The Far Time Incident Read Online Free PDF

paragraph or two explaining that the school was looking into the incident, with some inspirational words at the end.
Well-respected scientist at the tail end of his career may have sacrificed all for the benefit of mankindand the advancement of knowledge
, that kind of thing. Whatever the reasons for Dr. Mooney’s unscheduled run, I was sure that my words weren’t far from the truth.
    “Yes…well done, Julia.” The dean reread the statement, slipped it into his briefcase, and opened one side of the mahogany cabinet that took up a wall of his office. Extra shirts, assorted ties, and a bottle or two of hair spray waited inside. He loosened the lively red tie he’d worn to the museum breakfast meeting with Ewan Coffey—which had turned out to be very productive, he said—and hung it on the tie rack. Like me, the dean seemed to have a need to talk. “What a terrible thing—for Xavier—and the department. I know Chief Kirkland is still checking, but at this point it’s a formality. The basket came back empty and there’s only one thing that can mean… Nothing like this has ever happened on my watch. This has been my office for a long time, coming up on, what, nineteen years?” he said, rummaging among the ties without seeming to really notice them.
    I couldn’t help but throw a glance at the diplomas, awards, and photos with St. Sunniva’s chancellor, Jane Evans, and other dignitaries that graced the wall behind his desk. I corrected him gently. “Twenty this January, Lewis.” I’d already ordered a silver wall clock for his office with an appropriate inscription.
To Lewis Sunder. From his grateful students, professors, and staff.
    “Twenty, Julia, really? You’ve been my assistant for, what—”
    “Seven years. How about this one? Dark gray is always appropriate.”
    He took down the somber dark-gray tie and faced the mirror inside one of the cabinet doors. “Did you know that Chris, my assistant before you, retired early to grow palm trees in Florida? It wasn’t the winters that drove him away, he said. He’d had enough of students and their problems and wanted to work with something that wouldn’t complain all the time.” He chuckled,then grew serious again as he wound the tie into a perfect knot. “Xavier and I go way back, have I ever mentioned that? He and Gabriel Rojas and I worked on early attempts at spacetime warping technology as graduate students, back when time travel was just an idea on the back of a napkin. We were young and full of ideas—practical, ambitious, doable, impossible. It was difficult to get funding, a constant struggle. We were barely able to keep things going from one semester to the next. I moved on to other things. After tenure, I had the honor of being offered this post and I jumped at the chance. From that point on, I made it my mission to expand the science departments, bring in new talent, and do all I could to help my researchers.”
    He had certainly done that. St. Sunniva’s eight science departments, from the Mary Anning Hall of Earth Sciences to the Maria Mitchell Astronomical Observatory, owed a lot to him. He had fought for support for many a student and project, and had helped Dr. Mooney and Dr. Rojas scrape for funding at the bottom of the budget barrel until their joint project and the budding Time Travel Engineering Department had taken off. There had been criticism, too. There had been those who felt that St. Sunniva’s past as an all-girls school would be best honored by giving admission preference to female students. Lewis Sunder had been adamantly against that and had voted for blind (or as near as could be) admission decisions. But he had also done his best to bring women faculty members into the science departments and had been the one to suggest that naming buildings after Marie Curie and other women scientists would be a tangible way of honoring St. Sunniva’s past.
    “This will shake up the TTE lab—we’ll have to regroup, start fresh. And