The next morning, the three of us were sitting at the breakfast table, eating porridge and toast and marmalade .
Natty appeared to be lost in thought, and Jake was keeping his silence too, so it fell upon me to make an attempt at small talk.
"I imagine it must feel awfully strange to have to deal with two teenage girls in your apartment all of sudden, Jake," I ventured.
"Not at all. I rather enjoy the experience. If I had stayed in my own temporal era, and if I had had a daughter, she probably would be about your age now, Catherine." Jake smiled. "Sometimes I wonder about that, what my life would have been like if I had not taken part in that mission, fifteen years ago."
"Did you leave a girlfriend behind?" I prodded.
"Actually, I did. Her name was Lucille." He looked a bit wistful. "She thought that I was doing the right thing, though, when I volunteered to join the team of Operation Terminus. Lucille was just as dedicated to the cause of overthrowing the autarchy as I was. I wonder what became of her, if she is together with somebody else now. Or if she is still waiting for me." He sighed. "But that's all neither here nor there. As things stand, I will never return."
"Did you ever regret having made that choice?" I asked.
He shook his head. "No, not really."
"I, for one, am glad that you volunteered to participate in Operation Terminus," Natty observed. "Without your intervention, I would have been kidnapped as a baby and I would probably have been killed the day I turned sixteen."
Jake's face lit up. "That's true. I saved your life, didn't I?"
"You totally did."
This reminded me of something.
"Jake, would you mind telling us what century, or better, what year in the future you and your former team mates of Operation Terminus hail from?"
"You have not been very forthcoming about the particulars of your own native temporal era, Catherine. But I understand that you are not at liberty to inform me about that, whereas I am considered a rebel and a renegade by my own people, so there is no good reason I can think of why I shouldn't answer your question. The year my former team mates and I were sent to the 1950s ... You would label it the year 4138 AD."
I whistled softly. "4138, huh? That far in the future. So, that Pyrtar you fought in the warehouse ... He was about to contact his superiors in the year 4153, then. Assuming you people are keeping a synchronous connection."
"Exactly. Though I have no idea what you mean by a synchronous connection."
"Basically, it means that the connection is such that if you talk to your superiors in the deep future and hang up and after one hour has passed for you, you contact them again, you will find that exactly one hour has passed for them in their own temporal era as well."
"I see. Yes, we do have that kind of setup."
I helped myself to another toast, which offered Natty the chance to ask a question of her own.
"Do you think that those two men, Banks and Anderson, were members of the autarchy's cleanup crew, Jake? Or were they perhaps actual agents of the Security Service?"
"Technically, it is possible that they may have been both," he replied. "I know that our team has bribed and subverted politicians as well as members of the police force and even of the intelligence services. But in any case, I am positive that those two are members of the cleanup crew." He paused to take a sip of his coffee. "The cleanup crew has developed an odd amount of activity, lately. I am monitoring part of their communications, so I am reasonably well informed about what they are up to. Just this morning, I intercepted a message that seems to imply that there is currently some sort of a siege going on."
"Seriously, a siege?" Natty asked.
"Well, yes, that's what it sounds like," Jake explained. "It appears that they have trapped a large number of our friends, the Meddling Natives, or perhaps even all of them, in a place somewhere down in Wales. The cleanup team seems to be intent on finishing them off now, to be rid of their interference for once and all."
"Somewhere in Wales? Don't you have any more specific information about the location?"
"Unfortunately, I don't," he replied. "If I did, I would drive there to see if I can help or offer my assistance to that besieged group of Meddling Natives."
"You have no further information whatsoever, then?" Natty insisted.
"Well, that message seems to imply that the Meddling Natives are holed up in some sort of cave. Though that's kind of hard to imagine."
"Oh my god!" Natty exclaimed, at the same time as I breathed, "Great Gauss!"
"What?" Jake asked.
Natty and I exchanged a quick glance.
"The things is, we are fairly certain that we know where they are holed up. They must be in a place Erin Morgan refers to as The Forbidden Cave," I informed him. "We have been there ourselves, just two days ago."
We proceeded to tell him everything we knew about The Forbidden Cave, and about how we had been attacked there by a guy who had driven a jeep and who had claimed that civilians were not allowed access to the area around the cave.
"That man must have been one of the cleanup crew," Jake mused. "Perhaps he was already preparing the trap." He was looking cheerful now and ready for action. "Can you girls give me directions on how to get to that Forbidden Cave of yours?"
"I guess we could, but it is sort of complicated." Natty frowned. "The last leg of the journey is mostly along country roads, and there are few if any street signs out there."
"Damn," Jake muttered.
"But hey, why couldn't we just drive there? I mean all three of us," I proposed. "You can drive us to London afterwards, can't you?"
"I suppose we could do that." Jake sounded a bit doubtful. "It may get kind of dangerous, though, at that cave. I am not sure if I ought to expose you to that."
"We can have a look at the situation from a distance, can't we?" I said. "If it looks too dangerous for Natty and me, you can drive us to London and then return to the Forbidden Cave alone."
"Yes, I guess that sounds reasonable," Jake Ferguson agreed.
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A / N : Thanks a bunch for following the adventures of Cathy, Natty and their friends, I truly appreciate it!
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