Time Travelers Never Die

by Jack McDevitt

  “Really? And what might they have been?”

  “Two demons allegedly showed up at a wedding.”

  “You’re not serious, Tom.”

  By now, even Kirkbride was loosening up. “There were a dozen people,” he said, “who swore they simply popped in out of nowhere, then vanished again. Before everyone’s eyes. Frightful-looking creatures, they said.”

  “A week or so before that,” Paine added, “the son of one of our local farmers claimed to have seen something similar. A devil who floated down out of the sky.”

  Shel laughed. “It just amazes me what people will believe.”

  Paine finished his third muffin and expressed his compliments to Mrs. Kirkbride. Then to Shel and Dave: “We get indoctrinated when we’re young. Some of our people are as bad as those New England idiots. They hear about witches and devils, and they start seeing them.”

  “What did they look like?” asked Dave.

  “The ones at the wedding had horns,” said Kirkbride. “Eyes on fire, claws, the usual. I don’t recall hearing anything about tails. Did these creatures have tails, Melissa? Do you know?”

  “Not that I heard, but I wouldn’t be surprised.”

  “The world,” said Dave, “needs a book about common sense.”

  “I’ve already done that.”

  “I mean, common sense about other things. Not just politics.”

  Melissa took offense at that. “Tom’s book was not simply about politics,” she said.

  “You know,” said Paine, “the world really does need such a book. Something that will make a stand for reason rather than the ravings of lunatics.” He cleared his throat. “It would need a provocative title, though.”

  Shel thought about it. Smiled. “How about The Age of Reason?”

  CHAPTER 23

  My stern chase after time is, to borrow a simile from Tom Paine, like the race of a man with a wooden leg after a horse.

  —JOHN QUINCY ADAMS

  THEY left Joseph Kirkbride’s home and walked away from the town into the woods. To a place where they couldn’t be seen. “Somebody sees us come out of there,” said Dave, “and vanish, it would create some problems for them.”

  “You mean where Paine gets picked up for witchcraft and never completes The American Crisis? He hasn’t finished it yet, has he?”

  “I don’t think so. He’s published the first four parts. I don’t know what else has actually been written.”

  “So the rest of it goes by the board, and the Revolution fails. We go back to a country run by the U.K. That’s the way these things usually work on television.”

  “That’s the way.”

  “I don’t think,” said Shel, “we’d need to worry about a witchcraft trial. This is south Jersey, not New England.”

  “You saw those people at the wedding. I wouldn’t be too sure.”

  They seemed safely lost among the trees. “Ready to go?” asked Shel.

  Dave’s converter was clipped to his belt. He lifted the lid. “All set.”

  “See you at home.”

  Dave pressed the button and watched the trees and sky begin to fade, watched the familiar walls of Shel’s den take shape. The leaves and twigs underfoot were replaced by soft carpet.

  He looked for Shel.

  And waited.

  Come on, Adrian.

  HE set the converter to return to the point of origin, and went back to the forest. Shel was standing there, holding the unit in his hand, and impatiently stabbing at it with his index finger. “It doesn’t want to work,” he said. “I had a problem with it earlier, too.”

  “What’s wrong?”

  “How the hell would I know?” He sat down on the trunk of a fallen tree and removed the power pack. “It got dropped a couple of times while we were dealing with those farmers. Something’s probably loose. But let me try a test.” He handed the power pack to Dave. “See if you can make yours work with that.”

  Dave exchanged the power packs, hit the button, and went back to the town house. Moments later he’d returned to the forest. “It’s okay,” he said.

  Shel scratched one ear and looked at his own unit. “Okay. So now it’s official. It’s broken.”

  “I’ve got room for a hitchhiker.”

  “I don’t think it’s a good idea.”

  “What do you suggest?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You’re sure there isn’t another converter at home somewhere?”

  “None that I know of.”

  Dave put a hand on his unit. “So we try it with this one and find out what happens.”

  Shel ran his fingers through his hair. “Okay,” he said finally.

  Dave moved next to him and grabbed hold of his belt. “Ready?”

  “Okay.”

  Dave hit the key. The road and the countryside faded. And came back.

  “Try again,” said Shel.

  Dave tried again. It left them still standing in the woods.

  “Well.” Shel looked distinctly unhappy. “What now?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Shel sat back down on the log. He closed his eyes for a few moments, then brightened. “I have an idea.”

  DAVE returned once more to the town house. He took the converter off his belt, tied it to a cushion, set it to return to the woods, and sent it on its way.

  Except that it didn’t move. It and the cushion remained solid and immobile on the floor. He tried it a second time, with the same result.

  Damn.

  He went back to the forest, looked at Shel, and shook his head. “What happened?” asked Shel.

  “Nothing. Apparently it doesn’t like to transport pillows.”

  Shel lifted his hands at the sky. “Why me, Lord?”

  “I guess,” said Dave, “it won’t work unless somebody’s connected to it.”

  “It’s a fail-safe, Dave.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “They’ve built something in to prevent its activating accidentally. Like if you drop it.”

  “How would you do that?”

  “Damned if I know. But that’s what they’ve done.”

  “This is turning into a donkey drill.”

  “I know. Maybe it’s time I started looking for a hotel.”

  “Not yet.” A large yellow butterfly drifted past. “Can I get into your computer?”

  “Password is spiffy.”

  “Spiffy?”

  “Don’t ask.”

  DAVE returned to the town house. They needed Shel’s father. Maybe there was a better way than all the historical guesswork.

  He googled Michael Shelborne. And got hundreds of hits. Michael Shelborne at the Smithsonian. At the University of Maryland. Shelborne’s paper on temporal anomalies. His paper on slotted-line measurement. Shelborne gets Tindle Award. Kraus Award. Invited to annual Vatican symposium.

  There were several other Michael Shelbornes: a mystery writer, a former senator from Idaho, a noted chess player, a serial killer, and a pioneer in the development of stage lines in central Italy during the mid- seventeenth century.

  But he could find no clue revealing where the Michael Shelborne might have gone. Then, suddenly, he wondered how many people in seventeenth-century Italy had owned a name like Shelborne.

  He went back and looked at the biography. There wasn’t much. Shelborne’s birth date, 1570, was given as an approximation, as was his date of death, 1650. He’d lived in Caréo, near Florence, during the middle of the seventeenth century, where he’d been deeply involved in connecting Rome, Florence, and Naples via stagecoaches.

  He looked at a map: Caréo was only a short distance from Arcetri, Galileo’s home.

  DAVE was on his way out to his car, intending to drive home and change into robes, when he realized he didn’t need to go back to the Renaissance looking for Michael Shelborne. There was a much easier way to rescue Shel.

  He used the converter to put him back inside the town house at two o’clock the previ
ous Friday, when Shel was at the office. Once there, he retrieved the key to the desk from the Phillies cup. He opened the bottom desk drawer. It held both converters. One was the same one he had clipped to his belt; the other would break down later in Bordentown. He knew of no way to distinguish them. Not that it mattered. He took one, closed the drawer, and locked it.

  He set his own converter to take him back to Bordentown, and was relieved when he emerged only a few feet from Shel, whose eyes bulged when he saw the second unit. “Where’d you get that?”

  Dave explained. Shel laughed and shook his head. “Good idea.”

  “Let’s go home.”

  Shel nodded. And this time, both appeared more or less simultaneously in the town-house den.

  DAVE’S first act was to go back an additional two days and return the converter he’d borrowed to Shel’s desk. “Can’t be too careful,” he said, when the task was finished.

  “You know,” said Shel, “it looks as if we have as many converters as we could possibly want.”

  “You mean by going back and retrieving them.”

  “Yes.”

  “That might be Cardiac City.”

  “That’s begun to seem a little silly now. Anyhow, you’re okay, aren’t you?”

  “I’m okay. I’m not sure whether that would hold true if we didn’t put the converter back.” Dave was taking off his jacket. “Shel, remember the Atlantic.”

  “I know.” Shel sank into a chair. “We’re down to one converter now. So we’re not going to be able to do this anymore, the way we have been.”

  “Maybe.”

  “What do you mean, maybe?”

  “Shel, I’m not sure, but I think I’ve found your father.”

  CHAPTER 24

  Galileo was obliged to retract by those mitred marionettes who are today tyrants and the shame of Italy.

  —VOLTAIRE, NOTEBOOKS

  “WE put the extra converter away too soon,” said Shel.

  “I guess,” said Dave. “Let’s hope this is the last time.”

  Shel used the working converter to go back to the early morning and retrieve both units, for a total of three. That provided an additional one for his father, should they find him. He assured the Powers That Be that he’d replace them literally within seconds after their return from Italy.

  Now they were ready to go after Michael Shelborne again. By then, both were convinced that the man in Florence would indeed turn out to be Shel’s father. “We’re going to find out,” Shel predicted, “that he dropped the converter. And got stuck. Just the way I did.”

  They arrived in open country, in a field, on a cool morning in May 1640. Two young men, probably teens, were working in the field, about a mile away, and the first thing Shel did was look for dogs. The kids saw them. One waved. Shel and Dave waved back and started in their direction.

  They were on their knees, doing something to the soil, spreading fertilizer, perhaps. One got up as they approached. “Hello,” he said. “Are you lost?”

  “Yes,” said Dave. “We’re looking for Caréo.”

  “You have to get back on the road.” He pointed in the direction from which they’d come. “Go left. It’s about a twenty-minute walk.”

  DAVE stopped an elderly couple traveling in a cart and asked if they knew of a Michael Shelborne, who lived in Caréo.

  “Well, he used to live here,” said the woman.

  “Has he moved?”

  “Oh, no, sir. He’s dead.”

  Mòrto.

  Shel didn’t have to wait for the translation.

  “Are you sure?” asked Dave.

  “Oh, yes. It was three or four years ago, wasn’t it, Poppa?”

  “Yes,” Poppa replied. “He was a good man. Did you know him?”

  Shel showed the photo.

  “Oh, no,” Poppa said. “Michael was much older than this man.”

  The woman studied it. “It could be him. When he was young.”

  A young woman confirmed it. “That’s him,” she said. “He’s buried at Santo Pietro.”

  “A churchyard?” asked Shel, in English.

  Dave translated.

  “Sì.”

  “He wasn’t much of a churchgoer,” Shel objected. “It must be somebody else.”

  “Can you show us?” Dave asked.

  The woman’s name was Carlotta. She was attractive, with dark, luminous eyes and a quiet smile. She said it was only a short distance, and they fell in behind her. Shel walked almost in a daze. He wasn’t sure what he’d expected to find in Galileo’s Italy, but certainly nothing like this. For one thing, his father was immortal. Whatever else might change, he would be there, always ready to laugh, to demonstrate what living really meant. Carpe diem. Make the most of your time because you will not forever enjoy the daylight. And that very attitude had somehow imbued him with a cloak of invulnerability.

  Carts clattered past. People worked in the fields. Farm animals nibbled on grass. Occasionally, someone rode by on a horse.

  Carlotta knew everyone by name, greeted every person they passed, answered questions about her mother’s well-being by saying she was all right. Coming along. Bene. When Dave asked, she explained that her mother had recently delivered another child but had had a difficult time for a while.

  When she learned that Shel was Michael’s son, she offered condolences. “You look like him,” she added. The remark induced another chill.

  They moved at a steady pace, around a curve out of a cluster of trees, and a town came into view. It was a small town, maybe a hundred houses. Carlotta pointed out an attractive villa with a broad deck and bright green shutters, atop a hill. “That is where he lived,” she said.

  “Michael Shelborne?”

  “Yes.”

  They passed a winery and more houses. And finally they approached an old stone church. It was small and looked abandoned. Shel doubted they could have gotten fifty people into it.

  “No,” said Carlotta. “Santo Pietro’s still has an active congregation. But they have no money.”

  Its lonely steeple thrust up through the trees. “It doesn’t look safe,” said Dave.

  Carlotta smiled. “I can’t imagine anyplace safer.”

  An angel with spread wings dominated the churchyard, standing guard over three graves. “Priests,” their guide said. “Father Patrizio, Father Agostino, and Father Cristiano. They were good men. Father Agostino baptized me.”

  “Carlotta,” said Dave, translating for Shel, “do you know what Shelborne’s connection was with this church?”

  “Only that he was a member.”

  “Of Santo Pietro’s?” said Shel. “That’s not possible.”

  “I think he must have been. He left his estate to the parish.”

  “You mean, to the church?”

  “Not directly. As I understand it, it was left to the parròchia. Had he left it to the church, it would have simply gone to Rome. This way, Father Valentini was able to use it to help the poorer families in the district.”

  “You think well of him,” said Dave. “Father Valentini.”

  “Of course.”

  “You do not sound as if you care much for Rome, however.”

  “It is like everything else. The priests have no real power. They do what they can to make life easier for us. Without them, I’m not sure what hope we would have.”

  THEY went behind the church, where there was another statue, probably of Mary, looking heavenward. She held a tablet, inscribed with the words RIPOSI IN PACE. And maybe two hundred headstones. They looked through the markers, and it was Carlotta who found it. She pointed and stood aside.

  It was a plain headstone with an engraved cross.

  MICHAEL SHELBORNE

  M. 1637

  “Date of death?” asked Shel.

  Dave nodded. “Yes.” The graveyard was very still. “Three years ago.”

  “That can’t be right. The Internet entry said he died in 1650.”

  “It was a guess.”r />
  “He’s only been gone a few months,” said Shel.

  “It’s different here. It looks as if he’s been here for years.”

  “He wasn’t a believer.”

  While they stood looking at the marker, a door opened in the church, and a priest appeared. He raised a hand in greeting, seemed about to go back inside, when Shel signaled, asking him to wait.

  It was Father Valentini. Carlotta introduced them, then explained she had work to do. Shel gave her some carlinos. She tried to decline, but he insisted.

  When she was gone, the priest invited them inside. “How may I help you?” he asked.

  “Adrian,” said Dave, “thinks that Michael Shelborne may have been his father.”

  “There is a resemblance,” said the priest.

  “Father,” said Shel, “can you tell me if there was a connection between Michael and Galileo?”

  The priest’s features brightened. He was about sixty, his hair almost gone. His beard was white, and he had sharp amber eyes. “Galileo? Yes. Michael Shelborne knew him, but it was a long time ago.”

  “Galileo denied all knowledge.”

  “Ah, you’ve been to see him. I’m surprised you got past the Inquisition.”

  “Is there any reason he would have lied?”

  “I don’t think that’s what happened. Your father was, as far as I know, only a casual acquaintance, and that was a long time ago.”

  “Can you tell me when?”

  “I believe it was at the time of the nova.”

  “The nova?”

  “The new star. Professor Galilei was teaching mathematics at the University of Padua when it happened. It was visible for a year and a half, I believe, and was for a time the brightest object in the sky. Except the sun and moon, of course.” He shook his head. “It was so bright, we could see it in the twilight. But you’re too young to remember. We never did figure out what it was. A sign of some sort, perhaps.”