Timewatch (18 page)

Her father's concern tore at her as he tried to comfort her by saying, “Don't you worry, sweetheart. I'll come back.”

“
We
will,” she corrected. “If I'm old enough to fight and die for my country, I'm old enough to go with the rest of you, too.”

“Laney, if this time travel thing does happen, my mind would rest a whole lot easier if I knew you were okay. Now please go along with me on this.”

“Dad, I'm not ten years old anymore. You do what you want—I'm going.”

He didn't like that, but she knew she was right. She wasn't a kid anymore. Up to now she had been absorbed in her own problems. Now she was ready to take on something way more important. In the past, girls her age had ruled empires. She could do what had to be done, too.

“Okay, Laney. I can't stop you, but remember: you've got a whole lot of living to do yet.”

She looked at him with tears in her eyes. “So do you, Dad. So do you.”

“Just 'cause I'm down sometimes, honey, doesn't mean I want to die. But I've had a lot on my mind.”

Like being fired and her mother divorcing him. She felt how miserable he'd been. Mom had tried to convince her that the divorce was Dad's fault, but lately she'd been seeing a new side of her mother, how manipulative and feeling sorry for herself she was. And, yet, her mother was hurting, too. Maybe both of them were doing the best they could. But it wasn't up to her to fix their relationship—even if it could be fixed. All she could do was keep on loving them both.

Marjory was wiping her mouth with her napkin and saying, “I would be happy to cut a piece of the lining for each of us, Caleb.”

“As you wish, Marjory.”

Marjory took out a small pair of scissors from her purse. Nicholas silently handed her the box.

“Now let me see. Show me your thumbs,” she said lightly. The tension eased as J.J. snickered while the others laughed.

When Marjory had finished giving out the thumb-size pieces of cloth to everyone, Caleb got up and laid some big bills on the small tray that the waiter had left.

Her dad seemed lost in thought.

“Let's go, Dad.”

He stood up, pulled her gently to him, and held her for a long moment.

“Dad, people are staring.”

“I don't care. They're probably jealous because they don't have such a beautiful daughter. I love you, Laney, and I plan on coming back and sticking around for a long time. After all, your kids will need a grandpa to teach them how to play football.”

She brushed her hair over her shoulders as she said, “And I suppose I can expect you to tell me how to raise them.”

“Absolutely.”

They walked out into the brilliant sunshine glinting blindingly off the tiles of the restaurant's roof and the white stucco of its walls, over to the Lincoln in which the others were waiting.

CHAPTER 17

“What a pretty place!” exclaimed Laney.

Dan could see her point. Beds of roses ranging in color from red to pale yellow and the luxuriant foliage of bushes and trees encircled a small lawn.

A man with his back turned to them was loitering by a bush with bird-of-paradise blooms on it. Now he was fishing under his coat for something …

Catching his breath, Dan catapulted himself at the man. They fell to the ground. Then they were both clawing and jabbing, each trying to get the advantage. But although the guy was shorter than he was by a good three inches, he was wiry and hard-muscled—and drawing a gun.

Dan seized the gunman's wrist. Using reflexes he thought he'd forgotten, he brought the side of his other hand down hard on his assailant's neck. One last grunt and the man went limp.

There was a shocked silence. Caleb let rip a few choice expletives.

Dan got up. The whole fight—unlike Hollywood movies where the fight scenes went on forever—had only taken a minute or two. He felt sore all over, as though he'd been wrestling with a bear, and his head hurt where a lucky punch had landed.

Was the killing starting again
?
He picked up the guy's gun and on impulse checked his pulse. A little fast, maybe, but he'd live. Relief washed through Dan.

“How did you know he was going to shoot us?” asked J.J.

“I didn't, but I thought it was funny he was wearing that trench coat when it's so warm out.”

Pointing shakily to the gun, J.J. asked in a tone laced with disbelief, “He was going to kill us all with that thing?”

“You better believe it! That's a thirty-two-caliber Czech-made submachine gun.”

“It's not that big.”

“But lethal. They don't call it the Skorpion for nothing. Put it on automatic, and you can let off 150 rounds per minute. Even on semiautomatic it'll fire sixty-five rounds per minute, enough to take us all out fast. These babies are real popular now in places like Africa, Europe, and South America.”

There was a grudging respect in Caleb's eyes as he said, “You seem to be making a habit of rescuing us. It's fortunate for us all that you were so alert.” Then, pointing to two wooden benches, he said, “Let's sit down over there and talk this thing over.”

“Shouldn't we call the cops?” asked Laney in a worried tone of voice.

“I'll do that,” said Cummings, who had been standing discreetly to one side of the benches. “But at the moment,” he said, “I don't think our attacker is going anywhere. Until you return, I'll stand guard here,”

When they'd sat down, Nicholas asked, “Do you suppose that these attacks were meant to stop us from taking advantage of this ‘window' that Jeremy talked about?”

“But how could anyone have known about all this? We only found out the other day,” objected Gerry, who had sat down beside him. His heart constricted as he thought what might have happened to her if the gunman had successfully carried out his intent to kill them. She gave him a small smile and didn't pull away when he took her hand.

Cummings cleared his throat. “It is possible,” he said, “that Jeremy's opposite number—whoever he is—knows about this portal of entry into time and has decided to do something about it.”

“Like making sure we don't use it,” said Dan.

Cummings nodded.

They were all silent for a moment as the implications of that registered. None of them looked too happy, and no wonder—they'd expected a mild sort of adventure and here it had turned definitely nasty.

Suddenly Caleb roused himself and said, “Well, let's get on with it. Are you all with me?” he challenged, his bushy eyebrows drawn together in a frown that made him look like a pirate.

With a bleak look, Marjory said, “It seems we have no choice. More than ever, it appears necessary to follow Jeremy's instructions.”

After taking his thumb-size piece of the herb-soaked cotton out of his pocket, Caleb put it into his mouth.

Dan still had doubts about going back in time, but the two attacks on them were rapidly convincing him that someone was taking this whole thing very seriously. That probably meant that he should, too.

Their assailant wasn't moving, he noted. He looked at Cummings, a good guy to have their backs, who was standing guard with the assailant's gun. He nodded gravely. Reassured, Dan popped his piece into his mouth. The herbs in the cotton tasted slightly bitter, but not unpleasantly so.

Marjory put her piece on her tongue without showing any visible reaction except for a certain tightening of her lips afterward. Nicholas followed suit with a gusto that surprised Dan. Revealing his past must have been a real relief. Now it was J.J.'s turn. The boy's hand trembled, whether from nerves or excitement it was hard to say, but he, too, put his piece onto his tongue and clamped his mouth shut, while Laney closed her eyes and did the same. Gerry gave him a small smile before putting her herb-soaked piece into her mouth.

Then the light began to fade, the red, fuzzy-looking blooms of the bottlebrush tree and the vivid tints of flowers and the grass gradually losing all their color until they looked like one of those sepia-toned, 19th-century photos.

Everything was losing its substance, becoming two-dimensional: Laney, the trees, everything becoming only an outline in a landscape rapidly blurring and dissolving into nothingness. Was this what it was like to die?

Out of the void came a force that pulled him with such intensity that he felt turned inside out.

Then all sensation passed, as wrapped in a dreamlike state he passed into a strange country. He could see in the distance a massive hill upon which stood several large structures. At the base of the hill grazed cattle, small, rangy-looking creatures, compared with the hormone-filled and force-fed animals modern American industry had produced.

“Dad, we made it!” said Laney, who edged closer to him. Caleb, for once with nothing to say, was there with the others looking around in wonder.

Pointing to some round stone houses with thatched roofs, Marjory, a little catch in her voice, observed, “Surely this can't be New England. From what I've read, the early American settlers lived in frame houses and, later on, brick ones.”

“Or log cabins,” piped up J.J.

“The Swedes and Germans were the first to build them,” said Marjory.

“I wonder if we're even in America,” said Nicholas.

At this daunting remark, they all began scanning the horizon anxiously.

Then Dan saw a woman walking toward them with quick, firm steps, a heavy, golden thing around her neck and her hair streaming down the back of her blue robe. Stopping in front of them, she smiled gravely and said, “I am Bryanna, your ancestress, one of those in your lineage. As was common for children in Celtic Britain, I was sent away to a foster home. Tighearnach, the Archdruid, fostered me and taught me much. Eventually, I became a Druid priestess, one qualified to mediate disputes, school the young who would later become Druids, and to carry out religious rituals.”

“Druids yet!” Dan barely managed to avoid blurting out
.
Next, they'd be talking to elves. He prided himself on having as open a mind as the other guy, but this was getting more than a little strange. Had the decoction of herbs that Jeremy had prepared for them been a kind of hallucinogen? He'd smoked grass every now and again, and once had even tried some of the heavy-duty stuff—practically everyone he knew in 'Nam had tried some form of drugs—but this was unlike anything he'd ever tried before. This was so real!

“I saw you once before in Cornwall, near the megalith,” murmured Marjory.

A look of understanding passed between the two women. Bryanna nodded and then turned her attention upon the rest of them.

“Like Tighearnach who fostered me, I am part of an ancient tradition that included Hindu priests and the Magi, the priests of Persia. Our belief that souls never die, just take on new bodies, came from an even earlier priesthood who knew the Ancient Ones, those who long ago walked this earth as gods. Our oral tradition tells us that there will come a time when humankind will fall so far out of balance that life for all on this plane will hang by a hair.

“To succeed in your task, you must be prepared to learn the precepts of the One, who bids us live in harmony with all life and to follow our own inner wisdom. This inner guidance will tell you what has to be done. On this, the future of the human race may depend.”

A ton of questions sprang to mind, but before he could ask even one of them, a powerful force swept him up.

“Welcome, kinsmen.”

The change was so abrupt that for a moment Dan could only gape at the man who had to be Jeremy.

“We really did it!” exclaimed J.J.

“Where are we?” asked Dan.

“In transit to seventeenth-century New England,” said Jeremy.

Dan looked around. Then it hit him. “Hey, where is my daughter? And where are the rest of them?”

“Elsewhere and elsewhen.”

“Nobody said anything about separating.”

Jeremy ignored Dan's interruption and went on. “A number of key points in time require each of you to go to different places and times, into bodies that you once inhabited.”

“Yeah, we already talked to Bryanna,” said J.J.

“Then you know the extreme importance of your task. Now let us to business. In June 1675, Metacom (or King Philip as the English call him), chief of the Wampanoag tribe, with the help of other Indian tribes, began conducting an all-out war against the colonists of southern New England. Metacom believed that the settlers were trying to dominate the Indians by encroaching on their lands and dealing unfairly with them in the English courts. During the many battles that ensued, the Indians destroyed some twenty-five settlements. If the Wampanoag sachem is not stopped, Count Frontenac from New France to the north will claim the Thirteen Colonies for France. Then there will be no American Revolution and, consequently, no United States of America.”

“So what's your big plan? You want us to march up to this dude and tell him, ‘You're history, buddy'?”

“Not at all, Dan. My plans do not incorporate murder.”

“What can I do?” broke in J.J.

“You will save the life of the man who, more than any other, was responsible for stopping Metacom.”

“But I'm no hero!” cried J.J.

CHAPTER 18

As his voice echoed in his ears, a relentless force signaling another time shift propelled him forward. It felt like the day he'd gone swimming in Hawaii, when he'd been picked up by a huge wave and shoved with roller-coaster speed up onto the beach.

With a painful wrench that made his guts feel as if they were being turned inside out, he came gasping out of the void into a noisy confusion of dogs barking, children squealing, and someone chanting. He could smell the smoke of campfires and food cooking. Weights lay on his eyes, and he ached all over.