She has one whole drawer with nothing but fancy sweaters and blouses. We gather some up to bring back and she says I can have half of them.
On the way out, I open the hall closet and there’s a tangle of wires and silvery things along them like Christmas tree lights. At first Marietta tries to keep the door shut as if she doesn’t want me to see them, but then she says she trusts me as much as anybody she ever knew so she says, “Take a good look.”
I say, “I don’t know what it is, anyway.”
She says, “Time machine,” and starts laughing hysterically. And then we both laugh so hard we fall on the floor and I don’t know what’s the truth and what isn’t, except maybe I do.
I’m glad we went there. I don’t need to feel jealous after all. Even though Mom would probably like living like that, I wouldn’t.
The police hang on to those new people to see if any of them are guilty of anything at all and also as a sort of punishment, I suppose for being rich and taking up all the best places. That means Marietta and I have even more time together.
The lumber mill now has three night watchmen. They’re sitting right next to the biggest piles of lumber. The fish hatchery has people practically in with the fish.
But then—again in the middle of the night—all the new people disappear. The grown-ups, that is. So then we know who did the fish and lumber. But now there’s nobody to blame but their children. Some townspeople are so angry they want to put them in jail, too. Most of the townspeople don’t go that far, though. My parents and lots of others say they won’t let that happen. Besides, now that they know Marietta they like her.
But it’s not safe for the new kids to walk the streets anymore—two kids got beat up by a gang of boys and they weren’t even the new kids, they were just blond and tall and skinny. Mom dyes Marietta’s hair black so she’ll be safer. Some of the other new kids do that too.
Marietta looks good with dark hair. That doesn’t cheer her up, though. All those kids feel terrible. Naturally. But it’s odd, they keep saying they’re not surprised, they just wondered when it would happen.
We talk a lot in bed at night and Mom doesn’t tell us to shut up until it gets really late.
“How can your parents leave you like this?”
“We’re not allowed to say, but it’s for our own good.”
“Parents always say that.”
I try to cheer up Marietta. We go to lots of movies. She does like the Tarzan and John Carter books and there are lots of those to go through yet. Mom gives her valerian and chamomile tea almost every night. At first Marietta didn’t want hugs from my mom, but now she does.
I go around wearing her expensive sweaters and I wear her white jacket when she wears her shiny black one. That turns out to be a big mistake because I get taken for one of them. I’m as tall and skinny as they are. And here I am, wearing fancy clothes like they always do. And here we are, Marietta and me, one of us with dyed black hair and me, a darker blond than they are but that doesn’t matter to this bunch. They’re not high school boys. I don’t know who they are but they’re grown men—waiting for us after the movie.
They don’t think Marietta is one of the new people—they think I am. She’s wearing my faded blue jeans and my sweatshirt and I’m in her cashmere sweater and that white jacket.
They push her aside—so hard they knock her down—and come after me. They yank at Marietta’s jacket so hard the zipper breaks, and then pull the sweater up over my face so I don’t see what happens next. All I know is they suddenly stop and Marietta is pulling the sweater down so I can see. She yells, “Run,” and we do. When I look back I see all three of them collapsed on the ground.
“Don’t stop.” Marietta grabs my arm and pulls me along with her.
“What did you do?”
“I’m not allowed to say.”
We run all the way home and collapse in our front hall. That white jacket is lost and ruined out there somewhere and the sweater is all pulled out of shape.
Marietta right away says, “Don’t tell.”
“How did you do that?”
“I thought you had those here. Tazers. Don’t you? This is just a different form.”
“Where is your tazer?”
“I’m not supposed to say. See, where I come from it’s not safe anymore since the revolt of…. My drones—I mean my parents—they wanted me to be able to defend myself. Besides, they thought everybody here had guns.”
“Where is it? You can tell me.”
“Here.” She points to her earlobe. (There’s not even a mark that I can see.) “I have some control over the direction.” She twists her earlobe. “I can even point it back.”
I touch it, but I don’t feel anything.
“They left us here, my drones. They said they would if anything happened. And things did happen. I guess it is better here. I mean the air and water and space to move around in…. And the food…it isn’t what we’re used to, and it’s awfully primitive, everything is, but it’s better some ways and we’re rich. I have a million dollars in the bank in my name.”
She’s about to tell me more but Mom comes in right then and finds us sitting on the floor, and me, all bedraggled and the sweater ruined. She gets really upset when she hears about it. (We don’t tell her the tazer part.) She insists that she’s going to dye my hair that very night no matter how long it takes, and I have to stop wearing Marietta’s nice clothes.
For once I agree with her. I let her do all that, even though I know the kids at school will tease me.
I wonder if those men are going to tell what happened to them? Maybe not, though, because they were breaking the law.
I’m going to stick close to Marietta from now on. I feel safe with her.
Most of those new kids are physically awkward—like Huxley trying to be on the basketball team—but Marietta isn’t so bad. She says it’s because her parents didn’t believe in the education boxes most kids had. She says those were like being inside a TV set. But she kept calling hers “Mommy” by mistake and that upset her mother so much she actually had her playing outside even though the air wasn’t that good anymore and even when it was too hot.
She’s been telling me everything, even about the air-conditioned sweater her mom got her.
She says, “Even so, it was getting worse and worse. Food riots sometimes. I know this is best for us. But we have to be so careful and not change anything. Nobody knows what would happen if we upset things. Shoe Dad, I might not even exist. I’d go poof! Just like that.”
And then Huxley gets in trouble and that changes everything. He didn’t dye his hair like the others did. It might not have worked anyway. Three men attack him; maybe the same three that came after us. (You’d think they’d learn.) Marietta and I have to guess what happened: that he not only used his tazer, but tied up the men when they were down. Dragged them into the woods. Then he walked all the way home with bruises all over. Nobody found out about the men out in the woods till two days later. It rained all the next day and one of the men suffocated with his head in the mud. Marietta and I know Huxley didn’t use his tazer until he was practically all beat up. He was trying so hard not to cause any changes in the people living here but then he caused more of a problem.
The townspeople are blaming him. Of course they are. Besides, who knows what story those men told? So the police come to arrest him, but he takes off. They even shoot at him, but he gets away. We don’t know if he got shot or not.
All the new kids are even scareder than they already were. About going “poof.” They keep saying, “It’s gotta be even worse than that butterfly back in the Jurassic era.” I don’t know what they mean by that.
They stand there staring at nothing, as if thinking: Any minute and I never existed. They stop in mid sentence as if: Is it right now that I disappear?
On the other hand, they could disappear by going back home. We’d never know which it was. Marietta hangs on to me whenever she can. It’s as if she thinks as long
as she has a good grip on my arm, she won’t disappear. It’s a bother but I let her.
I know where Huxley isn’t. He’s not at that place where the bums used to go and where the boys go to smoke. That’s too easy. But I do know where he could be. I don’t even tell Marietta. I get up real early before anybody is up. I make a couple of peanut butter sandwiches and take some nuts and apples and go. Good that Huxley and I never got together or the cops would be watching me.
So I head out into the woods. It’s a good place to get lost since there are so many crisscrossing paths and there’s a lot of undergrowth for hiding. I think Huxley is somewhere in there but I’ll have a hard time finding him. I whistle. I sing. I make a lot of noise and wander all over. I think I’m going to get lost myself.
But what if he’s disappeared already? What if he’s never been at all?
Then I hear a bird chirping above me, I look up and there he is and he’s not been shot. I climb up and give him the sandwiches. He’s changed a lot from when he first came. I don’t think he’d have been able to climb a tree. He looks kind of wild and haunted and dirty. That makes me like him all the more. I’m always embarrassed, being so close to a boy I like so much, and now even more so. I don’t ask anything I really want to. I’m too nervous.
He gobbles up both sandwiches and apples and nuts all in about five minutes. When everything is gone he thinks maybe one of the sandwiches might have been for me and apologizes. But I say none of it was for me and I’ll bring more tomorrow.
He admires my new black hair, but I think he’s just trying to be nice.
I move up closer to the branch he’s on. Turns out I don’t have to ask anything. He tells me he always did like me but didn’t dare show it. Now he does dare. He thinks everything is all messed up anyway so he might as well like me and he wants me to know it.
Then we hear the swishing of underbrush and voices of people coming closer.
We shut up. He moves higher and I move lower.
In a few minutes the woods are packed with people walking all over the place looking for him. Some of them are cops in uniform. Lots are just townspeople. Mostly men but a few women.
I jump down and move away from his tree. I shout, “Let’s look over by the little cave next to the stream.” So I and a group of others including one cop, head over there.
The cop says, “Aren’t you supposed to be in school?”
“Yeah, but isn’t this important?”
“You’re lucky I’m not a truant officer.”
“What will you do when you find him?”
He pulls his cuffs out of his back pocket and rattles them. Says, “He’s dangerous.”
I know this whole woods better than a lot of them do. I lead them around to all sorts of good hiding places. I talk loud and make a lot of noise. I don’t ever look up.
It’s a tiring day for everybody. I had no idea I was going to get caught up in the search and get home so late. My folks and Marietta have been worried about me. I didn’t tell Mom where I’d been, but I tell Marietta. She feels bad that I didn’t ask her to come along, but I convinced her it was safer for Huxley if it’s just me.
Next day I don’t think I should keep on skipping school so I just skip my last class. This time I make four peanut butter sandwiches. It’s late so I bring a flashlight.
I head for that same tree first, but he’s not there. As before, I sing. I whistle. I keep looking up and chirping. I go to all the good spots. It gets dark and I’m worried about using the flashlight. There’s only a little moon so I stumble around tripping on things.
Pretty soon I know I’d better go home. I leave the sandwiches up in the tree where I first found Huxley. I leave the flashlight for him, too, and try to find my way out without it.
But I can’t. I thought if I just came to one of the streams and followed it, I’d be okay, but it’s muddy and slippery near the stream and I keep falling down. I decide it’s best to just wait till dawn. I huddle down against a tree. I wish I’d kept one of those sandwiches for myself.
In the morning I go back to the tree where I left the sandwiches. Something got into them and ate most of them and scattered what was left all over.
When I get back my folks are so worried and the police are all over looking for me. Thing is, Marietta disappeared, too, and first they thought we were off somewhere together. Then they thought that I got disappeared with all the others.
It turns out they’re all gone. I’ll never know if Marietta got to go home or if she never existed in the first place or maybe they decided it was a bad and dangerous idea to leave their kids here. Or maybe things got better so it was okay to go home. Or maybe they found better stuff from other times. Like way, way back before there were other people to get in their way.
She left a lot of her clothes in my room. Funny though, my old Tarzan and John Carter books—the ones she was in the middle of reading—are gone. That makes me feel that she didn’t disappear completely like she was afraid would happen. She’s still someplace, I’m sure of it, reading my books.
I wonder if I could write her a letter. I’ll bet there is a way, like sealed up in stainless steel. I wish we’d talked about that before she left. I wish I knew how long my letter would have to last to get to her. Maybe I’ll have to carve it in stone.
Carol Emshwiller grew up in Michigan and in France. She lives in New York City in the winter and in Bishop, CA in the summer. She’s been doing only short stories lately. A new one will appear in Asimov’s soon. She’s wondering if she’s too old to start a novel but if a good idea came along she might do it anyway. PS Publishing is publishing two of her short story collections in a single volume (sort like an Ace Double), with her anti-war stories on one side and other stories on the other.
Top Five Time Travel Nightmares by Carol Pinchefsky
Time travel is currently only a thought experiment, but if you have to dream, dream big. Who hasn’t fantasized about going back in time to choose the winning lottery numbers, or to kill Hitler, or to say no to the prom date who drenched you in pig’s blood?
There ought to be a guide for time travelers. But in the fine tradition of 1950s nuclear safety movies, why have a guide when you can learn by fear? So here’s a look at what you can and should be afraid of in your time travels.
GETTING STUCK IN THE PAST/FUTURE
Because time travel is the stuff of science fiction and not fantasy, it likely requires some sensitive equipment to work. How sensitive? It needs to land you in both the right time and the right place (as well as the correct elevation, so that you won’t end up cemented inside a mountain). But as any Windows user can tell you, technology sometimes fails spectacularly.
And that’s the sort of thing that can leave you stranded where and when you least expect it.
If you’re sent to the past and your equipment craps out, most likely you’re absolutely and irrevocably stuck. After all, the raw ingredients that power your thingamawhatzit may not have been refined or even discovered yet. And your Uranium-235 might be able to let you witness the Crucifixion, but it’s no better than pound cake if it’s buried in a mountain along with your feet.
Now if your equipment fails in the future, you may actually have a shot at returning…if you can obtain the necessary requirements discreetly, of course. However, if the natives recognize you for what you are—a person born at the beginning of the computer age—be careful: you could be taken against your will and experimented on. After all, you still have the dregs of semi-unpolluted air in your lungs, and your brain can actually remember the feel of real sex. That makes you a valuable commodity.
Should you find yourself stuck in the past, it’d be a bummer knowing that Buffy the Vampire Slayer is forever out of reach. But let’s face it, that’s a million times better than life in the future—as a special exhibit in a zoo.
CHANGING THE UNIVERSE
Some time travel issues are more treacherous than others, and nothing is more fraught with peril than accidentally alt
ering history. If you step off a predetermined path and crush a butterfly, time has a way of telling you that you should have joined PETA.
Think about it: every germy sneeze in the direction of a pregnant woman, every booze-fueled game of Russian Roulette with a stranger, you run the risk of altering the timeline. For every inconsequential moment, there’s a chance of turning all the intellectuals you know into fans of The Jersey Shore.
If your time travel device adheres to the Novikov Self-Consistency Principle (you can’t change history), then you’re good to commit mass Lepidoptera-cide. But even if your device allows for the consequences of your actions, it’s best to limit yourself to lurking in the shadows of historical events. If not, you could return to a world that seems eerily similar, yet for some strange reason your friends now call you Slappy.
CREATING PARALLEL UNIVERSES
One of time travel’s unintended consequences is the risk of creating a parallel universe. But there could be an upside to this: in one world, you can settle down and start a family, and in the other, you can be free to pursue your work.
Think about it. In one universe, you get to live the mindless existence of a parent to a newborn and in the other the mindless existence of an entrepreneur endlessly seeking funding. In each of these realities, you’d wonder if the choices you made were correct ones, causing major self-confidence issues. So, unsure of yourself, you fracture the universe again, creating all new worlds where you aren’t perpetually caught in traffic or where you always got the last donut of the day.
Unfortunately, no matter how many parallel universes you create, the sad fact is you’re still going wind up stuck on the 101, breathing in someone else’s exhaust fumes.
ENFORCED CHASTITY
In order to avoid sleeping with your eventual grandmother, thus creating a nasty paradox, time travelers should adhere to a strict abstinence policy. But like most humans, you’ll likely fall victim to those surging hormones known as the sex drive. ‘Cuz really, if there’s a choice between time travel versus sex with an attractive and willing partner, chemistry typically trumps physics.
Lightspeed Magazine Issue 2 Page 2