Free Steamrolled by Pauline Baird Jones

knew from the past.
    Their records are impeccable.
    But one of them bothers you. She felt a kick of something. That alternate time line again ?
    I have known Glarmere and Carig when they were less impeccable. But it would be unfair to judge either by behavior they did not, and have not done.
    Ashe wasn’t required to be fair, but he did have a point. Ashe let her attention drift to Faustus, though she took care to make sure he didn’t see her looking. If bland had its own center of the universe, it would probably be him. Despite his ugly mug, he looked bland, sleepy even. He shifted as if he sensed being watched, so she moved on to the last two Council members, the ones Lurch didn’t know. If they were hiding in bland, they were doing a really good job of it.
    No quivers about those two? Lurch mentally shrugged.
    Did that mean they had checked in from the future, or just that he’d never met them? The one on the end looked meek enough to be Keltinarian—
    Ashe tensed as she felt her sense of off time heighten, felt the clarity of the track she needed to follow, and knew that it wouldn’t last. Like ripples on the water’s surface, the disturbance would fan out, getting wider and bigger, and harder to follow.
    Time and tide wait for no man.
    It didn’t help that she felt odd, almost itchy, in this time that wasn’t quite real time. Her time senses didn’t like the slower base time. Her expression stayed neutral even as her instincts insisted that this disturbance threatened her , that she had to go now. If a paradox formed in the midst of an instability of this magnitude—the complexity of time, having the past, the present and the future rubbing together, settled an ache behind her eyes. Even as Lurch acted to ease the pain, Ashe smoothed her thoughts. One of the real dangers of time tracking was becoming overwhelmed by the complexities of it and falling into a time spiral.
    Carig finally fell silent. That helped the headache, too.
    Selnick came in on her five o’clock and hissed, “Keep up or be left behind, woman.”
    Yeah, he joined the service from the past.
    Another, bigger shock wave hit the perimeter, which was bad, but also good since it kept her from responding in a manner sure to be bad for her career. The tremors couldn’t reach into the Center, but they rocked against the edges, creating eddies in time within the shield. Being out of time wasn’t total protection, not when the threat intensified with each occurrence. No one seemed to notice but Ashe. They needed to act—
    Patience.
    Only when two of the Council members shifted restlessly did Carig finally nod to the Controller.
    “Trackers.” The Controller paused. “Deploy.”
     

SIX
     
     
    Black ops and geek battled for dominance as the shaking intensified. It was simple good manners to steady Emily. Good manners had never felt so excellent. Did she crowd in close as dust showered them from the old beams? Fyn was the only one not flattened against the wall, though he had positioned himself under a sturdy wooden beam. There was a blinding flash and when Robert’s vision cleared, there it was, a hissing mass of bug-like metal squatting in the center of the museum.
    “That’s it,” Carey said, as if the question might be in doubt.
    The Emerg—the EAD buzzed like an angry fly. He started to shut it off, but stopped. If it had summoned the machine, and evidence suggested it had, would shutting it off send it away again? Until he knew where it had been, until he could gain control, might be better to let it buzz.
    Emily’s mouth opened, the shape right for an almost question, then closed. She wobbled once, giving him a chance to steady her before he turned to the device, using caution he had no problem admitting to himself. It appeared to be an annoyed bug at the moment. Other than the angry hissing, bigger and louder than the EAD, it was much as Carey had described it during the initial debriefing.
    Somewhat oblong in shape and metallic in