TIME IS AN ONION

 

Richard Blaine continues his conversation with Winston Churchill.

" If mankind is to continue inother than this present barbarism, 

a new path must be found, a new civilizationbased on some other method than mere technology." 

- Sentient

TIME IS AN ONION

“Time is a cruel thief to rob usof our former selves. We lose as much to life as we do to death.”

- Elizabeth Forsythe Hailey

 

Between the black of yesterdayand the white of tomorrow is the great gray of today. I was tired of gray. Iwas tired of a lot of things that were not about to go away.

Then, as so often happened whenlife proved too much, I heard the velvet voice of Helen Mayfair:

“If you ever loved anything inyour life, try to remember it. If you ever betrayed anything, pretend for amoment that you have been forgiven."

I almost felt her hand lightly caress my cheek as it did on that faraway day.

 "If you ever feared anything, pretend for aninstant that those days are gone and will never return. Buy the lie and hold toit for as long as you can. Press your favorite memory, whatever it may be, toyour breast and stroke it till it purrs.”

Winston Churchill stiffened,“Your eyes. They’ve become so haunted. I am sorry, young man. Lucy is right. I ammore prone to bursts of temper of late.”

He looked morosely at my heavilybandaged hands. “Anger is a waste of energy. Steam which is used to blow off asafety valve would be better used to drive an engine.”

I shook my head and was afraid Ionly managed a sad smile. “I was merely hearing the voice of my own Lucy, HelenMayfair. I … will never see her again outside of my memories. And thatknowledge is a bleeding wound inside me.”

He looked intently at me. “Is shedead, then?”

“No, sir. But I have so manypowerful enemies ….”

“Good! That means you have stoodyour ground for what you believed was right. Eisenhower is but a man. Well, theman I see before me is not dead, is he? So, there is hope. Cling to that hope,nourish the love that you feel, and let your enemies be damned!”

He sucked in a deep breath. “Ifeel better already. I must put you on my staff.”

I smiled, thinking he was makinga jest. I was wrong.

An impish sparkle gleamed in hiseyes. “Yes, that is exactly what I will do! I will make you and your ‘Spartan3oo’ my official liaison between my office and that pompous Supreme Commander.”

The Prime Minister slapped hishand on my left shoulder. “I will even make Nurse Rachel Reynolds my aide as acourier of sorts to speak between us.”

“I don’t understand, sir.”

Cloverfield sighed, “GeneralEisenhower put pressure on the hospital to let her go as she went aboard the Rocinantewithout official sanction.”

“But she and Doc Tennyson saved….”

“Over a thousand soldiers betweenthem and your efforts … at least according to that journalist … ah, what was hisname again?”

“Walter Cronkite, sir,” saidCloverfield.

The New Zealander shook his head.“But he claims he did not write those articles that the McCord Newspaper Chainis printing under his by-line. In fact, he visited the Major’s hospital roomafter those MP’s escorted you off the floor. He was yelling he had beenbetrayed by the United Press.”

Churchill snorted, “That's life:trust and you're betrayed; don't trust and you betray yourself.”

I look back at that exchange nowand mourn how naïve we all were then, how ignorant of the horrors the war yearswould bring.

In the mirrors of many judgments,my hands are the color of blood.

I sometimes fancy myself an evilwhich exists to oppose other evils.  

And on that great Day of whichthe prophets speak but in which they do not truly believe … on that day when theworld is utterly cleansed of evil, then I, too, will go down into darkness,swallowing remorse for things done … and for things not done often enough.

Until then, I will continue bloodyingmy hands and refuse to let them hang useless.

Cloverfield frowned. “Speaking ofthose MP’s they’re running all around us as if good sense had left them. Theydon’t bloody look as if they even see us.”

I sighed, “Sentient just told methat she has slipped the three of us an onion layer back in time.”

Churchill snorted, “Is such athing possible?”

I nodded. “Time is not the linearconcrete concept Einstein believes. It does not easily fit into a black andwhite world of equations that runs to a logical conclusion.”

I bit my lower lip. “Time is … anonion of sorts. It exists whole as one unit. No beginning. No end. It does notrun on and on. It has … layers which Sentient can slip between … which how shetook me 413 years in the future to get these strange new hands.”

I started to run those bandagedfingers through my unruly hair and just managed to stop myself in time.

“In time.”

I grinned drily at the phrase.The three of us were “in time” indeed.

Churchill snorted again. “Areyou, then, smarter than Einstein?”

“Sentient has made it so.”

“You do not talk like a genius.”

I shook my head. “My enemy in NewOrleans uses language as a blunt instrument to batter those with whom he speaksto prove how much smarter he is than they. But I believe he is trying to provesomething else entirely different to himself. Just what I haven’t quitedecided.”

I remembered Helen groaning atwhat I called the vocabulary I used.

 “I speak in what I call ‘Jimmy Stewart’English. If I can imagine the actor saying it on the screen, I say it toothers. To me, language is meant to clearly communicate one to another without needlesslylabyrinthine terms.”

James Cloverfield shook his head.“You know what is truly frightening?”

“What?”

“I believe you.”