by Anthology
But it didn’t last. He shook his head until his cheeks wobbled. He stamped his foot. The sidewalk began to sink and whirl beneath him.
Knew it, he shouted. No backwards from this forwards.
Up to his knees in the sidewalk, he sloshed ahead with effort and tried to touch whatever he could. The man eating the banana melted. The car melted. The German shepherd melted. Finally, the world rose above Hwang’s eyes and, after a brief burbling, he went silent.
Well. I did try.
Hwang tries to look at it this way: time jumps forward when you sleep no matter who you are.
The first time Hwang jumps forward in time, he comes out of his room into fifty years later. The time machine had caught fire, and Grishkov had had to pull him out before the sequence completed countdown. The fire spread and trapped them; they knew already that the dusty red fire extinguisher had been emptied three years ago during a prank and never refilled. Grishkov succumbed to the smoke first, bad-heart Grishkov still clutching Hwang by the forearms as he swanned to the floor. Then Hwang fainted, too.
When Hwang awakes, many people are dead and many new people are alive and everything seems somehow worse, despite all the new machines and pills and fashions.
As Hwang is drawn to his daughters, his daughters are drawn to him.
Hwang does not want to die, but there would not be a very good reason to stay alive if life was only jumping through time rapidly. (Wait.) He is now part of the time machine, and although he is broken he remains magnetized to his descendants, his daughters. Down a street, in a tree, in a bar, driving a hovercar—they always find one another. His daughters feed him, imagining that they are experiencing a random surge of kindness toward a dusty, gentle homeless man.
Hwang is guilty about this; he feels that he is enslaving his daughters and the best thing to do would be to release all of them from this obligation. That is when he does want to die.
But he decides to wait it out. He will reach the end of time. He will reach the end of daughters. Then he can end, too.
When Hwang is now, nobody knows. He is sleeping. He has been sleeping all night, his eyelids fluttering and his mouth twitching from the struggle to stay asleep. He wants time to keep moving; he doesn’t want to stop anywhere, even though the light is seeping in around the curtains and the hours turn to day. I say to him, Dad, I won’t forget. I’ll be the one who remembers the story.
Still he sleeps. I watch him still. In his mind, I am already blurring.
I HEAR YOU CALLING
Eric F. Russell
A frightened town, dark and deadly. A minor name on a vast map. Formerly noteworthy for nothing save the idle rumour that a flying saucer had landed nearby. That had been a month ago and proved baseless. Police and pressmen scoured the outskirts. No saucer.
This event faded, lost significance as hunters took off in pursuit of something else, something weightier and more urgent that cleared the streets by night. On the main stem a few dusty, neglected neons glowed over empty bars while cops lurked in shadowy doorways, watched cats playing leapfrog and jumping low.
Widgey Bullock knew nothing of this. To him the town had its virtues. That was why he had just arrived there. It was forty miles from port, devoid of naval patrols, officers, pickpockets and the same old bunch of painted trollops. A new landfall. A place where a naval stoker first-class could roll the boat without getting tossed into the brig.
Entering a likely bar, he shoved his pork-pie on to the back of his head, said, ‘I’m in the mood, Mac. Give me an Atom bomb.’
‘What might that be?’ inquired the barman. He was a fat simple, pasty-faced with too little sun, too little sleep.
‘I should have to tell you?’ Widgey hitched his lean bulk on a stool, rubbed blue jowls. ‘Equal parts rum, tequila and vodka. Add a pinch of red pepper and shake.’
‘God!’ said the other. He slopped it together, vibrated it, slid it across. Then he watched warily as if awaiting the mushroom cloud.
Widgey poured some down. He twitched his scalp and the cap jerked with it.
‘What a joint,’ he commented, staring around. ‘No juke-box, no dames, no company, nobody but you and me. Where’s everybody?’
‘Home,’ said the barman. He nodded toward the wall-clock. ‘Ten thirty and it’s dark.’
‘Mean to say the town’s closed down?’ Widgey tipped the cap over his eyes, stared incredulously. ‘Ten thirty’s the time for things to start livening up. The police should get jumping around midnight.’
‘Not here,’ said the barman. His gaze drifted toward the door, came back. He didn’t seem to know what might enter next but obviously didn’t want it, not at any price.
‘What’s wrong with here?’ demanded Widgey, ignoring the door.
‘Folk are getting themselves killed.’
‘How’s that? Somebody feuding?’
“They just lie around dead,’ said the barman. ‘Dead and empty.’
‘Empty?’
‘No blood,’ said the barman.
‘Give me another,’ Widgey ordered, poking his glass. He got it, took a deep gulp, coughing with the fire of it. ‘Now let’s have this straight. Who’s being killed?’
‘One here, one there,’ the other said. ‘Mostly strangers.’
‘I’m a stranger myself,’ Widgey pointed out. ‘Does that put me on the list?’
‘Wouldn’t be surprised.’
‘What a dump!’ Widgey complained. ‘Forty miles I come for bright lights and freedom. What do I get? A hick town heading for bed and a barkeep measuring my corpse.’
‘Sorry,’ said the other, ‘But you might as well know.’ He waves a hand to emphasize the sheer emptiness of the place. ‘This is just the way it’s been every night for the last three weeks. When I go home I keep close by the wall and wear my eyes in my pants the whole way. I keep my door locked twice over.’
‘What are the cops doing about it?’
‘Looking,’ said the barman. ‘What else can they do?’
‘This sounds like a bar-yarn to me,’ observed Widgey, suspiciously. ‘Are you figuring on getting rid of me and shutting shop early?’
‘Dead wrong,’ the barman told him. ‘It’s all in the papers. A dry stiff every other night.’ He eyed the door again. ‘Besides, I can’t close up when I like and I need the company.’
‘I’ll say you do.’ Widgey assured. ‘Fellow your weight will have buckets of blood. You’re a major target.’
‘Shut up!’ said the barman, looking sick.
‘I’m not worrying,’ Widgey went on. ‘Just one night here and back to the ship tomorrow. After that, you can have this lousy town and welcome.’ He took a long swig, smacked his lips. ‘Know of any other joint where there’d be more than two of us?’
‘No. Not at this time.’
‘Well, d’you know of an address where I can knock three times and ask for Mabel?’
‘Think I’m a pimp?’ asked the barman, frowning.
‘I think you ought to know your way around seeing this is your own stamping ground.’
‘It isn’t mine. I’ve been here only a couple of months.’ He wiped the back of his neck, peered towards the street. ‘That’s what scares me. I rank as a stranger too.’
‘Take it easy,’ Widgey advised. ‘When you’re dead and empty you won’t know it even if you look like a slack sack.’ He poked the glass again. ‘Make it a double. If you can’t give me an address I’ll have to do without. Maybe I can drink myself beyond what I have in mind.’
The barman said, ‘Any more you’d better take with you. This is where I shut shop.’
Widgey pointed to a yellow bottle. ‘I’ll take that.’ He fumbled clumsily in a pocket, dug out money and paid. A couple of coins fell to the floor. He teetered as he picked them up.
‘It’s working on you,’ said the barman.
‘Which is all that is,’ said Widgey.
Pocketing the bottle he rolled out with a decided list to starboard. The street was a m
ess of greys and blacks, the neons gone. A thin sliver of moon rode above bulging clouds.
He headed uncertainly for the crummy hotel where he’d booked a room. A leering tomcat slunk across his path, wanting the same as he did. Hidden in the dark entrance to an alley a policeman watching his passing, made no sound to betray his presence. On the other side of the road a woman hurried along, wary and fearful.
‘Hi, Babe!’ he hoarsed across, not caring whether she were hot or cold, young or old.
She broke into a near-run, her heels making a fast and urgent clip-clop. Widgey stood watching her and swearing under his breath. The policeman emerged from the alley, kept an eye on both of them. The woman stopped two hundred yards down, frantically stabbed a key at a door, went into a house. The slam of the door sounded like the crack of doom.
‘Bet they say their prayers, too,’ scoffed Widgey.
Alcoholically aggrieved, he lurched onward, found the hotel, climbed upstairs. Savagely he flung his cap across the room, pulled off his jacket and shied it the same way, kicked his shoes under the bed. He spent a minute examining himself in the mirror over the washbasin, pawing his ears and making faces at himself. Then he went to the window and looked out at the night.
There was another woman on the road below. She drifted along in a strange unhurried manner, an undulating glide like that of a column of grey smoke wafted by a gentle breeze. She was blurry as if draped and veiled. A lot of things look blurry when a man has heavy cargo under the hatches.
But a woman is a woman. One who travels late and without haste is always a good prospect, thought Widgey. Slipping the catch, he opened the window and leaned out. No cops were visible. Nobody but the vague figure.
‘Yoohoo!’
It achieved nothing. Perhaps she hadn’t heard.
‘Yoohoo!’
The figure stopped. Moonlight was too poor to show which way she was looking but at least her halt was encouraging.
‘YOOHOO!’ bawled Widgey, bending farther out and throwing discretion to the winds. He waved an energetic arm.
The figure made a vague gesture, crossed the road towards the hotel. Closing the window, Widgey delightedly tried a slow soft shoe routine but his balance had gone to pot. Seas were rough tonight.
He left his door a couple of inches ajar so she would know which room was which. Hurriedly he cleaned a couple of glasses by sloshing water around them, put them on the bedside table along with the yellow bottle.
A timid knock sounded.
‘Come in!’ He spat on his hands, used them to brush back his hair, fixed a welcoming grin on his face.
The knocker came in.
Widgey backed away fast, then more slowly as strength flowed out of his legs. His grin had vanished and he’d gone cold sober in one-fifth of a second. He wanted to yell bloody murder but couldn’t emit a squeak.
The edge of the bed caught behind his retreating knees. He flopped backward, lay on the bed with chest and throat exposed. He couldn’t do a thing to save himself, not a damn thing.
It glided soundlessly to the bedside, bent over and looked at him with eyes that were black pinheads set deeply in green fluff. Its long, elastic mouth came out and pouted like the nozzle of a fire-hose. The last that Widgey heard was a whisper from a million miles away.
‘I am Yuhu. You called me.’
I LOVE GALESBURG IN THE SPRINGTIME
Jack Finney
“. . . and in the summer when it sizzles, and in the fall, and in the winter when the snow lies along the black branches of the trees that line its streets!”
—Lines tapped out on his typewriter, when he should have been writing up the Soangetaha Country Club dance) by Oscar Mannheim, Galesburg, Illinois, Register-Mail reporter.
I didn’t make the mistake—he’d have thrown me down the elevator shaft—of trying to see E. V. Marsh in his room at the Custer. I waited in the lobby, watching the coffeeshop, till he’d finished breakfast and was sipping his second cup of coffee before I braced him, walking up to his table smiling my lopsided, ingratiating, Jimmy Stewart smile.
When he learned I was from the paper he tried to fend me off. “I’ve got nothing for you,” he said, shaking his head. He was a heavy man in his fifties, with straight thinning hair. “There’s no story. There just won’t be any factory of mine in Galesburg, that’s all. I’m leaving this town on the first train I can get.”
“Well, I’m sorry to hear that,” I said untruthfully, and dragged up a chair from an adjacent table. Straddling it, I sat down facing Marsh across the chair back, chin on my folded arms. “But that’s not why I’m here,” I added softly, and waited. I’m a tall, bone-thin man; my pants legs flop like sails when I walk. I have a bony face, too, more or less permanently tanned, and straight Indian-black hair; and I’m still young, I guess. People generally like me all right.
But Marsh was mad now, his face reddening, his jaw muscles working; he knew what I meant. I glanced quickly around the room; it was still early and there were only a few people here. We were at a corner table looking out on Kellogg Street; no one was near us.
Leaning closer to Marsh’s table, my chair legs tilting forward, I said, “I’d rather get the story from you as it really happened than try to piece it together from a lot of half-true rumors floating around town.”
He glared. Then he leaned toward me, voice quiet but furious. “I wasn’t drunk. I can tell you that!”
“I’m sure you weren’t. Tell me about it.” And because I’m a reporter, he did.
He sighed a little, going through the motions of reluctance, but actually—and this is usually true—he was glad to talk now that he had to or thought he did. Ilene brought over the coffee I’d ordered when I walked into the room and I picked up my cup and tasted it; the coffee’s good at the Custer. Then I dropped my chin to my folded arms, feeling alive and eager, anxious to listen. Because the only reason I was here, the only reason I’m a reporter at all, was simple curiosity. Haven’t you ever wished it were somehow possible to cross-examine an absolute stranger about something none of your business but damned interesting all the same? Well, think it over—if you’re a reporter, you can. There’s no law says it has to be printed.
“I had two drinks before dinner,” Marsh said. “We all did. We ate up in my suite—the property owner, a Chamber of Commerce man, an attorney from the city, and a couple of councilmen. If you want a list of their names, ask them for it. After dinner most of us had a brandy. But we sat at the table from seven till ten and whatever drinks I had were spread over a considerable time; I wasn’t drunk or even close.” Marsh shrugged impatiently. “We worked things out—the price of the factory site, option terms, the probable contractor. Both councilmen and the attorney assured me there’d be no trouble about changing zoning restrictions, if necessary, or running my trucks down Broad Street to the Santa Fe depot. All friendly and pleasant.” Marsh took a cigar from the breast pocket of his suit coat and offered it. I shook my head and he began pulling off the cellophane wrapper. “But I like to sleep on a deal of any importance and told them I’d think it over. They left about ten and I took a walk.”
Marsh stuck the unlighted cigar in his mouth, bulging one cheek out, and leaned toward me. “I always do that,” he said angrily. “I take a walk and go over the facts in my mind; then home to bed, and when I wake up in the morning I usually know what I want to do. So I left the hotel here, walked up Kellogg to Main Street, then over to the Public Square, and when I came to Broad Street I turned up it. Not because the proposed factory site was on Broad; it’s way out near the city limits, a dozen blocks or more, and I wasn’t planning to walk that. Besides I’d been all over the site that day and I couldn’t have seen anything in the dark anyway. But Broad was as good a street as any other to walk along.” Marsh brought out matches, prepared to strike one, then sat staring at the tabletop instead. “At that, I walked a lot farther than I meant to. Pleasant street.” He struck his match and looked up at me for comment, sucking the flame ont
o the cigar end.
“It’s beautiful,” I said, nodding. “All those streets—Broad, Cherry, Prairie, Kellogg, Seminary, and all the others—are beautiful,” and I was remembering the day my father, mother, sister, and I got off the train from Chicago at the Q depot. We rode through Galesburg then, in a taxi, to the house my father had bought on Broad Street. The driver took us up Seminary first, from the depot, then along Kellogg, Prairie, and Cherry—a few blocks on each street—before turning onto Broad. I was six and as we rode something in me was responding to the town around us, and I began falling in love with Galesburg even before we reached our house. It happened completely, love at first sight, just north of Main Street when I first saw the thick old trees that line the streets of Galesburg, arching and meeting high overhead as far as I could see. We moved along under those new-leaved trees and the first warm-weather insects were sounding and the street was dappled with shade and sun, the pattern of it stirring as the trees moved in the late spring air. Then I heard our tires humming with a ripply sound that was new to me, and saw that the street was paved with brick. I guess that’s not done any more; nowadays, it’s concrete or asphalt, never brick.
But a great many Galesburg streets are still brick-paved, and some of the curbing is still quarried stone. And in the grassways beside those brick-paved streets there still remain stone curbside steps for entering or leaving carriages. Near them—not added for quaintness’ sake, but remaining from the days when they were put there for use—is an occasional stone or cast-iron hitching post. Back past the grassways and the sidewalks (of brick, too, often), and beyond the deep front lawns, rise the fine old houses. Many are wood, often painted white; some are brick or time-darkened stone; but—there along Cherry, Broad, Prairie, Academy, and the other old streets—they have the half comically ugly, half charming look, made of spaciousness, dignity, foolishness, and conspicuous waste, that belongs to another time.