He stowed his gun and jumped awkwardly, reaching with his right arm. His fingers grasped the edge, but handicapped by the stub of his left arm, he couldn’t swing himself up. His missing appendage hit the fence, and he slipped, falling hard to the ground. The impact knocked the wind out of him, and the gun crunched into his hip bone. Regardless of the numbing agent in his system, it hurt like hell. Blake groaned — long and loud — and struggled to his feet like a man Amhurst’s age.
He looked through one of the slats in the fence and saw the man opening the door of a car parked across the street. He’s getting away! Blake drew in a deep breath and raised his leg to kick through the fence. He drove his foot into the wood, which merely creaked in protest.
“Come on!” he fumed, sending out two more kicks, then a fourth, and finally two of the pieces of timber broke free.
Squeezing his way through, Blake nipped his tender arm against the opening but he gritted his teeth and kept going. A car door slammed. Damn! But wait, the man hadn’t entered the vehicle; he was now running again down another side street in the direction of the beach.
Blake saw he was closing the distance now as he rounded the next turn. The rate of footfalls betrayed the man’s fitness; he was slowing and near the point of exhaustion. Blake’s lungs burned as well, and he felt wetness running down his calf, dimly registering that the stitching on his leg wound must have ripped from the volley of kicks he’d just thrown.
Waves crashed in the distance beyond as the chase went down a set of wooden steps to the beach. The man must have known he couldn’t lose Blake within the city lights on the street and was hoping to escape in the darkness of the surf and sand.
And, Blake thought, he might succeed. The man was sinking into a black pit of shadows in front of him as the lights from the street lost their effectiveness with each yard of ground covered.
He couldn’t let this man get away. Then Blake remembered the gun and yanked it loose, firing a shot. A small shower of sand kicked up in front of the fleeing man and he skidded sideways, tripping over his own legs.
A few short strides later Blake had closed in on him. But the man had given up his attempt at escape. He rolled over, puffing for air, and now sat looking at Blake.
The gun shook in Blake’s hand as he caught his own breath, but he still pointed it at the sitting man. Then Blake saw his face.
What the hell?
“Ben Wallace?” The hair was a different color and the beard was absent, but the eyes that stared up at him now belonged to the same man that Blake knew from decades in the future.
Ben stood up, dusting himself off but not managing to remove all the stains from his pants. “I’m not the same Ben, I assure you. We haven’t met, although I’m sure you know who I am.”
Blake lowered the gun. “You bet your ass I know who you are — you sent me here.”
“I don’t doubt it.” Ben made a wry face. “I sent myself here too.”
“So what happens now?” Blake asked, shaking his head. This was a major mind fuck.
“Nothing. You failed, as I can see; they have the meteorite. They won. Again.”
Blake’s mind refused to accept there was nothing to be done. “Maybe we can stop them before they send back the Sons of Stalin.”
“No, it’s hopeless; this was our last option. We don’t know where they travel from in 1986, we only know when. We thought if we could make them fail here, then they would be stuck in an infinite loop of failure.”
“I didn’t fail. We still have a piece of the rock.”
“And they have the larger one.”
“How do you know that?”
“Because you failed, just as you failed before; because it all happens the same way every time. You don’t understand how hard it is to change history.” Then he seemed to reflect on something and, as if quoting a famous line, said, “The past is obdurate.”
Obdurate? Blake had no idea what the word meant, but he hated it already. “What are you saying?”
“It doesn’t matter how hard you try,” Ben said tiredly, like he was explaining things to a child. “You think you’re making a new choice, and then it turns out it was those choices that tipped the dominoes to begin with. You yourself are in a loop, my friend — just as I am — and no matter what different turns I think I’m making along the way, it ends up they’ve all been made before.”
Blake shook his head. This was too much to process.
“I bet you even know what will happen next,” Ben said.
“What are you talking about?”
“Look around. Where are we? Look at me — at my face.”
Blake puffed out an impatient breath. “I am. You’re Ben Wallace, and we’re standing on the beach.”
But as the words trailed from his lips and he stared at Ben’s face, recognition dawned.
He’d seen that face in another place besides 1986. It had been in a photo of Ben’s own dead body … a photo in an article that had been written about the mysterious death of the Somerton Man.
The realization hit Blake like a punch to the gut, but as he intently studied Ben’s impassive features, another shock ran though him: if he took the face in front of him and aged it twenty or thirty years, it would closely resemble Patient 3944. The same ginger hair.
What the fuck?
Ben was saying, “I’ve decided, with information I gathered today, and our conversation at this moment, that my mission had been a failure as well. My existence here only changes the future and makes it worse.”
“I won’t kill you,” Blake said, his jaw set at a stubborn angle. “I’ll choose differently.”
Ben smiled, but looked almost sad. “It wasn’t your decision. You don’t kill me, I poison myself.”
“Why don’t you alter your choice?”
“I can’t. We travelers are all flies in the ointment, caught in a web of our own doing.”
“That makes no sense at all,” Blake snapped. “I won’t kill myself to satisfy some perverse sense of duty.”
Ben shrugged. “So you choose to live, as you have before. Tobias chose life as well.”
“Tobias. He’s here.” Blake had almost forgotten.
Ben nodded. “I was going to go with him, but having seen how this attempt played out, I’m forced to switch my call.”
Blake stood in silence for a moment, trying to process what he was hearing. “How was it supposed to play out?”
“Things didn’t go according to plan. The doctor was supposed to run the moment Tobias sent the telegram.” Ben looked out at the darkness of the ocean. “We were friends, Tobias and I. But I couldn’t look into his eyes any longer without telling him the truth; I just wanted him to live. He’s leaving tonight. He’s at the train station now.”
Blake analyzed the possibilities. Perhaps he could still change things. What did this man know about what was possible? “What’s your plan?” he finally asked.
“It has already been enacted. I’ve left a message to inform those in the future that you and Tobias are dead. Otherwise, I’m supposed to make sure that you are.”
Blake tightened his hold on the gun. “Let me guess. To keep the timeline preserved.”
“Yes, but I can’t keep living this way. Sometimes, it doesn’t matter who you were when you went into the machine; you’re not always the same man who comes out on the other side.” Ben gave him a knowing look. “You’ll see.”
“Was it all for friendship, this sudden change?”
“No. It was love.”
“Oh my God — are you kidding? For a woman.” Blake wanted to laugh. This was all so … melodramatic.