Jill woke first and sat quietly to watch Ethan sleep.  She thought about what life might be like with something to hold on to other than her own wits.  She knew she should not think that way but she could not help it.  She had been alone for too long, an unhealthy long time, and she was unaccountably attracted to this young man, child though he was.  Full of youth and life, Ethan knew how to laugh.  Her life was so serious.  She longed to be able to laugh again.

Ethan opened his eyes, smiled at her and sat up on his elbows.  He winced and reached for his upper arm but that just made Jill’s smile deeper and stronger.  She did like him.  She could not help it.

“So what’s the plan?”  Ethan asked.  Jill changed the direction of her thoughts and put on her more serious face.

“This world had trains and telegraphs, but no internal combustion engines, and so no Wright Brothers, yet.  “About 1875,” she said.  She put the place in his time frame with the hope that his grasp of history would help.

“So we ought to be able to find the wire we need.”  Ethan concluded and Jill nodded.  She truly was glad that he was smart.

“So I was thinking, after graciously thanking our hosts for their hospitality, we walk to Hill Town.  It should be simple enough to get what we need.”

Ethan got all of the way up when they heard the front door close down below.  He stepped to the railing and turned his back on Jill to look over the edge.  “I decided last night that this earth hopping might be a tricky and dangerous business.”

“World hopping.”  Jill corrected Ethan’s terminology but did not disagree with the rest.

“Good thing my wife is the most brilliant and confident woman in the universe,” he said, and he reached his hand back for hers.  Jill could not see the expression on Ethan’s face, but decided that was just as well since it meant he could not see her face, either.  She gave him her hand even as she thought, how little he knows.

When the couple came down the stairs, Lars was going back out the front door.

“Ah.”  Lars smiled and paused.  “Our sleepy ones.”  He caught Jill’s eye.  “I should have gotten your husband up two hours ago for a ride to the fields to work off the toll.”  He laughed, stepped outside and shut the door behind him.  Jill suddenly felt embarrassed about sleeping so late, even if it was just seven o’clock.  She should have made more effort to conform to the culture.

“I hope we didn’t wake you last night.  I don’t think we got to sleep until late,” she apologized

“Auch!”  Angelica waved off the apology and went to the kitchen to prepare some food for her guests while Kirsten plopped down in her Papa’s chair.

Jill paused where she stood, part way between the front door, the kitchen and the fire.  She watched while Ethan took a seat in front of the fire and rechecked the contents of his briefcase, now that he knew how important the laptop was.  Poor Ethan, Jill thought.  She was sure this was the strangest first date he had ever been on.  She sighed for his sake before she had a truly impish idea.  She still looked at Ethan when she leaned over Kirsten’s chair and whispered in the girl’s ear.

“We didn’t sleep until very late.”  Jill pointed to her lip and bit it.

Kirsten glanced at Ethan and turned crimson.  Ethan raised a curious eyebrow.  Jill knew he would ask later what she said, but for the present, she just smiled at him and took the seat next to her girlfriend.  Ethan looked straight at her but shook his head in bewilderment and set down the briefcase between his feet.

Breakfast was good, all eggs, biscuits and plenty of bacon, but after breakfast they learned that Lars had loaded up the wagon and hitched up the horse for a trip to town.  They were going for a ride and Angelica and Kirsten were coming as well, to shop.

Jill caught Ethan’s nervous glance.  They both knew it could get tricky if they were asked too many questions about a town they had never been to; but she patted Ethan’s hand to reassure him and he nodded once to indicate that if it came up, they would think of something.  Jill knew that their explanations for things at times might get extremely thin, but she felt confident that Ethan’s experience in marketing and public relations would not let him down.

###

The road, if that two-rutted, rock-strewn excuse for a horse path could be called a road, left them all shaken.  Angelica sat up top beside Lars on the springboard, which shielded her, and Lars from the worst of the bumps.  Kirsten rode in the back with Jill and Ethan, and since Kirsten seemed to take her beating in stride, Jill tried to mirror that same attitude.

In only an hour of bumps and jumps, they started to see houses, neat wood framed buildings set out in straight rows on both sides of the improving road.  A short while later, they came to the edge of the town and crossed the railroad tracks beside the train station where two freight cars were linked to a steam engine that sent up occasional great billows of smoke.  Downtown was only one street long, but it was long enough to receive traffic from a dozen residential roads.  It looked to Jill like a picture out of some Victorian album.  She pointed out several things that were peculiar to Victorian architecture and Ethan nodded but held his tongue.  She was glad about that.  He was learning.

Lars guided his horse into a barn-like structure where a gangly young boy caught the horse by its bridal.  “Just water and a bit of feed.”  Lars said.  “We will be going home in the afternoon.”  The boy nodded and held the horse steady while Ethan and Jill followed Kirsten down and out of the wagon, slowly.  They were all bruised.

“I think we better go to the station first and see what time the train can take us back to New Amsterdam.”  Ethan suggested while he stretched out the kink in his back. Jill hugged Kirsten and gave her some womanly advice about marriage, and she hugged Angelica as well.

“I never expected to find an Anglish person here.”  Jill said.

Angelica took a quick step back.  “I used to be Anglish,” she said softly, and she looked down at her own dowdy boots and turned one toe in the dirt.

“Auch!  But the Dutch Long Island is full of country.”  Angelica was still not convinced.

Jill pulled away.  “But it is so Dutch,” she said, to make a joke.

Angelica paused before she nodded.  “Aye.  That it is.  I do understand wanting to get away from New Amsterdam.  Too many people in too little space, and dirty.  Too very dirty.”

“New Sweden seemed inviting to us,” Jill said.

“And we had no idea we were on anyone’s farmland,” Ethan added and wondered again why he should be the one to keep quiet.  “We apologize for intruding.  I’m afraid we were not paying attention to where we were going.”  He reached out to Jill and pulled her to him in a lover’s embrace, and he smiled down at her.  To his delight, she did not resist him and appeared to return his smile and she did not seem to want to pinch him or kick him or anything!

“But why New Sweden?”  Lars came out from the back room.  “This whole country is nothing but one big swamp.”

“Auch!  My husband thinks only that the grass is greener in the next valley,” Angelica said.

“But New Sweden is extremely fertile, swamp or not.”  Jill spoke before Ethan could taste her lips again.  “You have a lovely garden.”  She smiled at Angelica and separated herself again from Ethan’s arms.

Angelica looked ready to respond to the compliment when a young woman came in the front door and interrupted them.

“Mama.  Papa,” the young woman said.  She was a big girl, with long blond hair like her father and dark brown eyes like her mother, probably not yet twenty, and she carried some flowers that she had picked and no doubt planned for the supper table.  She smiled, but paused on seeing the couple.

“Kirsten.”  Lars spoke up.  “May I present Mister and Missus Lucas.  They are Anglish and newly wedded.”

“Pleased to meet you,” Kirsten said with a little curtsey.  Her Anglish did not sound too good.  Lars obviously spoke the language.  Angelica was born to it, but clearly Anglish was not spoken much around the house.

“Jill,” Jill introduced herself as she stepped up to the young woman and let out a friendly smile.  “And we should get those flowers in some water.  They are lovely.”

The young woman returned the smile and led the way to the kitchen where they found a vase.  Ethan edged in their direction so he could eavesdrop even while he pretended to enjoy the fire.

“You just married?”  Kirsten spoke volumes with her words and her grin.  “He is most handsome.”  She looked over at Ethan who turned his head to the fire so his spying would not be so obvious.  At the same time, he noticed Angelica leaning toward the kitchen herself.

Jill asked.  “So what’s his name?”

“Yon Veek,” Kirsten said before she began to whisper and Ethan could not hear anymore.

“So what is your work, Mister Lucas?”  Lars asked as he sat in a comfortable chair in front of the fire and pulled out a pipe to fill.  Poor papa, Ethan thought.  Oblivious to it all.

“Ethan, please.”  Ethan sat slowly on the couch, which also faced the fire.  He surmised the big fireplace was their version of a television.  “I’m a writer,” he suggested, having noticed a few books on a shelf by the kitchen.

“Auch!  An educated man.  Always a good catch for a young woman.”  Lars nodded.

“Our daughter has been through the grades, she has.”  Angelica spoke with a touch of defensiveness in her voice.  She came over to join them by the fire, though she kept one eye on Kirsten and Jill in the kitchen.  She sounded very proud of her daughter.

“Good for you,” Ethan said, not knowing what else to say.  It was finally dawning on him that things were very different here, wherever here was, and it would be too easy to say the wrong thing and get him and Jill in real trouble.  He briefly wondered again what Jill knew that he did not know.

“Aye.”  Angelica responded.  “New Sweden is not like New Angland.  There is not as much emphasis on education here.”

“School education.”  Lars pointed out sharply, and he pointed his pipe at his wife in a kind of correction to his wife’s words.  Angelica nodded while Lars continued to speak.  “But here, as long as a man and a woman can keep the farm, turn a little profit if the Dutchman in the market doesn’t steal it all, and raise the next generation to be good souls and to fight.  Do you fight Mister Lucas?”

“Ethan.”  He spoke more firmly.  “And no.  Not if I can help it.”

Lars looked a little disappointed, but Angelica smiled.  “An educated and sensible man,” she said.  “A double fine catch for a woman if you ask me.”

“I think so.”  Jill agreed and joined them even as Angelica got up to head for the kitchen.  Jill took a seat on the couch beside her pretend husband and snuggled close, though not as close as Ethan might have liked.

“Our Kirsten will marry soon.”  Lars pointed his pipe toward his daughter who was now helping her mother with supper.  “As soon as I decide on which young man it will be.”

Jill tightened her grip on Ethan’s arm, and Ethan agreed with her.

###

During supper, there was hardly a chance for a misstep, until Ethan let slip that he was from Rhode Island.  He had family there, but it was a place the Hjorth’s never heard of.  Jill stomped on Ethan’s toe, but despite that, Ethan dug the hole a little deeper.

“I could show you if you had a map.”

Lars and Angelica eyed each other.  Something unspoken passed between them.  Jill pressed hard on Ethan’s toe, but Kirsten took him at his word and fetched a book.  It was one of her reader history books and it had some printed maps, including a map of the current state of the world.  Ethan was fascinated by the map, but mostly relieved when Jill lifter her foot and snatched the book from his hands.  Ethan had no idea Jill could read Swedish, and everyone stared as she started at the beginning and flipped through the pages at an alarming rate.  She seemed to grasp the information with only a glance at each page.

“It’s a gift.”  Ethan explained, nervously, believing that what he said must be true.  “That is why she married a writer, I suppose.  Who else could keep up with her?”  He felt a light tap on his toe, but Lars and Angelica laughed, if a bit nervously.  Kirsten had another thought.

“Auch!  If I could read like that I would be the smartest girl in the world.”

When Jill finished, she said, “I see,” several times.  Ethan got the book back, found a map of New Angland and pointed to one of the islands about where Rhode Island ought to have been.  The Hjorths accepted his word that Rhode Island was the local name for the place.

Then Ethan took a long look at the current map of the world.

Europe was divided into hundreds of little countries and city-states including any number of strange place names like Amorica, Burgundy, Westphalia and Muscovy.  The Turks, Arabs and Moors held the Middle East and North Africa, but they looked pretty well divided, too.  Turning to the new world did not help Ethan’s confusion, though he did have a thought in the back of his mind that said, “no empire builders.”

Eastern Canada was Danish, called Vineland.  New Angland covered approximately New England with some of Canada, and there were English, or rather Anglish in a small state in Virginia as well, but south of there, there were small chunks of land carved out by the Normans, the Belgians, the Venetians and others.  Apart from those places, and New York State, which was marked Iroquois with Tuscarora in parenthesis, and approximately South Carolina, which was marked Cherokee, the rest of the Eastern United States beginning with the Middle Atlantic region and stretching all of the way to Wisconsin was Swedish.

“Here.”  Ethan handed the book back to Kirsten when he realized that everyone was staring at him.  “Sorry,” he said.  “I’ve loved maps ever since I was in school, and I see your Swedish cartographers do excellent work.”  Everyone appeared to accept that explanation, and with the book put back up on the shelf, the conversation drifted back to talk about the farm before bed. Ethan was more careful in his conversation after that.

Between gaslights and farm life, the Hjorths did not stay up much past sundown, even with company.  Jill and Ethan got the loft

“I am a sound sleeper.”  Lars whispered with a nudge and a wink to Ethan before Ethan and Jill went up.

Jill swiped her card, and the big steel doors at the entrance to the research and development wing clicked open.  It did not have far to go from there to her lab, but she hurried because she had been gone for a while.  When she opened the door, she saw Doctor Grimly dutifully working away.  She caught her breath and hoped he would not say anything.

“I got you a coke.”  She set the can down on the corner of the lab table.  Doctor Grimly looked up, but she ignored the look on his face.

“I think someone was checking up on her young man.”  Doctor Grimly grinned.  Jill hated it when he grinned like that.  He looked like a school kid teasing the girl with the pigtails in the front row.

“I just wanted to make sure everyone was all right.”  That was as much as she was going to admit.  “That dimensional jump was a bad one.”

“Not as bad as the first,” Doctor Grimly responded.  “Sadly, I have no idea how to correct the area of refraction.”

Jill found a clean sheet of paper and wrote a few quick equations.  “Here.  I think I have worked it out.  This needs to go into the field generator program.”

Doctor Grimly picked up the paper and studied it for a minute while Jill went back to ignoring him.

“I don’t see…”

“Just—.” Jill caught her tongue before she said something she didn’t mean.  “You wouldn’t understand the math.”

Doctor Grimly tilted his head toward the woman, like he might look over his glasses, and he put on his most serious stare.  It would have been a very effective stare if he wore glasses. “You are the only one I have ever known who could think Einstein under the table.  I am sure this Ethan fellow would like that.”

Jill imagined the same thing and turned away as she felt her cheeks turn red.  “Not a good idea.”

“No fraternization?”

“No.”  Jill pointed to the paper in Grimly’s hand.  “You just work those equations into the program while I work on the controller.  We have rattled the cage twice now.  I need to be gone.”

“Yes, your highness.”  Doctor Grimly returned to work.  Unfortunately, the grin also returned to the man’s face, and after a while, he added the word, “Chicken.”

The flash of light made Ethan see spots.  His stomach flew up into his chest.  He felt dizzy, disoriented and weightless, like he did when an airplane got caught in sudden turbulence.  That feeling vanished when the imaginary plane hit the runway, hard, and Ethan’s vision cleared.  He found himself sitting in a field of tall grass under a perfectly blue sky, and he did not appear to be alone.  Something went pop in the distance.  It sounded like a gunshot, but then his desk and cubicle returned with another bump and brilliant flash of light.  He heard Randy, the office jerk, run for the men’s room, no doubt to throw-up.  That made Ethan smile.

“Ethan!”  Tasha called from the next cubicle and scampered around the corner.  “That’s twice.”  She tried to keep her voice down, but did not entirely succeed.  She stared at him, wide-eyed, as if he should produce an explanation.  All Ethan could do was shake his head.  “Well?”  Tasha sounded impatient.  “My clothes are getting grass stains.”

“What do you want me to say?  I don’t know any more than you do,” he responded quietly, while his mind searched for answers that did not exist.

Tasha grinned.  “You can’t fool me.  I know you did investigations before you started to work here.  I know you started poking around after the first time.”

“Shh!  Not so loud.  I only studied investigative journalism at the university.  One class.”  Ethan hushed her and then raised his voice in case anyone might be listening in.  “Now I do marketing and public relations, same as you.”

“Bull.”  Tasha spoke softly, but with determination.

Ethan sat up straight and frowned at his co-worker.  “What do you want me to say?”  He repeated himself quietly before he raised his voice again.  “You know we aren’t even supposed to talk about it.  Upper management said they were looking into it.” Ethan shrugged.

“Bull.”  Tasha also repeated herself, but now the word came out as a whisper.

This time Ethan grinned.  It occurred to him, if he pushed the right button, Tasha might help.  She worked for the Company for years and had plenty of contacts that he did not have.  “Don’t you remember the Company’s oath of secrecy, that thing we all signed when we were hired because of the government research and all?”

Tasha frowned and stomped off to her own cubicle while Ethan noticed that his computer had crashed.  He cursed.  How was he going to find out what was going on if he could not access the company database?

When Tasha returned, she wheeled her chair into Ethan’s doorway to block his only avenue of escape.  “Look,” she spoke as she sat.  “I’m not talking to the big wide world out there.  I’m talking to you.  So far, I have heard everything from alien technology to Bigfoot; but I know you are looking into this, for real.”

Ethan shrugged again before he let his grin return.  He made a show of looking around as if he was about to divulge some great universal secret.  He figured Tasha wanted the secret, spy routine, and he even whispered to enhance the effect.  “It’s only a hunch, but I hacked into certain company records.  I also talked to Big Mary in accounting and found out that Doctor Grimly down in research and development has spent twice his budget in just the last three months, and his power use is off the scales.”

“I figured R&D had to be involved.”  Tasha whispered her agreement in return before she backed up and a playful look spread across her face.  “Are you sure this doesn’t have anything to do with Jill Lucas?  You talk about her in your sleep.”

Ethan’s private thoughts turned his grin into a smile before he defended himself.  “I don’t sleep at my desk.”  He picked up a pencil and tapped it a couple of times against his keyboard while he considered his words.  “Doctor Grimly’s research assistant is only a bonus.  Seriously, Doctor Grimly is the only anomaly I have been able to find.  The trouble is, the people in research and development are totally secretive about their work.  I think it is a holdover from the cold war.”

“I hear that.”  Tasha nodded in full agreement.  Public relations tended to be a nightmare in a company where no one knew what was going on.

“If I could figure out a way to get in there I might come back with some real good information.”  Ethan planted the seed, and Tasha responded.

She looked pensive at first.  “That might not be so easy.”  Then her face brightened.  “I’m gonna call Big Mary myself.  Maybe we can do some brainstorming.”  She picked up her chair for the return trip.  She became a woman on a mission.

Ethan stood, stretched and called after her.  “I’ll be in the break room in case your brainstorm produces some lightning strikes.”  He let his feet move slowly across the carpet, and he rubbed his eyes as he remembered the flash of light just before he went God only knew where.

Someone pulled one chair in the break room up to the lone, dirty window.  Ethan sat there so he could stare out on the parking lot.  No field of grass in all that pavement, he thought, before his mind asked the question:  So what do I know?

Doctor Grimly left the university the same year Ethan graduated, but Ethan never had a class with the man; not that the man did not have teaching assistants for that sort of thing.  He never met the man as far as he could remember, and in fact, he could not even think of any fellow students who studied physics.  That was not his crowd.

He paused and looked up when he heard a sound.

Jill Lucas stepped into the room and turned to the coke machine even as Ethan felt an involuntary smile spring to his lips.  She had on her long white lab coat, but it hid none of her beauty.

Jill got her coke and turned briefly to smile at him.  “Hello,” she said.

“Hi,” Ethan responded, and their eyes met.  They had been dancing with their eyes for several months, but neither had taken the next step.

Jill left before things got awkward, but Ethan could only think, God!  Just to look at her made his every sense tingle.  Then he reacted, but it was too late.

“Damn!  Why didn’t I say something?  That was the perfect opportunity to weasel in on Grimly.”  He felt like banging his head on the table, but refrained when he had a second thought.  In another world, she would be mine.

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Welcome to the first post of Guardian Angel, the story of two people who cling to each other as they travel the worlds–other earths, alternate universes–and face terrors too big for one universe to contain.

Guardian Angel will be posted, each chapter in three parts: Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday over the next 23 weeks at 8AM, a quick shot to start your day.   Enjoy, and Happy Reading

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