Second Paradigm (21 page)

2873: Alexander Zarth’s Isolation Compound

Blood rushed through Garret’s veins like lava down the sides of a volcano. His entire body reeled in confusion as the enormity of the unfolding paradox crashed through his mind. Taking deep breaths, he tried to refocus himself.

“Wanda, it seems obvious to me that there are some things we are going to have to do. After ten years without you I am loathe to start them … but I’m scared for the world if we do not.”

Wanda smiled at her husband and took his hand. “I know, James. After so long apart, we have no time to do anything but the job at hand. It is a bitter irony.”

Garret felt the warmth from Wanda’s hand spread through his body, settling his nerves and giving him a new resolve. The resolve he needed for this. “Well, then, you’ve been studying this for the years we spent apart. What is the first step we need to start the ball rolling in the right direction?”

Wanda sighed and released James’s hand, rubbing her temples and focusing inwards for a moment. “Honestly, James, I’m not sure what the exact sequence of events is. After all this, I really don’t know what we need to do. But I do know who does and I’ve called for him. He should be here any moment.”

As if summoned by magic, Alex Zarth appeared in the room, sporting his usual duster and fedora. “You rang? Are you kids already done with private time?” He raised an eyebrow at the Garrets.

Wanda glanced at Zarth. “I hardly find it respectful of colleagues to inquire into such a private, and above all sensitive, topic, Mr. Zarth. Perhaps we can skip straight forward to business? My husband understands the information you left for me to study these last years and is ready to act on it.”

Alex’s eyebrow climbed his forehead in surprise. “You truly are a remarkable man, James Garret. Most would take a lifetime to understand that, especially with where your understanding of temporal physics was when I dropped you off here.”

Garret shrugged. “I’m a fast study. Could you please cut to the chase rather than entertaining us with the bland and irrelevant details of my learning curve?”

Alex threw back his head and laughed. “For all your genius, you two forget that we are time travelers. Time is not ‘of the essence’ in this situation. Time is never of the essence. Quite the reverse, in fact, time is malleable to us. The only thing we have to worry about is subjective time running out and I believe I’m the only one dying of a disease and limited in subjective time. But forgive the quips of a dying man. Straight to business it is. Where we stand right now in the flux, the next event that needs to happen—and by your hand, Doctor Garret—is a bomb planted in Lucy Frost’s office.”

Alex noted the scowls on both of the faces before him and held up his hands in a placating gesture. “This bomb will not kill her.
That
distinction goes to another one of your Time Corp agents who is, frankly, an overreacting idiot. Rather, your false attempt on Frost’s life will actually save her for another few days during which she will be able to accomplish the pieces of this which she needs to.”

Wanda straightened her back and looked angrily at Alex. “I have endured ten years separated from my husband. I have forsaken the agency I work for to help you in this. But I draw a line at effecting any situation that will result in the death of another agent, Mr. Zarth. Do not try to push us past this line.”

Leaning back against the wall, Alexander Zarth closed his eyes and gathered his patience. He opened his eyes to a thin slit and looked Wanda Garret dead in her pupils. “Agent Garret,” he spoke softly and precisely, “I beg you to think very carefully here. How many agents have I
ever
killed, despite the fact that you people have hunted me through history?”

Wanda matched Zarth’s gaze and replied in an even tone. “Zero. Though you have humiliated many, you’ve never actually killed any of us.”

He nodded and continued in his soft tone. “And when I state, as I did, that our actions would
save
her life for an extra few days, why does this make you think that our actions will kill her? Look,” he sighed. “I am not adverse to needed bloodshed, but I vastly prefer to honor the sanctity of human life. That is why your fools who have pursued me are still alive. I will say this only once and in a way I hope you understand: I want no bloodshed, but if either of you threatens history by being unwilling to do what is needed in this situation I will destroy any and every trace of your very existence in the time stream.”

James Garret got to his feet and pointed a shaking finger at Zarth. “You bastard. You do NOT threaten my wife. Because of you we’ve both had to go through unimaginable pain and I’ll not stand idly by while you dangle threats over us to coerce us into cooperation with you!”

Zarth switched the focus of his intense gaze to James “The wife that died the first time around, on a poorly thought out mission, whom I saved and had to go to considerable trouble smoothing over the paradox, while dying myself, to keep alive? You misunderstand me. I will be left without a choice. This threat is not something I desire. But if you force me to it, I will not hesitate to destroy and rebuild history as many times as I need to in order to create a timeline in which this paradox can be resolved. A history in which a pair of selfish lovers does not balk at their tasks and endanger the entire human race.”

“If I must spill the blood of two in order to save the lives of hundreds of billions, I will not balk at the decision. Now, are we done with this foolishness?”

Husband and wife looked to each other, both pale and shaken by Alex’s speech. They seemed to reach a decision and Wanda looked back to the man before them. “We are sorry. You have our cooperation. And no more outbursts from us. This has been difficult for both of us and we are undoing a lifetime of knowing you as the enemy.”

Alex sighed again. “Thank you. And I am sorry that you had to endure that. Please believe me when I say that Lucy Frost is a dear friend to me and if there were
any
course of action which would not endanger the time-stream, and that could save her life, I would undertake it. Unfortunately, there is not. So, Doctor Garret, the matter of placing the bomb is up to you.”

Alex turned around to the wall computer and printed out a set of files. Handing them to the Garrets, he leaned back against the wall to allow them time to peruse them.

Once they had taken a cursory glance, he spoke. “Those are a set of blueprints, as you see. They are the building in which Lucy Frost is performing the major functions of her mission, guiding the research of Christopher Nost. Highlighted are the spots where the explosives must be placed in order to achieve the objective at hand. That objective is two-fold. Firstly, it will create the set of circumstances that leads to Frost’s death occurring later rather than sooner, which in turn, leads to Nost’s breakthrough in time travel. If this is not done correctly, then Nost will never invent time travel and pop goes the known universe. Got it?”

Alex waited for both to nod before continuing on. “James, you must do this alone. Wanda can help you plan the best possible methods of accomplishing the break-in and planting of the explosive charges, but she will be busy dealing with something else while you plant those charges. Understand?”

James looked up from the printouts back to Alex, “I do. May I ask though what Wanda’s mission will be?”

With a quick nod, Alex spoke to Wanda, “You will have to, basically, guard your husband’s back. There will be someone there trying to stop him from planting those charges. You
have
to stop the interference from happening. And I guarantee you that it will not be an easy task.”

Wanda nodded, back to focusing on the business of the mission at hand. “Do you have a dossier on who I will have to stop? Or am I going in blind?”

Alex pinched the bridge of his nose. “You will not need a file. You know him all too well, unfortunately.”

Wanda’s eyes narrowed in suspicion. “Alright, then. Who is it that I am going to have to fight to protect my husband?”

“His name is Stefan Arbu. He is the current director of operations for the Time Corp in your subjective time and one of the most highly decorated temporal combatants ever. And, um, your trainer if I recall correctly.”

Shaken, Wanda spoke, “He’s also better than me. Far better than me in the arena of the temporal martial arts. Zarth, he’s going to kick my ass. Soundly.”

Alex smiled, “Not quite, Wanda. I’ve given you a little edge that Arbu doesn’t have. Unfortunately, your body is not particularly strong in its ability to use it, but it is at least a little edge. However, I want you to try to talk to him first. There is a possibility that you can non-violently bring him to our cause.”

Wanda waited for Zarth to continue explaining, James spoke next.

“You gave her my down tech. She has it in her and doesn’t know it yet, right?”

Wanda started and stared down at her husband.

Alex nodded, “Correct. My analysis of her musculature and neural network showed that her particular usage will only result in the ability to move approximately five times faster than her current conditioning would allow. Perhaps it could be stretched to more, given a lifetime to train her abilities, but we don’t have the subjective time to do that. And there is no guarantee she would reach that higher level of skill.”

Wanda cleared her throat and looked between the two men. “I’m standing right here. Would you please stop talking about me as though I wasn’t? And will one of the two of you please explain to me what ‘down tech’ is and how I use it to move five times faster than normal?”

Alex motioned for Garret to explain, spreading his hands wide.

James looked at his wife. “Love, I invented a new type of time travel nano. I’m sorry I forgot to mention it earlier. Instead of pushing a body up and down the time stream, it can contract and expand a body’s personal time stream. Or, in other words, it can slow you down or allow you to move hyper fast.”

Wanda stared at her husband in awe. He shifted around in his seat, looking uncomfortable. “Er, I’m sorry I didn’t tell you sooner. It’s that with all this other stuff going on it kind of slipped my mind.”

Wanda leaned down and kissed her husband. “James, that’s brilliant. I think I can forgive you your absent mindedness. This is … God … James, this is incredible. How do I activate it?”

Alex stepped forward, interrupting Garret as he was about to start speaking. “I took some liberties there when I hacked your nano systems, Wanda. Access your subroutine structures and you’ll find a walkthrough under the ‘accelerate’ tag.”

Wanda blurred and reappeared across the room grinning. “This is incredible!” she said and vanished again. “Applying this to the martial arts will be a tremendous boon to my combat abilities. This is too incredible!”

Alex made a “settle down” motion with his hands. “Please, do not overestimate your abilities, or underestimate Stefan Arbu’s for that matter. Even with this boost, it will not be an easily won fight for you. He is an extremely skilled fighter.”

Wanda nodded, “I understand. He did train me after all. Hopefully, I can talk him over to our side. He is my teacher after all and not an unreasonable man. So, Mr. Zarth, what next?”

Time: 1997
Location: Denver
Operation: Recovery

The setting sun painted the sky in hues of oranges, reds, and pinks; creating a masterpiece more sublime than any human hand could ever accomplish, even with a thousand years of practice. Arbu sipped his coffee and sat in the grass, enjoying the beauty before him.

Pollution, so rampant in the air in these earlier centuries, made for much more spectacular sunsets and sunrises. That was the thing that Arbu missed most about working in down time.

He had been forced to give up fieldwork when he accepted the promotion to Director, a promotion that had come about because of Lucille Frost’s death and the disgrace it brought the man who had previously occupied his position. Mistakes of a large enough caliber killed the careers of men like Arbu, as it had been throughout history.

As he thought about past sunsets, he felt the presence of a woman sit in the grass next to him. “Hello, Wanda,” he said without looking away from the sunset.

“Sensei,” she said, acknowledging his salutation. “It truly is beautiful, setting across the Rockies like that.”

He smiled and nodded his head, “It is.”

They sat in silence for several minutes, each absorbing the spectacle, till Wanda broke the silence. “Tonight does not have to happen.”

Arbu laughed, quietly but warmly, “You are, as always, succinct and correct. However, I feel it worth pointing out that our conditions for tonight not happening are most likely in opposition to each other.”

“Sensei, you do not have possession of all the information. There are things you must know. Will you listen?”

Nodding, still watching the last vestiges of the sunset, he said, “Of course, child. How could I deny you that?”

Wanda took a deep breath and explained everything that had happened to her for the last ten years. They spoke for almost two hours before she finished her tale, never leaving their seats in the grass. Once she had finished her story, Arbu sat in silence, looking thoughtful.

“There is much you have learned, Wanda. Much which would benefit our organization to understand more thoroughly. But for all you, and the thief of time, Alexander Zarth, have come to understand, there is one thing you have overlooked.”

Wanda looked surprised. “The thief of time?”

Arbu laughed again, “Yes. For a thief he is, and that which he steals is time. Think closely on your own situation and tell me he has not stolen time for you. Did you know that the first agent to successfully track him down was me?”

Wanda’s jaw gaped. “I don’t understand. That’s not in the official files anywhere. In academy they made us study him and I never saw that.”

“Of course not, child. I never reported it. I would have had to explain why I bested him, then let him walk away from the encounter alive.”

Wanda mulled over this newest tidbit of information while her sensei remained quiet. He had always preferred to allow his students to puzzle out solutions themselves, rather than just feeding them facts until they choked on information.