23

A Tear and a Smile

It was Sunday morning back at the base in New Mexico, where an anxious little crowd waited outside a private ward of the infirmary. Samantha lay inside on a bed while a doctor and two nurses tended her. She was hooked up to several tubes and wires and was surrounded by a short wall of medical equipment. The room had one wall with a mirror covering its entire length, the other side of the two-way mirror being the observation room from which the crowd now watched.

Dr. Weiss was there, not using his cane for much more than worriedly tapping with as he watched the procedures, while Lou looked on like a lovelorn puppy, trying his best to school his features. Ben and Claire were there, too, as were Agent Harris, Captain Beck, and, most notably, General Karlson as they received a report from the head doctor and infirmary administrator.

“Whatever it was they did to program her, it had a fail-safe,” the doctor was saying. “Our best guess is that if either of her missions were to fail, she would suffer a seizure. She’s alive, but . . .”

He paused to look at Dr. Weiss and Agent Hessman, the latter straightening up before turning his usual stern face back.

“Continue, Doctor,” he said. “What is the full prognosis?”

Dr. Weiss, too, turned to regard the doctor, though he had no problem displaying his worry clearly for all to read.

“As it stands she is all but brain-dead, and in a very deep coma. We have her on full life-support, but we really don’t know if she’ll ever pull out. Whatever they’ve done, it’s on a level of medicine and the brain that we have yet to reach. Our best guess is that she’s in there somewhere, but . . .” He ended with a shrug, to which the general gave a nod.

“I see,” General Karlson said. “We’ll keep up the care for as long as it takes. The second she walked onto this base she was one of our family, and I never give up on family. Doctor, I expect regular updates on her condition. The least little improvement . . .”

“And I will notify you immediately, of course,” the doctor replied.

“Dr. Weiss,” the general said, turning to Sam, “what did you want me to tell her parents?”

“I’ll tell them myself,” he replied. “Avoiding all the classified stuff, of course. She was attacked by some terrorists and now lies in a coma. That’s the basic truth of it, after all.”

“I’ll leave it to you then,” the general stated. “Doctor, you can get back to your charges.”

The doctor left with a nod, leaving the general and the team to regard their fallen friend through the two-way mirror as her personal doctor and nurses tended to her.

“Since the subject seems to be before us,” General Karlson remarked, “and with respect to everyone’s feelings, I want to know what we can do to prevent any further interference from the future. I don’t care how bad it is in the future, they have no right to ambush us like this. If they want to change the future, then they could have the courtesy to tell us what it is that’s about to go wrong and let us judge what should be done next.”

“With respect, General,” Dr. Weiss said with a sniff, “and with all due respect to my own loss, I’m not only unsure if we can change the future but if we should even try.”

“Explain.”

With a last look back at his niece so still on the hospital bed, he faced the others with his explanation.

“Those Russians from the future have already changed their present by putting my niece into a coma. Not even they can foretell what repercussions that may have, what discoveries she might have otherwise made that they relied upon. Or what her discoveries might have inspired others to achieve. It’s a domino effect, a chain reaction that might have already destroyed some segment of the future that they were trying to hold on to.”

“Sam’s right,” Ben put in. “They may have the more advanced tech, but they lack the wisdom. To change whatever they’ve been suffering through, those future Russians acted in panic, and that’s never a good decision-making policy. And I would like to point out that there may be other things they may have inadvertently changed with their actions.”

“For instance?” the general prompted.

“Well, for instance: Did that plastic-eating bug get out of control because of some input of Samantha’s,” Ben replied, “or does it now get out of control because she’s not there with her think-tank group to point out its flaws? For all we know, they might have cursed themselves to their own undesirable future. History is riddled with self-fulfilling prophecies.”

“In which case, they may find themselves even more desperate and make yet another journey back into our time,” Captain Beck pointed out. “Or maybe the results of their actions have now made a different group desperate enough to come back.”

“It gives me a headache just thinking about it, but you all have a point,” the general agreed. “Recommendations?”

Dr. Weiss sniffed once more, wiped the tears from his face with his free hand, and then faced up to the general with what he hoped was more his usual self. “I can start work on improving the temporal scanners. With some tweaking I should be able to get them to detect an incoming temporal displacement wave before it actually touches down. That would give us some time to get a team on the spot to greet our intruders before they can do any harm.”

“Then get to it,” the general snapped.

“Immediately, sir.”

A last look at his sleeping niece, a quick nod to the general, and a glance to his fellow team members, and Dr. Weiss headed for the door. Before he left, however, Agent Hessman called to him.

“Wait . . . Sam. Is there any chance that we can just go back and do something to save Samantha? Maybe even before she’s kidnapped.”

Dr. Weiss sighed. “I’m afraid not. And she would be the first to agree with me. We would only risk messing up something else the way those Russians have done, and they were supposedly more skilled at this sort of thing than we are.”

“Got it,” Agent Hessman replied in a subdued tone. “I had to ask.”

Dr. Weiss left without another word said, at which point the general addressed the rest.

“And if ever anyone has some other recommendations,” he said, “no matter how ridiculous sounding, I want to hear them. Even you, Miss Hill.”

“Me? But I don’t know anything about this sort of stuff.”

“You have a proven ability at thinking on your feet and reading people that some would find envious, and on recommendation of certain others you are hereby a permanent member of this team.”

“Recommendations? But who would recommend me for something this important?”

“Well”—beside her Ben shrugged—“I might have had a word with General Karlson during a recent debriefing.”

“You?” Captain Beck put in. “I thought it was my recommendation.”

“I heard the highlights and may have made a suggestion to the general,” Agent Harris added.

“It looks like it was unanimous,” Agent Hessman remarked. “Since I’m guessing that Sam had a word or two with the general as well—not to mention myself.”

“Your official designation,” the general continued with a slight grin, “will be team reporter and humanities advisor. Assuming you want the job, of course.”

Claire’s answer was to hug herself close to Ben’s side and return the general’s grin with a more open smile.

“I thought I’d left my entire family back in 1919. I guess I was wrong.”

“It comes with a paycheck, of course,” the general continued. “But I’m afraid that very few people will be reading your reports, since they’ll be classified for quite a while to come.”

“Oh, I expected that. In fact, I knew it before you mentioned it. But if you don’t mind, could my unofficial title be something a little different?”

“Such as?”

She paused for a moment, directing her smile now to Ben at her side, who replied for her.

“She means ‘Claire Hill . . . cross-temporal reporter.’”

The general chuckled but nodded his agreement, then finally focused on Agent Hessman with a more serious look.

“Lou, are you going to be okay? It seems as half the base noticed your affection for Miss Weiss.”

Lou turned for a last look at an unconscious Samantha Weiss, gave one last sniff, and straightened. Gone were the sorrow, the lovelorn features, and any tears he might have shed; replaced with the stern, calculating look that all there had come to know him by.

“I will be fine, General. I was merely reminded of a basic rule of my profession.”

“And what is that?” the general asked.

“That for what it is that I do . . . I cannot afford attachments. This won’t happen again, and I would be most appreciative if no one else says anything more of this.”

He said that last with a look particularly at Claire, who replied only with a slow nod and a single tear leaking from the edge of one eye.

“Understood,” the general replied.

All eyes turned for a last look at Samantha Weiss, their heads hanging in collective memoriam. Some tears were shed, but never again by Agent Hessman. For that, Claire shed two tears: one for herself and one for the tears that she knew Lou dare not give.

Claire holding Holographic Photo

* * *

Later that evening, Claire was in her room on the base arranging things to her liking and unpacking one particular artifact: a slender electronic card the size of an old Polaroid photograph. As she held it out on her hand a picture sprang up in full three-dimensional glory of her and a young man grinning before a background of some futuristic airport. She sighed to see the picture, then, after another glance around, decided on one corner of a bookshelf as its final home.

“Now what on earth is that?”

Claire spun around to see Agent Harris standing in the doorway, leaning on her cane.

“My first memento,” she replied. “Apparently of many. A hundred years from now Jeffery Nezsmith will be giving me this.”

She held it up for Agent Harris to better see, then settled it into its place before crossing the room to join her friend.

“Though I suppose after Ben and I are married we’ll both just have to find a bigger room to move into.”

“Why not move in together now? You’ve already slept together, right?”

“Sue, please,” Claire replied with mock shock. “I do have some sensibilities from my birth century, you know . . . Which I guess is the one memento that I’ll always have of my time: myself.”

“I suppose that’s true enough,” Agent Harris admitted with a slight grin.

“But I’m just glad to see you on your feet again. How much longer until you no longer need the cane?”

“Doc says about a week. Then I’m back on active duty.”

“That’ll be great, because that other guy they had filling in for you just didn’t cut it. Agent Stevens? You could have replaced him with a robot . . . Uh, he really isn’t a robot or something, right? Because I never know with this time period.”

“No, he’s human . . . technically. Anyway, I just came to tell you that I have an update from General Karlson.”

“Something serious?”

“Depends on who you are. He just got word from the Joint Chiefs. They’ve agreed to expand the time travel program so as to include more international cooperation. The argument goes that things would benefit from the increased variety of expertise, not to mention that something like this is too dangerous for any single nation to possess.”

“I guess that means we could have an Italian as the next bodyguard of the day.”

“The next what?”

To Sue’s perplexed look, Claire broke out into a wide smile.

“Something Jeffery mentioned. Apparently Lieutenant Phelps was reassigned. But continue; it sounds like there’s more.”

“There is . . . After this latest incident, the Joint Chiefs have agreed that both the past and the future must be protected. In fact, someone’s bandying about the term ‘temporal guardians,’ though that sounds a bit much to me.”

“Pretentious,” Claire agreed. “Maybe something more like ‘time cops’ or ‘temporal police.’”

It would be a while before Agent Harris would know why Claire started giggling after saying that.

“I can see that I’ll be needing a more in-depth reading of that report you’ll be typing up to get caught up on all the in-jokes.”

“Excuse me,” Claire objected, “but I’m a reporter, which makes it an article. And yes, you have a little bit of catching up to do.”

“I look forward to it.”

As Agent Harris was mulling over Claire’s amusement, Ben approached from the hallway outside, coming up to stand beside Sue with a question for his betrothed.

“Have you asked her yet?”

To Sue’s questioning look, Claire started to explain.

“I mentioned something about it before we left for the mission, but now that you’re more fully up and awake I wanted to make it official. You see, Ben and I have finally set a date.”

“Congratulations,” Sue replied. “I’m sure it’ll be the biggest wedding that no one outside this base will ever have the clearance to know about.”

“And I would be honored if . . . Well, would you be my maid of honor?”

Sue replied with a smile whose width nearly seemed out of place on her face, and a slight nod.

“You do remember how I promised to dropkick anyone else you would have asked? I may have just been cming out of a coma at the time, but I remember you asking the first time, and it will be my honor.”

“Great,” Claire replied with a sense of relief. “After all, I wouldn’t want to mess up the future, now would I?”

She said this with a wink to Ben and nothing else explained. Not that Sue needed any explanations in that moment; she just hobbled over to Claire and gave her a big hug . . . and then pulled in Ben along with her.