KENNETH HADN'T KNOWN what to do when Savannah suddenly took her shirt off in front of him without any warning at all.
She hadn't been wearing anything underneath. He wasn't sure at what age women started wearing bras. Fifteen? Sixteen? He didn't know. That mystery he filed away under the heading of Things I Don't Know About Women.
The scar along her ribs had surprised him so much that he almost fled the room. When she turned around, he saw so many scars he could not tell where one ended and another began. White marks and raised white bumps lay everywhere on her skin. Kenneth recalled all the times when Savannah shied away from him. He wished he could take it all back.
He wouldn't have turned her away in gym class. She never, Kenneth realized as well, had let the girls in gym class see her back under any circumstances. Each scar must have come with a great deal of pain. She had kept her pain a secret from everyone-except him.
He didn't know why she chose to show him those scars. Without meaning to, he traced his finger along them. He was fascinated. He saw them as proof of Savannah's strength. He could think of nothing else to do then but to hold her. The disdain he felt for her only a week before had disappeared.
If he would be honest, it had disappeared before she showed him the scars. He had grown a lot since that day Unquill brought them here. He had seen her strength before he saw those scars, he realized, remembering how vehement she was when she decided to follow the path of their destiny to save women being maltreated and murdered by men like Imam Felor. He winced when he remembered how she'd shot the man, the look on her face, the will to rid the world of evil men like him.
He understood now. She killed a man to save more people, and almost did another but managed to stop because he was down. He was grateful he remembered to take the sign with the mark Hester and Party with them to discard in the restroom in the building where the central computer was held, tearing it into strips and disposing it into the kind of disposal system they had in this century, which was far better than it was before.
Which meant no one was ever going to see that sign, and unless there were witnesses, no one could connect them to the scene where the man died. He had to do something to protect her.
Both times, she was fighting back for someone else. She was so brave. He has nothing but admiration and respect for her now.
And another feeling he did not understand. He could have explained it only in terms of doing what he wanted to do.
He wanted to never let go of Savannah. Never mind if the clock ran out on them both. If he held her tight, neither of them would die from being in the wrong time-because it would be the right time for them, wherever they were. If he held her and kept on holding her, everything would resolve itself, including the plan of which Imam Felor had spoken. They wouldn't have to do anything but hold on as tight as they could.
At first, Savannah had cried. Kenneth tried to keep himself from crying as well. The urge to join her in a deep, hidden misery had been almost enough to strip him of his inhibitions.
While she turned to hug him back, however, he looked at her with dry eyes. Her hands came up around his neck, which he found strange. Though he wanted her to hold him around his chest, he hadn't known if he should mention it.
In fact, he didn't know if he should say anything at all. He listened to the rhythm of her breathing as her breath hitched in and out with ragged, painful sobs. With his ear against her shoulder, he thought he heard the rhythm of her heartbeat, strong and proud, unwilling to give in no matter how much suffering life might give.
In the end, he hadn't said anything. He remained mute while she left the hotel room, looking as though a vise was squeezing her tight from two opposing sides. He ate nutrients, looking out of the window to the city below.
Unquill had come into the room, though Kenneth hadn't noticed at first. He tried working with the television just as Kenneth had a short time before. Unquill's results produced no better effect than to call up a bunch of fuzzy static on the screen.
After finishing the can of nutrients, Kenneth decided to visit the computer once again. He hailed a taxi by jumping up and down while waving his arms in the air. A taxi pulled over, its driver considering him with a wide, smiling face. The driver said, "Ey oh, little one, where are you going all jumpy?"
Though Kenneth had Savannah much on his mind, he couldn't help laughing at the taxi driver's odd way of speaking. "I wanna go to the central computer," he said.
The driver waggled a thick finger at him while, "No, no, rules have changed. President Slaan said no more people coming in or out until tomorrow, not even little ones with no shirts on."
Kenneth looked down at himself. He had forgotten to put his red t-shirt with the superhero logo back on. He shrugged, and then let the taxi driver go on his way.
He walked about the city with his hands in his back pockets, not caring that everyone stared at him in disbelief for being both very short and half-naked. He didn't mind garnering attention from everywhere, so long as no one asked him any questions.
No one did.
After wandering around for a time, a deep fatigue settled into his body. Sunburn had gathered around his chest, turning his pale white skin an angry red color. He ignored it while he stood outside the hotel's entrance waiting for Savannah to return.
He waited for some time. The sun set while he continued staring at the passing cars full of absurdly tall people, sure that he was wasting his time. He could be home, leveling up his video game characters. Or, in the very worst case scenario, he could be eating a grilled cheese sandwich while pretentious people strutted about on reality shows.
He snuck into the room while everyone else slept. Seeing Savannah had made it back before him, he tried his best not to wake Unquill while he found a spot in the bed to sleep.
Sleep had come easily to him, which had been a pleasant surprise. He had always insisted on staying up late whenever his parents tried to get him to go to bed, just as all the best television shows came on in the evening.
That thought remained with him when he woke up to the sound of Unquill saying something.
Kenneth's chest burned and itched all at once. He restrained an urge to rake his fingernails up and down his skin. When he saw a big animal on the television screen, comprehension flooded his mind all at once.
He sat up in bed, looking around for where he had left his shirt. He found it crumpled on the floor between the bed and the wall. He reached a hand down and grabbed it. He put it on, not noticing it was on inside out. He looked down at himself, then decided it didn't matter much in any case.
He didn't see himself wearing the shirt for another day once he got back to his own time.
AFTER RETURNING FROM the central computer, Unquill Hester had not wanted to do much of anything.
He had been traveling every day since bringing Savannah and Kenneth forward in time by over 5,000 years. The travel had worn him out in more ways than he had expected. He remembered well his bubbly, exuberant attitude when he watched Kenneth consume the plants that the constabulary had grown just for that purpose.
On the ride back to the hotel that the president had arranged for them, Unquill had let his head sag against the taxi window. When he pulled his head back, a ring of opaque steam clung to the window where his head had been. Strands of hair stuck to the window, attracted by static electricity.
Under other circumstances, Unquill might have been bothered by this. On another day when he could assure himself of being fresh of mind and body, he might have been irked by his hair sticking out sideways while Savannah restrained the urge to laugh.
However, after traveling from the constabulary to the Williamsport transfer station, then to Hensen Var's base, then to the surface in a free-fall crash to Madagascar, then to the city of Alexandria, then across a vast continent to the Indonesian city of Jakarta, he found himself worn out.
Just plain tired.
So when he saw a familiar face in the hotel lobby, his first thought was that he ought to go up to his room and sleep. No polite greeting, no avoidance behaviors, no awkward pauses as he sorted out what he should say.
Sleep had to come first, he decided. His legs were sluggish and moved slowly, as though someone had strapped heavy weights to them. The muscles in his arms throbbed. A red, flaring soreness made a home in the small of his back. He decided that at 327 years old, he wasn't as young as he used to be.
He also remembered a term from his study of ancient history-jet lag. People had actually traveled the sky in vehicles that used combustible fuel. When Unquill read this, he thought that the author had surely made a mistake, for who would go so far as to put particulates and exhaust in the air, even if unintentionally? The vehicles they traveled in had been called jets. The fatigue people experienced as a result of changing time zones-or perhaps from simply allowing the body to endure the strain of moving very fast for prolonged periods of time-had been called jet lag.
Unquill had found the term appropriate, for he did indeed feel a lag in his body. He had always been able to count on being able to do whatever he pleased. He had always exercised, always kept his body in top physical form for his missions through time. The fatigue of exertion had been no stranger to him, as he always had pushed himself just beyond his limits to discover how far he could go.
The deep, consuming fatigue of travel, however, proved to be a new experience for him. He hadn't expected to be so completely worn out and exhausted from just sitting in place while various machines carried him all over the world. Even when the woman he could never forget greeted him in a pleasant, musical voice, he knew that the condition of his body was evident.
The woman said, "Dear Unquill Hester, I never imagined I would meet you in a place like this. Are you coming in?"
Unquill forced himself to look at her and smile, even though he wanted nothing more than to lay down in a bed and close his eyes. Any bed would do. He said, "Kaloa Syncrate. How are you after all these years?"
Kaloa, who looked more or less the same as when Unquill had last seen her, smiled back at him. She had long, curly red hair with pale green eyes that, so far as Unquill could tell, always fixated on him whenever he came close. She wore no makeup save for the suntan lotion she applied liberally to her forearms. The coconut aroma of the lotion pleased Unquill, for while he knew that coconuts had once existed in the world, he had gone a long time without thinking of one.
At eight feet three inches tall, she stood a hand taller than him. She wore a long, flowing dress with cavorting purple and yellow leaves that came down around her ankles. Even her hands hadn't gained any wrinkles since Unquill had last seen her. It was as if, and for a moment he almost convinced himself that it could be possible, she had stepped out of the time stream from the day they had said goodbye to one another in Germersheim, Germany.
She answered with honesty, as she always had. "I've been alone for a while. I don't know if I like it. Shall we go somewhere, Hester? I'd like to look at the sky with you."
Unquill clutched at the leg of his pants to keep his hand from running down his face. To him, the gesture would be an expression of fatigue. To Kaloa, however, the gesture might appear to be one of exasperation.
Even while he felt sleep calling him, he knew that such a chance might not come again. He had regretted saying goodbye to her in the way he did. There had been no closure. He had vowed that, if he ever got the chance to see her again, he would do things differently.
Now, the chance he had wanted fell directly into his lap. How could he not grab hold of it with both hands?