Why bring this to Jade?
And Jade had said, You think I can find proof that Phantom Time is real?
Roche had died before answering the question.
“You think Jade is going to find something.” He watched for a reaction, but this time, the Changeling woman maintained a steady poker face. “What? Something to do with Phantom Time?”
He thought he saw a faint glimmer of amusement in her eyes. Okay, not Phantom Time. What then? “Well, you’re right to be worried. Jade can be a regular bulldog when she puts her mind to something, but I guess you’re already figuring that out.”
“It’s not for you.”
Eve spoke so softly that it took him a moment to comprehend what she had said.
“What? What’s not for me?”
She did not answer and he had to turn his full attention back to the matter of driving as the trees thinned and the trail dipped down into a drainage ditch before rising back up to a dirt road. He down-shifted and engaged the four-wheel drive low range, then eased down the embankment. The vehicle nosed down so steeply that he had to make a conscious effort not to take his foot off the accelerator and brace himself to keep from falling. The SUV’s front bumper scraped the bottom of the ditch for a moment, then the vehicle tilted up and it was all he could do to keep his foot on the gas pedal.
When the vehicle was finally level again he turned to Eve. “Will you at least tell me which way to go?”
“That depends on where you’re going.”
“How about we go join the rest of your friends? I’m game if you are.”
She looked forward again, refusing to answer.
Professor shook his head and stared out the windshield at the deeply rutted road. From what he could tell, it ran north-south, leaving him with a fifty-fifty chance of getting it right on the first try. He could always backtrack if he hit a dead-end, but such a mistake might cost valuable time, or possibly exhaust his fuel supply, leaving him stranded. The ruddy glow of the distant fire was brightest to the north. Depending on how the road meandered, it might take them right into the heart of the blaze.
“Two roads diverged in a wood,” he muttered. “So I flipped a coin.”
He cranked the wheel to the right, turning the SUV away from the fire, but Eve stopped him. “Go the other way.”
He corrected immediately, veering to the left and, as soon as the wheels were all pointing forward, shifted the four-wheel drive back into high-range. “Why the change of heart?”
“Because I don’t know how far that road goes, but I do know that if you run out of gas out in the middle of nowhere, I’m screwed. Since you dislocated my knee, I won’t be walking out, and I doubt you’ll be able to carry me very far. It’s pretty simple math, really. Oh, and I don’t think that’s how the poem goes.”
“Poem?”
“Robert Frost. The Road Not Taken. ‘Two roads diverged in a wood and I, I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference.’”
“Ah. I didn’t think you were familiar with Frost.”
“You’re thinking of Jeanne Carrera.”
He looked at her again, wondering about the woman under the mask. “Is it worth it?”
“What?”
“Whatever it is you get from playing this game. Wearing a mask all the time. Living other people’s lives instead of your own.”
She turned away and looked straight ahead. “You don’t know anything about me.”
He shrugged and did the same, pushing the SUV as fast as conditions would permit. The headlight beams picked up the smoke in the air, but after about two miles, the road began to veer away from the fire. Not long after that, the road came to a T-junction with a paved highway.
“Left,” Eve said without looking.
He followed this guidance, but remained wary. Her pragmatic explanation for helping him earlier did not carry as much weight now that they had reached a road more traveled. “So where are we anyway? New Zealand?”
She gave a short, humorless laugh. “I figured you would have worked that out already.”
“I’m in the ballpark, right?”
“Tasmania.”
“Ah, of course.” The island of Tasmania, located a hundred and fifty miles off the south-eastern tip of Australia, shared the same latitude as parts of New Zealand, but was about eight hundred miles further west. “Well that’s a little embarrassing.”
Tasmania was fairly large for an island, about the same size as Ireland, but with only one-eighth the population, half of which was concentrated in the capital city of Hobart, with the rest mostly occupying settlements on the coast. Nearly half of the island had been set aside for parks or nature preserves, most of which were not easily accessible by vehicle, making it the perfect place to hide from the rest of the world.
“I take it that wasn’t your permanent headquarters.”
“We don’t have ‘headquarters.’ I told you. We are everywhere.”
“Well, it won’t be too hard to root you out.” He reached over and tugged the dangling flap of latex, revealing a little more of her true face.
She looked away again, staring absently out the side window. “Not everyone wears a mask.”
That thought was chilling. If the Changelings had truly been infiltrating the halls of power for several generations, then there would be no need for them to replace world leaders. They could simply leverage their preferred candidates into the limelight, and let democracy take care of the rest.
“I don’t believe you,” he lied. “But it doesn’t matter. You’re afraid. Afraid that Jade will find something that will utterly destroy you, and that tells me that you’re a lot weaker than you want me to believe.”
She continued giving him the silent treatment, which seemed proof enough that he was right. I have to contact Jade, he thought. Let her know that she’s on the right track. But how?
How indeed, if even the omniscient Changelings could not find her?
A light appeared further down the road, the headlights of an approaching car, the first he had seen. Probably someone coming to investigate the fire, he thought. But what if it’s not? What if it’s more Changelings coming to see why Eve was taking so long?
There was something strange about the lights too, but with them shining directly in his eyes, he couldn’t quite put his finger on what was bothering him. When the lights were only about a hundred yards away, Eve broke her silence, speaking in a calm detached manner. “They drive on the left here.”
Professor hauled the steering wheel to the side, veering into the left lane, even as the sound of the oncoming car’s horn reached his ears. The SUV shuddered as he fought to regain control, and for a moment, he thought it might go tumbling down the highway. Instead, the vehicle spun around sideways, the rear end clipping a white guard post, and then rebounded away, spinning across both lanes, just missing the passing car, and hit another guard post on the right side of the road.
Something exploded in Professor’s face, showering him with a spray of hot vapor and debris, and then his face slammed into the airbag that had deployed from the center of the steering wheel. The collision combined with the unexpected punch from the safety system left him momentarily dazed, but even before his wits returned, he started groping for the door handle. It took him a few seconds to realize that the door was already open, sprung out of its frame by the crash, and that the only thing holding him a prisoner of the wrecked SUV was his seat belt.
As he wrestled with the buckle, a bright red glow from outside the vehicle caught his attention. It was the brake lights of the car he had narrowly missed. The back-up lights came on, and the car began rolling backwards down the road.