The Great Altruist (16 page)

           
Jadzia sat back against the tree that supported the shelter and said nothing for a moment. Across the shelter, Genesis was crying. “Do you think this is your fault?” Jadzia asked.

           
“Of course I do!” she cried.

           
“But you didn’t know this would happen to me.”

           
“How are you not mad at me? I would be furious if someone took away a chunk of my life!”

           
Jadzia approached the woman she loved as a sister and smiled. “How could I ever be angry with you? You’ve given me a second life - a new life. More importantly, I have your friendship. If I have to sacrifice a part of myself for all that, then so be it.”

           
“I’m so sorry, Jadzia. I didn’t mean to do this. I thought I knew what I was doing.”

           
“It’s okay,” Jadzia said as she reached out to Genesis and embraced her. “You did nothing wrong.”

           
Genesis was inconsolable though. Once Jadzia had hugged her and tried to assure her of her forgiveness, Genesis left the shelter to be alone with her thoughts. She raced high into the sky and hovered with nothing but the moon to watch her as she cried. Devastated and furious with herself, she experienced real sadness for the first time. Far below in a tree-house sat the beautiful young woman she charged herself to protect. Now, the poor girl was dying (a fact she neglected to tell her) and she was scared Jadzia might never forgive her. Terrified of being alone again, she resolved in her heart to keep her knowledge of Jadzia’s impending death a secret until she discovered a way to repair damage.

           
She returned to the tree shelter a few hours later. Jadzia was already asleep so Genesis tried her best to remain silent as she flew onto her perch above Jadzia’s makeshift bed. To no avail, Jadzia turned over and looked up at Genesis.

           
“Where did you go?” she asked.

           
“I needed to think,” she said.

           
“I thought you’d left me.”

           
Genesis floated down to the pillow where Jadzia rested her head. “I’ll never leave you, Jadzia.”

           
She smiled. “There’s something I still don’t understand,” she said.

           
“What’s that?”

           
“I’m confused why I wasn’t able to control Mussolini and that judge? Did you see something wrong in my mind?”

           
“Actually, no,” Genesis said. “I checked for that. Whatever is ailing you is only affecting your memory, not the way your mind functions.”

           
“So what caused it then?”

           
Genesis shook her head. “I really don’t know. What did it feel like?”

           
“It felt as though I had no control, like something was holding me back. Almost like having a rope tied around my waist and when I tried to run, it pulled me back. No matter how hard I tried, whatever tugged in the other direction was always stronger.”

           
“What do you think it was?”

           
Jadzia didn’t reply at first. She just shook her head. A moment later, she said: “It sounds crazy, but it felt like the hand of God, like some higher power wouldn’t let me succeed.”

           
“You mean to suggest that World War two is
meant
to happen and there’s nothing we can do to stop it?” Genesis asked incredulously.

           
Jadzia said: “No, that can’t be possible. I’m just telling you what it felt like...inside my mind.”

           
Genesis flew back to her perch and said: “Get some sleep. We’ll decide what to do in the morning.”

           
She turned on her stomach and went promptly to sleep.

           
Genesis remained awake for several hours, desperate to find a means to save her friend. No scheme she could devise seemed to be sufficient enough to correct Jadzia’s ailing memory. 

           
Jadzia awoke just before the sun arose and climbed down from the tree-house to gather food. After cutting through the brush to find some berries and a fruit tree, she returned to the camp and prepared breakfast. Genesis was nowhere to be found, which alarmed Jadzia a little since she had never abandoned her in the clearing for more than a few seconds – except last night. Then Jadzia remembered the promise Genesis made the night before, that she would never leave her. Confident that she would not be alone long, she ate her half of the food and swam in the brook (which over the years had grown into a river) for most of the morning.

           
As promised, Genesis returned and said nothing for quite some time. Jadzia kept busy around the tree-house meanwhile, scribbling in a notebook she had fashioned from leaves and twine, and a pen she made from a hollowed twig and ink made from berry juice. Genesis remained outside, sitting on her favorite perch above the shelter. There, she watched the birds play and occasionally flew around with them around the clearing. Soon, she entered the shelter and called to Jadzia to join her. She climbed through the hole in the roof and sat beside Genesis.

           
“What’s on your mind?” Jadzia asked.

           
“You said something last night that made me curious. About whether World War two can even be prevented.”

           
“It was just a feeling,” she said. “The problem is probably in my mind somewhere.”

           
“I’m worried you might be right,” Genesis said.

           
“How is that possible?”

           
“If what you said is right, that there is an unseen force propelling the war, then there must be a good reason - and there will be nothing we can do to stop it.”

           
“I can’t believe that!” Jadzia said. “I can’t give up like that!”

           
“I’m not giving up on anything. I’m in this to the end with you. If you want to keep trying to stop Hitler, we’ll decide where to go next and get to work.”

           
“Good,” Jadzia said. “Because I’ll die before I give up.”

           
“I won’t let that happen either.” Genesis was suddenly tempted to tell Jadzia the truth that her life was going to be tragically cut short as a result of her arrogance. She suddenly recalled the time when they first met, when she used her powers simply to show off in front of Jadzia. She disgusted herself. If Jadzia was going to survive, Genesis new that the answer would be found in humility, the only quality she desperately lacked. “Where will you go next?”

           
“I want this to be over. No more head games and forcing people to say the right things,” Jadzia said in a huff.

           
“What option is there?”

           
“I know you’re not prepared to take a life and I won’t ask you to do anything you don’t want. But I’m not taking any more chances.” Jadzia fidgeted with her hands, her knees suddenly trembling.

           
“You want to kill him, don’t you?”

           
“There’s no other way to stop this. Hitler needs to die.”

           
“It will be hard to get to him. There were a lot of people who tried to kill him
and
never got anywhere near him.
”

           
“I want you to send me to the first War. As close to Hitler as you can.”

           
“Are you sure you want to do this?”

           
“He can’t rise to power if he was killed in the war.”

           
“Clearly,” she agreed, “but are you sure you want to take a life? It’s not like killing a fish, Jadzia.”

           
“It doesn’t matter what I want. We’ve been over this, and I won’t let me parents – or anyone else - die needlessly as long as there is air in my lungs.”

           
“Whatever you want,” Genesis said.

           
Jadzia readied her mind for the transfer and an instant later, the two women disappeared.

Chapter 8

           
The French countryside was scarred by the constant barrage of German shells that fell from every direction. Deep in the trenches, French soldiers covered their heads as planes shot across the sky, dropping bombs all across the landscape. An infantryman climbed from the trench and looked across the battlefield. German soldiers breached the barricade a hundred meters away until they hit the French bulwark and prepared to defend themselves.

           
Jadzia awoke in the body of a soldier covering his head in the trench. The sudden shock of the violence around her, and its counterpoint to the peaceful clearing she just left, forced her to the ground, cowering.

           
“Get up!” a soldier shouted at her. “We need to move!”

           
Jadzia crawled to her knees and followed the troops out of the trench. The gunfire began immediately as the French charged the rampart and the Germans stormed to meet them. Soldiers on both side collapsed around her but she forced her way across the battlefield with a single focus. If Genesis had done her part as Jadzia hoped, Hitler would be on the other side of the bulwark. Behind the German line, Jadzia saw her mark: running along a trench was a slender message runner. He never saw her coming. She tossed her rifle to the ground and withdrew the pistol from her belt. A bomb fell a dozen meters away and the shock threw Jadzia just where she wanted - she tackled Hitler to the ground and the two rolled into the trench.

           
She climbed to her feet and pressed her boot across Hitler’s neck. Hitler looked terrified, but Jadzia disregarded the guilty feeling in the pit of her stomach and readied her gun. There, in the moment when a Polish woman in a French soldier’s body stared her parent’s future murderer in the eye, she had no change of heart. She grimaced and pulled the trigger.

           
Nothing happened. She squeezed the trigger again, but still nothing. The gun jammed and Hitler seized the moment. In the second during her distraction, he swiftly reached for the knife at his side and plunged it deep into the soldier’s chest. Jadzia fell to the ground, dropping the gun, and Hitler climbed atop the soldier and reached for the pistol. He placed the gun to Jadzia’s forehead as she whispered: “Genesis, where are you?”

           
Hitler winced at the soldier’s curious words and pulled the trigger.