Starlight's Edge (11 page)

And David had been right about one other thing as well—training was more like college than anything military, a combination of tech courses mixed with a heavy dose of history and anthropology. Except that the history was all in bits and pieces, with gaps in the time line and frequent errors in the texts. Some days, Zee felt she was working on a giant, ever-changing jigsaw puzzle. Time travel was still so new that whole centuries and continents remained unexplored. Most of the time, she enjoyed trying to put details of the jigsaw together, but there were times she felt held back, sure the task would be easier if the New Earthers would embrace some of the psi sciences as well.

During her interviews, Zee had carefully explained her experiences as an empath and with divining, and detailed why she felt both could be useful to the Time Fleet. The interviewer listened attentively enough, and even took a few notes, but when she finished, he opened a fresh screen and began a new series of questions. Neither empathy nor divining was mentioned again. She refused to give up, though. It seemed impossible that her skills would desert her completely, and she was determined to reclaim them. When she did, surely the Time Fleet would see the usefulness of going beyond their just-the-facts approach.

“If they're so determined to gather every little scrap and put it in place, why don't we just go back to the beginning and work our way forward logically?” she asked David in frustration one night. They were curled up on the couch together. He was searching his cube for music he'd brought back from Prambanan while she was trying to memorize, in case she ever landed in Paris after the fall of the monarchy, when it was okay to praise Napoleon and when he should be condemned.

“Traveling to another era isn't as easy as it sounds,” David had explained. “First we have to send the parts for a transmission machine and hope they land close enough to assemble themselves. That alone can take years, and even when you finally succeed, transmission's not an exact science. You set the coordinates, but time is kind of … mmm”—he looked for the right word—“spongy. It speeds up and slows down. It's something you don't notice if you're there, but although you're aiming for a pinpoint, you could be off and land years or miles away, and often both. That's why Paul's mission to Pompeii is dangerous, and why he's going solo. He wants to get near the Vesuvius explosion but not get caught in it. The farther back you go in time, the more uncertain and dangerous it is. If Paul pulls this off, he'll be a hero, at least as far as Time Fleet Command is concerned.”

Zee had a hard time thinking of Paul as a hero. If she'd had to guess, she'd have said the mission was more about his drive to compete with David and impress their father than anything else. But a dangerous assignment was a dangerous assignment, no matter why you volunteered, and though she was still uneasy around Paul, she also still hoped she was wrong about him. The mystery of who Lorna was had never been resolved, but she did her best to forget about it.

*   *   *

On a warm, hazy Wednesday in August, Zee raced out of class. David was at a briefing in Tokyo and wouldn't be home until tomorrow, and if she could catch the next ghost, she could get back to London for the tail end of the weekly Lost Arts meeting. But as she hurried down the corridor, she heard herself being paged to report to the Time Fleet Admiral's office. For a split second, she thought about ignoring it, then turned down the corridor to the office. The Time Fleet might not be strictly military, but you didn't ignore an order.

She was shown into Admiral Walters's office, where the transcript of her intake interview was up on a wall screen. She saw the words
empath
and
divining
and felt a clutch of fear. She remembered the notes her interviewer had taken on that score, and the fact that he hadn't once smiled during Zee's final interview.

The Admiral saw the look on her face and released her from her anxiety. “Sit down, McAdams. You're not in any trouble.”

Zee had met Admiral Walters only once, when he'd welcomed the new recruits. She could hardly have done anything to impress him during their brief handshake, she thought as she took a seat.

“Your interview is quite interesting,” he said, glancing briefly at the wall screen before focusing his gaze on her. “I wonder if you could tell me more about your job as an empath, and about divining. Incidents and specifics.”

So Zee did, nervously at first but warming to the subject, as always. It was a relief, after so many weeks of having no one to talk to about them. She described the basics of empathy, then detailed how different divining was, how it wasn't a skill she had pursued, as she had empathy, but something that had surfaced in her life with the force of an iceberg. She told about the time she had
felt
the news of an earthquake and tsunami while it was happening, before any news service carried it, and about how, another time, she'd known that a bomb was hidden in an ambulance. That was the incident that convinced her, she said, to develop her gift.

She heard the undercurrent of grief in her voice as she said this, and wondered if Admiral Walters had too. It was the same grief that had haunted her for months, since the day her friend Rani had accepted an invitation for a balloon ride with a handsome, mysterious boy and ended up dead. If I had accepted the diviner's path earlier, Zee often wondered, would I have been ready that day? Would I have felt what was going to happen? Would I have been able to save Rani? It was a thought she'd kept bottled inside her for months, and sometimes used her divesting exercises to get rid of.

Admiral Walters was leaning forward slightly. “As you know, we have nothing like either empathy or divining here. Our energies have gone in quite another direction. But I could see where it might be of service on Time Fleet missions.” He paused for a long moment. “If you could continue your studies, would you?”

“Yes.” Her answer was immediate.

Admiral Walters leaned back and snapped off the wall screen.

“There's someone for you to meet. Down the hall, third door on the right. That's all, McAdams.”

Confused and slightly disappointed at the abruptness of his dismissal, Zee counted the doors down the long corridor. She opened the third one and stepped inside.

*   *   *

The oldest human she had ever seen set aside an ancient, papery book the instant she opened the door, giving the impression that he hadn't been reading at all, but waiting for her. When he looked up, she saw that his face was lined, like a piece of cloth that had been crumpled, unfolded, and crumpled again, over and over. He was nearly bald, with wisps of hair at the base of his neck, but his eyes were alive and alert.

“Hello?” she asked tentatively.

The man made no effort to stand but simply looked at her, his gaze warm and deep, drawing her in. “Don't you recognize me, Zee?” he asked.

It was an old man's voice, but there was something familiar about it. Without taking her eyes from his face, Zee found a chair and sat down opposite him.

“I thought for sure you'd know me, even after all this time.”

Zee gasped and heard the echo of a familiar chuckle in return.

“Major
Dawson
?”

“Yes, it's me, Zee. Somewhat the worse for wear, I'm afraid, but me nevertheless.”

She grasped his hands in her own. They were so light she could feel the bones under his skin, but he squeezed her fingers with a firm grip.

“Surprised?” he asked.

“But how did you get here?
When
did you get here? Did you leave before the meteors? Did you know I was here? Did anyone else come with you?” A thousand questions flew through her head like birds released from cages.

Major Dawson reached over and touched a keypad. “Tea?”

Zee wrinkled her nose. “No, thank you. Nano tea is terrible.”

“I'm trying to develop a taste for it,” he said as the tea appeared before him. “One must adapt, you know. At least it's hot.” He took a sip. “Now, your questions. But you'll have to forgive me if the story is a bit, ah, spotty. I have trouble remembering, sometimes. I'm so old, you see, I no longer remember how old I actually am. But yes, I was there when the meteors struck, and for many decades after that.”

For the next two hours, Zee sat listening, scarcely moving for fear she would miss a scrap or detail. The major's memory was like a flashlight dancing across a darkened room, showing some things in bright light and leaving others in shadow. He no longer remembered when the meteor strikes had begun or when they ended, but he remembered the destruction, how their cloud of dust had hidden the world, even the untouched cities, and caused millions to die of cold, starvation, and disease. He remembered how computers had failed, putting an end to things like clean water, light, and energy, and how satellites had tumbled from the sky, bringing down the world's communication systems and isolating people from one another.

“That's when I realized,” the major said with a spark, “I was sitting on the one communication system that required no technology at all. Divining! Of course, I'd lost my team. Some had died, others were scattered. There were no new recruits. There was no new anything, for years and years. And of course, I'd lost you years before, when you followed your young man to planet Omura. But since you'd flown the coop well before the meteors, I knew you were still alive. The Omurans continued to visit, less often and less enthusiastically than before, and I begged them to take me with them, to take me to you, so we could reestablish empathy and divining. I tried to convince them that, no matter how technologically advanced, no society was immune from disaster, and divining could be a lifesaving backup system. They needed
us,
and if they would take me to you, we could carry on our work. It all fell on deaf ears, but I never stopped asking. One day they left and never returned.”

No wonder his records had been deep-sixed, Zee thought. His requests to travel with them to a planet that never existed made him a liability.

Major Dawson was silent for a long time. Zee felt, deep in her chest, the major's loneliness. Or maybe the loneliness was her own.

“And then what?” she asked at last.

“Then we muddled on, trying to live. Small tribal wars, chronic food shortages, rumors of some Americans working on a way to restore the internet without rebuilding every last cable. I believed I was right about divining as a backup system and remained dedicated to it. In time, I did find people to work with. I developed new and better ways of knowing, an approach I call
reception
. I wrote it all down—the old-fashioned way, mind you—and kept careful records. I even trained someone younger to take over for me when I died.”

“But you didn't die,” Zee said.

“No.” The major chuckled. “I didn't die. I think the work kept me alive all those years. Then, a few weeks ago, a stranger approached me. I knew right away the chap was an Omuran, and my ears perked up when he said he'd come to deliver an unusual invitation.”

The words Admiral Walters had spoken a few minutes ago came back to her.
If you could continue your studies, would you?

“To come here?” she breathed. “To me?” A few weeks ago would have been about the time she was doing her intake interviews. The interviewer who'd seemed uninterested in everything she'd said about empathy and divining had been listening after all, and had given his notes to Walters.

“To you, Zee. To you and a new millennium.” The major smiled. “Who could resist such an offer?” He reached into his pocket and brought out a cube like the one David had given her. “It's all here, Zee. All my studies and writings, everything new I learned, the techniques of reception. Years of work, neatly transferred to this little gizmo. And I'm not done yet. They've put me on some sort of youth juice they say will add years to my life. Some days, I feel like I'm just beginning. So, care to join me? Be my student again?”

A tear rolled down Zee's cheek. Later she would realize that it wasn't sadness but the sense of being whole again, of being herself.

“Always, Major Dawson. Always.”

*   *   *

Her mind was still reeling when she stopped at her locker to gather her things. She looked at the handheld hanging inside her locker door, still showing the book she'd been reading on the ghost that morning. There was no way she'd be able to concentrate enough to read it on the way home. Not when her mind would be alive with the possibilities of something called reception.

She was so absorbed she didn't hear anyone come up behind her, and was startled by the hands that went suddenly around her.

“How's my favorite cadet?”

David's voice, but not David. She knew from the sinking, ill feeling that swept over her at the first touch. She pulled away and spun around.

“Paul,” she said sharply. “What do you think you're doing?”

She didn't try to keep the anger out of her voice. Paul raised his hands in an I-surrender gesture.

“Just joking, Zee. Seeing if you'd think I was David.”

“I would never mistake you for David. You should know that.”

“Okay, okay. I get the point, and I'm sorry. It won't happen again.” He paused, then smiled. “Tell David I got the reservations and we're all set. You're eagling too, right?”

“What?”

“You know, for my going-away party, before I leave for Pompeii. We're all going eagling together. I told David about it last week but wasn't sure I could get reservations. He said if I did, you'd both be there with bells on. Did he forget to tell you?”

Zee wouldn't give Paul the satisfaction of knowing she had no idea what he was talking about. “Of course he told me,” she answered. “We'll be there.”

“Good,” Paul said, flashing his perfect smile. “It's going to be a blast.”