Time Travelers Never Die - Jack McDevitt [87]
“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 previous 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