Ransom
by Albert E. Cowdrey
Time travel agent Maks Hamilton is told by mysterious kidnappers that if he ever wants to
see his own son again, he must travel back three centuries—just before the
Troubles—to abduct another boy.
Despite the characters’ belief that they can change history, up in the ITTDB Citadel we all agreed that the characters are an unreliable source and this story actually lives in a carefully crafted single static timeline along with a nice bootstrap paradox.
— Michael Main
I want you to bring someone from the past to the present—someone who would otherwise
die only a few hours afterward. Surely that’s possible.
“Ransom” by Albert E. Cowdrey, Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, March 2002.