Farewell to Yesterday's Tomorrow

by Alexei Panshin

Shelley Anne Fenstermacher, the other Chosen, who was ten years old and half his size and used him as a signpost as he had used Hope Saltonstall when he was younger, was waiting for him. She emptied her bucket of garbage into the hog trough, climbed down from the fence, and came, running.

  “Did you ask? Did you ask? What did she say?”

  “She said I was to walk and meditate,” said Little John.

  “What do you think it means?”

  “I don’t know.”

  He went into his room and got his latest notes from the closet. He didn’t know what Samantha had in mind, but if it made the slightest difference, he meant to follow her advice. He always followed her advice to the best of his understanding.

  “Can I come?” Shelley asked when he came outside. “Not today,” he said. “Today I’d better walk alone.”

  “Oh,” she said.

  “I’m sorry.”

  So he walked in the woods and meditated and read his note cards, anxious to stuff the least and last of it into his head. If it made a difference, if she quizzed him, he meant to be ready. He had every word she had said to him down on paper. Ask him anything, he’d show he was ready.

  And the next day when he and Samantha met, he was ready, that is, ready for anything except what he received, which was nothing. Samantha acted as though he had never spoken. She took up the discussion where he had broken it the day before, and they walked and they talked as usual and she never said a word about his request.

  And Little John, afraid to speak, said never a word, either. He did wriggle a lot, though.

  At the end of the two hours, however, she said, “A fruitful session, was it not?”

  And dumbly he nodded. And then he said. “Please ma’am, have you made a decision?”

  “Yes,” she said. “I brought you something.” She reached into her pants pocket and brought out an embroidered pouch. “It’s a present. Take this grass up on Roundtop tonight, and when the moon is two full hands above the horizon, smoke it and meditate.”

  That night he sat up on Roundtop on his favorite log. He watched the sun set and he watched the moon rise. And he measured with his hands. When the moon was two full hands above the horizon, he filled his pipe and smoked. And he thought, and his thoughts filled the night to its conclusion. They were good thoughts, but they were all of 1970 and of graduation to godhood. It was good grass.

  In gratitude he brought Samantha the best apple he could pick. He searched the whole orchard before he made a choice.

  His teacher was pleased with the apple. “Thank you, Little John,” she said. She ate it as they walked and wrapped up the core for the pigs.

  “What conclusions did you come to last night?” she asked.

  His thoughts had been ineffable, so what he said was, “Novalis died at twenty-eight.”

  “So he did,” Samantha said.

  They walked on in silence. They walked in silence for two hours. For someone her age Samantha was a brisk and sturdy walker. They circled Roundtop. The day was heavy and hot. There was a skyhawk wheeling high overhead, drifting on the current, and Little John envied it. He wanted to fly free, too.

  When they reached home, walking up the lane between the ripe fields, Samantha finally spoke. “Spend the night in Mother,” she said. “Then see me tomorrow.”

  “Without Tempus?” he asked.

  “Yes, without Tempus.”

  “But I’ve never done that.”

  She said, “We had Mother before we had Tempus. Try it and see.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” he said.

  He had kept Shelley Anne apprised of his progress. When she sought him out after dinner, sitting on the porch in the warm and quiet of the evening, he told her what Samantha wished him to do.

  “Really?” she said. “I never heard of that. Does she expect you to change your mind?”

  “I don’t know,” he said. “But I have to do it if she wants me to.”

  While they were talking, Lenny came out on the porch. “Hi, children,” he said. “Are you going to the convo tonight?”

  Shelley Anne said she was. Little John said he was busy and had other plans. When Lenny left, Shelley Anne went with him, and Little John was left alone in the evening. He could see the fire up on Roundtop and hear the voices.

  At last he went inside and set up Mother, just as though he were going on a trip, but without the drug. He checked the air line. He checked the solution line. And he set the alarm to rouse himself.

  He undressed himself and kicked his clothes into the corner. It was something he’d been known to do since he had decided that it wasn’t necessarily ungodlike. He picked them up himself sometime and as long as he did that eventually he figured it was all right.

  Then he unzipped Mother and climbed inside. It was overcool on his bare skin until he got used to it, like settling down on a cold toilet seat. He fitted the mouthpiece of the air line into place. He didn’t close the bag until he was breathing comfortably.

  As the warm saline solution rose in the bag, he cleared his mind. He basked and floated. He had never used Mother except on official trips and had never thought to wonder why it was called Mother. Now he leaned back, drifted and dreamed in Mother’s warm arms, and she was very good to him.

  Strange undirected dreams flitted through his mind. Pleasant dreams. He saw Shelley Anne Fenstermacher as an old woman, and she nodded, smiled, and said, “Hi,” just as she always did. He saw Samantha as a ten-year-old with a doll in her arms. He saw his old friends in the monastery in 1381, making their cordials and happily sampling them. And he wheeled through the blue skies along with his friend the skyhawk, coasting on the summer breeze high above the temperate world.

  And then he passed beyond dreams.

  In the morning, the cool, calm morning, he sat in the slanting sunlight listening to the song of a mockingbird shift and vary, and tried to pick it out with his eye in the leaf-cloaked branches of a walnut tree. At last Samantha came out to join him. He thought he could see the ten-year-old in her, even without the doll.

  She said, “How did the night pass?”

  Though his skin was prunish, he didn’t think to mention it. “Well,” he said. “I never spent a night like that before.” But already he planned to again. “It was very soothing.”

  “Ah, was it?” And then, without further preamble, she said, “Do you still want to travel to 1970?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” he said. “I’m ready for it. I’ll show you I am. What else do you want me to do first?”

  “Nothing. If you still want to go, if you’re still determined to go, I’ll send you.”

  Little John nearly jumped up and gave her a hug, but awe restrained him. If Samantha had been asked, perhaps she would have had him retain that much awe.

  So Little John got his trip to 1970, his chance to graduate. Mother was readied again, not for general wandering, but for a directed dream. Samantha calculated the mix of Tempus herself.

  She said, “This won’t be like any other time you’ve been.”

  “Oh, I know that,” he said.

  “Do you? I almost remember it myself, and it wasn’t like now.”

  “I can handle it.”

  “Let us hope,” she said. “I’m going to see that you are in good hands. Nothing too serious should happen to you.”

  “Please,” he said. “Don’t make it too easy.”

  “Say that again after you’ve returned. I’m going to give you a mnemonic. If you want to abort the trip and come back before the full period, then concentrate on the mnemonic. Do you understand?”

  “I understand,” he said.

  She checked him out on all points, once, twice, and then again before she was satisfied. Then, at last, he climbed inside Mother and drank the draft she handed him.

  “Have a good trip.” she said.

  “Oh, I will, ma’am. Don’t worry about that,” Little John said as the sack filled and he drifted away from her, back in time, back in his mind. “I expect to have a
good time.”

  That’s what he said. Nothing hard about being a god in 1970. They had had all the materials, and by now he had had experience in godhood. He was ready.

  But he came back early. And he didn’t have a good time.

  In fact, he was heartsick, subdued, drained. He wouldn’t speak to Shelley Anne Fenstermacher. And without prompting by Samantha or anyone he disappeared into the woods to be by himself, and he didn’t come back for two days.

  He spent the whole time thinking, trying to make sense of what he had seen, and he wasn’t able to do it. He missed two whole sessions with Samantha. And when he did turn up at last, he didn’t apologize for being missing.

  “You were right,” he said simply. “I wasn’t ready. Send me back to 1381 again. Please.”

  “Perhaps,” Samantha said.

  “I don’t understand. I don’t understand. I knew things weren’t right then, but I didn’t think they would be like that. Taxes was what they cared about. They didn’t even see what was going on. Not really. And it was just before the revolution. Are things always that bad before they change?”

  “Yes,” she said. “Always. The only difference this time is the way things changed. And you didn’t see the worst of it. Not by half, Little John.”

  “I didn’t?” he said in surprise. “I thought it must be.”

  She was too kind to laugh. “No.”

  “But it was so awful. So ruthless. So destructive.”

  Samantha said, “Those people weren’t so bad. As it happens, they were my parents.”

  “Oh I’m sorry, ma’am,” he said.

  “And your grandparents weren’t so different. And they did learn better. That’s the important thing to remember. If you take away nothing else, remember that. If they hadn’t changed, none of us would be here now.”

  He cried out, “But they had so much power. They all had the power of gods, and they used it so badly.”

  Little John may have been stupid, abysmally stupid, he may have been green, and he may have had more years ahead of him than little Shelley Anne Fenstermacher before he was fit to be let out in the world, but there were some things he was able to recognize. Some things are writ plain.

  3

  Endings of stories come easy. It is the beginnings, when anything is still possible, that come hard.

  Start now.

  10

  Sky Blue

  SKY BLUE waits for Landlord Thing. He holds the most powerful gun Groombridge Colony can hand him. He sits on a small unnaturally comfortable rock in space.

  Overhead the heavens wheel. Beneath him the brown planet whirls. Like a midge on a grain of wheat, he passes between millstones.

  A fat spaceship blipping on business like a slickery black watermelon seed went astray one day between Someplace Important and Someplace Important and wound up lost on the great black floor of the galaxy. It was the pilot’s fault, if you want to blame someone. He was stargazing at the wrong moment, misapplied his math, and then fritzed the drive in a fruitless attempt to recoup.

  The ship came to drift without power in a place where the stars glittered nervously and all the skies were strange. It was weird there, and after one look the curtains were hastily drawn. Nobody wanted to look outside except one boy named Harold who held the curtains in his hands and peeked.

  The pilot killed himself in another fit of overcompensation, but nobody noticed. They were all dead men in their dark powerless ship in that strange icicle corner of the universe, but nobody would say so. They huddled together in various parts of the ship and talked of usual matters.

  Now, this wasn’t just any old ship. This was a big-deal colony ship on its way to settle Groombridge 1618/2, a planet foredoomed for importance. It was so juicy a place that you had to pay high for a slice of the pie.

  The passengers on this ship had all paid. They were men of moxie. They knew the answers. Here’s a topper: Triphammer and Puddleduck, who had more answers than anybody, were aboard, too. They were along for the dedication ceremonies and a quick return home. They moved in high circles.

  Being lost so suddenly was as painful and frustrating to Triphammer and Puddleduck as an interrupted fuck. Suddenly their answers were of no use to them. Oh, it hurt.

  Triphammer, Puddleduck, and Mount Rushmore were the highest huddle of all. They gathered by a candle in one room. Triphammer paced frantically, Puddleduck nodded at appropriate moments, and Mount Rushmore loomed. Harold looked out through the curtains into the universe.

  Triphammer said, “Oh, losings. Screamie! The action, pop-a-dop.” Her face could not contain her regret.

  Puddleduck nodded. “Misery,” he said.

  “Misery,” said Mount Rushmore.

  Harold said, “There’s somebody walking by outside.”

  He was the son of Triphammer and Puddleduck. They hadn’t given him a proper name yet, and he wasn’t sure they meant to keep him. He needed them, so until he discovered their intention he was playing quiet.

  “Out of mind,” said Puddleduck, beating his brow. “Replebed and forgot.”

  Triphammer held a sudden hand before her mouth. “Oh, speak not.”

  “Misery,” said Mount Rushmore.

  Harold waved. “Hey, he sees me.” He waved again.

  Triphammer and Puddleduck didn’t hear what Harold said. It was his fault. He didn’t speak up. They had told him that it was his fault if he wasn’t heard.

  Great Mount Rushmore pounded himself on the chest. “Gelt gone blubbles. Misery. Misery.”

  Puddleduck said, “Misery.”

  “Miz,” said Triphammer.

  There was a tug at her sleeve and she looked down. It was Harold waiting for her attention.

  “Again?”

  Harold put on his best face and straightened to the full extent of his undergreat height, which was what he had been taught to do when he asked for things.

  “Can I go out and play, Mama? Please?” he asked, waving at the window.

  Triphammer’s expression made it clear that any request at this moment was a fart in church, and that the gods were displeased with the odor.

  “What what? Bird twitter while empires fall? Shame and a half, Harold, you nameless twirp. (Forbearing, but not much.) Forbidding.”

  “I’m really extremely sorry I asked,” Harold said.

  There was sudden consternation in the room. Out of nowhere—certainly not through the door—had come a being altogether strange. And here it was, making five now around the candle. It had pseudopods and big brown eyes.

  “Wowsers, a creature!” said Mount Rushmore. He backed away. “Bling it.”

  The creature looked at Harold and said, “Are you coming or not?”

  Triphammer had a tender stomach. She tried without success to stifle a retch.

  “Faa,” she said. “Bling it.”

  Harold said, “I’m not allowed. I asked already.”

  Puddleduck looked around and around the room, nodding furiously and muttering constant instructions to himself lest he forget, but there was nothing ready at hand to bling the creature with. Puddleduck waved his arms like frustrated semaphores.

  “But of course you are allowed,” the creature said. “If you want to come with me, you may. I don’t forbid anyone.”

  It broke off abruptly and looked around at Mount Rushmore, Triphammer and Puddleduck as they recoiled.

  “Is something the matter?” it asked, flexing its polyps in wonderment.

  Triphammer looked at it with a glance like a pointing finger and vomited reproachfully.

  “I beg your pardon,” the creature said.

  It gathered itself together, contracting its pseudopods into the main mess of its body. Its brown eyes bulged hugely and then blinked. And, speedy quick as a hungry duck, its appearance was altered. Where there had formerly been an—ugh—amorphous monster, now there stood a dark sweet old man with a short brushy mustache and a nose like a spearhead, as definite as geometry. He was dressed in a khaki shirt and s
horts to the knee and sturdy walking shoes.

  “Is that better?”

  “Oh, scruples!” said Triphammer.

  And it was better. Triphammer and Puddleduck knew how to deal with people. Creatures were another matter. They brightened to see him, for the old man looked like a mark, and they desperately needed someone to take advantage of.

  The sweet old fud looked around that dim room there in the dead and silent spaceship as though it were a very strange place.

  “Pardon me if I’m being overcritical of your favored pastimes, but is this really what you like to do? It seems limited. You could be outside on a day like this,” he said.

  Mount Rushmore shook his head like a rag mop. “Not happy, not happy,” he said. “Oh, not. Gelt gone blubbles, you know.”

  “Lost and out of it,” Triphammer explained. “Unjuiced, weenied and paddleless.”

  “Screamie-a-deamie!” said Puddleduck. “Massive frust! In the name of our importance, unpickle us.”

  “I had the feeling things weren’t just right,” the old man said. “Don’t ask me how I knew. I have an instinct for these things. Well, I’ll help you as much as I can. Come along with me.”

  He turned and walked abruptly through the wall of the ship. Gone. And no one followed him.

  He stuck his head back into the room, looking like a well-seasoned wall trophy.

  “Well, come along,” he said reasonably.

  Harold, smiling brightly, took a happy step forward. Then he noticed that Triphammer and Puddleduck were standing stock still. Above all else, he desired to please them and be kept. He couldn’t help himself. He stopped and wiped his smile away, and then he didn’t move, he didn’t breathe. He did check to see what his parents did, eyes flicking left, eyes flicking right, under their eyelash awning.

  “Aren’t you coming?” the old man asked. “I am willing to help you.”

  Mount Rushmore boggled at him. Triphammer and Puddleduck, with infinitely greater presence of mind, shook their heads silently.

  “What’s the matter?”

  “Nary a feather to fly with,” they said. “We told you that, pooper. We’re stuck, that’s what.”

  The dear old goat stepped back into the ship and nibbled his mustache.