A Gift of Time

by Merritt, Jerry

  Equally life threatening, I had connected a billions-of-years setting into the temporal switch just because I could. We might get that by mistake and shoot forward to when the Sun had turned into a red giant engulfing the Earth.

  So we were stuck. The millions-of-years-in-time setting that had gotten us here and centimeters-in-space. That was what we had to work with.

  I calculated that using the centimeter setting and the control stick’s altitude thumbwheel at maximum, we could get a couple of thousand feet up in under a minute. From there I would switch to time-travel mode and bump the control stick forward in quick million-year hops until the world looked familiar again.

  And to make all this work Ell would hold one end of the thermopile wiring over the fire, bringing it slowly toward the flames until the ever-increasing heat eventually produced just enough voltage to activate the IC chips and drive the glider skyward. Then she would try to maintain that level of heating until I set us down again far in the future to gain our bearings. It was caveman technology driving equipment that shouldn’t have shown up on earth for millions of years. I just hoped the two were compatible.

  I shaved some wood bits onto the fire-starter’s friction point with my knife and covered them with the piece of foam from the seat cushions before inserting the drill. Ell held everything in place.

  Within a minute, tendrils of smoke curled up into our faces. I withdrew the drill and lifted the foam. The shavings burst into flame. The Cretaceous finally worked in our favor. Its oxygen-rich atmosphere had overcome the residual dampness. I grabbed the metal console cover and transferred the burning tinder into it. Twenty minutes later, glowing coals guttered in the bottom. I scrambled forward to a front seat.

  “Okay, Ell, lower the wiring slowly down toward the fire.”

  “I’m lowering it, Cager, but there’s something coming up the beach toward us.”

  “Something?”

  “Um, actually, three somethings.”

  “How far away?”

  “Maybe a half-minute out. Should I hold the wiring closer?”

  “Absolutely. When the machine moves, back away from the coals a bit. We don’t want to put out too much voltage and cook the chips.”

  A few seconds later Ell called out, “There’re here.”

  I twisted around to look out the back.

  Raptors. Ten feet away. Their heads bobbed about as they clacked their teeth, studying Ell fully exposed in the opening.

  Then, without warning, the glider shuddered, lifted slightly, and leveled off. But it was too late. The raptors charged.

  I braced myself, but the glider never shook. When I looked back again, my heart nearly stopped. Ell remained bent over the fire holding the thermopile. Blood trickled from her face. Gore covered her head and back. Stupidly, I called out, “Are you okay?”

  She lifted the thermopile carefully an inch before answering. “I wet my pants a little.”

  Then I remembered her warning about trying to exit a glider while it was hopping. The raptors had simply been sliced to pieces.

  Picking up Ell’s droll humor, I said, “Yeah. Me too. Just now.”

  By this time, we were fifty feet in the air. I backed the glider up to peer out the front. Below, two headless raptors kicked in the sand, while a third with its snout cut away up to its eyes made futile attempts to eat them. It was time to leave.

  “Hold that distance from the coals. I’m going to bump us ahead in a few more seconds.”

  I pushed the stick forward as little as possible and immediately pulled it back to neutral. We came out in the middle of the night. Another bump and it was daylight again. The sea was gone. We were millions of years removed from the beach but clearly not yet home. Another bump and the ground appeared just beneath us. The Rockies had risen. I let the machine continue climbing for a while as I checked to see how Ell was doing.

  “The wires are getting a little warm.”

  Another longer bump and, again, the ground had risen to meet us. I pushed the control stick to the right as far as it would go, and we shifted noticeably to the east away from the mountains. Another bump forward in time-mode and grasslands spread out below us as far as I could see to the east. The Rockies rose snowcapped to the west.

  “I’m going to set us down.”

  Herds of buffalo blanketed the plains below. They scattered as I swooped in over them. I settled into the parting of the herd and nudged the machine forward toward a stream in the middle distance. As we settled onto the grass twenty feet from the water, the thermopile clattered to the deck. When I crawled back to Ell, her hands were burned where she had held the hot wires so carefully over the fire. I took her down to the stream and washed her blisters in the icy water to remove the heat and raptor residue.

  “Why didn’t you say the wires were burning you?”

  “I was scared to do anything to distract you until you could get us on the ground again. And I couldn’t put the wires down without crashing us.”

  I hugged her to me. “I’m sorry. I should have landed when you said the wires were getting a little warm.”

  “It’s okay. It was a small price to pay to get here. I was really scared.”

  “You never showed it.”

  “I was too busy.”

  “Well, you’re safe now. Let’s get that raptor blood washed off you and the glider.”

  Chapter 57

  Our escape from the Cretaceous’ determined efforts to consume us allowed breathing room to work out a final plan for getting home.

  “Do you have any idea what time period we’re in now, Cager?”

  Ell was gathering buffalo chips to keep the fire going while I washed the gore out of her clothes.

  “Probably not more than a million years in our past. Maybe a lot less. I’ll know better tonight. If the constellations look fairly normal, we’re within sixty thousand years of home. That would be a lucky break to have come out that close after a jump across at least seventy million years.”

  I stood up to wring out her clothes. “How are your hands?”

  “Not so bad. I’ll live.”

  It had been a big mistake to take the glider out so soon. I had known it could be dangerous but didn’t pay attention to my own admonitions to Ell. Now she was paying the price with me but making no complaints or accusations. She was a most unusual creature.

  “So have you been thinking about how we can make shorter time hops?” she asked. “If we’re within sixty thousand years of home, one more million-year leap won’t do us any good.”

  “I know.” The consequences of overshooting by a million years were sobering. Were humans even around that far in the future? Maybe malfunctioning, self-replicators had converted carbon-based life to copies of themselves. Were ancient defense systems still protecting a dead world, ready to destroy us the moment we materialized? But I pushed such thoughts aside.

  “The problem right now is to avoid picking a miswired time setting from the console switch. We know the seconds increment works. But when I selected years, some crossed wires apparently got us the million-year range instead. If just two wires are crossed, then the million-year and the one-year selections are reversed. So I’d say the way to play it is to hope that’s the only mix-up and use the million-year setting on the console to get the years option then try to end up in a time that has batteries.”

  Ell sat in the grass thinking as I went over the options. “Then I don’t see any reason to hang around here. We still have hot coals. While everything’s working, let’s just press on until we hit civilization.”

  “Yeah, that’s probably the best approach. But first let’s get something to insulate those wires from your hands.” While Ell dressed, I cut large squares of leather and foam from the other rear seat and wrapped them around the thermocouple wiring. Ten minutes later, we were skipping across time in multi-year leaps. When I saw smoke on the horizon, I dropped out of time-hopping mode and drove the glider forward toward a westbound train. I called back to Ell.
“How’s it going?”

  “Fine. Still got good heat.”

  I leveled off about ten feet above the plains and flew along the tracks to the east until a wooden water tower and a line shack appeared in the distance. Wires running beside the rails led off into the shack. It was a telegraph relay station. It would have batteries. I set the glider down several hundred yards behind the station. “I think we’re in luck, Ell.”

  As we approached the shack, a black dog tied to a hitching post woke up and started barking. Someone called out, “Hush, Tecumseh.”

  A loose-limbed, young man with a swivel eye stepped off the porch squinting in our direction. He had hobbled only a few steps toward us when his sparsely bearded jaw dropped. He whipped off his battered hat and turned his face away. “Pardon me, ma’am. I didn’t realize you wasn’t dressed yet.”

  Ell looked down at her still-damp, tattered sleeveless blouse and white shorts then glanced at me in confusion.

  “It’s okay, mister. She’s dressed. It just that we aren’t from around these parts.”

  He turned back, chin up, head cocked to the side, as he eyed first me then Ell. “Me neither,” he said.

  I offered my hand. “Micajah Fenton, sir. I take it you’re the telegraph operator here.”

  “Caleb, sir. Caleb Bean from back O-hi-o way.” He put equal emphasis on each syllable. “Yes, sir. I operate the relay. Don’t see much walk-in business, though. You want to send a telegram? Looks like you two been havin’ a hard time of it. Lost the wheels offen your whatchamacallit there. Looks like your team done run off too.”

  “Well, you’re right about having a hard time but, no, we don’t want to send a telegram. We’d be interested in a little bartering, though, if you have a mind to.”

  At that, Caleb hitched up his pants and grew sly. “Well, I might favor negotiatin’ a trade or two. What did you have in mind, sir?”

  “You in the market for a good Barlow?”

  “I might be, yes, sir.”

  I pulled out my hundred and seventy-dollar Boker pocketknife with its engraved images of elks and mountains and opened one of the surgical steel blades. Caleb’s sly indifference instantly transformed into fascination as I shaved hair off the top of my forearm. I snapped the blade shut and handed it to him. He clutched it with a reverence one might accord the Crown Jewels. “The handle is carved antler; blades are razor sharp, German steel. It will never rust and will last you the rest of your life.”

  “Deal,” Caleb blurted out.

  “Don’t you want to know what we want in trade?”

  “Oh. Well, yeah, sure.” He glanced back down at the knife. “I just hope I got whatever it is.”

  “Lunch for both of us and two of your one-and-a-half-volt batteries. And I’ll need to borrow your voltmeter to check the voltage. You have a voltmeter don’t you?”

  “Yes, sir. Yes, sir, I do. Right this way.” He hobbled off toward the station. “I ain’t got nothing fancy for lunch, though. I hope you don’t mind beans over buffalo rib. Got some hardtack too. And coffee. You sure you don’t need some clothes for the missus?”

  “Lunch and batteries will be fine, Caleb. Oh, there is one other thing?”

  “Yes, sir?”

  “I need to know today’s date, what state or territory we’re in, and how far up the tracks the next town is.”

  After wolfing down our first food in two days, we checked the batteries at 1.55 volts and carried them out to the glider. All three of us pushed the glider around to face down the tracks toward the next town. While I connected the batteries, I tried to fend off Caleb’s questions. Finally I just told him we were from the future. He glanced at the glider.

  “I kind of figured it might be something like that.”

  I crawled up to the front seats and, using the date Caleb had given us, punched in the number of years and days to take us home. After Ell was situated, I crawled back out and put my hand on Caleb’s boney shoulder. “Caleb. Would you like to become a rich man?”

  He cast a puzzled look at me. “Can’t say as I’d mind it.”

  “Then listen carefully.” He leaned in. “Head down to Colorado and buy as much empty land as you can close to Denver’s center.”

  “I can do that. Then what?”

  “Just hang on to it. It’ll be worth a fortune in a few years. Sell it and buy more cheap land a little farther out.” He straightened suddenly, grinning with understanding. I shook his hand. “Good luck, Caleb, and thanks for your help.” I scrambled back to my seat and nodded to him out the side window.

  A moment later, we hovered a thousand meters above a paved highway that ran arrow-straight to the horizon.

  Ell dozed next to me as we drifted along at the leisurely pace set by our spatial increment of centimeters. I wasn’t about to fiddle with the settings. I had the control stick as far forward as it would go so we were moving along at a fair clip even at the centimeter setting.

  An hour later, we ditched the glider in a ravine on the edge of Cheyenne. I pulled the control boxes out and removed the IC chips along with the spares then smashed the circuit boards while Ell destroyed the labeling on the console switches.

  I used my credit card to get us some new clothes and charter a plane to take us home, but after we had left Caleb on the plains of Wyoming Territory in 1869, I hadn’t accounted for the fact 1900 was not a leap year so we overshot by twenty-four hours. When we got to the cabin, Schrödinger was not happy. He hadn’t been fed for an entire day.

  Chapter 58

  A few days after our return, the papers picked up a story about a crashed UFO discovered in a ravine just northeast of Cheyenne, Wyoming. A photograph showed a half-dozen men in military surplus clothing and assorted ball caps standing around our abandoned glider. One was quoted as saying, “What we have here is another Roswell, except now we have the evidence of aliens from outer space instead of the government.” I hoped no one would appreciate just how accurate his statement actually was.

  Ell and I chuckled at the article and returned to the vault to begin listing the upgrades our next glider would need to make it safer to handle. After some much needed wiring harness changes, we left the main body and doors the same. That design had already proven airtight and structurally sound so long as we didn’t let dinosaurs climb on it.

  I spared no expense on rushing the work. Still, the best delivery we could get was three months. So I added a quality control requirement for the wiring harness to be independently triple-checked against the design drawings since that wouldn’t delay the overall delivery. Finally there was nothing left to do but go sailing.

  ***

  For two weeks, we chased whales with Schrödinger before our supplies ran low forcing us home.

  As Lovely Pebble passed Pacific Grove, Ell rested on the coaming entranced with the small storm petrels seemingly water-walking as they fed in the lee of our boat. “Why don’t those little birds ever light on the water and rest?”

  “That’s just their nature. They hover from moment to moment, never lighting until they reach their breeding grounds.”

  “They’re kind of spooky. Constantly fluttering like that.”

  “Early sailors thought so too. Believed they were harbingers of approaching storms.”

  “Why would they think that?”

  “The petrels would seek shelter in the lee of ships during heavy weather. The sailors assumed they had something to do with the storms. Used to call them Mother Carey’s chickens. Mother Carey was Davy Jones’ wife, of course. Sailors thought she had some influence over storms too.”

  “You’re making this stuff up aren’t you.”

  I cast her a knowing look. “All good sailors keep a weather eye open for portents and omens.”

  She grimaced. “I figured as much.”

  “So how about securing the genoa. We’ll be docking soon.”

  Our self-imposed news blackout ended when we stopped in at the marina restaurant for dinner. I picked up a newspaper left on th
e table and shook it open. Our abandoned glider was front-page. The crushed hulk had become a magnet for every UFO conspiracy group on the planet.

  They had just concluded a seminar in Cheyenne, drawing various eccentrics from around the country. An entomologist had found insect eggs deposited in one corner of what was being called the ruptured warp drive compartment. Then the discovery that the two batteries were Civil War era, fueled further wild speculation. “What we have here are multiple anachronisms,” one speaker announced. “Batteries from another century found with a machine from the future crashed in the present. And who knows what we’ll find if our biologists can hatch those eggs.” What would they find indeed? I wondered.

  A few days later, more clues came to light. A botanist combing through the debris on the floorboards had collected over a dozen small seeds from at least seven separate species. He’d also found traces of pollen and bits of dried seaweed. Then someone found blood and tissue residue.

  Mycologists, phycologists, exobiologists, and other -ologists from across the country, entered the fray after that—along with crime scene investigators. In Internet parlance, our abandoned glider had gone viral. It was hard to go through a checkout line anymore without seeing photos of the battered hull in the tabloids with lurid stories under outrageous headlines.

  “How long before the Boeing guys who built the hull go public with what they know?” Ell asked. “They must recognize the wreck there in Cheyenne is the remains of a test vehicle they made. Maybe that’ll put an end to all this speculation.”

  “Hard to say about Boeing. But this bunch will eventually have to admit to themselves that the seats, and harness wiring, and solar cells are all today’s technology. Not that it will have the slightest effect. And even if it did, those seeds and eggs are going to stun the scientific community when they find themselves raising plants and at least one species of insect that have been extinct since the dinosaurs. Everyone knows time travel is impossible, but they haven’t seen a live insect that until now was only known from being preserved in amber. And if they run DNA tests on that raptor tissue ….”