Home: Circle of Fate 12/?
by Nan Smith
Previously:
Behind her, she heard Lois's footsteps as she descended the stairs. Quickly, she replaced the book and turned, hastily wiping the tears from her cheeks. "Someone's left a message on your answering machine."
"Oh?" Lois said. She crossed to the telephone and pushed a button.
"Hello, Lois," a woman's voice said. "We've seen the news about the typhoon on TV, so we know Clark isn't there. Jonathan and I managed to get an earlier flight. We'll be in about eight o'clock. Don't worry about coming to get us. We'll take a taxi from the airport. 'Bye. See you this evening."
**********
And now, Part 12:
Clark, CJ and John Olsen clustered around the vidscreen, examining the recording that Arnie had taken in his lab. The odd little rectangle floated tantalizingly in the air, and the eye appeared, peeking through it. On the split screen, Arnie looked out at them. "What do you think of it?" he asked. "Have you ever seen anything like it, Grand -- uh, Clark?"
Clark stood still, observing the rectangle, and the eye, with close attention to detail. Something was tugging at the back of his mind, but he couldn't quite put his finger on it.
The rectangle disappeared.
"Wait," Arnie said. "Keep watching."
A minute went by, and another. By actual count, five minutes had elapsed when the rectangle quietly reappeared, followed by the eye.
Clark watched, silently counting the seconds as the strange phenomenon hovered. When he reached ten seconds, the rectangle popped into nothingness once more.
"Ten seconds," he said.
"What?" John said.
"It was there exactly ten seconds," Clark said. "So was the previous one."
"What does that have to do with anything?" CJ asked.
Clark shrugged. "Maybe nothing. But if it appears again, I'll be interested if it stays there exactly ten seconds."
"Why?" John asked.
Clark shrugged. "Arnie, how long did it last, the other times it appeared in your lab?"
Arnie Frazier frowned. "I'm not certain, but I'd say it was about the same time as these two examples."
"Watch it and see if it does it again."
"All right. If it comes back." Frazier scratched his beard. "Grandfather, I think you have an idea about this. Do you?"
Since the scientist was in his late thirties, Arnie appeared some ten years older than he did, but, Clark noted, not even CJ smiled at the incongruity of the title. All of them were looking hopefully at him.
"Maybe," he said. There was a wisp of an idea whizzing around in his brain, but it was hard to grasp it firmly enough to put it into words. He shut his mouth tightly, contemplating the now blank screen. There was something familiar about the little window, but he couldn't quite put his finger on it. "I'm assuming that this ... peephole in space has something to do with the time machine, and by extension, Lori. If it does --" He fell silent, frowning.
"If it does ..." CJ prompted.
And suddenly, Clark had it. "If it wasn't for the size," he said, "I'd think it was a time window."
"Time window?" Arnold Frazier asked.
"The Time Cops -- the Peacekeepers of the 22nd Century," Clark said, "had a better way of traveling through time than HG Wells' time machine. It was literally a window in time that they could step through. It had to be pre-set with a destination -- or, at least the one I was sucked into did. Without a destination, you wound up in some kind of time dimension and were lost. If it hadn't been for HG Wells and Lois, I would have been. This looks exactly like a time window -- only in miniature."
"Well, that makes sense," Arnie said. "Someone was looking at me out of it."
"So," John said, "someone was looking into our time through this miniature time window?"
"Maybe -- if that's what it is. Any sign of it, Arnie?"
The scientist shook his head. "No. The last time it appeared was almost an hour ago."
"Maybe whoever was using it has found out what he wanted to know," John said.
"Maybe. And maybe it'll appear again, tomorrow." Clark glanced at his wrist talker. "It's nearly eight. Arnie, I don't know when you normally leave that place -- or if you ever do -- but when you close up for the night can you set the lab camera to record any more appearances of that thing, just in case?"
Frazier nodded. "I was just thinking the same thing."
Arnold Frazier signed off and CJ sighed, rubbing his nose abstractedly with one finger. "If this *is* some kind of clue, I hope it comes back," he said. "But if it's a time window, why is it so small, and why would someone be peeking into Arnie's lab with it?"
"I don't know," Clark said. "It just seems to me that its appearance is an awfully big coincidence, considering what happened yesterday."
"Oh, I agree," John said. "It's funny that the thing should have appeared at STAR Labs, though."
"Maybe. And maybe the fact that it appeared in the electronics lab where Arnie is working on the time machine isn't a coincidence. It just seems like there are too many coincidences involved for it to be a completely random event," Clark said.
"I agree," John said. "I'm betting that it's connected, somehow. Maybe this Tempus somehow got his hands on a time window control and used it to kidnap Lori. It seems to me that a time machine like the one you built would have caused an awful mess in your living room -- or anywhere else in the apartment."
"I hadn't thought of that," Clark said, "but you're probably right. So maybe Tempus did use a time window. So if this is it, why is it so small?"
"There's no way to know that," CJ said. "Maybe there's some kind of control that determines how large it is. Or maybe it somehow got broken. Or, maybe we're on the wrong track completely here, but I doubt it. Have you ever heard of Occam's razor, John?"
"Sure," John said. "Basically, it states that the simplest explanation is probably the right one. Which means that this window is probably connected with Lori. Now all we need to do is to figure out what the connection is, and if there's any clue in it to where or when she is."
"It appeared at STAR Labs," Clark said. "As far as I was able to gather, somebody using a time window can appear anywhen and anywhere. There isn't any barrier to where the person using it can go."
"So whoever has it is scouting out STAR Labs. Would it be Tempus, by any chance?"
"I don't think so," Clark said. "The eye was the wrong shape. And it wasn't Lori; not only was the eye shaped wrong, it wasn't dark enough. Lori's eyes are like Lois's. So someone else has the thing."
"Maybe," John suggested, "she brought it to somebody who might be able to figure out how it works, and he was experimenting with it. That would put her somewhere in a time period where there's at least some technology."
"Or maybe someone else found it and doesn't know what it is," Clark said.
"If that's so, he's still in a period with some technology," John said, undaunted. "That narrows down the search -- assuming our basic assumptions are right. That would cut down the possibilities considerably."
"What if it's in the future?" CJ said.
"It could be -- but I'm betting not," John said. "If he took her to the future, our descendents are there, and would know about her kidnapping. And now that Arnie knows about the time machine, they'd know how to get her home, even if the general population hasn't found out about it. I'd guess Tempus wouldn't want to risk it. He probably intended to drop her off in some past era where she couldn't cause him any trouble. If we're right, she may have gotten the better of him somehow, and wound up somewhere after the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. Which," he added, "gives us a lot less of history to have to comb through."
Clark swallowed. John was right, he thought. It was starting to look as if his search for Lori might not be so hopeless after all.
**********
Lori awoke from a light doze to the sound of the ringing telephone. She was lying on the living room sofa of the Hyperion Avenue townhouse, and the room was dim. The sunlight outside had faded, and the room's lights had not turned themselves on automatically as they did in her time.
Lois jerked awake from her position in the recliner where she had evidently been sleeping, and after a moment of fumbling, she picked up the receiver. "Hello?"
There was a pause, and then she spoke again. "Just a minute, Dr. Klein; let me put you on speakerphone so Lori can hear." She punched a button on the telephone base. "There."
"Can she hear me, now?" Bernie's voice said to the room at large.
"Yes." Lori answered for herself. "Have you been able to fix it, Dr. Klein?"
"Only partially, so far, I'm afraid," Bernie's voice said. "I can turn it on, and it actually works. After I figured out how to take the cover off -- did you know that they make fasteners that you can't even see, but once you press the right place it opens up without any trouble at all? No stuck catches or anything! I tore three nails and broke a penknife trying to get it open. Nothing worked! Then I decided that it couldn't possibly be that hard and started pressing different places, and voila! It popped open without any effort! It was amazing!"
"Oh dear," Lori said, shading her eyes as Lois switched on the overhead light. "I didn't think about it or I'd have shown you. I think they invented the magic catch about the time I was born."
"Well, it's a wonderful invention," Bernie Klein said. "After that I was able to examine the device. The power cell was cracked. The only way I could get the control to run was to hook it up to the lab's generator, but it worked. It takes a tremendous amount of power. I hate to think what our bill is going to be at the end of the month." He laughed a little at his own joke.
"I didn't even think of that," Lori said. "Are you going to get in trouble, Dr. Klein?"
"No, of course not," Bernie assured her. "The lab always has a big bill. This will be larger than usual, but we'll make up for some of it. The last run burned out a mass of circuits and -- well, you don't need the details. The repairmen are working on it right now. The lab is running on our independent backup generators until the power is back online."
"Oh *dear*!"
"Anyway," Bernie continued, "It's sort of working, but you won't be able to use it to go back to your own time until I find a way to repair or replace the field modulator -- that's the gizmo that determines the size of the field. That's the most important thing. Right now it only produces a window about four inches by three."
"Do you think you can?" Lori asked.
"I hope so. It may take a while, and I'll probably end up having to build one, myself. There's nothing like it in modern day electronics. The navigational setting doesn't seem to work, either, so that's another point of damage -- fortunately not as critical as the modulator."
"What do you mean?"
Bernie's voice took on a note that led her to believe that he was having difficulty translating what was perfectly clear to him into everyday vernacular. "Uh -- well, if you were standing here in my lab and we used the device, you'd step into your own time in the same location. Does that help? Actually, there seems to be some kind of default setting currently in effect."
"What does *that* mean?" Lois asked.
"There's a provision for setting different times and locations that doesn't seem to be functioning. This default seems to be some kind of safety feature. As I read it, the previous trip sets the parameters. You came back exactly one hundred years, so you would go forward one hundred years -- which would allow for the time you've spent here."
"So, if I went back now, I'd wind up a day and a half after the time I left?" Lori asked, sounding almost as confused as she felt.
"I'm pretty sure that's what would happen," Bernie said. "And if you stayed here a year, it would send you back a year after you left. Of course I haven't been able to test it."
"Well, it's an improvement over the one we ran into a couple of years ago," Lois said acidly. "That one didn't have a safety. If you got sucked into it without a destination already set in it, you wound up in some kind of inter-temporal dimension -- at least, I think that's what Wells called it. If he and I hadn't been able to tell the exact second the accident happened, we would have lost Clark."
"Oh," Bernie said, sounding slightly appalled.
"I suppose they might have improved the model after that -- maybe put in some kind of default setting or something, so there wouldn't be any more accidents," Lois said. "I'm glad they seem to learn from their mistakes, but they *do* seem to goof up a lot. That's what makes me think this whole time-travel thing is run by the government in the future."
"Oh?" Lori asked.
"Yeah. They do things the hard way," Lois said. "Sort of like the Department of Motor Vehicles."
Lori giggled half-hysterically. "I get it. You know, things haven't improved a bit? We still have a Department of Motor Vehicles. You do most of your business online, and they *still* manage to foul things up half the time. Every few years somebody decides to try to fix the problem and it always ends up ten times as bad as it was before. That was one way Clark managed to get his records changed, though. He showed up in person and pointed out that he looked awfully young to be over a hundred years old, and they believed him!"
Lois snorted in amusement.
Dr. Klein also laughed. "Anyway, that's about where we stand right now. I think I'll probably be able to repair it, but it might take longer than we'd like. It's possible that some of the functions don't work because I don't have enough power, however."
Lori nodded, forgetting that the doctor couldn't see her. "What kind of power cell does it use? Can you tell?"
"Just a second --" There was silence on the other end, broken by various unidentifiable rustles and clicks. "Uh -- it says it's a 'genuine DuroRay power cell, size -23e' and guaranteed to outlast the life of the -- oh, that's an advertisement. It's a DuroRay power cell."
"It sounds more like a shoe-size or something," Lois remarked.
Apparently Dr. Klein chose to ignore this witticism. "I'm afraid we don't manufacture batteries like this, yet," he said. "I don't think even one of those bunny rabbit batteries would power this thing."
"'Bunny rabbit' batteries?" Lois asked.
Lori popped open the back of her wrist talker. "Dr. Klein, my wrist talker uses the same kind of power cell! You're in luck, too -- I just put in a new one last week, so it's practically new! If you like, I can bring it over, and give it to you for the controller."
"That's all right," Bernie said. "The townhouse is only a little out of my way. I'll drop by and pick it up."
**********
tbc
