Rewrite

by Gregory Benford

  Time somehow accelerates for him. He learns to relax and enjoy life as it comes. There’s always more coming, after all.

  He is in graduate school at UCLA when the book on the Robert F. Kennedy assassination is published in 1978. He devours it in his graduate student cubicle, looking for signs of the Hombre.

  He thinks he has him when he reads about a mysterious man who is supposed to have been with Sirhan Sirhan and a young woman at the Ambassador Hotel. But there is too little about the other man to be sure. He slogs on.

  Then a detail jumps off the page. There are several descriptions of an unknown girl in a polka-dot dress, seen behaving oddly right after the assassination. At first he thinks it odd to wear eye-drawing polka dots, but then he realizes that people would look at the dress, not at the face of the person wearing it. So he delves into the raw material of transcripts, tediously scanning. A few people have fragmentary memories. The hair color, to some blond, to others brown. One says the girl had a “funny nose.” Funny nose . . . with an odd point to it? Sort of blond.

  Elspeth!

  She isn’t hard to track down in the UCLA library’s archives. Already she has published four scholarly articles and a popular piece in Ramparts magazine, after getting her doctorate from Harvard. Now she is hiding out at the University of Toronto as an assistant professor of political science.

  Charlie dips into the reserve of cash he has salted away and takes a plane to Toronto. He has some questions to ask a certain attractive young lady.

  * * *

  Charlie’s mind churns on the flight. The taxi ride from the airport is endless. Even in the late 1970s, Toronto seems to go on long after it has made its point. Diesel fumes and jackhammers and vaguely French suits. Charlie’s first stop is a hardware store called, for some reason, Canadian Tire. He has the taxi wait. Then it’s off downtown for his little romantic get-together.

  The University of Toronto campus is a sprawling urban monster, like some of the older American campuses, but with Canadian cleanliness and order. He is helped by a friendly middle-aged woman at a reception counter and soon finds himself outside Professor E. Halpern’s door.

  He knocks with as much dispassion as he can manage.

  “Come in.” Her voice has a descending tone, at once commanding and dismissive in its welcome. She hasn’t changed, then.

  He lets the door swing open wide before he enters and closes it.

  Elspeth of course expects him. “Ah, Char-lee.” Her smile is unreadable, but Charlie doesn’t care. She rises to approach him but then thinks better of it and stands beside her desk chair.

  “Why, Elspeth?”

  “Why you, or why Kennedy?”

  “I don’t give a fuck about myself. Why Kennedy?”

  She doesn’t bother to answer him, just smiles, winding him up.

  He converts his rage into an interrogation.

  “That was your Beetle that Sirhan was in, wasn’t it? It was you who called out, ‘We killed him. We killed him.’ ” To this she still smiles. Doesn’t move. “You put your hair up, didn’t you? Bought a nice polka-dot dress, hypnotized the confused little bugger.”

  Elspeth’s smile bespeaks triumph, the same expression he saw on Gabriela’s face.

  “You are, were, will be, Gabriela, aren’t you?”

  “Sort of, Char-lee.”

  “You have both been taking me for a loser, the dick you lead around.”

  A smirk. “It’s a nice dick, Char-lee. Don’t be ashamed of it.”

  Elspeth moves a bit closer to Charlie. He backs away slightly and fingers the hunting knife in his pocket. His mouth is dry and he can find no words. Air rasps in his throat.

  “I just want to feel your body again.”

  Charlie feels stripped, humiliated in front of Elspeth, or Gabriela. Again. A feeling that familiarity does not improve.

  “Who was the Mexican?”

  “You mean Delgado? Nothing. Just a tool.”

  “No, the man who died in the desert, who killed himself with a gun, the Hombre, the one I have dreamed about.”

  “Ah.” Elspeth’s smile fades and she takes a step back to lean on her desk, the pretty curve of her pelvis pushing forward.

  “That, of course, is Gabriel. Father to both Gabriela and myself. Father, lover, self. We are really one person, you know, Char-lee.”

  “You mean I have been fucking a Mexican guy?”

  Elspeth looks cross. “Well, you’ve been fucking all of us. We’re all here, you know.” She gently strokes her forehead, an obscenely autoerotic gesture that sends a surge of nausea through him, his breath shallow.

  “And you wanted to add me to your menagerie?”

  “You seem to enjoy fucking us, Char-lee. I think you would like becoming part of us. Think what we could do then. We are blessed, we reincarnates—and rare.”

  Charlie’s guts are dropping out from underneath him; the room whirls. His throat clenches, refuses to let him speak. Her infernal smile returns, her eyes big and glistening. She is excited, nostrils flared just enough. He struggles, jaw clenched, and finally can relax. Control. You’re not really this kid. Then he’s back, his breathing calm.

  “So why did you kill Kennedy?”

  Her lip curls in scorn and he catches a smell from her, a smell of lust and anger. “We wanted to let Nixon destroy himself on his own with Watergate or whatever—he’s such a paranoid, he had to fail. Then that whole Cold Warrior establishment thing would unravel. America would get out of Vietnam. The eventual collapse of American world domination. But you haven’t seen it all yet.”

  He knows to let her run on. She grimaces, teeth flashing, as if holding in a huge rage. “I know you want the same things, Char-lee. You belong with us.” Elspeth advances on him, puts her hands behind his head, and kisses his chin. Then her mouth moves down his neck toward his chest. Charlie’s heart pounds with revulsion—not only for the monster that he finds Elspeth to be, but for his own attraction to her.

  She unzips his leather jacket, her smile sliding into a leer of triumph. She unbuttons his shirt.

  “You . . .” He struggles with himself, with confusion, fearing mental invasion. He has to play a role here, use what he learned a thousand years ago in Hollywood.

  She blinks like a lizard, her seduction interrupted.

  Fine. He puts a heavy earnestness into his youthful voice, using the skills he learned as a producer in Hollywood, where everybody was always your close friend. “You give me so much.”

  She blinks again, triumphant. “I am so happy with you, Char-lee. You have always been so smart.”

  He embraces her as his mind churns. Best to get away from here and think. Give her no clue that he is anything more than her pussy-whipped creature.

  “You’re wonderful,” he murmurs.

  41 The crisp black “42” sign is reassuring. Casanova remains as an anchor for reincarnates, the one stationary point for worlds in flux. Charlie looks around, but of course he is arriving here long before he did in the Charlie Two world. Maybe that matters.

  Phelps again opens the door seconds after the knock. Of course; they have men watching their perimeter. This time there is nothing tentative about Charlie’s entrance. “I want to see Albert and the chevalier immediately.”

  Phelps’s bone-white skin creases with the patience of ageless time, a slightly raised eyebrow. “I fear that Professor Einstein is not available at this time; he would accomplish a much better explanation. The chevalier, however, is expecting you. He is waiting for you in the den, sir.”

  Phelps leads Charlie part of the way toward the den, returns to his reception desk. His eyes watch Charlie with resigned wisdom.

  The chevalier rises as Charlie enters the chintz-stuffed room.

  “Dear boy! You have come to us at a far earlier stage.”

  The beaming chevalier approaches Charlie with arms open, but the younger man backs away.

  “I’m not sure I can trust you. Not anymore.”

  Casanova
shrugs, spreads his hands in a gesture of sympathy. “Yes, I’m sure I have disappointed you.” He sits down with a flourish and rests his head in his left hand.

  Charlie’s rage and confusion keep him upright, bristling. But at first he can’t speak. His throat locks up. Tears of humiliation and anger sting his eyes.

  “Why didn’t you tell me about Gabriel, Gabriela, the whole fucking mess I am mixed up with?” His words rush out, ragged and breathless; his hands quiver.

  “Gabriel and his crew? A nasty group, really.”

  “What is up with you people?”

  The chevalier pointedly sighs with exasperation. “There is so much I have to explain to you.” He offers a small glass of Amontillado, but Charlie dismisses it with a curt snort.

  Some of the weight of centuries seeps into Casanova’s face; he sighs. “When you first spoke with dear Albert, you must have realized that, for reincarnates, meddling with history is a perennial temptation.”

  The chevalier’s smooth tone deflates Charlie’s anger. Yes, he knew that; he had to. He had tried to do it himself. “So what have they been doing? And why?”

  Casanova realizes that he has Charlie back under his spell. He pats the floral cushion next to him. “Quite an interesting case, dear boy.”

  Charlie eases himself to the edge of the upholstery. A bone-deep fatigue rushes up in him, and with it an insight. Now this is the only real home I have.

  “Gabriel was a poor Mexican whose mission was to escape the—what do you call poor countries these days?—the second, no, third world hell that he grew up in. He was very poor. Very smart, though illiterate, but determined. He made his way out of Mexico, much as I made my way out of the Leads, by virtue of great resolve and grasping every opportunity. He died several times in the deserts of Arizona. He learned from defeat and death, as must we all.”

  Charlie whispers, “It all seems so futile.”

  Casanova nods, then brushes this away with a finger flick. “To continue, then. Finally Gabriel came here. He had followed clues.”

  “A goddamn newspaper ad?”

  “I have forgotten. He may be brighter than his actions seem—certainly Albert feels that the brain ‘correlations’ required for reincarnation do not necessarily mean intelligence per se. We have many avenues for reincarnation, some quite subtle. Gabriel and I met, and he learned about lateral reincarnation, the fusion of minds across time.”

  Revulsion rises hot and bitter in Charlie’s throat. “Do all reincarnates learn how to go laterally?”

  “Ah, no, dear boy.” The chevalier arches his eyebrows and a tender smile conveys resigned compassion.

  “I’m not going to be able to go lateral, am I?”

  “Perhaps not.”

  Better to cycle through his own body, Charlie thinks, and no one else’s.

  Casanova pats his hand. “Gabriel’s great passion was to escape the limitations of his world, economically, intellectually, politically. He was so promising in those days—so full of hope that more education would make his life easier, would let him understand reincarnation. But every time he died, he would go back to Mexico, with nothing, and fight his way back here.”

  Like me, Charlie thinks. Cycling, looping forever. Maybe this is hell and I don’t know it. One made for those who keep trying to alter time. But they never learn. So they kill again. Only if you hope can those hopes be dashed again and again, throughout eternity. Even Dante had no idea this bad . . . .

  “Any interest in lunch, Charles?”

  Charlie shakes his head emphatically. He can’t think of food now.

  “Pity. Well, I’m afraid, dear boy, that Gabriel has a lot of darkness lurking in his soul. Something to do with his mother, I fear. I had difficulties with my mother also. . . .”

  Casanova glances sidewise, notices that Charlie has little time for Freudian theories, and hurries on with his explanation.

  “So Gabriel was an angry soul from the start. Though he loved learning, he hated the bland rationalism of our time. He wanted to purge himself of his frustrations, and if that meant reaping a whirlwind of chaos for himself, and for this time, then he was happy to make it so.”

  Casanova sees that Charlie may finally be ready to speak reasonably, so he makes space for him in the flow of words. Charlie manages, “Gabriel was—or is—a kind of romantic nihilist? Like an anarchist?”

  “You could say so, my boy. Gabriel hates some of the basic ideas that to me are of the essence of civilization. Understanding, openness, order, personal freedom. He lives for the drama of time, for the turbulence of unbridled authenticity—yes, I think that was his phrase.”

  “So, you know him pretty well.”

  “Quite intimately, I’m afraid.”

  “Gabriela?”

  “Quite the little temptress, isn’t she?” Casanova gives Charlie an arch look, a tilt of the head. Despite himself, Charlie feels a pang of brotherhood.

  “Absolutely.” Charlie releases a pent-up breath. “So, we understand each other.”

  Charlie still recoils from the thought of Casanova and Gabriel switching sexes, a grand gavotte among many partners, skin touching and blending, then Gabriel as Gabriela or Elspeth having sex with him. But the violence of his revulsion is fading.

  “I know it’s hard to understand, Charles, but for some of us, once we have been through many lives, the real difference is between reincarnates and everyone else. The poor dear mortals, I call them, even though they cycle too, of course. They simply have no awareness that their lives loop back, go around, sometimes switch bodies. It’s all so vague and unconscious for them, just fragments of dreams show them the truth about their plight.”

  Maybe they’re lucky, Charlie thinks, many lives but no memories.

  The chevalier’s voice rises. “Whereas we, dear friend, know what is going on, as the complex flow of time sweeps us up and deposits us anew upon strange sands. Our understandings accumulate through time. We see so much, so we deepen.” Charlie notices that the man’s eyes are becoming moist.

  Casanova stands, smoothing his clothes as he rises. “Now I really must insist, I haven’t had a morsel.” He takes Charlie by the arm. “Come, come, dear boy. You look terrible, I’m afraid to say.”

  The food and more soothing words help. Charlie waits until they are sitting quietly across the great mahogany table from each other, wineglasses in hand, before demanding, “What is my place in all this?”

  Casanova hesitates, his mouth slanted with remorse. “Dear boy, I believe you are one of those reincarnates who will always be yourself.”

  “Thank God!”

  “Yes, and you are happy with that, are you not?”

  “You bet.”

  “I know that the gender blending, the passion slipping both ways, this bothers you, does it not?” The question is purely rhetorical, and Casanova smiles benignly to show that he understands Charlie full well.

  “So, you are locked in your time, the late twentieth century. Not a bad time. Good dentists, the doctors aren’t terrible. Well, they can’t do much of anything to really increase our life spans, but for us that isn’t an issue, now is it?”

  “No.”

  “Regrettably, you have gotten rather mixed up in Gabriel’s struggles. Even before your first reincarnation, they were hanging around you, weren’t they?”

  “Of course. I was married to Elspeth, for Chrissake.”

  “Indeed you were, weren’t you?” Casanova blinks, purses his mouth with wry humor. “One forgets details. In any case, I’m afraid that Gabriel’s bitterness has infected a number of lateral reincarnations. They work together over time, through time, spreading their ‘authenticity’ like a disease. You’ve seen something of that, I know.”

  “But what am I to do?” Charlie is anguished, pleading.

  “Well. Well, well. I’m afraid that is rather up to you, my young friend. Gabriel’s crew causes quite a bit of havoc in your time.”

  “I know he—they—must have been involved in s
everal assassinations.”

  “I’m afraid so, dear boy. They do keep us busy. But it does become an ugly business, you see—discreetly removing our kindred when they cause trouble. There was another time in the last century, the nineteenth, when we had a bout of assassinations. It all got quite tangled. That is when I started to back away from getting too involved. I’m sure you understand.”

  “Yes. I know.” He came close with Elspeth. But then he recalled, from a conversation right after Albert’s death, that Heinlein had said something about sending them to the back of the line. That stopped him.

  Casanova’s face works with concern, and Charlie sees to his surprise that the man is getting flustered. Even immortals have worries. “Well, you are one of the stronger reincarnates. Your retention of memory through your reincarnations is excellent. Something to do with waves and coherence, Albert has told me—I can’t follow the details. And of course you are rather intelligent, more than you at first suspected—even if sometimes, shall we say, overwrought.”

  “I’ll admit to that. I must have seemed a good recruit to Elspeth. Easily duped.”

  “I fear so. They decided to intersect you early in life, to enlist your loyalties.” Casanova shrugs, as if this is a common tactic he has often seen used.

  “And they’ll keep on, won’t they?”

  “Indeed, they want to have you to help them.”

  “And they don’t know how I really feel, now that I know what’s up.”

  “Yes, well, rather.” Casanova leans forward with a weary sigh. “One has seen odd triumphs and laughable tragedies, bad booms and beautiful busts—I assure you I do not pun here—plus ragtag revolutions and obliterating wars, great achievements and deep ambiguities, too. One has seen grand theories rise, only to be toppled by stubborn facts. This is a fine time of leisure and freedom, this America of yours, freed from the factitious urgencies of earlier days. But not for long, as you know. In your several time lines you have seen it decline. Einstein saw much worse, up there in the twenty-second century, after the big regional wars of the twenty-first. I saw some especially ugly things in the nineteenth. Not that they reached forward into your time.”