Time Travelers Never Die Part 50

She was visibly struggling to grasp the situation, and to control her anger. "Why didn't you tell me?"

"I didn't know how."

Her face had grown pale. When he'd finished explaining, her eyes looked empty. "You can take us back, right?"

"Home? Yes."

"Where else?"

"Anywhere. Well, there are range limits, but nothing you'd care about."

On the street, a couple of kids with baseball gloves hurried past. "And he thinks it's inevitable that he'll eventually get put in that graveyard?"

"Yes."

"I don't understand why he would."

"There seems to be a force that doesn't allow paradoxes." He told her about Ivy, and about Shel falling into the ocean.

"So what do we do?"

"I don't know whether we should do anything anything. With this crazy logic, he may be right. I wouldn't go back either to get hit in the head and thrown into a fire. Would you?"

"No," she said. "I guess not."

"I have an idea how we might be able to resolve things, though," Dave said.

"Hold on a second. Start with this: Do we have any idea at all where to find him?"

"I know some places to look."

"Will you take me to him?"

"Yes. I think he needs you."

A horse-drawn carriage clopped past. She stared at the quiet little buildings. White clapboard houses. "Nineteen-five," she said. "Shaw's just getting started."

CHAPTER 40.

There was a young lady named Bright Whose speed was far faster than light; She set out one day In a relative way And returned on the previous night.

-PUNCH

MARK S. Hightower had been Shel's dentist for years. He operated out of a medical building across the street from the University Hospital, where Helen had interned and still served as a consultant. S. Hightower had been Shel's dentist for years. He operated out of a medical building across the street from the University Hospital, where Helen had interned and still served as a consultant.

Dave had met Dr. Hightower once. He was short, barrel-chested, flat-skulled, a man who looked more like a professional wrestler than a dentist. But he was soft-spoken and, according to Shel, a guy who was great with his patients.

Helen and Dave, in a taxi, pulled up in front of a brownstone building. The doctors' names-there were four of them-were posted on shingles. Hightower was on the first floor. A sign in the window read: WE CATER TO COWARDS.

Dave asked the driver to wait, and, carrying a converter in a laptop bag, went into the office. One patient and a guy who was probably a salesman were seated in the reception room while two people on TV discussed the latest misadventure of a prominent actress. The receptionist looked up from behind a gla.s.s panel. "h.e.l.lo," she said, opening a window and sliding the sign-in sheet toward him.

"I'd like to make an appointment."

"Are you having a problem, Mr.-?"

"McCloskey. I'm new in Philadelphia. I just wanted to get a routine checkup."

She nodded, gathered some papers, and pushed them in his direction. "Fill these out, please."

"Thank you." He started toward one of the chairs, laid the papers on a side table, then turned and went back to the window. "Excuse me. Do you have a washroom?"

She pointed at a double door. "Through there, and on your right."

The doors opened into a corridor. He could hear a drill in back somewhere, but the corridor was quiet. He took the converter out of the laptop bag and went into the washroom. It was empty. He moved himself forward ten seconds. Got a reading on the location of the washroom so he could come back to it later.

He washed his hands and returned to the waiting room. "I'm sorry," he said to the receptionist, "but I think I came to the wrong place. This isn't Dr. Vester's office, is it?"

"No," she said. "This is Dr. Hightower."

"Oh. I'm sorry for wasting your time." He returned the papers and went outside.

Helen looked his way. "How'd you make out?"

"Okay."

CHAIN-REACTION collisions have become an increasingly dangerous occurrence on limited-access highways around the world. Hundreds die every year, thousands are injured, and property damage runs well into the millions. On the day that Shel was buried, there had been a pileup in California. It had happened a little after 8:00 A.M. on a day with perfect visibility, when a pickup rear-ended a station wagon full of kids headed for breakfast and a day at Universal Studios. collisions have become an increasingly dangerous occurrence on limited-access highways around the world. Hundreds die every year, thousands are injured, and property damage runs well into the millions. On the day that Shel was buried, there had been a pileup in California. It had happened a little after 8:00 A.M. on a day with perfect visibility, when a pickup rear-ended a station wagon full of kids headed for breakfast and a day at Universal Studios.

Helen and Dave materialized well off the highway moments after the chain reaction had ended. The road and the shoulder were littered with wrecked vehicles. Some people were out of their cars trying to help; others were wandering dazed through the carnage. The morning air was filled with screams and the stench of burning oil.

"I'm not sure I can do this," Helen said, spotting a woman bleeding in an overturned Ford. She went over, got the door open, and motioned Dave to a.s.sist. The woman was alone in the car. She was unconscious, and her arm looked broken.

"Helen," Dave said, "we have a bigger rescue to make."

She shook her head. No. This first.

She stopped the bleeding, and Dave got someone to stay with the victim. They helped a few other people, pulled an elderly couple out of a burning van, stopped a guy who was trying to move a man with two fractured legs. But Dave was unhappy. "We don't have time for this," he pleaded.

"I don't have time for anything else."

Sirens were approaching. Dave let her go, concentrating on finding what they'd come for.

He was in a blue Toyota that had rolled over several times before crumpling into a tree. The front of the car was crushed, a door was off, and the driver looked dead. He had bled heavily from a head wound. One tire was spinning slowly. Dave could find no pulse.

The guy was about the right size, tangled in a seat belt. When Helen got there, she confirmed that he was dead. Dave cut him free with a jackknife. EMTs were spreading out among the wrecked cars. Stretchers were appearing.

Helen could not keep her mind on what they were doing. "Your oath doesn't count," David said. "Not here. Let it go."

She looked at him desperately.

They got him out of the car, wrapped him in plastic, and laid him in the road. "He does look a little like Shel," she said in a small voice.

"Enough to get by."

Dave heard footsteps behind them. Someone demanded to know what they were doing.

A big, beefy EMT.

"It's okay," Dave said. "We're doctors."

Helen looked down at the body. "He's dead," she said by way of explanation.

The EMT looked annoyed. "We could use your help up ahead."

"On our way," said Dave.

As soon as he was gone, they put on plastic gloves. Dave attached one of the converters to the victim's belt and pushed the black b.u.t.ton. They watched him fade and vanish. "So far, so good," he said. "I was afraid it would be like the cushion."

"What cushion?"

"It's a long story," he said. "I tried to use a converter on one, but it didn't work. Maybe it needs to be attached to someone."

Dave followed the body. The highway carnage grew transparent and was replaced by the washroom in Dr. Hightower's office. The corpse was slumped on the floor. He detached the converter from it and took it back to Helen. Moments later, they returned. Helen had a laptop.

HIS name was Victor Randall. They found pictures of an attractive woman with cropped brown hair seated with him in a porch swing. And two kids. The kids were smiling at the camera, one boy, one girl, both around seven or eight. "Maybe," Helen said, "when this is over, we can send them a note to explain things." name was Victor Randall. They found pictures of an attractive woman with cropped brown hair seated with him in a porch swing. And two kids. The kids were smiling at the camera, one boy, one girl, both around seven or eight. "Maybe," Helen said, "when this is over, we can send them a note to explain things."

"We can't do that," Dave said.

"They'll never know what happened to him."

"That's right. And I don't think there's any way around it."

There was also about two hundred cash. Later, he would mail that back to the family. He dragged the body out of the washroom and laid it in the corridor. "Okay, Helen," he said, "your ball."

Using penlights, they began an inspection. A half dozen rooms were designated for patients. Dave followed her from offic e to offic e, not really knowing what they were looking for. But Helen did one quick turn down the pa.s.sageway, stopped in a room at the far end, and pointed at a machine tucked away in a corner. "This is it," she said. The manufacturer's label said it was an orthopantomograph. "It's designed to provide a panoramic X-ray."

"Panoramic? What's that?"

"Full mouth. It should be all we'll need." The records were maintained in manila folders in an interior office. Helen found Shel's, thumbed through it, and took out a disk. "Okay," she said, "we caught a break."

"What's that?"

"The results are on individual disks."

She explained how it worked: The person being X-rayed placed his forehead against this plastic rest and his chin in the cup-shaped support. The camera was located inside the cone over here, which was mounted on a rotating arm. The arm and cone traversed the head, like this, and produced a panoramic image of the teeth. The only problem was that the patient normally stood during the procedure.

"We'll need six to eight minutes to do it," said Helen. "During that time we have to keep him absolutely still. Think you can manage it?"

Dave nodded. "I can do it."

"Okay." She checked to make sure there was a disk in the machine. "Let's get him."

They carried Victor to the X-ray machine. At Helen's suggestion, they'd brought along some cloth strips, which they now used to secure the body to the device. It was a clumsy business, and the corpse kept sliding away from them. Working in the dark complicated things, but after about ten minutes, they had him in place.

"Something just occurred to me," Dave said. "Victor Randall already has the head wound."

Her eyes closed momentarily. "You're suggesting the arsonist didn't hit Shel in the head after all. You know, I'm beginning to think it's going to turn out to be the lightning strike at that."

A mirror was mounted on the machine directly in front of where the patient's face would be. Helen pressed a b.u.t.ton, and a light went on in the center of the mirror. "They would tell the patient to watch the light," she said. "That's how they're sure they've got it lined up."

"How are we we sure?" sure?"

"What's the term? 'Dead reckoning'?" She punched another b.u.t.ton. A motor started, and the cone began to move.

Ten minutes later, they took the disk out, leaving Victor in place until Helen could be sure they had good pictures. She inserted the disk into the laptop, brought up the picture, and handed it to Dave without looking at it. "What do you think?"

The entire mouth, uppers and lowers, was clear. "Looks good to me."

She took a deep breath. "Plenty of fillings on both sides. Let's see how it compares."

They went back to Shel's folder. "He goes to the dentist every three months," she said. (Dave couldn't help noticing she still talked about him in the present tense.) She checked the dates on the disks and removed one. "These are the results of his most recent checkup." She put it in the computer and brought up a panoramic picture, like the one they had just taken, and several smaller photos of individual sections. "I think they call these 'wings,' " she said. "But when they bring a dentist in to identify a body, they do it with these these." She indicated the panoramic and compared Shel's with the one they'd just made. "Well-"

"What?"

"They don't look much alike in detail. If they ever get around to comparing Mr. Randall's panoramic with Shel's wings, they'll notice something's wrong. But it should be good enough to get by." She transferred the data, everything except the panoramic, from Shel's disk to Randall's.

A car pulled up outside.

Helen put Shel's panoramic disk in her pocket, marked his name on the Randall disk, and placed it in the folder.

Dave heard a siren. Getting louder. "Helen, I think we may have tripped an internal alarm."

"Probably."

"We have to go."

"All set." She replaced the folder and closed the file drawer just as the siren arrived and shut off. Blinds covered the windows, but rotating lights leaked through.