Disclaimer: Voyagers! and its associated characters are registered trademarks of Scholastic Productions, James D. Parriott Productions, and Universal-MCA Entertainment. This story is based on characters and situations created by James D. Parriott and is provided for entertainment purposes only; no copyright infringement is intended by the author.
Acknowledgments
Jordre has two areas of historical specialization: WWII Germany, and the Middle Ages; due to the latter, she had a particular gripe about not getting to see what happened at Hastings, and so "Omni 101" is for her. Also, thanks to Peeper Stockwell for challenging me to write a scene where Bogg teaches Jeff to use the Omni. Additional thanks are due the Voyagers! team at for making the Guidebook available; without it, that scene could not have been written.
Mrs. Phineas Bogg graciously provided me with some excellent research links for the segment on Casey Jones, and one of them led me to the Casey Jones Village and Railroad Museum, whose historian Norma Taylor was kind enough to provide me with some information I could not find elsewhere.
And, as always, special thanks to Jordre—my own personal "history book in pants"—for the beta.
Voyagers!
The Gift of a Son
by
Jake Crepeau
Chapter 1
"Omni 101"
Hastings, England; October 14, 1066
Jeffrey pulled the goggles from his grimy face as he sat up. They had landed in a gully similar to the one where they had nearly been run over after leaving Egypt two days ago, but this one was grass-covered and quiet. He found the model airplane he had rescued from the Wright's argument; it was resting atop a cluster of wildflowers where it had fallen out of his pocket during the landing. Picking it up, he grinned. Apparently the Omni didn't care who shot down the Red Baron—if one could talk about an inanimate object as "caring" about anything—as long as someone did.
Behind him, Bogg grunted as he sat up, and Jeffrey turned, holding the little plane aloft. "We're alive!" he announced happily.
"Yeah; we made it," Bogg breathed in relief.
"And Eddie and Mary?"
"Green light, kid, all the way." He rested his elbows on his knees and gazed at the ground.
He actually seemed a little dejected, and Jeffrey thought he knew why. "You liked her, didn't you?"
Bogg sat up and looked at him. "Me? Nahhh. What makes you think that?"
"I don't know," the boy shrugged, getting to his feet. "It's just the way you looked at her. Kinda mushy; not like Agnes."
Bat's breath! Since when do kids his age notice things like that? Bogg thought as he picked himself up. "Forget about the way I looked at her," he said, starting to walk, the boy trotting along after him. "We're Voyagers, kid. There's no time for romance."
Mentally, Jeffrey pounced on the word "we." "Right. Voyagers. No romance," he repeated.
"Time is our oyster," Bogg proclaimed next.
"Oyster. Right."
"Quarter to no man," he went on, getting caught up in the game, swinging one arm to the side in a sweeping motion.
"No man," Jeffrey repeated, mimicking his gesture.
"We can do anything, change anything, be anything!" he was grinning now himself.
"Voyagers!" the boy concluded happily, and his heart was soaring. Aunt Elizabeth and Uncle Tom could go hang for all he cared; he never had to see them again. He was a Voyager!
"Voyagers," Bogg confirmed, then grabbed Jeffrey's arm to stop him. "You hear that?" he asked, listening intently. "It sounded like a cannon."
"Where are we?"
He reached under his leather jacket and withdrew the Omni. "England, 1066," he replied.
The high-pitched pinging told Jeffrey the rest, without the sight of the flashing red light. After a moment's thought, he blurted, "That's it!" hard on the heels of Bogg's misidentification of the event as Pearl Harbor.
This drew a puzzled "Huh?" from the Voyager, who was pretty sure he'd gotten it wrong…again.
"That's what's wrong; they didn't have cannons in 1066," Jeffrey clarified.
Another burst of fire, and a shell exploded about twenty feet behind them, drawing their gazes to the top of the rise, where the Normans were just coming into view, their longbows nocked and ready. "Bat's breath!" Bogg spat, grabbing for Jeffrey.
"Not again!" the boy protested as his companion snatched him up and started to run.(1)
Safely out of the way, Bogg and Jeffrey watched as the Norman forces were mercilessly mowed down; the survivors, terrified by this strange new weapon, fled in disarray. The Saxons broke ranks and pursued them; by midday, it was over.
"I take it that wasn't supposed to happen," Bogg remarked.
Jeffrey shook his head. "The Normans killed King Harold and won the battle." He turned puzzled eyes to his new friend. "What do you do when something happens too soon? The cannon isn't even supposed to be invented for another hundred years."
Bogg sighed unhappily. "There's only one answer to that question, kid."
Jeffrey made a face as he guessed the answer. "Another Voyager, and whoever it is made one huge mistake."
"That's one way of putting it," Bogg snorted.
~oOo~
It didn't take much to insinuate themselves into the general goings-on. The Saxons assumed they were someone's servants and put them immediately to work; Bogg was set to helping gather the wounded and bury the dead, and Jeffrey was drafted as a water boy.
The boy was nervous at first. Up until now, all their stops had involved Americans, people who spoke his language and whose customs were familiar, even if only from books and movies set in those times. They might be in England now, but whatever language these people were speaking, it sure didn't sound like English.
Then, suddenly, it did; the strange words seemed to twist and warp themselves in his ear until he was hearing his own everyday speech. Even more incredibly, when he finally dared to try talking himself, the other person seemed to understand him perfectly well. It must have something to do with the Omni, he decided; he'd have to ask Bogg about it later.
The whole scene could only be described as gruesome. While Jeffrey was only carrying water, he still had to walk among the fallen troops to get to the men—and women, he noted in some surprise, seeing the camp followers out there seeing to the wounded alongside the men. His history classes in school had had him believing that women in this era were kept strictly at home, but these were clearly the wives and families of the soldiers.
But that wasn't the only thing books and movies had gotten wrong; they hadn't even come close to showing what the carnage was really like. And the smell! He'd once read that, at the moment of death, the body expelled its wastes; now, his nose was telling him it was true. Combined with the metallic odor of blood, it was enough to turn his stomach. He tried not to look down, not to see the awful wounds, but it was impossible, and within the first hour he had thoroughly emptied his stomach three or four times. At first he was acutely embarrassed by what he thought was weakness, but then he saw some of the men being sick—even Bogg woofed his cookies a few times—and Jeffrey felt a little better.
He quickly learned that, unless someone wanted water, he was beneath everyone's notice, so he had no chance to ask questions, though he did manage to garner a few snippets of information simply by listening. It was amazing how careless of their tongues people were in front of "mere" servants; no wonder there were so many jokes about servants' gossip.
You've seen worse, Bogg firmly told himself with each hideously mangled body. Cannon balls did enough damage all by themselves, but when you threw in explosive shot, things got truly horrific. You've seen worse, he told himself again, but it didn't help. He turned quickly to one side and heaved onto the ground, then kicked dirt over the results as he called for water.
It wasn't until after he'd rinsed his mouth that he saw who the water boy was. The kid looked more than a little green around the gills himself, and Bogg managed a weak smile of encouragement. "You're doing fine, kid," he said softly.
"I don't feel fine," Jeffrey replied in a voice that shook just a little.
Bogg shook his head. "No, and neither does anybody else. You could see stuff like this every day of your life, but you never get used to it." He gave the boy's shoulder a squeeze. "Better get going before somebody decides to beat you; that guy over there doesn't look too happy with you right now."
Was that a wicked grin on the kid's face? "You watch yourself; they think you're a servant too, remember?" came the rejoinder as he moved off with his burden.
Bogg smiled and shook his head. The kid had been chiseling away at his heart almost since the moment they'd met, it seemed, and he had to admit that it was starting to work.
Those oak buckets were no featherweights even when they were empty, he thought as he watched him shift the yoke on shoulders that were probably already painfully bruised; filled with water, they must weigh nearly as much as Jeff did.
He winced in sympathy when the irate man dealt the boy a slap that had to have set his ears ringing; Jeffrey staggered when the force of it upset his balance, and he fell to his knees. The Voyager clenched his fists as the man raised his hand to strike again when the kid was too slow getting up—who did he think he was, smacking around a kid that wasn't even his?—but Jeffrey ducked the second blow easily, making it look as if he had just bent to remove the weight from his shoulders so he could rise. The man took his drink and said something Bogg couldn't hear, then left; Jeffrey glared after him, trembling visibly with the effort of choking back a retort as he flipped a bird at him when he was sure he wasn't looking. Bogg chuckled softly at the sight. It wasn't a habit he wanted to encourage in the kid—not after what he'd gone through trying to shed his own formerly salty language—but he figured that, just this once, he'd let him get away with it.
With a mental shake, he turned back to his own work, his impression of the kid now increased by more than just a notch or two. Historically, life was rough on kids, especially in the lower classes, and sometimes it seemed the earlier in time you went, the worse it got. Nobody knew that better than Voyagers did, but somehow, it had just become a lot more personal.
By the time nightfall put a stop to the cleanup, Jeffrey was ready to fall over from sheer exhaustion. Hiking and Little League baseball had done little to prepare him for this kind of work, and he was sure he'd walked many more miles than the longest hike he'd ever been on. The high-topped shoes he'd been wearing since Dayton didn't do much to cushion his steps; he really missed his Nikes. His face felt stiff where the man had hit him, and every muscle in his body was screaming when he settled onto the ground near a fire to wait for Bogg. The chill in the air wasn't helping. They itch, they're hot, and they make me feel stupid, he had complained about the coarse woolen knickerbockers, but he was glad of them now.
When Bogg found him, he was sound asleep, curled into a tight, shivering ball too close to the fire. He wasn't really surprised; except for a short nap before carting the glider to Big Rock Creek, they'd been going nonstop for over twenty-four hours. Not bad for a kid who, until three days ago, had probably been spending the better part of his days sitting in a classroom. People in the twentieth century had no idea how easy their lives were, the Voyager thought as he carefully lifted the sleeping boy into his arms, but this one was starting to learn.
London, England; June, 1066
Not that dream again, Jeffrey groaned mentally as a falling sensation brought him awake; then he landed and heard a grunt under him. Realizing what must have happened, he quickly rolled off Bogg. "You okay?" he asked.
Bogg sat up, gingerly holding his abused midsection. "Good thing my stomach was empty," he said dryly. Next time, wake the kid up first... He opened the Omni. "London, June 1066; red light," he informed the boy, then grinned. "I managed to find out what we needed to know while you were busy getting your ears boxed," he teased.
"Oh, yeah? And I suppose you have no idea what it feels like, huh?" Jeffrey shot back.
Bogg let it pass; the kid had earned the right. "I'm for food and a nice, soft bed," he said, nodding toward an inn just down the street, a picture-sign above its door identifying it as the Cock and Bull. "You in?"
"You bet! But how're we going to pay for it? You told me Voyagers don't carry money."
"Spoils of war, kid," Bogg replied, pulling a jingling pouch out of a pocket.
~oOo~
"You call this a nice, soft bed?" Jeffrey groused as he watched Bogg unroll the blankets he'd taken from the battlefield and lay them over a wide straw-stuffed ticking on the floor of an otherwise bare room.
"Best I could do in this time zone, kid, and lucky to get this much. We could've ended up sleeping on the floor."
The thought of resting his aching body on such a hard surface was enough to make the boy leave off his complaining, but he needn't have worried. Divested of shoes and jacket, he was asleep before Bogg finished shedding his own footwear.
~oOo~
"C'mon, kid; show a leg,"(2) Bogg called, nudging the blanket-wrapped cocoon.
The dark curls showing at one end shifted, and a muffled groan issued forth, sounding vaguely like, "Leave me alone."
"Not a chance; now up and at 'em, before I dump you on the floor." He grabbed the edge of the pallet and began to tug on it.
Jeffrey sat bolt upright at once. "I'm up, I'm up!" he said hastily, then noticed that Bogg was no longer wearing that striped suit he'd picked up in Dayton, but was instead dressed like a Saxon.
Chuckling a little, Bogg told him, "I got us some clothes," and set a bundle next to him, then went over to the fireplace and squatted down in front of it, stirring the embers to life and putting his discarded suit into the fire; he kept his back to Jeffrey to give him some semblance of privacy.
"So what did you find out?" the boy asked.
"The inventor was somebody named Ælfred; he started work in the spring. About a week ago now, they started hearing 'thunder' in the vicinity of his cabin, and King Harold sent some troops to investigate. He liked what they reported, so now Ælfred's got royal backing."
"You know where he is?" Jeffrey asked, his voice muffled by the tunic he was pulling over his head.
The sound of a distant explosion reached them just then, and Bogg said, "Does that answer your question? Now it's your turn: Tell me about the cannon."
"It was invented in China in the twelfth century and showed up in Egypt about a hundred years later. It didn't make it to Europe until the Hundred Years' War in the fourteenth century."
Bogg let out a short whistle. "Talk about jumping the gun," he grinned, and was rewarded by Jeffrey's groan. "You done yet?" he asked the boy.
"Yeah; what do you want to do with these?" He approached with what he was thinking of as the "Dayton clothes," and Bogg put them into the now-roaring fire. Jeffrey squatted next to him. "How come we can talk to the Saxons? I know I sure don't speak the language."
"Neither do I," Bogg told him. "It's the Omni."
"But you're the one carrying it."
"You don't have to be carrying it. You've traveled in its chronofield, so now you're included in its effect."
"What else can it do?" Jeffrey asked curiously.
Bogg shrugged. "Beyond that, you've got me. I'm told it has a whole bag of tricks that field Voyagers don't need to know about." He saw the boy's eyes straying to the device he'd left on the table and added warningly, "And you just remember what I said."
"Yeah, I know; don't touch it," Jeffrey sighed.
Bogg knew Jeffrey was hurt by the continued prohibition after the pep talk he'd given the kid—and, incidentally, himself—after first arriving here, just before all hell had broken loose; but the last thing he needed...
The thought was interrupted by the realization that it suddenly bothered him to lay down the law and just leave it at that. It was almost as if that little exchange had been some sort of…rite of passage was the only way to describe it. Jeffrey might be only eleven, but he was, for all practical purposes, his partner now, and you didn't treat a partner that way. The Code was clear about giving an Omni to someone who was not a Voyager, but he wasn't sure that applied to Jeffrey anymore. In for a penny, in for a pound…"I just don't want you to get lost in time, with me unable to go after you," he told the boy. "One day real soon, I'll teach you how to use it, and then things'll be different, but for now, for both our safety, just leave it alone, okay?"
His face lighting up, Jeffrey said, "You really mean it? You'll teach me?"
Chisel, nothing; somewhere in the last twenty-four hours, the kid had resorted to metaphorical dynamite, Bogg realized as his own heart lifted to see the joy on his face, and he grinned. "Hey, we're Voyagers, remember? What's a Voyager without his Omni?"
He'd meant it as a rhetorical question, but Jeffrey suddenly sobered and answered it with a single word. "Stranded," he said quietly; then, after a long silent moment during which he blanched a little as he presumably digested the ramifications of that, he said, "Okay, Bogg. I won't touch it until you tell me I can."
Smiling in approval, he ruffled Jeffrey's hair, then turned his attention back to the fire. Seeing that the anachronistic garb had been mostly reduced to ash, he banked the fire and got to his feet. "Let's go downstairs and get some breakfast, and then we'll go pay Ælfred a visit."
~oOo~
When they eventually located their quarry, he was alone in a field with a simple long iron tube mounted on a tripod, its back end resting on the ground. Next to it, cannon balls were stacked in the familiar pyramid display, a lit torch stuck in the ground nearby; on the other side was a small sack of black powder. At the moment, the man was doing nothing, pacing back and forth, now pausing to look over a sheet of parchment on a crude makeshift table, the sheet held in place by a large rock, then stopping to hold a hand over the barrel, and Bogg grinned tightly, his own experience with the cannons of the seventeenth century telling him exactly what the problem was. Now if he could just keep Ælfred from figuring out the solution...
"I'm going to have a look around," Bogg murmured in Jeffrey's ear. "Stay here; I'll be right back." With that, he moved off silently through the brush, and for a moment Jeffrey was painfully reminded of a game his father had played with him on camping trips, seeing if they could move as quietly as Indians, trying to sneak up on each other. It had only been a game then, and one that he had been starting to get pretty good at; now he could see that it would be a useful skill for a Voyager to have. For a moment, he was tempted to try to follow; just as he started to get to his feet, carefully making no sound, Bogg turned as if reading his mind and jabbed a finger in his direction, the look on his face a silent command, and Jeffrey made a face, but settled back down to wait.
Bogg was indeed back a moment later, rapidly murmuring instructions now. "His house is about fifty yards that way, just inside the trees; I don't think he can see it from where he is. I'll keep him busy; you go inside and have a look around."
"What am I looking for?"
Bogg shrugged. "Anything that looks like it doesn't belong."
Jeffrey watched a moment as Ælfred poured a little gunpowder. Probably an alchemist, he thought, and likely had notes lying around in the house. A sudden thought made him grab the Voyager's arm just as he started to move away. "Will I be able to read the language?" he hissed.
Bogg nodded, then turned and moved toward the edge of the forest, this time making no effort to be quiet. "Good morning," he called as he left the last trees behind, just as Ælfred was loading the next shot.
"Good morning," the would-be inventor replied. "What brings you out here? Did the king send you?"
"Uh, no," Bogg answered, then decided on a version of the truth. "I heard cannon fire..."
"'Cannon?'" Ælfred rolled the strange word around in his mouth, looking a little anxious. "You have seen such before?"
"A few years ago—in Egypt," he added, remembering what Jeffrey had told him.
"Egypt." Ælfred made no attempt to hide his relief. "Perhaps you can help me, then."
"Well, I can try. What's the problem?"
"I need a way to dissipate the heat. This will never be a practical weapon if one must wait so long between shots for the metal to cool. How did the Egyptians solve that problem?"
"Well, I don't really know. They were pretty secretive about it…"
~oOo~
It was a small cabin, built of rough-hewn boards, with a thatched roof. The stone fireplace at one end was leaking smoke through chinks in the mortar; an awful lot of it was drifting up from the chimney for this hour on a summer day. And the shutters on the single unglazed window were tightly closed.
Cautiously, Jeffrey opened the door and slipped inside. The only light came from the fireplace; the smoke stung his eyes, making it that much harder to peer through the gloom. Stifling a cough, he opened the shutters to let in some air, then froze at the sound of a weak groan, which drifted into disjointed muttering, first something about "swabbing the bore," then going on to Saracens. The first Crusade was due in about thirty years; maybe this guy—for it was indeed a man's voice—had attempted a pilgrimage to the Holy Land and run afoul of the marauders whose harassment of Christian pilgrims had been the main cause of the first of those wars.
He could make out the silhouette of an occupied pallet near the fireplace and hesitated. Should he get closer? What if the man had something contagious? The thought of catching so much as a case of the sniffles in an age without medicines was enough to make him shudder.
The man's mutterings faded into near-inaudibility, then rose in volume long enough for the words "Atlanta" and "General Sherman" to reach his ears, and Jeffrey caught his breath as he realized he was listening to the ravings of a Voyager.
He fell silent once more as the boy decided to risk moving closer. The only sound in the room now was the crackling of the fire...and a soft clicking that sounded suspiciously like an Omni's "get-out-of-Dodge" button. Sure enough, clutched in a white-knuckled grip in the man's right hand was a device identical to the one Bogg carried; his thumb was repeatedly pressing the top button, just to the right of the hinge. On the floor alongside the pallet, the unconscious Voyager's hand resting possessively on it, was what had to be his guidebook, the gold V on the cover partially covered by the hand. In the lower right-hand corner—the part of Bogg's book that had been obscured by Ralph's jaws—was the name Mordecai Bloom.
~oOo~
Ælfred was poring over his notes yet again, with Bogg looking over his shoulder, trying to read the Latin and only understanding one word in a dozen. He vaguely remembered studying Latin in his childhood, before he'd been pressed into the English navy, where he'd spent five miserable years until, unable to take any more, he'd jumped ship at Port Royal...he shook the memory away and forced his mind back onto the task at hand, just as the translator function readjusted itself to the secondary language(3) and he found himself looking at instructions for making gunpowder.
Both men looked up sharply at the sound of Jeffrey's voice calling Bogg's name; the kid was pelting at top speed across the field, though at least he was staying out of any potential line of fire. Bogg took advantage of the Saxon's distraction to grab the torch and throw it into the sack of powder; as Ælfred scrabbled to get away, Bogg snatched the parchment, rolled it up, and stuffed it into his tunic before jogging toward Jeffrey.
They were far enough away when it blew not to be injured by the blast. "Whatcha got?" Bogg demanded.
"There's a Voyager in there!" Jeffrey panted. "I think he hit his head; it's all bandaged up. He's delirious, but he keeps trying to bug out. I think his Omni's busted, though. The name on his guidebook is Mordecai Bloom."
Tossing a quick glance over his shoulder to make sure Ælfred was still occupied putting out the fire, he followed Jeffrey inside, where he found everything as the boy had said. Bloom was muttering again, going on about something called a "zoot suit."
"Keep an eye out and let me know if our friend out there starts coming this way," Bogg told Jeffrey as he attempted to pry the Omni out of Mordecai's hand.
His raving immediately stopped. "No!" he protested weakly, beginning to struggle.
"Take it easy. I'm a Voyager, and I'm trying to help you."
His words clearly were not penetrating the man's delirium; his struggles grew more violent, despite his enfeebled state.
"Voyager Bloom!" Bogg snapped, putting all the authority he possessed into his voice.
At the window, Jeffrey cringed reflexively. He'd never heard that tone in Bogg's voice before and decided right then and there he was going to make darned sure it was never directed at him.
The effect on Bloom was immediate; the man ceased his struggles and opened his eyes, gazing at Bogg as cognition returned. "Voyager...?"
"Bogg. Phineas Bogg."
"Please...VHQ..."
"I will, if you let me have your Omni for a minute."
The tight grip loosened, and Bogg took the device. Another explosion rent the air—presumably whatever remaining powder hadn't gone up in the first blast, Bogg surmised.
Mordecai struggled to sit up. "No!" he blurted.
"Don't worry; I've got it," Bogg tried to reassure him as he finished setting the Omni.
"You...don't understand," Bloom insisted, falling back against the bedding. "Out of it...not sure what...I might've said."
Bogg picked up the guidebook and placed it on Bloom's chest, folding the injured man's left arm over it. "I know; he's trying to invent the cannon out there."
"Too soon!"
"Yeah, but he doesn't know he has to swab the bore—and I'm not gonna tell 'im," he added in a conspiratorial tone, placing the Omni back into the other Voyager's hand. "Now you just Omni yourself out of here and let us take care of it."
That made Jeffrey smile. Us, he'd said. Just three days ago, Bogg had been trying to abandon him; now he was saying us.
With a soft whoosh! Mordecai Bloom vanished.
"He doesn't know he has to swab the bore," Jeffrey softly repeated Bogg's earlier remark. He had no idea what it meant, but it was obviously something critical; Bloom had been...His head snapped up. "Bogg! When I first came in here, he was mumbling something about swabbing the bore—What does that mean? It's important, isn't it?"
"You could say that. You know what a ramrod is, right?" At the boy's nod, he went on, "The one for a cannon is double ended; one end has a wet sponge on it. You run that through the barrel to cool the metal and put out any smoldering powder left from the last shot so it doesn't make the fresh powder go off when you're trying to reload." The single chime of a green light sounded as he opened his Omni. "Looks like we got here just in time...and I think we'd better get out of here before Ælfred comes in to ask Mordecai what he's been doing wrong."
Indiana; May 3, 1962
Bloom's plight left Bogg badly shaken; it was every Voyager's worst nightmare come true. Critically injured and helpless in a primitive time zone, Mordecai's reaction had been the one drummed into every student Voyager until it became true reflex: Get back to Headquarters if you can. In the unlikely event of damage to the Omni itself, recall was automatic, but that didn't cover other scenarios. Because of this, it was part of Mission Control's job to monitor the condition of every Voyager in the field; theoretically, they could have yanked Bloom out of there, but intertemporal telemetry was unreliable at best, and medical problems often went unidentified until it was too late. Bloom had tried, but the head injury had apparently befuddled his thinking enough that he'd forgotten to reset his Omni.
It had driven home to Bogg the single greatest advantage of having a partner: someone to Omni them out if he was unable to do it himself. One day real soon, he'd promised Jeffrey; well, that day was right now.
It was an almost universal belief that a Higher Power controlled where one ended up when the Omni was in automatic mode, and, at the moment, Bogg was inclined to believe it. Just when they needed it, they'd landed in the middle of nowhere, a huge open field, pancake-flat, with not a sign of human habitation for miles in any direction—unless one counted the soybeans growing in neat rows. And in a green zone, no less, he grinned as he checked the Omni; then he held it down to the kid's eye level. "Okay, kid; where are we?" he asked.
Jeffrey studied the device, noting again the four rings, the small indicator window, the crosshairs over the globe. The readout was blurred; taking hold of Bogg's hand, carefully not touching the Omni itself, he tilted it until he could see it clearly. After reading off the date and location, he looked up at Bogg and asked, "How come it didn't work when Bloom was pushing the button?"
"He didn't reset it."
"You turn those dials," Jeffrey nodded; he'd seen that done a few times already.
"That's one way," Bogg confirmed. Squatting down to make it easier for Jeffrey to see what he was doing, hemoved a small switch on the side of the Omni's case. "That sets it to automatic mode. Then, when you Omni out—you've already found out how to do that—it selects a destination at random." He couldn't resist the little bit of gentle teasing; the boy at his side reddened a little and let out an embarrassed laugh. "When we land and I check it, that's when I reset it. It's always the first thing you do after you land, in case you need to leave in a hurry.
"But this is the most important setting for you to know." He spun the dials until the four red marks were lined up under the window, forming the same stylized "V" that adorned the lid. "That'll take us to Voyager headquarters." Meeting the boy's eyes gravely, he said, "You saw what I did for Bloom; if I ever get hurt that badly, it'll be your job to do it for me. In fact, from now on, if I can't Omni us out for whatever reason, you'll do it. Got it?"
Jeffrey nodded very soberly. If only he'd had an Omni that awful day... Tears rose in his eyes at the thought.
"I know," Bogg said softly, knowing too well what thought must have just run through his head; gently, he gathered the boy into his arms. The biggest drawback to this job was letting people die who were supposed to die—or, worse, making sure they did—but that was a lesson for another day, hopefully a long way off.
"Sorry," Jeffrey mumbled, pulling away and wiping viciously at his eyes.
"For what?" Bogg asked.
"Being such a cry-baby."
"You're not a cry-baby. You've got a lot of hurt bottled up in there; it's gotta come out somehow. I can think of worse ways to blow off steam." He took the boy's hand and firmly placed the Omni in it. "Now let's see you put this thing in automatic mode and take us out of here."
The change in Jeff's demeanor was immediate and dramatic; from seeming to fold into himself in embarrassment, he went to a sort of nervous anticipation, his hands actually shaking just a little as he moved the selector switch. Bogg grinned as he watched, remembering his own first time—He'd actually dropped the thing, and one of his classmates had taken perverse pleasure in calling him "Voyager Fumblethumbs" for the rest of the day. Had it been anyone but his best friend, he might have taken offense. He chuckled softly to himself at the memory as he put a hand on Jeff's shoulder and nodded.
Cayce, Kentucky; 1879
They landed in the middle of a narrow dirt road at the edge of a field where several men were hard at work raking cut hay into windrows; Jeffrey read off the date and location before snapping the Omni shut on the red light and handing it back to Bogg - after making sure the selector switch was in the auto position..
"Any ideas yet?" Bogg asked him.
"The place sounds familiar," Jeffrey said thoughtfully, gazing across the hayfield just as the worker nearest them, a particularly tall, lanky individual, removed his hat and mopped his brow. "Bogg! That's Casey Jones!"
~ooooO~
(1) Adapted from the pilot episode.
(2) This is a nod to Bogg's seafaring past. According to the British Naval Museum, it was customary, when a naval vessel was in port, to allow women on board—ostensibly the sailors' "wives," but nobody ever tried to verify this. When it was time to wake the men, someone would call out, "Show a leg." If a feminine leg emerged from a bunk, the sailor with her was allowed an extra half-hour sack time.
(3) Nearly all written material at that point in time was in Latin, as opposed to the Old English which was the spoken language of the Saxons. Vernacular writing did not start to become widespread until the 17th century.