Time Travelers Never Die (44 page)

Cheering broke out from the Thespians. New squadrons had appeared and were filing into the pass, their armor dusty. The Thespians got louder, yelling and clashing swords against shields. The newcomers responded in kind.

“It’s the Spartans, I think,” said Shel.

“Okay.” Dave didn’t much care. “I just wanted to be sure you were all right.”

“I’m fine.”

“They don’t look like guys you’d want to pick a fight with,” said Dave.

“I wouldn’t think so.”

“All right.” He threw up his hands. “I don’t particularly want to hang around here for the bloodletting.” He turned away as if he were going to travel out.

“Don’t,” Shel said. “Dave, try to understand. I’m scared of this.” His eyes were bleak.

“I know.”

“Eventually, somehow, I’m going to wind up in that house. In that grave.”

DAVE
towered over the Spartans. Even Shel was bigger than most. They shook hands with a few. Wished them well.

“By the way,” Dave asked him, “how did you land in the dungeon?”

Shel frowned, not seeming to understand. “What dungeon?”

Dave needed a moment. Then he realized that Shel was younger here than he had been in Rome. For him, the Vatican incident had not yet happened. “Never mind,” he said. “You’ll find out soon enough.”

“Well. I’m pleased to know that when it happens, whatever it is, you’ll be there to rescue me.” His expression changed as a thought struck him. “You
did
rescue me, right?”

 

 

PEOPLE
accustomed to modern security precautions would be amazed at how easy it was to approach Leonidas. He accepted the good wishes of his visitors and observed that, considering how big they were, especially Dave, they would both have made excellent soldiers. “Although”—he smiled at Dave—“I’m afraid you’d make a prominent target for the archers.”

He had dark eyes and was in his thirties. He brimmed with confidence, as did his men. There was no sense here of a doomed force.

Leonidas knew about the road that circled behind the pass, the one that would eventually allow the Persians to get to his rear. But he’d already dispatched troops to cover it. “The Phocians,” said Shel, when he and Dave were alone. “They’ll run at the first onset.”

Leonidas invited them to share a meal. They talked about Sparta’s system of balancing executive power by crowning two kings. And whether democracy could really work in the long run. The Spartan hero thought not. “Athens cannot hope to survive indefinitely,” he said. “They have no discipline, and their philosophers encourage them to put themselves before their country. God help us if the poison ever spreads to us.” Later, over wine, he asked where they were from, explaining that he could not place the accent.

“America,” said Dave.

He shook his head. “It must be far away. Or very small.”

They each posed with him and took pictures, explaining that it was a ritual that would allow them to share his courage. Sparks crackled up from the campfires, and the soldiers talked about home and the future. Later, Dave traded a gold coin to one of the Thespian archers for an arrow. “I’m not sure that’s a good idea,” Shel said in English. “He may need the arrow before he’s done.”

But they both knew better. One arrow more or less would make no difference. When the crunch came, the Thespians would refuse to leave their Spartan allies. They would die, too. All fifteen hundred of them.

But history would remember only the Spartans.

To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
Of all the western stars, until I die.

 

 

 

 

THE
sensible thing to do would have been simply to leave it alone. Let Shel go. If he wants to wander through the ages, let him. But Dave knew that, if he did that, Shel would, in some manner, come back, or be carried back, to the town house on that Thursday night in mid-September. Before it burned.

He needed Helen. If it was at all possible to find a way to bring him home and sidestep the cardiac principle, he had to have her help.

The house had burned September 13. He pulled up the newscasts. Here was the town house, a charred ruin. And excerpts from a police statement that there’d been one fatality, a Dr. Adrian Shelborne. Then, two days later, another statement that the victim in the town-house fire had been bludgeoned to death.

One of Shel’s cousins had posted pictures at her Web site, photos of Shel as a boy, Shel at ten in a rowboat with a fishing pole, Shel with his father feeding a camel in the shadow of the Great Pyramid. And here was Shel in a high-school cap and gown. And with his prom date, whose name Dave had once known but had long since forgotten.

Shel at Princeton. Shel getting his doctorate. Shel sitting in a tree. Shel showing off his Toyota to a girlfriend.

And, finally, pictures of the funeral. The preacher. The coffin, supported above the open grave. The mourners. Helen was visible. And Jerry. But not Dave.

The drive home afterward was seared into his mind. He remembered the intersections, the people on the streets, people living as though nothing had happened. He’d kept the radio on, to put a voice in the car. Peace talks had broken down somewhere. Domestic assaults were up or down. Couldn’t remember which.

And there’d been that strange story out of California. The pileup on one of the freeways.

And two people stealing a body out of the wreckage.

Incredible.

At first, the aid workers had assumed they’d been trying to help. Panicked people doing what they could. Had to be. What other explanation was possible?

There was one.

 

 

DAVE
called Helen at home—it was a Saturday—and left a message. An hour later, she called back.

“Are you free this afternoon?” he asked. “I have something to show you.”

“Okay,”
she said.

“Dress casually.”

When he got to her place, instead of escorting her to his car, he suggested they go inside for a moment.

That, plus the briefcase, got her curiosity up. “Sure,” she said.

She lived in a sixth-floor condo above City Avenue. It was tastefully furnished, and a picture of Shel occupied a side table. They sat down opposite each other. “I’ve been doing some traveling,” said Dave.

“Really? Where?”

He set the briefcase down on the sofa and opened it. She looked at the converters. “What are they?”

“An invention of Shel’s father.”

She picked one up. “It looks like a Q-pod.”

“It’s a time machine.”

That provoked a broad grin. “Seriously.”

“Helen, Shel and I have been traveling in time.”

“Come on, Dave. You want to talk to me or not?”

“I’m not kidding.”

She sat back and nodded. Right. Of course. Why hadn’t she thought of it herself?

“It’s true,” he said.

“Dave—”

“If you’ll allow me, I’ll do a demonstration.”

She frowned at it. Looked at her watch.

“All right,” Dave said. “Let me show you.” He handed her one of the converters. “Can you attach it somewhere? To a pocket or something? There’s a clip on back.”

“You’re
serious
.”

“Humor me.”

She took a long, deep breath, put it into a pocket in her slacks, and fastened it. “Okay. Now what?”

“Stand.”

He got up. She looked at him uncertainly, and stood.

“Ready?” he asked.

“I suppose. We aren’t going back to play tag with dinosaurs, are we?”

“Laugh if you like.”

“If you haven’t noticed, Dave, I’m not laughing.”

“Okay. There’s a large black button at the top. When you push it, the room’s going to fade. Don’t be alarmed when it does. Within a few seconds you’ll be somewhere else.” The skeptical smile was gone. Her eyes held him in a frightened gaze. She was beginning to wonder if he’d lost his mind. “Ready?”

She nodded, mouth open. Said nothing.

He fastened his own converter to his belt. “One. Brace yourself.” That brought the smile back. But it was less self-assured this time.

“I’m braced.”

“Wrong choice of words. Two. I’ll be with you.”

“Glad to hear it.”

“Three.”

She hesitated. Pressed the button, and he immediately followed suit. The living room began to grow dim. She stiffened. The walls and furniture faded to a green landscape with broad lawns and gas streetlamps. The lawns and lamps became solid, and she staggered out of the fading aura. He caught her as she started to fall.

“Welcome to Ambrose, Ohio,” he said. “We’ve gone upstream. Into the past. It’s 1905.” She was making odd murmuring sounds. “Teddy Roosevelt is president.”

“Not possible,” she said. Eyes wide, she was looking at the sky, at clusters of trees, at a nearby town, at the dirt road underfoot, at a railroad station. “Can’t be happening.”

Dave had been there once before, with Shel, when Thomas Edison was supposed to pass through, but they hadn’t done their research thoroughly, and he didn’t show up. It was a pleasant little town with tree-lined streets and white picket fences. Straw hats were in favor for men, and bright ribbons for ladies. Down at the barbershop, the talk would be mostly about the canal they were going to dig through Panama.

Birds sang, and in the distance the clean bang of church bells started. He helped her across a set of railroad tracks, and they stopped in front of a general store.

She leaned against him, trying to shut it out.

“It takes a little getting used to,” Dave said.

“This is crazy.” People were burning leaves, talking over back fences. Cabbage was cooking somewhere. A single car, an open coach, really, with its engine mounted in the rear, moved noisily past them and crossed the tracks.

“How long?” she said.

“How long have we had these?”

“Yes.”

“For almost a year. Shel’s father invented it.”

“Okay.” She was in a state of near shock.

“He went back to see Galileo.” Dave waited for her to laugh. She just kept looking straight ahead. A couple of people came out of a drugstore, looked their way, then turned in the opposite direction.

“But . . . ?” She seemed unable to manage a sentence.

“The device got wet, and he was stranded. He’s still there.”

“Where?”

“In the seventeenth century.”

“Then he’s dead.”

“It’s complicated.”

They found a café and went inside. Helen lowered herself into a chair near the window. “I can’t believe this is really happening.”

He described what he and Shel had been doing. Told her about Michael’s determination to stay where he was. The waitress came, and they ordered coffee.

“It’s hard to believe any of this,” she said. “Even with that sitting in front of me.” She indicated the street scene outside the window. A couple of guys were passing in a horse-drawn cart. Signs on the walls advertised cigarettes and Coca-Cola.

“There’s something else you should know.”

“Wait. If we can really travel in time, we can go back and see Shel.”

Her eyes pleaded for the response she needed.

He reached across the table and took her hand. “He’s not dead.”

“What?”

“You and I had lunch at Applebee’s Wednesday. And afterward, we went to my place.”

“Yes?”

“It wasn’t so I could give you a Greek medallion.”

“Why, then?”

“Because Shel had been there earlier that morning.”

Her eyes slid shut.

“I wanted you to see him. But he’d gone by the time we got there.”

“He’s alive, and you let me go through that funeral?”

“I didn’t know then, Helen. Not any more than you did. I assumed he was dead, and that was the end of the story. But he showed up at the house.”

“All right,” she said at last, “where is he now?”

“I don’t know, Helen. Lost in time, somewhere.”

“So who’s in the cemetery?”

“He is.”

“But you’re saying he’s still alive.”

In a way, he’ll always be alive. “Yes. He’s still out there. But he won’t come back.”

She was visibly struggling to grasp the situation, and to control her anger. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I didn’t know how.”

Her face had grown pale. When he’d finished explaining, her eyes looked empty. “You can take us back, right?”

“Home? Yes.”

“Where else?”

“Anywhere. Well, there are range limits, but nothing you’d care about.”

On the street, a couple of kids with baseball gloves hurried past. “And he thinks it’s inevitable that he’ll eventually get put in that graveyard?”

“Yes.”