«And then the decades rolled past. The 1970's, 1980s, 1990's and 2000's … until finally we were in the 2010's of today. And once again, iPads and iPhones appeared, those magical futuristic devices that did not work back the age of aether, that strange other-world which I and I alone could still recall.»
«But you have still have something from it," Sabine said. «You still have the box Volzstrang gave you. Don't you?»
Bantam smiled. «Brilliant. Just like your great-grandmother. Yes. It is here.» Bantam bent to the sack he had brought with him and pulled out the slender wooden box with the gold trim.
«But how can you have that?» Sabine breathed. «When the timeline got reset, why wasn't that erased?»
«Volztrang understood his own wave equations," Bantam explained. «This box was specifically designed to resist the propagation of timewave causality perturbations. Just like the capsule — based on his equations — had been. I mean, when I traveled back to the alternate 1944, why was I not erased upon arrival? The future that produced me would never come to pass: why didn't I cease to exist? Because Volzstrang's device put me in the 28th dimension and this protected me from such things. I am guessing that somehow, this box did the same thing. It is the only remnant to survive that deleted era … and at last, I am allowed to open it.»
Sabine gasped. «You mean … you waited? All this time? You’ve never even peeked inside?»
Bantam shook his head. «No. Unpeople, remember? I had no right. Anything I did could have had horrible repercussions, possibly even worse than the Shadow itself.
«And now I would like to open it with you, Sabine, great-granddaughter of Rachelle Archenstone. Shall we?»
Sabine nodded.
He popped the locked off the box. Two envelopes, brown with time, fell out. One was addressed to Benjamin Bantam directly. The other read simply, The Cure.
Rachelle had written down the cure to the Shadow.
Bantam wasted no time opening the letter addressed to him. He read it in private, turned away slightly, and did not share it's contents with Sabine. As he did so, large sobs he could barely swallow shuddered his ribcage.
When he finished, Bantam handed The Cure to Sabine. «This is the work of your great-grandmother. It's only fitting you, her heir, be the one to present it with me.»
«Present it with you?» Sabine said. «Present it where?»
Bantam nodded towards MacLaren Army Base. «Present it in there, of course.»
At that moment, the ground began shaking violently. A strange blue and yellow plasma-halo danced across the surface of the earth like a will-o'-wisp.Short, sharp, shocks of lightning sizzled between ground and cloud.
Sabine looked fearful. «Don't worry," Bantam said. «That's just the other-me, going back in time. It'll be over in a --»
And at that very moment, the shaking and the light show stopped.
«Ah," Bantam smile. «And so it begins. Come. Let's deliver the cure. At last! Let's complete my mission, you and I together.»
Epilogue
AS BENJAMIN BANTAM and Sabine Portis, great-granddaughter of Rachelle Archenstone, approached the gates of MacLaren Army Base, klaxons began howling. Men in emergency vehicles buzzed by behind the guard gate, frantic. Acrid black smoke rose in dense plume in the middle distance.
«What's going on?» Sabine asked. «What's wrong?»
«It's the Gaultier-Ross Supercollider," Bantam explained. «It's on fire right now. Remember? The Volzstrang Wave ripped it to ribbons when it sent me back.»
Ah, Sabine nodded. She'd nearly forgotten the first part of Bantam's story. Not really believing it at the time, she'd dismissed it and not really listened. But now, with a shock, she realized she was actually entering the impossible tale she'd just heard. She was no longer a spectator, no longer someone merely listening to the story: she was becoming a part of the events themselves.
The ruins of a time machine — a real, true, actual time machine — lay beneath her feet. And now it was destroyed, just as Bantam had described it happening in advance.
Bantam approached the guard booth. The sentinel waved at him angrily, other hand on his holster, shouting, «Sir! Get out of here! We're on emergency lockdown!»
Bantam only gave a beatific smile in return. Calmly, opening his palms, he shouted into the noise, «I know! I am the cause of your emergency!»
The guard blinked. What?
«I destroyed the Gaultier-Ross Supercollider!»
Immediately, the guard drew his weapon, eyes wide, adrenalin surging. Sabine screamed.
«Both of you! Hands where I can see them!» Shakily, Sabine raised her arms, one hand holding a notebook.
«Drop the book!»
The precious notebook, the most valuable thing in the world. The cure for The Shadow, a plague that had ravaged the world. It was written by Rachelle Archenstone in an alternate past.
And Sabine let it go. It flapped to the dirt.
Three guards swarmed out of the booth weapons drawn. «On your knees!» Bantam complied slowly, his old knees creaking with pain as he did so. But he didn't care. He didn't care! Everything was a surprise! He had no idea what was going to happen next. The thrill of that fact overpowered him for a moment: he hadn't had the capacity for surprise in decades. Then, by degrees, he recalled why he was here.
«The notebook," Bantam said, nodding his head. «You'll want it. As evidence that I caused the supercollider to explode — which again, I freely admit!»
The very existence of the supercollider was a strict military secret. Among other reasons, parts of it actually curved outside of the grounds of MacLaren — some of it underneath Mirror Lake, for starters. Some of it even snaked beneath civilian residential areas, the inhabitants of which would have an absolute fit if they knew it was there.
«You're under military arrest for suspicion of terrorism," one guard said, placing a plastic tie around Bantam's wrists.
Bantam old-man-coughed a laugh. «This isn't the first time I've been charged with terrorism at MacLaren. It's getting to be a habit.»
THEY WERE escorted to a military jail and locked in different cells. There, they waited for several hours. The sirens and the yelling and frantic din outside their rooms conveyed the panic, the disarray that infected the base. Nobody was processing them — it seemed they had become lost in all the confusion. But at last the din died down, and two MP's removed Bantam to an interrogation room.
Unlike the sumptuous room Hardin had interrogated him in a far off civilized age that had ceased to be, this room was cold and aluminum with lit with a buzzing neon light that seemed to shiver with madness. That far off world was better, Bantam thought ruefully.
But it was mostly better because that world contained Rachelle Archenstone. The version of her who knew him — and loved him.
«What's your name?» a buzzcut with an MP band asked him. Bantam looked him up and down, sized him up. This guy was A Someone. Good. This would save Bantam time.
«Captain Benjamin Bantam, United States Army," Bantam replied evenly.
The buzzcut's eyes glinted. Ah, he knows the name, Bantam thought. He's got clearance on the time travel mission.
«What are you doing here?»
«On this day, several hours ago, I was sent back in time. My mission was to retrieve a cure for the Shadow and return here with it. Today I have done so. The girl who you arrested with me has a notebook. That notebook contains the cure.»
The MP stared at him for a moment, unsure what to ask next. In a million years, he had never expected this sort of answer.
«I do apologize for my … ah, un-military age and appearance: you see, I had to take the long way here. My return ride was destroyed.» Destroyed. And with it, Rachelle Archenstone, who had bravely erased herself from history to prevent a thousand years of Nazi rule. He winced with momentary pain at the memory.