Time Travelers Never Die

by Jack McDevitt

  Shel’s career with Carbolite had come to seem impossibly mundane. Dave’s decision to leave Penn inspired him to pull the plug. The morning after they’d returned from watching the moon shot, Shel gave Linda his resignation. Effective in thirty days.

  She was shocked. “I thought you were happy here, Shel. I had no idea you were contemplating anything like this.”

  “I’ve been happy,” he said. “It’s not that. But I came into some money, and the truth is that I’d just like to take it easy for a while.”

  “Okay.” Linda sighed. “Shel, you understand I won’t be able to hold the job open for you.”

  “Of course.”

  He was tired. Traveling took a lot out of him. He never quite knew what time it was. Or what day of the week. After he’d talked with her, he went back to his office to work on a sales brochure for the new solar-energy system they were preparing to market.

  STORM clouds gathered through the day, and it was raining when he left. It was a Thursday afternoon. He and Dave were planning to go out again Saturday, back for another party with Voltaire, which had rapidly become Shel’s favorite pastime. His French had improved immeasurably. He wasn’t fluent, certainly, but he could not remember a time in his life when he had so much enjoyed himself.

  The storm was breaking up and drifting east toward Jersey when he got home. He put aside the work he’d brought along and crashed for an hour. Then, on a whim, he called Helen. “If you don’t have anything planned,” he said, “I’m looking for a beautiful young woman to take to dinner.”

  “I’ll see if I can locate one,” she said.

  “Ah, mademoiselle, surely you josh with me.”

  “Surely. How’s Voltaire coming?”

  The response jolted him. Then he remembered that he’d mentioned during an evening out last weekend that he was reading the French philosopher. “Okay,” he said.

  “Good. All right, Shel, if you don’t mind, I’m in the mood for some pizza.”

  “You’re going to give me a cheap date.”

  “You know me.”

  “YOU seem down tonight, Shel.” She nibbled at her salad.

  “No, I’m good.”

  “What happened?” She lifted her Coke, looked at him, and put it back undrunk.

  The scent of candles mixed with the warm aroma of oregano. The candles were inside globes mounted on the walls. “I quit my job today.”

  “You left Carbolite?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  “I was bored.”

  “Okay. That’s a good reason.” She smiled at him, inviting him to explain where he was going next.

  “I thought I’d just take some time off and decide on a new career path.”

  That must have sounded foolish, but she didn’t react, other than to show she sympathized. “You going to be all right?” she asked.

  “You mean for money?”

  She said yes with her eyes.

  “Yeah. I’m fine. Money’s not a problem.”

  The pizza came, and he thought about inviting her to join him for an evening with Voltaire.

  “There’s something else on your mind.”

  Maybe there was. “Helen, I miss you when we’re not together.”

  She was dividing the slices. “Ah, Shel, that’s a bit over the top. But the truth is, I miss you, too.”

  “Really?”

  “Well, up to a point.”

  He leaned across the table. “Helen, this doesn’t feel like the right time to ask, but—” The world squeezed down to the tabletop, the Cokes, the candles, and the pizza. And those large, lustrous eyes. “I’m in love with you.” He lowered his voice. “I’d like you to share my pizza forever.”

  She laid a piece on his plate. “Is that a proposal?”

  “Yeah. I’m sorry. I know this isn’t exactly a romantic spot.”

  She laughed.

  “And I don’t have a ring with me. I didn’t expect to do this tonight—”

  “When did you expect to do it?”

  “I don’t know. But anyhow—”

  “Yes,” she said.

  HE dropped her at home. “I’d invite you in, Shel,” she said, “but tomorrow’s my day at the hospital. Starts at dawn.”

  “I know.”

  “It’s not exactly the way to launch our engagement, but I have to be awake.”

  “I know. Call you tomorrow night.”

  “I hope so.”

  He walked her to the door. She delivered a deep kiss, and held on to him for a long minute. Then she laughed and pushed him away. “I better go.”

  She put her key in the lock, looked back briefly, with glowing eyes and a happy smile. Then the door opened, and she let herself in just as a bolt of lightning brightened the street. Seconds later, thunder boomed, and rain began to fall. “Appropriate staging,” he said.

  She laughed. “Good night, Shel.”

  He drove home through a downpour. Life with Helen was actually going to happen. And yes, this weekend he’d take her to meet Voltaire.

  HE didn’t like his living room anymore. The twenty-second-century penthouse was better. It was, in fact, spectacularly better. He could sit up there and look down at the city lights. Helen would love the place. And he’d take her there, too. Maybe take her there first, so she could get used to the jumps. Come to think of it, Voltaire might not be a good idea. He had no clue whether she could speak French.

  He’d call Dave in the morning and tell him.

  But now there would be three travelers. It was getting crowded. He could imagine his father’s reaction.

  He made a drink and listened to the rain pounding on the roof. The storm had become torrential. Lightning lit up the curtains, and thunder shook the place.

  He was wide awake, so there was no point going to bed. Couldn’t put on the TV or the computer during the storm. But, of course, he had options.

  He got a converter out of the bottom drawer in his desk, set it for the penthouse, and traveled out.

  HE arrived on a clear, cool summer evening. There was a concert getting ready to start down on the Parkway, and lights were just coming on at the Art Museum. He’d brought his drink along, and he went outside onto the balcony to finish it.

  He was still excited, too ramped up over Helen to sleep. He thought about going down and joining the crowd. But he’d need her along. In the end, he simply made himself another drink.

  He listened for a while. The band was mostly strings, and they were playing pop music. Some of it was familiar, tunes that had been around in his own time.

  Eventually, he went back inside, sat down in front of his computer, and turned it on. He checked the news on Wide World. A price-fixing scandal had erupted among food distributors. Somebody had filmed a celebrity orgy, and it was playing all over the Internet. Congressmen had been caught taking money from China to influence U.S. policy. Crime rates were dropping again. The National Football League had gone back to salary caps. And a prominent physicist was saying that antigravity was close.

  Then, without giving himself time to think about it, he did what he’d been wanting to do ever since the converters became available. He ran a search.

  On himself.

  CHAPTER 33

  Time is like a river. As soon as a thing is seen, it is carried away and another takes its place, and then that other is carried away also.

  —MARCUS AURELIUS, MEDITATIONS

  DAVE was out with Katie when the storm arrived. She’d just unloaded a guy who, a few weeks earlier, had looked like the one she’d spend her life with. But he’d proven to be too wrapped up in himself. Good-looking, kind to animals, bright future. Still, his conversation was limited to his own interests, to himself, and she’d given up. So they’d sat in Lenny Pound’s, and Dave had listened, assuring her everything would be okay, and she was lucky to have found out before she’d become emotionally involved (which, of course, was not at all the reality). The thunder had rumbled through the night, and eventua
lly he’d taken her to her apartment. He saw that she didn’t want him to stay, so he’d suggested dinner the following evening, gone home, and turned on the late news. But a few minutes later, a lightning bolt knocked out the power.

  He switched on a battery-powered lamp, picked up the Inquirer, and was still on the front page when the lights came back on.

  Life was good, and getting better. The stacks of essays that lined the walls of his room would, by January, be gone. He would no longer have to worry about getting up in the morning. He would have no boss. And he saw no reason why he wouldn’t become wealthy. Overnight. He’d begun looking around for a new home. Something a bit more plush. He’d lost interest in the cabin-on-a-mountaintop plan. Maybe because his options were opening up. Maybe because he no longer felt an inclination to hide from the world. However that might be, he sat with the paper folded in his lap, thinking about Katie, wondering how he’d explain his new financial status to his family, and feeling fortunate. Everything—almost everything—was breaking his way.

  The storm dwindled to a light sprinkle and an occasional rumble. He went out to the kitchen, got a piece of chocolate cake, and switched on the computer. A news roundup was reporting a six-car pileup on I-95. In Connecticut, a young man officially designated as retarded would be competing for the state chess championship, and another bank robbery had happened in South Philadelphia.

  Then it was on to sports and weather. The Eagles’ new all-pro tight end had fallen down a flight of stairs and broken an ankle. A front was moving in from somewhere. Another storm.

  Last time he’d had chocolate cake, he’d been sitting across the table from Sandy.

  She would linger, he knew, a long time.

  Against his better judgment, he tapped her name into the computer.

  Her doctoral thesis was available. And some commentaries. He looked at them, but they were written for mathematicians, not for a love-struck time traveler.

  Her three kids had also been successful. One had become a professional baseball player, though he’d never made it to the big leagues. Dave found a picture of him in a college uniform. Looks like me, he decided. Ah, that it could have been so.

  Her husband had been a graduate of Wesleyan University. That would have been around 1928. On a whim, he called up the list of graduates for that year, but found no David Collins.

  There was also none in 1927 or 1929.

  Odd. He found himself hoping that maybe there was something not quite legitimate about Collins. Something that would cause Sandy to wish, somehow, she had been able to hold on to him. It was a selfish reaction, and pointed to a weakness in his character. But there it was.

  In fact, he stayed with the search and discovered that Collins had graduated several years later. At the age of twenty-six. He’d started school late because he liked sailing. He owned a boat, and had made a part-time career taking tourists out to sea near his home on St Simons Island, Georgia. For a time, he said, he was content with sailing and thought about passing on college altogether. Ultimately, after the war, David Collins had become a dentist.

  He sighed and shut the system down.

  He always read for a while before going to sleep. Back in the old days, before Shel had shown up with his converters, it had been mostly novels, and maybe a few political books. But now he found himself reading Voltaire and Lamb and biographies of Galileo and Molly Pitcher. It felt both strange and exhilarating to know he had heard their voices, had known the sound of their laughter.

  The book that night was Shoot-Out: The Life and Times of Calamity Jane, by Michael Hevner. He turned on the bedside lamp, settled into the sheets, and began to read. Calamity was out in the Rockies someplace, functioning as a scout for the cavalry. And yes, he could literally see it. See her. He remembered her touch. Remembered the way she’d smiled when he bought her a whiskey.

  He was, he decided, the luckiest man on the planet.

  HE slept peacefully through the night. Once or twice he woke to the rumble of distant thunder. But the rain had stopped altogether. He wondered if maybe one day a time traveler from the distant future would come back to meet him.

  By morning, the storm had passed though the sky was still gray. Dave showered and dressed, went downstairs, and started a couple of hard-boiled eggs while the TV pundits switched over to the deteriorating relations between India and China over food and energy. The president had offered the services of the United States to assist with negotiations.

  He made two pieces of toast, collected his eggs, and put them in a cup. He decided to go with grape jelly for a change on the toast and poured a glass of orange juice.

  The new Star Trek film was being released tonight, and everybody expected it to top the charts. Susan Holvik and Gary Park, a pair of Hollywood superstars married amid considerable hoopla eighteen months earlier, were splitting. And Evin Cowper was rumored to be taking over the James Bond role.

  Same old stuff. Dave turned off the TV, and ate his breakfast with the current Newsweek propped up in front of him. When he’d finished, he picked up his briefcase. Later today he would go back to 1936 Britain to buy an early bronze from Lynn Chadwick, then in his early twenties. The bronze was part man, part eagle, with wings spread, and a distinctly threatening aspect. Dave didn’t know much about sculpture, but he liked the piece, and he knew its value would multiply substantially over the price he’d negotiated.

  He was getting his converter out of the sock drawer when the phone rang. It was Jerry Shelborne.

  “Dave,” he said, “have you heard the news?” His voice was hollow.

  Dave’s first thought was that there’d been a terrorist attack. “No. What’s wrong, Jerry?”

  “Shel’s dead.”

  “What?”

  “It happened this morning. Lightning hit his place. It burned to the ground.”

  “He didn’t get out?”

  “No.”

  DAVE got it up on the computer. The lightning had struck the town house at about four thirty in the morning. The fire department had responded within minutes, but they were unable to rescue Shel, who was apparently asleep in his bedroom when it happened. The body had been burned beyond recognition.

  Dave read the report through, then simply sat, empty of all feeling. He knew, absolutely knew, it wasn’t possible. Shel couldn’t be gone.

  The phone rang again. “Dave, I just heard.” It was Katie. “I’m sorry, Dave. He was a good guy.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Are you okay?” She paused. “I guess that’s a dumb question.”

  “I’m okay,” he said.

  HE was still in a state of shock when he got into his car and headed for the town house. It was going to turn out to be a terrible mistake. Had to be.

  When he arrived, the place was a smoking ruin. The walls and roof had collapsed. At the side of the house, the garage was blackened but still standing. Shel’s Toyota was apparently okay. The music store that flanked him on one side was moderately damaged. The pharmacy, on the other side, had apparently escaped the conflagration. A police car and a black vehicle marked CITY OF PHILADELPHIA were parked at the curb. Yellow tape sealed the property off. Two people from the fire department were standing to one side. He could make out a corner of the sofa, which was half-buried under blackened rubble. And what remained of the coffee table. And the frame of Shel’s desk. Where he kept the converters. No way they could have survived.

  Several people watched from across the street.

  He stopped and got out. A police officer came toward him. “Have to move on, sir,” she said.

  “I’m a friend.”

  “I’m sorry for your loss. But there’s nothing here, and you’re blocking traffic.”

  “The newspapers say that Dr. Shelborne was found in his bed.”

  “I believe that’s correct.”

  “Are they sure it was him?”

  She was a tall woman. About thirty. Kept looking from him to his car. “The body was pretty badly burned. I don’t th
ink they’ve been able to do a formal identification yet. But as far as I know, there doesn’t seem to be much question. May I ask your name, please?”

  She wrote it down, added contact information and relationship, and suggested he call the next day for more details.

  He drove away, went several blocks, and pulled over. He hesitated, then took out his cell phone and punched in Helen’s number.

  A young woman answered. “Dr. Suchenko’s office. May I help you?”

  “Ma’am, this is David Dryden. Is Dr. Suchenko available?”

  “I’m sorry, Mr. Dryden. She’s with a patient at the moment.”

  “Tell her I called, please? It’s important. I’d appreciate it if she could get back to me as soon as possible.”

  “Mr. Dryden, is this a medical emergency?”

  “No, ma’am.”

  “Okay. I’ll see that she gets the message.”

  HE was back in his living room when Helen called. “What’s wrong, Dave?”

  “Are you sitting down?”

  “Dave, I’m awfully busy.”

  “Shel’s dead.”

  “What?”

  “Lightning hit the house last night. It burned down.”

  “No. That’s not—”

  “He was in bed. They don’t have a positive ID yet. But—”

  “Where are you now, Dave?”

  “At home. I’ve been over there. There’s nothing left of the place.”

  “My God.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  No response.

  “You okay?”

  “Yeah. I’m all right.” Her voice was tight.

  “Helen, if there’s anything I can do—”

  “I know, Dave. Thanks.”

  HE put on the TV and let it play. A game show. He never watched game shows, never really watched much of anything except news. And of course the Phillies and Eagles.