ashe nodded with obvious wariness.

“What does
pulling
involve? How is it done?”

Until the incident with the time traps, she’d have said pulling was terminal, supposedly an accidental termination. Now she wasn’t so sure.

We don’t know. Just admit it to her and move on.

So she did and got an icy stare in return.

“What if one wasn’t pulled? What if,” she almost looked frustrated, “what if they weren’t gone, just shifted through time? Is that possible?”

It felt like a kick to the stomach region.
Lurch?

I’m looking.

There won’t be data, but does the research indicate it’s possible? And if it were possible, how would it present? What signs would there be?
There’d be signs. All time tampering left signs.
What if it happened accidentally, when the Service tried to replace a pulled pin?
Now that she thought about it, how was it possible to replace a pin with any precision when finding people was so imprecise?
Don’t believe what you’re told
.
She frowned.
I just don’t see what the benefit would be though. If someone wanted to destabilize time, then wouldn’t they want to pull the pins?

That’s the theory.

So far theory wasn’t stacking up well with reality.
If it’s possible, it might be a way to move a problem out of the way without tipping off time or the Service.

If someone was doing it, it might give them the advantage of knowing where the pin was if they wanted to remove it at a selected time. If a tracker followed an instability to the source, the pin wouldn’t be there. Even if the pin was in the wrong place, I would postulate that the impact on the original time would remain the same if the pin was pulled.

A chill ran through her. It might also be a way to collect enough pins to seriously destabilize the stream. If that’s what was happening, it was beyond bad. And might explain what she’d observed in the stream.

“You believe this Smith is a shifted pin?”

“He’s from this galaxy, though I have no idea when.”

Ashe felt the hairs on her body lift. “
Smith
is from
this
galaxy?”

“According to his DNA he has both Gadi and Dusan in him. There were a few Dusan who survived the battle.”

“And you didn’t think to tell me this until now?” Ashe thought her head might explode.

“I don’t see how it’s relevant.” Chameleon managed to hide most of puzzled with annoyed. “When he was removed, the changes to our time were negligible; it was if he’d never been in there, so something about him must have been right. Or the wrong was righted. Perhaps he is shifting through space in a kind of time window of opportunity.”

Ashe almost pulled her hair. “
Smith
. Gadi. That didn’t make you wonder. At all?”

She looked annoyed. And fingered a weapon. It seemed they’d come full circle to wanting to shoot Ashe again.

“Smith is a common alias on Earth.”

“An alias that has persisted through
here and there.
This didn’t make you wonder?” It mattered, though Ashe couldn’t see exactly how just yet. The possible tremor? Could he have existed somewhere in Ashe’s time line? If only she could check the base history archives—something in the Chameleon’s face yanked her back into the moment. “You think there is another of these out of time pins here, now, in your time?”

“There is a certain,” she paused, as if she needed to search for right word, though Ashe had a feeling she knew, that she always knew, “persistence, an odd intersection between me and this person that doesn’t make sense and is quite annoying. I wouldn’t mind if he was moved back to where he’s supposed to be.”

“Time doesn’t always make sense,” Ashe spouted the company line. “The logic isn’t always obvious.”

“But there should be links that can be followed. Logic to his arrival here. We didn’t just show up here. It was part of an overall plan, a strategy. His story has none.”