Changes
The old man sat glowering at the fire. “I’ll have him,” he muttered. “I’ll have him. He must show himself this time, and I’ll have him.”
“Excuse me, sir?” The voice was unfamiliar. The old man blinked.
“Sir?” the stranger said again. “My apologies for intruding, but are you Captain-”
“Aye,” the old man said. He was the only captain he knew of on this barren rock. “What d’ye want? I have a long voyage tomorrow, and it’s passing late for visitors.”
The stranger smiled suddenly. “I could be vague about all this, but there’s no point, really. Even if you found my time machine, you don’t have the technical expertise to work it.”
“Your what?” The old man blinked again.
“Never mind. The point is, I know exactly who you are, and what you’re after. I’m from the future. My name’s irrelevant, but I represent a group of people who sympathize with your quest. We read the book; we know how it ends. You’ll die.”
The old man was outraged. “I cannot die, no matter what you say! I have been given assurances, nay, signs-
“Yes, yes, the stranger said, a little impatiently. “I figured you would bring that up. Here.” He tugged a book out of his coat pocket. “Read the last chapter. 135, I believe it is.”
The old man read quickly. Then he looked up at the stranger. Others would have asked who had written the text, but the old man recognized the thoughts and the words. He knew them for his own. “Right,” he said. “So I die then.”
“No,” said the stranger, producing a second article from his coat pocket. The old man thought it looked like an old flintlock he had seen once, in the war. “No, you don’t.”
“Why?”
The stranger smiled again. “When you stand on your quarter-deck, your wooden leg made fast in your pivot hole, and you look left or right, you see different scenes with each direction you look? Each turn?”
“Aye,” the old man said. “Every turn, I see a new sea and a new wave.”
The stranger made a slight shrug. “That’s it, then. My friends would like a new sea.”
***
A year later, the old man’s ship paraded triumphantly into the harbor, all sails out and banners flying. The sailors told wild stories of how the old man had struck down the hated white whale, struck him down with a bolt of red light from his hand. No one believed the stories; men long at sea were known for their exaggeration.
That night, the stranger visited the old man again. The captain seemed much bemused. “I have done what I set out to do,” he said. “I had him. I revenged myself upon him. But…what shall I do now?”
The stranger smiled. “Do more.”
