It is said that the term nuclear bomb passed through some of the learned minds and even escaped some of the learned lips. I find this hard to believe.
Why don’t they talk to us? one anchorman bewailed. Think of all the wonderful things they could tell us! Think how easily they could solve the problems that beset us every day!
Sometimes the colony makes me think of a huge bathysphere that has been dropped deep into the sea of time. The people in it are looking out at fish swimming around them in the sea. Marianne saw a fish she liked, and the fish is me.
* * *
I go into town and rent a small apartment. I return to camp and try to fall asleep. I cannot. That evening I sit on my bunk and smoke too many cigarettes. At quarter of eleven, the other guards and I are driven to the colony in the personnel carrier. Marianne is in her window waiting for me. She says yes when I ask her if she has the disseminator. I tell her she must wait till almost dawn before she burns through the field. She is in her negligee, and I tell her the sooner she gets dressed, the better. Next time I stop before her window, she has a short blue dress on. It is different from the dresses present-day women wear, but not radically so. You must pack, I tell her my next time by. She nods. Perhaps she already has. Throughout the night, she keeps telling me she is afraid, and I keep telling her not to be. When the sky in the east begins to brighten, I tell her there is no need to wait any longer, and she disappears from the window.
She reappears a few moments later, hurrying around the house. She is carrying a suitcase in one hand and a small object in the other. Kneeling close to the field, she points the object toward it. There is a lance of white light. It turns the section of the field directly before her a fiery blue. Blue flames leap up; there is an acrid smell. Then a hole appears in the field. She drops the object and leaps through the hole with her suitcase. The hole closes behind her. In a moment she is in my arms, soft, sweet-scented, taller than I thought she would be. I kiss her greedily, and she kisses me back no less greedily. At length I force myself to pull away. I point to a small stand of locusts about a hundred feet from the field. “Over there. You must hide. I’ll come for you as soon as I’m relieved.”
“Oh, Wayne, I’m so scared!”
I kiss her cheek. “Don’t be, Marianne. Everything will be fine.”
She hurries toward the trees. Presently the darkness beyond the range of the lights hides her from sight.
* * *
It is impossible for me to go to her immediately after I am relieved. I have to return to camp with the other guards and get rid of my rifle first. Hurriedly I shave and shower and get into a clean uniform. At the gate, I call a cab. I have the driver take me back to the colony. I get out on the highway and cut across the fields to the stand of locusts. Marianne is lying in a fetal position at the foot of one of the trees. Her suitcase is lying beside her. I seize her shoulders and shake her. “Marianne!”
I pull her to her feet, and she clings to me as though a gale wind were blowing and she is afraid it will tear her away. She is trembling. “Marianne, will they come looking for you?”
“I do not think they will dare to.”
I lead her back across the fields to the highway. I did not tell the cab driver to wait, because I feared he might guess the truth. We walk the short distance to town. I lead Marianne up the stairs to our apartment. At once, we make love.
After we are through, she lies beside me on the bed, breathing softly. Although she looks like a little girl, she did not make love like one. Her flesh is roseate. Compared to it, my flesh is like that of an old man. “Is this where we are going to live together?” she asks.
“For now. In six months, I’ll be discharged. Then I’m going to take you home.”
“I thought you were going to . . . marry me.”
“I am going to. But as yet I don’t even know your last name.”
“I have none.”
“We’ll make one up.” I look at my watch. It is nearly noon. “Let’s go have lunch somewhere.”
“I Can’t. I tore my dress in the woods.”
“Put another one on.”
“I don’t have another.”
“But your suitcase—you must have one in there.”
“No. I didn’t bring one.”
“Well, what did you bring?”
“It’s not important.”
“Well, put your dress back on. We’ll go buy you another.”
* * *
She picks out a cotton and polyester one. I wanted to buy her something better, but she insists it is all she needs. It does not need altering, and we return to our apartment, where she puts it on. Then we go to a small restaurant for lunch. Her table manners are quaint. Probably if I were to go back to ancient Sumer, mine would seem quaint, too.
We make love all afternoon. In the evening, we again go out to eat. Then we make love again. I am exhausted when I go back to camp to go on duty.
* * *
During the night, I look often into the colony. All seems as calm as before. Perhaps Marianne’s absence has not been discovered yet. If it has been, it has given rise to no excitement.
The hours drag by. I am glad when at last I am relieved. After a shower and a shave and a change of clothes, I go immediately into town. Marianne seems to have sensed my coming, for she is lying in bed with the covers thrown back, waiting to make love.
* * *
That afternoon, after I have slept part of the day away, I ask her about the future. “The world you come from, Marianne—what’s it like?”
She smiles and says, “Could you tell someone who lived thousands of years before your time what the late twentieth century is like?”
“It would be difficult.”
“It would be impossible.”
“What century are you from?”
“The date would mean nothing to you, since the Gregorian calendar is no longer in use.”
“Then tell me how many years separate your time and mine.”
“Enough of them so that I had to learn to speak English all over again when we were learning to read each other’s lips.”
“Twenty thousand?”
“No. Not quite. . . . If we keep talking about the future, we may lose track of the present.”
“Only one more question, then. How long will the colony be here?”
“There are no plans to take it back.”
“Why was it sent back in time?”
“You said only one question.”
“All right. The subject is dropped.”
After all, why should I care why she is here? The fact that she is here is all that counts.
* * *
Despite her objections, I buy her another dress and a new pair of shoes and new underthings. I also buy her a toothbrush and a comb and a brush. Although she brought her suitcase, she seems to have brought nothing in it.
It becomes known in camp that I am shacking up. Some of the guys saw Marianne and me together in a restaurant, and they keep asking me where I came up with such a dish. I introduce my buddy Steve to her one evening when he is doing the town. She is wearing the new dress I bought her. It is white and has a low neckline, and she looks as though she stepped out of a TV screen. Steve is awed. “I didn’t think they made them like that anymore!”
* * *
There is a man standing in Marianne’s window!
I pretend I did not see him, and do not slow my pace. But I know he is looking at me.
The window is empty when I retrace my steps. Perhaps he only glanced through it out of idle curiosity.
But what is he doing in Marianne’s house?
* * *
“Marianne, in the colony, did you live with someone?”
“. . . No.”
“There’s someone staying in your house. I saw him looking through your window.”
“. . . Perhaps someone else moved in.”
The slanted morning sunlight is full upon her face. It is the face of an innocent little girl.
She is lying there in our bed waiting to make love. I cast the man from my thoughts.
That night he is standing in her window again. I try to cast him from my thoughts again, but he will not go away.
* * *
The next night, when I am getting ready to go on guard, Steve asks if I will change nights off with him. He will take my place tonight if I will take his tomorrow night. He had a heavy date lined up. This is fine with me. Tonight the man in the window can watch him. After we make arrangements with the corporal of the guard, I return to town.
The word Surprise! is on my lips as I enter Marianne’s and my apartment and walk across the little living room to the bedroom, but the word does not leave my lips. She is lying in bed with the bed light on, and her suitcase is positioned beside her. It is open, revealing the metallic control panel of some manner of machine. Wires issuing from the base of the panel are attached by electrodes to her forehead, her neck, her chest, her stomach, her arms and legs. It is as though she were taking an EKG.
When she sees me, she tears the wires away. They retract themselves, and she sits up in bed and quickly closes the suitcase and lowers it to the floor. She looks like a little girl who has been caught with her hand in a cookie jar, but she recovers quickly and holds out her arms to me. As always, I am unable to resist them.
“I thought,” she says, after we have made love, “that you were supposed to go on guard.”
I tell her that Steve and I changed off. She does not mention the suitcase. I do not, either. People who live in glass houses should not throw stones.
* * *
The next afternoon, shortly after we have returned from lunch, someone begins knocking on our door. “Don’t answer!” Marianne says. I see that her face has gone pale. “Why not?” I ask. “It may be Steve.” She runs into the bedroom and closes the door.
It is not Steve. It is the man I saw in her window. Despite the August heat, he is wearing a blue pastel suit. Its styling is subtly different from that of suits I am familiar with. He has blond hair and his eyes are as blue as Marianne’s. He is built like a Greek god and is at least a foot taller than I am.
He stands in the doorway and looks into the room. He says something, only one word of which I can understand. “Marianne.”
“I don’t think she wants to see you.”
He says something else that I do not understand. He not only looks like a Greek god, he talks like one. He steps into the room, pushing me aside. He sees the closed bedroom door and starts toward it. I do not know what to do. He opens the door, and Marianne screams. “Wayne, make him go away!”
I reach up and seize his shoulder, and he turns toward me. Again he says something I do not understand, then he turns his back on me and starts to step into the bedroom. I seize one of his arms with both hands and try to pull him away from the doorway. I do not expect to be able to, he is so huge, but to my astonishment, he backs up several paces and almost loses his balance. I pull harder on his arm, and this time he does lose his balance and crashes to the floor. I have to let go his arm, and now I stand there watching him. He rolls over onto his stomach, gets up on one knee, struggles to his feet. There is terror in his blue eyes. I push him into the hallway, and he almost falls again. I slam the door. I hear his footsteps as he hurries toward the stairs.
I go into the bedroom. “Marianne, he’s gone.”
She has assumed a fetal position on the bed. I sit down beside her. “He’s gone,” I say again.
Slowly, she straightens out her legs, then turns on her back. Color comes back into her cheeks. “He was your lover, wasn’t he?” I say.
“In—in a way.”
“Why didn’t you tell me before?”
“I—I was afraid.”
“You shouldn’t have been. I would have understood.”
“I don’t think you understand now.”
Yes, I do, Marianne.
“He—he won’t come back?”
“I don’t think so. When I’m not here, just lock the door.”
“He may break it down.”
I laugh. “He won’t break it down.”
“You’re not mad, Wayne?”
“No.”
She holds out her arms to me. “Let’s make love.”
“Not right now. I’m tired.”
“Later on?”
“We’ll see.”
* * *
They play croquetlike games in their back yards and they go for walks in the therapeutic sunlight and they sit in the park and talk, these beautiful people from tomorrow. They were unable to bring their golf courses with them, but I am sure they brought their TVs.
* * *
When Marianne is taking her morning shower, I place her suitcase on the bed and raise the lid and look at the control panel. There are a number of recessed dials and a switch by which the machine can be turned on and off. I know there must be batteries somewhere. At length I find the hidden receptacle that encloses them, and I remove them and recover the receptacle. They are like no batteries I have ever seen before. They are so tiny they do not even make a bulge in my shirt pocket. I close the suitcase and shove it back under the bed.
During the days that follow, I watch my true love grow old.
She does not know the batteries are gone. Probably she never knew the machine needed batteries in order to run. When I walk my post, I picture her lying in bed with the suitcase beside her, its dead wires attached to her like a web.
Age comes into her eyes first. I watch their blueness pale. I see them settle deeper and deeper into her skull. I marvel at the concavity of her temples. I pity the shuffling way she begins to walk.
I am not a monster. I put the batteries back in.
Youth blooms again, and my atrophied true love turns back into a rose. The concupiscence that my real youth awakened reappears in her eyes. But I am unable any longer to assuage it.
“You know, don’t you,” she says to me one morning.
I nod. I go into the bedroom and get her suitcase. “Can you get back in?”
Her young-old eyes will not look into mine. “Yes. He’ll let me in.”
I call a cab. On the way to the colony, I ask, “Is there no room for you in your own time?”
“No. There are too many of us. It had to be the past or euthanasia.”
“There must be other colonies.”
“There are many. Each is a century apart.” She shudders. “I do not wish to grow old. I do not wish to die.”
“No one does.”
* * *
There are not many sightseers looking at the colony. After we get out of the cab, I lead the way around the field till we can see her window. I time our approach to coincide with the moment when both of the nearest guards will be hidden by the curvature. Her “lover” has been watching us through her window. He disappears and a few moments later comes hurrying around the house. He has a disseminator in his hand. He burns a hole in the field, and she runs through it with her suitcase. He takes her suitcase, and they embrace, and then, arm in arm, they walk back around the house.
This afternoon they will probably play “croquet” in their back yard. Later on, they will no doubt go for a walk. Perhaps they will sit for a while in the park and chat with their acquaintances. This evening they will watch TV. The future equivalent thereof. Programs beamed back from the future, actors who have not as yet been born. Sitting before the screen, perhaps they will hold hands. They will pretend that the youth that left them long ago still resides in their rejuvenated flesh. After a while they will go to bed, but they will not make love, because even in the future, old men, despite their beauty, are still old men.
All of the houses in the colony are made of glass, but I do not dare to cast a stone.
Although it is reinforced glass, all of the houses will eventually come tumbling down.
One of the guards rounds the curvature of the field. I wave to him and he waves back. No doubt he wonders what I am doing so close to the field. Before it occurs t
o him that he should challenge me, I turn and walk away.
Tonight is my night off. I will find a bar somewhere where young people drink and dance and revel in their youth, and I will join them and revel in mine. And if we keep reveling long enough and loudly enough and are careful not to throw stones, perhaps our own glass houses will never come tumbling down.
Promised Planet
The European Project was a noble undertaking. It was the result of the efforts of a group of noble men who were acquainted with the tragic histories of countries like Czechoslovakia, Lithuania, Romania, and Poland—countries whose juxtaposition to an aggressive totalitarian nation had robbed them of the right to evolve naturally. The European Project returned that right to them by giving them the stars. A distant planet was set aside for each downtrodden nation, and spaceships blasted off for New Czechoslovakia, New Lithuania, New Romania, and New Poland, bearing land-hungry, God-fearing peasants. And this time the immigrants found still waters and green pastures awaiting them instead of the methane-ridden coal mines which their countrymen had found centuries ago in another promised land.
There was only one mishap in the entire operation: The spaceship carrying the colonists for New Poland never reached its destination . . .
—RETROSPECT;
Vol. 16, The Earth Years
(Galactic History Files)
* * *
THE SNOW WAS FALLING SOFTLY and through it Reston could see the yellow squares of light that were the windows of the community hall. He could hear the piano accordion picking up the strains of “O Moja Dziewczyna Myje Nogi.” “My Girl Is Washing Her Feet,” he thought, unconsciously reverting to his half-forgotten native tongue; washing them here on Nowa Polska the way she washed them long ago on Earth.
There was warmth in the thought, and Reston turned contentedly away from his study window and walked across the little room to the simple pleasures of his chair and his pipe. Soon, he knew, one of the children would come running across the snow and knock on his door, bearing the choicest viands of the wedding feast—kielbasa, perhaps, and golabki and pierogi and kiszki. And after that, much later in the evening, the groom himself would come round with the wódka, his bride at his side, and he and Reston would have a drink together in the warm room, the snow white and all-encompassing without, perhaps still falling, and, if not still falling, the stars bright and pulsing in the Nowa Polska sky.
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