The Collected Stories of Robert Silverberg, Volume Seven: We Are for the Dark

by Robert Silverberg

  At last Christine appeared. She had been gone for what felt like hours: washing her face, brushing her hair, changing into a robe she evidently considered more seemly for receiving a visitor at nightfall. Her vanity was almost amusing. The world is about to come to an end, he thought, and she pauses to make herself fit for entertaining company.

  But of course she could have no idea of why he was here.

  He said, “Are you free tomorrow night?”

  “Free? Tomorrow?” She looked uncertain. “Why—yes, yes, I suppose. Friday night. I’m free, yes. What did you have in mind, Thimiroi?”

  “How well do you trust me, Christine?”

  She did not reply for a moment. For the first time since that day they had had lunch together at the River Cafe, there was something other than fascination, warmth, even love for him, in her eyes. She seemed mystified, troubled, perhaps frightened. It was as if his sudden breathless arrival here this evening had reminded her of how truly strange their relationship was, and of how little she really knew about him.

  “Trust you how?” she said finally.

  “What I told you this afternoon, about Capri, about Canterbury, about The Travel—did you believe all that or not?”

  She moistened her lips. “I suppose you’re going to say that you were making it all up, and that you feel guilty now for having fed all that nonsense to a poor simple gullible woman like me.”

  “No.”

  “No what?”

  “I wasn’t making anything up. But do you believe that, Christine? Do you?”

  “I said I did, this afternoon.”

  “But you’ve had a few hours to think about it. Do you still believe it?”

  She made no immediate reply. At length she said, glancing at him warily, “I’ve been napping, Thimiroi. I haven’t been thinking about anything at all. But since it seems to be so important to you: Yes. Yes, I think that what you told me, weird as it was, was the truth. There. If it was just a joke, I swallowed it. Does that make me a simpleton in your eyes?”

  “So you trust me.”

  “Yes. I trust you.”

  “Will you go away with me, then? Leave here with me tomorrow, and possibly never come back?”

  “Tomorrow?” The word seemed to have struck her like an explosion. She looked dazed. “Never—come—back—?”

  “In all likelihood.”

  She put the palms of her hands together, rubbed them against each other, pressed them tight: a little ritual of hers, perhaps. When she looked up at him again her expression had changed: the confusion had cleared from her face and now she appeared merely puzzled, and even somewhat irritated.

  In a sharp tone she said, “What is all this about, Thimiroi?”

  He drew a deep breath. “Do you know why we chose the autumn of 1347 for our Canterbury visit?” he asked. “Because it was a season of extraordinarily fine weather, yes. But also because it was a peak time, looking down into a terrible valley, the last sweet moment before the coming of a great calamity. By the following summer the Black Death would be devouring England, and millions would die. We chose the timing of our visit to Augustus the same way. The year 19—19 B.C., it was—was the year he finally consolidated all imperial power in his grasp. Rome was his; he ruled it in a way that no one had ruled that nation before. After that there would be only anticlimax for him, and disappointments and losses; and indeed just after we went to him he would fall seriously ill, almost to the edge of death, and for a time it would seem to him that he had lost everything in the very moment of attaining it. But when we visited him in 19 B.C., it was the summit of his time.”

  “What does this have to do with—”

  “This May, here, now, is another vintage season, Christine. This long golden month of unforgettable weather—it will end tomorrow, Christine, in terror, in destruction, a frightful descent from happiness into disaster, far steeper than either of the other two. That is why we are here, do you see? As spectators, as observers of the great irony—visiting your city at its happiest moment, and then, tomorrow, watching the catastrophe.”

  As he spoke, she grew pale and her lips began to quiver; and then color flooded into her face, as it will sometimes do when the full impact of terrible news arrives. Something close to panic was gleaming in her eyes.

  “Are you saying that there’s going to be nuclear war? That after all these years the bombs are finally going to go off?”

  “Not war, no.”

  “What then?”

  Without answering, Thimiroi drew forth his wallet and began to stack currency on the table in front of him, hundreds of dollars, perhaps thousands, all the strange little strips of green-and-black paper that they had supplied him with when he first had arrived here. Christine gaped in astonishment. He shoved the money toward her.

  “Here,” he said. “I’ll get more tomorrow morning, and give you that too. Arrange a trip for us to some other country, France, Spain, England, wherever you’d like to go, it makes no difference which one, so long as it is far from here. You will understand how to do such things, with which I have had no experience. Buy airplane tickets—is that the right term, airplane tickets?—get us a hotel room, do whatever is necessary. But we must depart no later than this time tomorrow. When you pack, pack as though you may never return to this house: take your most precious things, the things you would not want to leave behind, but only as much as you can carry yourself. If you have money on deposit, take it out, or arrange for it to be transferred to some place of deposit in the country that we will be going to. Call me when everything is ready, and I’ll come for you and we’ll go together to the place where the planes take off.”

  Her expression was frozen, her eyes glazed, rigid. “You won’t tell me what’s going to happen?”

  “I have already told you vastly too much. If I tell you more—and you tell others—and the news spreads widely, and the pattern of the future is greatly changed by the things that those people may do as a result of knowing what is to come—no. No. I do not dare, Christine. You are the only one I can save, and I can tell you no more than I have already told you. And you must tell no one else at all.”

  “This is like a dream, Thimiroi.”

  “Yes. But it is very real, I assure you.”

  Once again she stared. Her lips worked a moment before she could speak.

  “I’m so terribly afraid, Thimiroi.”

  “I understand that. But you do believe me? Will you do as I ask? I swear to you, Christine, your only hope lies in trusting me. Our only hope.”

  “Yes,” she said hesitantly.

  “Then will you do as I ask?”

  “Yes,” she said, beginning the single syllable with doubt in her voice, and finishing it with sudden conviction. “But there’s something I don’t understand.”

  “What is that?”

  “If something awful is going to happen here, why must we run off to England or Spain? Why not take me back to your own country, Thimiroi? Your own time.”

  “There is no way I can do that,” he said softly.

  “When you go back, then, what will happen to me?”

  He took her hand in his. “I will not go back, Christine. I will stay here with you, in this era—in England, in France, wherever we may go—for the rest of my life. We will both be exiles. But we will be exiles together.”

  She asked him to stay with her at her house that night, and he refused. He could see that the refusal hurt her deeply; but there was much that he needed to do, and he could not do it there. They would have many other nights for spending together. Returning to his hotel, he went quickly to his rooms to contemplate the things that would have to be dealt with.

  Everything that belonged to his own era, of course, packed and sent back via his suitcase: no question about that. He could keep some of his clothing with him here, perhaps, but none of the furniture, none of the artifacts, nothing that might betray the technology of a time yet unborn. The room would have to be bare when he left it. And he wo
uld have to requisition more twentieth-century money. He had no idea how much Christine might have above what he had already given her, nor how long it would last; but certainly they would need more as they began their new lives. As for the suitcase, his one remaining link to the epoch from which he came, he would have to destroy that. He would have to sever all ties. He would—

  The telephone rang. The light jingling of its bell cut across his consciousness like a scream.

  Christine, he thought. To tell him that she had reconsidered, that she saw now that this was all madness, that if he did not leave her alone she would call the police—

  “Yes?” he said.

  “Thimiroi! Oh, I am glad you’re there.” A warm, hearty, familiar masculine voice. “Laliene said I might have difficulty finding you, but I thought I’d ring your room anyway—”

  “Antilimoin?”

  “None other. We’ve just arrived. Ninth floor, the Presidential suite, whatever that may be. Maitira and Fevra are here with me, of course. Listen, old friend, we’re having a tremendous blast tonight—oh, pardon me, that’s a sick thing to say, isn’t it?—a tremendous gathering, you know, a soiree, to enliven the night before the big night—do you think you can make it?”

  “Well—”

  “Laliene says you’ve been terribly standoffish lately, and I suppose she’s right. But look, old friend, you can’t spend the evening moping by yourself, you absolutely can’t. Lesentru’ll be here, do you know that? And Kuiane. Maybe even Broyal and Hammin, later on. And a rumor of Cenbe, too, though I suspect he won’t show up until the very last minute, as usual. Listen, there are all sorts of stories to tell. You were in Canterbury, weren’t you? And we’ve just done the Charlemagne thing. We have some splendid tips on what to see and what to avoid. You’ll come, of course. Room 941, the end of the hall.”

  “I don’t know if I—”

  “Of course you will! Of course!”

  Antilimoin’s gusto was irresistible. It always was. The man was a ferociously social being: when he gave a party, attendance was never optional. And Thimiroi realized, after a moment, that it was better, perhaps, for him to go than to lurk here by himself, tensely awaiting the ordeals that tomorrow would bring. He had already brought more than enough suspicion upon himself. Antilimoin’s party would be his farewell to his native time, to his friends, to everything that had been his life.

  He spent a busy hour planning what had to be planned.

  Then he dressed in his formal best—in the clothes, in fact, that he had planned to wear tomorrow night—and went upstairs. The party was going at full force. Antilimoin, dapper and elegant as always, greeted him with a hearty embrace, and Fevra and Maitira came gliding up from opposite sides of the room to kiss him, and Thimiroi saw, farther away, Lesentru and Kuiane deep in conversation with Lutheena, Denvin, and some others. Everyone seemed buoyant, excited, energetic. There was tension, too, the undercurrent of keen excitement that comes on the eve of a powerful experience. Voices were pitched a little too high, gestures were a trifle too emphatic. A great screen on one wall was playing one of Cenbe’s finest symphonias, but no one seemed to be watching or listening. Thimiroi glanced at it and shivered. Cenbe, of course: that connoisseur of disaster, assembling his masterpieces out of other people’s tragedies—he was the perfect artist for this event. Doubtless he was in the city already, skulking around somewhere looking for the material he would need to complete his newest and surely finest work.

  I will never see any of these people again after tonight, Thimiroi thought, and the concept was so difficult to accept that he repeated it to himself two or three more times, without being able to give it any more reality.

  Laliene appeared beside him. There was no sign on her face of the earlier unpleasantness between them; her eyes were glowing and she was smiling warmly, even tenderly, as though they were lovers.

  “I’m glad you came,” she murmured. “I hoped you would.”

  “Antilimoin is very persuasive.”

  “You must have some tea. You look so tense, Thimiroi.”

  “Do I?”

  “Is it because of our talk before?”

  He shrugged. “Let’s forget all about that, shall we?”

  Laliene let the tips of her fingers rest lightly on his arm. “I should never have put that transmitter in your room. It was utterly stupid of me.”

  “It was, yes. But that’s all ancient history.”

  Her face rose toward his. “Come have some tea with me.”

  “Laliene—”

  Softly she said, “I wanted you to come to me so very badly. That was why I did it. You were ignoring me—you’ve ignored me ever since this trip began—oh, Thimiroi, Thimiroi, I’m trying to do the right thing, don’t you see? And I want you to do the right thing too.”

  “What are you trying to tell me, Laliene?”

  “Be careful, is what I’m trying to tell you.”

  “Careful of what?”

  “Have some tea with me,” she said.

  “I’ll have some tea,” he told her. “But not, I think, with you.”

  Tears welled in her eyes. She turned her head to the side, but not so quickly that Thimiroi did not see them.

  That was new, he thought. Tears in Laliene’s eyes! He had never known her to be so overwrought. Too much euphoriac, he wondered? She kept her grip on his arm for a long moment, and then, smiling sadly, she released him and moved away.

  “Thimiroi!” Lesentru called, turning and grinning broadly at him and waving his long thin arms. “How absolutely splendid to see you! Come, come, let’s sip a little together!” He crossed the room as if swimming through air. “You look so gloomy, man! That can’t be allowed. Lutheena! Fevra! Everybody! We must cheer Thimiroi up! We can’t let anyone go around looking as bleak as this, not tonight.”

  They swept toward him from every direction, six, eight, ten of them, laughing, whooping, embracing him, holding fragrant cups of euphoriac tea out at him. It began almost to seem that the party was in his honor. Why were they making such a fuss over him? He was starting to regret having come here at all. He drank the tea that someone put in his hand, and almost at once there was another cup there. He drank that too.

  Laliene was at his side again. Thimiroi was having trouble focusing his eyes.

  “What did you mean?” he asked. “When you said to be careful.”

  “I’m not supposed to say. It would be improperly influencing the flow of events.”

  “Be improper, then. But stop talking in riddles.”

  “Are they such riddles, then?”

  “To me they are.”

  “I think you know what I’m talking about,” Laliene said.

  “I do?”

  They might have been all alone in the middle of the room. I have had too much euphoriac, he told himself. But I can still hold my own. I can still hold my own, yes.

  Laliene said in a low whisper, leaning close, her breath warm against his cheek, “Tomorrow—where are you going to go tomorrow, Thimiroi?”

  He looked at her, astounded, speechless.

  “I know,” she said.

  “Get away from me.”

  “I’ve known all along. I’ve been trying to save you from—”

  “You’re out of your mind, Laliene.”

  “No, Thimiroi. You are!”

  She clung to him. Everyone was gaping at them.

  Terror seized him. I have to get out of here, he thought. Now. Go to Christine. Help her pack, and go with her to the airport. Right now. Whatever time it is, midnight, one in the morning, whatever. Before they can stop me. Before they change me.

  “No, Thimiroi,” Laliene cried. “Please—please—”

  Furiously he pushed her away. She went sprawling to the floor, landing in a flurried heap at Antilimoin’s feet. Everyone was yelling at once.

  Laliene’s voice came cutting through the confusion. “Don’t do it, Thimiroi! Don’t do it!”

  He swung around and rushed toward the d
oor, and through it, and wildly down the stairs, and through the quiet hotel lobby and out into the night. A brilliant crescent moon hung above him, and behind it the cold blaze of the stars in the clear darkness. Looking back, he saw no pursuers. He headed up the street toward Christine’s, walking swiftly at first, then breaking into a light trot.

  As he reached the corner, everything swirled and went strange around him. He felt a pang of inexplicable loss, and a sharp stab of wild fear, and a rush of anger without motive. The darkness closed bewilderingly around him, like a great glove. Then came a feeling of motion, swift and impossible to resist. He had a sense of being swept down a vast river toward an abyss that lay just beyond.

  The effect lasted only a moment, but it was an endless moment, in which Thimiroi perceived the passage of time in sharp discontinuous segments, a burst of motion followed by a deep stillness and then another burst, and then stillness again. All color went from the world, even the muted colors of night: the sky was a startling blinding white, the buildings about him were black.

  His eyes ached. His head was whirling.

  He tried to move, but his movements were jerky and futile, as though he were fighting his way on foot through a deep tank of water. It must be the euphoriac, he told himself. I have had much too much. But I have had too much before, and I have never felt anything like—like—

  Then the strangeness vanished as swiftly as it had come.

  Everything was normal again, the whiteness gone from the sky, time flowing as it had always flowed, and he was running smoothly, steadily, down the street, like some sort of machine, arms and legs pumping, head thrown back.

  Christine’s house was dark. He rang the bell, and when there was no answer he hammered on the door.

  “Christine! Christine, it’s me, Thimiroi! Open the door, Christine! Hurry! Please!”

  There was no response. He pounded on the door again.

  This time a light went on upstairs.

  “Here,” he called. “I’m by the front door!”