He sighed and looked out of the window at the impossible blue sky.
“We’ve only got a few minutes so pay attention. I’ve been trying to save her for eons and I still remember how I used to feel. How you feel about her right now. I’ve been split down to an atomic level so many times and for so long but the love never dies. Everything else does but it doesn’t. It won’t let me stop and I can’t do it anymore. This wasn’t the plan but plans never work out the way you want, do they? I wanted to come back months ago but traveling isn’t an exact science. I wanted to take her away before I gave her the injection but that would have changed everything, too. She wouldn’t have known me. You have no idea how complicated it is. It’s not natural and things aren’t always the same every time you go back. Sometimes you can’t go back at all, it just doesn’t work. Sometimes you get caught in a loop and can’t get out. Sometimes a butterfly flaps its wings and changes the world. Saving her became a mission, a calling impossible to ignore. The only thing that kept me going. The only reason to continue to live. I’ve finally done it, though, even if it didn’t work out the way I wanted. She’s safe and now I should go be with her but I’m not you anymore. I’ve got too many memories in my head and I don’t know which one I’m living half the time. She won’t even know me.”
The longing and sadness on the man’s face was tangible and Jessie understood. It dawned on him what he was saying and why he’d strapped the device to his wrist.
“So, you’re going to stay? I go to wherever you came from and you take over my life here?”
“Maybe I’ll just lie down and die like you were trying to do.” the man said and glanced to the door, at the reddish glow of flames around it. “It would be easier. I’ve seen into the dark, Jessie. I’m tired.”
He turned to stare at the sky, seeing things only he could see and remembering things only he remembered. Jessie watched through dimming eyes as the ancient, ageless man shook himself then grabbed his wrist and started tapping buttons on the strange device.
“How does it work?” Jessie slurred.
“None of your business.” the man said. “I know you. You’ll try to fix things. You’ll try to go back and stop the outbreak or kill Hitler as a child or something else equally stupid. It won’t work, Jessie. Believe me. If you try to use this thing without knowing what you’re doing, you’ll wind up out in deep space when you reappear. The planets are constantly moving and all of them have wobbles. Even if you came back one second from now, you’d be in the next room, probably inside the wall with a two by four sticking out of your ass.”
“How?” Jessie asked. “If I came back here, I’d come back here.”
“No, you wouldn’t. Did you forget everything you learned in science class? The earth is moving at sixty thousand miles an hour through space. It’s spinning on its axis at a thousand miles an hour. If you came back here in five minutes, you’d smack into the moon. Now quit asking dumb questions.”
The bracelet started to hum and a faint glow seemed to be coming from the metal itself.
“Going back to where you started is different, you have a fixed coordinate in time and space, you’re not guessing. Are you listening?”
Jessie nodded and regretted it.
“When I send you back, take this thing off and drop it in the osmitron vat that’s on the table. The blue one. Scarlets too. Don’t push any buttons, don’t try to smash it, don’t save it for future study. Don’t do anything dumb. Drop it in the vat. Do you understand?”
Jessie nodded his head slightly and grimaced at the movement. Everything was blurry, the conversation was getting hard to follow and he was only staying awake by sheer will.
“Tell her I loved her.” the man said as he pushed a final button on the bracelet. “And you might want to get your face fixed. I made some enemies.”
Jessie felt a tugging at his core and the room vanished.
134
The Traveler
He sat back in the chair, rubbed his scruffy beard and wondered at what he’d just done. He coughed from the smoke then stood and looked around the room. Her room. It was ages ago since he’d last been here and it looked the same except for all the blood on the bed. He hadn’t come here to die last time, he’d come to take a memento. He touched the golden amulet hanging on his neck then looked over to the jewelry tree on the desk. It still hung there, a whole lot newer than the battered one he wore. He’d grabbed it on the way out the window, the room ablaze and his leathers smoking from the heat. The fires were much worse last time. Of course, he had spent a lot of time tracking down the Lord of the Underworld back then. The guy had a secret room and a dozen crazy zealots protecting him. This time he knew where to look, it hadn’t taken but a few minutes to eliminate the final threat. He wondered about knocking over the vase, the distraction that let Ricketts deliver the killing blow. If he hadn’t been here, would things have gone exactly like they had last time? In all the times he’d jumped, this was
