Everyone was on duty.
Heather had plenty of helpers to get the concrete blocks from the dance floor onto the patio, where all the extra plant stuff was already crammed. She swept and vacuumed, but resisted the temptation to try the new floor. The team was already arriving for breakfast, including General Ko-fenral from the air base, and Maria needed all the help she could get.
The dining room buzzed with excitement over the newly-remodeled facility and the unusual topic of the session. General Bo-seklin was in his element, presiding over a vibrant and promising new military intelligence program, and assuring the visiting general that the information they were receiving, although they hadn’t acted on any of it, was already justifying the expenses.
“When do we start acting on this new information?” General Ko-fenral asked.
General Bo-seklin cleared his throat. “I think Doctor Po-selem will be shedding some light on that issue today.”
“Program P-Seventeen, Session Eleven, nine November 3662, zero-nine hundred hours, seven minutes.”
“Good morning everyone. Present are myself, Heather, and . . .”
Everyone with program clearance in the entire world was there — all five officers, six enlisted personnel, four professors, one cook, and one little girl.
“This is a very special day, as the remodeling of the facility was just
NEBADOR Book Nine: A Cry for Help 110
completed . . . let me see . . . about an hour ago.”
The entire room erupted with laughter. Even the guards by the stairs had trouble keeping straight faces.
“It’s also special because I get to relax, listen, and ask questions for the first time!”
Both General Bo-seklin, in his most impressive dress uniform, and the physics professor, with his wild hair, flashed her cheesy grins.
“I hope everyone likes the comfy new seats. Sam has three in his office!”
Murmurs of delight came from all round the circle.
“The blackboard is also brand new,” Heather continued, “and I trust everyone remembers that no erasing is allowed until Ben photographs it. So with that, I give the floor to Doctor Po-selem.”
He stood, faced the blackboard for a moment, then turned around and looked at the circle of military people, psychologist, historian, and philosopher. “Wow. This isn’t as easy as giving a standard lecture to wide-eyed undergrads. How do you do it, Heather?”
She just smiled.
“Um . . . I’ve been meeting with General Bo-seklin and Colonel Ba-kerga, and we worked up some hypothetical questions I could put to my physics colleagues all over the world, with the pretense that I was just working on a very speculative article, almost science fiction . . .”
Neither Heather, nor anyone else, could remember the convoluted theories the physicist presented over the next hour, but as best they could tell, his logic and math were sound. He and his colleagues were in agreement that very tiny influences by someone with knowledge of the future would probably not change it, but there could be exceptions. He advised Heather, and all team members, to stay away from world leaders of any kind.
But when he started talking about large, purposeful changes to the future, everyone was on the edges of their seats. He assumed that none had been attempted, and both generals verified.
“And yet,” the physicist went on, “there wouldn’t be much purpose for the military to study the material that Heather is giving us, unless . . . the possibility existed that someday, after hearing of something in the future that was just too terrible to swallow, the Department of Defense decided to act.”
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As Doctor Po-selem looked around at his listeners, no one denied the possibility.
“And I think it’s safe to assume that the bigger the problem, the bigger the intervention that will be needed.”
“Naturally,” General Ko-fenral admitted.
“So, applying these theoretical equations,” the physicist continued, pointing at the blackboard, “the greater you find the necessity of changing the future, the greater the possibility that doing so will cause our timeline to diverge from the one with Heather’s memories . . .” He looked around to see if they were still with him. “. . . and the greater the possibility that the time traveler will vanish — in other words, that Heather’s memories will disappear, and she’ll suddenly become just a seven-year-old girl wondering where her mommy is.”
Heather frowned at the notion.
“Are you counseling us to never act on the foreknowledge we’re getting?”
Colonel Ba-kerga asked with suspicion and disapproval written all over his face.
Doctor Po-selem stared at the floor for a moment before looking up and speaking. “No. I can’t say I had a religious bone in my body before joining this team, but it’s painfully obvious that this . . . gift . . . was arranged by . . .
someone, someone very powerful. As I’ve said several times, backwards time travel, even by mere information, just isn’t natural, in any sense of the word. I can’t imagine any reason for going to all this trouble unless it was intended to be used at some point.”
He noticed the colonel’s slight nod of agreement.
“But . . . I just hope everyone will keep in mind that we might — no, it’s more accurate to say that we will probably get only one shot at something big, and we will probably lose Heather in the process.”
After a long silence, General Ko-fenral took a deep breath. “By lose Heather, you mean her memories would disappear.”
The scientist looked up toward the ceiling for a moment. “At least. And I wouldn’t be surprised if her other predictions — those that had not yet come to pass — suddenly became inaccurate.”
Heather still wore a slight frown, but didn’t show any signs of surprise.
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The questions came at Doctor Po-selem for nearly an hour, and he was hard pressed to explain his theories in language they could understand, but he tried.
Finally, at a slight gap in the discussion five minutes before noon, Heather stood up, and the physicist used the silence that followed to quickly retreat to his chair.
“I’m sure these questions will continue to . . . um . . . haunt us, probably for the entire future of this team. The green security lamp is about to be switched off, and your note pads must be locked in your mail drawers. Every imaginable goodie is waiting in the dining room, there will be tours, all the non-classified schmoozing you desire, and I will dance for you at one o’clock
— I mean thirteen hundred.”
They smiled or chuckled.
“And don’t forget — the team is on vacation next week!”
Several people pulled appointment calendars from their pockets.
Thinking of nothing else that needed saying, and seeing no one with urgent announcements, Heather nodded at Sergeant Ta-nibon behind the tape recorder.
“Session Eleven ends at eleven hundred hours, fifty-eight minutes.”