The Far Time Incident Read Online Free PDF Page A

humanly possible, Penny Lind took a delicate sip of the hot chocolate, which left a mustache above her upper lip, and asked, “Is it true that Erika Baumgartner would have been back in less than an hour with the photos?”
    “Yes—a day in the field takes about fifty minutes of lab time.” I waved that aside. “I can give you a tour of our other science buildings if you’d like—”
    “Will there be any time travel in them?”
    “I’m afraid not.”
    It was not a good idea to send her into the office of the probably still-fuming Dr. Baumgartner, that was certain. For a wildmoment I considered walking Penny over to the museum so she could snap a few photos of Ewan Coffey for her blog, but decided the actor might not appreciate that. And we did need his checkbook, as crass as that sounded. Probably now more than ever, the unpleasant thought shot through me, given what had happened to Dr. Mooney.
    Penny tapped an impatient leopard-print boot.
    “How about this? I’ll arrange for you to observe a second project after we resume STEWie runs.” I flicked on my computer and opened STEWie’s roster. “Maybe with someone from the History Department—let’s see—yes, here we go—there’s a team scheduled to travel to 41 BC to gather data on Cleopatra, the last of the Egyptian pharaohs.”
    Whatever had gone wrong last night with STEWie, I hoped it would be dealt with soon; otherwise there were going to be a lot of unhappy researchers roaming the halls and snapping at the students who remained on campus during the winter break.
    I went on, “The Cleopatra team will try to find out if the source of her power was her beauty, as has been rather fancifully reported down the ages, or if it was the more practical combination of intelligence, charisma, and political smarts. Should they return with photos, the question will be answered once and for all.”
    “The question?”
    I leaned forward. “
Did she have a large nose?
”

    The day’s exams proceeded as scheduled; school life, like the proverbial show in Ewan Coffey’s line of work, had to go on. After resolving a problem that had arisen during the freshman Human Biology test (there was a reason cell phones, with theirmemory and messaging capabilities, had been banned from exam rooms), I printed out the press statement I’d prepared for the dean’s review. I usually e-mailed inter office documents to him, but something stopped me from doing that this time.
    To seek company is the instinctive human response to death.
    Though I was keeping my fingers crossed that the professor would be found at home or in the special collections section of the Coffey Library attending to the formerly lost volumes whose copies he had obtained on STEWie runs, I did not hold out much hope. Officer Van Underberg had kept me updated on the progress of the investigation via a series of texts. Chief Kirkland and the officer were checking all the obvious places for any sign of the professor, starting with Dr. Mooney’s house on the edge of campus, on the off-chance that he had changed his mind about biking home once he saw the snow and had made it there by walking or hitching a ride, and then overslept after a long night in the lab, missing our many calls to his home phone number. They were not back yet.
    Dean Sunder stood at the wide windows of his office, lost in thought. At first I assumed he was looking out at the still-falling snow, but then saw that he had a PhD thesis in his hands. It was bound with the red cover the school had used before switching to blue in 1980, fifteen years before I enrolled in the Business Administration program at St. Sunniva. Xavier’s old PhD thesis, I suspected, from the dean’s personal collection. I cleared my throat and Lewis turned toward me. He shut the volume, put it aside, then held out his hand. “Julia. Is that it?”
    He took a minute or two to read over the press statement. I had taken care in crafting it. It wasn’t very long, just a