Time Travelers Never Die - Jack McDevitt [114]
He stopped and got out. A police officer came toward him. “Have to move on, sir,” she said.
“I’m a friend.”
“I’m sorry for your loss. But there’s nothing here, and you’re blocking traffic.”
“The newspapers say that Dr. Shelborne was found in his bed.”
“I believe that’s correct.”
“Are they sure it was him?”
She was a tall woman. About thirty. Kept looking from him to his car. “The body was pretty badly burned. I don’t think they’ve been able to do a formal identification yet. But as far as I know, there doesn’t seem to be much question. May I ask your name, please?”
She wrote it down, added contact information and relationship, and suggested he call the next day for more details.
He drove away, went several blocks, and pulled over. He hesitated, then took out his cell phone and punched in Helen’s number.
A young woman answered. “Dr. Suchenko’s office. May I help you?”
“Ma’am, this is David Dryden. Is Dr. Suchenko available?”
“I’m sorry, Mr. Dryden. She’s with a patient at the moment.”
“Tell her I called, please? It’s important. I’d appreciate it if she could get back to me as soon as possible.”
“Mr. Dryden, is this a medical emergency?”
“No, ma’am.”
“Okay. I’ll see that she gets the message.”
HE was back in his living room when Helen called. “What’s wrong, Dave?”
“Are you sitting down?”
“Dave, I’m awfully busy.”
“Shel’s dead.”
“What?”
“Lightning hit the house last night. It burned down.”
“No. That’s not—”
“He was in bed. They don’t have a positive ID yet. But—”
“Where are you now, Dave?”
“At home. I’ve been over there. There’s nothing left of the place.”
“My God.”
“I’m sorry.”
No response.
“You okay?”
“Yeah. I’m all right.” Her voice was tight.
“Helen, if there’s anything I can do—”
“I know, Dave. Thanks.”
HE put on the TV and let it play. A game show. He never watched game shows, never really watched much of anything except news. And of course the Phillies and Eagles.
But at the moment he needed voices in the house.
What were the odds against a lightning strike?
He closed his eyes and tried to wish it away. Tried to make it a day like every other day, in which Shel might call at any moment, in which the only real concern was where they would go this week.
Where they would go.
So much for Voltaire.
He wondered whether he should go back to Italy and inform Professor Shelborne. Maybe that would be an unnecessarily cruel act. But if he didn’t, he would go on from day to day, waiting for his son to show up again.
The converter was in his bedroom. It was on a side table, where he’d left it when he hurried out of the house an hour earlier. The last unit.
And a sudden possibility froze him. If you can travel in time, there are no limits to what you can do. He still tended to think of yesterday as a place that existed only in memory.
But Shel was alive back there. As surely as his father. As surely as Nero was still, somehow, somewhen, falling out of his chariot.
Everything is forever.
He could go back and warn him.
The local news came on. More bad weather coming. A woman had been assaulted by two masked kids in Brandywine. A bus driver had suffered a heart attack and plowed into an outdoor food market. There was confirmation about the victim killed last night in the lightning strike. Dental records showed it was Adrian Shelborne, thirty-two, the son of the eminent Philadelphia physicist who’d disappeared mysteriously almost a year ago.
HE drove back to the town house and parked down the street. The tape was still up, but the investigators and police had gone. He picked up the converter and attached it to his belt. A couple of people were standing near the tape, but they weren’t paying any attention to him.
He set the instrument for 11:00 P.M. the previous night. He took a deep breath, and, with more reluctance than he’d ever felt before, pushed the button.
Torrential rain poured down on him. The sky was full of lightning. But lights were on in the town house. Downstairs.
He moved beneath the overhang of a storefront, which provided some shelter from the storm.
A van