Time Travel Omnibus, page 704
But now they were free of the surface breeze and climbing vertically. Even in his rigidly suppressed panic Charley was observing, judging. They rose but more and more slowly until—just higher than the flat tops of the enormous bridge towers—they stopped and through several moments hung absolutely motionless not six feet from the northern tower of the bridge and nearly level with its top. Far below the cars had shrunk t& miniatures, the six-lane roadway to the width of a man’s hand. Around them the air lay still and unmoving through a dozen heartbeats while they held their breaths. Then they felt the air stir infinitesimally, and ever so slowly it began to move them not seaward but back toward the bridge and for an instant Charley closed his eyes in relief. Then he opened them quickly to grin at Mrs. Lanidas and after a moment she smiled back.
Almost precisely even with the level top of the bridge tower, they drifted slowly toward it and would have bumped gently into it if Charley hadn’t fended them off with his free arm. For a moment the flat top of the great bridge tower lay directly before them like a moonlit table top, their knees almost touching it. Inspired by the excitement of relief, Charley reached overhead and rubbed a finger across the base of the kerosene brazier. It came away blackened with soot and he leaned forward slightly and in the moonlight wrote “C.B.” on the very top of the northern tower of the Golden Gate Bridge. He looked at it for a moment—proudly, smiling—then glanced at Mrs. Lanidas, and she reached up to the brazier, then wrote “E.L.” just under his initials. Once more Mrs. Lanidas rubbed her finger through the soot of the brazier, reached out to the tower, and began to draw something—a circle, an oval, or something else—around the set of initials. But what it was to be Charley never knew because the breeze had them again now, their moment of motionlessness over, and they moved on across the bridge leaving their initials on its very top to the eternal mystification of the steeplejacks who painted it.
They were out over the Bay moving high above it in a wide arc that was carrying them, Charley saw, north toward the Marin County shoreline again. Off to the right lay the shining city and they stared down at it in awe. Its lights were scattered thinly now, most of the city asleep. But they picked out the floodlighted front of the Fairmont Hotel and, directly across from it at their own eye level, the huge windows of the Top of the Mark. Far to the south they saw Market Street angling across the city, the great dark rectangle of Golden Gate Park, and the whole maplike crisscrossing of San Francisco’s streets rising over and then slipping down its hills. And they heard—very clearly—the toylike cling-clang of a cable-car bell.
Then they were across the shoreline moving almost due north in a straight line which, Charley saw, would intersect their mile-and-a-half-long east-and-west street. Almost sleepily now, they simply sat waiting until they should reach it. Presently, when he recognized the curving pattern of lighted dots ahead which were the lamps of their street, they moved along it, following the curving white center line toward home.
In the morning Charley’s wife and daughter were back again, the house alive and happy once more. In the days, then weeks, then months that followed, he thought of his balloon packed away in the garage, and of using it again. But he never did and presently he realized that, alone no longer, he wasn’t going to; that he’d had what he wanted from it and needed no more. And that, in fact, his flight in the balloon could not ever really be repeated. He thought of showing the balloon to his wife and of telling her what had happened. But he realized that he wasn’t sure he knew what had happened; that what had happened was very little a matter of fact and almost entirely a matter of emotion for which he had no words.
He didn’t see Mrs. Lanidas again for six months. Then he was at a P.T.A. meeting, and, the meeting over, the parents standing in the corridor chatting, Charley stood beside his wife who was talking to someone. He’d spoken politely to a number of people whom he saw nowhere else but here. His wife had introduced him to still others. Now he stood absently waiting, wanting to go home and have a drink. When his wife touched his arm, saying, “Charley, I want you to meet”—he turned with an automatic smile as she finished—“Mrs. Lanidas, from our street.”
For a moment Charley stood looking at her knowing that, factually speaking, this was Mrs. Lanidas. Yet it wasn’t at all. This was no laughing girl in a black leotard, sailing through the sky and the night as the wind rippled her hair. This was a mother of small children with the first lines in her face, all dressed up in a hat, good dress, dark coat, and wearing a girdle. Charley nodded pleasantly. “Oh, yes,” he said politely, “I’ve met Mrs. Lanidas.”
At the absurdity of this, she smiled, and for a moment—eyes warm, almost mischievous—she was a girl once more. Speaking to both of them, but her hand rising to touch Charley’s sleeve, she said, “Not Mrs. Lanidas. Call me Josephine.”
Out in the dark schoolyard as they got into their car, Charley’s wife said, “Now, why did she say that? I’m almost certain her name isn’t Josephine. I think it’s Edna.
But Charley didn’t answer. Sliding under the steering wheel he simply shrugged, smiling a little, and, half under his breath, he continued his whistling of an old, old tune.
THE TIME DISEASE
Martin Amis
Twenty-twenty, and the time disease is epidemic. In my credit group, anyway. And yours too, friend, unless I miss my guess. Nobody thinks about anything else anymore. Nobody even pretends to think about anything else anymore. Oh yeah, except the sky, of course. The poor sky . . . It’s a thing. It’s a situation. We all think about time, catching time, coming down with time. I’m still okay, I think, for the time being.
I took out my hand mirror. Everybody carries at least one hand mirror now. On the zip trains you see whole carloads jackknifed over in taut scrutiny of their hairlines and eye sockets. The anxiety is as electric as the twanging cable above our heads. They say more people are laid low by time-anxiety than by time itself. But only time is fatal. It’s a problem, we agree, a definite feature. How can you change the subject when there’s only one subject? People don’t want to talk about the sky. They don’t want to talk about the sky, and I don’t blame them.
I took out my hand mirror and gave myself a ten-second scan: lower gumline, left eyelash count. I felt so heartened that I moved carefully into the kitchen and cracked out a beer. I ate a hero, and a ham salad. I lit another cigarette. I activated the TV and keyed myself in to the Therapy Channel. I watched a seventy-year-old documentary about a road-widening scheme in a place called Orpington, over in England there . . . Boredom is meant to be highly prophylactic when it comes to time. We are all advised to experience as much boredom as we possibly can. To bore somebody is said to be even more sanative than to be bored oneself. That’s why we’re always raising our voices in company and going on and on about anything that enters our heads. Me I go on about time the whole time: a reckless habit. Listen to me. I’m at it again.
The outercom sounded. I switched from Therapy to Intake, No visual. “Who is it?” I asked the TV. The TV told me. I sighed and put the call on a half-minute hold. Soothing music. Boring music . . . Okay—you want to hear my theory? Now, some say that time was caused by congestion, air plague, city life (and city life is the only kind of life there is these days). Others say that time was a result of the first nuclear conflicts (limited theater, Persia v. Pakistan, Zaire v. Nigeria, and so on, no really big deal or anything: they took the heat and the light, and we took the cold and the dark; it helped fuck the sky, that factor) and more particularly of the saturation TV coverage that followed: all day the screen writhed with flesh, flesh dying or living in a queer state of age. Still others say that time was an evolutionary consequence of humankind’s ventures into space (they shouldn’t have gone out there, what with things so rocky back home). Food, pornography, the cancer cure . . . Me I think it was the twentieth century that did it. The twentieth century was all it took.
“Hi there, Happy,” I said. “What’s new?”
“. . . Lou?” her voice said warily. “Lou, I don’t feel so good.”
“That’s not new. That’s old.”
“I don’t feel so good. I think it’s really happening this time.”
“Oh, sure.”
Now this was Happy Farraday. That’s right: the TV star. The Happy Farraday. Oh, we go way back, Happy and me.
“Let’s take a look at you,” I said. “Come on, Happy, give me a visual on this.”
The screen remained blank, its dead cells seeming to squirm or hover. On impulse I switched from Intake to Daydrama. There was Happy, full face to camera, vividly doing her thing. I switched back. Still no visual. I said, “I just checked you out on the other channel. You’re in superb shape. What’s your factor?”
“It’s here,” said her voice. “It’s time.”
TV stars are especially prone to time-anxiety—to time too, it has to be said. Why? Well, I think we’re looking at an occupational hazard here. It’s a thing. True, the work could hardly be more boring. Not many people know this, but all the characters in the Armchair, Daydrama, and Proscenium channels now write their own lines. It’s a new gimmick, intended to promote formlessness, to combat sequentiality, and so on: the target-research gurus have established that this goes down a lot better with the homebound. Besides, all the writing talent is in game-conception or mass-therapy, doing soothe stuff for the nonemployed and other sections of the populace that are winding down from being functional. There are fortunes to be made in the leisure and assuagement industries. The standout writers are like those teenage billionaires in the early days of the chip revolution. On the other hand, making money—like reading and writing, come to that—dangerously increases your time-anxiety levels. Obviously. The more money you have, the more time you have to worry about time. It’s a thing. Happy Farraday is top credit, and she also bears the weight of TV fame (where millions know you or think they do), that collective sympathy, identification, and concern that, I suspect, seriously depletes your time-resistance. I’ve started to keep a kind of file on this. I’m beginning to think of it as reciprocity syndrome, one of the new—
Where was I? Yeah. On the line with Happy here. My mind has a tendency to wander. Indulge me. It helps, time-wise.
“Okay. You want to tell me what symptoms you got?” She told me. “Call a doctor,” I joked. “Look, give me a break. This is—what? The second time this year? The third?”
“It’s different this time.”
“It’s the new role, Happy. That’s all it is.” In her new series on Daydrama, Happy was playing the stock part of a glamorous forty-year-old with a bad case of time-anxiety. And it was getting to her—of course it was. “You know where I place the blame? On your talent! As an actress you’re just too damn good. Greg Buzhardt and I were—”
“Save it, Lou,” she said. “Don’t bore me out. It’s real. It’s time.”
“I know what you’re going to do. I know what you’re going to do. You’re going to ask me to drive over.”
“I’ll pay.”
“It’s not the money, Happy, it’s the time.”
“Take the dollar lane.”
“Wow,” I said. “You’re, you must be kind of serious this time.”
So I stood on the shoulder, waiting for Roy to bring up my Horsefly from the stacks. Well, Happy is an old friend and one of my biggest clients, also an ex-wife of mine, and I had to do the right thing. For a while out there I wasn’t sure what time it was supposed to be or whether I had a day or night situation on my hands—but then I saw the faint tremors and pulsings of the sun, up in the east. The heavy green light sieved down through the ripped and tattered troposphere, its fissures as many-eyed as silk or pantyhose, with a liquid quality too, churning, changing. Green light: let’s go . . . I had a bad scare myself the other week, a very bad scare. I was in bed with Danuta and we were going to have a crack at making love. Okay, a dumb move—but it was her birthday, and we’d been doing a lot of tranquilizers that night. I don’t happen to believe that lovemaking is quite as risky as some people say. To hear some people talk, you’d think that sex was a suicide pact. To hold hands is to put your life on the line. “Look at the time-fatality figures among the under classes,” I tell them. They screw like there’s no tomorrow, and do they come down with time? No, it’s us high-credit characters who are really at risk. Like me and Danuta. Like Happy. Like you . . . Anyway, we were lying on the bed together, as I say, seminude, and talking about the possibility of maybe getting into the right frame of mind for a little of the old pre-foreplay—when all of a sudden I felt a rosy glow break out on me like sweat. There was this clogged inner heat, a heavy heat, with something limitless in it, right in the crux of my being. Well, I panicked. You always tell yourself you’re going to be brave, dignified, stoical. I ran wailing into the bathroom. I yanked open the triple mirror; the automatic scanlight came on with a crackle. I opened my eyes and stared. There I stood, waiting. Yes, I was clear, I was safe. I broke down and wept with relief. After a while Danuta helped me back into bed. We didn’t try to make love or anything. No way. I felt too damn good. I lay there dabbing my eyes, so happy, so grateful—my old self again.
“You screw much, Roy?”
“—Sir?”
“You screw much, Roy?”
“Some. I guess.”
Roy was an earnest young earner of the stooped, mustachioed variety. He seemed to have burdensome responsibilities; he even wore his cartridge belt like some kind of hernia strap or spinal support. This was the B-credit look, the buffer-class look. Pretty soon, they project, society will be equally divided into three sections. Section B will devote itself entirely to defending section A from section C. I’m section A. I’m glad I have Roy and his boys on my side.
“Where you driving to today, sir?” he asked as he handed me my car card.
“Over the hills and far away, Roy. I’m going to see Happy Farraday. Any message?”
Roy looked troubled. “Sir,” he said, “you got to tell her about Duncan. The new guy at the condo. He has an alcohol thing. Happy Farraday doesn’t know about it yet. Duncan, he sets fire to stuff, with his problem there.”
“His problem, Roy? That’s harsh, Roy.”
“Well, okay. I don’t want to do any kind of value thing here. Maybe it was, like when he was a kid or something. But Duncan has an alcohol situation there. That’s the truth of it, Mr. Goldfader. And Happy Farraday doesn’t know about it yet. You got to warn her. You got to warn her, sir—right now, before it’s too late.”
I gazed into Roy’s handsome, imploring, deeply stupid face. The hot eyes, the tremulous cheeks, the mustache. Jesus Christ, what difference do these guys think a mustache is going to make to anything? For the hundredth time I said to him, “Roy, it’s all made up. It’s just TV, Roy. She writes that stuff herself. It isn’t real.”
“Now I don’t know about none of that,” he said, his hand splayed in quiet propitiation. “But I’d feel better in my mind if you’d warn her about Duncan’s factor there.”
Roy paused. With some difficulty he bent to dab at an oil stain on his superwashable blue pants. He straightened up with a long wheeze. Being young, Roy was, of course, incredibly fat—for reasons of time. We both stood there and gazed at the sky, at the spillages, the running colors, at the great chemical betrayals . . .
“It’s bad today,” said Roy. “Sir? Mr. Goldfader? Is it true what they say, that Happy Farraday’s coming down with time?”
Traffic was light and I was over at Happy’s before I knew it. Traffic is a problem, as everybody keeps on saying. It’s okay, though, if you use the more expensive lanes. We have a five-lane system here in our county: free, nickel, dime, quarter, and dollar (that’s nothing, five, ten, twenty-five, or a hundred dollars a mile)—but of course the free lane is non-operational right now, a gridlock, a caravan, a linear breakers’ yard of slumped and frazzled heaps, dead rolling stock that never rolls. They’re going to have a situation there with the nickel lane too, pretty soon. The thing about driving anywhere is, it’s so unbelievably boring. Here’s another plus: since the ban on rearview mirrors, there’s not much scope for any time-anxiety. They had to take the mirrors away, yes sir. They got my support on that. The concentration-loss was a real feature, you know, driving along and checking out your crow’s feet and hair-line, all at the same time. There used to be a party atmosphere out on the throughway, in the cheap lanes where mobility is low or minimal. People would get out of their cars and horse around. Maybe it still goes on, for all I know. The dividing barriers are higher now, with the new Boredom Drive, and you can’t really tell what gives. I did see something interesting though. I couldn’t help it. During the long wait at the security intersect, where even the dollar lane gets loused up by all the towtrucks and ambulances—and by the great fleets of copbikes and squadcars—I saw three runners, three time punks, loping steadily across the disused freightlane, up on the East Viaduct. There they were, as plain as day: shorts, sweatshirts, running-shoes. The stacked cars all sounded their horns, a low furious bellow from the old beasts in their stalls. A few dozen cops appeared with bullhorns and tried to talk them down—but they just gestured and ran defiantly on. They’re sick in the head, these punks, though I guess there’s a kind of logic in it somewhere. They do vitamins, you know. Yeah. They work out and screw around; they have their nihilistic marathons. I saw one up close down at the studios last week. A security guard found her running along the old outer track. They asked her some questions and then let her go. She was about thirty, I guess. She looked in terrible shape.
And so I drove on, without incident. But even through the treated glass of the windshield I could see and sense the atrocious lancings and poppings in the ruined sky. It gets to you. Stare at the blazing noon of a high-watt bulb for ten or fifteen minutes then shut your eyes, real tight and sudden. That’s what the sky looks like. You know, we pity it, or at least I do. I look at the sky and I just think . . . ow. Whew. Oh, the sky, the poor sky.
