Time Travel Omnibus, page 889
Reading over some of my earlier entries, I find I referred to a “turbocycle.” Did I actually know what a turbocycle was when I wrote that? Whether I did or not, it is gone now. A cycle of turbulence? Kalais might ride turbulent winds, I suppose. No doubt he does. His father is the north wind. Or as I should say, his father is the god who governs it.
I am alone. Kleon was with me until a moment ago. He knelt before me and raised his head, and I cut his throat as he wished. He passed swiftly and with little pain. His spurting arteries drenched me in blood, but then I was already drenched with blood.
I cannot remember the name of the implant that will move me forward in time, but I hesitate to use it. (They are still shoveling dirt upon this tomb. The scrape of their shovels and the sounds of the dirt falling from them are faint, but I can hear them now that the others are dead.) Swiftly, then, before they finish and my rescuers arrive.
Eeasawn won the chariot race. (Pukz 111-114) I reached the semifinals in spear-dueling, fighting with the sword I picked up during the battle in my left hand. (Pukz 115-118)
Twice I severed a spear shaft, as Kastawr taught me. (Pukz 119 and 120) I was as surprised as my opponents. One must fight without effort, Kaeneus said, and Kaeneus was right. Forget the fear of death and the love of life. (I wish I could now.) Forget the desire to win and any hatred of the enemy. His eyes will tell you nothing if he has any skill at all. Watch his point, and not your own.
I was one of the final four contestants. (Pukz 121) Atalantah and I could not have been happier if I had won. (Pukz 122 and 123)
I have waited. I cannot say how long. Atalantah will surely come, I thought. Hahraklahs will surely come. I have eaten some of the funeral meats, and drunk some of the wine that was to cheer the king in Persefonay’s shadowy realm. I hope he will forgive me.
We drew pebbles from a helmet. (Pukz 124 and 125) Mine was the black pebble (Pukz 126), the only one. No one would look at me after that.
The others (Pukz 127 and 128) were chosen by lot, too, I believe. From the king’s family. From the queen’s. From the city. From the palace servants. That was Kleon. He had been wine steward. Thank you, Kleon, for your good wine. They walled us in, alive.
“Hahraklahs will come for me,” I told them. “Atalantah will come for me. If the tomb is guarded—”
They said it would be.
“It will not matter. They will come. Wait. You will see that I am right.”
They would not wait. I had hidden the dagger I won and had brought it into the tomb with me. I showed it to them, and they asked me to kill them.
Which I did, in the end. I argued. I pleaded. But soon I consented, because they were going to take it from me. I cut their throats for them, one by one.
And now I have waited for Atalantah.
Now I have waited for Hahraklahs.
Neither has come. I slept, and sat brooding in the dark, slept, and sat brooding. And slept again, and sat brooding again. I have reread my diary, and reviewed my Pukz, seeing in some things that I had missed before. They have not come. I wonder if they tried?
How long? Is it possible to overshoot my own period? Surely not, since I could not go back to it. But I will be careful just the same. A hundred years—a mere century. Here I go!
Nothing. I have felt about for the bodies in the dark. They are bones and nothing more. The tomb remains sealed, so Atalantah never came. Nobody did. Five hundred years this time. Is that too daring? I am determined to try it.
Greece. Not that this place is called Greece, I do not think it is, but Eeasawn and the rest came from Greece. I know that. Even now the Greeks have laid siege to Ilion, the city we feared so much. Agamemnawn and Akkilleus are their leaders.
Rome rules the world, a rule of iron backed by weapons of iron. I wish I had some of their iron tools right now. The beehive of masonry that imprisons me must surely have decayed somewhat by this time, and I still have my emergency rations. I am going to try to pry loose some stones and dig my way out.
The Mayflower has set sail, but I am not aboard her. I was to make peace. I can remember it now—can remember it again. We imagined a cooperative society in which Englishmen and Indians might meet as friends, sharing knowledge and food. It will never happen now, unless they have sent someone else.
The tomb remains sealed. That is the chief thing and the terrible thing, for me. No antiquarian has unearthed it. King Kuzikos sleeps undisturbed. So does Kleon. Again . . .
This is the end. The Chronomiser has no more time to spend. This is my own period, and the tomb remains sealed; no archeologist has found it, no tomb robber. I cannot get out, and so must die. Someday someone will discover this. I hope they will be able to read it.
Good-bye. I wish that I had sailed with the Pilgrims and spoken with the Native Americans—the mission we planned for more than a year. Yet the end might have been much the same. Time is my enemy. Cronus. He would slay the gods if he could, they said, and in time he did.
Revere my bones. This hand clasped the hand of Hercules.
These bony lips kissed the daughter of a god. Do not pity me.
The bronze blade is still sharp. Still keen, after four thousand years. If I act quickly I can cut both my right wrist and my left. (Pukz 129 and 130, infrared).
TIME ABLAZE
Michael A. Burstein
A good deal of this actually happened—but how much?
Adele Weber dreamed of fire and water.
In her dream, she stood on a wooden raft, which simultaneously also existed as a tenement building and a wooden maze. The fire chased her as she ran from one side of the raft to the other. The fire spat smoke at her, so she leaned out of window after window for a gasp of fresh air. The fire threw intense heat at her, so she ran through corridor after corridor, searching for cooler air.
The fire chased her, and so Adele rushed to the edge of the raft, to the front door of the building, to the end of the maze. But no freedom could be found there, because of the water. A sparkling clear blue, it surrounded her on all sides. But it never touched the fire, never even approached close enough to put the fire out. It served as a barrier, trapping her, taunting her. She knew she should remove her dress, undergarments, and stockings and dive into the water, anything to get away from the flames, but modesty and her inability to swim prevented her.
Suddenly an eight-foot-tall figure appeared: Mose the Fireman, spoken of in legend. He wore a leather firefighter’s helmet as big as a barrel and a pair of humongous rubber boots, each the size of a sailboat. His coat declared that he was part of the Engine 40 unit. “Hello, little lady,” he said. “How can I help you?”
“Please,” Adele said. “You must save me from the fire. You must save my family.”
Mose the Fireman took a swig of beer from the fifty-gallon keg he kept on his belt. The beer trickled down his thick white beard, and suddenly both beer and beard vanished. “I can’t save anyone unless you save yourself.”
“But—but you’re Mose the Fireman. You rescue people from fires! You swam the Hudson in two strokes! You’ve lifted trolley cars out of your path to run to the rescue of babies!”
“I’ve retired and moved to Hawaii,” he replied.
Suddenly, Mose the Fireman wasn’t Mose anymore, but her father. Adele watched in horror as her father called out to her in puzzlement. “Adele?”
“Father!” she shouted, but she was too late, as the flames licked closer and closer, filled with glee as they chose between immolating Adele or her father first . . .
And Adele’s nightmare ended. She awoke gasping for air, as she had many times since her father’s death, with her body and head wrapped snugly in her blanket.
Lucas Schmidt entered eighteen-year-old Adele Weber’s life on a Sunday in May. As usual, after services at St. Mark’s Evangelical Lutheran Church had ended, the congregants lingered to talk. Cigar smoke filled the air and voices speaking German filled the room, with only the occasional English word as a reminder that the community actually lived in the United States. People eagerly spread news about the everyday events of each other’s lives.
Adele and her mother were no exception. They found themselves chatting with Philip Straub and his wife while the three Straub children ran around playing with other children.
Just as the Straubs took their leave, Adele and her mother were approached by Reverend George Haas, the pastor of the church, and a dark-haired stranger.
Haas adjusted his glasses and stroked his salt-and-pepper beard. “Mrs. Weber, Miss Weber,” he said in English. He nodded to each one in turn. “And how are you this Sunday?”
“We are doing quite well, thank you sir,” Adele replied. Although she returned the nod, her eyes were drawn to the handsome stranger, partly because of his looks but mostly because of his odd behavior. He looked distinctly uncomfortable. He kept his mouth closed, while his gaze darted around the room. Tiny beads of sweat covered his brow, and his hands repeatedly pulled at his collar and tie. Adele stifled a laugh, while waiting for the presumed introduction.
Finally, Haas said, “Allow me to introduce Mr. Lucas Schmidt.”
Schmidt nodded. “A pleasure to meet you both.”
“Mr. Schmidt,” Adele said. “A pleasure to meet you as well. I take it you are new to New York City?”
“Yes,” he said. “I am.”
“Where do you come from?”
“I—I have just arrived from abroad.”
“Really? I’m surprised to hear it. Your accent does not sound like that of the old country.”
Schmidt blushed, reminding Adele of a schoolboy caught in a lie. “No. Um, my family emigrated to England many years ago. I grew up speaking English much more than German.”
“Whereas I grew up fluent in both,” Adele said.
Suddenly, Schmidt began coughing repeatedly, and Haas pounded him on the back. “Are you all right, Mr. Schmidt?”
Schmidt nodded and wiped his brow with a handkerchief. “It’s all the cigar smoke. I’m not used to it.”
“Don’t they smoke in England?” Adele asked.
“Um. Not where I come from.”
“How strange. Well, welcome to Kleindeutschland, Mr. Schmidt.”
He nodded. “Little Germany.”
There was an awkward pause, and then Haas spoke up. “Mr. Schmidt needs a place to stay. And I seem to recall that you still have that room for let.”
“Well,” Mrs. Weber said, “that all depends. How old are you, Mr. Schmidt? How do you earn your living?”
“I’m twenty-five, Mrs. Weber. And I work as a journalist.”
“Oh,” Adele said, a touch disappointed.
Haas smiled. “You’ll have to forgive Miss Weber. She was just telling me how scandalous she finds the newspapers.”
Schmidt turned to look at her, and Adele shifted under his gaze. “Indeed? Are you a regular reader?”
Adele’s mother spoke up again. “My daughter is quite a voracious reader.”
“Yes,” Adele said, slightly nettled. “I am a reader.”
“And you find the newspapers scandalous?”
She sighed. “The newspapers should spend more time reporting the truth, and less time dredging up spectacles.”
Schmidt shrugged. “I tend to agree with you, Miss Weber, but I must point out that newspapers need to sell copies to stay in business.”
“They could sell just as many copies appealing to man’s greater instincts.” She sniffed. “Tell me, Mr. Schmidt, for which paper do you write?”
“I work for the New York World.”
“Oh, Joseph Pulitzer’s paper. That’s not as bad as some of the others. Given that, I think you’d be acceptable.”
“I am honored, Miss Weber,” Schmidt said. He turned to Adele’s mother. “So I’ve been interviewed by both mother and daughter. When will I get to meet Mr. Weber?”
Adele and her mother looked at each other. “My father passed away six years ago,” Adele said after a moment.
“Oh,” Schmidt replied. “I’m sorry.”
Mrs. Weber sighed. “He left me to finish raising Adele on my own. But the community has been helpful. Somehow, I manage to find enough work cleaning offices or taking in laundry to help us live.”
“And taking in boarders?” Schmidt asked.
Adele’s mother smiled. “Yes,” she said. “And taking in boarders. And you do come with good references,” she added, nodding at Reverend Haas.
“Then,” Schmidt said, “if it’s not presumptuous of me to ask, I will need to know my new address.”
“We live three blocks south of here, on Third Street.” She turned to her daughter. “Adele, perhaps you can help Mr. Schmidt find his way to our apartment?”
Adele and Schmidt exchanged an awkward glance.
“Are you going somewhere, mother?” Adele asked.
“I need to stay for a while and talk with Mary Abendschein about the excursion. I have some ideas for her.”
“Excursion?” Schmidt asked. “What excursion?”
“You’ve come to our community at a good time,” Mrs. Weber said. “Next month we’ll have a day to get away from the heat of the city.”
“When?”
“Wednesday, June fifteenth,” Reverend Haas said. “It’s our annual excursion to celebrate the end of the Sunday school year. We charter a steamboat for the day, and head out to Locust Grove, a picnic ground on the northern shore of Long Island. There’ll be food, fun, music, and games. You should join us if you can get away from work.”
“It sounds like quite an outing,” Schmidt said. “You said that you do this every year?”
Haas smiled. “This is our seventeenth one. The church started running them in 1888.”
Mrs. Weber laughed. “You’re being far too modest, Reverend. After all, the excursions were your idea.”
“Really?” Schmidt asked.
Haas waved his hands and shook his head, as if to say that it had not been that much of an achievement. “It just seemed to me that it would be nice if we could celebrate the end of the Sunday school year with some sort of picnic. And it’s so popular that many of our former congregants return from Yorkville and Brooklyn to join the festivities.”
“Some even come from as far off as New Jersey,” Adele said. “Such as my uncle and cousins.”
“We usually get close to a thousand people,” Haas added.
Schmidt whistled. “And what about the program book?”
Adele and her mother exchanged a puzzled glance with Haas. “We didn’t mention the program book,” Adele’s mother said.
“Oh,” Schmidt replied. “Well, perhaps I heard it from someone else. But you did mention Mary Abendschein. I would imagine she has something to do with the program book.”
“Ah, yes,” Haas said. “Mary is in charge of putting it together, along with many of the other details of organizing the event.”
“I would like to assist her, if I could. It seems like a good way of getting to know my new community.”
Haas smiled. “A capital idea. She only started last month, so I imagine her committee could use one more person.”
“Perhaps Mrs. Weber and Miss Weber could introduce me to her.”
“Certainly,” Adele’s mother said. “And then afterwards, Mr. Schmidt, let us escort you to your new home.”
Lucas Schmidt did his best to prevent himself from disrupting the Weber family routine. As part of the boarding arrangement, he shared breakfasts and dinners with Adele and her mother. He would come down to the dining room right on time for the morning meal, made sure to leave before Adele’s mother or Adele herself needed to start working, and he always returned by the scheduled dinner hour.
He even offered to clean the dishes, or to assist the Webers with the household laundry, much to their delight and amusement.
“Most men of my acquaintance wouldn’t do such things,” Adele had told him.
“Does that mean you’d rather I didn’t?”
“Oh, not at all. We’ll gladly take you up on your offer.” She smiled. “But we’ll be sure not to tell anyone, so your reputation remains unbesmirched.”
Schmidt’s behavior and appearance enchanted Adele so much that she and her mother decided upon a plan for Adele to spend some time alone with their new boarder. So the following week, Mrs. Weber told Mr. Schmidt that she had been hoping to take her daughter on an outing to Coney Island. “But,” she said, “my health is not what it once was. Still, I hate to disappoint my daughter. Might you by chance be willing to accompany us?”
From behind the back stairs, Adele heard the whole thing. She felt a small thrill of delight when Schmidt agreed. She admittedly had been shocked when her mother had suggested a Coney Island outing; despite the amusement parks that had been there for almost ten years, it still bore a reputation for vice. Still, friends of the Webers had gone with their young children and declared that they had enjoyed the rides immensely—even if they only mentioned it quietly, and away from the pastor and other officials of the church.
“Why, of course I will,” Schmidt replied.
“Thank you. I know how much Adele is looking forward to seeing Luna Park.”
“Luna Park?”
“It’s a new amusement park that opened just recently on the location of the old Sea Lion Park.”
“Oh, yes, I remember reading something about that.”
“I would have expected you to, if you work at the World.”
That Saturday morning, as the three of them ate breakfast, Adele and her mother completed their plan. Mrs. Weber told Schmidt that she was feeling under the weather and that perhaps they ought to cancel the outing. Schmidt immediately offered to escort Adele on his own.
