He pointed at her. “How long . . .?” He turned around and walked out of the circle, stopped and turned around again.
“How long what?” Annie demanded, a little unnerved by his agitation.
“How long have you had that sweatshirt?”
Annie looked down at her white sweatshirt and considered her father’s question for a few seconds before the implication of it dawned on her. She knew when she put it on that it was significant. “A couple of years,” she said slowly. “The night of the Time Traveler’s Convention might have been the first time I wore it.”
“So that was you.”
“What do you mean, was me?”
“I saw you there.”
Annie tilted her head toward him. “What were you doing there? You said it was silly and had no intention of attending.”
“I do have a right to change my mind. So you thought you could just dig through the trash and take my invitation?”
“You didn’t want it and I was curious, but I never made it through the gate. Started feeling sick as I was walking up. Went home and went to bed.”
“Sick?”
“Yes. Stomach ache and throwing up sick.”
Steven came back into the circle and stopped before his daughter. It was still a good thirty seconds before he said anything. “I got home about 11:00 and went straight up to check on you because who I saw at the convention was getting into the driver’s seat of a red Jeep Cherokee.”
Annie just stared at him with her mouth open. As a matter of fact, everyone’s mouth sat ajar as they looked between Annie and her father.
“You looked right at me before you ducked in. You’d just helped a guy get into the passenger seat, but I didn’t see him very well. Big was the only impression I got. I was going to follow but by the time I got back to my car, you, or they, were long gone. As I got to thinking about it though, I concluded it wasn’t you because the hair was short. You had it down to your waist until last year when you cut it before your wedding. And you were a nearly a half block away, at night, illuminated by only a streetlamp.”
“But you still ran home to be sure I was there.”
Steven nodded and they both fell silent. All mouths remained locked half open until Charles’ deep baritone voice broke in. “The big guy you saw getting into the passenger seat of his Jeep Cherokee . . . was me.” He rose to his feet and looked down at Annie. “Can you and I talk for a minute . . . in private?”
Chapter 77
May 7, 2005
In Charles Walshe’s opinion the Time Traveler’s Convention was juvenile. He had not planned on attending, except here he was, driving in circles looking for a parking place. Just as he started to turn north onto Ames Street with the intention of giving up and going home, not really knowing why he was there to begin with, car lights came on two spots down on the southbound side where Ames Street became one-way. The spot was on the left next to the Senior House. Charles turned the corner, slowed and waited. When the car finally pulled away, he swung in and then just sat.
It was a short walk to the event, but he was so tired. He took several deep breaths, lay his head back and felt his heart beat. It didn’t so much beat as pound, and the deep breaths did little to relax the tightness in his chest. Maybe it’s indigestion, he thought, but realized he hadn’t eaten in about four hours. Can indigestion rise up after four hours? Of course it can. He’d had heartburn after sleeping for eight hours. That’s likely what it was. He was experiencing serious heartburn.
He rolled his head around in an attempt to work out the pain in his neck. That had started in the afternoon when all he was doing was reading. He’d spent the morning helping his grandmother with spring cleanup; trimmed some dead branches off her oak tree, planted several new rose bushes and repainted the two window boxes that overhung her front porch. He’d probably pulled a neck muscle trimming the tree. By the time he had cleaned up the tools and put everything away, he was exhausted. His grandmother made him a roast beef sandwich which, along with a pickle the size of a small watermelon, he hardily consumed. That’s probably what caused the indigestion, he thought. He shouldn’t have eaten the pickle.
He’d tried to spend the remainder of the day in his easy chair with a copy of A stubbornly persistent illusion: the essential scientific works of Albert Einstein by Albert Einstein and Stephen Hawking. His German was decent, but mix that with Euclidian geometry, theory and principles of relativity, and quantum physics and mechanics, it was all he could do to stay focused. He was restless, but how could he be exhausted and restless at the same time?
He needed more exercise; it was as simple as that. He’d start tomorrow. He’d get up in the morning and go for a walk before breakfast.
Decision made, he looked at the dashboard clock. It was10:03. He opened the door, leveraged his bulk out onto the sidewalk and thought about how nice a night it was. Maybe he’d go for a walk now. He could go up Ames and come around to the convention from the other side. He wasn’t going to get exercise if he kept putting it off until tomorrow. He took another deep breath and as he lifted his arms over his head in an attempt to ease the pressure off his chest, there came a sudden change in the air, a seeming rise in the barometric pressure and a rush of wind. Several trees overhanging the corner of the wall bordering the passage up the back of the Senor House began whipping about as though a mini hurricane was passing through; brand new green leaves scattered for a few seconds and then the wind died and a glow of light began. It came on gradually, growing until the undersides of the trees were as clear as a bright, sunny day. Whatever was causing it appeared to be coming from just over the wall that provided a visual barrier into a courtyard, unless you were tall in which case you could just look over. Charles took several steps until he was able to peer over the wall.
What he found was only a glowing light and no apparent source. He looked up into the trees, out into the courtyard and then behind him to see if someone else was watching. When he looked back over the wall an image was forming in the middle of the glow. The word hologram came to mind. After what could have been seconds or minutes, he later couldn’t be sure, the glow reached a brilliant white. He knew he should turn his eyes away but he was mesmerized. Gradually the hologram-like image took the shape of a woman: knees drawn up, head down, hair barely touching a white sweatshirt, earmuffs. And then, as though someone flipped a switch, everything went dark.
Charles blinked several times against his loss of night vision, becoming convinced that he’d had a hallucination. As his vision readjusted to the ambient light thrown off by street lights, the image, returning to him as a white form in the dark, rose to her full height and looked out into the courtyard. No more than four feet away, Charles considered reaching across the wall and touching the top of her head to see if she was real, but he only held his breath.
And he was still holding his breath when she turned around, lifted her face up to him and grinned. “Hi, Charles.”
He sucked in a lungful of air and fell flat onto his back.
Charles lay on his back looking up at the stars and considered jumping up and running to his jeep, but his legs, his arms, nothing would respond. What in the hell was happening? And then all of a sudden the woman who appeared out of nowhere and said hi to him was standing over him.
“Can you get up, Mister Walshe?” she said, presenting her hand to him.
There was no way he was going to take that hand. Besides, she was small and he was huge and all he’d do was drag her to the ground with him, if she was real. He rolled over and sat up, not trusting himself to stand just yet. His head was swimming and the pain in his neck was now radiating out to his shoulder.
He swiveled his head back and forth. “Who are you?”
“I’ll tell you later. Right now we need to get you into your jeep and then I’m going to drive you straight to Cambridge Hospital.”
“What?”
“Give me your keys.”
He looked at her like she was crazy, or like
he was.
“Give me your keys!”
“No.” He started to shake his head but it hurt.
With an exasperated tone she said, “If you stay here, you’re going to die.”
“What?”
“And since I know you’re not going to die, you’re going to give me your keys and then get into that jeep,” she pointed, “and I’m going to drive you to the emergency room.”
Charles thought about the tightness in his chest and the other symptoms he’d been experiencing. “I’m having a heart attack?”
“Bingo, big boy. Now let’s go!”
Without another word, he got to his knees, inhaled several times and stood. He handed her his keys and walked to his jeep. She followed him around to the passenger side and waited until he was in before running around and opening the driver’s door. Just before she got in she looked up the street. Her father was just passing under a street light. She laughed to herself as their eyes met, and then climbed into the driver’s seat.
“My God!” she said, unable to reach the pedals. She found the seat adjustment, struggled the seat forward and then started the jeep. She buckled, considered helping him with his and then decided the delay wasn’t worth it. She pulled onto the street.
“Who are you?” he asked.
“My name is Annie. What you just saw back there was real.”
“You’re a . . .”
“Time traveler.”
He stared at her until she turned the corner. “I was going to say angel.”
“No Charles. I’m not an angel. I’m a time traveler. You’ve sent me back from the future to save your life.”
“Okay,” he said.
“You believe me?”
He managed a small shrug. “I’m probably hallucinating and I’m still lying on the ground, dying.” He took several shallow breaths. “God it hurts. I’ll probably be seeing the white light anytime now.”
“You’re not hallucinating.”
He could only continue to stare at her, his mouth opening and closing like a beached fish. He sucked up a bit of moisture and said, “I sent you?”
“You’re part of a team. I’m here just long enough to get you into emergency and then I’m gone.”
Charles’ chest tightened again. He put his hand to it. “I’m too young to have a heart attack.”
“Statistically, it’s rare. One in thousands. I guess you were chosen to be that lucky one.”
He went silent and she focused on negotiating traffic, choosing what she hoped was the quickest route, eventually turning northwest onto Hampshire Street. She wondered what she would say if she was pulled over for speeding. Fortunately traffic was light and there were no cars with flashing colored lights appearing behind her. Besides, Charles didn’t say anything to her about being stopped by the cops. She pressed a little harder on the gas pedal as they flew through an intersection, yellow lights sending her a warning. She looked over at him. He was leaning against the door, head against the glass, eyes closed.
When they had walked away from the shocked professors, and Charles had divulged to her the real reason he was on the team, she’d asked him why he waited until the last minute to tell her about this. They’d spent an entire semester in a class together and he hardly paid any attention to her and before that she’d seen him around campus and he had certainly seen her, knew who she was.
“I didn’t want to jinx it,” he’d told her. “You obviously didn’t like me so what would you have said if I’d told you that you would save my life after traveling two years through a wormhole?”
“I may have actually believed you, considering my history.”
“I didn’t know anything about your history. All I knew was that you showed up like an angel and drove me to the hospital, gave me a quick explanation as we flew through the night, and I mean flew, and then just as mysteriously, disappeared. Besides, you told me that I wouldn’t share it all with you until now.”
Charles the Dweeb. She felt bad for calling him that, especially behind his back. She looked over at him, slumped against the door, and wondered if he was unconscious. As though sensing her glance, he opened his eyes. “You said that I sent you. How?”
“Sometime in the next year you will stumble onto research by several prominent professors and you will discover that their ideas are very much like yours. Somehow you will also discover that they are very close to achieving what most believe to be impossible. You will worm your way in because they can’t afford to have you spouting your mouth off and also because they need a fourth person. They have, or will have, a mission, a purpose for the time travel machine.”
“What is that?”
“That is for you, and them to find out. In the meantime, however, other missions will come into play, one of those being to save your life.”
Charles closed his eyes again and thought about that for a while. “That seems twisted somehow.”
“It sure does. You won’t say anything to anybody about your personal goal until an hour or so before I come here.”
“Why?”
“I have no idea.” Annie didn’t like the way he looked. But she would get him there on time. That much was for sure. She passed through the Prospect intersection, swung into the oncoming lane to get around a slow moving truck, flashed her lights at the idiot coming at her who wouldn’t slow down, whipped in quickly and studied the next light at Cambridge, the intersection from Hell. It was green but certainly wouldn’t stay that way. She punched the gas a little more, barely registered the needle pass through 60, and wondered how slow she’d have to take the turn onto Cambridge. It wasn’t a full 90 degrees. A half block out the light turned yellow. She flashed her headlights as though anyone would pay attention and barreled into the intersection as the light turned to red.
Suddenly there was a little white sedan coming from her left. Too late; she was committed. It skidded to a stop and honked. Annie noted a surprised look on an old woman’s face in the sickish glow of artificial light. Missed you by inches at least, Annie wanted to scream, caught the curb on the right, bounced, brought the jeep under control and accelerated again.
Charles mumbled something about dying before they got there.
“Thirty seconds!” Annie declared and resisted the urge to take her hand from the 10-4 position to give him a reassuring touch.
The sign for the emergency entrance came up suddenly. She hit the brakes, heard a screech of rubber on asphalt from somewhere, whipped right into the emergency pull through and skidded to a stop. She flew out, ran around and punched through the hospital doors. When she spotted a guy in white looking at her she yelled, “Heart attack!” and ran back out.
Charles had the door open, ready to tumble out. “No Charles!” She grabbed him. “Wait! They’re coming.” He nodded and she continued to hold on to him, whispering assurances for what seemed to be forever before someone showed up with a wheelchair. And then there were two of them and three of them, and they had control. As they disappeared through the emergency doors, she backed away and felt for the seeker. It was still where she put it. She jogged back to Cambridge Street, crossed over onto a paved drive between two houses, settled onto secluded patch of lawn in a backyard, punched the seeker button twice, waited ten seconds and punched it twice again. She thought about what she’d said to Aunt Gracy about the pattern of death following her around and was glad, for at least once, that she could give back a life.
Chapter 78
June 18, 2007
When Annie scooted out of the chamber, Charles was waiting for her. He and Professor Bradshaw had changed places so that Charles could greet her. Her feet had barely touched the floor and he had her in his arms. “I’ve been waiting two years to do that, he said. You may not have thought so, but you were definitely my angel that night.”
She wanted to say, “Euuuuu,” and push away, yet in some odd way wanted to hug him back. She did the later and then pushed him away. It was then that she noticed how much less of him there was
compared to when she dropped him at the hospital. “How much weight did you lose?”
“The last time I stepped on the scale it was 123 pounds since that night.”
“That’s an entire person.”
“I was so out of control. You changed my life.”
“You changed your own life. All I was there to do was make sure you still had a life to change. How long were you in the hospital?”
“Eight days. Had a double by-pass.”
Annie nodded and looked at her dad. “Saw you seeing me when I was getting in the jeep.”
Steven shook his head. “I can’t believe any of this.”
“You’ve accepted it all better than I thought you would.”
“It didn’t seem like I had a whole lot of choice or say.”
“Welcome to the team, Steven,” came Professor Bradshaw’s voice over the intercom. “No choice is how we’ve been running since Annie showed up.”
With Charles’ big bulk in the small space, Annie hadn’t noticed that Patrick was still where she left him, sitting on the floor next to the door. A small space opened up and their eyes met. They both smiled for a brief second and then she turned back to her father. “There is still one more thing I have to do.”
“That’s what you said before.”
“I need to do it now.”
“Now?” Bradshaw said.
“We’re still running hot. Why not? Besides, once Aunt Gracy figures out where I am and comes here, she’ll make sure this gets shut down, if she has to rip out cables herself.” She pulled a slip of paper from her pocket and handed it to her dad. “Here are the coordinates, and the date and time.”
Steven looked at it. “February 17th, 3:30 pm. Is that local time?”
“Yes.”
“This is the last event, right?”
“I don’t know of anything else.”
Steven looked at Charles and then up at the camera in the corner. “Guys? Should we do this?”
“The way we’ve been operating,” Professor Grae said, “if she says we did, we do.”
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