The Mammoth Book of Time Travel Romance (45 page)

Any doubts I had about the legitimacy of my printed book were laid to rest by the binder with its tech-we-don’t-have-yet paper. Per Tordönsson
was
from the future.

And the date on the first article was tomorrow . . . no. We weren’t in the middle of Thorsday Night any more. We’d slipped into plain old Friday morning. The paper’s date was today. The headline read
WOMAN SLAIN BY INTRUDER IN HOME INVASION
. The photo Tyler had badgered me into getting identified me as “woman slain”.

I closed my eyes and wrapped my arms around myself. “I should have let Tyler take me home,” I said.

“No,” Per said. “You did the right thing. Just keep skimming.”

There was an article where Tyler said my murder was a huge tragedy, that I’d just sold my first novel, that we were engaged, that I had no one else in the world. That we’d been so happy together. The bit about me having no one else in the world was true enough. But everything else was a lie.

Through newspaper articles, videos (also on the amazing paper, with sound included) and copies of legal documents dated well into the future, I discovered that Tyler had somehow had himself designated the executor of my estate. He’d managed my first novel sale into a bestseller by playing heavily on my emerging talent cut short by the tragedy of my brutal murder. I tried hard not to think too much about the “brutal” part.

It didn’t hurt that the books had been good. But the promotion had been . . . well . . . inspired.

I looked up at Per.

“I’ve loved you . . . your work . . . since I found the first book by you,” he said. He put his hand on mine and said, “You are a brilliant writer. And I lo—” He shook his head.

I couldn’t catch my breath. “I . . . you . . .”

He touched a finger to my lips and said, “You have to understand the situation – quickly – because there are some choices you must make. I need to know what you want. Your work has become classic in my time. Millions of people have read you, have had their lives changed and made better by your stories. You’re famous, you’re beloved.” He took a deep breath, and continued, “But all the probabilities suggest that your work only found its audience because you died so horribly – and because Tyler Boothe Mayall jumped in to market your just-sold book on your death. The odds are that if you had lived, all seven of your novels would have stayed in the trunk in your bedroom, along with any others that you might have written, and neither I nor anyone else would have ever heard of you.”

So.

If I died later this morning, I could be famous. Big-time famous. My words would live on long past my final breath. I would achieve the sort of literary immortality most writers dream of – and almost none get.

If I lived, odds were good that when I was dead no one would know I’d been here.

He was watching my eyes, looking for answers there. I doubted he could find any.

I buried my face in my hands.

I loved writing. And I loved the stories I told, the characters I created, the themes I explored and pursued and eventually pinned down and answered. I
wanted
people to read what I’d done, to love it as much as I did. And I wanted to leave something of me behind when I was gone.

But I loved breathing, too. I loved waking up in the morning to the sunlight falling across my face. I loved walking the block to work, where I was a copywriter for a small ad agency. I loved the taste of cherries in summer and apples in autumn, the way my muscles burned when I stretched, and the way my heart pounded in rhythm with my feet when I ran.

I could be immortal if I died today.

I could be nobody at all if I lived tomorrow.

But the odds were I couldn’t have both my life and my fame.

“Writers dream about reaching millions,” I said. “But we also dream about being around to enjoy it.”

He nodded. “I know. And I can’t know how long you will live if you don’t die today, or how much more you will write. There are no odds for that, no way to predict, no way to track what didn’t happen. But I can tell you . . . having heard the first chapter of your new book, I would give
anything
to read the rest of it.”

I frowned. “Only . . . whether I live or die, you never will. Because either I won’t live to write it . . . or I won’t manage to publish it.”

“Those aren’t exactly the options. Don’t worry about what comes next. Or about me. Tell me what you want now. Do you want to become as famous as . . . well, not Shakespeare, but as famous as Tolkien? If you have to die today to do it? I know some writers would give anything for that guarantee.” He took a deep breath, and said, “Or would you want to live, knowing that if you do, odds are no one will ever know who you were?”

I drank the last of my diet soda and put my hand over his. “How long do I have to make up my mind?”

“Your murder happens at 7.24 a.m.”

I looked at my watch. It was 4.10 a.m.

I put my hand on his and said, “I have to go home. I want you to come with me.”

“I . . .” He looked away and blinked and swallowed, and I saw one tear slide down the side of his nose.

Without another word, he went to the counter and paid the bill, and we walked out together.

He was staring at his shoes as he walked me to my car. “So you have decided? You want to die and be famous in the world you leave behind?”

“No, Per. I just want to know there’s something worth living for.

I had to go back to my place. My gut demanded it, but my mind wouldn’t say why.

I couldn’t run away. Well, I could – running away had been what I’d been best at my whole life, frankly. Foster homes, jobs, relationships . . .

But holding the book I’d written in my hands and knowing I hadn’t lived to see it published, that someone I didn’t like much had taken my work and my passion and made it successful after I was dead because I hadn’t had the guts to even
try
while I was alive . . .

Yeah. I had to go back to my place. I didn’t know what was going to happen there, but I wanted to have a say in what did.

Per didn’t talk much on the drive over.

He sat in the passenger seat, staring straight ahead. When I glanced over at him I could see the muscles in his jaw working. I realized he was angry. I wasn’t sure why.

Finally he said, “You know why I came back?”

I should have asked that. “No.”

“I’ve been reading and rereading your books since I was fifteen. They changed me. They gave me a way of looking at the world that I don’t think I could have found on my own. I’m a better man because I read you than I ever would have been without you. And there are a lot of people like me out there, which is why your books are still selling. You said something that mattered.

“But,” he continued, “the whole story of how you died never felt right to me. Your lawyer fiancé—”

“Tyler has never been my fiancé. He’s someone I’ve gone out with about maybe six or seven times in the last four months. He belongs to the same writers’ group I do. That’s it.”

Per bit his lip and took a deep breath, and I realized my relationship with Tyler was beside the point at the moment.

“The man
everyone in my time thinks
was your lawyer fiancé told a good story. He had all the paperwork to prove you’d made him your designated heir and the executor of your estate. The signature on your publishing contract perfectly matched the signatures on everything else he had on his desk—”

“I never signed a contract,” I said.

“I know that now,” he said, and the muscles in his jaw jumped harder. I told myself to shut up and let the man finish. He said, “In my time, I went through everything available on your life, because there was this air of wrongness about your lawyer.”

I forced my mouth shut, but I thought, He’s not my lawyer, as loudly as I could.

“When I read the interviews that didn’t get wide coverage, I realized your Thorsday Night Writers were too surprised that the two of you were engaged, and absolutely flat-footed that you’d sold a novel and hadn’t even mentioned it at the last meeting you attended.” He glanced over at me, his expression unreadable. “So I became a field historian – a time-travelling researcher – because I needed the truth. Always in the back of my mind I held this tiny hope that one day I might be able to travel back to see you while you were alive. Maybe even talk to you. Nothing consequential, nothing that would change anything. But just . . . I held that hope.” His voice broke, and his body tensed.

I sat silent for a moment. “And now you’re doing something that is almost certain to change the future,” I said. “Why?”

“One week ago in my time, I made a registered trip back to this morning. A few hours from now. To your apartment. I’d spent the last two years building a case against Tyler Boothe Mayall being your legitimate heir, and I presented my case to the Head of Literature Research. Because you’re an important historical figure, my request to validate Tyler Mayall’s story about his association with you went through. I was allowed to come back here, set up recorders in your room and in Tyler’s home and office to document the specific details of your death and his actions following it. Once the recorders were in place, I had to leave. I couldn’t be in the room because just my presence could break the rules of historical engagement.

“I did the standard three-month forward-time transfer to a point when I knew both apartments and the office would be empty, and I dropped myself in, extracted the recorders, and went back to my own time.”

“One week ago – in my time – I saw the man who killed you break into your room, almost the way Tyler said it had happened. Except that prior to his breaking in, Tyler used his key to let himself into your apartment while you were still at the meeting, and unlocked your bedroom window. I saw him do it. And I saw the intruder . . .”

Per’s voice broke again. He took a deep breath as I pulled into the parking lot in front of my apartment. The apartment in which an unlocked window would be used by a murderer intent on killing me.

I’d never given Tyler a key to my place. But he had spent a night over. Had brought me breakfast the next morning. Had left the house to do it.

Per said, “The intruder slapped duct tape over your mouth while you were sleeping, and then . . .” He shook his head. “He brought both a knife and a gun. You didn’t die quickly. It was the . . . horrific details of your murder that made your death famous enough to guarantee immediate public recognition when your publisher overnighted your book to the stands. Several million copies of your first novel sold. The quality of your work – and Tyler flogging the tragedy of your death every time he and your publisher brought another one of your trunk novels to print – kept you a household name. But . . .”

He turned and stared into my eyes. “You weren’t yet dead and your killer was still busy with you when Tyler got there.”

“And tried to save me?”

We sat there in the parking lot, in the dark, and Per took my hand, and held it tightly between both of his. It was as if our hands had been created just to fit into each other like that.

He said, “No. Tyler told the killer to hurry up, because he had other things to do.”

I had no words.

I fell into the darkness inside my head for a long time, until pain pulled me back to the world. I realized the stick shift was digging into my right hip, and that Per had his arms around me, and that I was sobbing into his shirt.

“Oh, God,” I whispered. “And you came back to . . . to what? If you change history and I don’t die, won’t you have never read my books? Won’t there be a paradox that will make it impossible for you to come back at all? The fact that you’re here means that I have to die, doesn’t it? You just came to be with me, to . . . give me something to put me to sleep or something so my death wouldn’t be so awful, and then you’re going back . . .”

“No,” he said. “You
don’t
have to die. I’m not here officially. It took me a week – my time – to arrange my absence and bribe the people who could get me here. If you wanted to guarantee that your work would live on after you do, I did bring something you could take so that you wouldn’t wake up during your murder.” His arms tightened around me, and his voice went hoarse. “
If that was what you wanted.

“But that’s not why I came back. That’s not why I became a historical researcher. That’s not why I specialized in literary research. Nila, I fell in love with
you
through your books when I was fifteen. You were in them, in every one of them, and I wanted to meet you. And in person, at the meeting tonight, you
were
the woman who wrote those books. I was afraid I’d be disappointed, that you wouldn’t be anything like what came through in your work – but it was
you.
The you I’d known existed. The you I’ve loved for half of my life.”

“If I don’t die, you’ll never read me. You’ll never become a historical researcher.”

“I’m here, Nila. And I’ve already read every book you wrote, and I loved every word, but more than the books, I love the woman who wrote them. And I’d rather have you alive and unknown than dead for the betterment of millions of strangers. That’s selfish. But just knowing that you didn’t die today would get me through a whole lot of years.”