Eric Flint - Time spike

"Okay, Captain. You've got your deal. On our side"-here he actually grinned; a no-fooling, nothing-hidden grin-"it was unanimous. Don't know how well it'll go on your side, though." Andy grinned back. "I don't need to take a vote. For the time being, anyway, I'm still the boss." "Figures. Leave it to convicts to have to introduce democracy into the Age of the Dinosaurs." "I'll take Kidd and Cook himself," said Rob Hulbert. "They're the two cons in that group I can trust to stay level-headed." Andy scratched his jaw. "Cook, yeah.

But… Kidd?" "Sure, he's a cold-blooded killer. But that's the whole point, Andy. In this situation, the operative term is 'cold-blooded.' Look at it this way. Kidd was in our custody for a little over eight years. How many times did we have to take him down, in that stretch?" "Not once. The two times he got into it with another con, it was over before we even knew about it." "Right. How many times did he get in a confrontation with a guard?" "Not once. Okay, I see your point. I just…" Rod smiled. "Relax, Andy. The truth is, I'm more comfortable with this deal you cut with the Boomers than you are.

Look, we both knew-so did Joe Schuler, because we talked about it once-that sooner or later we were going to have to start freeing some of the inmates." "Yeah, fine, but I was thinking in terms of the ones convicted of nonviolent crimes. Or something like manslaughter. Not murderers in the first degree, for Pete's sake." "There's first degree murder and there's first degree murder. The law may not make that distinction, but I do-and so do you. You know perfectly well that the reason the prosecutor went for a plea bargain with Kidd is because the only people he ever killed were thugs themselves. We're living in a world that has dinosaurs in it, not to mention saber-toothed tigers and God knows what else." Hulbert shrugged. "I can live with it. What I can't live with are the likes of Adrian Luff-who wasnot convicted of murder, remember-and his stooge Phil Haggerty. Now there's a piece of work. Who, I remind you, was convicted of a nonviolent offense." Andy made a face. Haggerty had been convicted on charges of state-tax evasion. That was the only way the police could get him behind bars.

Even though they knew perfectly well he'd been guilty of at least three brutal hijackings, which had left one person dead and several others badly injured. The fatality had been a fourteen-year-old boy run over by the getaway car and left to die, bleeding and mangled in the street. "All right, point taken. Cook and Kidd. You got 'em."

Rod's negotiations with Kidd were more complicated. The first part went well enough. "How many rounds you got left?" Hulbert asked him.

"Two." "You'll need more. Youmight need more-but keep in mind that we're just trying to do a reconnaissance. If all goes well, not a shot will be fired." He rummaged in his pack and came out with two magazines for Kidd's pistol. Fortunately, all the firearms in the prison had been standard issue. They didn't have to fiddle with matching a lot of different calibers to different guns. "Thanks." Kidd stuffed the two magazines away in a pocket he'd jury-rigged. "Now we got to deal with a different problem." "What's that?" Kidd pointed.

"Them. The three kids. They're already anxious, figuring something's up. As soon as they see me leave, they'll start hollering like you wouldn't believe." "Jesus H. Christ," Rod muttered. "When did baby-sitting get added to my job description?" Kidd chuckled. "When did it get added tomine?" Rob scratched his head, considering the problem. After a while, he said: "I'll talk to Hanrahan. She's good with kids, and she misses the three she left behind." In the end, that worked out pretty well. The three kids were still unhappy at Kidd's departure, but by the time he left Kathleen had them ensnared in a fairy tale. How she managed to get the meaning of the story across without sharing a word in common was and would remain forever a mystery to Rod Hulbert. Even in the Cretaceous, "earth mother" was still not part of his job description.

Chapter 48 Jenny stroked Joe's feverish forehead. He had pneumonia, and was bleeding internally. She planned to open him up and see what she could do, but she didn't have a lot of hope. The small amount of pink-tinged froth he coughed up every few minutes scared her. The same thing went for his color. He was as white as a sheet and too weak to even sit without help. She was amazed he was still alive.

She gave him a sip of the whiskey the Cherokee Kevin Griffin had given her, about a half a swallow. He had to hold it down or they wouldn't be able to do anything for him. "What are they going to do about the prison?" he asked. "We can't leave Luff in charge. The man's crazier'n a loon, under that mild-mannered exterior. I can't imagine what's happening to those poor bastards still inside, the ones he has it in for." "Chief Watkins and his people, plus the army personnel that were with them, say they'll help us take it back." He nodded and the slight motion caused a wave of nausea to engulf him. A jaw-clenching minute later, he mumbled, "Sorry," rolled to his side and vomited. He didn't lose much, but only because he didn't have much to lose. Once his stomach was empty, the dry heaves continued for almost three minutes.

Jenny wiped his forehead with a damp cloth. "It's okay," she lied.

"I'm dying," Joe said, matter-of-factly. "You can't stop it from happening." Jenny knew he was right, but didn't like the idea of just sitting on her hands doing nothing. It felt wrong. This wasn't an old man who had lived his life. Joe was young and strong. He should live another thirty or forty years. Maybe even fifty, as healthy as he'd been. "Joe, it's up to you. I can try to operate, and if we're lucky, I might be able to do something." "You said the left lung was collapsed." Jenny nodded. There was no air going in or coming out of the left side of Joe's chest. No lung sounds. The right lung was doing it all, and it was damaged. She could hear the sounds-much like crackling paper-that indicated more trouble than she could fix. She knew if the situation had been reversed, if the right lung was silent and the left filled with fluid, he would have already been gone. The slight difference in lung size, one side to the other, was all that was keeping him alive. And that difference wasn't going to be enough to let him survive much longer. "If you can't fix it, just sit with me. I'd rather not die that way, cut open and out of my head. And I also don't want to die alone." "Are you religious, Joe?" He gave his head a slight nod. "Nazarene." "Would you like me to pray with you?"

"Too late now," he whispered. "I have to go on my record and hope I got it right." He coughed then moaned. "Man, this hurts." Jenny stroked his face. He reach up and took her hand. "Don't leave me." She looked at him and then at Barbara Ray and Lylah Caldwell. The two of them were looking at her, their eyes filled with tears. They were waiting for her to do something, anything that might help him. Part of her wanted to sayto hell with it and dive in. She wanted to at least try. But she couldn't do that. Joe had the right to refuse. It was his death; he should be able to decide how he would do it. "Sure, Joe. Of course we'll stay with you." "I heard about the little girls," he said. "The ones that Geoffrey Kidd rescued. What a twist that is."

Jenny nodded and told him about Hulbert and Bailey's pups, and laughed aloud when she saw the sparkle in his eyes. She squeezed his hand and whispered, "This place is horrible, but we're going to make it. And it's going to be a real world, a real home." She kept talking after that, about anything that came to mind. Occasionally his eyes would close, but if Jenny quit talking they would pop open filled with panic. So she talked. She told him about the trees and the bog and the medicine woman. She even told him about the tools the Cherokees had.