"Then you admit you've come through Time?"
"I may as well."
Ilaria cursed quietly. "But you're not an average guy. You have a working knowledge of chemistry and biology and physics and history and a few arts and sociology and psychology and geopolitics and literature and the English language as spoken in AD 1954. You hope to be successful as a writer. You're Public Relations Consultant with Duo-Point, one of the biggest corporations in your nation in 1954."
"Yes," Jay Welch said. "And I make good money. Even better than a bus driver or a steam-fitter. So?"
"So here you are. 1954's representative to 2054." Ilaria was only a man. He could not keep the flourish and the Hollywood grandeur out of his voice.
"Yes! And what happens tomorrow when I don't show up for work? What happens in a few days when people find out I've disappeared? What happens when they find out Julie was the last person I was with? What—"
"You're getting yourself worked up again, Jay Welch. Don't you think we have thought of those things? We've brought you across one hundred years, Jay Welch."
"Yes," Jay said quietly, flatly. "Yes." Then just as flatly, just as quietly he said, "Why?"
"So you've remembered to wonder about that at last." Ilaria smiled. Jay noticed that the smile was one-sided and pulled back the left corner of Ilaria's mouth. He stood there and looked down at Jay Welch, who had forgotten that he was sitting on the floor. His tunic was white and there were three diamond-shaped silver pieces in a vertical line on each elbow-length sleeve. There was a wide blue stripe and a narrow silver stripe at the hem of his tunic and at his sleeves. He wore sandals. His belt was leather and there was a holstered pistol of some sort hanging at his left hip. In tiny blue script above his left breast pocket were the words 'Trib. Ilaria'. On the pocket was a red disk with the letters PR. A silver-worked blue cloak was flung over his shoulders. Except for the identification and the odd fabric of his clothes and the holstered gun he looked very like a young Roman of the first century.
Ilaria's slow smile pulled back the left corner of his mouth. "Because you are who you are and what you are. Because you attended the University of Louisville and Doctors Borley and Schink knew you. Because they chose you. Merely because they chose you. They might've chosen anyone else.