Timewatch (36 page)

He looked wildly around. No one noticed his agitation. Everyone else was staring at the fast-disappearing plane.

The wind had dropped. A fatalistic calm settled over Caleb.

What kind of weapon were the Germans going to use—a killer virus, something in the water?

Not likely. They needed a weapon to make an immediate impact, one that could be seen and felt right away, so maybe it was something along the lines of the V-2 rockets that the Germans had developed during World War II.

Caleb waited.

Ten minutes. Fifteen.

Maybe the colonials would stage a last-ditch resistance effort. Maybe …

And maybe there was no way out for Colonial America.

A sudden flash a few miles away made him jump. What he saw next made his flesh crawl.

Oh, no, not that horror unleashed here, too!

The mushroom cloud was rising steadily, spreading its deadly burden of radioactive gases throughout the atmosphere. Already a firestorm was beginning to sweep the area.

A cheer went up from the men around him. Caleb felt sick.

A hand slapped him on the back. “We've won!” Siggy yelled.

“You think so?” Caleb was suddenly so mad he didn't care what they thought of him. “If we stay here, we're all dead men.”

Siggy looked startled.

Didn't they know anything about the effects of nuclear radiation? Maybe not. Klaus's memories included only that London had been annihilated with this weapon and that shortly afterward England had surrendered. Nothing else.

Now the captain was ordering them into the trucks again. Good idea to get out of this place. It definitely wasn't safe.

The trucks began driving at a good clip. They weren't as advanced as the vehicles that American industry turned out in his time, but they could pour on the speed when they had to.

“Hey, what's this? We're going the wrong way!”

Siggy looked at Caleb in surprise. “You really are screwed up today. This is the way to Philadelphia.”

“But … but we should be going the other way!”

“Not according to Kreuger.”

“That devil!”

“Not so loud. You want to get us into trouble?”

“You haven't seen trouble yet. We go to Philly and we die.”

“What are you, some kind of psychic? We're just going to mop up there. There'll be no fight left in the colonials after what we just dropped on them—if there're any of them left alive.”

“Don't you know anything, you stupid Kraut? The area's hot, radioactive. We go there and we get radiation sickness. Our hair falls out, we get sores all over us, and our red blood cells get so screwed up that we die in a few weeks or months. No cure. You get it now?”

Siggy paled. “I don't believe it. If it was that dangerous, Captain Kreuger wouldn't send us in there.”

“What makes you think he wouldn't? Where is the stinking captain now? I don't see him risking his ass. Well, where is he?”

Heads twisted around and mouths opened in surprise as the other men looked at Caleb.

“Yeah, go ahead and look. We're finished, all of us, right now, unless we turn around and go back.”

“How do you know? What makes you so sure?”

The objector was a tall man in his early 30s. Even the fatigue that stamped his face couldn't mask the intelligence in his eyes.

A chorus of murmured comments greeted his words.

How could he get through to these guys? He hadn't come all this way to die horribly, especially without having accomplished anything.

“Trust me on this one. Just ask yourself why they bothered to send us. The city will be devastated. There won't be any resistance. People will be too busy trying to get away. So why send us? Can you tell me that?”

His avalanche of questions seemed to have rocked the men. They began muttering among themselves.

The trucks stopped suddenly. Caleb saw why. There was no road left. It had heaved up in the same way that he had seen an earthquake in San Francisco destroy a freeway. Farther on, the road had fused into a glass-like substance. Fires were burning everywhere; not one building was standing, only blackened shells.

Where were the survivors—if any?

Then Caleb saw them. As with one voice, the men gasped. He heard Siggy beside him becoming violently sick over the side of the truck.

You couldn't tell if they were men or women, Caleb observed with a sort of detachment that he recognized as shock. They were like something out of a horror movie, those crisped, stump-like figures moaning and stumbling along like an army of zombies.

The trucks suddenly roared into reverse, bumped to a jerky stop, then turned and drove madly off, followed by the insane howling of what was left of the former inhabitants of the City of Brotherly Love.

Maybe they were the lucky ones. At least they'd die fast. Already the soldiers and himself were exposed. They'd take longer to die a slow, miserable death.

Caleb looked up at the sky, his heart contracting with misery for his country, his doomed country that had never really had a chance.

What was the point of his having seen this devastation that would live forever in his nightmares? No one—except perhaps the other Morgans—would ever believe that a rich, powerful America, the mightiest nation that had ever arisen, could ever experience such devastation. But the ancient Romans probably never thought that the day would come when barbarians would conquer them.

So was there anything he could do? He knew what he had seen, what he had felt in his gut. If there were even a slim possibility of this scenario occurring in the 20th century in his lifetime, he would work night and day to prevent this.

The light began to dim, a slow fade-out that sucked out colors, leaving a gray blight over everything. Then he felt himself being pried out of the body of his host and contracted into a single point of consciousness, enveloped by the sweetest music he'd ever experienced, a sound at once awesome and familiar, healing and soothing. Borne on the mighty waves of this music, he was swept back into his universe.

CHAPTER 50

J.J. straightened up cautiously. He was sitting on the bench in the mission garden, in his own body. The rest of the Morgans and Mr. S. were all there, too. He looked at his watch: June 21, 2:20
P.M.
, five minutes after they'd left.

Over the sudden babble he could hear Caleb saying, “I had the time of my life in Colonial America, but my jump into a future alternate timeline was pretty ghastly. Nobody had better try to tell me that nothing happened!”

By the look on everyone's faces, no one was about to.

Dan was nodding his head. The remote expression on his face made you think that he must have had a few adventures of his own, too.

Marjory had edged right over to the end of the bench that she was sitting on beside Nicholas, who didn't seem to be paying any attention to her. It was like he didn't care. Gerry had come out of her shell and was smiling at everyone. Laney was sitting erect as a little princess and looking very thoughtful. Bet she had a few things to talk about.

Only Cummings was his usual self. He was one cool guy. “Welcome back,” he was saying, and then, “I have notified the sheriff's department about our assailant here.”

The guy was lying on his back, out cold. Then he started groaning and trying to sit up.

“Hold still!” said Cummings, pointing the gun he held at the man.

After rubbing his arm, Dan got up and went over and checked the guy—probably for other weapons—who glared at him but stopped trying to get up.

Cummings walked over to them. Looking down at the guy on the ground, he asked, “Who are you?”

“Carlo,” he muttered.

“Well, Carlo, face it—you've lost,” said Dan.

“Yes,” observed Cummings. “Today is the summer solstice, and the window for changing this timeline has closed.”

With a bleak look on his face, Carlo looked at Cummings, then closed his eyes and murmured, “Papa.”

“Your papa,” said Cummings, “wanted to dominate the world.”

Carlo opened his eyes and protested, “It was for their own good.”

“But not their decision.”

An uncertain look came into the eyes of their assailant. “But Papa said …”

“That you elites know better than the masses how to run their affairs? What your papa has forgotten is that the way that most people learn is by being allowed to make their own mistakes. In that sense, this world is a perfect place to learn, for by reincarnating over and over again—albeit in different scenarios, from warriors and kings to peasants—one finally learns compassion for others.”

A siren wailed in the distance. Tires crunched on the gravel of the car park. Two cops hustled into the garden soon after that and took the gun from Cummings.

Carlo got up and pointed at Dan. “This man attacked me! Arrest him.”

Caleb hurried over. “I'm Caleb Morgan,” he said.

“The developer?” asked the younger cop, who was built like a wrestler.

Caleb puffed out his chest. “The very same,” he said.

“My dad used to work for you, said you were a straight shooter. So what happened here?”

“This thug tried to kill us. If it hadn't been for Dan, he would have succeeded.”

“I am Carlo Hauptman, no thug but a respectable businessman!”

“Yeah, right. So why were you trying to kill us?” asked Dan.

“We'll sort this out when we all go downtown,” said the older cop in a raspy voice.

Carlo was taken into custody and held for interrogation. After the authorities were satisfied that the Morgans and Nicholas were basically just tourists, they were allowed to leave. Caleb suggested that they all go back to his place where they could order in supper and debrief.

CHAPTER 51

They gathered in Caleb's library, where Cummings took their orders for food. After he had called a restaurant, he said, “I shouldn't be surprised if the attacks were over.”

“Why is that?” asked Laney.

Giving one of his rare smiles, Cummings answered, “Since you have succeeded in stabilizing the timeline, you Morgans are no longer a threat—at least for now.”

“How do we know if we really did succeed?” asked Laney.

“I'm sure there will be certain indicators.”

She had her mouth open to ask some more questions when Dan cut in with, “So the reason we were attacked was that someone didn't want the timeline stabilized.”

“It makes sense,” broke in Nicholas. “Mind you, Marjory and I had some opposition from an Indian who tried to stop us from seeing Susanna …”

“Kiontawakon! He tried to make me persuade the chiefs of the Iroquois League to help Metacom against the New Englanders,” cried J.J., “but I wouldn't do it.”

“And quite by accident, I saved the life of Benjamin Church, who led the colonists to victory in King Phillip's War. If Church had died, there might not have been an America,” said Dan. “Where did you go, Gerry?” he asked, his gaze lingering on her.

“Back into the body of Lady Mary Montague, who persuaded the Princess of Wales to inoculate her children against smallpox. That meant, you see,” she explained, “that all of England eventually followed suit.”

“Saved a lot of lives,” said Dan, nodding his head. Then turning to his daughter he asked, “Laney, where did you go?”

“France. I was the wife of the Marquis de Lafayette.”

That explained her new air of self-confidence. Living with a bunch of aristocrats must have been fun for her.

“But I'm glad to be back.”

Everyone nodded in agreement. J.J. whispered to her, “Why do you think you went to that lifetime?” he asked.

“I told Lafayette he was going to be a big hero during the American Revolution, and that it was because of him France helped the Americans, who mightn't have won otherwise,” she said in a rush as though it was a confession she had to make all at once.

“Sounds like that's what you were supposed to do.”

At the hopeful look in her eyes, he added, “It's tough to be a hero. Maybe Lafayette needed a little encouragement to do what he was going to do, if you see what I mean.”

Laney brightened and said, “Maybe it was all right, telling him about the future and all, since he was feverish anyway. He might have thought later that he'd just imagined it.”

“You made him think.”

“I hope so. Oh, and later I think I saved his life from an assassin. He was a great guy. I …” She looked down at her hands. “I found it hard to leave him.” Her eyes filled with tears, and she looked away.

“I met a girl I didn't want to leave, either.”

Laney brushed away her tears and looked at him compassionately. “I never thought time traveling would be like this, getting attached to people and then feeling just horrible when you had to leave them.”

The food came and got cold while Dan and the others went on and on about their adventures. Marjory and Nicholas, who hardly looked at each other, told their stories, too, but were pretty reserved about the whole thing. It sounded as if they hadn't been too thrilled about living in Colonial America.

Marjory was excited when she heard that Geraldine had gone back to the 18th century. Trust the old lady to know all about Lady Mary and how she had persuaded the English to start vaccinating people against smallpox.

Then Gerry spoke up. “I have a question. Like the rest of you, I went back to another era, but how could I do that? I'm not really a Morgan. After my father died, my mother married Aunt Marjory's brother.”

Dan gave a muffled exclamation and looked hard at Gerry.

“The same applies to me,” said Nicholas. “I, too, am not a Morgan, yet I also went back in time.”