After our return from the Devonian, Di spent three days in the hospital, where physicians prepared to amputate her foot if the Devonian bacteria spread any further. Instead, the swelling subsided. However, she remained in the hospital for three weeks, and spent another two months in her apartment.

Di’s treatments were overseen by a new company physician, named Charles Ling. He was Asian, with skin a shade darker than most, in his late 40s or early 50s. He usually wore a cell phone that clipped to one ear; a tiny attached screen hung like a monocle in front of one eye. He carried a large briefcase made of bulletproof plastics, presumably first used during a term as an UNCOST health adviser to some less-than-stable nations. He was a good-humored and charming man, but not afraid to state a problem bluntly. He was the one who told us (that is, me, Di and Carlos) about Dianna’s other injury, a few days after our return

“Dr. Gonzalez, you are making an excellent recovery,” Ling said. “The infection in your ankle is receding, and—as I am sure you have noticed—the swelling is going away. You are now well past the stage where amputation would have to be considered.” I could tell from the tone of his voice that the news was not all good. “We conducted a careful examination for other injuries, particularly in the head. We found fairly extensive head trauma. In hindsight, you must have suffered a concussion.” (I winced, remembering our night by the campfire, and realizing for the first time how much I must have put her through.)

“The most extensive trauma is in the right temple. You suffered a minor fracture, which has already begun to heal. More seriously, you suffered sub cranial trauma—in essence, a bruise on the brain. Blood is pooling in the space between your brain and your skull, and it is already causing cerebral tissue to become enflamed. It is vital to operate as soon as possible.”

There was a long moment of silence. I felt heartsick, just as I had when I feared her dead in the shipwreck. Di was the one who spoke, more hoarsely than usual: “What will it take to fix it?”

“By the standards of neurosurgery, the treatment will be routine,” Ling said confidently. “I have already contacted several highly capable physicians, and they will be able to operate within the week. There are, however, certain necessary measures that may seem drastic. To operate at all, it will be necessary to remove a piece of your skull. This can be reinserted after the surgery, but it will be necessary to install a titanium plate to hold it in place. This plate may be removed once the bone has fused, but I advise against it. During the surgery itself, it may prove necessary to operate below the surface of the brain, and even with the best non-invasive techniques, this will almost certainly involve the permanent removal of a small portion of the brain. I have a legal obligation to inform you of this, and you have the right to decline treatment.”

Dianna laughed, with more than a trace of bitterness. “What’s to choose? Go ahead.”
The operation, from the beginning of preparation to the last suture, took 22 hours. I stayed in the hospital the whole time. In hour two, Dr. Ling told me that the doctors were making the first incision in her skull. In hour five, he reported that the treatment of the injury itself had begun. At hour 12, he told me that the treatment was complete, and the doctors were now working to replace the detached portion of her skull. During hour 21, he reported that the bone was fitted in place, and the doctors were performing a skin graft. At hour 22, the operation was finished. 90 minutes later, they wheeled her into the visiting room.

I went in to post-op immediately, though I knew there was no chance that she would be in shape to talk. I was startled to find that her eyes were open. She raised her head with difficulty, and smiled at me. I darted to her side and took her hand, not withstanding the raised eyebrows of the attendant. “Rest, Reyna,” I told her. I stroked her face, carefully avoiding the stitches on her forehead. Her skin was moist, and slightly chilly. She lay back, squeezing my hand tightly. Then her grip loosened, and she went to sleep.

A week after the operation, she was sent home, with the understanding that she would undergo enforced bed rest and physical therapy. Over the next two months, Carlos and I visited regularly, and assisted her in every way possible. A number of past clients sent messages of support. Dr. Carradine flew to El Salvador for a visit. All the while, romance thrived between Dianna and me, though our times together could scarcely have been further from the usual romantic activities. I helped her with therapy, kept her apartment clean, and ran errands for her while she was bed-ridden. On more than one occasion, she rewarded a small favor by ordering a dozen roses.

It was clear to me that Di was changed. But I could not be sure how much of it was from the ordeal of recovery, how much was a reflection of her changed feelings toward me, and how much was a result of her injury. At times, being with her seemed like being with a different person—or, even, several people. I quickly observed several distinct demeanors. One I dubbed “bubbly Di”. This was the most surprising to see. When she was with others, she would be talkative, more outgoing, and a little less abrasive than in the past. She was also a little freer in her speech and behavior. She spoke more frankly about her own feelings, and about issues beyond the strictly intellectual plane she usually dwelt in. On occasion, she said things that were “off-color”, even profane. Once, at a dinner to celebrate two months of successful rehabilitation, she had too much to drink. When Carlos said as much, she answered, “No! Just enough!”

When she was alone with me, or in small groups, darker demeanors came forth. There were truly frightening phases, which I called “quiet Di”. There were many moments, significant in hindsight, when she seemed to “space out”: to stop talking, not notice her surroundings, or do things she could not explain or even clearly remember afterward. During one of these episodes, she struck me with no apparent provocation and knocked me unconscious. Carlos, who was fortunately present, said he had to pull her off of me and lock her in her bedroom. When I regained consciousness, perhaps twenty minutes after it happened, Carlos was standing guard at her door with a rock hammer he had retrieved from his car.

The most painful times, but in the long run, perhaps, the most helpful, came in phases I called “weepy Di”, characterized by depression, anxiety and occasional outpourings of shame over the past. On more than one occasion, I stopped her, and begged her to tell me no more. “I love you, and I want to marry you,” I told her at one point. “I forgive you, no matter what you’ve done, even if I never know just what I’m forgiving. Isn’t that how forgiveness is meant to be?”

She only cried harder. “That’s pretty much what my ex said,” she cried.” That’s what he said at first.” Then, after a few minutes rocking in my arms, she began to softly sing:

They say, ‘You can’t cross the same river twice’.
You can’t go home again
Can’t do it over again
Forgetting is the best you can get.

She looked up into my eyes. “If we could go back to our own past, and see those things… Would you keep them from happening, make them never exist? And even if you did, could you still forgive them?”

“If we did,” I responded gently, “can we be sure that we would still be here?” I embraced her, with tears trickling from my own eyes. “I know it hurts. But we can’t be who we are without our past, and we have to accept whatever evil we went through to get here along with the good we have even now. I guess even time travelers can’t get around that.” She threw her arms around me and cried harder.

As the weeks passed, she talked with increasing frequency and excitement about getting married. Things came to a head in the fifth week of home care. “I don’t really care about the ring, or even the ceremony,” she said. “As far as I’m concerned, we can just have a civil ceremony and have a reception for friends and family. In fact—did you know we already meet all the prerequisites of a civil union? Listen to this form: ‘To establish a civil union, it is necessary and sufficient to demonstrate a prior relationship, including (but not limited to) the sharing of a common dwelling for four or more days a week; shared income; provision of medical or other care; a shared legal or biological offspring; an express wish to bear and raise a common offspring; and Other.’ All we would have to do is fill out this form and send it to a government office.”

I was quick to shush her. “I’m looking forward to getting married too, but I can wait. I’m glad to,” I told her at one point. “And this isn’t really about being excited, is it? You’re afraid that given enough time, I might decide to back out.”

She sighed. “Maybe you’re right. I’ve felt afraid… but not so much of that,” she said. “Sometimes… This will sound crazy, but sometimes I’m not sure how much time we might have. I go through times when I’m scared I won’t live another night. And I get nightmares.”
“Tell me about it,” I said.

“You were right. But it isn’t just that,” Di told me later. “I’ve been having these feelings of…of…total dread. Like there’s no future for me. Like there might not be a future for anybody. And I’ve been having nightmares.” With a little coaxing, she described it: “It’s not the kind of dream where I feel like it’s happening to me. It’s like I know I’m dreaming, but it still seems real. I’m on a road—and the road is time. Ahead of me is a man made of metal. It’s like he’s made of angles. He’s coming toward me… and he’s coming between you and me. And standing there by the road, just watching, is a man. At least, he looks like a man. But inside, he’s…chaos. Ever seen a representation of a shape that is geometrically impossible, or a graph of an equation with no real solution? I see him like that. And beyond him is a black wall—a black wall of nothing. Not emptiness; emptiness still has length, width and volume. Just nothing. And that’s when I wake up.”

“I can’t tell you what it means,” I told her. “But I can tell you this. I love you. I want to spend my life with you. No matter what happens, I will never leave you. If anyone or anything should come between us, I will fight my way back to you. That’s a promise. No form, no ceremony, no vow, no ring, no night together could be more binding than that. If you can’t trust me now, nothing else is going to make it better. Can you trust me?” After a long moment of silence, she nodded. From that evening on, she was happy, and “quiet Di” and “weepy Di” seemed to go dormant.

It was during an expedition to the Miocene a few months later that I finally proposed. After she said she was interested in pursuing a relationship, our courtship proceeded rapidly. I knew that we both felt there was no point in waiting any longer. I developed an elaborate plan to propose to her after a picnic dinner under a pristine sky where the stars shone undimmed by man-made lights. What I didn’t count on was that said sky was filled with smoke from a forest fire. I felt annoyed that my perfect plan had been so perfectly fouled up. The prospect of possibly being burned alive by the advancing flames was also a bit of a drag.

Hours before our return to the present, my fiancé and I watched the advancing flames from the edge of the temporal displacement platform. I sat, and Dianna lay on her back. The orange glow from the fire provided more illumination than the smoke-obscured sun. I reached over and rubbed her exposed midriff. She giggled and pushed my hand away. “I love you,” she said.
“I love you, too,” I said. I still felt a sense of euphoric fantasy every time I heard her say those words. I glanced at the fire, which was now about half a mile away. “Think it will reach us?” I asked.
“No, we’re definitely safe,” she said. “It’s, what, 15 minutes until we go?”
I glanced at my watch. “Thirteen minutes and forty seconds,” I said.

There was a long, somewhat awkward silence. A herd of Syndyoceras thundered by a hundred meters away. The animals looked like antelope, but the paleontologists said they were more closely related to camels. Then Carlos came stomping over. “Hey, lovebirds!” he shouted. “All the specimens and equipment are loaded, no thanks to you lazy bums.” He cracked a smile. “C’mon, it’s ten minutes until extraction. And by the way, Di, I totally agree with your decision. Ted’s genes definitely deserve to be preserved.”
Dianna took another look at the fire. “The wind’s kicking up. Sparks from the fire may reach us before we leave,” she said. “Is the Ora fireproof?”

The question was obviously meant for Carlos. As a former soldier, he had faced Ora armored cars in combat. “I’m afraid not,” Carlos said grimly. “The hull is almost impervious to heat, but the tires burn like sterno logs. If one of the middle tires catches fire, the flames can go straight from there to the fuel tank. If that happens… well, then we would have a `fiery dragon’ on our hands.” He wiped his brow, as if once again feeling the heat of some explosion from his army days.
“In that case, we should spray the tires with the fire extinguisher,” Di said
Carlos nodded. “Yes, that would work against stray sparks. I’ll handle it. You guys buckle up.”

I took the front seat, and Dianna rode shotgun. We had spent almost every night of the trip there in the cab, talking for hours about anything, everything or nothing. I flipped a switch, and heard a faint whir as four legs lowered from the vehicle’s sides. The legs had originally been designed to absorb the recoil of heavy weapons and to raise the vehicle during maintenance procedures. Now, they helped absorb the terrific shock that came with time displacement. “Stay buckled into your seats,” I said into the intercom. “Don’t brace yourselves; that will only make the shock worse. Just sit back and relax.” I gazed at Di. She blushed, but locked eyes with me. Then she reached out and took my hand.

“You know, I’ve been attracted to you since we met,” she said. “But it seemed like just a silly crush, and I was engaged…” She stopped to wipe a tear from her eye. She had not yet told me the full story of her breakup with her ex-fiancé. A bright bolt of electricity shot between the poles. The time machine was firing up.

I told her,” We both needed time to figure out what was right. Don’t be sad, and don’t be afraid. I’ll always be here for you.” For a moment, my eyes flicked to the windshield. In that moment, I saw something move outside. I stifled a curse and leaped to my feet. I grabbed the nearest weapon, which was an A^3 Eliminator hanging above the door. In the passenger area, I saw Carlos sitting down and preparing to buckle up. “Carlos, get a weapon! There’s a stowaway on the platform. SORRY ABOUT THIS, DIANNA!” Outside, the five-minute alarm sounded.

I got out the door and saw the stowaway. It was a Syndyoceras, undoubtedly a stray from the herd that had just gone by. It had 4 horns, two at the rear of its skull and two side-by-side on its snout. Carlos raised his weapon to shoot, but hesitated. Then he lowered the weapon. There reason was obvious: The syndie was standing in front of one
of the poles. A bullet that missed or exited the syndie might disable the time machine. “Aw, —–,” Carlos said. “What do we do now?”

“Let’s try to scare it off,” I suggested. I shouted an old soccer cheer while pounding the floor with the butt of the dinosaur rifle. Carlos joined in with a profane battle cry and 3 bursts into the air. I fired a thunderous shot of my own. Bolts of energy crackling through the air added to the noise. But the syndie was unperturbed. As the two-minute alarm sounded, it sat down.

Carlos finally took direct action. He fired one more burst and screamed, “Get off our time machine, ya cousin of a camel!” Then he rushed at the stowaway. The beast bounded to its feet. A disconcertingly human sneer was on its face; the hell glow of the forest fire made the expression even more unnerving. It charged and stabbed Carlos in the thigh with one of its rear horns. Carlos fell to his knees, and the syndie stood up on its hind legs and pummeled him with its hooves.

I circled this bizarre fight, trying to find a way to shoot the syndie without hitting Carlos or the pole. Before I could line up a shot, the syndie tried to retreat back to the corner. I stepped directly in its path. I couldn’t fire without hitting Carlos. Instead, I used the Eliminator first as a shield to block the thrusting horns, then as a club to drive the animal back. Unfortunately, the syndie reared up on its hind legs and countered with a hoof to the forehead. The gun fell from my hands as I went reeling into the pole. The syndie lowered its horns for a textbook goring. Before it could drive its horns home, a volley of shots brought it down.

“Carlos, are you OK?” I said.
“Jus’ a concussion and a bruised kidney or two,” Carlos mumbled. I saw that he was still kneeling. Dianna was standing next to him, with the rifle in her hands.
“90 seconds to departure,” she said succinctly.
She moved toward me, but I waved her back. “Get Carlos to his seat, and then strap yourself in. I’ll pitch the syndie overboard.”

I watched as Dianna led Carlos back to the Ora. Carlos was mumbling, “OK, here’s what we’ll say. A three-ton enteledont charged onto the platform, I was trampled during a heroic diversion, and Ted shot it when it was about to eat you.” The syndie may have damaged his body and his pride, but nothing could put a dent in Carlos’s sense of humor.

I turned to dispose of the syndie, and got a nasty surprise. It was back on its feet. Unable to gather enough strength for a charge, it staggered toward me with its head swinging. I took a step back, narrowly avoiding possible disembowelment, only to step right off the platform. I tumbled down the hill, but stopped myself by grabbing hold of a tree root. I felt a tingle of energy as I crawled back onto the platform. I found myself face to face with the syndie. It snorted in warning, spraying bloody saliva in my hair. I drew my bush knife, and grabbed one of its horns with my free hand. I held its head down just long enough to cut its throat. There was a sizzle as the dying animal tumbled through the energy field and off the platform. The time machine was safe. Now I had to get to my seat.

I dropped the rifle and ran into the Ora. I was halfway to the cabin when the time bell returned to the present. I felt another tingling sensation as we went from one time to another. For a fraction of a second after we arrived, nothing happened. Then the platform’s supports touched the ground. It is a little-known fact that the spinning of the Earth has slowed down over time. This makes returning to the present from another geologic era like jumping off a bullet train. In this case, the resulting jolt knocked me off my feet and into unconsciousness.

I woke to the sound of Dianna’s throaty voice: “Ted? Ted…” I became aware of motion and a pillow under my head. I was being carried on a stretcher. I opened my eyes to see lights and a steel ceiling. I was in the corridor leading to the temporal displacement chamber. Dianna’s face appeared overhead. She smiled and whispered, “I saw what you did. Thank you.”
I smiled back, and managed not to groan in pain. “Just doing my job,” I said. I sat up and spoke to the stretcher-bearers. “Guys! I can walk! Could you please let me down?”

Carlos’s grinning face came into view. “How ungrateful! I let you take the stretcher, and the first thing you do is complain.” There was a dull clumping; I looked down and saw that he was using the Eliminator as a crutch.
We took a left turn into the new infirmary. Carlos didn’t quite make it. There was a thump and a metallic ‘whang’ as he collapsed just outside the door. The stretcher-bearers set me unceremoniously on a bed and went back for him. Dr. Ling greeted us. “What seems to be the trouble this time?”

“A llama creature kicked him in the head, and he got tossed when the TDD landed,” Dianna explained. “He also took a nasty cut to the chest.” I looked down, and saw that she was right. The syndie’s horns had come closer than I had realized.

“Well, we’ll patch you up, and do a scan to make sure we didn’t miss anything.” Ling turned to Carlos and said, more in weary cynicism than in shock, “Dear God! You let this man walk in here?”
“He was very insistent,” a stretcher-bearer said defensively.
“He yelled, and made some pointed gestures with the assault rifle,” Dianna whispered.
“Put some antibiotics on this man’s wounds and put a tourniquet on the leg, like you should have before you left the time bell,” Ling ordered. “Then give him a transfusion; his blood type will be on file. We’ll need to scan him to determine the extent of his injuries. Mr. Flockman, if you’ll remove your shirt, we can scan you right away.”

I obeyed, a little self-consciously. “Maybe I should go,” Dianna said.
“You’ve seen me shirtless before,” I told her. “I’d like to have you here.”
“Put these on,” an aide told me. He handed me what looked like a pair of sunglasses dipped in black paint. There was a series of blinding flashes from the scanner. When I took my glasses off, I saw several images of my insides on an oversized screen.

Ling peered at the screen and pronounced, “Looks like a broken nose, a broken rib on the right- pardon me, the left side, and some blunt force trauma to the forehead. Looks like the cut is only a flesh wound. No internal injuries.”
Carlos chuckled. “If I have any internal injuries, I sure hope they’re on both sides.”

The scan showed that he had none. Ling bandaged both our injuries, and warned Carlos not to put pressure on his leg. Then we all walked out together. We were greeted by Dr. Werner and Lou Tanaka. Dianna gave Lou a hug, and ecstatically showed off her engagement ring. “Oh, no, she’s got `fourth-finger syndrome,” Carlos said. I ignored him.
Lou and I enthusiastically bowed to each other. “Congratulations!” he said. “Have you decided on a date?”
“Not really,” Di said. She turned to me and said sweetly, “Is tonight all right?”
I laughed. “No, we haven’t set a date,” I said. “But whenever it is, we want you to be the best man.”

“I’m terribly sorry about the close call,” Dr. Werner said. “The time probes showed that there had been forest fires in the area, and I tried to avoid them.”
“It’s not your fault,” I said. “Forest fires happen all the time. I’m sure you did your best.”
“No, I didn’t,” Werner said. “I could have done much better. The problem is that the TDD is imprecise, and UNCOST won’t allow me to make the necessary improvements. The way it is now, there’s a margin of error of decades. But if they would only let me refine the program, I could be precise to within a matter of days. A new client is offering to pay for the installment. In fact, he’s hosting a dinner for the Naughtenny Moore staff next week. I hope you will all be able to attend.”

We exited the main building through what had become a trophy hall. Display cases, shelves and several complete specimens of very large animals were scattered about the former hangar. What little order there was based upon the order in which we collected them. A new arrival hung from the ceiling: a Dunkleosteus. As we walked under it, it snapped its jaws and screamed. Dianna gasped and pressed against me. “It’s an animatronic replica,” Lou explained. “We shipped the real one to the Smithsonian.” I gently moved away from Di, mainly so she wouldn’t feel me shudder.

“Dr. Wrzniewski!” someone called as we walked out the door. The speaker was a man in a business suit, with the look of an official. He walked up to Carlos and gave him a card. “This man wishes to speak with you.” The man got in his car and drove away. I saw that the car had official UN plates.

Carlos just stood there, staring at the card. When I tried to see it for myself, he stuffed it in his pocket. “Somebody wants to talk to me about something that happened when I was in the military,” he said. Then he went limping toward his car. I went after him.

“Come on, Carlos, talk to me,” I said. “What’s this about?”
Carlos turned his head. In his eyes, I could see the look of great but carefully veiled fear. “I can’t talk about it,” he said. “I’m not allowed to.”
“Can you at least tell me who wants to talk to you?” I said. “Can you tell me if you’re in trouble?”
“If you drive me home,” Carlos said, “I’ll tell you what I can.” I agreed.

I got in the driver’s seat, and he stretched out in the back. After a few minutes, he began to talk. “There’s no trouble—not legal trouble. As you’ve probably guessed, the man who wants to talk to me is with UNCOST. He’s in charge of an investigation into an incident that I was involved in, a long time ago.”

“It was Omega Facility, wasn’t it?” In the aftermath of the previous attack, I had discretely investigated Carlos’s background. I had suspected for some time that he had been involved in the Omega Facility incident. The so-called “Omega Facility incident”, is generally considered to be the deadliest episode in the history of biological warfare. Precious little is known about it, partly because of official secrecy, but also because nearly all the witnesses are dead. In the closing weeks of the Serbo-Albanian War, Albanian troops had closed in on a Serbian bioweapons facility. A deadly bioagent had been released. Thousands of civilians and military personnel on both sides were killed. It was very persistently rumored that a team of EU troops were sent to investigate, but never returned.

“Put the pieces together, did you? Well, I won’t deny it,” Carlos said.
“Has something been found?”
Carlos laughed bitterly. “If they did, do you think they would tell me? If they did, the question would remain of what they found.” I nodded again. The Serbs had not only developed conventional bioweapons, but pursued a program of ‘human enhancement’, led by the French biochemist. Dr. Arnault Chablan, sometimes known as ‘Dr. Nibeaux’. He had previously won a Nobel Prize for developing treatments of the congenitally ill. He had also been a leading investigator of ESP, and a prominent member of the Aryan Ophites, an occult society loosely rooted in Nazism. It was generally believed that Chablan had joined the Serb bioweapons program simply as a means to pursue the Ophite goal of breeding a physically and spiritually perfect form of the human race. No accounts of his death have reached the general public, but all official references say that he died in 2047. One of his known subjects, a convict and fellow Ophite known only as Zaratustra, had been briefly captured at that time, but escaped.

“But, that’s not what I really wanted to talk to you about. I asked you once before if you really believed in your god. Now, I want to ask you this: Do you believe in demons?” I was too surprised to answer. “Demons, now, Them I believe in. I believe in Them because I’ve seen Them. I saw them, there at Omega Facility. There were things there that looked human… except for the eyes. But they could do things—make things happen—that no man could do. And there is no doubt in my mind that the reason is that it wasn’t just the things there, but THEM working through the things. Whatever the men from UNCOST are investigating, it’s more of Their work. And I know if They are around, the only sensible thing to do is to run. That’s why, as soon as I talk to this man, I’m going on leave and taking the first flight to Canada. I suggest that you do the same. Marry Di soon—Hell! Call a justice of the peace and do it tonight!—and get as far away from El Salvador as you can.” I said nothing. What was there to say?

Soon, we reached Carlos’s house. After helping Carlos out of the car, I called Di and asked her to pick me up. “Thanks for the ride, and thanks for listening,” Carlos said. “I know you think I’m nuts. But still think about it!”

After the surreal conversation with Carlos, Dianna’s company was a welcome relief. Di sensed that I was troubled. “What’s the matter?” she asked.
I decided not to tell her about what Carlos had said, at least not in full. “Carlos seems upset,” I told her. “He’s planning to take a break and go to Canada.”
“Did he say anything about what that man wanted to talk to him about?”
“A little,” I said. “He says that it’s part of an ongoing investigation into something that happened years ago.”

“Was it in Serbia?” Dianna asked.
“Yes,” I said, startled. “Did he tell you he was in the Balkans? I didn’t find out until today.”
“He mentioned it, once,” Di said. We said nothing more about it. Dianna was clearly troubled. I suspected that Carlos might have told her even more than he told me.
I finally broached the question that weighed heaviest on both our minds. “Di, when do you want to get married?” I asked.

“To be frank, I really do wish it could be tonight,” she said. I was jolted by her answer, but she quickly added, “Of course, what we need is to wait. There’re things we still need to talk through, and I suppose we should get premarital counseling. I don’t care about planning a big wedding. Let’s aim to get it done by October.”