Time Travel Omnibus Volume 2

by Anthology

  Mr. Simms arose and walked out.

  “There goes Mr. Big Talk!” yelled Mr. Melton at the departing gentleman. He turned and looked at Susan. “Hey. Someone’s crying. Breakfast’s no time for people to cry. Now is it?”

  At nine-fifteen Susan stood on the balcony of their room, gazing down at the plaza. Mr. Simms was seated there, his neat legs crossed, on a delicate bronze bench. Biting the tip from a cigar, he lit it tenderly.

  Susan heard the throb of a motor, and far up the street, out of a garage and down the cobbled hill, slowly, came William in his car.

  The car picked up speed. Thirty, now forty, now fifty miles an hour. Chickens scattered before it.

  Mr. Simms took off his white panama hat and mopped his pink forehead, put his hat back on, and then saw the car.

  It was rushing sixty miles an hour, straight on for the plaza.

  “William!” screamed Susan.

  The car hit the low plaza curb, thundering; it jumped up, sped across the tiles toward the green bench where Mr. Simms now dropped his cigar, shrieked, flailed his hands, and was hit by the car. His body flew up and up in the air, and down and down, crazily, into the street.

  On the far side of the plaza, one front wheel broken, the car stopped. People were running.

  Susan went in and closed the balcony doors.

  They came down the Official Palace steps together, arm in arm, their faces pale, at twelve noon.

  “Adiós, señor,” said the mayor behind them. “Señora.”

  They stood in the plaza where the crowd was pointing at the blood.

  “Will they want to see you again?” asked Susan.

  “No, we went over and over it. It was an accident. I lost control of the car. I wept for them. God knows I had to get my relief out somewhere. I felt like weeping. I hated to kill him. I’ve never wanted to do anything like that in my life.”

  “They won’t prosecute you?”

  “They talked about it, but no. I talked faster. They believe me. It was an accident. It’s over.”

  “Where will we go? Mexico City? Uruapan?”

  “The car’s in the repair shop. It’ll be ready at four this afternoon. Then we’ll get the hell out.”

  “Will we be followed? Was Simms working alone?”

  “I don’t know. We’ll have a little head start on them, I think.”

  The film people were coming out of the hotel as they approached. Mr. Melton hurried up, scowling. “Hey I heard what happened. Too bad. Everything okay now? Want to get your minds off it? We’re doing some preliminary shots up the street. You want to watch, you’re welcome. Come on, do you good.”

  They went.

  They stood on the cobbled street while the film camera was being set up. Susan looked at the road leading down and away, and the highway going to Acapulco and the sea, past pyramids and ruins and little adobe towns with yellow walls, blue walls, purple walls and flaming bougainvillea, and she thought, We shall take the roads, travel in clusters and crowds, in markets, in lobbies, bribe police to sleep near, keep double locks, but always the crowds, never alone again, always afraid the next person who passes may be another Simms. Never knowing if we’ve tricked and lost the Searchers. And always up ahead, in the Future, they’ll wait for us to be brought back, waiting with their bombs to burn us and disease to rot us, and their police to tell us to roll over, turn around, jump through the hoop! And so we’ll keep running through the forest, and we’ll never ever stop or sleep well again in our lives.

  A crowd gathered to watch the film being made. And Susan watched the crowd and the streets.

  “Seen anyone suspicious?”

  “No. What time is it?”

  “Three o’clock. The car should be almost ready.”

  The test film was finished at three forty-five. They all walked down to the hotel, talking. William paused at the garage. “The car’ll be ready at six,” he said, coming out, worried.

  “But no later than that?”

  “It’ll be ready, don’t worry.”

  In the hotel lobby they looked around for other men traveling alone, men who resembled Mr. Simms, men with new haircuts and too much cigarette smoke and cologne smell about them, but the lobby was empty. Going up the stairs, Mr. Melton said, “Well, it’s been a long hard day. Who’d like to put a header on it? You folks? Martini? Beer?”

  “Maybe one.”

  The whole crowd pushed into Mr. Melton’s room and the drinking began.

  “Watch the time,” said William.

  Time, thought Susan. If only they had time. All she wanted was to sit in the plaza all of a long bright day in October, with not a worry or a thought, with the sun on her face and arms, her eyes closed, smiling at the warmth, and never move. Just sleep in the Mexican sun, and sleep warmly and easily and slowly and happily for many, many days . . .

  Mr. Melton opened the champagne.

  “To a very beautiful lady, lovely enough for films,” he said, toasting Susan. “I might even give you a test.”

  She laughed.

  “I mean it,” said Melton. “You’re very nice. I could make you a movie star.”

  “And take me to Hollywood?” cried Susan.

  “Get the hell out of Mexico, sure!”

  Susan glanced at William and he lifted an eyebrow and nodded. It would be a change of scene, clothing, locale, name, perhaps; and they would be traveling with eight other people, a good shield against any interference from the Future.

  “It sounds wonderful,” said Susan.

  She was feeling the champagne now. The afternoon was slipping by; the party was whirling about her. She felt safe and good and alive and truly happy for the first time in many years.

  “What kind of film would my wife be good for?” asked William, refilling his glass.

  Melton appraised Susan. The party stopped laughing and listened.

  “Well, I’d like to do a story of suspense,” said Melton. “A story of a man and wife, like yourselves.”

  “Go on.”

  “Sort of a war story, maybe,” said the director, examining the color of his drink against the sunlight.

  Susan and William waited.

  “A story about a man and wife, who live in a little house on a little street in the year 2155, maybe,” said Melton. “This is ad lib, understand. But this man and wife are faced with a terrible war, super-plus hydrogen bombs, censorship, death in that year, and—here’s the gimmick—they escape into the Past, followed by a man who they think is evil, but who is only trying to show them what their duty is.”

  William dropped his glass to the floor.

  Mr. Melton continued: “And this couple take refuge with a group of film people whom they learn to trust. Safety in numbers, they say to themselves.”

  Susan felt herself slip down into a chair. Everyone was watching the director. He took a little sip of wine. “Ah, that’s a fine wine. Well, this man and woman, it seems, don’t realize how important they are to the Future. The man, especially, is the keystone to a new bomb metal. So the Searchers, let’s call them, spare no trouble or expense to find, capture, and take home the man and wife, once they get them totally alone, in a hotel room, where no one can see. Strategy. The Searchers work alone, or in groups of eight. One trick or another will do it. Don’t you think it would make a wonderful film, Susan? Don’t you, Bill?” He finished his drink.

  Susan sat with her eyes straight ahead of her.

  “Have a drink?” said Mr. Melton.

  William’s gun was out and fired three times, and one of the men fell, and the others ran forward. Susan screamed. A hand was clamped to her mouth. Now the gun was on the floor and William was struggling, held.

  Mr. Melton said, “Please,” standing there where he had stood, blood showing on his fingers. “Let’s not make matters worse.”

  Someone pounded on the hall door.

  “Let me in!”

  “The manager,” said Mr. Melton dryly. He jerked his head. “Everyone, let’s move!”


  “Let me in! I’ll call the police!”

  Susan and William looked at each other quickly, and then at the door.

  “The manager wishes to come in,” said Mr. Melton. “Quick!”

  A camera was carried forward. From it shot a blue light which encompassed the room instantly. It widened out and the people of the party vanished, one by one.

  “Quickly!”

  Outside the window, in the instant before she vanished, Susan saw the green land and the purple and yellow and blue and crimson walls and the cobbles flowing down like a river, a man upon a burro riding into the warm hills, a boy drinking Orange Crush, she could feel the sweet liquid in her throat, a man standing under a cool plaza tree with a guitar, she could feel her hand upon the strings, and, far away, the sea, the blue and tender sea, she could feel it roll her over and take her in.

  And then she was gone. Her husband was gone.

  The door burst wide open. The manager and his staff rushed in.

  The room was empty.

  “But they were just here! I saw them come in, and now—gone!” cried the manager. “The windows are covered with iron grating. They couldn’t get out that way!”

  In the late afternoon the priest was summoned and they opened the room again and aired it out, and had him sprinkle holy water through each corner and give it his blessing.

  “What shall we do with these?” asked the charwoman.

  She pointed to the closet, where there were 67 bottles of chartreuse, cognac, crème de cacao, absinthe, vermouth, tequila, 106 cartons of Turkish cigarettes, and 198 yellow boxes of fifty-cent pure Havana-filler cigars . . .

  THE GALLERY OF HIS DREAMS

  Kristine Kathryn Rusch

  Let him who wishes to know what war is look at this series of illustrations . . . It was so nearly like visiting the battlefield to look over these views, that all the emotions excited by the actual sight of the stained and sordid scene, strewed with rags and wrecks, came back to us, and we buried them in the recesses of our cabinet as we would have buried the mutilated remains of the dead they too vividly represented.

  —Oliver Wendell Holmes

  1838

  Brady leaned against a hay bale and felt the blades dig into his back. He smelled of pig dung and his own sweat, and his muscles ached. His da had gone to the pump to wash up, and then into the cow shed, but Brady claimed he needed a rest. His da, never one to argue with relaxation, let him sit against the hay bales. Brady didn’t dare stay too long; if his ma saw him, she would be on the front porch, yelling insults unintelligible through her Irish brogue.

  He did need to think, though. Milking cows and cleaning the pig pen didn’t give him enough time to make plans. He couldn’t stay on the farm the rest of his life, he knew that. He hated the work, the animals, the smell, and the long hours that all led to a poor, subsistence living. His da thought the farm a step up from the hovel he had grown up in and certainly an improvement from Brady’s grandfather’s life back in the Old Country. Brady often wished he could see what his da’s or his grandfather’s life had really been like. But he had to trust their memories, memories that, at least in his grandfather’s case, had become more and more confusing as the years progressed.

  Brady pulled a strand of hay from the bale, sending a burst of sharp fresh summer-scent around him. He wanted more than a ruined farm and a few livestock in upstate New York. Mr. Hanley, his teacher, had pulled Brady aside on the day he left school, and reminded him that in the United States of American even farmboys could become great men. Mr. Hanley used to start the school day by telling the boys that the late President Thomas Jefferson defined the nation’s creed when he wrote that all men were created equal, and President Andrew Jackson had proven the statement true with his election not ten years before.

  Brady didn’t want to be president. He wanted to do something different, something he couldn’t even imagine now. He wanted to be great—and he wanted to be remembered.

  1840

  The spring thaw had turned the streets of New York City into rivers.

  Brady laughed as he jumped from one sidewalk board to the next, then turned and waited for Page to jump. Page hesitated a moment, running a slender hand through his beard. Then he jumped and landed, one tattered shoe in the cold water, one out. Brady grabbed his friend’s arm and pulled him up.

  “Good Lord, William, how far away is this man’s home?”

  “He’s not just any man,” Page said, shaking the water off his legs. “He’s a painter, and a damn fine one.”

  Brady smiled. Page was a painter himself and had, a few months earlier, opened a studio below their joint apartment. Brady helped with the rent on the studio as a repayment for Page’s help in moving Brady from the farm. Being a clerk at A.T. Stewart’s largest store was an improvement over farm life—the same kind of improvement that Brady’s father had made. Only Brady wasn’t going to stop there. Page had promised to help by showing Brady how to paint. While Brady had an eye for composition, he lacked the firm hand, the easy grace of a portraitist. Page had been polite; he hadn’t said that Brady was hopeless. But they both knew that Mathew B. Brady would never make his living with a paintbrush in his hand.

  Brady braced himself against a wooden building as he stepped over a submerged portion of sidewalk. “You haven’t said what this surprise is.”

  “I don’t know what the surprise is. Samuel simply said that he had learned about it in France and that we would be astonished.” Page slipped into a thin alley between buildings and then pulled open a door. Brady followed, and found himself staring up a dark flight of stairs. Page was already half-way up, his wet shoe squeaking with each step. Brady gripped the railing and took the stairs two at a time.

  Page opened the door, sending light across the stairs. Brady reached the landing just as Page bellowed, “Samuel!” Brady peered inside, nearly choking on the scent of linseed and turpentine.

  Large windows graced the walls, casting dusty sunlight on a room filled with canvases. Dropcloths covered most of the canvases and some of the furniture scattered about. A desk, overflowing with papers, stood under one window. Near that a large wooden box dwarfed a rickety table. A stoop-shouldered long-haired man braced the table with one booted foot.

  “Over here, Page, over here. Don’t dawdle. Help me move this thing. The damn table is about to collapse.”

  Page scurried across the room, bent down, and grabbed an edge of the box. The man picked up the other side and led the way to his desk. He balanced the box with one hand and his knee while his other hand swept the desk clean. They set the box down and immediately the man pulled out a handkerchief and wiped away the sweat that had dripped into his bushy eyebrows.

  “I meant to show you in a less dramatic fashion,” he said, then looked up. Brady whipped his hat off his head and held it with both hands. The man had sharp eyes, eyes that could see right through a person, clear down to his dreams.

  “Well?” the man said.

  Brady nodded. He wouldn’t be stared down. “I’m Mathew B. Brady, sir.”

  “Samuel F. B. Morse.” Morse tucked his handkerchief back into his pocket and clasped his hands behind his back. “You must be the boy Page has been telling me about. He assumes you have some sort of latent talent.”

  Brady glanced at Page. Page blushed, the color seeping through the patches of skin still visible through his beard.

  “Hmmm,” Morse said as he stalked forward. He paced around Brady, studied him for a moment. “You’re what, eighteen?”

  “Almost, sir.”

  “If you had talent, you’d know it by now.” Morse shook his head. His suit smelled faintly of mothballs. “No, no. You’re one of the lucky ones, blessed with drive. A man with talent merely has a head start. A man with drive succeeds.”

  Morse stalked back to his desk, stepping on the papers that littered the floor. “Drive but no talent. I have the perfect machine for you.” He put his hand on the box. “Ever hear of Louis Daguerre? No
, of course not. What would a farmboy know of the latest scientific discoveries?”

  Brady started, then shot another look at Page. Perhaps Page had said something about Brady’s background. Page ignored him and had come closer to Morse.

  “Daguerre found a way to preserve the world in one image. Look.” He handed Page a small metal plate. As Page tilted it toward the light, Brady saw the Unitarian Church he walked past almost every day.

  “This is a daguerreotype,” Morse said. “I made this one through the window of the third floor staircase at New York University.”

  “That is the right view,” Page’s voice held awe. “You used no paints.”

  “I used this,” Morse said, his hand pounding on the box’s top. “It has a lens here—” and he pointed at the back end from which a glass-topped cylinder protruded “—and a place here for the plates. The plates are silver on copper, which I treat with iodine and expose to light through the lens. Then I put the plate in another box containing heated mercury, and when I’m done—an image! An exact reproduction of the world in black and white.”

  Brady touched the cool edge of the plate. “It preserves memories,” he said, thinking that if such a device had existed before, he could have seen his father’s hovel, his grandfather’s home.

  “It does more than that, son,” Morse said. “This is our future. It will destroy portrait painting. Soon everything will be images on metal, keepsakes for generations to come.”

  Page pulled back at the remark about portrait painting. He went to the window, looked at the street below. “I suppose that’s why you brought us up here. To show me that I’ll be out of work soon?”

  “No, lad.” Morse laughed and the sound boomed and echoed off the canvas-covered walls. “I want to save you, not destroy you. I’m opening a school to teach this new process and I invite you to join. Fifty dollars tuition for the entire semester and I promise you’ll be a better portraitist when you’re done than you are now.”