Time Enough for Love Read Online Free PDF Page B

saying, but it doesn’t work that way. I can’t make one little change and know instantly how it’s going to turn out unless I return to my own time. If I were to go back to my time after making a change, I’d have a sudden rush of very vivid double memories. I’d remember all the things that had happened differently in the seven years between now and then.”
    “So how will you know when you’ve made the changes you need to make?”
    He gazed into her eyes. “I’ll know.”
    “How? Because if you don’t know the outcome, maybe you
have
done all you need—”
    Chuck shook his head. “Simply coming back in time isn’t enough. I need to create an event that willaffect the life of my present-day self—of Charles. And as Charles does things differently, I’ll have those new double memories—but only one by one as they happen in real time.”
    “Wait, you lost me.…”
    Chuck shifted in his seat, leaning across the table, trying to make her understand. “Think of it on a physical level,” he said. “Look at me. I’m here, I’m whole, right? If you were to X-ray me, you’d see I’ve never had a broken bone. I’ve lived to be forty-two years old and I’m still in one piece. But if I convinced you to go and push Charles—not me, but Charles—off the sidewalk and into oncoming traffic, my own X rays would suddenly be very different. You’d probably see multiple signs of healed fractures. And I’d probably have a couple more scars to show for it, even though it didn’t happen to me. But think about it. It
did
happen to me, because he’s
me
.”
    He sat back in his seat, uncertain if she understood. “Memories, even double memories, work the same way. Until I actually change the past—until I convince you to actually push me into traffic, to continue with that rather grim example—I won’t have a clue as to what’s going to happen.”
    Her eyes didn’t leave his face, her gaze sharp and probing. “Most people die when you push them intooncoming traffic. You’re not here to ask me to help kill you, are you?”
    Chuck considered trying to laugh her words off for about a tenth of a second, but the look in her eyes convinced him to be honest. This was Maggie he was talking to. She’d always been able to see right through him. “Actually, that’s a solution I’ve considered,” he told her seriously. “If Charles is gone, all those theories about time travel are gone too. It’s a quick and easy fix. But remember what I just told you. What happens to him affects me. If he’s dead, I’m dead too. I’m hoping to find another way.”
    Maggie took in a deep breath, letting it out in a burst of air. “Oh, man.”
    “I’m
going
to find another way,” Chuck told her. “The agents from Wizard-9 tried to kill me. I don’t want to give them the satisfaction of seeing me dead—even if the only way they’d remember me was in the faintest of double memories.”
    “That day you came,” Maggie said. “There was blood on you. Your shoulder …”
    His shoulder had only been scraped. Most of the blood had not been his own. Chuck took a sip of his soda. “I went to Data Tech that morning breathing fire, intending to use the Runabout to go back intime and prevent the bombing, but they were waiting for me.”
    He reached across the table for her hand, needing to touch her to eradicate the memories. He could still see her eyes, dimming as the life seeped from her body. He couldn’t tell her all of it, but that didn’t matter. He was going to make damned sure that it happened differently this time around.
    “You were there,” he whispered, “and somehow you knew they were gunning for me. You tried to warn me. You saved my life.”
    “Yeah, well, saving people’s lives is one of those things I just happen to be good at—along with finding clothes for the naked time travelers who show up in my backyard.” She was trying to make light of it, but he knew she was not unaffected by the touch of his