Back in my room, I sit at my desk, staring intently at the note. I can’t deny I’m more than a little tempted to make the jump. But even after putting aside the questions of who gave me the coordinate and why the person wants me there, I’m confronted with a third unknown: If I were to make the trip, how would I do it without anyone at the institute knowing?
Any time I use my Chaser, my companion Palmer feels it and those who monitor him know I’ve gone somewhere. If I travel at an unscheduled time, Sir Wilfred will be informed and security will be waiting for me when I get back. Or, quite possibly, based on the fact we’ve been told our destination can be tracked, the guards may even come after me.
So, as tempted as I am to go, I see no way to make it work without putting my position in danger. I tuck the note away and try to forget about it.
Exactly one week later, I receive a second message.
Like the one before, the new message is machine printed.
If you want answers, go. Disconnect. It’s safe.
This is followed by a short list of instructions.
Disconnect. There’s that word again. I try to recall if I’ve ever heard anyone at the institute use it, but nothing comes to mind. When I read the instructions, however, I finally understand what it means. The instructions concern making adjustments to my Chaser, but it’s the last line that explains it:
5. Once done, enter the coordinates and go. You are disconnected from your companion and cannot be traced.
My skin tingles from both fear and excitement. Thoughts of do it and go are matched in strength by ones like the note is a lie and it can’t be safe.
Even if I want to go now — which I’m not sure I do — I can’t. My next mission is about to start and Johnston’s already waiting by the door.
Today, our work takes us to Pittsburgh, 1971, in the business district near where the rivers meet. Johnston, as he often does, has told me to stay where I am while he checks ahead, so I’m blending in by leaning against the side of a building and reading a local newspaper I found on the ground.
It’s a nice day and a lot of people are out, walking along the sidewalk. None pay me the slightest bit of attention. That is, not until someone tugs at my arm.
I keep my eyes on the paper and pretend I haven’t noticed, hoping whoever it is will go away. But there’s a second pull, followed by a young boy’s voice saying, “Excuse me.”
Thinking he’s looking for a handout, I say, “I don’t have any change.”
This isn’t the first time I’ve talked to someone in the past, but the encounters are always unnerving, and, per training, I do everything I can to end them quickly.
“Who’s asking for money?” he says.
I move the paper to the side and take my first look at him. Though his clothes are not new, they’re relatively clean and there’s no dirt on his face or hands. Not a street kid.
“I’m busy,” I say, and start to open the paper again.
“I have a message for you. You want it or not?”
A message? “You must have the wrong guy.”
“You’re Denny, right?”
I lower the paper all the way to my side. “Yeah.”
“So, do you want it?”
Johnston must be in trouble, I realize, and this is the only way he could reach me. “What is it?”
“They can’t track you if you go farther than ten years.”
I stare at him, dumbfounded. “What?”
“They can’t track you if you go farther than ten years.”
“Who told you to tell me that?” When he doesn’t answer, I say, “Who?”
I reach out to grab him by the shoulder but he jumps back.
“Hey, leave me alone.”
I step toward him. “I just want to know who it was.”
As he turns to run away, I notice we’re beginning to attract attention. My need to know who gave him the message struggles with my training to blend, and it takes all my will to move only a single step after him.
That’s when the boy stops and looks back. “Oh, yeah. One more thing. Disconnect and go!”
My feet sink into the cement sidewalk as he disappears down the street.
Perhaps, if I really want to play the fool, I could dismiss the first part of the boy’s message as coincidence. But there’s no way the last is.
Whether it’s true or not, I don’t know.
What I do know now is that I’m going to make the trip.
I can hardly wait to get to my room when we return.
After I finally close and lock my door behind me, I dig out the note containing the instructions and set to work disconnecting my Chaser from my companion. It’s not difficult. Only two wires need to be decoupled and a third rerouted.
I check my work several times to make sure I did it right. The only way to know for sure, though, is to make the trip.
I enter the date and location information from the first note, key in an adjusted time, then stare at the device, my confidence wavering.
Should I really do this? Is it worth the risk?
My answer vacillates with every second, until, with yes still in my head, I press the GO button.
As always, the world around me winks out and I’m shrouded in gray mist. What’s missing this time is the faint but ever-present sense that Palmer is there, too. As quickly as I register this, the mist is gone and the world of March 16, 1982 appears. The note told me to arrive at 4:30 in the afternoon, but, per my training, I’ve arrived thirteen and a half hours early at 3 a.m.
A trip of thirty-three years would typically result in nothing more than a headache that might last a few minutes. What I experience is a spike of pain more reminiscent of a hundred-year jump. It forces me to a knee as I ride out the sensation.
Once the pain has abated, I look around and see that I’m not, as is usually the case, behind a building or in an alleyway or some other hidden spot in a city. In fact, there are no buildings in sight. I’m at the edge of a forest in a grassy meadow where boulders stick out of the ground here and there like skullcaps of buried giants. The only sound I hear is a gently flowing river somewhere to the right.
It’s a perfect place for an out-of-the-way meeting.
Or ambush, the cautious part of my brain thinks.
I choose a spot just inside the woods, use the Chaser’s calculator to refigure my arrival location, and pop to 4:30 p.m.
As soon as my eyes adjust to the tree-filtered daylight, I creep up to the edge of the meadow and look around. At first I think something must be wrong. No one’s waiting for me near the spot where I’m supposed to appear. I scan the meadow, wondering if this is someone’s idea of a joke, perhaps Lidia trying to get me into trouble. But then I spot someone sitting on one of the rocks about fifty yards away, back to me.
By the time I’m halfway there, I’m pretty sure I know who the person is, and when I’m near, I know I’m right.
“Gorgeous here, isn’t it?” Marie says.
I take a look around. “It is.”
She motions to a spot beside her. “Join me.”
The rock is easy to ascend, and within seconds I’m sitting next to my old instructor.
“If you’re hungry, I have some snacks,” she offers. “Water, too.”
“I’m fine, thanks.”
After a quiet moment, she asks, “When did you come from?”
I give her the date of my home time.
“Took you a whole week, huh?”
“When did you come from?” I ask.
“I put the note in your pants ten minutes before I got here.”
“Which note?”
She raises an eyebrow. “Well, I guess it would be the first one. I take it I needed to give you another.”