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do have to work out a cover yarn. I know we will, because my not-so-much-older self gave me to
understand I d handle my present troubles all right. However, it doesn t let us off going through the
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mo-tions.
Time is unchangeable? I wondered. We--our lives--are caught and held in the continuum--like flies in
amber?
I don t know, I don t know, he groaned. I do know that my efforts were wasted. My former
associates called me a fink, my new friends were an insignificant minority, and, hell, we could hardly give
away our literature.
You mustn t expect miracles in politics, I said. Beware of the man who promises them.
True. I realized as much, after the shock of what I d seen uptime had faded a bit. In fact, I decided my
duty was to come back and stand by my mother. At least this way I can make the world a tiny bit less
horrible.
His tone softened: No doubt I was foolish to keep a copy of my flyer. But the dearest girl helped me
put it together ... Well. In a way, I ve lucked out. Now one other human being shares my life. I ve barely
started to feel how lonely I was.
You are absolutely unique? I whispered.
I don t know. I d guess not. They re doubtless very rare, but surely more time travelers than me exist.
How can I find them? he cried. And if we should join together, what can we do?
5
BIRKELUND PROVED less of a problem than expected. I saw him in private, told him the writing was
a leftover script from an amateur show, and pointed out that it was actually sarcastic--after which I gave
him holy hell about his treatment of his step-son and his wife. He took it with ill grace, but he took it. As
remarked earlier, he was by no means an evil man.
Still, the situation remained explosive. Jack contributed, be-ing daily more short-tempered and
self-willed. He s changed so much, Eleanor told me in grief. His very appearance. And I can t blame
all the friction on Sven and his boys. Jack s often downright arrogant.
Of course he was, in his resentment of home, his boredom in school, his burden of foreknowledge. But I
couldn t tell his mother that. Nor, for her sake, could he make more than over-night escapes for the next
two or three years.
I think, I said, it d be best if he took off on his own.
Bob, he s barely eighteen, she protested.
He was at least twenty-one, probably more, I knew. Old enough to join the service. He d registered in
the lawful man-ner on his birthday. That ll give him a chance to find himself. It s possible to be drafted
by request, so as to be in for the mini-mum period. The board will oblige if I speak to em.
Not before he s graduated!
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I understood her dismay and disappointment. He can take correspondence courses, Ellie. Or the
services offer classes, which a bright lad like Jack can surely get into. I m afraid this is our best bet.
He had already agreed to the idea. A quick uptime hop showed him he would be posted to Europe. I
can explore a lot of history, he said; then, chill: Besides, I d better learn about weapons and combat
techniques. I damn near got killed in the twenty-first century. Couple members of a cannibal band took
me by surprise, and if I hadn t managed to wrench free for an instant--
The Army was ill-suited to his temperament, but he stuck out basic training, proceeded into electronics,
and on the whole gained by the occasion. To be sure, much of that was due to his excursions downtime.
They totaled a pair of extra years.
His letters to me could only hint at this, since Kate would read them too. It was a hard thing for me, not
to open for her the tremendous fact, not to have her beside me when at last he came home and through
hour upon hour showed me his notes, photographs, memories.
(Details were apt to be unglamorous--problems of vaccina-tion, language, transportation, money, law,
custom--filth, ver-min, disease, cruelty, tyranny, violence-- Doc, I d never dreamed how different
medieval man was. Huge variations from place to place and era to era, yeah, but always the &
Orientalness? ... no, probably it s just that the Orient has changed less. However, he had watched
Caesar s legions in triumph through Rome, and the greyhound shapes of Viking craft dancing over Oslo
Fjord, and Leonardo da Vinci at work.
He d not been able to observe in depth. In fact, he was maddened by the superficial quality of almost all
his experi-ences. How much can you learn in a totally strange environ-ment, when you can barely speak
a word and are liable to be arrested on suspicion before you can swap for a suit of con-temporary
clothes? Yet what would I not have given to be there too?)
How it felt like a betrayal of Kate, not telling her! But if Jack could keep silence toward his mother, I
must toward my wife. His olderpersona had been, was, would be right in stamping upon the child a
reflex of secrecy.
Consider the consequences, had it become known that one man--or one little boy--can swim through
time. To be the sen-sation of the age is no fit fate for any human. In this case, imag-ine as well the
demands, appeals, frantic attempts by the greedy, the power-hungry, the ideology-besotted, the
bereaved, the frightened to use him, the race between governments to sequester or destroy him who
could be the ultimate spy or un-stoppable assassin. If he survived, and his sanity did, he would soon have
no choice but to flee into another era and there keep his talent hidden.
No, best wear a mask from the beginning.
But then what use was the fantastic gift?
Toward the end of my hitch, I spent more timethinking than roving, he said.
We d taken my boat out on Lake Winnego. He d come home, discharged, a few weeks earlier, but
much remained to tell me. This was the more true because his mother needed his moral support in her
divorce from Birkelund, her move away from scenes which were now painful. He d matured further, not
only in the flesh. Two of my years ago, a man had confronted me: but a very young man, still groping his
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way out of hurt and be-wilderment. The Jack Havig who sat in the cockpit today was in full command of
himself.
I shifted my pipe and put down the helm. We came about in a heel andswoosh and rattle of boom.
Springtime glittered on blue water; sweetness breathed from the green across fields and trees, from apple
blossoms and fresh-turned earth. The wind whooped. It was cool and a hawk rode upon it.
Well, you had plenty to think about, I answered.
For openers, he said, how does time travel work?
Tell me, Mr. Bones, howdoes time travel work?
He did not chuckle. I learned a fair amount of basic physics in the course of becoming an electronics
technician. And I read a lot on my own, including stuff I went uptime to consult- books, future issues of
Scientific American andNature, et cetera. All theory says that what I do is totally impossible. It starts
by violating the conservation of energy and goes on from there.
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