by Anthology
“And you chose not to? But what an extraordinary thing to—”
“Isn’t it?” he said. “One can’t help wondering why.”
THE BUSINESS, AS USUAL
Mack Reynolds
“Listen,” the time traveler said to the first pedestrian who came by, “I’m from the Twentieth Century. I’ve only got fifteen minutes and then I’ll go back. I guess it’s too much to expect you to understand me, eh?”
“Certainly, I understand you.”
“Hey! You talk English fine. How come?”
“We call it Amer-English. I happen to be a student of dead languages.”
“Swell! But listen, I only got a few minutes. Let’s get going.”
“Get going?”
“Yeah, yeah. Look, don’t you get it? I’m a time traveler. They picked me to send to the future. I’m important.”
“Ummm. But you must realize that we have time travelers turning up continuously these days.”
“Listen, that rocks me, but I just don’t have time to go into it, see? Let’s get to the point.”
“Very well, what have you got?”
“What d’ya mean, what’ve I got?”
The other sighed. “Don’t you think you should attempt to acquire some evidence that you have been in the future? I can warn you now, the paradoxes involved in time travel prevent you from taking back any knowledge which might alter the past. On your return, your mind will be blank in regard to what happened here.” The time traveler blinked. “Oh?”
“Definitely. However, I shall be glad to make a trade with you.”
“Listen, I get the feeling I came into this conversation half a dozen sentences too late. What d’ya mean, a trade?”
“I am willing to barter something of your century for something of mine, although, frankly, there is little in your period that is of other than historical interest to us.” The pedestrian’s eyes held a gleam now. He cleared his throat. “However, I have here an atomic pocket knife. I hesitate to even tell you of the advantages it has over the knives of your period.”
“Okay. I got only ten minutes left, but I can see you’re right. I’ve got to get something to prove that I was here.”
“My knife would do it,” the pedestrian nodded.
“Yeah, yeah. Listen, I’m a little confused, like. They picked me for this job last minute—didn’t want to risk any of the professor guys, see? That’s the screwiest knife I ever saw, let me have it for my evidence.”
“Just a moment, friend. Why should I give you my knife? What can you offer in exchange?”
“But I’m from the Twentieth Century.”
“Ummm. And I’m from the Thirtieth.”
The time traveler looked at him for a long moment. Finally, “Listen, pal, I don’t have a lot of time. Now, for instance, my watch—”
“Ummm. And what else?”
“Well, my money, here.”
“Of interest only to a numismatist.”
“Listen, I gotta have some evidence I been in the Thirtieth Century!”
“Of course. But business is business as the proverb goes.”
“I wish the hell I had a gun.”
“I have no use for a gun in this age,” the other said primly. “No, but I have,” the time traveler muttered. “Look, fella, my time is running out by the second. What d’ya want? You see what I got, clothes, my wallet, a little money, a key ring, a pair of shoes.”
“I’m willing to trade, but your possessions are of small value. Now some art object—an original Al Capp or something.”
The time traveler was plaintive. “Do I look like I’d be carrying around art objects? Listen, I’ll give you everything I got but my pants for that screwy knife.”
“Oh, you want to keep your pants, eh? What’re you trying to do, Anglo me down?—or does your period antedate the term?”
“Anglo . . . what? I don’t get it.”
“Well, I’m quite an etymologist—”
“That’s too bad, but—”
“Not at all, a fascinating hobby,” the pedestrian said. “Now as to the phrase, ‘Anglo me down,’ the term ‘Anglo’ first came into popular use during the 1850-1950 period. It designated persons from the eastern United States, English descent principally, who came into New Mexico and Arizona shortly after the area was liberated—I believe that was the term used at the time—from Mexico. The Spanish and the Indians came to know the Easterners as Anglos.”
The time traveler said desperately, “Listen, pal, we get further and further from—”
“Tracing back the derivation of the phrase takes us along two more side trails. It goes back to the fact that these Anglos became the wealthiest businessmen of the Twentieth Century—so much so that they soon dominated the world with their dollars.”
“Okay, okay. I know all about that. Personally I never had enough dollars to dominate anybody, but—”
“Very well, the point is that the Anglos became the financial wizards of the world, the most clever dealers, the sharpest bargainers, the most competent businessmen.”
The time traveler shot a quick despairing look at his watch. “Only three—”
“The third factor is one taken from still further in the past. At one time there was a racial minority, which many of the Anglos held in disregard, called the Joos. For many years the term had been used, to Joo you down—meaning to make the price lower. As the Anglos assumed their monetary dominance, the term evolved from Joo you down to Anglo you down; and this it has come down to our own day, although neither Anglo nor Joo still exists as a separate people.”
The time traveler stared at him. “And I won’t be able to take the memory of this story back with me, eh? And me a guy named Levy.” He darted another look at his watch and groaned. “Quick!” he said, “Let’s make this trade; everything I got for that atomic knife!”
The deal was consummated. The citizen of the Thirtieth Century stood back, his loot in his arms, and watched as the citizen of the Twentieth, nude but with the knife grasped tightly and happily in hand, faded slowly from view.
The knife poised momentarily in empty air, then dropped to the ground as the time traveler completely disappeared.
The other stooped, retrieved it, and stuck it back in his pocket. “Even more naive than usual,” he muttered. “Must have been one of the very first. I suppose they’ll never reconcile themselves to paradoxes. Obviously, you can carry things forward in time, since that’s the natural flow of the dimension; but you just can’t carry anything, not even memory, backward against the current.” He resumed his journey homeward.
Marget, hands on hips, met him at the door. “Where in Kert have you been?” she snapped.
“You mustn’t swear, darling,” he said. “I met another time traveler on the way home.”
“You didn’t—”
“Certainly, why not? If I didn’t somebody else would.”
“But you’ve already got the closet overflowing with—”
“Now Marget, don’t look at it that way. One of these days some museum or collector—”
She grunted skeptically and turned back into the house.
THE CARPET BEDS OF SUTRO PARK
Kage Baker
I had been watching her for years.
Her mother used to bring her, when she was a child. Thin irritable woman dragging her offspring by the hand. “Kristy Ann! For God’s sake, come on!” The mother would stop to light a cigarette or chat with a neighbor encountered on the paths, and the little girl would sidle away to stare at the old well house, or pet the stone lions.
Later she came alone, a tall adolescent with a sketchpad under her arm. She’d spend hours wandering under the big cypress trees, or leaning on the battlements where the statues used to be, staring out to sea. Her sweater was thin. She’d shiver in the fog.
I remember when the statues used to be there. Spring and Winter and Prometheus and all the rest of them, and Sutro’s house that rose behind them on the parapet. I sat he
re then and I could see his observatory tower lifting above the trees. Turning my head I could see the spire of the Flower Conservatory. All gone now. Doesn’t matter. I recorded them. As I record everything. My memory goes back a long way . . .
I remember my parents fighting. He wanted to go off to the gold fields. She screamed at him to go, then. He left, swearing. I think she must have died not long after. I remember being a little older and playing among the deserted ships, where they sat abandoned on the waterfront by crews who had gone hunting for gold. Sometimes people fed me. A lady noticed that I was alone and invited me to come live with her.
She took me into her house and there were strange things in it, things that shouldn’t have been there in 1851: boxes that spoke and flameless lamps. She told me she was from the future. Her job was saving things from Time. She said she was immortal, and asked me if I’d like to be immortal too. I said I guessed I would.
I was taken to a hospital and they did a lot of surgery on me to make me like them. Had it worked, I’d have been an immortal genius.
The immortal part worked but the Cognitive Enhancement Procedure was a disaster. I woke up and couldn’t talk to anyone, was frightened to death of people talking to me, because I could see all possible outcomes to any conversation and couldn’t process any of them and it was too much, too much. I had to avoid looking into their eyes. I focused on anything else to calm myself: books, music, pictures.
My new guardians were very disappointed. They put me through years of therapy, without results. They spoke over my head.
What the fuck do we do with him now? He can’t function as an operative.
Should we put him in storage?
No; the Company spent too much money on him.
Gentlemen, please; Ezra’s intelligent, he can hear you, you know, he understands—
You could always send him out as a camera. Let him wander around recording the city. There’ll be a lot of demand for historic images after 2125.
He could do that! My therapist sounded eager. Give him a structured schedule, exact routes to take, a case officer willing to work with his limitations—
So I was put to work. I crossed and recrossed the city with open eyes, watching everything. I was a bee collecting the pollen of my time, bringing it back to be stored away as future honey. The sounds and images went straight from my sensory receptors to a receiver at Company HQ. I had a room in the basement at the Company HQ, to which I came back every night. I had Gleason, my case officer. I had my routes. I had my rules.
I must never allow myself to look like a street vagrant. I must wash myself and wear clean clothing daily. I must never draw attention to myself in any way.
If approached by a mortal, I was to Avoid.
If I could not avoid, Evaluate: was the mortal a policeman?
If so I was to Present him with my card. In the early days the card said I was a deaf mute, and any questions should be directed to my keeper, Dr. Gleason, residing on Kearney Street. In later years the card said I was a mentally disabled person under the care of the Gleason Sanatorium on Chestnut Street.
The one I carry now says I have an autiform disorder and directs the concerned reader to the Gleason Outpatient Clinic on Geary.
For the first sixty years I used to get sent out with an Augmented Equine Companion. I liked that. Norton was a big bay gelding, Edwin was a dapple gray and Andy was a palomino. They weren’t immortal—the Company never made animals immortal—but they had human intelligence, and nobody ever bothered me when I was perched up on an impressive-looking steed. I liked animals; they were aware of details and pattern changes in the same way I was. They took care of remembering my routes. They could transmit cues to me.
We’re approaching three females. Tip your hat.
Don’t dismount here. We’re going up to get footage of Nob Hill.
Hold on. I’m going to kick this dog.
Ezra, the fog’s coming in. We won’t be able to see Fort Point from here today. I’ll take you back to HQ.
I was riding Edwin the first time I saw Sutro Park. That was in 1885, when it had just been opened to the public. He took me up over the hills through the sand dunes, far out of the city, toward Cliff House. The park had been built on the bluff high above.
I recorded it all, brand new: the many statues and flower urns gleaming white, the green lawns carefully tended, the neat paths and gracious Palm Avenue straight and well-kept. There was a beautiful decorative gate then, arching above the main entrance where the stone lions sit. The Conservatory, with its inlaid tile floor, housed exotic plants. The fountains jetted. The little millionaire Sutro ambled through, looking like the Monopoly man in his high silk hat, nodding to visitors and pointing out especially nice sights with his walking stick.
He was proudest of the carpet beds, the elaborate living tapestries of flowers along Palm Avenue. It took a boarding-house full of gardeners to manicure them, keeping the patterns perfect. Parterres like brocade, swag and wreath designs, a lyre, floral Grecian urns. Clipped boxwood edging, blue-green aloes and silver sempervivum; red and pink petunias, marigolds, pansies, alyssum in violet and white, blue lobelia. The colors sang out so bright they almost hurt my eyes.
They were an unnatural miracle, as lovely as the far more unnatural and miraculous phenomenon responsible for them: that a rich man should open his private garden to the public.
The mortals didn’t appreciate it. They never do.
The years passed. The little millionaire built other gifts for San Francisco, his immense public baths and towering Cliff House. The little millionaire died and faded from memory, though not mine.
The Great Earthquake barely affected Sutro Park, isolated as it was beyond the sand dunes; a few statues toppled from their plinths, but the flowers still sang at the sky for a while. Sutro’s Cliff House went up in smoke. After automobiles came, horses vanished from the streets. I had to walk everywhere now by myself.
So I watched Kristy Ann and I don’t think she ever saw me once, over the years, though I was always on that same bench. But I watched the little girl discovering the remnant of the Conservatory’s tiled floor, watched her get down on her hands and knees and dig furtively, hoping to uncover more of the lost city before her mother could call her away.
I watched the older Kristy Ann bringing her boyfriends there, the tall one with red hair and then the black one with dreadlocks. There were furtive kisses in amongst the trees and, at least once, furtive sex. There were long afternoons while they grew bored watching her paint the cypress trees. At last she came alone, and there were no more boys after that.
She walked there every afternoon, after work I suppose. She must have lived nearby. Weekends she came with her paints and did endless impressions of the view from the empty battlements, or the statue of Diana that had survived, back among the trees. Once or twice I wandered past her to look at her canvases. I wouldn’t have said she had talent, but she had passion.
I didn’t like the twentieth century, but it finally went away. Everything went into my eyes: the Pan Pacific Exhibition, Dashiell Hammett lurching out of John’s Grill, the building of the Golden Gate Bridge. Soldiers and sailors. Sutro’s Baths destroyed. Mortals in bright rags, their bare feet dirty, carrying guitars. Workmen digging a pit to lay the foundations of the Transamerica Building and finding the old buried waterfront, the abandoned ships of my mortal childhood still down there in the mud. The Embarcadero Freeway rising, and falling; the Marina District burning, and coming back with fresh white paint.
My costume changed to fit the times. Now and again I caught a glimpse of myself, impartial observer, in a shop window reflection. I was hard to recognize, though I saw the same blank and eternally smooth face every time under the sideburns, or the mustache, or the glasses.
The new world was loud and hard. It didn’t matter. I had all the literature and music of past ages to give me human contact, if secondhand through Dickens or Austen. And I had kept copies of the times I’d liked, out of w
hat I sent into the Company storage banks. I could close my eyes at night and replay the old city as I’d known it, in holo.
Everything time had taken away was still there, in my city. Sutro was still there, in his silk hat. I could walk the paths of his park beside him, as I’d never done in his time, and imagine a conversation, though of course I’d never spoken to him or anyone. I didn’t want to tell him about his house being torn down, or his park being “reduced” as the San Francisco Park Department put it, for easier maintenance, the Conservatory gone, the statues almost all gone, the carpet beds mown over.
Kristy Ann in her twenties became grim and intense, a thin girl who dressed carelessly. Sometimes she brought books of photographs to the park with her and stalked along the paths, holding up the old images to compare them with the bare modern reality. One day she came with a crowd of young mortals from her college class, and talked knowledgeably about the park. The term urban archaeology was used a number of times.
Now, when she painted the park, she worked with the old photographs beside her, imposing the light and colors of the present day on representations of the past. I knew what she was doing. I’d done it myself, hadn’t I?
Kristy Ann in her thirties grew thinner, seldom smiled. She took to patrolling the park for trash, muttering savagely to herself as she picked up empty pop cans or discarded snack wrappers.
She came once to the park with two other women and a news crew from KQED. They were filmed in front of the statue of Diana, talking about a Park Preservation Society they’d founded. There was talk of budget cuts. A petition. One of the cameramen made a joke about the statue and I could see the rage flaring in Kristy Ann’s eyes. She began to rant about the importance of restoring Sutro Park, replacing the statues, replanting the parterres.
Her two companions exchanged glances and tactfully cut her off, changing the focus of the interview to the increasing deterioration of Golden Gate Park and the need for native, drought-resistant plantings.