Eric Flint - Time spike

Theywanted them to revolt so they could just gun them down. That way they wouldn't have to feed the convicts. He rolled over on his bunk and looked out between the bars. No. That wasn't the right answer. If they wanted them dead all they would have to do is quit feeding them.

There was a war going on. That was obvious. Either the Muslims, Arabs or Chinese had come up with some new weapon, and the prison had taken a hit. They had been blasted right out of middle-America and into wherever they were. Captain Andy Blacklock had no one to answer to. He could do anything he wanted to do, and no one would care. So why were they still alive? Why hadn't he ordered them shot? Adrian rubbed his head and tried to think. He needed information. And he couldn't count on Collins to give it to him. Besides, he didn't want the bastard to know what he was thinking. Ducks like him loved to quack; it made them feel important. But they tended to spook easy. He needed someone else to supply him with gossip. Reliable gossip. Mentally, he went over the list of inmates already on work detail. He figured the infirmary was the best bet for getting reliable information. That posed a problem, since he didn't have anyone working inside it. There were four prisoners who worked the infirmary. Two were high-ranking rugheads. No way he would get anything from one of them. The third hung out in Boomer's corner. He wasn't the man's galboy; Boomer didn't lay the track with anyone. But he took care of his boys. He was retired-a lifer-so he didn't have anything to lose. Each time he went off, he'd do the hole and the thorazine shuffle for six months, then he'd be back in the general population looking for revenge. No. Adrian didn't want to mess with that. They didn't call Tim Bolgeo "the Boom" for nothing. The little bit of information he was after wasn't worth getting 10-10'd over. The last guy Boomer labeled a poacher got greenlighted. The contract hadn't taken forty-eight hours to be filled. The man was a crazy. But he was a crazy who paid well. It would have to be the fourth one, the Indian. He had run the guy's tags as soon as he showed. He had been transferred in just three days before the Quiver. His name was James Cook and he was an unknown. But the word was he was an amateur. This was his first trip and he was an independent, and that meant he hadn't been schooled. He could be used.

He was also in the cell house, just one tier up from him and was scheduled to work the infirmary's afternoon shift. But he'd have to be softened up first, and softened up good. Luff needed full cooperation and he didn't have time to screw around with the usual slow and easy methods. Luff scribbled a quick note, stuck it in a tin hooked to a thin rope, and whipped it into the next cell. "Work this over to Butch. As soon as the screws open the gates for supper, I've got something I want him to do."

Chapter 17 "You're sure about this?" Margo asked, peering at the graphics display on Leo Dingley's laptop screen. "I mean… it seems…" "Really weird?" Dingley chuckled. "As opposed to everything else about these…" He turned his head to half-glare at Richard Morgan-Ash, who was sitting next to Malcolm O'Connell on the couch in the living room of the large suite he'd rented at the hotel in Collinsville. "Whatever we're going to call these things, which we've never been able to decide because Mr. Fussbudget over there shoots down every proposal I make." Morgan-Ash smiled thinly. "I have probably ruined my reputation as it is, associating with you heretics.

I will be damned, however, if I will hammer the nails into my own professional coffin by presenting a paper entitled 'Some Observations on the Mystery Bombs from Outer Space.' Much less 'Some Observations on the Bizarre Bolides from Beyond.' " "They're good names," insisted Leo. " 'Myboos' and 'Bibobs' are right up there with quarks." " 'Myboos' will be turned into 'Myboobs' within eight seconds of reaching the blogosphere," said Morgan-Ash. "I shudder to think what would happen to 'Bibobs.' " "Will you two quite clowning around?"

Margo said crossly, still peering at the graphics. "Dammit, this new data you brought down here with you just doesn't makesense. Why would there be a time dilation? We've never seen it before." Malcolm O'Connell shook his head. "That doesn't mean anything, Margo. The data that exists on the Grantville event is sketchy, to say the least. None of the equipment that detected anything at the time was designed for the purpose, the way our stuff is now. And all the other events since Grantville have been tiny in comparison. The energy levels either weren't high enough to produce this phenomenon, or-more likely, in my opinion-the phenomenon existed but we simply weren't able to detect it. The fact that you can track a jumbo jet's trajectory from miles away doesn't mean you can track a sparrow's from the same distance."

He heaved himself up from the couch and came over. "And it's weirder than you think." He pointed to a sidebar in one corner of the screen.

"See this? If I'm interpreting it correctly, it means the time bolide or whatever the hell we wind up calling it isn't simply speeding up-so to speak-relative to our own timeline. It's… I'm not sure what it's doing, exactly. Call it stuttering." "What do you mean?" asked Nick Brisebois. He was sitting on the other couch in the room next to Timothy Harshbarger, his friend from the state police. Every time Margo looked at the two of them next to each other she had to struggle not to smile. Where the air transport specialist was stocky and on the short side, Harshbarger was at least six feet, four inches tall, and as lean as a rail. The effect was even more striking when they were standing next to each other. Mutt and Jeff, absent the facial hair and the antique costumes. Neither man had said anything, since Richard explained the gist of what The Project had been doing in Minnesota for the past few years. Brisebois seemed interested, at least.

Harshbarger's expression had been completely neutral. Margo wondered if the policeman thought they were all half-nuts. O'Connell looked over at him. "What I mean is that-if I'm interpreting this correctly, mind you-the bolide's timeline isn't speeding up steadily in relation to our own. It's stuttering. Stopping and starting. At various points, it seems to suddenly slow down and match our own. Or slow down even further. It's hard to know, of course. And there seems to be a wobble in the spacial dimension. If I'm right about that, what it means is that the area of impact as the bolide moves back in time isn't holding steady. It's moving around. Not much, but some. And it keeps getting bigger too. Well. I think." Brisebois looked a little cross-eyed, as if he were trying to visualize the process. Margo had tried that herself and suspected she looked cross-eyed too, when she did. "In other words," Nick said, "it's like a spike being driven back in time.

But the penetration isn't steady. It stops or slows down at points.

And the-tip of the spike, I'll call it-is shifting around. And spreading out." "Hey, that's not bad!" said Malcolm. "What if we call them 'time spikes,' Dick? You can't possibly object to that." "Oh, I can manage to object to almost anything. To start with, there doesn't seem to have been anything 'spiky-ish' about the Grantville event.

That was more like a time scoop." He shook his head. "But forget that, for a moment. Nick's translation-yes, yes, it's a layman's attempt to put mathematical concepts into words, with all the usual imprecisions but it's still damn good-brought something into focus for me. Is there acorrelation between these stutters, as you call them, and the shifting of the spacial locus?" "Huh!" O'Connell frowned. "I dunno.

Actually, I'm not sure exactly how you'd match the two." He peered at the screen. "I mean, the way these figures are generated…" "Sure we can," said Leo, sounding excited. "Hold on a minute." For just about that period of time, he typed furiously at the keyboard. Not the laptop's own, which Dingley found a nuisance, but a full-sized keyboard he'd brought with him and had connected to one of the computer's USB ports. He finished whatever he was doing and, quite dramatically, pressed the "Enter" key. A completely new graphic appeared on the screen. "God damn. Will you look atthis?" He lifted the laptop a few inches off the table and swiveled it so that everyone could see. Brisebois laughed. "Oh, swell. Leo, that spiderweb or whatever it is may mean something to you, but it's Greek to me." The reaction of the scientists in the room, however, was quite different.