Lightning

futures:
Destiny struggles to reassert the pattern that was meant to be
. When Stefan had saved her from the junkie in the grocery store in 1963, fate eventually had brought her to another pedophile, Willy Sheener, in 1967. She had been destined to be an orphan, so when she found a new home with the Dockweilers, fate had conspired to shock Nina Dockweiler with a fatal heart attack, sending Laura back to the orphanage again.
    Destiny struggles to reassert the pattern that was meant to be.
    What next?
    In the pattern that was meant to be, Chris had never been born. Therefore would fate arrange his death soon, to bring events back as close as possible to those which had been ordained and with which Stefan Krieger had meddled? She had been destined to spend her life in a wheelchair before Stefan held Dr. Paul Markwell at gunpoint and prevented him from delivering her. So perhaps now fate would put her in the way of Gestapo gunfire that would sever her spine and render her paraplegic in accordance with the original plan..
    How long did the forces of destiny strive to reassert the pattern after a change had been made in it? Chris had been alive for more than eight years. Was that long enough for destiny to decide that his existence was acceptable? She had lived thirty-four years out of a wheelchair. Was destiny still troubling itself with that unnatural squiggle in the ordained design?
    Destiny struggles to reassert the pattern that was meant to be.
    As dawn's light glowed softly at the edges of the drapes, Laura tossed and turned, growing angry but not sure at whom or what her anger could be directed. What
was
destiny? What was the power that shaped the patterns and attempted to enforce them? God? Should she be raging at God—or begging Him to let her son live and to spare her from the life of a cripple? Or was the power behind destiny merely a natural mechanism, a force no different in origin from gravity or magnetism?
    Because there was no logical target at which her emotions could be vented, Laura felt her anger slowly metamorphosing to fear. They seemed to be safe at the Gaines's Palm Springs house. After passing one uneventful night in the place, they almost could be assured that their presence would never be public knowledge, for otherwise killers from the past no doubt already would have appeared. Yet Laura was afraid.
    Something bad was going to happen. Something very bad.
    Trouble was coming, but she did not know from what direction.
    Lightning. Soon.
    Too bad the old saw wasn't true: In fact lightning did strike twice in the same place, three times, a hundred, and she was the reliable rod that drew it.
7
    Dr. Juttner entered the last of the numbers in the programming board that controlled the gate. To Erich Klietmann, he said, "You and your men will be traveling to the vicinity of Palm Springs, California, in January 1989."
    "Palm Springs?" Klietmann was surprised.
    "Yes. Of course, we had expected you'd have to go somewhere in the Los Angeles or Orange County area, where you would have found your young-executive dress more appropriate than in a resort town, but you'll still pass without notice. For one thing, it's winter there, and even in the desert dark suits will be appropriate for the season." Juttner handed Klietmann a sheet of paper on which he had written directions. "Here's where you'll find the woman and the boy."
    Folding the paper and putting it in an inside coat pocket, the lieutenant said, "What about Krieger?"
    "The researchers didn't find mention of him," Juttner said, "but he must be with the woman and the boy. If you don't see him, then do your best to take the woman and boy captive. If you have to torture them to learn Krieger's whereabouts, so be it. And if worse comes to worst and they won't give you Krieger—kill them. That might draw him into the open somewhere down the time line."
    "We'll find him, Doctor."
    Klietmann, Hubatsch, von Manstein, and Bracher were all wearing their homing belts beneath their Yves St. Laurent suits. Carrying their Mark Cross attache cases, they walked to the gate, stepped up into that giant barrel, and moved toward the two-thirds point where they would pass in a wink from 1944 to 1989.
    The lieutenant was afraid but also exhilarated. He was the iron fist of Hitler, from which Krieger could not hide even forty-five years in the future.
8
    On their first full day in the Palm Springs house, Sunday the fifteenth of January, they set up the computer, and Laura