Chapter 7
"I want to go up there and beat the crap out of him." Dad murmured as he nodded his head in the direction of the forward cabin of the Air Force VC-20. It was a big plane, and we were in the large rear compartment that was arranged more like a conference room than a typical airliner. In the forward compartment, Dr. Grimes was handcuffed to a comfortable armchair with four armed sailors guarding him.
"Leave him be, Dad." I said with an exasperated sigh. This wasn't the first time Dad had suggested doing that, but I hoped it would be the last. I was still tired, and I'd found out why this morning. The navy doctor had informed me that he'd found several sedatives and traces of some other drugs in my system. Grimes must have administered them with the water, or by injection when I was asleep, and that had me very pissed off. If Dad suggested it again, I might go beat the crap out of the man myself.
"Well, if I didn't believe that story you told me last night, I'd believe it now." Dad said with a grunt. "You're definitely taking this a lot better than I'd expect, and the way you ordered that airman about sounded just like the officers I saw on the base."
"You notice how he jumped to obey as well?" I teased Dad. The crewmember really had jumped when I'd started giving orders as soon as we came aboard. It was habit, really, nothing more. For the last dozen years of my life I'd been a naval officer and quite use to issuing orders. I did it at times without even thinking about it, especially when surrounded by men and women in uniform.
"Yes, I did." Dad said with a frown towards me. Since coming to the hospital room this morning with the Admiral, he'd been studying me closely. "You sure didn't sound twelve when you were talking to him. I also see differences in how you behave around me now. You have a lot more confidence in yourself and you behave like an adult. You've always been precocious that way, but not like this."
"So you're coming to terms with this whole thing?" I asked him and he nodded slightly.
"I'm starting to, son, but I'm not there yet." Dad answered. "There are a lot more questions I'd like to ask, but I'm pretty sure you won't answer them. For now, I'm giving you a lot of leeway. We are, after all, on a military jet heading to Washington."
"Sir, your lunch is ready." The same airman from earlier poked his head in the door as he spoke and I nodded. We'd left around ten in the morning, and I was famished. The food was better than airline food, but not really that great. Still, it was filling and that was what I needed right now.
"This isn't half-bad." Dad commented on the food after we'd both finished.
"Yeah, these flights usually have slightly better food, but it's not as good as what you'd get on Air Force One." I observed and saw the look of jealousy on his face. "It was only twice, and it was during the ninety's, not the eighty's."
"Still, that is something." Dad said and I suppressed a sigh.
To my utter surprise, since he'd arrived in my hospital room earlier this morning, he'd been treating me very close to the way he had during my first life time, after I'd grown up and become an adult. I knew it wouldn't last forever, and he'd go back to treating me as a twelve-year-old at times, but if we could relate to each other like this more and more as time went by, it might be possible for me to actually have a good relationship with my father. I kept on getting more and more hopeful that might really happen the longer he kept on behaving this way.
I actually enjoyed watching his face as we arrived at Andrews and waited for Dr. Grimes to be escorted off the plane. Then two suited men from the United States Secret Service came onboard and told us they were here as our escort to the White House. It was a full-blown limousine that waited for us near the plane and Dad luxuriated in the ride through Washington. He stared at a few of the monuments and I remembered that he'd never really been here before, while I'd actually lived in this city while finishing high school in the last timeline.
When we pulled into the White House without stopping at the guard gates, I could see Dad's eyes widen slightly. This morning, I'd talked on the phone to the President and was able to tell him that Dad now knew some of my secrets. To my surprise, the President had responded with one word, 'good', and told me he'd be welcome at our meeting once we arrived in Washington. When we entered the White House, a guard handed us passes for the building. Mine was a permanent pass with my picture on it, but Dad's was a regular visitor's pass, although it did clear him to be in the Oval Office, which was where the Secret Service Agents led us.
"Mr. Jones, it is a pleasure to meet you at last." President Reagan said as we were shown into the oval-shaped room. He stood and came to shake Dad's hand. "Please, accept my personal apologies for the troubles you and your family have been through in the last few days. I made the mistake of trusting some very influential people and unfortunately it is you and your son who have had to bear the brunt of that mistake."
"No apologies are necessary, Mr. President." Dad practically gushed out. Casper Weinberger was the only other person in the room at this point, and the President released Dad's hand and pointed towards the nearby couches.
"Why don't we have a seat, gentlemen?" the President stated carefully. "Mr. Jones, this is my Secretary of Defense, Casper Weinberger."
"It's a pleasure to meet you, sir." Dad said to the SecDef while they shook hands briefly before sitting. The President and SecDef sat on one couch while I sat next to Dad on the other.
"Likewise." Cap Weinberger stated with a nod of his head.
"David, how are you doing?" the President asked me once we were all seated. His voice showed real concern, which wasn't a surprise to me.
"Much better now, Mr. President." I answered him honestly. Even as I spoke, he opened his mouth and I knew there'd be an apology forthcoming. "Please, before you say anything near to an apology to me, it's not necessary. Part of what happened to me was because I goaded Grimes and his men into slightly harsher treatment by making them angry. I despised what they were doing, and hated knowing I was powerless to prevent them doing those things to me, so I lashed out at them a little."
"We've read the debriefing from Grimes's men on what they did to you." SecDef said with a huge frown. "Such treatment of any American citizen is absolutely unacceptable, no matter what you might have said or done to provoke their anger. The men in question are paid operatives of the CIA and so will get a trial for their actions. The attorneys, the jury, the judge and other court agents will be chosen from a jury pool of people with high security clearance. It doesn't happen often, but they'll receive a trail in full accordance with their rights under the Constitution. As for Dr. Grimes, he'll receive much the same after some further interrogation."
"David, no matter how high up the chain it goes, whoever knew about, authorized, or condoned the way you were treated will be punished." the President said firmly. "You are an American citizen and do not deserve such treatment."
"Thank you sir." I accepted the statement at face value. Whether such treatment of non-citizens was permissible was a different story and a different argument entirely.
"So, you've finally decided your father should know about your situation." the President stated, moving on to the next topic at hand and I nodded carefully. "That's good. I don't like the idea of keeping secrets from parents unless it's absolutely necessary. It's a pretty hard story to take, isn't it, Mr. Jones?"
"Yes, sir, it is." Dad said softly. "But with everything that was going on recently, and with some of the things he knew about our family, it fit together. I'm still trying to adjust and think about how to treat him. I mean, on the one hand, he's my twelve-year old son and on the other…he's an adult old enough to be my father."
"The government is having the same problems deciding what is best for us to do in relation to him as well." the President stated. "I gave the Vice-President more discretion than I should have, and it looks like that was abused greatly, but at the same time there are elements in the government who know about him that are arguing we should keep him here in Washington so we can have full-time access to him."
"We need to settle his status with the government once and for all." Cap Weinberger stated firmly and fixed me with a very direct look. "We have to decide if you're a legal adult or a minor child, and now that at least one of your parents knows we can settle this. That's one of the purposes of this meeting today."
"I am mentally able to function as an adult." I spoke up, resisting the urge to sigh. "Yes, I am in the body of a twelve-year old, but for all intents and purposes I am an adult. The real question is what obligation I have to the government. Obviously, the obligation to help in handling the effects of other time travelers coming back in time exists and must be met. There is a secondary obligation to help this nation secure its defense and intelligence agencies against outside threats, and to a limited extent, internal threats through espionage or terrorism. Then there's the fact that I've served the government for over twenty years in two lifetimes so far."
"What does that tell you, son?" Dad asked me, giving me a hard look that told me he expected truth from me.
"It tells me that those who argue for me to be here in Washington and working with the government on a full-time basis have a very valid argument." I answered in full honesty and he nodded, as did the President and SecDef. "But no man is an island, gentlemen, and as I said last time I was here, I'm tired. For over twenty years I've served the government both in uniform and out of uniform. I gave up a very pleasant and stable private life when I came back here, and I want to live my life outside of government circles while meeting my obligations."
"It sounds like you want your cake and icing too." Dad stated dryly and for a second I thought he was arguing against me.
"It is traditional to have a cake with the icing." I noted as I realized where he was going and he smiled at my response. "It'd be a waste to not make use of the new facility being built in Eureka for my benefit."
"Ahem, you're not the main reason that facility is being built." Cap Weinberger stated with a slight grin. "We'd planned on building that facility and the DoD spent the last two years looking at different sites. Eureka was actually on their finalists list, but was originally bypassed because of several minor reasons. Politics actually had a hand in the original site being in Colorado. The Nevada site actually has several bonuses including less ambient light from nearby towns, greater security with its remote location, and of course having you in the area made its secondary use more important than the previously mentioned political considerations. The Air Force is actually happier that it's going in there than they were with the Colorado site."
"Not everything revolves solely around you, David." President Reagan joked. That garnered chuckles from all four of us.
"Point taken, Mr. President." I acknowledged after a few moments of mirth. "Still, I think me not being in Washington would also be safer for everyone involved. Once the new facility is up and running, the level of communications and response between me and the people you assign to work with me will be about the same as we would have with me here. I'd be able to lead a more balanced life as well, and readjust to living in this time again. A final point is that there is a danger in anyone becoming dependent on me or my information for making important decisions. The moment I came back in time, the timeline started to change again."
"What exactly do you mean when you say the timeline has started to change?" President Reagan asked with a look of concern on his face.
"Let's see… my family lives in Eureka two years early." I started my explanation very carefully, choosing non-government examples for this. "Everyone I attended junior high school with will have direct and indirect impacts because of my absence there, as well as the absence of my sister at her elementary school, and my parents in the community. At the same time, we are present in Eureka, Nevada two years earlier than my first lifetime, and we are changing everyone we come into contact with there. Also, you're building a facility in that area, affecting the community, as well as the people assigned there and at the same time affecting the Colorado location where the facility would have gone originally. Already there are thousands of direct and indirect changes based on what we've done so far. Some people who had jobs in the future, or present are going to lose them. People who were assigned to the Colorado station, met and fell in love there, eventually marrying and having children and now they will not do that. Likewise, people who never met before could end up marrying and having children with people in Eureka. New people who did not exist before in either timeline will appear in a few years, and people who existed in the previous timeline will not. Those are changes that could be just minor, or they could be major in the long run."
"I never thought of it that way before." Cap Weinberger said softly while Dad gave me a hard stare. I could see his mind working hard behind his eyes, and I knew from the set of his mouth that he was thinking of God, and probably 'God's will' more than anything else.
"That's why time travel should never be allowed to happen…again." President Reagan said firmly. "As nice as it is to have the information we do, and will have, the dangers represented by these types of changes outweigh the benefits."
"Changes in the last timeline resulted in a war where over sixty thousand American soldiers and sailors died." I continued in a cautious voice. "Later, in another war, another fifteen thousand Americans, and nearly two hundred thousand civilians, died who did not die in my first life. All of that happened because three people originally came back in time from the first, original time line."
"Was that the original time line though?" Cap Weinberger asked and my head started to hurt.
"For me, it was." I stated simply and got a shrug and a nod in response.
"Okay, let's put that aside for the moment." President Reagan said carefully. "I still want to understand why you are so adamant about living as a child when you are not really a child."
"What it boils down to at its core is that while I may have as much experience, and memories, as someone closer to your ages, gentlemen, I am here in 1981 in the body of a twelve-year old." I explained after thinking carefully for a few minutes. "When the officers I am dealing with, when you gentlemen yourselves are ready to retire, I will be in my twenties or early thirties. The men who will likely fill the office of President over the next twenty years are my father's age or younger. The people who will be leading businesses or the military are just starting their careers, and the people I will work with on a daily basis in twenty years are my physical age. We can fabricate documents that I went to the same schools as they did, but if I do not, I will not belong with them in the way I will by attending the schools over again. In the last timeline, my friends, the people I associated with during my time off, were of the same physical age as I was.
"The counter-argument that my personal life should be irrelevant to the work at hand does not take into account the realities of being human. Mr. President, would you be able to live your life without Nancy to lean on at night? I believe the answer would be a yes, but would that be a life you wanted to lead if it was possible not to do so?"
"No, I wouldn't." President Reagan answered after a moment of thought. "I see your point. If it was necessary for you to live your life without friends your own age, would you do so for the sake of the country?"
"Of course I would, Mr. President." I answered him immediately. "However, I don't believe it is necessary. Right now, and for the next few years, there will only be sporadic need for face-to-face meetings with me. I would also argue that by using written reports where I can take the time to think through my answers and polish them up before they are read would make my work more effective than face-to-face meetings. If there is a real need for me to be somewhere to further the work, that can be arranged quite easily, and explained away by 'family emergencies' or other things."
"Cap?" President Reagan's single word conveyed his question and the Secretary of Defense nodded after a moment.
"He's right in that we're more likely to get better information by allowing him the time to write things out, and that there's less likelihood of personal conflicts entering into the equation." Cap Weinberger answered. "The recent events involving Dr. Grimes lend credence to that argument. With the new facility in that area, we will have plenty of access to him there, or we can bring him here or anywhere we need him in a few hours. The area is fairly secure, and easy to monitor for security purposes. No Chinese or Russian agent is going to be able to get close to him without our seeing them coming for miles and a rapid-response team at the base can deploy to his home or school within minutes."
"Very well, we will allow you to continue your life at Eureka for now." President Reagan decided with a nod of his head to me, and I let out a sigh of relief. "Mike Andrews has been reassigned to your case and will discuss the handling of the day-to-day details with you before you leave. Thank you once again, David."
"My pleasure, Mr. President." I said firmly, rising to my feet as he did and shook his hand before the Secret Service escorted us out of the Oval Office. Unsurprisingly, Mike Andrews was there, waiting nervously. Weinberger had followed us out and spoke to the CIA officer before Mike came up to us.
"It's good to see you again, Davey." Mike said after the SecDef had returned to the Oval Office.
"It's good to see you as well, Mike." I replied. "This is my father, David Sr."
"It's a pleasure, sir." Mike said with a smile to Dad, shaking his hand. "We've arranged a room for you here in town, and we need to give Davey a debriefing at Langely. The Secret Service will escort you to the hotel, sir, and we'll bring Davey back around ten tonight."
"It's okay, Dad." I said as Dad started to open his mouth to protest. "I'll be back later tonight, okay?"
"Okay." Dad said curtly and nodded towards Mike as a Secret Service agent came up to Dad and then led him out of the White House. Mike and I took a different route towards another exit and a waiting car.
"I'm really sorry about what happened to you." Mike said as we got into the car and it drove off. He was a middle-aged man with light brown hair and was fairly fit.
"It's over and I'm alive." I said with a shrug.
"True." Mike chuckled. "Well, I've got a lot of things that have been piling up while we waited for you to get settled out in Nevada. You'll actually be able to take most of them home with you, but I did want to go over a few things while you're here."
"Sounds fine to me." I agreed with another shrug.
We arrived at the Langley, Virginia CIA offices without any other real conversation. The small conference room Mike led me to was like any of a dozen I'd been in throughout my last lifetime and didn't raise my hackles at all, despite the recent experience in Nevada. The interviews that followed, though, were frustrating in the extreme.
A large part of that frustration was my own natural impatience. I'd been through this all before, with the same questions being asked and having to explain the same things over and over again. Sure, it was 1981 and a lot of the things I knew about had not yet happened, had not yet even been started, but to me they were very old news. To the CIA agents and military analysts they were brand new ideas, though, and often quite confusing.
I was taken back to a nearby hotel just after ten in the evening. Dad had just about worn a hole in the carpet, worrying about me. His concern was touching and reassuring, given how our past relationship had gone in the other timelines. Unfortunately, he was as full of questions as the CIA and I was not in the mood. Instead I begged his questions off and pushed for going to sleep. They'd given us a single room with two beds, and I crawled into mine and was asleep within minutes.
I woke up with the sun the next morning, and went for a short run before my scheduled pick-up with Mike. Dad had just gotten up when I came back, sweaty and ready for a shower. It was a good thing I'd left him a note, and I didn't bother to mention the CIA car that had shadowed me on my morning run. The Secret Service wasn't being tasked with my security in this timeline, and I was actually glad for that.
After having agents around me for most of the last timeline I was quite glad for the relative privacy.
The morning meeting was at Langley again, and Dad got to enjoy a guided tour of the place while I met with the CIA analysts again to discuss infiltration of the Soviet Union and the nascent efforts to get photos of the Chinese leadership. Things weren't going too well in that area, but they did have ten new photos for me to look through. None of them were even close to the man I remembered, so they were thrown aside.
After a quick lunch in the Langley cafeteria, we were driven back to Washington for a meeting at the Pentagon. To say that Dad was excited about going to that building was an understatement. He'd always had a fascination with the military, and today he was going to be given a tour while I met with the Navy leadership. They'd read over my analysis of the strong and weak points of current weapons systems and they had a lot of questions they wanted answered.
"So what you're saying is that our current fleet isn't up to meeting the Soviet threat." Admiral Charles Emerson the Third was saying two hours later. He was a tall, thin man who had the bearing of an engineer more than a flag officer.
"That's not quite accurate, Admiral." I said with a careful exhalation of my breath. Of all the meetings and people involved with them, I was most at home with Naval Officers because we spoke the same language. "The older ships, like the Adams-class destroyers, Coontz-class destroyers, Knox-class frigates, Leahy-class cruisers, Belknap-class cruisers, and similar one-off ships need to be phased out as rapidly as possible and replaced by the Aegis-equipped vessels. Perry-class frigates are fine anti-sub platforms and will remain that way for at least a decade, but their air defense is still very weak. The Spruance-class destroyers are excellent anti-sub platforms, but their weakness in air-defense with only a single eight-cell Sea Sparrow launcher makes them to easy to overcome in a missile attack."
"Son, there's only one Spruance-class still being built and no more are planned." Admiral Halsworth noted with a frown in my direction. "There are thirty Perry-class ships already built, eight on order and fourteen more being planned. Are you saying we should cancel those orders?"
"No, I'm not saying that, Admiral." I answered easily. "I do recommend we look at how we use them though. If we're not careful, we'll end up depending on them to fulfill functions where they cannot hope to succeed. They just don't have the equipment, and neither do the majority of the destroyers we have in the fleet. Current planning is for the Adams-class to fill the secondary AAW role but they will not be outclassed in less than five years."
"Son, the Mk. 41 vertical launch system won't be ready for deployment for another three years." Commander Harper, the most junior officer in the room, stated with derision. His statement made me smile though.
"Which is why ordering more ships of the Aegis class now is vitally important." I pressed on with my point. "We can order more hulls and by the time they are ready to be equipped with VLS, that technology will also be ready."
"We'll be laughed out of Congress if we ask for that much more money." Admiral Halsworth grouched and I locked my gaze with him.
"Admiral, it's the President's job to sell them on the need for this, and possibly my job with some of the leadership." It was moments like this that I cursed the fact that my voice was still too high-pitched to be very effective. Still, it seemed to work as Halsworth relaxed and finally nodded his agreement.
If, for whatever reason, Shevardnadze wasn't assassinated and managed to rebuild the Soviet military for another war like the last one, we'd be better prepared. More than likely we'd still lose a carrier or two, and several dozen ships and subs, but nothing like the last timeline. Hopefully none of that would happen though, and all these preparations would prove to be unnecessary.
This meeting was far from over, even with the Admiral's agreement. There was still much to discuss, such as the importance of towed-array sonar on every combat ship, including nuclear cruisers, as well as the importance of having two sub-hunting helicopters on every escort ship as well as the carrier employing an additional two S-3 Viking anti-sub aircraft. Those were all important issues, but the hardest sell this morning was the retrofitting of every ship in the fleet with additional point-defense Phalanx cannons and the immediate call for development of a new point-defense missile system. If those had been in place in 1988, we would not have lost three carriers that had been sunk by Soviet missiles. Sure, we still nearly lost the Long Beach even with her improved defenses, but they'd had to use so many of their missiles to get that hit that they had none left with which to finish us off. That had enabled me to get the ship into kill range for the nuke ASROC. By the time the meeting was over, with me having convinced them of the need for all those improvements, it was time for dinner. The officers packed up their notes, including the hastily drawn diagrams of several ocean battles I'd made from memory, locking them in secure briefcases, and left the room. I stood after they'd left and headed towards the room's main door, which opened just as I got close. Dad stood there with a broad smile.
"Admiral Jensen has invited us to dinner in town with him." Dad said with a very broad smile and I had to think about who the Admiral could be. After a moment, I realized that he was the current head of the Chaplain Corps. Dad seemed excited by that so I just smiled at him and nodded my agreement. The referenced Admiral was waiting out in the main hallway and I was introduced to him briefly before we followed him out to his car. Mike Andrews came up just as we were leaving and mentioned that a car would follow us and take us back to the hotel after we'd eaten.
The restaurant Admiral Jensen took us to was a steakhouse near the Pentagon. It was a very popular place with Pentagon officers, and was swept at random for bugs by the intelligence arms of the different services. They rotated the responsibility between each branch and rolled a six-sided die to determine the number of days between each sweep. The table we were seated at was relatively secluded, and so I wasn't too surprised when the Admiral, who had a cross above the rank insignia on his sleeves to indicate he was from a Christian faith, started talking about sensitive topics.
"I was called to the White House yesterday to chat with the President." Jensen said once the waiter had left with our orders. "He had some questions regarding your situation, and looked to me for some advice."
"I see." I said simply after taking a sip of water. How many people were going to know in this timeline? That had me a little worried, but I was very much aware that Chaplains often had very high security clearances.
"To be honest, I find this whole situation disconcerting." Jensen continued in a carefully neutral tone of voice. "Why God would allow people to mess with the natural flow of time, I'm not sure. Your father had some interesting insights into that question when we talked earlier today."
"I still say that nothing can happen without God's consent." Dad said. "Look at what he let happen to Job, as an example."
"Yes, and it's a point I'll be thinking about for some time." Admiral Jensen said with a nod towards Dad. The conversation stopped while the waiter brought our salads, and I began to eat with a voracious appetite. Long meetings always left me hungry. Jensen continued once the waiter had left. "One of the things the President and I discussed was your father. I'm sure you're aware that the government does not like private citizens holding on to the nation's greatest secrets."
"So you suggested making him a chaplain?" I asked after swallowing some salad all but drowned in Thousand Island dressing. Jensen looked surprised that I'd guessed his solution, but it was simple, really. The Admiral was discussing it with me to let me know that they'd put Dad in uniform so they could keep control of him through military regulations. It was a simple, solution. Chaplains wore the uniform, but didn't have to meet many of the physical requirements of service, weren't in the chain-of-command although they did hold an 'honorary' rank. Despite that, they were still covered by the Uniform Code of Military Justice, and could be held or silenced without worry about violating their civil rights.
"We've offered, and he's accepted, a commission as an Ensign Chaplain in the United States Naval Reserve." Admiral Jensen said after staring at me for a moment. "He'll be supervised and serve his duty weekends with Commander Joseph Rock at NAS Fallon, and eventually be assigned TDY as the chaplain for the Eureka Air Force facility."
"I know, or knew, Commander Rock in the previous time." I said with a smile. The man was Catholic and had a tendency towards heavy drinking. He had been the Chaplain for the Long Beach and had died in that submarine attack the night I launched the nuke. "He's a good man."
"That's good." Jensen said neutrally and I smiled.
"I think it's a good solution." I said with a smile for the man. "What do you think, Dad?"
"I… I'd like to accept but I wanted to talk to you first." Dad said softly. "I know you were in the Navy according to what you've told me and I wondered if you think it might mess up the timeline or be too hard on you."
"I won't make you salute, don't worry." I told Dad as a joke and he smiled slightly. "No, it won't be a problem for me at all."
"Good, that's settled." Admiral Jensen said with a broad smile. "So, how's the salad?"
"It's good, Admiral." I answered with a smile for him and Dad.
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