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  “They lead you back to an entrance,” I added unnecessarily.

  “Um hm” she agreed. “But I didn’t know that then. They dropped altitude like a rock and I almost lost them, but then saw the second one disappear into a dark opening in the rocks. I dropped back, and then followed into the entrance, going really slow. I was sure I was going to lose them, but then heard them a short distance ahead. I parked the cycle and hurried as quietly as I could in the direction of the sound. I think they were disagreeing on something, probably what to do about their friend, which slowed them down. Otherwise I never would have seen them go into the tunnel. It disappeared after them before I could follow.”

  She smiled at me and continued. “I was stunned. I ran up to the wall finding of course, nothing but the stone walls of the tunnel. I looked for some kind of control, but found nothing.”

  “How did you get in?” I asked really curious now.

  “I went back to my brother’s house,” she said. “I assumed that whatever controlled the entrance had to be something these creatures carried with them. There was one of them still lying dead back at the house, and my thought was he had something on him that would get me inside.”

  Quick thinking under stress.

  “Of course I was right, although I didn’t know which of the handful of items I took from its belt did the trick, but one thing I found was one of those little rectangular pieces you wear around your neck.” She fingered a similar piece around her own neck, and continued. “When I returned to the cave with the assortment of stuff in my hands, fully expecting to have to push, or activate some button or something, the opening simply appeared. I dumped everything in my beltpack, readied the rifle, and crept inside. I had just made it to the intersection of tunnels when I heard them coming. I ran off to the side, slipped partway down an adjacent tunnel, and waited with the rifle ready. I thought they had discovered me, but they hadn’t, and three more of them disappeared down the tunnel I had just entered.”

  “You followed?”

  “No, I waited until they were gone, went back and got my Skybike from where I had hidden it in case I would need it inside. Then I started exploring, as quietly as I could. It didn’t matter. I decided the tunnels were probably similar to the one I had entered, going somewhere, but not where the aliens would have taken my brother. They had brought him inside, so I worked my way up the ramp into what turned out to be some form of control center. I looked everywhere. Lots of equipment, quietly humming away, but none of the creatures. I found one long hallway that ended in a massive locked door that I couldn’t open no matter what I did. I suspected they had taken him that way.”

  “The airlock,” I offered.

  “That’s what I think now also. It looks like one. But to where?”

  “And that’s it?” I asked. “What of the three aliens?”

  “Oh, they came back,” she responded. “They went after their buddy and brought his body back. I was hiding, but saw them carry him down the long hallway and disappear. They stopped first at a bank of the equipment and one of them made a number of adjustments. And then they left. Three to one, I was afraid to take them on. Besides, it wouldn’t get my brother back.”

  “I don’t see. . .” I started. “If they have a time machine,” I continued, trying a different approach, “Why didn’t they simply go back in time and prevent your interference, now that they knew you would be there. They could save their buddy, and make sure their visit was undetected.”

  “At the time I still didn’t know what I had found,” she said. “It wasn’t until later I realized what this thing was, and then have wondered the same thing. There must be some limitations on what is possible. I have often wondered why they have all the tunnels which they leave activated?”

  So had I, but that was just one of many unanswered questions.

  “So, what did you do then.”

  “Then I found out how much trouble I was in,” she said. “I planned to go back, call the authorities or my brother’s employer who would have more powerful connections than the local authorities, and report what I had found. Perhaps with help, we could crack that doorway. But when I went back down the ramp to the tunnel room I discovered my tunnel was gone. There was simply a dimple in the wall where it had been. They had closed off my only way home!”

  I didn’t know what to say, and could only imagine how she must have felt. My trips had always been a lark, starting and ending at home, more a game than anything. Hers had been for survival. And she appeared to have done well.

  “I’m sorry,” I said, meaning it. “The aliens?” I asked.

  She knew what I was asking. “I have never seen them again. For the last four years I have no indication they have entered the time matrix at all.”

  It was late and we both were tired now. I had a lot to think about and she had some memories to sort through after telling me her story. We said our goodnights, and she slipped into her bed. The lights went down on her verbal command, and we slept.

  Chapter 6

  Northern Africa:

  52,000 BC

  While not fully recovered, I was actually mobile the next morning. After finishing off the remains of our supper, chased by more of the warm tasteless juice, Karole led me on a tour of the area. She had done a lot, and by herself. We didn’t follow up our topic from the night before, although I never had gotten around to asking why her brother had been a target. I was sure she didn’t know anyway, and decided it was better not to push her thoughts that way again right now. She was surprisingly cheerful this morning, and I was enjoying being with her.

  At one end of the large room where I had been nursed back to health, the path opened into a series of roomy caverns. Karole had made plans for the first half dozen of them, the rest being too small to be useful. The cavern just behind ours she had been setting up as a lab and reference area. She just hadn’t gotten very far, which explained a lot of the equipment piled in the main area. The other way out of our area led though a series of interconnected stone tunnels, many running off in a variety of directions. One branch was the way back to the entrance to the time complex, and another led to the outside world. The tunnels were reasonably well lit by natural light from outside. There were many openings in the ceiling to let in sunlight and fresh air. As usual, the entrance was well hidden from the outside, with the largest opening the one in the ceiling to the open air. I now realized this was because the ‘Builders’, the aliens, used their flying devices and left the tunnels vertically and probably never exited on foot as we did.

  We were sitting on a large rock, about one hundred meters off to the left of the entrance to the caves. It was about 9:00 AM, local time, and the sun was up and warming the cliffs. It was a comfortable seventy plus degrees, with the smallest of breezes. I noticed a variety of birds, and even the occasional squirrel running through the brush. So far I had seen no bigger animals of any kind.

  “So, when and where are we?” I asked. It was something we hadn’t gotten around to discussing. I had been here before on one of my explorations, but like the aliens had had no interest in looking back into the caves. I might have found her cache, or maybe even run into her, had I been more thorough in my exploration. At the time I had been curious to see the outside, and had been curious to see what era this tunnel had opened up. I knew then it was an older era, but I hadn’t calibrated it accurately. I hadn’t found a good way to do that. Karole had better equipment, and had pinned it down precisely. In my case, having found little after a week of exploring, it became one of the tunnels I had marked for later exploration. For a number of reasons I had never found a reason to come back. More interesting things were waiting for me in some of the other periods.

  “It’s the oldest of the tunnels,” she responded. She was wearing another outfit of the same material, except this time in an off white. The pants were of the same design, but today she had put on a full-length shirt and some type of shoe. They resembled a tennis shoe, except without any obvious form o
f fastener. Like the clothes, the shoes seemed to fit themselves to her form, and clung in place until the user elected to remove them. They also didn’t seem to get dirty. She had been truthful about the coloring also. Her skin was already only faintly bluish, her hair mostly brown, as were her eyes. Her natural coloring made her look even more attractive.

  I couldn’t say the same for my clothes. I had pressed her for my jeans, and even the T-shirt. She had cleaned them somehow, very effectively I might add, and there were no traces of my blood from the wound I had suffered a few days before. The T-shirt was still torn from the spear, but still felt more natural to me than the silky material she had dressed me in earlier. My New Balance running shoes had seen better days, but would do until I got home. If I only had my pack, I would have a complete change of clothes, plus a few other essentials.

  “My instruments say this is about 54,000 years before your time. I estimate an accuracy of about ten years,” she explained. I suddenly realized it hadn’t taken days as she had expected. Her accent was already perfect. She now spoke American English as clearly as I did. Only the occasional word that didn’t exist in my time crept in, and I would have to ask what she meant.

  “Why here?” I asked.

  She misunderstood. “I have no idea what their interest would be this far back,” she responded seriously. “I have searched a bit with the Skybike and can see nothing of interest. I have not seen a single human or signs they have been here. At least within 100 miles. But the cycle is almost out of power; another thing I can’t replace. The technology doesn’t exist in any of the uptime openings we can reach,” she added.

  “No, I mean why have you chosen this place to set up a base of operations? And don’t you worry that the aliens might come back and close off this tunnel, leaving you stranded here?”

  “For a long while I was,” she replied. “For months I was terrified. No matter where I was. Partly because no place was home, and everywhere was strange. With the exception of the one tunnel where everything is abandoned, my time was the most future of all the gates. So no matter where I would go I was visiting an ancient place of historical curiosity. I knew a little of some of the places from history lessons, but had never really paid that much attention. How well would you know day to day details of life a couple hundred years before your time?” she asked.

  She had a point. It would be tough to fit in starting from nothing.

  “I couldn’t live in the center. There is nothing there. No food, no water, and I had no idea how anything worked, nor whether the aliens would return suddenly and find me there. I finally elected to try and establish myself in a time roughly two hundred and fifty years downtime from my own. It was the closest in time, and was the least foreign. Even though I was on another continent, everything was so different that it didn’t matter. But it offered the most advanced technology available, although hopelessly limited compared to my own time. The better the technology, the better my chances of finding answers. I finally decided there was nothing else I could do. I must try and find an answer, and if they close the tunnels, they close them. I can’t just sit somewhere and exist hoping to be safe.”

  “It couldn’t have been easy to establish yourself. Even in my time it is getting very difficult to fake an identity.”

  “It was very slow going, especially at first,” she conceded. “I didn’t have money, know anyone or my way around, or even where I was at first. Fortunately, the language wasn’t that different, and I was taken for a foreigner. I had some jewelry I was wearing, simple stuff, not worth anything at home. But there, two hundred plus years downtime it was a real novelty. It got me enough to carry me through a while. Fortunately, there are always people on the fringes, who aren’t so conscious of the rules and formalities.

  “I was able to stay with a group of students, and they helped me find a simple job that also helped cover my share of expenses. For a time it was merely survival while I tried to learn my way around and figure out a way to establish myself. I made weekly trips to the matrix,” she added. “Just to see if anything had changed, or whether the aliens had returned. Sometimes it was just to see if the way home had been reopened. Sadly, that never happened.”

  There was little I could say at this point other than to encourage her to continue.

  “And then came a time I thought things were going to fall apart. The people I was staying with reached the end of their study year, and they all had made plans to leave for their homes, or in some cases jobs in other cities. I had made a few other acquaintances, friends would be too strong a word, and one was in need of a roommate when hers left for home for the same reasons. She was a strange person, with a number of problems, but I had little choice and I moved in with her.”

  “How long did that last?”

  “Not long at all, and led to my becoming a criminal,” she said solemnly.

  I looked at her suddenly.

  “Oh, they haven’t caught me yet. I’ve become adept at cheating the system.”

  “Tell me about it,” I urged.

  “As I said my roommate had a lot of problems. One weekend when I came back from the matrix I found her dead in the bathroom. She had committed suicide.”

  “My God!”

  “Once again I felt that I had nowhere to go. Then I made a bold move. I knew she had no family, and had few friends, most of who were gone for a few more months. I needed an identity, so I took hers. I went back to the matrix and retrieved my cycle, coming back for her late at night. I took her uptime, and there I buried her. They couldn’t find her body there.”

  “Someone was going to miss her eventually,” I suggested.

  “I told the landlady we had decided to move. I think she was very glad, as she didn’t like us, and it meant a couple of months on the lease she could keep. I sorted through my roommate’s possessions. She actually had quite a bit of money. I packed up those items that would be of use. The rest I carefully junked. Then I moved to another city, not too far away so that I would still be close to the matrix, and close enough to access the places I had become familiar with. But far enough that no one would know I had replaced her.

  I had found enough money I could move into a better area. After a while I found a job with a company where I thought I could use a little of my future knowledge to my benefit. I was right. I gradually improved my position. It took almost three years, but now I am well established and have a substantial income. It is amazing what a little pre-knowledge can do.”

  It was an amazing story. I was impressed.

  She continued. “A few months ago I started this project. I have explored the various tunnels periodically, and spent a lot of time in the control areas, but decided I needed a private base to do this right. I haven’t gotten very far, and am still bringing in supplies. Well, you have seen the disarray yourself. Much of the stuff here I was able to buy outright. I now have the money in my established time era. Some of the items were not so readily available. For those I have had to continue my criminal activities and have found ways to acquire them outside of normal channels.”

  She was serious about pursuing this. I had done nothing compared to her. True, her motivation was based on stronger reasons, but still I was chastened by my own lack of persistence.

  “But here,” I said waving my arm to emphasize our current environment. “Why did you come back here to set up all of this?”

  “Two reasons. There is no one here to find anything. I don’t have to worry about someone finding or questioning what I am doing. This is my secret place. There are no people here. I can bring things from many ages and leave them here. Come back and study when I like. No worry about someone stumbling onto a mystery they can’t explain. I can hide here as well, if needed. For years. I have all the power and supplies I need.”

  She had demonstrated her power system earlier when I asked about the lighting and the other equipment. “MC-Cell, a nuclear battery,” she had said showing me the small console with the large power cable coming fro
m the back. “Fairly primitive actually, but capable of providing light, heat, and power to all of my equipment for more than one hundred years. Best I could do with the available technology. Still, we have no worries there.”

  “The other reason may be pointless, but it seemed that back here is the most protected time. If the aliens are trying to make changes to our timeline, then anything upstream of where they make a change will probably be wiped out. What we have back here might not. Maybe it doesn’t work that way, and this will change also.” She threw up her arms. “It just seemed a reasonable precaution.”

  I couldn’t fault her reasoning. In fact, I had read a number of science fiction books where the authors held the same premise. Once you have time travel, the only safe place against deliberate or accidental change was downtime. At least it was private.

  We slid down from the rock platform and I brushed off small bits of rock that had adhered to my pants. She didn’t have to as the miracle cloth shed them automatically, along with any wrinkles that had tried to form while we sat. It was warming up, as the sun rose in the sky. The grasses were thick and firm in the rich soil, although the many rocks made walking a conscious effort as we made our way back up the hill towards the opening. I was still the slow one, but based on progress so far, by tomorrow I expected to be fully recovered.

  As we made our way back, it was my turn. Karole had nursed me back to health, patiently explained her story, but now wanted to know what had led to her finding me on the floor of the time center. I told her the events of the past couple of years as thoroughly as I could, including the death of my friends and of my narrow escape a few days past.

  Chapter 7

  Southwest North America

  538 AD

  I was back! It had been a week to the day since I had crawled bleeding through this very cave trying desperately to make it home. Exactly a week since I had seen my two lifelong friends killed before my eyes. Then I had been dying, alone, and with little hope for survival. Now I was as healthy, probably healthier, than I had ever been in my life. I had an ally, someone else who had experienced the time complex. I was now with someone who knew more about it than I did, and someone who would work with me to resolve the mystery. It didn’t seem possible for such a sudden turn-about to have occurred.