The Green Futures of Tycho

by William Sleator

  “Tamara, please. You have to believe me!”

  “If you don’t go away now, I’ll get that man over there to take you away,” she said angrily. “He’s strong. I’ll tell him to hurt you.”

  Tycho turned and glanced at his older self—and saw him vanish. Obviously he had just departed on some detestable errand in time. Tycho turned back to Tamara. “All right, you don’t believe me,” he said. “But what about Ludwig and Leonardo? Where are they?”

  “Who are they?” she said. “I never heard of them.”

  “You never … But they’re your brothers!” he cried, spreading his arms. “You must know them!”

  “I have only one brother,” she said harshly. “And now I’m going to tell him to come over here and …”

  Then her voice faded. And with it faded her dress, and her hands, and her face. A dim, smoky filter passed across the world. Tamara was not there. She had never been there.

  “Tamara!” he moaned, backing away. “Tamara! Don’t … .”

  “There is no Tamara,” croaked the old man lying on the ground.

  And in that moment of horror the answer, all at once, slid into place. The common element that linked all the futures he had seen was revealed to him. It was the egg.

  Of course it was obvious. So obvious that he had not realized it until now, when it was too late. Any future that it took him to would have to include it. In every future he had it with him, he used it, he depended on it. And it was more than just a time travel device. He didn’t know what its other functions were, or what his older self was trying to do to the world, or what he meant by they. He didn’t even know whether it was really evil, or just too subtle and sophisticated a tool for a human being to handle.

  What he did know was that it had done terrible things to him. It was at the root of all the miserable futures he had seen. And there was only one way to prevent those futures from coming true. It was maddeningly simple. He had merely to go back and change things so that he would never find it.

  But how? He would never be able to get away from his older self now. He was trapped here, in this hideous, stinking world he had created. And it was his own fault, for being so stupid. If he had thought of it only fifteen minutes ago, it would have made all the difference. He could have gotten rid of it, and cleansed himself and the future of its influence. Now it was too late.

  Something pressed against his arm. He spun around. It was his older self, returned from his errand, standing beside him. The man looked down at Bobby, lying on the ground and breathing shallowly. He prodded Bobby with his big foot, as though he were a piece of trash. “They don’t like him,” he murmured. And then he turned from Bobby and his eyes met Tycho’s. One of them was half closed by a new green thing sprouting just above it. “They don’t like you, either,” he said softly.

  Tycho took a step backwards. “What happened to Tamara?” he said.

  “Tamara? Who’s that?” said his older self, his mouth twitching as though he were trying not to laugh.

  “You know who I mean!” Tycho shouted. “You can’t pretend to me. She was our sister. And you just went back and did something to get rid of her. What did you do? Fix it so she was never born?”

  “Oh, no, that’s much too complicated,” the man said complacently. “She died when she was two. She drowned in the bathtub.”

  Tycho felt numbness growing in his stomach. He moved farther away from the creature he had become. “You mean … you went back and … killed her? When she was two?”

  “It had to happen,” the man said, sounding quite reasonable. “If she had lived, she would have been in the way.” He moved close to Tycho again. The smell of him was vile. “In the way, like you are now.”

  “But you can’t do anything to me,” Tycho said, shaking his head. “I mean, I’m you. A younger version of you. We’re the same person!” He gestured with his hands, trying to get through to him. “If you get rid of me, then you’ll be getting rid of yourself. Don’t you see? If I don’t exist, then you won’t exist either. If you kill me, you’ll never grow up. You just can’t do it!”

  “But there are other things I can do,” murmured his older self.

  Tycho turned and ran for the house. In another flash, one last idea had come to him, one final shred of hope. The time Ludwig had found the egg in his room, and he had made a quick trip back to change things so that Ludwig would not find it. In doing so, he had generated a duplicate of the egg. He had kicked it into the closet, out of Ludwig’s view. And he had left it there.

  His older self, after a moment of indecision, took off after him. Tycho jumped through one of the holes in the addition. Inside, the floor was soft, sticky, slowing him down. He squelched through it, trying not to breathe the horrible smell, up the ramp to the kitchen.

  Was it possible that the egg was still there, in the back of the closet, after twenty years? That Judy had not swept it away? That Ludwig had not found it again? That he himself had forgotten it, and not hidden it somewhere else? The chance was small, appallingly small. But it was his only chance.

  The liquid filth on the kitchen floor was several inches deep. More brackish stuff gurgled out of the overflowing sink. Tycho splashed through it and started up the stairs. He could hear his older self grunting only a few yards behind. His legs were longer; if it were not for the weight of the pack on his back, he would have overtaken him already.

  At the top of the flight there were three missing steps: Tycho took a deep breath and leapt over the gap. He landed—and his right foot went through a hole in the floor. He ripped it out, twisting his ankle painfully. The going was treacherous here: piles of rubble hiding the missing floorboards. It was also too dark to see anything very clearly, but he plunged ahead recklessly, hoping not to fall again. He kicked aside an old doll of Tamara’s—a ballerina doll, blackened and headless now—and limped into his room.

  And cried out in pain, as his hopes vanished.

  The room was empty. The bed, the desk, all the furniture was gone. There was only a bare floor, buried under broken glass and wet plaster and ashes. Someone must have found the thing when the room had been emptied.

  But he couldn’t give up, not while he could still think and move. He raced to the closet, sank to his knees, and began sifting frantically through the debris. In a moment his hands were bleeding, but he didn’t notice. He tossed aside a melted telephone and a charred edition of Yeats, a transistor radio and a postcard from Hawaii.

  Behind him, heavy footsteps crunched through the trash. There was a gulping snort and two large damp hands closed around his neck.

  “No, you can’t! You’ll just be killing yourself!” Tycho gasped, barely able to get the words out through the sudden pressure on his throat. And then, against all reason, his own hands closed around something familiar in the dust.

  His older self let go of his neck, kicked him brutally in the side of the head, and reached for the egg.

  But Tycho had already spun the dials, without even looking: backward into the past, anywhere. He pressed down on the jewel.

  “Where did you come from?” someone bellowed, and the bedside light went on. Tycho lifted his head weakly to see who it was. There were two people in the bed.

  “Oh, sorry,” Tycho said, not even able to be embarrassed. “I didn’t mean to—”

  And then his older self flashed into the room. The controls were clenched in his hand, and his eyes were fixed on the exact spot where Tycho lay.

  But that was impossible! How could his older self have found the precise moment that Tycho had so randomly escaped to? It must be just a ghastly coincidence. Tycho spun the dials and jumped again.

  Sunlight streamed into the room. Ludwig, in his twenties, sat at the desk, talking to Leonardo, who stood in the doorway. “ …must be a diary,” Ludwig was saying. “Wait until you hear what he says about—”

  Then they both yelled as Tycho’s older self appeared and started toward him. But it was impossible! How could he keep finding
him this way? Tycho twisted the dials farther than before and pressed down.

  “ …with this power I can tell the future,” he heard himself saying.

  “Cut it out, Tycho,” said Leonardo. Then Leonardo saw young Tycho appear, and went pale.

  Tycho stumbled to his feet and pushed his way out of the room. He had to get outside so he wouldn’t keep bumping into people and would have time to figure out what was happening. Behind him, his older self tramped noisily down the stairs.

  It wasn’t coincidence. The egg had grown over the years, becoming more complex and more versatile. The tool his older self had could do many different things. It must have some kind of homing device in it, that could trace the energy released when Tycho used the egg that he had, and follow it anywhere. With a horrible sinking feeling, Tycho realized that he had not yet even begun to escape. He would only be safe when he had got rid of the egg for good.

  He raced out to the maple tree and leaned against it, panting. There was only one way to escape from his older self, one way to eliminate those terrible futures. He had to go back to before he found the egg and take it away. Then he would never find it. It would never poison his life and his future. None of this would ever happen.

  His older self was hurtling toward him across the lawn. He had to go, this instant. But how far? He didn’t know the date or the time where he was now. He was too frantic to calculate. What was he going to do?

  Then he noticed the freshly dug vegetable garden. That was it! It was really very simple. All he had to do was go back before he started the garden, dig up the egg and throw it away. Then he would never find it. And that had been less than a week before that talk with Leonardo. He spun the dials back a week and jumped.

  Then he was down on his knees, clawing at the earth. Where was the exact spot? How deep had it been? Why wasn’t it there? He had to hurry, before his older self showed up.

  Then the earth dropped from his hands as another thought smote him. He sat up. Once he did find it, what was he going to do with it? Throw it into the next yard, or across the street? Flush it down the toilet? What good would that do? All that would happen was that someone else would find it. Perhaps Tycho and his family would be safe, for a while. But another person would still be influenced by it. And what would stop him from doing dangerous things to the world?

  “No, no, you can’t do that!” his older self screamed harshly. Tycho was too late to escape another agonizing kick in the head. But he did have an instant to flip the dials back a few more years and press down on the jewel.

  He pushed himself to his feet and staggered a few paces across the lawn, just to be out of reach of his older self when he appeared. He didn’t pay any attention to the three children who were taunting another little boy. His head hurt so much now that he could barely think. And he didn’t have much time.

  Where had the egg come from, originally? It hadn’t just burst into existence, out of nothing. Someone—or something—must have put it there. It was odd that he had never wondered about it before. Now the question of its origin suddenly assumed gigantic importance. The only way to save the world from it was to go back and return it to whatever had brought it in the first place. “No thank you, we don’t want it,” he heard himself saying, idiotically.

  His older self, hulking and demented, surged furiously toward him. Tycho held the egg up to his eye and spun the second most powerful dial, the one for centuries. He had never used it before. He pressed down on the jewel and felt faint.

  He was standing on a vast, featureless plain. It was dawn. Tall grasses bowed against the wind in all directions. A group of large dark animals grazed several hundred yards to his left.

  But when had the egg made its first appearance on the earth? In order to give it back, he had to pinpoint the exact moment of its arrival. With all the aeons at his disposal, there was no hope that he would stumble accidentally upon that moment. He felt himself go weak under another onslaught of hopelessness. It was impossible to get rid of it. Unless …

  His older self barreled toward him, hands outstretched. “What … When … What are you doing?”

  Tycho spun the dial and pressed. He was up to his waist in warm water. The slimy ooze under his feet was like quicksand, sucking him inexorably down. He couldn’t stay here very long. But he needed a moment to think.

  What if it was impossible for the egg to take him back before its arrival on the earth? There was a certain logic to that. If there was any limit to how far back it could go, then its own existence in this space would have to be that limit. Wouldn’t it?

  The mud was up to his knees now and the water lapped greasily around his neck. Something moved against his stomach.

  It had to be the answer! In order to reach the moment it had come here, he would make it take him back as far as it could go. It was the only hope of getting rid of it. All he had to do was—

  Then he was choking as the muddy water flowed into his lungs. His older self must be sitting on him, holding him under with his whole body, because there were two powerful hands grappling with him for the egg. Tycho fought the instinct to breathe. He kicked, he thrashed, and he felt for the inner dial, the most powerful dial, turning. The dial for millennia. There was water in his lungs but he couldn’t spit it out because he would only breathe in more water. He felt like he was going to explode. He kept on spinning the middle dial, back, back, farther back. The enormity of the time span underneath his fingertips was more frightening than anything else. Was it ever going to stop?

  Then it was being torn out of his hand. But the dial clicked into position and would not move. Tycho. pressed down on the jewel and felt very faint indeed.

  16

  UNFORTUNATELY, TYCHO HAD NO TIME TO get a good look at the brontosaurus.

  He was lying in hot, stinking mud. A heavy mist hung over the world, dimming the intense orange glare of a gigantic sun billowing angrily on the horizon. The air was thick and strange, unpleasant to breathe. But at least it was not water. He inhaled deeply.

  Just in front of him, a being moved through the swamp. Tycho shook the water out of his eyes. There was a group of the creatures, and the one near him was the last in line. It was green. It had veiny, wrinkled bumps on its body, and little snoutlike protuberances. Where had he seen something like it before?

  Its only garment was a kind of metallic purse with many pouches and pockets. It had taken something out of one of the pouches and was in the act of dropping it to the ground. Something very plain, and gray, and vaguely egg-shaped. It bore very little resemblance to the glittering object in Tycho’s hand.

  Tycho reached for it as it landed in the mud. Almost as if it were alive, it wriggled away from him, seeking to bury itself in the slime. Tycho’s hand went after it. But it was slippery and squirmed out of his fingers.

  Tycho wanted to cry out in frustration. But he couldn’t let the being know he was there. He stuck the jewel into his mouth and clenched it in his teeth. He plunged his other hand into the mud and firmly cupped the egg in both his palms. He scooped it up out of the swamp.

  Then his older self was breathing heavily behind him. He felt the beginnings of pressure on his elbows, holding back his arms. Ahead of him, the being was moving away.

  With one final burst of strength, Tycho broke free. He stretched out his arms. Wondering what was going to happen next, he dropped the egg back into the pouch from which it had been taken.

  Everything went black.

  EPILOGUE

  IT FELL FROM THE SHOVEL AND LAY GLINTING on the grass, shiny and new and bright as a polished silver spoon. The metallic sheen of its surface caught the morning light and sent it dazzling directly into Tycho’s eyes—or else he might not have noticed it at all.

  He bent over and picked it up, then bounced it casually in his palm. “Weird,” he murmured. But his mind was on tomatoes and zucchini, and this thing was not quite weird enough to distract him for long. He started to slip it into his pocket.

  Tamara, on h
er knees beside him, sat back and brushed off her hands. The vegetable garden was her project too; they were sharing it. “What did you dig up, Tyke?” she asked him.

  “Nothing much,” he said. He dropped it into her outstretched palm.

  She studied it for a moment. “Oh, I know what it is,” she said. “It’s just an old empty lipstick tube.” She opened the lipstick tube and shook the dirt out, then closed it and handed it back to him. “You don’t really want to keep it, do you?”

  Something stirred deep inside his brain, something unpleasant. What had made him start to put it in his pocket? He didn’t want the worthless piece of junk. “Want it? Are you kidding?” he said. “Let’s see if I can hit the trash can from here.” He aimed carefully and pitched it across the yard. It went into the trash can with a delicate little ping.

  “I can’t wait until we get this garden planted,” Tamara said, picking up the trowel again. “So what if Ludwig and Leonardo think it’s a waste of time? They’ll be eating our tomatoes when the time comes, won’t they, Tyke?”

  “Sure they will,” Tycho said. “Too bad we can’t make the summer go by in one second. Then we’d be eating them right now.”

  “The summer will go by fast enough,” Tamara said. “It always does.”

  “That’s for sure,” Tycho said. Why did he feel so happy all of a sudden? It must be just the beautiful weather. Whistling, he pushed the shovel into the earth.

  Don’t get left behind!

  STARSCAPE

  Let the journey begin …

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