Time Travel Omnibus, page 668
And he was a pusher himself. He didn’t care for pullers. He agreed with the sentiment expressed by Marian, shortly after lift-off. Marian had just finished her first ground leave after her first voyage. So naturally she was the drunkest of them all.
“Gravity sucks,” she said, and threw up.
It was three months to Amity, and three months back. He hadn’t the foggiest idea of how far it was in miles; after the tenth or eleventh zero his mind clicked off.
Amity. Shit City. He didn’t even get off the ship. Why bother? The planet was peopled with things that looked a little like ten-ton caterpillars and a little like sentient green turds. Toilets were a revolutionary idea to the Amiti; so were ice cream bars, sherbets, sugar donuts, and peppermint. Plumbing had never caught on, but sweets had, and fancy desserts from every nation on Earth. In addition, there was a pouch of reassuring mail for the forlorn human embassy. The cargo for the return trip was some grayish sludge that Ian supposed someone on Earth found tremendously valuable, and a packet of desperate mail for the folks back home. Ian didn’t need to read the letters to know what was in them. They could all be summed up as “Get me out of here!”
He sat at the viewport and watched an Amiti family lumbering and farting its way down the spaceport road. They paused every so often to do something that looked like an alien cluster-fuck. The road was brown. The land around it was brown, and in the distance were brown, unremarkable hills. There was a brown haze in the air, and the sun was yellow-brown.
He thought of castles perched on mountains of glass, of Princes and Princesses, of shining white horses galloping among the stars.
He spent the return trip just as he had on the way out: sweating down in the gargantuan pipes of the stardrive. Just beyond the metal walls unimaginable energies pulsed. And on the walls themselves, tiny plasmoids grew into bigger plasmoids. The process was too slow to see, but if left unchecked the encrustations would soon impair the engines. His job was to scrape them off.
Not everyone was cut out to be an astrogator.
And what of it? It was honest work. He had made his choices long ago. You spent your life either pulling gees or pushing c. And when you got tired, you grabbed some z’s. If there was a pushers’ code, that was it.
The plasmoids were red and crystalline, teardrop-shaped. When he broke them free of the walls, they had one flat side. They were full of a liquid light that felt as hot as the center of the sun.
It was always hard to get off the ship. A lot of pushers never did. One day, he wouldn’t either.
He stood for a few moments looking at it all. It was necessary to soak it in passively at first, get used to the changes. Big changes didn’t bother him. Buildings were just the world’s furniture, and he didn’t care how it was arranged. Small changes worried the shit out of him. Ears, for instance. Very few of the people he saw had earlobes. Each time he returned he felt a little more like an ape who has fallen from his tree. One day he’d return to find everybody had three eyes or six fingers, or that little girls no longer cared to hear stories of adventure.
He stood there, dithering, getting used to the way people were painting their faces, listening to what sounded like Spanish being spoken all around him. Occasional English or Arabic words seasoned it. He grabbed a crewmate’s arm and asked him where they were. The man didn’t know. So he asked the captain, and she said it was Argentina, or it had been when they left.
The phone booths were smaller. He wondered why.
There were four names in his book. He sat there facing the phone, wondering which name to call first. His eyes were drawn to Radiant Shiningstar Smith, so he punched that name into the phone. He got a number and an address in Novosibirsk.
Checking the timetable he had picked—putting off making the call—he found the antipodean shuttle left on the hour. Then he wiped his hands on his pants and took a deep breath and looked up to see her standing outside the phone booth. They regarded each other silently for a moment. She saw a man much shorter than she remembered, but powerfully built, with big hands and shoulders and a pitted face that would have been forbidding but for the gentle eyes. He saw a tall woman around forty years old who was fully as beautiful as he had expected she would be. The hand of age had just begun to touch her. He thought she was fighting that waistline and fretting about those wrinkles, but none of that mattered to him. Only one thing mattered, and he would know it soon enough.
“You are Ian Haise, aren’t you?” she said, at last.
“It was sheer luck I remembered you again,” she was saying. He noted the choice of words. She could have said coincidence.
“It was two years ago. We were moving again and I was sorting through some things and I came across that plasmoid. I hadn’t thought about you in . . . oh, it must have been fifteen years.”
He said something noncommittal. They were in a restaurant, away from most of the other patrons, at a booth near a glass wall beyond which spaceships were being trundled to and from the blast pits.
“I hope I didn’t get you into trouble,” he said.
She shrugged it away.
“You did, some, but that was so long ago. I certainly wouldn’t bear a grudge that long. And the fact is, I thought it was all worth it at the time.”
She went on to tell him of the uproar he had caused in her family, of the visits by the police, the interrogation, puzzlement, and final helplessness. No one knew quite what to make of her story. They had identified him quickly enough, only to find he had left Earth, not to return for a long, long time.
“I didn’t break any laws,” he pointed out.
“That’s what no one could understand. I told them you had talked to me and told me a long story, and then I went to sleep. None of them seemed interested in what the story was about. So I didn’t tell them. And I didn’t tell them about the . . . the Starstone.” She smiled. “Actually, I was relieved they hadn’t asked. I was determined not to tell them, but I was a little afraid of holding it all back. I thought they were agents of the . . . who were the villains in your story? I’ve forgotten.”
“It’s not important.”
“I guess not. But something is.”
“Yes.”
“Maybe you should tell me what it is. Maybe you can answer the question that’s been in the back of my mind for twenty-five years, ever since I found out that thing you gave me was just the scrapings from a starship engine.”
“Was it?” he said, looking into her eyes. “Don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying it was more than that. I’m asking you if it wasn’t more.”
“Yes, I guess it was more,” she said, at last.
“I’m glad.”
“I believed in that story passionately for . . . oh, years and years. Then I stopped believing it.”
“All at once?”
“No. Gradually. It didn’t hurt much. Part of growing up, I guess.”
“And you remembered me.”
“Well, that took some work. I went to a hypnotist when I was twenty-five and recovered your name and the name of your ship. Did you know—”
“Yes. I mentioned them on purpose.”
She nodded, and they fell silent again. When she looked at him now, he saw more sympathy, less defensiveness. But there was still a question.
“Why?” she said.
He nodded, then looked away from her, out to the starships. He wished he was on one of them, pushing c. It wasn’t working. He knew it wasn’t. He was a weird problem to her, something to get straightened out, a loose end in her life that would irritate until it was made to fit in, then be forgotten.
To hell with it.
“Hoping to get laid,” he said. When he looked up she was slowly shaking her head back and forth.
“Don’t trifle with me, Haise. You’re not as stupid as you look. You knew I’d be married, leading my own life. You knew I wouldn’t drop it all because of some half-remembered fairy tale thirty years ago. Why?”
And how could he explain the strangeness of it all to her?”
“What do you do?” He recalled something, and rephrased it. “Who are you?”
She looked startled. “I’m a mysteliologist.”
He spread his hands. “I don’t even know what that is.”
“Come to think of it, there was no such thing when you left.”
“That’s it, in a way,” he said. He felt helpless again. “Obviously, I had no way of knowing what you’d do, what you’d become, what would happen to you that you had no control over. All I was gambling on was that you’d remember me. Because that way . . .” He saw the planet Earth looming once more out the viewport. So many, many years and only six months later. A planet full of strangers. It didn’t matter that Amity was full of strangers. But Earth was home, if that word still had any meaning for him.
“I wanted somebody my own age I could talk to,” he said. “That’s all. All I want is a friend.”
He could see her trying to understand what it was like. She wouldn’t, but maybe she’d come close enough to think she did.
“Maybe you’ve found one,” she said, and smiled. “At least I’m willing to get to know you, considering the effort you’ve put into this.”
“It wasn’t much effort. It seems so long-term to you, but it wasn’t to me. I held you on my lap six months ago.”
“How long is your leave?” she asked.
Two months.”
“Would you like to come stay with us for a while? We have room in our house.”
“Will your husband mind?”
“Neither my husband nor my wife. That’s them sitting over there, pretending to ignore us.” Ian looked, caught the eye of a woman in her late twenties. She was sitting across from a man Ian’s age, who now turned and looked at Ian with some suspicion but no active animosity. The woman smiled; the man reserved judgment.
Radiant had a wife. Well, times change.
“Those two in the red skirts are police,” Radiant was saying. “So is that man over by the wall, and the one at the end of the bar.”
“I spotted two of them,” Ian said. When she looked surprised, he said, “Cops always have a look about them. That’s one of the things that don’t change.”
“You go back quite a ways, don’t you? I’ll bet you have some good stories.”
Ian thought about it, and nodded. “Some, I suppose.”
“I should tell the police they can go home. I hope you don’t mind that we brought them in.”
“Of course not.”
“I’ll do that, and then we can go. Oh, and I guess I should call the children and tell them we’ll be home soon.” She laughed, reached across the table and touched his hand. “See what can happen in six months? I have three children, and Gillian has two.”
He looked up, interested.
“Are any of them girls?”
FISH NIGHT
Joe R. Lansdale
IT WAS A BLEACHED-BONE AFTERNOON WITH A CLOUDLESS SKY and a monstrous sun. The air trembled like a mass of gelatinous ectoplasm. No wind blew.
Through the swelter came a worn, black Plymouth, coughing and belching white smoke from beneath its hood. It wheezed twice, backfired loudly, died by the side of the road.
The driver got out and went around to the hood. He was a man in the hard winter years of life, with dead brown hair and a heavy belly riding his hips. His shirt was open to the navel, the sleeves rolled up past his elbows. The hair on his chest and arms was gray.
A younger man climbed out on the passenger side, went around front too. Yellow sweat-explosions stained the pits of his white shirt. An unfastened, striped tie was draped over his neck like a pet snake that had died in its sleep.
“Well?” the younger man said.
The old man said nothing. He opened the hood. A calliope note of steam blew out from the radiator in a white puff, rose to the sky, turned clear.
“Damn,” the old man said, and he kicked the bumper of the Plymouth as if he were kicking a foe in the teeth. He got little satisfaction out of the action, just a nasty scuff on his brown wingtip and a jar to his ankle that hurt like hell.
“Well?” the young man repeated.
“Well what? What do you think? Dead as the can-opener trade this week. Deader. The radiator’s chickenpocked with holes.”
“Maybe someone will come by and give us a hand.”
“Sure.”
“A ride anyway.”
“Keep thinking that, college boy.”
“Someone is bound to come along,” the young man said.
“Maybe. Maybe not. Who else takes these cutoffs? The main highway, that’s where everyone is. Not this little no account shortcut.” He finished by glaring at the young man.
“I didn’t make you take it,” the young man snapped. “It was on the map. I told you about it, that’s all. You chose it. You’re the one that decided to take it. It’s not my fault. Besides, who’d have expected the car to die?”
“I did tell you to check the water in the radiator, didn’t I? Wasn’t that back as far as El Paso?”
“I checked. It had water then. I tell you, it’s not my fault. You’re the one that’s done all the Arizona driving.”
“Yeah, yeah,” the old man said, as if this were something he didn’t want to hear. He turned to look up the highway.
No cars. No trucks. Just heat waves and miles of empty concrete in sight.
They seated themselves on the hot ground with their backs to the car. That way it provided some shade–but not much. They sipped on a jug of lukewarm water from the Plymouth and spoke little until the sun fell down. By then they had both mellowed a bit. The heat had vacated the sands and the desert chill had settled in. Where the warmth had made the pair snappy, the cold drew them together.
The old man buttoned his shirt and rolled down his sleeves while the young man rummaged a sweater out of the backseat. He put the sweater on, sat back down. “I’m sorry about this,” he said suddenly.
“Wasn’t your fault. Wasn’t anyone’s fault. I just get to yelling sometime, taking out the can-opener trade on everything but the can-openers and myself. The days of the door-to-door salesman are gone, son.”
“And I thought I was going to have an easy summer job,” the young man said.
The old man laughed. “Bet you did. They talk a good line, don’t they?”
“I’ll say!”
“Make it sound like found money, but there ain’t no found money, boy. Ain’t nothing simple in this world. The company is the only one ever makes any money. We just get tireder and older with more holes in our shoes. If I had any sense I’d have quit years ago. All you got to make is this summer—”
“Maybe not that long.”
“Well, this is all I know. Just town after town, motel after motel, house after house, looking at people through screen wire while they shake their heads No. Even the cockroaches at the sleazy motels begin to look like little fellows you’ve seen before, like maybe they’re door-to-door peddlers that have to rent rooms too.”
The young man chuckled. “You might have something there.”
They sat quietly for a moment, welded in silence. Night had full grip on the desert now. A mammoth gold moon and billions of stars cast a whitish glow from eons away.
The wind picked up. The sand shifted, found new places to lie down. The undulations of it, slow and easy, were reminiscent of the midnight sea. The young man, who had crossed the Atlantic by ship once, said as much.
“The sea?” the old man replied. “Yes, yes, exactly like that. I was thinking the same. That’s part of the reason it bothers me. Part of why I was stirred up this afternoon. Wasn’t just the heat doing it. There are memories of mine out here,” he nodded at the desert, “and they’re visiting me again.”
The young man made a face. “I don’t understand.”
“You wouldn’t. You shouldn’t. You’d think I’m crazy.”
“I already think you’re crazy. So tell me.”
The old man smiled. “All right, but don’t you laugh.”
“I won’t.”
A moment of silence moved in between them. Finally the old man said, “It’s fish night, boy. Tonight’s the full moon and this is the right part of the desert if memory serves me, and the feel is right–I mean, doesn’t the night feel like it’s made up of some fabric, that it’s different from other nights, that it’s like being inside a big dark bag, the sides sprinkled with glitter, a spotlight at the top, at the open mouth, to serve as a moon?”
“You lost me.”
The old man sighed. “But it feels different. Right? You can feel it too, can’t you?”
“I suppose. Sort of thought it was just the desert air. I’ve never camped out in the desert before, and I guess it is different.”
“Different, all right. You see, this is the road I got stranded on twenty years back. I didn’t know it at first, least not consciously. But down deep in my gut I must have known all along I was taking this road, tempting fate, offering it, as the football people say, an instant replay.”
“I still don’t understand about fish night. What do you mean, you were here before?”
“Not this exact spot, somewhere along in here. This was even less of a road back then than it is now. The Navajos were about the only ones who traveled it. My car conked out like this one today, and I started walking instead of waiting. As I walked the fish came out. Swimming along in the starlight pretty as you please. Lots of them. All the colors of the rainbow. Small ones, big ones, thick ones, thin ones. Swam right up to me . . . right through me! Fish just as far as you could see. High up and low down to the ground.
“Hold on boy. Don’t start looking at me like that. Listen: You’re a college boy, you know what was here before we were, before we crawled out of the sea and changed enough to call ourselves men. Weren’t we once just slimy things, brothers to the things that swim?”
“I guess, but—”
“Millions and millions of years ago this desert was a sea bottom. Maybe even the birthplace of man. Who knows? I read that in some science books. And I got to thinking this: If the ghosts of people who have lived can haunt houses, why can’t the ghosts of creatures long dead haunt where they once lived, float about in a ghostly sea?”
