All the Birds in the sky - Charlie Jane Anders Page 0,106

this about her, she would only screw up again. Ernesto was right: She should just try to be a speck on a speck. So instead, she held on tight to her anger, even as she choked on the recycled air in the car. Patricia had no time for grief, blame, or a broken heart, but anger, there was endless time for. Stay angry. Hold on to it. Anger is your tightrope over the abyss. She repeated in her head what she said right after the storm hit: Some fucker had to pay.

Kawashima had been vague about their destination, but now that they were zipping through Utah at 300 MPH, he opened up. “We’re going to be proactive. We’re going to stage an intervention. For the planet.” He paused and Patricia was on tenterhooks. Then Kawashima explained at last: “There are some maniacs outside Denver building a doomsday device, which will tear a hole in the planet, and we’re going to deal with it.”

Patricia was ready. Let it come.

27

LAURENCE HAD LUNCH with Milton. Just the two of them. No Isobel, no other members of Laurence’s team. “I remember when I first saw you, when you were a little boy,” Milton said. “Youngest person ever to build a two-second time machine.” He smiled and reached for another piece of fried chicken from the bucket on the floor between them.

They were sitting on the carpet of the main office on the top floor. The chicken was perfectly crispy and gushed with juice inside its bread shell, and Laurence’s fingers still felt pristine after two pieces. The bucket had the name of some local fry shop on it. How did Milton keep conjuring up fast food? Even for a billionaire, this was a coup. Laurence sensed Milton was making some late-in-the-game effort to bond. They were listening to Robert Johnson, the only music Milton liked.

“The two-second time machine.” Laurence wiped his fingers even though there was no need. “Classic example of a useless device.”

“Well, yes and no.” Dirth shrugged with his whole torso. “It was a badge of membership in a select group, right? But also, an object lesson. Imagine if you could build a device that goes backward two seconds, instead of forward two seconds. But you couldn’t stop yourself from pressing it over and over.”

“You’d be stuck in a loop,” Laurence said. “The same two seconds, forever.”

From where Laurence sat on the floor he could just see the treetops of the forest on the other side of the feeder road from the industrial park. They shook like pom-poms.

“We could be stuck in a two-second time loop right now, and never know it,” said Dirth. “Except that it’s already been two seconds since I said that. But yeah, think about it, man. The same device, harmless if you go one direction, but potentially disastrous if you go the other way. Sometimes things have a grain, that you have to go with. You can’t swim against a tidal wave.”

“And history,” said Laurence, maybe seeing where Milton was going with all this. “History is a tidal wave.”

Laurence glanced out the window again, and this time he could see not just the tops of those trees, but the branches and some of the trunks. They were waving at him. He thought maybe if he did a good job of bonding with Milton, he would let Laurence out to take a walk in the woods. It would make Laurence feel closer to Patricia.

“History is just the flow of time writ large, man,” Milton said.

Laurence reached for another piece of chicken, then glanced up to see the trees from across the road. He could see way more of their trunks now.

“Get down!” Laurence threw himself on top of Milton on the floor, just as a branch, as wide as his rib cage, shot through the window and into the far wall. In seconds the room was crammed with leaves and branches. Laurence couldn’t see the walls or any of the desks, just dense, heavy, spiky green.

Laurence crawled on his belly toward the open doorway. From behind him, Milton said, “What the hell is…,” and Laurence just shrugged, since he couldn’t say anything without losing his voice forever. He had enough presence of mind to bite his tongue.

From downstairs, Laurence heard the firecracker laugh of a machine gun. Someone screamed in pain and fear. The guards were shouting for backup, and more and bigger weapons.

Laurence reached the door that led from the main office and got to his feet.