His smile was slow and sweet. “I like it.” He hesitated. “Norm used to talk about being here. Snow outside, fresh bread smell from the oven and a pot of chili on the stove. Shut away from the world with his Elaine. He wasn’t like some of the other married guys, you know. He never strayed. He fought for her, lived for when he could come home to her.”
“But he didn’t.” Mel’s voice was flat, hiding the emotion his words had stirred. It was odd to miss someone you’d never met, but Mel did. The rift, the sense of loss wasn’t huge, but it was always with her. The weird part, she didn’t have that same feeling about her own dad. She wished she’d known him, of course, but it wasn’t the same.
“He shouldn’t have died,” Jack said, putting into words the feeling Mel had never let herself think, let alone say out loud. He looked drawn and tired—and every inch his age.
“You should sit down,” she said. It was easier to focus on that than what he’d said. “The living room is through there.”
“Can’t we sit there?” he asked, nodding toward the kitchen table.
“Of course.” Mel started toward the table, but stopped. “Would you like something to drink?” Did she have anything but soda to offer him? She hadn’t had time to get to the store and restock.
“Diet Dr. Pepper would be fine,” he said, as if she’d spoken out loud. “In the can.”
She got them both a cold one, her thoughts tumbling uselessly in all directions. Wondering how he knew her favorite drink. Why he was here. She slid onto the opposite bench. She was a tall girl, but he sat taller than she did and their knees bumped slightly under the table.
He took a drink, then lowered the can to the table top. His gaze seemed to bore into her, laying bare her soul. Mel looked down, away from his gaze, remembering a time when that table had been Gran’s biography assembly area, before the move to the dining room. In her mind, the surface was covered again with pictures and the pages of Norm’s biography that were half written in Gran’s spidery handwriting. For a moment the pain of missing her was as sharp as if Gran had died yesterday. Grief was like that, she’d learned. It would retreat for a time, then return when least expected.
“You still miss her,” Jack said. It wasn’t a question.
Mel looked up and nodded, a lump clogging her throat.
“You shouldn’t have to.”
She shrugged. “Gran always said life isn’t for wimps.”
Jack smiled. “She nailed it.”
Mel could have sat there smiling at him all morning, but curiosity was a virus inside her head, even if it did kill the cat. “That was a neat trick you pulled with that picture. How did you get a picture of my temporary tattoo? Did Rockman get it for you? I never did trust that guy.”
Instead of answering her, Jack slid his hand in the inside pocket of his expensive looking, dark suit and pulled out an envelope. He slid it toward her.
With one swift wary glance at him, Mel opened it and pulled out a series of snapshots. They were all of her forties twin in a variety of poses. In one, she was with the captain of the famous Memphis Belle, and in another, she was behind the wheel of a Jeep. All the photos were in black and white and clearly aged.
“Who is she?” Mel set the photos down. “She could be my twin.” She could be me, she thought, wanting to laugh at the thought, but for some reason she couldn’t.
“She…” he stopped. He ran a hand through his hair, the gesture oddly familiar and endearing. He looked at her ruefully. It was a cute look on him. “I’ve had sixty years to think about it and now that I’m here, I don’t know where to begin.”
“Usually it’s best to begin at the beginning,” Mel suggested.
“The beginning. If only I knew what it was,” he said so softly she almost missed it.
“Is there something you wanted to tell me about Norm?” she asked, hoping to prompt him. Curiosity was a very uncomfortable emotion.
He looked at her then. “Yes, it’s about Norm. And you and me and what we did sixty years ago—what we shouldn’t have done.”
“What could you and Norm do then that would affect me now?”
“Not me and Norm.” He hesitated, as if at the edge of a dive, and then said in a rush, “You and I.”
Mel blinked. She couldn’t have heard him right. “I wasn’t born sixty years ago.” It was stating the obvious, but she felt it still needed to be said.
For some reason, this appeared to help him relax. His shoulders rose and fell in a quick sigh. He looked apologetic.
“I can’t believe I’m messing this up, but there just isn’t a good way to explain. It’s so unbelievable.”
Jack seemed to be a few marbles short of a full complement. “What is?”
He held up one of the photos. “This isn’t your twin, Mel. This is you.”
Mel blinked again. It wasn’t useful, but it was something to do. Make that more than a few marbles short. She was, she realized, alone in the house with a loony tune.
“Norm shouldn’t have died sixty years ago. You…we—changed history and now we have to change it back. Actually, you have to change it back.”
Mel swallowed, trying to wet a suddenly dry throat. He didn’t look dangerous and she could kick his butt, but she didn’t want to beat up an old man, even if he was insane.
“And you know this because…”
“You told me sixty years ago. I sent you back to tell me and…you told me.”
Funny he didn’t look insane, but what did insane look like? Humoring him seemed like the best course to take for now. “Really? That’s very…interesting.”
Jack grinned, as if he knew what she was thinking.
“You don’t remember it, of course, because for you, our meeting hasn’t happened yet. The past is still in your future.”
“I suppose that would…explain it.” The next question, the obvious one was how she told him all this, but she already knew. He’d named his freaking plane The Time Machine and Gran hadn’t raised a total fool, though Jack clearly thought differently. He looked so serious, so sincere. A pity he was nuts. Who let him out?
His expression turned rueful again.
“When you told me you were from the future, I didn’t believe you either at first.”
Okay, humoring him wasn’t working for her. She needed a new plan, but what?
“I went before I left the plane,” he said.
“People can’t really—what did you say?”
“I went before I left the plane.”
Her stomach dropped, not just to her feet, but to China, at least. “How did you know I wet my pants up there?” She hadn’t told anyone she wet her pants before she left the plane.
“Is that what you meant? You never told me that part.” Jack grinned.
Maybe her new plan should involve keeping her mouth shut.
“You said it was a sure way I could make you believe that I do have a time machine and that I can, and did, send you back in time, if I needed to.” He leaned forward, his expression urgent. “We did things and your family got wiped out. When I met you in the past, you had a large, happy family.” He looked around. “Not this.”
She stared at him, trying to process what he was saying. It couldn’t be true…and yet…a dark tunnel formed around her and began to close in. She heard him make a sharp sound and he jumped up. She felt his hands turning her so he could push her head down between her legs.
“Deep breaths,” he said. He sounded a long way away.
The only problem, there was no way to get her head down far enough or breathe deep enough to clear it of this.
* * * * *
December 12, 1942, Thirty thousand feet above Paris, France
They’d left at 1215 hours, heading across the channel toward Romilly-Sur-Seine. No problems reaching the target, but it was obscured by cloud cover, so they turned back toward Paris and some rail yards, their target of last resort. The Time Machine was one of only six planes that actually dropped their bombs, because even this
target was partially obscured. They weren’t sure if they hit anything useful. Enemy planes sighted, but they made a pass at them, got shot at, a couple got knocked out of the sky and they took their toys and went home. The chatter was cheerful and profane. Relief was as palpable as their breath in the cold air.
It was luck, not skill today. The formation had been ragged to non-existent and most were returning to base with their bombs. Colonel Wray wasn’t going to be happy. Jack could see more drills, more training ahead.
He sighed. The Ram claimed he got a glimpse of the Eiffel Tower through the bomb sight. Maybe he had. Jack hoped it would still be there when this was all over. Not the way he’d hoped to see France. He’d wanted to stroll Paris streets, talk to Paris people, not bomb it to oblivion with the 500 pound bombs in The Time Machine’s belly.
Jack didn’t waste a lot of time thinking about why he was here. He knew that. In the month since their group went operational, he’d learned it didn’t pay to think a lot about the deep stuff. His life, his death, all that was out of his hands, no matter how well he flew his bird. Better pilots than him had already gone down, worse ones than he were still around. Jack figured God already knew the outcome and the survivors, so no sense worrying about when and where. He needed to just do his job until he couldn’t anymore.
It was easy to not think too deep in the cockpit of a Fort. There was so much annoying little crap to think about. The leg room was non-existent. His heated suit only heated him in the heat of battle when he didn’t need it. Then it held pooled sweat against his body until he could get back to the station and strip it off. On the up side, the deep cold did numb his legs and a body aching from the vibration of the Fort’s four engines. His arms trembled from the effort of keeping the huge plane level and in its place in the formation. She had a mind of her own and fought him coming and going.
Despite the misery of the vibration, Jack was glad all four engines were running. That painful vibration meant they stayed in the sky. If he focused on being grateful, he could almost forget the metal and rubber smell from his oxygen mask and the ice that quickly formed around the edges from the moisture of his own breath. That ice meant he was still breathing, also a good thing and he only saw his raccoon mouth from ice burn when he looked in the mirror.
Nothing in the Fort had been designed for their comfort. It served one purpose: to rain a lot of bombs on a target. It bristled with guns in an attempt to keep the crew alive long enough to keep them trying to fulfill their purpose. It wasn’t called the Flying Fortress for its size, though it was a big mother.
“There’s the coast,” his co-pilot and best friend, Ric Bramwell, said. They’d joined together, learned together and now they served together–and they would probably die together. Ric didn’t ever think about stuff, deep or little. His thoughts were filled up with girls, which left room for little else in there–barely enough for him to help out with the flying. “Get this bucket on the ground. I’ve got a date.”
“You’ve always got a date,” Jack said, his gaze reaching past the haze-shrouded coast to the landing field. Now exhaustion hit him and in a mean twist numbness fled, leaving behind snarls of pain to gnaw at the edges of his concentration.
“You could have one, too. She’s got a friend.”
“She’s always got a friend.” Jack made a slight course correction as the formation loosened up even more in sheer relief. And the friend always wished she was with Ric, not Jack. It didn’t make for a fun date.
“So many girls, so little time. Why waste any of it?”
It wasn’t that Ric thought he was going to die. He just thought the war wouldn’t last forever and he might fall short of his goal to kiss every pretty girl in England and France. If he survived, he’d make it. While Jack wasn’t an expert on the male attraction factor, he’d been in position to observe considerable empirical evidence that Ric had plenty of it. Jack was a great believer in empirical evidence.
For a moment he was tempted to take Ric up on his offer. Be nice to put his arm around someone soft and sweet-smelling and think about something besides killing the enemy and breaking things. All those years spent observing Ric and he still didn’t know how to take it casual. Ric was always telling him he was too serious, too intense. Luckily Ric didn’t know that much of what went on inside Jack’s head. He probably thought Jack thought the same thoughts Ric did. He sure as heck didn’t know about Jack’s fascination with the science of time. They’d all teased him plenty when he named their Fort for his favorite novel, but they didn’t know he didn’t just believe in time travel, he knew how to do it. And if he had his way, they never would. Trouble was, when you thought about time too much, it changed the way you looked at every day. Made it hard to live right now. Ric had no trouble with right now and most days couldn’t remember yesterday. Or pretended he couldn’t when it wasn’t convenient.
Jack should let him take over more, but he felt the wave of discontent from the crew when he did. Ric took too many risks, particularly when they were headed home. He was too eager to get on the ground. It meant Jack got back feeling like he’d been stretched on the rack.
In the distance, he saw the field, with the planes ahead of him already lined up and going in. They’d made it. They’d all live one more day.
* * * * *
Present Day
Mel didn’t lose consciousness, but it was a near thing. When the stars cleared and the blackness retreated, clarity of thought remained stubbornly elusive. Had he really said she’d traveled back in time? He was senile. He had to be. Only he didn’t look senile. And if he was living a delusion, how did he know her embarrassing secret? She hadn’t told anyone, only according to Jack, she’d shared it with him twice.
“I’m sorry, Mel. I’m sorry we have to do this again, but we have to fix what we did. You need your family back and I,” he stopped, shaking his head, “I thought I was helping Ric, but all I managed to do is ruin him.
“Ric?” Mel frowned. “He’s dead.” Jack’s co-pilot aboard The Time Machine had died in a car accident a couple of years ago, while under the influence of a lot of alcohol. Took a family of four with him to the next life. Norm would have made better use of his life, but Norm had died. Only according to Jack, he wasn’t meant to die. He was supposed to be alive. No, not Jack. Her. She’d told Jack that. In the future past.
She felt a headache start behind her right eye.
“Can we talk while you pack?” Jack asked. “We really are almost out of time. Your SEAL gig ran long.”
He wouldn’t get an argument out of her on that point. Her producer had been hiding from her since she got back. He smiled and she found herself smiling back. What was she doing? Her smile faded.
“What am I supposed to be packing?”
“Some of your grandmother’s clothes from the late thirties, and some of your own stuff. Enough to last until you jump.”
“Jump?” Her brain latched on that word like glue. “The one thing the SEAL gig taught me is that I don’t like jumping. It’s too much like falling.”
“I know. I’m sorry.”
Mel’s eyes widened. “You want me to go on that last mission, the one where you got shot down! You want me to jump into Occupied France with you?”
“Yes.” He looked sorry, but there was also an “and” hanging in the air between them.
“What?” she asked with suspicion. What could be worse than jumping into Occupied France?
“You also have to jump out of a plane at high altitude again. Into the vortex my machine will create. Time travel requires velocity, you see.”
She didn’t see, and yet, in an awful way, she did. “Velocity? And how do I achieve this velocity?”
“By jumping into the vortex without a parachute.”
Mel felt her jaw drop and heard something rather whimper-like come out the opening, as her thoughts spun into one clear certainty. When her head was down, she should have kissed her tush goodbye.
Chapter Three
&nbs
p; December 17, 1942, Basingbourne Aerodrome
Jack had been right. Colonel Wray wasn’t happy with their performance outside of Paris. They’d dropped some bombs, but it wasn’t clear if they’d done any damage to anything. Shooting down a couple of enemy planes didn’t earn them any praise either. They were, according to Wray, lucky the enemy hadn’t pressed their attack. They couldn’t rely on luck. It wouldn’t always be on their side. They needed to maintain the formation. The formation was everything. The formation was their only chance of surviving.
And so they practiced staying in that formation every day the weather was clear enough for flying but not optimum for a mission. When they couldn’t fly, they did time in ground school and practiced in the link trainer. That carnival ride training device at least took energy and focus. The classes were mind-numbing dull.
Jack knew that a lot depended on the success of this very dangerous experiment. The Brits only flew at night. Trouble with that, you can’t see where you’re dropping your bombs so their success rate was dismal. The Yanks aimed to bloody the enemies’ nose with daytime missions. Those in charge figured the well-armed B-17’s, flying at or above twenty thousand feet and fitted with the Norden bomb sight, were just the ticket for taking the war to the enemy, while the generals worked on plans for an invasion. They needed to impair the German’s war production, too, or an eventual invasion would be impossible.
They’d been lucky so far, but no one expected it to last, not after St. Nazaire. As soon as the weather cleared, they’d be back up again. Flying over the continent, looking down on what the Germans controlled, and seeing their war machine come up to greet them with a hail of lead, well, it was hard to believe they’d ever be able to contain them, let alone invade and win.
We won last time, he reminded himself, but this was different. The guy in charge over there was different. And they were fighting on two fronts, trying to play catch-up with two enemies who’d prepared themselves well for battle. There were lessons to be learned here…if they survived to remember them.
Out of Time Page 3
