Time Travel Omnibus Volume 2

by Anthology

  Is this one in a coma? he wondered. Is that why his memories have not been thrust upon me?

  He had no way of knowing how long he lay there, thankful for the respite, however long it lasted, be it seconds or hours.

  Or forever.

  As the ill-defined minutes drifted by, an unexpected and sourceless feeling of familiarity crept over him. The same kind of gentle nostalgic feeling that washed over him whenever he returned to his boyhood home.

  The feeling grew, slowly forcing out the apprehension and dread that he had felt as he waited for the merging with this new host.

  Finally, the host’s eyes opened.

  The host looked around the hospital room, slowly. The beeping accelerated, and he wondered: Is this it? Is it this host’s time, as it had been the others’ ?

  But it wasn’t, not yet.

  The host, not strong enough to sit up unassisted, crossed himself as best he could with his palsied hand.

  “Who is here?” The words themselves were slurred, but they were crystal clear in his mind.

  Abruptly, he realized with absolute certainty who this host was, why the sense of familiarity had been so great.

  It was himself, decades in his own future.

  How long did I serve, he found himself wondering? Twenty years? Thirty?

  And the answer came, appearing in his mind as the countless other memories had: twenty-six. Followed by the words themselves, slurred as the host’s lips tried to form them.

  As his own dying body tried to speak them.

  Does this future self know the truth, he wondered? Does he remember this night more than twenty-six years in his past? Is that why I am here, merging with that future self? To learn what the nightmares meant? Who had sent them? And why?

  Even as he silently asked the questions, the same voice that had spoken to him wordlessly moments before the first of the nightmares spoke again: you are here to learn your destiny.

  And the memories flowed.

  But not randomly, as they had flowed into his own mind during each incarnation. This time, as they flowed from his younger to his older self, they were organized, and both selves instantly recognized the starting point: Humanae Vitae, the document that his older self had upheld and defended zealously all these years. Its convoluted but meticulous logic, its carefully chosen words, its elaborately constructed arguments, its sometimes arcane references had not changed. Its conclusion was still, to them both, as obvious and irrefutable as ever.

  Without warning, it was juxtaposed with the countless memories of war and famine and starvation, and the links between those catastrophes and the enforcement of the document’s conclusions suddenly were made inescapably obvious by one memory after another.

  Too many people, too few resources. A deadly combination.

  Still, both selves resisted, convinced that it was nothing more than a Satanic trick, that Satan was indeed the source of these hideous visions. Surely the thoroughly reasoned and eloquent defense of God’s law put forth in that sacred document could not have been the cause of such tribulations! Surely—

  Abruptly, the memories of the last two hosts, the suicides, overwhelmed all the others.

  The older self crumpled inwardly, shocked to his core not by the suicides alone but by what had driven them to it. By the hundreds of evils the one had inflicted on the other. By the knowledge that this one offender was not alone in his actions, but only one of many within the Church.

  For an interminable moment it was as if his older self had ceased to exist, and he wondered if the end had come, if that terrible memory had utterly destroyed him.

  But then his answer came.

  I knew, but I did not believe, the older self’s mind confessed, the unspoken words a cry of agony that assaulted the younger self’s mind. I was told, time and again, but I would not believe. I could not believe!.

  But now, suddenly and belatedly, he believed. They both believed as the memories settled firmly into their minds, establishing their reality. And it was not just the abuse that they believed. They now knew that those terrible visions of starvation and war and cruelty and, most importantly, the relationship that had been revealed by the countless memories, were not the work of Satan. While they might not be directly from God Himself, they were most certainly a miracle—and a warning! They could both now see that they and countless others in the upper reaches of the Church hierarchy had been cruelly deceiving themselves. They had in their pride convinced themselves that their esoteric logic and eloquent words about respect and love and responsibility could truly bring about the Utopian marital relationships they desired and God demanded. They both knew that, despite their own memories of the death camps and a thousand other historical atrocities, they had not taken human nature with all its flaws sufficiently into account. And those flaws, like those of the abusive priests, had inevitably led to disaster.

  And they both realized what must be done.

  With that realization, the hospital room and his older self simply vanished, and he found himself back where his terrifying journey had begun: Cell 91, the room in the papal residence to which he and one other had been assigned while the elections were held and to which he had returned, alone, to spend the last night before his installation in solitary contemplation.

  Resisting the totally impractical urge to rush from the room with the news of how his attempt at contemplation had been rewarded, he lay quietly, formulating his plans.

  He might well fail, but at least he would have tried.

  In his first act as pope, John Paul II startled the world by using the traditional speech following his installation to call for preparations for Vatican III, including a new and thorough examination of his predecessor’s encyclical on the regulation of birth, the controversial Humanae Vitae. In the following months, he also earned—and gladly accepted—the nickname The Great Reformer, by exposing and waging relentless war against the child abuse that had been going on within the Church for decades. Already one of the most powerful popes in centuries as a result of his boundless energy and charisma, his series of major victories in that war gave him even more influence, so that when, at the conclusion of Vatican III, he issued a new encyclical in which birth control was not only accepted but encouraged. Objections were heard only from a minuscule and hidebound minority. From then on, birth control was no longer anathema but was promoted in all its forms around the world by this wildly popular and utterly fearless pope, who traveled and proseletyzed more widely than any previous pontiff.

  And he succeeded.

  By the end of the millennium, world population had leveled off and become stable, and abortions were at an all-time low. The specter of famine, while not entirely vanquished, was no longer the leading cause of death. He knew there were of course other problems, other disasters that would afflict humanity as long as it existed in all its imperfections, but at least irresponsible procreation, the worst of the self-inflicted disasters, was, for the time being, off the board. It would not be looming over everything, ready to multiply the effects of the natural disasters, the wars and all the rest.

  Humanity still might some day succumb to the darker side of its nature, but now at least it had a chance.

  THE MAN IN THE PINK SHIRT

  Larry Niven

  The two men looked disgusted as they emerged from the office. They were big men with no necks, but dressed in conservative suits and ties. At the sight of Svetz they glared, but didn’t speak.

  Svetz stepped briskly between them, smiling into their frozen glares, and caught the door before it closed. He paused to savor the moment before stepping into the office.

  Campbell was in, looking a bit younger than his photo: firmer chin, darker hair. For a moment he was taken aback, his eyes sweeping over Svetz’s pink shirt and big metallic belt: a startling sight in the early 1940s. Then he glared, too. “Who’re you?”

  “I’m Hanny Sindros, a writer,” Svetz said. “At least I hope I’m a writer. I was just passing, and I though
t I might meet the editor of Astounding Science Fiction. Are you John W. Campbell?”

  Campbell nodded cautiously.

  “Were those FBI?”

  Campbell waved it off. “You won’t believe what just happened. What can I do for you?”

  “I had a notion, but . . . what happened?”

  “We, Astounding Science Fiction, we’ve been publishing stories about atomic power for years. I got a story in by Cleve Cartmill and I set it up for next issue. Somebody in the secrecy business saw it. They sent some FBI to tell me that Germany has spies reading our magazines and such. We’ve been guessing a little too close. They want me to stop publishing anything about atomic power.”

  “Arrogant. Stupid. Are you going to do it?”

  Campbell laughed, giving it his best, his belly rolling. “No, listen. I said, ‘We’ve been writing these stories for twenty years. More. What if these German spies see that Astounding has suddenly stopped publishing anything about atomic bombs? What would they do? They’d think we were hiding something.’ The FBI jerks looked at each other and went away.” Campbell’s laughter roared.

  Svetz waited it out, then asked, “What if Analog—sorry. What if Astounding were to suddenly stop publishing stories about psychic powers?”

  “What?”

  “You could get them to waste megascads of money running down a blind alley. No, wait, psychic research is cheap. Doesn’t use enough resources. Stop publishing stories about teleportation. Make the Nazis do some expensive research.”

  Campbell thought it over. “Nice. I’ll have to that past my authors’ lunch crew.”

  “I was thinking of doing it for real.”

  Campbell began scribbling rapidly on note paper. “Teleportation. Psi. Time travel’ ”

  “Bad idea,” Svetz said.

  “Why?”

  “They might find something. That could be really bad.”

  Campbell’s pencil stopped and he looked up. But the man in the pink shirt was gone.

  THE MAN WHO BOUGHT TOMORROW

  William P. McGivern

  Reggie paid a nickel for a look at tomorrow’s news . . . and demanded a fast refund!

  The sequence went about like this: A printing machine, in some unaccountable manner, fouled up an ad in one issue of a magazine called True Astrology.

  A month later, a Chicago news vendor sat on a fruit crate beside his stand peering at this one particular copy of the magazine. His name was Creepy Brown, and he was a small, red-nosed little man, with narrow, alert eyes, thinning brown hair, and an impressive gift for self-delusion. Creepy was an optimist; he believed in astrology, in fortune tellers, in the exploiters of the occult—in anything, for that matter, that promised him a break, a train trip, a blonde, a pot of gold. Creepy, on this night, was reading one particular ad over and over, his lips moving slowly, his forehead crinkling with effort. There was something wrong with the ad. Some of the words were strange to his eye. The ones he recognized offered a promise of help, but the sense of the message was destroyed by the unfamiliar words.

  Still, it was exciting to roll those words on his tongue. They had a nice solid ring to them, and gave him a sense of power which he enjoyed without understanding.

  Supposing someone should help him, he thought pleasurably. Wouldn’t that be fine! But how? What did he really want? Girl’s? Money? Well, of course. But supposing he could have anything he wanted. What would it be?

  Creepy’s thoughts strayed along the horizon of his interests, on which loomed nothing so trivial as atom bombs, wars, and the state of the world. Standing prominently before all else was the forthcoming fight between Ace Nelson and Wild Billy Bell for the middle-weight championship of the world. That was it! If he could only know how that battle was going to turn out. What more could anybody want? Now, if someone would just tell him that little thing—or better still, let him see a copy of the newspapers after the fight. That would do it.

  Smiling and rubbing his jaw, Creepy bent closer to the book and reread the ad in a clear, slow voice

  Yoh-Agparth twitched in his century-old sleep, and caused a tremor that dislodged a mountain side in the Himalayas. He rose on one elbow, and the frown on his dark face was blacker than the lightless depths of his vast cavern. Again it came, the faint, tugging, loathsome command, bringing him up to a sitting position. How long had it been since that call had brought him from these passages? Not since the Egyptian seer, Farak, had divined the secrets of Bal.

  And now again! A slave to human whims. Yoh-Agparth cursed horribly, and the demons of hell, hearing him, tried piteously to cross themselves.

  And what was it this time? Ah, the same foolish plea. The future! Always they wanted to know what was coming. Why couldn’t they wait? Did they expect tomorrow to be kinder? The fools!

  Yoh-Agparth stretched his arms and leaped skyward, and his harsh laughter trailed behind him like a plume . . .

  On the same night that these two things occurred, Reggie Saint Gregory strolled from his club and stood for a quiet, rewarding moment contemplating the glacial serenity of Lake Michigan. Reggie rather liked nature. Trees and bushes and water. Things like that. A chap knew where he stood with them. They were solid and comfortable. No shifting around, no back talk. You could look at a tree all day without getting into trouble. No confusion about trees. A chap stood here, the tree stood there, and that was that. But people—altogether different matter.

  “Nice night, isn’t it, sir?” the doorman said.

  “Ah . . . yes,” Reggie said. He rather liked conversation, too. Until it got out of hand. At the moment, though, it was going fine. A fine, spirited give-and-take.

  “But a bit cold after all,” the doorman said.

  “Well . . .” The talk was going off on a tangent now, Reggie realized moodily.

  The doorman stifled a yawn. His feet hurt and he wished Reggie would go home. “Considering last year though, it’s not bad,” he said.

  Reggie thought hard, trying to remember last year’s weather. It must have been important, or this chap wouldn’t have brought it up. Something fishy about last year’s weather, maybe. What could it be? “Ah . . . yes,” he said, straddling the issue slyly.

  The doorman eyed Reggie’s lean, pleasantly vacant face with misgivings. Sometimes talk with this young man had a way of trailing on indefinitely. “Anyway, the farmers are probably happy,” he said, seeking another avenue of interest.

  Reggie frowned slightly. What the devil did the farmers have to do with it? This doorman, he thought, while obviously a good solid chap, behaved as if his mind were on a pogo stick. Really, it was wearing. He sighed. “I don’t know any farmers,” he said. “I couldn’t say.”

  “Well, naturally,” the doorman said, with a little laugh.”

  Reggie pondered this. Why was it “natural” that he knew no farmers? Come to think of it, why didn’t he? With a little start of alarm, he realized that the conversation had taken a mad turn. He had to break it off before it got completely out of hand, “Well . . . good night,” he said.

  “Good night, sir,” the doorman said, and went gratefully back to his cubicle beside the lobby.

  Alone, Reggie strolled down the quiet, wind-swept grandeur of Lake Michigan, mulling over the evening. It had been pleasant, in a dullish sort of way. Dinner at the club, and then a quiet snooze in the library. After that a bit of poker. Actually, Reggie didn’t play poker; he wasn’t allowed to. But he watched with great enthusiasm. He never understood why the members were so damned secretive about their cards. Acted as if money were involved instead of a lot of silly chips,

  Reggie walked past the Water Tower, past the Tribune Tower, and then turned East on Ohio street. He had a small bachelor apartment in this neobohemian but still elegant area of Chicago. The streets were empty now, and the, wind coming off the lake was definitely cold.

  He hurried along, eager to get out of this weather and into his apartment. The streets were empty, and bits of waste paper somersaulted along the cu
rb. High above him a cold, pale, lonely star blinked in the black sky. Reggie turned up his coat collar and put his hands deep in his pockets. Hellish weather. He remembered something about the farmers, but he couldn’t pin it down. They either were happy or unhappy about it, that was it.

  He plowed along, head bent against the wind, until he came to the first intersection east of Michigan Boulevard, where there was a newsstand at which he bought his papers. There was a nickel in his overcoat pocket, cold to the touch even through his gloves, and he fished it out and raised his head to the wind. He was almost abreast of the newsstand, and what he saw then made him raise his eyebrows in astonishment.

  The newsdealer whose name, Reggie knew, was Creepy, was sitting on a fruit crate and leaning back limply against the wooden side of the stand. His eyes were fixed straight ahead of him in a glazed state, and his teeth were rattling together like hot dice. On his lap was an open copy of a magazine.

  Directly before him knelt a tall, splendidly proportioned man, with calm, noble features and eyes that gleamed with a crimson light. This magnificent creature wore a flowing white robe, and his curling black hair was held in place with a heavy, jewel-encrusted band of gold. In his powerful outstretched hands he held a golden tray; and on the tray rested a single newspaper.

  “Well, well,” Reggie said.

  He put his hands on his hips and studied the weird tableau. This is dauced queer, he thought, regarding the seemingly paralyzed newsdealer and the kneeling figure of the strange man with a little frown. Deuced queer way to sell newspapers, he thought. He dropped his nickel on the golden tray and took the newspaper and put it in his pocket. Must be a new merchandising stunt. Damned lot of overhead, though. Two men at every stand, instead of just one, and neither of them paying much attention to business.

  Mildly curious, Reggie picked up the magazine from the newsdealer’s lap, and looked at it. True Astrology. An ink-ringed ad on the open page caught his eye, and he read it slowly, stumbling over several words that were unfamiliar to him. The gist of it, as nearly as he could make out, was that if you got into a jam someone would come and help you out. Like his Uncle Ephraim. His Uncle Ephraim was always bailing him out of trouble. But that was over now, Reggie thought with regret. Uncle Ephraim had died of a heart attack several months ago in a Paris bordello, and had left the bulk of his not inconsiderable fortune to a scientific foundation that was studying the breeding habits of plant lice. Well, Reggie thought, dropping the magazine back onto the newsdealer’s lap, maybe he could use this help sometime. If he ever had an anchor around his neck and was about to practise high-diving . . . But at the moment he didn’t need any help, thank you.