Time Travel Omnibus, page 629
He’d never kept records before, except in his head. But it was a good idea; now that his later self had thought of it, he’d continue it. No, he’d begin it. He laughed, and then he didn’t laugh. He’d begin it because he’d found it; when and how was the actual beginning? He grappled with the idea of circular causation, then shrugged and accepted what he couldn’t fully understand—like it or not, it was there. He looked again at the card, at the signposts on his zigzag trail.
A short time, this one, ending a few days after the wedding. Then about seven months of being twenty and back in college; probably it would be when he found the sense to quit that farcical situation, in which he knew more of many things than his instructors did, but very little of what his exams would cover. He looked forward to seeing his parents again, not only alive but in good health. They’d nag him for quitting school, but he could jolly them out of that.
And next—no, he’d look at it again later; Judy would be getting impatient. A quick look at the other side. Below the key was printed First Mutual Savings and the bank’s address. The key was numbered: 1028. So there was more information in a safety-deposit box. He’d look at it, first chance he got.
He put on a robe and slippers; the last time with Judy, in 1972-73, her freedom from the nudity taboo was still new and strange to her. Shuffling along the hall toward breakfast, he wondered how the record he’d just seen was lost, wiped out, between now and that time. Did he later, in some time between, change his mind—decide the knowledge was more harm than help? He came to the kitchen and to Judy, with whom he’d lived twice as husband, but never met.
“Morning, honey.” He moved to kiss her. The kiss was brief; she stepped back.
“Your eggs are getting cold. I put them on when I heard the water stop running. There’s a cover on them, but still . . . what took you so long, Larry?”
“It took a while to think myself awake, I guess.” Looking at her, he ate with little heed to temperature or flavour. She hadn’t changed much, going the other way. Red-gold hair was pinned up loosely into a swaying, curly mass instead of hanging straight, and of course she was bundled in a bulky robe rather than moving lithely unencumbered. But she had the same face, the same ways, so different from his first time with her. That was in the late, quarrelling stages, five years away, when she drank heavily and was fat, and divorce was not far off. He did not know what went so wrong in so short a time between. Now at the start, or close to it, he wished he could somehow rescue the fat drunk.
“More coffee, Larry? And you haven’t even looked at the paper.”
“Yes. Thanks. I will, now.” Damn! He had to get on track better, and fast. “Well . . . what’s new today?”
He didn’t care, really. He couldn’t; he knew, in large, how the crises and calamities of 1970 looked in diminishing perspective. The paper’s only use was to orient him—to tell him where in the middle of the movie he was, what he should and should not know. And today, as on the first day of any time, he looked first for the exact date. September 16, 1970. His wedding was six weeks and three days ahead of him, on Halloween. And this day was Wednesday; the bank would be open.
As if on cue, she asked, “Anything special you need to do today?”
“Not much. I want to drop in at the bank, though. Something I want to check on.” That was safe; she’d know about the bank. He kept only essential secrets. “Anything you’d like me to pick up at the groshry?” He remembered to use their joke-pronunciation.
“I’ll look. I have a couple of things on the list, but they’re not urgent.”
“Okay. Come here a minute first, though.” Short and still slim, she fit well on his lap, as she had two years later. The kisses became longer.
Then she pulled back. “Larry. Are you sure?”
“Sure of what?” He tried to bring her to him, but she resisted, so he relaxed his grip. “Something on your mind, Judy?”
“Yes. Are you sure you want to get married again, so soon after . . .?”
“Darlene?”
“I know you had a hideous time, Larry, and—well, don’t get on that horse again just to prove you’re not afraid to.”
He laughed and tightened his hold; this time she came close to him. “Proving things isn’t my bag, Judy. To myself, or to anybody.”
“Then why do you want to marry me, when you have me already? You don’t have to—all you have to do is not change, stay the same for me. So why, Larry?”
“Just old-fashioned, I guess.” It was hard to kiss and laugh at the same time, carrying her to the bedroom. But he managed, and so did she, her part.
She got up first; the ‘groshry’ list was ready when he was dressed to leave. Their goodbye kiss was soft.
Downstairs, he recognised the car with pleasure—a year old Volvo he knew from two and five years later; it was even more agile and responsive now.
The drive to the bank gave him time to think.
In his early time-years the skips were small, a day or two, and his young consciousness took them for bad dreams—to wake with unfamiliar sensations, body changed and everything out of size. Much later, waking in a hospital, he learned they were real.
“Do you use drugs, Mr. Garth?”
“No, I don’t.” A little grass now and then wasn’t ‘drugs.’ “I’d like to know why I’m here.”
“So would we. You were found lying helpless, unable to talk or co-ordinate your movements. Like a baby, Mr. Garth. Do you have any explanation, any pertinent medical history?”
So this is where I was, he thought. “No. I’ve been under a lot of pressure.” That was probably safe to say, though he didn’t know his body-age or circumstances. But in some thirty consciousness-years he’d learned to keep cover while he got his bearings in a new time. And eventually, as he hoped and expected, they told him most of what he needed to know about himself, and let him go. As sometimes happened, his research into the parameters of now was largely wasted; the time lasted only a dozen or so days. But the waste was not total, for when the following time came to him, he would still remember.
Once as a four-year-old he woke to middle age and panicked, screaming for his mother. He remembered being taken to the hospital that time, and did not look forward with pleasure to waking in it. But what had been would be. And he was certain there was at least one more infancy skip to be lived down someday.
At first he did not talk of these things in ‘home’ time because he had no speech. Then he remained silent because he thought it was the same for everyone. And finally he kept his counsel because he realised no one could help or understand, or even believe.
Once in his seventh consciousness-year he woke with a throbbing joy at his groin; the woman beside him overrode his bewilderment and fulfilled his unrealised need. It was a time of a single day, and he hadn’t seen her again. He didn’t know the time-year or where he was, but he knew enough to say very little. He kept the situation as simple as possible by saying he was tired and didn’t feel well, remembering just in time that grownups say they’re not going to work today—he almost said school. He got away with it, and his confidence improved.
There were other dislocations from his early time-years, but none major until he went to sleep aged nineteen and woke to spend seven months as a forty-year-old man, twice-divorced. He wondered what was wrong, that twice he had failed in marriage. His unattached state simplified his adjustment, but after a time he became convinced that he’d lost twenty years and was cheated. But the next skip was to an earlier time, and then he began to know the way of his life.
The changes came always during sleep, except for the one that came at death. He didn’t know how old he died; his brain’s constricted arteries would not maintain an attention-span of any useful length. Inside him, his brief thoughts were lucid, but still the effect was of senility. How old, though? Well, he’d once had a year that included his seventieth birthday and golf, an operation for cataracts, a lawsuit successfully defended and a reasonably satisfying state of potency. So when he came to the last, he knew he was damned old.
Having died, he still feared death. It would be merely a different way of ending. For he had no clear idea how much of his life had been lived, back and forth in bits and pieces. One day he would use up the last unlived segment, and then . . . he supposed he simply wouldn’t wake up. At his best estimate, he had lived something less than half his allotted time-years. He couldn’t be sure, for much of his earlier conscious time was unmeasured.
Dying itself was not terrible; even his senile brain knew he had not yet filled all the blank spaces of his life. The pain was bad, as his heart fought and for a time would neither function nor gracefully succumb, but he had felt worse pain. His mind lost focus, and came clear only for a few seconds at the end. He died curious, wondering what might come next.
It was the other book end; the circle closed. He was trapped, constricted, pushed. Pressured and convulsed, slowly and painfully. Finally cold air reached his head and bright light stabbed at his eyes; at the consciousness-age of perhaps thirty, he was born. Except for the forgotten instinctive rapture of feeding, he found the new-born state unpleasant.
Filling early skips involuntarily, he dipped twice again into infancy. The first time bored him almost to apathy; he could neither see clearly nor move well. The second time, better-learned, he concentrated on his wide-open senses, trying to understand the infant condition. He found the experience instructive, but still was glad when next he woke adult.
Relationships with others were ever difficult; always he came in at the middle of the second feature, unsure of what had gone before, and of correct responses to people he was supposed to know. He learned to simulate a passive streak that was not his by nature so that his friends would accept the quiet necessary to each new learning period. He cheated no one by this small deceit; it was as much for their benefit as his. And while he stayed in one time, at rest between zigzag flights, his friends and lovers—and their feelings—were real to him, of genuine concern. When he met them again, before of afterward, it pained him that they could not also know and rejoice in the reunion.
Early in his experience he sometimes fumbled such reunions. Now he knew how to place the time and adjust his mental files to produce only acceptable knowledge for the year.
There was no way he could pursue a conventional career with organisational status and seniority, and at the end of it a pension. Hell, he couldn’t even finish college. Luckily, at his first major change, when he skipped from nineteen to forty, he found himself a published author of fiction. He read several of his works and enjoyed them. In later times, half-remembering, he wrote them, and then others that he had not read. His writings never hinted at the way of his own life, but a reviewer said of them: ‘Garth presents a unique viewpoint, as though he saw life from a different angle.’
It was a strange life, he thought. How did they manage it? Living and seeing solely from one view that plodded along a line and saw only one consecutive past.
So that they could never, ever understand him. Or he, them.
He had attuned so easily to the car and the locality, hands and feet automatically adjusting to four-on-the-floor and quick brakes and steering that, daydreaming, he nearly drove past the turnoff to First Mutual Savings. But from the right-hand lane, braking and signalling quickly, he made his turn without difficulty. He found a slot at the end of a parking row, well away from the adjacent car in case its driver was a door-crasher.
He didn’t know the bank, so he walked in slowly and loitered, looking around with care. The safety-deposit counter was to his left; he approached it. On it, a marker read ‘Leta Travers’; behind the desk was a grey-haired woman, spectacularly coifed, who wore marriage rings. He couldn’t remember how people in this suburb in this time addressed each other in business dealings. Well, it couldn’t be too important . . .
“Good morning, Mrs. Travers.”
She came to the counter. “Mr. Garth. Going to change your will again?”
What the hell! No; she was smiling; it must be a ‘family joke.’ Damn, though; how had he later come to set up such a stupid thing? He knew better than that, now.
Well, go along with it. “Yep. Going to leave all my millions to the home for retired tomcats.” But he’d have to kill this for later, or else change banks. Or some next-time, off-guard, it could be bad. Maybe that’s why he dropped the records . . . wait and see.
Leta Travers led him to the aseptic dungeon, where their two keys together opened Box 1028. Saying the usual polite things, she left him to its contents.
The envelope was on top. He didn’t like the label: This Is Your Life with his signature below. That was show-off stuff. Or dumbhead drunk. He’d brought a pen; with it, he scribbled the designation into garble. He thought, then wrote: Superannuated; For Reference Only. He repeated the phrase subvocally, to fix it in his mind.
He unfolded the envelope’s contents and was impressed. There were two major parts, plus some side-trivia he could study later. The last looked interesting, but it had waited and could wait awhile longer.
First was an expanded version of the card in his wallet: a chronology of his consciousness, more exactly dated than he could verify from memory. Somehow, later, he’d checked these things more closely. He couldn’t imagine how to do it. Or maybe, along with the dumbhead labelling, he had taken to putting exact dates to inexact recalls. He didn’t like to think of his mind going so flyblown, and determined to watch against such tendencies.
He skimmed without going deeply into memory. The list seemed accurate; he’d have to look more closely later. The second paper described his life from a different aspect: by time-years it showed the parts he’d had and what he’d known and guessed of what had gone between. At the back was a summary in chart form.
Both parts went well past his own experience, as the card had done. He looked at the first and read, after the college section: ‘February 6, 1987, through March 4, 1992. Three years wonderful with Elaine and the others, then two so terrible as she died and afterward. She died November 10, 1990, and we are alone.”
He could not read any more; he couldn’t make sense of it. Elaine—how could she die so soon? He was counting on her, someday, for a lot of good years: now and then, as it would happen. Suddenly he could see a reason for destroying records—he’d rather not know the end of Elaine. But obviously he hadn’t thought that way afterward, or the papers wouldn’t be here before him. Something else must happen, later, to change his mind.
He knew Elaine from two times: first when their matured marriage was joined fully to that of Frank and Rhonda. Only two months then. And later, starting when they were six months married, he had the next year and a few months more. And she was the person he most wanted, most loved . . . and most missed.
He couldn’t take any more of it, not yet. He needed to study and memorise the record, but not here, not now. Well, Judy wasn’t nosy; he could take it home. He put the envelope in a pocket. Everything else went back in the lock-box; he pushed it in to click its assurance of security. All right; time to go.
At the counter he thanked Mrs. Travers. “And I’ve decided to leave my will alone from now on,” he said. “The retired tomcats will just have to do the best they can.”
She laughed, as he’d hoped she would. “Well, whatever you say, Mr. Garth.”
“True,” he said, “it’s my nickel, isn’t it? Well, then . . . see you again, Mrs. Travers, and thank you.”
He walked toward the door.
The black-haired girl walked by as he came out to the sidewalk, and before he could think, he called to her. “Elaine!”
She turned, frantically he tried to think of a non-incriminating excuse. But her eyes went wide, and her arms; she ran to him and he could not resist her embrace. “Larry! Oh, Larry!”
“Uh—I guess I made a mistake,” he said. His mind churned uselessly. “Perfectly natural. I guess I do look like a lot of other people.”
She shook her head, scattering the tears that leaked onto her lashes. “No mistake, Larry.” Her hands gripped his upper arms; he could feel the nails digging in. “Oh, think of it! You too, Larry! You too!”
His mind literally reeled; he felt dizzy. He breathed deeply, and again, and a third time. “Yes,” he said. “Look. Elaine—let’s go someplace quiet and have a coffee or a drink or something. We’ve got to talk.”
“Oh, yes! We have to talk—more than any other two people in the world.”
They found a small bar, quiet and dimly lit, and sat at a corner table. Three men occupied adjacent stools at the bar; across the room a couple talked quietly. The bartender, scowling in concentration, mixed something in a tall glass.
Larry looked at Elaine, ten years younger than he had ever seen her. She aged well, he thought; the little lines at the corners of her eyes hadn’t advanced much by the time they were married. The grey eyes themselves did not change, and the line of her chin was durable. The black hair was longer than he’d seen it; the few threads of grey were yet to appear. He could close his eyes and see the slim body under her bright dress; he felt desire, but remotely. More important now were things of the mind—of both their minds.
The bartender was coming to their table. “Vermouth on the rocks?” Larry said. “You always like that.”
