Time Travel Omnibus, page 725
I couldn’t take risks, though. I pointed the gun at his face and squeezed the trigger.
The thing made a report like the end of the world, and the man fell, blood and tissue sprayed across the wall behind him.
A woman screamed from a nearby doorway, and I pointed the gun at her, unsure.
The pain was still there. It came from the woman. I pulled the trigger again.
She fell, blood red on her blouse, and I looked down at her as the pain faded, as stability returned.
I was real again.
If the man were her husband, perhaps she was destined to remarry, or to be unfaithful—she would have been the tamperer’s ancestor, but he might not have been. The twisting of time had stopped only when the woman fell.
I regretted shooting him, then, but I had had no choice. Any delay might have been fatal. The life of an individual is precious, but not as precious as history itself.
A twinge ran through my stomach; perhaps only an aftereffect, but I had to be certain. I knelt, and went quickly to work with my knife.
When I was done, there could be no doubt that the two were dead, and that neither could ever have children.
Finished, I turned and fled, before the fumbling police of this era could interfere.
I knew the papers would report it the next day as the work of a lunatic, of a deranged thief who panicked before he could take anything, or of someone killing for perverted pleasure. I didn’t worry about that.
I had saved history again.
I wish there were another way, though.
Sometimes I have nightmares about what I do; sometimes I dream that I’ve made a mistake, killed the wrong person, that I stranded myself here. What if it wasn’t a mechanical failure that sent the machine into flux. What if I changed my own past and did that to myself?
I have those nightmares sometimes.
Worse, though, the very worst nightmares, are the ones where I dream that I never changed the past at all, that I never lived in any time but this one, that I grew up here, alone, through an unhappy childhood and a miserable adolescence and a sorry adulthood—that I never travelled in time, that it’s all in my mind, that I killed those people for nothing.
That’s the worst of all, and I wake up from that one sweating, ready to scream.
Thank God it’s not true.
THE INSTABILITY
Isaac Asimov
PROFESSOR FIREBRENNER HAD EXPLAINED it carefully. “Time-perception depends on the structure of the Universe. When the Universe is expanding, we experience time as going forward; when it is contracting, we experience it going backward. If we could somehow force the Universe to be in stasis, neither expanding nor contracting, time would stand still.”
“But you can’t put the Universe in stasis,” said Mr. Atkins, fascinated.
“I can put a little portion of the Universe in stasis, however.” said the professor. “Just enough to hold a ship. Time will stand still and we can move forward or backward at will and the entire trip will last less than an instant. But all the parts of the Universe will move while we stand still, while we are nailed to the fabric of the Universe. The Earth moves about the Sun, the Sun moves about the core of the Galaxy, the Galaxy moves about some center of gravity, all the Galaxies move.
“I calculated those motions and I find that 27.5 million years in the future, a red dwarf star will occupy the position our Sun does now. If we go 27.5 million years into the future, in less than an instant that red dwarf star will be near our spaceship and we can come home after studying it a bit.”
Atkins said, “Can that be done?”
I’ve sent experimental animals through time, but I can’t make them automatically return. If you and I go, we can then manipulate the controls so that we can return.”
“And you want me along?”
“Of course. There should be two. Two people would be more easily believed than one alone. Come, it will be an incredible adventure.”
Atkins inspected the ship. It was a 2217 Glenn-fusion model and looked beautiful.
“Suppose,” he said, “that it lands inside the red dwarf star.”
“It won’t,” said the professor, “but if it does, that’s the chance we take.”
“But when we get back, the Sun and Earth will have moved on. We’ll be in space.”
“Of course, but how far can the Sun and Earth move in the few hours it will take us to observe the star? With this ship we will catch up to our beloved planet. Are you ready, Mr. Atkins?”
“Ready,” sighed Atkins.
Professor Firebrenner made the necessary adjustments and nailed the ship to the fabric of the Universe while 27.5 million years passed. And then, in less than a flash, time began to move forward again in the usual way, and everything in the Universe moved forward with it.
Through the viewing port of their ship, Professor Firebrenner and Mr. Atkins could see the small orb of the red dwarf star.
The professor smiled. “You and I, Atkins,” he said, “are the first ever to see, close at hand, any star other than our own Sun.”
They remained two-and-a-half hours during which they photographed the star and its spectrum and as many neighboring stars as they could, made special coronagraphic observations, tested the chemical composition of the interstellar gas, and then Professor Firebrenner said, rather reluctantly, “I think we had better go home now.”
Again, the controls were adjusted and the ship was nailed to the fabric of the Universe. They went 27.5 million years into the past, and in less than a flash, they were back where they started.
Space was black. There was nothing. Atkins said, “What happened? Where are the Earth and Sun?”
The professor frowned. He said, “Going back in time must be different. The entire Universe must have moved.”
“Where could it move?”
“I don’t know. Other objects shift position within the Universe, but the Universe as a whole must move in an upper-dimensional direction. We are here in the absolute vacuum, in primeval Chaos.”
“But we’re here. It’s not primeval Chaos anymore.”
“Exactly. That means we’ve introduced an instability at this place where we exist, and that means—”
Even as he said that, a Big Bang obliterated them. A new Universe came into being and began to expand.
THE PRICE OF ORANGES
Nancy Kress
“I’m worried about my granddaughter,” Harry Kramer said, passing half of his sandwich to Manny Feldman. Manny took it eagerly. The sandwich was huge, thick slices of beef and horseradish between fresh slabs of crusty bread. Pigeons watched the park bench hopefully.
“Jackie. The granddaughter who writes books,” Manny said. Harry watched to see that Manny ate. You couldn’t trust Manny to eat enough; he stayed too skinny. At least in Harry’s opinion. Manny, Jackie—the world, Harry sometimes thought, had all grown too skinny when he somehow hadn’t been looking. Skimpy. Stretch-feeling. Harry nodded to see horseradish spurt in a satisfying stream down Manny’s scraggly beard.
“Jackie. Yes,” Harry said.
“So what’s wrong with her? She’s sick?” Manny eyed Harry’s strudel, cherry with real yeast bread. Harry passed it to him. “Harry, the whole thing? I couldn’t.”
“Take it, take it, I don’t want it. You should eat. No, she’s not sick. She’s miserable.”
When Manny, his mouth full of strudel, didn’t answer, Harry put a hand on Manny’s arm. “Miserable.”
Manny swallowed hastily. “How do you know? You saw her this week?”
“No. Next Tuesday. She’s bringing me a book by a friend of hers. I know from this.”
He drew a magazine from an inner pocket of his coat. The coat was thick tweed, almost new, with wooden buttons. On the cover of the glossy magazine a woman smiled contemptuously. A woman with hollow, starved-looking cheeks who obviously didn’t get enough to eat either.
“That’s not a book,” Manny pointed out.
“So she writes stories, too. Listen to this. Just listen. ‘I stood in my backyard, surrounded by the false bright toxin-fed green, and realized that the earth was dead.
What else could it be, since we humans swarmed upon it like maggots on carrion, growing our hectic gleaming molds, leaving our slime trails across the senseless surface?’ Does that sound like a happy woman?”
“Hoo boy,” Manny said.
“It’s all like that. ‘Don’t read my things, Popsy,’ she says. ‘You’re not in the audience for my things.’ Then she smiles without ever once showing her teeth.” Harry flung both arms wide. “Who else should be in the audience but her own grandfather?”
Manny swallowed the last of the strudel. Pigeons fluttered angrily. “She never shows her teeth when she smiles? Never?”
“Never.”
“Hoo boy,” Manny said. “Did you want all of that orange?”
“No, I brought it for you, to take home. But did you finish that whole half a sandwich already?”
“I thought I’d take it home,” Manny said humbly. He showed Harry the tip of the sandwich, wrapped in the thick brown butcher paper, protruding from the pocket of his old coat.
Harry nodded approvingly. “Good, good. Take the orange, too. I brought it for you.”
Manny took the orange. Three teenagers carrying huge shrieking radios sauntered past. Manny started to put his hands over his ears, received a look of dangerous contempt from the teenager with green hair, and put his hands on his lap. The kid tossed an empty beer bottle onto the pavement before their feet. It shattered. Harry scowled fiercely but Manny stared straight ahead. When the cacophony had passed, Manny said, “Thank you for the orange. Fruit, it costs so much this time of year.”
Harry still scowled. “Not in 1937.”
“Don’t start that again, Harry.”
Harry said sadly, “Why won’t you ever believe me? Could I afford to bring all this food if I got it at 1988 prices? Could I afford this coat? Have you seen buttons like this in 1988, on a new coat? Have you seen sandwiches wrapped in that kind of paper since we were young? Have you? Why won’t you believe me?”
Manny slowly peeled his orange. The rind was pale, and the orange had seeds.
“Harry. Don’t start.”
“But why won’t you just come to my room and see?”
Manny sectioned the orange. “Your room. A cheap furnished room in a Social Security hotel. Why should I go? I know what will be there. What will be there is the same thing in my room. A bed, a chair, a table, a hot plate, some cans of food. Better I should meet you here in the park, get at least a little fresh air.” He looked at Harry meekly, the orange clutched in one hand. “Don’t misunderstand. It’s not from a lack of friendship I say this. You’re good to me, you’re the best friend I have. You bring me things from a great deli, you talk to me, you share with me the family I don’t have. It’s enough, Harry. It’s more than enough. I don’t need to see where you live like I live.”
Harry gave it up. There were moods, times, when it was just impossible to budge Manny. He dug in, and in he stayed. “Eat your orange.”
“It’s a good orange. So tell me more about Jackie.”
“Jackie.” Harry shook his head. Two kids on bikes tore along the path. One of them swerved towards Manny and snatched the orange from his hand. “Aw riggghhhtttt!”
Harry scowled after the child. It had been a girl. Manny just wiped the orange juice off his fingers onto the knee of his pants. “Is everything she writes so depressing?”
“Everything,” Harry said. “Listen to this one.” He drew out another magazine, smaller, bound in rough paper with a stylized linen drawing of a woman’s private parts on the cover. On the cover! Harry held the magazine with one palm spread wide over the drawing, which made it difficult to keep the pages open while he read. “ ‘She looked at her mother in the only way possible: with contempt, contempt for all the betrayals and compromises that had been her mother’s life, for the sad soft lines of defeat around her mother’s mouth, for the bright artificial dress too young for her wasted years, for even the leather handbag, Gucci of course, filled with blood money for having sold her life to a man who had long since ceased to want it.’ ”
“Hoo boy,” Manny said. “About a mother she wrote that?”
“About everybody. All the time.”
“And where is Barbara?”
“Reno again. Another divorce.” How many had that been? After two, did anybody count? Harry didn’t count. He imagined Barbara’s life as a large roulette wheel like the ones on TV, little silver men bouncing in and out of red and black pockets. Why didn’t she get dizzy?
Manny said slowly, “I always thought there was a lot of love in her.”
“A lot of that she’s got,” Harry said dryly.
“Not Barbara—Jackie. A lot of . . . I don’t know. Sweetness. Under the way she is.”
“The way she is,” Harry said gloomily. “Prickly. A cactus. But you’re right, Manny, I know what you mean. She just needs someone to soften her up. Love her back, maybe.
Although I love her.”
The two old men looked at each other. Manny said, “Harry . . .”
“I know, I know. I’m only a grandfather, my love doesn’t count, I’m just there. Like air. ‘You’re wonderful, Popsy,’ she says, and still no teeth when she smiles. But you know, Manny—you are right!” Harry jumped up from the bench. “You are! What she needs is a young man to love her!”
Manny looked alarmed. “I didn’t say—”
“I don’t know why I didn’t think of it before!”
“Harry—”
“And her stories, too! Full of ugly murders, ugly places, unhappy endings. What she needs is something to show her that writing could be about sweetness, too.”
Manny was staring at him hard. Harry felt a rush of affection. That Manny should have the answer! Skinny wonderful Manny!
Manny said slowly, “Jackie said to me, ‘I write about reality.’ That’s what she said, Harry.”
“So there’s no sweetness in reality? Put sweetness in her life, her writing will go sweet. She needs this, Manny. A really nice fellow!”
Two men in jogging suits ran past. One of their Reeboks came down on a shard of beer bottle. “Every fucking time!” he screamed, bending over to inspect his shoe.
“Fucking park!”
“Well, what do you expect?” the other drawled, looking at Manny and Harry.
“Although you’d think that if we could clean up Lake Erie . . .”
“Fucking derelicts!” the other snarled. They jogged away.
“Of course,” Harry said, “it might not be easy to find the sort of guy to convince Jackie.”
“Harry, I think you should maybe think—”
“Not here,” Harry said suddenly. “Not here. There. In 1937.”
“Harry. . ..”
“Yeah,” Harry said, nodding several times. Excitement filled him like light, like electricity. What an idea! “It was different then.”
Manny said nothing. When he stood up, the sleeve of his coat exposed the number tattooed on his wrist. He said quietly, “It was no paradise in 1937 either, Harry.”
Harry seized Manny’s hand. “I’m going to do it, Manny. Find someone for her there.
Bring him here.”
Manny sighed. “Tomorrow at the chess club, Harry? At one o’clock? It’s Tuesday.”
“I’ll tell you then how I’m coming with this.”
“Fine, Harry. Fine. All my wishes go with you. You know that.”
Harry stood up too, still holding Manny’s hand. A middle-aged man staggered to the bench and slumped onto it. The smell of whiskey rose from him in waves. He eyed Manny and Harry with scorn. “Fucking fags.”
“Good night, Harry.”
“Manny—if you’d only come . . . money goes so much farther there . . .”
“Tomorrow at one. At the chess club.”
Harry watched his friend walk away. Manny’s foot dragged a little; the knee must be bothering him again. Harry wished Manny would see a doctor. Maybe a doctor would know why Manny stayed so skinny.
Harry walked back to his hotel. In the lobby, old men slumped in upholstery thin from wear, burned from cigarettes, shiny in the seat from long sitting. Sitting and sitting, Harry thought—life measured by the seat of the pants. And now it was getting dark. No one would go out from here until the next daylight. Harry shook his head.
The elevator wasn’t working again. He climbed the stairs to the third floor. Halfway there, he stopped, felt in his pocket, counted five quarters, six dimes, two nickels, and eight pennies. He returned to the lobby. “Could I have two dollar bills for this change, please? Maybe old bills?”
The clerk looked at him suspiciously. “Your rent paid up?”
“Certainly,” Harry said. The woman grudgingly gave him the money.
“Thank you. You look very lovely today, Mrs. Raduski.” Mrs. Raduski snorted.
In his room, Harry looked for his hat. He finally found it under his bed—how had it gotten under his bed? He dusted it off and put it on. It had cost him $3.25. He opened the closet door, parted the clothes hanging from their metal pole—like Moses parting the sea, he always thought, a Moses come again—and stepped to the back of the closet, remembering with his body rather than his mind the sharp little twist to the right just past the far gray sleeve of his good wool suit.
He stepped out into the bare corner of a warehouse. Cobwebs brushed his hat; he had stepped a little too far right. Harry crossed the empty concrete space to where the lumber stacks started, and threaded his way through them. The lumber, too, was covered with cobwebs; not much building going on. On his way out the warehouse door, Harry passed the night watchman coming on duty.
“Quiet all day, Harry?”
“As a church, Rudy,” Harry said. Rudy laughed. He laughed a lot. He was also indisposed to question very much. The first time he had seen Harry coming out of the warehouse in a bemused daze, he must have assumed that Harry had been hired to work there. Peering at Rudy’s round, vacant face, Harry realized that he must hold this job because he was someone’s uncle, someone’s cousin, someone’s something. Harry had felt a small glow of approval; families should take care of their own. He had told Rudy that he had lost his key and asked him for another.
