He passed a wakeful night. In the early morning, he looked up to see a
little man with a briefcase at his cell door.
"Wish joy, Mr. Elliott," the man said coolly. "I am one of Mr. Bullen's
barmen. You know, represent at law? He sent me to arrange your release,
if you are ready to be reasonable."
Jeff lay there and put his hands behind his head. "I doubt if I'm
ready. I'm comfortable here. By the way, how did you know where I was?"
"No problem. When we read in this morning's newspapers about a man
claiming to be a time traveler, we knew."
"All right. Now start explaining. Until I understand where I am, Bullen
isn't getting me out of here."
The lawyer smiled and sat down. "Mr. Kersey told you yesterday--you've
gone back six years. But you'll need some mental gymnastics to
understand. Time is a dimension, not a stream of events like a movie
film. A film never changes. Space does--and time does. For example, if
a movie showed a burning house at Sixth and Main, would you expect to
find a house burning whenever you returned to that corner?"
"You mean to say that if I went back to 1865, I wouldn't find the Civil
War was over and Lincoln had been assassinated?"
"If you go back to the time you call 1865--which is most easily
done--you will find that the people there know nothing of a Lincoln or
that war."