Helen smoothed her short brown hair and put her hand back on her lap. She felt as though she could either hold perfectly still or start climbing the walls.
A young man with a pleasant smile and a forearm monitor approached her. “The Ministers are ready for you now,” he nodded at the closed door at the end of the hall.
Helen smiled tightly as she rose, tucking her cap under her arm. She was ready, too. Her head was up as she entered the small room and stayed up even as the doors shut behind her. She’d saved the life of a man who would go on to influence generations of people for good. That was nothing to be ashamed of.
“Agent Rasmussen?” asked a plump old fellow with more laugh lines than actual wrinkles.
Helen nodded. When he indicated the empty chair near her, she seated herself. She found a place for her cap beside the tabletop monitor before her.
“You have been summoned to this disciplinary council, Agent Rasmussen, to give your account of the events which took place on March 15, 2043.”
As a group, the elderly gentlemen turned expectant gazes in Helen’s direction. Most of them were ex-military, so she felt a sort of kinship with them. Minister Harris frowned a little as he looked at her. He had been part of the original committee that selected her for the mission and probably felt personally affronted by how she’d handled things.
“As you know from my report, I arrived safely at the refugee encampment three days before the attack.” Helen disciplined a grim smile as she remembered how their tidy little plan had been shattered by a pickpocket. “It took longer than anticipated for me to reach the battle site and required me to assume the guise of a soldier recently discharged from the Royal military. By the time I located Patterson, it was less than twelve hours before the attack.” She paused, her stomach dropping when a photo of Patterson appeared on the tabletop monitor. He was just as devastating in real life.
“You were sent as an observer, Agent Rasmussen. Your report indicates,” Minister Walters tapped his monitor, “that you actually met Patterson. Did this in any way affect your decision to intervene?” There was something strangely penetrating about the way he looked at her.
A page from her report stared up at Helen from her monitor. “Amiable and surprisingly optimistic” were such pale words to describe the man she’d met.
“Yes,” she answered the question as stated. “Because,” she added, “as my report also states, he informed me that he intended to lead the attack himself.”
A wave of frowns made its way around the table.
Minister Harris leaned forward, folded his hands together, and said, “The history books clearly state that he did not lead the attack, Agent Rasmussen. If he had led the attack, he would have died along with his men when the Royal military detonated its fail-safe device to keep the monitoring installation from falling into rebel hands. Why did you feel that you had to intervene?”
“At first, I didn’t,” she answered this question more slowly. “I took pictures, made notes, and waited to see what prevented him from following through. An hour passed, then three, then seven. Patterson was still at the camp, planning to lead the charge.” Frowning a little herself, she scrolled down in the report to where she had documented her disclosures regarding the installation’s defenses. “According to the history books, they had detailed maps of the installation. Some mysterious source of information that allowed them to come within seconds of successfully capturing the installation.” Her hand dropped back into her lap and she shook her head. “There were no maps. There was no spy. I needed to stay in range of Patterson in order to observe him, but I had no excuse unless I created one. So I became the spy.” She ended with a small shrug.
“What was their reaction to your detailed information?” asked Minister Jackson, a lean man who still carried himself like a Major General despite his twenty-five years of retirement.
Helen allowed herself a smile at that question. “They were suspicious. I spent an hour in a holding cell for believing the historian who wrote that Patterson’s brief capture was common knowledge.” She felt more than a little foolish at that memory. Once she’d gotten past revealing her “former connection” to the Royal army, she’d thought it was safe to refer to Patterson’s escape from the Royal prisoner of war camp. “They would have held me longer, but Patterson made a forceful speech about why he hated the Royals and tossed me the keys.”
Minister Harris’ frown deepened. An enormous digital library of history books, official papers, news reports, medical records, and so on, was kept in a protected vault by the History Department of the Time Travel Division. An exhaustive review of those records had revealed no difference between history before her assignment and history after, not excluding a distinct lack of new rumors about Patterson’s capture. Had it been otherwise, Helen would already be in a modern jail cell.
“Agent Rasmussen,” Minister Walters spoke again. “What happened? Why did you interfere?”
“I had no choice. At thirty minutes to time, Patterson was issuing orders and checking his weapons. According to the history books, he never even left the camp that day.” She clenched her hidden fists until the nails dug into her palms. “I waited until he was getting in the jeep before I acted. It took considerable persuasion to get him back in the tent. His driver, Irish, assured him that he could ‘get him to the war in plenty of time,’” she slipped into Irish’s accent without thinking. “Patterson knew something was terribly wrong but it was almost more than I could do to convince him to stay.”
“You told him,” surmised Minister Walters.
Helen looked up. After a moment, she nodded somberly. Ignoring the angry mutters that began circling the table she explained, “The history books state he had no injuries at all. I would rather have knocked him out with something, but I couldn’t change history, could I?”
Minister Walters chuckled. Then he laughed aloud. “Gentlemen,” he turned from Helen to the rest of the committee. “Observe.” Tapping his tabletop monitor, he brought up a holographic display of items that made Helen gasp.
“That’s me!” she exclaimed, staring at the photos on her side of the slowly rotating display.
“That,” Minister Walters said, “is Patterson’ wife. You see,” he permitted himself a broad smile, “we were so focused on answering a military question that we never looked at the civilian records. In fact, we were so focused on not altering history that we neglected to review what happened after the battle.”
Minister Harris’ interrupted, “Rubbish. You manufactured these!”
A hush fell over the room. Minister Walters’ smile faded into a hard glare.
“I got these photos from the digital library you protect so zealously,” he replied coldly.
“I move that we adjourn to consider this new evidence,” Minister Jackson said mildly.
The move was seconded. All the screens went blank. Helen sat a moment longer than necessary, staring at her darkened monitor. It wasn’t every woman who got to see her future. Dazed, she allowed a pleasant usher to guide her out of the building. Somehow she even managed to give her correct address to the automated transit cab. She couldn’t eat though, or sleep. Every time she closed her eyes she saw the pictures again. Patterson with his arms around her. Patterson with a baby in his arms. Herself with a young child and a baby. The pictures had gone on and on, documenting Patterson’s life – his life with her.
A persistent pounding on her door jarred her out of an unsatisfying sleep. She stumbled to the door, yesterday’s clothes rumpled and skewed from sleeping on her living room couch. Luckily she caught sight of herself in the black, polished dispenser face as she passed it.
“Hot pancakes and eggs,” she ordered as she quickly straightened her blouse and smoothed her hair. She left the plate where it was and hurried to answer the door. “Minister Walters!” she greeted cheerily. “Come in, won’t you? You’re just in time for breakfast.”
“Thank you, I’ve just had my lunch,” he smiled kindly.
She blushed but stepped aside to let him enter. “You have news?” she asked.
“It’s official,” he held out a small epad. “You’ve been cleared of any wrongdoing.”
Helen took the epad and read carefully. Her smile slipped when she scrolled down to the second page.
“I don’t understand,” she looked up at him. “I’m being reassigned?”
“Let’s sit down, shall we?” he gestured towards the couch she had just vacated. He noticed that she left the pancakes in the dispenser and that there was a pair of shoes under the coffee table, but he said nothing. “Determining your innocence was relatively easy once we realized you went on to become a part of our timeline. A terribly important part, too. Patterson’s sons went on to form the Continental Alliance.” He paused and smiled in almost paternal pride as she blushed again. “However, we then had to determine our role in your future in our history.”
She blinked and the corner of her mouth quirked up in a half-smile.
“In short, my dear,” he leaned forward and winked, “you’re being transferred home."
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