Abney Park's The Wrath Of Fate (16 page)

At this point a carriage driver reined his horse, narrowly stopping before hitting him. He helped the doctor up, and gently carried him to the side of the road, and said, “I hope you’re near your destination, good sir. You look a mess!”

At that point Calgori saw a pub. Not the pub of his youth, but as he was not thinking clearly, this was close enough to feel a relief. “Yes, I believe I have. Thank you,” he said to the driver, feeling embarrassed to have bothered with his clumsiness.

And then
she
walked out of the pub! A delicate young beauty, with smooth golden hair. She was tiny and young, a girl of sixteen with cheeks smooth as peaches, and clean fresh smile that told the world she had never know sorrow. She was just as he remembered her, as she pulled her new coat onto her tiny frame, buttoning the fur sash to cover her soft smooth neck. The girl of his youth could never have afforded such a coat, but the girl of his memories did.

He was so tired, and he ached all over from his fall, and the cold, and for other reasons he could not remember. The sight of her made him burst into tears, and he ran to her sobbing. Part of his mind felt the emptiness of years of living alone, but the conscious part of him just longed for the love of the girl of his youth. He had hunger and longing that had never been satisfied for the fifty years since he had last seen her.

When he reached her, he wrapped his muddy and horse-fouled arms around her and cried loudly into her shoulder. He wanted his tears of fear to be quenched by the love of his girl. Here was the comfort he missed for a lifetime, and the beauty he hadn’t seen in years of living alone in his workshop.

And then she screamed.

To her, a strange and hideously old man, with blood dripping down his wrinkled and repulsive face and arms had just run out of the street, and grabbed her. She was horrified by his hideous age, by his foul smell, by the look of terror and abandonment in his eyes, she screamed in terror of him.

A policeman from the corner who had watched this man stumble towards the pub saw the old man grab the young girl. He heard the girl scream, and leaped to her aid. As the Calgori staggered back in terror of the girl’s scream, the policeman clubbed him squarely in the head, cracking his weakened skull mortally.

I found him moments later. I had come when I heard the girl scream, and I held him in my lap as he bled out in the street. He told me how he had assured our finances for repairs, and he told me it was time for me to go back to my life, and go back for my friends. He told me to have children, while I still could, and love and be loved while it was still wanted of me.

Then he told me, “I am tired, father, and I miss mother.”

And then he died in my arms.

I drove back in the snow, alone and crying. I told the crew what had happened, and many of them cried as well.

Over the next week many of the original crew gave up. They were nearly back in their own time, and things had fallen apart to the point that putting them back together was simply too much for them.

Those left continued to finish the repairs the doctor had laid out for us, and at the end of three weeks, the ship was finished and ready to go, but there were only ten sailors left to fly it. Barely enough.

We discussed what was to come next. We were fairly sure the doctor had already set the map room for a return trip to 2006. The goal was to return before my small plane crashed into the
Ophelia,
and possibly save my band mates before they plummeted to their death that night.

After that, perhaps we’d return the remaining crew back to the times we had acquired them, or perhaps we’d all stay in 2006 – we weren’t sure. We were not the least bit confident we could run the Chrononautilus without Calgori.

For the month that followed, we tied up all the loose ends, both literally and figuratively. The airbag had been patched, and filled, and the rigging had been re-tied as well and doubled in number.

We also found a home for the stolen baby. A small orphanage about seventy-five miles southeast of us was run by Catholic nuns. They seemed both strict and loving. That alone seemed a combination that would keep this child from developing into the monster he otherwise would have become. A child raised by one set of parents, molded by them, and instilled with the morality they give will become a certain person. Remove their influences, the same child will become someone else.

In addition to this altering of the child’s history, (and I refused to feel any guilt for this) an orphan in the 1900s simply would not have the resources to rise to become an evil dictator. He would not be afforded the best colleges. He would not spend his teen years and early twenties collecting a network of friends and connections in powerful places. He would end up with a much smaller, and less dangerous level of influence on his country.

Still, it did raise the moral question of “Can you condemn a baby for what he has not yet done?” Had this been any other child, this argument might have swayed us, but knowing who this baby would become, we decided to leave the child under the care of the holy sisters.

Finally, the calendar day caught up to the date of our original collision, and once again the ship was aloft, and ready for our final effort.

BOOK II

THE END OF DAYS

Once again we were hit with a sudden wind, pummeling our airbag and rigging like someone threw a switch and turned on a tornado. There was a horrible ripping sound, almost like some monstrous scream, followed by ropes twanging, and something huge and wooden finally tearing lose.

A second later, I saw a four foot section of carved wooden railing swinging towards me on a piece of lanyard, and smash through the starboard window of my cabin. That would take three days to fix, at least – but we were getting quick at rebuilding. Or we wouldn’t bother to fix it, our adventure was just about at an end.

Soon the ship came to a swinging stop. Through the broken glass I could see it was a bright, clear sunny day. The wind was from momentum of the earth as we jumped through time. The actual weather here was hot, arid, and still.

I half-ran from my cabin, out onto the deck, snatching my spyglass as I did. On deck the rest of the crew was beginning to emerge from the portholes and stairways. I met up with Daniel at the railing. We extended our spy glasses in unison, and focused toward the ground.

Below us was a vast expanse of yellow grassland dissected by the remains of a freeway, cracked and ancient-looking in the hot sun. It was half-covered in dust and dirt, with bushes grown through the many cracks in it. About a mile up the road, in the direction we were heading, was a huge cloud of dust being kicked up by a caravan of vehicles. Massive semi-cabs, pulling three, four, and sometimes five different trailers behind them. The first trailer was a painted caravan-house like a huge gypsy wagon but with many floors and windows, the second was a flat bed trailer with greenhouses, and the third had a huge tank of water or fuel, and so on. They called these “hauls”, and each family had at least one. This huge and colorful mobile town looked like someone crossed a victorian house with a circus train, overgrown and over-adorned.

The huge semi-trains were surrounded by smaller vehicles: rusty and haphazardly modified SUVs, small beat up jeeps, odd handmade contraptions of varying design, a dozen motorcycles, and ten or so mounted horses and camels. The motorcycles and mounts were at the tail end, driving a herd of cattle, llamas, and a few dozen yards behind them were…

“Tigers? Are those tigers in the grass? Along the roadside slightly behind the caravan?” Daniel asked with excited concern.

“It looks like it. They seem to be stalking the herd!” I said.

At that moment there was a flash of movement. By the time I refocused my glass, it was over. A tiger - no a cheetah! - had left its hiding spot in the grass, and overtaken one of the bikers. The bike now lay on the ground, tires still spinning, and the black-leather-clad biker on his back kicking, with the body of the large cat extending from him, its face buried resolutely in the biker’s neck. A few moments later the biker stopped kicking as other cheetahs gathered around and waited patiently for their turn to eat.

The other bikers and mounted riders started firing their rifles, not at the cats but into the air to drive the cattle faster.

“Not much we can do for him. He’ll be dead before we can get there,” Daniel said, lowering his glass.

The other cats had stopped pursuing the caravan, and were now gathering around the kill. Tigers, several lions, and at least six cheetahs waited to calm their hunger.

“Even still, let’s catch up with that…what is it, a
wagon train?
Something is seriously wrong. If something like this occurred in 2006, a wagon train of semi-trucks driving cattle and attacked by a mixed pride of predatory cats, I think I would have heard about it! We should be over a major highway in Idaho, yet it looks like we’re in the middle of the African Savanna, over a road abandoned for a hundred and fifty years! Besides, they’ve already spotted us by now, I’m sure. We didn’t emerge in cloud cover, which means we are nowhere near the time and place of our original collision with the
Ophelia
as we had hoped.”