The River of No Return

horses now tied behind the coach. It had been more than enough time for Nick to remember that maybe Leo didn’t consider Nick his friend. More than enough time for Nick to remember that he had taken Guild money for nine long years while Leo had managed on his own, making his own way.
    As dusk began to fall, Penture, who seemed to know the country like the back of his hand, had led the strange entourage off along a narrow track between several long meadows to an enormous, half-ruined medieval barn. They had lit a fire with the few logs they had found in the barn, and settled Julia in a pile of hay. But then Leo had turned and said to Nick, “Come on. Let’s go scare up some more wood.” And now they were marching silently off into the gloaming.
    “How is Meg?”
    Leo glanced at him. “She’s okay. She’s seventy-five now. She worked with us in Brazil for about seven years, but then she retired. Lives in an apartment in Salvador. She has a Natural lover, Tabitha, and the two of them are making hay while the sun shines.”
    “Is she fat yet?”
    Leo grinned. “No. She says she must have hollow legs, because she eats all the time and she’s still just as skinny as the day she first jumped.”
    They kept walking. The meadow grasses were lush, and the ground was wet. Their tall boots made squelching sounds as they walked. “It’s funny to see you all dressed up like this,” Nick said. “In this kind of gear.”
    “You, too.” Leo looked Nick up and down. “I mean, I know it’s your natural habitat and everything, but when I think of you it’s in that pair of faded jeans you wore practically every day.”
    “I can’t tell you how much I miss those jeans. Actually, jeans were the first things I loved about the future.”
    “Not me. I hated them. Still do. But then, I had been wrenched away from the most beautiful couture in the world.”
    Nick glanced at his friend. “I’m glad to see you kept your scalplock.”
    Leo reached back and threaded the three long braids through his fingers. “Yes, well. Some things never change.”
    “Everything changes. Or everything could change. I thought that’s what Ofan believe. Or want to believe.”
    Leo shrugged. “I guess you saw the ‘end of the world’ pictures. And heard about the Pale.”
    “Yes.”
    They reached the trees and began gathering whatever wood they could find, wandering away from each other. When they both had an armful they caught each other’s eye and started back again. They could see the path they had made as they came, the grass silvery where they had stepped. Without discussing it, they started a new path and walked back toward the magnificent barn looming up in the middle distance. It was dark against the clear sky, which glowed with that blue-green evening light so specific to an English springtime.
    “Why did you leave?”
    Leo didn’t answer for a minute. Nick stared ahead at the barn, hearing the silence, which was in fact alive with the evening chatter of birds and insects. “We had to,” Leo finally said. “We had realized. We didn’t know anything of course. About the Guild and its money and its policing of the past and the future. But we realized that we just couldn’t stay and be in the Guild. I was convinced there had to be other communities of time travelers. People who were doing it differently from the Guild. It was easy enough to leave the compound. Anyone could just walk away down the road, which is what we did. Early that morning.”
    “But why didn’t you tell me?”
    “You weren’t ready.”
    It was Nick’s turn to say nothing. Leo was right. He hadn’t been ready. In fact, he’d been perfect material for the Guild. Rich all his life. Too accustomed to security and too easily distracted by the material pleasures of life. The comfort of jeans. An old house in the Vermont woods. If he hadn’t been called by the Guild to play a minor role in their drama, he would have remained happily drowned, full fathom five, in the twenty-first century.
    Meg and Leo had been right to abandon him.
    “Sorry,” Leo said. Nick could tell he was. Sorry that Nick hadn’t been ready, that he and Meg had no option but to leave him behind. Sorry, in other words, but not regretful.
    “So did you go to Brazil?” Nick kept his voice light. “Alice and Arkady said you must have, when I asked why they’d killed you. That’s what I thought. That they had killed you. And yes. Before you say anything, I went ahead and took