A large anthology of sci.., p.798
A Large Anthology of Science Fiction, page 798
“How’d’you think he died?” I asked Crocker. Hearing my own voice made me feel normal again. And that was important right now.
“Who knows? Probably some sort of accident.”
“Nah, he looks too good.”
“That don’t mean nothin’,” Crocker said. “They can make anybody look good as new . . . almost. He could have even had cancer.”
Crocker looked up in the air.
I called his name, but he ignored me. It was as if he was listening to something. He had his head cocked like the RCA dog.
“Crocker, come on,” I said after a while. I was starting to get worried. “Hey, you . . . Crock-a-shit.”
“Shut-up!” Crocker snapped. “Can’t you hear him?”
“Hear what?”
“Just listen.”
I listened, I really did, but I couldn’t hear a damn thing. Crocker is probably off his nut, plain and simple. But I wasn’t much better; not after I had just seen the corpse glowing like the hands on a watch.
Who knows, maybe the dead guy could talk. And maybe Crocker could hear him.
But I just wanted to get out of here.
I was already feeling like the walls and everything were going to close in on me.
“He’s leaving,” Crocker said. “He’s saying good-bye to everybody. Cool!”
“Okay, then let’s go,” I said; but I couldn’t help but look at the spot where Crocker seemed to be staring; and I got the strangest feeling. Then I saw it: a pool of light like a cloud that seemed to be connected to the body that was now glowing softly again.
And the light was bleeding out of the corpse like it was the guy’s spirit or something.
A few seconds later the light just blinked out, as if someone had thrown a switch; and the body looked different, too, as if something vital had just drained out of it. Now it was nothing more than a shell; it looked like it was made of plastic. It was dull, lifeless.
We left then . . . Crocker and I just left at the same time, as if we both knew something.
And I heard thunder and remembered my father talking in the language only he could understand; and I felt as if I was drowning in something as deep and as big as the ocean.
When we got out of the funeral home, and past all the men standing around and smoking cigarettes, Crocker said, “You heard him, didn’t you? I could tell.”
“I didn’t hear nothin’,” I said, protecting my ass.
“Bullshit,” Crocker said.
“Bullshit on you,” I said.
“Well, you were acting . . . different,” Crocker said.
I admitted that maybe I saw something that was a little weird, but it was probably just in my head. That bent Crocker all out of shape; he seemed happier than a kid with a box of Ju Ju Bees, and I got worried that he’d shoot off his mouth to everyone he saw.
I warned him about that.
“Give me a break,” he said. “It’s enough that the guys in the club think of me as some sort of asshole as it is. You’re the only one I feel I can talk to—and I don’t even really know you.”
“Okay,” I said, worried that maybe there was something wrong with me. Why else would Crocker feel that way? It also worried me that first I saw the dead guy glowing like my aunt’s Sylvania ‘Halolight’ teevee, and then I saw his soul (or whatever it was) pass right out of him, leaving nothing but a body that was more like a statue or something made out of plaster-of-Paris. But I put those thoughts away and asked, “What did the guy say?”
“His name is Matt . . . remember? He said he was scared out of his gourd until he found his grandmother.”
“What?”
“His grandmother’s dead. She’ll show him around.”
“Around? Around where?”
“How the hell should I know?” Crocker said. “Heaven, probably.”
“You got to be kidding.” I couldn’t help but laugh. “You’re making that stuff up.” But somehow I really wanted to believe it.
“I thought you said you saw something,” Crocker said, hanging his head. “And I believed you . . . I wanted to know what you saw—”
“I said I thought I saw something.” I punched him hard on the arm to make him feel better. “And it wasn’t nothing but a glowing like a teevee tube when you turn it off.”
“I never saw that.”
“Now tell me what else did Matt say?” I asked.
“He hates Bill Haley, but we got Jackie Williams right.”
“Uh, huh,” I said.
“Well, that’s what I thought I heard,” Crocker said.
“Why’d you say ‘cool’ ?” I asked.
“Whaddyamean?”
“When you were looking up in the air, you said, ‘Cool.’ Don’t you remember?”
“Yeah.”
“Well?”
And Crocker started laughing. It was like he couldn’t stop. He kept leaning forward and stumbling and then laughing even louder. I couldn’t help but smile, and I kept knuckling his arm until he told me.
“He said he was going to visit the Big Bopper.”
“What?”
“That’s what he said. And Ritchie Valens.”
“You’re so full of crap,” I said.
But now I couldn’t stop laughing either.
“Then maybe dying’s not so bad,” I said; and we fell down right there on the sidewalk on Ackley Avenue in front of a brown, shingled house that belonged to Mrs. Campbell, my third grade teacher.
I don’t know what it was, but I just couldn’t stop laughing and crying.
Neither could Crocker.
And who knows, maybe I really did see something flickering in the air above Matt’s dead body while he was floating around in Heaven somewhere meeting his grandmother.
And maybe he did get to see the Big Bopper.
Just like the Big Bopper probably got to see Valens and Holly . . . and probably Mozart and Beethoven, too.
And maybe the Big Bopper also got to meet my Dad.
Why not? Dad would be there, standing right on line; he always liked to play the piano, all that beebop and boogie-woogie stuff. So maybe he became a musician, just like all the others.
Now that would be something . . .
BAD TIMING
Molly Brown
“Time travel is an inexact science. And its study is fraught with paradoxes.”
Samuel Colson, b. 2301 d. 2197.
Alan rushed through the archway without even glancing at the inscription across the top. It was Monday morning and he was late again. He often thought about the idea that time was a point in space, and he didn’t like it. That meant that at this particular point in space it was always Monday morning and he was always late for a job he hated. And it always had been. And it always would be. Unless somebody tampered with it, which was strictly forbidden.
“Oh my Holy Matrix,” Joe Twofingers exclaimed as Alan raced past him to register his palmprint before losing an extra thirty minutes pay. “You wouldn’t believe what I found in the fiction section!”
Alan slapped down his hand. The recorder’s metallic voice responded with, “Employee number 057, Archives Department, Alan Strong. Thirty minutes and seven point two seconds late. One hour’s credit deducted.”
Alan shrugged and turned back towards Joe. “Since I’m not getting paid, I guess I’ll put my feet up and have a cup of liquid caffeine. So tell me what you found.”
“Well, I was tidying up the files—fiction section is a mess as you know—and I came across this magazine. And I thought, ‘what’s this doing here?’ It’s something from the twentieth century called Woman’s Secrets, and it’s all knitting patterns, recipes, and gooey little romance stories: ‘He grabbed her roughly, bruising her soft pale skin, and pulled her to his rock hard chest’ and so on. I figured it was in there by mistake and nearly threw it out. But then I saw this story called ‘The Love That Conquered Time’ and I realised that must be what they’re keeping it for. So I had a look at it, and it was . . .” He made a face and stuck a finger down his throat. “But I really think you ought to read it.”
“Why?”
“Because you’re in it.”
“You’re a funny guy, Joe. You almost had me going for a minute.”
“I’m serious! Have a look at the drebbing thing. It’s by some woman called Cecily Walker, it’s in that funny old vernacular they used to use, and it’s positively dire. But the guy in the story is definitely you.”
Alan didn’t believe him for a minute. Joe was a joker, and always had been. Alan would never forget the time Joe laced his drink with a combination aphrodisiac-hallucinogen at a party and he’d made a total fool of himself with the section leader’s overcoat. He closed his eyes and shuddered as Joe handed him the magazine.
Like all the early relics made of paper, the magazine had been dipped in preservative and the individual pages coated with a clear protective covering which gave them a horrible chemical smell and a tendency to stick together. After a little difficulty, Alan found the page he wanted. He rolled his eyes at the painted illustration of a couple locked in a passionate but chaste embrace, and dutifully began to read.
It was all about a beautiful but lonely and unfulfilled woman who still lives in the house where she was born. One day there is a knock at the door, and she opens it to a mysterious stranger: tall, handsome, and extremely charismatic.
Alan chuckled to himself.
A few paragraphs later, over a candle-lit dinner, the man tells the woman that he comes from the future, where time travel has become a reality, and he works at the Colson Time Studies Institute in the Department of Archives.
Alan stopped laughing.
The man tells her that only certain people are allowed to time travel, and they are not allowed to interfere in any way, only observe. He confesses that he is not a qualified traveller—he broke into the lab one night and stole a machine. The woman asks him why and he tells her, “You’re the only reason, Claudia. I did it for you. I read a story that you wrote and I knew it was about me and that it was about you. I searched in the Archives and I found your picture and then I knew that I loved you and that I had always loved you and that I always would.”
“But I never wrote a story, Alan.”
“You will, Claudia. You will.”
The Alan in the story goes on to describe the Project, and the Archives, in detail. The woman asks him how people live in the twenty-fourth century, and he tells her about the gadgets in his apartment.
The hairs at the back of Alan’s neck rose at the mention of his Neuro-Pleasatron. He’d never told anybody that he’d bought one, not even Joe.
After that, there’s a lot of grabbing and pulling to his rock hard chest, melting sighs and kisses, and finally a wedding and a “happily ever after” existing at one point in space where it always has and always will.
Alan turned the magazine over and looked at the date on the cover. March 14, 1973.
He wiped the sweat off his forehead and shook himself. He looked up and saw that Joe was standing over him.
“You wouldn’t really do that, would you,” Joe said. “Because you know I’d have to stop you.”
Cecily Walker stood in front of her bedroom mirror and turned from right to left. She rolled the waistband over one more time, making sure both sides were even. Great; the skirt looked like a real mini. Now all she had to do was get out of the house without her mother seeing her.
She was in the record shop wondering if she really should spend her whole allowance on the new Monkees album, but she really liked Peter Tork, he was so cute, when Tommy Johnson walked in with Roger Hanley. “Hey, Cess-pit! Whaddya do, lose the bottom half of your dress?”
The boys at her school were just so creepy. She left the shop and turned down the main road, heading toward her friend Candy’s house. She never noticed the tall blonde man that stood across the street, or heard him call her name.
When Joe went on his lunch break, Alan turned to the wall above his desk and said, “File required: Authors, fiction, twentieth century, initial ‘W’.”
“Checking,” the wall said. “File located.”
“Biography required: Walker, Cecily.”
“Checking. Biography located. Display? Yes or no.”
“Yes.”
A section of wall the size of a small television screen lit up at eye-level, directly in front of Alan. He leaned forward and read: Walker, Cecily. b. Danville, Illinois, U.S.A. 1948 d. 2037. Published works: “The Love That Conquered Time”, March, 1973. Accuracy rating: fair.
“Any other published works?”
“Checking. None found.”
Alan looked down at the magazine in his lap.
“I don’t understand,” Claudia said, looking pleadingly into his deep blue eyes. Eyes the colour of the sea on a cloudless morning, and eyes that contained an ocean’s depth of feeling for her, and her alone. “How is it possible to travel through time?”
“I’ll try to make this simple,” he told her, pulling her close. She took a deep breath, inhaling his manly aroma, and rested her head on his shoulder with a sigh. “Imagine that the universe is like a string. And every point on that string is a moment in space and time. But instead of stretching out in a straight line, it’s all coiled and tangled and it overlaps in layers. Then all you have to do is move from point to point.”
Alan wrinkled his forehead in consternation. “File?”
“Yes. Waiting.”
“Information required: further data on Walker, Cecily. Education, family background.”
“Checking. Found. Display? Yes or . . .”
“Yes!”
Walker, Cecily. Education: Graduate Lincoln High, Danville, 1967. Family background: Father Walker, Matthew. Mechanic, automobile. d. 1969. Mother no data.
Alan shook his head. Minimal education, no scientific background. How could she know so much? “Information required: photographic likeness of subject. If available, display.”
He blinked and there she was, smiling at him across his desk. She was oddly dressed, in a multi-coloured tee-shirt that ended above her waist and dark blue trousers that were cut so low they exposed her navel and seemed to balloon out below her knees into giant flaps of loose-hanging material. But she had long dark hair that fell across her shoulders and down to her waist, crimson lips and the most incredible eyes he had ever seen—huge and green. She was beautiful. He looked at the caption: Walker, Cecily. Author: Fiction related to time travel theory. Photographic likeness circa 1970.
“File,” he said, “Further data required: personal details, ie. marriage. Display.”
Walker, Cecily m. Strong, Alan.
“Date?”
No data.
“Biographical details of husband, Strong, Alan?”
None found.
“Redisplay photographic likeness. Enlarge.” He stared at the wall for several minutes. “Print,” he said.
Only half a block to go, the woman thought, struggling with two bags of groceries. The sun was high in the sky and the smell of Mrs. Henderson’s roses, three doors down, filled the air with a lovely perfume. But she wasn’t in the mood to appreciate it. All the sun made her feel was hot, and all the smell of flowers made her feel was ill. It had been a difficult pregnancy, but thank goodness it was nearly over now.
She wondered who the man was, standing on her front porch. He might be the new mechanic at her husband’s garage, judging by his orange cover-alls. Nice-looking, she thought, wishing that she didn’t look like there was a bowling ball underneath her dress.
“Excuse me,” the man said, reaching out to help her with her bags. “I’m looking for Cecily Walker.”
“My name’s Walker,” the woman told him. “But I don’t know any Cecily.”
“Cecily,” she repeated when the man had gone. What a pretty name.
Alan decided to work late that night. Joe left at the usual time and told him he’d see him tomorrow.
“Yeah, tomorrow,” Alan said.
He waited until Joe was gone, and then he took the printed photo of Cecily Walker out of his desk drawer and sat for a long time, staring at it. What did he know about this woman? Only that she’d written one published story, badly, and that she was the most gorgeous creature he had ever seen. Of course, what he was feeling was ridiculous. She’d been dead more than three hundred years.
But there were ways of getting around that.
Alan couldn’t believe what he was actually considering. It was lunacy. He’d be caught, and he’d lose his job. But then he realised that he could never have read about it if he hadn’t already done it and got away with it. He decided to have another look at the story.
It wasn’t there. Under Fiction: Paper Relics: 20th Century, sub-section Magazines, American, there was shelf after shelf full of Amazing Stories, Astounding, Analog, Weird Tales and Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine, but not one single copy of Woman’s Secrets.
Well, he thought, if the magazine isn’t there, I guess I never made it after all. Maybe it’s better that way. Then he thought, but if I never made it, how can I be looking for the story? I shouldn’t even know about it. And then he had another thought.
“File,” he said. “Information required: magazines on loan.”
“Display?”
“No, just tell me.”
“Woman’s Secrets, date 1973. Astounding, date . . .”
“Skip the rest. Who’s got Woman’s Secrets?”
“Checking. Signed out to Project Control through Joe Twofingers.”
Project Control was on to him! If he didn’t act quickly, it would be too late.
It was amazingly easy to get into the lab. He just walked in. The machines were all lined up against one wall, and there was no one around to stop him. He walked up to the nearest machine and sat down on it. The earliest model developed by Samuel Colson had looked like an English telephone box (he’d been a big Doctor Who fan), but it was hardly inconspicuous and extremely heavy, so refinements were made until the latest models were lightweight, collapsible, and made to look exactly like (and double up as) a folding bicycle. The control board was hidden from general view, inside a wicker basket.
