The Inheritance Paradox
Sixteen (Eugene’s Story)
“OH, EUGENE, I’m so happy for you!” Lynn cried. “Can I help you move in?”
Eugene had just been awarded the position of caretaker of the apartment building she lived in. She’d done much more than help him move in. She’d found the position and went to the apartment management to see if Eugene could get the job, and the accompanying apartment.
“There isn’t much to move, but I’d love to have your help,” he said.
It was Saturday and they planned to go on a date later that day anyway. They immediately set about emptying the Corvair of all Eugene’s worldly belongings and taking them into the furnished efficiency apartment.
The job was done for no pay other than the apartment in the basement. The building had been fully renovated, but the basement apartment had failed inspection because the window was too small. The company couldn’t legally rent it. But the owner decided he could let someone live there if they took care of vacuuming the floors and shoveling the walks. Major repairs were handled by the leasing company.
“You have so little,” Lynn said when they’d brought the last of his things in. “Are you okay, Eugene?”
“I guess that’s one way to look at it. On the other hand, I’m surprised my little car could hold all this stuff. It almost fills the apartment,” Eugene said.
He looked at Lynn and pulled her into his arms to hold.
“I guess you could say I don’t have much, but I’m rebuilding my life. And Lynn, you are a part of its foundation. It isn’t too soon for us to be living so close to each other, is it?”
“We’re not living with each other,” she said. “And for now, we should probably keep our visits short. But you have a phone here! I can call and talk to you sometimes.”
“Oh, give me your number and we can set a time when I should call you,” he said. “It’s not necessary for you to make the calls. It’s… I mean… You’re a girl. You shouldn’t be calling a guy.”
“Eugene! This isn’t the 1950s. I’m a modern woman and I can pick up the phone and call my boyfriend if I want to.”
“Am I really your boyfriend, Lynn?”
“I don’t know what else you’d call it! We’ve been dating for um… six weeks? Wow! I think my mother was married in that amount of time.”
“We shouldn’t rush that. Let’s go on our picnic. I need to tell you about my journey last night.”
Their weekly dates were a high point for both of them. Eugene thought the Corvair handled a little differently with no baggage in it. The basket Lynn packed for the picnic hardly weighed anything. Nonetheless, once they got to the Michigan Dunes, they relaxed and enjoyed the beach and the water.
“So, last night, I was sent into a French town in Canada. I didn’t realize there was trafficking back in the 1820s. I found a house where six young women were being held and were to be sold off to wealthy patrons.”
“Oh, my! Did you have to have sex with all of them?”
“Oh, no. No, my dear. I know it might seem strange, but I try not to just have sex with women because they are available. It just… It isn’t right.”
I can’t believe you just tell her these things, and she doesn’t think you’re a lunatic or a pervert.
“If I told her about you, I’m sure she would flee,” Eugene said softly.
“You don’t have to tell them about me,” Lynn said. “It’s just a dream. Use it to explore your past life.”
“Uh… Yes.” Galahad was becoming more and more comfortable with commenting on everything in Eugene’s life and Eugene found he couldn’t shut the computer up.
“How long were you there?” Lynn asked.
“About a month.”
“My dreams never last that long. I’m usually in and out in an hour,” Lynn said. She treated all of Eugene’s stories as if he’d been dreaming or meditating or reliving a past life.
To some extent he couldn’t deny that. He left his car, transferred to Dr. Wells’s laboratory, was equipped for his venture, including having Galahad tuned up so he didn’t dump them in a lake again, and then he flew off to some other era to find and impregnate a random woman. When his task was done, he went back to the between place where Dr. Wells healed him of any injuries or if he had been exposed to a disease that might be contracted by someone in his own time. He then returned to his car exactly one second after having left it.
“I managed to free the young women without actually harming any of their captors. I had a wagon ready for them and as soon as they were out of the house, they jumped into the wagon and under the furs I’d collected. I drove southwest toward Toronto. We had to stay away from the roads where we might be encountered by the slavers, so it took several days before we got to Toronto.”
“They all lived in the wagon for that time?”
“All of us did. I’d provisioned the wagon for the trip, so they didn’t suffer. It was plenty warm beneath the furs.”
“Together. You with them,” Lynn speculated.
“Well, yes. We were quite cozy, but mostly respectable. I wasn’t there to traffic the women I’d just saved from it.”
“How did you communicate with them? Do you know French?”
“Well, I’m not sure all of them were even French,” Eugene said. “I could hear them speaking whatever languages they spoke, and I could just understand them. The same was true when I spoke. They just understood.”
“You see, that just proves that it is all a dream or a past life meditation,” Lynn said. “You just automatically understand and are understood.”
With a little help from your friend.
“Yes, I suppose so. One of the girls decided I belonged to her. While I got all the girls to a church where nuns took care of them, Angelique slipped back into my wagon and into my… dream. I found it hard to leave her after that, but ultimately, she returned to the convent to be cared for by the nuns until she could find a permanent home. I do hope she was happy. It can’t have been easy to be a single mother in that age.”
“Of course, she was pregnant.”
“I can’t imagine she could escape it.”
She was.
“Well, then, your mission was accomplished. Do you know why the particular locations are chosen for your journeys?”
“I don’t understand the logic, though I was told it was because of migration patterns that would bring a lot of my descendants into the same region of the country. I suppose that means here in Michigan, but I don’t know why.”
They didn’t spend a great deal of time talking about sex, but Eugene could scarcely deny that was the purpose of his missions. Once the story had been told, however, Lynn was content to move on and not mention it again. They had been quite reserved about the progress of their own relationship. They held hands and Eugene found that simple act more thrilling than his escapades in a different time. At the end of their dates, they spent a few minutes kissing and had progressed as far as some light tongue kisses. Lynn said she was experienced, but he thought she might not have been as worldly as she sometimes seemed to be.
Two weeks later, like clockwork on a Friday night near midnight, Eugene was transported to the Laboratory Between Times. He’d come up with that name himself while telling Lynn of his adventures and Wells seemed to have no better suggestion. Ultimately, it was shortened to the LBT.
“What have we here?” Eugene asked when he had recovered from his disorientation. He looked over the clothes he’d been given.
“Going back to the Middle Ages,” Wells said. “I tracked some of the migratory patterns from Central Europe in the twelfth to fourteenth centuries to America by way of Spain and Portugal. I’m hoping by going back that far that we can plant the genetic material into a broad sample by the time they are boarding ships in the seventeen and eighteen hundreds.”
“What country are we headed to?”
“The countries weren’t really established the way we know them today.”
The area could have become Romania, Hungary, or Czechoslovakia. Lots of political upheaval and revolutions.
“We’re targeting the period soon after the fall of Constantinople in 1204. The Fourth Crusade created upsets that continued for nearly two centuries. Of course, the refugee situation had begun twenty years earlier when the Byzantine usurper started slaughtering the Latins. One wave of refugees is followed by another,” Wells said.
“And I should just find a likely candidate and leave a child?”
“Well, I have observed that you aren’t really having a difficulty finding a likely candidate. You could leave several children.”
“You seem to think it’s a lot easier than it is,” Eugene growled.
“There isn’t much in the way of firearms in the region yet, though gunpowder was being used for fusillades and bombardments. Hence, you will need a sword and a knife for self-defense—possibly to rescue a likely candidate.”
Try not to hurt yourself with them. They’re sharp.
“Galahad has strict instructions to remove you from the situation and bring you back here if your life is ever in imminent danger. He has the general use of the weapons programmed in and will transfer the instructions to your brain for fastest assimilation. You should practice them as soon as possible. You have a few more things in your satchel, including appropriate food items, changes of clothes, and enough money to get your woman or women settled somewhere safe.”
“Safe? I take it where she is when I arrive is not safe?” Eugene asked.
“What part of a ‘refugee situation’ do you not understand? The group with the upper hand will drive out the group before them. That group will flee. Most will be killed—at least most of the men. The women will either be captured and become part of the invading force or will flee from being raped and killed. Someone will need you to help them to safety and will repay your kindness with… kindness.”
Eugene finished changing his clothes and made sure he had his watch. It was almost always in his possession. Even when he slept, it was close enough to be translated with him. He examined the sword, the pouch of coins that seemed to be struck with a variety of different images, and the other things in his satchel. It was not much more than a canvas bag with a strap for his shoulder.
“Have a seat. I want to upload the necessary information for Galahad. Then you can be off.”
“I could have used a longer nap,” he growled.
All you ever do is sleep.
“Good luck, Eugene.”
Eugene was recovering more quickly from the disorientation of landing in a different time. It seemed to get a little easier with each trip. His landing, however, was accompanied by a rumbling. Dust and rubble fell from above. He ducked into a doorway and looked around. He could hear angry voices as a battering ram was applied to a door somewhere to his left.
“Where to?”
Right! Away from the angry mob. They don’t have any idea you aren’t one of the establishment.
“Right.”
Eugene was soon in the kitchen. He looked around and saw food in various stages of preparation, just lying on tables. Smoke was rising from an oven where bread was burning. He didn’t try to rescue it. He was about to move on out the kitchen door when he heard a squeak and slight shuffle behind him. He spun and saw a narrow stair that led up toward what he assumed were the master’s private quarters.
“A mouse?” he asked.
I don’t think so. That was a very human squeak.
Eugene peered into the darkness beneath the stairs and saw two pairs of eyes staring back at him. They looked very frightened.
“I don’t think this will be a safe space for long,” he said softly. The words sounded strange in his ears, but apparently the kids under the stairs understood what he said. “We should try to get out of here and away from the castle. They’re breaking down the doors.”
There was a crash as if to punctuate his statement and he looked at the kids.
“Please. I don’t want to have to tear up the stairs. We haven’t much time.”
A young woman poked her head through between the treads and began to work her way out. He helped pull her through. She stood facing him.
This is no little girl!
“Please, sir. I throw myself on your mercy. You have a kind look and aren’t dressed either as a soldier or a rebel. Please help my son and me to escape,” she said.
Eugene could see a young boy wiggling out of the stairwell behind her.
“That’s what I’m here for. We need to find a way out of here now.”
The girl had a bag over her shoulder, and the boy had a small sack as well. Her hands seemed soft and unaccustomed to work. He pointed at the bags.
“Clothes?”
“Yes. Just a few things we could pull together. We should take what provisions we can stuff in our bags as well.”
“Okay. You know this place better than I do. How do we get out of here?”
Are you sure she knows the place? She looks almost as daft as Lynn.
“Enough of that,” he said harshly. The words were apparently not translated to her language as both the girl and the boy looked at him curiously. Eugene could feel a breeze and assumed there was a door around the corner of the kitchen. Instead, she took his hand and led him to a door into a dark room.
“We were fleeing to the larder for supplies when the catapults started firing. My husband was killed in the first fusillade. When we get supplies, there is a tunnel from the larder to the stable,” she said, holding Eugene’s hand on one side and her son’s on the other.
She said it was her son, though it could be a younger brother. She didn’t look old enough to have a child that size. They went through a door and down a few steps into a cool room that should have been stocked with food but seemed pretty bare.
She grabbed some dried meat and cheese to stuff into her bag. It was a good idea, so Eugene and the boy grabbed some items as well. Then he saw a wineskin that looked full and slung the strap over his shoulder.
“It’s behind here,” she said.
Eugene pushed a shelf aside, nearly tipping it over, and found a narrow tunnel opening beyond. As they entered, he pulled the shelf back into place.
Who wants to go into the dark spooky tunnel first?
The girl was waiting for Eugene and after a moment’s fumbling caught his hand to lead him and the boy forward. There was no light, but it wasn’t like there were any alternate routes as they stumbled forward. She led as if accustomed to sneaking out this way. In a few minutes, they could see faint light coming through a trapdoor above them. Bits of straw and dirt fell through the slats as a horse above stomped. They could smell smoke that wasn’t far away.
“We need to do this now or we’ll be suffocated down here, and the horse could keel over on the trap door,” Eugene said.
He heaved at the door and the horse whinnied and stomped. The girl pushed her son out first and then crawled through herself. Eugene handed the bags through and then slithered out of the tunnel. They let the door slam shut behind them.
The horse in the stall was not the only one in the stable. They were getting extremely restless as the smoke drew nearer. Eugene could see stacks of hay and straw that would catch fire with the first spark that reached the barn.
“Quickly! Open the stall doors,” he directed as they pushed out of the stall. There were six horses in the stable. He found a bridle he looped over the nearest horse’s head.
That’s not how that fits!
“Then give me some help!” he yelled at Galahad.
The girl quickly ran to his side and corrected the halter. Her son led a smaller horse with them. They led the horses to the stable door and pushed it open, exposing them to the sight of the harsh fire ahead. It was night and apparently no one had thought to rescue the livestock. There were chickens and cows roaming the area as well. She led him to a gate which Eugene pushed open and used the bridled horse to lead the others out of the barnyard.
Head west!
“That’s helpful. Which way is west?” he said. The girl looked at him strangely and her son pointed.
Now that they were out of imminent danger from the fire, the horses were happy to follow along with the leader. They could hear voices yelling back toward the castle, but they didn’t seem to be getting closer. Eugene spotted a tree stump and led them to it. The girl helped her son up onto the small horse and let Eugene help her onto the bridled horse they led.
Oh, no! You’re not going to… Do you know how to ride a horse? I’m not programmed for this!
“Come on. We’ll move more quickly on horseback.”
He swung a leg over the back of the horse behind her, causing her to gasp as he reached around her for the reins. He was not doing well at guiding the horse and she took the reins from him.
“We’ll go to the waterfall,” she instructed and her son led the way. She nudged the horse forward. Eugene wrapped his arms around her, and they left the castle and revolution behind.
“I’m Eugene,” he finally said by way of introduction.
“You are our savior,” she said.
“And your name?”
“You don’t know?” she asked dumbfounded.
Uh oh. This is no scullery maid and her brat.
“I am Princess Genevieve Valoria Celestine of Baldara,” she said proudly, as if everyone should know.
A princess? They’ll be looking for her. That means the boy is a prince!
“I hate to say it, Princess, but I think from now on you had better be known as something simpler. Maybe just Valoria—or better yet, just Val. And your son?”
“Aleksandru of Baldara.”
“We’ll have to go with a simpler version of that, too. Maybe Alex. If there is another name he can adopt that is not known to the rebels, even better. If the flames we saw rising back there were an indication, there is no more Baldara.”
That’s sure to win her to you.
“Sarcasm? You surprise me.”
Please feel free to send comments to the author at devon@devonlayne.com.
