“Okay.”
“One of the guys from my unit ended up with the state police out here in California,” Dryden said. “He oversees those alerts they plaster all over the TV and radio sometimes—flood warnings, emergency broadcast system notices, abducted kids.”
So far, every word of this was true. That was about to change, but the man on the phone would have no way of knowing.
Dryden said, “This friend of mine, if I asked him to—and I have—he could put an alert on the airwaves that wasn’t actually real. An abduction notice about a kid named Aaron Newhouse, for example. He could run it a few minutes from right now.”
From the other end of the phone call, Dryden heard a soft hiss of breath, alien-sounding in the digital distortion.
Dryden said, “You know what I was doing ten hours and twenty-four minutes ago? I was listening to your machine pulling in signals. Which means I was hearing radio traffic from right now. And if my friend sends out that alert in a couple minutes, there’s a very good chance I’d hear it, all those hours ago. Be on the lookout for Aaron Newhouse. You can bet your ass it would get my attention.”
There was a long silence that told Dryden a great deal, and when the man finally spoke there was no more sarcasm in his voice. No front. Just naked fear exposed by the collapse of those defenses. “You can’t do this,” the man said.
“Of course I can,” Dryden said. “And if ten-and-a-half-hours-ago me heard that name on a missing alert, I’d know for a fact it was my friend who sent that message. Then I’d do the math and know he sent it right now, around nine in the evening. I wouldn’t know why he sent it, but that doesn’t really matter, does it? What matters is that it would throw a wrench in the timeline. It would change the past, at least from our point of view right here and now. My past, and yours, too. Sending information back in time would change it, one way or another. And I could swear I heard somewhere that you guys are nervous about changing the past.”
“Listen to me,” the man said. Dryden pictured him gripping his own phone a bit tighter, as if that tension could come through the connection and emphasize his point. His accent had also sharpened, especially the French. “What you’re talking about is something we never do. We designed the system very carefully to avoid it. The computers send information back through time, but they send it from the future. From our future. This distinction is goddamned critical. We change our future, but we never change our past. For Christ’s sake, we don’t even know what that would feel like.”
“We’re about to find out.” Dryden looked at his watch. “It’s a minute past nine o’clock. My friend executes the alert at ten after unless I call and tell him to abort.”
It crossed his mind to wonder what his friend was actually doing at that moment. Maybe having dinner with his family. Maybe walking the dog. Dryden hadn’t spoken to the guy in months.
“Listen to me,” the man with the accent said. “Listen. You are talking about a perfect unknown. Very smart people lose sleep thinking about this. Nobody knows what it would feel like, from our point of view.”
“You and I will, in nine minutes. Actually more like eight and a half.”
The man on the other end went quiet, except for the breathing. Dryden heard it going in and out, sibilant, as if coursing through teeth.
“This is a bluff, yeah?” the man said. “You’re lying to me.”
“Maybe. Why don’t we stand around a while and find out?”
“You wouldn’t risk this for yourself. You’re smart enough to know better.”
“I’m fucked either way,” Dryden said. “Like you said, I’m alone out here, one on six. Eight minutes now, by the way.”
Again the man went silent.
“Proof of life,” Dryden said. “Put Claire on the phone.”
He heard the guy’s breathing accelerate, but otherwise there was no response at all. No answer as the seconds drew out.
Dryden felt his own skin tighten and go cold.
There was no reason for these people to withhold proof of life. No reason unless—
Unless they had killed her.
The tightness in his skin spread down into his muscles. It set them pulsing, a vibration he felt to his core.
“I can’t put her on,” the man said.
“Is she there with you?”
“She is, but—”
“Then put her on the phone.”
“She’s under sedation. She’s blacked out. I can’t put her on.”
Everything in the man’s tone said he was lying. It was obvious, even through the voice scrambler.
Dryden had experienced pure rage before. Feral anger, elemental, independent of thought or language or anything else that might temper it. He felt it blooming inside him now, a burst of red ink in water.