"In terms of time-travel then...?"
"I was frightened because Will sprung it on me and I saw the dangers right away. But to be fair, I should at least try it."
"Will doesn't face fear the first time something comes at him, does he?"
"No. He reacts without thinking. He's fearless."
"You might say that when the two of you face a scary incident, he's a fast thinker, and you're a slow thinker."
"That's fair."
"And when the two of you are in an argument, you're the fast thinker, and he's the slow thinker."
"True. That bothers him a lot."
"Interesting how the two of you are polar opposites."
"You're trying to tell me something, TG. Spit it out."
"Too bad you weren't a couple. There'd always be one fast thinking partner ready to react to any situation. The two of you would make a formidable team, I suspect. Provided that whoever was the slow thinker in that incident was given a chance to catch up to the fast thinker later."
# # # # # # # #
That evening, TG brought his time-travel capsule, Wolf's time-travel capsule, and a number of surveillance bugs to Izzy's kitchen. They spent an hour in their river valley getting used to the features – TG himself not yet proficient. Then they TiTr'd back six months and planted the bugs on both houses. True to TG's prediction, they found the writers within twenty-four hours of real time. They were indeed Zzyk's sleepers. Izzy said that she'd need some time to decide what to do with them.
Once again, she kissed TG on the cheek and thanked him. "Why'd you do this for me, TG? A lot of time I'm not a nice person to be around."
"I disagree. You're an exciting person to be around, especially when you plan your battles. Are you OK for that now?"
"Yah. I have the outline in my mind. But first, I need to meet with Will. You didn't say why you did this, TG."
"You and Will saved Liset and me from death. Now we're together and we have Yollie with us. I'm just trying to help you out in return for what you did for me. That's what families do, is it not?"
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Chapter 29
Early Thursday morning, before he was in his office, Zzyk's computer spat out a personal e-mail to the secret e-mail addresses of his two sleepers. Only Zzyk and Zzyk's personal computer knew those addresses. The sleepers knew that anything coming to them from that computer was a direct order from Zzyk.
Immediate and urgent! You are facing arrest and incarceration within two days unless you do the following.
1. Send your most recent copy of your books on Izzy to the following folder on our server. You can retrieve these after the current danger is past. Only you will know where they are stored.
2. Destroy all drafts of the Izzy books on any computers or storage devices that you may own. Also, destroy any documents that reveal that you have been posting articles about Izzy on the Internet. Also, destroy any physical evidence that reveals that you have been behind the tour guides harassing the Wilizy compound and the misleading messages about Will and Izzy on the WZBN. Destroying all the evidence will mean B.C. cannot prove anything against you.
3. One B.C. official has been conducting the search for you. He has not shared his suspicions with anyone else. Kill him and you will be safe. He has a predictable routine. On Thursday nights, he dines with other ranking officers of B.C.'s military in a back room in their Officers' Club. A friend of ours will leave the back door to that room unlocked. Entry should be easy before 5 p.m. Place enough explosives to take out the entire room and leave. All targets should be in place by 7:30 p.m.
# # # # # # # #
On Thursday night, acting on a tip from the Wilizy, B.C.'s military police watched as two Albertan noses entered the back room of the Officers' mess. To facilitate that entry, the MPs had left the back door unlocked. They recorded a man and woman concealing enough explosives within that room to bring down the building. MPs arrested the pair as they exited and charged them with espionage and an attempt to assassinate the top officers of the B.C. military. Neither Albertan nose was willing to cooperate.
To save the empty building from damage, MPs took all the explosives wired to explode at 7:30 and placed them on a raft floating in the middle of Surrey harbour. They chained the two Albertan noses to the raft too. The noses had the choice to disarm the bombs or they could simply wait for the bombs to explode. The noses chose to disarm the bombs and take a job in the B.C. Prison Service as unpaid cell inspectors.
A certain storage folder in a certain place on Alberta's main servers was removed that same evening by the effective owner of that server.
# # # # # # # #
Will's words.
I was working my way through the drone data in the months leading up to Mac's August 2081 wedding. Wolf said that he knew what was going to happen and he didn't want to see it taking place in slow motion in front of his eyes. I had promised to fill him in if something unusual happened. That's why he was hovering with me above the top of Saskatoon's chapel's steeple as I described what I had found.
"Sven kept putting pressure on Mac for a date in April and May. At one point, she said that she had already answered him and she wouldn't keep telling him No. He kept trying to convince her with subtle moves like coming to her house drunk, yelling at her to open the door, and pounding on it."
I wasn't going to tell Wolf about the conversations Sven had with his two mates and what he told them he was going to do to her. It was all about sex. However, Wolf did need to know about the conversation that Sven had with the general in June. I'd clean up the language a little. OK, I'd clean up the language a lot.
"This is the part I need your help on, Wolf. In July, Sven went into the general's office and told him that he would be dating his daughter soon. He said that she was currently resisting his efforts, but she'd give in soon."
"He didn't say dating, did he?" Wolf asked.
"Uh, I don't remember the exact wording."
"Will, don't ever play poker with anyone. You're a terrible liar. Go on. I already figured out what would be coming."
"So Sven said that the general knew that all he had to do was show Mac a picture of a car accident and she'd be having sex with him the next day. The general stood up at that point, and it looked like he was going to come around the desk, but he didn't. Instead he sat down and said, "I wouldn't if I were you. You'll regret it." Sven laughed, said a whole bunch of uncomplimentary things about Mac, and left making some rude gestures."
"That night, the general went home, performed his usual ritual, and was in bed by 9. At least that was what the bug in the telephone would have reported. But the general had wrapped the telephone in a big blanket at 9 p.m., went downstairs, and brought up the blinds and draperies that should have been in his bedroom but weren't. He went upstairs and installed them in his bedroom. He also went into Mac's bedroom and opened her blinds and draperies a bit. Here are pictures of the house before the redecorating and now this morning."
"He's using them as a signal," Wolf said. "Nobody looks at the windows of a house. At least not a soldier driver who just wants to pick the general up and drop him off at his office."
"That's what I thought too. So I watched the general's house the evening after he had put up the signals. At about 2:30 in the morning, Mac came into his yard; she was dressed completely in black. You know that gravel border around the general's garden? She changed things. Added some slightly bigger pieces of gravel, relocated the rocks, turned a figurine backwards – that kind of thing. Here's the before picture; and now this shows the garden the next morning."
"The driver isn't going to notice anything." Wolf said. "Did the general look at his garden that morning?"
"Yes. He was a little slower coming down the walk than usual, and at one point he bent over to tie a shoelace. I saw him undo the shoelace inside the house. Mac goes by the house every morning and evening. It's right on her way to work."
"Good. This tells us how t
hey are communicating. The messaging system has to be crude. Fifteen or twenty words, perhaps. Danger. Help. That kind of thing. Yesterday, the general warned her what Sven was going to do and Mac replied. Did they keep communicating?"
"The general did. The next morning the windows were back to normal; then, he draped out the same message; then, back to normal; then, the same message. Mac didn't return to the garden."
"He's trying to insist. She's refusing to listen. I bet'cha he's telling her to clear out. Sven will continue to badger her for sex. He can't give in now that he's told the general what he's going to do to her. What was the next stage in Sven's courtship?"
"He came into the anteroom and slapped a picture down on Mac's desk. I couldn't see what it was. It would have been printed off his pinky ring."
"What did Mac do?"
"Took out a match and burned it. Right in front of him."
"Sven replied that he had plenty more where that came from and made some descriptive comments about Mac. Mac replied that she had plenty more matches and she returned the verbal favour. She told him that she didn't care what people thought of her. She was a different person back then. You know that I've cleaned up the conversation a lot, right?"
"Right. Did Mac match him curse for curse?"
"Oh yeah. He was just crude. She stripped him bare."
"Atta girl!"
"Sven said that he'd take what he wanted whether she wanted to give it or not. Mac said that if he so much as touched her, she'd have him up on statutory rape charges in front of a military tribunal, a tribunal that Sven did not control. Then she reminded him that she was 15 years old, well under Saskatchewan's age of consent of 18. But after Sven threatened to post the picture of the general's car accident, Mac gave in. She said she'd have sex with him but only in marriage. Saskatchewan allows 16 year olds to marry. She turns 16 on August 31 – the day of the wedding."
"Smart. Strategic retreat. This is important, Will. Did any of the SODs catch on to the real reason she offered to marry him?"
"Wolf, she didn't offer. She was forced into agreeing."
"That's what you think. Is that what the SODs think as well?"
"Yeah. Sven's buddies spent a lot of time slapping him on the back and applauding when he described what he'd be doing."
"Good," Wolf said.
"Good?"
"Yah. Watch the tapes through to her departure from Saskatoon and then we'll meet. I'm looking forward to learning what happens next."
"You know that she's getting married on the 31st. Right? You know what Sven is going to be doing that night. Right?"
"I know what he's not going to be doing that night."
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Chapter 30
As TG had suggested, Izzy's first meeting with Will was all about secrets. They met in the living room of the house – the kitchen being a mess with papers strewn all over. Izzy shared with Will everything that she had ever held back, explaining that she didn't want anyone to know how pathetic she had been. Izzy also admitted that she had overreacted to Will's secrets since she herself was equally to blame for holding things back. She asked if Will had any other secrets that he had kept from her. She wouldn't be mad at him if he had.
Will wanted to be thorough, so he took some time to think about it. Izzy said that he should take his time and she'd work on the plans for the war. When he called her back to the living room, he reminded her about the time he and TG had gone to the pub. He hadn't told her about drinking only half a bottle of beer before he passed out.
"I bossed you around about that, didn't I? I told you that you shouldn't go to pubs."
"Yah. I didn't realize that until much later. I'd like to go to pubs with TG."
"Will, from now on, go anywhere you want; just tell me what your plans are. Not for permission; just so that I know where you are. But I am curious why you'd want to go to a pub again seeing as how you can't tolerate alcohol."
That lead Will to tell Izzy about TG, and why he liked to go to pubs to observe people and learn about human behaviour. Will told her that he found his time-travel trips to find Mac so compelling because Mac had had such a hard life, and she was such a strong person, and so brave. He couldn't stop from watching her deal with Sven, and wondering if she and her father would ever make up. Of course Izzy didn't know anything about that, and Will said that he couldn't tell her, and that made another secret that he had been keeping from her and he had forgotten about that, but Mac wouldn't appreciate everyone knowing about her life. "People are way more interesting than putting drones together and testing them," he said.
Izzy suggested that perhaps they could go to a pub together. She might find that watching people was interesting too and Will said that could be fun.
"I don't want to be bossy, Will, but perhaps we should stop talking now. We have a lot to talk about, and I think we should take our time. If you were alright with this, perhaps we could meet tomorrow morning, but each of us could come to the meeting with rules about what kinds of secrets we can keep from each other and for how long?"
"We need rules on arguing too."
"Perhaps we should talk with Yolanda and Hank and find out what they do?"
"Doc and Granny too. Why don't you make a plan for the week, Izzy? You're good at that."
So Izzy did.
# # # # # # # #
Hank and Yolanda revealed that they often disagreed, usually on how the children should be raised. Hank was more tolerant about the children being daring. Yolanda was always on the cautious side. Their most important rule? "Never fight in front of the children."
"You actually fight?" Will had asked.
"Not a physical fight, but yes," Hank said. "We get mad at each other, but not for long and we always apologize if one of us has been in the wrong."
"And you still love each other?"
"Yes, of course we do," Yolanda said.
"Why wouldn't we?" Hank asked.
# # # # # # # #
Doc and Granny shared that they didn't fight very often. They were now at the age where they tolerated just about anything.
"Keep talking until you work it out," Granny said.
"You guys need a stop signal so that Will can have a chance to think when you're having a fight," Doc said.
"If it's a serious fight, perhaps the two of you could write your arguments down and exchange them by e-mail," Granny suggested.
"That would give Will a chance to think," Doc agreed.
"It would give Izzy a chance to slow down and make sure that she actually wanted to say what she was going to say," Granny added.
Both Will and Izzy liked that idea and built it into their plan.
# # # # # # # #
In terms of the time-travel, Izzy told Will that she had tried it out with TG and she agreed that it was safe if they followed the rules and stayed invisible when they were in the past. She also confessed that she needed to have time to adjust to things that were initially threatening to her.
They talked about the Will and Izzy craziness. They talked about this a lot. They didn't have an answer. They did have an answer for something that had been causing a lot of problems for them.
"It's still very important to me that we don't have sex before marriage," Izzy explained. "But I believe that it's silly that we can't get married until we reach a particular age that somebody has set because that's the way it's always been. I do think though that we need to see if we can make our new arrangement work before we even think about sex."
On Thursday, they agreed that Will should move back into the house so that they could try their new rules.
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Chapter 31
TG told Will that he was curious to see if Surrey pubs were any different than English pubs, so they planned an evening out for the boys on Saturday, October 20. Wolf offered to come along as security since Will was going to be visible and his picture had been circulated widely. Wolf also happened
to know a good pub. Yollie and Izzy would have a girls' night at home.
Wolf's pub was large and well lit in contrast to the smaller and darker pubs in England. It didn't have warm beer, but it did offer cold beer of any variety they'd want. Customers could order a good range of hard drinks plus a wide selection of food. The music was quite loud, so the patrons had to speak up to hear each other and that made for quite a din. TG found a table in the back next to a fire exit and they settled in. Wolf said that he'd float around invisibly for a bit. Will ordered his Virgin Mary and TG decided to try a Canadian beer. They settled back, not trying to talk in the din, and watched the crowd. Some couples were up dancing.
TG was the first to notice the two hot girls approaching them. He grunted to catch Will's attention. The grunt could be translated to, "Do you see what's coming?"
Will grunted in the affirmative. Undoubtedly he was expressing appreciation for all the time these girls had spent to make themselves unforgettable.
"Somebody said that you were Will, you know of Will and Izzy," the blonde said to Will. In point of fact, that somebody had been Wolf.
"Is that true?" the brunette added.
"Yeah. Will's off for a night on the town," TG responded.
The blonde turned, and in a voice that surprised everyone because it was louder than the din of the music plus the conversation of sixty patrons trying to be heard, she screeched. "It's HIM!!!!"
Women rose as one and rushed into Will's corner of the pub. Men climbed on chairs to see what was happening. The pub owner stood up on his bar and decided to turn off his music. That plus the squeals from the women could bring the authorities in for breaking the noise ordinances. Waitresses started pushing their way to the front of the crowd, solely to see if Will needed another drink.
TG took charge. "Now ladies, yes this is Will and he's quite happy to speak with you. But let's form a line here so that everyone will have a turn."
Will looked at TG the way a deer would look at the headlights of an oncoming tank.
Just say something on how good they look tonight and shake their hands. It'll only take a few minutes.
So Will stood up and came around the table. The first couple of conversations went smoothly. Then, how this happened is unknown, but for some reason, the women in the line heard that Will was looking for a new partner. This news passed up and down the line at supersonic speed – women having the ability to speak at that speed when they felt the need. Purses were opened, pens and paper were extracted, and little notes were penned. TG saw this happening and took a position at the front of the queue. "Thirty seconds only," he directed and positioned his cap to receive their notes.