Mom took her eyes off of me long enough to look at him, then back at us. “This is Senator Loughery of the Senate Intelligence Oversight Committee.” She introduced us in turn, though we had to supply Luis’s and Richard’s names since she hadn’t met them.
The door to the house opened and a military policeman came through the door. Behind him came Captain Moreno, another military policeman, and Lieutenant Thayer. Moreno’s hands were handcuffed in front of him. Lieutenant Thayer’s hands were not secured.
General Alderman addressed the first military policeman. “Put him in your car, Sergeant. I’ll be along in a minute.”
Moreno gave us one last look, his lips a straight line, then he marched off between the two MPs, his head high and his back straight.
One down. I thought.
General Alderman turned to Lieutenant Thayer and said, “Transport the men and equipment to Fort Hood. I’ll meet you there this evening and we’ll start the official inquiry.” He turned back to Senator Loughery. “I expect your people will have unraveled the CIA end, by then?”
Senator Loughery looked pained. “Frankly, General, I don’t know. We’ll do our damnedest, though. Keep in touch.”
“Yes, sir. Lieutenant, carry on.”
Lieutenant Thayer snapped to attention. “Yes, sir.” He left the porch, briskly. He winked at me as he went by.
Marta Rigby spoke up. “Senator, I want the names of all those soldiers. They’re involved in criminal violation of my clients’ civil rights and I intend to prosecute. In addition, they’re clearly responsible for extensive damages, both property, physical, and, I don’t doubt, mental anguish, which we will bring suit about in civil actions.”
General Alderman said, “Councilor, these men currently face military inquiries and possible courts-martial. When the army is done with them, you’re welcome to prosecute and sue all you want—but we get ‘em first. Believe me, your clients will probably be called as witnesses, though, as I understand it, your main beef is likely to be with the CIA renegade.”
Marta arched her eyebrows. “Renegade? They’re not wasting any time going for plausible deniability, are they?”
The senator sighed. “Believe me, madam, we’ll do our best to find out how high the decision went. We don’t want illegal covert operations against American citizens any more than you do. Er, make that any covert operations against American citizens.”
Marta looked at him. “Uh-huh.”
The men who brought Bestworst and his assistant out wore mirrored sunglasses and suits. They were respectful to the senator. Bestworst and his assistant were handcuffed behind their backs.
“Senator,” said Bestworst, earnestly, “this is a terrible mistake. You’ve got to get this technology under control. The future of this nation is at stake!”
Senator Loughery looked at him. “Not your way, Madison. In fact, it looks as if your way has removed any chance of controlling this…thing.”
Luis spoke up. “Who are these men, Senator?” He pointed at the men in sunglasses.
Loughery wrinkled his forehead. “Why?”
Luis said, “I want to know what agency they’re from. I don’t want this man—Madison?—to have disappeared when this case comes to trial.”
The senator nodded slowly, then pointed at the first man. “This is Federal Agent Nagle, from the Houston FBI office. I’m afraid I don’t know these others, but they’re FBI agents under Nagle’s supervision. Is that good enough?”
“It depends,” said Luis. “Are these two under arrest? Will they be detained?”
Agent Nagle said, “They are under arrest for violations of the National Security Act and Executive Order 12333. Further charges will be considered as this investigation proceeds. That is all I can say right now.”
Luis nodded. “Thank you.”
Senator Loughery said, “Have you got all of the videotapes?”
Agent Nagle said, “Yes, sir.”
For a moment I thought they were talking about our videotapes, then I realized they were talking about Bestworst’s, that is, Madison’s tapes.
Tapes that showed the actual operation of the gate.
I wondered who would see them and if they’d believe them.
“Take them away, then,” said the senator.
“You’re making a mistake, Senator,” Madison/Bestworst said, as they walked him off the porch.
“Perhaps,” said Loughery. “But my actions, mistaken or not, are within the law.”
Under his breath, Luis said, “Save it for the next campaign speech.”
Richard muttered, “Cynic.”
“Realist,” replied Luis.
I turned to watch Madison/Bestworst being taken off to an unmarked car and as I twisted around, my knee gave way. I collapsed against Clara, who barely caught me, slowing, but not preventing my fall.
They took me to the hospital, not, as the senator suggested, in a county sheriffs car, but in my parents’ Lincoln, the same car I took the guys to the prom in when this whole mess began. I’d said, “I’d just as soon avoid any more ‘official’ help.” Clara caught Impossible and put him in the barn, and came along. I stretched out in the back, my head in her lap.
Rick followed, with Joey and Marie, in his car.
I let Dad deal with the paperwork, but gave him my Wildside Investments insurance card.
“Is this any good?” he said. “Maybe I should use our insurance.”
I nearly blew up at him, but settled for, “Use mine, please. With any luck, we’ll make the CIA pay for it, anyway.” To my surprise, he did it my way.
The diagnosis was complicated by all the dirt, but came down to a burned shoulder (healing on its own), a torn ligament in my knee (which would require surgery eventually), multiple contusions and bruises, slight hearing loss in my right ear, and exhaustion.
“Can I have a bath?”
Straight-faced, the doctor said, “Please. Really. We would consider it a favor.”
They gave me pain meds, a knee brace of nylon, steel, and Velcro, a wooden cane, and then sent me away. “If you haven’t gone into shock before this, you aren’t going into shock now.”
Mom offered me my old bed at home, but I said I wanted to go back to the ranch.
“There are no mattresses!” Dad said.
I shrugged. “There’s the couch. I’ll make do.”
Mom said, “You can hardly walk.”
“If there’s no one there, who knows what those guys will do? It’s my place, and I want to keep an eye on it.”
They gave in.
Rick, Marie, and Joey left us there. Rick was going to drop them at Marie and Clara’s apartment, then go on to Chris. Clara came with us.
I sat up this time, my leg stretched across the backseat. “Was that car following us on the way to the hospital?”
Dad said, “What car?”
Mom said, “Yes, it was.”
Clara craned her neck around. “They aren’t being very subtle about it.”
“They’re FBI,” Mom said.
Dad’s voice raised. “How do you know that?”
“While you were checking Charlie into the emergency room, I went out and asked them. They showed me their ID. They say they’re doing this for our protection.”
I turned back around. “Well, it’s hardly covert, is it?”
Clara whispered something in my ear.
“Oh, yeah. Mom? I’ve got a note for you.” It was in my shirt pocket—they’d gone after my weapons and tools when they’d frisked me and missed the thin envelope. I handed it over the front seat and sat back without relaxing.
She stared at it long past the time needed to read it.
Finally she turned her head. Her eyes were wet, but her face was calm. “So that’s what happened to him.” She stared past Dad’s head for a moment, blankly, not focusing on anything, then said forcefully, “The idiot!”
“So you knew about the gate?” I blurted out.
Dad turned to stare at Mom, nea
rly hitting a car. He swerved back into his lane, swearing.
She looked at me briefly without saying anything, then took a tissue from her purse and blew her nose. “Let’s go by the house,” she said to Dad.
“I want to go to the ranch,” I said.
“It’s on the way and it will just take a minute,” Mom said. She faced forward, and it was hard to argue with the back of her head.
“Okay, then,” I said, and held Clara’s hand. I tried to lean back and relax, but it didn’t work.
Dad opened the garage with the remote while we were still up the street and drove right in.
Mom, Dad, and Clara climbed out quickly but it took me a moment to squirm through the car door in my leg brace.
We ended up in an odd grouping, Clara, Dad, and me by the car and Mom standing facing us, beyond the hood of the Lincoln.
I found myself watching Dad, who was frowning and looking at Mom as if he didn’t know her.
“You knew about the gate?” he said.
Mom nodded, “Of course I knew about the gate. I’ve always known about the gate.” She turned to the storage shelves at the back of garage, bent over, and pushed a dusty ice chest out of the way. Behind it, on the bottom shelf, was an old suitcase, hard-sided, and old-fashioned.
It had been around forever, as long as I had. Every time we moved to a new base, Mom and Dad would have the argument, so alike that by the time we moved here, it had become a ritual.
“When you going to throw this old thing out, honey? Do we have to move it again?”
“It’s all I have of my childhood. You wouldn’t have me leave my childhood behind?”
We’d always moved it, and I’d never seen it open, though there was a scratch on the top where I’d tried to force it once when I was nine.
Mom dragged the suitcase out onto the cement floor and tipped it over, then reached down and did something to the lock. It went “click” and she opened it flat on the floor. We stepped forward, drawn despite ourselves, and grouped around her.
She pushed aside a camera—an old bellows type, though I’ve never seen one with three lenses—then set aside a framed diploma and a graduation cap. I think it was a graduation cap, but it had five sides and two tassels. The diploma said ∆ΙΠΛΟΜΑ across the top in ornate letters and it seemed to be a ΔΟΚΤΟΡ ΟΦ ΦΙΛΟΣΦΙ in ΕΚΟΛΟΓΙ.
Below these things was an aluminum case with an ornate combination lock. Mom twisted and turned the dial until it, too, opened. Inside, padded in deteriorating foam rubber, was a block with buttons on it, metallic, like cast silver or tin.
Like the gate.
She pushed a button in the lower right quadrant and a blank area at the top lit up with green letters—Greek again.
“What is it?” I asked.
She turned it off. “A piece of useless junk—now. It’s the gate programmer. The thing that reconfigures the destination—the world version that the gate opens to.”
“Version? Like which alternate earth?” asked Clara.
Mom nodded.
“Where did you get that?” Dad asked. His voice was hoarse and he was trembling.
“We brought it with us,” she said. “Max and I. He kept track of the gate and I kept track of this.”
“Brought it?” said Dad. “From where?”
Mom looked at him, her head tilted to one side, and sighed. “From our home.”
“Ohio?” I said. I don’t think so.
“Well,” Mom said, “one version of Ohio, anyway.”
Clara took a step back. “Uh, you’re not from this earth.”
Mother smiled at her. “No. But I’ve lived here for over thirty years. This is my home.”
“I’ve gotta sit down,” I said.
Dad exhaled sharply. “You and me both.” He shook his head. “You tried to tell me, didn’t you, that night in New York.”
Mom nodded. “You didn’t take it very well.”
“I asked you to see a psychiatrist.” He hung his head for a moment. “Why didn’t you just show me?”
Mom shrugged. “You were in the military by then. What would you have done? I would’ve had to reprogram the gate and leave. I was pregnant.” She looked down at the control and her next sentence was almost inaudible.
“And I didn’t want to lose you.”
I winced.
Dad walked over to Mom and hugged her.
I felt uncomfortable, like a voyeur, a witness to something fundamentally private. It was embarrassing. One didn’t expect such behavior from one’s parents. I looked at Clara, to see if she was as shocked as I, but she was smiling and her eyes were wet.
Better, I guess, than thinking they didn’t love each other.
Mom shut the suitcase and sat back on her heels.
“I didn’t know about the passageway in the barn,” Mom said. “Max must have put the gate there after I moved away with your father. He was angry with me. Aunt Jo was local, like your father, so I was the only one from home, the only one Max could talk to freely about home, about the mission. I was sad, but I thought he’d understand eventually.
“Not that he didn’t love Aunt Jo—he even let her take him to that church of hers when she contracted cancer and went strange—but he couldn’t talk about our childhood in the preserves, or the vacations at sea, following the whale migrations, or Biome Census Month, or the terraforming of Britannia.”
My face felt stiff and the rest of me was numb. “Britannia?” I managed. “Like England?”
“Britannia in our path. It was rendered uninhabitable in the late eighteenth century. Our industrial revolution included crude and very unsafe nuclear reactors. There were thousands of extinctions. It was terrible. Oh, over a hundred thousand humans died, eventually. Serfs, mostly, unable to leave when things got bad.”
“Path,” said Clara. Her posture was tense, as if she wanted to run, and her eyes were narrowed as she looked at Mom like, well, like she was from another planet.
“Yes. Path. Universe. World. Our version of earth. It got worse, too. The evacuation of Britannia put a huge strain on Europe and the New World. Whole forests were leveled to make the ships that brought them away. The American Natives didn’t stand a chance. The railroads crossed North America by 1835. The coal fields were in full production ten years after that. The buffalo lasted another decade after that. The passenger pigeon followed in another three years.”
She’d been staring at something we couldn’t see as she talked, but at her last sentence she looked back at us. “The passenger pigeons. I should’ve known this was a cross-path anomaly when I read about them, but the discovery of isolated pockets of a species has happened before. For a moment, I hoped it was some scheme of Max’s, that he’d come back, but he took the mission far too seriously to risk the cross contamination. For Max, the mission was everything.”
“Contamination?” I said.
“Contamination. The pigeons. What sort of disease might they carry with them? Something they were proof against but could attack avian populations on this side? It’s a large enough problem just going from continent to continent. Did you know that over seventy billion dollars of economic damage is done annually by exotic plant and animal life mistakenly or accidentally imported into the United States?”
“But the passenger pigeon is native to the US,” I said. My stomach was sinking. I felt angry and scared at the same time.
“It was. Not anymore. What bacteria and parasites and viruses came with it?” She sighed. “It’s not your fault, Charlie. I would’ve told you about this long ago if I thought that the gate was still accessible. But when Uncle Max disappeared, and I couldn’t find the gate, I thought it was over. No gate, no mission. There wasn’t any point.”
“So what was the mission?” asked Dad.
Mom looked at him and took a large breath of air.
“The mission was a simple one. We watched, we waited, and we kept the gate safe.”
“Waited for what?” Dad asked.
&n
bsp; Mom looked from Dad to me and back again. “There are two different circumstances that would have resulted in making this path, this ‘wildside,’ accessible to the ‘tame side.’
“The favorable one required a massive shift in politics, economics, and attitude. It required an end to nonsustainable development, an end to extinctions, an end to the poisons being dumped into the biosphere. Essentially, it required that this path show it is ready to care for biomes, to use them in ways that don’t destroy them. I’m talking about stewardship, and not just by the few, but by the many.
“Then, the diversity of this planet would’ve been carefully restored. The wild path could’ve been used as a source for extinct species, as a classroom, as a laboratory. It would have even supported some careful sustainable development.”
She looked at Dad. “I’m afraid I didn’t see this happening. Extinctions are up. Economic conditions do not favor the careful use of resources. A hungry man thinks only about how he can feed his family today. He doesn’t care that how he feeds them today destroys his children’s tomorrow.”
I shifted my feet, disturbed by the bleak look on Mom’s face.
“What were the other circumstances?” asked Clara. “The other set of conditions under which you would have made the wildside accessible.”
Mom’s face got even bleaker.
“That criterion was very simple. If the human population of your path dropped below twenty million due to environmental degradation, we would have opened the wildside as a lifeboat, a second chance.
“A last chance.”
I saw Clara shudder and put my arm around her.
Clara hunched forward and leaned into me. “How many empty earths are there? The ones where humans didn’t evolve?”
“An almost-endless number,” Mom said.
Clara’s voice rose, pitched higher, “Then why is it a ‘last’ chance?”
Mom shook her head. “How many biospheres should one species be allowed to destroy? There are also an almost-endless number of worlds where humans did evolve. Do you take their second chance as well?”
Clara shook her head slowly. “No. Why twenty million?”
Mom closed her eyes and took a deep breath. For a moment I thought that she was angry, but when she opened her eyes she said, “Because that’s all the humans that were left on our path, when the discovery of cross-path gates saved us.”