Time Travel Omnibus, page 621
I turned from the pool. Before me stretched a desolate waste, a rocky desert bleached almost white by the sun. I retreated further into the shade of the oasis, kneeled by the pool.
“Yuri,” I whispered, dipping my hand into the coolness of the water. A pebble suddenly danced across the silvery surface. The ripples it made mingled with those my hand had created.
I lifted my head. Yuri stood only a few feet away. He had barely begun to age. His face was still young, skin drawn tight across high cheekbones. His hair was only lightly speckled with silver.
“Yuri,” I whispered again. I ran to him.
AFTER we swam we sat next to each other beneath the palms, our feet in the water. I was intoxicated with joy. Yuri smiled at me and skipped pebbles across the pool. My mind reeled drunkenly and whispered, he’s alive, he’s here with you, and he’ll be with you in a hundred other places at a hundred other times.
Yuri started to whistle a tune, one I had heard from him for as long as I had known him. I pursed my lips and tried to whistle along with him but failed, as I always had.
“You’ll never learn to whistle,” he said. “You’ve had more than two hundred years and you still haven’t figured it out.”
“I will,” I replied. “I’ve done everything else I ever wanted to do and I can’t believe a simple thing like whistling is going to defeat me.”
“You’ll never learn,” he teased.
“I will.”
“You won’t.” He laughed.
I raised my feet, then lowered them forcefully, splashing us both. Yuri let out a yell and I scrambled to my feet, stumbled into my sandals and tried to run. He grabbed me around the waist. “I ought to spank you,” he said. “Instead, I think I’ll kiss you.”
The long kiss was delightful. “But I still say you won’t learn how,” he whispered, eyes twinkling.
I pursed my lips to try again . . . and Yuri disappeared. My time was up. Once more I was thrown and torn.
I was in the cubicle once more.
I left the Time Station and walked home alone.
I BECAME a spendthrift, visiting the Time Station several times a week. Yuri and I met on the steps of a deserted Mayan pyramid; we argued about the mathematical theories of his friend Alney while jungle birds shrieked around us. I packed a few of his favorite foods and wines and met him in a Hawaii still awaiting the arrival of its first inhabitants. We sat together on a high rocky cliff in Africa. Far below us apelike creatures with bone weapons hunted for food.
In my real-time existence I became busy again, working with a group designing dwelling-places inside the enormous trees that surrounded the city. By tinkering with sequoia genes, the biologists had created these gigantic trees hundreds of years before reverse-time travel had been developed. The trunks were partially hollow, and it was possible to live inside them without harming the trees. Because of the pressing housing shortage, the work was considered important.
I would hurry to the Time Station with my sketches of various designs, anxious to ask Yuri for advice or suggestions.
But I had to watch Yuri age, as I had watched before.
Each time I saw him, he was a little older, a little weaker. The fact was that going into the past meant seeing him age all over again. After a while our visits took on a tone of desperation. He grew more cautious about our choice of times and sites, advising me to meet him on deserted island beaches or inside empty summer homes of the twentieth century. Our talks with each other became more careful as I grew afraid of arguing too vigorously with him and thus wasting the little time we had left together. Yuri noticed this and understood what it meant.
“Maybe I was wrong,” Yuri said to me after I showed him the final plans for the tree dwellings. I had been overly animated, trying to be cheerful, ignoring the signs of age that reminded me of his death to come. I couldn’t fool him. We had been together too long for that. “I wanted to make it easier for you to live without me, Nanette. But maybe I made things worse. If I hadn’t planned these visits, possibly,you would have recovered by now . . .”
“Don’t,” I whispered. We were on a ledge near a deserted stretch of beach in southern France, hiding ourselves behind huge boulders from the family picnicking below us. “Don’t worry about me, please.”
“You’ve got to face it. I can’t make too many more of these journeys. I’m growing weaker.”
I tried to say something but my vocal cords seemed locked, frozen inside my throat. The voices of the frolicking children on the beach reached my ears with piercing clarity. I wondered idly if any of them would survive the coming war.
Yuri held my hand, opened his lips to say something else, then vanished. I clutched at the empty air in desperation. “No!” I screamed. “Not yet! Come back!”
I found myself once again at the Time Station.
I had been a spendthrift. Now I became a miser, going to the Station only once or twice a month, trying to stretch out the remaining time I could spend with Yuri. I was no longer working on the tree dwellings. We had finished our designs and now those who enjoyed working with their hands would undertake the construction.
A paralysis seized me. I would spend days alone in my house, unable even to dress myself, wandering from one room to another. I would sleep fitfully, then rise and after sitting idly for hours alone would fall asleep again.
Once I forced myself to walk to the Slumber House and asked them to put me to sleep for a month. I felt no different after awakening but at least I had been able to pass that lonely month in unconsciousness. I went to the Time Station, visited Yuri, returned to the Slumber House, asked for another month of oblivion. When I awoke the second time two men were standing over me shaking their heads. They told me I would have to see a Counselor before they would put me to sleep again.
I had been a Counselor once myself, and I knew all their tricks and wanted none of them. Instead, I trudged home and there waited out the time between my visits.
The back-travel could not go on indefinitely. The list of remaining coordinates grew shorter. At last there was only one set left. I knew I would see Yuri once more only.
WE MET at a lovely summer home that overlooked a picturesque river. It was autumn there and Yuri began to shiver in the cool air. I managed to open the back door. We walked in, careful not to disturb anything.
Yuri lay down on one of the couches. Outside, the thickly wooded area that surrounded the house was bright with color—orange, red, yellow. A half-grown fawn with white spots on his back peered in through a window, then disappeared among the trees.
“Do you regret anything?” Yuri suddenly asked. I sat down on the couch, stroked his white hair and managed a smile.
“Nothing.”
“You’re sure?”
“Yes,” I said, trying to keep my voice from quavering.
“I have one regret—that I didn’t meet you sooner!”
“I know.” We had talked about our first meeting at least a thousand times. The conversation had become a ritual, but we never tired of it. “You were so blatant, Yuri. Coming to my door like that, out of nowhere. I thought you were a little crazy.”
He smiled up at me and repeated what he had said then. “Hello. I’m Yuri Malenkov. A—a friend of mine made me promise to look you up. Do you mind if I join you for a while?”
“And I was so surprised I let you in.”
“And I never left.”
“I know, and you’re still around.” Tears stung my eyes.
“You were the only person I could talk to honestly, right from the beginning.”
By then tears were bathing my cheeks. “Yuri! What will I do now? You can’t leave me. You can’t die again.”
“Why torture yourself?” he whispered. “You don’t have much longer yourself. Haven’t you noticed, darling?”
“What?”
“Get up, Nanette. Look in that mirror over the fireplace.”
I walked over to the mirror, stared into it. The signs were unmistakeable. My black hair was sprinkled with silver. Tiny lines were etched into the skin around my eyes.
“I’m dying,” I said hoarsely. “My body isn’t rejuvenating itself any more!” I felt a sudden rush of panic. Then the fear and confusion vanished, replaced by a deep calm. I hurried back to Yuri’s side.
“It won’t be long,” he said. “Try to do something meaningful with those last months. We’ll be together again soon, if only in death. Just keep thinking of that.”
“All right, Yuri,” I whispered. Then I kissed him for the last time.
WHAT was I to do with the time left to me? I had trained as a Counselor many years before and had worked as one before choosing a new profession. I decided to draw on my old experience to help those who, like myself, faced death.
I found them for the most part unable to accept their fate. They were used to their youthfulness and their full lives, feeling invulnerable to anything except an accident. The suddenness with which old age descended on them drove some to hysteria and they would concoct wild schemes to bring back their youth. One man, a biologist, spoke to me and then decided to spend his last months in the elusive search for immortality. Another man, who had recently fallen in love with a young girl, cried on my shoulder and I didn’t know whether to weep for him or the girl he was leaving behind. A woman came to me, only seventy and already aging, deprived by fluke of throwback-gene of her normal life span. I began to forget about myself in talking with these people.
Occasionally I would walk through the city and visit old friends. My mind was aging also. On these walks I found myself lost in memories of the past, memories clearer to me now than those of more recent events.
I might have gone on that way, if I had not passed the Time Station one warm evening while sorting my thoughts. As I walked by, I saw Onel Lialla, dressed as a technician, looking much the same as when I had known him.
An idea struck me. Within seconds, it had formed itself in my mind and became an obsession. I can do it, I thought, Onel mil not refuse me.
Onel had been a mathematician. He had left the city a long time before and I had heard nothing of him since. I hurried to his side.
“Onel?”
His large dark eyes turned toward me. Uncertainty was written on his classically handsome face. Then he recognized me.
He clasped my arms. He said nothing at first, perhaps embarrassed by the signs of my approaching death. “Your smile hasn’t changed,” he said finally.
We walked toward the park, talking of old times. I was surprised at how little he had changed. He was still courtly, still fancied himself the young knight in shining armor. The dark eyes still paid me homage in spite of my being an old gray-haired woman. Blinded by his innate romanticism Onel saw only what he wished to see.
Twenty years before, barely more than a boy, Onel had fallen in love with me. It had not taken me long to realize that, being a romantic, he did not really wish to attain the object of his affections and had probably unconsciously settled on me because I was so deeply involved with Yuri. Onel was in love with love. He had followed me everywhere, pouring out his heart. I had tried to be kind, not wanting to make him bitter, and had spent as much time as I could in conversation with him about his problems. Onel had finally left the city—“to forget”, as he had put it. I let him go, realizing that this too was part of his romantic game.
Onel not only had not forgotten; he remembered every detail. We sat in the park under one of the crystalline willows and he paid court again. “I’m still grateful for your kindness,” he said to me. “I swore I would repay it someday. If there’s anything I can do for you, I’m yours to command.” He sighed dramatically at this point.
“There is something,” I replied.
“What is it, Nanette?”
Opportunity had fallen right into my lap. “I want you,” I went on, “to come to the Time Station with me. You’re one of the technicians there, aren’t you? Well, send me back to this park two hundred and forty years ago. I want to see the scenes of my youth one last time.” Onel was stunned. “You know I can’t do that! The portal can’t send you to any time you’ve actually lived through. We’d have people bumping into themselves, or going back to give their earlier selves advice. Impossible!”
“The portal can be overridden,” I said. “You know how. Send me through.”
“I can’t, Nanette. Believe me—”
“Onel, I don’t want to change anything. I don’t even want to talk to anybody.”
“If you changed the past . . .”
“I won’t. Why should I? I had a happy life. Besides, I’ll go back to a day when I wasn’t in the park. It would give me a little pleasure before I die to see things as they were. Is that asking too much?”
“I can’t,” he said. “Don’t ask it of me. Please.”
Finally he gave in, as I knew he would. We made our way to the Station. Hands shaking, Onel adjusted a portal and sent me through.
HE HAD given me four hours. I appeared in the park behind a large red refreshment tent. Inside the tent people sat at small round tables enjoying delicacies and occasionally rising to sample the pink wine that flowed from a fountain in the center. As a girl I had cooked in that tent, removing raw foodstuffs from the transformer in the back and spending hours in the kitchen making the desserts, which were my specialty. I had almost forgotten the tents that had been replaced later on by more elaborate structures.
I walked past the red tent toward the lake. It too was as I remembered it, surrounded by oaks and a few weeping willows. Biologists had not yet developed the silvery vines and glittering crystal trees so profuse in later centuries. A peacock strutted past as I headed for a nearby bench. I wanted only to sit for a while near the lake, perhaps visit one of the tents before I returned to my own time.
I watched my feet as I walked, being careful not to stumble. The people in the park ignored me, probably annoyed by the presence of an old woman who reminded them of their eventual fate. Once I had been like them, avoiding those who so obviously would soon be dead, uncomfortable around those who were dying when I had everything ahead of me.
Suddenly a face was in front of me and I collided with a muscular young body. Unable to regain my balance, I fell.
A hand was held out to me. I grasped it and struggled upright. “I’m terribly sorry,” said a voice, a voice I had come to know well, and I looked up at the face with its wide cheekbones and clear blue eyes.
“Yuri!” I blurted.
He was startled. “Do I know you?” he asked.
“I attended one of your lectures,” I said quickly, “on holographic art.”
He seemed to relax a bit. “I’ve only given one,” he said. “Last week. I’m surprised you remember my name.”
“Do you think,” I said, anxious now to hang on to him for a while, “you could help me over to that bench?”
“You bet.” I hobbled over to it, clinging to his arm. By the time we sat down he was already expanding on points he had covered in the lecture. He was apparently unconcerned about my obvious aging and seemed happy to talk to me.
A thought struck me like a blow: Yuri had not yet met my past self. I had never attended that first lecture—I met him just before he was to do his second. Desperately I tried to remember the date I had given Onel.
I had not counted on this. I was jumpy, worried that I would indeed change something, that by meeting Yuri in the park in this fashion I might somehow prevent his meeting me in the future. I shuddered. I knew little of the circumstances that had brought him to my door. I could somehow be interfering with them.
Yuri finished what he had to say and waited for my reaction. “You have some interesting insights,” I said. “I’m looking forward to your next lecture.” I smiled and nodded, hoping that he would now leave and go about his business.
Instead he looked at me thoughtfully. “I don’t know if I’ll give any more lectures,” he said.
My stomach turned over. I knew he had given ten more. “Why not?” I asked as calmly as I could.
He shrugged. “Lots of reasons,” he muttered.
“Maybe,” I said in desperation, “you should talk about it. That might help.” Hurriedly I dredged up all the techniques I had learned as a Counselor, carefully questioning him, until at last he opened up, flooding me with his fears and worries.
He became the Yuri I remembered, with an intense and warm sensitivity he concealed under a cold, flippant exterior. He had grown tired of the superficiality of most of the city’s citizens, uncomfortable because so many resented his awareness and penetration. He was unsuited to the gaiety and playfulness that surrounded him, wanting to pursue whatever he did with single-minded devotion.
He looked embarrassed after telling me all this, began once more to withdraw behind his shield. “I have some tentative plans,” he said calmly, regaining control. “I may be leaving here in a couple of days with one of the scientific expeditions to Venus. I prefer the company of dedicated people, and I’ve been offered a place on the ship.”
My hands trembled. Neither of us had gone with an expedition until five years after our meeting.
“I’m sorry for bothering you with my problems,” he went on. “I don’t usually inflict them on strangers, or anyone else for that matter. I’d better be on my way.”
He stood up, started to walk off. Why hadn’t I thought of it before? I knew what I had to do. “Wait!” I cried. “Wait a minute. Do you think you could humor an old lady, maybe take some advice?”
“It depends,” he said stiffly, “on the advice.”
“I think you need some proper company before you go on that expedition. Do you think you could visit a girl I think might enjoy talking to you?”
His chin lifted. He had the normal reflexes, as well I knew. “A girl? Is she pretty?”
I ducked that one. “She’s a lot like you. You’d find her sympathetic.” I told him where I had lived then and gave him my name. “But don’t let on that an old lady sent you—she might think I’m meddling. Just say it was a friend.” He smiled. “I promise.” He turned to leave. “Thank you, friend.” I watched him as he ambled down the pebbled path that would lead him to my door.
