Melancholy Elephants

by Spider Robinson

  “Hey,” Joe said sharply. “You’re only a kid. What’re you lookin’ at?”

  “I’m not sure,” Spud said slowly, “but I got a feeling I’ll figure it out in a couple of years, and I’ll want to remember.”

  Joe roared with sudden laughter. “You’ll do, kid.” He glanced down. “Kinda wish I had my other half along myself.” He shook his head sadly. “Well, let’s get going.”

  “Wait a minute, stupid,” Spud snapped. “You can’t just leave her there. This is a rough neighbourhood.”

  “Well, what am I sposta do?” Joe demanded. “I don’t know which apartment is hers.”

  Spud’s forehead wrinkled in thought. The laundry room? No, old Mrs. Cadwallader always ripped off any clothes left here. Leave the two of them here and go grab one of Mom’s housecoats? No good: either the girl would awaken while he was gone or, with Joe’s luck, a cop would walk in. Probably a platoon of cops.

  “Look,” Joe said happily, “it fits. I thought it would—she’s almost as big on top as I am, an’ it looked loose.” The fat man2 had seemingly become an integer, albeit in drag. Draped in paisley, he looked like a psychedelic priest and something like Henry the Eighth dressed for bed, As Anne Boleyn might have done, Spud shuddered.

  “Well,” he said ironically, “at least you’re not so conspicuous now.”

  “Yeah, that’s what I thought,” Joe agreed cheerfully. Spud opened his mouth, then closed it again. Time was short—someone might come in at any second. The girl still snored; apparently the bang on the head had combined with her faint to put her deep under. They simply couldn’t leave her here.

  “We’ll have to take her with us,” Spud decided.

  “Hey,” Joe said reproachfully.

  “You got a better idea? Come on, we’ll put her in the trunk.” Grumbling, but unable to come up with a better idea, Joe picked the girl up in his beefy arms, headed for the door—and bounced off thin air, dropping her again.

  Failing to find an obscenity he hadn’t used yet, Spud sighed. He bent over the girl, got a grip on her, hesitated, got a different grip on her, and hoisted her over his shoulder. Panting and staggering, he got the front door open, peered up and down the street, and reeled awkwardly out to the waiting Buick. It took only a few seconds to smash open the trunk lock, but Spud hadn’t realized they made seconds that long. He dumped the girl into the musty trunk with a sigh of relief, folding her like a cot, and looked about for something with which to tie the trunk closed. There was nothing useful in the trunk, nor the car itself, nor in his pockets. He thought of weighing the lid down with the spare tire and fetching something from inside the building, but she was lying on the spare, his arms were weary, and he was still conscious of the urgent need for haste.

  Then he did a double-take, looked down at her again. He couldn’t use the sandals, but…

  As soon as he had fashioned the floral-print trunk latch (which took him a bit longer than it should have), he hurried back inside and pushed Joe to the car with the last of his strength. “I hope you can drive, Spud,” Joe said brightly as they reached the curb. “I sure as hell can’t.”

  Instead of replying, Spud got in. Joe lowered himself and sidled into the car, where he floated an eerie few inches from the seat. Spud put it in drive, and pulled away slowly. Joe sank deep in the seat-back, and the car behaved as if it had a wood-stove tied to the rear-bumper, but it moved.

  Automobiles turned out to be something with which Joe was familiar in the same sense that Spud was familiar with biplanes, and he was about as comfortable with the reality as Spud would have been in the rear cockpit of a Spad (had Spud’s Spad sped). A little bit of the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway was enough to lighten his complexion about two shades past albino. But he adapted quickly enough, and by the time the fifth homicidal psychopath had tried his level best to kill them (that is, within the first mile) he found his voice and said, with a fair imitation of diffidence, “I didn’t think they’d decriminalized murder this early.”

  Spud gaped at him.

  “Yeah,” Joe said, seeing the boy’s puzzlement. “Got to be too many people, an’ they just couldn’t seem to get a war going. That’s why I put my life savings into this here cut-rate time-belt, to escape. I lost my job, so I became…eligible. Just my luck I gotta get a lemon. Last time I’ll ever buy hot merchandise.”

  Spud stared in astonishment, glanced back barely in time to foil the sixth potential assassin. “Won’t the cops be after you for escaping?”

  “Oh, you’re welcome to escape, if you can. And if you can afford time-travel, you can become a previous administration’s problem, so they’re glad to see you go. You can only go backward into the past or return to when you started, you know—the future’s impossible to get to.”

  “How’s that?” Spud asked curiously. Time-travel always worked both ways on television.

  “Damfino. Somethin’ about the machine can recycle reality but it can’t create it—whatever that means.”

  Spud thought awhile, absently dodging a junkie in a panel truck. “So it’s sort of open season on your legs back in 2007, huh?”

  “I guess,” said Joe uneasily. “Be difficult to identify ’em as mine, though. The pictures they print in the daily Eligibles column are always head shots, and they sure can’t fingerprint me. I guess I’m okay.”

  “Hey,” Spud said, slapping his forehead and the horn in a single smooth motion (scaring onto the shoulder a little old lady in a new Lincoln Continental who had just pulled onto the highway in front of them at five miles per hour), “it just dawned on me: what the hell is going on back in your time? I mean, there’s a pair of legs wandering around in crazy circles, falling down stairs, right now they’re probably standing still on a sidewalk or something…”

  “Sitting,” Joe interrupted.

  “…sitting on a sidewalk. So what’s going on? Are you causing a riot back there or what?”

  “I don’t think so,” Joe said, scratching his chin. “I left about three in the morning.”

  “Why then?”

  “Well, I…I didn’t want my wife to know I was goin’. I didn’t tell her about the belt.”

  Spud started to nod—he wouldn’t have told his mother. Then he frowned sharply. “You mean you left your wife back there to get killed? You…”

  “No, kid, no!” Joe flung up his hands. “It ain’t like you think. I was gonna come back here into the past and make a bundle on the Series, and then go back to the same moment I left and buy another belt for Alice. Honest, I love my wife, dammit!”

  Spud thought. “How much to you need?”

  “For a good belt, made in Japan? Twenty grand, your money. Which is the same in ours, in numbers, only we call ’em Rockefellers instead of dollars.”

  Spud whistled a descending arpeggio. “How’d you expect to win that kind of money? That takes a big stake, and you said you sunk your savings in the belt.”

  “Yeah,” Koziack smiled, “but they terminate your life-insurance when you go Eligible, and I got five thousand Rockies from that. I even remembered to change it to dollars,” he added proudly. “It’s right…” His face darkened.

  “…here in your pocket,” Spud finished. “Terrific.” His eyes widened. “Hey, wait—you’re in trouble!”

  “Huh?”

  “Your legs are back in 2007, sitting on the sidewalk, right? So they’re creating reality. Get it? They’re making future—you can’t go back to the moment you left ’cause time is going on after it already. So if you don’t get back soon, the sun’ll come up and some blood-thirsty nut’ll kill your wife.”

  Joe blanched. “Oh Jesus God,” he breathed. “I think you’re right.” He glanced at a passing sign, which read, MANHATTAN—10 MILES. “Does this thing go any…ulp…faster?”

  The car leaped forward.

  To his credit, Joe kept his eyes bravely open as Spud yanked the car in and out of high-speed traffic, snaking through holes that hadn’t appeared to be there and doing unspeak
able things to the Buick’s transmission. But Joe was almost—almost—grateful when the sound of an ululating siren became audible over the snarling horns and screaming brakes.

  Spud glanced in the mirror, located the whirling gumball machine in the rear-view mirror, and groaned aloud. “Just our luck! The cops—and us with only five bucks between us. Twelve years old, no license, a stolen car, a half a fat guy in a dress—cripes, even fifty bucks’d be cutting it close.” Thinking furiously, he pulled over and parked on the grass, beneath a hellishly bright highway light. “Maybe I can go back and talk to them before they see you,” he said to Joe, and began to get out.

  “Wait, Spud!” Joe said urgently. He snatched a handful of cigarette butts from the ashtray, smeared black grime on Spud’s upper lip. “There. Now you look maybe sixteen.”

  Spud grinned. “You’re okay, Joe.” He got out.

  Twenty feet behind them, Patrolman Vitelli turned to his partner. “Freaks,” he said happily. “Kids. Probably clouted the car, no license. Let me have it.”

  “Don’t take a cent less than seventy-five,” Patrolman Duffy advised.

  “I dunno, Pat. They don’t look like they got more than fifty to me.”

  “Well, all right,” Duffy grumbled. “But I want an ounce of whatever they’re smokin’. We’re running low.”

  Vitelli nodded and got out of the black and white, one hand on his pistol. Spud met him halfway, and a certain lengthy ritual dialogue was held.

  “Five bucks!” Vitelli roared. “You must be outa your mind.”

  “I wish I was,” Spud said fervently. “Honest to God, it’s all I got.”

  “How about your friend?” Vitelli said, and started for the Buick, which sat clearly illuminated in the pool of light beneath the arc-light.

  “He’s stone broke,” Spud said hastily. “I’m takin’ him to Bellevue—he thinks he may have leprosy.”

  Vitelli pulled up short with one hand on the truck. “You got a license and registration?” he growled.

  Spud’s heart sank. “I…”

  Vitelli nodded. “All right, buddy. Let’s open the trunk.”

  Spud’s heart bounced off his shoes and rocketed back up, lodging behind his palate. Seeing his reaction, Vitelli looked down at the trunk, noticing for the first time the odd nature of its fastening. He tugged experimentally, flimsy fabric parted, and the trunk lid rose.

  Blinking at the light, the blond girl sat up stiffly, a muddy treadprint on her…person.

  The air filled with the sound of screeching brakes.

  Vitelli staggered back as if he’d been slapped with a sandbag. He looked from the girl to Spud to the girl to Spud, and his eyes narrowed.

  “Oh, boy,” he said softly. “Oh boy.” He unholstered his gun.

  “Look, officer, I can explain,” Spud said without the least shred of conviction.

  “Hey,” said the blond girl, clearly dazed.

  “Holy shit,” said Duffy in the squad car.

  “Excuse me,” said Joe, getting out of the Buick.

  Both cops gasped as they caught sight of him, and Vitelli began to shake his head slowly. Seeing their expressions, the girl raised up onto her knees and peered around the trunk lid, completing the task of converting what had been three lanes of rushing traffic into a goggle-eyed parking lot.

  “My dress,” she yelped.

  Koziack stood beside the Buick a little uncertainly, searching for words in all the likely places. “Oh shit,” he said at last, and began to pull the dress over his head, removing the derby. “Pleistocene, here I come.”

  Vitelli froze. The gun dropped from his nerveless fingers; the hand stayed before him, index finger crooked.

  “Tony,” came a shaky voice from the squad car, “forget the ounce.”

  Spud examined the glaze in Vitelli’s eyes and bolted for the car. “Come on,” he screamed at Joe. The girl barely (I’m sorry, really) managed to jump from the trunk before the car sprang forward like a plane trying to outrun a bullet, lurching off the shoulder in front of a ten-mile traffic pileup that showed no slightest sign of beginning to start up again.

  Behind them Vitelli still stood like a statue, imaginary gun still pointing at where Joe had been standing. Tears leaked from his unblinking eyes.

  As the girl stared around her with widening eyes, car doors began to open.

  Spud was thoroughly spooked, but he relaxed a good deal when the toll-booth attendant at the Brooklyn Bridge failed to show any interest in a twelve-year-old driving a car with the trunk wide open. Joe had the dress folded over where his lap should have been, and the attendant only changed the five and went back to his egg salad sandwich without comment.

  “Where are we going?” Spud asked, speaking for the first time since they had left the two policemen and the girl behind.

  Joe named a midtown address in the Forties.

  “Great. How’re we gonna get you from the car into the place?”

  Joe chuckled. “Hey, Spud—this may be 1976, but Manhattan is Manhattan. Nobody’ll notice a thing.”

  “Yeah, I guess you’re right. What do you figure to do?”

  Joe’s grin atrophied. “Jeez, I dunno. Get the belt fixed first—I ain’t thought about after that.”

  Spud snorted. “Joe, I think you’re a good guy and I’m your pal, but if you didn’t have a roof on your mouth, you’d blow your derby off every time you hiccuped. Look, it’s simple: you get the belt fixed, you get both halves of you back together, and it’s maybe ten o’clock, right?”

  “If those goniffs at the dealership don’t take too long fixin’ the belt,” Joe agreed.

  “So you give me the insurance money, and use the belt to go a few months ahead. By the time, with the Series and the Bowl games and maybe a little Olympics action, we can split, say, fifty grand. You take your half and take the time-belt back to the moment your legs left 2007, at 10:01. You buy your wife a time-belt first thing in the morning and you’re both safe.”

  “Sounds great,” Joe said a little slowly, “but…uh…”

  Spud glanced at him irritably. “What’s wrong with it?” he demanded.

  “I don’t want you should be offended, Spud. I mean, you’re obviously a tough, smart little guy, but…”

  “Spit it out!”

  “Spud, there is no way in the world a twelve-year-old kid is gonna take fifty grand from the bookies and keep it.” Joe shrugged apologetically. “I’m sorry, but you know I’m right.”

  Spud grimaced and banged the wheel with his fist. “I’ll go to a lot of bookies,” he began.

  “Spud, Spud, you get into that bracket, at your age, the word has just gotta spread. You know that.”

  The boy jammed on the brakes for a traffic light and swore. “Dammit, you’re right.”

  Joe slumped sadly in his seat. “And I can’t do it myself. If I get caught bettin’ on sports events of the past myself, it’s the Pleistocene for me.”

  Spud stared, astounded. “Then how did you figure to accomplish anything?”

  “Well…” Joe looked embarrassed. “I guess I thought I’d find some guy I could trust. I didn’t think he’d be…so young.”

  “A grownup you can trust? Joe, you really are a moron.”

  “Well. I didn’t have no choice, frag it. Besides, it might still work. How much do you think you could score, say, on one big event like the Series, if you hustled all the books you could get to?”

  Twenty thousand, Spud thought, but he said nothing.

  Joe had been right: the sight of half a fat man being dragged across the sidewalk by a twelve-year-old with ashes on his upper lip aroused no reaction at all in midtown Manhattan on a Friday night. One out-of-towner on his way to the theater blinked a few times, but his attention was distracted almost immediately by a midget in a gorilla suit, wearing a sandwich sign advertising an off-off-off-Broadway play about bestiality. Spud and Joe reached their destination without commotion, a glass door in a group of six by which one entered various secti
ons of a single building, like a thief seeking the correct route to the Sarcophagus Room of Tut’s Tomb. The one they chose was labeled, “Breadbody & McTwee, Importers,” and opened on a tall stairway. Spud left Joe at the foot of the stairs and went to fetch assistance. Shortly he came back down with a moronic-looking pimply teen-ager in dirty green coveralls, “Dinny” written in red lace on his breast pocket.

  “Be goddamn,” Dinny said with what Joe felt was excessive amusement. “Never seen anything like it. I thought this kid was nuts. Come on, let’s go.” Chuckling to himself, he helped Spud haul Joe upstairs to the shop. They brought him into a smallish room filled with oscilloscopes, signal generators, computer terminals, assorted unidentifiable hardware, tools, spare parts, beer cans, as-yet unpublished issues of Playboy and Analog, overflowing ashtrays, a muted radio, and a cheap desk piled with carbon copies of God only knew what. Dinny sat on a cigarette-scarred stool, still chuckling, and pulled down a reference book from an overhead shelf. He chewed gum and picked at his pimples as he thumbed through it, as though to demonstrate that he could do all three at once. It was clearly his showpiece. At last he looked up, shreds of gum decorating his grin, and nodded to Joe.

  “If it’s what I t’ink it is,” he pronounced, “I c’n fix it. Got yer warranty papers?”

  Joe nodded briefly, retrieved them from a compartment in the time-belt and handed them over. “How long will it take?”

  “Take it easy,” Dinny said unresponsively, and began studying the papers like an orangutan inspecting the Magna Carta. Joe curbed his impatience with a visible effort and rummaged in a nearby ashtray, selecting the longest butt he could find.

  “Joe,” Spud whispered, “how come that goof is the only one here?”

  “Whaddya expect at nine thirty on a Friday night, the regional manager?” Joe whispered back savagely.

  “I hope he knows what he’s doing.”

  “Me too, but I can’t wait for somebody better, dammit. Alice is in danger, and my legs’ve been using up my time for me back there. Besides, I’ve had to piss for the last hour-and-a-half.”