Time's Last Gift

'Still, I got hungry for city life now and then, and I did want to keep watch on the rise of civilizations. So I spent time in Egypt and Mesopotamia and along the Indus and the Yellow River and in ancient Crete and Greece. And I was once Quetzalcoatl, the details of whose story you will find here. 'I have been everywhere a dozen times and seen everything. I was the first human to set foot on the island of Tahiti; the second time I went there, I beat the first raftload of Polynesians by a week.

'But all this is in the records.

'I have been married many times and fathered many children. Each of you is my descendant. I would say that almost every human being that has lived since 5000 B.C. is my descendant. I am my own ancestor many times over.

'I could talk forever. I could reveal what lay behind many of the great mysteries of history and I could solve many of the lesser, but just as intriguing, mysteries. For example, I was on the Marie Celeste.

I will be sitting under this overhang when my moment of conception comes. What will happen then? I suggest you researchers read the newspaper accounts and determine if the body of a man six-foot-three, with black hair and gray eyes, was found on this ledge. If it wasn't, then I may just have disappeared. Or perhaps I was found only after I'd become a skeleton. Or some body snatcher took me away. The possibilities within Time's fold are many.

'Whatever happens, I am grateful that I have lived a life such as no man has lived.

'And now, Rachel, for you. You will be on the 3500 B.C. expedition. And we will be married in Ur of the Chaldees. You will decide to stay behind when your colleagues return to their time.

'And there we two will live as Terah and his wife, and you will bear Abraham.

'I tell you this because, of course, the time came when we had to part again. You never got the elixir because I never had a chance to analyze it and so make some more. So you died.

'I am telling you this so that you may try to change the course of Time. If you decide not to go on the expedition, then something will happen contrary to my experience, to my knowledge of Time as it happened.

'Is this possible? I don't know. I'll know the day the expedition arrives.

'But I did come to love you, Rachel. And you were the ancestress of Moses and King David and, of course, of yourself. And of me.

'But perhaps you do not want this.

'We shall see.

'In the meantime, here is my collection, the secrets of the ages revealed, art objects that were thought lost forever. Knowledge that mankind would never have possessed otherwise.

'Time's last gift.

'Goodbye, my friends. Hello, Rachel. Perhaps.'

There was an uproar when the voice ceased.

Rachel was weeping.

But she was happy.