Road Less Traveled (25 page)

And it wasn't like he was lonely himself these days. “I've got a girlfriend myself,” he bragged. “Her name's Julia Golden. She's a researcher at GD.” He smiled, thinking about her. “She's great.” Though he had to admit that, much as he liked Julia, she wasn't the same as Jo. Far from it. Which didn't make Julia any less awesome in her own right, but sometimes Fargo wondered if he was just settling. Then he usually kicked himself.

“Really? Good for you!” His double seemed genuinely happy for him, and maybe a little bit jealous as well. That made Fargo feel a little better. “So, you help Jo and your sheriff—Carter, right?—out with cases?” Sheriff Fargo clearly wanted to change the subject. Fargo let him. No point in humiliating him by calling him on his lie. “You helping them with anything now?”

“Actually, yes.” Fargo rubbed his hands together. “Jo and I are working on a theft here at GD, in fact. In one of the bio labs. It involves a project called—”

“The Thunderbird,” his double said at the same time he did. Then he grinned. “Nice! I'm working on the exact same thing!”

“Wait, you've got a Thunderbird project, too?” Fargo stared. “And it was stolen?”

“Yes indeedy—both eggs got swiped, by someone who knew exactly what they were doing.” Sheriff Fargo shook his head. “Shut down the security cam beforehand, disabled the door panels, shorted out the containment fields, took both eggs, and disappeared. By the time Dr. Korinko got in, they were long gone.”

Fargo nodded. “Of course. That makes total sense! In my world, the thief only got away with one of the eggs,” he explained. “I was in early and noticed the security alert about the containment fields. The thief shut down the security to the lab and blanked the cameras all the way there, but didn't think to disconnect the energy sensors, so they registered the change from the containment rupture. I hit the alarm and alerted Sheriff Carter and Jo, and they showed up in time to interrupt the thief. One of the eggs hatched prematurely, and they had to dissipate the fledgling Thunderbird before it could hurt anyone. But the thief got away with the other egg in the confusion.” He left out the part where his attempts to contain the gases from the containment field had caused the hatching and provided the cover for the thief's escape. No need to go into all that right now.

But of course it was almost impossible to lie to himself, and his double had a knowing smile as he took all this in. “Good thing you were there to help” was all he said, however. Then he laughed and pushed the hat back on his head. Fargo had always wondered how he'd look in a hat. He wasn't entirely sure it worked, though it did add to the uniform's overall effect. He wondered if he should suggest a hat to Carter when he got back home. “So, you got any leads so far?”

Fargo shook his head. “Nothing. We talked to Korinko, but she's too genuinely upset to have taken it. We haven't caught Sean Boggs or Andee Wilkerson yet—”

“Don't bother,” his other self interrupted. He looked frustrated, too. “We talked to them on our side. Neither of them had anything to do with it.”

“Oh. Okay. Thanks.” It occurred to Fargo that teaming up with himself could save both of them a lot of time. After all, it was the same case, right? “Then we inspected the lab, but it was clean, no traces of fingerprints or bootprints or DNA.” Sheriff Fargo nodded. “We've tried tracking the Thunderbird's energy signature, but with no success. And there was an anomalous microstorm, but it turned out to be a high school kid working on his science project.” Both of them snorted at once. “After that, we started looking into how the thief might fence the egg, if that was his intent. So we talked to Victor Arlan—”

“Victor Arlan?” Sheriff Fargo interrupted again. “Why?”

That brought Fargo up short. “What do you mean, why? Isn't he in prison here, too?”

“Prison? No, of course not—he retired from GD last year and moved to some tropical island somewhere.”

“Oh.” Fargo debated whether to tell his other self what Arlan had been up to with the Vault all those years. Would it do him any good now? Probably not. “Well, he had some . . . contacts in the black market. We talked to them, and put the word out that we'd be interested in buying the egg if it came up for sale. So far, though, it hasn't.”

“Which means they may not be looking to sell it,” Sheriff Fargo muttered, mainly to himself. Then again, talking to Fargo was talking to himself, in a way. “Or they may just be waiting until the heat dies down.”

“But they won't have a whole lot of time,” Fargo reminded him. “Even if they don't get caught, and they've got a containment field of their own to keep the egg stable, it'll hatch within the week. That's what Korinko told us.”

“Right. So maybe they didn't steal it for the money.” Sheriff Fargo rubbed his chin, and Fargo did likewise. Both of them chuckled at the synchronicity. Fargo realized it was like watching himself in a mirror. Only with different clothes. “Why take it, then?”

“Revenge?” Fargo suggested. “A prank? Diverting attention from something more serious?”

“Maybe so.” His other self nodded approvingly, then smiled. “Hey, you'd make one heck of a sheriff!” They both laughed. This was fun! Finally, some intelligent conversation in Eureka, and with someone who really took him seriously!

“We'd wondered if the Thunderbird had caused our two worlds to draw together,” Fargo mentioned, “since the timing seemed suspicious. But it turns out the impetus was—”

“Your sheriff—Carter, right?—getting a massive shock off the collected energy and becoming magnetized with energy from my world,” Sheriff Fargo finished. “I heard.” He frowned. “Huh. But even if the Thunderbird didn't cause the problem, maybe—”

“It contributed somehow?” Fargo finished. His other self didn't get angry at him for interrupting, either. He just nodded. “Especially since it exists on both sides?”

“It's worth looking into,” his double agreed. Then he blinked at Fargo. “Why're you getting all . . . hazy?”

Fargo looked down at himself. Was he? He looked the same. But, glancing around, he realized that his other self and that world's GD lobby were getting a bit blurry around the edges. He must be returning to his own world.

“Looks like time's up,” he said, and his words sounded strangely faint. “It was really great meeting you . . . me . . . you!”

“Same here,” Sheriff Fargo replied. “We'll coordinate through the Drs. Russell, okay? Together we'll figure out who took our Thunderbird eggs and get them back.” He gave a thumbs-up, and Fargo echoed it. Then everything wavered, and Fargo found himself standing in his own GD lobby again. He felt slightly dizzy.

“Whoa.” He wobbled for a second, waving off the looks of the people passing by, then took a deep breath. That had been wild! And a bit depressing, to be honest, but also very cool.

Plus, he had new information to report to Jo and Sheriff Carter.

And a question to put to Dr. Russell.

He debated which to do first.

 

“We've got a problem,” Allison reported as she ap
proached the conference room. Jo, Henry, and Carter all looked up. Henry had just stopped by with a take-out bag from Café Diem, and Carter and Jo were crouching down to give their knees a break, sipping their coffees after finishing a few of Vincent's excellent baked goods.

“What's up?” Carter's eyes automatically went to the short, heavyset Asian man behind her. “Dr. Kwan.” When the occupational therapist nodded vaguely but didn't make eye contact, Carter frowned and directed a questioning look at Allison.

She nodded. “Yes, Dr. Kwan is from the other Eureka. He and I bumped into each other in the hallway, and when he looked confused I guessed as to the reason why.”

“Wait, you bumped into each other?” Jo rose to her full height like she was on springs. Carter took a second longer to straighten up, his knees twinging in protest. “Literally?”

Allison nodded. Then she reached back and patted the man on the shoulder. “See?”

That was bad. Up until now they'd resisted touching any of their visitors directly. The other-Eureka residents had no problem sitting in their chairs, working on their computers, even eating their donuts and drinking their coffee, but more than once Carter had noticed someone's hand not quite touching a wall or a door. It was like they were mostly here but not fully.

Until now.

“We're still drawing closer together?” Henry asked Allison quietly as Jo ushered Dr. Kwan into the conference room. He went without arguing, or even saying a word, which might have been another difference between the worlds—their own Dr. Kwan never seemed to shut up.

“Must be,” Allison agreed just as softly. “Which means Zane and the Russells haven't solved the problem yet.”

Carter sighed. “Not good.”

“No.” She smiled but it didn't touch her eyes. “Not good.”

 

Fargo hesitated just inside the doorway. Russell was bent over the main console, with Zane right beside her, both of them poring over something scrolling past on the screen. The other Dr. Russell was doing almost exactly the same thing in her world, though she didn't have anyone else with her. Fargo hated to interrupt them right now, but if he and his counterpart were correct it could be important. Very important.

He waited a second, but no one glanced up. Should he call out again? Or just come back later, and hope to hell his question didn't wind up being the one thing that could have saved them?

And, if that was the case, that no one ever found out?

Then he saw a flicker of movement in the monitor. A figure stepped into the doorway, strode confidently across it, and headed down into the lab.

An extremely familiar figure.

Clad all in tan.

Right down to the hat.

Okay, then. Fargo mirrored his actions, and hurried his pace so he reached Russell and Zane at the same time his other self reached the other Dr. Russell. Sheriff Fargo met his gaze in the monitor and tipped his hat. Fargo nodded back.

“Dr. Russell,” they both said together. “We have a question for you.”

“Hm?” Russell—both Russells—glanced up. Then at their respective monitors. Then back again. “What is it, Fargo?” Russell asked. Her counterpart's response only varied because she said “Sheriff” instead of “Fargo.” And Fargo didn't think he imagined the fact that her tone was less wearied and more genuinely attentive. Damn.

Zane, meanwhile, looked up, saw both Fargos, saw what the other Fargo was wearing, and did a double take. “You've got to be kidding me.”

That, at least, amused Fargo to no end.

“The Thunderbird,” Fargo continued, and this time his other self stayed quiet and let him talk. “We know it didn't trigger this event. But could it have contributed to it? It's an electromagnetic anomaly, after all. Could it have skewed your results somehow?”

Russell and Zane looked at each other. Then they both swiveled back toward the console. The other Russell was already punching in data on her end.

“Damn,” Zane said softly after a minute, as new figures appeared onscreen. “You were right, Fargo.” Fargo could sense how much it galled him to say that. Another point for him. “The Thunderbird's energy warped the input frequencies just a little bit. They added extra oomph.”

“And they acted as another electromagnet,” Russell added, indicating one spot on a graph. “They increased Carter's effective charge somehow.”

“He got zapped by the first Thunderbird hatchling,” Fargo explained. “Just a little while before he came in here. He must have still been carrying that charge when he got zapped again.”

“And the frequencies meshed, and compounded,” Zane agreed. “That's been throwing off all our numbers! We were basing them on Carter's getting charged once, not twice!” He grabbed the keyboard and started typing rapidly. “But we've got the Thunderbird's energy signature already in the system, and we know when Carter absorbed it, so we can calculate how much energy he absorbed then, and work out the rate of decay, and then factor that into the later encounter, and—” A new formula appeared on the screen, which then resolved into a new string of numbers. “Voilà! A revised target frequency!”

“Good catch, Fargo,” Russell told him with a nod. “Both of you. That may have made all the difference.” The two Fargos grinned at each other.

“Happy to help.” Fargo turned to leave, but then stopped. “So,” he asked, “what happens if the remaining Thunderbird egg hatches? It'll produce another anomaly like the first one, but this time without the bio lab's built-in shielding, there will be a significantly larger energy output.”

Zane frowned. So did Russell. “It could throw another monkey wrench in our attempts,” Zane answered. “Especially if it somehow distorts the energy the other Russell is feeding us, and alters it so it doesn't rebound from Carter anymore. The energy wavelengths have to match precisely. If they don't, they won't be deflected—they'll hit us full-on.” He rubbed his chin. “Enough energy and we could wind up vaporizing Eureka before the two realities merge and flatten whatever's left.”

Fargo gulped. “Great. Jo and I will make sure we get the egg back safely, then.” He turned and hurried out.

But not before he saw the look on Zane's face when he mentioned that he'd be working with Jo again.

Score another one for the Fargonator!

“Where the hell've you been?” Jo demanded when
Fargo emerged from one of the corridors and hurried over to her beside the conference room door. “I said get your other work done, not go on vacation!”