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eBook Category: Science Fiction Nebula Award(R) Nominee
eBook Description: Physicist Leo Garfield's university project in time-reversal has successfully sent a few electrons into the unknown past, but the scientific barriers that prevent his work from progressing have Garfield suspecting that his life's work may never get past the starting gate. When a self-proclaimed time traveler from the year 2999 floats down from the sky above Rome and captures the world's attention as a prophet, Garfield escapes his laboratory frustrations to join a small group of experts attempting to determine if the charismatic man from the future is authentic.

eBook Publisher: Fictionwise.com, Published: 1968
Fictionwise Release Date: November 2001

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Available eBook Formats [MultiFormat - What's this?]: eReader (PDB) [266 KB] , ePub (EPUB) [262 KB] , Rocket/REB1100 (RB) [241 KB] , Portable Document Format (PDF) [823 KB] , Palm Doc (PDB) [274 KB] , Microsoft Reader (LIT) [280 KB] , Franklin eBookMan (FUB) [290 KB] , hiebook (KML) [598 KB] , Sony Reader (LRF) [328 KB] , iSilo (PDB) [223 KB] , Mobipocket (PRC) [278 KB] , Kindle Compatible (MOBI) [353 KB] , OEBFF Format (IMP) [359 KB]
Words: 79595
Reading time: 227-318 min.
Microsoft Reader (LIT) Format: Printing DISABLED, Read-Aloud ENABLED
Portable Document Format (PDF) Format:  Printing DISABLED, Read-Aloud DISABLED
All Other formats: Printing DISABLED, Read-aloud DISABLED

A memoir of this sort should begin with some kind of statement of personal involvement, I suppose: I was the man, I was there, I suffered. And in fact my involvement with the improbable events of the past twelve months was great. I knew the man from the future. I followed him on his nightmare orbit around our world. I was with him at the end.

But not at the beginning. And so, if I am to tell a complete tale of him, it must be a more-than-complete tale of me. When Vornan-19 arrived in our era, I was so far removed from even the most extraordinary current matters that I did not find out about it for several weeks. Yet eventually I was drawn into the whirlpool he created ... as were you, all of you, as was each of us everywhere.

I am Leo Garfield. My age is fifty-two as of tonight, the fifth of December, 1999. I am unmarried--by choice--and in excellent health. I live in Irvine, California, and hold the Schultz Chair of Physics at the University of California. My work concerns the time-reversal of sub-atomic particles. I have never taught in the classroom. I have several young graduate students whom I regard, as does the University, as my pupils, but there is no formal instruction in the usual sense in our laboratory. I have devoted most of my adult life to time-reversal physics, and I have succeeded mainly in inducing a few electrons to turn on their tails and flee into the past. I once thought that a considerable achievement.

At the time of Vornan-19's arrival, a little less than one year ago, I had reached an impasse in my work and had gone into the desert to scowl myself past the blockage point. I don't offer that as an excuse for my failure to be in on the news of his coming. I was staying at the home of friends some fifty miles south of Tucson, in a thoroughly modern dwelling equipped with wallscreens, dataphones, and the other expectable communications channels, and I suppose I could have followed the events right from the first bulletins. If I did not, it was because I was not in the habit of following current events very closely, and not because I was in any state of isolation. My long walks in the desert each day were spiritually quite useful, but at nightfall I rejoined the human race.

When I retell the story of how Vornan-19 came among us, then, you must understand that I am doing it at several removes. By the time I became involved in it, the story was as old as the fall of Byzantium or the triumphs of Attila, and I learned of it as I would have learned of any historical event.

He materialized in Rome on the afternoon of December 25, 1998.

Rome? On Christmas Day? Surely he chose it for deliberate effect. A new Messiah, dropping from heaven on that day in that city? How obvious! How cheap!

But in fact he insisted it had been accidental. He smiled in that irresistible way, drew his thumbs across the soft skin just beneath his eyelids, and said softly, "I had one chance in three hundred sixty-five to land on any given day. I let the probabilities fall where they chose. What is the significance of this Christmas Day, again?"

"The birthday of the Savior," I said. "A long time ago."

"The savior of what, please?"

"Of mankind. He who came to redeem us from sin."

Vornan-19 peered into that sphere of emptiness that always seemed to lurk a few feet before his face. I suppose he was meditating on the concepts of salvation and redemption and sin, attempting to stuff some content into the sounds. At length he said, "This redeemer of mankind was born at Rome?"

"Bethlehem."

"A suburb of Rome?"

"Not exactly," I said. "As long as you showed up on Christmas Day, you should have arrived in Bethlehem, though."

"I would have," Vornan replied, "if I had planned it for its effect. But I knew nothing of your holy one, Leo. Neither his birthday nor his birthplace nor his name."

"Is Jesus forgotten in your time, Vornan?"

"I am a very ignorant man, as I must keep reminding you. I have never studied ancient religions. It was chance that brought me to that place at that time." And mischief flickered like playful lightning across his elegant features.