Late For Tea (Part Three Of The Wonderland Series) Read online

couple of hours, I think. Isn’t that great? Then we can finally go home. Get back to our life.”

  His brown eyes looked like those of a puppy. Was he actually thinking that somehow when they returned home that things would go back to the way they were? Or was he thinking that somehow they would be different, perhaps better? Either way, Lupita was not sure she could bare it. Even if Raul had decided to become a better man to her, she was not certain she could go back to that life with him. But then she wondered how she would be able to avoid it. Then there was this whole thing about them both knowing what they knew about the Mirror Anomaly.

  “Raul, do you think the government will ever let us go back to our lives after all of this?”

  Raul’s smile drew down into a thin straight line across his face. “Well, I dunno, Lupe. What can they do? We’re citizens. It’s not like they will deport us or something.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous …” And then she stopped herself when she saw his jaw tighten at the remark. The instinctive fear that he might hit her arose and she gripped the handle of the door behind her. “I need to take care of something.”

  And then she pushed the door back open and backed out into the frigid day shutting it before Raul could even think to follow her. Lupita turned about and as she did so, she crashed right into one of the scientists coming up along the walkway leading from the Mirror Anomaly hut.

  “Alice?”

  It was Bernie! He was zipped up, and she could not clearly see his face, but there was no mistaking her geologist.

  “I’m so sorry,” she said, as she stepped back from him.

  Bernie unzipped the hood from his parka, revealing his cherub-like face, eyes twinkling, and then he grabbed ahold of her mittened hand. “That’s quite okay, but where are you off to in such a hurry?”

  “Oh, well, Raul …” Then she glanced away out across the glacier field in the distance.

  “He’s not bothering you, is he?” Bernie asked, his tone turning serious. He had become quite protective of Lupita when it came to Raul. And Bernie, although not nearly as large a man as Raul, was not afraid to put himself between her and her quasi-boyfriend. Not that the situation had ever arose, but clearly every time Lupita saw Raul enter the same room as Bernie Skarpinski, the scholarly geologist’s entire mannerisms, tone of voice, and body language transformed. Bernie Skarpinski became Bernard, the great White Knight, even if he was half a head shorter than Raul and his frame was half the size. So, it was somewhat amusing as well as unnerving for Lupita to see when he did transform into her protector.

  “No, it’s okay,” she said. “I just needed to get out of there.”

  The thought of what Raul had just told her jumped back into her mind. The thought that this man she was standing there looking at was going to disappear from her life, and the man she was trying to get away from was going to be quite prominent again did not sit well with her stomach. That is, provided that she was actually going to be allowed to resume her life when she got back to Corpus. Perhaps she had watched too many movies, but she just couldn’t help but think that there was no way the government was going to just let her and Raul go home knowing what they knew about the Mirror Anomaly. The thought of darkened rooms, brainwashing, and hypnosis to bring about some sort of induced amnesia came into her mind at that moment.

  “Well, okay, then,” said Bernie, the smile coming back to his face. “But where are you off to? It’s getting late in the day, you know. I was thinking we could play a game of cards or something. Have you eaten dinner yet?”

  “Uh, no, I haven’t, but …”

  His smile evaporated again. “What is it?”

  “I heard a tractor is coming from Marble Point.”

  “Oh.” Bernie sighed then, and he squeezed her hand. “It’ll be okay. Don’t worry.”

  Lupita gave out a short laugh, and grinned, reassured by the strength of her “protector’s” hand through both of their mittens. “Oh, Raul is the least of …”

  “Well, don’t worry about them, either,” Bernie cut her off. “Yes, I am sure you will spend some time being debriefed, and you will probably have to sign off on some documents swearing you to secrecy – like the rest of us will have to do at some point, no doubt. But you will be all right when it comes to Uncle Sam.”

  She squeezed his hand back. “I hope so.”

  Bernie smiled again. “So, dinner? A quick going away party, just you and me?”

  She looked away again out across the glacier field. “Uh, okay … but I need to take care of something. I will be back in a minute.”

  “Don’t take too long,” Bernie said as she pulled her hand free and started down the walkway toward the Mirror Anomaly hut. “I’m microwaving your favorite Antarctic dish … beef stroganoff!”

  Lupita did not look back. She couldn’t because she knew right at that instant what she needed to do. The thought of interrogators, debriefings, going back to Corpus with Raul, and having to leave Bernie … well, there it was. She knew the time would come, but just couldn’t face it.

  She reached the Mirror Anomaly hut, and stepped inside. The interior of this hut was laid out a little differently than the other hut where the scientists were housed. Instead of a central corridor that split off into separate living quarters, kitchens, bathrooms, and the like, the hut where the Mirror Anomaly was enclosed was mainly one large open bay area, very much like an airplane hangar – just an airplane hangar for a very small plane. But on the far end of the Quonset hut were some enclosed rooms where the scientists were known to gather and continue to conduct research into the strange device that was centered, more or less, there in the open bay area.

  Lupita looked around and did not see anyone in the bay area, which was typical even at this point in the morning. Most of the time the few scientists that had any sort of “expertise” with anything remotely involving things of an extraterrestrial nature currently on staff were in the closed-off rooms on the far end going over data that had been previously collected. And with the ban on further contact, there was only the occasional “official” activation of it – official meaning, other than those carried out by Lupita whenever she wanted to talk to Johann.

  Quickly, Lupita walked toward the raised dais of the mirror platform. It was a great oval-shaped flat plane about three meters in diameter and it was made of a material that looked like silver and was polished to a degree that when one glanced down at the surface, one could clearly see their reflection in it. But Lupita had been told that the platform was not made of any material known to man, and the best anyone could explain was that it was some sort of combination of known materials and some unknown materials never before encountered on Earth.

  Approximately three or four meters away and opposite where Lupita stood as she looked down at the platform was a white-colored, carved stone podium that stood two meters off the ground and was about two meters wide. The actual dimensions of this stone podium were shaped almost like a perfect cube, except that the top had a slight angle to it, suggesting that this was something of a console.

  Lupita pulled her gaze from the mirror platform and strode over to the stone podium. Behind the podium was a long fold-out table the scientists had set up and a couple of chairs, along with a small desk. Both the table and the desk were littered with various scientific devices that Lupita was not entirely clear on their use, as well as books, papers, and a couple of laptop computers that were almost always left on for reasons that Lupita could not fathom. Butted up against the back of the stone podium was a large, wooden step that led up onto a plate steel platform the scientists had put in place so that they could stand up and look down upon the top of the podium.

  She walked over to behind the podium and then stepped up onto the plate steel platform. Upon the top were aligned several different tube-shaped, crystal-looking objects of various colors. Lupita had learned over time through her observations, and also by questioning the scientists as t
o exactly what these crystal objects did, that these were the controls to operate the Mirror Anomaly. Manipulated in the right sequence, they activated the Mirror Anomaly, set the frequencies by which the device could make contact with other mirrors -- standard everyday mirrors of manmade construction anywhere in the world -- and regulated the duration by which the contact would be maintained. After a month of being around it, Lupita could and had been operating the device as if it were no more complicated than her microwave back home.

  She pressed down upon a six inch tall blue crystal, pushing it flat with the surface top of the podium. Then she pushed a green one next to it until it was just about halfway and she heard a subtle hum, like when a radio was turned on but the volume was turned too low to hear the music. Lupita looked over at the platform and she could see that the surface of the Mirror Anomaly was shimmering as if it was a pond that was being disturbed by a gentle breeze.

  Then she reached over to her far right, and began turning an upraised amber-colored crystal, as if it was like the knob of an old-fashioned radio. In times previous Lupita used to pretend she was turning the dial looking for her favorite Tejano station, but now she knew exactly what she was doing. Even though she turned the crystal very slowly, down upon the mirror platform images