Written in Time (25 page)

“Those with more experience relating to the phenomenon have indicated that ball lightning has a number of extremely peculiar properties. It can enter a structure through a closed surface, for example, without precipitating damage to the surface through which it has passed. There is frequently sound accompanying the phenomenon, often described as like unto air slowly exiting a membrane through a tiny puncture.
 

“Considering that ball lightning is almost certainly superheated plasma gas,” Jane continued, “it should, logically, rise in air, but it doesn’t. It’s of short duration, or seems to be, and as the particular manifestation of the phenomenon concludes, there is frequently the sound of an explosion accompanied by the smell of something burning in its immediate aftermath.
 

“Its physical appearance seems not to be confined to one particular coloration, but several. That may relate to temperature or other variables. Size is usually seven plus inches in diameter—close to the size of a regulation basketball, I should think. The duration of the phenomenon is a matter of several seconds only.”
 

“About the same amount of time that we’re able to fire up the lighting array when the experiment really works?” Clarence suggested.
 

“Yes, about,” Jane agreed.
 

The rain beat against them and the ground on which they stood with the intensity of a high-pressure car wash. Still, none of them moved toward shelter, the equipment long since packed safely away and their bodies long since soaked to the skin.
 

“There is no universally accepted theory as to the exact nature of ball lightning, other than that it is composed of superheated plasma, as I believe I mentioned. Nothing, as of yet, satisfactorily explains its peculiar mobility or the source of its energy,” Jane concluded.
 

“And you saw this stuff when the helicopter disappeared?”
 

“Yes, circling around the aircraft. I remember now thinking that it reminded me of electrons circling a nucleus. Most peculiar motion pattern for ball lightning. And they all vanished into the black spot into which the helicopter seemed to disappear as well.”
 

“Then it’s hopeless,” Peggy Greer declared, raising her voice to be heard over the drumming of the rain.
 

“Why?” Clarence demanded.
 

“We can’t make ball lightning, and the phenomenon occurs with such irregularity that we might have to wait indefinitely. Lightning experiments in laboratories produce pretty puny stuff by comparison to the real thing, and that’s conventional lightning,” Peggy went on. “And experiments of the type we’d need to conduct even to attempt to produce a laboratory equivalent of ball lightning, even if they were possible, would cost a fortune—a large fortune.”
 

It was then that Clarence Jones had decided to find the owner of Horizon Enterprises, the company Ellen had told him, in their last conversation, owned the property in Nevada on which the ruined house stood—the company started by David Naile. One hundred percent of the stock in Horizon Enterprises was owned by a man named Alan Naile. Alan, if Clarence remembered correctly, was David’s middle name.
 

Wearing one of his theater suits—he had almost a dozen of them, this one gray—Clarence waited with Peggy Greer in a side office for Alan Naile to arrive. The secretary, a pretty girl, but not as pretty as Peggy, had apologized, telling them, “Mr. Naile called on his cell phone that he was detained in traffic. He should only be a few moments. May I get you something?”
 

As neither Clarence nor Peggy wanted anything but information and help, and neither of those could be provided by the secretary, she left to go back to the outer office.
 

It had taken Clarence nearly a month to find the means by which to contact Alan Naile, evidently a very private person, and this only after utilizing his ex-military buddies once again for their information gathering talents.
 

Yet once he got a phone number where Alan Naile could be reached, it was almost as if Clarence had been expected and the appointment was arranged within days.
 

There was an ashtray. Clarence lit a Winston. Peggy didn’t smoke, but didn’t seem to mind it when he smoked.
 

In the instant that Clarence pocketed the Bic lighter, the door at the side of the room opened and Clarence almost dropped the lit cigarette from his mouth. It was David’s face, David’s height and build, but this David looked to be about thirty years old, immaculately and expensively tailored, the steel gray suit he wore an obvious Armani.
 

“I’m Alan Naile, Clarence. And, you must be Doctor Greer.” Clarence stood up. Alan Naile offered a firm, dry handclasp to Clarence, then held Peggy’s hand briefly, almost as if he were about to raise it to his lips. Peggy had remained seated.
 

Alan Naile had David’s dark, wavy hair; but, unlike David, who habitually kept his hair short and brushed the waves as straight as possible, Alan Naile’s hair was grown out to where it was brushed back above his ears and, at the neck, it went slightly over the collar of his jacket.
 

Alan Naile got right to the point. “I have debated with myself since I first learned of the time anomaly when I was twenty-one whether or not I’d interfere with it someday, especially since, for the bulk of the time I would be running Horizon, I’d have no knowledge of future history. I even brought my oldest son—my youngest was born nine months ago—to an autographing session at a science fiction convention so that he could meet Jack and Ellen. I knew I look like my great-grandfather, David, quite a bit, so I prepared by growing a beard and getting some fake glasses. It would have been awkward to explain looking almost identical to their son. What was I going to say? Your son is my great grandfather?
 

“And you’re here because you want my help, perhaps with those experiments Dr. Greer has been conducting with Dr. Rogers. You guys have come up with the same conclusion that I reached as soon as I learned that your experiments with electricity and the helicopter’s disappearance may have been related. It could be done again—maybe.”
 

Clarence realized that the cigarette was burning his fingers. He stubbed it out and lit another one. “Smoking’s bad for you, Clarence. And please, don’t mind my calling you Clarence, because we are related.” Alan Naile sat on the edge of the desk for a second, and then stood. “Follow me, will you? We’ll all be more comfortable in my office.”
 

Alan Naile opened the door through which he had just entered, turned into a narrow, carpeted corridor with sconced bulbs providing the illumination. The hallway looked like something out of an old movie, the frosted glass covers over the lights having what his aunt Ellen would have called an art-deco look.
 

Halfway along the corridor, Alan Naile put a key into a lock and opened a mahogany-colored door. “Please,” he beckoned, letting Peggy, then Clarence, inside ahead of him.
 

Alan Naile’s office was large enough to hold an intimate dance party. There was a huge, dark wooden desk at the far side of the room that fronted enormous windows with soft-looking white sheers over them; the sheers diffused the sunlight, filtering it.
 

The desk itself was clearly one belonging to a wealthy and busy man. Several telephones, a computer monitor and keyboard, stacks of files and several notebooks littered the desk in patterns that seemed neither haphazard nor perfectly organized. Either his secretary knew Alan extremely well, or Alan maintained full responsibility for his own clutter.
 

Alan crossed behind his desk. “Sit down, guys. Can I have Cecily get you anything? Coffee, a Coke, a beer if you want.”
 

“I’m fine,” Clarence volunteered.
 

“Me, too,” Peggy added.
 

“See this?” Alan picked up a Lucite block from the front of his desk and crossed around his desk again, showing it to them. “This is the first money that actually came into Jack Naile’s General Merchandise. Ellen Naile saved it. Great-grandpa would have invested it.” He laughed. “It’s an 1853 half-dime. Can you imagine that? A half dime, contemporaneous, since it was still in circulation in 1897, with the nickel. Amazing. So, you want me to finance your trip back through time, Clarence, if it can be managed? Right?”
 

“You get right to the point, don’t you?” Peggy Greer observed.
 

“I have to, Doctor. Anyway, it would seem, since there was never a mention of you in anything Jack and Ellen left behind, or my great-grandfather, for that matter, that you are a new element into the mix, Clarence. Perhaps your mother died during childbirth, or your father died before you were conceived.”
 

“What the hell are you talking about?” Clarence demanded.
 

“Simple. Every time Jack and Ellen Naile make the trip—and don’t ask me to explain it, because I don’t understand it myself, only that it happens. But every time they make the trip, history changes a little. In documents they left behind the last time, the most glaring example is that eight million Jews were killed by the Nazis during World War Two. Yet we all know that six million were killed. Something that my great-grandfather did—likely the private-intelligence organization he put together— helped to alter history and save two million lives.
 

“Anything that any of us could accomplish would pale in comparison, I’m sure you’d both agree. Who knows? Maybe one of the Jews who didn’t die did something that somehow in some way we could never figure out allowed you to be born, Clarence. Who can say?” He shrugged his Armanied shoulders, went back around his desk and plunked down into the insanely expensive-looking leather swivel chair.
 

“At any event, Clarence,” Alan went on, “you’re here in the first quarter of 1994, and you want to go back to there, which, judging from what they left behind, is probably the spring of 1898. That means that your grandfather, who was also named Clarence, is just a month or two old somewhere in New York, and his older sister hasn’t taken up her profession as a madam in East St. Louis, just probably still is some cute little girl about to become an orphan.
 

“We could change history in a radical way here, Clarence, maybe for the better . . . or maybe we’ll just fuck everything up. Your call.”
 

“Oh, thanks a fucking lot!” Clarence exploded. “If I go back in time, I could alter history?”
 

“Of course. Jack and Ellen have gone back in history I don’t know how many times, because the last time, they found a partially destroyed wall outlet in the wreckage of their house, which means that they had gone to the past before. This could be a time loop that never ends. Think about that for a while, Clarence, and see if you don’t get yourself the gigantic headache that attacked Cleveland.”
 

“‘Those who don’t learn the lessons of history . . .’” Peggy began.
 

“Perhaps that’s why they and we are doomed to relive it. We failed to learn history’s lessons or some crap like that. At any event, I’m not going to play God. My wife tells me that my ego is big enough already. No. If you go back, Clarence, you might bring about great good, you might bring about great evil, and you might break the cycle of the time loop. God knows and He isn’t telling me.
 

“If you want my help,” Alan said flatly, “you’ve got it to the limit of Horizon Enterprises’ resources, and those have virtually no limit at all. We make more than a number of not-so-small countries, Clarence. I don’t have the notoriety, because I don’t want it, but I’m one of the two dozen or so wealthiest men in the world. Take all the time that you want and let me know, or tell me now. Whatever. Even though your mother was Ellen’s adopted sister, I still consider us blood, which in fact, if not in hemoglobin, we are. So you name it and it’s yours. I don’t envy you the decision. And, it might not work, anyway.”
 

Clarence looked at Peggy sitting beside him. She wore a pale blue sweater set and a dark blue straight skirt. Her hair was up. She wore makeup, which she rarely did. She was really way too pretty a girl, but he asked her anyway, “Would you go with me? I mean, marry me first?”
 

“Yes. Twice.” And she reached out and took his hand and rested it over her thigh.
 

Clarence looked at his newfound relative and benefactor. “Let’s try and book two passages into the past, Alan. What do you say?”
 

“I’ll have my best people on it by tomorrow morning. Meanwhile, let me buy you guys the finest dinner in Chicago. Unfortunately, I won’t be able to join you, but I’ll see you guys tomorrow right here at eight a.m. I’ll send a car around. Consider the dinner an engagement present. You guys are staying at the airport Hilton. Let’s say a driver will pick you up in the lobby at quarter to seven, traffic and all. Now, let’s schedule that dinner, shall we?”
 

CHAPTER
EIGHT
 

Peggy led the way, driving the Naile family Suburban, Clarence beside her in the passenger seat, his eyes on the side view mirror. There was no road, only the flat plain of desert. Trucks and more trucks, eighteen-wheelers all, two and three abreast, roared after them along the barren terrain, enormous clouds of dust in their wake. Some of the trucks bore oversized load banners, huge yellow generators mounted on their flatbed trailers.
 

Overhead flew helicopters, three of them, the lead machine bearing Alan, the other two packed with scientists and engineers.
 

The Suburban itself pulled a box trailer, both the trailer and the Suburban packed with additional items Clarence thought might prove of use to his aunt, uncle and cousins, as well as some few of his own belongings and Peggy’s things.