Flicker

By E. J. Lake

When Liz Franklin received an unexpected job offer from the Treehouse, a trans-lunar space station, she had no idea that her new coworkers had sent a deadly retrovirus back to the year 1809. Now people are dying in an outbreak of flu, and Elizabeth must work with physicist Daniel Oakbridge to reverse the effects of a time-travel experiment gone terribly wrong… Time-travel science fiction by E. J. Lake; originally published by Belgrave House

• Language: English
• Publisher: Belgrave House
• Release date: Jan 1, 2012
• ISBN: 9781610846158

Book preview

Lake

Chapter 1

In the pressure of the moment perspective is impossible. But now, so many years later, I can wonder at the sequence of events that brought this group of people together, at this particular time.

Liz Franklin especially, with her unique combination of talents and background. At first it bothered me. What would have happened if she’d turned down the job? But the universe, it seems, is not so easily fooled.

—Kenneth Treckleman, Memoirs of a Stitch in Time

Pan-Atlantic Ballistic Exit-Entry Vehicle, Houston to Mar Imbrium

The boost to C-fraction was grim, and not helped—in my humble opinion—by the cheerful messages piped in to each seat.

Acceleration will end in four minutes and thirty seconds. Thank you for your patience.

I imagined a thirty-something blonde dressed in reassuring, up-scale colors.

Boost parameters continue within normal limits. Do not be alarmed by loud sounds emanating from the aft engine compartment of the spacecraft.

They weren’t kidding about the loud sounds. A sharp bang from somewhere below me shot through the ship, followed closely by a spacecraft-shuddering whomp.

A whomp wasn’t something that the first-time-in-spacer wants to hear. I imagined the rear end of the vehicle coming off in large, rough-edged chunks. I tried not to clench my jaws, blowing out short, sharp breaths through my teeth. As instructed. The reclining seat swung to re-orient us, eyeballs in. A large boulder settled on my chest and started to push.

The captain and crew thank you for flying Pan-Atlantic Spacelines. We know you have options in space travel, and we appreciate your choosing us.

Uh-huh.

Acceleration will end in three minutes and thirty seconds. Thank you for your—

Oh, shut up.

Ballistic flight finally cut in, just about the time I was beginning to re-think my decision to accept the offer from the 4AX group.

OK, not really. Whatever the hell ‘4AX’ stood for, whoever the hell they were, there was no way I was going to pass up this chance. I had dreamed of spaceflight my entire life, playing endless rounds of I Wish I Was Somewhere Else with my brother Andrew, throwing my arms wide open to the hazy Minnesota night sky, hoping that the stars were still out there, somewhere.

Scottie, Scottie, do you read me? I’m ready, Scottie. Transport me the hell off this planet.

Andrew was the one who had dreamed about lab coats and a cure for new diseases, wishing himself tromping through small, picturesque villages in under-developed countries, taking blood samples from an unsuspecting populace. Ironically, that was where I ended up instead, working for the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta.

Except there was no tromping and no picturesque villages. I spent my days in a CDC lab, hunched over data fields on the computer screen or with my head in a minus-seventy freezer.

And Andy was long dead.

 * * * *

A BEEV carried hundreds, although you’d never know it by my own small compartment with its ten seats, of which only one was occupied. Mine. I assumed I had fellow passengers, although I hadn’t actually met any of them, what with being escorted aboard privately, VIP-like. Very secretive, it had seemed to me. As if I was some hot-shot celebrity.

Maybe it was the other passengers who were being kept secret from me. I guessed that the rest of them were rich, considering the usual price of space travel, even these days, unless you were willing to sign-up for asteroid work, or ice-mining on Luna. Or if your ticket was marked émigré. No return.

I’d thought about it.

The memory of the brutal minutes of lift faded. Frack all but zero-gee was a kick. I felt myself drift up slightly from the seat, restrained only by my belt. My hair—long, curly, dark-brown—floated in and out of view.

I played around for a few minutes, flicking the curls into a tangled mass, lifting my arm and watching it drift, until I got bored and ready for something better to do.

The blonde had used her Very Serious tone of voice to caution passengers against ‘manipulating small objects’ during ballistic flight. On the other hand, nobody had said anything about larger stuff. Bodies, for example. I decided to try a slow mid-air somersault, a la Apollo 13.

Ten minutes later I was sweating, and mad, and still in my seat. Seatbelts-in-space had apparently progressed beyond the ‘insert tab into buckle’ stage. I couldn’t figure out how to take the damn thing off.  

But then—as I continued to fuss with the belt, working through my repertoire of bodily-function-related profanity—the sliver-glass viewport to my left cleared suddenly.

First light. Stars.

My heart leapt. It’s not like I didn’t know they’d be there. Still–

Dazzling swathes of stars against a field of black. Some with a tinge, a flicker of color at the edge of perception, red, or blue, or green. Clusters of stars, a few with a distinctly fuzzy quality, and I wondered, was it possible, could those be nebulae, other galaxies, somewhere, full of more stars—

Oh, Andy, I thought. I wish you could see this.

Even though my brother only would have laughed. Lizzie, who cares? People are starving on our own planet, dying of dirty water and poor sanitation—

I know, Andy, but look–

I shook my head, willing myself away from the past. Willing myself back to the BEEV and to that spectacular view through the sliver-glass. About two minutes later, the seatbelt unbuckled itself.

Chapter 2

Humshaugh Hill, Northumberland

Daniel, the ninth Marquess of Ashbourne, dropped down from the saddle with a quick, athletic movement, and stood for a moment, stretching an hour’s-long kink out of his shoulders. Achilles shook his mane and puffed clouds of breath into the cold air. The hills surrounding them were a chiaroscuro of greys and white, the brightness of the snow broken up with mounds of half-buried heather and the deep shadows of scots pine.

The setting was so beautiful that for a moment the marquess thought of taking out his sketchpad; he was a talented amateur, and drew often for his own amusement. 

The cold made him think better of the idea. The marquess glanced at the sun, which was by now low on the horizon. He nodded, satisfied. Near enough to three in the afternoon as made no difference, and only five minutes from Druswood. Exactly as he’d planned.

He could see the village of Humshaugh to the north, a cluster of thatched-roof cottages and a small church. The manor house itself—his house—was hidden from view, behind one last treed slope. The marquess did not need to see Druswood Manor, however, to know precisely what was occurring at that moment. Jeremy would already be standing at the front steps, ready to lead Achilles into the stables, where the stallion would be carefully groomed and treated to a fine bucket of oats. Mrs. Polebridge would be making a final swipe or two with her dusting cloth, ready to greet him at the door.

And the maid—Penny, wasn’t it?—would be brewing his tea.

The marquess, by choice, kept to a small staff at Druswood. Each additional human being was potential mischief. People were tardy. They indulged themselves in odd behaviors. They changed.

Now in London . . .  The London townhouse was a different matter, to be sure. Marchers required a small army of maids and footmen just to keep the thing free of soot. Not to mention cleared of the town rats.

And people would insist on seeing you in London. But at Druswood, in peaceful out-of-the-way Northumberland, a stone’s throw from the Tyne, and another from the wall of Hadrian, he was free.

The marquess glanced at the saddle and decided better of it. Taking the reins, on foot, he led Achilles to the crest of the hill, and down into the small valley where the manor house sat, a few wisps of smoke curling from each of its three chimneys.

Chapter 3

Pan-Atlantic Ballistic Exit-Entry Vehicle, Houston to Mar Imbrium

Three gorgeous slow-mo somersaults and one bad landing later, a steward came in to tell me, very politely, to knock it off. After that, the hours crawled by. I had time to think about where I was going (BGT-415, a trans-lunar space station) and why (very little clue.)

If Hank had taken the job, would they have told him what he was supposed to be doing?

Hank Morales was my boss, sixty-something, with thick, salt-and-pepper hair and a publication record that required its own qubit down in the CDC archives. I was the newbie, full of ideas and working eighty hour weeks in the seventh-floor vaccine lab of Sugano Hall for the joy of science and a bad salary.

He’d called me into his office ten days ago.

You have another job offer.

I must have really worn out my welcome at the CDC.

Gods, I told him. "Have you been putting out feelers?" Hank was a good boss, a great boss, a little anxiety-prone sometimes, but we all had our days—

Was it that time Reggie and I put the cherry kool-aid label on a jar of ethidium bromide?

It’s a temp appointment—

I narrowed my eyes. A temp?

—on a space station.

A long pause. Hank looked pleased with himself. I was stunned.

What’s the job? I managed. It came out as a squeak. In space! In space!

A new vaccine.

Viral vaccines were my—our—field. I hesitated to make eye-contact with this particular gift horse, but honesty prevailed. Unlike Hank, I wasn’t anything close to a Big Name. Why me?

Hank shrugged, deadpan. Dunno. Maybe it’s your winning smile—

Ha ha.

—or your easy-going personality.

Who says the boss doesn’t have a sense of humor? I pursed my lips, working through the possibilities. Pharmco worked out of a close-earth orbit. That Taiwanese research team had dedicated low-gee tanks somewhere near the old Fra Mauro site, the Congolese were there, too—

But I hadn’t heard about anything on a space station. Close-earth was cheaper, and the moon was an easier build. I gave up. Which one, exactly? I asked Hank.

Which what?

Space station.

BGT-415.

I stared at him. Whoa. That space station.

Hank narrowed his eyes. Do you know somebody up there?

I was as baffled as he was. Me? I shook my head. Are you kidding?

OK. He shrugged. Whatever. The team wants you.

Team?

The ‘4AX team’.

Who?

No idea.

Why me? I asked again. I remember feeling uneasy at that point in the conversation. Good basic instincts. Bad triangulation.

Another shrug. Hank tended to the phlegmatic with personnel issues. Viruses were another matter. Do you care?

I guess not. I hesitated. Are we sure that place even exists?

For the amount they’re going to pay you as a sign-on bonus, said Hank, I’m guessing it does.

He’d seen my contract. Huh. I suppressed a moue of annoyance and went on the attack.

How do you know? I said. Maybe it’s just a story to scare little kids.

Elizabeth—

If you don’t do what mom tells you, we’ll send you up to the big, bad rich guy’s space station, which is parked near some heavy-core asteroid, and you’ll be mining beryllium cake with your teeth until, you know, something—

Ifni, said Hank.

Well, if I never come back, it’ll be all your fault.

  * * * *

BGT-415 was—allegedly—one of the trans-Lunar space stations, meaning it was parked somewhere beyond the moon. A fair number of these stations had been built during the past fifty years, mostly by multi-national consortia determined to avoid government regulations of one sort or another. International law was having enough headaches dealing with a thousand competing claims on the lunar surface: for anything outside the perigee of the moon’s orbit they mostly didn’t try.

Go ahead and build it, was the idea. If it explodes—

Which they did, occasionally. Some of the stations had been abandoned when financing went sour, but several others had experienced—umm—‘incidents’ of a drastic, wholesale death-related nature since—as it turns out—if quality control isn’t super good on construction meant to sit in the middle of a vacuum at about a half-degree Kelvin, serious shit happens.

Still, a few survived. We all heard about them, back in the gravity well, staring up through the muck of haze. You had to have major money to visit one, but—have you noticed?—no matter what financial problems everyone else is having, there always seem to be people with major money.

There were space casinos for those who couldn’t lose their money fast enough on earth. Space spas catering to rich vid stars who required the ultimate in gravity-free face lifts. Space brothels, even, which were especially popular for technical, physiological reasons we won’t get into.

Low-gee porn had been a growth industry for years.

They were all expensive digs, but trans-Lunar meant never having to say you were sorry. Or pay taxes.

Gossip claimed that, out of all the existing stations, BGT-415 was owned by an individual. Somebody who had made a fortune on Luna—although ‘fortune’ doesn’t really cover it—and decided to build himself his own world. But even the gossip was sketchy. I’d never met anyone who’d been up there themselves, or said they’d met someone who’d met someone, etc.

There were other rumors. Colin Patterson got drunk one night at Daffy’s— over a total of (count them) two beers—and told me that the owner was supposed to be the geek of all science geeks. The uber-geek, if you will. He hired scientists by the score, in everything from astrophysics to zoology. People disappeared from good positions at major universities and industrial labs, never to be heard from again. According to Colin.

And here I was. Big inner sigh. Elizabeth Franklin, trans-Lunar virologist. Liz Franklin, reporting live from trans-Luna. The work reported by Dr. Franklin in her Nobel prize-winning paper was performed on BGT-415, trans-Luna.

It had a romantic ring for a wannabe space-dog. I hadn’t thought twice before telling Hank I’d take the offer. ‘Never heard from again’ didn’t bother me. Colin was an idiot. Besides, what could anybody have against a virologist?

  * * * *

After I signed the contract I expected reams of explanatory material to follow. All about the 4AX team. The virus they were working on. What they wanted me to do. I could have been planning the original tank set-ups, I could have been scanning the genomics for step-ins, I could have been learning my new boss’s name for frack’s sake.

But D minus one rolled around and I had—nada. Not a pipit. Whoever they were, whatever they wanted, I was going to have to wait. I packed. I re-packed. I pumped Hank for everything he knew.

Which was nothing, so instead of reviewing tank specs, I spent the last few days obsessing about null-gee.

What if I get space sick? I whined to Hank, the morning before my flight.

Then it will be a real quick trip.

I grimaced, imagining. Passengers who got badly, wish-I-were-dead space-sick on the BEEV were given a choice. Tough it out to Luna, or be launched—ejected—back to Earth in an old-style, ablation-shield recovery pod.

No matter how rich you were. It seemed impossible that this was the best they could offer the cake-eaters. But it didn’t matter, because I wasn’t going to take an ablation ride. I was going to BGT-415. I was going to be in space.

  * * * *

A steward finally poked his head in through the curtain and asked about my preference for dinner, or in fact, if I wanted dinner at all. I guessed that some of the other passengers weren’t doing well in ballistic flight, because he had that look on his face, the look of someone not happy with his fellow human beings.

The list of entrees—which he rattled off at orbital vee, monotone—was short. No gyros or falafel, nothing resembling Greek food, which I am passionate about, so I settled for something in the chicken line.

Very good, madam, he said. Actually, I’m kidding. It was something more like mmph. Or rrgh. He left.

While I waited for a dinner that I seriously hoped would include wine, I decided to catch up on some professional reading. Hank had been on a tear recently, assigning one project on top of another, and back issues of the CDC Morb and Mort had started to pile up in my qubit reader. The Center for Disease Control Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, the catalogue of everything new and health-related, including viruses.

I thumbed open an edition from a few weeks ago, and started reading.

Transmission of Hepatitis B Virus in Correctional Facilities in Jakarta

Atypical Rous sarcoma-like retrovirus found in village cluster, northeast Britain

Tuberculosis associated with blocking agents against tumor necrosis factor alpha

Revised list of reportable diseases for the week beginning–

The usual CDC litany of the damage, real or anticipated, done to the human body by things a lot smaller than ourselves. We are cannon fodder for the microscopic. From their point of view—

I thought of my brother, dead at twenty-four.

Particularly viruses. Viruses are tricky. Fast. Inexorable. With the wrong virus at the wrong time, it’s no contest at all.

Chapter 4

BGT-415, Trans-lunar

Daniel Oakbridge saw the small red light and paused at the entrance to his lab, brushing a philodendron leaf away from the lock pad. He pressed his thumb to the surface and waited for the mechanism to cycle. A drop of water fell onto the glass, distorting the image of the captured print.

Daniel wondered whose idea it was to bolt the door. A psychological barrier, he guessed, since there was nothing in the lab that would be of use to anybody other than his own group of sleep-deprived physicists.

Too bad locks didn’t work against the minions.

Crash.

He heard shouting inside, and the sound of something heavy shattering against a wall. 

Gods, please, they weren’t throwing pieces of the new skindip.

Daniel fought the impulse to turn around and walk off. He could come back in an half-hour or so when the yelling had stopped and the pieces of whatever it was—airborne thanks to Giorgo, he had no doubt—had been collected and sent to the remax. He didn’t really want to know what had gone wrong this time.

The volume of shouting notched up as the door began to cycle open.

No! You can’t use a batt-servo, you daft wanker!

That would be Giorgio Mastronarde, Daniel’s senior research assistant. Giorgio was brilliant. Volatile. A London-born Italian. Arguing with Kenny the Trekky.

Yes, but—

You’ll blow the conduit half-way to—

Not if—

"Oh, sod off!"

If this kept up, they’d need to sound-proof the room.

Stop yelling. A woman’s voice, cool and matter-of-fact. Seema, their resident expert in the wormhole dynamics, was a brilliant mind when it came to physics. Her weakness was a tendency to believe that people behaved rationally. Serge is going to hear about—

Oh, like he doesn’t damn well know already! 

Daniel pushed open the door and looked around, wondering what piece of inordinately expensive electronics had just hit the wall. He saw only shards of a coffee mug, scattered halfway across the lab floor.

One of Giorgio’s. Bet on it.

There was a long breath’s worth of silence.

Hey. Dan, said Kenny. Calm and professional.

How are you feeling? added Seema.

Giorgio shot her a look. Shut up. All three were attempting to smile reassuringly.

Don’t bother, Daniel told them. They could probably hear you on Luna.

Another silence. Then— Sorry, Dan.

So. What’s the problem?

We need to upgrade the doppler for the skindip by three tevs.

Gods.

You can’t get by with a double?

Huh-uh. Field strength parameters won’t match.

A long discussion ensued. Kenny handled most of the math, while Giorgio paced around the lab, throwing out possible solutions one after another, his hands gesturing and punching the air. Seema shot down every idea, calmly.

You’ll be exactly back where you started. None of this is addressing the basic issue— 

But what about—

Sometimes one of Giorgio’s mad brainstorms would work. This time, however, Daniel knew that Seema was going to be right. 

Then he saw Kenny’s eyes close. Daniel guessed that he was calculating the possible Lorentzian metrics. In his head.

A stator, said Kenny, suddenly, his eyes popping open. A T-3.

Giorgio’s eyebrows raised. Hell if.

Can we even get one? asked Seema.

It was a fair question. Serge had provided everything they’d asked for. So far. But a T-3—

A T-3 stator was a several million dollar piece of equipment, a bit of ultra-tech about the size and general shape of a rat.

The stator would be the perfect solution, Daniel realized. An unorthodox way to get around the field strength issues, that was certain—but perfect.

We can ask, can’t we? 

Yeah. Daniel blew out a long breath. We can ask. OK. I’ll do the requisition today. We’ll see what happens.

When? Kenny was keyed up, impatient already, bouncing on his heels. 

With anything else— Daniel shrugged. Anything else would be up on Monday’s shuttle. But for the stator, he couldn’t be sure. How long did it take to make a no doubt wholly illegal purchase? Let’s assume we can get it. Why not? Let’s assume it gets here next week.

Giorgio nodded. We’ll be ready.

Daniel wondered which was more difficult; research on Earth, following gigabytes of government regulations—

—or research in the Treehouse, where Serge fast-tracked anything that caught his interest and everything was expected to be finished yesterday. The first experiment had gone so smoothly—

Except it hadn’t, as they now knew.

 * * * *

He retreated to his office and a few minutes later, as expected, a minion showed up. Daniel didn’t know how they always knew exactly where he’d be, or when. Or why they never used the standard office coms. He didn’t bother asking. The information flow with minions was one-way.

You need a Friesland T-3 stator, said the minion.

It wasn’t a question.

Yes, said Daniel, and waited. You didn’t explain anything to a minion. You didn’t elaborate.

It will be ordered, the minion said.

And that was that.

Chapter 5

Mar Imbrium, Luna

I was on the moon. I was on the moon. OK, it was only the Mar Something-or-other spaceport, and nobody had shown up to meet me when I got off the BEEV and I had no idea where to go next—

But I was on the moon.

The pilot had given us regular, cheerful updates in mostly unintelligible BEEV-speak as we landed, chatty to the point that I wondered who was flying the damn thing. We’d landed soft-side, rolled over and been ‘decanted’—the pilot’s word for it—into the lower level of Mar Whatever.

The rolling over part of the process had been moderately alarming; at some point I’d become aware of lunar gravity, low-gee though it was, and suddenly very aware that I was hanging upside down in my seat. Then—I wasn’t upside down anymore. Weird. The BEEV lights had brightened, the seatbelt retracted on its own, and a door opened to the front of me, sending in a brief rush of cold air.

 I’d exited the BEEV without seeing another soul, under directions from the same chipper, disembodied voice that had gotten us off the ground.

We would like to thank you for flying Pan-Atlantic Spacelines, said Blondie. Please exit now through the front of the spacecraft. We would like to thank you for—

The exit led to a tunnel, which led in turn to a ramp and an airlock, which exited into a large space, dimly lit, with a roof that seemed klicks overhead. People hurried by. I heard snatches of conversation.

—and I caught the two o’clock to Heavyside, but—

"Deimos? You’re kidding. Frank says—"

I hesitated, wondering if I should stay near the airlock exit, waiting for someone to hold up a sign saying Dr. Elizabeth Franklin.

Nobody paid any attention to me at all.

OK, now what? I’d been given no other instructions beyond ‘take the six a.m. BEEV from Houston. You will be met at Mar Imbrium by a representative of the 4AX team.’

Mar Imbrium. That was it. I looked around. The space—cavern, whatever—was full of people, with garish neon-lighted shops along the walls and kiosks scattered throughout. The people seemed to be a mixture of tourists (Hawaiian shirts? Seriously?) and local workers. Rolligons zipped noiselessly by.

Those shops looked promising. With any luck, I could find an I (heart) Luna coffee mug for Hank. Then, as my eyes adjusted to the light, I realized that one side of the cavern had—windows.

Far out. I started in that direction at a quick pace, only to lose my footing almost immediately. I was air-borne, sort of, pawing at the ground with my high heels, and tilting rapidly out of balance. I mentally computed my trajectory, and decided that my first activity on the moon was going to be bouncing off the Mar Imbrium space station floor with my ass.

Somebody grabbed my arm—I yelped—and deposited me back on my feet.

Oh—

Lady, said a young man, slow down.

Yeah. Thanks— 

And for dawg’s sake get rid of those shoes.

Well, damn. And they made my legs look so good.

The heels had also been a subject of protest from Hank, who had seen me off from the Atlanta port.

Seriously? was his comment, complete with flared nostrils and narrowed eyes.

What?

The heels. Are you nuts?

They’re my favorite pair.

"You’re going into space."

Low-gee, remember? Shouldn’t it be easy on my feet?

Ifni. He’d shaken his head.

Well, I liked them. But they were starting to make me feel like a space debutante.

I looked longingly at the windows in the distance. If I walked very slowly—

Then I noticed a nearby cart selling what looked to be hot drinks and pastries.

Moon coffee! Moon doughnuts! I edged carefully in that direction, trying to keep my balance, aware that the cart’s owner was staring at my feet.

Coffee? I asked.

Two creds. He handed me what looked like a large brown plastic onion with a straw molded into the top. Sip it easy.

And a doughnut?

That got me a shrug. Kouleroos. One cred.

I handed over a fiver, got a dwink in return, and the pastry.

I took a test bite. Gave a heartfelt sigh. Yum. The kouleroo was sweet, heavy with cinnamon and honey.

Incredible, I told the man, grinning, wiping a smear of cinnamon off my chin.

He shrugged again.

Talkative guy. 

I continued inching my way—gingerly—toward the windows, trying to stay out of rolligon traffic. I figured that I could give myself a few more minutes to soak up some lunar color before venturing off