Thirty-four
I HAVE THE INFORMATION YOU NEED, Richard Welk typed
from his offices in Boston.
In the chambers beneath the barren foundation of the
Trevor mansion in Silver Ridge, the cursor of a computer screen blinked
patiently, waiting. Corin specified a drive for the file to be
downloaded. BE MY GUEST, he typed back.
The file began downloading.
HOW WELL DO YOU TRUST YOUR
COMMUNICATIONS SECURITY? Richard Welk
wanted to know.
IMPLICITLY.
SILVER RIDGE DIE-CASTING’S FINANCIAL RECORDS ARE
FALSIFIED. TREVOR INDUSTRIES HAS A LINE TO ALL CORPORATE COMPUTERS AND A
FRIEND OF MINE MANAGED TO GET TO THE RECORD YOU WANTED. YOU SHOULD BE
GETTING A TRANSCRIPT OF EVERYTHING WE MANAGED TO RIP OFF. TAKE SPECIAL
NOTE OF THE SHIPMENTS TO THE EAGLE LAKE COMPRESSOR COMPANY. THE COMPANY
CHECKS OUT AS LEGIT, BUT THE PLANT WAS ONCE A PHYSICS LAB EMPLOYED BY THE
DEFENSE DEPARTMENT UNDER A TOP SECRET CLEARANCE, APPARENTLY FOR SOME STAR
WARS RESEARCH. THE LAB LOST ITS CONTRACT A FEW YEARS BACK AND OSTENSIBLY
SPECIALIZES IN PRECISION MACHINING. WE DON’T KNOW WHO OWNS THE COMPANY.
IT’S PASSED THROUGH SEVERAL HANDS SINCE ITS HEYDAY WITH THE GOVERNMENT.
IT WILL BE TO YOUR ADVANTAGE TO KEEP THIS INFORMATION
CONFIDENTIAL, Corin warned the man, THIS ENTIRE SITUATION, IN FACT.
I WOULDN’T HAVE THE SLIGHTEST IDEA WHAT IT ALL
MEANS. AS YET. SARAH MAY PROVE TO BE MORE OF A PROBLEM. SHE HAS A MIND
OF HER OWN.
BE FOREWARNED, MR. WELK. IF SARAH’S SECURITY PEOPLE
CROSS SWORDS WITH THE INDIVIDUAL RESPONSIBLE FOR THE DESTRUCTION OF THE
MANSION, THERE WILL BE UNAVOIDABLE DEATHS. SARAH CAN DO LITTLE TO HELP
BILLY AT THIS TIME.
I WILL RELAY THE MESSAGE, AS USUAL.
THANK YOU. TERMINATING COMMUNICATIONS.
THANKS FOR THE WARNING THIS TIME.
Corin leaned back in his seat and tried to relax.
“Up kind of late, aren’t we?
Evie sidestepped from behind him, her calloused feet
whispering on the hard tile. She sat cross-legged on the floor off to one
side of the console, wearing a thin cotton gown over her slender body.
She reached for one of the small machines that had followed her in. The
device retracted its legs and allowed her to pick it up, but it swiveled
its lens about to keep her face in view as she examined it.
“They were Billy’s gadgets initially,” Corin said,
“nothing very sophisticated. They were inspired by what he sensed was to
come.”
“You made them come alive.”
Corin smiled. “In a very real fashion, they are
alive. Within another few decades, you’ll have a much clearer
understanding of how organic brains function. The basic algorithms of
neurological functioning are elegant, but amazingly simple.
Consciousness, though, is something else. It will never be fully
understood.”
“If you’re from the future, I don’t understand how
you can change your own past.”
He sighed, knowing he would have to at least try to
explain. It would, he suspected, give them something to think about for
the rest of their lives. If, in fact, they had a future in this freshly
developing train of probabilities.
“Evie, every point in time is an intersection for an
infinite number of pasts and futures. Every point in time is an end and
an entirely new beginning. It is a fact of physics even your century is
beginning to understand.”
“Have you explained everything to Billy?”
“It’s important to understand why I’m here, not how,”
Corin said. “My adversary does not have the right to interfere with your
world. He and his friends believe they do.”
“Are they evil men?”
Corin shook his head reluctantly. “They are
desperate men. They are men who suffer beyond any definition of the word
you would understand. They’re intent is not evil.”
“Are you all really from the twenty-third century?”
“The twenty-third century happened to be my
historical specialty. But we are from the future as you understand the
term.”
Evie rose to her feet and drew closer. “How do you
travel through time?”
“It’s not that simple, Evie. Nothing about the world
around you is what you believe it to be. Your physical sciences are only
beginning to delve into its true nature of reality, and that reality is
not physical in nature. I didn’t have to travel through time. Billy and
I are both part of a larger psychic structure.”
Evie looked at up him like a curious child. “Are
people the same where you come from as they are here?”
Corin shook his head slowly. “We have no physical
existence.”
“I certainly don’t understand that. Are you ghosts?”
He smiled. “It’s not easy to explain. Give me some
time and I’ll try a bit later.”
“I wish I didn’t have to try to understand anything.
I wish none of this had ever happened.”
“So do I.”
Her eyes were dark, her expression quietly
challenging. “Are you anxious to go back?”
Corin studied the pretty, dark little girl and shook
his head. “No, I’m not anxious to go back. But I can’t stay.”
“I thought at first that you were a thief who was
going to steal Billy’s life and pretend to be him.”
“That has been Billy’s fear as well.”
“Billy’s afraid that I’ll fall in love with you.”
Corin looked surprised. “When he knows the whole
truth of who I am, he won’t be so concerned about that.”
“But if you’re part of Billy,” she asked softly and
cautiously, “if you remember me from your own past, what kind of feelings
do you have for me?”
Corin closed his eyes. He composed himself and
stared at her without expression. “Somewhere, Evie, you must have a
counterpart in my world. I’ve never given it much thought. Connections
of that kind are hard to follow. If only you knew of the gulf between
us.”
Confused by his answer, she rose to her feet and left
the room, taking with her the smell of her hair and her body. Corin
muttered a profanity not to be heard in the twentieth century. He tried
to remember what he had been doing before Evie had arrived to unwittingly
torment him so.
