Resonance

Chapter 16. Back in the TSA

  For a while it looked as if we might not be able to go back. Aunt Jean suddenly decided on Sunday after church that she was against it, and Shep did not have her permission to go. He didn't argue at the time—he knows pretty well how to handle her. He came over—by then I was back in my own house—and we discussed it, and then we went to my dad. He talked it through with us, and then Shep went and talked to Uncle Will, and the two of them talked to Aunt Jean.

  Basically Shep explained that there was no way not to go. They were going to pick us up on Monday morning, and there wasn't any way to get in touch and tell them not to. All he could do would be to refuse to participate once he got there, and that would be pretty ungracious, after the way they had saved his life—my dad had made it very clear that Shep would have been dead, or at least brain-dead, a vegetable, without their intervention.

  He reminded her that Andrew Kirk had promised that we would not be in any danger, and he came up with something really clever on his own: he said that whatever time line they put us into for their project, if something went wrong there, they could always go back and pull us out before it happened. I didn't know whether that was even true, although it sounded logical, but he finally convinced her.

  Mom probably wasn't too keen on me going back either, but all she said was, "I guess this seems like a real adventure to you."

  "It's the most exciting thing that's ever happened to me," I answered. "And I want to go back more than I've ever wanted anything."

  "Angel?" she asked. I'd told her a little more about Angel than I'd shared with the group, not how I felt, but she could read between the lines.

  "Definitely," I said, "but not exclusively. The whole thing is just way too interesting to walk away from. Wouldn't you want to go to the TSA if you could?"

  "I sure would," she said. I knew she meant it. I knew Dad and Uncle Will would also jump at a chance to go. I was pretty sure that Aunt Jean wouldn't.

  Aunt Jean wouldn't let Shep spend Sunday night at our house, and I didn't see any need to make it harder for Mom by spending that night at Shep's. We figured they could find us, wherever we were.

  And they did. I don't know what time it was on Monday morning that they picked us up, but I woke up that morning in my room in the TSA, not my bed at home. I jumped out of bed grinning and went to take a shower.

  That's when I realized that we were being monitored somehow. I came out of the bathroom, and there was a knock on the door, and it opened before I could say anything, and Angel came in pushing a trolley with breakfast.

  I let her shut the door before I kissed her, which I did for a while and very thoroughly. Then I realized that I should have gotten dressed first, then I thought, what the hell, she didn't seem to mind last time.

  "You should get dressed," she said finally. "We should have breakfast. Then I'll take you over to my dad again, and he can tell you about the project."

  Suddenly I was afraid Aunt Jean had jinxed it somehow and kept Shep home.

  "What about Shep?" I asked.

  "He can get his own breakfast," she said.

  "He's here? What if he comes knocking on my door?"

  "Of course he is, and there's a big Do Not Disturb sign on it," she answered, blushing a little bit.

  I realized that I had told Shep all about the magic food hatch, even pointed it out, and he could indeed get his own breakfast. I went and got dressed.

  While we ate, I told Angel all about what had happened when we got home. I was just getting to the newspaper article when it dawned on me.

  "Oh, shit—I mean, I'm sorry," I said smoothly. "You already know all this, don't you, from watching?"

  "No!" She looked shocked. "Of course not. I wouldn't spy on you! Nobody does, nobody would do that."

  "How did they know when to pick us up?" I asked.

  "They turned the dial? With the date? To Monday morning?" she explained. "It isn't exactly a dial, but they just aim for the exact time they want."

  A thought struck me. "Can you go back and forth at will?" I asked her. "I mean you, personally. Do you have the magic portal on call? Or do you have to get permission from your dad or somebody—your mom?"

  "Yes, I mean no," she answered. "I can't open a portal. I have to ask. Only people who are working here can come and go as they like. Usually when my mom or dad are coming, they bring me too. Not that I'd be home alone otherwise, because of course when they're here, they're not actually gone from home. It's just that their elapsed time is longer than mine unless I go along. And it's more fun, I see more of them here."

  "Uh-huh, wait," I said. "If you don't spy on people, how did you happen to rescue us? Which I am nothing but glad about, believe me."

  "Oh." She was blushing again. "Alan—you met Alan, who works with Jean? He has a little crush on me, I think, and he was showing me how you zero in on a time and a place. We were just zapping and saw you, your car, and he showed me how to follow it, and we saw them run you off the road, so you crashed into the tree. And I—well, I told you. I thought you were cute. So I went to my dad and said we had to rescue you. Both of you."

  "Went to your dad? How long did that—oh. You went back and got us. How come you didn't just, I don't know, prevent the accident instead?"

  "How?" she asked. "That would have involved something really complicated, like going back and following the guys in the truck for a day or two, making one of them late, or early, or making a leak in the gas tank so they would be out of gas, or making them forget to get gas. It was easier to just yank you out."

  "Your dad said that history mends itself," I remembered. "Does this mean that now Shep will die some other way?"

  "I don't think so," she said seriously. "His death was not the result of some unstoppable historical trend. You could say it was an anomaly. What if those guys had come out of the side road a minute earlier or later, or you had driven enough faster or slower to miss them? Why did they suddenly decide to harass you? And if they did, they could just as well have run you off the road into a field, where you wouldn't have crashed into anything. I think it was an event unto itself, if you know what I mean—a pile of coincidences. Daddy thinks so too, otherwise he wouldn't have agreed to save you."

  "Good," I said and then got the shivers. Our rescue was also a pile of coincidences, for which I was very grateful. I was even grateful for the accident, because otherwise I wouldn't have met Angel, and we wouldn't be involved in this adventure.