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"I ht never have been born" Chris said

She reached to Chris and put a hand on his arm, not only to reassure hiht not have been born ood and bad of the world that’s been since 1944it’ll all wash away like an elaborate sandcastle, and a new reality will exist in its place"

"A new and worse reality," Stefan said, clearly exhausted by the effort he had ht never have written my novels"

"Or if you wrote novels," Stefan said, "they would be different frorotesque works produced by an artist laboring under the rule of an oppressive governuys built the atom bomb in 1944," Chris said, "then we’ll all crumble away into dust and bloay"

"Not literally But like dust, yes," Stefan Krieger agreed Gone, with no trace that we’ve ever been"

"We’ve gotta stop thereed "But first we’ve got to stay alive in :his reality, and that ht not be easy"

Stefan needed to relieve hi his with the plu of sick men By the tiain; though he was ly weak

She told hih which he had re from the past instead of the future, how do they knohere to find us? How did they know in 1944 that we’d be at Dr Brenkshaw’s ere, forty-five years later?"

"To find you," Stefan said, "they made two trips First, they went farther into the future, a couple of days farther, to this co weekend perhaps, to see if you had shown up anywhere by then If you hadn’t-and apparently you had not-then they started checking the public record Back issues of newspapers, for one thing They looked for the stories about the shooting at your house last night, and in those stories they read that you’d taken a wounded man to Brenkshaw’s place in San Bernardino So they simply returned to ’44 and made a second trip-this ti, January 11"

"They can hopscotch around us," Chris told Laura "They can pop ahead in time to see where we show up, then they pick and choose the easiest place along the time stream to ambush us It’s sorta likeif ere cowboys and the Indians were all psychic"

"Who was Kokoschka?" Chris wanted to know "Who was the man who killed my dad?"

"Head of institute security," Stefan said "He claimed to be a distant relation of Oskar Kokoschka, the noted Austrian expressionist painter, but I doubt if it was true because in our Kokoschka there was no hint of an artist’s sensitivity Standartenfuhrer-which means Colonel-Heinrich Kokoschka was an efficient killer for the Gestapo"

"Gestapo," Chris said, awestruck "Secret police?"

"State police," Stefan said "Widely known to exist but allowed to operate in secrecy When he showed up on that mountain road in 1988, I was as surprised as you There’d been no lightning He must have arrived far away from us, fifteen or twenty miles, in so had been beyond our notice" The lightning associated with time travel was in fact a very localized phenomenon, Stefan explained "After Kokoschka showed up there, on ht I would return to the institute and find all of ot there, no one took special notice of me I was confused Then after I killed Penlovski and the others, when I was in thefor my final jaunt into the future Heinrich Kokoschka burst in and shot hway in 1988 Then I realized that Kokoschka had obviously only just learned of my treason when he’d found the men I’d shot He would travel to 1988 and try to kill ate would have to remain open to allow him to do so, and that I was destined to fail to destroy it At least at that time"

"God, this headache," Laura said

Chris seeled threads of time travel He said, "So after you traveled to our house last night, Kokoschka traveled to 1988 and killed er, you killed Kokoschka forty-three years after he shot you in that labyet you had shot him before he shot you This is wild stuff, Moreat?’’

"It’s soreed "And how did Kokoschka know to find you on that mountain road?"

"After he discovered I’d shot Penlovski, and after I escaped through the gate, Kokoschka must have found the explosives in the attic and base into the autoate is used That was a bit of data tracking that was my responsibility, so no one previously had noticed all my jaunts into your life, Laura Anyway, Kokoschkaof his own, , secretly watchingme alter your destiny for the better Hethe day I came to the cemetery when your father was buried, and hewhen I beat Sheener, but I never saw him So from all the trips I made into your life, from all the times I just observed you and the times I acted to save you, he picked a place at which to kill us He wanted to kill me because I was a traitor, and he wanted to kill you and your family becausewell because he realized you were so iht Why aer? Why have you intruded in ive me a better life?

She would have asked those questions then, but he hadfast, and he was having so She did not want to interrupt and confuse hiate’s progra board, Kokoschka could have discovered ht, your house But, you see, I actually had intended to return to the night that Danny died, as I promised you I would, and instead I returned one year later only because Iate, wounded, Heinrich Kokoschka would have found those calculations He would have realized my mistake, and would have knohere to find ht that Danny died In a way, by coht Danny’s killer with h Danny would have died in the accident anyway At least you and Chris are alive For now"

Why wouldn’t Kokoschka have followed you to 1989, to our house last night? He knew you were already wounded, easy prey"

"But he also knew that I would expect him to follow me, and he was afraid I was armed and would be prepared for hi hie of surprise Also, Kokoschka probably figured if he followed me to 1988 and killed me there, I would not therefore have ever returned to the institute frohway and would not have had a chance to kill Penlovski He no doubt thought if he could pull a trick with ti the head of the project But of course he could not do so, because then he would be altering his own past, an impossibility Penlovski and the others were already dead by then and would stay dead !f Kokoschka had better understood the laws of time travel, he would have known that I would kill him in 1988 when he followed e