by Mike Ashley
“I do,” I said, knowing what was coming. I had raised a hand to cover my mouth, and was stroking my upper lip.
“I wonder if you would happen to know the identity of a certain person, often to be seen in this Park?”
“Who—?”
I could not finish the sentence. His eager, pinkening earnestness was extremely comical. I spluttered an explosive laugh. At once I turned it into a simulated sneeze, and while I made a play with my handkerchief I muttered something about hay fever. Forcing myself to be serious I returned my handkerchief to my pocket and straightened my hat. “Who do you mean?”
“A young lady, of about my own age.” Unaware of my amusement he moved past me and went down the bank to where there was a thick cluster of rosebushes. From behind their cover he looked across at the other side. He made sure I was looking too, then pointed.
I could not see Estyll at first, because of the crowds, but then saw that she was standing quite near to the queue for the Tomorrow Bridge. She was wearing her dress of pastel colours – the clothes she had been wearing when I first loved her.
“Do you see her, sir?” His question was like a discordant note in a piece of music.
I had become perfectly serious again. Just seeing her made me want to fall into reflective silence. The way she held her head, the innocent composure.
He was waiting for a reply, so I said, “Yes . . . yes, a local girl.”
“Do you know her name, sir?”
“I believe she is called Estyll.”
An expression of surprised pleasure came over his face and his flush deepened. “Thank you, sir. Thank you.”
He backed away from me, but I said, “Wait!” I had a sudden instinct to help him, to cut short those months of agony. “You must go and talk to her, you know. She wants to meet you. You mustn’t be shy of her.”
He stared at me in horror, then turned and ran into the crowd. Within a few seconds I could see him no more.
The enormity of what I had done struck me forcibly. Not only had I touched him on his most vulnerable place, forcing him to confront the one matter he had to work out for himself in his own time, but impetuously I had interfered with the smooth progression of events. In my memory of the meeting, the stranger in the silk hat had not given unsolicited advice!
A few minutes later, as I walked slowly along the path, pondering on this, I saw my younger self again. He saw me and I nodded to him, as an introduction, perhaps, to telling him to ignore what I had said, but he glanced away uninterestedly as if he had never seen me before.
There was something odd about him: he had changed his clothes, and the new ones fitted better.
I mused over this for a while until I realized what must have happened. He was not the same Mykle I had spoken to – he was still myself, but here, on this day, from another day in the past!
A little later I saw myself again. This time I – he – was wearing the same clothes as before. Was it the youth I had spoken to? Or was it myself from yet another day?
I was quite distracted by all this but never so much that I forgot the object of it all. Estyll was there on the other side of the Channel and while I paced along the pathway I made certain she was never out of my sight. She had waited beside the toll-booth queue for several minutes, but now she had walked back to the main path and was standing on the grassy bank, staring, as I had seen her do so many times before, towards the Tomorrow Bridge. I could see her much better there: her slight figure, her young beauty.
I was feeling calmer at last. I no longer saw a double image of her. Meeting myself as a youth, and seeing other versions of myself, had reminded me that Estyll and I, apparently divided by the flux field, were actually united by it. My presence here was inevitable.
Today was the last day of her vigil, although she might not know it, and I was here because I was supposed to be here. She was waiting, and I was waiting. I could resolve it; I could resolve it now!
She was looking directly across the Channel, and seemed to be staring deliberately at me, as if the inspiration had struck her in the same instant. Without thinking, I waved my arm at her. Excitement ran through me. I turned quickly, and set off down the path towards the bridges. If I crossed the Today Bridge I should be with her in a matter of a few seconds! It was what I had to do!
When I reached the place where the Tomorrow Bridge opened on to this side I looked back across the Channel to make sure of where she was standing.
But she was no longer waiting! She too was hurrying across the grass, rushing towards the bridges. As she ran she was looking across the Channel, looking at me!
She reached the crowd of people waiting by the tollbooth and I saw her pushing past them. I lost sight of her as she went into the booth.
I stood at my end of the bridge, looking down the ill-lit covered way. Daylight was a bright square two hundred feet away.
A small figure in a long dress hurried up the steps at the far end and ran into the wooden tunnel. Estyll came towards me, raising the front of her skirt as she ran. I glimpsed trailing ribbons, white stockings.
With each step, Estyll moved further into the flux field. With each frantic, eager step towards me, her figure became less substantial. She was less than a third of the way across before she had blurred and dissolved into nothing.
I saw her mistake! She was crossing the wrong bridge! When she reached this side – when she stood where I stood now – she would be twenty-four hours too late.
I stared helplessly down the gloomy covered way, watching as two children slowly materialized before me. They pushed and squabbled, each trying to be the first to emerge into the new day.
xv
I acted without further delay. I left the Tomorrow Bridge and ran back up the slope to the path. The Today Bridge was about fifty yards away, and, clapping a hand on the top of my hat, I ran as fast as I could towards it. I thought only of the extreme urgency of catching Estyll before I lost her. If she realized her mistake and began to search for me, we might be forever crossing and recrossing the Channel on one bridge after another – forever in the same place, but forever separated in time.
I scrambled on to the end of the Today Bridge, and hurried across. I had to moderate my pace, as the bridge was narrow and several other people were crossing. This bridge, of the three, was the only one with windows to the outside. As I passed each one I paused to look anxiously towards each end of the Tomorrow Bridge, hoping for a glimpse of her.
At the end of the bridge I pushed quickly through the exit turnstile, leaving it rattling and clattering on its ratchet.
I set off at once towards the Tomorrow Bridge, reaching for the money to pay the toll. In my haste I bumped into someone. It was a woman and I murmured an apology as I passed, affording her only a momentary glance. We recognized each other in the same instant. It was Robyn, the woman I had sent to the Park. But why was she here now?
As I reached the tollbooth I looked back at her again. She was staring at me with an expression of intense curiosity but as soon as she saw me looking she turned away. Was this the conclusion of the vigil she had reported to me on? Is this what she had seen?
I could not delay. I pushed rudely past the people at the head of the queue and threw some coins on to the worn brass plate where the tickets were ejected mechanically towards the buyer. The attendant looked up at me, recognized me as I recognized him.
“Compliments of the Park again, sir,” he said, and slid the coins back to me.
I had seen him only a few minutes before – yesterday in his life. I scooped up the coins and returned them to my pocket. The turnstile clicked as I pushed through. I went up the steps and entered the covered way.
Far ahead: the glare of daylight of the day I was in. The bare interior of the covered way, with lights at intervals. No people.
I started to walk and when I had gone a few paces across the flux field, the daylight squared in the far end of the tunnel became night. It felt much colder.
Ahead of me: t
wo small figures, solidifying, or so it seemed, out of the electrical haze of the field. They were standing together under one of the lights, partly blocking the way.
I went nearer and saw that one of them was Estyll. The figure with her had his head turned away from me. I paused.
I had halted where no light fell on me, and although I was only a few feet away from them I would have seemed as they seemed to me – a ghostly, half-visible apparition. But they were occupied with each other and did not look towards me.
I heard him say, “Do you live around here?”
“In one of the houses by the Park. What about you?”
“No . . . I have to come here by train.” The hands held nervously by his side, the fingers curling and uncurling.
“I’ve often seen you here,” she said. “You stare a lot.”
“I wondered who you were.”
There was a silence then, while the youth looked shyly at the floor, apparently thinking of more to say. Estyll glanced beyond him to where I was standing, and for a moment we looked directly into each other’s eyes.
She said to the young man, “It’s cold here. Shall we go back?”
“We could go for a walk. Or I could buy you a glass of orange.”
“I’d rather go for a walk.”
They turned and walked towards me. She glanced at me again, with a frank stare of hostility. I had been listening in and she well knew it. The young man was barely aware of my presence. As they passed me he was looking first at her, then nervously at his hands. I saw his too-tight clothes, his quiff of hair combed up, his pink ears and neck, his downy moustache. He walked clumsily as if he were about to trip over his own feet, and he did not know where to put his hands.
I loved him; I had loved her.
I followed them a little way, until light shone in again at the tollbooth end. I saw him stand aside to let her through the turnstile first. Out in the sunshine she danced across the grass, letting the colours of her dress shine out, and then she reached over and took his hand. They walked away together, across the newly cut lawns towards the trees.
xvi
I waited until Estyll and I had gone and then I too went out into the day. I crossed to the other side of the Channel on the Yesterday Bridge, and returned on the Today Bridge.
It was the day I had arrived in the Park, the day before I was due in Geneva, the day before Estyll and I were finally to meet. Outside in the yard, my driver would be waiting with the carriage.
Before I left I went for one more walk along the path on this side of the Channel and headed for the bench where I knew Estyll would be waiting.
I saw her through the crowd: she was sitting quietly and watching the people, dressed neatly in her white skirt and dark blue blouse.
I looked across the Channel. The sunshine was bright and hazy and there was a light breeze. I saw the promenading holidaymakers on the other side: the bright clothes, the festive hats, the balloons and the children. But not everyone blended with the crowd.
There was a rhododendron bush beside the Channel. Behind it I could just see the figure of a youth. He was staring across at Estyll. Behind him, walking along deep in thought, was another Mykle. Further along the bank, well away from the bridges, another Mykle sat in long grass overlooking the Channel. I waited, and before long another Mykle appeared. A few minutes later yet another Mykle appeared, and took up position behind one of the trees over there. I did not doubt that there were many more, each unaware of all the others, each preoccupied with the girl who sat on the bench a few feet from me.
I wondered which one it was I had spoken to. None of them, perhaps, or all of them?
I turned towards Estyll at last and approached her. I went to stand directly in front of her and removed my hat.
“Good afternoon, miss,” I said. “Pardon me for speaking to you like this.”
She looked up at me in sharp surprise. I had interrupted her reverie. She shook her head, but turned on a polite smile for me.
“Do you happen to know who I am?” I said.
“Of course, sir. You’re very famous.” She bit her lower lip, as if wishing she had not answered so promptly. “What I meant was—”
“Yes,” I said. “Do you trust my word?” She frowned then, and it was a consciously pretty gesture – a child borrowing a mannerism from an adult. “It will happen tomorrow,” I said.
“Sir?”
“Tomorrow,” I said again, trying to find some subtler way of putting it. “What you’re waiting for . . . it will happen then.”
“How do you—?”
“Never mind that,” I said. I stood erect, running my fingers across the brim of my hat. In spite of everything she had the uncanny facility of making me nervous and awkward. “I’ll be across there tomorrow,” I said, pointing to the other side of the Channel. “Look out for me. I’ll be wearing these clothes, this hat. You’ll see me wave to you. That’s when it will be.”
She said nothing to this, but looked steadily at me. I was standing against the light, and she could not have been able to see me properly. But I could see her with the sun on her face, and with light dancing in her hair and her eyes.
She was so young, so pretty. It was like pain to be near her.
“Wear your prettiest dress,” I said. “Do you understand?”
She still did not answer, but I saw her eyes flicker towards the far side of the Channel. There was a pinkness in her cheeks and I knew I had said too much. I wished I had not spoken to her at all.
I made a courtly little bow and replaced my hat.
“Good-day to you, miss,” I said.
“Good-day, sir.”
I nodded to her again, then walked past her and turned on to the lawn behind the bench. I went a short way up the slope, and moved over to the side until I was hidden from Estyll by the trunk of a huge tree.
I could see that on the far side of the Channel one of the Mykles I spotted earlier had moved out from his hiding place. He stood on the bank in clear view. He had apparently been watching me as I spoke to Estyll, for now I could see him looking across at me, shading his eyes with his hand.
I was certain that it was him I had spoken to.
I could help him no more. If he now crossed the Channel twice, moving forward two days, he could be on the Tomorrow Bridge to meet Estyll as she answered my signal.
He stared across at me and I stared back. Then I heard a whoop of joy. He started running.
He hurried along the bank and went straight to the Today Bridge. I could almost hear the hollow clumping of his shoes as he ran through the narrow way, and moments later he emerged on this side. He walked, more sedately now, to the queue for the Tomorrow Bridge.
As he stood in line, he was looking at Estyll. She, staring thoughtfully at the ground, did not notice.
Mykle reached the tollbooth. As he went to the paydesk, he looked back at me and waved. I took off my hat and waved it. He grinned happily.
In a few seconds he had disappeared into the covered way, and I knew I would not see him again. I had seen happen what was to happen next.
I replaced my hat and walked away from the Channel, up through the stately trees of the Park, past where the gardener was still pushing his heavy mower against the grass, past where many families were sitting beneath the trees at their picnic luncheons.
I saw a place beneath a wide old cedar where I and my parents and sisters had often eaten our meals. A cloth was spread out across the grass, with several dishes set in readiness for the meal. An elderly couple was sitting here, well under the shade of the branches. The lady was sitting stiffly in a folding canvas chair, watching patiently as her husband prepared the meat. He was carving a ham joint, taking slices from beneath the notch with meticulous strokes. Two servants stood in the background, with white linen cloths draped over their forearms.
Like me, the gentleman was in formal wear. His frockcoat was stiff and perfectly ironed, and his shoes shone as if they had been polished for weeks. On the
ground beside him, his silken stove-pipe hat had been laid on a scarf.
He noticed my uninvited regard and looked up at me. For a moment our gaze met and we nodded to each other like the gentlemen we were. I touched the brim of my hat, wished him and the lady good-afternoon. Then I hurried towards the yard outside. I wanted to see Dorynne before I caught the train to Geneva.
RED LETTER DAY
Kristine Kathryn Rusch
This story, which deals with how our future selves might seek to influence their younger selves, seemed to me to be the ideal way to close this anthology, as you will discover when you reach the end.
Kristine Kathryn Rusch is a prolific American writer and editor who has produced award-winning stories and books in the fields of science fiction, mystery and romantic fiction under her own and various pen names. Her time-travel story The Gallery of His Dreams (1991), set at the time of the American Civil War, won the Locus Award as that year’s best novella. It is included amongst a selection of her other shorter works in Stories for an Enchanted Afternoon (2001). With her husband, Dean Wesley Smith, she ran Pulphouse Publishing from 1987 to 1991 and she edited the prestigious Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction from 1991 to 1997. The following story was voted the most popular story of the year by readers of Analog, in which it was published.
Graduation rehearsal – middle of the afternoon on the final Monday of the final week of school. The graduating seniors at Barack Obama High School gather in the gymnasium, get the wrapped packages with their robes (ordered long ago), their mortarboards, and their blue and white tassels. The tassels attract the most attention – everyone wants to know which side of the mortarboard to wear it on, and which side to move it to.
The future hovers, less than a week away, filled with possibilities.
Possibilities about to be limited, because it’s also Red Letter Day.
I stand on the platform, near the steps, not too far from the exit. I’m wearing my best business casual skirt today and a blouse that I no longer care about. I learned to wear something I didn’t like years ago; too many kids will cry on me by the end of the day, covering the blouse with slobber and makeup and aftershave.