The Shape Stealer Read Online Free Page A

Edinburgh, and San Francisco. We’ve been getting some very interesting communications from New York this morning. Your friend Will has been a busy fellow.”
    “So let me see if I’ve got this straight. Because Will stayed behind in 1602, he has changed time, and you are able to see those changes here?”
    “See and record. Once any one of us leaves the institute our own memories will assimilate to the new time line. Jean-Luc here will not remember that Love’s Labour’s Won was ever lost. Claudine…”—he gestured to the white-haired woman who had read the sonnet—“will think she has known those poems all her life. Because she will have . Only here in the institute are we granted a brief window of … er … time  … to record that the world was ever different and to evaluate the nature of the changes made.”
    “Why?” I asked.
    Monsieur Durant looked perplexed.
    “I mean, sure, I can imagine you do this for knowledge’s sake—”
    He shook his head so vigorously that his fluff of white hair moved like a storm cloud. “ Non, non, non! Not merely for the sake of knowledge, but to guard against those who would change the time line for their own nefarious purposes. If we find such a change, we send our operatives back in time to prevent the change.”
    “Oh,” I said, abashed at my assumption and looking with new eyes at the bookish crew assembled in the hall. “Will you be sending anyone back this time?”
    Although they didn’t raise their eyes from their books I knew by the cessation of pen scratchings that the chronologistes were listening.
    “That assessment is made by the head office when all the data is in, but I would gather from what we’ve seen so far that the answer will be no. Mr. Hughes has, on the whole, been making harmless and even beneficial changes. I can see no pattern of attempting to gain unfair advantage over the world. Even his dealings in the world’s financial markets have been to shield and protect the victims of precipitous crashes, and defenseless animals from cruelty, instead of profiting from any foreknowledge he had. The changes we have seen in the police blotters … well, Jules can tell you about them.”
    A thin young man with fair hair parted in the middle lifted his head from a ledger and pushed his eyeglasses up the bridge of his nose. “Mais oui,” he began in French, then cleared his throat and reverted to English. “So far I have recorded twenty-eight fewer suspicious deaths from the years 1602 to 1689.”
    “What kinds of deaths?” I asked, my mouth suddenly dry.
    “Murders of prostitutes and street beggars, some bearing the earmarks of a vampire attack such as wounds about the neck, and great loss of blood. A few murders of this sort each year have been rewritten .”
    “You see,” Monsieur Durant looked at me with eyes that were no stranger to pain. “A new vampire would have preyed on such victims. It is not surprising that he would have inadvertently killed many in his blood lust. But when Will went back he chose not to kill these people. Of course, there is always the possibility that one of the people he has chosen to spare will change the time line adversely, but so far…” Monsieur Durant shrugged. “When you walked through the streets of Paris this morning, you did not observe any cataclysmic changes, did you? The sky was still blue, the sun was still in the sky, n’est-ce pas ? It seems to me that Mr. Hughes is on a mission of repentance. And, I think, my dear, it’s clear what his inspiration is. All of this…” He waved his hand at the tables of fluttering pages that sounded in the vast hall like flocks of pigeons wheeling through the sky. “… is Will Hughes’s four-hundred-year-long love letter to you.”

 
    4
    Impressing the Lady
    “Johannes Kepler! How is that possible? You were alive … well, when I was alive!”
    The man beamed, as if pleased that Will had heard of him. “Let’s be blunt here, man,” he said.