“This sucks, you know. It really does.”
She glances round for a trash can, finds none, shoves the paper back into her pocket because it has lived there for so long and she cannot bear another tiny change, another small loss. When she sees two men, one tall and blond, the other short and dressed all in black, hurrying across the lawn toward her, she isn’t even surprised. It makes sense, somehow, that they’d show up now, to rub salt in the wound.
“Tiffany, my dear!” The rabbi raises his hat to her. “You left the hospital early, did you not?”
“You guys looking for me there?”
“Yeah,” Nick snaps. “Now come on, Tiff, make up your mind. We gotta hurry. The interface isn’t going to stay open forever, y’know.”
“Tough. I gotta have a little more data before I make up anything, pal.”
Nick stares, goggling in disbelief, while Akiba smiles. Together they start walking, drifting aimlessly down an asphalt path through green lawns, past gold and purple clumps of gazanias. Distantly comes music, carillon tapes from the antique carousel hidden behind a low hill, a stand of trees.
“Listen, you guys. I wanna know something before you start yammering on my head with this parallel world crap again. Why are you here? What’s it to you what world I’m in?”
“A fair question,” Reb Akiba says. “You did die for Israel, you know. Twice, as a matter of fact. You must admit that dying twice is rather remarkable, even in the part of the universe where I’m currently residing. Not exactly a common event, no, not at all, not until very recently, anyway. So it seemed to me that the least I could do was make sure you were happy where you were. So I arranged a small visit. If you weren’t happy, I thought, well, we could simply take you back. It’s not much, I know, but one feels that one has to show one’s gratitude somehow.”
“Okay. And thanks. Really, thanks for the thought.” She glances at Nick. “You. Explain.”
“Don’t you order me around!”
“Why not? I been thinking, about some of the Bible stories I heard when I was a kid. Creature. That’s what the rabbi calls you, and it’s true. You’re as much a creature as I am. Created. It made you up, dint It? And you hate to admit it, but there you are, Its creature, and not even human. I got a lot more right to order you around, buddy, than you do me.”
Nick’s face flames red with rage, the pale eyes filling with blood until they gleam like coals in a fire. When the rabbi whoops aloud in laughter, Nick spins on him. He raises one hand for a blow, and it seems that his fingernails turn long, curve, become claws—then he catches himself, stopping stone-cold before the rabbi’s mocking smile.
“And so what are you going to do to me, with me already dead for thousands of years?”
Nick snarls. Slowly he lowers his hand, an ordinary human hand again, and sighs. Slowly the rage drains from his face, leaving him pale, his eyes the palest thing of all, unblinking as he scowls.
“Front and center, mister,” Tiffany says. “Why?”
“You’re in the wrong place. I told you that. Should be reason enough. You’re out of order.”
“So what’s it to you?”
“I cannot stand it when things get out of order. Why do you think I warned It against you and all your wretched kind? I did, you know. They’re just going to cause trouble, I said. Would It listen? Oh no. Told me to mind my own business. And then, the gall of It, when I went to prove my point, there in that stupid garden, and that’s all I was doing, too, trying to prove my point, It got furious.”
“Totally unfair.” Reb Akiba folds his hands in fake piety. “How could It?” He winks at Tiffany. “Don’t take him literally, my dear. There wasn’t any real garden. He’s the one who’s mixing his metaphors now.”
“Oh stop mocking me, will you?” Nick turns back to Tiffany with a snarl. “Human? Oh yes, you are that. I’d never deny it. Big fucking deal, lady, big fucking deal. All your kind’s ever done is mess everything up for everyone else. Making your damn little choices. Worlds dividing off all over the place. Huh, one of your own kind said it best, ’The trouble with organic life is it’s so messy.’”
“Beg pardon, but Lewis did put that line in the mouth of a villain,” the rabbi breaks in. “That character worshipped you, as a matter of fact, which showed her rather alarmingly bad taste in gods, if nothing else.”
Nick growls under his breath.
“All right, next question,” Tiffany snaps. “Suppose, just suppose, you guys are telling me the truth. I got a choice to make. Well, okay, won’t everything split again when I choose? Won’t there be four worlds instead of two? You know, like this one where I stayed, and this one where I left, and that one where I stayed away, and that one where I came back.”
“Jeez,” Nick mutters. “I never thought of that. Oh crap.”
“No no no no,” Reb Akiba says. “You see, the worlds have already split. The only question remaining is into which one you fall. Let me see, I’m the one who needs a metaphor this time. Aha. Atomic orbits. That’s it. The potential for orbits exist unchanging for each element. Where each individual electron falls, now, well, that’s another matter entirely. Like a page from the Torah. The letters must exist in each word in their proper order. Which drop of ink becomes which letter . . . that’s not important. It doesn’t alter the sense of the word, which molecule of ink the scribe uses to write it out.”
“But we don’t know what kind of choices this is going to influence down the line,” Nick says. “Hey, old man, this is scary. What if . . . ”
“No more what ifs!” Tiffany is determined to keep this discussion under her control. “Now, these parallel worlds, they can differ in a lot of small ways at once and still match in a lot of other ways, right?”
“Yeah,” Nick says. “Or differ in big ways but match in all kinds of small ones. It just depends. Dunt make any sense. That’s why I hate it so much.”
“Okay, so tell me something.” She appeals to Akiba. “I bet you know this. Just somehow I bet you do. In that other world, am I ever gonna heal enough to fly? I dunt mean ride in some lousy plane. I mean fly.”
“No, dear, I’m afraid not. Your nervous system, what you call the wiring . . . ” He let his voice trail away. “Well, you could probably fly an antique plane someday. One of those ones with the blade-things on the front end.”
“Big deal. If I could find one that could even still get off the ground, huh? Or the gas to put in it.”
They stab her to the heart, his words. They burn through her entire body worse than the pain of waking from death upon a field hospital table. Her last hope is gone. She’ll never fly again, not in any world. Not that she would want to fly in combat, no. She has drunk her fill of death, could never again inflict death upon another living soul no matter who ordered her to do so, not now, having tasted it herself. But to be an instructor, say, to fly in peaceful skies, to feel again her mind meld with her plane’s cybernetics until there is no mind, only flight . . . the lonely impulse. Rapture no more. Never. When both men swivel to look at her, she knows that she is weeping for the second time in a couple of days, for only the second time in a couple of years.
“It means that much?” Reb Akiba says, and softly.
“That much. The one thing I woulda left here for. The only lousy thing I ever wanted.” She pulls herself together, wipes her face on the jacket sleeve. “Well, hell, then. Forget it. I ain’t going anywhere.”
“Yes you are too!” Nick snarls. “I’m not going to stand for this! You can’t mess up two whole worlds—”
“Hey, man, chill!” Tiffany uses her best officer’s voice. “Nothing’s ever going to be perfect, you know. Dunt matter what world you’re in.”
“It coulda! It coulda been perfect! You’ve spoiled it, all of you. And I hate you for it! All of you! You won’t do what you’re supposed to. You never would and you all blame me for it, as if I wouldn’t whip you all into shape if only I had the chance! Why won’t you go back? You belong there, you should be
there, so why the hell won’t you go there?”
“Too many people here are gonna miss me too much if I go. Mark, my mother, my sister, the kids. In that other world, they be over it already, losing me, I mean. Here, they never did lose me. If I leave, they will. It’ll hurt.”
“Oh, that! I should have known. Your little cutesy-pie human sentiments. Love, I suppose you mean? Disgusting! What about the air base, Tiff? What about the honor? They know, back there, that you’re the best damn fighter pilot that ever lived.”
“Yeah so? If I dunt go back, they’ll still know. And I’ll know they know. So what?”
Nick’s defeat is almost comical. His mouth drops like a cartoon, he closes it with a snap, tries to speak, shakes his head. For a long moment he stares at the ground, then looks up, his eyes running tears to match hers.
“Please?” he says. “Just this one little thing?”
“Ain’t a little thing, not to Mark and my family.”
The tears stop as suddenly as they started.
“I really wish those old legends were true,” Nick snarls. “The ones about the eternal fires and all that hell crap. I would love to drag you kicking and screaming—”
“Then she’d really be out of place, creature,” the rabbi breaks in. “You’re contradicting yourself.”
Nick screams and vanishes. One moment he was there; now he’s gone, completely gone. Rabbi Akiba stops walking, considers the spot where once the Devil stood on earth, and shrugs his shoulders.
“He always was a poor loser, you know. Well, my dear, I’m afraid that I have to go now, too, but I really do think you’ve made the right decision.” As he speaks, he seems to be growing thin, stretched out like the fog at its edge, turning first pale, then transparent, wisping away. “And don’t worry about that other world. It really won’t split again, not because of you, anyway.” Only his voice is left. “Farewell. And thank you again, my dear, for guarding my people.”
He too is gone. Despite all her reservations, despite the part of her mind that is screaming at her, telling her that she’s been hallucinating, that she’s making all this up herself, Tiffany regrets his going. She would have liked to have sat at the feet of Rabbi Akiba for a long afternoon, the first woman in history to do so, most likely, to have listened to him talk about the law and the holy books without Nick around to interrupt.
“Neither of them were real, you know,” she remarks aloud. “You gotta remember that. It’s all in the wiring.”
Spoken aloud, and she glances around fast. No one’s within earshot, but the long lawn has disappeared, the trees have vanished, she stands on the sidewalk in front of a grey door, scabbing paint, beside a small window, covered with rusty iron bars, light gleaming through the window. Automatically she finds her key, puts it in the lock, walks the two steps down. Home. Shuts the door fast as Meebles gets to his feet on the sofa and stretches, yawning. She whirls round, sees grey light, the last of the foggy day, coming through the window. She’s reached home before dark. It cannot still be Friday, as for one panicked moment she was convinced it was. Tonight, as well, she smells no chicken and garlic—smells sausage, rather, and a lot of onions, frying together, and she hears no TV, only Mark singing “Down by the Riverside” in the kitchen. If nothing else, she knows that she did not hallucinate every event for the past three days.
Yet still, she strokes the cat, soft and warm, rubs her hand along the scratchy back of the sofa, touches the smooth painted wall, too, just to reassure herself that she’s no longer in the park, that somehow or other she must have kept walking in the company of the rabbi and the Devil to fetch up like a bit of foam thrown by a wave against her door.
“I’m sorry, my dear, to startle you.” Akiba’s voice sounds just behind her right shoulder. “I was only trying to save your strength, you see, by bringing you home.”
She swirls round. No one there.
“Tiff?” Mark calls out. “That you?”
“Sure is.” She can feel the blood draining from her face as she hurries toward the kitchen.
“Someone with you?”
“No. Just me.”
“Okay. Thought I heard someone else, that’s all.”
“Yeah? Just some kids outside.”
All of a sudden her knees seem made of wet bath towels. By taking one careful step at a time, placing the bad leg just so, moving the good leg ahead of it, dragging the bad one forward again, she manages to get to the kitchen. Mark turns from the stove in some concern.
“Jeez, I’m so glad you’re here.” She catches the doorjamb and steadies herself. “Just for a minute there I thought—well, I dunno what I thought. Tell me something. We did go to my mom’s yesterday, dint we?”
“Sure did.”
“And on Saturday LoDarryl, he was here, talking about dump running?”
“Yep. What’s wrong? You having trouble with your memory again?”
“’Fraid so.” She’s not sure if she’s lying or telling the truth. “I’m gonna talk with the doctor ’bout it, tomorrow.”
“Good. Hon, you look dead beat out. Come on, sit down.”
“I did too much walking. God, I’m thirsty.”
She lets him lead her to a chair, lets him sit her down like a child, and fetch her a glass of water, which she drinks fast, in big gulps. He refills it, frowns at the stove, then hands her the glass.
“You better take that jacket off, and I better stir this dinner.”
She takes it off, spends a good couple of minutes smoothing it out, folds it neatly in half, then lets it slide unnoticed to the floor.
“How was your day, sweetheart?”
“Oh, pretty good.”
His voice, his expression, are so carefully arranged that she knows he’s hiding something.
“Oh yeah? Out with it. Something happened.”
“Not much, really.” All at once the grin breaks through. “Got myself that warehouse job today. Salary starts at fifteen hundred a month, but they’s built-in risers.”
“All right! Wish we had some champagne.”
“Wish you could drink it.”
Tired as she is, she manages to laugh, snaps him a salute, laughs again when he returns it. He takes the frying pan off the heat and sets it to one side, then sits down and catches both of her hands in his.
“So I been thinking,” he goes on. “You wanna get married?”
“You bet.” She can hear her own voice shaking. “I mean, hell, why not, now?”
“Just what I thought. Why the hell not? We can throw ourselves a big old party, hire a band, maybe. Gonna do it up right.”
“Sounds good to me, man. And hey, if you want to invite LoDarryl and Manny Mike and the guys, that’s cool with me.”
“Really?”
“Yeah, really. No matter what, they were in the war with you.”
“Yeah, they sure were. Thanks, hon.” He raises their clasped hands and kisses her fingers. “I think that’s one reason I love you so much. You understand ’bout stuff like that, being in the war, and how you feel about the guys you were in the war with.”
Tiffany merely smiles, thinking that she understands a great deal more, that she remembers a great deal more, than she can ever tell him.
Afterword
On a Friday morning, some two weeks after their wedding, Tiffany is just leaving for the hospital when the mail carrier pounds on the door. She accepts a battered parcel, wrapped in torn brown paper and too much tape, starts to toss it onto the couch and leave, then hesitates. In the usual place right above the address, and spilling over the top of the box as well as running down the side are Israeli stamps, postmarked all over with Hebrew letters, far too many stamps for the weight and faded ones at that, a commemorative Golda Meir issue that must be at least twenty years old. Her first thought is to wonder where Reb Akiba dug them up this time. Her second is to decide that for a change she can be a few minutes late. When she finds a knife, back in the kitchen, and slices the parcel open, a big paper-book versio
n of Hunter’s Night slides onto the table. For a long time she stares at the cover picture, the cropped silver-grey fighter, the golden planet against a backdrop of black sky and stars; at the title, embossed silver; at the author’s name in smaller black letters, Albert Allonsby. On top of the vuphone lies the Collected Stories.
“Right about that cover picture, wasn’t I? Oh jeez!”
The book that doesn’t exist, whose author died before he could write it, lies in front of her. She grabs the wrap, turns it this way and that: no return address, just the Israeli postmark, but the stamps convince her that Rabbi Akiba has sent her a wedding present from another world. No one else she knows in Israel would have put six times extra postage on a parcel like this. Anyone else would have sent her a note, even if they had time for only one line, a simple “Write and let us know how you’re doing,” if nothing else. When she reaches for the book she finds her hands are shaking. Slowly, carefully, as if it just might vanish at her touch, she picks it up, opens it, flips through the pages, reading a word here, a sentence there.
“Same book all right, just like I remembered. Well, I’ll be damned.”
Curled on a kitchen chair Meebles opens one eye, shuts it again. Tiffany tucks the book under her arm and heads for the door. Book or no book, she refuses to miss therapy, and she can, after all, read a few pages on the bus. As she’s locking the door behind her, it occurs to her that she never did tell Doctor Rosas about those hallucinations. As she walks down the street toward the streetcar stop, it also occurs to her that now she never will.
Once she’s installed in her favorite seat, she flips through the book, glancing at a scene here, a bit of dialogue there, discovers that these words do lift off from the page and make sense, form pictures and sounds in her mind exactly as they used to. She finds, as well, her old place in the story. She remembers perfectly where she left off, right at the last chapter but one, just as the heroine realizes she can crack the traitor’s comp access codes. As the car picks up speed, clanging round onto Seventh Avenue, Tiffany begins to read.
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