Shadowtime or The Story of Thrax, Pt.2 (Ch10)
Chapter 10 in THEDA'S TIME MACHINE. Dr. Andersen's story, in which he's chosen to travel through time with a deadly mission.
The golden light from the boarding house window withdrew and shadows slipped in to conspire in corners and up walls. Andersen gestured for the overhead light, but the intense filament burned the poor doctor’s cloudy eyes. Conlin lit a shaded side lamp that cast the room in eerie ochre.
“You didn’t kill Hitler,” Colin smiled tightly. “I have the scars on my back from German shrapnel to prove it.” He cocked his head over a cigarette. Flick! the flame popped from his father’s lighter that he carried from Harlem to Europe during The Great War. Conlin palmed it, marveling that this little piece of metal and flint had seen two world wars and had somehow found its way back to the first one. He held the cigarette to Andersen’s lips and the dying man hiccupped the smoke down. Conlin withdrew the butt, the filter bloodstained.
Andersen let go of the smoke in one puff, closing his eyes, his lips rimmed red. When Conlin had first met him, he noted what an interesting voice the doctor had, a deep baritone with hypnotic inflection. That voice involuntarily stopped people from their task to listen, as if tuned to a pleasant frequency. Like that Orson Welles on Mercury Theater. Smooth as silk. That voice now turned gravely, its lifeforce draining to the weak straining of the elderly on their last breaths. Conlin sat on the edge of the bed to make sure he got every word.
“We didn’t kill any of them. One person, no matter how evil, can’t bring the world to its knees like that. There were many German leaders whom, ultimately, were all complicit in the Third Reich. Our assignment was to take them all out during the Great War, before they could take their places in such a terrible history.”
Andersen pointed at the cigarette, and Conlin provided. “I’m a man of science,” he began again. “I don’t believe in the supernatural, or religion, or anything other than what can be measured by the scientific method. I did not believe that we could travel to a year where I wasn’t even born yet. I expressed such to Ben. Madness, I had said. They’re playing a trick on us. If we fall for it, we’re fools.”
Conlin calculated this information silently. If Andersen hadn’t been born yet in 1917, then he was younger than twenty-eight years old. Impossible! He’s an old man!
The doctor went on. “We were silent on the walk to the bus stop. I remember gazing upward at the few stars that weren’t flushed from the sky by the lights of Manhattan, thinking of how we see those stars in another time, another dimension, because of the sheer distance for the light to travel to our eyes on Earth.
“Then Ben said, I believe them.
“I stopped in my tracks. I considered him much brighter than I, and the thought that he swallowed that story hook, line and sinker was a shock. Why? I asked.
“He buried his hands deeper into his coat. He was debating if he should tell me. ‘That voice,’ he said. ‘I know who it belongs to. There’s a man with the medics. Big guy. Must be over forty, but I can’t really tell. At first I thought he was just a big goon. Not too bright, dumping bed pans, cleaning up accidents, that sort of thing. But the other day I was making rounds in the infirmary, and I heard him talking to one of the patients. One that I didn’t treat.’ He stopped at a streetlight and lit a cigarette.
“And? I asked.
“’And his voice was different. I thought it was my imagination. But then I listened closely. His voice went from some street rat from Queens to college professor. The intonation, the vocabulary, the tone, everything changed. If I hadn’t seen him with my own eyes, I would’ve thought it was someone else. I got scared. Thought he was a Kraut spy.’”
“Who was the patient?” Conlin asked.
“Ben didn’t know. By the time he was able to get back, the bed was empty. The orderly was a guy named Danny that we all knew. Big lump of a guy.
“Ben said he followed him after his shift ended and Danny was alone, shuffling down the street, avoiding people, walking slow so they got away from him. Danny had an odd walk. I thought maybe the limp was from a past ankle injury or clubfoot, but Ben said when Danny was far enough away from the infirmary, he straightened out. That limp was as fake as the voice.
“I asked Ben where he went. ’To that building we just came out of,’ Ben said. ‘He’s no shit-dumping orderly, I’ll tell you that.’”
Andersen sank further into the pillow, closing his eyes and for a terrifying moment, Conlin thought that the man was finally going to die. Conlin had been almost nodding off. The doctor’s quiet voice, even its melodic tones diminished, was lulling him to sleep. “Doc?” he stubbed the smoke out into a glass ashtray. “Maybe rest now, Doc. This is too much.”
Andersen was quiet, and Conlin thought that if the doctor slept, he’d get some rest, too. He hadn’t slept a full night since they had crossed the threshold of time and found themselves in another year. In the Shadowtime. That’s what Andersen had called it. The place where we crossover is the Shadowtime. The dark part of time with no bounderies.
He was as wiped out as he had ever been, even when he had been in France during ’44 and every day seemed to bring another fresh hell that was worse than the previous day’s. He moved to the heavy wooden chair he had initially pulled up to the side of the bed, before he realized he could hear Dr. Andersen better if he just sat next to him. In truth, he wished Andersen would get to the point. All this background would be great if they had all the time in the world and weren’t searching for a girl who still hadn’t shown up where she was supposed to be. I’ll never disrespect the man, but if I don’t get some information soon, this cat’s gonna pop off and I’ll be left holding the bag. Conlin propped his stubbly cheek on one hand and let his heavy eyelids draw slowly closed, the black, thick lashes dusting his upper cheeks. I’ll just rest my eyes a bit. Have to get some rest before I’m no good to anyone.
“We killed them all!” Andersen wailed.
Conlin’s eyes snapped open. Andersen tried to sit up like a reanimated corpse, the expression of grief pulling the corners of his mouth down, a trickle of blood in each corner.
“Doc!” Conlin reclaimed his place at the bedside and tried to gently push Andersen to the pillow. “Who, Doc? Who?” Conlin succeeded in getting Andersen back down, the doctor’s jagged breathing painful to the ear. Andersen collapsed, and Conlin whipped a crocheted afgan from the foot of the bed and threw it over Andersen’s midsection.
Andersen closed his eyes, his breath ragged and smelling like meat that turned. Conlin anguished, weighing between forcing a dying man to talk or allowing him sleep. “Just tell me a little of it, Doc, then get some rest and we’ll pick the story up again. Who’d you kill?”
The older man let out an anguished sob, commencing into a rattling cough, his nostrils pinching with every breath. “Every single one of those scientists,” he said.“We killed them all. Stole their technology, their minds. We killed them to save lives. But now I fear thousands will die. And it’s my fault.”
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