Time Travel Omnibus Volume 2

by Anthology

  Reincarnation, by God! They’d always said you don’t remember; well, somebody was wrong. Either he was the exception—some kind of fluke—or else all babies remembered at first and lost the recall later. He didn’t want to lose his. He ran a few facts through his mind again; no, they weren’t fading . . .

  He was surprised at the way he absorbed the shock so easily. Before he could flinch at the loss of his lifelong identity, something inside him grasped eagerly at the prospect—a whole new lifetime!

  But his thoughts rioted in confusion, so that he hardly noticed the way his mouth sucked instinctively at the bottle or the warmth and gentleness with which his bottom was washed, dried and rewrapped. The cuddling and petting calmed him; first his body relaxed, then his taut awareness. He could think again.

  The question of age puzzled him. Remembering his son’s earliest days, he was almost certain he was at least a week past the newborn state. Perhaps, he theorized, consciousness could not emerge until the effects of birth trauma subsided. It didn’t matter, but still he wondered. He’d like to know his birthday, he thought, and the year.

  The year! He’d always been curious about the future, wanting to live to see as much of it as he could. Well, sooner or later he’d learn what part of it was now his lot.

  The nurse talked to him and made crooning sounds, but at first he couldn’t force his ears and brain to shape the sounds into intelligible words. Then slowly, like becoming accustomed to a thick dialect or accent, he began to understand. And then he received his second shock.

  “Sweet baby,” said the nurse. “Oh, she’s a sweet, sweet baby!”

  His mind froze, his self-image fighting to keep its place as the nurse returned him to the crib and left the room. He recognized what was happening within him, he dove deep and found the concept of himself as a person first and everything else second, and the struggle eased. Well, came the thought, that’s fair. See how the other half lives.

  He could not think of himself as a she; he sought but could not find any feeling of shentss. His bodily sensations were too diffuse to tell him anything; from the internal feelings at his crotch he could have been male, female, hermaphrodite or completely sexless. His hands were no help; even if he could have controlled them, he was too well swaddled.

  Intellectually there was no need to confirm the nurse’s words; surely she knew and said the truth. And certainly it hardly mattered at the moment, and wouldn’t, in a sense, for some years to come. But inside him was something that clung stubbornly to the concept of maleness and refused, without proof, to give it up. Inside him, against his Will, raged conflict.

  He’d have to wait and see, he decided. Either his inner attitudes would shift naturally, guided by glandular balance, or he’d have to work at adjusting to the new, the totally unexpected situation. He was pleased to find that he was not consciously resisting the inevitable; he had no desire to begin his new life with a built-in basis for neurosis.

  Sensation brought his self-congratulation to a halt. He had wet himself again, and more than that. Without conscious intent, he began to cry, loudly. The noise he made was out of proportion to the mild protest he felt; he wanted to laugh at the incongruity. But what the hell, he thought; it’s the only game in town. And eventually the nurse came and changed him again. He concentrated on the way it felt to be patted dry, and was fairly certain that the warm washcloth encountered no protrusions. The nurse had not lied to him.

  What would it be like, then? He thought of the women he knew well, of what he understood them to be like. He wondered if he understood them at all, or they him.

  Elizabeth understood him, of course, sometimes better than he knew himself, and from the start—their agreement to marry came quickly and with few words. Elizabeth Wilson was so young as to need parental consent for marriage, but she was free of the gaucheries he expected from such youth. She seemed so much a part of him that when, rarely, she became truly angry in a disagreement, he acceded to her wishes almost automatically, out of sheer surprise. One time: “No! We will not take the morning flight. I can’t be ready until afternoon.” When the morning flight crashed without them, half-joking he accused her of precognition. “If I could see the future, Ralph, I wouldn’t have led clubs into dummy last night, and cost us the rubber.”

  A part of him, and he a part of her. No wonder he missed her so much.

  He thought of his mother, widowed when he was twelve—of how her warm love became overly protective for a time. “. . . wear your galoshes; it might snow . . . shouldn’t you wear a sweater under that light jacket? . . . I’m not trying to choose your friends, but there’s a lot of talk about that girl . . . Of course you can live on campus if you wish, but I’d feel much better if you stayed here and drove to classes . . Her touch on the reins was light but ever-present. Then one day, after much thought over a long period, he told her it was time he began making his own mistakes—the storm was less than he had feared, and afterward they could be friends. But as a woman, he realized, he knew very little of her.

  His sister Cheryl? Happy child, then spiteful brat and runaway hellion. With Cheryl, the breakaway drew blood, and the later reunion was equally painful. Then, her life stabilized, she was a good friend to him and Elizabeth.

  He could put little importance to the other women who crossed his life. No great loves, and after adolescence, no great hurts.

  His thumb found its way to his mouth; the sucking pads in his cheeks worked diligently, but nothing came to swallowing but his own saliva. The crying reflex blurred his thought; he held it back for a moment, thinking: Elizabeth is really all I know of women.

  He visualized her; the picture in his mind changed from scene to scene, from time to time. And then, crashing through the defenses he’d neglected, came the bloody, mangled thing that had died in his arms.

  It was good to cry, mindlessly, for nothing more than nourishment; he purged himself as he fed, and then slept.

  Time was strangely extended; his experienced mind knew he’d begun consciousness only a few days ago, but his body emotions insisted the period was much longer.

  He still found it difficult to accept the reality of his tiny female body; its size was also a dual, contradictory thing to him. And perhaps, he thought, when I can make my mouth and tongue say words, I can get the feedback to become “she.” Meanwhile, he waited and learned, and wondered.

  His vision improved, and the movements of arms and legs. He could see and sometimes touch the plastic toys that hung close to his face, and make them rattle. Once he stuck a thumb in his eye. It hurt, but the motion had been slight and random, and did no damage. Usually he could bring thumb’s comfort to mouth at first or second attempt.

  Governed by his body’s needs, he slept much of the time.

  Bowels and bladder were a minor outrage, out of his control. They voided, and his will had no effect. The boy began to handle it in about a year, he thought. Without much prodding. I wonder how old I am.

  He thought more about his son Carl, regretting that he hadn’t lived to see the boy remarried. But perhaps Carl was still alive at the start of this new life, and someday he could see him again. What a strange meeting that would be! And what a thing it was, to have fathered a genius. As a child, his son seemed to learn by instinct. Later he had no need of adolescent rebellion; he was always amenable but never subservient. Quite a boy, and quite a man . . .

  Thought of fatherhood gave way to pangs of hunger. He cried and was answered.

  He was fed by breast as well as by bottle. Bottle was more efficient but breast comforted him warmly; instinct did not always make him sleep after bottle. He wondered who his mother might be, and where he was, and when; he liked the blurred glimpses he’d had, of her smile. He was fairly certain that he was in the United States and near his own time; the language hadn’t changed, the little he’d heard of it. And he knew he was Caucasian and of a relatively affluent family, for he could see his skin and knew the cost of private accommodations. And where, he
wondered, was his own father?

  Nothing was said in his hearing to answer the questions that still plagued him. Very well, he would wait. In him, content and patience grew, but not at the expense of memory or purpose.

  One day, feeding at breast, he heard a new male voice. “Hello, dear, I couldn’t get back any sooner. You’re all right, I see?”

  “Oh, yes!” He heard the sounds as much through his mother’s chest, one ear close to it, as through the air. He strained to hear what was said, but sleep was upon him, and a thought: That’s my father; I wonder what he looks like.

  He woke, being lifted and laid into a smaller resting place. Then he was jounced in walking-rhythm, felt cold air on his face—then he was set down. Doors closed, ear-hurting; he was in a confined space of dead air. Noise came, and bad smells, a pattern of harsh movement. His memory knew the bounce of city streets and the stench of vehicle exhausts. His young body knew only fright and discomfort.

  Lifted again at the end of it, his place-of-lying moved and swung in strides—more cold air, and then warm—until it was again set to rest. The light was dim, but he could see, leaning over him, the faces that were now his mother and father. His memory prickled but did not speak.

  “Well, now,” said the father-face. “Welcome to our home, Betsy Wilson.”

  Unease tugged at his gut; he strained to see more closely. The faces were so big to him, and strange. Both were smiling; suddenly an old picture superimposed on what he saw . . . and then he knew.

  He was not in the future; he was more than fifty years deep into his own past. These were Elizabeth’s parents. He was Betsy Wilson, who one day would become Elizabeth Ascione.

  He thought—when he could think again—no wonder she knew me so well!

  If only I can remember as well as she had.

  But of course she would, for she was herself; there had never been any other. Ralph was the earlier segment of her conscious life and she the later—though the two ran, had run, would run, parallel through the years he had lived and she was now to have. And with knowledge of her personal identity came acceptance of her sex.

  What will it be like, she wondered, to meet him—see him—and know? He had never known; there had been no hint. What if she told him? She hadn’t; could she? Probably not; he wouldn’t believe it. Only after her death had his hard-headed materialistic view of the universe begun to broaden.

  Her death! She had forgotten that there are drawbacks to living in known time. The freeway horror that lay two years back in her memories also waited for her, fifty-two years ahead. Oh, God! If only I hadn’t outlived myself. Then I wouldn’t know. I wouldn’t know

  But was the future predetermined in such detail? Did it run on tracks, or could it be changed? She had to find out. She had no way to do it now, and wouldn’t for years; she simply didn’t know enough details of her early life. Oh, a few things, from mutual reminiscences, but nothing she could think to use as a test. For the present she could only wait and think, and learn.

  The fierce vitality of her young body would not allow depression to hold her for long. Time enough later, she thought, to try to rattle the bars of time, and evade or accept a death more than half a century away.

  Then she realized—it would be her second death in that remote decade. And she couldn’t even remember Ralph’s . . .

  “Look, dear,” said her mother. “I think she’s trying to laugh.”

  Learning and achieving seemed slow to her, but instinct combined with mature knowledge and purpose to make her development precocious; her parents occasionally remarked on it.

  First she needed to communicate. Not by speech—that was months away, and she shouldn’t introduce it too soon, for fear of being considered a freak or prodigy. She used crying and movement; deliberately she cultivated different “tones and cadences to ask for food, to be changed, to be held and cuddled. For the latter she also worked to make her arms reach out when her mother or father came near. She found that snuggling was essential to well-being—the psychologists were right—the contact, the warmth, the rocking and soft-voiced crooning had a definite physical effect, and for best vitality she needed it. Luckily, her mother seemed to feel the complementary need, and satisfied it often.

  The infant Elizabeth grew, became a toddler. Overt sexual development was years ahead, but she began to notice that it felt differently, to be a girl. She couldn’t remember male infancy; those recalls were buried nearly six decades deep. But being Elizabeth did not feel the same as being Ralph. She had no words to describe the difference, and she knew why; words derive from shared experience. She decided the distinction was something like that of being right-or left-handed: no “better” or “worse,” but merely two states of being.

  When the time came for speech, she was ready; she practiced, when she was alone, to train her tongue and lips. She knew better than to go too fast or use adult vocabulary, but she would not stoop to babytalk. Her camouflage was not perfect; occasionally she caught puzzled looks on her parents’ faces.

  And once her father said, “I know what it is, honey. Betsy always has just the right word. She seldom makes mistakes.” After that she took pains to err more often. But not too often; she had her pride.

  The one thing she did hurry, camouflage or no camouflage, was toilet training.

  Early along, she worried about the problem of adapting fifty-eight years of male experience and habit to a pattern of acceptable female behavior. The worry was waste; she found as she came to walk and speak that her parents gave a constant flow of clues, with and without words, to what was expected of her. The less she relied on deliberate thought, the more she relaxed and responded naturally to them, the easier she found it to be a convincing Elizabeth. Yet she did not lose herself in the role; her memories were intact, with their commentaries on the ways of her life.

  Now, she thought, I see what Women’s Lib was complaining about. Role-training? Every minute, and in ways they don’t even realize, consciously. But she herself had no complaint; the role was necessary to the years and the life she would have. And so far as she knew, Ralph hadn’t tried to press her into any mold. She’d had many activities, anything she said she wanted, outside the homemaker’s sphere. Of course, it might look different from this side, when the time came. Wait and see.

  Ralph had not much enjoyed the jungle-law years of small-boyhood; Elizabeth was glad to be spared a rerun of the experience. She found the world of small girls utterly new: sometimes delightful, sometimes appalling, but generally fascinating, as she learned it. Staying in character became more difficult; slips of knowledge that her parents would not notice were grossly apparent against the bright clear light of misinformation firmly shared by her playmates. When in doubt or in no doubt at all, she learned to stay out of the line of fire. As when Sharon-down-the-block, three years older, explained the facts of life to Betsy and a group of her agemates . . .

  “You get married and the minister does something, and a baby comes out your bellybutton.”

  “Right in church?”

  “I bet it hurts a lot.”

  “Does it hurt, Sharon?”

  “I dunno,” said Sharon. “Kathy didn’t say. But anyway, we don’t have to.”

  Maybe you don’t, thought Elizabeth. But I think I do . . .

  Except for occasional rediscovery of something long forgotten in the times she was reliving, school became a dull and boring ache. The prison of childhood stretched ahead, interminably. She had forgotten the way childhood’s thought and speech can remain the same for so very long. Sitting through hours of repetition, varied only by the wrong answers that led to still more repetition, she longed to come to grips with a future she could put to test.

  She had put in abeyance her need to try that future, to attempt to change it, she’d kept busy learning and practicing her role. Now she looked for a checkpoint of some kind, for a handle she could turn. Occasionally she tried to do something she was fairly certain Ralph’s wife could not have done as a ch
ild, but the results were never conclusive. There seemed to be an inertia, along with her own trained wish and habit, that kept her from doing anything that might make her seem unusual, or shock or hurt her parents. So when she was ten, she watched thirteen-year-old Sharon pass for twenty-one and acquire a small arm-tattoo in the carnival tent, the drunken man’s hand so steady, as his mouth was not. But she could not bring herself to follow suit, even if the man had allowed it.

  Impatiently, she awaited the onset of adolescence; she was in no hurry for sexual development as such, but she felt prisoner of the static ways of childish glands, in herself and in her associates. The world of little girls had lost its charm for her; changes in minds and personalities would be welcome. She knew how banal the teen-age mind could be, but at least it would be a different banality, and could interest her for a time.

  Still, menarche at eleven caught her unprepared; signs at chest and pubis had not seemed so far advanced. But one day .at school her skirt was wet where she sat. Her role-playing body panicked. Drawing upon earlier knowledge, she excused herself and walked home. Well, it was time for that talk, the one her mother had begun several times but never completed. She entered her home.

  “Mother?”

  “Yes, Betsy.” Elizabeth, like all her friends, changed her nicknames frequently; nonetheless, her mother always called her Betsy. “I’m in the kitchen here.”

  Sitting on a high stool, Mrs. Wilson peeled potatoes at the kitchen sink. She weighed more than she had earlier or would a few years later, more than her daughter would ever weigh. Her hair, bleached lighter than the brown of Elizabeth’s, was piled in a loose upsweep that drooped alarmingly on the left side. “Yes, dear?” she said.

  “I’ve started, Mother.” Elizabeth turned to show her stained skirt. “I’ll rinse it with cold water. But you’d better show me how those things work, the ones you use.”

  She knew her mother would cry and embrace her, and she did. Then, the skirt rinsed and the flow controlled, the two women sat in the kitchen, the older with coffee and the younger, bathrobed, sipping milk.