The return portal formed in the air like razor blades slashing through clear ice. Andrea stepped across the threshold, her mixed elation and disappointment so overwhelming that she barely noticed the skin-fizzing sensation of hopping back home from an adjacent timeline.
"I got something!" she called, unslinging the backpack from her shoulder. "How about a miracle cure for multiple sclerosis, anybody?" It wasn't what she had hoped to find, but she had to make it look good.
In the receiving room of Alternitech, portals and complex control panels surrounded her. At her announcement, technicians and other cure hunters began to pay attention. "How much follow-up do we need?" asked the chubby man in the operating booth.
"Not necessary--I got all the right data." Andrea brushed a hand through her short, sweat-rimed dark hair, feeling her cheeks grow warm.
Cure hunters like herself dreamed of such unlikely chances. Peeping into parallel timelines, digging through other-universe medical libraries, Andrea searched for effective treatments that doctors in her own timeline had somehow missed.
Who would have thought that a drug used for skin disorders would be amazingly effective against MS? When injected into the spinal columns of those suffering from the disease, the drug dissolved the small white plaques covering nerve sheaths.
No one in her own timeline had thought of it, but in an adjacent universe, a doctor had stumbled upon the treatment and published it to high acclaim. Alternitech would profit greatly from the discovery, and so would mankind.
The man in the operating booth spoke into his intercom, summoning verification reps to paw through her data. Other cure hunters applauded Andrea as they waited for their own gates to open. She surrendered her backpack and its contents to the security guard.
It was phenomenally expensive to haul foreign mass from other timelines. Hunters like Andrea recorded pertinent data onto the diskettes or videotapes they carried with them. Apparently, there was no cost to transfer information between timelines, though Andrea supposed the entropy specialists would probably come up with something sooner or later.
After the announcement of her discovery, the reporters would come, the television interviewers, the applause from the public, the heart-felt thank-you letters from MS patients given sudden new hope for their conditions. She allowed herself to revel in the times she made a find like this.
Andrea also felt a disappointment inside, despite the rewarding rush of success. After all, she had not been looking for a cure for MS. She had failed in her primary mission.
The problem gnawing at her was whether or not she should tell Everett. He was the one who had everything at stake.
)
