Steamrolled by Pauline Baird Jones

Author:Pauline Baird Jones [Jones, Pauline Baird]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Sci Fi Romance
Publisher: L&L Dreamspell
Published: 2011-04-11T04:00:00+00:00

TWENTY-FOUR

“If you’ll take my advice,” Chameleon sounded like she thought Ashe wouldn’t, “you won’t tell him your full name. In his culture an exchange of names is an engagement or maybe marriage. We’re not sure.”

“We are not allowed to reveal our names.” Ashe knew she sounded prim, and she stood on shaky ground. If she managed not to reveal her name, it might be the only regulation she didn’t break in this place. Chameleon’s arched brows and the mockery in her eyes said she knew it, too. Up to now, events had unfolded too fast for Ashe to do more than react. Act, not react was another family stricture and she felt a need to change the dynamics sooner, rather than later—though both sooner and later were tricky to define on a Time Service operation. She stopped the thought there, so as not to start a round of eye twitching or a time spiral.

Lurch tried to help her organize the incoming data, but she needed to think, to try and get some perspective on what they’d learned. Back before the “drill” she’d felt an urgent need to move, to act, now she felt as much urgency to stop and consider. It helped to be outside in real air after so much time in the stream, though it felt odd to be on the outpost when it wasn’t the base. It looked almost the same, but it wasn’t. Unlike the base, or her brief time in the time tear, this outpost teemed with activity. Garradians—no—Gadi and Earthlings passed by in almost equal numbers. Unification was in the “later” column in this time. It felt a bit like being in one of those historically based Earth vids.

Time looked different here, too. She didn’t just see it surging through this place in new and interesting patterns. She felt it, too, felt its persistent, eager progress. Time didn’t stop on the base, at least not in the section she worked out of, but it did proceed at a reduced pace and the patterns were more sedate when the inhabitants had fewer choices to make and the time shields and sensors filtered out much of the stream. Ashe didn’t like extended time on the base. As a time sensitive, slow time itched, despite her protective uniform. Even those not as sensitive to time as she was got twitchy if they lingered in slow time for too long.

Here in real time, it looked to be mid-day, well into the hot season, judging by air thick enough to swim through. Even the Chameleon looked hot, an interesting feat for someone so fundamentally cold. The humidity wasn’t a surprise, since the outpost had always been surrounded by a large body of water and was in a temperate climate zone on Kikk. What did surprise was how little it had changed in the passing of so many seasons, so many Earth years.

Lurch had a time stamp from spiking into the outpost’s systems, but it was little help when time continued to flex and flux out in the stream.

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