Borrowed Time (23 page)

“I still feel guilty knowing you’re doing that.” Betty was taking a break as she massaged a hand cramped from manual note-taking. “It’s bad enough that you have to spend so much time with me during the days.”

“It’s not a hardship,” Jim replied. “I kind of like it.”

She smiled. “Then why haven’t you tried to kiss me?”

“Because I don’t trust myself. To stop at just kissing, I mean. I can’t believe how hormone-addled I am sometimes.”

“Tell me about it.” Betty sighed. “You’re right. We know too much about that, about how good it would feel, and our older selves might not have enough control to keep us from going too far. Especially since you’re probably the only boy in our school who knows how to get a girl’s bra off. If we got caught, there’d be hell to pay and you’d never be allowed within a half-kilometer of me again.”

“So instead we’re being the models of well-behaved youth, circa 1964.”

“That is so weird, isn’t it?” She picked up her pen. “Back to work, Mr. Jones.”

#

“Why haven’t I seen Bill around?” his mother asked at dinner.

“Bill?” One of Jim’s closest friends when he was fifteen. They had talked at school in the last few weeks, but that was it. “I guess he’s been busy.”

“
He’s
been busy?” Mary said. “Maybe
you’ve
been busy spending every minute with Betty Knox. They’re
always
together,” Jim’s little sister continued dramatically. “
Every
minute of
every
day.
Everybody’s
talking about it.”

His mother bent a smile toward Jim. “I’m glad you’re spending time with her. She’s a smart girl. And a nice girl.”

Only because we don’t dare do anything
, Jim thought. “We’ve got a lot in common,” he mumbled, feeling fifteen years old again in every way.

“Mom said she was smart,” Mary remarked. “How could
you
have anything in common with her?”

“Maybe I have reservoirs of intellectual capacity that you’ve failed to appreciate.” No sooner had Jim said that than he knew it had been a mistake. His fifteen year old self never would’ve spoken that way at home, and now his mother, father and Mary were watching him with surprise. “I read that in a book,” he added hastily.

“What book was that?” his father asked.

Austen? It had sounded like something one of her characters would have said. But did teenage boys in 1964 read Jane Austen? Probably not. “Hemingway. Something by him.”

“Pretty long-winded for Hemingway,” Jim’s father commented. He gave Jim a wink. “Be careful with this Betty girl. You might end up married to her some day.”

“If you’re lucky,” his mother added.

To his horror, Jim realized that he was blushing.

#

The library was almost deserted this night, only a few other patrons far off among the book stacks and the librarian half-dozing at her desk, Jim and Betty bent over reference books as they noted contact information and important data. Realizing that Betty’s pen had fallen silent, Jim looked up to see her staring blankly at the book in front of her. Without any warning, she leaped to her feet and ran down the nearest aisle between bookshelves.

Jim stood up slowly, tense with worry, and followed at a casual pace hoping that no one else had noticed Betty’s sudden flight. He found her at the end of the shelves, facing into the corner between a shelf and the wall, her entire body shuddering with sobs. “Betty?” he said softly.

She didn’t answer for a moment, then Betty started speaking while she kept her face to the wall, her voice coming out rough and so low he could barely hear it. “Ten years from now, my best friend in college, Cindy Arens, will be diagnosed with breast cancer. She’ll die in 1975. Sixteen years from now my older brother will be diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease. He’ll spend seventeen years suffering before dying from pneumonia. I’m fifteen, Jim. I’m physically alive in ways I’d long forgotten. But all around me I see people I know are dead, and sometimes I know how and when they died. And I can’t stop it in time, even if it’s something our work could eventually accomplish, and sometimes it’s too damned hard to even think about. Do you understand? Or is this a sign that I’m losing it, becoming unstable?”

Jim tried to keep his own voice level, but heard it quaver. “I understand. Sometimes I feel like I’m in one of those movies where almost everyone has died but still walks, like I’m surrounded by ghosts or zombies. They don’t want to hurt me, because they don’t know I’m different. But I’m alive, and I have memories of them being dead. Most of the time, it’s wonderful being young again and seeing them alive. But then . . . I remember their graves.”

She turned around, her face streaked with tears, and lunged into his arms. He held her, and she held him, while Betty buried her face in his shoulder. “I can’t help them, Jim.”

“I know.” He heard his own voice cracking. “The Tonkin Gulf Resolution passed this year. Next year the big build-up begins in Vietnam. Nobody but us knows what’s going to happen. I knew guys. They’re alive now, they’re kids like me, and they’re going to go there. And some of them are going to die there. And even though I know what’s going to happen, I can’t stop it.”

Betty pulled back a little to watch him, misery in her eyes. “I’m so sorry. Our levers are so small, Jim, and the momentum of history is so strong. It will take a long time to make things change even a little. Too long to save Cindy. Too long to save my brother or your friends. We can’t alter events that are taking place over the next few years. No one would listen to us. The generals, the politicians, the scientists and the doctors today, they all think they know the answers. So two fifteen year old kids stand up and say it’s a mistake, you’re doing it wrong, and why should they care?”

He felt old tears of his own coming. “One of the worst things . . . back then . . . sitting in the dirt . . . holding a guy whose life was leaking out . . . feeling so helpless . . . nothing I could do. And it’s still like that. All over again.”

Betty shook her head. “No. You survived. You could do that. And you did the right thing, didn’t you? I haven’t really known you that long, Jim, but I’m sure you did the right thing.”

Jim nodded. “Yeah. I stayed alive. And I kept the faith. I didn’t let anyone down. But it didn’t matter, did it?”

Betty clasped him tightly, her head close to him again so her voice was slightly muffled. “It meant you were alive to come back and help me, and help everyone. Maybe we’re all that’s left, Jim. Maybe all the others in the first wave and your wave are gone and there won’t be a third wave because the project seems to be a failure, and it’s up to
us
to get people thinking a little quicker about environmental toxins and their effect on the human genome, to get research pointed in the right directions. We have to believe that we can make some difference. I didn’t know it would be this hard to live among our past, but the future of billions of people is in our hands. That matters, doesn’t it?”

He stared at the books before him, not seeing their titles. “I can’t grasp that, Betty. Billions of people? That’s too hard to get a handle on. I discovered a long time ago that someone like me keeps trying because someone else, someone they care about, needs them, is depending on them.”

“I need you, Jim. Is that good enough?”

His arms tightened about her. “Yeah.”

She wasn’t crazy, just enduring the same thing which had been tormenting him. Somehow, knowing that someone else understood that, felt that, made it possible to endure. They stood there, holding each other as if sharing their strength, until the lights blinked to indicate the library was about to close, then Jim walked Betty home before he went to his home, a place that existed here and also as a distant memory.

#

The third week since his arrival was drawing to a close. The strange sensation of once again living within a dimly-remembered past had faded a bit, but Jim still felt a growing uneasiness, aware that the last trace of members of the first wave had been in October, and they were well into that month now.

He and Betty had worked out a coping mechanism they called surfing the past. When around others, they tried to live in the moment, accepting and enjoying moments and people that had once been long gone. When alone together, they blocked out the present, working with each other to change the future. More than once Jim had wondered what it would have been like to be alone with his memories of the future.

“I said ‘thank God it’s Friday’ today and everybody looked at me like I said something amazing,” Betty commented as he walked her home. “I wonder if I just coined that phrase?”

“There you go changing history without thinking.” Jim’s grin was cut off as he felt the itching between his shoulders that sometimes came when someone was watching him. “Excuse me.” He went to one knee, pretending to retie his shoelace, but angling his body as he knelt so the corner of his eye could see behind them.

A boy he didn’t recognize was standing a little distance off, not-watching them in a way obvious to Jim.

Jim straightened up, walking with Betty, who eyed him. “What’s the matter?”

“Don’t look, but I think there’s a boy our age watching us back there. Or watching you. I don’t recognize him from school.”

“A boy our age.” Betty almost stumbled, catching herself. “That doesn’t necessarily mean anything.”

Jim paused at a phone booth, using the reflection in a piece of glass to look behind them again. “I think he’s still there, but a long ways back.”

“You can’t tell if he’s following us?”

“Not without making it clear I’m watching him.”

She looked frightened, but Betty’s voice stayed steady. “We need to learn a lot more, Jim. If he is another time traveler, why did he come here? Why is he interfering with things, if he is? And what happened to Paul and Charlie and maybe all the others who came down with me?”

Jim nodded to her. “So I keep a closer watch out and a low profile. Not let on that I’m anything more than a typical kid who likes hanging out with you. And you keep a close watch out, too. Tomorrow we can walk around a bit more, and see if he shows up again. Maybe we’ll be able to go someplace where you’ll be able to get a good look at him.”

“All right.” They reached her home and Betty took a deep breath. “I am so glad you’re here.” She leaned in and kissed him on the lips before he realized what she intended, then walked quickly to her front door.

#

Jim watched Betty’s house a good part of the night, but saw no one. Saturday morning, yawning, he walked up to her front door and knocked.

Betty’s mother answered, but instead of a welcoming smile she gave Jim a stiff look. “Betty can’t come out today.”

The door closed in his face before Jim could say anything.

What the hell happened?
Jim went back out to the street, then angled across some yards under cover, working his way around the back of Betty’s house. Like any proper 1960s suburban home, Betty’s house had a few trees and plenty of bushes along the fence line in the back yard, so Jim could stay concealed until he could see the ground-floor window of Betty’s room. She was sitting there, looking out, and when he waved she put one finger to her lips to invoke silence before tossing him something.

Jim picked up a note wrapped around a pen.
Mother saw me kiss you yesterday and was worried about me getting too serious with a boy. She tried to have The Talk with me. I made the mistake of trying to reassure her that I knew what I was doing and used the word condom. Mother almost spontaneously combusted. I’m grounded except for school while I consider the immorality of being knowledgeable about my physical health.

He nodded to her, tried to indicate wordlessly that he would keep an eye out, then waved a rueful goodbye before sneaking back out to the street. There was no use making things worse for Betty right now.

#

Jim had done this before, sneaking cautiously through night-shrouded terrain, from bush to tree, making no noise and alert to every movement and sound. At least this time he didn’t have to worry about the VC or North Vietnamese regulars hunting him. Memories of the area around Khe Sanh flooded back as Jim moved into position and settled down to watch Betty’s house, determined to remain through most of Saturday night.

Who was he watching for? Kids like him and Betty had minds and memories and knowledge from 2040, but they didn’t look any different and none of them should be dumb enough to parade their anachronistic nature. The coincidence of the time travelers being targeted meant it had to be other time travelers at work. He had been told the time travel process was being worked on at multiple locations. It was hard and expensive, but the project wasn’t the only outfit with access to the process. But who would kill kids and why?

The end days people? The ones who think everything happening in the mid-twenty-first century is God culling out the unfit before Armageddon? There’s been some killings by groups who think like that.

But how would they get their hands on time travel equipment? And why would anyone with access to that stuff help some homicidal religious warriors? It’s not just the time travel itself. Whoever this is, they know who was sent back and they know enough about where those people live to go after them.

Betty’s right. We need to get our hands on this guy and get some answers.

Nothing had happened during his previous night shifts except for occasional routine neighborhood activity, but some instinct told him that something would occur tonight. It was almost an hour before anything out of the ordinary did take place, though.

Whoever the other kid was, he wasn’t skilled at concealment. Jim heard him before he spotted the boy scuttling along in a fast, noisy, and obvious way apparently learned from watching bad action movies. The boy seemed to be the same size as the one Jim had seen on Friday. He wasn’t alone this time, though. With him was another boy, one who bulked physically larger. Either he was a few years older, or he had a powerful build.