by White, Gwynn
I didn’t bother to consult Waylon. I said, “Mary, I can cure you.”
Letting her nightgown fall back around her body, sitting down on the bed with her legs over the side, she said, “I prayed fuh a miracle an’ God ansuhed mah prayers.” There were tears in her eyes.
I thought how to explain our ship to her. I said, “Mary, I’m an angel helper, not an angel exactly. I came from the sky, but I came in a metal ship. I have miracle medicine that can cure you, but you have to go with me to the ship. I can cure your wounds with a combination of heat, light and ointment.”
Mary started trembling. With the look of an abused, terrified animal, she leapt off the bed and cowered in the corner. She said, “I cain’t go. I be caught. I be whipped again.”
I said, “Mary, we were sent to help you. You should let us fulfill our mission.”
Waylon cleared his throat. I knew he wanted to talk this over with me.
Mary said, “I do not want tuh be a disobedient child.” She looked toward the ceiling, placing her hands together, her fingers pointing upward. “Lord, fo’give me. Thy will be done.” Turning to me, she said, “It will be safer tuhnight. Aftuh dark. It will be harder tuh see us.”
I said, “That’s fine. We’ll come back then. We’ll meet you right here.”
Mary grabbed my arm. She said, “God knows everythin’. He already knows dis. I don’t know if all angels know all things. But slaves are free now, by gov’ment order, if we can get tuh a free place. I in love wid Jessey. He fleein’ tuhnight wid Henry and Basil. I was supposed tuh go, too, but I so sick I can hardly stand up. Can dey come wid me tuh your ship? Den we can leave right aftuh you cure me. Can you bless us and help us get away? Please. Oh, please. I love God wid all mah heart. I try tuh be da best person I can be given my circumstances.”
I said, “That would be fine.”
My heart was breaking for this woman. We could help her. I felt this didn’t violate the Law of Noninterference to any significant degree. She and the other former slaves were planning to escape anyway. I’d give her treatment that would heal her back within hours. That’s all. It wasn’t like I was arranging their method of escape. If I wanted to, I could take them in the time travel pod to a completely different time and place. I wasn’t doing anything like that, just giving this woman treatment to help her wounds heal.
Mary said, “When it gets dark and you see lights flickerin’ in da windows of da big house, it should be safe fuh you tuh get me.” She thought for a moment and added, “I know you’re usually invisible—watchin’ ovah me, but invisible. Can you make me invisible, too?”
I said, “No, Mary, I can’t.”
She said, “We should leave at night den. It’s da only way. Knock three times on mah door, so’s I know it’s you.”
Waylon moved the chair. He opened the door a sliver and peeked out. Then he opened it wider and led the way back outside. I followed, shutting the door behind me.
We walked in silence until we reached the edge of the forest. Then we slipped under the cover of leaves and shadows and walked to our pod.
Waylon said, “I’m not sure you should heal her.”
I said, “Law of Noninterference, right?”
He said, “Yes.”
I explained my reasoning. “The amendment to the original law states that in the event that a time traveler needs to save their own life or the life of a fellow traveler or needs to bring back the dead body of a traveler, they are to use their judgment regarding the law. Right?”
Waylon lifted his arm to move a branch out of his way. He said, “Yes.”
I said, “Those rules were made before actual time travel started. It comes out of the Theory of the Multiverse. It’s just a theory. No one knows if it’s true or not. We’ll know more as we run missions. In the meantime, think about it. By simply showing ourselves to people, we’re changing their lives. And yet figuring out who we can trust and interacting with them is a part of this mission that we’re on right now. Mary thinks we’re angels. What if she becomes a preacher because of that? Then we’ve changed her life in a significant way by just showing up and letting her see us. Now what if she becomes a preacher and changes someone else in some significant way? Then the multiverse could be changed even more. I think that as long as we don’t move her to a different time-space, we’re obeying the basic idea behind the Theory of the Multiverse.”
Waylon said, “We’ll do it your way. All of this gets reviewed by the TTA when we get back home, anyway. Everything’s subject to evaluation after missions are run and data collected.”
After returning to our pod, we recorded the events that had just taken place and rested until dark.
When night fell, we left our ship. The moon was bright enough to light our way. Passing by the lake, I remembered that Waylon and I had planned to go swimming. That would not happen now. We made our way through the woods to the edge of the plantation property. We batted biting insects away from our faces. They were so incredibly annoying, I felt glad they had all gone extinct.
The lights were on in the main house. No one seemed to be outside. The grounds were quiet except for the incessant night chatter I knew to be frogs and toads and insects.
We made our way down to Mary’s cabin. I jumped when a horse whinnied. We moved farther into the shadows, but no one appeared.
When we finally reached the cabin, Waylon knocked on the door three times. He did it so quietly, I wasn’t sure Mary would hear it.
The door opened a crack. Mary was wearing a striped cotton dress. It must have been painful for her to have taken off the nightgown and put it on. She looked pretty in it.
A smile flickered over her face as she stepped outside.
In silence, we snuck around the side of the barn and hurried to the edge of the forest. Then we stepped into the leafy coolness, appreciating the cover it would give us.
Mary said, “Look at da moonlight comin’ down through da trees. It makes the tip o’ da leaves silver. God made da world so beautiful, didn’t He?”
Waylon replied, “The world really is beautiful. Moonlight on trees is one of the most exquisite things I’ve ever seen.”
I wondered if we’d ever return Earth to this degree of richness and splendor. I could smell the dirt beneath our feet, the flowers that bloomed throughout the forest and on the plantation, pine trees somewhere nearby. Frogs and toads filled the night with their odd songs.
The world outside of enclaves like the TTA was brutal. Winds howled and blew parched dirt and sand into the air, turning it dark and gritty. The land that had been the United States—the land mass where the TTA is located—had shrunk in size centuries earlier when areas along the coasts were drowned by rising seas. Enclaves all over the globe had it good. But the human population was increasing so rapidly, we’d soon outgrow that space. We had to become more aggressive, and without the use of AgStim.
I felt a mild tremor in my hands and a quick run of heartbeats from the injection I’d given myself earlier. It wasn’t much, just enough to allow me to risk possible violation of the Law of Noninterference, my own and Waylon’s lives, and the lives of the people we were trying to help in another space-time location.
Our people were going to have to get a whole lot more aggressive, though, to push beyond the comfort of our peaceful enclaves. We were going to have to experiment with terraforming Earth’s dead regions, hoping it doesn’t backfire somehow and wipe us all out. And there are plans to try once again to establish a Mars colony. The thinking is that eventually Earth will die and the best chance for human survival is to inhabit more than one planet.
Mary needed help walking on the dead tree crossing the stream, so I supported her by placing my hands under her arms from behind and guiding her across. She winced when my fingers accidentally touched her back.
The moonlight lit tiny waves rippling over stones and branches. Fireflies blinked on and off throughout the forest and all along the stream.
It was a beautiful night, y
et we found ourselves in the midst of human-created ugliness.
When we got to the place where we had landed our ship, Mary stood still. She put her hands to her mouth, as though trying to stifle her words or the amount of shock she was experiencing. She said, “You came down from da heavens in dis?”
I knew of the religion from her space-time. I said, “This is how we came here. We don’t have wings.”
Mary said, “You told me dat you’re an angel helper. Do da angels have wings?”
I said, “Yes. Yes, they do.” I had no idea about that, but better not to interfere with her belief system.
Waylon separated the panels that allowed entry into the pod.
I told Mary to follow him.
Extraordinarily trusting of us, she followed.
When we got inside, she marveled at everything. She had never seen furniture or utensils or tools like ours. She’d never seen holographic artwork. She’d never seen light that didn’t come from a natural source, never seen lamps that didn’t have flames flickering inside them. She accepted it all by believing that we were supernatural beings and these were simply manifestations of our extraordinary powers.
I led her to the medical bay. I asked her to remove her dress and any undergarment covering her back.
She cried as her dress and an underdress ripped more skin from her back.
When she’d completely exposed her back, I asked her to lie on her stomach on the treatment table. I explained the procedure she was about to go through. Heat and light would wash over her back. It would hurt, but it would sterilize and knit her skin together. It would be almost healed when we were done. Ointment would do the rest, and that would be soothing. I told her to keep her eyes closed.
Mary said, “I am ready.”
I moved to the edge of the room. I blinked to make my contact lenses shield my eyes and to turn down the amount of empathy I would feel, so that I could run the procedure through to the end.
I said, “I’m going to begin now.”
Mary shrieked as the light and heat covered her back and intensified streams of it moved up and down each and every laceration. She screamed for the entire duration of the treatment. At the end, when I could see on my contact lenses that the lacerations had knitted almost entirely together and the pus and infection were gone, I initiated the soothing part of the treatment. Ointment was sprayed along every gash where she had been whipped.
Mary cried, I’m sure at that point from relief.
I asked how she felt.
Her body was trembling, but she said, “Good. Most o’ da pain in mah back is gone.”
I pushed a button. Table-length mirrors rose on either side of her. I said, “Look at your back.”
Forgetting modesty, she lifted herself up on her elbows, exposing her breasts. She gazed in the mirrors, a look of astonishment crossing her face. She said, “I’m healed.”
I said, “Just about. In the next couple of hours, everything will heal completely.”
She dressed. I gave her potion to drink that would speed the healing process. I wanted to give her stronger medicine, but this was the only one deemed safe for pregnant women. She said that it didn’t taste like anything she’d ever eaten or drank before, which had to be true. It came from a pungent plant developed and grown in the healers’ enclave.
After crossing the stream on our way back, gingerly balancing herself on the tree trunk, not needing any help this time, Mary turned to me and said, “May I pray tuh you fuh another favuh?”
I said, “You can.” We’d see afterward if I could answer it.
She said, “I have two babies dat was taken from me. Aftuh we escape, when I am truly free, I want tuh find dem. Will you watch ovah me and mah babies from heaven and help me find dem?”
I said, “Sure.” People from many eras prayed all the time. Hundreds, thousands of prayers went unanswered. No one really expected to have all their prayers answered. All those unanswered prayers just got tucked away in the back of people’s minds. They kept praying until the day they died, thinking God hadn’t gotten around to it yet. I knew I could promise Mary I’d help her and at the very end of her life, if she hadn’t been reunited with her children, she’d just tell herself I must have a long list of prayers to answer before getting to hers. On the other hand, if we found that the Law of Noninterference wasn’t necessary, I’d look for Mary’s children and bring her to them if she wanted. I liked this woman. She’d suffered enough.
By the time we stepped out of the forest, the moon was directly overhead. We walked to the barn and were coming around it when we heard loud voices.
Mary grabbed me by the arm. She said, “Oh, no, massuh’s back! He wasn’t supposed tuh be back tuhnight!”
We hid behind the barn.
Mary said, “Hear dat yellin? Dat massuh’s voice. He down by da men’s slave cabin—where Jessey and Henry sleep.”
We listened to the voices, and Mary told us who they belonged to.
Master: Where is Mary? You tell me right now! I ain’t gonna have any nigger o’ mine walkin’ off. I heard the rumors about you all plannin’ ta go get your freedom. Where is Mary?
His words were slurred, his voice growling.
Jessey: I don’t know wha Mary is. I don’t know. She wasn’t feelin’ good tuhday and went tuh huh cabin soon’s as huh work was done.
Master: You son of a bitch! You know where she is. You tell me right now!
Then, quiet. We watched as the plantation owner came up a hill and crossed the lawn into the main house.
Mary led the way down to the men’s quarters, which turned out to be a log cabin, but larger than the one Mary stayed in.
She ran up to one of two men standing outside the building. They embraced. I couldn’t hear what she was saying from where Waylon and I were hiding in the shadows.
Mary brought the two men over to us. The one she had hugged, obviously Jessey, had tears in his eyes. He said, “You are da sign we need. You ansuhed mah prayer fuh God and our guardian angels tuh watch ovah us. We leavin’ here tunight. We have people gonna get us all da way up north. It gettin’ dangerous here, since the massuh heard ’bout bunch o’ slaves leavin’ da plantation couple miles down da road.”
Dogs started barking. Torches moved in the night, burning through the darkness like fiery ghosts. Men shouted.
The plantation owner had gathered a bunch of men. I had no idea who they were. Neighbors? Paid workers?
He pointed at our group. I doubt he saw Waylon and me for what we were. We would have appeared only as humanoid shapes in the darkness. We moved behind two trees that were close to each other. He said, “Those two! You get those two!”
I thought for a moment he meant Waylon and me. It turned out he meant Jessey and Henry.
A group of men grabbed them and wrestled each of them over to a separate tree. Slamming their stomachs against the bark, they pulled their arms around the trunk and tied their hands together on the other side. They ripped their shirts off their backs.
Then, Whack!
I’ll never forget the sounds of the shrieking, the barking dogs, the Twack! of the whips.
By the time it was over, the plantation owner’s words had become increasingly slurred. Drinking from a glass bottle and wiping his mouth on his sleeve, he shouted in a primitive, animalistic voice filled with rage, “Hang ’em! They were plannin’ to leave anyway. They’re all free now! All the niggers are free—can you even imagine that? My property, all gone. You make an example outta them right now! Boys, bring the rest of ’em out. Make ’em watch!”
Mary ran out of the shadows. Waylon tried to grab her. He reached too far as she tore herself from his grasp. He fell—right into the area lit by the moon and the flickering torches where everyone could see him.
Dogs continued barking. The people went deadly silent.
Jessey, Henry and Basil stared at him. I’m sure they thought an angel had stepped up to save them, that he would use some kind of supernatural power to smite t
heir enemies and rescue them.
The other men, the tan ones now restraining barking dogs on leashes to keep them from attacking, also stared. They did not think we were angels.
Perhaps aided by alcohol, the plantation owner recovered from the shock of encountering a type of humanoid creature he’d never seen before, at least enough to respond. He staggered closer to Waylon. Then, raising his bottle in the air, he shouted, “The niggers have brought a demon into our world! That nigger woman there—Basil—she came to us from Louisiana! Auctioneer told me nothin’ ’bout her except she’s strong and a good worker. Well, that may be, but I always suspected her of practicin’ voodoo. Just look at her eyes, all mysterious and lit with evil. There are times when her eyes are blank and a man can see his reflection in them. Deuteronomy 18:10: ‘There shall not be found among you any one that maketh his son or his daughter to pass through the fire, or that useth divination, or an observer of times, or an enchanter, or a witch…’ Men, let the dogs go!”
In his inebriated state, he seemed to expect the dogs to go after Basil because that’s what he had in mind.
I watched in horror as the dogs attacked Mary. He didn’t seem to care, as though he intended for her to be next.
Five large dogs raced toward her. They knocked her to the ground, sank their teeth into her flesh and shredded her alive. She screamed until she went unconscious or death took her.
I sat down with my back to the closest tree, held my stomach and wept in silence. Tears poured down my face. I was terrified for Waylon. I wanted to help, but I thought the best way to do that was to remain hidden. If Waylon or any of the slaves ran into the forest, I’d run with them to the pod, hide them under its camouflage cover and then move them somewhere else in space-time. If I made myself visible, I’d never win against the plantation owner, his men and the dogs. I realized that I could turn my empathy level way up, so that I’d begin sharing thoughts and feelings with everyone nearby. That would scramble the minds of everyone from the time period we were visiting, as their brains weren’t evolved enough to handle it. However, the degree of hostility and fear in their minds would either drive me insane or kill me and I’d be no help to anyone.