*** After another companionable silence, Andrew said, "This place isn't just a picnic site, is it? You wouldn't have remembered it for centuries unless it meant more than that. "The place is important. And the date. You practically dragged me to Earth so you could share the secret with me here, at this time. But it's not my birthday. So what is it?" "You said there were no major battles near here," Adam said quietly. "And you were right. "But there was a foolish squabble between two Highland clans, in which the young Duncan MacLeod took a fatal wound. It was *here*, in a hut on this site, that he died as a mortal and was born into his Immortality. "Three thousand years ago today." *** Andrew sucked in a deep breath. He closed his eyes, and had the eerie sensation that only a tissue-thin veil separated him from that hut, that dying man who had been his twin. With total certainty, he said, "There's something more you're not telling me." He opened his eyes to see Adam nodding. "Yes. I had your birth timed. So I could bring you here on the three thousandth anniversary of MacLeod's first death, and you'd be the exact age he was. Within three months of your thirtieth birthday." Then he saw the blaster in Adam's hand. "You're going to kill me," he said calmly. But this time he was wrong. "No, of course not! I thought you might want to make the transition here, on this anniversary, and I brought the blaster for *you*. If you want to use it." Andrew held out his hand, and felt the cool weight of the gun slip into it. He aimed it at his heart. He didn't need to be told that with a weapon this powerful, a shot to the temple might take his head off. Then he gazed out into the clearing, at those spectral picnickers. At the man who'd been born and slain in the Highlands, Duncan MacLeod. He lowered the blaster and tucked it into a pocket. "You don't want to become a full Immortal?" Adam sounded not so much disappointed as surprised. Uncomprehending. "Not here, not now," Andrew told him gently. "This is *his* place, MacLeod's. And his anniversary. It must have been a dark day, the most terrifying he'd ever known. "As you told me, *I'm not MacLeod*. I will make myself Immortal, Adam, and I hope you'll be with me when I do it. But I want it to be on *my* world. The one I've *made* mine, at least for now. Hathor. In the spring." He felt tears well in his eyes, and let them come. Then he saw that he wasn't the only one who was crying. He pulled his brother into his arms. "Thanks to you," he vowed, "that will be a day of celebration. A day when I'll embrace the future, with no fear and no regrets." He heard the projector click off as Adam whispered, "So will I." THE END