By the Bay (22 page)

Once Christine was asleep, she set about putting the house in order, determined that no substitute would look after her sister today. She would do it herself.

Owen
insisted on coming over in the evening, claiming he felt better.
She didn’t bother to prepare supper since Christine was still asleep and
Owen
ha
d
been fed by workers at the
café
, but she had hot tea ready to warm him from the damp night.

He shook droplets of water from his clothes and settled his heavy form on the sofa before asking for an update on Christine’s condition. After she’d given that, he motioned to her to sit down and she guessed he had something to tell her.

A prickling up and down her spine warned her it was about Jillian.

“Roy came in tonight. Had some of your smothered steak with mashed potatoes.”

“Roy always likes smothered steak,” she responded automatically, very
conscious
at this moment that Roy Ezell wasn’t only their friend, but with the police as well.

“He says they can’t find any trace of either of them. It’s like they just vanished.”

In a way she was relieved. From the tone of his voice, she’d been suddenly terrified that the news was really bad.

They settled down in the quiet house, not even bothering to turn on the radio. It was by no means the first time they found comfort in just being together.

Chapter
Thirty

This strange reality where chance was the only constant was bearable only because they were together. No longer feeling
secure
in their theory that time talents were safe during the changes, the Timing team insisted they spend the night within the headquarters building.

They were provided with a comfortable enough bedroom with a large bed that had been hauled in and a bath with a shower just down the hall. It was still an office building but just for tonight, it was their home.

Jillian tried not to think that it was probably the only home they would have, that their time together was running out fast.

She was no ostrich with her head sticking in the sand ignoring the obvious.  Most of her life she’d wished for adventure and now all she seemed to think about was being back in picturesque little Port Isabel with the bay close beside her cottage and her family members nearby. She wanted that life with Philippe at her side. That would be everything she needed.

She didn’t miss teaching. She wasn’t scared of much of anything in the world but high school kids and their sarcastic tongues. From her first day in her new position, they’d been trying her out, the pretty young teacher who was such fun to harass.
No, she didn’t miss that much, but she’d even go back to teaching high school if it meant she could be home with her family again.

Philippe had collapsed into sleep the minute his over-strained body hit the bed and he slept for several hours while problems raced through Jillian’s mind. She lay close to him, reassured by the contact with his body, even as she worried.

To her it was obvious that the team knew well enough the nature of the troubles around them. Their company, once a government agency, had done their time
experiments
since before World War I and those
endeavors
were wreaking their own havoc. They had no idea how to fix things and were clinging desperately to hope that the talents could somehow make a difference.

Jillian saw it the other way around. The way she had it figured, she and Davis and others like him were causing the imbalance. Nature meant for them to stay in place, lea
d
ing their lives in linear fashion, moving straight through the years from birth to death. Instead they’d hopped from here to there, in the past at one moment, in the future in another, using time as though it were a transport system designed for their pleasure.

The imbalance had come because of the time experiments. She was reluctantly sure of this.

Which meant, if there was any hope of saving this reality and its multiplicity of people, they must all go back to their true places and she must do everything she could to keep that virtual doorway to her own world firmly closed so that Davis and his ilk could not cross
-
contaminate it.

She moved away from Philippe, afraid that her restless tossing would waken him from much needed sleep. Beyond honest exhaustion, Jillian felt frantic of both mind and body and finally moved slowly from the bed, determining that she could no longer even make the pretense of trying to sleep. She was entirely too miserable.

Philippe stirred in his sleep, at some level aware of her departure. She paused to look lovingly into his face. He was so very dear to her and if what she was thinking turned out to be right, they would have no life together. Such a thought made her heart ache.

She left the room behind, moving bare-footed and dressed only in a night shirt into the wide corridor that led to offices, labs and conference rooms. In the distance she could see the soft glow of lights and the murmur of voices and suspected that a night shift was at work. Most of the building, however, seemed echoingly empty and she wondered if it was because most worked by the light of day, or because they had lost the majority of their workers as the ripples passed over.

As a person of religious conviction, though not as openly devout as Philippe who came from another time and culture, she firmly believed that when a person passed from life, they went to a certain and substantial elsewhere. She doubted
that existence i
n
Heaven was a mere matter of golden streets, playing harps, and so on—no doubt God had better plans that were simply to
o
complex for an earthly creature to understand.

But this ripple thing was another matter. She didn’t see this as part of the plan for the afterlife, and felt sure that somehow, somewhere those people who had vanished could be restored to this plane to live a normal life. If she only had some idea how!

She longed to accomplish this miracle for personal reasons as well. Davis, Christine, Auntie,
Owen
, Jillian—they weren’t her family, but they still felt like close relatives. And now they were gone. She had to find them, had to help them.

Strolling noiselessly along the corridors, more because the motion helped her to think than because there was anyplace she wanted to go, she considered plans and then, mentally, tossed them out.

She even barged into a conference room where Roderick and
Sherlynn
, looking as if they’d been drained of every ounce of strength, seemed to be in a brainstorming session with other workers. “No sign of Davis?” she queried.

Roderick shook his head. They all stared at her as though to say she was interrupting something important and then
Sherlynn
motioned her to a nearby chair. “You’re a talent,” she said. “You’ll probably have better ideas than we do.”

Jillian seriously doubted that, but she seated herself anyway. Maybe she would learn something helpful.

Most of the people seated around the long table were young. Only a couple looked to be older than forty, but then her sluggish brain  crawled into action and she remembered what Davis had said. Because of modern techniques, people looked younger these days and, hopefully, with medical advances they actually lived longer.

She settled in place and tried to listen in spite of her fatigue.

Most of the ideas she heard about ways to stop the rippling sounded crackpot to her. Some of it was about interfering at the atomic level, which she didn't understand at all. One woman suggested seeding the clouds with chemicals. Another wanted a kind of mass hypnosis to be used to convince people that things weren’t really changing at an abnormal rate. She seemed to think that having enough people
believing
would change the reality.

Jillian found herself wishing Davis was back. At least he seemed to have some connection to possible solutions instead of wild theories. And yet, he was one of the few who had started this whole thing in the first place. She wondered idly that she’d never met any of the other originators.

She finally decided that nobody could shoot her for asking a  question. “What about the people that started this? The original group?”

Roderick frowned. “I don’t understand your reference, Jillian.”

She leaned toward him, earnestly trying to explain her reasoning. “They were the idea group, those first people. Why aren’t they here helping you figure out where their ideas have taken the rest of us and what to do about it?”

“First group?” he frowned.

“Davis said it was back before the great war that they got together trying to work out a way to move around in time. That they thought they could insure permanent peace that way.” She found herself getting impatient with his lack of understanding.

“Oh!” His expression cleared. “Wouldn’t we like that.”

Around him voices chimed in agreement.

“The fact is, Jillian, that your dad was the last one left standing. Now that Davis is gone, we don’t have any one of the founders left to help us. And they kept secrets, they didn’t tell us everything . . .” his words trailed away into a tired sigh.

“They died?”

He shook his head. “Not all of them. Oh, there have been a few deaths, though not of talents. The others just went away, disappeared over the years one after another. Timing can be a temptation, you know.”

She didn’t have any idea what he was talking about so she just waited for him to go on.

“Think about it, Jillian. You can go anywhere and anywhen you want. And either you are a talent, or your friend is one and can take you where you want to go. You might say that members of the original team seemed to take voluntary retirement, one after another, over the years.” He smiled at her. “You must see why you are so important to us. You are the beginning of Timing’s future.”

Jillian was too busy thinking of someone like herself living and dying in Victorian England, in Ming dynasty China, in the empire of the Incas. She’d like to take a look in at the American revolution.

A look in, but not a permanent stay. She couldn’t imagine living forever away from her own time and life. She’d have the most massive case of homesickness ever reported.

Kind of like now when in spite of everything going on, she wanted to see her home and family. She should be amused at herself, considering that most of her life she’d dreamed of traveling elsewhere and seeking adventure. Was it just in human nature to be discontented with what was?

“Jillian! Jillian!” Finally she realized that
Sherlynn’s
quiet voice was seeking her attention and that every person at the table was watching her with anxious eyes.

“Sorry,” she said, “I just drifted away.” She saw the anxiety increase in their faces and hurriedly added. “I meant mentally.  I’m just tired, I suppose.”

They insisted then that she go back to bed and readily enough she agreed, though when she left the room and was out of their sight, she tiptoed instead to the
front
exit where she stepped cautiously out into the night. It was a balmy, moonlit night with the nearby palms swaying in the breeze.

She wondered what it was like to the ordinary residents of this reality. Did they lie in their beds fearing what the next moment might bring to them and their families or did they live, moment by moment, in blissful ignorance that they
were
on the edge of change and possible extinction?

Feeling that she was allowing herself to slip into the deep blue of depression and missing Mom, Auntie and
Owen
so acutely that her stomach hurt, she went back inside and moved quickly down the corridor
to
where
Philippe still slept.

Crawling into bed next to him, she snuggled close for comfort and found a warmth that chased the blues a little distance away. She drew courage just from being near him. Together they would work this out.

He stirred at her presence, half awoke to draw her into his arms, and then, slowly at first and then with increasing ardor began to make love to her.

Chapter
Thirty One

Trying to convince himself that he was entirely recovered and feeling like
normal
again, Philippe ignored various aches and pains as he walked without limping to where they breakfasted alone because everyone else was still sleeping.

When he commented about the members of the team not being early risers, Jillian told him they’d spent most of the night in meetings which she’d attended. She sounded almost annoyed with him as though she thought he should have been there too.

It wasn’t like her to be irritable in the morning so he concentrated on his food, which was good though not New Orleans quality, and when she’d finished her coffee and nibbled her toast, suggested a walk outside.

She wasn’t at all herself, but seemed locked in deep thought. This happened rarely that she shut herself away from him so he gave her the time she needed by putting all his attention to what was going on around them.