Rewrite

by Gregory Benford

  “How?”

  “One of our other cameras spotted the third-story window whence came the shots. The master has dispatched two of our defenders.”

  “I didn’t know you had any.”

  “Always, sir.”

  “I want to see the chevalier immediately.”

  * * *

  Casanova speaks from his comfortable love seat: “ ‘But at my back I always hear / Time’s winged chariot hurrying near,’ my Charles. You seem to have avoided the chariot. Forgive me, I seize every chance to quote Marvell.”

  “Who was it?”

  “We shall have a report shortly. Come sit, will you?”

  Charlie finds a suitably deep leather chair beside the flickering yellow fire. “Sure. It’s been months, sorry. I—”

  “Do not regret growing older. It is a privilege denied to many.”

  “I came to tell you that Albert is dead.”

  “I know.”

  “Already? How?”

  “Res ipsa loquitur, ‘the thing speaks for itself.’ ”

  “You have a network—”

  “Allies, friends, some reincarnates who wish to forever remain unknown to others of us.”

  Charlie sits back. Phelps appears at his elbow with a glass of amaretto, takes another to Casanova. “It’s morning!”

  “You look as though you need it.” Casanova hoists his bowl glass. “Whereas instruction does not always delight, delight always instructs.”

  “Who tried to kill me?”

  Casanova beckons to Phelps. Charlie sips the amaretto, and its sweet, burning scent prickles his nose, its taste lancing through his airline-dried mouth and sinuses. It is just the right thing.

  Into the room step two large men in shirts and ties, wool pants, and level hard looks. Casanova salutes them and raises his eyebrows.

  “We know that shoot site, sir. They’ve used it before,” the taller one says in a formal baritone. “Got away, left the rifle. Had a silencer on it, not a good one.”

  “I heard the shot,” Charlie says.

  “Yes, sir, you were in the cone that kind of silencer can’t suppress, right out of the muzzle.”

  “They missed by maybe an inch.”

  “Yes, sir, our apologies. That apartment rented out three months back; we saw no activity beyond normal. They cleared out fast.”

  “How long ago did they use it last to shoot at your goddamn secret entrance?”

  “Twelve years, as I recall,” Casanova says. “I purchased the building, but—”

  “Our error, sir,” the taller says. “They looked like ordinary, upscale—”

  “What happened twelve years ago?” Charlie shoots back.

  “They killed Luther Burbank,” Casanova says flatly. “A brilliant scientist.”

  “That’s why you don’t leave here very much,” Charlie says.

  “Alas, yes. Fortunately, much comes to me.”

  The tall man says, “I think I know how to track them, sir.”

  “Do it.” Casanova dismisses them with a wave. “Repay in kind.”

  The men’s faces harden as though they have heard this order before. They leave. As they go, Charlie can see they are muscular and graceful, lithe lions in an urban jungle.

  “Why does this go on?” Charlie sits up in his chair, fists balled.

  “To expect the world to treat you fairly because you’re a good person, my friend, is like expecting a bull not to charge you because you are a vegetarian.”

  Charlie sits back, blinking. Adrenaline ebbs from him, confusion rising like a muddy flood. “Non sequitur,” is all he can get out.

  “Your work with Albert and that Heinlein fellow—not to my taste. How could you not expect to catch attention from those who play the history game?”

  “Albert and I, we wanted to understand all this.”

  “All credit to you, my friend. Most of us are buffeted by our many lives, small boats in the frothing rapids.”

  “We can’t do it if these murderers come after us in every life.”

  Casanova considers this, signaling Phelps to fill his glass. “Then you must secure a time line where you can work unimpeded.”

  “What? Kill myself?”

  Casanova waves this away. “You are new to this. It is natural to indulge in solipsistic whining. Do not be embarrassed by it.”

  “Hadn’t realized I was.” Charlie feels insulted, but he has to stay on the favored side of this man who seems to know so much but care so little.

  “Among our kind, dear Charles, the mind is not a vessel to be filled, but a fire to be ignited. I applaud your ambition—and in merely your second life as well!”

  “Don’t brush me off with an epigram, please.”

  “But I am not!” Casanova’s expression shifts to his waspish storytelling cast. “Long ago I was walking with Samuel Beckett in Paris on a perfect spring morning. I said to him, ‘Doesn’t a day like this make you glad to be alive?’ to which Beckett answered, ‘I wouldn’t go as far as that.’ Luckily for him, he did not reincarnate. It would simply have depressed him more.”

  “Point is?”

  “You have a gift for living. I could see it in your films.”

  “I’m surprised you caught them.”

  “Recall, I have lived through times much like these without your work—and with the works you so, shall we say, profited from.”

  Charlie feels his face redden. So Casanova sees his entire pattern of pirating movies. Casanova’s pale eyes still regard Charlie with fondness, and a certain wry tilt of his mouth implies he could say much more.

  “So how do I proceed?” asks Charlie.

  “Why, when I told you, I recall you said a moment ago, ‘What? Kill myself?’ ”

  “How do I know I’ll be reincarnated?”

  “Aye, the puzzle. Yet my long, somewhat tortured experience tells me you will. I have observed those who reincarnate only once or twice, and they do not have your cast.”

  Charlie’s forehead wrinkles with disbelief, so Casanova leans forward earnestly. “Most people are dull, unimportant cogs in an unimportant machine called society. They lack a certain spirit.”

  “Albert said it was about correlations in the brain. They make minds able to link, to quantum transport, to nearby space-times. Where those come from, I dunno.” Charlie realizes he desperately wants Casanova to be right. But that also makes him cautious, a lesson Albert’s death has taught him.

  “My poorly educated mind observes that those who are on their last cycle have let joie de vivre give way to gaze de navel.”

  Charlie wonders if he is like that. “I don’t feel any different than I did as Charlie One, and he didn’t think he would live again.”

  “You lost your virginity, in a way—as did I, when first I died. Rest assured, the happily ignorant don’t see the problem. Albert’s correlated minds discover it soon enough. He termed us ‘chemical scum that dream of distant quasars,’ as I recall. Come, let us scum dine.”

  They move to the opulent dining room, now with a snowy dining cloth and a centerpiece with a delicate rose in a fluted vase. Charlie uses the time to frame his questions. Over a fluffy omelet with a Sancerre wine Casanova toasts, “I urge patience to us both.”

  Charlie shoots back irritably, “Why is patience a virtue and ‘hurry the fuck up’ isn’t?”

  Casanova chuckles. “At least you have the energy to be rude. Young Charles, patience because we have all the time in this world—and in the next ones.”

  “Ever hear of a guy named Delgado?”

  A quick dash of concern flits across the ancient face. “I may have, just. In my many paths through these ‘universes,’ as Albert calls them, I have seen your nemesis gang, those I term the history game players, use agents who are, alas, not of the reincarnated. Delgado I do recall.”

  “Why do I dream of an older Mexican guy?”

  A sigh, raised eyebrows, and he finishes his glass of Sancerre, staring at the ceiling with an expression of re
gret. “Another phenomenon Albert attributes to these correlations. You can ‘pick up,’ as you Americans say, the lateral fragments of other minds.”

  Phelps steps forward to fetch Casanova’s plate while Charlie ruminates on this. “I haven’t met him, Delgado, so—”

  “Then it is a forward event you dream of. You have not yet, but you will.”

  “What’s Delgado’s role?”

  “They use him, those darker players in the history game, Gabriela’s gang.”

  “You’ve known her a long time.” A wave of loathing breaks over Charlie. Why, he’s not sure.

  Casanova ignores Charlie’s bitter tone. “Delgado they used in the Kennedy shooting, I recall. He was conveniently located near Kennedy’s peak, when he won an election or primary or something, so Delgado—”

  “Robert Kennedy. Their work?” He does not let the shock slow him.

  “Indeed, in one or two of the universes they perverted. Probably did in this one as well.

  “I try not to recall too much about such matters.” Casanova signals for more wine, then takes some almonds from a dish. “One reason I remain here, and seldom go out—except to see your films, of course. They are worth the risk.”

  Charlie shrugs off the compliment. “Where did this Delgado live? I dream of him in some desert, poverty stricken.”

  “They remove him from that, set him up nearer the site. He is an illegal immigrant and cannot move about without risk. They put him on the coast in California. Some town with that name.”

  “Coast?” Charlie envisions a map of Southern California, runs his attention down it. “Costa Mesa?”

  “I believe something like that. I am not one for sordid details. There have been so many in my life now.” A self-pitying gaze into infinity.

  “What else can you tell me about them?”

  “Little that I want to recall.”

  “You have to.”

  Casanova sits up and gives Charlie a stern glare. “I do not have to do anything.”

  “Sorry.” He has to hold himself in check here. A conviction is blossoming in him.

  “Alas, I’ll never be free of them, those evil laterals. I am a lateral, but it seems being so has gone to their heads. They make worlds they wish to live in, birthed out of some demented political ideas. They are evil in flight. They remind me of the despicable events in Paris during my time of origin. Utopia was to come from a guillotine.”

  “How can we stop them?”

  “We? I will never. I am not that sort. Not political.”

  Charlie now knows that he is that sort. “Do you want Albert back?” he says slowly.

  “Of course. He is my favorite of all of you. . . .” Casanova brightens. “And yours, too, I’ll wager.”

  “I’ll wager too,” says Charlie, realizing with a shock that he might just wager everything.

  36 Charlie gets out of the limo, looking Hollywood in his shades, suit, and open collar.

  The air carries the ocean’s salt tang and soothes his skin. He walks along the beach and sees Heinlein strolling in a tight swimsuit with a belt and pouch, studying the waves as though he wants to go in. Empty sands stretch away on a weekday afternoon, and a wind whispers in Charlie’s ears as he approaches Heinlein from behind. Since Heinlein’s didn’t answer his phone, he guessed the man would be here, getting exercise. Ten meters away, Heinlein suddenly turns, hand on his waist pouch, fetching forth a snub-nosed revolver. Says nothing.

  “Have they tried again?”

  “No, and I’m not giving them the chance. I’m going home.”

  “They can find you there.”

  “Ginny and I have a better perimeter there.”

  “So you do. Plus, you can improve it with tricky defenses.”

  Heinlein nods.

  “I understand—Ginny’s number one and there’s no number two.”

  “Damn right.”

  “No desire to alter history along another time line, live there?” Charlie keeps his tone casual, as though this is not the crucial question.

  A flinty flicker in the eyes. “Nope.”

  “What were you going to do with the pistol when you went swimming?”

  “It’s special manufacture, waterproof.”

  Charlie laughs and after a moment Heinlein does too.

  * * *

  There are sturdy cartons already filled and sealed inside Heinlein’s living room, Charlie notes, all neat and ready to go. “Have the police come by?”

  “No, but it’s just been days. Nothing at all in the papers. I’ll be gone in another day—you can tell the studio to cancel my contract.”

  “I wonder who those guys were?”

  Heinlein mixes two gin and tonics. “No clues on the bodies.” He sits down and scowls, shaking his head. “I’m guessing you’re thinking of killing yourself, just to set things right in your next incarnation?”

  “Mulling it over.”

  “Not my game.” Heinlein’s eyes narrow. “You don’t have anyone to hold you here?”

  “No. I’ve made a lot of movies and money . . . but I can do all that again.”

  “No special person, a woman you might miss?”

  “In your terms, I’m a failure.” Maybe mine, too. “They didn’t really take. Well, maybe one.” Images of the young Michelle fill his mind, so beautiful and fine.

  “What happened?” Heinlein asks.

  “It didn’t turn out well.”

  A sad, slow nod, Heinlein’s head bowing. “Me too. First wife. But I found the right one, finally.” His head rises abruptly. “You’re not afraid of dying?”

  “Not really.” Casanova said Charlie seemed like a recurring reincarnate. Charlie believes a man who has centuries of experience on his side.

  “A man who is fearless cannot be courageous. He is also a fool.”

  Charlie decides not to take this personally. It’s part of Heinlein’s crusty persona. “Let’s say I’m confident. Casanova thinks it’s a spiritual thing, something in the character.”

  Heinlein chuckles. “Sounds like he is making stuff up.”

  “Look, we have the fantastic luxury of multiple lives—great, but we’re still flotsam tossing on a random sea we don’t understand. Or control.”

  Heinlein laughs. “My hat’s off to you, sir. I’m headin’ home.”

  * * *

  Charlie’s estate planner finishes the will and he signs. It’s essential to straighten out matters with the studio, tie up deals and secure gains that occurred while he was away. Everyone assumes he is back to restart his career, but he ignores all questions, preferring to be enigmatic.

  As the movie production work he knows so well goes forward, he says good-bye to it. He writes a legacy document disguised as a proposal memo, outlining ideas with titles: Total Recall (some help for Phil Dick), Starship Troopers (a departing gift for Heinlein), The Shawshank Redemption. (Stephen King doesn’t need the money, but Charlie writes a set of production notes straight from memory in half an hour because it is such a good story.) Maybe they won’t be great movies, but they will help two people who helped him.

  He feels a strangely nostalgic loyalty to his Charlie One unhappiness, a sense that his sad life in that distant world of A.D. 2000 was where he really belonged. He earned that sadness by his own actions. Should he now again live out a life of small decisions? He could have an easy Hollywood career, just let life flow and forget Albert . . . starlets and spotlights succeeding each other emptily.

  Or . . . go for chances, grab at them—make a better world. Could he make a time line where his life helped?

  The best part of nostalgia, he sees, is that it is about what lies in the past and can’t be changed, only relished in retrospect and then put aside. I’ll let them be, those future years that would wrap me in comforts. But nothing has been as important as his time with Albert and Robert.

  The reincarnates who play the game might be surprised. He will keep punching in the clinch.

  Now I can make my own ti
mescape, a history I want to happen.

  * * *

  So the time has come to die.

  Charlie holds a Saturday night special, the snub-nosed Victory .38, favorite of cheap crooks. His clenched fingers tremble slightly as they caress black metal, the weapon like a cobra that has to be captured by a firm grip behind the neck. He feels trapped in time’s cycles, an insect in amber.

  He thinks back to the last time he died. Even now, fear grips him. His heart hammers, sweat chills his skin.

  Can I be sure this works every time? All that talk from Casanova and Albert, I never got any hard numbers about how often the whole reincarnation thing works, or when it starts to fail. Does it always work for a new reincarnate?

  And again . . . is this what Casanova meant about what I would decide to do? Do reincarnates try to set their worlds straight?

  Maybe he is different. He doesn’t want to live through all that bland future up ahead in the 1990s, with Pax Americanum holding sway over a zombie culture. This is about his future, too. Somebody is trying to kill him anyway, right? So why not steal their moves? Do it myself. Stay in control.

  But he steels himself, thinking about the first time he died. Thinking about coming back to 1968, doing more with his life than running around Hollywood.

  Charlie squeezes the trigger but stops short. He sees a hardening smile on Elspeth’s face, and then Michelle’s face, a mask of troubles.

  He changes his mind. No .38 for him.

  * * *

  Charlie turns to a recreation that guarantees the greatest adrenaline surge without human distractions. Something with zest in it. A sport just starting. Skydiving.

  He enrolls in a course offered at a small airport out by Banning, with a good view of the San Jacinto Mountains. The other people in his class are sober, careful, asking pointed questions. One woman, a bit overweight from middle age, gets so nervous she drops out. For many of the students, the class seems to be a deliberate challenge, a way perhaps of mastering themselves.

  But for Charlie it is completely different; he is lighthearted, grinning and joking, quite unlike his classmates. They seem to be a mixture of control freaks and adrenaline junkies.

  His heart pounds, though, on the first practice dive. With all the safeguards in place—an instructor floating on a tether nearby to pull the rip cord just in case, and a backup chute, too—he still must overcome his innate fear of throwing himself out an airplane door into the abyss. But he does. Knowing he may be immortal helps. How others manage it, he will never know.