Bridgebuilders Read online

  She rested her cheek on the top of his head, her arms around his shoulders, as he held her. “I've never stopped loving you, Sam,” she whispered. “I hated you for a while, 'tis true. But I never stopped loving you.”

  He tightened his hold on her, more aware than he had ever been, just how precious she was to him. He tried to speak, but his voice wouldn't work, even after he cleared his throat. And surely, she was waiting to hear him say he loved her, too. What would she think if he said nothing? Panic rose, he couldn't breathe. She sat up, peering into his face, her expression closed and guarded. Then she smiled and he felt like the sun came out. “You're a sentimental slob Sam,” she said, just as she had earlier, and he found his voice.

  “Do you have any idea what I've been through this last year? Thinking you hated me forever, and wasn't it just what I deserved? Seeing you today ... ah love,” he pressed his forehead to hers. “Tell me you forgive me, Sarah. That you'll let me make it up to you, if I can ever do that. Tell me I can love you again, and you won't turn away from me.”

  She kissed him again, slowly. He'd never really been kissed before, he realized. All others had just been teasers, leading up to this one.

  “There's nothing to forgive, my love,” she said, her lips moving lightly on his. “You meant no malice by telling me. And in the end, my family means more to me than ever, because I know these things.”

  Sometime later, she spoke again, her voice content and languid. “So do I have the job?”

  Chapter 2

  1980

  Three years later

  Sarah stared with blank disinterest at the morning news on the lab’s wall screen. In truth, it was the digital clock in the upper right corner that had her attention. Three years of experimentation and scrapped prototypes had just culminated with one brilliant insight that woke her up at two-dark-o’clock this morning. She’d left Sam slumbering while she threw on jeans and sweatshirt, to pad her way to the laboratory. Four hours of tinkering brought the insight to physical reality, and wonder of wonders, the bloody thing worked.

  Her fingernails tapped a dull rhythm on the countertop, keeping time with the ticking of the grandfather clock in the hallway. She’d long since given up trying to keep busy as she waited for Sam and her uncle to wake up and respond to her urgent message telling them to hurry. The TV clock flipped to seven-oh-six.

  Men seemed to wake up quickly for just one thing.

  Although, she perhaps should not be having such thoughts about her uncle.

  Sam, though ...

  The sound of footsteps drew her thoughts back to safer territory. She turned with narrowed eyes and pouting lip to regard the men as they at last entered the lab.

  “I thought you’d never get here. I sent you a memo an hour ago.”

  “At six in the morning, lass,” Jamie said. “Normal people were still in bed.”

  Sam carried a large, steaming mug in each hand, and he held one out to her, in the apparent hope he could use it as a peace offering. “I brought you tea.”

  The fragrance reached her, and she decided not to fight it. As she took the mug from him, he said, “I noticed you were gone around three o’clock. What drove you from your sleep this time?”

  She sipped the tea and offered a smile to both men before she turned away, crooking her finger to get them to follow. “The solution to our problem.”

  “Which one?” her uncle asked. She didn’t look back, just rounded a counter and reached for the petri dish in the center. She slid it toward them, then took another sip of tea as she watched their expressions.

  Perhaps it was still too early. They stared at the dish, and at the two-centimeter-wide silver cylinder that glinted in its center. They exchanged a glance with each other, before bringing their gazes back to her for enlightenment. She sighed and began to explain.

  “Our bridge-builder, which I’ve started calling CERBO, by the way ... ”

  “CERBO?” Jamie asked.

  “Confined Einstein Rosen Bridge Originator,” Sarah said. “CERBO.”

  He frowned, but did not comment. As a rule, Jamie didn’t like acronyms, although he admitted that he’d never find a universe without them.

  “So far, we’ve only been able to build wormholes that stay in this universe.” Sarah continued. “This wee chip alters the neutrinos to allow for travel to another universe. One that already exists, anyway.”

  A strange shadow crossed Sam’s face, but her uncle’s face lit up with a huge grin. He pointed. “This? You’ve done it with this?”

  She nodded, returning Jamie’s grin. But she watched Sam.

  He was staring at the cylinder, the steam from his forgotten tea rising to dissipate against his chin. Her uncle turned to face Sam as well. They waited.

  At last Sam blinked, put his mug on the counter, and picked up the cylinder, holding it on the tip of finger. “How does it work?”

  Sarah shrugged. “It’s plug-and-play. You use CERBO to collect your neutrinos and build the bridge that you design. But if we want to return to the first universe ... and we do want to, don’t we Sam?” His slight nod did nothing to relieve her anxiety, but she went on. “To travel to the first universe, we insert this wee chip, and input the parameters for the shape of the neutrinos in that universe. That way, the bridge we build will start here, and end up there.”

  Jamie whistled and bounced on his toes.

  Sam handed the chip to Sarah. She gripped it between thumb and forefinger, and shook it at him.

  “It does more than that, though,” she said.

  He looked a little pale. “What?”

  “It also controls the time travel. It’s a safety feature, Sam. Used alone, CERBO will only build wormholes within our own universe. Or,” she shrugged, “whichever universe we happen to be in. But we cannot travel to another universe, or through time, unless this wee chip is inserted first.”

  “So no more accidents, eh?” Jamie said.

  “No more accidents,” Sarah said. She was relieved to see a bit of color return to Sam’s face.

  His lips twitched. “We better not lose it.”

  Sarah shivered as a cold hand gripped her heart. She put the chip back in the petri dish. “I’ll make more than one.”

  “Good idea.”

  “No.” Jamie shook his head, and Sarah looked up at him, surprised.

  “No?”

  “Oh, make more than one,” he said. “Indeed, indeed. But take just one with you. It would be disastrous if it fell into the wrong hands.” He reached out to touch the chip. “No, I’m afraid we’ll have to ask you to design one more miracle before we attempt this.”

  She sighed, and Jamie showed her a brief grin before turning serious again.

  “Program a fail-safe into each CERBO. I want a program that will find you in whatever universe or time you are in, and that will automatically transport you home after a set time. In case you do lose your wee chip. Or if ... something else ... should happen.”

  Sarah thought about it, noticing Sam’s slight nod of agreement. “I can probably do that,” she said. “We’ll need to wear something that the fail-safe can lock onto. A marker of some kind.”

  “It should be internal,” Sam said. “If we’re really going to do this insane thing, we should have a biomarker, perhaps in our bloodstream. Something that carries the shape of the neutrinos in this universe.”

  “We all carry that already,” Sarah said. “Everything in this universe does. But I think I can come up with something that will work.” She looked heavenward. “Another sleepless night or two.”

  “Then we’ll be ready,” Jamie said, gazing at the chip.

  “We’ll be ready to run a test,” Sam said, his tone firm. “A probe. Build the fail-safe, and we’ll send a probe to the first universe. They’re a hundred years ahead of us, and we have no idea what’s happened in the last seventy-four years. We need data.”

  “Certainly,” Jamie said, as if puzzled that Sam even suggested it.

  Sarah
just nodded, aware that the cold grip on her heart had not lessened.

  Chapter 3

  When the probe vanished from the floor of Cave Hill’s biggest cave, Sam decided his shaky legs would not hold him upright much longer. He sank to his knees, flicking an anxious glance toward CERBO. The digital timer counted down the mission time.

  Four minutes, 55 seconds ... 54 ... 53 ...

  CERBO was by far the most promising of Sarah’s bridge machines. The tablet-sized prototype did not look as impressive as its name, but Sam considered that a positive feature. They needed something light and unobtrusive.

  A ray of sun shone through the cave entrance, as if to spotlight the probe’s empty space. A few lanterns lit the rest of the cave, scattered on rocks around the room. They cast enough light to reveal the volcanic walls, and the dusty ground littered with rocks and equipment.

  Sam heard a nervous swallow behind him, and his lips twitched in empathy. Sarah was just as anxious as he was. Jamie stood on the other side of Sam, keeping as still as the rocks around them. Jamie was a Nobel laureate, and one of the topmost physicists in the world, but even he was apprehensive about this experiment. That was understandable. All of Jamie's career, all his life, had led to this point: returning to the original timeline from which their world had sprung.

  The first Sam Altair had worked for years in this new world, and had trained Jamie to continue his work. He wanted to understand what had happened when he and Casey traveled back through time.

  Sam—he refused to think of himself as “the second Sam”—squinted his eyes against the headache he always got when he thought about it. Casey Andrews had brought him into their work eight years ago, just after he'd earned his PhD in physics in 1972. The time travel work had been kept secret, restricted to a handful of researchers and technicians, all of them employed by the Freedom Technological Consortium, which the first Sam Altair, along with Albert Einstein, had started in 1912.

  Now in 1980, only five people in the world, Sam, Sarah, Jamie, and their two assistants back at the lab, knew that their world was a divergence from the original history of the universe. In the original universe, the shipbuilder, Thomas Andrews, had died in 1912, drowning when his famous ship, RMS Titanic, sank after hitting an iceberg. In this world, Casey and Sam had met Tom, and set out to prevent the accident. Casey had married Tom, one of many changes they made to history. They were successful in saving his life, and the lives of many others, although they had not been able to keep the ship from sinking.

  Tom Andrews was one of two people in the early 20th century who knew about the time travel. The other was Albert Einstein, who spent many years working with the original Sam. He helped teach Jamie, who learned of the secret when he was twenty years old. It was Casey’s request that they find a way back to the original universe, a debt she felt Sam Altair—it didn't matter which Sam Altair—owed her. The debt was not to go back and prevent their travel through time, but to go back and let her parents know what happened to her.

  One minute and 14 seconds ...

  Sam chewed on his lip as he watched CERBO’s timer. He thought it was a mistake to try this. But Casey had worried all her life, knowing how her parents must have suffered when she disappeared. It was the only way to give her peace, Jamie said. They had to try.

  Sam remembered how fascinated he had been at the beginning, as he read through the secret journals kept by all of them. The journals had explained much about the astonishing scientific advances of the 20th century. Sam’s Consortium was a mix of business and science, where the brightest and best competed to develop the infrastructure Sam needed to continue his own work. He was not careless about this. He built his consortium into a world-wide powerhouse, introducing the technology of the 21st century into this early time, and turning the world toward what he called “sustainable” methods of power and agriculture.

  This was all good, as far as the young Sam was concerned. It was the history of his world, and he was content with it. But he was not comfortable with Casey's request. There were so many ways it could go wrong. At the very least, the political climate of the first universe could be volatile. But that wasn't what bothered him the most.

  He didn't want to create another alternate universe. Returning to the first timeline would not do that. But once there, Casey wanted Sam to travel back to 2006 and pay a visit to her parents in Berkeley. It was this backward travel through time that created new universes. The neutrinos had to alter their shape to compensate for the stress. It was all very simple and elegant, once you understood what was happening.

  Sam had no desire to play God.

  But he couldn't deny Casey, either. He'd read her journals. Her writing was permeated with memories of her parents, her father's dry humor and wisdom, her mother's stubborn liberalism and community work as a physician for women. Casey brought them into her life in as many ways as possible, from the names of her children, to her own work in the suffragette and peace movements. Her journals were filled with frequent references to “Dad would say ...” She once told Sam that she still had the habit of stopping to think about how her father or mother would handle a situation, using that as her cue.

  It occurred to him that it would be an honor to meet them.

  It all hinged on this experiment. Sam blinked, noticing the timer was down to forty-five seconds. Had the probe crossed into the alternate universe? Would it reappear, as Sarah's programming directed? Or had they made an error somewhere, and the probe had disintegrated?

  Thirty seconds.

  What if there had been people in the area as the probe appeared? It looked just like the other rocks scattered around the cave, but if someone saw it appear out of nowhere ...

  Twenty seconds.

  What if the probe appeared in the same spot someone was standing? What if the GPS algorithms were buggered, and the probe ended up in the cave wall?

  Ten seconds.

  Sam held his breath, unable to look away. He felt Sarah's hand tremble on his shoulder. Jamie stood still, a dignified statue.

  If Sam had blinked, he would have missed the moment of return, so quiet was the probe's sudden appearance. It took Sarah's gasp to make him realize the probe was not a figment of his anxiety. He stood, then jumped in surprise when Jamie thrust a fist into the air and yelled, “Whoo! It worked!”

  Sarah laughed, holding onto Sam's arm and swinging past him to hug her uncle. Sam's cautious malaise vanished, leaving him giddy as he joined the others, slapping Jamie's back, kissing Sarah, all of them laughing with a timorous trace of hysteria that proved their anxiety.

  They turned to the probe as their celebration slowed. It rested on the ground, a rock of the same basaltic material as the rest of the cave. Only the closest examination would reveal its electronic center. They gathered around, staring at it with some apprehension. Sam glanced over at the computer, to see that it was merrily flipping through the data streaming from the probe. He let it work, accessing just the basic probe parameters. Temperature and radiation were normal. The collected neutrinos had all vanished, converted into the energy used to bridge universes.

  “Can we take it back to the lab?” Sarah asked.

  Sam shrugged. “Sure. Everything looks normal.”

  “Did it go ... there?” she asked. “Did it really work?”

  Jamie shook his head, his brows lowered as he stared at the probe. “We'll have to run tests, Sarah. Look at the video, at least.”

  “I know.” She was staring at the probe, her face a pale light in the cave's gloom. When she glanced up, Sam thought she looked afraid. “Let's get it back to the lab.”

  ~~~

  “Blimey.”

  “That's all you have to say, Uncle Jamie?”

  The old man shook his head. He started to speak again, but stopped. Then he said, “Blimey.”

  Sarah gave in to a tight smile. She stood between Sam and her uncle, staring at the monitor. She couldn't blame Uncle Jamie for his shock. The video proved beyond doubt that the
probe had been somewhere different. The hills and valleys showed that it was Belfast. Yet the geography also revealed the biggest difference. The shoreline was much further inland, with water reaching as far as Ormeau Park. Most shocking to the three of them was the absence of Queen's Island. Harland & Wolff Shipyard was completely gone. Nearby, there was a huge crater near the first cave, as if a meteor had fallen.

  “Or a bomb,” Jamie said.

  It was impossible to see details of the city from their hideaway on Cave Hill, but the familiar layout was intersected by tall walls that divided the city into separate sections. There was no spaceport.

  There seemed a general air of desolation about the place. Houses and other buildings spread out as far as they could see, but they looked deserted and broken. In some places, roads appeared overgrown, as grass and bushes reclaimed them. Sam whistled.

  “Why would they desert the suburbs? Where did everyone go?”

  “Why is the city divided like that?” Sarah stared at the walls, disturbed.

  Jamie touched her shoulder. “Mum and Sam told us about the Troubles, remember? Sam said there were times when Belfast was a war zone.”

  “But,” Sarah waved a hand at the screen, “the Troubles happened a hundred years ago for them. I mean, the Belfast we're looking at is a hundred years ahead of us, right? It’s 2080 over there.”

  “We're assuming that,” Sam said.

  She shook her head. “I expect cities of the future to look clean and fancy, with flying cars and big, shining buildings. This place looks ... old. Grungy.”

  They were silent for a troubled minute as the video finished and started over. The camera had been filming throughout the experiment, but it showed nothing of its actual trip through time. There was only the countdown to show them anything had happened, plus the fact they knew the probe had vanished before their eyes. But the cave on the video remained the same as the camera scanned 360 degrees, before the probe rose from its spot and floated toward the cavern entrance. Cave Hill itself seemed the same, except for that crater. But as the camera panned across the valley, bringing into view the closer shoreline and the walls, Jamie sighed and sat down.