Universe 10 - [Anthology]

by Edited By Terry Carr

  * * * *

  At four, Wednesday morning, his alarm sounded. He turned it off, groaned, and sat up. A little hung over but not badly, he rose to endure, according to schedule, his second short day.

  Only then did he think: Well, it worked! For the first time since June second, he was the same person two times running.

  He hoped it would not be necessary to change phases often.

  Again he kept away from Margaret, staying at his work desk but no longer working. When he heard her leave the house he gave a sigh of relief mixed with guilt. Now he could relax. . . .

  He felt sleepy—the compressed schedule, like jet lag, confused his body’s processes—but he must not sleep yet. Then he thought, sure he could! For he had taken many catnaps—dozes—since Melanie began, and none of those had changed the progression of their lives.

  So he lay on the couch and rested, then slept. Vaguely, he dreamed. Then the dream took him to the edge of a black gulf; he began to fall and woke in cold sweat, lunging off the couch and wordlessly shouting.

  He quieted himself and looked at his watch. It read an hour past noon.

  His clock, the one in his head, was upside down now. He looked for the schedule he had written in duplicate, but when he found it, it made no sense to him. Had it been coherent in the first place? Look at it, you moron!

  Yes, he thought, it did make sense. But had he followed it? He could not be sure. In his mind the times jumbled, his and hers.

  Suddenly he could endure no more waiting.

  * * * *

  Driving now, he forgot caution, ignored his own rules for keeping within limits of tolerance, kept no watch for police cars. But luck rode with him; he arrived safely and unticketed.

  At her door he rang the bell. No answer; he used his key. Of course! —she would still be asleep, and God knew she needed it. But he had to see her, to talk with her. In silence he approached her bedroom and opened the door.

  Even sprawled sleeping, hair tangled and mouth ajar, the look of her caught him, made him pause. Then with a quick headshake, smiling, he moved to sit gently on the bed beside her and stroked the rumpled hair. Her eyes opened, then blinked.

  “It worked,” he said. “It worked. Here we are, and for the first time I have no memory of it, and you do. Tell me, did we have a good day, once you got yourself all the way woke up?”

  Frowning, she shook her head. “You’re kidding me, Ed—you have to be. It didn’t work—because I don’t remember this at all.” Using her elbows, she pushed herself up, half sitting. “Why are you joking with me? What’s the point?”

  “I’m not—” He leaned to hug her, fiercely, then pulled her up to sit erect. “Are you sure—you’re awake now, aren’t you?—are you sure you don’t remember this, being here, being me?”

  Wide-eyed, her face showed only concern. “Of course I’m sure. And —Ed!” For a moment she put her hands to her face and closed her eyes, then looked at him again. “Ed, I went to sleep as me and woke as me— nothing of you in between. I didn’t go back and have your Tuesday at all. I-”

  “Wait a minute. Sure you did—you had to. Because I did. Look, everything was normal—normal for us, I mean—through Monday. Right?” She nodded. “And then you had the long haul—I’m sorry it was so rough—and went to bed this morning. Still right?”

  “Yes, I have that, of course. But then—”

  “And then there was my own short Tuesday and I got up early today, skipping from me straight to me again, just as we’d planned. And here we are!”

  “But I didn’t have your Tuesday. I skipped straight from me to me, too.”

  He thought. “Then I guess you’re right. It didn’t work. The mechanism, whatever it is, compensated somehow. Well, it was a nice try. But I guess we’re stuck with the way things are, just as before.” He stood, and helped her to her feet. “Come on. This needs some coffee, something to eat. Never mind clothes; you look just fine, and it’s warm in here.”

  She laughed, only for a moment, and followed him to the kitchen. “Eggs?” he said. She nodded, and he added, “You’re the one short of sleep; just sit while I fix stuff and think out loud. Or ... do you have any ideas?”

  “One. Do you realize, Ed—here we are and neither of us remembers it? We’re both having it for the first time? How can that be?”

  As he prepared food and coffee, he spoke in brief bursts. “How, you ask? I don’t know. Any more than how we happened in the first place.” He turned the eggs, broke one, and cursed, without emphasis, as though reciting someone else’s words.

  He wheeled to face her. “But now what happens? Where does it go from here?”

  “I don’t know. Here, the eggs will burn—let me—” She rose and rescued the eggs, slipping them neatly onto the toast he had prepared. Sitting, she said, “What do you think will happen?”

  Now he felt his hunger and ate, speaking between bites. “We’ve never lived a day in parallel before, each for the first time. Maybe next we switch and do it over, each remembering.”

  “How can we? Because we’re both here, and we didn’t.”

  He shook off the chill of threatened paradox, ‘Then maybe one of us wakes next with both these sets of memories, and then the other picks it up from there.” He poured coffee. “In which case we still don’t know whether we managed to change phase or not. I wish I knew—it’d be a shame to go through all this for nothing.”

  She looked away, then back to him. “Whatever happens, surely it hasn’t been for nothing—has it?”

  He reached and clasped her hand. “What do you mean? What do you think might happen?”

  “No.” She shook her head and would not answer further.

  It was strange, he thought, being and talking with her when her responses were all new to him, when he had not experienced them from her side. He told her so.

  “I wouldn’t know. I’ve always been on the other end of it.”

  He laughed. “That’s silly; we’ve both had both sides.”

  “But it doesn’t feel the same, when I’m you and when I’m me. Haven’t you noticed that? But of course you have. I remember it”

  “That’s good. For a minute there, you had me worried.”

  But the talk lagged, for now he was acutely aware of the difference between this conversation and any other they had had.

  They tidied the kitchen, showered together, and then made love. At first it went well; then came an awkwardness and he realized how much, with her, he relied on subliminal memory to tell him what to do. He rallied and both succeeded. But afterward, even as they lay smiling in embrace, he felt . . . well, a lack.

  He could not tell her so and did not try. After a time, up and sitting, watching boats move on the lake below, she said, “It’s different, isn’t it?”

  “I guess so.”

  “How, for you?”

  “Well . . . before, I always knew.”

  “Yes. That’s what I wanted to experience, from this side.”

  He hugged her. “And maybe with luck you will. We don’t know yet which way it’s going to go.”

  Now he felt they were closer again, the two halves of him. As he left, he said, “Tomorrow, the one who doesn’t remember past today should be the one to get in touch.”

  “Yes. I hope it’s you, Ed. I want the other side.”

  “I know.”

  He drove home as conservatively as Dr. Phipps; Margaret greeted him. “Well, at last! Now can you tell me how your idea worked?”

  He held her shoulders and kissed her. “I wish I could.” He explained, and added, “Tomorrow we should know.”

  Eyes narrowed, she spoke. “Ed, you need a drink. Go sit down; I promise not to scant you.”

  She didn’t; they sat, arms around each other while he sipped. She said, “If it would help any . . .” and quoted a very old joke, wrongly attributed to Confucius.

  He shook his head. “Not right now—I’ll reinstall you as a fixture in the house a little later, maybe. Thanks, thou
gh.” Suddenly he realized —with Margaret, the lack of “advance” memories had never been a problem. And he said, “Honey, I wish there were some way, sometime, that we could be each other.”

  “I wish I could even begin to understand how that feels.”

  “And I wish there were words I could use to tell you.”

  * * * *

  After Ed left, Melanie read awhile, ate a snack, and went back to bed. When she woke in the night and found her identity unchanged, she buried her face in the pillow and cried.

  * * * *

  Ed’s first morning thought was, All right, which way is it? Then, Straight from my own yesterday; good. Satisfied, he nodded. So it had worked after all; his loss of one of Melanie’s days was not important in the long run. Margaret was up and gone; he made a quick breakfast and went to Melanie.

  He could not believe her. “Nothing?”

  “No. I’m still just me. For the third time, at least.”

  “Yes. Me too—but I don’t see how.”

  They stood in fierce embrace. “I do, Ed. But I don’t like it much.”

  He pushed back, not violently but away from her. “What is it?”

  “Oh, stop it! You know; you just won’t admit it.”

  “Admit what? What the hell are you talking about?”

  “We’re not going to be each other anymore, Ed. Not ever, ever again. We’re two now, not one any longer.” She pulled him to her and kissed him, then let him go. She tried to laugh, but a small, gulping sob came instead. “I’m going to miss you—being you—the same way you’ll miss being me. And the physical thing, that’s only a part of it.”

  Nausea struck him. He turned away and fought it down, then turned back “But—but I’d only begun to learn how to be you!”

  * * * *

  Every day he saw her. Now there were no paradoxes, no traps, only the driving urge to be what he could not be. When they were together he watched her, totally engrossed, trying to see into her mind that had once been his.

  But without success. One day he said, “It’s as if I had never been you at all. I can’t tell what you’re thinking anymore—except from what you say, I have no idea.”

  Melanie smiled. “Isn’t that the way it is with everybody? At least we had more, while we did have it.” He got himself a drink—he was watering his bourbon these days—and did not answer.

  She said, “I do wish we’d been able to switch precedence for a while. It doesn’t seem like much, but . . .”

  “I know.” Then he had to say it. “Melanie, what are you planning to do now?”

  She smiled. “You still know me, don’t you? And you’re right, of course. Because it’s your memories and attitudes I’m using—how else?— to decide that I have to cut free of my emotional dependence on you. And—and go out and build my own life.”

  He saw her wince at the reaction he could not hide. She said, “You did see it coming, didn’t you, Ed?”

  “Yes. But I didn’t want to.”

  “No.” She reached to touch him. “Ed—I owe you—I am you, or at least built up from what you gave me. But I can’t stay around, being your juvenile alter ego when I’m really not. Can you see that?”

  “I guess so.” He hunched his shoulders, brought them down again. “Hell, I know so. It’s just—I hate to lose—your part of me.” He grinned at her. “We lasted too quick, is all.”

  “Maybe if we’d waited longer to try the phase shift. But we were diverging already; it might have happened anyway, splitting apart.” She paused. “Ed? Would you like-?”

  Thinking about it, he brushed her trimmed bangs back to kiss her forehead, and stroked her hair down the back of her neck. He shook his head.

  “No, Melanie. We’ve had the best of that, between us.”

  “When we were the same, you mean?”

  “And getting used to being separate. That was good, too.”

  “Then why not—?”

  “You just declared your independence, and you’re right. So this is no time for you to look back or step back.”

  “If you say so.” She stood. “Well then—you want a good-bye kiss or a good-bye handshake?”

  “How about both?” As he walked away after her warm response, as he reached the door and turned the knob, he looked back and said, “Live yourself a good life, Melanie. For both of us.”

  * * * *

  She heard the sound of his footsteps, outside, diminish. Was I right? Or is it too soon? She paced to the glass wall, looked out, and turned away. I could call him. She gazed around the silent room.

  He had left half his drink. She sat and sipped at the watered bourbon, not liking it much. Her thoughts refused to quiet.

  Memories: “the turnip,” bluffing her way through that frightening, disoriented first day. Ed’s relief at thinking it all a dream, his resignation when he found it wasn’t. Dr. Phipps. Rape, abortion. Trapped action, as Ed. The competency hearing. Brother Charles—she should get in touch with him, probably. The slow transformation of turnip into Melanie, the daily counterpoint of Ed’s life. The meeting, the time together as one, the split, the time together as two. All of it now ended. The new, unknown beginning. . . .

  Remembering, she pitied the man she had been—and would miss. Was she wrong to leave him? Without him, she would have been nothing.

  Then realization struck. All her feelings for Ed Carlain came from June third and after; for his earlier life she felt no emotional identification at all.

  She nodded. All right, it would hurt—it did hurt—but what she was doing, she had to do.

  Maybe I’ll come back sometimes—when I have a life of my own to share.

  * * * *

  When he got home he told Margaret, “I’m sorry, honey, but I can’t talk. Not yet, anyway. Maybe I need a drink.” She went to another room. He poured himself a very large glass of bourbon—no ice, no water. He held the glass and looked at it, took a sip, and then another.

  He sat for a long time, his thoughts all of Melanie, before he rose and went to the kitchen. There he poured a little of the liquor into a smaller glass, adding ice and water, and put the larger one aside. Then he went to Margaret.

  She looked up and said, “That was fast. All better now?”

  “No. But maybe if I try to tell you . . .”

  When he was done, she said, “You’re two different people now? There’s no more connection?”

  “That’s right I’ve lost her. Lost being her, and now lost her new self, too.”

  Margaret paused, then said, “What’s the worst part? You were getting to like being a double agent in the war of the sexes?”

  “No. I mean, sure, that was a goddamn revelation. I—”

  “Yes. I’ve noticed some differences lately. Good ones.”

  “Okay—it’s too bad everybody can’t make all those rounds, and I’ll miss it. But that’s not what kills me.”

  “Then what does? To me, you look pretty healthy.”

  Eyes unfocused, Ed looked into a lost future. “Age, honey.” He shrugged. “We all have to face it; right?” He looked at her and pointed a finger. “But there I was, every other day, eighteen years old again. I never said anything about it, but of course Melanie remembers how I felt.”

  He tried to laugh, but even to himself it did not sound right. “I wondered, you know—what would happen to Melanie and me if I died? After all, I’m twenty years older. Or if one of us got killed, for that matter—would the other just keep going?”

  “So being Melanie could add twenty years to your life?”

  “All right—yes. I thought maybe I had it. And more—because we were living two days for every calendar day, remember. And now it’s gone; I’ve lost it. I . . .”

  He frowned, trying to put words to what he felt. “It’s like . . . when you dream how someone you loved, that died, didn’t really die after all. And then you wake up. But this time it’s me that was going to die, and then wasn’t, not so soon at least—and now I woke up.”

&nb
sp; “And that bothers you.”

  He nodded.

  “Come here, Ed.”

  * * * *

  He woke when Margaret set an icy glass on his belly. The gambit was familiar; he flinched only a little before taking hold of the glass. He sipped; it was tomato juice, with the added tartness of some lemon squeezed in. He felt his mind coming awake.