Winthrop Was Stubborn

by William Tenn

  “It’s not just the poker, Mary Ann. That’s hair-raising enough, I grant you. It’s so many things. Take this used car he has, that he drives you around in. Any man who’d drive one of those clumsy, unpredictable power-plants through the kind of traffic and the kind of accident statistics that your world boasts— And every day, as a matter of course: I knew the micro-hunt was a pathetic, artificial affair, but it was the only thing available to me that even came close!”

  “You don’t have to prove anything to me, Gygyo.”

  “Maybe I don’t,” he brooded. “But I had reached the point where I had to prove it to myself. Which is quite silly when you come to think of it, but that doesn’t make it any less real. And I proved something after all. That two people with entirely different standards for male and female, standards that have been postulated and recapitulated for them since infancy, don’t have a chance, no matter how attractive they find each other. I can’t live with my knowledge of your innate standards, and you—well, you certainly have found mine upsetting. We don’t mesh, we don’t resonate, we don’t go. As you said before, we shouldn’t be in the same world. That’s doubly true ever since—well, ever since we found out how strongly we tend to come together.”

  Mary Ann nodded. “I know. The way you stopped making love to me, and—and said—that horrid word, the way you kind of shuddered when you wiped your lips—Gygyo, you looked at me as if I stank, as if I stank! It tore me absolutely and completely to bits. I knew right then I had to get out of your time and out of your universe forever: But with Winthrop acting the way he is—I don’t know what to do!”

  “Tell me about it.” He seemed to make an effort to pull himself together as he sat beside her on a section of upraised floor.

  By the time she had finished, his recovery was complete, the prodigious leveling effect of mutual emotional involvement was no longer operative. Dismayed, Mary Ann watched him becoming once more a highly urbane, extremely intelligent and slightly supercilious young man of the twenty-fifth century, and felt in her very bone marrow her own awkwardness increase, her garish, none-too-bright primitiveness come thickly to the surface.

  “I can’t do a thing for you,” he said. “I wish I could.”

  “Not even,” she asked desperately, “with the problems we have? Not even considering how terrible it’ll be if I stay here, if I don’t leave on time?”

  “Not even considering all that. I doubt that I could make it dear to you, however much I tried, Mary Ann, but I can’t force Winthrop to go, I can’t in all conscience give you any advice on how to force him—and I can’t think of a thing that would make him change his mind. You see there’s a whole social fabric involved which is far more significant than our personal little agonies, however important they may to us. In my world, as Storku pointed out, one just doesn’t do such things. And that, my sweet, is that.”

  Mary Ann sat back. She hadn’t needed the slightly mock-hauteur of Gygyo’s last words to tell her that he was completely in control of himself, that once more he looking upon her as an intriguing but—culturally speaking—extremely distant specimen.

  She knew only too well what was happening: she’d been the other end of this kind of situation once or twice herself.

  Just two months ago, a brilliantly smooth salesman, who handled the Nevada territory for her company, had taken her out on a date and almost swept her off her feet.

  Just as she’d reached the point where the wine in her bran was filled with bubbles of starlight, she’d taken out a cigarette and dreamily, helplessly, asked him for a light. The salesman had clicked a lighter at her in an assured and lordly gesture, but the lighter had failed to work. He had cursed, clicked it futilely a few more times, then had begun picking at the mechanism madly with his fingernails. In the erect few moments as he continued to claw at the lighter, it had seemed to Mary Ann that the glossy surface of his personality developed an enormous fissure along its entire length and all the underlying desperation that was essentially him leaked out. He was no longer a glamorous, successful and warmly persuasive young man, but a pathetically driven creature who was overpoweringly uncertain, afraid that if one item in his carefully prepared presentation missed its place in the schedule, the sale would not take place.

  And it didn’t. When he’d looked at her again, he saw the cool comprehension in her eyes; his lips sagged. And no matter how wittily he tried to recapture the situation, how cleverly he talked, how many oceans of sparkling urgency he washed over her, she was his master now. She had seen through his magic to the unhooded yellow light bulbs and the twisted, corroded wires which made it work. She remembered feeling somewhat sorry for him as she’d asked him to take her home—not sorry for someone with whom she’d almost fallen in love, but slight sorrow for a handicapped child (someone else’s handicapped child) who had tried to do something utterly beyond his powers.

  Was that what Gygyo was feeling for her now? With brimming anger and despair, Mary Ann felt she had to reach him again, reach him very personally. She had to wipe that smile off his eyelids.

  “Of course,” she said, selecting the first arrow that came to hand, “it won’t do you any good if Winthrop doesn’t go back with us.”

  He looked at her questioningly. “Me?”

  “Well, if Winthrop doesn’t go back, we’ll be stuck here. And if we’re stuck here, the people from your time who are visiting ours will be stuck in the twentieth century; You’re the temporal supervisor—you’re responsible, aren’t you? You might lose your job.”

  “My dear little Mary Ann! I can’t lose my job. It’s mine till I don’t want it any more. Getting fired—what a concept! Next you’ll be telling me I’m liable to have my ears cropped!”

  To her chagrin, he chuckled all over his shoulders. Well, at least she had put him in a good mood; no one could say that she hadn’t contributed to this hilarity. And My dear little Mary Ann. That stung!

  “Don’t you even feel responsible? Don’t you feel anything?”

  “Well, whatever I feel, it certainly isn’t responsible. The five people from this century who volunteered to make the trip back to yours were well-educated, extremely alert, highly responsible human beings. They knew they were running certain inevitable risks.”

  She rose agitatedly. “But how were they to know that Winthrop was going to be stubborn? And how could we, Gygyo, how could we know that?”

  “Even assuming that the possibility entered nobody’s mind,” he pointed out, tugging at her arm gently until she sat down beside him again, “one has to, in all reason, admit that transferring to a period five centuries distant from one’s own must be accompanied by certain dangers. Not being able to return is one of them. Then, one has to further admit that, this being so, one or more of the people making the transfer recognized this danger—at least unconsciously—and wished to subject themselves to its consequences. If this is at all the situation, interference would be a major crime, not only against Winthrop’s conscious desires, but against such people’s unconscious motivations as well—and both have almost equal weight in the ethics of our period. There! That’s about as simple as I can make it, Mary Ann. Do you understand, now?”

  “A—a little,” she confessed. “You mean it’s like Flureet nut wanting to save you when you were almost being killed in that micro-hunt, because maybe, unconsciously, you wanted to get yourself killed?”

  “Right! And believe me, Flureet wouldn’t have lifted a finger, old friend or no old friend, your romantic twentieth-century dither notwithstanding, if she hadn’t been on the verge of major transformation with the concurrent psychological remove from all normal standards and present-day human frames of reference.”

  “What is this major transformation business?”

  Gygyo shook his head emphatically. “Don’t ask me that. You wouldn’t understand it, you wouldn’t like it—and it’s not at all important for you to know. It’s a concept and a practice as peculiar to our time as, oh say, tabloid journalism and election nig
ht excitement is to yours. What you want to appreciate is this other thing—the way we protect and nurture the individual eccentric impulse, even if it should be suicidal. Let me put it this way. The French Revolution tried to sum itself up in the slogan, Liberty, Egalire, Fraternite; The American Revolution used the phrase, life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness. We feel that the entire concept of our civilization is contained in these words: The Utter Sacredness of the Individual and the Individual Eccentric Impulse. The last part is the most important, because without it our society would have as much right to interfere with the individual as yours did; a man wouldn’t even have the elementary freedom of doing away with himself without getting the proper papers filled out by the proper government official. A person who wanted to—”

  Mary Ann stood up with determination. “All right! I’m not the least little bit interested in this nonsense. You won’t help us in any way, you don’t care if we’re stuck here for the rest of our natural lives, and that’s that! I might as well go.”

  In the name of the covenant, girl, what did you expect me to tell you? I’m no Oracle Machine. I’m just a man.”

  “A man?” she cried scornfully. “A man? You call yourself a man? Why, a man would—a man would—a real man would just— Oh, let me get out of here!”

  The dark-haired young man shrugged and rose too. He called for a jumper. When it materialized beside them, he gestured toward it courteously. Mary Ann started for it, paused, and held out a hand to him.

  “Gygyo,” she said, “whether we stay or leave on time, I’m never going to see you again. I’ve made up my mind on that. But there’s one thing I want you to know.”

  As if knowing what she was going to say, he had dropped his eyes. His head was bent over the hand he had taken.

  Seeing this, Mary Ann’s voice grew gentler and more tender. “It’s just—just that—oh, Gygyo, it’s that you’re the only man I’ve ever loved. Ever really truly, absolutely and completely loved. I want you to know that, Gygyo.”

  He didn’t reply. He was still holding her fingers tightly, and she couldn’t see his eyes.

  “Gygyo,” she said her voice breaking. “Gygyo! You’re feeling the same, aren’t—”

  At last Gygyo looked up. There was an expression of puzzlement on his face. He pointed to the fingers he had been holding. The nail of each one was colored with a bright; lacquer.

  “Why in the world,” he asked, “do you limit it to the fingernail? Most primitive peoples who went in for this so of thing did it on other and larger parts of the body. On would expect that at least you would tattoo the whole hand — Mary Ann! Did I say anything wrong again?”

  Sobbing bitterly, the girl darted past him and into the jumper. She went back to Mrs. Brucks’ room, and, when she had been calmed sufficiently, explained why Gygyo Rablin, the temporal supervisor, either could not or would not help them with Winthrop’s stubbornness.

  Dave Pollock glared around the oval room. “So we give up? Is that what it comes down to? Not one person in all this brilliant, gimmicky, gadgety future will lift a finger to help us get back to our own time and our own families—and we can’t help ourselves. A brave new world, all right. Real achievement. Real progress.”

  “I don’t see what call you have to shoot your mouth off, young man,” Mr. Mead muttered from where he was sitting at the far end of the room. Periodically, his necktie curled upwards and tried to nuzzle against his lips; wearily, petulantly, he slapped it down again. “At least we tried to do something about it. That’s more than you can say.”

  “Ollie, old boy, you just tell me something I can do, and I’ll do it. I may not pay a whopping income tax, but I’ve been trained to use my mind. I’d like nothing better than to find out what a thoroughly rational approach to this problem could do for us. One thing I know: it can’t possible come up with less than all this hysteria and emotional hoop-la, this flag-waving and executive-type strutting have managed to date.”

  “Listen, a difference it makes?” Mrs. Brucks held her wrist out and pointed to the tiny, gold-plated watch strapped around it. “Only forty-five minutes left before six o’clock, So what can we do in forty-five minutes? A miracle maybe we can manufacture on short notice? Magic we can turn out to order? Go fight City Hall. My Barney I know I won’t see again.”

  The thin young man turned on her angrily. “I’m not talking of magic and miracles. I’m talking of logic. Logic and the proper evaluation of data. These people not only have a historical record available to them that extends back to and includes our own time, but they are in regular touch with the future—their future. That means there are also available to them historical records that extend back to and include their time.”

  Mrs. Brucks cheered up perceptibly. She liked listening to education. She nodded. “So?”

  “Isn’t it obvious? Those people who exchanged with us—our five opposite numbers—they must have known in advance that Winthrop was going to be stubborn. Historical records to that effect existed in the future. They wouldn’t have done it—it stands to reason they wouldn’t want to spend the rest of their lives in what is for them a pretty raw and uncivilized environment—unless they had known of a way out, a way that the situation could be handled. It’s up to us to find that way.”

  “Maybe,” Mary Ann Carthington suggested, bravely biting the end off a sniffle, “Maybe the next future kept it a secret from them. Or maybe all five of them were suffering from what they call here a bad case of individual eccentric impulse.”

  “That’s not how the concept of individual eccentric impulse works, Mary Ann,” Dave Pollock told her with a contemptuous grimace. “I don’t want to go into it now, but believe me, that’s not how it works! And I don’t think the temporal embassies keep this kind of secret from the people in the period to which they’re accredited. No, I tell you the solution is right here if we can only see it.”

  Oliver T. Mead had been sitting with an intent expression on his face, as if he were trying to locate a fact hidden at the other end of a long tunnel of unhappiness. He straightened up suddenly and said: “Storku mentioned that! The Temporal Embassy. But he didn’t think it was a good idea to approach them—they were too involved with long-range historical problems to be of any use to us. But something else he said—something else we could do. What was it now?”

  They all looked at him and waited anxiously while he thought. Dave Pollock had just begun a remark about “high surtax memories” when the rotund executive clapped his hands together resoundingly.

  “I remember! The Oracle Machine! He said we could ask the Oracle Machine. We might have some difficulty interpreting the answer, according to him, but at this point that’s the least of our worries. We’re in a desperate emergency, and beggars can’t be choosers. If we get any kind of answer, any kind of an answer at all… ”

  Mary Ann Carthington looked away from the tiny cosmetics laboratory she was using to repair the shiny damage caused by tears. “Now that you bring it up, Mr. Mead, the temporal supervisor made some such remark to me, too. About the Oracle Machine, I mean.”

  “He did? Good! That firms it up nicely. We may still have a chance, ladies and gentlemen, we may still have a chance. Well then, as to who shall do it. I am certain I don’t have to draw a diagram when it comes to selecting the one of us most capable of dealing with a complex piece of futuristic machinery.”

  They all stared at Dave Pollock who swallowed hard and inquired hoarsely, “You mean me?”

  “Certainly I mean you, young man,” Mr. Mead said sternly. “You’re the long-haired scientific expert around here. You’re the chemistry and physics professor.”

  “I’m a teacher, that’s all, a high-school science teacher. And you know how I feel about having anything to do with the Oracle Machine. Even the thought of getting close to i1 makes my stomach turn over. As far as I’m concerned it’s the one aspect of this civilization that’s most horrible, most decadent. Why, I’d rather—”

  “My stomach di
dn’t turn over when I had to go in and have an argument with that crazy Mr. Winthrop?” Mrs. Brucks broke in. “Till then, out of this room I hadn’t taken a step, with all the everything I had positively nothing to do —you think I liked watching one minute a pair of rompers, the next minute, I don’t know what, an evening gown he starts wearing? And that crazy talk he talks—smell this from a Mars, taste this from a Venus—you think maybe, Mr. Pollock, I enjoyed myself? But somebody had to do, so I did. All we’re asking you is a try. A try you can make?”

  “And I can assure you,” Mary Ann Carthington came on in swiftly, “that Gygyo Rablin is absolutely and completely the last person on Earth I would go to for a favor. It’s a personal matter, and I’d rather not discuss it now, if you don’t mind, but I would die, positively die, rather than go through that again. I did it though, because there was the teensiest chance it would help us all get home again. I don’t think we’re asking too much of you, I don’t think so one little bit.”

  Mr. Mead nodded. “I agree with you, young lady. Storku is a man I haven’t seen eye to eye with since we’ve arrived, and I’ve gone out of my way to avoid him, but to have to get involved in that unholy Shriek Field madness in the bargain—” He brooded for a while over some indigestible mental fragment, then, as his cleated golf shoes began squirming lovingly, about on his feet, shook himself determinedly and went on: “It’s about time you stopped shooting off your mouth, Pollock, and got down to humdrum, specific brass tacks. Einstein’s theory of relativity isn’t going to get us back to good old 1958, and neither is your Ph.D. or M.A. or whatever. What we need now is action, action with a capi-tal A and no ifs, no ands, no buts.”

  “All right, all right. I’ll do it.”

  “And another thing.” Mr. Mead rolled a wicked little thought pleasurably to and fro in his mind for a moment or two before letting it out. “You take the jumper. You said yourself we don’t have the time to do any walking, and that’s doubly true right now, doubly true, when we’re right up against the dead, dead deadline. I don’t want to hear any whining and any whimpering about it making you sick. If Miss Carthington and I could take the jumper, so can you.”