By the Bay (26 page)

Afterwards she and Philippe stopped by
the
café where she hoped to be able to talk to
Owen
alone.
The
Owen
she knew was a reasonable man. She hoped to be able to persuade him to her point of view.

Realizing as she did how rapidly things were changing outside this base zone, she could hardly sleep or eat so fearful was she that at any moment this reality might dissolve or explode or whatever terrible thing was about to happen.

They had no time left and yet Davis and Michael seemed determined to keep them here in endless wrangling while they grew closer and closer to the precipice.

They found seats at a table near the back of the room, the location where she normally ate with Auntie and Uncle
Owen
and when the waitress came over,
she
ordered chocolate pie and coffee for each of them.

The pie wasn’t up to the standards she was used to and she remembered that Auntie was the café’s skilled baker.
Owen
could produce good meals, but baking wasn’t his
specialty
. The crust of the pie was doughy and underdone. Philippe pushed it aside after one bite and concentrated on his coffee. Uncle
Owen
made the best coffee in town.

Funny how some things were the same, like Uncle
Owen
’s coffee, while others were so different.

After a while the tall, thin man she had a hard time identifying as
Owen
came over to join them. “Pie’s no good,” he confirmed. “There’s this local girl with a real talent for pastries. I’m thinking about hiring her to do a little baking for me.”

Jillian had an idea she knew that girl’s name. If so, it would be a while before she joined the restaurant staff. She knew Auntie had gone to school for a while, then married and had a baby. It was only when she’d divorced her husband when they drifted apart after their little son’s death that she’d gone to work for
Owen
.

He sat down with them. “How did you get into this time travel stuff,
Owen
?” she queried. She felt rushed with no time for small talk while the world was falling apart. “Davis get you into it?”

His laughter sounded uneasy. “Actually it was the other way around. I always liked to read science fiction. You know Jules Verne and H.G. Wells, particularly Wells. I like to think about things like that, kind of stretch the brain, you know.”

Jillian nodded while Philippe silently sipped his coffee.

The café was full of chatter. Nobody was paying particular attention to them.

“Anyway Davis and me, we’re always talking about anything and everything. We got to thinking maybe there was something real to these ideas about time, how you could move back in the past and forward into the future. We’ve watched the trouble boiling up in Europe for some time now and
talked about
how it takes so long to communicate and how thinking can get so mixed up. Heck, sometimes it seems like governments just stumble toward war.”

She nodded. “Like the battle of New Orleans being fought after a peace agreement had already been signed,” she
agreed.

“What?” Philippe asked, obviously startled. “A peace agreement?”

She didn’t have time to explain. They had to deal with the current emergency right now, not one in the past.

“Yeah.”
Owen
leaned back in his chair. Looking closely, Jillian thought she saw traces of the face she knew so well.

“So you developed your theories and went to the government with them?”

He shook his head. “Didn’t happen like that. Not at all. Davis and me, we figured nobody would buy into our thinking, it sounded more like story telling than science. So a couple of years ago, we began to try it out. We’d worked and worked at night and his wife she was getting downright annoyed. You see he didn’t have  time to hold down a job, even turned down a chance to work for the police department, something he’d always thought he’d liked to do.”

“And Mom . . .I mean Mrs. Blake didn’t like that.”

“Well, she wouldn’t , would she, with her having to hold down a job to support the two of them. I got my café started here, but Davis he didn’t have time for anything.” He broke into a sudden smile. “Time for anything but time.”

“After the peace treaty?” Philippe was still stuck with the news about his own hometown.

“He got it to work finally.”
Owen
went out. “At first it was just a day or two forward or backward.”

“And you believed him?” Jillian was incredulous, feeling she would have thought this was only the wildest imagination.

“No, not exactly. You see, you kind of have to do it before you believe it.”

She waited. “He got so he could take me with him and we went back. We was at Vicksburg during the war between the states. It was more downright awful than you can figure and that’s when we began to think we could maybe change things so such terrible wars wouldn’t happen
any more.

His expressive face showed the agony of that experience. “We figured if somebody could actually go back and look at war and tell people what it was like, you know report on it to them, and talk about the suffering and not lies about glory and valor and all that, it would change things.”

It was a noble motive. But it hadn’t worked out that way. “That’s not what happens,
Owen
. They use it to move troops and equipment to where they know they will be needed. Timing becomes a military advantage, a way to win wars not stop them. It was developed with the best of intentions, but those were betrayed. Surely you saw that happen?”

He shook his head. “I don’t travel. None of us will except Davis and the people he’s recruiting. Oh, he takes us along now and then.”

“But he chooses where and when you’ll go?”

His eyes widened with horror.

She was suddenly aware that they had company. Cal Franklin stood just behind her, listening intently.

“The worst of it,
Owen
,” she went on, pretending he was her only listener, “is that it destabilizes time. Just ahead of now and just behind, time is flashing wildly from one neighborhood to another and even Davis, the Davis I know who is a middle-aged man, is terrified that everything is just going to blow away.”

Owen
wasn’t the one she was paying closest attention to now. Cal Franklin’s deep voice reached her,” Can you prove that, Miss Blake?” he asked. “Can you offer us more than just your unsupported word.”

“She’s Madame
d
e Beauvois,” Philippe corrected hastily. “And we can take you there, the two of us. We can travel in the same way that Davis Blake can
.”

Owen
remained frozen in his chair, his face a mask of tragedy. Franklin might insist on proof, but
Owen
believed them.

“You’ll be risking your life,” Jillian cautioned the government representative. “As times change, people vanish and we don’t know for sure that they ever show up again.”

“My government sends young men to sure death in warfare,” the older man said calmly. “I can’t stop a project that might change that without convincing . . .no, not with
out
overwhelming evidence. I am willing to run the risk.”

Jillian got to her feet and Philippe came to her side. He took her left hand and she grabbed the big fat hand of Cal Franklin in her right hand. She was conscious of the sudden stillness in the room and knew that every eye was watching them. No doubt this would become a moment of legend in local storytelling.

She concentrated as Davis had taught her and they moved through time.

Chapter Thirty
Seven

Cal Franklin drank his bourbon and demanded that
Owen
serve him a second before he would begin the meeting. They were at the Blake cottage with Mike Stevens,
Owen
Lewis
, and, of course, Davis
had
been summoned. The three of them sat uneasily on the sofa while Philippe stood beside Jillian’s chair which flanked the big easy chair where Franklin determinedly downed his second drink.

Apparently he was accustomed to bourbon because he didn’t act in the least influenced by the drink other than that the gray tone of his face was a little less
pronounced.

He looked like a man who had just been through a really bad experience.

Davis glared at Jillian and she figured he was making a fairly accurate guess as to what had just happened.

They were lined up now, two sides with the timing
entrepreneurs
on one side and she and Philippe on the other with Cal Franklin. Jillian felt a sparking of hope that it was President Wilson’s man who really mattered in this decision.

It was over before it had properly begun. She was almost sure of it.

Franklin started talking in his low, rumbly voice.
“I would throw the three of you in prison if I could think of what charge to make,” he began fiercely, fixing the three on the sofa with his gaze. “That still may happen when the president hears about this.”

“But sir, our intentions were of the best,” Mike Stevens protested.

“You know just what road is paved with good intentions,” Franklin virtually spat out the words.

“And you,
Lewis
, the main thing I can accuse you of is being a damn fool.”

Owen
winced but didn’t say anything. Franklin’s darting gaze came to rest on the man in the middle, red-haired Davis Blake. “But you, Blake, you knowingly let this go on, fully aware of the risk, and still pushed the project ahead and tried to involve the U.S. government in this . . .this treason.”

“Not treason,” Davis snapped angrily. “I was working for the best good of my countrymen.”

“Treason against the world and all its people,” Franklin was brooking no argument. He raised one hand, forming it into a fist. “It’s over, Blake, we will not fund your project. In fact you will be carefully guarded to see that another attempt is not make to destroy the world.”

Mike Stevens tried to say something, but Franklin told him to shut up.

He turned quietly to Jillian and Philippe as though they were the only people in the room. “Madame and Monsieur
d
e Beauvois, I am told you are not native to our
country
. It seems to
me
if we are to have a chance at rescuing our
tortured
land, it is by restoring things to where they started and you’re being here is part of the changes this man made.”

Jillian met his gaze, a mixture of emotions sweeping through her. She nodded her agreement, but then her gaze went to Philippe.

He too had known this was coming. Not only the fact that they were here in
this other
world, but the fact that they wer
e
together at all was out of joint with the times.

Their union was part of the problem.

He belonged in 181
5
New Orleans and she was from 194
3
Texas.

“I am very sorry,” Franklin seemed to feel genuine pity, seeing the long look exchanged between the two of them, “and am very aware that we wouldn’t have this chance, this slim chance, without the two of you taking the trouble to show me what the results of these
experiments
would be.” His chuckle was, in spite of everything, laced with humor. “So I am thanking you for your visit and at the same time begging you to depart.”

He was only asking them to leave, not telling them to stay
apart from each other.
The latter was a decision no one else could make.

She glanced at the three men on the sofa and as she watched, Davis got to his feet. He, too, laughed, though it was a bitter and angry sound. “You have no idea what you’re doing or what this action of yours will cost.”

Philippe took her hand and together they once more moved through time until they found themselves standing by the lapping water of Laguna Madre.

“They will try again,” Jillian said, still hanging on to his hand as though she would never let go.

“We have given them a chance. It was all we could do.”

She nodded, tears flooding her eyes and running down her face until she could feel the taste of them in her mouth.

“We could run our own risks,” she said, her voice hardly sounding like her own so choked was it with emotion. “But we can’t risk everybody else.”

“Surely,” he protested, “there is somewhere we can go where no one will be harmed.

“It isn’t us. It’s us together. We put the balance off.”

They kissed then, a slow and lingering kiss that would have to last them the rest of their lives, and then they pulled away and walked in different directions. Jillian headed up the sandy street to the cottage and Philippe waded into the bay where he knew a boat would be waiting.