Mickey Reichert: Dragonrank master

"Please, read, then," Gaelinar insisted.

"Aloud," Taziar specified.

Larson hesitated. His single semester of college physics had scarcely gotten him past the law of gravity and Newtonian mechanics. "It's mostly numbers. They wouldn't have any meaning for you. If you give me a little time, I may find something useful." He opened to the first page again, taking note of details. The entry was dated 12/07/1988. Larson gawked until the numbers blurred beyond his ability to read them. 1988? Almost twenty years after I went to Vietnam . He tried to picture his sister, Pam, more than forty years old, telling her children about their uncle killed in the war. But the image defied him. Absently, he fluttered the pages as he considered. I destroyed the future, didn't I? Or changed it, at least. Then again, since Mannix apparently came back before I did … His thoughts became incomprehensibly jumbled; time lost all relative meaning.

As pages flicked past him, Larson noticed a change in the quality of the penmanship. Toward the end of the journal, a darker handwriting replaced the chicken scratch of numbers. The discrepancy caught Larson's attention. He found the first entry of the newer author, a long treatise of words in letter form. "I think I have something here." Tucking his legs beneath his buttocks, he began to read.

"Galin R.," Larson glanced up to find Gaelinar watching him, a perplexed look on his wizened features. "Galin R.," Larson started again, and this time the incongruity clicked. "Galin R., Gaelinar." The names sounded too alike to attribute to coincidence. Despite the unfinished quest, an enemy close at hand, and multiple unsolved mysteries, Larson broke into laughter. Unable to read on, he lowered the book and roared.

Gaelinar and Taziar looked alarmed, which only made Larson laugh harder. He gasped between bouts, "Now… we know… where Silme… got your name." The Dragonrank mages must have passed it on for centuries . Several more minutes passed before Larson gained enough control to continue.

"Galin R.," Larson snickered, but managed to go on. "Well, I did it, at last. I channeled the stored energy and set off for…" Larson paused. The diary read "Egypt, 700 B.C.," but he saw no way to translate the place and era. He settled for a vague description of the location and indicated centuries back in time.

Taziar interrupted. "You must have misread. How could someone live for more than 1700 years?"

Larson held his place in the journal with a finger. "Shadow, I have a feeling it'll get even more confusing." He returned to reading.

"The explosion must have looked magnificent. I'm sure you'll read about it in the papers long before you see this letter-if you ever see this letter. Certainly, there will be those who try to link my disappearance to the…" Larson skipped over the word "nuclear" which had no Old Norse equivalent. "… testing which went on here for the last fifteen years, but you and I and three dozen lab assistants know better. I thought we would never get past moving peach pits, books, apples, and cats short distances into the past and future. Now we've done it. I'm gone, and everything went with me: my research, yours, the…" Larson avoided the term "particle accelerator" which held no more meaning for him than for his companions. "… the equipment, the walls. Everything went exactly according to plan except one thing, dear Galin. The instant I arrived, I lost power. The lights went out, the…" Larson substituted "tools" for "machines" and continued "… went down, the…"He interposed "box for keeping food cold" for "refrigerator-"

"… stopped running."

Larson continued reading, interpreting where possible, substituting descriptions for words when necessary, and paraphrasing as much as he could. "The air conditioner also quit working, but, oddly, it didn't bother me. It couldn't have been more than forty degrees outside, and the only desert sand was the stuff I brought with me from Nevada. Thank God for your paranoid insistence on contingencies-and your addiction to Pepsi. I lived off warm soda and canned fruit cocktail while the steaks spoiled in the nonfunctioning freezer during the two weeks it took me to establish a geothermal energy source. Boy, could I use a physicist. If you ever find yourself in ninth or tenth century Scandinavia, feel free to drop in for a visit, okay?

"By now, Galin, I'm certain you figured out what happened. Some miscalculation dropped me in the wrong place and time, not a tragedy in and of itself, except I'm apparently no longer in contact with our line of stored energy. I 'm trapped, unable to tap the power and unable to move through time, stuck in a world of Vikings until you find me. Of course, I could start the process over again. I have the cyclotron and your notes. But without your knowledge or the patience to go over the long, complicated mathematics you did for me, I'd probably end up in the Pacific Ocean somewhere during World War II. Besides, I'm short a few pounds of plutonium and a handful of lab technicians. So, if you happen to come across any extra, please send them to Gary Mannix care of General Delivery, Old Scandinavia. I don't know the zip, but I can tell you I'm about six inches shy of hysteria.

"Galin, please tell Marsha and Jimmy I love them very much. I doubt my life insurance policy covers such a contingency. I trust you and your team. I know you'll come for me if you can. If you time it right, perhaps you'll arrive before I write this note. For the record, my watch says it's October 16, 1989 at 9:17 pm. According to the guarantee, it's not supposed to lose more than a minute a year. Think I can get my money back?" The signature at the bottom read simply "Gary." Larson lowered the journal.

An expectant hush followed, broken finally by Taziar. "Did that make any sense to anyone?"

"Not much," Gaelinar admitted.

Even Bramin looked perplexed.

The sun hovered directly overhead, creating short shadows beneath the buildings and the wall. Recalling the skeleton hunched over the lab chair, Larson reached for the final volume, labeled number six. If someone spent his last moments of life writing, he must have had something urgent to say . The binding was cracked, as if the book had remained in one position for quite some time. Larson separated the covers, and it fell open naturally to a blank page stained black with old blood. Larson backtracked to the final entry and read aloud in the same manner as before.

"Dear reader,

"Much of what I write may seem primitive to you. Unless the manufacturer greatly underestimated the life span of this paper, you must be a time traveler. Therefore, you come from a future I never had the opportunity to see. As far as I know, I am the first time traveler. Even if the technology I used has become outdated, my story may prove interesting to anyone who comes after me, if only to learn from my mistakes. I have no choice but write my story quickly. Today, almost certainly, I am going to die.

"My name is Gary Mannix. I am a parapsychologist, originally from Cherry Hill, New Jersey. More than once, a sneering skeptic has called my profession an oxymoron, but I don't find that comment any funnier now than when I became trapped in ninth or tenth century Scandinavia twenty-two years ago. Apparently, neither did the United States government. In their infinite wisdom, they gave me and my associates a grant to study ways to affect enemy alpha brain waves with oscillating magnetic fields, but they wouldn't give a penny to my friend, physicist Galin R., for his research on time travel.

"I have always had a special interest in the differences between the ancient mind and our own. Despite tremendous gains in technology, information and its processing, there has also been knowledge lost: the secrets of the great pyramids and Stonehenge, for example. I felt certain I could glean useful information from Egypt in 1000-500 B.C., an age when brain surgery was not only being performed, but the patients survived. Galin convinced me his project was worthwhile. By careful manipulation, I managed to work his research onto my grant. It worked out well for both of us. Galin got his money and a laboratory in the basement. I got a promise that I would be the first man to travel through time.