But they were still lost in their reminiscences. “Didn’t he have a telescope or something?” said Leonardo.
“Yes,” said Ludwig. “But he was interested in other things too. He made a vegetable garden once. Remember how much we encouraged him and helped him with that?”
Tamara smiled. “Remember how we all loved him so?” she said warmly. “He was the youngest. We adored him and babied him. We wanted to help him with everything.”
The footsteps were now on their way down to the first floor. Tycho’s stomach went cold. He wanted to run, but panic and indecision kept him frozen on the threshold. They had to be warned! But how could he do it without giving himself away?
“We sure did baby him,” Leonardo was saying. “We used to argue about who got to play with him and take care of him and teach him things. I remember feeling so proud and happy every time he learned something new.”
“And we used to get angry at Bobby and Judy whenever they disciplined him even slightly,” said Ludwig. “We thought they should let him do anything.”
Tycho had entered the kitchen from the dining room. There was another entrance from the front hall. The footsteps were there now. Quickly Tycho stepped back toward the dining room and crouched down behind the refrigerator again. He wasn’t really hidden, but there was at least a chance he might not be noticed here.
The footsteps moved quietly across the kitchen. Tycho saw a man walk past the refrigerator. He didn’t see Tycho, and Tycho couldn’t tell whether it was his older self or not. For the man was wearing a mask. It was a green plastic mask that fit tightly over his face, with slits for the eyes, nose, and the mouth. The man had a bulging pack on his back, from which sprouted a thick cord attached to some kind of device in his hand. He entered the green passageway.
“That’s right,” Tamara was saying. “I remember how I used to love hugging him so much—”
Then she screamed. Ludwig and Leonardo were screaming too. Tycho felt like screaming himself as he listened to the tortured cries that ripped harshly out of their throats. When at last they stopped, he could hear them gasping for breath. He didn’t want to look; he couldn’t bear it. But before he knew what he was doing, he was standing up and looking into the passageway again.
The man stood in the center of the room, his back to Tycho. Ludwig, Tamara and Leonardo, their faces shockingly white, were bent over in pain. “Oh, so hard … Tycho,” Ludwig managed to croak, his hand clutching his gut. “You didn’t have to … make it so hard.”
“But oh, my brother,” came the soapy, syrupy voice from behind the mask. “You make me so sad. And I try to be merciful. That was only a two. You must strengthen yourself to be able to withstand a force of ten if you continue to play that nasty, evil stuff I heard.”
“But Tycho,” Tamara pleaded brokenly. “It was only a little rest. Just a moment to … to relax. We’re trying to do what you want, we really are. Don’t we at least deserve a moment of peace?”
“Peace?” The voice was rich and condescending, as though he were talking to a child. “But the more you backtrack like that, the farther away the true peace we are searching will be. When you disobey me, we lose days, we lose weeks. Oh, how I wish you could understand! I have told you again and again.”
Leonardo had mechanically dipped his hands into the vat and was sculpting again. “All right, Tycho, but … We’re trying so hard. We’re working as fast as we can.”
“Ah, but it is still not fast enough.” The voice took on an inspirational resonance. The mask tilted upward, and one hand gestured nobly. “We are trying to open up a new fabric in the earth, a new texture, a new doorway … .”
The others glanced at each other quickly, embarrassed.
“ …And it takes time, my brothers and sister, lots of time, and I am afraid there is not very much time left. What is the matter, Ludwig? Must you force me to give you a taste of number six?”
Ludwig placed his hands on the keyboard. The wrenching, sickening sounds began again. The rods hanging from the ceiling quivered.
His back still to Tycho, the man in the mask bent over Tamara. “I have tried to protect you, my dear. I try so hard. But now, I am afraid that you no longer deserve it.” He pulled off the mask and threw it to the ground. Tamara squeezed her eyes shut and twisted her head away from him, her mouth tightening. All Tycho could see was the back of his head. “There is no need to malinger,” he said to her. “And now, please tell me what time you need.”
“Uh … between twelve o‘clock and one o’clock,” she said faintly, picking up the thing on the counter.
The man made an adjustment on the device in his hand. So that was why he permitted Tamara to have her own duplicate of the egg! She couldn’t use it to escape. It was under the control of the one in his pack.
Tamara pressed down on the green end and vanished. In an instant she returned, holding another egg in her other hand. She slipped it into a compartment in a large crate beside the counter. She pressed down on the green end and vanished, returning in a moment with another duplicate of the egg. She slipped it into a compartment and vanished again.
It took Tycho only a moment to figure out what she was doing. She was using the egg to make copies of itself. All she had to do was leave it sitting on the counter between 12:00 and 1:00. Then, at a later time, she would go back to 12:59 and pick up the one that was there. She would bring it back, then go get the one at 12:58 and bring that one back. In this way she could easily make infinite copies of it. But for what reason? What was his older self going to do with all of them?
His older self meanwhile, had mounted a dais at the back end of the room. In the kitchen, Tycho felt feverish and sick. Watching this little scene was like banging his head against a cement wall. He longed to get away. And yet something held him there. His older self had still not turned around. What was it that had made Tamara cringe when he removed the mask?
The adult Tycho plugged his control device into the wall. A video screen appeared out of nowhere. The shadowy shapes on it were meaningless and vague, and Tycho could make nothing of them. But his older self studied them intensely, occasionally making notes on a pad he had taken out of his pack. After several minutes, he turned off the screen and made some calculations. He went over them carefully. He thought for a moment, glanced at the pad again, and turned to Leonardo, as if to check on what he was doing. Then Tycho saw his face.
It was his own face, looking older than ever. But Tycho barely noticed the deep lines and thinning hair. A dark irregular stain, like a birthmark, wrinkled the skin from just below his left eye to the corner of his mouth. His lip withered where it met the stain, curving up slightly in a fixed sneer. It was his soul printed on his face.
Tycho turned and ran from the kitchen. He pressed the thing into the indentation in the door and hurried outside. He rushed around to the back of the house. He found the spot where the oak tree must have been, and placed himself well behind it. He checked the dials.
It was late afternoon. Deep shadows hung over the only growing thing left in the yard, a great unkempt hedge against the back fence. Just as he was about to jump, Tycho noticed that the leaves were quivering slightly. But there was no wind; the air was oppressively still. It was as though some large animal were moving inside the hedge, rustling the foliage. Then there was a kind of wet hiss and a snuffling sound.
Tycho returned to the oak tree and the night. And then he was sick on the grass.
14
HE DID NOT EVEN ATTEMPT TO GET UP FOR school the next day. Judy, after one look at him, ran for the thermometer. And even though he registered no fever, she stroked his head and insisted that he stay at home.
The others peered in on him, hushed and curious, before they left for school. “I hope you’re not very sick.” “I hope you don’t feel really terribly,” they murmured meekly. It was a relief when everyone finally went away and left him alone in his misery.
This future had been worse than anything he could have imagined.
His older self was not merely sappy, or criminal, or inhumanly cruel, as he had been before. He was insane. He was a demented monster who had turned the rest of his family into slaves.
And for what? To create that ugly raucous music and those repellent sculptures; to make endless copies of the egg? What was the purpose? What did he mean by “a new fabric in the earth, a new texture, a new doorway?” It was crazy. And why did he have to make them do it? Why couldn’t he just leave them alone and go about his own lunatic business himself?
He lay in bed all morning, feeling dazed and sick, brooding over the implications. He had realized, and seen, that because of unpredictable chance events, everyone had many possible futures. And yet, though the futures he had visited were different in many respects, there was also something dreadfully similar about them all. There was some event that he had not managed to escape, that in every case had led him in the wrong direction. But what was it? Was it something he was stuck with, that was going to have an influence over all his futures? Or were there cases in which he had managed to avoid it?
What he had to do was carefully go over all the futures, and analyze what was similar about them. Only that way could he isolate the fatal event that was common to them all—the event which had to be avoided.
Now he knew better than to write anything down. But without the clarity and order of pencil and paper, the different trips spun confusingly in his head. They blurred together like dreams, until he could not tell one from the other. What was so frustrating was that he knew somehow that the event he sought was terribly obvious: that it was staring him in the face. Yet as the hours went by, it continued to elude him.
He got up and paced around his room for a while. Then he wandered out into the upstairs hall, with its shiny green wallpaper, and into Bobby and Judy’s room. There was a recent picture of the four children on Judy’s desk. He picked it up and gazed at it abstractedly. Ludwig, with his short red hair. Tamara, the glittering braces showing through her shy smile. Fat, fat Leonardo. And Tycho himself, with that green splotch on his cheek from an experiment with his chemistry set.
Chemistry set? What chemistry set?
Something clicked in his head. He felt as though a cloud had lifted. For a split second he remembered a Ludwig with long black hair failing over his eyes, a Tamara without braces who was not shy at all, a Leonardo not nearly so fat, and a Tycho who had never had a chemistry set. Was it possible that his trips in time had already made changes in the present? Or was his older self in the future going back into its past and changing things that were affecting his present?
But then the cloud descended. The fuzziness, growing all too familiar now, sank back over his mind. Of course Ludwig had always had red hair. And his chemistry set was down in the basement. He had only made one little trip to the past, which couldn’t have had much of an effect. And how could traveling to the future make changes in the present? He put the picture down slowly, telling himself to stop being so illogical. The answer to his problem was not to be found in the present and in his silly daydreams about his family. It was the future that he must be concerned with now.
But one thing at least had become clear. He needed additional data. The last three trips to the future were not enough. He had to have more information in order to discover the element that linked his futures. Even another bad future would provide him with plenty of useful material. And if he happened to end up in a good one, then the answer would be there for the taking, written all over everything he saw.
He would very likely be going into danger, subjecting himself to more brutality and ugliness. But that was a risk he had to take. Only by understanding what had made those terrible futures would he be able to prevent them. And to understand them, he needed to know more.
Once more he put on his traveling clothes and went out to the elm tree. He took the egg out of his pocket. The pictures inside the jewel shifted and changed. The beehive of cells now reached from the jewel to the dials, flickering on and off in busy, complex patterns. They were beautiful patterns that told a kind of story. He longed to watch and listen. But that would have to come later, after he had found the answer and could relax. Now he had important work to do. Last time he had stayed until five. He set the dials for six.
He closed his eyes. Just as he pressed down on the jewel, he remembered the noises in the bushes, as if some large animal were moving there. An unreasoning panic seized him. Then he felt faint.
In the moment that he opened his eyes, many things happened at once.
15
IT WAS DUSK. IN THE PURPLE TWILIGHT, THE yard was dim and full of green shadows. A heavy rotten smell hung in the motionless air.
The new addition sagged, full of large holes, soft around the edges like melted wax. Behind it loomed what was left of the house, half seen in the fading light. The roof was gone. Much of the exterior wall had crumbled away. Inside, broken glass and rubble filled the rooms. The furniture was blackened and ruined, the interior walls cracked and gaping. Little fires flickered delicately here and there. Exposed pipes gurgled and hissed.
An old man, Bobby, lay on the pavement beside the addition. Tamara sat near him. When she saw Tycho appear, she shrugged and looked away.
There was a footstep behind him. Someone grabbed his arms and pinioned them behind his back. Tycho’s knees went weak with shock. He cried out. Tamara didn’t even turn to look.
Escape! He had to get away from here! But the person behind him had a grip like iron. One hand held Tycho’s wrists together, bending his arms back painfully. Another hand was prying his fingers open, trying to get the egg away from him.
“No!” Tycho screamed. The weakness left him. He struggled violently, twisting his body, kicking out with his feet. The person behind tightened his grip, grunting. He wrenched Tycho’s arms back into an even more excruciating position. Tycho bellowed in pain and kicked back with all his strength. Then something grabbed him by the ankles and he went over. The pain in his arms made him helpless. His grip weakened. The egg slipped out of his grasp. Instantly his arms were dropped.
For a moment Tycho lay there limply on his stomach, gasping, as the pain ebbed. He was stunned by the suddenness of what had happened. But quickly realization came flooding back. Someone had taken the egg! He staggered to his feet.
And came face to face with his older self. The man was bent over from the weight of the pack on his back, but he was smiling pleasantly. Little green growths were sprouting out of the stain on his face. He held the egg he had taken from Tycho in his hand.
“No! Give it back!” Tycho screamed, and grabbed for it.
But his older self stepped quickly away. He held the egg up out of Tycho’s reach and gazed at it. “Yes,” he murmured. “I remember this stage. Just beginning to get nice.”
“But you can’t do this!” Tycho cried, and jumped for it.
But his older self was too fast for him. He reached behind and dropped it into his pack. The pack sealed itself shut. Tycho grabbed the pack. A terrible feeling, more painful than an electric shock, seared his hands and raced through his body. He collapsed onto the ground.
His older self stood over him, looking down. His grotesque face was blank now, empty, almost simpleminded. He scratched his head vaguely.
“But why?” Tycho said, half sobbing, feeling tears welling out of his eyes. “Why … why do you want me here? Why can’t I just take it and go away?”
The ugly man shook his head. “Oh, no. I can’t let you do that. It wouldn’t be safe.”
“Safe?” Tycho moaned. “But all I want to do is go away from here. What could I do to harm you?”
The man’s face hardened. “You could change things. You could go back and make it different. After I’ve worked so hard. You could ruin everything.”
“Ruin everything?” Tycho repeated, totally bewildered. He pushed himself to his feet and gestured at the house. “But just look around you. Everything already is ruined. How could I do anything worse than this?”
“But …” Hopeless, Tycho stared up into his future face. How could he argue with him? There was no reason there. All that was left of him was a kind of doglike loyalty and devotion. To what? To the thing he carried on his back? To the messages he heard from it? He, and not his family, was the real slave.
There was no point in trying to change his mind. He couldn’t undo the influence of twenty years. But perhaps he still had a chance to escape. It was the word slave that made him remember the last future and gave him an idea. Tamara had been making duplicates of the egg. Perhaps she had done that in this future too. And then he could get one from her and get out of here.
He left himself staring hopefully up at the darkening sky and hurried over to where she sat. She had Bobby’s bald, wrinkled head in her lap and was stroking it softly.
“Tamara,” he said. “Look at me. Do you know who I am?”
She looked at him briefly, without interest. “Go away, little boy,” she said wearily.
“But Tamara! Don’t you recognize me? I’m Tycho, eleven-year-old Tycho. You have to help me.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” she said. “He never looked like that.”
“Tamara, just listen,” he pleaded. “I really am Tycho. I came from the past, with a thing like he has, to travel through time. And he took it away from me and I’m stuck here. But I saw you making duplicates of it, once. If you gave me one and I got away, I could change things, and save us, and this would never happen.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said. “I don’t know what it is you want from me, and I can’t help you. Just leave us alone.”
The Green Futures of Tycho Page 9