SAVANNAH AWOKE TO the sound of a man whooping in excitement.
She knew she hadn't been asleep long, for she'd developed the headache she always got whenever someone interrupted her sleep.
She saw the image of a man, his skin stretched tight around his face, his eyes dull, emotionless.
To her, this was the image of a man who had given up on life.
She felt sorry for him, for she knew that he would soon die.
She turned her face away, unable to look at the man.
A flicker of recognition in the back of her mind told her that she'd seen this man somewhere before.
Even while Unquill shouted the name Hinjo, she knew it had to be true.
Here was a man who would, according to Unquill, destroy the human race, yet she had met him before.
He had to have been a time traveler, she thought.
She looked up to catch Kenneth staring at her.
She stuck his tongue out at him.
He turned his face away, pouting.
Savannah stood up, feeling the weariness in her bones.
Her mother had often said that Savannah had no business being tired or sore since she was so young, yet Savannah couldn't help it. She had caught the insomnia bug earlier in the year. Now, no matter how hard she tried, she couldn't sleep more than three or four hours a night. As a result, she found herself growling at Unquill's exclamation, who, when he turned about to give her his good news, looked abashed.
"What's going on?" Savannah asked.
"This man, this is Hinjo," Unquill said.
Kenneth stood up. "Really? He doesn't look that dangerous to me."
Unquill smiled.
To Savannah, the smile looked rather sad.
"This is an image taken at the end of his life. No other images of him exist because he had not come to be known among us before he made his choice. We tried locating him before this, but with no success."
They all studied the image for a while. Savannah couldn't shake the feeling that she'd seen the man somewhere before.
Though his his hair lay in tufts about his head, his chin and forehead retained a certain something to it.
At that moment, Savannah happened to look at Unquill.
She saw that, where he hadn't bothered brushing his hair in the back, Unquill had the same pattern of tufts that Hinjo did.
Savannah swallowed.
She took a deep breath before speaking. "Unquill, that man-it's you."
Unquill's mouth hung open in shock.
He approached Savannah until he stood in front of her.
Then he knelt before her.
Their eyes met.
Unquill's eyes retained the animation of life whereas Hinjo's did not.
Yet, they were the same color.
Up close, so close that Savannah could feel the heat of his breath on her face, she became ever more sure of herself.
Unquill backed off.
He pulled a weapon from his belt. "You believe what you say. I don't see any deception in you. Then, if you are right, I will kill myself here and now. That will end all the problems once and for all."
Kenneth spoke up. "No, it won't."
Savannah turned to look at him. "What do you mean?"
"Do we know how old Hinjo was when the photograph was taken?"
"Surely, all you need to do is calculate how old I am now, together with how many years will pass between now and then," Unquill said.
Savannah picked up Kenneth's train of thought. "Unless you factor in how many years you'd been alive while traveling to some other time. That might explain why you can't find, well, yourself. It's because you popped back in right at the moment when everything got started. You've been expecting Hinjo to live a normal life in obscurity like everyone else, right? What if that's not how it is? What if Hinjo travels-traveled-from a point in the past or future to the critical point you've been worried about?"
Unquill said, "Such things are forbidden. One must always return to the precise point from which one has left. To do otherwise would lead to a banishment from the Constabulary for all time. Some have tried it, believe me. All have failed."
Kenneth scratched his nose, then his chin, deep in thought. "If you went forward to study a future in which people don't exist anymore, you could just use their thingies whenever you wanted, couldn't you? No one would stop you."
Unquill's eyes widened for a moment. "I had not considered that. Perhaps it's time we put this matter before the Council of Thirds. If indeed it is I, then-"
The more Savannah looked at Unquill, standing before her and Hinjo on the screen, the more she felt certain that Unquill and Hinjo were the same person.