Timeshares Part 20

A blinding white light suddenly enveloped the inside of the modulator and I felt like a Rubik's Cube of flesh, twisting and turning, turning and twisting. And then I felt nothing but a lingering taste of cottonmouth, like I'd eaten rhubarb for an eternity.

It's unwise to travel the trenches by day. The enemy's snipers are always looking for new targets. And they are good. Better marksmen than our boys. Pritchard tells me it's on account of their grand Teutonic past that favored arms to art. I respond it was probably because they drank less rum and got better training.

I pa.s.s NCOs issuing the day's orders. Soldiers filling sandbags. Others dumping creosol and chloride of lime. Still more men pumping the brackish water out of the trench while singing hymns. The British Tommy loves to sing, even when he is about to die. Maybe he knows it could happen anytime. Perhaps it's his way of preparing his immortal soul even as he pumps putrid water.

I walk by a couple of big brown rats. Hefty b.u.g.g.e.rs who, despite their bulk, are ever so nimble on the parapet. The one at the end of this little expeditionary force stops and inspects me. I try to remember a refrain or a bar from Tchaikovsky's Nutcracker Suite Nutcracker Suite. I think even though he's a rat, he would have made a lovely king of mice commanding his soldiers. But he doesn't stay long enough for me to remember a note. So I schlep on, keeping my head down.

I find William Blake in his "coffin." It's his morose way of describing his pillbox crafted out of sandbags.

And, yes, it's that Blake. The eighteenth-century painter, engraver, visionary poet, and patriarch of English Romanticism. Turns out Timeshares isn't restricted to my own century. They've been busy capitalizing on Faulkner's famous dictum that "the past is not dead. It's not even past," and adding their own consumer slant with, "And now it can be anything you want it to be!"

Blake wears a frown as he says, "War on Earth is energy enslav'd."

I slump down on an overturned barrel and stare. Even after a month, I still find it hard to reason-which Blake keeps telling me is man's greatest folly-that I'm sharing the trenches of World War I with the eccentric poet who was considered mad during his lifetime and a genius in modern times.

I have the itch to ask him if it's true that he and Mrs. Blake recited Milton in the nude in their garden in South Molton. But I just can't bring myself to do it.

I tap the last Woodbine from the package, pack it on the b.u.t.t of my revolver, and toss it into my mouth. I only cough a couple of times now when I take a long drag. It was a lot harder in the beginning. I felt like I was coughing my lungs up, and there is mustard gas for that.

A rowdy bout of mortars rain down.

"So, what shall we discuss today?" asks Blake.

He asks me this every time. And I answer it with the same reply: "Timeshares."

It's what binds us together and sets us apart from the other soldiers. But with this broken homing device, G.o.d knows I'm stuck here now just like the rest of the infantrymen. And I shouldn't be. It's a f.u.c.king mistake. The soldiers, they know they might die here in France. I was one hundred percent certain I couldn't couldn't. So my fate now seems more sealed than the men around me. They've got hope, whereas I don't even have that. Even if I do survive the coming battle, this time isn't mine. I don't have a family to go home to. s.h.i.t, I'm not even born for another ninety-five years!

Blake knew I was relieved when I found him. And I might have just pa.s.sed him by like I did so many of the other men. I only stopped because he was vandalizing military equipment.

I stepped closer for a better look. I had to cough to get his attention.

Right away I sensed something different about him. He looked me square in the eyes with sad, innocent ones, like the eyes of a seer. They were so at odds with his fierce-jowled face.

If he hadn't met my gaze, I wouldn't have looked down.

That's when I noticed what he had been engraving into the b.u.t.t of his rifle. It was an hourgla.s.s.

I splurted out, "What . . . what do you know about that?"

"Nothing sir," he replied surly.

"You tell me right now what you know about that hourgla.s.s, or I'll have you digging a latrine while the flares go up."

He shook his large head. "Infernal intellectuals. I wonder if that's why I'm such a good shot?"

"I'm warning you, soldier."

Enigmatically he said, "Time can as easily flow forward as it can back." (If I had known who he was then, I'd have thought it was simply one of his proverbs.) "Timeshares," I whispered, as if to a lover.

"Yes," he replied. "The Eternals, it seems, have brought us together."

Machine gun fire rattles over No-Man's-Land. It sounds like rain falling on leaves.

Blake hunches down in his coffin. He's drawing a bead on some unfortunate. I always try to see him pull the trigger. But it happens like some prestige. The only evidence of his kill is the empty cartridge floating in the muck at his feet.

I ask him again to tell me about Timeshares in his world. "It's not an order," I say. "It's a favor, of one friend to another."

Blake slides the bolt back on his rifle. "Timeshares is a dowdy little hovel on Carnaby Street. I like to wander all over London, exploring, thinking-it's when I get my best visions. I was curious about the sign of the hourgla.s.s hanging outside the shop. Time has always intrigued me: each end of an hourgla.s.s seems to me like twin aspects of eternity. So I stepped into the una.s.suming shop and came out here."

"But why did you?"

Blake frowns and it produces a faint smile on his lips. He stuffs a hand into his mud-splattered trench coat and pulls out a handful of dark little seeds like minuscule shots. "Poppy seeds," he tells me, shaking them in his closed fist. "Wherever the angel tells me there will be a great war in the future, Timeshares sends me to that place, and it's where I sow the seeds of poetry. I came here to leave a gift; to remind man that war threatens creativity, destroys the breath of the Almighty. Man's wars are nothing but the fever of the human soul. I even went back to antiquity, to Homer's day, hoping to discourage him from writing his war epic. But the fool thought me an upstart poet trying to steal his muse."

A shower of flares explodes over our heads. They fall to earth like wounded angels.

Blake stares at me. In his eyes, I swear I see a sea of swaying poppies, exactly like the flowers that will one day cover these fields of Flanders. "And you?" he asks.

I lean closer, to be better heard. "I came here to save a man." Then I toss my head back and laugh like an a.s.s. "And it turns out to be me."

I show Blake my broken homing device. "I can't return. And tomorrow's the most devastating battle of this war. Time is literally running out. I don't want to die." I can hear the tremor in my voice. "I came here to right a wrong, but now all I want to do is save my own skin. It's futile trying to change history. You can't. No matter if your intentions are good or bad. And I'm only now realizing this. I'm alone to suffer my fate like all the other men here."

Blake reaches into his trench coat again. He shoves a photo of a young woman into my hands. "She's a looker, isn't she? Nice legs, too. That Mrs. Blake knows how to ride a c.o.c.k horse to Banbury Cross."

I smile, but it's a little forced.

Blake shoves me. "Ah, come on, where's your sense of humor? Jesus and Mary, you're making me weep with your drama."

He furrows his brow, which makes him look exactly like his painting of Nebuchadnezzar.

Rain. Mud. The coils of barbed wire slick. Each barb the cold bite of reality stretched out inside of me.

Dawn is approaching. The stand to order came hours ago in the fug of night. Not that day is any clearer. It's just less ambiguous. Stark reality glares all around us even without the sun. The dead bodies. The craters. The bloating mules. The endless barbed wire. The screaming and crying of wounded and dying men.

I can't believe I let Blake talk me into this. Maybe he is as mad as history makes him out to be. But what other choice did I have?

The Timeshares homing device is dead. And Blake says he doesn't have one.

My mouth goes dry. But it's not the cottonmouth I experienced time traveling to the trenches. This is produced by fear.

Blake chants at my side. "Tyger! Tyger! burning bright, in the forests of the night, what immortal hand or eye, could frame thy fearful symmetry?"

"Is that a pa.s.sage from the Bible?" asks an ashen-faced young Tommy.

"Shut it," commands the sergeant.

The long line of soldiers becomes deathly silent.

My heart feels like it's an hourgla.s.s sifting my life away.

The major's whistle shrieks. "Charge," he screams, leading the way.

Over the top I go with the rest of the battalion.

The rattle of machine guns. Blood. Screams. A severed leg. A madman cackling in a crater.

And I'm running and flinging poppy seeds like Blake instructed, like he saw in his vision. I don't even remove my revolver. Just toss the seeds among all the carnage, expecting a bullet in the skull at any moment.

A blinding flash. A loud bang.

Someone's shaking me.

"Hey buddy, you okay?"

The smoke clears. I'm sitting on a highly polished sanitized floor. The clicks and zips and metallic beeps of computers bombard me.

"Did you have a blast or what?" asks the young tech, his bright, white-gold tooth shining like a piece of shrapnel in his mouth. "s.h.i.t, you did, didn't you?"

By Our Actions Michael A. Stackpole

Michael A. Stackpole is an award-winning writer, screenwriter, podcaster, game and computer game designer, and graphic novelist. His most recent novel, At the Queen's Command At the Queen's Command, is the first in his Crown Colonies series. He lives in Arizona and, in his spare time, enjoys indoor soccer and dancing. The idea for this story came to him after too much research and too little sleep. His Web site is www.stormwolf.com.

The Timeshares helicopter thundered around the mountain. This has to be bad. This has to be bad. The mantislike air-ship unsteadily lowered itself into the meadow. The pine trees downslope of the cabin hid it, but the fluttering roar of the copter's rotors echoed from the mountains. Men shouted below and he caught the flash of the first of Jacobsen's phalanx coming up the crooked path. The mantislike air-ship unsteadily lowered itself into the meadow. The pine trees downslope of the cabin hid it, but the fluttering roar of the copter's rotors echoed from the mountains. Men shouted below and he caught the flash of the first of Jacobsen's phalanx coming up the crooked path.

Logically he should have put the ax down and readied himself to greet his old employer's envoy, but he couldn't. Jacobsen had violated the promise to leave him in peace. Doesn't matter. The answer's no Doesn't matter. The answer's no.

Perry gripped the ax tightly to stop his body's trembling.

Then Jacobsen himself appeared, still dressed for the heart of the city. Perry's mouth went dry. It can't be It can't be.

Jacobsen adjusted his tie-college striping, full Windsor knot-and played at brushing a spot of mud from his black suit's knee. He smiled, making it carry up into his eyes, and made eye contact. He extended his hand several muddy steps shy of level.

"It's good to see you again, Perry. The mountain air has done you well, old friend."

Perry stared at the proffered hand as if it was a snake. His own right hand bore the ax. He swung it up, then rested it on his shoulder. "You shouldn't be here. Please go."

"Give me five minutes, Perry." Jacobsen glanced back over his shoulder as his hand drifted down. "On the copter."

Perry shook his head. "Whatever you need, I can't do it. Won't."

"I need to convince you otherwise."

"You can't."

The white- haired man's eyes narrowed. "We've lost a leper."

The shakes. .h.i.t Perry so hard he dropped the ax. "You lost . . . how could you? You promised!"

"Sometimes promises have to be broken."

"And this one broke time?" Perry closed his eyes, then muttered a prayer. He used the time afforded him in picking up the ax and burying it in the chopping block to get control of himself. He shifted fear into anger, his eyes opening into narrow slits. He spitted Jacobsen with a stare. "How could you have been so stupid?"

Jacobsen turned, starting back down toward the helicopter. "I will brief you en route. We really have no time to waste."

"Funny to hear that from you." Back in the early days of Timeshares that had been a running joke. They had all the time in the world since they could go anywhere, do anything. Perry might have laughed out of habit, but Jacobsen's flat delivery underscored the urgency of the situation.

Perry swung into the copter easily enough-old habits never really die, just lay dormant. The chemical scent of aviation fuel filled his head, adding to his queasiness. The rolling clack of doors closing, the thrumming thunder filling the cabin, all things that reminded him of days he'd hoped to forget.

A bodyguard handed him a helmet and plugged him into the communications system. The helmet selected the executive frequency as Perry strapped in. As if the click of Perry's restraints had freed the craft from gravity's grip, the helicopter leaped into the air with a lurch. It left Perry's stomach on the ground.

Jacobsen, belted onto the bench beside him, pa.s.sed him a tablet reader. "Everything you need to know is in there."

Perry shook his head. "Why did you do it?"

Jacobsen's gaze hardened as he reached over and turned the tablet on, then tapped open an app. A picture appeared. "That is Senator Harrison Smelton, religious conservative from north Texas. He chairs the Senate select committee on scientific research. He came to us and suggested that he was going to hold hearings into exactly what we do at Timeshares."

"He never should have known about Timeshares." Perry had been one of the company's first scouts. It had been made painfully clear to him that time travel wasn't going to be a Greyhound Bus kind of a vacation. The ultrarich, maybe some research trips, but not common knowledge in the early days. If folks even imagined time travel was possible, every economic boom and bust cycle would be blamed on profiteering by Timeshares customers. Timeshares had created the cover story of a virtual-reality touring package and even provided the same in some franchise operations. Those satellite facilities helped screen for potential high-end customers, but Jacobsen had been dead set against government regulation from the beginning.

"After you left, we had a couple clients dog-bone us." Jacobsen tugged at his shirt cuffs. "We dealt with most of them, but one of the early ones made a killing selling some artifacts he'd buried and dug up later. He hadn't gone for significant stuff, just did a time capsule with some rare baseball cards, comics, that sort of stuff. Smelton courted him for campaign contributions. They became chummy and, one night over cigars and a bottle of scotch that had also been in this guy's trove-stuff that went missing during Prohibition, nice planning on his part-he confessed. Then I got a call."

Perry flicked his finger across the tablet's screen. The picture went from one of the senator alone, to his standing with a young man, early twenties, in front of the Timetank. Flick. A third included their guide.

He looked up. "The Senator extorts a family trip to Jerusalem, 28 A.D.? April, around Pa.s.sover?"

Jacobsen pointed at the third picture. "We followed your playbook. We sent a guide. They were all three done up as lepers so no one would get near them. This was strictly a holo-safari."

"That wasn't what I recommended. That wasn't what you agreed to." Perry shook his head. "Some events are just too hot. People feel compelled to interfere, to interact. What did the senator do?" wasn't what I recommended. That wasn't what you agreed to." Perry shook his head. "Some events are just too hot. People feel compelled to interfere, to interact. What did the senator do?"

"He didn't do anything." Jacobsen sighed, a wall of static onto the com channel. "He got hurt, attacked. His guide, too. They hit their panic b.u.t.tons, heading back. The son, Kevin, is gone." didn't do anything." Jacobsen sighed, a wall of static onto the com channel. "He got hurt, attacked. His guide, too. They hit their panic b.u.t.tons, heading back. The son, Kevin, is gone."

Something isn't right. "What aren't you telling me?" "What aren't you telling me?"

"It's delicate."

"You came for me. It's way past delicate." Perry searched the man's face for a flicker of humanity, but found none. "Oh, s.h.i.t. You didn't do a psych vetting on the kid, did you?"

Jacobsen shook his head. "Kevin is a schizophrenic. The boy thinks, among other things, that he's possessed. His father was taking him back to get Jesus to heal him. To cast out a demon. Two days without meds, figured out where he was, he freaked out, attacked his father and the guide. "We think he hurt Jesus. Maybe even killed him."

"Not possible. I've been back. I saw . . ." Perry blinked. "So the Kaku Theory of Temporal Elasticity isn't holding up?"