Knowing the voice, Ryan didn’t even turn from the monitor screen as he quickly tapped in the three letters and pressed enter, and was rewarded with a series of glowing green letters that laid out all the cards on the felt of the playing table.
Subject. Tanner, Theophilus Algernon. Doctor of Science, Harvard. Doctor of Philosophy, Oxford University, England. Birth date and location. South Strafford, Vermont. February 14, 1868. Married June 17, 1891. Wife, Emily Louise, nee Chandler. Children, two. Rachel and Jolyon.
“Can’t be the same man,” Ryan murmured as he navigated a cursor light down to tool bar on the comp screen and clicked on a visual button. In response, a mug shot of a sad-looking man in his early thirties popped up in a window. The portrait was unmistakably their own Doc Tanner, a much younger version minus the complex map of age that now lined his face, but the bright blue eyes that still held a wink of childhood, and the strong white teeth being shown for the camera were one and the same.
Ryan clicked off the photo display and went back to the text of the file, reading farther down beyond the initial entry of biographical information. “No wonder they knew you when we showed up here, Doc. You were in their files, your pic, your bio- stored in here with all kinds of overlapping entries regarding time trawling and matter transfer,” he whispered, as both he and Krysty read the secrets presented before their astonished eyes.
“And do you believe what you read, Ryan?” Doc replied.
“Yeah, I guess. Explains a lot. According to this, you were the only success in their entire time-trawling program.”
“There are varying degrees of success, Ryan Caw-dor,” Doc said in a choked voice, before turning and exiting the library, running from the truths it housed.
“I’ll go after him,” Krysty said. “He sounded pretty upset.”
Ryan held out a restraining arm. “Wait a sec, I’m about done here. We’ll go together.”
Going to the end of the document, Ryan and Krysty read the final entry:
Subject’s refusal to become reconciled to tern- poral correction proved difficult. Several abortive attempts to bribe or cheat his way into the chron chambers were undeniable evidence of his overwhelming desire to travel back to his own tune. Subject’s constant attempts to rejoin “beloved Emily” and his own century became a considerable irritant. Dr. Tanner was taken by the appropriate responsible authorities and placed under restricted access and egress. When this proved to be an unsuccessful deterrent, subject was used in final-stage trawl and pushed along via temporal conduit to future setting, destination and chronological year, unknown.
“The arrogant bastards,” Ryan muttered.
“There’s a whole lot of names here, topped by some whitecoat named Herman Welles, who was apparently Doc’s keeper during his years as a guest of this Operation Chronos,” Krysty said.
“Ancient history, I guess,” the raven-haired man retorted as he turned the comp console off, leaving the information disc inside the drive.
Outside the massive vault of the library, they found Doc waiting for them, his head hung low. The older man’s eyes were red from crying, and he appeared even more downbeat than usual.
“You read it all?” Doc asked.
Ryan replied in the affirmative.
“I am so alone, my dear Ryan and Krysty. A mere speck of infinity, two centuries old, with my wife and children long dead. Yet in their world, they are all alive. And waiting. Waiting for me to return. So you see, I still cherish the hope that one day I will be able to go back to them if the right gateway is found. Now, if you will excuse me, I think time alone might do my weary soul some good.”
Doc turned and left the couple in the hallway. They watched his back as he slowly made his way down to the bend in the corner and disappeared from sight.
Chapter Eighteen
Within the main control room of El Morro’s secured matter-transfer gateway complex, the heavy steel and armaglass door to the six-sided unit was hanging open on twin counterbalanced hinges, waiting to be closed in order to start yet another chron jump.