The Thing Itself

by Adam Roberts

  They were at Adonais’s building, and si let him through the main door. Together they rode the lift up to shis floor. ‘I read somewhere,’ si said, ‘that they think it’s an artefact of the Seventeen. Of what happened back then.’

  ‘Yes, I’ve heard that. Something to do with the resonances, or the harmonics, of time itself. There may be clear areas up at 2350 too, for the same reason. But no one has been able to get back to us from then and we can’t reach that far. So it’s all speculation.’

  ‘I suppose if a time were perfectly purged of decision points,’ Adonais pondered, ‘a person could time travel there without becoming a Ghost?’

  ‘I suppose so,’ laughed Attar. ‘But then there’d be no human free will, so it would be a time of automata. I’m not sure I’d want to go there.’

  The lift doors opened, and Adonais opened shis front door with a finger-click. ‘I’ll tell you something else,’ Attar said, stepping inside. ‘I know people, back in my time, who had put themselves in long-term stasis tanks. They’ll wake up in the twenty-fourth century, and then their curiosity will be satiated.’

  ‘Excellent,’ said Adonais. ‘So: take a seat.’ Part of shim wanted to grab Attar right away, and kiss him. But si restrained shis impulsiveness. The time traveller took his backpack off, and sat down, and the pattern of the sofa was mistily visible right through him.

  Then: the impossible.

  The truth was si was falling in love. Si couldn’t help it. It really wasn’t how si normally acted – giddy, like a kid, heart pounding like a James Brown drum fill. But having him in the apartment simply applied the pressure of a peculiar sort of grace to shis soul, first for one day and night, then for another. That first evening, Adonais checked online and discovered a specialist supplier that dealt in Ghost meats. The thought that such a market existed had never so much as occurred to shim before – most travellers carried their own supplies with them, of course. Still, it was good that somebody had been enterprising enough to cater to it. A contact in the future sent sheep, pigs and cows back in time, machines strapped to their bodies. The supplier butchered them and sold them on, or hoped to do so before the meat became too faded. Adonais placed an order for one eye-wateringly expensive sirloin. The cost was not an issue; shis heart was reckless with the flush of new love, and si didn’t care. The supplier required proof that si was cooking for a Ghost. Apparently anti-Ghost terrorist groups were in the habit of making spurious orders in order to attack the delivery drone. Adonais got Attar to stand in front of the camera to prove their bona fides. Then the order went through, and within an hour a drone had delivered a bag containing a Ghost steak.

  It was fresh enough to be susceptible to heat; and Adonais cooked it, guided by online recipes, and making a best guess as to the timings – meat half Ghostly had to be cooked for twice as long, three-quarters Ghostly four times, and so on. In a separate pan si cooked a regular steak for shimself, and served the two together. Since Attar only had the meat, si didn’t serve shimself any vegetables. He drank water from a large bottle from his backpack, and devoured the Ghost steak hungrily.

  Afterwards they sat together in companionly intimacy, and watched the news. It was all about the attacks of the day, of course; the ways they had been predicted by the time travellers, and the trivial ways in which they differed from prophecy. Experts talked the issue back and forth. The main thrust of what the Ghosts said had certainly been proved true. The misdirection by malicious Ghosts could be discounted; or by Ghosts who thought they had a duty to add uncertainty back into the picture. But who could fathom the motivation of these people, anyway? When you considered what they sacrificed: why would any level-headed, normal person want to travel in time?

  ‘You can ask, you know,’ Attar said.

  ‘I didn’t want to seem impolite,’ said Adonais. ‘But I’ll admit, I’m curious.’

  ‘I thought about it for a long time. In the end it was the approach of the cut-off that decided me. It was when I realised that, if I didn’t do it, I would never do it. When I realised how much the prospect of never doing it horrified me.’

  ‘You came out of curiosity?’

  ‘I read about the attacks, the last days of the war and especially today and tomorrow. Lots of people died. But returnees said that as they remembered it, many more people died. They impressed me. They’d made a difference.’

  ‘But at what cost to their own lives!’

  He shrugged. ‘Nothing valuable is cost free. Maybe if I hadn’t come, you’d have been killed when that building was blown up! That’s worth something, isn’t it?’

  Si put shis hand, very gently, on top of his. Waited for him to kiss shim, and when that didn’t happen, kissed him shimself. Shis heart thrummed. Couldn’t remember when si had felt quite so excited, quite so turned on. Applying only the slightest pressure gave back the sensation of being on the verge of breaking through the surface tension that held him in. The thought of that repelled shim – shis face literally sinking into his, a ghastly thought. Yet it was that very horror, held at bay by shis careful self-control (that very quality si had spent a lifetime honing) that gave such force and spice to shis desire for him. Desire always takes fire from the proximity of revulsion, after all. Si had to hold back, and the holding back, the voluntary restraint, was the biggest turn-on of all.

  He responded, touching shim delicately and finely, and that excited shim all the more.

  They moved from the sofa to the bed, and made love in an agonisingly delicate, tender way. Adonais’s climax was of a deeper and more satisfying kind than si had known for many years. Afterwards they lay together in the twilight. The city outside serenaded them with the rattle of distant gunfire, with ambulance and police drones buzzing frantically back and forth, with army ground effect vehicles swooshing down the long streets.

  Si couldn’t deny it any more. Si was in love.

  They talked in low tones. ‘It is wonderful, walking around the past. The city isn’t like this, where I come from.’

  ‘You’ve done your research.’

  ‘Of course. But it’s no substitute for actually going there.’

  ‘I’m sorry the natives aren’t friendlier.’

  ‘You’re a native,’ he pointed out, ‘and you’re being pretty welcoming.’

  Shis blush was hidden in the darkness. ‘I don’t make a habit of doing this kind of thing,’ si assured him.

  ‘As for the others,’ he said. ‘Well, some people are courteous and helpful. They appreciate that I have come to help them. You know the stats, I’m sure. With each quantum wave of travellers, the rate of preventable death drops by between ten and twelve per cent. It’s because of us, because of me and people like me, this war has the lowest casualty rate of any major war.’

  Si pressed shimself against him, gently. ‘I am grateful. You saved my life. I won’t waste that gift.’

  ‘Some other people are hostile, it’s true,’ Attar went on, in more meditative tones. ‘I suppose they think we ruined something pristine. Released the last evil demon from Pandora’s sack. And a small sub-set of those people are violent, it’s true. I know the stories of kidnapping, even murder. And the low levels of successful prosecution of people accused of killing Ghosts. But that’s not most of you. Most of you are indifferent. I’ve been here two days, and I’d say that’s far and away the most common reaction I’ve met with. People are bored with meeting time travellers. I guess, when the first ones arrived, people were probably pretty ramped. But then more came, and more, and every new wave was superposed over the ones who were already here, so that it had always been that way. So now, the time travellers are here and have always been here, and without that sense of novelty people are naturally unimpressed.’

  ‘Perhaps it’s not like that back at the beginning of the whole thing.’

  ‘The Seventeen.’ He exhaled, as if uttering a magic charm word. ‘The real holy grail would be to go back before twenty seventeen. What wide eyes people would have! How amazed t
hey would be! How they would pester us for tales of the miraculous future!’

  ‘I know it can’t be done. But you could go back to the Seventeen, couldn’t you?’

  ‘I can’t,’ said Attar. ‘My machine has a period range of thirty years. I’ve come back as far as I can with it.’

  ‘So buy a new machine! Oh!’ si said, realising shis error. ‘But I suppose you wouldn’t be synced to that.’

  ‘Maybe the people who import beef from my time could also import new machines? I don’t know if that would work. No, I can’t go back to the Seventeen. You could, though.’

  There was something hungry in Attar’s voice as he said this, and for the first time Adonais felt a shiver of suspicion. ‘You want me to give up everything, and dive back into time.’

  ‘You could go back to the Seventeen – or just after. You could speak to people who were there!’

  ‘Many of them are still alive today. I could just go and find them, speak to them, without the bother of time travel.’

  ‘Of course. But they’d be old. If you went back, you could travel hard up against the limit and speak to people for whom it was fresh in their memory!’

  ‘And then? Come back to now, and tell you all about it? Become a Ghost?’

  He nuzzled shim a little. ‘I’m teasing,’ he assured shim.

  Si felt like crying. Really, tears moistened shis eyeballs. And si realised why: it was because si wanted it. Not to see what the world of 2017 was like, with shis own eyes, but to become a Ghost, to align shimself with Attar. The two of them could fade together as the quantum storm split the cosmos over and over again, pierced by decision trees like Saint Sebastian by arrows. It was an intensely romantic thought. Si grasped his shoulder, and for a moment forgot shimself. Si felt shis fingers sink into his flesh, as into fresh dough, and with a yelp si pulled free.

  ‘It’s OK,’ he said, in the darkness. ‘It doesn’t hurt me.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ si replied; and just like that the whole edifice of romantic sacrifice and doomed love dissipated.

  They slept, and in the morning made love again. For breakfast Attar ate from his supplies and Adonais fixed shimself some eggs and coffee. They spent the rest of the morning flâneuring the city, or trying to: military checkpoints blocked the main roads into town and, although the sounds of gunfire were sporadic and distant, and the drones flying past all seemed to be official, Adonais didn’t feel very safe. At eleven a vast rumble and a faraway avalanching sound indicated that the Shard had been blown up from beneath. They sat on a park bench and watched the fat pillar of smoke jack-beanstalk its way, slow-motion, into the sky. ‘It’s hard to be sure,’ Attar told her, ‘since quantum effects play tricks on the earlier records of returnees. But I think that originally killed nearly two thousand people.’

  ‘“Originally”,’ Adonais said, smiling.

  ‘It sounds so odd talking about it like that, doesn’t it? But you know what I mean. Before I left twenty sixty-nine the death toll was on record as four. That’s quite a few lives saved.’

  ‘Wouldn’t it be possible,’ Adonais mused, ‘to travel back and somehow prevent the explosion in the first place?’

  ‘Harder to do than you might think. Ghosts can talk to people, but drones won’t pay us no mind. And anyway, the building they erect on that site is one of the splendours of my London. I wouldn’t want to stop that ever being built.’

  The sun came out from behind a cloud, and a watery December light glimmered on the snow. ‘You’re looking thinner,’ si observed. ‘Good lord, you are.’

  ‘I’ll be fine for a bit,’ he replied. ‘War tends to clump decision trees together. It’s like a rainstorm. Mostly it’s a light drizzle; this last half-hour was a downpour. But it’s back to drizzle now.’

  Si hurried him home, as though getting indoors would somehow shield him. Si knew that was nonsense, of course. Walls and a roof were no protection. But si felt a little happier inside. They took an early lunch, and Adonais opened a bottle of wine si had been saving for a special occasion – though Attar of course couldn’t partake. Then they went to bed. Attar felt different under shis fingers: not exactly softer, but somehow less there. He had to finish himself off whilst si watched, and shis climax was muted compared to the previous night.

  They lay side by side, layered over by the barcode shadows of her venetian blind. Outside, rifle fire rummaged around in a box of broken plates; fell silent; started up again.

  Attar said: ‘Most of the people I know, back, eh, home – they’re looking forward to the year rolling into twenty seventy. It’s an exciting new dawn for them. No more time travel: the future entirely unknown. There are millennial cults who promise that the world will end as soon as the threshold is passed. Most people don’t think that, of course. But they do wonder what it’ll be like, living in a Ghost-less age. Nothing but historical records, and people’s memories, to connect us to the past. No knowledge of what happens next.’

  ‘You make it sound exciting,’ si said.

  ‘I used to think so,’ he said. His voice was fainter. ‘I was looking forward to the untrammelled future. Really, I was. And then I thought: there are other ways of knowing what the future will be than experiencing it. But that’s not true of the past. Because there’s this difference between the to-come and the always-gone. Because tomorrow is always, pretty much, like today. But yesterday is profoundly different, because it’s gone and can never come back. Or at least,’ he laughed, lightly, ‘that’s how it’ll be in twenty seventy. And who knows, thereafter for ever. And ever. And I saw that my chance to go back was about to slip away, so I took it and … here I am.’

  Adonais was silent for a long time. Then si said: ‘What was her name?’

  Attar breathed deeply and exhaled. ‘Shis name was Dahlia.’

  Oh! ‘Did si … die?’

  ‘Si finished with me first. Then si went and died,’ he said. ‘I went back, and once I did that it had always been the case that I was haunting my own fucking love affair. I apologise for the bad language.’

  ‘It’s OK,’ si said.

  ‘There’s little so crass as Ghosting yourself. And once I had done it, in my moment of weakness, well then: of course si dumped me. What else could si do? What a horrid knot. God I miss shim!’ He sniffed noisily, and took a series of deep breaths. And then he was crying, and Adonais lay there, trembling with the shock of his sorrow, and the frustration that si couldn’t simply hold him tight and comfort him. After a while the sobs died. ‘Si was a daredevil and a wild thing – completely unlike you!’

  ‘Well,’ said Adonais. ‘Not completely.’

  He laughed, briefly. ‘But in shis attitude to life. But si fell to shis death climbing in East Asia. They didn’t even think to tell me for a week – I was just some old boyfriend. I found out online, quite by chance. And after that twenty seventy didn’t look so appealing. So I bought a machine and went back to see shim again, and as soon as I did it I knew I’d been stupid. There’s a reason sane people choose not to travel back into their own lives.’

  ‘So you came here.’

  He shifted in the bed, turning towards shim. ‘It wasn’t just selfishness. I really did think I might as well do some good with my life. And yesterday, I warned six people about the building. The one that blew up. Two of them told me to leave them alone, but I don’t know, maybe they heeded my warning after I had gone. The other four thanked me. And I met you!’

  ‘I’m glad we met,’ si admitted. Si felt like weeping, but held back. Holding shimself together was what si was good at, after all.

  Si heard him rubbing his face with the palms of his hands, vigorously enough to make an odd squelching sound. Then he said: ‘What do you think happened in the Seventeen?’

  ‘It’s well known, isn’t it?’ si replied.

  ‘Oh no, hardly at all. I mean, obviously, we know that that’s when time travel was actualised. And we know that that originary trip was a hard bounce back thirty-one years give or take
. And that it set up the equal and opposite harmonics in time. And the device itself, we know where that came from – the Institute. But the actual event is still largely a matter of mystery.’ He stopped. ‘I’m babbling. I’m sorry.’

  ‘You don’t need to apologise to me,’ si said, in a soft voice.

  ‘I sound like I’m trying to nag you into going back. But it wouldn’t do any good. Plenty of people have gone back to the limit-line – and you’re always a second after the main event. Belatedness is the condition of creatures like us. I think.’ Then he said, his voice cracking a little, ‘I think I’m falling in love with you.’

  Si didn’t want to reply that si felt the same way, for fear of unleashing a storm of weeping from shis own breast. When it came to tears, Adonais had the fear that once you start, why would there ever be a reason to stop? Si touched him, as gently as si could.

  ‘Tomorrow,’ he said, ‘is the last day of the Time War! And after that, it’ll be about building a land fit for heroes and heroines.’

  ‘Well,’ si said. ‘We know how that goes!’

  They slept. The next morning was a bright, cold, crisp day. Adonais didn’t feel like breakfast, just black coffee. Si went for a shower, and when si came back Attar was gone. Si slumped into the sofa, caved-in at finding herself unexpectedly alone. Si concentrated on calming shimself. Abandonment is so central a terror, so defining a feature of human emotional growth, it takes only a very little thing to summon it out of its lair.