Stolen Dreams (13 page)

 

Now
that they were as certain as they could be that the tempometer would
work again as long as it was kept above freezing, they only had one
problem to concentrate on—the destination time.

 

"We may not be
able to figure it out before we have to use it," Gabriel said during
their evening meal.

 

"We're
not running out of food yet, are we? I thought you said we had a
week—more, with the reduced rations you've been serving."

 

He
shook
his head. "It's not the food. It's the time period that concerns me.
We've been working so hard on the tempometer, we both forgot about
something you said to me before we got here. If you're right about the
eddies and flows in time, why were we pulled to this particular moment
of the Frozen Era?"

 

Her spoonful of chowder stopped an inch
from her open mouth, and she lowered the utensil back to her bowl. "The
cataclysm."

 

With
a slow nod, he confirmed her guess. "It's the only event of any
importance in this time period. The asteroid could be on its collision
course right this minute and we'd have no way of knowing it."

 

Shara's
mind soared through the facts she knew. The Frozen Era came to an
abrupt end when a sizable asteroid hit Norona, knocking it onto an
orbit closer to its sun. The impact caused a series of earthquakes,
floods, and tidal waves that temporarily wiped out every living thing
on the planet's surface. Thousands of years passed before nature calmed
and the life cycle resumed. The period after the cataclysm was the only
time of Norona's history that would have been less hospitable to humans
than the Frozen Era. 
 

 

Before
they went to sleep, Shara set the tempometer next to her in case they
needed to leave in a hurry during the night. It was programmed to
return them to the time they had left. . . she hoped. This time,
exhaustion was not sufficient to allow her to sleep soundly. Too many
problems were playing screwball in her head.

 

Thus, shortly
before
dawn, when she felt the temperature within the sleeping pouch begin to
rise, she immediately tensed. Needing to confirm what she feared was
happening, she turned to Gabriel and placed her palm on his back.

 

He
was burning up!

 

 

Romulus!"

 

XL
Asters shout sounded in his mind a second before Rom heard her call him
aloud, and by then he was already on his way to their living room.

 

"Did
you do this?" she asked, her voice a nervous pitch higher than usual.
She was pointing at a chair with brown-and-beige-striped upholstery
next to the fireplace.

 

Rom frowned. Her confusion was
interfering with his ability to read her thoughts. "Did I do what?"

 

"Exchange
the chairs," she replied with some annoyance.

 

He
took another look at the chair, then realized what she was referring
to. Now he was as confused as she. "Wasn't that the material that was
my first choice when we picked out that chair?"

 

"Yes. But I
convinced you that the floral print would brighten up the room.
Remember?"

 

Rom
gave her a wink. "In fact, I have a very pleasant memory of precisely
how you convinced me, too." He cut off his affectionate thought when he
realized she was growing more agitated. "Wait a minute. You think I
exchanged the chairs?"

 

Aster threw her hands up, knowing he
had done no such thing, but grasping for a satisfactory explanation.
"Last night when we went to bed, the floral chair was here. Now the
striped one is in its place. Even if I went so far as to suppose Mack
was playing a trick on us, he didn't know that the striped upholstery
was your preference. But how else could it have gotten in here during
the night and the floral chair taken away?"

 

Before Rom could
formulate a guess, their son opened the front door, slammed it behind
him, and stood there glowering with his hands fisted on his hips.

 

"You're
not going to believe this!" he exclaimed.

 

"What's the matter?"
Aster asked, momentarily setting aside her questions about the chair.

 

"Why
aren't you in class?" Rom added.

 

Mack
marched across the room shaking his head and flopped his long body into
the striped chair. "Somebody's pulling a twist on me, but I can't
figure out who or why. I got to class this morning and the professor
said I wasn't on his roster. He admitted that I was there yesterday and
the day before that, but today my name's not on the list, so I must not
be in the class."

 

Frustration had him out of the chair again.
"Then
I went to the admin clerk to straighten it out, and guess what?" He
paused and made sure he had both parents' full attention. "I'm not in
their records at all. According to the computer, I never registered for
school this year. Do you believe that? After how hard I tried to talk
you out of making me attend academy this year, and how I killed myself
to earn a passing mark in calculus last term, nothing I've done shows
up in the files!"

 

'That's ridiculous," Rom said, striding over
to the telecommunicator. "I'll get this straightened out
right now."

 

While
Rom contacted the academy, Aster questioned Mack about the chair. When
he seriously asked "You mean that's not the same one that was here
yesterday?" she knew he wasn't the culprit responsible for the strange
switch.

 

"No one can explain it," Rom told Mack after ending
his
call. "All traces of your attending classes this year have been erased.
They're investigating the matter, but in the meantime, you can go back
and re-register right now."

 

"Oh, lucky me," Mack muttered
sarcastically.

 

As
soon as he had gone, Aster and Rom shared the same thought. Something
wasn't right. Both of them had the feeling that neither incident was
simply someone pulling a twist.

 

They were already worried sick
over
Shara taking off with the tempometer. It seemed unlikely that she would
get past the security officers on Norona, but a confirming report that
she had been stopped could not reach Innerworld's communication center
for at least another whole day.

 

The moment they had realized
what
she had done, Rom had sent a message to Norona, vaguely explaining that
due to a family emergency, Shara needed to be detained immediately upon
her arrival there and put on the first return flight. He and Aster
firmly believed that Shara's unusual defiance would end the moment she
knew her deception was uncovered. But that didn't really prevent either
of them from worrying.

 

By the end of the day, they knew Shara
wasn't the only thing they had to worry about.

 

A number of
people they talked to had weird stories
about something in their lives that had inexplicably been altered. Each
involved a choice that had previously been made, but had now been
reversed. Like Aster's chair fabric and Mack's attending the academy,
one man swore he'd decided to park his vehicle in his garage last
night, but in the morning it was in his driveway. A woman spoke of how
the kalani bushes that had been in front of her residence for months
had somehow been replaced by roses, which was what she had almost
planted to begin with.

 

Rom called in several trackers who had
the
ability to "see" events that occurred within the past twenty-four
hours. None picked up a single image of something changing in any way,
despite the clear memories of those affected.

 

Rom and Aster
called a
meeting with the Chiefs of Security and Scientific Research that
evening. They, too, had heard some peculiar tales during the day.
Nothing suggested any imminent danger, but neither could the incidents
be ignored, no matter how insignificant.

 

The only immediate
actions
decided on, however, were to search the universal history data banks
for similar circumstances, while a team of scientists would be set to
work theorizing how such changes might have logically happened without
the interference of some alien culture in possession of magical powers.

 

Whatever
had caused the alterations, the Inner-worlders were determined that
they would stop it before anything more serious was affected.

 

Shara
crawled out of the pouch and huddled in a corner of the tent. If
Gabriel was about to have another attack, he was going to suffer this
one on his own.

 

The starlight, combined with the dim glow from
the
heater orb, illuminated the tent enough for her to see how the fever
progressed. She sympathized with him as muscle spasms racked his body,
and he began clawing at his neck and chest as if biting insects were
eating him alive.

 

His groan of pain was so excruciating, she
had to
stop herself from going to him. There was really nothing she could do
to help, and she had no intention of becoming part of any hallucination
he might be having this time.

 

Shara.

 

She heard it
clearly, the voice from her dream, but it didn't seem to have come from
Gabriel.

 

Shara.

 

Panic
trapped the air in her lungs. Her name hadn't been said aloud; it was
thought to her. But Gabriel had no such ability, nor was she touching
his temple to read him. And yet she was intuitively certain it was
Gabriel calling her.

 

She wiped at the annoying film of
perspiration on her
upper lip. It seemed incredible that his body temperature could be so
high that it heated the entire tent, but that seemed to be the case.

 

Gabriel
thrashed from side to side, kicking at the confining pouch and moaning
in pain and frustration. She could do something to help a little, she
realized. Careful to keep out of his reach, she freed him from the
pouch and opened the tent flap a fraction of an inch to let in a draft
of icy air.

 

The cold was such a relief from the suffocating
heat,
she knelt in front of the opening and let the biting wind curl around
her. Still, it was not enough to cool her. Urgently tugging at her
clothing, she stripped to the skin and opened the tent flap a bit more.

 

Come
to me, Shara.

 

She
whirled around, expecting to see Gabriel right behind her, but he was
where he had been, curled into a fetal position and twitching
uncontrollably.

 

Help me!

 

The desperation in the words
almost rent her in half. The cold air was so soothing, yet she felt
compelled to obey his call.

 

Something
crawled up her arm and she brushed at it, but she could see nothing
there. She scratched at the skin where she had brushed to ease the itch
left behind. An insect must have invaded their shelter! A few seconds
later, a similar itch irritated her neck, then her other arm. She
suddenly felt as though her nerve endings had moved to the outside of
her flesh.

 

I need you.

 

The words stroked her body as
if they had
substance. Despite the cold at her back, fingers of fire caressed her
breasts and danced between her naked thighs, creating a burning need that even the
freezing wind could not cool.

 

You need me.

 

Her
perspiring body trembled from the effort it took to remain where she
was rather than give in to her weakness.

 

Suddenly
awareness flashed through her discomfort. She was suffering from all
the same symptoms as Gabriel. The virus had affected her after all. She
wasn't hearing his thoughts; she was hallucinating. Without her
realizing it, the mysterious fever had taken control of her mind as
well as her body. While logic remained, she closed the flap, no matter
how good the cold felt at the moment.

 

A pounding drum had
taken up
residence between her thighs, demanding immediate appeasement. The
fever seemed to begin and end at the core of her womanhood. Her fingers
confirmed the excessive dampness she knew would be there, but it was
not her own touch that her body craved.

 

She cried aloud from
the
pain of a need so great she would surely die if it went unsatisfied,
yet she continued to fight against it.

 

Until her mind could
fight no more and retreated into darkness.

 

"Shara? Are you
asleep?"

 

She heard his voice and knew it was him and not the
fever talking, but held her response in order to analyze the situation.

 

She
was lying on top of him, naked, and she could feel him deep inside her.
How could she not remember how she had gotten there? With her next
breath, she realized her body's temperature had returned to normal, as
had his, and she could feel the chill in the
air from when she had opened the flap. The fever that had driven her to
the brink of sanity was gone. The overpowering desire that had held her
in thrall was now only a mild humming through her body.

 

What
sort of
virus would carry so many radical symptoms, and yet be completely
neutralized by sexual gratification? Before she could give that
question further consideration, Gabriel's shaft throbbed within her and
her own muscles clenched around him in automatic response.

 

"Shara,
as good as this is to wake up to, I have the distinct impression I've
missed something again."

 

With
an embarrassed groan, she separated their bodies and eased to his side.
The light tone of his voice contrasted with the humiliation she felt at
finding herself in such an intimate situation and not knowing how it
had come about. Only the concern in his eyes gave her the courage to
speak.

 

"You had another ... seizure a while ago. However, it
now
appears I have contracted the same virus. The symptoms seem to be
identical. High fever, tremors, oversensitive skin, possibly brought on
by agitated nerves—everything, exactly like that night. Unlike you,
though, I was wide awake, at least for a while. I heard a voice call
me, like in my dream, only this time I knew it was you. I heard you in
my mind. Or I thought I did. It must have been a hallucination brought
on by the fever. I blacked out. I swear to the Supreme Being, I have no
idea how I came to you, or ... or ..."