by Jack Dann
Grimes nodded and shook a finger at her unsteadily. "You're talking time travel, here. I've seen `Science Fiction Theater'; I know about these things. Well, then, what about my life? Won't it change something if I don't go back?"
She leaned back in the chair, hands in pockets. "Frankly, Mr. Grimes, you'd scarcely be missed. You never marry, never have children, never really affect another person's life in any significant way."
"You don't mean it. You can't keep me here." He crossed his arms in front of him, made an effort to frown. abandoned it.
"You don't know that, Mr. Grimes." She chuckled softly, shaking her head. "It's amusing, actually, when you see it from our point of view. You think you have a right to control other people's fate—Duffy, Tomacheski, the Indian—because you think you're naturally superior to them. That's bigotry. We control your fate because we actually are superior. That's simple fact."
The words stung. Grimes searched for a retort, but nothing came to him that he couldn't imagine her laughing off in that arrogant way, and then the moment for rebuttal passed, leaving him silent and powerless.
She watched him calmly for a moment, then cocked her head to one side as though listening to something he couldn't hear. "The malfunction has been repaired," she said, getting up from behind the desk. "The others will be waiting." The room dissolved to featureless white.
They were standing beside the Indian and the bum and two people even stranger-looking than his "doctor." The wall was going funny. A blinding whiter whiteness opened up in it—the sun on snow, with tall firs on a hill. The Indian shouldered his bags of Tomacheski's food and stepped through.
The hole closed, and opened again on an alley at night with a moon and streetlights shining on brick walls and wet pavement. There was a scent of rain and garbage. One of the people handed the bum a wad of genuine-looking currency and shook his hand. The bum gave Grimes a little wave and walked in.
"Your turn, Mr. Grimes," the doctor said, turning to him. "Which will it be? Return on our terms—or stay?"
He thought for a moment. How important was this immigrant diner jockey in Morton Grimes' scheme of things? The world was going to hell anyway, and it wasn't going to get there any faster if one Russian hired one Negro to grill hamburgers. Maybe he shouldn't worry so much.
He had a choice, she said. He supposed he did, but he wouldn't have any problem making it. The world was changing a little faster than he would like, even in 1956, but even given that, it was a damn sight better than dirty-talking blue-haired women and disappearing doctors' offices and being treated like an invading bacillus. None of it seemed to be worth his time and trouble at this point.
"I can go back if I promise to leave Tomacheski alone?" "You are not permitted to take any action that will endanger him or his business."
He supposed he could live with that. "Fine," he told her. "I'll go." He buttoned his shirtsleeve, straightened his tie and jacket. His hat must have blown off as he came through. He ran fingers through his hair as the hole began to grow again.
"You should arrive within a minute or so of your departure. Have an adequate life, Mr. Grimes, and remember—we'll be watching."
The hole punched through to the diner, with an agitated Tomacheski and Duffy talking and gesturing to someone he couldn't see. Grimes looked back for a moment to see if he was really free to go.
"You'd better hurry, or you'll miss this one. Go on." She made a hurry along gesture to him, and he stepped forward onto his hat and into the arms of Ed Crawford.
"Mort! What the hell were you doing in. the Ladies' Room? And where's that Indian you were raving about? You okay, Mort? You look terrible."
Grimes stepped back and turned around. The wall was a wall again. He picked up the hat and made a few useless attempts at straightening it, then put it on his head. He needed a drink, he decided—maybe two. He turned to Tomacheski, who was watching him expectantly. "My inspection is completed. Don't bother to see me out—I'll leave your A-placard on my way. Coming, Ed?"
Crawford looked confused, but turned to go.
"What about the Indian?" Tomacheski whispered, pointing at the wall.
"And the bum?" Duffy added.
Grimes stooped to pick up his portfolio from the hallway floor. Suddenly he felt incredibly tired. He didn't understand the present, and the future stunk. He looked from Duffy to Tomacheski and nodded slowly, more to himself than to either of them. "Home," he said, tucking the case under his arm and following Crawford out of the hallway. "They've gone home."
Straightening his shoulders, Grimes walked down the narrow length of shining linoleum, pulsing pink and green with neon light, and paused to flip the A-placard onto the counter before he opened the screen door and let it click shut behind him.
• • •
He was home too, he supposed, but he couldn't find much joy in it, not given what he knew. He turned and looked back at the little diner and the garish sign, and at Duffy and Tomacheski watching him from the doorway. He scowled at them; they smiled and waved.
"The world is going straight to hell," he told them . . . but not loud enough so that they'd hear.
He pulled his hat low against the sunlight, and walked away.
TIME'S ARROW
Jack McDevitt
Born in Philadelphia, Jack McDevitt now lives in Brunswick, Georgia with his family. He is a frequent contributor to Asimov's Science Fiction and has also sold stories to Analog. The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Full Spectrum, Universe, The Twilight Zone Magazine, Chess Life, and elsewhere. An ex-naval officer, ex-English teacher, and ex-customs inspector, he retired in 1995 and now works full time as a writer. His first novel, The Hercules Text, was a second place winner of the Philip K. Dick award. His next novel was the popular A Talent for War. His most recent books are a major new novel, Ancient Shores, and a collection of his short work, Standard Candles. Coming up is another new novel, Eternity Road.
Here he gives us an ingenious story that suggests that if you open a window into the turbulent and dangerous past, you sometimes might not like the view . . .
It can't he done." I stared at him, and at the gunmetal ten-foot-high touts that dominated the room. "Time travel is prohibited."
He pushed a stack of printouts off a coffee table to make room for his Coors, and fell onto the sofa. It sagged and threatened to collapse under his hulk. "Gillie," he said, "you've got all those old Civil War flags and that drum from—ah—?"
"Fredericksburg."
"Yeah. And how many times have you been to the battlefields? Listen, we can go see the real thing. Fort Sumter. Bull Run. You name it." His easy, confident smile chilled me. "It is possible to reverse the arrow of time. Tonight you and I will have dinner in the nineteenth century."
"Mac," I said, adopting a reasonable tone, "think about it a minute. If it could be done, someone will eventually learn how. If that ever happens, history would be littered with tourists. They'd be everywhere. They'd be on the Santa Maria, they'd be at Appomattox with Polaroids, they'd be waiting outside the tomb, for God's sake, on Easter morning."
He nodded. "I know. It is odd. I don't understand why there's no evidence."
I drew back thick curtains. Sunlight sliced through grimy windows. Across the empty street, I could see Harvey Keating, trying to get his lawnmower started. "In fact, if you were the father of time travel, they'd be out there now. Knocking down barricades—"
He nodded. "I hear what you're saying." He looked past me, and out toward the front of the house. A pickup cruised by. Keating's lawnmower kicked into life. "Still," he said quietly, "it works." He jabbed an index finger toward the torus, and then expanded his arms in a grand gesture that took in the entire room, computer banks, gauges, power cord tangles, rolltop desk. Everything. "It works," he repeated, even more softly. "I've tested it."
I blinked. "How? Are you saying you've been to the nineteenth century?"
His gray eyes lost focus. "I've been somewhere," he said. "I'm not sure where."
He wiped the back of his hand across his mouth. "I finally realized the problem was in the stasis coils—"
"What happened, Mac?"
"Gillie, I landed in the middle of a riot."
"You're kidding."
"Yes. I damn near got trampled. There was a labor demonstration on the other side."
"On the other side?"
"Of the nexus." He gestured toward the torus. "At least that's what it looked like. People carrying signs, making speeches. Just as I crossed over, a bomb went off. In the back of the crowd somewhere. Cops waded in, swinging sticks. It was pretty grim. But they had handlebar mustaches. And old-time uniforms." He took a deep breath. "We were outside somewhere. In the street." His eyes focused behind me. "Goddammit, Gillie, I've done it. I was really there."
"Where? Where were you?"
"I think it was the Haymarket Riot. I was on Jefferson Street, and that's where it happened. I spent the day at the library trying to pin it down."
"The Haymarket Riot? Why would you go there?"
"I was trying to get to the Scopes monkey trial." He shrugged. "I missed. But what difference does it make?" His eyes gleamed. "I've done it." He swept up a half-full beer can and heaved it across the room. "I have goddam done it!"
"Show me," I said.
He smiled. Genuine pleasure. "That's why you're here. How would you like to see Our American Cousin? On the night?"
I stared at him.
He handed me another Coors—it was mine that had gone for a ride—stepped over a snarl of power cables and octopus plugs, turned on a couple of the computers and opened a closet. Status lamps glowed, and columns of numbers appeared on monitors. "You'll need these," he said, tossing me some clothes. "We don't want to be conspicuous."
"I think I'd prefer to see him at Gettysburg."
"Oh." He looked annoyed. "I could arrange that, but I'd have to recalibrate. It would take a couple of days." The clothes were right out of Gone With the Wind. He produced a second set for himself.
"I don't think they'll fit," I said.
He nodded his satisfaction as if I hadn't spoken, and jabbed at a keyboard. A legend appeared on one of the monitors: TEMPORAL INTERLOCK GREEN. "The heart of the system," he said, indicating a black box with two alternately flashing red mode lamps. "It's the Transdimensional Interface. The TDI." He placed his right hand gently against its polished surface. "It coordinates power applications with field angles—"
I let him talk, understanding none of it. I was an old friend of McHugh's, which was why I was there. But I was no physicist. Not that you had to be, to understand that the past is irrevocable. While he rambled on, I climbed reluctantly into the clothes he'd provided.
The twin lamps blinked at a furious rate, slowed, changed to amber, and came gradually to a steady green.
"The energy field will be established along the nexus. We'll make our transition about a mile and a half outside D.C., at nine in the morning, local time. Should allow us to travel to the theater at our leisure."
His fingers danced across the keyboard. Relays clicked, and somewhere in the walls power began to build. A splinter of white light ignited in the center of the torus. It brightened, lengthened, rotated. "Don't look at it," McHugh said. I turned away.
The floor trembled. Windows rattled, a few index cards fluttered off a shelf, a row of black binders fell one by one out of a bookcase. "Any moment now, Gillie," he said. The general clatter intensified until I thought the building would come down on us. It ended in a loud electrical bang and a burst of sudden sunlight. Ozone flooded the room. Time broke off. Stopped. McHugh held one arm high, shielding his eyes. A final binder tottered and crashed. Then a blast of wind knocked me off my feet and across the coffee table. I went down in a hurricane of printouts, pencils, clips, and beer cans, grabbed a table leg, and held on. Magnetic disks and plastic plates whipped through the room. A chair fell over and began to move toward the torus. Windows exploded; the curtains flapped wildly.
A rectangular piece of clear sky, a cloud-flecked hole, filled the torus. Everything not bolted down, books, paper plates, card files, monitors, a Rolodex, you name it, was being sucked toward it, and blown through. McHugh almost went too when the console to which he was clinging broke loose.
He bounced past, terrified, and seized the sofa. The console crunched through the hole, sailed out among the clouds. Mac's lower half went next. He screamed.
The sky was full of clothes and printouts and magazines and index cards.
I maneuvered my table closer until I could reach him. He held out a hand, but I ignored it and wrapped my arms around his shoulders. His eyes were wide with terror. The paper storm continued: where the hell was it all coming from? A computer broke loose and went out.
Like the console, it slid across the sky. I watched it, and, impossibly, my senses rotated, the way they do when you're sitting under one of those giant cinema screens, and I realized I was looking straight down. I could see forest down there, and a river. And green and gold squares of cultivated land.
Something with feathers flapped through a window, blurred across the room and was flung out among the clouds.
The river flowed past farmhouses, past orchards, past a town.
The land was unbroken by highways or automobile traffic. But down through the clouds a half-built obelisk gleamed in full sunlight.
"Gillie—" He let go of me long enough to clap me on the back. "That's the Washington Monument."
"Mac," I howled. "What the hell's going on?"
"We're here, goddammit. Now what do you say?" He laughed and his eyes watered and the table lurched a few inches. Matter of time.
Do something. Close the goddam hole. An octopus socket lay nearby. Cut the power, that was it. But when I picked it up, McHugh's state of alarm soared. He stabbed a frantic finger at his legs. I'd pulled him back somewhat, but everything below his knees was still thrust out into space.
Okay: try something else. The coffee table was too wide to go through the hole. But if I could keep it sideways, I might be able to wedge it against the torus. Block off the hole. Not all of it, but enough.
I changed my position, got behind the table. And pushed. McHugh saw what I was doing, and nodded encouragement. Yes. His lips formed the word. Yes, yes. I held on as long as I could, fearful that the table would twist in the gale, that I would lose it, and then follow it. "Get your legs out of the way," I screamed. "I need room."
He shook his head. Can't do it. But I didn't need to tell him that I no longer controlled events, that the table was moving under its own power, and that he should do it or his legs were going south. He made another effort, and wrenched himself clear just as the furniture and I arrived at the nexus. The table jammed tight against the sides of the torus.
It shut off some of the drag. Not much, but some. More important, it gave McHugh a place to put his feet. He was now reeling in the octopus plug himself, and began methodically, angrily, disconnecting everything. Across the room, a radio came on. Then, abruptly, the hurricane died.
"You were right," I said in the sudden silence. "We were about a mile and a half from D.C."
"Ready?" He stood by the TDI. It was almost two weeks after the first attempt.
"Should we wear seatbelts?"
He grinned. Very much the man in charge. "You can have your little joke. But I've made some adjustments on the transition phase. I think I can promise we'll be at ground level this time." The twin mode lamps on the TDI went to green.
"Same destination?"
"Of course." He hovered over the Macintosh which would initiate the sequence. "Ready?"
I nodded, positioning myself near the table.
He touched the keyboard, and the tiny star reappeared. I turned away as it brightened. We got the electrical effects again, and the ozone. And the sudden, intoxicating bite of salt air. The hole was back.
It was night on the other side of the torus. A lovely evening, composed of a broad dark sea, blazing constellations, and a lighth
ouse. A quarter moon lay on the surface. Surf boomed, and a line of white water approached. I felt spray.
"Goddam." McHugh froze.
The ocean surged in. Black water crashed against the furniture, boiled around the walls, smashed the windows. And shorted the lights.
The hole collapsed.
"Here we go." He wiped his jaw with the back of his hand. Sweat stood out on his forehead.
"Okay."
"This time we'll get it right." There was no smile now.
Everything was bolted down and well off the floor. The room had been cleared of all furniture and nonessentials. I wondered whether we hadn't been lucky. What would have happened if the hole had opened in the depths of the ocean? Or far beneath the surface in a stratum crushed under ten thousand feet of rock? "Mac," I said, "maybe we should forget it."
He shook his head vigorously. "Don't be ridiculous."
"I mean it. I get the feeling somebody's trying to tell us something."
McHugh pulled on his waistcoat and bent over a display. "System's fully charged. We're all set, Gillie. You want to do the honors?"
Reluctantly, I walked over to the TDI, looked at him, looked at the torus. Looked at the keyboard. It was a new computer.
"Okay," he said, trying to look casual, but bracing himself all the same. "Any time."
I did it, and the process started again.
This time, we found summer. Green meadows stretched toward a nearby line of wooded hills. Goldenrod, thistles, and black-eyed susans covered the fields. Afternoon invaded the room, and, with a thump, the air conditioner kicked in.
"At last," said McHugh, standing before the torus, gazing through it. "1865," he breathed. For a long time, he didn't move. Then: "Now, listen, Gillie: the nexus will close five minutes after we pass through. But it will open again for five minutes every twelve hours until we come back to shut it down. Okay? Make sure you remember where we are. In case you have to find your own way back."