“The year 1896, to be exact. This guy with the fancy name, he might have something going with time trawling, otherwise you wouldn’t be so worked up.”
“John Barrymore, I have to say I’m surprised. You are more of a student of human nature than I ever surmised,” Doc stammered. “If such a possibility exists…I have to see it though. Dr. Jamais-vous’s work here hints that I might indeed be able to return home someday.”
J.B. took off his fedora and adjusted the brim. ‘ ‘Hell, Doc, from what little I know about time trawling, it’s a triple-risky proposition with a bastard-poor chance of succeeding. You’ve cheated the odds twice, which puts you ahead of the reaper double time. Not to mention the second time you crawled into one of those things and got your ass pushed forward you came out on the other side an old man.”
“What would you do, John Barrymore?”
“I honestly don’t know, Doc. I guess I’m a lucky son of a bitch in that all the people I care about travel with me.”
Doc fell silent after that, and stayed with J.B., smoking the cigar down to a stub before leaving the way he came, his thoughts elsewhere.
Maryland, Virginia, 1999
DR. THEOPHILUS TANNER had been moved once more, this time from the caverns of Dulce, New Mex- ico, to a more civilized facade for a redoubt, with an outer shell of a beautiful white house. With the change in scenery came an ultimatum.
“Have you reexamined our offer, Dr. Tanner?” Welles asked.
Tanner smiled, and his smile was a wonderful thing to behold. “I have.”
“What do you say?”
“I say, who am I to challenge the tides of time?”
“We must have your full cooperation in order for the programming to be effective.”
“I give it to you, freely.”
“Then preparations must be made. And you must understand your place within the machine. Your intelligence makes you worthy. Your future is assured. You will be a great man, a leader in your own time once you are returned with the knowledge we intend to share.”
“How will I be readied?”
“Patience. Time is irrelevant. Against my own better judgment, I have been told you must be properly informed.”
“Informed?”
“We here at Chronos have temporal windows into the past and into the future. All is not lost Steps must be taken to influence that the proper chain of events are followed.”
“How important is my place?” Tanner asked uneasily.
“You are but one plan,” Welles said. “And one outcome. The right outcome. To assure this of happening, you will be given privileges and taught the future.”
So, as a more active part of his eventual acclimation into the Chronos project, Tanner found he was now being treated less as a curiosity in a cage and more as an equal. Many of those involved in the day-to-day operations of the Chronos project were eager to discuss their work with such an avid listener. Knowing that the elegantly dressed man from the past was an essential piece in the overall puzzle of time trawling, they welcomed his insights and deductions. Tanner gave them new eyes, with a decidedly different point of view, since he was a man of the 1800s.
Women, in particular, seemed to flock to his lean form. Whether they found something appealing in his florid gestures and attentive manner was open to interpretation, but he soon found himself always in their company-either in the laboratories or during the meal breaks or even after-hours and socially. Most of the men liked Tanner’s company too, seeing a father figure or an older brother in the smiling man’s verbal musings.
After correcting a few of the staff members who tried to call him “Theo,” and rejecting the more formal “Dr. Tanner,” one soul simply dubbed him “Doc.” The nickname stuck, and even though his brain burned with wanting to know everything Chronos had to offer in order to devise his own individual escape, Tanner was quietly touched.
In his lifetime, he’d never been a recipient of the signs of affection shown by a fond nickname, and he took quiet reassurance and pride in the familiarity of the abbreviation of his title.