Lightning

But if her guardian had been entering her life at crucial points by time travel, he could have made all of his journeys in the space of a single month or week in his own era while many years had passed for her, so he would have appeared not to have aged. Until she could question him and learn the truth, the time-travel theory was the only one on which she could operate: Her guardian had traveled to her from some future world; and evidently it was an unpleasant future, because when speaking of the belt had said, "You don't want to go where it'll take you," and there had been a bleak, haunted look in his eyes. She had no idea why a time traveler would come back from the future to protect her, of all people, from armed junkies and runaway pickup trucks, and she had no time to ponder the possibilities.
    The night was quiet, dark, and cold.
    They were heading straight into trouble.
    She
knew
it, but she didn't know what it was or where it would come from.
    When she got back into the Jeep, Chris said, "What's wrong now?"
    "You're crazy about
Star Trek, Star Wars, Batteries Not Included
, all that stuff, so maybe what I've got here is the kind of background expert I seek out when I'm writing a novel. You're my resident expert in the weird."
    The engine was switched off, and the interior of the Jeep was brightened only by the cloud-cloaked moonlight. But she was able to see Chris's face reasonably well because, during the few minutes she had been outside, her eyes had adapted to the night. He blinked at her and looked puzzled. "What're you talking about?"
    "Chris, like I said earlier, I'm going to tell you all about the man lying back there, about the other strange appearances he's made in my life, but we don't have time for that now. So don't snow me under with lots of questions, okay? But just suppose my guardian— that's how I think of him, because he's protected me from terrible things when he could—suppose he was a time traveler from the future. Suppose he doesn't come in a big clumsy time machine. Suppose the whole machine is in a belt that he wears around his waist, under his clothes, and he just materializes out of thin air when he arrives here from the future. Are you with me so far?"
    Chris was staring wide-eyed. "Is that what he is?"
    "He might be, yes."
    The boy freed himself from his safety harness, scrambled onto his knees on the seat, and looked back at the man lying in the compartment behind them. "Holy shit."
    "Given the unusual circumstances," she said, "I'll overlook the foul language."
    He glanced at her sheepishly. "Sorry. But a
time
traveler!"
    If she had been angry with him, the anger would not have held, for she now saw in him a sudden rush of that boyish excitement and a capacity for wonder that he had not exhibited in a year, not even at Christmas when he had enjoyed himself immensely with Jason Gaines. The prospect of an encounter with a time traveler instantly filled him with a sense of adventure and joy. That was the splendid thing about life: Though it was cruel, it was also mysterious, filled with wonder and surprise; sometimes the surprises were so amazing that they qualified as miraculous, and by witnessing those miracles, a despondent person could discover a reason to live, a cynic could obtain unexpected relief from ennui, and a profoundly wounded boy could find the will to heal himself and medicine for melancholy.
    She said, "Okay, suppose that when he wants to leave our time and return to his own, he presses a button on the special belt he wears."
    "Can I see the belt?"
    "Later. Remember, you promised not to ask a lot of questions just now."
    "Okay." He looked again at the guardian, then turned and sat down, focusing his attention on his mother. "When he presses the button—what happens?"
    "He just vanishes."
    "Wow! And when he arrives from the future, does he just appear out of thin air?"
    "I don't know. I've never seen him arrive. Though I think for some reason there's lightning and thunder—"
    "The lightning tonight!"
    "Yes, but there's not always lightning. All right. Suppose that he came back in time to help us, to protect us from certain dangers—"
    "Like the runaway pickup."
    "We don't know why he wants to protect us, can't know why until he tells us. Anyway, suppose other people from the future
don't
want us to be protected. We can't understand their motivations, either. But one of them was Kokoschka, the man who shot your father—"
    "And the guys who showed up tonight at