By Ron Hooft 1995
By Ron Hooft 1995
Redmond Quain flung open the door to the lab and got a fist in the lower jaw for his carelessness. On most other days he would have been in touch with his inner voices. He would have felt a presence behind the entrance - if nothing deeper. For all his training and skill, he had missed this one, and it could have cost him his life.
It was a lucky thing Adra Davis was on the other end of that fist, and not someone else, someone with more on their mind than revenge for being stood up. True, Baxter's was not the `hot spot' of the twenty second century, - more `Mcdonald's' than `Chez Pierre'- and he hadn't actually promised to be there, but he'd implied it.
Besides, that wasn't the point, she felt jilted, and in any century that was enough to usher forth the full wrath of even the most docile female. Redmond noted that of all the things that could be said about Adra Davis, docile was nowhere among them.
He'd always had a flair for attracting strong women. Usually it worked to his advantage, but sometimes...
" Adra, I can explain." he began, but what could he tell her? The truth was out of the question, she'd never believe him. Worst of all, if by some small miracle she did, it could compromise his whole mission, not to mention putting her life in danger.
Better to lie. The fact was: he'd never had any intention of seeing her again anyway. In three days from now he'd be finished his assignment and safely back in his chosen time, back with Rachel.
He decided he owed her at least part of the truth.
" I'm married." he said sheepishly, but without apology , " I was going to tell you, but..."
" You son of a bitch." she hissed, and slapped him hard. " You lying bastard son of a bitch. When were you going to tell me? Right between, `Was it good for you?' and `Pass me a smoke?" He could have stopped her hand from finding it's mark, he was prepared for it this time, but the truth was, he had used her. She deserved an opportunity to get even.
" Well let me tell you something, mister." she continued while waving a finger in his face. " You'll never get that chance now." And with that, she stormed down the long hall way.
He watched her go and wished there was something he could say, something that would make her understand, but there wasn't. As she neared the door she turned. Her surprise at seeing him still standing there was obvious. Deep down she felt a flicker of satisfaction from the remorse she sensed from him.
For some that would have been enough, but Adra wasn't the type to let a man off the hook so easily.
" And you know what's sad?" she asked in consoling tones.
" I really liked you. I would have given you the best damn night of your life.... Now you'll never know." She walked the last few steps to the door, opened it, and without looking back, slammed it behind her.
Quain stood there for a moment in deep contemplation. Had it really been necessary to use her to get to Dillard? Or was she right, had he chosen her out of some subconscious lustful desire? " She'll make someone an interesting bond mate some day." he thought. If not for Rachel, he might have been tempted to taste the forbidden fruit himself, but even if he wasn't previously involved, that kind of tampering with the past was not permitted to him.
A child out of timeline was a complication he didn't need, and the odds of pregnancy when paring humans with dolmans -particularly a male dolman with a human female - were almost one hundred percent in favour, no matter what contraceptive devices were used as prevention.
What he'd told Adra was not quite true. He and Rachel weren't married in the traditional sense. They were bond mates, and in every sense, that meant far more than just being married.
She was part of him. Every time he crossed over to another time line, their bond link was broken. Every time, a part of him was torn away as if she'd died.
This mission had gone on far too long. He missed her.
It wasn't the same for Rachel, and Redmond had to constantly fight down the urge to resent that fact.
For her, his journeys took only a matter of minutes, not days or weeks as they did for him.
Some times, as the endless minutes passed, she would drift into a day dream. She would recall times she and Redmond had spent on past missions. Times she knew she was remembering, as they were occurring in the timeline Redmond currently occupied. Times that hadn't existed before the very moment she recalled them. Yet the memories remained as valid as those they had replaced.
Only Redmond retained the full knowledge, and scope of change, their actions brought to the world they were to save from themselves, and he never spoke of the paradox unless it was relevant to their next mission.
As he entered the lab, the hairs on the back of his neck stood on end. He knew who was waiting for him, he'd set up the meeting two days ago, - with Adra's help. Yet the fact that he was actually here where it would all begin, was still a little overwhelming, - even for him.
A muffled voice from across the room, called to him by name.
" Ah, Quain. Over here my friend." Doctor Dillard was anything but a friend. The mere thought of what this man was capable of would have driven a lesser individual to kill the butcher where he stood, but that wasn't part of the plan. This bastard would live to murder over a billion people before his end came at the hands of an angry mob.
The next two years would see the bloodiest conflict earth had ever faced, but in the end she would stand united under one government.
The build up of armaments would be outlawed to individual countries, and the only legal army would be a United Nations peace keeping force, made up of what remained of the worlds war machine.It was a crucial time in the history of this planet, and without Dillard, none of it would ever come to be.
Irony was a recurring theme in Redmond's trade, and that's why he was here to SAVE the scums life, not to end it, as every moral instinct he had was demanding of him.
He kept his feelings hidden behind a warm smile and a pleasant demeanour. " Doctor. Dillard I presume?" he said, and chuckled as he remembered where he'd heard that quote before.
The parallels were there in a sardonic sort of way, Stanley had travelled across endless jungle to find the man he so admired, while Redmond had travelled across the centuries to find the one he most despised.
" I see your in a little hot water with my assistant. She's a fine woman." Dillard said. " You could do a lot worse."
" I'm afraid we've had a misunderstanding." Redmond answered. " But it's for the best."
" Pity... I've been trying to get her out more. She's a bit of a workaholic, you see. But that's not what you've come to see me about, is it?"
" No sir, I have reason to believe that an attempt will be made on your life in the next few day's. I've been sent to protect you."
" An attempt on my life? Who sent you?"
" I'm sorry. I'm not at liberty to say, Doctor."
" The Agency... So they're finally taking me seriously."
Redmond made no reply, but took on the stoic air he was famous for.
" Oh it's alright, Mister Quain. I've had death threats before. One gets used to that sort of thing when you're in my line of work."
" This is no ordinary threat, sir. If I don't stop him, he WILL succeed. I advise you to follow my instructions to the letter."
Dillard eyed the tall slim man with suspicion.
" My last body guard told me the same thing. As you see, I'm still here... By all means do your job, Mister Quain, but do it from afar. I have a lot work ahead of me."
Dillard went back to his charts.
Redmond felt like a school boy who'd just been dismissed from the principles office.
" Sir, I...' he began, but the doctor cut him off.
" I'm an old man, Mister Quain. Don't expect me to cower at the thought of my own demise... When my work is finished, I will welcome a peaceful death."
Redmond hadn't been prepared for Dillard's attitude. From what he'd read in preparation for this mission, Dillard was a paranoid little man, prone to fits of depression, vanity, and a single mindedness that forged the foundation for his vial acts.
This man had been known to order the execution of innocent people he merely SUSPECTED of plotting against him. Yet all Quain could get from scanning the Doctors mind, was a sense of weariness, and sincere resignation that his work would, in all likelihood, be completed by someone else. Maybe the Doctor's mental state would change over the next few months, he thought. Yet surely there should be some evidence of his impending condition.
Redmond felt suddenly strange, as if the room had shifted a foot to the left. Normally he was rock steady, fully aware of his surroundings, but now he found it hard to focus on the task at hand, a feeling he'd never experienced before.
No, he remembered now. Just before he'd met Adra at the door to the lab, he'd been disoriented. That's why he hadn't felt her presence. But the effect was hardly noticeable compared to this.
His muscles tensed and a wave of nausea came over him. It sent danger signals to every part of his body at once. Dolmans didn't get nausea as a rule, but when they did, it was usually a sign of extreme trauma. Yet, he had suffered no trauma. Quain was suddenly plagued by a strange sense of Deja vu.
Redmond caught the change in Dillard's facial expression. A fear that hadn't been in his mind only a second ago, expressed itself freely in his features. Was he experiencing the shift as well?
As suddenly as the shift had come, it was gone again. Quain let out an inward sigh of relief, but Dillard still seemed agitated. Mind racing, fear gripping every fibber of his being, an unmistakable imbalance just behind the left temporal lobe. Then that was gone as well.
Quain walked to where Dillard was sitting, and bent close to him in order to get a better scan. " Are you alright, Doctor?" he asked.
The Doctor shook his head slowly. " Yes... Yes of course I am. Why shouldn't I be?" He stood and moved toward a work station, pulled up a stool, and told his computer to bring up the file on R6.
" Do you Know my work, Mister... Quain?"
" Only what I've read, and that was rather vague. Something about Regenerative genetics?"
" Quite right. A boon to man kind. Soon, if you lose an arm or a leg, or your kidney or heart fail, I will be capable of growing you a new one in a matter of hours, rather than the usual six to eight years. And, I will be able to do it with less than .001 percent probability of rejection. Yet, I have to wonder... Your a soldier, of sorts. You tell me the implications of such an advancement."
" The field potential is enormous...as long as the other side doesn't have the same technology." He didn't know what else to say. Redmond knew that within the next six months, Dillard would be in the process of building an army of mutants.
Soldiers injected with the R6 gene were virtually immortal. If one was wounded in battle, the program would repair and regenerate the afflicted aria without the need for medics. A man would fall, only to rise again twice as healthy as he was before.
The only problem was the indirect side effect the serum had on the brain. Trauma experienced when a soldier was injured would naturally put him into shock. That proved to be the catalyst for a bizarre chemical reaction to take place, temporarily shutting down that part of the brain responsible for conscience, love, compassion, and empathy.
When in that state, unspeakable horrors were perpetrated without the slightest remorse. That is, until the drug wore off. Most of the first test subjects went insane upon realizing what they had done, but Dillard had a solution for that too.
It turned out that all he had to do was keep his subjects in a perpetual state of shock. This he eventually accomplished by adding a virulent strain of flesh eating bacteria to the serum. Now the Agency had the perfect killing machines. Men on the edge of sanity, with nothing to lose but their inner torment, and nothing at all to gain.
These walking dead not only wreaked death and destruction upon enemy troops, but a short time after the bacteria was introduced to the gene, R6 mutated it, facilitating the realization of the disease's dormant desire to become air born.
They brought with them a plague such as the world had never seen. Whole populations were decimated in a matter days after contact with `The legions of the beast', as they came to be known.
" The field potential." Dillard spat the phrase in disgust, as if the taste of those words were poison on his lips.
" We can always count on Your people to twist a miracle into an abomination. Hasn't your damn war brought enough misery?"
Again Redmond was surprised by the doctors reaction. This was not the man Redmond had come to despise.
" When we met, you seemed relieved that the Agency was taking you seriously. If that's not the way you feel, why continue developing R6?" Quain was travelling dangerous ground, but something was terribly wrong. He needed answers.
" I am not an unpatriotic man, Mister Quain. But if it were only for patriotic reasons, I would burn this building and my life's work, to the ground. The war won't last for ever.
Then, out of the darkness of despair, R6 will arise to take it's rightful place as a medical break through.
It's the medical potential that drives me, Quain! Your god forsaken war be damned! I will let history judge its outcome, but the merits of my work are beyond question. If it were not for the Government funding, I'd be the first to tell the Agency what to do with its meddling. "
" How Ironic," thought Quain. Dillard had it all wrong, It was history itself that was being judged here.
At that moment, another wave of nausea hit him hard, and again the room listed violently to the left. Quain heard a voice from the back of his head. In his confusion, his senses told him the sound came from behind. He turned quickly, photon weapon drawn, ready to do battle if the need arose. No one was there.
Dillard looked pale, his eyes clouded and unfocused. A weak scan of his mind revealed only a sub-conscious garble consistent with a man near coma.
" Redmond!" The voice screamed at him. He turned again almost losing his balance in an effort to respond, and then he knew the unthinkable was true. His bond was reconnected.
" Rachel?" he was slipping into a darkness he'd never experienced before, and his mind fought to keep him aware a few minutes longer. He found her presence anchoring him as the room began to shift again. This time it didn't stop.
As the lab continued on a slow rotation to the left, a fog of swirling colours drifted by like smoke in slow motion, interweaving with a ray of sun shine streaming through a window on a hot summers day. He fondly remembered better times on another world, light years from here.
Redmond could discern only vague shapes at first, but as his head cleared to a tolerable level, he began to understand what the shapes really were: Windows in time, past events captured on a photon beam. Quain knew full well what that meant, Time was somehow moving past him faster than the speed of light. - This type of photonic imaging wasn't possible otherwise.
" I remember." Rachel said through the link. " Not all of it, but enough to know something's gone terribly wrong. I think Your in a nexus caused by a linear shift in time and space. Somehow we've caused a focus in the continuum and it's manifesting itself as a small black hole. As far as I can tell, time, where earth is concerned, is converging, falling in on itself. You were...Are, at the centre of that nexus."
" Who was sent to kill Dillard?" He asked through the link. That had been an unknown from the beginning, but a reply wasn't necessary. From across the room he saw the door to the lab open in slow motion. He saw himself walk in. His photon weapon pulsing red with pent up energy, begging for release. Redmond instantly understood that it was set to kill. His double raised the gun and took careful aim as he scanned the room.
" Wait!" Redmond shouted.
As the two men's line of sight connected, he saw the pain in his own eye's for the first time, and knew what it was going to cost him to leave this place in more or less one piece.
" What are you doing here?" He heard the other Redmond ask. -The question was echoed over the bond link.
Rachel responded instantly. " You have to tell me when and why you were sent to kill Dillard. Only you can know that, Redmond. We have to find out which timeline is the one that must continue."
" I don't know...I can't remember. Are you in contact with my double as well?"
" No, I shouldn't even be linked to you." she didn't say it, but her time line was shifting as well, falling backward almost imperceptibly, but that wouldn't last.
Rachel knew, instinctively, that what was going on would have never ending repercussions if it was not stopped before the black hole grew much larger than an atom.
" Then there's only one way to find out." Redmond thought. Talking to yourself is one thing, but talking to yourself standing across the room, with a charged photon weapon pointed at your chest, is another.
" Why were you sent to kill him?" They asked simultaneously, though the dream-like fog.
The double looked as if he were in deep thought for a moment and then answered.
" Rachel says you must tell her to bring you back now. We're caught in a nexus. For obvious reasons I can't tell you why, but it's MY time line that must prevail."
" No!" Rachel shouted. " Tell me...her, I was wrong back then, and she's wrong now. - Damn, this is confusing!"
" I'm not here to kill him." Both men said.
The Double's lips were a full three seconds out of sync with his voice.
Redmond was going to ask about the photon weapon he was brandishing, then changed his mind. If his double had wanted to kill Dillard, the doctor would have already been dead, and had HE arrived in the situation as his double had, his reaction would have been the same - find the danger, and if possible, eliminate it. Besides, why would his past self lie to him? What would he gain?
Redmond noticed something odd about that gun. Then instantly he knew what it was... he'd never seen that design before.
As his mind bent around the ramifications of his latest revelation, the door to the lab opened again.
" Redmond!" Rachel cried. " I remember..." but it was too late.
A number of things happened at the same moment: A third Redmond Quain entered the room with weapon drawn, and set to maximum. He moved with lightning speed toward Dillard - apparently immune to the effects of the nexus, and oblivious of the other two in the room. Redmond drew his weapon, and for the first time since this began, Knew exactly what course of action he must take.
The first double fired on the third and vaporised him in mid stride. His Shock and surprise burned itself into Redmond's mind as he watched himself die in agony.
Yet, without hesitation, he fired on the first double, sending that self to the same fate as the first, and in considerably more pain.
A strange, knowing smile crossed the double's lips as he faded out of existence. Then all that was left was a photon weapon, clattering on the concrete floor. The nexus was weakening, but not completely gone.
" My God, Redmond. What have you done?" The voice echoed it's horror through his mind.
" Given this planet - and us - a new lease on life.. I hope. But it's not over yet, Rachel. Those two were from the distant future. Our future, not our past."
" What are you saying?" Rachel asked.
" What I'm saying is, this is the first time we've done this... but it won't be our last. We may have to reevaluate our course of action. A wrong decision now, will mean repeating what we just went through, at infinitum."
Redmond noticed that Doctor Dillard had come out of his comatose state, and was holding the abandoned photon weapon in his hand.
" I have seen the future, Mister Quain. I can not allow my work to be perverted in that way."
Tears rolled down his cheeks as he held the weapon to his temple. Redmond lunged across the room to stop the inevitable, but Dillard had already pushed the fire button, and was dissolving before his eyes. The nexus subsided.
" I'm bringing you back, Redmond." Rachel said.
The link vanished, only to return full force when Redmond re-materialized in the twenty sixth century. Rachel flung her arms around him, and they flowed into each other as if they were a single unit.
" We're back where we started from, aren't we?" Redmond asked in the after glow. Rachel handed him a data pad from her desk.
" It seems Doctor Dillard's assistant, Doctor Adra Davis, completed his work and sold it to the Agency. They made her chief of medicine, where she went on to modify R6 for the war effort. Two years later there was a successful democratic uprising, the war was stopped by the new interim government, and a few weeks later, she was mobbed and bludgeoned to death on the street just outside her home."
" So the time line, up to this point, has been restored?" Redmond sighed and leaned back against the wall.
" That's something we have to talk about." Rachel whispered.
Redmond pushed himself forward and faced her. " What do you mean?" he asked with a ting of exasperation.
" I know why you killed your doubles. At the same time Dillard pushed the trigger and took his life, I linked with myself in the two future time lines your doubles came from.
You were right when you said it wasn't over, and it will never be finished as long as Crossover exists. We don't belong in this time line, Redmond. We came here to find a way to prevent the destruction of the planet in the late twenty ninth century. I'm not sure why we didn't remember that, but it just goes to show how messed up things have become.
In a very real way, those two were from our past. Somewhere in the future, you've left me grieving for you in two time lines. If you had killed them in any other continuum outside of the nexus, you would have ceased to exist all together, but you knew that. I have to believe you knew. "
" It was the only thing I could do." he answered solemnly.
" You have to go back, Redmond."
Quain steeled himself for what he knew was coming next, but he had to ask the question, if only on the off chance that he was wrong.
" To what time period?"
" A couple of days before you met me." Rachel said without emotion.
His worst fears were being realized.
" You were right, back then. I should have known I couldn't stay in control of Crossover forever. We came to save this world, but every step we take just drives us deeper into uncertainty"
He took her in his arms and kissed her. Their minds intertwined for what he knew might be the last time.
" You have to stop me from creating it, Redmond." she said catching her breath. " No matter what it takes... Do you understand?"
Even now, he was mentally preparing for this next mission. Though the totality of what she was asking threatened to drag him to the depths of despair, he silently promised her he would find a way to make things right. He wouldn't let it come to that.
His arms tightened around her, and he gained strength from the sharing.
" I'll miss you." he whispered.