By the Bay (18 page)

She didn’t pay any attention to who was speaking and was greatly relieved when they left the room without even saying goodbye. She was left alone with the man who was almost her father.

“What is this place?”

“Timing Central. At least that’s what they call it now.”

“In the future?”

“My future, not yours.”

“I don’t like it here.”

He nodded. “I don’t either, but then it has changed recently. And I was ordered to give them a chance to recruit you. There aren’t many of us around, you know, who can move through time.”

“Maybe that’s a good thing,” she said sourly. “Seems to be you’ve done more damage than good.”

Food was served them and though Jillian was hungry enough to eat some of it, she found it tasted like sawdust mixed with pepper. The only thing she liked was
the
rather sugary lemonade served with the meal and when she said so, her father looked amused.

“That drink never even brushed close to a lemon,” he said.

“Is nothing real here? Those young people, they looked so much alike in a strange way.”

His grin widened. “It’s been a long time since they were young. Modern science does marvels with human appearance.”

“Is that it?” she asked angrily. “Time has only bought the ability to look young, to bounce around from one choice to another. Is nothing really improved?”

“Oh, many things are better, Jillian.”

“Like what? Are there no more wars?”

“I couldn’t say that exactly.”

“People have better lives. They work less and spend more time enjoying their families?”

“Better in some ways,” he said cautiously. “Work is easier in some ways, though it’s more a matter of brain work than actual labor.”

“And families can have more time together?” She, who prized her family above most other things, hoped it was true.

He hesitated. “Families are different now. Each person tends to go his or her own way. Marriages don’t last and
people don’t live close to each other as they did when you and I were young.”

She wanted to protest that she was still young, only twenty four, but supposed that wasn’t true in a way, not here.

She tried to make her expectations simpler. “Everybody has a place to sleep and plenty to eat in this new world of yours?”

“Well, you know we always have the poor with us, especially in some parts of the world where food shortages are creating famine.”

This didn’t sound good at all! “What has gotten better then?”

He considered again, looking sad as though even he didn’t like the way the numbers were adding up. “We can travel faster and communicate so much better. Strangers from across the world can talk to each other.”

“We had long distance telephones in the 1940s,” she said with a  certain dignity, “and radio communication.”

“No, no, it’s different than that. Much better. And, of course, the weapons are much more powerful and the world council is doing a pretty good job of keeping everybody from killing everybody else.” When she allowed a confused look to cross her face, he tried to explain, “Well, you know after the atomic bomb was developed, that genie was out of the  bottle and things kind of went on from there.”

She had no idea what he was talking about. All she knew was she had no wish to be part of this future of his.

They went out together then into a Brownsville, Texas she barely recognized. Some familiar landmarks still remained in place and, strangely enough, not many people walked around down town, though Davis told her the population had increased many times.

Lots of cars drove the streets, new and shiny and
b
e
aring
little resemblance to those with which she was acquainted. He took her out to eat and this time the food was better, what he called Tex-Mex and reminded her of dishes
Owen
and
Florence
used to serve in their café.

When they were eating their
sweet
, he told her there were two bargaining chips the Timers wanted to offer her.

She frowned, not sure what he meant. She drizzled honey on her dessert, thought about the lemonade and wondered if this honey had actually been produced by bees. She decided it would be better not to ask.

“Two things? You mean ‘wealth and power,’ like they said before. “Thanks, but no thanks.”

He chuckled. “I know you better than that even if it’s just from knowing my Jillian. After all, you two are kind of like identical twins.”

She didn’t find this amusing.

“Wealth and power wasn’t what I wanted either,” he explained, suddenly serious. “I wanted to make things better for all of us.”

“Didn’t work, did it?”

“Some of us think it did.”

She ate her dessert, one dainty bite at a time. Almost as good as
what
Auntie made. She wondered about the faux mother and auntie, waiting for her back in
1
942, expecting her to come out of her father’s office any minute now.

Shifting uneasily in her chair, she wondered even more what was happening to her real family back at home.

“Two things,” he reminded her. “Neither wealth or power, but
things
more important to you than either.”

What kind of game was this? She’d finished her
dessert
and was anxious to wash her sticky hands.

He held up one finger. “One, you want your mother to be well, or at least better.

She blinked, thinking of the woman who was his wife and not actually her mother. That Christine was well enough to be loving and caring, to be the kind of mother she’d always longed to have. Still she wouldn’t trade. She loved her Christine.

And wanted her to be well and living a fulfilling life.

Might as well wish for the moon.

He leaned closer and, examining his face, guessed that anyone caring enough to look at the two of them would guess they were father and daughter. “Medicine is one of the ways in which the years have seen great improvements. These days there are drugs to help people like your mother, as well as all kinds of therapy. She could be a happy, functioning person, Jillian.”

“We don’t live here,” she snapped. “And you popping in and out of her life over the years has only added to her instability. I don’t expect moving her
nearly eighty
years in time would improve her condition.”

“We could go to her.”

She suddenly got it. “And that door you think I closed, you want me to open it so your medicine and doctors can get to Mom. Just to be helpful, no personal agenda involved.”

“I do care about you and your mother.” His tell-tale
completion
reddened once again at her accusation and her suspicions about his intentions only increased.

She glanced around, suspicious that they were being watched. “Why do you want this so much?” she lowered her tone to ask. “When did my reality and yours split? What change made it fork into two different divisions.”

“You know it was the defeat in
N
ew Orleans in1815.”

She shook her head. “I don’t know any such thing. From what I’ve heard so far, that’s something that’s still in flex, still happening. Your world is
teetering
on a change point back then, like two kids on a see-saw and you’re afraid of what’s going to happen if things don’t go your way. It’s your world that’s so crazy unstable that things are rocking back and forth, not mine. I think the change point was a whole lot more recent. It was when you and your crew starting fooling around trying to fix things, wasn’t it, Dad?”

He looked suddenly ill.

“It was right before the great war, the first world war, wasn’t it? That’s when you guys started your work.”

He closed his eyes and nodded.
“We need your help, Jillian. There is an instability in this reality. What you see around here now,” he nodded at the other tables and their customers, “could change at any minute. Ripples are running along time, past and present.”

“We need you to help us bring things back to normal and, in exchange, we are willing  to give you what you most want. We will save the life of your Philippe. Right now he is a British captive and dying of his wounds.”

Her heart stopped with fear. Philippe? Dying? But before she could react, Jillian felt something like a faint shiver and instead of sitting with Davis in a border restaurant, they were standing on the sands of the beach. Looking outward, she saw ships in the distance, firing at each other.

But around her was a Padre Island changed almost beyond recognition.

Chapter Twenty
Five

Philippe drifted in and out of conscious
ness
. Each time when he awakened he tried to get to his feet, ready to charge out to the battle once more. Sometimes there was someone nearby to restrain him and keep him on his pallet, but other times he stumbled a step or two to fall to the ground and
sink
again into a fever-induced stupor.

Thus it was that when he heard her
dear
voice, cool and reasonable, abo
ve
the torment of pain and heat, he thought at first it was only another delusion.

The voice sounded like Jillian’s, her sweet, light tones lifting his heart. If he was going to die, as he suspected he would, then it would be in her arms.

But no! He could not leave his Jillian a prisoner of the British, lost in a place where she had neither friends nor kin. He murmured in French, protesting, swearing at such a possibility, and with great effort manag
ed
the task of lifting his eyelashes so that, through a blurry fog of pain, he saw her standing there, dressed as though she were a young woman of the time, in a long plain skirt and white blouse.

“Oh, Philippe,” she said and blinked tears from her lovely blue eyes.

He managed to smile. “Imagine encountering you in a place like this.”

“Wherever you are,” she countered bravely.

“Are you a prisoner too?”

She shook her head, red strands escaping from her upswept hair. “There is a truce, an
armistice
while the battlers chat and try to come to terms. I was allowed in as were other women of New Orleans to see to the welfare of the men we love.”

“That seems kind,” he commented doubtfully. It also seemed very unlikely. The British army did not normally act in such a compassionate way, not any
more than would his privateers in similar circumstances.
They were hard, sometimes brutal men, giving no quarter and expecting none.

She had bandages and medicines. While the injured around him watched with envy, she gave him pills to swallow and poured stinging fluid on to his wounds, then wrapped clean bandages
on
his wounds. “This is just temporary,” she said, “until we get you out of here and to a hospital.”

Other women were moving among his fellow prisoners now so he did not feel so badly to be the only recipient of assistance. He felt the pills she had given him take over his form and his thinking so that he drifted away from the pain and despair, indulging in a sort of euphoria.

Jillian went to speak to someone outside and two men with a stretcher came in for him and with infinite care, lifted him on to it.

In spite of their caution, his pain was beyond bearing and he dropped into blackness, his only thought that Jillian was at his side.

When he awakened he was in a cool, white bed in a room th
at
smelled funny, though not in an entirely unpleasant way. It smelled of medicine and had nothing of the humid warmth of Louisiana within its walls.

He
was
totally unlike himself, weak and powerless, and he didn’t like the feeling at all.  He was having trouble remembering his English, though he had spoken the language as much as French for most of his life. But at this moment of great weakness, he was back at his beginnings and the words that formed in his brain were all in his first tongue.

Jillian wasn’t at his side and he wondered if he had only imagined her presence. He wanted her here. There were so many things
he
needed to tell her before he slipped away from this life.

He had been injured
on many occasions
in his career as a privateer and that was why he now recognized that his wounds were mortal. He would not walk away this time. Like most men who lived on the edge of danger, he had known all along that death could come at any time. He was ready to commit his being to
the good God
, but hardly eager. He had responsibilities in New Orleans and he’d had such a short time with this woman he adored. Being alive with Jillian at his side would have been such an adventure!

Ah well
.
Now he had only to say goodbye to her.