Erasing Time (13 page)

Next time he kissed her, he’d have to make sure they were someplace private.

Assuming, of course, there was a next time. Assuming the scientists didn’t call to say they had a fix on Tyler Sherwood and completely ruin his plans.

As this thought passed through his mind, Echo’s comlink beeped. He sat motionless, feeling like his breath had been sucked from his body.

“It’s not the scientists,” Jeth said, guessing at his worry. “They would have beeped me, not you.”

Echo slid his comlink into a computer that perched on the side of the table. The menu vanished, and two young men appeared on the screen. Caesar had bronze hair and spiked metallic eyebrows sticking up over his eyes like a row of teeth. Next to him was Geno, whose short-cropped hair stood up in purple rows. It matched his lips, which had been decoratively split in several places.

“Echo!” Caesar crooned from the computer. “Where are you shoveling? We stopped by your site, but you weren’t there.”

“I’m at a foodmart,” Echo said flatly. “I’m working with my father.”

“Work?” Geno asked. “As I see the event, you’re sitting with two beautiful girls.”

“Three,” Caesar said. “Don’t forget Elise.”

Geno grinned, making the scars on his mouth stretch. “I’d never want to forget Elise.”

Elise pursed her lips and pushed her chair farther away from the table to be out of the two men’s sight.

Caesar smiled, leaning forward a bit, looking around the foodmart. “When do we get to darty with your new friends, Echo?”

“I don’t do darties anymore,” Echo said.

“Doesn’t have to be a darty then,” Caesar said. “We just want to meet them. They look interesting.”

They looked useful
, he meant. Echo gritted his teeth together. Somehow Caesar knew about Taylor and Sheridan. How did the Dakine always learn things so quickly?

Caesar’s gaze traveled from Taylor to Sheridan, and then back to Echo. “I give it odds they’d like to jump with us.”

Which meant the Dakine was determined to have them, and Echo knew why. Sheridan and Taylor were the only two Traventon residents not in their infancy who didn’t have crystal implants. The Dakine could send them anywhere undetected, and if the girls were inadvertently killed in the process,
pues
, what did that matter to the Dakine?

Echo put his hand on his comlink, ready to pull it from the computer. “I need to turn off my comlink so everyone can order lunch.”

“We’ll beep you later,” Geno said.

“Really soon,” Caesar said, then added with a cryptic smile, “You can’t keep filed away forever, you know. It isn’t good for you.”

Echo unplugged his comlink without saying good-bye and shoved it into his belt. The menu returned to the computer screen, and he stared at it unseeing.

Jeth leaned over and touched Echo’s arm. In his normal voice, not the one with the old-twenties accent, he said, “Caesar’s right. You’ve been much too solemn lately. Joseph wouldn’t want that. You need to go out again. See your friends. Perhaps the next time the girls need a break from our research, you could beep—”

Elise leaned over the table and cut him off. “Don’t even consider it, Echo. You’re not taking the time riders to those filthy shadlers.”

“Elise!” Jeth gave her a look of reproof, but she kept her gaze locked on Echo, her eyes sizzling with anger.

She knew. Somehow she knew Caesar and Geno were with the Dakine.

But how?

A feeling of dread crept up Echo’s skin. Perhaps she knew because she was Dakine herself.

He pushed away the thought. Elise had connections to the Doctor Worshippers, and those two groups were as opposite as could be. The DW’s motto was Freedom of Knowledge, Speech, and Belief. Every once in a while they draped banners with that phrase from the sides of buildings. Sometimes they cut into city program feeds demanding more citizen rights, telling the public they deserved them. They met in secret groups to pass on knowledge and talk of their beliefs.

The Dakine had a different sort of motto: Power to the Dakine, and Death to Anyone Who Got in Their Way. They didn’t have to make banners with those words or put them in city program feeds. Every assassination they ordered proclaimed their message. The Enforcers couldn’t stop Dakine, and no one else dared to try.

Elise turned away from Echo and went back to reading the menu.

She couldn’t be a Dakine member. She was too gentle, too good. But then, he’d been wrong before. He couldn’t rule out anyone again.

A memory of Allana pressed into his mind. There she was, walking hand in hand with him toward her building, sending him pouting looks in an attempt to convince him to come home with her. He’d refused because he kept thinking how attached his brother was to her. And Allana would tell him about it. Probably with glee. She’d made a game of playing him and his brother against each other. She stirred up a competition between them and presented herself as the prize. “Eventually I’d like to be exclusive … with someone,” she would whisper into his ear before she kissed him.

He knew she was whispering the same thing to his brother.

The rivalry shouldn’t have happened. Echo had had enough girls orbiting around him. He hadn’t needed Allana at all, even if she was beautiful, even if she was the daughter of the chairman of trade. Except for one unfortunate thing. Echo had really cared for her.

Joseph had always loved his studies, his work, too much to be distracted by social rounds. But Allana had had a talent for knowing what was important to guys. She invited Joseph to places of culture, introduced him to head educators, even convinced her father to trade with New Seattle for their archaeology display so that Joseph could touch artifacts from the nineteenth century with his own hands.

Allana hadn’t needed such grand endeavors to capture Echo. She’d just played on his ego. He had been an effortless target.

So there he and Allana had been on the street, she gently pulling at his hands and sending him sultry looks, while he stood in front of her building, refusing to go in, but not leaving to go home either.

How had they even started talking about the Dakine? One would think he’d remember the details of such a life-changing conversation. But he didn’t. He only remembered Allana’s upturned face, half laughing, even though every word that came out of her mouth was completely serious.

“You’d be surprised at how far incircutrated the Dakine are. They’re in all professions, even the government.”

He had shrugged. “No surprise there. The government never had any integrity to begin with.”

She should have gotten a little upset then. She should have at least defended her father. Instead she said, “Integrity is such a weighty item. It’s easier to live without it.”

“What a great philosophy,” he said. “We’d all be happier if the Dakine ran the city.” Even saying the word Dakine felt dangerous, felt wrong, and he pulled Allana closer so that their voices would be lower.

She wound her arms around his neck, her bright silver hair tumbling off her shoulders as she looked up at him. “They practically run the city already. They’re everywhere. People you know, people you work with, people you trust.”

“Not people
I
work with. Most of the people I work with are my family.”

“It’s sweet that you’re so naive.” She ran her hand up his arm. “But really, when will you click onto reality?”

“Echo …” Elise cut into his thoughts. He was not on that street but back in the foodmart with all gazes on him.

“Are you going to order?” Elise asked.

“Are you all right?” Jeth added.

“Yes.” No. Maybe he still wasn’t seeing reality. Maybe he couldn’t be sure of Elise. For all he knew, she didn’t want Caesar and Geno to get hold of Sheridan and Taylor because her branch of the Dakine had plans for them instead.

Echo punched in his food order and knew he wouldn’t be able to finish it.

He had thought that when the time came, when they actually had the supplies to leave the city, he’d be able to convince Elise to trust him. Now he wondered if he could trust her.

As soon as they got back to the wordsmiths’ office, Jeth’s comlink beeped. Sheridan stared at it and felt prickles of fear.

“No cause to worry,” Jeth said, detaching it from his belt. “The scientists are probably checking to make sure you’re still functioning well, no cellular destabilization happening.”

“The restaurant table said we were fine,” Sheridan offered. She walked over to a couch and pretended she wasn’t listening to his conversation.

He pushed a button, and the wall turned into a picture screen. The scientist with the red lightning bolt running down his cheek sat half slumped at a desk. His eyes were glassy, like he hadn’t slept for a while.

Jeth walked up to the wall. “Do you have a fix on Tyler Sherwood’s signal?”

The man winced. “Tyler Sherwood’s signal has all but disappeared from the time line. The science chairman is afraid our attempt to strain Sherwood inadvertently killed him.” The man ran his hand over his forehead. “So the mayor has forbidden us to retrieve anyone else until he’s reviewed the program. He’s half convinced we’re running assassinations on important historical figures.”

Jeth shook his head sympathetically. “Unfortunate.”

“Enforcers will come to your office tomorrow night to take the girls. Mayor’s orders. Make sure they’re ready.”

Jeth nodded. “Of course.”

Every muscle in Sheridan’s body grew tense. What were the Enforcers going to do with them? She glanced at Echo. He was watching the wall screen, listening. She told herself not to panic. Echo had just kissed her. He wouldn’t have done that and then, say, let someone shoot her.

She looked out the window and forced her expression to remain neutral. If the wordsmiths knew she could understand them, she wouldn’t be able to eavesdrop on them anymore.

The call ended, and Jeth walked over to the computer and paused the recording function. In his modern accent, he spoke to Echo. “You can delete the order?”

“Of course.”

Jeth then turned to the girls and spoke in their accent. “I need to explain something to you.” He cleared his throat and looked from Taylor to Sheridan uncomfortably. “The scientists feel you’d function better in our society if you had no memory of your old one. They’ve ordered memory washes for you.”

Sheridan’s heart lurched in her chest. They were going to take her memory. She would wake up somewhere with no clue to her identity except for a picture in her pocket of an unknown jolly fat man in red. She’d probably spend the rest of her days searching for Santa Claus in hopes he could tell her who she was.

“Fortunately,” Jeth went on, “Echo has some splicing abilities.” He put his hand on his son’s shoulder. “Both of my boys had the sight for computigating. They could have been programmers—would have been the finest in the city. But they wanted to work with their father. Best compliment of my life.”

Echo’s bright blue eyes fixed on Sheridan. His words were soft, calming. “I should be able to cut into the Scicenter’s program and delete the memory wash order before it goes to the schedulers.”

Taylor’s foot jiggled up and down the way it did when she was nervous. She scanned the room, thinking. “And if you can’t?”

“Then Enforcers will come tomorrow night and take you to a Medcenter for surgery. If you fight them, you’ll be shot. But,” Echo added, “you don’t need to worry. I can remove the order.”

Taylor’s foot kept jiggling.

Echo sent Sheridan a questioning gaze. “You trust me, don’t you?”

She hesitated only a moment, then nodded.

He smiled back at her, and it felt like a second kiss, delivering the same warmth.

Echo talked with Jeth for a bit longer, discussing the best way to return to the Scicenter so that he could splice into its mainframe.

Taylor tapped her foot into Sheridan’s. “Maybe we should just make a break for it.”

Sheridan gave a subtle shake of her head. “We’d be biting off more than we can chew. We need to look before we leap, or something could hit the fan. We have a lead to follow before we make like a banana and split.”

Elise looked back and forth between them. “Are you still hungry? Sometimes I can’t understand what you say.”

Taylor and Sheridan simultaneously shook their heads. Neither spoke again.

Jeth and Echo had moved to the cabinet and were deciding on an artifact to take to the Scicenter for dating. They needed an excuse to get near a Scicenter computer.

Sheridan watched them, wondering about memory washes. Did they erase a person’s personality, their intelligence? It would be a shame if Taylor lost her intelligence. Taylor’s mind was something special, something rare.

And then Sheridan realized why the Time Strainer had brought them here. She should have known all along, and it was probably just luck that the scientists hadn’t figured it out too.

She turned to Taylor, her voice nearly a whisper. “Back home, you used a pen name, didn’t you?”

Taylor flushed, didn’t answer.

How many times had Sheridan seen her sister typing papers about physics theories? Papers not only for class, but for physics journals as well. “You got caught red-handed,” Sheridan went on. “They just don’t know your hands are red yet.”