* * * * * * * * * * * * * *
"I don't believe it," said Wilson for the fourth time, shaking his head as if to jar something loose in it.
"You saw the tape, too. There's been some time mix-up. The Director General thought that this dimension might travel in the opposite direction with respect to time. That's why you came back two weeks before you left," said the Leland. Leland was a rather irritating scientist because he talked a lot and was right far too often, a trait Wilson instinctively disliked.
"You mean I was there while I was there?"
"Precisely. Look here at my watch, set at the right time. The time on your ship is about four weeks off, two weeks for when you were here and the two weeks you went back in Rega time."
Wilson seemed still preoccupied with the image of two of himself at once and, to give the governor, who was dead on Rega in some other time, credit, he didn't seem too thrilled at the thought of another of him floating around. "There just can't be two of me at the same time!"
"Why not? Besides the fact it's disturbing, I mean. Why do you think they kept you under wraps as soon as you came back? And didn't they do the same thing before you left on your excursion?"
"There just can't be two of me at the same time!"
"Boy," said a fatherly minister who was, thankfully the only religious member of the colonists' council members, "There are two of you in this dimension now."
"That's right," piped in a rather quiet man, a mathematician who was constantly referred to by Leland. "I calculated that you'll be skipping through this system for another four days before returning to pick us up."
"I don't believe it," said Wilson. "And, now I wish I hadn't returned at all. I knew I should have skipped off. I don't know what came over me."
Leland and the human calculator shrugged and, giving him up as a lost cause, began to discuss the ramifications of living backwards in time. The preacher began a long, rather complicated, sermon that, if boiled down, simply meant that there was no helpful reference in the Holy Book to draw from, which rather went without saying. Leland and a young history scholar began clamoring over the possibilities of visiting their civilization in the past while Packer, a lovely young physicist, contended that she didn't see how we could visit unless we had according to history.
Leland immediately decided this anomaly explained the UFO's of old earth while the historian said poppycock and the minister took a swig of brandy. Finally, as the argument became more heated, everyone turned to Wilson. "What do you think?"
He looked up from his unhappy introspection and said, "You're asking me?"
"Well, the Director General did say you were unknowing leader material. He left you in charge."
"He also left me unknowing. Look, I don't know anything about this. Sorry, but leave me out of this."
"But you'll have to make the decisions, plan out the future, form policy."
Wilson got swiftly to his feet and retreated to the door of the hut, all the while protesting, "I don't know anything about time travel or being leader or physics. I'm no historian. Why me? Why me?" He threw open the door and strode outside, slamming the ill-fitting door with surprising force as his voice drifted back into the hut:
"I don't even know why they picked me!"
Conjuring Dreams or Learning to Write by Writing Page 15