HOLLYWOOD, CALIFORNIA

It was hard to imagine a man like Hughes living in a place like this. He was very eccentric, rich, and kept his distance from most people and that made him a very mysterious fellow. That conjured up images of grand palaces with strange things. While this home was by no means a poor mans shelter, the inside was somewhat Spartan for Grant’s tastes and the rest of it could only be described as cozy. It just somehow did not fit the image that Grant had of the man.

Trevor found the housekeeper in the den. Because she was deaf he had to write down what he wanted from her. She took the slip of paper and nodded with a smile as she rushed off to get it. He then looked to Julia Bitrerlich and said, “I assume you wanted your usual? Pabst?”

Julia grunted, “I don’t drink on the job Grant. I assume you wanted your martini though. Have at it.” Julia then nodded towards the door that the housekeeper left by, “I take it she doesn’t work for Hughes?”

“Oh,” Grant shrugged, “of course not. She actually works for the bureau. Do you think that Prince Valiant is the first such guest they’ve had to entertain?”

Julia could see the value in having a deaf mute around for jobs like this. There wasn’t much chance of her over hearing anything she shouldn’t. It suited Julia well enough so, then, she decided it was time to get it over with. The less time she spent around Grant the more she liked it. “Can we talk to our dear Prince now?” Grant led the way.

Julia had already been told what to expect but, seeing it was an entirely different matter. For someone to be so important, to rate this much security, he was quite a let down at first sight. He was sloppy in appearance, a bit overweight, and looked to be anything but a genius. At the moment, if Julia had to pick a word to describe the kid, it would be bored.

The room he was in had been cleared of all but the most basic furniture and more than a couple of blackboards had been brought in to replace the furniture. There was writing on those boards but it looked to be so much gibberish to Julia. It was not that she was ignorant of math but, what was up there was way over her head and she was smart enough to admit it. For that reason she ignored it, smiled at the young man, and then sat down at the table across from him. He did smile back and it did seem genuine enough. That also surprised her a little.

Grant sat down next to Julia and made introductions, “Ely, this is Miss Bitrerlich.”

“Call me Julia,” she injected quickly as she reached out and shook his hand. “Can I call you Ely or do you prefer Mister Wallace?”

The guy just waved it off, “Ely’s fine.” He was then quick to ask, “so what is it you do around this place?”

It was Grant that answered, “she’s a specialist of sorts Ely.”

The kid rocked his chair back on two legs and, with his arms crossed, he flipped out a finger to point at Grant, “you know, I never can shake how you remind me so much of somebody else that I know. He never gave me a straight answer ether.”

“That’s not for now Ely,” Grant replied.

Ely ignored his advice, “he’s a little bit scruffier than you are but, you two even look kind of the same.”

Grant took his hat off and went for a cigarette as he said, “Julia here…”

Julia cut him off, “I didn’t say you could call me that Doctor.”

Grant went on, “she’s going to ask you some different kinds of questions today. They’ll be quite different from the ones we normally talk about.”

Ely, still rocking back in his chair, just shrugged, “well? It’s not like I’ve tried to hide anything.”

Now the moment caught up with Julia. When they decided to let her have access to Prince Valiant, and told her who he really was, she was not sure she believed it. Now that she was sitting here looking at him it was the only thing that made any sense. Julia had a sorted past. It was a past that included the kind of pain that she only wished she could forget. She had learned how to be a lady but, she had also decided that if she were ever to set things right then, it was going to have to be playing in a man’s world and at his game. Every step she took she had to prove herself. A day never went by where that did not happen, until now.

This boy treated with her, looked at her, like she was no different from anyone else. Julia had never seen that before or, at least, not from a guy. Even the ones that respected her still looked at her. She would notice their eyes from time to time. Most of them, unlike Grant, tried to hide it but, it was still there. Ely was different. He looked at Julia no different than he looked at Grant sitting next to her. It was actually kind of refreshing.

“So,” Julia said, “Ely. You really are from the future?”

His response was the kind that was born of having answered that question more times than Julia had to fend off lusty males. He just shrugged, “yeah. That was an easy one. Got any more like that?”

She actually snorted a short laugh. Then Julia noted that Grant was not particularly pleased about that. It made her giggle a little more. Then she collected her thoughts and got down to business, “I’ve already read the transcripts from most of your interviews concerning what I do. I just…”

Ely interrupted with, “and what is that exactly?”

Grant was the one to reply, and rather quickly, “Miss Bitrerlich here is a security specialist Ely. She…”

“I can answer for myself Doctor,” she told him very sternly. Then she switched back to a smile, “lets just say I handle problems. In our case, they very well could be the kind of problems we might encounter in the foreseeable future.”

Again Ely shrugged, “I told that Donovan guy that I usually caught naps in history class. I mean I know a few things but, I couldn’t even tell you if I remembered them right.” He perked up and added, “I know that on December 7^th the Japanese are going to bomb Pearl Harbor. Is that what you want to know?”

That shocked Julia. Nowhere in any file, that she had read, did they bother to mention that! Even after all of the redactions how could they have possibly hidden that! It told Julia that Donovan had not given her every file and it made her wonder how many more there were. She quickly put that out of her mind though. If Donovan had not given her that file then it was for a good reason.

Julia suddenly realized that she had let her shock become all to visible. What was even more interesting was that Grant was not shocked. He also did not seem overly concerned that she heard this information. She decided to ask, “which December 7^th? Of this year?”

“Um,” Ely was at a loss, “well, what year is it again?”

Grant dipped his head and rubbed his eyes in agitation, “it is 1940, Ely.”

“Oh,” he thought about it for a minute and then said, “I don’t think it’s this year. Maybe in a couple of more? I know they bombed us so we nuked them.”

Julia was so clueless about that she actually looked to Grant, “nuked?”

“Don’t ask,” he replied. “It’s a little project that Enrico Fermi is working on at the moment. Apparently he will be successful.”

Julia smiled very genuinely, “I bet that just pisses you off doesn’t it?”

Grant raised his chin and replied, “it’s hardly as important as what we’re working on now.” Grant waited a second before he finished the thought, “which is not what we need to be talking about here.”

Julia nodded, although her smile did not go away. She looked back to Ely and in a nice and friendly manner she asked, “no Ely, what I really want to know is, what kind of things we might expect to find on Mars.”

“Mars?” Ely was genuinely stumped by that. He burst out in frustration with, “how should I know?”

Now it was Julia’s turn to be stumped, “I’m sorry, I was told that in the future we are flying in space. You were on a ship called… what was it?”

“Destiny,” Ely replied. “It wasn’t our ship lady. We didn’t build it we just found it. It also wasn‘t anywhere near Mars. It was on the other side of the universe. It was so far out there we didn‘t even know exactly where it was.”

That sent shivers down Julia’s spine. Donovan had warned her about the nature of this information. She had thought she understood his warning but, now, she was seeing just how wrong she was. Julia had seen an installment or two of Buck Rogers. He flew on rocket ships to other planets like Saturn and Mars. To Julia, such places were at the far reaches of her imagination. Suddenly she was starting to understand exactly how limited her imagination was.

Julia took a deep breath and asked, “what about closer to home? I mean you did say that the Stargate can take you to many planets. It would just seem to me that the other side of the universe is a little too far for a first step.”

Ely tossed his hands up and shrugged, “you’re talking to the wrong guy again. I explained that to everybody. We might have been traveling in space but, in my time, they kept it a secret just like you guys are now. I guess some things don’t really change that much. I only found out about the Stargate a few days before I wound up getting stranded on Destiny so, if you’ll excuse me, we had other things to worry about then.”

Julia considered that for a moment and compared it with the facts that she did know. She put some thought into her next question, “this Aleutian Alliance you spoke of?”

Ely easily replied, “some bad guys from the Milky Way? I knew a little bit about them but not much.”

Grant injected at this point, “but you did say they were human.”

“Well,” Ely replied, “yeah. I mean they were just like us. They didn’t like us a whole lot but, yeah they were most definitely human.”

Julia thought about that for a moment and then asked, “so do you think they might be hostile now?”

Ely rolled his eyes, “lady, I don’t even know if they’re out there right now. I told you, I was a lot more concerned with our problems. We had more than a few.”

Julia knew that much from the reports that she had read. Ely had been very forthcoming about his entire journey. She was told that he even had moving pictures in a little round ball. As of yet, nobody had figured out how to access the information on it. They were stuck with his testimony for the time being and Julia had become intimately familiar with it over the past few days.

Ely and his people had been stranded on that ship. They had encountered aliens that had forced most of the crew to go into some kind of deep hibernation. Julia was still a little fuzzy on all of that since most of what he said made no sense to her. What she did understand was that, for lack of resources, Ely could not join his people. He was left awake and, in the time he had alone, had managed to work out how to get back home via the Stargate. Apparently, his plan was not as successful as he had hoped. Julia had read his statements but, again, she did not understand exactly what went wrong. What she did know was that he had never intended to land in that warehouse in New York.

It really made Julia curious. If all of this was an accident then why was the guy being so cooperative? Julia was not so sure that, if she were in his place, she would do the same. She actually put that question to him and he replied, “you act like I’ve got a choice here lady. I’m guessing you noticed the goon squad as you were coming in.”

Grant graciously stated, “and as I have told you Ely, those men are here for your protection.”

Ely was not impressed, “a gilded cage is still a cage. Farscape.”

Apparently Grant was used to such strange speech because, as Julia noted, he did not react. She was a trained intelligence specialist, and she knew she was above such things. Julia considered herself the kind of person you never wanted to play poker with but, in this case she realized that she showed her confusion all too well. How could anybody not?

The interview was a lot shorter than Julia had anticipated. Donovan had obviously called her in because, in the past, Julia had been quite good at getting information out of some very tough customers. This time she had to admit failure or, at least, to a degree. The reasons she called it short was simple. Prince Valiant had not told them much about things closer to home simply because he really did not know. Julia was quite prepared to tell Donovan that.

She was also quite prepared to do a few other things, most notably, to find the first synagogue they came too and pray. Julia had not felt like doing that in years. It was not like this information had slapped her in the forehead. It was far worse than that. As Julia left the house she realized that all of this stuff was hitting her in the very foundations of her reality. It was a subtle kind of thing that knocked you over before you even knew it. She had read the files before coming here and she had consumed the information with the same interest she might have a novel.

Now after meeting Wallace, and seeing how he took all of this for granted, she suddenly realized that knowing and believing were two different acts. She kept thinking things like, “races of ancient humans traveling to the stars? Life on other worlds? Everything I ever believed was wrong? How can we be special? Why is anything we do on this planet even important?”

Ely saw all of that in her eyes as she walked out. He had seen it countless times before. It usually happened whenever they brought in someone new to talk to him. The only one that really surprised him was Einstein. Ely had just assumed that the smartest guy that ever lived would get it. He had been disappointed. Einstein might have come close to understanding the math but, the rest of it deeply disturbed him like it had everyone else, or, almost everyone else.

Doctor Grant had taken all of it with a grain of salt. Ely suspected that if the man was as much like Nicholas Rush, as he both acted and appeared, then that only made sense. Both men seemed too interested in themselves to let little things like the true nature of the universe bother them. Of course, that did not explain Annie. The deaf woman had been interested in all of it but, she did not act as if it blew her away.

Ely realized that they had put her here because she could not hear any secrets. What they had not counted on was the fact that both she and Ely could sign to each other. Her way of doing it was slightly different from what he had learned but, they were close enough to be understood. It was something that Ely wrote off as a timeline differential. After that he did not care because it gave him access to something he very much desired at the moment. Annie, the F.B.I housekeeper, had become his one and only friend. For that reason he kept his sign language skills a secret and Annie agreed to do the same.