Far Edge of Darkness

"Gate Three."

"Just checking my phone. Thanks." He hung up without bothering to identify himself, then muttered half aloud, "Odd. And I'm tired of things around here being odd."

Francisco tapped Tozer's file with one dissatisfied fingertip, then set the file aside and considered Dan's file. The chair creaked again. He frowned at the i

Their kid was... what? Fifteen, now? The years had passed so quickly, he'd hardly noticed. A smile played at the edges of his lips as he recalled his arrival at the base. Lucille had remembered his passion for schnitzel. Da

Then, four months ago, Dan had simply stopped talking to him.

In the ensuing weeks, his commanding officer had made a heroic effort to behave normally, but the quiet evenings spent chewing over politics and plans for the future had come to an abrupt end. And Dan's warm, comfortable way with others had turned cold as ice. New arrivals Francisco treated at the "fridge" referred to him as Old Man Winter.

Having been on the receiving end of Dan's inexplicable new personality a few times, himself, Francisco couldn't blame them.

Lucille and Da

And now Dan was losing weight, avoiding him, and—judging by the smell—drinking pretty heavily.

Was Lucille having an affair? Was Dan? Or maybe Da

Yeah. Right. He'd as soon believe Frosty the Snowman wintered in Miami to catch a glowing tan.

When Francisco tried to call Juneau, he got the same recorded message.

"That's nuts," he muttered. "Who the hell lives up here to tie up all the circuits? Nobody for miles but the caribou and grizzlies. And the bears are asleep."

He picked up a pen and tapped it absently against the desk. All right. What else? He glanced surreptitiously toward a featureless wall, in the direction of the ugly, squat building at the far edge of the base. Francisco had no idea what went on inside that building. He didn't have the security clearance to know. He'd never crossed the threshold, never mind taken a gander at what was inside. All he knew was, a pack of civilian physicists with security clearance far higher than his had been holed up in there for months.

They'd arrived shortly after Francisco had, many of them with families. Francisco frowned. What about them? He hadn't seen some of them in weeks. That was more than odd; it was downright unsettling. He decided to check his file on Sue Firelli, out of curiosity. She'd come to him complaining of stomach pains. He'd diagnosed ulcers and put her on Tagamet and had been seeing her every couple of weeks since. But he hadn't seen her in a while and her prescription ought to have run out by now. He wanted to check the file, see what the date of her last visit was. But he couldn't find it.

Where in blazes was her file?

He double-checked the cabinet, then the scattered stacks and waterfalls of paper, but it was gone.

Francisco closed a lateral file drawer thoughtfully. He hesitated to go to Dan with his concerns. He shrank even further from talking to base Security. Francisco didn't like Kominsky. And most of the men he'd seen working Security details were strangers. The longer he thought about them, the more his back crawled. Those Security "officers" could well be some of the hundred sixty-eight people for whom he had no military medical records.

Who the hell were those hundred sixty-eight men? More to the point, did Dan Collins know who they were? And why—given the fact they were literally in the middle of nowhere, up here—why did Dan Collins have a twenty-four hour personal guard? Francisco hadn't missed the unpleasant little interplay between Dan and his bodyguard in the interrogation room, waiting for McKee.

Despite Francisco's bone-weariness, he paced the narrow floor restively. He liked to walk when he was puzzling out things and it was far too cold to walk outside. The sounds drifting in from the infirmary ward were completely normal. The night nurse was talking to the duty physician about Kruger's recovery. The familiar smells of antiseptic and illness soothed the sense of not-quite-rightness he couldn't shake.

He knew how to deal with patients recovering from emergency surgery. Francisco didn't have the faintest idea what to do about his questions or the genuine worries that had begun to plague him.

And what about that intruder, McKee? Francisco muttered under his breath. The man was clearly insane. Babbling about time travel and lightning strikes...

But Dan's reaction...

Dan Collins had taken Logan McKee very seriously, indeed. Nor could Francisco explain away the very disturbing questions Logan McKee represented. How had he gotten onto the base in the condition in which they'd found him? His story made no sense, but neither did the facts.

Time travel?

Absurd.

But Francisco had been watching Dan's face when McKee had suggested it. For just an instant, panic had utterly stricken his old friend. Francisco swore under his breath again. He would have given a great deal to know just what Dan had asked McKee after they were alone.

"Well, there's one way to find out. Isn't there? Just march in and ask him." He wasn't thinking about Dan. He needed to check McKee's hands and feet, anyway, to be sure no complications had set in from the frostbite.

Francisco abandoned the stacked files and put together a medical bag, then headed across base. As chief medical officer, not even Kominsky could deny Francisco access to the prisoner. One way or another, Francisco was getting to the bottom of this mess. As he stepped out into murderous cold, he had a sinking feeling no one else on base wanted him to get to the bottom of it.

And that frightened him.

He ducked his head against the wind. Wonderful. He'd signed on as surgeon, not hero. His idea of national defense service was stitching up the hides of the real soldiers, the ones who got themselves shot in the line of duty, not solving mysteries that piled up like freeway accidents. Life, Francisco Valdez reflected sourly, was seldom fair.