THE BETTER PART OF VALOR. Morgan Mackinnon
She glared again at second engineer Kurt Kaufman, who was still within her sight.
“You should have had enough time in the past, I mean, in your time for me to explain but you, we didn’t. That means we’ll try to explain to you now, what all this means and why we need you here in the future. I mean the present. I’m asking you to trust me. Can you do that?”
Her eyes. Those impossibly violet eyes. Keogh wasn’t sure what was going on, but he saw compassion and…caring in those eyes. Did she care for him? He squelched the notion. Yet she said these strange people meant him no harm, so perhaps the least he could do would be hear them out. He addressed the people in the room at random.
“What future? What…year?”
“Myles, it’s the year twenty-oh-two. One hundred twenty-seven years from where you and I just were.”
Keogh was speechless at first. He wanted to go back to the blanket in the grass and the picnic basket and the poems. These strange people were all looking at him now, expecting some reply, so he did the best he could.
“I do not know what any of this means, but I believe I know Cresta well enough by now to let you explain. I have fought in nearly one hundred battles of the Civil War and am assigned to the Seventh US Cavalry in Dakota Territory fighting Indians. I believe I can handle this.”
Cresta heaved a sigh of relief. Let’s get settled, let’s talk about this and see what can be done to salvage this operation. She explained to Keogh where the restroom was as well as what it was and said they needed to get “the team” assembled before they could begin. Keogh nodded in understanding, seeming to intuitively comprehend he would not be able to break out of here, wherever or whenever this was, by brute force, so he might as well sit still and see what happened.
As Cresta went tiredly out into the corridor, Vernita grabbed her hands. “You bitch! We knew by his photo he’d be a fox, but he’s much better in person! And landing on the transplacement platform on a blanket, him on top of you? Girl!”
Dr. Leigh shook her head. “It’s not what it looked like. He thought he was protecting me.”
Vernita let her go but thought to herself, Damn! I wish I could find somebody who looks like that to protect me!
Cresta headed for her locker, knowing just how much they really had to explain to Keogh. Her mind drifted back more than a month ago when the whole thing started and that ridiculous moment when she spilled coffee on her suit.
Chapter 13
Langley, Virginia
March 30, 2002
The traffic out to Langley was heavy today. People trying to get into the secured parking lots of the Central Intelligence Agency buildings were snarling at each other and snarling at the guards checking their entry credentials. The thin woman with long red hair dodged an overly aggressive FedEx van as she scuttled across the parking lot, giving the driver her middle finger. In doing so, she managed to spill coffee all over the front of her navy-blue suit.
“Shit,” she said aloud. Why the hell were all the foreign official briefings held during lunch time? Didn’t foreign officials eat lunch or were they so jet-lagged they didn’t bother eating at all? Cresta Leigh usually worked from home unless some matter involving her expertise as a clinical psychologist arose within her work team. Tossing the coffee carton in a waste bin, she banged the elevator button for the third floor. Brushing ineffectually at her coffee-stained suit, she registered that the guy on the left of her had unwrapped and was chowing down on a pungent burrito; the largish woman on the right was…slurping a Slurpee. Burrito-guy got off on the second floor, and apparently, the Slurpee was going to an upper level. The woman with the stained suit got out of the elevator, turned right, and entered the office marked Dr. C. M. B. Leigh, PsyD, Department of Internal Development.
“Stacie? Stacie! There you are. Come help me. The briefing starts in ten minutes, and I’ve got coffee all over myself.”
Stacie Clayton, the chirpy secretary, team fixer, and friend of Dr. Leigh, took in the situation. “Oh, here. Let me have the jacket. Navy blue isn’t going to show coffee once I treat it with some seltzer. Tug the jacket a bit to the right when you go in and no one will see the coffee stain on your blouse. Our guests have already arrived and Doctor Sanford is passing around Danish.”
As Cresta pulled her slightly less stained jacket back on, she smiled. Dr. James Langton Sanford never failed to have a plate of Danish, a couple of vats of coffee, and a pitcher of orange juice at the ready. Didn’t matter, really, if he was briefing an ambassador, a prime minister, or the President. He believed human beings would pretty much accept whatever was presented to them if their stomachs were full.
This briefing room was large enough to seat fourteen comfortably, and as the rest of her colleagues entered the room, the woman took her seat on one side of the polished conference table. Dr. Sanford immediately left off his fussing around and poured her coffee.
“Everyone here? Good. Now then, I would like to offer some introductions before we begin. What? Oh. Well, I’m supposed to also tell you the restrooms are right out this door and down to the left. I am Doctor James Sanford, and I am the lead scientist and director working on the CATE project. Our project is within the authority of the Special Activities Division and overseen by the Secretary of Internal Development. It is our mission to keep working on technologies which may have an impact on the safety and preservation of the world order.”
The good doctor waited briefly until a translator at the far end of the table spoke to two unsmiling gentlemen on either side of him.
“I’d like to welcome General Andrew Klingman of the Department of the Armed Forces of the US.”
Klingman nodded.
Sanford continued, “General Michael Magruder of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Secretary of Internal Development, Doctor Rick Berstem. Lieutenant Joe Rico of the US Navy. Gentleman, may I introduce General Andrei Polovochenko and Captain Evgeni Vikansnetskaya from the Russian Delegation as well as their translator, Mister Yuri Zeitzan.”
The translator spoke briefly to his charges, General Polovochenko and Captain Vikansnetskaya, before indicating Dr. Sanford should continue.
“This is most of my team. Doctor Robert McGuire, who is a physicist, Doctor Edward Wolffe, also a physicist, Doctor Vernita Connor, in charge of archaeology and anthropology, and Doctor Cresta Leigh, our resident psychologist. You’ll meet our chief engineer in a few minutes.”
All the team members nodded as their names were mentioned. Cresta had rushed here from home after receiving a call from Stacie Clayton, informing her Dr. Sanford was giving a briefing to some special guests. So, Cresta thought, our group today is Russian, and the army and navy seem to be quite interested as well. She tugged her suit jacket over the stain on her blouse. We’ll have to be on our toes.
Moving on, Dr. Sanford turned on the over-head projector, got no image on the screen, tugged on the electrical cord, and was finally rewarded with a slide that read, “CATE PROJECT. COMMON ALTERATION THEORY EXCHANGE.”
Receiving no applause for this accomplishment, Sanford hurried along. “Yes. Well, as you gentlemen know, my project team has been exploring the process known as Transplacement Theory, also referred to as time process movement. Not to be technical, scientists have long suspected that if space and time warps could be properly bent and controlled, man could attain some type of time travel.”
Noticing his audience listening intently, Sanford smiled. “Yes, time travel. Can you imagine the benefits to mankind? Oh, I’m not talking about anything monumental. At least not in the beginning. Trying this type of time warp in a spacecraft would be problematical since the craft would have to accelerate beyond the speed of light. But!” He held up his hand for attention. “If we can use an energy source to bend space and time in a controlled environment, there is a possibility.” Sanford had a habit of veering off topic from time to time, and this was one of those times. “Just think. The movie about