Lightning

On his third trip into the future, he explained, he had traveled to California in 1984. California because his previous two trips — two weeks in 1954, two weeks in 1964 — had shown him that California was perhaps the coming cultural and current scientific center of the most advanced nation on earth. Nineteen eighty-four because it was a neat forty years from his own time. He was not the only man going through the gale by then; four others began making jaunts as soon as it was proved safe. On that third trip Stefan had still been scouting the future, learning in detail what had happened to the world during and after the war. He was also learning what scientific developments of the intervening forty years would most likely be taken back to Berlin in '44 to win the war for Hitler, not because he intended to help in that design but because he hoped to sabotage it. His researches involved reading newspapers, watching television, and just circulating in American society, getting a feel for the late twentieth century.

Leaning back on his pillows now, recalling that third journey in a voice utterly different from the gloom with which he had described his grim life up to 1944, he said, "You can't imagine what it was like for me to walk the streets of Los Angeles for the first time. If I had traveled one thousand years into the future instead of forty, it couldn't have seemed more wondrous. The cars! Cars everywhere — and so many of them German, which seemed to indicate a certain forgiveness for the war, acceptance of the new Germany, and I was moved by that."

"We have a Mercedes," Chris said. "It's neat, but I like the Jeep better."

"The cars," Stefan said, "the styles, the amazing advancements everywhere: digital watches, home computers, videotape recorders for watching movies in your own living room! Even after five days of my visit had passed, I was in a state of pleasant shock, and looked forward each morning to new wonders. On the sixth day, as I passed a bookstore in Westwood, I saw a line of people waiting to have copies of a novel signed by the author. I went inside to browse and to see what kind of book was so popular, to help me a bit in understanding American society. And there you were, Laura, at a table piled with copies of your third novel and your first major success, Ledges."

Laura leaned forward, as if puzzlement were a force drawing her to the edge of her chair. "Ledges'? But I've never written a book with that title."

Again, Chris understood. "That was a book you wrote in the life you would've lived if Mr. Krieger hadn't meddled in it."

"You were twenty-nine years old when I saw you for the first time at that book-signing party in Westwood," Stefan said. "You were in a wheelchair because your legs were twisted, useless. Your left arm was partly paralyzed, as well."

"Crippled?" Chris said. "Mom was crippled?"

Laura was literally on the edge of her chair now, for though what her guardian said seemed too fantastic to be believed, she sensed that it was true. On a deep level even more primitive than instinct, she perceived a tightness to the image of herself in a wheelchair, her legs useless and wasted; perhaps what she apprehended was the faint echo of destiny thwarted.

"You'd been that way since birth," Stefan said.

“Why?”

“I only learned that much later, after conducting much research The doctor who had delivered you in Denver,

Colorado, in 1955—Markwell was his name — had been an alcoholic. Yours was a difficult birth anyway—"

“My mother died delivering me."

“Yes, in that reality she died too. But in that reality Markwell botched the delivery, and you received a spinal injury that crippled you for life. "

A shudder passed through her. As if to prove to herself that she had indeed escaped the life that fate had originally planned for her, she got up and walked to the window, using her legs, her undamaged and blessedly useful legs.

To Chris, Stefan said, "That day I saw her in the wheelchair, your mother was so beautiful. Oh. so very beautiful. Her face, of course, was the same as it is now. But it wasn't the face alone that made her beautiful. There was such an aura of courage about her, and she was in such good humor m spite of her handicaps. Each person who came to her with Ledges was sent away not only with a signature but with a laugh. In spite of being condemned to a life in a wheelchair, your mother was so amusing, lighthearted. I watched from a distance and was charmed and profoundly moved, as I'd never been before."

"She's great," Chris said. "Nothing scares my mom."

"Everything scares your mom," Laura said. "This whole crazy conversation is scaring your mom half to death."