Borrowed Time

OTHER BOOKS BY THE AUTHOR

Stark's War
STARK'S WAR
STARK'S COMMAND
STARK'S CRUSADE

Paul Sinclair: JAG In Space
A JUST DETERMINATION
BURDEN OF PROOF
RULE OF EVIDENCE
AGAINST ALL ENEMIES

The Lost Fleet
DAUNTLESS
FEARLESS
COURAGEOUS
VALIANT
RELENTLESS
VICTORIOUS

The Lost Fleet: Beyond the Frontier
DREADNAUGHT
INVINCIBLE
GUARDIAN

The Lost Stars
TARNISHED KNIGHT
PERILOUS SHIELD

Short Story Collections
SWORDS AND SADDLES*
BORROWED TIME*
AD ASTRA*

*available as e-books from Jabberwocky Literary Agency

Borrowed Time: Short Stories

Copyright © 2013 by John G. Hemry
Cover art by Tiger Bright Studios.

Collected for the first time in this e-book by Jabberwocky Literary Agency, Inc. in 2013

ISBN 978-1-625670-168

PUBLICATION HISTORY

"Small Moments in Time"
first published in
Analog
(December, 2004)

"Where Does a Circle Begin"
first published in
Amazing Stories
(Fall, 1999)

"Working on Borrowed Time"
first published in
Analog
(June, 2005)

"These are the Times"
first published in
Analog
(November, 2007)

"Joan"
first published in
Analog
(November, 2009)

"Betty Knox and Dictionary Jones in The Mystery of the Missing Teenage Anachronisms"
first published in
Analog
(March, 2011)

"Crow's Feat"
first published in
Analog
(November, 2000)

CONTENTS

Small Moments in Time

Where Does a Circle Begin?

Working on Borrowed Time

These Are the Times

Joan

Betty Knox and Dictionary Jones in The Mystery of the Missing Teenage Anachronisms

Crow's Feat

Author's Note on
Small Moments in Time

Until AIDS, the Spanish Influenza was the worst plague of modern times. It also had a somewhat odd origin and an odd pattern of who it killed. Unlike most illnesses that are dangerous for the old and weak, the Spanish Influenza killed those who were the strongest. Young adults were at the most risk. Modern science has determined that was because the Spanish influenza killed by turning the human body’s own immune system against it. The stronger the immune system, the more at risk you were. Now, in recent decades, official rates for all sorts of auto-immune diseases where the immune system attacks the body have been rising dramatically. The reasons for this remain unknown, but what it has in common with the Spanish influenza is the paradox that a strong immune system can be the human body’s worst enemy. As a result, in this story when a time traveler gets involved in the Spanish Influenza, he faces the most difficult choice imaginable.

Small Moments in Time

The odd truth of working as a Temporal Interventionist is that some there and thens are better than others. History books make the past sound like one thrilling event after another. But for every Shoot Out at the OK Corral moment of excitement, there’s days, weeks, months and years of people just doing the things that people have to do. Things important enough to keep them alive and their society functioning. Plenty of the all-too-usual human drama, but not the stuff of great historical drama. Most people don’t believe that when I tell them, though.

I leaned against the window frame, squinting against a dry, hot wind blowing across the Kansas prairie and into my face, bringing the gritty taste of fine dust into my mouth whenever I licked my lips. Sometimes I think about the fact that the dust might literally have once been part of someone I knew in another long ago there and then. Usually, I try not to think about that, but something about the apparently endless prairie and the seemingly endless wind brought it to mind now, along with memories of the Earps and their brief moment in another western town where the wind had always seemed to be blowing hard.

The thin curtain drawn back from the hotel window fluttered in that wind. From my second story room, I could see down the main drag of Junction City, Kansas circa July, 1918 A.D. Such as it was. Lots of wood structures, some brick and some sandstone block construction, primitive internal combustion-driven automobiles contending for space on the road with horse-drawn wagons, and a few clouds in a faded blue sky as yet contaminated mainly only by that damned dust.

A cluster of men wearing drab military uniforms came around a corner, offering a small reminder of the hosts currently grinding each other into the bloody mud of Europe, just as they’d been doing for the last four years here and now. I knew that particular war was finally drawing to a close. If I wanted to, I could find out the names of the soldiers I saw and learn which of them would die before the end of the war. I didn’t want to.

Instead, I gathered up the coat local fashion demanded I wear despite the weather, wished I could do without the neck-tie local fashion likewise demanded, took a drink of the lukewarm water remaining in the pitcher the room boasted instead of a sink, and headed for one of the local grain suppliers.

I had to walk into the sun to get there, but local fashion at least had the wisdom to also demand hats with brims, so I was protected from the worst of the glare. “Jeannie. Confirm my directions to this place.”

“One more block down, then two blocks south. Just before the railroad track.”

“Thanks.” Jeannie, my implanted personal assistant, had a wonderful navigational package. A female friend of mine had once remarked that my having Jeannie inside me was perfect for a man, since it meant I could ask for directions without anyone knowing I’d done so.

The grain supply office was filled with the musty smell of a different kind of dust, this from the endless bushels of wheat which passed through the office or the nearby grain elevators. I could see the grain dust as well, clouds of it floating gently in the air currents, as I walked down the line of sample bags, looking for specific seeds for wheat variants which had gone extinct between now and the future I came from. A lot of people needed those extinct plant seeds, and needed them enough to be willing to pay the large sum needed to bring me to Kansas in the early years of the twentieth century.

I found a couple of wheat varieties listed among the requirements Jeannie kept track of for me, as well as a bonus rye variant, and purchased sample bags with some of the better-than-real counterfeit local currency I’d outfitted myself with. Such are the exciting adventures of a Temporal Interventionist.

I stopped by the town’s other major grain supplier and found a few more samples I needed, then walked back to the hotel to drop off my purchases and have lunch there. Lunch turned out to be fried chicken. Again. But at least it wasn’t chicken and dumplings. Again. The iced tea made up for it, though. Downtime farmers know how to make iced tea like nobody else.

Conversation among the other hotel guests was mostly about The War, of course. One of the couples were put out because they couldn’t see their son, who was at the big Army base nearby. I shrugged it off as the usual sort of wartime security, until they said the word ‘quarantine.’

Downtime diseases make any Temporal Interventionist nervous. You can’t develop an immunity or sometimes even get a vaccination for some bug which died out centuries before you were born. Even if decent medical records existed for the period, those records were only as good as the medical theory and technology of the time. And primitive armies were notorious for attracting epidemics. The little nano-bugs which helped out my immune system could deal with a lot of things, but you never knew just how virulent something unknown might turn out to be. I hurriedly finished my lunch and headed for my next objective in town, determined to get my work done and then out of here and now as fast as possible.

“Jeannie, did any serious disease outbreaks take place in or near Junction City, Kansas in 1918 A.D.?”

“Only the Spanish Influenza.”

Anyone watching would’ve seen me jerk with momentary shock. “Is that all?” It’d been a long time since the Spanish Influenza when I’d first learned about it, but it still held the dubious record of being the deadliest epidemic in history, which was why I immediately recognized the term. “Here?”

“It apparently originated in Camp Funston.”

“I thought the big Army installation here was named Fort Riley.”

“That’s correct.”

I felt briefly reassured, then remembered why ‘artificial intelligence’ is still a disparaging term. “Is Camp Funston related in any way to Fort Riley?”

“Camp Funston is located on Fort Riley.”

“Thanks for elaborating. How serious is the threat at this time and place?”

Jeannie, as always, sounded authoritative and calm. “Very limited, which is why there is no disease warning flagged on this here and now. The early phases of the Spanish Influenza were widespread in some areas but had low mortality rates consistent with usual influenza outbreaks.”

That was reassuring. “When did the later phases begin?”

“August, 1918.”

Plenty of time to work with. Still . . . “Here?”

“No. Simultaneous or near-simultaneous outbreaks of a much more deadly variant of Spanish Influenza will erupt in Freetown in Sierra Leone, Brest in France, and Boston in the United States.”

That was even more reassuring, but also odd. “Simultaneous or near-simultaneous outbreaks, in three different widely-dispersed areas, of the same deadly variant?”

“Yes.”

“How could . . . how did that happen?”

“Insufficient data.”

“Just in your database, or insufficient data, period?”

“My database contains all information available in our time of origin.”

Very odd. But I’d just have to live with that oddity. I wasn’t surprised no one had yet made jumps into downtime to investigate whatever had brought about the Spanish Influenza’s multiple simultaneous deadly assaults. Jumping into plague zones isn’t the smartest thing to do. In the case of the Spanish Influenza, for which I confirmed with Jeannie a specific vaccine had never been developed, it could be suicidal. And I was only here and now to collect extinct seeds, not to try to stick my nose into dangerous and unresolved medical mysteries.

But I’d only made half a block toward my next destination when I got diverted anyway.

“I’m detecting a nearby temporal field,” Jeannie advised.

Another jumper here and now? There’s not
that
much demand for extinct seeds. “Coming or going?”

“From the temporal jump field echo it’s an arrival.”

I looked around, trying to remember what the street had looked like moments before and whether there was an extra person suddenly out there now. Instead, I saw a rapidly forming crowd peering down at someone or something on the ground across the street from me. I weighed the term ‘Spanish Influenza’ and the risks of mixing with people against the chance that the crowd might be forming around a fellow Temporal Interventionist, perhaps one who’d been injured.

By the time I got there, though, the crowd was breaking up. A pale, skinny man was being helped to his feet by a stout character. Jeannie did a quick visual diagnosis. “Seizure disorder.”

“The pale guy just had a seizure?”

“Correct.”

“I guess that rules him out as the person who jumped in.” I meant the comment to be sardonic, but Jeannie surprised me.

“He is carrying a jump mechanism. The fading field signature indicates it is a primitive design.”

I took another look. The man was indeed skinny, with the look of someone who’d never gotten enough to eat. He was tall, though, like someone who ought to be very big and healthy if he wasn’t starving. The skin seemed paler than a seizure could account for, and I wondered if he was anemic as well. His eyes blinked, watering heavily, and the man sneezed violently several times before he fished a handkerchief out of one pocket and held it over his mouth and nose.