Changing Direction
Alpha Universe, 14th October 1066
At last, the time jumper was his again. All those contemptible months back here in this disgusting, uncomfortable historical backwater, scheming and planning, concealment and flight, privation and hardship, smooth talking and murder, had finally born their bitter fruit. He was free.
And he was still in his own universe, to boot. Corvantes had indeed listened just long enough to the planning session going on in his own underground headquarters without him to understand what those wretched Tyler girls and the two busybodies who had burst in to "rescue" them were up to. (And his own turncoat technician. But that was a minor issue, albeit one he carefully tucked away to exact payment for at a later date, if he ever ran across him or his descendents again.)
But he had no intention of returning to the scene of the crime. At least, not yet.
No, Paul Corvantes had at last realized that he was thinking too small, when he'd tried to enlist his mirror images in his underworld plots. With the jumper on his wrist, all of time, past and future, was his to explore. The universe, not the world, was his oyster. He would go forth and make many fortunes, many times over, and then, when he was good and ready, he'd come back home to his own time and place, where he was comfortable, and set himself up permanently. Nobody – no cop, no interfering female, no law, no rival, no government – would ever be able to touch him again. Oh, he'd take care of the Tylers, all right, and their two accomplices, but in his own good time. He always chuckled at that thought. He now literally had all the time in the world, and could still come back to blow them out of the water whenever he felt like it.
He started hopscotching through time, staying for now on Earth, going a few hundred years at a jump; getting used to the changes wrought at each step, getting an idea for the sweep of future history, indulging in petty crime to support himself. And then, just for the hell of it, he programmed a jump into the far, far future, a hundred thousand years or more.
Right in mid-transit, however, his arm was nearly wrenched out of its socket, when something seemed to grab the time jumper on his wrist and yank it – and him – sideways. He came stumbling out of the transport flash and went sprawling on an oily metal floor. Coughing from the greasy smoke immediately assaulting his lungs, he shook his head and began to gather himself up, only to be stunned into silent immobility at the sight which met his eyes, materializing through the haze.
His last free thought was to realize the he was only a very puny, insignificant little being, after all.