Time Travelers Never Die

by Jack McDevitt

  “Who never came? Dad?”

  “According to the story, Caesar wasn’t sure he wanted to go through with this, so he hesitated at the river’s edge until a god showed up and directed him to cross.”

  “You didn’t actually think it would happen that way?”

  “No. But I was tempted to play the role of the deity.” He grinned at Shel’s shocked reaction. “Just kidding.”

  They joined the crowd on the mall for the “I Have a Dream” speech. In August 1944, they were in Paris when the Allies arrived.

  MICHAEL Shelborne had liked Charles Lamb. So they went to London in the spring of 1820, planning to meet the celebrated essayist. But they arrived outside the city and were almost immediately accosted by highwaymen. It was broad daylight, but it didn’t seem to matter. The bandits laughed while inviting them to empty their pockets. Dave and Shel shrugged, said good-bye, and returned to the town house.

  They tried again, after resetting the converters to get closer to London. They arrived during early evening, having allowed time for Lamb to get home from his job clerking for India House. They got lucky this time, and stepped out into Covent Garden, only a few blocks from his home on Russell Street. They picked up a bottle of wine en route, and presented themselves at the front door as admirers of Lamb’s work. At that point, though Lamb was in his forties, the great essayist had written little of note.

  “We’re reviving the London Magazine next year, Mr. Lamb,” Shel told him. “We’d like very much to have some of your time, if you don’t mind.”

  “Of course, gentlemen,” he said. “Please come in.” Lamb was thin, about average height, with an easy smile. He led them back to a sitting room, where a middle-aged woman was reading.

  They did a round of introductions. The woman was Mary Lamb, who had murdered her mother twenty years earlier in one of her occasional bouts of insanity. Fortunately, at the moment she seemed fine. She was not unattractive, although there was a stolidity in her features that suggested she wasn’t especially flexible.

  The sitting room looked out onto Russell Street, where several children were playing with a ball. Framed pictures of people Shel couldn’t identify hung on the walls. Bulging bookcases stood on opposite sides of the room. A newspaper was spread out across a coffee table in front of a sofa where Lamb had apparently been seated.

  “The first issue,” said Shel, “will be out in July. We’d like very much to have an essay from you, if you’d be so kind.”

  “An essay? Mr. Shelborne, I don’t want to disappoint you, but I haven’t written anything for twelve or thirteen years. Why would you come to me?”

  “Trust me, Charles. May I call you Charles?”

  “Of course.”

  “All right, Charles.” Shel glanced over at David as he said it. He’d toyed with the idea of trying Charlie. “Perhaps you know my father, Michael? He has always been quite enthusiastic about your work.”

  “Michael Shelborne?” Lamb considered it. Shook his head. “I don’t know the gentleman.”

  “Let me show you a picture.” Shel produced the usual photo.

  Lamb reacted much as Aristarchus had. But no, he had no recollection of the man.

  “In any case,” said Shel, trying not to show his frustration, “we’ve looked at your Tales of Shakespeare. And at the Works of Charles Lamb.”

  “And you liked them?”

  “Of course. We’d like you to write essays for us. On a regular basis.”

  “Are you serious, sir?”

  “Of course I am.”

  “If I may ask, I’m not familiar with your name. Will you be the editor?”

  “I’m financing the project. Behind the scenes, you understand. My name won’t appear anywhere.” Shel told him who the editor would be.

  “I see.” Lamb grew thoughtful. A suspicious look passed between him and Mary.

  “Listen,” said Shel. “I’d be doubtful, too. But what have you to lose? All I ask is that you send us an essay. Find out whether I’m serious.”

  Everybody’s mood lightened. Shel asked whether he and David might take the Lambs out for dinner. “To celebrate.”

  “I’d like to, very much,” he said. “But we have friends coming this evening.”

  Mary looked at Shel. “Perhaps,” she said, “if it’s convenient, Mr. Shelborne and his associate might like to join us next week.”

  “We’d be delighted,” said Dave.

  Lamb smiled. “Sam will be here Wednesday. He would enjoy meeting you.”

  SAM turned out to be Charles’s longtime friend Samuel Taylor Coleridge. He was something of a comedian, a quality Shel would never have guessed from his written work. Not that he’d read much of it. He had a hearty laugh and he commented that Shel’s interest in Charles demonstrated his impeccable taste. “The truth is,” he said, “I’ve been trying for years to persuade him to move in my direction, to switch over to poetry, where the big money is.”

  That brought a hearty laugh. And Lamb corrected him: “Romantic poetry.” Even Mary thought that was funny.

  “With Byron and Shelley running loose out there,” said Coleridge, “God knows we need all the help we can get. By the way, has anyone here read Frankenstein?”

  “I have,” said Mary.

  “What did you think?”

  “I saw some resemblances to ‘The Ancient Mariner.’ In fact, I’m not sure it wasn’t an homage to you.”

  “Really?”

  “Do you know Mary Shelley?” asked Dave.

  “Oh, yes.” Coleridge lit up. “She’s a talented young woman.” He glanced at Lamb for confirmation.

  “Haven’t read it,” he said. “But yes, she is.”

  Coleridge admitted the book was occasionally slow going. “She could have picked up the pacing a bit, though I’m sure she’ll figure that out for herself. But I liked the notion of an artificial man with a taste for Milton. Mary has an exquisite sense of humor.”

  MICHAEL had been a baseball fan. On a hunch, they showed up at Wrigley Field on August 25, 1922, to watch the Cubs beat the Phillies 26-23, in the highest-scoring major-league game ever. And they went to Berlin for Jack Kennedy’s celebrated “Ich bin ein Berliner” address. Finding anyone in either of those crowds was, of course, out of the question. But Shel was enjoying himself. There was an especially moving aspect to sitting in on an event armed with a historical perspective. As to finding his father, he was close to giving up.

  “You know what’s really painful?” he said, moments after they’d returned from Berlin.

  “That your father probably didn’t have time to do much of what we’ve been doing?”

  “It goes deeper than that, Dave. Truth is, I don’t know how many places he visited. But what strikes me is, we’re getting a kind of godlike view of the world.”

  Dave nodded.

  “We stood out there today, listening to Kennedy, and we know what’s coming. We know the Cold War will end, that everything will turn out okay in Europe. And we know that in five months, Kennedy will be dead.”

  “Yeah.”

  “The whole time we were listening to him, that was what kept running through my head. That he was going to be taken out by that nutcase in Dallas, and nobody would ever even know why.”

  “I know. I thought about that, too.”

  “When we were watching Lincoln, it was the same thing. And King. I don’t like knowing what’s coming.”

  Dave unclipped the converter and sat down.

  Shel’s eyes lost their focus. “I hate that part of this.”

  “I saw a movie once.”

  “Yeah?”

  “It was called TimeQuest. A time traveler goes back and does what you’re talking about: He warns JFK.”

  “How does it turn out?”

  “A lot better. We stay out of Vietnam. We get Moonbase. King survives and becomes the first black president. Kennedy dies peacefully fifty years later in his bed at Hyannisport.”

  “I wish we could arrange somethi
ng like that.”

  “So do I. But we’re talking about the ultimate hubris now. I suggest we keep our hands off.”

  DAVE’S classes at Penn had become impossible. Getting through the days talking about Greek pronouns and Latin verbs was overwhelming him. He wanted to tell his classes that he’d been to the Library at Alexandria. And to Selma. Tell them he was planning to go to classical Athens that weekend to see Prometheus Bound.

  He ached to go down to the next English Department meeting and describe his conversations with Lamb and Coleridge. That maybe, if he was in the mood, he’d wander over to Oxford this evening and have tea with A. E. Housman.

  “Life has become better than I’d ever dreamed possible,” he told Shel one evening at the Wan Ho Chinese Restaurant. “The only downside is that we haven’t been able to find your father. And that we can’t tell anybody about what we’re doing.”

  “I know, Dave.”

  “We should write a book.”

  “I’ve been doing something like that.”

  “What?”

  “I’ve been keeping a journal. Everything’s in there, pictures, recordings, my reactions. Everything.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes.”

  “What are you going to do with it?”

  “Probably nothing. It’s for me.” And, after a moment: “It seemed as if there should be some kind of record.”

  THEY went back to the Library, took Aristarchus to lunch, and recorded some more plays, mostly Sophocles and Euripides, and a substantial section of the Periclean journal. Aristarchus asked whether they’d found Michael. “It’s hard to believe,” he said, “that men with such godlike capabilities can’t locate him.”

  They sent the Periclean material, and two more plays, Troilus and The Hawks, to Aspasia. She reacted by posting a message at her Web site, pleading with them to contact her.

  That night Shel and Dave met in a restaurant in King of Prussia. Both were eating cheesesteaks when Shel said, quietly, “There’s one more possibility we haven’t tried.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Thomas Paine. My father has his collected works at home. Always thought he was really the guy who drove the Revolution.”

  He’d caught Dave in the perfect mood. “Tom Paine? Yes. Of all those guys at the beginning, he’s the one I’d most like to meet.”

  “We could go down to Emilio’s Saturday. Get some clothes.”

  PAINE had spent much of his time on the road, traveling with the army, and had been a frequent visitor at their camps. “We have a couple of dates when he was present at Valley Forge,” said Shel. “That would be the right setting. The place to find him.”

  Dave frowned. “Bring a good jacket.”

  “Not a problem.”

  “Also not a good idea.”

  “You think they’d take us for British spies?”

  “I think they’d take us for guys who don’t belong in the camp. We’d be questioned and probably jailed. If we were lucky.”

  “What do you suggest?”

  “Arrange the encounter to happen after the war.”

  “That takes all the passion out of it. Anyway, I think my father would have wanted to see him at the height of the action.”

  “Okay.” Dave googled Paine. Flipped through the entries. “Here’s one,” he said. “He was in Philadelphia in 1777. In September. Arranging for publication of The American Crisis. The Brits closed in, and he cleared out.”

  “Where’d he go?”

  “He had a friend in Bordentown, New Jersey. Joseph Kirkbride. He went up there and stayed with him through the winter.”

  BORDENTOWN lay on the Delaware River, northeast of Philadelphia. Its population was small, but it was a hotbed of anti-British sentiment. Consequently, the British sent their Hessian mercenaries to seize the town in 1776.

  Shel and Dave had no interest in landing in the middle of the fighting. Late 1777 seemed relatively safe. The British Army, by then, was still in the general neighborhood, but there was no record of action in the immediate area.

  They arrived Saturday, September 21, at 10:30 A.M.

  In someone’s backyard. Dave found himself staring at a startled woman in a bridal gown. Her eyes had gone wide, and hysterical people were staring at him. A guy who might have been a groom screamed. An older man in ceremonial garb seized a cross from a small table and thrust it in his face. A deep voice behind him growled that “It’s exactly what happened over at Robbie’s last week.” Dave would have laughed had circumstances been a bit different. Absolutely, he thought, apparitions everywhere.

  The cleric stepped forward, shielding the bride from whatever intentions Shel and Dave might have, and made the sign of the cross in the air. “Begone, Satan,” he said. “In the name of the Lord, I command you, begone. Leave this place.”

  Footsteps were rushing up behind them. And Shel’s voice: “Clear out, Dave.”

  “I say, Leave, Spawn of the Devil.”

  Dave hit the button, and moments later he was collapsing in laughter on the sofa in the town house, waving at Shel, who was coming in across the room. In near hysteria.

  When they’d calmed down, he said, “Think of the stories they’ll have to tell their grandkids.”

  “Placement was perfect,” said Dave, when he got a semblance of control over his voice. “We were right up front. I bet you couldn’t do that again in a thousand years.”

  “He’d probably just asked whether anyone had a reason why this couple should not be joined in holy wedlock.”

  “Well, I’ve been called a lot of things—”

  “All right. Shall we try again?”

  “Sure. But let’s move a little to the north. The other side of town.”

  Shel sat down with the converters. “I’ll set them to arrive a week earlier this time. Just so we don’t run into anybody who recognizes us.” He handed Dave’s unit back to him. “Ready?”

  THEY were in a field. The ground was flat, with lots of grass. There were a silo and a barn, some trees, and a grazing horse. And, just past the barn, a farmhouse. In the distance they could see a river. That would be the Delaware.

  A man carrying what looked like a hoe came out of the barn, saw them, and stopped to stare. “Bordentown should be south,” said Shel, consulting his compass.

  Before Dave could respond, a howl came from the direction of the barn. Two hounds raced out of the open doorway and charged. The guy with the hoe threw the implement aside, ran back into the barn, and emerged with a shotgun.

  “Go,” said Shel. “Clear out.”

  Dave pressed the button, watched the dogs fade into spectral light, and was glad to see the walls of Shel’s den materialize. He waited for Shel.

  And waited.

  Shel should have appeared over by the armchair near the fireplace.

  But he didn’t.

  CHAPTER 21

  When I contemplate the natural dignity of man; when I feel (for

  Nature has not been kind enough to me to blunt my feelings) for

  the honour and happiness of its character, I become irritated at the

  attempt to govern mankind by force and fraud, as if they were all

  knaves and fools. . . .

  —T HOMAS PAINE, RIGHTS OF MAN

  IT’S hard to stay cool when two drooling hounds are coming after you. Shel should have simply stayed still and used the converter to leave. But he hadn’t attached the instrument to his belt, still had it in his hands, which, ironically, was what he’d started doing after the incident with the highwaymen. If he were holding it, he’d reasoned, he could press the button in an eyeblink. Get out of there at a moment’s notice. It had even been his advice to Dave.

  The problem with having it in his hands was that it also made the device hostage to involuntary physical reactions. When the hounds showed up, Shel shrieked and flipped the device into the air.

  He almost dived after it, but reflexes took over, and he froze. The dogs growled and snarled and dr
ipped saliva and showed their teeth, but they didn’t attack. The farmer, though, had seen Dave vanish, and he now stood watching Shel with a shotgun pointed at him but held in trembling hands.

  “Don’t shoot,” said Shel, trying to look friendly.

  He was in his twenties. A kid. Yellow hair, the beginnings of a beard, sallow skin, thin lips. He just stared, with his mouth hanging open.

  “Sorry,” Shel said. “I guess we—”

  “What are you?” the kid asked.

  “I’m just—”

  “Where’d the other one go?”

  Then Dave reappeared. First the aura, a silver glow—it was silver by daylight, gold in the dark—then a human form taking shape, growing solid. The kid swung the gun toward it while he stumbled backward. The radiance went away, and Dave stood there, Dave in all his glory, gawking at the weapon, carrying two pork chops from Shel’s refrigerator.

  The dogs went after him. Dave tossed them the meat, but they paid no attention. One sank its teeth into Dave’s leg. He yelled and went down. And vanished again.

  If the kid had been scared a moment before, his mental state now went to pieces. He screamed and fired a blast at a tree. “Look,” said Shel. “I know this looks strange—”

  “Keep your hands up.” It was part screech. The weapon was a single-shot, and the kid was making no effort to reload, but the dogs were still there.

  “Okay.” Shel raised them as high as he could.

  The kid kept raising the barrel of the shotgun, signaling higher, higher. At the same time, he begged Shel not to hurt him.

  “I won’t. I wouldn’t hurt anyone. Look, my name’s Shel—”

  “Don’t tell me your name.” He was still backing away, eyes terrified. My God, at best, he was going to leave Shel with the hounds.

  The converter was lying at the base of a tree. Too far away. He couldn’t get to it before the dogs got to him.