AUTHOR’S NOTE:  This is the first chapter of the upcoming second installment of the TIME VANDAL series.  It contains one small spoiler from the first book.  So if you have not yet read First Epiphany of the Time Vandal, you might want to avoid this post.  But it is only a small spoiler, so if you feel so inclined, please continue.

Elijah crouched behind the hedge at the edge of the field.  He kept low to avoid being seen by the many soldiers milling around on the valley floor barely two hundred yards away.  The group closest to him numbered around ten, and seemed to be preoccupied with moving a pile of cannonballs onto the back of a horse-drawn cart.

He had his mini binoculars unfolded and was looking down on them.  He assumed they were General Kutuzov’s men.

“I very much doubt Kutuzov is even in command anymore.” came the voice of Elijah’s A.I. Fuzzy over the earbud in his right ear.  The computer and the T714 craft which housed it were currently hovering some 5 miles above what Elijah knew as the Czech town of Slavkov u Brna, but which the world’s historians knew as Austerlitz.  “The Russian emperor would have long since arrived.”

Elijah nodded, smiling grimly.  “Messing everything up.”

“Is it  your contention,” asked Fuzzy, “that had the command been left to General Kutuzov then Napoleon would have lost this battle?”

It was weird speaking in past tense about an event that was about to unfold in front of one’s eyes, but Elijah had almost gotten used to it.  It was par for the course for a man with his own time machine.  “No, not really.  Napoleon has them by the short hairs.  Remember, he’s been chasing them since Vienna.”  He pulled the binoculars from his eyes, turning them over in his hand and giving them a look of disdain.  “These binoculars aren’t worth a bucket of spit.  I can’t see a thing.”

Fuzzy’s voice answered, “You gave your good ones, the spyglass, to Harald.”  He was referring to Harald Blatan, or Bluetooth, who had been Elijah’s travelling companion for a time.  He was also one of Fuzzy’s all-time favorite humans.  After the boy, of course.

Elijah lifted the binoculars back up to his eyes, training them on the French side.  He wanted to see Bonaparte.  Plus, he wanted to ignore Fuzzy’s last comment.

But Fuzzy was relentless.  “It might not have been such a good idea to give them to him.  Historically speaking, I mean.”

Elijah nodded curtly, fully aware that Fuzzy couldn’t see him doing it.  “They never found him.  Never found his body.  When we left the 21st century they had already  been looking for decades.”  He scanned the horizon again.  “They’ll never find him.”

“So, we’re now using blind luck to justify taking grave risks.”

“You can’t change the future, Fuzzy.”  Elijah’s patience with this line of discussion was quickly running out.

“No, but you can get an anvil dropped on your head by the universe for tempting time,”replied the equally impatient computer.  ” Or so you’ve said many times.”

Elijah looked up briefly into the clouds, then shook his head and went back to watching the troops.  “I get the point.  I won’t do it again.  I promise.”  After a few moments he lowered the binoculars again.  “I see better without these things.  I need to get closer.”  He folded them and put them in his messenger bag.

“I wouldn’t recommend getting any closer,” replied Fuzzy.

Elijah started to turn, another sarcastic comment about ‘who was in charge, etc.,‘  rising to his lips, when the corner of his eye caught a movement on his right, up the slope about twenty yards.  It was a soldier, he realized, no more than seventeen or eighteen years old, crouched behind a bush and watching him.

Realizing he was seen, the soldier stood up and looked around.  His eyes pleaded with Elijah to not make a noise.

Elijah walked slowly towards him, both hands held out on each side, palms up.  “TEE RUS? (Are you Russian, in Elijah’s horrible version of the Russian language).

The soldier nodded.

Elijah whispered into his microphone, “Fuzzy, translate for me.  What is your name?  Are you a deserter?”

Fuzzy gave the translation back to Elijah, which he repeated to the kid.  When the kid answered, Fuzzy gave Elijah the translation back.

The soldiers head went down.  “I do not want to die, but I am not a deserter.  I got too drunk last night, and fell asleep away from the camp.  This morning I overslept.  Now I am afraid if I try to go back, they will shoot me as a deserter.”  He kicked a small pebble at his feet.  “My name is Benka.”

Elijah approached more closely.  Only ten yards separated them now.  “Don’t worry, I won’t tell them.  As you can see I am hiding from them, too.”

Benka eyed Elijah and his strange garb.  “How did you get here? There are scouts everywhere.”  His arm waved back to encompass all the fields and rolling hills behind Elijah’s position.  “I am afraid they will catch me and I will never see my wife Doycia again.”

Elijah nodded, his eyes taking in Benka’s uniform.  “You’re right, you’ll never make it past them.  There are five on horseback not two miles from here, in the direction I’m guessing you’ve planned to go.” He pointed and the soldier nodded sheepishly.  “I’ll make you a deal,” Elijah continued.  “You give me that uniform, and I’ll give you a change of clothes and  get you out of here.”

A look of unbelief washed over Benka’s face.  “How could you do that?”

Elijah grinned.  “Never mind that.  Where are you from?”

“Petrovichi.  In Belarus.”

Elijah nodded and sat on a nearby tree stump.  He opened his bag.  “Would you like to see your wife tonight?  Taste her home cooking again?” He pulled out a flask and opened it, taking a long swig.  He handed it up to Benka  “Want some?”

Benka sat and took the bottle.  “You’re talking crazy,” he said.  “Na-zda-ROV-yea.”  He shrugged and lifted it to his lips.

Elijah took that moment to lift a small syringe from its place on the inner wall of the bag.  Just enough to knock the kid out.  “Well, when we get to Petrovichi, you can apologize.”

                                                           .                   .                   .

Fuzzy was beside himself.  Hadn’t they just talked about this very thing?  About tempting time?  About getting involved when they need not do it?

Elijah was nonplussed, sitting at the console of his MTDM (mobile time displacement module) high in orbit.  He was still wearing Benka’s uniform.  Benka laid on the floor behind his seat, snoring loudly.  “The kid won’t remember a thing, other than meeting me in a field.” He punched in a few keys on the right hand keyboard.  “Besides, it was the least I could for the loan of this uniform.  It got me close.”

“Too close,” came Fuzzy’s reply.

“I could have gotten even closer had you not ruined it.”  He looked up at the middle monitor.  “That really pissed me off.  I have half a mind to lower your Assertiveness setting.

“You didn’t know I could make a dust devil, did you?”

“No, I most certainly did not.”  Elijah punched in a few more keys, this time stabbing the keyboard like a kid playing typewriter on his little brother’s chest.”

“Well, an officer off to the right of and behind you had taken notice of your presence, just standing there and doing nothing.  He was sending a guard over to you when I intervened.”

Elijah looked back up at the monitor, his full attention now on the subject at hand.  “I wasn’t ‘doing nothing‘, I was taking video.  Great video.”  When Fuzzy said nothing in response, he went on. “So it was that close?”

“It was that close.  And it gets worse.”

Elijah stiffened.  “Worse?”

“I know who he is.” Fuzzy’s voice was flat, emotionless.  “Benka.”

Oh no, came the thought to Elijah’s head, not again.  “Go on.”

“I ran him through face recognition to try to get a progenic match. To see if I could determine his family tree.   I knew that his home village was Petrovichi, and he had spoke of his wife and gave her name, so I was able to better filter the results.”

“A progenic match?”  Elijah’s voice raised a notch.  “I don’t think that’s a word.”

“I tried to match him to his progeny, if he had any.”

“Of course you did.”

“You’re not going to like it.”

Elijah half-turned in his chair and looked down at Benka.  “No, I probably won’t.  So who is he?”

“He is Benka Asimov, the great-great-great-grandfather of Isaac Asimov.”

In the silence that followed Elijah’s head dropped to his chest.  He held that position a few moments, then started shaking it slowly to the left and the right.  “I had to save him.  I didn’t have a choice.  He would have been killed.”

His face brightened suddenly and his head popped back up.  “See?  I just made sure that our history happened, that we had Asimov to write all those great stories.”  He smiled broadly.  “I’m a hero.”

“You’re a very reckless man.”

“You’re welcome.”  He saluted the middle monitor above his head.  “Aw, come on, Fuzzy.  Don’t ruin this for me.  I’ve got Isaac Asimov’s great-great-great grandfather in my care.  I told him we’d get him home, and home is where we’ll get him.”  He went back to punching numbers into the keyboard.  “Let’s go to Russia .”

Fuzzy begin making calculations and plotting courses.  Elijah smiled and asked him to play back the footage from the ship’s cameras.  He wanted to see Bonaparte.  As Fuzzy did so, Elijah pulled a pen and a small piece of paper from his front pocket.  He wrote the words ‘Name Your Son Israel‘ on the paper and folded it over.  Asimov’s great-great grandfather was, after all, named Israel.  Elijah just wanted to make sure he had the right guy.

Later he would slip the note into Benka’s pocket.  Benka would have to translate if from English, as unfortunately Elijah didn’t know how to write in Russian.

And he wasn’t about to ask Fuzzy for help.