Erasing Time (25 page)

“Because instead of doing something useful, the guy joined the Mafia and studied words for a living.”

Sheridan leaned back in her chair. “Which bothers you more?”

Taylor shot Sheridan an exasperated look. “He should have been an engineer, a scientist, a researcher. He could have been someone great.”

“And people who use and study words are never great?”

“They’re great when you need a good book, but even you have to admit that none of the important advancements in society—the breakthroughs in science, technology, and medicine—were discovered by English majors.”

And science, technology, and medicine were, of course, the only valid advancements society ever made. Sheridan usually would have let it drop. This time she didn’t. “Words create thought. Thought changes society.”

“Maybe, but words don’t create automobiles, computer chips, or penicillin. If all the great minds had studied words, we’d have some really nice novels we could read by candlelight in our caves.”

Sheridan pushed herself away from the desk. Taylor needed to work on the computer, not debate the merits of the literary profession. Still, it irked her. Sheridan might not be able to understand computer functions on first sight or invent machines that changed matter into energy, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t smart in other areas.

As Taylor mumbled threats against the computer, Sheridan pulled the mirror around so that it blocked the view from the door. That way, if Echo came back soon, or if anyone else came into the room, they wouldn’t see what Taylor was doing. Then, because Sheridan needed a plausible excuse for having moved the mirror, she took some of the jeweled things from the desk and clipped them into her hair. It looked ridiculous, but at least she could pretend she’d been preening in front of the mirror.

After a while, she peered around the mirror at Taylor. “Any luck?”

“He’s blocked every way I can find around this encryption. It’s not even a two-dimensional block, it’s three-dimensional.”

Whatever that meant.

Taylor pushed her chair away from the desk and ran both hands through her hair. “It’s impossible to get around this.”

“Then we’ll find another way to accomplish the same thing. Can we trick someone into taking us outside?”

“I doubt it.”

Sheridan returned her gaze to the mirror, to the reflection of the freckleless girl with golden eyes. “What happens when the alarm goes off?”

“A loud noise blares through the speakers, and all the doors in the building automatically lock.”

Sheridan considered this. “Could you change it so that the alarm still goes off but at such a high pitch that no one can hear it? And then the doors—”

“The sound level is unchangeable,” Taylor said sourly. “It’s part of the door, not part of the program.”

“Could you make the alarms go off continually? If they malfunctioned, then the Dakine would have to turn them off.”

The frustration slowly melted from Taylor’s face. She looked up at the ceiling as though considering invisible equations written there. “That might work. As long as I hide the problem so they can’t fix it easily …” She returned her attention to the computer and typed out a line of numbers and letters on the keyboard. “If I made it look like it was part of the original programming … next time it cycled through a reset …”

She didn’t finish speaking; instead, she kept typing.

No one questioned Echo’s presence in the compucenter. He checked in, sat down in front of a computer, and accessed the control panels in what he hoped was a natural manner.

That was the problem. He’d been tense for so long, he’d forgotten how to act natural. Had anyone here noticed him acting differently?

But then perhaps they expected it. After all, he’d just become a fugitive from the government, cut off from his father and everything in his old life. It would seem more unnatural if he acted like the old Echo—happy and carefree.

He brought up the Prometheus program on-screen and gave it an algorithm loop to run so that he could do his real work undetected.

Elise was still the only chance of a safe way out of Traventon. He had to contact her. It was risky to send a message to her comlink, though. If Enforcers had her in custody, they would be monitoring her comlink for information. They could use it to set a trap for him.

But that was only if they had taken her into custody. Jeth and Elise couldn’t be blamed for losing the time riders. The Dakine had taken them from the government’s own detention rooms. Still, the wordsmiths might be in trouble for the things that had happened beforehand, when Echo went off with Taylor and Sheridan escaped from the Histocenter. Hopefully Jeth and Elise could make their innocence convincing, or at least slide the fault over to Echo. By now the government had certainly realized the contradictions in Echo’s Scicenter story. They were looking for him. He was certain of it.

Would his father have the sense to blame Echo, or would he give way to parental loyalty and defend him? Echo could see Jeth standing in front of Helix, the anger on his face shining as brightly as the green circles he wore. “Of course Echo disappeared along with the time riders. The Dakine knew they’d need a translator to speak to the girls, so they kidnapped him too. How can you accuse him of crimes when you should be finding and freeing him? I’ll contact the mayor himself about this!”

Yes, Jeth would probably defend Echo, the same way he’d defended him to anyone who implied that Echo had something to do with Joseph’s death. Jeth would defend Echo even if he didn’t believe in his innocence himself.

Sangre
, Echo would miss his father. He hadn’t realized how severely until this moment. The thought of never hearing Jeth’s voice again—his continually cheerful voice—brought a sharp pain to the back of Echo’s throat.

He swallowed hard, tapped his fingers against the keyboard, and ignored the pain the best he could.

If only he knew for certain his father was safe. And then Echo realized he could know. The Dakine computers had a spliced link into the government ones. He could check the detention log to see if Jeth or Elise were listed as prisoners.

Echo made the link quickly, half afraid someone at the compucenter would catch him but at the same time feeling justified in doing the search. Even if he hadn’t been planning to send a message to Elise, he would still want to know what had happened to her and to Jeth. The compucenter leader could only be mad that Echo hadn’t gotten proper clearance before he did it.

The list came up on the screen. Echo scanned it. With each unfamiliar name, his hope rose. Jeth and Elise weren’t listed in the detention log, and a few minutes later he found they weren’t scheduled for memory washes either. They were safe for now.

He would have liked to track Jeth’s and Elise’s crystals to find out where they were, but it was too dangerous. The government might trace the signal back to him.

Echo spent a few more minutes searching recent Scicenter interlogs looking for either Sheridan’s or Taylor’s name—anything that would give him an indication of how much the scientists knew about them. Did they know for certain that Taylor was really Tyler Sherwood, and if they did, were they foolish enough to state that fact in their logs? Both the government and the scientists must know that the Dakine kept track of their doings.

Echo found the classified Time Strainer file. He skirted around the encryption encoding it and skimmed through it. It listed medical statistics for Taylor and Sheridan, then gave a detailed record of the interviews the wordsmiths had helped with. Next came the mandate for Taylor and Sheridan’s arrest. The charge: withholding information.

Someone had questioned the girls, and while he had found Taylor uncooperative, he indicated that Sheridan would be willing to negotiate.

Echo moved the cursor over the words again, searching for any missed links. It didn’t make sense. Who had interrogated them? What had Sheridan been willing to negotiate about?

The last entry recorded that Taylor and Sheridan had been taken from the detention cell by Dakine operatives, and a citywide search was under way to find them along with the missing wordsmith, who was presumed either in Dakine custody or dead.

Pues
, they certainly were getting closer to the truth. Luckily, there was no indication, at least from this log, that Jeth and Elise were in immediate danger of arrest.

Echo unlinked himself from the government mainframe and tried to decide what to put in his message to Elise. As he wrote it, questions nagged at the corner of his mind. How had someone communicated with Taylor and Sheridan during their interrogation? There was no mention of a wordsmith being present at that interview.

Echo coded his message as much as he could. He addressed it to Candy Cane. That had been his nickname for Elise when she first started working in the Wordlab. At the time, her hair had been striped red and white. She would recognize the term, but no one else from this century would. He added a few other references to convince her that it was really from him.

He requested a meeting time, and in one final attempt to convince her of his genuineness, added, “When you meet us, bring Jeth with you.”

Jeth wouldn’t go. He wouldn’t ever think of leaving the city. Still, Elise ought to know that Echo would never set a trap for her and tell her to bring Jeth. If she wasn’t sure about anything else, she knew he loved his father.

Echo hit the Send button. It was done. Hopefully she would get it, hopefully he’d be able to get away from the Dakine when he needed to, and hopefully—
pues
, there were too many things to hope for.

After putting in an hour on the Prometheus project so that no one would be suspicious of the time he’d spent in front of the computer, Echo headed back to the girls’ bedroom.

Taylor and Sheridan were probably tired of repeating phrases by now.

He was almost to their room when he realized that Taylor and Sheridan weren’t repeating phrases. Most likely, as soon as he’d left, Taylor had tried to computigate through the computer files.

If he hadn’t been so preoccupied with sending his message to Elise, he would have thought of this before. He shouldn’t have left Taylor alone anywhere near a computer. Who knew what information she’d been accessing and what trouble she’d caused?

She might have alerted the Dakine about her abilities, and all for nothing. The computer system was secure. He’d seen to that. It was just one more monumental regret in his life.

Sheridan was standing in front of the mirror weaving a string of glowing white lights into her hair when Echo returned. She smiled at him in what she hoped was a pleasant and not guilty manner. “I got tired of imitating talking dolls and decided to do my hair.”

Taylor still sat by the computer, obediently repeating dialogue from a show.

He sat down on the top of the desk and flipped off the computer. “Were you two practicing the whole time I was gone?”

“Well, I was,” Taylor said. “Sheridan keeps getting distracted by her hair. Her
r
’s aren’t nearly as trilling as mine.”

“But now I look like I’ve got a halo,” Sheridan added, admiring her reflection. “Something Taylor has certainly never experienced.”

Echo kept his gaze fixed on Taylor. “I’m glad you didn’t try to computigate. The systems on this computer are secure, and you’ll only get into trouble if you tamper with anything.”

Taylor gave him a wide-eyed look of innocence. “Oh, really?”

“Taylor.” He said the word softly. “Don’t do it.”

She sighed as though giving in to his request. “I’ll be an angel while I’m here. Even if I don’t have a halo.”

For the rest of the evening Sheridan and Taylor worked on pronunciation with Echo. He spent most of his time with Sheridan, although she wasn’t sure whether this was because he liked her or because she just needed more work than Taylor.

He sat across from her on a couch, his knees touching hers. “If a
d
is between vowels, it’s soft. Almost like your
th
. Watch my mouth.
Adult. Adding. Adopt
.”

She looked at his lips and could barely speak at all. It didn’t help that she could see Taylor out of the corner of her eye making kissy faces. Taylor was supposed to be working on some phonetic alphabet charts that Echo had downloaded, but she was obviously listening to them instead.

Sheridan repeated the words, knowing she would probably forget to say the soft
d
the next time she used the words. Who thought about whether a
d
was between vowels while they were speaking? “How long did it take you to learn our accent?” she asked.

“Over a year. In your era, English didn’t follow many pronunciation or spelling rules, so I had to memorize how to read and say each word individually. I still can’t think about the words
psychology
,
rhythm
, or
hors d’oeuvres
without wanting to kick something.”

Sheridan nodded. “I never saw the point of having an apostrophe in the middle of
hors d’oeuvres
. That’s just putting on airs.”

“I would probably agree with you,” Echo said, “if I had any idea what
putting on airs
meant.”