GeneSix (26 page)

“Hey!” one of them called out. “She just knocked out Billy!”

They all then converged on her, some pulling knives and others grabbing those long sticks to use as weapons. But she still gripped her sword, and it was wet with blood from her previous battle. She was not afraid to add their blood to it.

Scott, his mind working on more than one thing at once, was staring with disbelief at the thirteen year-old who claimed to be Jeff Calder, and at the same time, he was thinking about the mission they had just completed.

“Rick, April,” he said, “go to the computer alcove and check the surveillance satellites in the other universe. Focus primarily on the Quebec area. See if our mission had any affect on the crater. Sammy, tell me exactly what happened here regarding Jeff.”

As April and Rick stepped into the computer alcove, Sammy explained what had happened. Little Jeffy had simply disappeared in what appeared to be a sudden burst of tachyon waves, and then with a second burst the adolescent Jeff appeared.

Scott’s tricorder was still on his belt, so he pulled it and ran a quick scan of the boy.

“He’s Jeffy, all right,” he said. “Right down to the genetic coding. His zeta implant is still in place.”

“zeta
what
?” the boy said.

“What could have happened?” Jake said, “Some sort of tachyon energy leak from the hangar deck? Somehow it aged him?”

Scott nodded. “A possibility, but not too likely. I’ll have to examine the logs to see if there were any random tachyon energy spikes – “

The boy interrupted him. “Why don’t you just ask me, dude?”

April suddenly called out, “Scott! Jake! Get in here!”

“Hold that thought,” Scott said, and ran to the computer alcove, followed by the others.

On one screen was a view of a city, with a skyline similar to New York.

Scott said, “I thought you were checking surveillance satellites in the adjacent universe.”

“We are,” April said. “This
is
the alternate universe.”

“This?”

Rick nodded gravely. He indicated another monitor, showing a smaller city. Nineteenth century architecture mixed with a few modern steel and glass buildings. “That’s Quebec, where the crater was.”

“
Was
?”

“No sign of it now, though. None at all. And now, our satellites show a city covering Manhattan Island and the neighboring shores, which were all just wilderness in the scans taken as recently as this morning. Here, though, it’s apparently called New Amsterdam. A baseball team called the Americans plays in a park called American Stadium, in the Bronx.”

Sammy said, “Sure. A parallel of our own New York Yankees, playing in Yankee Stadium.”

“The city has a population of over seven million. On the West Coast, Los Angeles stands in the same spot where ours does.”

April said, “And all the others. London, Paris. All where they should be. Their Paris has no Eiffel Tower, though. And there are a few other small differences.”

Scott said, his gaze fixed on the screen showing the buildings of New Amsterdam, including a duplicate of the Empire State Building. “I think I see what happened. That asteroid would have started a second ice age, the one they were just coming out of, before we changed things. When we prevented their ice age, we apparently changed the course of their history.”

“What ice age?” Sammy said. “The alternate reality has always been a direct parallel of ours, climate-wise and technology-wise.”

Scott glanced at him. “What are you talking about? That Earth was just pulling out of a recent ice age. Humans there were living in primitive, stone-age conditions.”

Sammy was looking at him, equally puzzled. “What are
you
talking about? We have been monitoring that Earth ever since we set up shop here in this complex. They’ve always been on a technological and cultural level with us.”

Chuck said, “I never remember hearing you say anything about any kind of ice age over there.”

“In fact,” Sammy said, “I was kind of wondering why you were so curious about that Earth’s distant past.”

Scott reached past Rick to a console. “Let’s pull up some images taken this morning, before we left on the mission.”

The images on the monitors flickered, being replaced by others taken by satellites earlier in the day. Those images also reflected modern architecture and development. There was a bridge with cars moving along it. Another monitor showed an airport, and a jetliner taking to the sky.

“Butterfly effect,” April said.

Scott was staring in disbelief. “I don’t see how this is possible. The butterfly effect is only an erroneous theory.”

Jake said, “But why aren’t Sammy and Chuck aware of it?”

Scott said, realization hitting him, “Because, apparently our history has been altered too, at least regarding our observations of the alternate universe. It’s not that their recent ice age has been undone, it is that it now never happened at all.”

April said, “I think I am getting a little dizzy.”

Jake asked, “Why weren’t we affected? Why do we remember it?”

“Probably some affect from being in the time stream when the alterations in history happened. We were somehow shielded.”

Sammy said, “Unbelievable. Apparently you actually altered history to the degree that you reshaped an entire civilization. You created a new planetary history for them. And Chuck and I have the memories of the altered history, while you all still have memories from the previous, unaltered time line.”

Scott found himself taking an involuntary step backward as he stared at the monitors. “My God. To think we have that kind of power. With one act we reshaped an entire world. An entire timeline.”

Jake said, “All right. I’ll concede that might be possible. Considering I have the power to fly through space unaided, and as you keep reminding us, you can think four-dimensionally. But if this is the case, and if both Earth’s parallel each other so closely, then where is the asteroid from our own timeline?”

April and the others were looking at him a little blankly, as though they were not quite following his line of thought.

Jake said, “Seven thousand years ago, there should have been an asteroid up there, heading for own Quebec. An asteroid roughly the size of..,” he glanced at Scott. “What did you call it? Phobos? The Martian moon? What prevented it from colliding with our Earth and sending us into another ice age?”

Scott’s mind was working, examining the possibilities. “What if that asteroid you destroyed wasn’t simply the size of Phobos. What if it
was
Phobos?”

Sammy said, “Intriguing. If I am following this correctly.”

“We’ll have to conduct an examination of the solar system in the alternate universe. I wouldn’t be surprised if their Mars has no Phobos, now.”

Jake said, “Something in their universe knocked their Phobos out of orbit seven thousand years ago, and sent it on a collision course with their Earth. But that same something didn’t happen here in our universe.”

“Precisely.”

“I wonder if we’ll ever find out.”

Scott nodded. “Consider it added to our ever-growing list of things to do.”

The carnage in the pool parlor did not last more than thirty seconds. Four bikers were lying on the floor, dead from wounds they had received from Akila’s sword. The others had backed off and were keeping a cautious distance.

Akila scooped Hasani off the floor with one arm, and draping him over her shoulder, ran from the building.

Outside, she found it was night. And she found herself suddenly facing two men. One was in a long coat, and a hat that sort of slouched down, casting his face into shadows. The other was older, and his eyes stared aimlessly – he was blind, she realized. He held a white cane in one hand.

“Is that them?” the one with the hat asked. Akila could not understand his words, but his voice was gravely and harsh.

The blind man nodded.

“Reach out to them. Give them our language.”

Akila suddenly felt like her mind was on fire. She had experienced something similar when the minister Antula had touched her mind once. But this was overwhelming. Disorienting. So much mental contact all at once. She almost dropped Hasani, but managed to hold onto him. Her sword, however, clanged against the concrete at her feet.

“There,” the one with the hat said, “can you understand us?”

“I...I can,” she said with disbelief. “How did you do that?”

However, the man had lifted his head a bit as he spoke, and the shadows covering his face lifted. She saw greenish, reptilian skin, and eyes that were yellow, with vertical slits for pupils. She audibly gasped. “What are you?”

“One like you. They call me Snake. Come with us, if you want to live.”

The blind man chuckled. If there was a joke, Akila had missed it. But the one called Snake turned away, along with the blind man. Akila saw few other options so, still carrying the unconscious Hasani, she retrieved her sword from the concrete and followed them away into the shadows.

A mist fell from the night sky, touching the face of Quentin Jeffries with its cold fingers.

He pulled a cell phone from his coat pocket, and glanced at it to check the time. 1:21 AM. He had been waiting on this corner for nearly an hour. He would wait a little longer, he thought. The man he was waiting for usually had information that was worth the wait.

He thrust his hands into the pockets of a dark trench coat, the collar turned up against the weather. His shoulder-length hair was tucked into the collar of the coat, partly against the cold mist, and partly so any passers-by would find him a little more nondescript and maybe not so easy to remember.

He was alone on the sidewalk, and only an occasional car would go by, its tires making a whooshing sound on the wet pavement, the driver casting a casual glance toward him.

Far down the street, a set of headlights came into view. The car gradually worked its way closer, and Quentin could see it was a black-and-white. It belonged to Boston’s Finest.

Quentin breathed a sigh of exasperation. Not that the cops presented any real threat to him or his team, but he simply did not want the inconvenience of having to deal with them.

He waited, hoping they would continue on. They did. An officer on the passenger side cast him a glance, but nothing more.

Across the street, a man stepped around a corner and into view. He also wore a trench coat, and perched on his head was a baseball cap. In the dark, it was impossible to determine any markings on the hat, but Quentin knew who the man was, and as such, knew the hat belonged to the Boston Red Sox. A faded navy blue, with a faded red letter “B” adorning the front.

Quentin failed to understand the attraction these Americans felt for things like baseball. And even moreso, football. Rugby – now, there was a man’s sport.

The man across the street lit a cigarette, the lick of flame from the lighter glowing in the darkness. Quentin did not approve of smoking - for health reasons and because he hated the smell of a smoldering cigarette. But he supposed it did this man little harm. After all, fire caused the man no harm at all, so it was doubtful its emissions would.

With his mind, Quentin reached out to the man so they could communicate without having to shout across the street to each other. “DID THE COPS SEE YOU?”

“NOPE,” the man thoughtcast back to Quentin. “ANY SIGN OF HIM?”

“NONE YET.”

“ARE YOU SURE HE’S COMIN’?”

“LORD, I HOPE SO. I WOULD HATE TO THINK I WASTED A PERFECTLY GOOD EVENING OUT HERE IN THE DRIZZLE.”

“THAT MAKES TWO OF US, BUDDY.”

A hot cup of tea would do me good, Quentin thought to himself.

The man, Cosmo, was along as security. Quentin was perfectly capable of taking care of himself, and did not believe he would be in danger even if Jake Calder himself descended from the sky to try and apprehend him. However, Mandy insisted their leader not wander about the streets of Boston alone.

Though Quentin was their leader, he usually acquiesced to Mandy if she became insistent. Partly because he respected her judgment, and partly because she was one of the few people in this world he was truly afraid of.

Peter might have seemed the better choice for a body guard, as he was a human powerhouse. He could roll over a car with one hand. But he was a southern country boy and was a bit out of his element in the city. Cosmo had been born and raised here in Boston, and knew his way around these dreadful streets.

Cosmo was like a living flame thrower. In his way, more dangerous than Peter. They had been considering the need for code names, and he wanted to call himself just that.
Flame Thrower
.

Quentin thought code names a little amateurish, but really did not care what they called themselves as long as they got the job done.

“HERE COMES A CAR AGAIN,” filled Quentin’s head, in the Boston street accent of Cosmo.