Page 74 of Kiss Across the Universe
“Oh shit,” she breathed, sitting up. “Kit!” The sun was almost touching the tops of the mountain chain to the west. They’d slept away most of the afternoon. “Kit!” She shook him.
Kit came awake with the snap-to-it alertness of a wild animal. He sat up, looked around, then let out a deep breath. “Damn,” he muttered.
“How bad is it, that we’ve slept this long?” she said. “You wanted to be out of the mountains by late afternoon, and we’re not even close to the plains, yet.”
“I wanted to be somewhere by tonight,” he said. He grimaced. “There’s a house. A place. I wanted to get there. Check in. Talk to a few people.”
Communications. News. Her guess had been right.
Alannah pushed herself off the rock, and moved over to where she could see through the trees to the prairies. They were closer than the last time she had studied them, but still a few hundred feet below where she and Kit stood. “Where is this house you want to get to?” she asked Kit. “Can you see it from here?”
“I’ve got good eyesight, but I think an eagle would have trouble seeing it from here.” He moved over to her side, scrubbing at his hair and stretching. Then he shifted, peering through the trees. “No, not from here. I can see all the landmarks, but not the house.”
“What’s the closest landmark to the house that you can see?”
He glanced at her. “You have something in mind?”
“I can jump to what I can see,” she explained. “If you have binoculars in that kitchen sink you’re carrying, that will make a difference. I can study the details.”
“I thought you just jumped to…bookmarks, you called them.”
“That’s if I jump by accessing the timescape. And there’s no guarantee the bookmark will be there, anyway. And…” She rubbed at the back of her neck. “I don’t know if the shield that’s hiding me will strip away if I go onto the timescape. So a simple jump from point to visual point seems safest to me. I just have to be able to see where I’m jumping to. I have to know the place where I will land.”
“Like your house above Canmore?”
She nodded. “There’s a basement—no one knows about it. ButFarand Mom set it up so any jumpers could jump there, to the exact moment they wanted. There’s an atomic clock…I could jump us there, with complete certainty.”
Kit thought about it, then shook his head. “We don’t know the conditions we’ll be jumping into. Iron Grey knows way too much about you. He knows the house. He might know about the basement. Until we get more information, we need to be wary about returning to the house.”
“So we jump to this house you’re aiming for, to get information,” she concluded.
“It’s my uncle’s house. Right on the north edge of the reservation. He’s got an old landline phone.” He moved over to his pack, rooted through it, and pulled out a black box and tipped a small pair of folding binoculars out and held them out to her. “They’re not powerful, but you could pick up the details you need.” He turned her so she was facing the correct direction and pointed. “See the glint of the river, down there, and the triangle of trees to the south?”
She looked and nodded. “Got it.” It was a long way away. She could understand why Kit had been concerned about making good time.
“Follow the river to the east a ways. You’ll see a tributary coming off it, and an old wooden bridge crossing it. No sides to the bridge—it’s on private land. Dirt road.”
“Sounds like our bridge across the gully,” she murmured and lifted the glasses. She found the river beside the triangular lot of trees and traced it east. She found the bridge. The dirt road to either side of it was covered in snow, with double tire tracks cutting through it. “Someone’s been across it the last day or so,” she murmured. “The tracks look fresh.”
“Uncle Joe has a few businesses in Calgary and Airdrie. He heads in every day,” Kit said.
Politicians litter my family. Obscenely successful businessmen, too.
Alannah lowered the glasses. “I can jump us there. To the bridge. Only, it’s pretty open, Kit. Anyone might see us arrive there. How far is it from the house?”
“The house is among trees, about three kilometers on from the bridge, and in the valley made by the river the bridge crosses.”
“And you thought we’d get all the way there by tonight?”
“With your long-legged stride? Easy.” He smiled. “I just didn’t account for falling asleep in the sun. Stupid newbie hiker move.”
“It was a busy night,” Alannah said, holding the glasses out to him.
Kit fumbled taking the glasses back. He drew in a breath, clutching them firmly, and took them back to the pack.
Had she embarrassed him?
His face was held in its usual neutral expression when he rose and moved over to the rock to roll up the sheet.
