Timothy Zahn - For Love of Amanda

Her eyes searched my face as I stood up again. "I can go home?" she asked, as if still not believing it.

"Absolutely," I assured her. "Our portal is in an apartment in Columbus. Let me bundle up these characters where they'll keep for an hour or two, call it in to my coordinator, and I'll drive you there. You'll be home in five hours."

She looked down at the men. "You're not going to just leave them here, are you?"

"Absolutely not," I said grimly, grabbing one under the arms and starting to drag him to a nearby alley. "Aside from anything else, I rather like watching kidnap trials."

It took some long and fancy persuasion to get Sir Charles and the authorities to allow me to go back. Even then, they made me wait until two months after I'd brought Amanda home.

Which was fine with me. I'd been planning to wait that long anyway.

The biographies said that Weldon had quit his barroom career by this point and was writing full-time out of a downtown Pittsburgh apartment. He seemed cautiously pleased to see me. "Hello, Sigmund," he greeted me, stepping back to let me into the room. "I was hoping you'd come back."

"It took some doing," I said. "But I managed to convince them it would be safer to give you the whole story than leave you with only half of it."

"I have a full half, do I?" he asked wryly as he waved me to a somewhat threadbare chair.

"Possibly a bit less," I conceded, studying his face as I sat down.

Two months had worked wonders on the man. The emptiness I'd seen in his eyes that last night was gone, replaced by the creative fire the biographies had so often commented on. "You're looking good," I added. "Much better than the last time I saw you."

"I could say the same about you," he reminded me. He hesitated, just noticeably. "How is Amanda?"

"She's fine," I assured him. "She sends her greetings, and her deep thanks."

"So what exactly was that all about?" he asked, sitting down on a mismatched couch across from me. "I watched the papers for days, but there wasn't a thing in there. I was about ready to march into the police station and demand some answers."

"I thought you might," I said. "That's one reason I pushed them to let me come back."

"Back from where?" he asked, some tension creeping into his face as he leaned forward. "Russia? China?"

I shook my head. "I'm from the future, Weldon. To be precise, from November 7, 2153."

He took it better than I'd expected him to. A couple of owlish blinks of the eyes, and he was back on track again. "Two hundred years exactly," he said thoughtfully. "Coincidence?"

"No, that's just how it works," I told him. "You can only do jumps in one-hundred-year multiples. No one knows why."

"I've read stories about that sort of thing," he said. "Science fiction, they call it. I never thought it could really happen. So Amanda was a time-traveler too?"

"A very unwilling one," I said. "She was a kidnap victim."

That one got me no less than three blinks. "She was _kidnapped? _" he asked. "Why?"

"The usual reason," I told him. "Her father has a lot of money. A gang of sewage-eaters wanted some of it."

He mulled at that a moment. "And they decided to hide her in the past while they waited for the ransom to be paid?"

"Basically," I said, rather impressed he'd made the connection so quickly. "It's a little trickier than that -- they wanted some complicated power transfers instead of straight cash. But never mind that. The point is that it was going to take time, and the way everything's interconnected they knew they could never hide her that long."

I waved a hand around me. "So they commandeered a pastportal and brought her here."

"Sounds like a pretty good plan."

"It was a terrific plan," I admitted. "Not only did we not have our usual resources to draw on in 1953, but we also had to make sure we didn't change history while we were looking for her. This was the first time this has ever been tried. I hope the cops can figure out a way to make sure it won't happen again."

He frowned slightly. "You're not a policeman?"

"Private investigator," I told him. "Amanda's father hired about eight hundred of us to assist the police in the search. I just happened to be the lucky one."

"Bull droppings," he said flatly. "Luck had nothing to do with it. You knew something."

"I didn't _know_, exactly, but I had a strong hunch," I said. "You see, during our interviews, one of Amanda's friends mentioned that she had discovered your music when she was a teenager, and that she had specifically felt drawn to your first published work."

His eyes widened. "You mean 'For Love of Amanda'? It's going to sell?"

I tensed. Uh-oh. "Haven't you sent it in yet?" I asked cautiously.

"Last month," he said. "But I haven't heard anything."

I breathed a quiet sigh of relief. Good; he'd already sent it in. No risk of me pushing or suggesting, then. "You will," I assured him. "Anyway, everyone else just assumed that she liked the song so much because her own name happened to be Amanda. Coincidence, and all that."

"But you didn't buy that."

"I wasn't sure," I said. "But I got to thinking there might be more to it than that, especially after I sat in on a couple of your sessions and saw how intensely personal and individual your barroom music could be."

"Like a handmade silk glove," he murmured.

"Amanda's own words," I agreed. "Which made me wonder if maybe that song really _had_ been written especially for her. If so, it stood to reason that you and she would eventually run into each other. I figured all I had to do was hang around in your shadow and wait for her to show up."

I shrugged. "Turns out I was right."

He shook his head wonderingly. "I knew I'd helped with something important," he said. "Somehow, I just knew it. But I never guessed it was something _this_ big."

"You saved her life," I said. "It doesn't get much bigger than that."

"I guess not," he said thoughtfully. "So what was that shiny thing you took out of her coat?"

"A restrainer," I told him. "A smaller version of a standard police gadget. If you try to run while wearing one, the controller can simply push a button and drop you where you stand."

"Is that what they used on you?"

"No, that was a paralyzer," I said. "It's supposed to immobilize someone for twenty minutes, minimum. Hurts like blazes, too."

He made a face. "I don't think I'd like living in your time," he commented.

I shrugged. "I know people who would agree with you."

He took a deep breath, let it go. "So that's it?"

"That's it," I confirmed, standing up. "I just wanted to come and tell you Amanda was okay. And to ask you not to tell anyone about this, of course."

"Of course," he said, standing up too. "I don't suppose you can...?"

I shook my head. "Sorry. Time travel has already got the philosophers and legislators tied in knots as to how known history and free-will can work together. They're not about to tempt fate by letting people like me give out hints. The only reason this particular event didn't land us all in trouble was that neither the goons nor Amanda knew who you were."

He snorted. "I'd be lying if I said I understood all this."

"So would I," I said. "But it happened, and Amanda's safe, and I'm not in trouble. The rest is up to the philosophers."

"Sounds good to me." He hesitated again. "Can you at least tell me if I'll ever see Amanda again?"

"I don't know," I said. "I doubt it, though."

"That's kind of what I thought," he said, his face looking wistful. "In that case, could you give her something for me?"

"Depends," I said warily, wondering which of the rules I was about to put my weight on this time. "What is it?"

"This." He crossed the room and selected two old-style reels of audio tape from a small pile on top of the piano. "It's a copy of the tape I just sent in," he said. "The original version of the song."