“And–?”
“And for those lucky few, their memories are immunized against the new timeline. To the extent they snap to the new reality, their memories don’t snap with them. They retain their old timeline.” I look around myself, buying time to absorb this. “And when I saw you react to Elizabeth for the first time, I knew right then that you were one of us. That you remembered your life with her.” I kneel down on the grass to avoid falling. “You see how important that is don’t you?”
“Yes,” I say without thinking.
“You can’t compare histories if you don’t remember them.”
“No.”
“And that’s why I need you on my team,” he says. “You know, at one time I wanted to take you and make you suffer a little along with the others. Then I wanted to kill you because you were the one that got away. I do tend to ruminate over these things; you know, whip myself up into a frenzy, and maybe I got it a little out of proportion. But then when I discovered your gift, I became a little ambivalent to be honest. So, you see, I’m just a man with human foibles–I can get confused, torn. You have to give me some slack, Joad. Anyway, I realized it would have been a monstrous shame to just kill you. And now I’m seeing what should have been obvious to me much sooner. We need to be partners, you and me.”
I look up at him and there’s nothing but sincerity on his jowled, sepia face, looking like an antique photograph of a long dead relative. Could there be a quark of truth to this? To think that words emitted from Kasper Asmus could possibly be anything but lies is itself an act of insanity. Yet ... I believe him. Or at least, I think he believes himself.
“The scientist in you has only one option, Joad. You can’t walk away from this offer–to learn and understand more about the nature of things in one week than in your whole mediocre career. Jump on this.”
“I need to get back to the mansion,” I say. The missile. I can’t be here with this lunatic.
“You’re worried about Galois and your little band of brothers? It’s sweet that you care about such small matters.” He smiles warmly. “But there are a few things I need to make happen first–things that’ll leave Penrose in no doubt who’s in control. Once that’s all figured out, we can get your little team taken care of.” Asmus reaches up and runs his finger along a leaf frozen in mid fall. “Now, are you with me, Joad Bevan?”
“What do you want from me?” I ask.
“Good question.” He strokes the small accelerator disk with his thumb. “First thing, let’s accel forward a couple of days. By then Penrose will be extremely anxious to talk with me and willing to accept terms quite favorable to us.”
Us! I feel a pang of disgust.
“So we’ll simply saunter up, in full control of the situation, and talk business.”
Then my neck turns cold as what he had said catches up with me. Accel forward two days! The day of the strike, always assuming it hadn’t happened before.
“No!”
“No?”
“We need to make sure Gallie, Zhivov and the others are safe. We need to get right back there, in the now.”
“You’re such a worry wart, Joad. That’s not going to work in your new job. Believe me, your friends are going nowhere with the Continental Army guarding them. They have no chance of getting out of there.” Then I see his thumb beginning to trace out patterns on the accel disk. “Trust me.”
FIFTY-TWO
Tee time has returned and I’m looking into a cloudless, blue sky. I’ve lost my bearings. We’re on open ground and now I see the mansion ahead. But the camp has gone and there’s not a soul, not a tent, not a campfire remaining. I turn back to see Asmus. He’s surveying the landscape and looking confused. Then he tells me to follow him. I feel my heart thudding hard against my rib cage. I look up again to scan the sky knowing that if I were to see anything it’d be too late. I begin to run toward the mansion. Everything I care about is in it. I run faster shouting “Come on!” to no one. The mansion is a couple of hundred yards ahead of me. No sentries outside, neither goon nor soldier. I hear a distant whistle that becomes a scream in the instant it takes me to look up. Something dark passes over me at unfathomable speed and I look ahead to see the mansion become a haze of gray, orange and red. A sack of anvils swings into my chest as I feel the ground drop from beneath my feet.
Silence. Absolute silence. I open my eyes to dense, swirling points of light that slowly part to reveal patterns of shifting black and blue. My heart pounds soundlessly. I focus enough to see thick black smoke passing over me in waves. I try to move but feel white hot bolts being driven into my ribs. I take a breath, grit my teeth and push myself up onto my elbows. Ahead, there’s no vestige of a building or of any structure: just flames and billowing smoke. I grit my teeth hard and look toward the barn. Two walls remain standing. No movement, no sign of life. Is this how I go? I would never have guessed it.
It’s a wonderfully silly ending.
I see movement near the barn and squint at it. A horse mounted by a bluecoat emerges from the tree line. Then another, and then around them, foot soldiers walking out tentatively without
