“Good,” he grunted. “Mayhaps he will come on Sahmain midnight like my brother.”
Epilogue
It was late afternoon, though you could not tell the time inside the Exploratorium. Pony was too young for any but the simplest of exhibits, but Lucy had to admit that the Exploratorium was way more fun with a child in tow.
Galen bent over their daughter’s flaming red head, showing her how to look through a lens at some fish that glowed in the dark. She giggled and shrieked with delight.
Galen and Lucy had traded in the Camelot for a fifty-three-footer, better for a family with a dog. Apparently, no one at whatever agency Casey worked for believed that there had ever been a time machine, or maybe everyone was just engaged in a gigantic cover-up. A brief note of apology from the Secretary of the Navy no less had been waiting for them in Santiago, noting that some rogue operatives had expressed some strange ideas that were officially non-sanctioned and that any inconvenience would be compensated. That was scary because someone knew where they were and who they were. But nothing more materialized. And that was that. No one was after them.
Galen’s hair was shorter and streaked blonder from the sun since they had been in San Francisco last. He was as gorgeous as ever. He could still send her spinning with a touch. He now spoke English with barely an accent. Tanned from their years at sea, he looked like the sailor he was.
What he didn’t look like was a prominent environmentalist. His papers on how to manage population density had gathered quite a following. Using the identity Jake had provided, Galen had become the face of a new environmental consciousness. He sponsored conferences and refereed feuds between factions, even authored legislation. It had as much to do, Lucy suspected, with his strange magnetism as his sensible ideas. He was a natural leader. They figured out together which issues to tackle and how to use his new “talents.” She doped out the right agencies and NGOs to enlist in their cause. Galen had been right. She had a lot to offer. They were better together than either would have been by him-or herself. They’d worked for four years to establish Galen’s credibility.
So they were ready for the latest challenge.
They’d met yesterday with the head honchos from the Berkeley Seismological Laboratory and the U.S. Geological Survey out of Menlo Park to propose a private/public partnership establishing a serious earthquake prediction center. The only thing that had gotten them the meeting on such a crackpot idea in the first place was Galen’s reputation.
What got them the commitment was a demonstration. Galen had told the scientists about every earthquake—both the intensity and the site—that would occur in the next two hours around the globe. Then he and Lucy had gone down to the cafeteria for coffee and to get Epona an orange juice. Quite an exit. They’d left everyone sputtering. But two hours later, Dr. Magnussen himself had sought them out in the cafeteria, his tone all humble pie, and it looked like serious efforts were going to be made to fund this venture. Galen could give people enough notice to leave the quake zone. He was up to predicting three to five days in advance for serious quakes. Millions of lives could be saved. Maybe they could use his predictions to discover a way to predict quakes on their own. It would give him even more credibility as he tried to get the peoples of the world used to working for the earth, not against it.
Or maybe it would be her daughter that completed Galen’s mission. Epona had been conceived on that very first night, the vernal equinox, as far as Lucy and Galen could figure out. Lucy sometimes looked into Pony’s blue eyes and saw something stirring there. It frightened her. But Galen had learned to live with his gifts, and she supposed Pony could learn to live with her own, if it turned out she had them.
“Mommy,” Pony shrieked. “Come and see the fish.”
Lucy smiled. Galen looked up, his expression soft. Hardly like a Viking warrior at all. He was a good man and true, constant in his love for her and patient with Pony. He’d never once said he wanted a boy after Pony had arrived and been named for his mother and her horse goddess. He’d get one now, of course. Lucy patted her stomach. In about another five months. That was one reason why they’d decided to come back to live in San Francisco again. No more babies delivered in Thailand. It was time to come home from the sea.
Jake, as it turned out, had left the apartment house to her in a hastily made will before Casey had gotten to him. And she happened to have a gift for the stock market. You can trade from anywhere with a satellite phone and an Internet connection. So she and Galen were more than set. They could fund his efforts to save Gaia from mankind till the cows came home.
She leaned over, and the weight of Leonardo’s book in her bag jostled Pony. “Sorry, honey,” Lucy said. “Oooh, those are great fish.” She’d taken to carrying the book around with her again ever since they hit land last week. It was a little worrying. She thought she’d left that whole obsession thing behind her. Other than her obsession with Galen, of course. That hadn’t abated one bit. Nor had his for her. She’d had to unlearn some prejudices about Vikings.
The Exploratorium was emptying out. Galen glanced toward the door marked Danger, No Admittance in the hallway beside the gift shop.
They were here to check that the machine was still secure.
They drifted toward the gift shop, Pony in tow.
A little docent with mousy brown hair and big eyes hurried over. “Closing time, sorry,” she announced.
“Okay,” Galen said. “We’ll just stop at the restrooms before I take my two girls home.”
The docent smiled.
And Lucy shuddered. The echoing Exploratorium around her seemed to pulse in and out. She couldn’t get her breath. She could feel Leonardo’s machine behind that door as though she could see right through the metal. And she could feel his book under her arm, almost . . . quivering. Was that possible?
“Lucy, are you all right?” Galen was at her side, supporting her. She staggered against him. “You need to sit down.” He looked around.
“Over here, ma’am,” the little docent said. “Here’s a bench.”
“Thank you,” Lucy murmured as Galen helped her to sit.
“What’s wrong with Mommy?” Pony asked in a small voice.
“Nothing, honey,” Lucy managed. “Maybe Mommy didn’t eat enough at lunchtime.”
The museum was empty now, all the noise now concentrated out by the doors.
“I’m fine,” Lucy insisted as both Galen and the docent hovered.
“You look . . . uh . . . pretty pale,” the docent said. There was something about her . . . had Lucy seen her before?
Galen looked around. “Can you look after Pony?” he asked the docent. “I’ll buy a coffee mug at the gift shop and get a glass of water.”
The docent grabbed Pony’s hand, and Galen strode away.
The presence of the time machine at Lucy’s back was palpable. Leonardo’s book seemed almost to . . . yearn for something. That sounded crazy. Better take her mind off this.
“Have you been a docent long?” she asked.
The girl turned her attention up to Lucy and . . . and a connection sparked between them. The girl’s eyes were really quite beautiful. Hazel maybe, with long, thick lashes.
“A few years. It pays the bills while I wait for my ship to come in.”
“And what exactly would your ship look like?”
The girl smiled, a self-deprecating, self-aware smile that said she was smart and knew well enough that being so was not always an advantage. “Well . . . I write books. You know how it is.” She looked up to see Lucy’s expression of sympathy. “Oh, I’m published,” she assured Lucy. “But it doesn’t come with health insurance or a four-oh-one(k). Working for the city of San Francisco does that.”