You bounced up and roared, “I’ll get ’em! You hold that faker here, Father, and I’ll teach these idiots to play jokes.” You rushed out. Your father mopped his face.
I said mildly to Ginny, still standing close by me, “Where am I, anyhow? Not that it matters.”
Ginny reached out her hand to Stan. As if somnambulistically, he handed her a book. It was an ancient, crumbling, tattered volume of fiction. Ginny opened it with fingers that trembled only a very little. I read:
To: Charles Fabius Granver
Sector 233, Zone 3, Home 1254, Radii.
The Thirty-Fourth Century, a.d.
My dear great-great-great-etc.-grandson
Charles:
Ginny said softly in my ear, “Read it! Fast!”
I read.