Alex gazed at Murad, sighing. “Not exactly.”
Murad sat down beside her. “What do you mean, not exactly? Alex, you can’t leave me in the dark. Not when you have me acting as your go-between.”
Alex hesitated. Murad was right. She needed him as a liaison, and his life was in danger, too, for the part he would play in their affair. History, of course, would never record the execution of a mere slave, but Alex had no doubt that Murad would be the first to lose his head if she and Blackwell were ever found out.
He had a right to know everything, a right to know the truth. Alex laid her palm on his arm, leaning close. “You are my dearest friend, Murad. I love you so much.”
His expression softened. “I know.”
“I want to tell you everything. Murad …” She hesitated. “I am from the future.”
Murad rose and towered over her. “Alex, you said that once before. Why do you keep saying that? It’s not even amusing.”
“Because it is the truth.” She stood. “Really.”
Murad’s gaze remained fixed on her face, his expression strained.
“Murad, I was born in the Midwest of America in 1973.”
“Is this some kind of strange game? Is there a point to all of this?”
“No, this is not a game. It’s not a joke. I’m twenty-three years old, and I was born one hundred and seventy years in the future.”
Silence fell between them. “Alex, come sit down.” Murad was now alarmed. She was so serious. He pushed her down onto the cushions, then sat beside her, his arm around her. His heart was racing. “I am going to get a physician. You are not well. You are hysterical. What happened just now with Blackwell? What did he say, what did he do?” Murad couldn’t help it—he had to know.
Alex pushed at him. “I am not ill. I am not hysterical. I do not need a damned doctor. I am serious. Blackwell and I talked, Murad, nothing more.” She took his hands. “You have to believe me. I am a graduate student at Columbia University from the year 1996. I was researching my masters thesis when I read about Blackwell. I read about his capture in July of 1803. In the account I read, he was ambushed off Cape Bon while taking on water, and thePearlwas destroyed in an act of sabotage at sea before ever reaching Tripoli.” Alex frowned. “That’s why I was so shocked to see thePearlarrive the other day. It’s all wrong.”
Murad said nothing, staring at her, his pulse racing harder now. His mouth had become unnaturally dry. Why was she insisting on this? What had happened between her and Blackwell, to make her talk this way? But she had been surprised to see thePearlarriving in Tripoli. He recalled that very clearly.
“And I also read about his execution in June of 1804.” Alex now gripped his arm. “The bashaw had him executed a year later, Murad. A year after his capture.”
Murad remained immobile. Afraid to think, afraid to breathe. Alex believed what she was saying.
“I’m telling you the truth. He was executed for his affair with a Moslem woman.”
Murad did not respond. He could barely absorb what she was saying. Was Alex insane?
“Murad?”
He couldn’t speak. Her words were not merely confusing him, frightening him, they were filling him with dread. And they were making him feel almost violently ill. He could not understand his own reaction.
“She was the wife of the bashaw’s son, Murad,” Alex cried, shaking him. “Don’t you see?”
And Alex was now wed to Jebal.Murad shook himself free of that thought. “Alex, you need some rest,” Murad finally said. “You are not well.” He was firm.
“No!” Alex stood. “I have not lost my mind. I fell in love with Blackwell, and somehow my love carried me back in time—to him. The oil lamp that was in my backpack, the blue one I keep in the chest, did it! All those strange stories I have told you and Jebal? Those are twentieth-century movies. Murad. I didn’t make up Darth Vader and R2D2 and Han Solo. Batman is a comic-book hero.”
“What’s a movie?” Murad was also standing, dismayed and mesmerized. “What’s a comic book?”
Alex sighed. “A movie is something you watch. Actors acting out a story, only it’s on film; the people aren’t real even though they move and talk. Forget it, Murad. In my time people really fly in the sky in the airplanes I have described in my stories, and drive automobiles, and use telephones … I have proof.”
Murad folded his arms and watched Alex rush across the room. She was ill and he knew it. She was mentally ill, weaving this incredible story and believing it herself. That was the only possibility.
He stared as she returned with her backpack, a bag he had always found odd with its many strange clasps and pockets. Alex pulled out a small, leather-bound book. He had glanced at the small book before. The silver rings had fascinated him. But he could only speak English, he could not read it, so he did not know what the book contained.
But whoever had written in the book had used strange colors of ink—red and purple and blue as well as black. He had never seen such colorful ink before.
She was triumphant. “My Filofax. Look at the calender. Murad.”
