Time Travelers Never Die - Jack McDevitt [137]
And he went away.
“Is he coming back?” asked Helen.
Dave smiled. “He already did.” She looked pale. “You okay?” he asked.
“I think I have a headache.”
CHAPTER 41
O, call back yesterday, bid time return.
—WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE, RICHARD II
LIGHTNING glimmered in the curtains. Shel’s heating system came on.
Helen looked at the body and at the staircase. “We should have brought him in on the second floor.”
“I didn’t have the coordinates.”
“It’s only fifteen feet up.”
She was right, of course. Dave made the adjustment for the converter, attached it to the body, and punched the button. It faded, and when they went upstairs they found him on the landing. “Which bedroom is Shel’s?” she asked.
He almost told her that he thought she’d know. But he decided she wouldn’t think it was funny.
There were three bedrooms, but it wasn’t hard to pick out his. Pictures of their old high-school baseball team, plaques acknowledging his outstanding work for Carbolite, a pile of books on the side table.
Dave turned back the sheets, hauled the corpse onto the bed, and dressed it in Shel’s pajamas. When he’d finished, they put his clothes into a plastic bag.
They also had a brick in the bag. They went downstairs and got the keys for Shel’s car out of the Phillies cup. They’d debated just leaving the clothes to burn, but neither wanted to leave anything to chance. Despite what one might think about time travel, David understood that what they were doing was forever. They couldn’t come back and undo it, because they were here, and they knew what the sequence of events was, and you couldn’t change that without confronting the cardiac principle.
They borrowed Shel’s Toyota. It had a vanity plate reading SHEL, and a lot of mileage. But he had taken good care of it. They drove down to the river. At the two-l ane bridge that crossed the Narrows, they pulled off and waited until there was no traffic. Then they went out to the middle of the bridge, where they assumed the water was deepest, and threw the bag over the side. Dave still had Victor Randall’s wallet and ID, which he intended to burn.
They returned Shel’s car. By then it was 3:45 A.M., thirty-eight minutes before a Mrs. Wilma Anderson would call to report a fire at the town house. Dave worried whether they’d cut their time too close, that the intruder might already be inside. But it was still quiet when they returned to the house and put the car keys back in the cup.
They locked the place, front and back, which was how they’d found it, and retired across the street behind a hedge. It was a good night’s work, and they waited now to see who the criminal was. The neighborhood was tree-l ined, well lighted, quiet. The houses were upper-m iddle-class, fronted by small fenced yards. Cars were parked in garages or on drive-ways. Somewhere in the next block, a cat yowled.
Four o’clock.
“Getting late,” Helen said.
Nothing moved. “He’s going to have to hurry up.”
She frowned. “What happens if he doesn’t come?”
“He has to come.”
“Why?”
“Because that’s the way it happened. We know that for an absolute fact.”
She looked at her watch. 4:01.
“I just had a thought,” David said.
“We could use one.”
“Maybe you’re right. Maybe there is no firebug. Or rather, maybe we are the firebugs. After all, we already know where the fractured skull came from.” And he knew who had broken into the desk.
She thought about it. “I think you’re right,” she said.
“Wait here,” he told her. “In case someone does show up.”
“Where are you going?”
“To get some gas.”
David left the shelter of the hedge and walked quickly across the street, entered Shel’s driveway, and went back into the garage. There were three gas cans. All empty.
He needed the car keys again. He used the converter to get back inside and retrieved the keys. He threw the empty cans into the trunk of the Toyota.
There was an all-n ight station on River Road,