Madman's Dance (Time Rovers #3)(142)

Cynda ignored him. Hopkins sucked in a deep breath, waiting for the first concussion. All they heard was a dog barking in the distance.



“You got lucky,” he said.

“Luck has nothing to do with it. That means the barrels are not within fifty yards of here.”

“So sayeth the Morrisey,” Hopkins muttered.

The second hand marched forward, but there was no indication that she’d synced up with 2058. Cynda gave it another wind. Nothing. “What’s yours doing?”

Reluctantly, Hopkins performed the same movements. His head slowly rose, eyes wide. “I’m not syncing at all. Not even with Guv. It’s like they’re not there.”

Cynda waited as he came to grips with what that meant.

“The time distortion has moved passed us,” he said in a barely audible voice. “We’re stuck here, aren’t we?”

“You got it.”

As Hopkins paced and stewed, Cynda sat on a well curb, trying to parse out the future without a roadmap. Every now and then she’d look down at her interface. There were thirteen minutes left before the first explosion. Providing their foes would keep to the same schedule as before.

“Why not? They have the upper hand,” Mr. Spider commented. He was watching one of his real cousins rebuild its web on the pump spout after the rainstorm.

Despite the desperate situation, she found herself fascinated by the small creature. It was weaving anchor threads from the spout to the water pipe. When one of the threads didn’t attach, the spider tried it in another location. When that didn’t work, it moved to different place on the spout. That thread caught.

“It’s adapting to the pump spout’s curve,” she murmured. “Changing the design as it goes.”

“I told you we were smart,” Mr. Spider remarked. “So are you.”

She didn’t feel that way right now. Theo would have worked this out in a flash, with time to spare.

Cynda looked back at her fellow Rover. “Why are they using advanced technology to trigger the explosions, but letting some local tote the barrels around?” she asked, skeptically. “Doesn’t make sense. It’s too dangerous: the cops are everywhere.”



“They did it the first time.” He was still on the move, churning up the mud, burning off energy. She’d been like that once, before the NMR.

Before Theo.

She was about to tell him to knock it off when it hit her.

“No footprints,” she exclaimed.

Her tone of voice made him stop. “What?”

“Theo said there were no footprints around the barrels. It was bothering him. He finally chalked it up to the heavy rain.”

“Makes sense.”

“Unless they were never there in the first place.” She thumped her forehead with a palm, like it would jolt something loose. “Come on. How are they doing this?” Another thump. “How can they deliver the bombs on short notice without using a local?”

A second later, her mouth dropped open. “Oh geez. That’s it!” she announced.

“What?”

“They use a time jump. No hassles with the cops, no chance of being delayed. Damn, that’s brilliant.”

“You’ve lost it, Lassiter.” Hopkins shook his interface at her. “No time travel, remember? We’re orphaned, and so are they.”

“Just because we can’t access the time stream doesn’t mean the people ahead of us have the same problem,” she argued. “The disconnect may not have reached them yet. Their interfaces may still work, at least in the short term.”

“Even if that’s true, no one would transfer explosives through the time stream,” he protested. “That’s insane.”

“Not through time. A side-hop, here in ’88. You can set those so fine there’s virtually no time differential. You do it right, you don’t access the stream.”

“But they’ll set off their own bombs.”

“Not if they configured their time pulses correctly.”

Slowly the light dawned in Hopkins’ eyes. Then he sagged in defeat. “We tipped our hand too soon. They can deliver the barrels seconds before they detonate. We won’t be able to stay ahead of them unless we can jump ourselves.”



He sat next to her on the well curb. “We’re done for. We’ll never get back. My future is gone.”

“Mine too,” she said. “I was supposed to become a legend and—” She leapt to her feet. “Of course! They’re here somewhere. I know it.”

“The bombs?” he asked, completely confused.

“No, my entourage. They’ve followed me since I first arrived in ’88. Why miss the final curtain?”

To her relief, Cynda found them almost immediately. Thomas was leaning up against a lamppost arguing with Prudence. They jolted to attention when she skidded to a halt in front of them.

“Hi guys,” she said. “Life’s sucking here, if you haven’t noticed.”

“We were debating that very point,” Thomas replied.

The younger Rover arrived at that moment. “Hopkins, meet Thomas and Prudence. They’re academics from upstream.”

“Hello,” Pru said gamely.