Her back was the most gruesome thing I’d ever seen. It was covered with blood and pus and clear fluid from areas that looked like burst blisters. Deep red lines ran like rivers across her back. They ran in all directions, crisscrossing each other like nature had gone mad and lost its way. Pus oozed out from some of those lines. There were patches where skin had been torn off her back and places where threads from her gown had adhered.
I knew that I could heal her wounds if we could get her to our ship.
I didn’t bother to consult Waylon. I said, “Mary, I can cure you.”
Letting her nightgown fall back around her body, sitting down on the bed with her legs over the side, she said, “I prayed fuh a miracle an’ God ansuhed mah prayers.” There were tears in her eyes.
I thought how to explain our ship to her. I said, “Mary, I’m an angel helper, not an angel exactly. I came from the sky, but I came in a metal ship. I have miracle medicine that can cure you, but you have to go with me to the ship. I can cure your wounds with a combination of heat, light and ointment.”
Mary started trembling. With the look of an abused, terrified animal, she leapt off the bed and cowered in the corner. She said, “I cain’t go. I be caught. I be whipped again.”
I said, “Mary, we were sent to help you. You should let us fulfill our mission.”
Waylon cleared his throat. I knew he wanted to talk this over with me.
Mary said, “I do not want tuh be a disobedient child.” She looked toward the ceiling, placing her hands together, her fingers pointing upward. “Lord, fo’give me. Thy will be done.” Turning to me, she said, “It will be safer tuhnight. Aftuh dark. It will be harder tuh see us.”
I said, “That’s fine. We’ll come back then. We’ll meet you right here.”
Mary grabbed my arm. She said, “God knows everythin’. He already knows dis. I don’t know if all angels know all things. But slaves are free now, by gov’ment order, if we can get tuh a free place. I in love wid Jessey. He fleein’ tuhnight wid Henry and Basil. I was supposed tuh go, too, but I so sick I can hardly stand up. Can dey come wid me tuh your ship? Den we can leave right aftuh you cure me. Can you bless us and help us get away? Please. Oh, please. I love God wid all mah heart. I try tuh be da best person I can be given my circumstances.”
I said, “That would be fine.”
My heart was breaking for this woman. We could help her. I felt this didn’t violate the Law of Noninterference to any significant degree. She and the other former slaves were planning to escape anyway. I’d give her treatment that would heal her back within hours. That’s all. It wasn’t like I was arranging their method of escape. If I wanted to, I could take them in the time travel pod to a completely different time and place. I wasn’t doing anything like that, just giving this woman treatment to help her wounds heal.
Mary said, “When it gets dark and you see lights flickerin’ in da windows of da big house, it should be safe fuh you tuh get me.” She thought for a moment and added, “I know you’re usually invisible—watchin’ ovah me, but invisible. Can you make me invisible, too?”
I said, “No, Mary, I can’t.”
She said, “We should leave at night den. It’s da only way. Knock three times on mah door, so’s I know it’s you.”
Waylon moved the chair. He opened the door a sliver and peeked out. Then he opened it wider and led the way back outside. I followed, shutting the door behind me.
We walked in silence until we reached the edge of the forest. Then we slipped under the cover of leaves and shadows and walked to our pod.
Waylon said, “I’m not sure you should heal her.”
I said, “Law of Noninterference, right?”
He said, “Yes.”
I explained my reasoning. “The amendment to the original law states that in the event that a time traveler needs to save their own life or the life of a fellow traveler or needs to bring back the dead body of a traveler, they are to use their judgment regarding the law. Right?”
Waylon lifted his arm to move a branch out of his way. He said, “Yes.”
I said, “Those rules were made before actual time travel started. It comes out of the Theory of the Multiverse. It’s just a theory. No one knows if it’s true or not. We’ll know more as we run missions. In the meantime, think about it. By simply showing ourselves to people, we’re changing their lives. And yet figuring out who we can trust and interacting with them is a part of this mission that we’re on right now. Mary thinks we’re angels. What if she becomes a preacher because of that? Then we’ve changed her life in a significant way by just showing up and letting her see us. Now what if she becomes a preacher and changes someone else in some significant way? Then the multiverse could be changed even more. I think that as long as we don’t move her to a different time-space, we’re obeying the basic idea behind the Theory of the Multiverse.”
Waylon said, “We’ll do it your way. All of this gets reviewed by the TTA when we get back home, anyway. Everything’s subject to evaluation after missions are run and data collected.”
After returning to our pod, we recorded the events that had just taken place and rested until dark.
When night fell, we left our ship. The moon was bright enough to light our way. Passing by the lake, I remembered that Waylon and I had planned to go swimming. That would not happen now. We made our way through the woods to the edge of the plantation property. We batted biting insects away from our faces. They were so incredibly annoying, I felt glad they had all gone extinct.
The lights were on in the main house. No one seemed to be outside. The grounds were quiet except for the incessant night chatter I knew to be frogs and toads and insects.
We made our way down to Mary’s cabin. I jumped when a horse whinnied. We moved farther into the shadows, but no one appeared.
When we finally reached the cabin, Waylon knocked on the door three times. He did it so quietly, I wasn’t sure Mary would hear it.
The door opened a crack. Mary was wearing a striped cotton dress. It must have been painful for her to have taken off the nightgown and put it on. She looked pretty in it.
A smile flickered over her face as she stepped outside.
In silence, we snuck around the side of the barn and hurried to the edge of the forest. Then we stepped into the leafy coolness, appreciating the cover it would give us.
Mary said, “Look at da moonlight comin’ down through da trees. It makes the tip o’ da leaves silver. God made da world so beautiful, didn’t He?”
Waylon replied, “The world really is beautiful. Moonlight on trees is one of the most exquisite things I’ve ever seen.”
I wondered if we’d ever return Earth to this degree of richness and splendor. I could smell the dirt beneath our feet, the flowers that bloomed throughout the forest and on the plantation, pine trees somewhere nearby. Frogs and toads filled the night with their odd songs.
The world outside of enclaves like the TTA was brutal. Winds howled and blew parched dirt and sand into the air, turning it dark and gritty. The land that had been the United States—the land mass where the TTA is located—had shrunk in size centuries earlier when areas along the coasts were drowned by rising seas. Enclaves all over the globe had it good. But the human population was increasing so rapidly, we’d soon outgrow that space. We had to become more aggressive, and without the use of AgStim.
I felt a mild tremor in my hands and a quick run of heartbeats from the injection I’d given myself earlier. It wasn’t much, just enough to allow me to risk possible violation of the Law of Noninterference, my own and Waylon’s lives, and the lives of the people we were trying to help in another space-time location.