Myths of the Modern Man (25 page)

She sat back away from the monitor and stared helplessly at it. She glanced with dread at the empty chamber.

John was lost.

Eleanor sat up. Dr. L’Esperance said as much. You lost him, she had said. For the first time, she thought of him.

Where was he? Could he have been caught in some partial time vortex, or did he remain in Britannia at the crucial point? She did not know. There would be no getting him back. She would never know.

Cassius had said Moore was capable, and the failure of the mission allowed for the military theorists not to capitalize on the project. Dr. L’Esperance said something else. She wanted him back, to foil the militarists by saving the mission and turning the findings over to the public. Who was right, or were they both merely guessing, or dressing up what was for each really only a self-serving plot? She trusted no one now.

But, Moore was gone. Of that much she was certain. There were too many other variables as to the why and right and wrong of it, she did not know what was for the best. She did know she failed, that her failure might cost her career, as Dr. L’Esperance predicted. It certainly cost Moore his life.

She rubbed her hands slowly together, and stuffed them in the pockets of her lab coat. John was lost. She had done it.

The door handle clicked, and someone entered her lab. For the moment, it was still her lab, but it probably would not be for long. She expected to hear the voice of disciplinary measures, even held out for the vague possibility of offered words of comfort. There were neither.

“
Eleanor,” Dr. L’Esperance said, “Will you let me help you now?”

Eleanor turned and faced her, spitting invective and fury. Dr. L’Esperance only watched her with apparent curiosity.

“
What did you do? What did you do to ruin it?” Eleanor nearly shrieked her words.

“
Nothing.”

“
You scuttled my project. You said it would fail, and you made it happen.”

“
I did not,” Dr. L’Esperance replied with her calm, soothing attitude of motherly understanding that made Eleanor want to strangle her.

“
Then if you didn’t, what in holy hell makes you think you can fix it now? Do you think you are that much more an accomplished metaphysicist than I am? I have credentials to fill this room.”

“
I’ve already told you I am a great admirer of your work.”

“
From the future?” she scoffed.

“
As I’ve said.”

Eleanor began to pace the room. Dr. L’Esperance placed her hand on Eleanor’s shoulder, but Eleanor squirmed away from her touch.

“
Assuming Colonel Moore was in the right place, the error involves the celestial wobble, which you did not calculate properly.” Dr. L’Esperance said.

“
I did.”

“
No. You assumed the wobble was a full rotation. It was not.”

Eleanor stopped and stared at her.

“
Based on what?”

“
A similar anomaly at the turn of my millennium. It makes time travel back several thousand years impossible from my era. We need to first hit this location, and booster back from here, factoring in the half wobble.”

Eleanor swore, swiped her hand through her hair and looked at Dr. L’Esperance again.

“
I have no way to work that out. Not with the information I have. It will take me weeks to come up with a model.”

“
I can do it for you now.”

Eleanor considered her.

“
Oh yes, you can do anything. That’s convenient. Why would you want to help me?”

“
For all the reasons I stated earlier. This isn’t personal, Eleanor.”

“
It’s always personal,” she muttered, and stole a glance at the empty module again.

“
Look, Doctor, Colonel Moore is past the moment of opportunity. I couldn’t get him back now even if you had a model to correct the problem. It’s over. I’ve lost him. I’ve lost him as you said I would.”

“
There is a possibility,” Dr. L’Esperance said, “one we use frequently in my time. I’ve told you. A Retriever. Someone carrying a device to piggy-back the electromagnetic waves.”

“
Do you mean Milly?”

“
Milly has her job here. No, the only one who can go with the proper magnetic devise to retrieve him is you.”

“
Good lord, what are you talking about?!” Eleanor folded her white lab coat arms and longed for self possession to return.

“
I cannot go, Eleanor. I am needed here to run the patch program. Only I can do that. Besides, my darker skin would make it difficult for me to travel in anonymity in Britannia at that time. You are fair. You know the mission. You know Colonel Moore. Only you can do this.”

“
I can’t do this!” Eleanor’s voice shook, “I’m not a field operative. I’m an administrator, a scientist. A theorist. I have no qualifications that would even keep me alive in that place and time, let alone accomplish the mission to retrieve Colonel Moore!”

“
Nevertheless, you are the only one who can go.”

“
We can get a female operative to do it. I’ll call….”

“
We can’t. There is no time for preparation. And besides, we would have to officially requisition an operative, and it would be known that I helped you. How much longer would it take for word to get out that I am from the future, something we must guard against, Eleanor.”

Eleanor slowly lowered herself to the metal stool at her workstation. She looked as if she had been given a death sentence, and quietly realized that had always been her biggest fear, from the earliest time she could recall the sea rising and the earthquake take her town as a child. She thought such realizations early in her life had made her fatalistic, but they had really only left her terrorized, and fear was her personal key to survival. She had not loved life as much as she feared death.

“
You must decide, I think, what is most important to you now,” Dr. L’Esperance spoke gently, “your survival on this mission, or your survival here in your own time. At least you have a choice when and where to make a stand. So many do not.”

“
How…how would I even find him?” Eleanor’s weak voice sounded like a gasp.

“
If he intentionally moved from his position, you likely will not. Although why he might intentionally move, I could not begin to say. It would certainly be illogical for him to do that. If he was killed already, you likely will not find his body. If he is alive and the battle is over, it is probable he was captured.”

“
Probable. Improbable.” Eleanor muttered, hugging herself.

“
These are the tools of our trade, Eleanor.”

“
I know that.” The tools of our trade. The knives in our drawer.

“
I would send you therefore to the south, to the region where the captives would be collected. That is our best chance, if he survived.”

“
I can’t do this.”

“
Your protection is that you will go as a Roman noblewoman, perhaps adopting the persona of a wealthy merchant’s wife. In your quest for a suitable slave, you will be allowed near the closure of the captives. If you see Colonel Moore, you need only grasp his hand or touch his body in some place and activate the device, which sends the signal here. Once I have you tracked, I’ll reverse the magnetic process and return you both. I will of course first need to amply your equipment.”

“
Amplify?”

“
The devices we use in my time are much more powerful, and faster. I’m afraid your system setup is not always as accurate, and I rather think the coarse amplification of forces must indeed be harsher on the time traveler than my contemporaries are used to.”

“
I can’t do this.”

“
You need only touch him….”

“
I’m afraid. I mean…I’m afraid.”

Dr. L’Esperance touched the communicator, and in a moment Milly entered the lab. Dr. L’Esperance gave her a warm smile and gestured for her to approach. In low tones she gave Milly new orders, as they both stole glances at Eleanor, who watched them closely, apprehensively, trying to see them with new eyes as two women from nearly a thousand years into the future. They did not seem any different in form or gesture than anyone she knew, except that there was a look of serenity in them both, telegraphed by every neat, careful move and gentle tilt of the head. They were both placid. Milly left.

“
How long have you known her?” Eleanor asked.

“
Ten or eleven years, I should think. We work together.”

“
Milly is also quite tall,” Eleanor observed wearily, feeling inclined to make such irrelevant observations because the real issues at hand were too frightening to discuss, “I had never noticed because she is usually sitting down. Or leaning over a desk, or stooping to pick up something. She stood almost eye-to-eye with you. You’re quite tall, Dr. L’Esperance.”

“
Compared to you,” she smiled, “but my height is quite average in my era. Evolution and a diet more rich in animal protein than to what you are accustomed would account for taller, more muscular individuals.”

“
You eat a lot of meat?”

“
Yes. Arable land has diminished greatly, but biogenetics in domestic livestock has increased food supply with new breeding techniques.”

“
I see,” she said, not really thinking about it.

“
Milly is going to use her resources to procure a suitable guise for you.”

“
Clothes?” Eleanor asked, her stomach beginning to churn.

“
Yes,” Dr. L’Esperance said, turning her attention from Eleanor’s anxiety to the terminals. She approached Eleanor’s workstation, pausing thoughtfully and scratching her smooth cheek with long, glossy nails, as she thought through the process on behalf of the slower computer in front of her. Eleanor watched her. She wished Dr. Ford were here. She wished she could tell him of all this, get his opinion, and hear him dismiss her suspicions, and her fears, as ludicrous.

“
Where do you think he is?” Dr. L’Esperance asked over her shoulder.

“
Who?”

“
Colonel Moore. You must rely on your knowledge of him. I think you know him well, better than you admit.”

CHAPTER 20

Colonel John Moore’s narrative:

Deep in the grove, Taliesin waited for me. Alive, and miraculously in one piece. At least, it seemed as if he were waiting for me. There he was. His wide, dark eyes seemed to direct me, like a pleading dog, to follow him.

“
Nemain is dead.” I panted.

“
I know this.”

“
Tomorrow, and in the days ahead, the Romans will scour the countryside for fugitives.”

“
You know the future,” he said, walking ahead of me into the darkness.

“
No, this is reason….”

“
This is fate, and it is your gift, or curse, to know.”

Truer words were never said, pal.

I pulled on his arm.

“
I have also seen Cailte.”

He stopped and turned. He looked up at the icy stars through the branches of the leafless tree.

“
He is dead?” he asked, not looking at me.

“
By now he is.”

He looked at me then. I could not even take a deep breath, but whispered,

“
Crucified.”

Taliesin looked away sharply. He drew a very deep breath to steady himself, and walked onward.

Buried in a thicket was the queen’s chariot. A distance away, one of her horses stirred, tied to the branch of a tree. Beyond this was herself, sitting alone in a small grove, under a stray shaft of moonlight.

Nosce te ipsum was the Latin proverb to “know thyself.” I thought of this suddenly, and the words of the Tibetan ruler who said that a true warrior must not be afraid of who he is. Nosce te ipsum, you and me, Boudicca.

I approached Boudicca, and knelt beside her as I did the day I met her, how many weeks ago?

“
We must have no fire.” Taliesin explained, and I nodded. A campfire, even a torch would announce our location.

The night grew colder with an instant burst of wind. The summer was dying, or had died along the way.

“
Did you see this in a vision?” Boudicca asked in a hushed voice, looking at me as if she had expected me to come.

“
I…feared it.”

“
A man who owns his fear.” She said in wonder and fatigue, and smiling, cocked her head, “I would not own fear, but I must own defeat.”

“
Your rebellion is done.”

She nodded. The blue-streaked sweat on her face glistened in the moonlight.

“
What will you do?” I asked.

“
I will not be crucified. The Romans will not hang me from a cross.”

I noticed the cup in her hands, resting in her lap. It was a drink of poison.

I reminded myself that I was not here, in this place and at this time, to change history. I was here to watch, even this.

“
Boudicca….” I heard myself saying.

She smiled, a cat-who-got-the-canary grin, and drank.

I shut my tired, stinging eyes briefly as she raised the cup to her lips. Some things I can’t do, even for you, Eleanor.