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  Then we passed the one that took her to her new home, about five hundred and fifty years uptime of my own era. I found it interesting that her tunnel was adjacent to my own.

  “Have you tried them all?” she asked curious.

  “I went at least to the cave on the other end for every tunnel. Sometimes the situation on the far end looked too risky to investigate. Other tunnels were not obvious when or where they went and I marked them for later exploration. I have spent at least a week down about half of them, and many weeks exploring a few,” I finished.

  “I dated them all,” she explained, “but also have not spent much time in many of them. I couldn’t see where it would help me with my final objective.”

  “To find your brother,” I offered. I doubted she had much hope there, but didn’t see a tactful way to bring it up.

  “No, I’m convinced he is dead,” she said surprising me. “It took a while, until I understood what this place did before I realized that. The creatures appear to leave the tunnels open. If they closed one, like they did the tunnel to my time, then they must be finished there. They are not planning to go back. If so, what use was my brother to them. No, they took him for whatever reason they wanted him. I think they wanted to remove him from that time for some reason. They must have killed him when they were through.”

  “Then. . . .”

  “I’m going to stop whatever they are doing. I would really like to get back home someday, but I don’t really expect that to happen. But if we can learn how to stop them, I will be satisfied.”

  We had reached the entrance to the tunnel that led home to my time. The tunnel opening was roughly six feet at the widest and maybe eight feet tall. The lower portion was filled in to provide a level area for walking, so it wasn’t like trying to move through a pipe, although in many ways it felt that way. A lot could happen in the next few days, and it would determine what our chances were to set up a base of operations here, assuming I could convince Karole. She was weakening, but I still didn’t have her agreement. We still had to circumvent the law and cover up the last days of my lost friends. They had to go missing, but nothing could point to me. Together we made the short walk into 1994.

  By the time we had made it down the hill from the entrance cave to where I had parked my Explorer, we were both dusted with a layer of snow. I was cold even with the Northface jacket, while Karole looked comfortable in the thin future cloth she always wore. Effective as it might be, we were going to have to get her into more typical clothes if we were going to avoid unwanted attention. I opened her side of the Ford so she could slide in, and then walked around to the driver’s side. Once inside I was pleased to find the heavy duty battery was up to the task of starting the car, even after a couple of weeks of sitting ignored out in the cold. I sat for a minute as the car warmed, and then turned on the heat. While the interior warmed, I went back out and scraped the snow from the windows. Mostly snow, but a thin layer of ice underneath that was easily scraped away.

  I put the wipers on slow intermittent just to keep up with the falling snow, and slipped into drive. Moving slowly, I circled the grove of trees that I had parked behind, coming out headed back down the fire access road toward the county road that would get us back to the highway. The thin layer of ice and snow cracked and popped as we drove slowly away from the cave entrance.

  My passenger watched this activity the whole time with a certain wry amusement. “Primitive,” was all she said, but I noted she watched the countryside with interest as we drove down the dirt path. I realized she was memorizing the way back to the cave, but also sensed that she was curious about what she was about to experience. Despite her vocalized lack of enthusiasm, she was about to immerse herself in an era she had been wary of venturing out into on her own. Ancient history it might be, but still an experience to be savored.

  We bounced, swayed and slid our way all the way to the pavement. The snow tires did their job, and I didn’t need the chains packed away in the back. The pavement was lightly covered with freshly fallen snow when we got there, but nothing that would be a problem. Moving at a cautious pace, it took only a short while to reach the main highway where we merged into the Seattle bound traffic, and made our way anonymously toward home. It was a Saturday afternoon here, so traffic was relatively light, and despite the weather we made good time. About ten miles from home, and across the highway from one of the malls, I pulled into a Marriot parking lot.

  Karole waited in the car while I went in and made arrangements for our room. I paid cash, no need for credit card records on this stay, and was lucky to find a room on the first floor, in the back, near one of the many entrances. Returning to the car with a pair of electronic keys, I drove around back so we could check out our temporary residence. I pulled the knapsack out of the backseat and carried it inside, ushering Karole into the room ahead of me after demonstrating the use of the key. She looked amused, but accepted the second key from me and preceded me into the room.

  I threw the knapsack on the closer of the two beds while Karole wandered around the room looking at the furnishings, turning on the television, and examining the mini-bar. Looking at the clock, I decided we had enough time to complete some necessary shopping before we settled in for the night. I indicated the knapsack and said, “Time to change”.

  We had brought along a few of Lisa’s clothes that had been left at the cave when she and Pat had discovered winter attire was not appropriate any longer. The clothes were a poor fit for Karole, but would do long enough, and would generate a lot fewer questions than the miracle cloth from the future she was currently wearing. Reluctantly, she headed into the bathroom and exited a little while later dressed like a native.

  Shopping was a lot easier than expected, and we were back in the room by six o’clock with several outfits, underwear, two jackets, boots, shoes and a couple of hats. She was wearing one set of the new clothes, and we put Lisa’s items back in the knapsack that we would ditch downtime at our earliest opportunity. I had planned on a simple meal courtesy of room service, but now that she had been out, Karole wanted to explore further. I didn’t see what it could hurt, and so we ventured out for pizza at the Pizza Hut a couple of miles back up the road. She was an instant addict.

  The weather had cleared the next morning when we rolled out very early. Karole quickly mastered the basics of operating my Ford Explorer that was fortunately equipped with an automatic transmission. The intricacies of road etiquette were a different story, but the plan was for her to follow my lead when we made the drive to San Francisco. For now, I sat next to her in the passenger seat and added encouragement while her skill level rapidly improved. Karole was a very quick learner, I realized. Well, I’d had a brief ride on her little Skybike, and if she could handle that thing, she should be able to operate anything. So long as she followed my lead on the long drive, I was certain we would be okay.

  “Wait here,” I said as she sat in the Explorer with the engine running. I walked the last couple of blocks to my house and let myself in the back way. There were a number of messages on the phone, but I didn’t check them. Plenty of time for that when we returned. Crossing the kitchen to the garage, I took Pat’s keys off the keyboard and made my way to the old VW dune buggy that sat in the corner. I removed the plates and exchanged them with Pat’s. If they stopped me I had a problem anyway. Changing the plates would just add a little diversion in case there was an ongoing search for his car, lessening the chance we would be pulled over.

  The trip was tense and arduous, with lots of rain, which didn’t clear until we entered California. After that the skies cleared, and we made better time. With only occasional logistics problems, and two overnight stays, we made it to the City. We ditched Pat’s car at the San Francisco airport where I knew it would eventually be found. We took the parking tag so there would be no record of the day we dropped it off, and the police would have to assume that Pat and Lisa had left it after their family visit at Christmas. At least there would be no pro
of otherwise. Of course, I had exchanged the plates again, putting back the ones that belonged. Any traces of my hair, skin or other leavings would not be unnatural, as Pat and I often traveled together in his car.

  It was Tuesday evening and we planned to head home the next morning. We made love for the first time that night in our room with a view of San Francisco harbor. I’m not even sure exactly how it happened. She wanted to see the Golden Gate Bridge. She had seen pictures, even models, but the bridge itself no longer existed in her time. To be able to walk across it, yes walk, despite the freezing January wind blowing in from the sea we walked, was an experience to be savored. Then dinner in Chinatown, with all the varieties of food she had never tasted. We drank a little, but not enough to matter. Later we walked back to our hotel. As we walked she told me that she agreed to stay here, in this time after all.

  Back in Seattle, it was time to rejoin mainstream society. I made a call to Pat’s office and left a message for him. Later in the day I called his home and did the same, as if trying to locate him after getting back into town. My vacation was not scheduled to be over until the end of the following week, but he was supposed to have been back to work for some time. They would be frantic for him to get back as he was key to the proposal they were preparing. I knew that my call would alert the police to my return if they didn’t already know.

  Karole, or Carol Martens, as we had decided she would become, had temporarily located herself in one of the spare upstairs bedrooms. As soon as we could get the official business surrounding the disappearance of my friends out of the way, we would have to get busy establishing a real identity for her; one that would stand up against a detailed investigation. I had shown her how to get onto the internet and she was rapidly coming up to speed on how things worked here. She was a skilled researcher in her own time, and our primitive systems held little challenge for her.

  The police contacted me the next day. Although there were several interviews over the next couple of days, it was easier than I could have hoped. I was never a suspect. They already knew how close the three of us had been, and there was nothing to link me to their disappearance. The car was found by the end of the week, and that shifted the investigation south. Eventually it went into the unsolved case file and life moved on.

  As soon as it seemed prudent, we went to work on the Carol Marten’s identity. It really wasn’t hard. The detective literature is full of clever ways to defeat the system, and we lifted a number of ideas that looked the most promising. Two weeks later we rented an apartment for her, and spent the next week shopping for furniture. Within a month she was ready to move in.

  We made one trip back to the time complex for a quick trip uptime to dump the remaining evidence that could connect us with Pat and Lisa’s disappearance. We needed an idea for a quick jump-start for our proposed consulting business; something that would get us noticed and allow us access to bid on state of the art projects an unknown would have trouble gaining access to. The risk associated with a sudden unprecedented success was small, and at this point we could adjust our plans as required. The library I had used a few years uptime for my earlier financial manipulations seemed just the place to start the search. I knew the ropes there, and it would provide the kind of future knowledge that would give us a solution no one had thought of – yet.

  We found what we needed with only a few hours search. The arsenal of nuclear weapons the United Sates had built during the past thirty or forty years were all aging. Key components, mostly ceramics and some metals, which had been subjected to the continuous one hundred degree temperatures and low level radiation characteristic of the physics packages were slowly changing. It was uncertain how well the devices would actually perform if the need came to use them. Thousands of hours of computer analyses were performed to evaluate the expected yields and reliability of the devices given the changes in properties of key materials used when the bombs were manufactured. Replacement parts were manufactured in some cases and painstakingly changed out to keep the bombs usable. What was needed was a modified material that would retain unchanged over a longer period. We knew the material would be found in another dozen years. Discovered by accident, the new material retained 97% of the key thermal strength and neutron reflective properties so important to the device performance. As a result of the discovery of the modified material, the United States would be able to rebuild some of the aging weapons and ensure a viable defense for more than another half century.

  Back home, we commissioned the company that would have ‘discovered’ the change in ceramic composition, to make up and test some of the material per the information gathered uptime. We would allow them to eventually patent the change and make the profits, so our theft of their discovery would not harm them financially, but would allow us to alter the time table of the change, establishing our credentials within the government procurement system. Knowing what the results of the tests would be, we created an unsolicited proposal identifying the new material we had developed and it’s properties and benefits to the nuclear weapons program. Along with the material, we proposed a new process for forming the ceramic. Now all we had to do was wait a few weeks for the material to be produced and tested. With the formal test report from our selected manufacturer in hand, we would be able to submit the report, along with a sample, for evaluation.

  ----------------------

  We woke early on the morning she was scheduled to leave. For some reason it was the first time we had shared the same bed since that special night in San Francisco. “What, no breakfast in bed,” she smiled as she stretched and looked across the bed at me. “You know it’s important that I go back for a while?” she asked, noting the look on my face.

  “I know, I know,” I admitted reluctantly. We had talked it out the past week. I didn’t like it, but she was right. Her identity uptime was going to be very important to our efforts. She had access to advanced technology that we would need to improve our chances for success. She had already been gone a lot longer than any time since she had established herself, and unless she made an appearance soon, her carefully created persona could be lost. No, I accepted that she had to go, and that it would be awkward for me to trail along. I didn’t fit in there. Besides, I had a few tasks of my own. In addition to follow-up on our “Bomb Project’, I had a list of six people I needed to contact, face to face, as possible members of our insider group. These people would fit in as key members of our ‘consulting firm’, each being an established expert in relevant technical fields, but more important, each was someone I thought could be counted on to be enthusiastic about the secret aspects of our project, once I could dispel their initial disbelief.

  I looked at my watch. Eight thirty already. It had gotten later than I expected. The time of day where she was headed was much later than it was here. Almost seven hours later. That meant she had to get to the tunnel cave early if she wanted to be ‘home’ before dark. None of the zones were really coordinated time of day for some reason, although many were close. It was frequently a nuisance, like now, and I wondered if there was a reason for it or just random chance.

  “Okay,” I reluctantly consented. If you want to get to the cave by our noon, we had better get a move on. I’ll start breakfast while you shower.”

  Rewarded with a glowing smile, I scrambled out of bed and down the hall to my chores. We made good time getting ready and out of the house, Karole once again dressed in her silky clinging garments. Despite the foggy weather, we made it to the tunnel complex a little in advance of the target time. I walked her up to the tunnel entrance. There was no point of my going inside, as she would simply make a quick pass from this tunnel to the one that would take her home. A quick hug, a catch in the throat, and she was gone, the entrance closing behind her.

  As I started home alone, I suddenly realized I had no way to find her. I knew which tunnel lead to her uptime, but beyond that I had no clue where she was, or even the name she had adopted there. I felt suddenly lost. I should have fou
nd a way to go with her, just to know how to get to her if I needed to in the future. But it was too late for that now.

  She was gone exactly six weeks, just as we had planned. It seemed a great deal longer.

  Chapter 9

  Present Day

  Friday, 19 May 2006

  Seattle, Washington

  Sam Harmon sipped his Pepsi and munched his fries. The game was on the television monitor attached to wall off to one side; one of the nicer large flat screen TVs that seemed to have almost entirely replaced the older, heavier and smaller CRT variety. His interest was focused on other game, however, which was sitting across the room with his back towards him. He had followed the man when he left his office at Aero-Technologies after the surprise meeting his superiors had arranged earlier that afternoon. When the target had pulled off and into the parking lot of the Outback Restaurant, Sam had waited in his car for more than ten minutes. He could see him being seated through the window, and waited until he was sure that he was really settling in. Then Sam had moved inside. He had elected to sit at the bar that allowed him the option of a quick departure. Seating himself eliminated the chance of being given a table in an undesirable location by the pretty lady greeter. He had been an agent for more than fifteen years before going freelance, and he knew all of the tricks by now. This target was easy. He obviously had no clue he was being tagged.

  Sam’s phone silently vibrated against his side. He jerked slightly in response, and pulled the phone from his pocket.