Sideslip
Page 21
What it all boiled down to was that the Angels would have to remain in de facto power for a time, over a good two thirds of the Earth.
They would, it is true, be working under the United Government, as it was starting to be called, but they would be there, inevitably, inescapably. Earth just couldn’t swing it otherwise.
Increasingly though, as negotiations progressed, I became aware that my relationship with Sharna had not.
My final confrontation with her symobilzed this. It was midnight in Manhattan as we sat in her apartment by the windows overlooking the two worlds.
And Manhattan was a blaze of light. Two weeks had passed since the abortive Nazi putsch, and the United States had come alive again. Here in New York the myriad lights were a living symbol of this new life. Busier than they’d been for twenty-eight years, the countless business enterprises centered in New York were burning away the days and nights in a surge of effort to make up for lost time.
At last they were stretching their muscles again, picking up where they’d been made to leave off; old catchphrases about “Yankee ingenuity” and “American know-how” were bouncing into currency again.
“I’ve told you,” she said, her tone tender, but betraying impatience, “it simply cannot be done. Marriage between our races is impossible.”
“You didn’t tell me,” I said quietly. “Why should it be impossible?”
“Well, for one thing, there’s no offspring. We’ve already established the fact that the union between your race and mine is sterile.
“For another, there’s the difference in our age-spans. I am still in the early years of my life, and you are not. Oh, we’ve got drugs that could extend your own life-span, but not by that much. I would still live more than twice as long as you.
“I want to have children—of my own. I want to nurse them and raise them. I want them to know their father.
“Don’t you see, Ronald, it wouldn’t work?”
“You knew this all along,” I said slowly.
“We both did,” she replied. “You said it yourself, once. We came together at a time when we both needed each other. Now—we don’t. It’s that simple.”
I remembered back, way back, to that girl I’d known in France. I’d treasured her memory, but in the back of my mind I’d known something: it was an interlude. I could see it among my other wartime buddies who found girls. With most it didn’t last long. A few married, but their marriages didn’t last long either. Was that what I’d missed—and what I was finding out for myself this time?
Which is better, I wondered—to end an affair suddenly, while it is at its height, or to see it through to its bitter end?
This was the bitter end. I’d seen it coming; I’d felt it all along. Sharna and I were the products of two disparate cultures. We did not think alike, we could not live together happily in either home culture. And we could never have a family.
What kind of romantic sucker had I been? Marriage? I knew better. This was a wartime alliance, an interlude. And it was over now.
“Don’t be bitter, Ronald,” she said softly. “Try to remember what we’ve shared.”
Yeah, and remember how, in recent weeks, our love-making had grown less frequent, more perfunctory—how her kisses had changed from deep, eager kisses to quick pecks taken in haste. I tried to ask myself—did I want it to end? Or were we simply drifting apart, gradually, until the gap was too great to bridge?
I tried to remind myself: she’s just a kid; at her age she’s immature, too immature to think of anything serious, or long-term.
“Don’t blame yourself,” she said. “It’s more my fault than yours. I wanted you, Ronald, so I used you. I took you with me, and I guess I toyed with you. I shouldn’t have. I should’ve known that you’re not the kind of man who enters these things casually.”
“Yeah,” I said heavily. “You know something? I’d like to go home.”
It was a good fight they were waging here, but it wasn’t mine—not any more. I’d done my bit, small as it was. This was another Ron Archer’s world—and I’d killed him. I could step into his shoes now, but his feet had been dirty.
I was tired, now, and reaction was setting in. I kept sniffing the air, and it didn’t smell right. There was always that subsonic throb, from the weather-control generators, underfoot. And I had to leave the city to see what the moon really looked like.
I had no friends here—only memories, and they were getting bitter.
The Technocrats had their jerry-rigged machine located in a catacomb almost directly under Sixth Avenue. They were no longer in hiding, but the machinery was too complicated to remove in a short time. I found myself stooping and trudging through puddles, Sharna following me, as Henry Dupree explained over his shoulder that he had no idea whether they could work the switch successfully in reverse. “Up till now, we’ve only brought objects from your universe into ours,” he said, halfshouting. “We’ve been experimenting, reversing the process, but of course we have no way of knowing what’s happened to our test objects. I hope you understand that—we have absolutely no idea of what your chances will be. All we can do is hope.”
So here I stood, now, surrounded by busbars, generators building up into a background scream, and quiet men fussing unemotionally behind their instrument panels.
“I think we’re ready now,” someone said.
“I believe this malfunction was what resulted in your arriving on the street, last time,” Dupree commented.
“Ronald—goodbye,” Sharna said.
There was nothing startling about it. Like last time, it was all in the blink of an eye. One moment I was surrounded with junk. The next moment I wasn’t.
I was standing in a small pool of water, in a dank service tunnel.
I pointed the beam of the flashlight in my hand back, the way I’d come. I pushed through the tunnel, scaring a few rats, until I came to the iron rungs set in the wall.
When I got to the manhole cover, I had to get my shoulders up under it, before it budged. From somewhere overhead, I could hear the sounds of traffic. I gave a heave, and the cover turned over and fell with a heavy clang on the pavement. I stuck my head out.
I was in the middle of Sixth Avenue—of the Avenue of the Americas, rather—and a solid line of cars, snorting gasoline and exhaling fumes, was bearing down on me.
I was home.
It doesn’t end there. Nothing ever really ends, of course. I was back in my own, comfortable, 1968 New York. I was also all but broke, and still with a summons to serve.
I’d been gone three days, according to the dates on the papers. Nothing exciting had happened. The draft quotas had been raised again. Business leaders were worrying about inflation. France was making unpleasant noises, there was more trouble between Israel and the Arab countries—the same old business-as-usual.
And it didn’t take me long to slip back into business-as-usual, either. Too many bills, too little money in the bank. So I’m writing this book, with a couple of friends who know how to spell, and maybe I can pass the whole thing off as a joke, a science fiction story—and the royalties will pay my gas and electric bill.
But sometimes I wonder, when I get to thinking, over a quiet shot of good Scotch, about two things.
I get to thinking about that matter-displacer, which is still just an experiment, and which may not be in practical working order for years—but their years, which don’t seem to correspond exactly with our own. Don’t ask me how both worlds had the same July 31st, because I don’t know; but I do know I was gone a hell of a lot longer than three days.
And then too, every time I read about a space shoot, or I see one on TV, I get to thinking about the Angels of this universe, with their two- or three-mile-long spaceships, and how they haven’t expanded into this sector, here, yet. . . .
And I worry. . . •
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Table of Contents
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN