Time Salvager (Time Salvager #1)(96)
Elise had long since given up trying to mold Rima into anything resembling a lab assistant. That became a moot point when Grace came on board anyway. However, the girl had become invaluable as Elise’s personal assistant. Rima still desperately wanted to stay near her, so instead of trying to make her something she wasn’t, Elise moved the girl out of the lab and put her natural skills to use. She had a rifle allocated to the girl full-time and had one of the tribesmen teach her how to drive one of the rickety ground cars. Now, Rima filled the roles of her personal assistant, bodyguard, and driver, making her completely invaluable to Elise day to day. There was no way Elise was going to give her up.
To both their surprises, it was James who finally broke the ice, mostly because of Grace’s continued insistence on calling him “pet.” That pushed Elise over the edge, and the two bickered so loudly that the people working on the roofs could hear them go at it. They arrived at an uneasy truce when Grace agreed to concede the nickname if Elise promised to find another assistant for her.
Since then, their relationship had warmed up little by little as Elise came to appreciate just how brilliant Grace was. In the short time since Grace had joined them, she had displayed a frightening aptitude for picking up research and, for the first time, Elise felt like she was making real headway on this Earth Plague cure. The way Grace was able to slide into her role and propel Elise’s work forward right away was uncanny. In return, Elise satiated Grace’s thirst for knowledge about the twenty-first century, Grace’s favorite period of time. It was also one of the reasons she had originally studied time travel.
Now, the two had settled into an awkward mentor-mother relationship built upon mutual goals, one-upmanship, and more than a bit of snark. Elise wouldn’t admit it, but she, after the initial hiccups, had eventually grown fond of the sharp-tongued elderly woman.
Right now, Elise kept the butterflies in her stomach under control as she joined James for a stroll. They had both been busy—James with keeping the lab and the tribe supplied, and Elise with her research. She wasn’t ready to admit it to him, or to herself for that matter, but she missed their time together. The two had seen each other very little ever since the tribe got behind her, and every time they did get the chance to spend some time together, she’d feel the tingling, nauseating thrill of her stomach twisting into knots. Not that she’d show it, of course.
They walked side by side, close together but shyly not touching, down the sky bridge paths, making small talk and making the circuit around the Farming Towers. Most of the glass panels on the passageway connecting the two structures were long gone, so the crosswinds constantly pushed her toward the edge. As they strolled across the sky bridge to the adjacent building, they passed several of the Elfreth making their way to the ground level. Several of the older women exchanged knowing smiles. Elise pretended not to notice, but her blush betrayed her.
“I brought you something.” James pulled a sunflower from inside his jacket. “I know how much you love flowers and how you always complain there aren’t any around anymore. I found this at one of my previous jumps. I thought it was pretty. I was going to save it for your birthday but—” he shrugged.
Elise’s face turned crimson as she accepted it. Sunflowers weren’t the first thing that came to mind in terms of romantic flowers, but this small gesture meant a lot to her. As she often did when slightly nervous, she began to gab.
She told him about her experiments and trials and how helpful Grace was. She moved on to the gossip within the Elfreth and how all the older women doted on her and tried to match-make her with some of the young strapping men in the tribe. She continued talking about her plans to make Rami her new apprentice and how she wanted to start a school to teach all the Elfreth children. She finally stopped herself when she realized that they had made an entire circuit around the Farming Towers and he hadn’t said a word. Elise decided she liked that about him. She appreciated how deeply he listened.
“How’s the cure coming along?” he finally broke his silence and asked.
“You realize,” she said, “assuming that it’s even possible, it’ll take years before we find a cure?”
“Years?” He frowned. “We don’t have that long. I can’t keep us hidden from ChronoCom forever. I thought you said back in your time, your people were already close to a cure.”
“We were,” she said. “Doesn’t mean we are now. Back in my day, the Earth Plague was only five isolated blooms in remote parts of the world. The damn thing is everywhere in this time.” Elise waved her arms in a big circle for emphasis just as a stiff breeze blew in, pushing her a little too close to the edge of the skyway for comfort. She squawked and latched on to James’s elbow.
“Why couldn’t you just start where you left off?” he asked.
“Because back in good ol’ 2097, we had this something called technology.” She hated sounding like a broken record. “Resources and manpower a little more sophisticated than a couple of Bunsen burners and a hundred-year-old lady.”
“I heard that,” Grace said in her head. “You really should learn how to control that comm band of yours. I’m worth a hundred of your primate scientists, by the way.”
“Stop listening in on me,” Elise thought back. It was true, though. She was awful with comm band management and tended to blab all her thoughts accidentally to both James and Grace, the only two others with bands in the camp. It had led to several awkward exchanges. She closed Grace’s channel.