How close were the boilers to letting go? Jake’s hand crept up to the panic button under his shirt.
Brownson said, “We can’t bring information from the future to the past, but we can’t bring it forward either. Not if we could tell other people what we found. I planted the bomb.”
Overhead, the moon vanished within the clouds, and darkness covered the steamboat. Brownson’s voice came out of the black. “It was sealed. Undefusable. When I set it, when I couldn’t get away, I made the first trip. I’ve proven that you can travel in time, but no one will ever know.”
“How much time?” Jake’s hand caressed the switch.
“How much time did you give yourself?”
“We didn’t do anything.”
“You didn’t? Then it must be something else. Something unexpected.” Brownson faced away from the river, looking over the sleeping forms. The two soldiers Jake had talked to earlier were still conversing. “Lincoln’s dead, the cowards. Lincoln’s dead,” spoke one, his voice without feeling. Brownson said, “You poor boy. These men didn’t do anything either, but their stories are over. The unexpected is on its way for them, the inevitable, as it is for me, here or in my lab or somewhere else.” He paused for a raspy breath. “Just as it is for you. Your lab won’t be there long.”
Before he could hear another word, before the boilers could let loose to fling hundreds of men into the frigid Mississippi, before the bitter soldier talking in the cloud-veiled night could say again that Lincoln was dead, Jake pressed the button and disappeared.
Martin sat at the worktable, his hands wrapped around the back of his head, his forehead pressed against the scarred work surface. He didn’t look at Jake when he appeared in the room, but he talked anyway. Perhaps he’d been talking the whole time. “Our destinations weren’t random. The physics of the paradox tossed us where we couldn’t matter.”
“I know.”
“The math says that Pelee is here, right here in the room with us, and so is the Sultana and the Hindenburg and everything else. The end is on its way.” He began weeping.
“What did you say about Brownson’s math?” said Jake.
“Tornado. Earthquake. Meteor strike. Nuclear bomb. Fire. Flood. Famine… quick famine. It’s on the way. That’s how the equations balance.”
Jake ripped open his shirt. Double checked the equipment. Power was good. “You told me something about the math once, about the equations.” He looked out the window. Was the sky turning dark? Was there a rumble in the building’s basement. The unexpected was surely on its way. “Brownson told us that information couldn’t travel in time. That’s the paradox at work, but you said the math never solved perfectly. The numbers were always a little unbalanced.”
“I don’t get you,” said Martin. “The numbers don’t matter now.”
“Only thirty-three people died on the Hindenburg. One man survived Mount Pelee. Five hundred or so lived through the Sultana.” Jake spoke fast. What had happened began to make sense, if he had enough time. If he could get to where he needed to go before the time ran out. “If information is prevented from traveling backwards and forwards perfectly, if the equations add up perfectly, then we should only have been able to travel where there were no survivors. There could be no chance for escape, but if I get to the right place I might have a chance.”
He pressed the button and found himself on a steel deck, slick with ice. The ship’s name, Halifax, was printed across a lifeboat.
He pressed the button. Martin flinched when he reappeared.
Jake pressed again. Another mountain rose up before him. Its top too was smoke-covered.
He pressed the button. Martin said, “Where are you going?”
The button gave way. A cityscape. People streamed by, many on bicycles. Street signs were in Japanese. Without looking, he knew a lone bomber flew over the city.
“Tell me where and when,” shouted Martin.
Jake paused, ready to go again. How much time did he have? None to be wasted, for sure, but the numbers didn’t lie. Their imperfections held all the hope he needed. Maybe most of information could not go from the future to the past. All he could believe was that in the fractions that didn’t add up, he could slip away.
“The Hindenburg,” he said. “If I wait long enough. If I jump from the widow not so high that I’ll die, not so low that the ship will crush me, then I’ll survive. Sixty-two people lived. I can be the uncounted sixty-third.”
There’s no point in not trying, he thought, and he pressed the button.
ONE DAY IN THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT
Redmond came out of coldsleep fast, an amphetamine and neurostimulator crashload whacking about his head and limbs like fire alarms. Even before his pod opened he ran security on Grant and found his sleep-pod was warm, bios off. A quick check confirmed what Redmond feared: they were thirty-seven years too soon; everyone else slumbered on, teetering so close to death’s edge that their bodies forgot to age. Just the two of them were awake on the Atonement, a half million ton starship slowly accelerating toward Zeta Reticuli with enough colonial equipment and frozen, fertilized ova to seed a new world, and Grant meant to kill him.
Pulling sensors off his chest and arms, Redmond cursed under his breath. He’d programmed the system to alert him much sooner, when there was any change in Grant’s readout. Grant must have figured a way to fool part of Redmond’s security, or he’d weaseled a gimmick into the meds to wake him quicker. Either way, his plan wasn’t good enough, or Redmond would be dead now.
The computer told him every door between the north and south sleepbays was locked. So, unless Grant was already in the south sleepbay with him, he had time to prepare a defense, and if he didn’t get him that way, to hunt him down.
Maybe Grant was in the chamber with him. Maybe he was standing beside the pod, waiting, rage in his eyes and something deadly in his hands. Redmond watched the countdown before the pod opened. One minute to go. He drummed his fingers on the luminescent, slick inner surface, glowing a thin crimson around him. He imagined Grant poised outside. Redmond reached beneath his thigh and wrapped his fingers around the zoology supply tranquilizer gun he’d smuggled into the pod. Cool metal felt ominous against his palm.
He couldn’t picture shooting his brother, but it was time to end this.
The sleeproom was empty. Redmond sat, his gun in hand, and surveyed. Half the crew slept in this end of the ship; the other slept nearly a mile away. That way a catastrophe might not take them all. They’d be able to continue. A movement in the corner of his eye startled him. He tracked the gun toward it. It was a maintenance robot rolling toward a bot tunnel, an aperture barely large enough to accommodate the eighteen inch tall and two foot wide machine. Redmond shuddered. The round-shelled mechs reminded him of cockroaches, really big ones, scuttling behind the walls. The bot scooted through the hatch that opened with a distinct, pneumatic wheeze. Even that sounded insect-like and horribly organic.
He moved to a workstation, keeping his gun raised, and woke the rest of the system. Vid monitors flickered into life.
“Where’s Grant?” he said.
“There is no one named Grant aboard the ship,” said the computer.