Time Travel Omnibus, page 848
Embarrassment, shuffling feet, a nervous laugh. Had he said something wrong?
“Now isn’t that just the spirit of exploration,” the President said, with the air of a schoolteacher determined to find something positive to say about a rowdy pupil. “You’re a firecracker, Captain. Larger than life!”
“A credit to the nation,” the Ambassador said. “Ah, sherry!”
An overall relaxation, as trays of drinks circulated and people began to move towards the buffet. Titus seized a glass of sherry and hung back as the nobs went forward. “Monster,” Dr. Trask whispered, grinning. “So this is how Victor von Frankenstein felt!”
“You’re a troublemaker, Titus,” Shell agreed. “You’ve got your nerve, jerking the poor Ambassador’s chain like that. I thought I’d bust a gut.”
Titus refused to be distracted, even by the spread of food. “I like the idea of going to Tau Ceti. Who else is going? You, Lash?”
Dr. Trask snickered at the idea. “Not with his asthma! And you’re never getting me up in one of those things. Clonal surgeons have plenty of work Earthside, grafting new limbs and boobs and organs onto people. Shell’s the one who’ll sweep those Forties off their feet.”
Titus blinked. He had not meant to suggest that women could be explorers. “If they have feet,” someone else in the line remarked.
Shell sipped her sherry and laughed. “Did you see that awful cartoon on the Today page?”
“Well, prophylactics wouldn’t take up all that much cargo space!”
The talk veered off into jokes and chatter that went right over Titus’s head. “It sounds like a perfect job for me,” he grumbled, accepting the plate someone handed him. What an odd and casual way to eat—and they called this a banquet? To Titus, banquets meant waiters and service, not shuffling through a line for bangers and mash.
Dr. Trask plopped a scoop of potatoes onto her plate and said, very kindly, “Titus, the teams have been in training for ten years. It’d be an awful lot of work for you to get up to speed.”
“Frankly, old man, you were the highest example of the explorer as amateur,” Dr. Lash said. “But this is the age of the professional. It’s no reflection on your own worth.”
In fact Titus did not believe this. His entire experience, leavened with the example of Buck Rogers in the 25th century, assured him that all he had to do was try. Surely a concerted effort would bring success. He helped himself to an enormous plateful of food, only belatedly noticing that he had cleared off half the sausages. How odd, that meat should make up such a small fraction of the offerings! But he had always been a carnivore, and it would surely be incorrect to shovel part of his portion back onto the platter. Instead he allowed them to seat him at the head table.
The President had asked Dr. Piotr a question about the economic impact of speedy space travel, and the talkative scientist was off and away. “At FTL,” he said with enthusiasm, “the planets are just suburbs. We can colonize the solar system! No more of this three-years-to-Mars stuff. We’ve already gained so much from this one Fortie contact, I can’t wait to see what else is coming.”
Every word was English, but Titus found he had no idea what was being said. He leaned nearer to Shell. “Do you understand him?”
“Sure.”
“I don’t.”
She laughed. “And Piotr prides himself on being a populizer, too! Don’t disappoint him by telling him.”
“Hamilton’s such a show-off,” Sabrina Trask muttered from beyond Shell. “Just because she taught economics and math at Stanford.”
Titus wasn’t even sure what economics was. Something to do with money, he hazarded. Born to wealth, all he knew of money was how to spend it. He wondered what precisely Buck Rogers had lived on, and how he had got into the 25th century’s military. “Shell, how much education have you had?”
“Me? Gosh, let me think—twelve years of school, four years college, medical school, another two for my communications doctorate . . . If you count the Fortie training, I’ve been in school just about all my life.”
Dr. Piotr had finished his remarks, and the President applauded, saying, “Doctor, I swear if you ever want to quit the Paticalar business, I have a job for you in politics. You could sell shoes to snakes.”
The doctor grinned, pinker than ever. “Once, Madam President, you might have tempted me. Now, I know the better part. This is where the fun is going to be.”
“Gad, I envy you young people,” the Ambassador said. “Tell us more about the time business—what’s this new time window trick the newsies are chattering about?”
Obligingly, Dr. Piotr said, “Well, it’s disruptive and difficult to pull a real object or person through time. A perfect candidate like the captain here is rare. It would be as much fun, and cheaper, to just pull light—images. I wouldn’t mind a photograph of a velociraptor, would you? We could make a fortune on the posters and screensavers alone.”
This is beyond me, Titus admitted silently. He bowed his head to the inevitable. Buck Rogers was a cheat, the invention of some fantasizing duffer who’d never actually had to work with less than seventy percent of the knowledge necessary. Titus would live the reality, and he could acknowledge now that much of it would be forever beyond his comprehension. To swallow down the entire 21st century was too big a mouthful. His only hope was to select an area to worry at and, please God, to master.
But which area? If he wasn’t going to explore, then what? “Lash, what am I going to live on? They must have proved my will and settled the estate. I don’t suppose my heirs’ descendants, my great-grandnephews and so on, will want to part with the money even if there’s a bean left after all this time. Will you people support me until I die?”
“A stipend’s in the works,” Dr. Lash said. “PTICA is responsible for your existence, Titus—you won’t starve.”
“But I bet anything you like, you’re not going to want to live out your life as a couch potato,” Shell added. “I can’t wait to see what the newsies will say, about your reconquering the American Colonies!”
Dr. Lash shuddered. “I could wish, Titus, that you’d be more careful about what you say!”
Titus ate steadily, thinking hard. His life had been handed back to him on a platter. But the President, of all people, had put her finger on the key question: what could he do with it? He knew how to fight, and he knew how to die. He had a sense there was very little call for such skills in the 21st century. As useful as knowing how to blow a duck call, he thought sardonically. Perhaps he could assist that young black at the museum.
He had it now: enough information so that he could distinguish what was truly vital. Clear as day, Titus saw that if he didn’t carve a niche for himself, he would indeed become a couch potato—he was repelled without even knowing what that was. There was a higher fence to clear than just learning to exist here. The crucial battle lay not in the past, nor the present, but the future. From infancy, playing with popguns and wooden horses, he had always known what he would be: a soldier. Now in this strange new world this destiny was gone, and he was adrift. He could do anything he set his will to. But first he had to find a new destiny to replace the one he’d left behind in 1912. Else he’d become a pet, a parasite, leeching off the moderns for the rest of his useless life, trotted out for display every now and then to bark for the visiting brass.
It reminded him of his first sight of the Himalayas, in India. Some dashed impressive mountains, but then the morning haze lifted for a moment, and the eye took in the colossal heights beyond, snow-capped peaks rearing up to pierce the sky. What he had thought was the real battle had again been nothing but the first skirmish. How much easier a sharp crisis would be! Walking to one’s end in a blizzard, perhaps. “May be some time,” indeed! This slow stubborn uphill slog would last till his dying day—in the spirit of locking the barn door too late, he swore that when he drew that final breath it should not be expended on feeble ironies that would come back to haunt him.
Wars came to an end in a year or two. Even manhauling to the Pole and back had to be accomplished in six or seven months during the austral summer. But this was never going to end. It would call for more pluck and resolution and bottom than anything else he’d ever set hand to, because it would never be over. For a moment the prospect was unspeakably daunting, and he slumped over his empty plate. But with an effort he straightened. Stiff upper lip and all that. He had conclusively demonstrated, after all, that he could do anything he set his mind to. “I’ve survived far worse,” he said aloud.
Dr. Lash glanced up. “What’s that you say, Titus?”
No time like the present to begin. Titus gazed thoughtfully at the other man’s little machine, lying beside his plate. “Lash . . . what time is it?”
WHAT WEENA KNEW
James Van Pelt
A part of the story that H.G. Wells never knew . . .
Weena waded away from the others into deeper parts. Current pulled at her tunic, threatened to take her feet from the bottom, but she wasn’t ready yet. Maybe one of the others would see her and ask why she was alone, what she was doing so close to the dangerous waters. No one did, even though she stood still for some time, letting her fingers rest in the stream, the cool flow pushing them aside like little fish fins. She squinted against the Sun’s glitter; each ripple caught a diamond point and tossed it against her vision, so the stream’s middle didn’t look like water at all but more like a glittery ribbon, gently squirming before her.
She licked her lips—they were dry—and even though the day was not yet hot, her forehead felt flushed.
No one will come. They don’t care, she thought. They’re more concerned with gathering flowers, eating fruit and making love until the Sun sets. She closed her eyes. Would it be frightening to fall into the glittery ribbon, or glorious? Would she rise up at the end, a thousand diamond points herself, a sparkling display that none could bear to look at lest they go blind? A step deeper. Water reached midway up her chest; it tugged her hands. Come with me, it said. Come deep and stay.
So she did, and the current took her. For an instant, it was peaceful, the floating as her feet rose from the gravel, and she knew she’d chosen well. No more nights hiding away. No more mornings convinced the Fear was a dream, that missing friends weren’t missing at all, just hiding. She marveled at how light she felt. The river held her like a cloud; a child could not ask for a cradle so soft.
Then she inhaled. It burned! Her eyes popped open. Her arms waved and feet kicked. Another rush of gagging water down the throat. It wasn’t supposed to hurt! Her face broke the surface. She screeched, glimpsed her friends, then tumbled back under again. Roaring in the ears: current pushing through rocks, waves slapping on waves in the turbid middle. Her hand flailed in the air, tantalizingly above the water, but no movements of her arms or legs seemed to move her up. Her tunic’s weight dragged. Then an upswelling pushed her face free for another peek and a halfswallow of air mixed with foam. No one on shore had moved! They weren’t going to help her!
But she knew they wouldn’t; it wasn’t their nature.
A calmness crept through her. She hurt still, but an inner part relaxed. This was the last. The river gripped her and drew her to him, and she understood she would not be coming back up. Light faded.
Then a vise clamped her upper arm. A surge. A tremendous force, and she was clear of the stream. Air! There was air to breathe, but all she could do was cough. She was being carried. Her cheek rested on skin. Huge arms wrapped her close until they were on the bank. Gently, her rescuer put her down. Rock warmed her back; her hands lay flat in the heat; her head dropped onto the warmth. Against the sky stood a figure strangely shaped. Weena’s vision swirled—she could barely focus—but before she passed out, she saw in wonder, he was a giant.
Weena’s life seemed no different from that of the other Eloi. She was raised by the mothers, played with the other children, learned in time not to eat poisonous berries, grew to adult height, lay with the boys when she wanted, loved the Sun and feared the night. If there was a variation, it was in her absent-mindedness, her willingness to explore beyond the grey home’s grounds, to mourn the loss of friends. She cried, which puzzled the others greatly. In the mornings when some Eloi were missing, and the others went off to bathe or play in the grass, she sat by herself. There weren’t even words for what she was feeling, but the friends were gone. In the dark the Morlocks came and took them. They would never return. There were no words to explain the space in her chest. It ached in emptiness. Then, later, there was another emotion she had no name for. She envisioned herself rising above the Morlocks, fear banished, the sun in her hands, striding toward them, and they fled.
After he made sure Weena was not going to die, the giant donned strange clothes fastened together with round pieces of bones. Weena watched him dress, all fear of the night for the moment banished. He was huge, almost her own height again taller than she was, and broad and strong. The face was rounded and lined with wrinkles near the eyes and comers of his mouth. Oddly enough, his hair was straight. His speech baffled her. When she couldn’t answer him, he shook his head, gave up and wandered away. Weena followed, staying out of sight. Soon she saw that he appeared to be exploring with purpose. He walked in widening circles, stopping only when he came to the river, then reversing himself. Buildings interested him, even the empty ones no one had lived in for as long as Weena could remember. Even the dark buildings no one entered.
He moved with such purpose! She’d never seen anyone go from place to place as if one were more important than the other.
Who was this alien creature? What did he want here? How was it he could go into the dark without fear?
Weena resolved to find out more. She searched the bushes for flowers to string together until she’d made a necklace big enough. Her nimble fingers wove them together. If the giant saved her from the river, he would not hurt her now, and if he didn’t fear the darkness, maybe she would be safe with him. When she finished, she approached, and he let her put the flowers around his neck. They spent the afternoon sitting in a stone arbor, where Weena soon learned some of his speech, but not enough to ask questions. He taught her his words for rock and grass and tree and everything he could point at around him, and then taught her hand and foot and face.
When, in the afternoon, the giant went wandering again, Weena tried to stay with him, but his pace was too fast, and he was going too far from the grey home. The Sun moved toward the horizon, and even though Weena cried out after him, he did not return. She fled to the grey home just as the Sun touched the horizon. A chill shook her as dusk poured over the land. The giant was alone outside, and night was coming.
No one asked her who he was or what he wanted. The Eloi chatted idly among themselves, and even though Weena had spent the most extraordinary afternoon, not one questioned her. She tried to tell some of them, “The giant went into the dark buildings! The giant has stayed outdoors after the Sun set!” but none seemed interested. She would have been fascinated. If someone told her such a story, she would hang on every word.
Late in the evening, long after the Eloi had gone to sleep, Weena sat up watching the shadow on the wall that was the door into the grey home. Would he return, or would something else come through the door tonight? The moon was over three quarters gone. In a few nights, there would be no moon. It would do no good to run. All she could do would be to lie still and hope they passed over her. It was all any of them could do.
Then, a figure came through the door. Weena gasped; he was so sudden. She’d almost forgotten already how large he was. He found a place and lay down. She rose, walked carefully among the sleeping Eloi, and joined him. At first, he seemed surprised, but he let her rest her head on his arm, and soon he was asleep. Weena stayed still, her eyes open. Even his breathing was big; he rumbled behind her. She could feel the heat broadcasting from his chest. His hand, only a foot from her face, lay palm up, each finger a massive curve of strength. She put her hand on his; hers was tiny.
When Weena was young, before she learned about the night, she built a dam on a stream. The rivulet wound its way down a shallow gully behind the grey home until it joined the larger waters. She didn’t want to walk all the way to the river to bathe. It seemed so silly. By the time she returned, she’d be just as hot as she’d been before, so she gathered round stones and put them in the water. Methodically she built a wall, and as the wall grew across the stream, the water rose. After the Sun was nearly done for the day, a good-sized pool had grown behind her wall.
In the morning she took some friends to see it. “Look,” one said, “Weena has found a pool for us to play in.”
“I did not find it,” she said. “I built it.”
“Why would you do that?”
Weena didn’t have an answer. How could she explain the feeling she had while watching the water rise? Bit by bit it swallowed the bank upstream. Gradually it deepened. Her heart filled too. There was a joy in seeing the rushing water stilled. If the wall was bigger, everyone from the grey home could bathe here. They could bathe wherever they found a stream!
But she couldn’t say that. Her friends splashed in her pool for the day, and the next day they walked to the river the way they always had. Weena knocked a hole in the wall.
In the morning, the giant ate with the Eloi, trying to talk, but they became bored shortly and no one remained but Weena. She told him the word for each fruit, for the drink, for the table and cushions, for door and window. He told her his words. Soon they left together, and she followed him as he continued exploring buildings, fearlessly plunging into darkened structures, some that Weena knew contained Morlock passages, but despite her pleas he didn’t seem concerned.
