Time Travel Omnibus, page 1082
“All that to finish in a year,” the kid says. “I’ve become a drug addict so I can look better on paper. So I can land a job where I’ll always have to wonder if the reason I got hired was because I had an unfair advantage. You had it all wrong,” he says, sobbing. “You never escape cause and effect. You just draw your cards from the deck in the wrong order.”
Habit makes Ernie glance up at the mirror. Big mistake.
“Jesus H.,” he says. “Why’re you telling me all this, kid?”
“So you’ll give it back to me,” the kid says, his voice quivering. His whole face is red and wet; his eyes are bloodshot. “So I won’t have to call the cops,” he says. “So I can get the device back without having to admit I lost it. So I can go back to screwing up my life, I guess.”
He starts crying again.
“Jesus,” says Ernie.
They get to Ernie’s place. “That’ll be fifty-eight fifty,” he says. The kid looks up at Ernie and laughs. At least he can take a joke.
Ernie asks him what his name is. “Ernest,” the kid says.
“You gotta be kidding,” Ernie says with a laugh. “That’s my name! My folks named me after Hemingway.”
“Mine too,” says Ernest. His voice is real quiet. “They wanted me to go into literature.”
“Hell,” says Ernie, “I don’t know what they wanted for me, but it sure as hell wasn’t driving cabs. Wait here.”
He goes inside, gets the Samsonite carry-on from the basement and crams the suit in it. It’s not a hard decision.
It might have been if they’d started their conversation on Ernie’s front porch, but they were driving all the way from Cambridge and Ernie had plenty of time to think. Plenty of places to turn off, places he could’ve dropped the kid and kept driving. This time of night, the wrong neighborhood, maybe skinny little Ernest never comes back.
Maybe. Or maybe Ernie just drives him someplace secluded, lets him out, breaks both his knees with the front bumper. Pick a dark place and turn the lights off and no one could get a good look at his plates. He could’ve made skinny little Ernest a speed bump, even backed over him to make sure, and the only description the cops would’ve had is “a taxi cab.”
Ernie could have done it but he didn’t. He can’t exactly explain why, either. Maybe it’s because he wasn’t sure he could have gotten away with it. Maybe it’s because he got away with everything so far and he didn’t want to push his luck. Or maybe getting away with it isn’t as easy as it sounds. Ernie’s not sure. He just knows this one wasn’t the hard decision.
Ernie gets behind the wheel, passes the case back to Ernest, and pulls a U-turn to take the kid back to the Yard.
“This isn’t my suitcase,” says Ernest.
“Yeah, well, the suit’s in it,” says Ernie. “Don’t get picky on me.”
“No,” the kid says. “You don’t understand.” Ernie can hear him futzing with zippers. “There was a journal,” he says. “It had a log of the time I’ve borrowed. I need it back or I won’t know where to start borrowing from again.”
Maybe you ought to lay off the borrowing, Ernie wants to say. Maybe it’ll help you quit the pills. But Ernie figures it’s not for him to get all high and mighty on this kid. “My wife’s got it,” he says.
“I need it back,” says Ernest.
Ernie looks at him through the mirror. “Kid,” he says, “you don’t know what you’re asking.”
All the kid says is, “I need it back.”
Ernie pulls up in front of Janine’s sister’s place and the living-room drapes are thin enough that he can see they’ve still got the kitchen lights on. He sighs and says, “Give me the damn suitcase.”
He rings the doorbell and her sister peeks out between the drapes. Janine comes down after a minute. Ernie takes a deep breath. “I need to tell you something,” he says, “and I’m gonna tell it to you straight.”
It’s a month later when Ernie gets a call. It’s seven PM and Ernie’s been driving since seven that morning. That’s become a regular thing for him. He knocks off for half an hour once or twice to grab a bite and read, but otherwise he’s running Logan and Brigham and Massachusetts General like clockwork. He does it for Janine, he says, but when he takes the time to think about it he knows it’s more than just that.
He’s got another regular thing going these days: he tends to take lunch at a particular Seven-Eleven. The old guy behind the counter there probably thinks Ernie’s a scatterbrain, what with him always forgetting his change on the counter when he leaves. Ernie would do the same at a particular gas station too, only the girl they used to have got fired. It wasn’t even over Ernie robbing the place. The poor kid was too honest to keep the change he kept leaving on the counter, and her boss canned her for being over whenever she closed out her register.
Ernie talked Roberta at dispatch into getting her a job but the kid hasn’t taken to it. Ernie’ll tell you it just goes to show how hard it is to do right by somebody after you did them wrong.
He’s at home on the sofa reading Sherman Alexie when the phone rings. It’s Ernest; he recognizes the voice right away.
He doesn’t know how the kid got his number, but then the kid is wicked smart. “I just wanted to thank you,” he says.
“For what?” says Ernie.
“Returning the device,” says Ernest. “And the suitcase and the journal.”
Ernie laughs. He ended up driving that kid all the way back to the Yard for free that night, but does he get thanks for that? “You don’t have to thank a guy for returning what he stole from you,” he says.
“Yeah, well, thanks anyway.”
“How you doing with those pills?” says Ernie.
“How are you doing with that wife?” says Ernest.
Ernie laughs again, but for once he’s pretty happy on that front. Janine spent the night. They both had a few drinks in them the night before and in the morning Janine said it was probably a mistake, but Ernie liked the sound of the word probably. She let him give her a kiss on his way out the door, and that’s not bad.
The night he came to get the kid’s carry-on he told her the whole shebang. She didn’t believe him. Called him a lying sack of shit, actually, but he was surprised to learn he really didn’t care whether she believed him or not. The big thing was that he told her the truth. It was the hardest decision he’d made in a long time. He still can’t say it felt good, but it felt right.
That’s not much comfort, by the way, and he’ll be the first to say so. He’ll say, You know that satisfaction people talk about? The one you get from doing the right thing? Well, that and a buck’ll get you a cup of coffee.
On the phone he says, “Let me tell you this, kid: it’s not easy to make things right with someone when she don’t believe you. It’s even harder when the true story is the most cockamamie thing you ever heard of. So thanks for inventing that suit, huh? And for leaving it in my cab. You damn Harvard types.”
Now the kid laughs. He says, “You’re the one who put it on. I suppose you’re going to blame me for that too?”
A memory comes back to Ernie: the image of a skinny drunk in his back seat on the drive back to the Yard, folding that suit over and over in his hands. He looked like he was thinking pretty hard about it. Ernie doesn’t know the kid well or anything, but for some reason he’s got hope for him.
“Hey, you’re not going to believe what happened to me today,” Ernie says. “I’m dropping off a couple of Frenchmen at their hotel and they don’t understand tipping. Fifty bucks they left me. I tell you what, me and Janine are eating steak tonight.”
“That’s great, Ernie.”
The kid’s tone is flat and Ernie knows their conversation is over. “Listen,” he says, “you take care of your girls, kid. Keep ’em close.”
“You too, Ernie,” says the kid, his tone still flat, and Ernie’s not sure he’ll ever hear from him again.
But if it’s the last thing the kid ever told him, at least it was good advice. Ernie’s going to keep Janine as close as he can. He’s already decided he’s taking her to Davio’s tonight if she’s up for it. If not, the next night, maybe. He figures it’ll all work itself out. They’ve got time.
IAN’S IONS AND EONS
Paul Levinson
IAN’s IONS AND EONS . . . that’s what the neon sign said, in glowing script above the door. I don’t know when it first opened. I had been out of town for about a year, and I never could get a straight answer out of Ian. I don’t know what everyone else in the neighborhood thought when they walked by Ian’s on Johnson Avenue in the Bronx. Some kind of computer store, an electronic gimmick shop, a latter-day Radio Shack, perched on the second floor above a dry cleaner?
“We’re a travel agency,” Ian told me.
“Oh? Where do the ‘ions’ fit in, then?” I asked him. “Some kind of faster-than-hypersonic propulsion?”
“Nope. Not like that at all.”
I looked around the store. It was nondescript. I guess that was a bit self-refuting. There was an old picture of the Parthenon on one wall and a drawing of the Roman Coliseum on another, next to a stained photo of some Mayan ruin. “You specialize in travel to ancient places, like Rome and Athens, and that’s where the ‘eons’ come in?”
“Something like that,” Ian replied. He stroked his mustache. It was a fine mix of black and white. His hair was a little lighter, his eyes a little darker.
“What’ll it cost me to travel back to 2000?”
“So you knew what we do, all along.”
“Word gets around,” I replied. “You’d be surprised—or maybe you wouldn’t.”
Ian shook his head.
“So what’s your pricing?” I asked again.
“2000 isn’t too far back; we consider it part of the twenty-first century, a break for you. The rest of the price would depend on the purpose of your trip—personal or societal?”
“Strictly personal.”
Ian scowled.
He explained that nothing was strictly personal in his business—you want to go back and kiss that girl again in the seventh grade, well that could still have unforeseen consequences for the world. And that meant such a trip required all the standard precautions, which were expensive. But they were less costly than protection from the possible results of a trip intended to change some kind of public event.
He quoted me a price, 20 percent less than the standard societal rate. “All inclusive.”
“Jeez.” I shook my head and whistled. “That’s still a small fortune.”
“You’re welcome to try the competition,” Ian said blandly. He knew that I knew there was none.
“You’ll need the complete payment up-front?”
“Obviously.”
I nodded and pressed in my account number and the desired dates of my journey on the thin terminal embedded in front of me on the counter. It fast-printed a twenty-five-page itinerary. Ian still did some of his business the old-fashioned way.
I looked at the first page. “A train?”
“Yep—somewhere between Philadelphia and Wilmington. That’s the way we do it.”
“For the East Coast?”
“For any coast.”
The itinerary was fairly explicit. Go down to Penn-Moynihan Station beneath the Farley Post Office. Fare already paid for, included in the package. Take the Tricela to Washington . . .
“Any Tricela?” I asked Ian. “They run every half hour, don’t they?”
He nodded. “The specific Tricela doesn’t matter. You supplied the date and time. It’s the speed, the curve, and what they got going on down there, under the ground, between Philadelphia and Wilmington.”
“That’s where the ‘ions’ come in?”
He nodded again. “Some kind of future underground technology produces them. They poke a little hole in the fabric of time. And if you hit it just right—at the speed and angle at which the Tricela is traveling—you get through.”
“But it doesn’t affect anyone else on the train?” I asked.
“It does not,” Ian replied. “You have to be in just the right spot on the train, at just the right time. Plus, you need to be wearing this.” Ian reached under the counter, rummaged around, and pulled out a blue-gray woolen vest with silvery buttons.
“You’ve got the 2000 model,” Ian advised. “It’s the micro-weave that attracts the ions.”
I massaged the textile between my thumb and forefinger. “Feels like wool . . . Okay if I try this on right here?”
“By all means,” Ian said. “As I told you, the vest attracts the ions only on the Tricela, between Philadelphia and Wilmington—”
I tried on the vest.
“One size fits all,” Ian said.
“Good,” I said. “And how do I get this back to you?”
“It’s all in the itinerary,” Ian replied. He pulled the counter screen back toward him and regarded it. “Let’s see . . . in 2000, you’ll find yourself on a Metroliner. You do your business back there. Then get on a northbound Metroliner. Wear the vest. And somewhere just south of Trenton, you’ll go to the right place in the train and the next thing you’ll know, you’ll be back on the Tricela, heading north, in our time. The fabric of time ‘remembers’ you. It’ll pull you back to the time you left, as long as you’re wearing the vest. The fabric of time attracts the fabric of your vest. It’s all in the itinerary,” he said again.
I looked at it again. The relevant line began, ‘Go to the café car, just as in the Tricela—’ I nodded. “When exactly in 2000 do I arrive? Can I specify the arrival date?”
“You get there on whatever month, day, hour, minute, second you leave in our time. Nothing other than the year changes. Same with the return—you get back here on whatever month, day, et cetera in 2000 you happen to find yourself on the Metroliner heading north, south of Trenton. It’s all in the itin—”
“Okay. How come the jump to the past takes place between Philadelphia and Wilmington, and the jump back to the present between Philadelphia and Trenton?”
“Several reasons. The Metroliner has a space-time configuration slightly different from the Tricela—it’s heavier than the Tricela, therefore cuts through space in a slightly different way—even when the two are moving at the exact same speed. And it’s actually helpful that the going and returning happen in different places—too much action in the same place could tear the temporal fabric with who knows what consequences.” Ian shrugged. “That’s what it is. The snap in the space-time continuum is ‘elastic,’ extending from Wilmington to Trenton. You all set?” His tone indicated he was about through with the conversation.
I tried one more question, anyway. “And you wouldn’t happen to know who built this future underground technology?”
“I would not,” Ian answered. “I’m just an agent selling tickets on a river boat. I have no idea how the river was created.”
Many people consider the post office an anachronism. E-mail has been on mobile media for decades, and if you want to mail a package, hey, just fill out a Web form, and someone will be by your side to pick up your parcel in under an hour, in most parts of the country.
One thing neither the post office or the Web could ever do, though, is mail people. That still required planes and trains. Fortunately, the famous inscription above this post office usually worked as well for trains: “Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds.”
Trains had become swift. They usually kept their appointments. I knew it wasn’t always that way. There was a time, right around the turn of the century, when most people thought trains were all but finished . . .
I looked up at the inscription one more time for good luck and hurried downstairs to board my Tricela. It was new and gleaming. I found my seat, reserved in the itinerary, and sat down next to a blonde. She was pretty nice too.
“Going to Washington?” she asked politely.
I entered my ID into the terminal on my armrest. It beeped confirmation. “Actually, Philadelphia.” I didn’t want her to wonder where I was when we headed south from Philadelphia.
She smiled. Her eyes were agate gray and sparkled slightly in the soft train light. “Oh, I think you’ll be going down to Washington, eventually.”
I looked at her. “You’re with Ian.”
“Don’t worry—I’m included in the package.”
“But you’re not in the itinerary,” I said.
“Ian didn’t want you looking for me on the train—didn’t want you to look as if you were looking for someone you couldn’t find. That could attract attention you don’t need. Especially given the significance of your mission.”
The train sighed and glided imperceptibly into its journey. My head felt as if it was moving a million times faster.
“So . . . Ian knows I was lying, about my business being personal.”
“Of course he does. How could he not? He checked the past and the future. It’s his business.”
She caught my expression. “Don’t worry, I’m not here to stop you, I can assure you. I’m here to help. I’m part of the package,” she repeated.
“But Ian charged me for the personal trip?” I asked.
The blonde smiled. “As Ian probably told you, there’s really no such thing as a purely personal trip in time, as far as unforeseen major consequences go. We just keep the ‘personal rate’ as an incentive for our customers. People like a bargain. It’s a lot of money.”
The train sped under the Hudson. “Philadelphia, twenty minutes,” an announcement advised. “Next stop, Philadelphia. No stops at Newark or Trenton on the Tricela.”
“Think of me as your guide and your guardian,” the blonde said. “My name’s Ilene. With an ‘I.’ ”
“So Ian has no problem with what I really want to do in 2000?” I asked her.
“He has no problem with your plans for Washington. But people who listen in on Ian’s Ions and Eons might feel differently. That’s another reason he was happy to go along with your ‘personal business’ cover story.”
