Three Days to Never (31 page)

“You also serve who only stand and watch,” she said, and Marrity could hear the amusement in her voice as she went on copying the figures. She was already on her third match. Belatedly Marrity recognized the tune she'd been humming—it was “Bye Bye Blackbird.”

“We'll talk to both of you at length this evening,” said Mishal, “in a safer place, but right now—where are they now, the people you were with until today?”

“In Palm Springs; on their way there, anyway.” Charlotte was biting her lower lip as she moved her eyes up and down—which was just for show, Marrity realized. “There's a thing my pal's great-grandfather made, there—I don't know the whole story, but allegedly you can twist somebody's lifeline right out of existence with it. It uses some energy—having to do with the great-granddad's cosmological constant? It's way bigger in other dimensions, which is why it measures nearly
zero from here, to us. Like a big beachball has a footprint that's only the size of a dime on a two-dimensional sheet of paper. The old guy said it was the worst mistake of his life, figuring it out.”

Marrity heard old Mishal shift in his chair. “Do you mean,” Mishal said, sounding interested for the first time, “they can make someone never have existed at all? No record or memory of that person?”

“Yep.” Charlotte finished the final circle and dropped the last match onto the glass tabletop. She turned to Marrity and spread her hands. “No ill effects!” she said cheerfully, though Marrity thought her voice was shriller than she had meant it to be.

“And this is
located,
somehow,” said Mishal impatiently, “this…
tap
for the vacuum energy?”

“Yes,” said Charlotte. “One of my employers said it was ‘a singular object.'”

Lepidopt had struck several more matches, and Marrity picked one up and began copying figures onto his own sheet of paper. He was pleased to see that his scraped palm wasn't leaving blood on the paper—God only knew what effect that would have.

Mishal nodded. “I imagine he said ‘singularity.' Einstein made a few oblique references to a thing like this in his notes, and we've wondered for years whether it might have been something he actually figured out. We have to look into this—though I wonder if even I have the math for it.” He squinted at Charlotte. “Have they ever used it?”

Charlotte shrugged. “Who'd know?”

“Of course, of course. Where is it, where in Palm Springs?”

“Well, that's my bargaining chip, telling you that,” she said. “I'll tell you, in exchange for use of the time machine. We—they—know you've got it. One of their guys got shot this afternoon when you took it out of Frank's grandmother's house.”

Marrity was glancing at Lepidopt as she said this, and he thought Lepidopt's eyes narrowed slightly—in satisfaction?

“You said you've proposed a deal to them,” said Mishal, “and that you'll go through with it if you can't make a deal with us. What did you propose to them?”

“They want to negate Frank's daughter, so that she won't have burned up their movie and generally made a hash of their plans. But Frank and Daphne have a psychic link, like mental Siamese twins, so these people can't isolate her and erase her while Frank is still alive. Of course they'd like to just kill Frank and get on with it, but the deal I proposed to them is that they negate
me,
instead.”

Marrity had paused from his copying to look at her. She was staring across at Mishal, so Marrity could see her eyes behind the sunglasses; but when he noticed the glitter of tears on her lower lashes, and her impatient blink, he quickly looked back down at his paper.

She went on, “I screwed up their operation badly enough so that if I never existed,
they'd
have got the time machine, not you fellows. I've proposed a trade—me for Daphne.”

“But that won't do,” said Mishal, shaking his head, “if this singularity is real. If you're negated you'd never have told us about it.”

Lepidopt leaned forward, frowning. “Miss, uh, Webb,” he said. “You proposed that they erase your existence? No one remember you, nothing you've ever done leaving any slightest mark—this would be worse than death.”

“Or better,” said Charlotte. “But if you'll let me use the time machine, then I won't have to follow through with it.”

“There's something you did,” said Lepidopt quietly, “that needs to be undone.”

Marrity had finished his copy of the strange diagram. Mishal took it and Charlotte's and frowned critically over them.

“You can't use the time machine,” Mishal said absently. “But if, after I've done some math, this singularity looks plausible—and if the time machine works and we get our priority tasks out of the way—and if the change you want to make meets with our approval—we'll dispatch an operative
to make the change for you.” He put the papers down, pursing his lips. “These are good enough.”

“I don't know if your operative could do it,” said Charlotte. “It'll involve getting onto a secret U.S. Air Force base in 1978.”

Mishal looked up from the papers and gave her a frosty smile. “Oh, I think we can manage.”

He held out his hand, and Charlotte shook it.

“And you'll get my daughter away from those people,” said Marrity.

“Yes,” said Mishal. “Of course.”

Lepidopt caught Marrity's eye and nodded slightly. Then he waved at the papers they'd marked up with the burnt matches. “Fold those in half, top to bottom, with the marks on the outside, without smearing the carbon, and press them against your skin under your shirts, top side outward. They'll smear soon enough, but it's the initial burn that counts. You can make fresh ones again later.”

Charlotte took hers and started to get up, but Lepidopt raised his hand. “I'm sorry, Miss Webb, but you've got to do it here. We can't let either of you out of our sight, and I'm not going to escort you to the ladies' room.”

Marrity began unbuttoning his shirt. He noticed Lepidopt look up at the balcony over their heads and touch his chin, and then look back down at the table. Signaling a watcher? thought Marrity. I bet we'll be leaving here soon.

When he had pressed the paper against his chest and buttoned his shirt over it, and Charlotte had rearranged her blouse over her own copy, Marrity cocked his head and opened his mouth to speak, then hesitated.

Lepidopt raised an eyebrow.

“Nothing,” said Marrity, “I just—” He turned to Charlotte. “Do you get any…?” He waved vaguely at his rebuttoned shirt.

She touched her blouse over the hidden piece of paper. “Yes,” she said, “The paper, as if it's…” She giggled, then bit her lip. “I think I'm getting your heartbeat.”

Marrity grinned in embarrassment. That was it—the paper
was faintly pulsing to a heartbeat that was not his. “And I guess I'm getting yours,” he said. “Cheaper than stethoscopes.”

Mishal had shifted in his chair to look at the crowd behind him. “That's a common effect,” he said to Marrity over his shoulder, “when the papers are prepared at the same time.” A sandy-haired man in a business suit was walking toward their table, and Mishal seemed to nod slightly in recognition.

Marrity was aware of curiosity from Daphne, and he was glad that wherever she was she had the leisure to notice things like this. He crossed his arms and then patted the couch on either side of himself, hoping this would show her that he was not actually pressed skin to skin against Charlotte.

Charlotte was looking at him, her eyebrows raised above the frames of her sunglasses.

“Clarifying it for Daphne,” he explained.

“Ah! Your chaperone!”

The sandy-haired man had paused by the fountain a dozen feet from their table and was watching the people in the lobby with no apparent interest.

“You'll tell us all you know,” said Mishal to Charlotte, confirming it.

“Yes,” she said.

“Where is the singularity located?”

“I'll tell you as soon as I know. And I'll know as soon as I call them. Where they propose to do the exchange, that's where it is. They'll want to be ready to negate Daphne instantly if things go wrong.”

“Fair enough,” said Mishal, getting to his feet. “Right now we're going to take you both to a safe house. Or is it a safe tepee, Oren?”

“Tepee,” said Lepidopt. “Well, wigwam.”

T
he twin-engine Bell helicopter had touched down at a shadowed plateau high in the rocky San Jacinto Mountains southwest of Palm Springs, and when its passengers had climbed or been carried out, it had taken off again, the late afternoon sun lighting up its blue fuselage as it climbed above the level of the peaks.

The plateau was a couple of hundred feet wide, crowded up to the mountain shoulder and slanting down to the northeast, and an old flatbed truck was parked next to a gray wooden cabin on the eastern edge. A new-looking black tent was set up on the truck's bed.

Three young men in olive green park ranger uniforms had wheeled two gurneys and a wheelchair across the dirt, and Golze sank shakily into the wheelchair while the young men lifted the bundle that was Daphne onto one gurney and Rascasse's unconscious blanketed body onto the other. Even at three thousand feet, the breeze was stiflingly hot, but the cabin at the east end of the plateau had a clattering air-con
ditioning unit on its shingle roof, and when they had all walked or been lifted up the wooden steps, the air in the big kitchen proved to be cool.

The tape was stripped off Daphne's canvas sack, and she kicked it away and hopped down off the gurney and brushed off her jeans as the other gurney, the one with the blanketed body on it, was wheeled to a corner by the front door. One of the uniformed young men, blond haired and with no expression in his pale blue eyes, bolted the door and then, with a kind of indifference that was scarier than rudeness would have been, marched Daphne across the room and handcuffed her to a rusty vertical water pipe against the east wall.

The cabin was mainly a kitchen, and the white refrigerators were at least as old as Grammar's and the wide stoves had ceramic knobs on them. None of the equipment seemed to be hooked up anymore, and the place smelled faintly of motor oil. A lot of rust-brown utensils hung on the wall over the stoves—bottle openers, spatulas, whisks—and Daphne tried to make out the labels on the dusty boxes and cans that were crowded on a shelf above them.

A door in the far wall opened, and a lean white-haired man in a red flannel shirt scuffed into the room, his hands in the pockets of his faded jeans. Behind him Daphne could see a smaller lamplit room, and she noticed that there were two more doors in that wall. She hoped one of them was a restroom.

“I don't see my favorite girl,” the man drawled. His face was very tanned and wrinkled, and he had a bushy white mustache.

“She switched sides,” rasped Golze from his wheelchair in the middle of the floor. “Took a car and ran off with the young Marrity, and now she's invisible to Rascasse—she couldn't have done that on her own, she must be dickering with the Mossad.”

The white-haired newcomer widened his eyes and laughed, then crossed to where Daphne stood against the far wall, his boots knocking on the floor. “Then I've got to find a new favorite girl! What's your name, sugar pie?”

In the corner on the other side of the door from Rascasse, the old Frank Marrity shook his head and said, “I was told there was liquor here,” then began laboriously lowering himself to a sitting position against the wall.

“Daphne Marrity,” said Daphne.

“Well, Daphne, I'm Canino, like in canine. I'm the old dog around here. I'm guessing you could use a chair.”

“I'd like to be driven to a town, Mr. Canino,” said Daphne, “where I could call somebody to pick me up. I've got quarters.”

Marrity had managed to sit down on the floor, his right leg extended straight out. “Dream on,” he muttered.

Canino's eyes were bracketed with wrinkles that deepened when he squinted sideways at old Marrity. “You'll get your bottle as soon as I'm satisfied you can keep your mouth shut. Right now I've got my doubts.” To Daphne he added, “If any of these sumbitches give you any sass, you tell me, hear?” He smiled and patted her on the shoulder. “We'll be turning you loose soon enough, child. But not right now. We need to find out who these people are that your dad's hooked up with. We got no business with your dad or you, but these people will come after you, and we got to talk to
them
.”

“Can I use the bathroom?”

“Good lord yes! I'm sorry. Fred, free her and take her to the bathroom. Wait outside the door.”

The same expressionless young man who had handcuffed her now released her and led her by the elbow across the booming wooden floor to the middle door in the far wall. Daphne went in and closed the door behind her.

It was a narrow room, lit only by the early evening light filtering in through a small cobwebbed window high up in the wall.

The ancient toilet proved to be in working order, and the sink, almost invisible in the dimness, produced a trickle of water. As she dried her hands on her blouse, Daphne looked at the window wall.

Her father had said,
I won't let them catch me, and I'll come get you soon. These people aren't planning to hurt you.
He had also said,
Don't do anything in the helicopter!
—meaning, don't try to burn up the engines.

Then her father had kissed that woman Charlotte. Charlotte had told these people that they should not try to kill her father, and that they should “negate” her instead of Daphne.

Daphne hoped the woman wouldn't be killed, if negated meant killed. Sometimes at night, even these two years later, Daphne would be awakened by intrusive images of her mother, and a droning undercurrent of bewildered loss.

I'm not enough, loving him by myself, she thought. I need help.

She opened the door before the Fred man might start knocking on it. Fluorescent lights now glowed whitely below the ceiling in the big room.

The box with the portable phone in it began ringing, and old Canino picked it up from the floor and carried it to Golze. “Here you go, chief,” he said, unsnapping the case and lifting the phone out.

Daphne jumped then, and even felt a twitch too in Fred's restraining hand on her upper arm, for a cluster of ancient whisks on the wall over the stove had begun buzzing and vibrating, throwing off a cloud of dust. Old Marrity's bad leg drummed on the floor planks as he made an abortive scramble toward the front door.

A voice came shaking out of the ringing whisks, with a baritone quality provided by the resonance of the wooden wall. “It's Charlotte. Go along with what she says.”

Golze nodded irritably and switched the phone on. “Charlotte!” he said. “What's the good word?”

Charlotte's voice was scratchy under crackling static. “Oblivion, Paul,” she said. “You know you want it too. Meet me at dawn somewhere and we'll do the switch. Daphne walks out first from your side, then I walk out from mine and you take me in exchange for her.”

“Okay, that works for us,” said Golze. “El Mirador Medical Plaza, at Tacheva Drive and Indian Canyon Drive. That's, uh, in Palm Springs.”

“Duh. I'll be armed, and if anything goes funny, I promise
you I'll be able to kill both myself and Daphne, as well as anybody else who might be standing nearby, and you'll be left with nothing. Right?”

“Well, not with nothing,” said Golze. “We've got the directions on how to use the time machine. We've debriefed old Marrity thoroughly, and we'll kill him at the first sign of any trouble from your side. So don't let your new pals imagine they can just wipe us all out like the pope did at Carcassonne. You know
they
have no interest in this exchange.”

“I've got no pals. ‘But I will go where they are hid who never were begot.' And I don't care about the time machine. You can all fight about that in a world that never included any Charlotte Sinclair.”

“I hope they don't negate you!” piped up Daphne.

“You be me, kiddo,” came Charlotte's faint voice. “Go easy on the sauce.” There was an enormous click, and the line was dead.

Golze turned the phone off, then said to the ceiling, “She's sincere. If the Mossad is running her to get to us, she doesn't know it. Fred, cuff the girl to the pipe.”

“She's with them,” said the Rascasse voice, sounding to Daphne like a bowling ball rolling over broken glass, “or I'd see her, and I don't. They've given her a masking amulet.”

“Speaking of which sort of thing,” said Golze, “get the girl's prints.”

Canino nodded and touched his forehead, then crossed to the stoves and lifted a foot-square pane of glass from a white enameled pan. Clear oil ran off the corner of the glass in a long, glittering string, and he wiped the front and back surfaces with an ancient towel and then turned to Daphne, holding the square of glass out toward her.

“If you would press your hands on that, sweetie.”

Daphne did, and then accepted the towel from him and managed to wipe most of the oil off her hands on its stiff fabric.

“And,” Canino said, “I'll take just the tiniest bit of your
hair.” He clicked open a switchblade knife and cut off a pinch of her brown hair. “Thankee.”

Then Fred took her back to the vertical pipe and ratcheted the handcuff onto her wrist again.

“I think we can assume Charlotte's with them,” said Canino, pressing the hairs onto the oily glass and then wiping his hands too and tossing the towel into a corner, “and that they'll come with her, acting like backup but ready to push her aside and take
you
.” He pointed at Golze. “Or Denis. Is he still alive?”

“Fred,” said Golze, waving toward the gurney in the corner, “if you would…”

Fred walked to the gurney in the corner and flipped back the blanket.

“Shit!” he exclaimed. “This is a woman!”

Canino burst out with a surprised laugh. “Now where did you clowns leave poor old Denis?”

“That's me, you fools,” said Rascasse, managing to make the whisks and the wall almost roar, “I was a woman once.” After a pause the voice went on, more quietly, “I see I've now reverted back to that.”

“I'm not sure this can be said to be…
going well
,” said Golze thoughtfully.

Daphne was horrified to realize that she was about to start giggling, though not in merriment. She clamped her teeth together hard and didn't look toward Canino.

“Some magical procedures,” rang Rascasse's voice from over the stoves, “can't be done by women. I found certain alchemists who reconfigured all my elements, and fixed me in the masculine estate.”

Canino shook his head, frowning sympathetically. “Looks like you've come unfixed, old buddy.”

Daphne snorted, and then she was laughing hysterically, trying to stifle it by biting her handcuffed fist.

Fred turned to her and, still with no expression, slapped her cheek stingingly hard.

Rascasse's voice went on, “I'm losing my attachment to
this place and time. I never quite came back to here, I think, from last night's freeway trip. But I can last until we close this time line out. Paul, radio for reinforcements now. Three cars—we'll want the helicopter too.”

Daphne had noticed that he was speaking like someone in Shakespeare, the same cadence. Rubbing her cheek, and with a cautious glance at Fred, she asked, “Why are you speaking in iambic pentameter?”

“I need to keep my thoughts straight, little girl,” rattled the whisks, “and meter is an aqueduct for them.” After a pause, they went on, “I was a little girl myself, you know.”

Daphne just nodded, wide-eyed.

“I sure signed on with the winning team,” said Marrity. “Where's that bottle?”

“I'll dig one out for you,” said Canino, looking at a watch on his tanned wrist, “as soon as I get back from taking my favorite girl for a little walk.”

He signaled Fred to unlock the cuffs, and then Canino unbolted the door and waved Daphne ahead of him, outside. To Fred he said, “Watch us.”

As she tapped down the two steps to the dirt, she listened to Canino's steps behind her over the alien buzz of cicadas, and she considered running. The sky was dark blue already, with a few shreds of clouds showing pink over the mountain's shoulder, but the breeze was still warm. Could she outrun Canino and Fred and hide, somewhere among all those rocks up there?

A puff of dust sprang up from the ground a dozen feet ahead of her, simultaneous with a breathy
snap
from behind her. She spun around.

“I wasted a dart,” said Canino, grinning as he lowered a pistol, “but you see it works. Tranquilizer darts, Fred has one too. You'd fall down—bloody nose, torn clothes—we don't want that, do we?”

“No,” said Daphne. Mentally she reached out for the gun, but she knew she couldn't get away before Fred could shoot her with a dart. The cicadas sounded like a hundred dentists' drills.

She sighed, and followed Canino around the corner of the cabin to the flatbed truck that had a tent set up on its bed. The tent was hardly bigger than a ticket kiosk at a carnival.

“Now this tent!” said Canino, putting a hand on the edge of the truck bed and lithely vaulting up onto it, his boots knocking on the wood, “is where you're going to be spending the next couple of hours. Girl needs her privacy. Gimme your hand.” He leaned over the edge and took hold of Daphne's hand and then lifted her up onto the boards. Up close, Daphne could see that the tent was made of some thick black cloth.

Looking back, she saw that Fred was leaning against the corner of the cabin. She looked the other way and almost gasped—far below the edge of the little plateau, the lights of what must have been Palm Springs lay in lines and squares against the darkness of the desert-valley floor.

Canino pulled the tent flap aside and reached into the darkness; a moment later she heard a click over the rattle of the cabin's air-conditioning unit, and an electric bulb was glowing on the end of a wire swinging from the tent's peak. Below it in the narrow space, a kitchen chair was bolted to the truck-bed boards, and a silvery roll of duct tape lay next to one of the legs. In front of the chair, a section of white plastic pipe was mounted like a telescope on an aluminum pole, and the far end of the pipe stuck outside the tent through a close-fitting hole in the fabric. Behind the chair were stacked a lot of metal boxes with cables connecting them, and at the top were what seemed to be two car headlights.