The Rising(66)

“But by your own admission,” the woman’s voice blared in clear argumentative fashion, “the events forming that pattern took place over an extended period of time. How can you reconcile that with the immediacy suggested by this space bridge of yours being completed?”

“Precisely the question I’ve asked myself a thousand times, until I came up with an answer that made sense. If we accept the pattern as an early warning sign, then we’re suggesting the events are directly related to the space-time continuum, which must be manipulated in order to create what is essentially a rudimentary wormhole. And in that continuum, time gets skewed between chronological and effectively practical. In other words, what transpires over a week or a month in our time might only be a blink, a moment or a minute, within the void itself once the door on the other side of the space bridge was opened.”

Donati assumed Top Left would offer the first response to that and he was right. “And you believe that’s what happened eighteen years ago. Someone or something came through that door you built from the other side.”

“I can’t say with any certainty that anything came through per se, sir, but I can say they opened the door we’d built from that other side—blew it open, to be more accurate, with enough quantum force to destroy the entire facility.”

“Get back to the present, Dr. Donati,” said Bottom Right. “You’ve already detailed your evidence of this pattern reoccurring. But this door you built has been closed for some eighteen years—not just closed, but obliterated when Laboratory Z was destroyed. I imagine you and your director, this Orson Wilder, were lucky to survive.”

“Indeed,” Donati acknowledged. “Just because we didn’t build the door this time, sir, doesn’t mean somebody else didn’t. And maybe it’s taken all of those eighteen years to achieve.”

“By which you seem to be suggesting something may indeed have come through that door eighteen years ago and has been laying the groundwork for whatever’s coming all that time.”

“The thought had crossed my mind, sir,” Donati affirmed in obvious understatement.

“The question,” said the woman in the top right, “is what, or who, exactly? And where?”

“I can expound forever on who or what, but can speak more authoritatively on where,” Donati explained. “See, if you continued along the line of the Earth’s curvature as suggested by the original pattern, you’d cross right through Laboratory Z. Follow today’s pattern in the same manner and you’ll end with a grid that contains the new doorway with a reasonable degree of certainty.”

“I’d strongly suggest,” said Top Left, “that there can be no degree of certainty of any kind pertaining to this topic.”

“We’re talking in theoretical concepts here,” Donati reminded him, “not absolutes.”

“I believe we all understand that much,” the lone woman chimed in. “Much harder to grasp is precisely what all this portends and what exactly we’re supposed to do about it.”

“I don’t have answers for either of those questions at this time, ma’am,” Donati conceded. “If whoever was on the other side of that door eighteen years ago is coming back, though, I can tell you one thing with a reasonable degree of certainty.”

“And what’s that, Doctor?”

“That this time they’re going to get it right.”





NINE

END OF THE ROAD

Blessed are the hearts that can bend;

they shall never be broken.



—ALBERT CAMUS





67

THE WOODS

ALEX AND SAM HUDDLED against the cold, tucked into the lip of the coast redwoods forest, safe from sight of the road.

“He’s not coming back,” she said softly between quivering lips.

“I know.”

“What are we going to do?”

Alex hugged her tightly in response but didn’t answer, because he didn’t know. Somehow the canopy provided by the towering redwoods made him feel safer. The trees of this forest were some of the tallest and oldest in the state, but little known to nonresidents compared to the more famous forests farther north. As a boy, he’d often imagined them coming to life, unhinging their roots from the ground and moving en masse to save the world from monsters making war on it.

If only they could do that now …

“The sun’ll be up soon,” he said finally. “It’ll get warmer.”

“That’s not an answer.”

“It’s something.”

Sam continued to tremble against him, whimpering softly.

“I’m scared,” she said, voice hushed and cracking.

“I know.”

“I mean really scared. If they know who I am—”

“They don’t know who you are.”

“But if they do, my parents…”

She left the thought to dangle, hanging in the crisp air.

“When I was a little girl, I’d wake up scared like this some nights and wait for the sun to come up. Because I knew once it did, everything would be okay. But it’s not gonna be okay this time, is it?”

Alex eased Sam from his embrace but still held her tight. “I don’t know.”