The Loved and the Lost (37 page)

“What's wrong with my sister?” was the last thing the older Hansum heard Guilietta asking as he ran out of the house.

“Kingsley,” he shouted as he passed the dead guards on the stoop, one's throat cut and the other lying in a pool of red, blood still oozing from his chest and mouth. “KINGSLEY!” he shouted as he jumped off the stoop and started running down the alley. “Kingsley! Answer me, Kingsley!”

“Kingsley,” he heard Shamira's voice shriek from the house.

Hansum stopped momentarily at the body of a man in a deerskin jacket. “Kingsley!” Hansum shouted again. There. A figure on its knees, silhouetted in the dark. “Kingsley,” Hansum said with relief in his voice. He ran more easily now, touching his communications node. “He's in the alley. He's okay.” The faces of the older Lincoln and Shamira came into his mind. They both looked relieved. Then, as Hansum neared the kneeling figure he scolded it. “Man, Kingsley, you had us all so worried. Why didn't you . . .” he stopped.

“The angel,” came a voice from the kneeling figure. It wasn't Kingsley's voice, but a rasping croak. “The large angel appeared from thin air and saved me, Romero.” Ugilino was speaking very quietly. He was kneeling beside Kingsley, who was on his back, his eyes staring up at the stars, his head surrounded by a dark halo. “He slew one and I ran away. And then he kept fighting. I guess, I guess he isn't an angel.”

The others were running from the house now, the older Shamira in the lead.

“Kingsley, I was so afraid,” she called from the dark.

“Stop her!” Hansum shouted. “STOP HER!” but the others couldn't catch up till she was only a few steps away. As the truth of the situation slammed into Shamira's mind, she jerked still, her arms convulsing backward. She gasped and froze, her skin instantly going white as blood drained from her face. The Master, both of the Lincolns and the other Shamira took hold of her, all standing with horror and confusion on their faces. Finally, the older Shamira was able to inhale. As she did, her face contorted in an agonized knot.

“KINGSLEY!” she shrieked, her wail echoing up the alley. She pulled her arm violently, almost getting away from one of the Lincolns, but the Master enveloped her in a massive bearhug.

A whirlwind came from the younger Lincoln's lirripipe and Pan appeared on the ground. Ugilino fell onto his backside and the Master looked on in astonishment. Pan peered at Kingsley closely, and then looked up at Hansum, shaking his head.

“Kingsley.” This time the older Shamira said it very softly, and she slumped. The Master and both Lincolns helped her to the ground. Once there, she crawled over to her dead fiancé and lay over him.

A glow wrapped around the older Hansum's chest and Sideways appeared, returning from the 24th-century. His smiling face changed as he assessed the situation.

“I must go to my sister,” they heard Guilietta's voice call, and she appeared hobbling along, holding the younger Hansum's arm. Her eyes took in everything, the two Lincolns, her one sister draped over a large dead man, the other standing, hands clasped over her mouth. Guilietta quivered as she looked into the face of the other Romero and her eyes bulged as she stared into the living face on his cloak. Her legs gave way. As she fell, her Romero caught her, helping her gently to the ground. But now she was eye to eye with a little man with hairy legs, goat feet and a gnarled, frowning face. Guilietta's eyes rolled up into her head and she fainted.

“We must go,” Sideways said, and A.I. tendrils shot out from the cloak. They grabbed hold of each person from the future, including Kingsley, and disappeared. Pan snapped his fingers and winked out of sight.

Ugilino got to his knees. He looked at the remaining Shamira. “Were they angels or demons?” he asked. But Shamira didn't answer. She just stood there, staring at the spot where her other, terrified self had been screaming and crying over the body of a very beautiful man.

Hansum preferred being put to sleep during his DNA repair procedure, although it wasn't technically necessary. But it made his stomach queasy, something that just came with age the doctor told him. Then again, many things made his stomach queasy of late.

“If you just let Medeea do a deeper mind-delve, she could fix you up.” Lincoln had been telling him this for years.

“No thanks, pal.”

“I really don't know why you always refuse,” Lincoln said, shaking the grey locks that now hung over his ears and collar.

Hansum had never allowed a deep mind-delve. He didn't want anybody to know what he was really thinking or, more to the point, feeling. He'd only allowed conversational delves, exchanging just what he wanted to say.

As he drifted asleep to receive his third and last allowable DNA repair, it wasn't long before the images came again. They were the Mists of Time recordings he hated reviewing during his monthly planning meeting with Lincoln, the ones they used while working on their ever-developing tactics for a next foray back to the 14th-century. The images came in waves, washing over him and causing high tides of emotion. He saw Kingsley lying dead as they appeared back in the medical facility, both the human and A.I. doctors rushing to save him. But he had been stabbed multiple times in the heart, lungs and liver, and his spine had been severed. He had also lain dead too long. It was almost twenty minutes before the older Hansum found him, and till Sideways returned to take him back to the 24th-century. The sights and sounds of Shamira's hysterical screams still plagued him. She pleaded that they go back immediately and change events so her fiancé wouldn't be killed. But that wasn't allowed. Shamira cried in Hansum's arms as Arimus explained how, when Kingsley's parents were informed about their son, they refused permission to change the event.

“His family loved him without reservation, my dear.
But of death and the concept of right and wrong,
people from the 26
^th
-century think differently, I fear.
To think we are the same is a temptation,
but change comes with every generation.
This is among the hardest lessons to learn
and accept.”

It was indeed a hard lesson to live with, but Shamira survived. She resigned from time travel and chose instead to marry herself completely to painting.

“My baby. My child,” Hansum murmured in his dream sleep. He saw a new image, Charlene floating close by when Lincoln finally had time to tell him that Guilietta was pregnant. As the gravity of it hit Hansum, he collapsed. His vision morphed into him struggling to talk, his voice harsh and broken after hours of sobbing, confessing to his A.I. confidant, “When Guil died and burned in the fire, it was bad enough imagining her . . . there. But now I know there was . . . is a baby . . . my baby . . .”

“We have a baby somewhere in the universe,” Charlene said softly. “Somewhere in time. We have to save it.”

So, as hard as it was to imagine, the stakes were now even higher and Hansum could not let himself fall apart, no matter how much pressure he bore.

During the third day of his drug-induced coma, Hansum's memory re-watched an event that could be fixed. Arimus had simply sent Sideways back to tell the earlier Hansum hiding in the woods to go out of phase while reconnoitering the cannon testing. This forced Elder Parmatheon Olama to go out of phase to find him, so Chinza never saw anyone in the bush. That meant Lieutenant Raguso didn't order his men to scour the forests, Feltrino attacked and the battle ran as before. The timeline was restored, including the fact that Lieutenant Raguso and his brother, Chinza, as well as the other soldiers, weren't killed at the della Cappa home. But alas, Chinza was killed when Gina, the cannon, went back to exploding.

Maybe it was the molecules of every strand of his DNA being partly disassembled and repaired, but the next vision vexed the unconscious Hansum even more. It was the obsequious Parmatheon Olama smiling at him as if he were an old friend, acting like it was nothing he had done that initiated the stream of events resulting in Kingsley's death.

“I'm sure you will be pleased to know,” Parmatheon's voice echoed in the mind, “I not only relinquished the chairmanship of the Council back to Elder Barnes, but I also started a new committee to organize all the resources you asked for.”

It was true. When they got back, everyone, Arimus included, was again surprised how easily they were able to reverse the damage, while the other situation, saving Guilietta, seemed impossible. It gave more credence to the scientists' theory of temporal nexus points. That, along with the public's fascination with the ongoing Romero and Guilietta drama, triggered a stampede of demand for “the project.” And the A.I.s fell in line too.

The dreaming Hansum watched the memory of himself bite his lip and start pragmatically cooperating with Parmatheon. He needed to get back to Guilietta as quickly as possible.

But then the memory of Arimus delivering more bad news showed itself. Hansum and Lincoln were in Cape Town at a meeting with the leading time travel scientists. Arimus asked the boys to come outside with him.

“I wanted you to hear this from my lips only, my sons.
Time has another blackout rendered.
Travel to the 14th-century has been suspended.”

Hansum could once again feel the sweat dripping from every pore of his body. He didn't know if it was the memory of the tropical sun beating down on him or the fear dredged up from the depths of his soul. He lashed out.

“Arimus, you're from the future. Did you know this blackout was coming? Why didn't you tell me? We could have gone back sooner.”

“You forget that things are happening differently
from what those of my time know as history.
Of this blackout you ask? You shout, you implore!
Yes, it's starting the same time as before.
So I am here to tell you, prepare, my son.
if it continues to happen the same,
it's going to be a very long one.”

“It's going to be a very long one.” The words echoed in his memory. Arimus then told Hansum the best thing to do was to relax, to keep his mind clear, for the good of himself and his family. Hansum became even more incensed.

“For the good of my family? For the good of my family? How about all my family? How about Guilietta and the baby?” Even in his dreams he felt the salty tears in his throat.

Arimus paused, gazing at his young protégé with his practiced look of compassion.

“Yes, that indeed is a further reason
to make sure your mind and body don't cause you a treason.
For if it's this rest of the family, you seek as your prize,
you cannot help them otherwise.”

Once again, Hansum swallowed down the bile.

As the days of the body-repairing sleep passed, the weeks and months of Hansum's life during the new blackout streaked by. A long winter and a green spring that did not feel refreshing. The blackout's first-year anniversary came and went. Life went on for humanity. There were countless other times in history that people from the 24th-century could explore. History Camps continued to do the good work of helping educate youth about how it was each and every human's responsibility to keep humanity within the healthy confines of its place on the planet. Yes, the rest of the world was happy.

As a second year came and went. Hansum watched Lincoln and Medeea get married. A year after that they had their first child, a boy, Azure. As an A.I. mind-delver, he matured more quickly than humans. The next year Medeea and Lincoln had twins, Lima and Lami. All the kids loved their Aunt Shamira and Uncle Hansum and wanted them to visit often.

But there would be no children for either Hansum or Shamira. Both gave up their childbearing allotments and refused any and all advances from suitors. Instead, Hansum continued training, putting together his team and coordinating with the 24th-century scientists and Parmatheon's new logistics committee. Everything was in place for the time when travel to the 14th-century started again. But yet another year came and went and still nothing happened. Hansum didn't even ask Arimus for more information, for he knew he wouldn't get it. All the while, Hansum kept his vow to remain prepared, and that included not letting things he had no control over eat him up, body or soul.

To keep up his skills and accreditations, Hansum went on many missions to the other times humanity still could travel to, all with his delver partner, Lincoln. They had been given exemplary citations for each operation and were now senior journeymen in the History Camp Time Travel Corps. When he wasn't away, Hansum lectured at the History Camp Time Travel University, speaking about those missions. But he soon found the majority of people inevitably wanted him to talk about Verona and his quest to save Guilietta.

As time passed, Hansum became a prominent elder at the time travel school, training recruits and becoming an excellent mentor to the hard cases, just as Arimus had been to him. Eventually, while the blackout to the 14th-century continued, travel back to the 31
^st
-century reopened and Arimus was able to go home. Arimus, now older than anyone knew, retired. Hansum heard little from him but seemed to be following in his footstep, gaining many interesting friends, both powerful and common, all throughout time.

Elder Parmatheon Olama passed away, and soon his special allocations committee disbanded, but that didn't stop Hansum and Lincoln from continuing to make their own plans to rescue Guilietta and her family.

Hansum rose within the History Camp structure and to all around him he seemed content. But deep down he lived for one thing, to rescue his wife, their unborn child and her family. Many more missions came and went and Hansum became a member of the Time Travel Council. A few years later, he was its chairperson. Now he was even retired from that.