Road Less Traveled (11 page)

Still, it was a fuse box, essentially. There should be a breaker switch, right?

He reached for the box and made contact with its smooth metal surface—just as another crackle sounded beside him. Great. But then he realized that might be exactly what he needed. He waited, holding his breath, and felt the energy build up all around him. Then—

The discharge leaped to his arm—and coursed down it, into the box. Which flashed and flared and smoked. And the soft hum he'd been feeling in his bones and his teeth suddenly disappeared.

Yes!

Wobbling slightly, Carter rose to his feet. Then he made his way back over to where the boys waited. Slowly.

Good thing nobody has a dog on this block,
he thought to himself. He could just picture having to comfort some distraught neighbor after Fluffy the poodle turned into instant rotisserie. Not pretty.

Though it did make him hungry.

“I'll speak to Mrs. Murphy when she gets home,” he assured the boys. “I'll make sure she pulls her field back in so the sidewalk is completely clear.”

“Thanks!” Ray was definitely the group's spokesman. “Um, are we in any trouble?”

Carter pretended to consider that for a second, just to make them sweat. “I didn't actually see you do anything to the privacy fence,” he finally said slowly. “And you pointed out the box so I could shut it off before it could endanger anybody else. So I don't see any reason to bring you downtown.” The boys all sighed and visibly relaxed. “Just do me a favor. Next time, call me first, okay?”

“We will,” Ray assured him. “Thanks!”

Carter nodded and climbed back into his Jeep. His hands were still shaking slightly as he turned the key in the ignition. What was it about this week and getting shocked? He was starting to wonder if he should carry a lightning rod around with him.

 

Ray and his friends were still standing around after
the sheriff drove away. Mike was arguing that they should follow through with their original plan, now that the privacy fence had been shut down properly.

“We need to make sure she knows not to do this again,” he argued. Derek nodded.

“No way,” Ray countered. “Sheriff Carter said he'd take care of it. And he knows who we are now. If we do anything, he'll know to come after us.”

“He knows you,” Derek pointed out. “Not the rest of us. Not by name, anyway.”

“Oh, so you'd leave me to take the heat alone?” Ray demanded. The others all looked away. “We're a team, right?” They nodded slowly, one by one. “So it's all or nothing. Besides, how hard do you think it'd be for him to find out your names, too?”

They were still discussing it when the sheriff's Jeep pulled up at the curb once again. Ray and the others froze. Had he somehow known what they were about to do? Man, he was good!

They watched as the Jeep switched off and its driver-side door opened. Then a man climbed out and looked at them. “Everything okay here?” he asked.

Dumbfounded, Ray just nodded.

“I heard there was a problem with a malfunctioning privacy fence,” the sheriff continued, glancing around. “Seems quiet, though.”

“It got shut off,” Ray told him after he found his voice. “It's all good.”

“Oh. Really?” The sheriff seemed surprised. “Well, okay then. You boys have a nice day.” He slid back into the Jeep, started it up again, and roared away.

Ray glanced over at his friends, but they looked just as confused as he was. What was going on here? He knew who the guy was—he'd seen him a few times before, at Eureka town functions and when they'd had a class field trip to GD.

But what was Douglas Fargo doing wearing the sheriff's uniform and driving his Jeep?

“Dude, this is all too weird,” Shay whispered. “I vote we just go get slushies and hit the arcade instead.”

The rest of them looked to Ray, and he nodded. Whatever was going on, they were better off well out of it. “Let's roll,” he said. And he and his friends hightailed it down the street, leaving Mrs. Murphy's lawn unharmed except for the blackened spots where her own privacy fence had burned out patches of grass.

If need be, they could always come back and write “Free the sidewalks!” with plant-killer later.

The lanky Australian glanced up as Jo approached. He was, as she'd expected, out in the woods around Eureka. Since he was wearing his usual pocketed vest and carrying his rifle, she assumed he was either hunting or animal watching, which really amounted to the same thing. She'd only seen him fire the rifle a handful of times, and then only when absolutely necessary. For someone who had all the appearance of a big-game hunter, Taggart was a ridiculously soft touch when it came to animals.

And not just animals, she reminded herself as she saw his eyes light up. They hadn't gone out for long, but it had been . . . fun. In the end, Taggart hadn't been the man she was looking for. But she did still like him, if not in that way.

The problem was, she knew he still liked her in exactly that way. And he made no bones about showing it. He and Zane had apparently formed a grudging respect for one another, and Taggart had told her once that he was happy for her as long as she was happy—but he'd also said that he'd be there for her if she ever changed her mind.

“Jo! G'day! What brings you out here?” Taggart stood and loped toward them, gliding through the grass in a way Jo knew many of her old Ranger buddies would have envied. He slowed slightly as he saw the little researcher puffing along behind her, though. “Fargo. Didn't expect you out here, mate.”

“Me, either,” Fargo agreed, leaning against a tree trunk and gasping for breath. “Jo, would it kill you to slow down a little?”

“Probably,” she answered without looking back. She was trying to not be as hard on him as she had yesterday, but that didn't mean she was going to cut him any slack, either. That just wasn't the way she was built. Besides, a little exercise was good for him.

“I take it this isn't a social call,” Taggart commented as he reached them. He smiled. “Still, always good to see you, Jo.”

“Good to see you, too,” she admitted. “But no, not a social call. Sorry. We need to know if you know anything about the Thunderbird project.”

“Thunderbird, eh?” He scratched his bristly chin. “That's Korinko and Boggs's deal, eh? I don't know much about it, no. The basics, sure—they're tryin' to create a living thunderstorm—but not much more. They've been pretty tight-lipped.” He grinned. “Why, they run into a brick wall? Need ol' Taggart to bail them out?”

“Not exactly.” Jo glanced around out of habit, though of course they were alone out here. “Somebody stole the eggs they'd created. And trashed their lab.”

“Oh, that's bad,” the tall hunter commented. “That's bad. So you're lookin' for tracking, not ornithology?”

“A little of both, really.” Jo sighed. “We don't have any leads right now, but we figure whoever stole the eggs wants to sell them. We need to know who might be interested in buying them, and how they can smuggle them out of Eureka.” She didn't mention that one of the eggs had already hatched. No sense in sharing information if it wasn't necessary. It wasn't that she didn't trust Taggart. But he did like to talk to people.

He scratched at his chin again. “Yeah, I see what you mean. 'Fraid I'm not much help there, though. Never had reason ta smuggle anything out of town before, y'know? Don't traffic in black-market beasties much, either. Though I'd think it's less likely you're lookin' fer a collector and more likely it's a rival research group, or someone who can use the Thunderbird itself.”

“So you don't know what the Thunderbird's living requirements might be?” Fargo cut in for the first time. “What it would eat, for example? Or what kind of environment it would live in?”

“Nope, sorry,” Taggart answered. “Like I said, Korinko and Boggs've kept details to themselves all this time. Never even got a good look at the eggs. Wish I had. Bet they're beauties.”

“You said eggs.” Fargo jogged forward to confront Taggart, an attempt that would have worked better if the hunter hadn't towered over him by almost a foot. “How'd you know there were eggs?”

“Jo just mentioned 'em,” Taggart replied easily. He didn't seem at all intimidated, but then he'd known Fargo for years. “Wish I could 'elp more,” he added. “If I 'ear of anything, I'll give a holler.”

“Thanks, Taggart,” Jo told him. “I appreciate it.” She turned to go. Then stopped. “Come on, Fargo,” she snapped over her shoulder.

“All right, all right,” he grumbled, hurrying to catch up with her. “I've got my eye on you,” he called back to Taggart, who just smiled and waved.

“You've got your eye on him?” Jo commented as they trekked back to her car. “Please.”

“What? His answers seemed fishy to me.” She didn't reply, and they walked the rest of the way in silence. Fargo was busy imagining a confrontation with Taggart again, this time without Jo to hold him back. Unfortunately, all of those daydream scenarios ended with the lanky hunter turning him into a pretzel.

“What now?” he finally asked as they were strapping themselves into her car.

“I have no idea,” Jo answered, putting the car in gear and stomping on the gas. They fishtailed for a second on the dirt road, then she took control and they shot away, back toward town.

Great,
Fargo thought.
Another dead end. No wonder everybody laughs at me all the time.

And to make matters worse, now he was dying for a pretzel.

 

“It's going great,” Zane assured Allison, showing her
the data on his computer pad. “We've got the initial nodes isolated, and all we have to do now is sync them up in sequence.”

“And prevent the feedback from distorting your signal, or frying the receiver,” she countered, indicating a spot in the calculations. “Have you fixed that yet?”

He grinned at her. “Yeah, all right,” he admitted. “I should've known you'd catch that.”

“That is my job,” Allison reminded him.

“I know, it's just that I could usually fool my previous bosses.” Which was true. Allison was no dummy. “No, we haven't fixed it yet. But we will.” He was telling the truth, too. He was sure he and Gunter could crack that little problem.

It was just a matter of time.

“Okay, good.” Allison glanced at her watch. “Put that all in the progress report, and tell Arnold we—” Her phone rang, interrupting her, and she glanced at it briefly, then looked again and answered it. “Dr. Russell? What is it?” She listened, then smiled. “Absolutely! I'll be right there!”

“Is that the extradimensional visualization project?” Zane asked as she hung up. “I'd love to see it.”

“How do you even know about that?” Allison asked as she turned to go. Then she laughed and gestured for him to catch up.

“I have my ways,” he told her, grinning as he bounded after her.

They reached the lab a few minutes later and found Dr. Russell waiting for them. “I've got the arrays realigned,” she explained, shaking hands with Zane and waving toward the main screen. “We've collected sufficient input to form our visual matrix, and we're ready to translate it to the monitor.”

“Excellent.” Allison rubbed her hands together. “Let's see what you've got.”

Russell hit the switch on the main console, and the monitor overhead turned black, then to fuzz. The fuzz gained streaks and blobs of color, and then began to clear as those bits began to merge and shift and shape themselves into coherent images. In less than a minute, they were looking at a perfectly clear image—

—of the extradimensional visualization lab.

And at Dr. Russell and her crew, staring back at them. Or, at least, staring at her large overhead monitor, which was showing an image—of them watching her from here!

“Oh. My. God.” Allison whispered. “That's amazing!”

“I thought it best to use a location I knew intimately,” Russell explained quietly, never taking her eyes off the screen. “So I thought, what better place than my own lab?” She shook her head. “It makes sense that if that world's Eureka has a me, and she's working on this same project, she'd come to the same conclusion.”

“Yeah, but what are the odds that she'd collect input from our reality while we collected it from hers?” Allison wondered out loud. They had to be staggering. Beside her, Zane waved and they all watched as his image in the monitor they were seeing through their screen waved as well.

It was enough to give her a headache.

“Any chance we can talk to her?” Zane asked.

“I haven't worked out how to isolate soundwaves yet,” Russell said apologetically. “Visible light is a broader, stronger spectrum, so it's easier to absorb and process. I have some ideas, though.” She looked at her other self and smiled. “And if we both work on it, we should be able to solve it that much faster.”

“We absolutely need to find a way to communicate,” Allison agreed.

“On it,” Zane replied. He ran out of the room and returned a few minutes later, pushing a whiteboard in front of him. “Here you go.”

On the screen, the other Dr. Russell nodded. She said something to one of her techs, and he departed in a hurry. A few minutes later he was back with a whiteboard of his own.

“Hello,” Dr. Russell wrote on hers.