Rebel in Time

Chapter 21

They had been talking, explaining the apparatus to the admiral, but they grew silent when Troy came up. Seeing him dressed like this drove home the realization that this was not just another experiment, that he would be gone soon. Though they had planned this together he was the one who was leaving, who would travel through time, who would leave this world forever. For the instant he was gone he would be dead as far as they were concerned, would have been dead for a century or more. Now that the moment had come, there was also the understanding that this was something more than time travel. It was also execution.

'I have never seen so many long faces in my entire life,' Troy said. 'Cheer up — it's not the end of the world. In fact, I am going to make sure that it won't be.'

'You can still change your mind,' Kleiman said. 'We would understand…'

'Well I wouldn't. Here I am about to go to a more healthy world, to escape from all the smog and pollution, the threat of the atomic bomb, television commercials, all that — and you want to stop me.'

'We don't want to stop you, Troy,' Roxanne said, stepping forward and taking him by the arms. 'I think that you are the bravest man that I have ever met and I want to wish you all the luck in the world.' She leaned forward and kissed him, then turned quickly away before she did something stupid like crying.

'Ready to go when you say,' Kleiman said, pointing at the controls. 'Everything set for your arrival on the first of August in the year eighteen fifty-nine. At around three in the morning and, if we can believe the newspaper files, it is raining like bejeezus. Are you sure that this is the date you want?'

'Positive. The admiral and I worked it out very carefully. McCulloch will have been there for over a year now, so whatever his plans are they should be well under way. It is those activities that should enable me to find him. The war won't start for a year and a half yet, so not only do I have time to track him down, but there is still time enough to put a monkey-wrench into whatever bit of nastiness he is up to.'

'Sounds good,' Kleiman agreed. 'Now the other thing. You remember, you promised to let us know tonight how you would go about getting a message to us. Something that would tell us how the affair finished, what McCulloch was trying to do. Have you worked it out?'

'I have. A very simple idea. I am going to write up a report and seal it into a bottle. Really seal it, even try to get a glass blower to melt the neck of the bottle shut. I'll put that in a solid box and bury it about six feet deep in a spot where you will be easily able to find it.'

'Where?'

'Right there.' Troy pointed to the granite rock before them. 'Down on the north side. All you have to do is dig-'

'Great!' Kleiman said. 'Of course it will also mean moving all of the equipment out of the lab, then tearing up the concrete floor. I can hardly wait. We'll get onto it right away.'

'Well, at least wait until I have gone!'

They were silent then, all of them, staring at the grey rock where it projected up from the scuffed laboratory floor. Down there, under the foundations, under the ground, was the message. If Troy had indeed left that message in the past, then it must be buried there right now. It had been lying in that spot for well for over a century. Buried safely beside the rock, when this had been only farmland, before they had been born, before this laboratory was even built. It was an unnerving thought.

'We'll wait,' Roxanne said. 'This is important enough — and new enough — for us not to get involved with time paradoxes at this stage. We will have to think about them some time. But not just now.'

'Amen,' said the admiral.

'Seconded,' Kleiman said. 'Time paradoxes have to be avoided at any stage. You must beware of doing or saying anything that might affect events. We have no way of visualizing the consequences.'

Troy nodded and seized up the well-worn saddlebags. 'It's time to go,' he said.

'A good idea,' Kleiman agreed, pointing to the metal brackets fixed to the stone surface. 'I'm putting a wooden platform there. It will raise you about an inch above the surface of the stone. So you should drop that amount when you arrive — better bend your knees. I would rather have you above the stone than, well, inside it by a fraction of an inch. That is another matter that needs investigating. So here we go-'

Troy helped him fix the platform into place, then clambered up onto it. The admiral handed him the saddlebags and they were ready. There didn't seem to be much to say. The admiral looked grim; Kleiman and Roxanne were busy at the controls.

'All ready,' Kleiman said, his hand poised over the red actuator button. 'Count of three, okay?'

'Okay. Let's go. Geronimo.'

'One.'

Troy flexed his knees.

'Two.'

There was a frozen silence. Troy saw that Kleiman's hand was shaking, his lips working in silence.

'Do it, man, do it now.' Troy said.

'Three.'

Darkness.

Emptiness.

A sensation of nothing. Or a sensation of lack of sensation? It lasted an instant — or perhaps an eternity. Troy couldn't tell, it was too different. It could have been over even as it began, or it could have continued for an unmeasurable time. As he tried to think about it, even as he began, it ended.

Heavy, warm rain beat down upon his shoulders and something hard smacked against the soles of his boots, rough stone, tripping him. He tried to regain his balance in the rain-filled darkness but couldn't. He slipped and fell, slithering down the rock face into the mud, the breath half-knocked out of him. He had a moment of panic as he groped in the darkness for the saddlebags. They were there, it was all right.

Sudden lightning cut through the night, the bolt striking so close by that the rumble of thunder arrived right on top of the flash. The lightning flared and was gone, but for an instant there he had been able to see through the thick rain.

The black form of the projecting rock was clear, as well as the outline of trees against the sky. But the laboratory was gone as though it had never existed. Of course, it didn't exist, not here, not at this time. It still had to be built, its existence was still a probability in the distant future.

He had arrived. Fairfax County, Virginia. A few miles north of the nation's capital.

The summer of the year 1859.

Clutching the saddlebags he climbed to his feet and stood with his back against the rock, rubbing the rain from his eyes. He had done it. 1859. But it meant nothing to him. He felt numb, the truth of the situation just couldn't penetrate. Only the rain had any reality.

What should the next step be? Sitting put, that was obvious. When it was daylight he had to chart the location of this particular ridge of stone, the exact spot where he had arrived so he could be sure of finding it again. When the time came he would bury the message here. It was important, not only to those yet unborn who would someday dig for it in the distant future, but was vitally important to him as well. It was a link, no matter how tenuous, with the world that he had left forever. He settled down against the rock to wait.

The rain slackened and Troy was surprised to see that the eastern horizon was already growing light. He had to remember to make a note of that for the others. Calibration was important, that's what Kleiman always said. Still, a few hours difference over the immense span of the years, that wasn't too bad. He would have to check the date too, just in case.

The rain died down to a steady drizzle, then stopped. The air was close and heavy; it was going to be a hot day. As the sky brightened the mist lifted and a grassy field began to emerge from the darkness, running down from the ridge of granite to the woods beyond. A track, a cowpath really, cut close by. He heard a distant mooing and the clanking of a cowbell; there was a farm not too distant. Nor should this spot be hard to find again. The ridge of rock, shaped somewhat like a ship, rose from the summit of a small hill, and it was the only bit of rock in sight. The cowbells sounded closer now, and the sound of heavy, slow footsteps.

They came out of the woods one behind the other, a file of small brown cattle. The leader rolled her eyes at him as she approached, then moved out around him. Troy watched her pass then turned back.

The boy was standing at the edge of the trees, looking at him.

Troy did not move when the boy started forward again. He was about twelve years old, dressed in patched trousers and shirt. He carried a length of green willow to use on the cows. His hair was blond and thick. His skin spattered with freckles. His bare toes squelched through the mud as he walked up and stopped before Troy. He just looked up at him, saying nothing.

'The rain stopped,' Troy said. The boy tilted his head.

'You talk funny for a nigger,' he said. He had a rural Virginia accent himself, no different from the ones Troy had heard countless times before.

'I'm from New York.'

'Never met a Yankee nigger before. You lost?'

'No, just travelling south. Got caught out in the rain, got lost. Going to Washington. Can you tell me the way?'

'Of course I know the way,' the boy said contemptuously, swinging the willow at a clump of grass. 'Right ahead to the cart track then you gonna turn left into Tysons Corners and then you reach the pike. You're not very smart if you don't know that.'

'I told you, I'm not from around these parts.'

'Goldy, dang your thick hide, get out of that!' The boy called out suddenly, then ran after the cows.

Troy looked after him, aware of the tension draining away. It had worked all right. His first meeting. But just with a boy. What would happen when he met other people? For one thing, he wasn't going to talk Yankee any more. Could he fake a thick handkerchief-head accent? Sho' nuff. He had better do it — his life might very well depend upon it. He had heard enough of that kind of talk in the army, big thick kids from the south, no education, Army even had to teach some of them to read. Yassuh, yassuh. It sounded pretty fake. But he would just have to learn to do it. Listen to how the other blacks talked. Do the same. But he must remember that until he felt secure he must talk as little as possible.

The boy and the cattle were vanishing down the path. Troy turned his back on them, threw the saddlebags over his shoulder, then started in the opposite direction. He patted his pockets as he went; everything was there.

Washington, District of Columbia, was ahead.

Also, somewhere out there as well, was Colonel McCulloch. They had an appointment that the colonel didn't know anything about.