Time to Love Again Read Free

Stuffing both notebook and disks into her purse, she returned
to the living room, frowning at what she beheld.
    The house needed some Christmas brightness.
It was only three days until the holiday, and she hadn’t even hung
a wreath on the door. Picking her keys off the hall table and
heading toward the garage, India decided she would visit the mall
again that afternoon. She wanted some new decorations, and she also
wanted to buy a gift for Hank, who had been so patient with her the
day before. She still did not think he was the right man for Willi
because he was too involved with his work – work that India simply
could not understand. She doubted if many people could understand
what Hank was trying to do, which must have been frustrating for
him. Feeling a bit sorry for him, she resolved to invite him and
Willi to dinner one night during the coming week.
    She was in an upbeat mood as she backed her
car out of the driveway. She had the feeling that something
wonderful was going to happen. Her life had begun to change, and
unlike her recent holidays, this was going to be a happy
season.
     
     
    The university was not as deserted as she had
expected. Most of the students had gone home for the holiday break,
but as she followed the janitor toward Hank’s office, India met
several professors she knew, all of them carrying armloads of the
blue books that contained the students’ answers to the
just-completed final exams. Grades had to be posted by Monday
evening, so everyone she met passed her with only a hurried
greeting. Remembering how distracted Robert could become at the end
of a semester, India thought with some amusement, as the janitor
opened Hank’s office door and let her in, that everyone except the
janitor would very likely forget having seen her.
    Sitting down at the computer, she got right
to work, checking the material on the first floppy disk against
Robert’s handwritten notes. Soon she was immersed in the old
familiar world of eighth century Francia, the land that would by
modern times become partly France and partly Germany. She could
speak the language of that world, after a fashion, for Robert had
tried his best to teach it to her.
    A few hours later, she stopped to stretch her
muscles. While walking around the office wriggling her shoulders
and flexing her fingers and wrists, her eyes fell upon a pile of
printout material that Hank had left. On the top sheet was the word Time , followed by a mathematical equation that looked
vaguely familiar. She picked up the paper, sinking back into the
chair as she read it over, trying to make some sense of it. In
spite of its apparent familiarity, the meaning of the formula was
beyond her.
    “Space and time,” she muttered, frowning at
the numbers.
    Recalling with a guilty pang that Hank wanted
his papers left untouched, she reached across one of the new pieces
of equipment to lay the sheet back on the pile. As she did so, her
left hand accidentally brushed against the switch Hank had warned
her not to touch. The mysterious piece of equipment hummed into
life.
    “Oh, dear.” At first, India snatched her hand
away from the switch, then, almost immediately, she leaned forward
again to turn it off. But she froze before she made contact with
it, mesmerized by the bright peach-colored glow now emanating from
the screen in front of her. As she watched, the letters of the data
she had been working on disappeared into the growing brilliance of
that light. Within another second, the light had eclipsed the
components of Hank’s entire system.
    India knew she ought to turn the computer
off, but she could no longer see the switch, and she was afraid of
an electrical shock if she put her hand into the light and started
fumbling around. Still seated, she scooted the chair backward,
wondering how best to deal with this unexpected problem. She
thought about diving beneath the work station to find the plug and
pull it out, but she wasn’t sure where the plug was