The Loved and the Lost (10 page)

Hansum's battle cry transformed to one of intense pain. He crashed to one knee, and then quickly bounced up and ran several steps away, so as not to be an easy target. Feltrino whipped his sword through the air again.

“Run or die . . .” he began. That's when Guilietta flew out of the wagon and fell upon the Gonzaga prince. He deftly twisted his body, throwing her off. Guilietta's head and back slammed hard onto the street.

“Guilietta!” Hansum screamed, pulling her off the ground and holding her close. Blood poured out of him and over the half-conscious girl. Holding her face to his breast while he faced the menacing Feltrino, he began running clumsily backwards. “Just take the looker and go, Feltrino. Please!”

“Apprentice, you know I cannot leave you to tell,” a jovial Feltrino chided. “But how gallant of you to sacrifice a digit for your master's child. Now you both shall sacrifice all,” he said raising his sword and stepping forward.

“No, not Guil . . .” Hansum swung Guilietta around to protect her. He started to run, awkwardly lifting her off the ground. She looked up at him, a look of recognition finally reappearing.

“Front or back, means naught to me,” he heard Feltrino say casually.

“We must run . . .” Hansum began, when a stabbing pain exploded into his back. He felt the push of something terrible rip through his chest. A searing pain exploded in his lungs and shot up to his brain. His mouth gaped open . . . and then there was silence. He stopped and looked down at Guilietta . . . the same open-mouthed expression was on her face, her terrified eyes staring back at him. Then, her whole body shuddered and her eyes rolled up into her head. She began falling back, but Hansum could not find the strength to catch her. As she keeled over backward, away from her helpless husband, Hansum saw blood gush from her breast. Hansum's dimming eyes followed Guilietta's slow motion fall to the ground. That's when he saw the foot of blood-drenched steel protruding from his own chest. His and her blood. His sight began to fade and the scene darkened.

“Two with one,” he heard an echoing voice laugh. He felt a boot on his back, pushing him away and forward. Hansum was flying through space and time.

“Okay, here's a piece of his heart,” the human surgeon, Dr. Elizabeth Barnard said, holding a centimeter cube of red tissue with tweezers. “What do you think, Dr. Ramma?”

The A.I. surgeon levitated close and analyzed what she held. He was a potato-shaped orb with two eyes, one with a monocle over it. He also had two piggy ears and a piggy nose with a fringe of bristly mustache underneath. Below that was a very serious mouth.

“Analyzing,” he said, squinting his monocular eye. “Yes, cleanly done, my dear. This will do just fine. Put it in the growth medium.”

A younger male human doctor brought a two liter container of liquid forward and Elder Dr. Barnard put the tissue in. It slowly drifted to the bottom.

“Please put the beaker into the time chamber and set it for ninety days,” Dr. Barnard ordered.

“Yes, mother,” the younger doctor replied. The time chamber was a solid box with a simple screen on one face. He touched the display. “Ninety days, Zat.” The line-drawing of a face appeared and spoke.

“Okie dokie. See you then, Doc Stan. You too, Elder Dr. Barnard.” Then the image looked at the A.I. doctor. “See you in three months, Dad.”

“Just get going, Zat,” the A.I. surgeon said. The face on the time chamber frowned, and then winked away into thin air. “He talks too much,” the A.I. father added.

“Well, spending months by himself in a time vortex can be boring,” the younger doctor suggested.

“You're too hard on him, Ramma,” Dr. Barnard observed. “You were so patient with me, even when I was a bratty kid. And with Stan too. Why not with your own son?”

“You two wanted to become doctors and worked hard. My boy said he wanted to, but didn't put in the effort.”

“Not everyone has it in them to be what they want to be, let alone what their parent wants,” Dr. Stan said. “And now that we have time travel, he's found his place as a good time-travel tissue-minder. And he's always been a good friend to me, ever since we were young.”

“But he talks too . . .”

Zat reappeared. He was yawning. “It's done three days early,” the tissue-minder reported. “Strong heart.”

Apprentice-surgeon Dr. Stan opened Zat's lid and took out the beaker, which now contained a healthy, fist-sized heart with long veins and arteries growing from it. The two human and one A.I. came in for a close inspection.

“Beautiful,” they said in unison.

His vision was a blur of white and black static, like he'd seen on an ancient cathode ray tube at the museum of technology. A childish stick drawing of a devil danced against the static background, all the while poking a trident towards him. This was accompanied by a horrible pins-and-needles feeling that buzzed in his brain and bubbled throughout his whole body. It made him want to throw up. Finally a familiar sound entered his mind. Words.

“I think he's waking up,” a girl's voice said. “Kingsley, get Lincoln. Hansum? Hansum, can you hear me? It's Shamira.”

As Hansum's eyes quivered open, Shamira's worried face appeared above him. He squinted against the hard light, and then Lincoln appeared, causing a shadow to block it.

“Hey, pal, welcome back,” Lincoln was saying. He still seemed far away. “Can you hear me?”

“Wha? Where?” A look of terror sprung to his eyes. “Feltrino! Guilietta!” Hansum tried to lunge forward, but a glowing red energy field held him back.

“You're not supposed to move, sweetheart,” Shamira said. “You have to stay still for a few days, but you're going to be just fine.”

Hansum didn't answer. He just looked up at the ceiling.

“She's, she's dead again. I got her killed even earlier.”

“It wasn't your fault,” another voice said. Kingsley came into view, a hard look on his face. “It was my stupid actions that caused it. I didn't understand . . .”

“Don't say that,” Shamira exclaimed. “Arimus told you . . .”

“I don't need someone to tell me when I make a mistake.”

Hansum started to cough in distress.

“Cool it you two,” Lincoln broke in.

“Finally, he's awake,” came Arimus's voice.

The room went silent. Hansum lifted his head a little and saw the elder standing in the doorway. Arimus walked over and stood next to Hansum, ignoring the others. His face was serious, not kindly and non-judgmental as usual.

“Guil . . .” Hansum managed to say.

“She's fine now.”

“How?”

The teens could tell Arimus was extremely angry. He didn't even try to rhyme his words.

“As soon as we got you back to the future,
I took the best time travel emergency team available
and went back to fix things.
We even tried taking Guilietta forward with us, but still couldn't.
But, for some reason, we were able to put things back
to before my blunder occurred.
Time and events proceed as before.”

Hansum closed his eyes and relaxed. It felt like the whole weight of world had just been lifted off his chest.

“Thank you, Elder,” he whispered. “Thank you.”

“Elder, it wasn't your blunder,” Kingsley said resolutely. “I'm the one . . .” Arimus cut him off.

“Yes, you are the one whose gross actions precipitated this.
You broke the cardinal interference rule
and disobeyed my instructions.”

“But it's really my fault,” Shamira argued. “I'm the one who got Kingsley to go into the 14
^th
-century, as a tease at first. And when he saw how upset I was when Guil was being hurt . . .”

“All are guilty and all are punished,”
Arimus shouted. Actually shouted.

“But they shouldn't have revoked your time travel license,” Lincoln said. “That's not fair.”

“The elder holds responsibility for all his charges.
It is proper. But it's only temporary, till an inquest is held.”

“Still, I'm sorry,” Kingsley said, his head down.

“Me too,” Shamira added.

“What I don't understand,” Lincoln said, “is why an inquest? Isn't that when somebody's dead? Hansum was, sure, but . . .”

“Never mind that death was defeated,
An inquest's held so the pain's not repeated!”
Arimus put a hand to his temple to take a message.
“This is Arimus. Has the Council . . .
What? Really? When?
So it happened the same way.
How is the Council reacting?
Any indication of its duration being different?
I shall see you directly.” Arimus tapped his temple.
“That was Talos, my A.I.
There's news.”

“What's up?” Lincoln asked.

“A blackout period.
Time travel has stopped.”

“Like we learned about in the lectures?” Shamira asked.

“Yes,” Arimus answered.
“It's the first time your 24
^th
-century Council has to deal with this.
Some members are feeling overwhelmed,
since they must also deal with their first disciplinary inquiry.”

As the teens had learned in their basic classes, blackout periods in time travel are not an uncommon phenomenon. Once in a while, the ability to travel through time stops completely and, on other occasions, traveling from one specific time on Earth to another specific time is affected. Even the lecturers from the future admitted the scientists from their eras hadn't figured out the exact causes. Their best theory involved the fact that the location of Earth in space is constantly changing, not only around the sun, but also as the radial arm of the galaxy spun around its center. Added to the computation, the Milky Way is also moving, expanding outward from the universe's “big bang” center, along with several billion other galaxies. Since the time vortices have to go from where the Earth is to where the Earth was, or will be, as it cuts through the fabric of time/space, they frequently pass by large singularities, stars, black holes, etc. It was postulated that it's the gravitational influences of these that stopped time vortexes from passing by them, so they can't remain coherent. The majority of blackout periods were usually only seconds or minutes, a few hours, and still fewer, a day to a month long. But some blackout periods had been known to last for a year or two, the longest having been ten years.

“I am called in front of the Council again.”

Without saying goodbye, Arimus snapped his fingers and site transported away in a blink.

Hansum fidgeted under his energy restraints.

“Thank Gia, Guilietta is okay,” he began, and lifted his arm. Then he remembered his thumb and looked. Though swollen and with a white line around where it had been severed, his thumb was there. It had been reattached. With effort, he moved it.

“I had the fun of picking that thing up,” Lincoln said. “They say it will work as good as new in a few days. Hey, just about now you're cutting Feltrino's thumb off back at that river. What's that, Medeea?” Lincoln asked, looking to the empty space at his side. “Yeah, a thumb for a thumb, she says. It's kind of ironic. And Medeea says all your new scars look very manly.”

“
All
my scars?”

Shamira's hand went to touch Hansum's bare chest. The bed's force field buzzed red again, keeping her away.

“Sorry.”

Hansum bent his head and looked. The last time he had seen his chest, Feltrino's blood-drenched sword was sticking out of it. Now there was about a ten centimeter white cross welded into his flesh. It reminded him of the cross cut into the large loaves of medieval bread.

“Our patient is awake,” another voice at the door said. Dr. Barnard walked in with Dr. Ramma floating by her side. “Let's take a look at him.”

The other teens moved back, allowing the doctors to flank Hansum. Ramma floated right up close to Hansum's eye, his monocle only millimeters away.

“Open your eye wide, please. Very good. Very good. Now, bare your chest,” he said cocking his head and aiming his piggy ear at the big scar. “Your new heart sounds just wonderful,” he said. “Better than before.”

“N . . . new heart?”

“That's when Feltrino . . .” Shamira began.

Hansum winced and closed his eyes, using the hand with the reattached thumb to cover his face. “Yeah, I remember.”

“I watched your adventure on the Mists of Time Chronicles this morning, young man,” Dr. Barnard said. “Half the planet has by now, I'm sure. You four young people certainly do get into interesting dilemmas.”

Lincoln looked to his side. “Five,” he said.

“Excuse me?” Dr. Barnard asked. “Oh yes. The delver girl. Okay then, let us finish with our patient. All of you out.”

As the two doctors chatted, probed and admired their work, Hansum thought hard, remembering what had gone on less than a day ago for him. Once again he had been unable to protect his wife. And now, what was worse, his entry into the History Camp Time Travel Corps was at risk, along with all the others, including Arimus. He wanted to cry. He wanted to shout. But, as the doctors tapped and scanned him, he remained silent. After what happened, he couldn't see how the History Camp Time Travel Council could possibly believe he had the right stuff to go on with his training.