A Bridge of Years

by Robert Charles Wilson

He turned to the house. He ignored Tom Winter, ignored the pinwheel rotation of the night sky, attempted to ignore his pain. He could not fathom a destination but the tunnel, which he had confused with escape or going home.

  He hurried through the open door of the house, this bar of light. This door which contained a door which was a door in time which was all he had ever wanted, an unwinding of his life, a way home. He imagined it as a road, pictured it in his mind with sudden clarity. A dusty road winding into dry, distant mountains under a clean blue sky.

  Sanctuary. A door into the unmaking of himself.

  Billy peeled off the battered fragments of his armor and entered the house.

  □ □

  □ □

  Past reason, past calculation, Tom picked up his weapon and followed the marauder into the house.

  Forced to justify the action, he might have said it was still possible for the marauder to escape, follow the tunnel back to Manhattan, heal himself and repair his armor. The idea that the events he had just endured might not be an ending was too painful to consider. So he rose and followed the marauder into the house under the blinding weight of his own burned flesh. Doug Archer and Joyce and Catherine came around the corner as he was at the door, called out to him to stop, but he barely registered their voices. They didn't understand. They'd missed the main event.

  The house was full of a gray, cloying smoke but the cybernetics had extinguished all the fires. Ben Collier lay bloody and prostrate at the top of the stairs. Tom registered this fact but set it aside, something to be dealt with later.

  He felt giddy going down the stairs. He was in pain, but the pain was distant from him; he worried about shock. Probably he was in shock. Whatever that meant or might later mean. It didn't matter now. He made himself walk.

  He found the marauder some yards into the tunnel.

  The marauder had collapsed—probably for the last time, Tom thought—against the blank white wall. He was armorless, weaponless, naked, hurt. Tom felt his fingers open, heard the rattle of his own weapon as it fell to the floor. The marauder didn't look.

  Tom reached out a hand to support himself but the wall was too smooth; he lost his balance and sat down hard.

  Two of us here on the floor, Tom thought.

  He was at the brink of unconsciousness. The pain was very bad. He spared another glance at his ruined left side. His light-headedness lent him some objectivity. Singed meat, he thought. He had never thought of himself as "meat" before. Barbecued ribs. It made him want to laugh, but he was afraid of the sound his laughter might make in this empty tunnel.

  This transit in time. Not a tunnel under the earth; something stranger. Strange place to be lying with what might be a mortal wound, next to the man who had wounded him.

  He saw the marauder move. Dismayed, Tom raised his head. But the marauder was not hostile, only frightened, trying to back his broken body away from this:

  This sudden apparition.

  This halo of fight in the shape of a human being.

  It came toward the marauder at a terrible speed.

  Time ghost, Tom thought, too sleepy to be terrified. Doug had called it that. Ghost of what? Of something native to this fracture in the world. Of a kind of humanity uprooted from duration.

  Something too big to be contained by his idea of it. He felt its largeness as it hovered a few feet away. It was large in some dimension he couldn't perceive; it was many where it seemed to be singular.

  He felt the heat of it wash over his face. He felt it consider him ... and pass him by. He saw it hover over the marauder, saw it contain that frightened man in a veil of its own intolerable light. And then it disappeared, and the marauder was gone with it.

  Tom heard voices calling his name, Joyce's voice among them. He turned with a feverish gratitude toward the sound, would have stood up but for the darkness that took him away.

  PARTTHREE - Time

  Twenty-four

  When he woke there was nothing left of his wound but pink, new skin and an occasional phantom pain. The cybernetics had healed him, Ben explained. He'd been asleep for three and a half weeks.

  The house had been healed, too. No trace remained of the smoke and fire damage. The windows had been replaced and reputtied. The house was immaculate—spotless.

  The way I found it, Tom thought. New and old. A half step out of time.

  "There's someone you need to meet," Ben said.

  She was waiting for him in the kitchen.

  Dazed with his recovery and events that seemed too recent, he didn't recognize her at first; felt only this powerful sense of familiarity, a sort of deja vu. Then he said, "You were in the car . . . driving the car that hit him." He remembered this face framed in those lights.

  She nodded. "That's right."

  She was gray-haired, fiftyish, a little wide at the hips. She was dressed in jeans and a blue cotton blouse and thick corrective lenses that made her eyes seem big.

  He looked again, and the world seemed to slip sideways. "Oh my god," he said. "Joyce."

  Her smile was large and genuine. "We do meet under the most peculiar circumstances."

  He spent a few days at the house undergoing what Doug called "emotional decompression," but he couldn't stay. In effect, the building had been repossessed. The time terminus was repaired; Tom didn't have a place here anymore.

  He was homeless but not poor. A sum equivalent to the purchase price of the house had appeared in a Bank of America account in his name. Tom asked Ben how this happy event had occurred—not certain he wanted to know—and Ben said, "Oh, money isn't hard to create. The right electronics and the right algorithms can work wonders. It can be done by telephone, amazingly enough."

  "Like computer hacking," Tom said.

  "More sophisticated. But yes."

  "Isn't that unethical?"

  "Do you own this house? Did you really take possession of the chattel goods to which you're entitled under the contract? If not, would it be fair to leave you penniless?"

  "You can't just invent money. It has to come from somewhere."

  Ben gave him a pitying look.

  The tunnel was repaired and the time travelers came through it from their unimaginable future: Tom was allowed a glimpse of them. He stood at the foot of the basement stairs as they emerged from the tunnel, a man and a woman, or apparently so—Ben said they changed themselves to seem more human than they really were. Their eyes, Tom thought, were very striking. Gray eyes, frankly curious. They looked at him a long time. Looked at him, Tom supposed, the way he might look at a living specimen of Australopithecus—with the peculiar affection we feel for our dim-witted ancestors.

  Then they turned to Ben and spoke too softly for Tom to understand; he took this as his cue to leave.

  Archer and Catherine made room for him in the Simmons house at the top of the hill. The bed was comfortable but he planned to leave; he felt too much like an intruder here. They made allowances for his disorientation, tiptoed around his isolation. It wasn't a role he wanted to play.

  The Simmons house was for sale, in any case. Archer had left his job with Belltower Realty but refused to employ another agent; the property was "for sale by owner." "It's full of important memories," Catherine said, "but without Gram Peggy this place would be a mausoleum. Better to let it go." She gave him a curious half-sad little smile. "I guess we all came out of this with new ideas about past and future. What we can cling to and what we can't."

  Archer said they were moving up to Seattle, where Catherine had a market for her painting. He could find some kind of work there—maybe even audit some college courses. Tom said, "Leaving Belltower after all these years?"

  "Cutting that knot, yeah. It's easier now."

  "It rained morning glories," Tom said.

  "All up and down the Post Road. Morning glories a foot deep."

  "Nobody knows it but us." "Nope. But we know it."

  August had ended. It was September now, still hot, but a little bit of winter in the a
ir, colder these nights.

  He took his car out of the garage and drove it down to Brack's Auto Body for a tune-up. The mechanic changed the oil, cleaned the plugs, adjusted the choke, charged too much. He ran Tom's Visa card through the slider and said, "Planning a trip?" Tom nodded.

  "Where you headed?"

  "Don't know. Maybe back east. Thought I'd just drive." "No shit?" "No shit."

  "That's wild," the mechanic said. "Hey, freedom, right?" "Freedom. Right."

  He made a couple of phone calls from the booth outside.

  He called Tony. It was Saturday; Tony was home and the TV was playing in the background. He heard Tricia crying, Loreen soothing her.

  "I was passing through town," Tom said. "Thought I'd call."

  "Holy shit," Tony said. "I thought you were dead, I really did. Are you all right? What do you mean, passing through town?"

  "I can't stay, Tony. You were right about the house. Not a good investment."

  "Passing through on the way to where?"

  He repeated what he'd told the mechanic: someplace east.

  "This is extremely adolescent behavior. Immature, Tom. This is life, not 'Route 66.' "

  "I'll keep that in mind. Listen, is Loreen around?"

  "You want to talk to her?" He seemed surprised.

  "Just to say hi."

  "Well. Take care of yourself, anyhow. Stay in touch this time. If you need anything, if you need money—"

  "Thanks, Tony. I appreciate that."

  Muffled silence, then Loreen got on the line. "Just checking in on my way through town," Tom said. "Wanted to thank you folks."

  They chatted a while. Barry had been down with chicken pox, home from school for two weeks. Tricia was cutting a tooth. Tom said he'd been traveling and that he'd be traveling awhile longer.

  "You sound different," Loreen said.

  "Do I?"

  "You do. I don't know how to describe it. Like you're making peace with something." He couldn't formulate an answer. She added, "It's been a long time since that accident. Since your mama and daddy died. Life goes on, Tom. Days and years. But I guess you know that."

  A last call, long distance to Seattle; he charged it to his credit card. A male voice answered. Tom said, "Is Barbara there?"

  "Just a second." Clatter and mumble. Then her voice.

  She said she was glad to hear from him. She'd been worried. It was a relief to know he was all right. He thanked her for coming to see him back in the spring. It was good that she cared.

  "I don't think a person stops caring. We didn't work too well together but we weren't the Borgias, either." "It was good when it was good," Tom said. "Yes."

  "You're still hooked up with Rafe?" "We're working things out. I think it's solid, yeah." "There were times I wanted you back so bad I tried to pretend you didn't exist. Can you understand that?" "Perfectly," she said. "But those were real years." "Yes."

  "Good and bad." "Yes."

  "Thank you for those years," he said. She said, "You're going away again?" "I'm not sure where. I'll call." "Please do that," she said.

  He drove out of town along the coast highway until he came to the narrow switchback where his parents had died. He turned off the road at a scenic overlook some yards up the highway, stepped out of his car and sat awhile at the stone barricade where the hillside sloped away into scrub pine and down to the ocean. He had passed this place a dozen times since the accident but had never stopped, never allowed himself to contemplate the event. The knock on the door, the inconceivable announcement of their death—he had considered and reconsidered those things, but never this place. The mythology but never the fact. He reminded himself that the tumbling of their vehicle down this embankment had happened on a rainy day, that the car had crushed itself against the rocks, the ambulance had arrived and departed, the wreckage had been lifted by crane and towed away, night fell, the clouds parted, stars wheeled overhead, the sun rose. Two people died; but their dying was an event among all the other events of their lives, no more or less significant than marriage, childbirth, ambition, disappointment, love. Maybe Loreen was right. Time to take this bone of bereavement and inter it with all the other bones. Not bury it but put it in its place, in the vault of time, the irretrievable past, where memory lived.

  He climbed into the car and drove back toward Belltower.

  To the hollow central mystery of his life now: Joyce.

  He found her on the Post Road, hiking to the little grocery up by the highway.

  He stopped the car and opened the passenger door for her. She climbed inside.

  By Tom's calculation she had turned fifty in February of this year. She'd gained some weight, gained some lines, gained some gray. She wore a pair of faded jeans a little too tight around her thighs; a plain yellow sweatshirt; sneakers for the long hike up the road. The marks of time, Tom thought. Her voice was throaty and pitched lower than he remembered it; maybe time or maybe some hard living had done that. Her eyes suggested the latter.

  She looked at him cautiously. "I wasn't sure you'd be back."

  "Neither was I."

  "Still planning on leaving town?"

  He nodded.

  "I was hoping we could talk." "We can talk," Tom said.

  "You haven't been around much. Well, hell. It must be a shock, seeing me like this."

  It was true, but it sounded terrible. He told her she looked fine. She said, "I look my age, for better or worse. Tom, I lived those twenty-seven years. I know what to expect when I look in the mirror. You woke up expecting something else."

  "You left," he said. "Left before I had a chance to say goodbye."

  "I left as soon as I knew you'd be all right. You want to know how it went?" She settled into the upholstery and stared into the blue September sky. "I left because I didn't trust the connection between us. I left because I didn't want to be a freak of nature, here—or make you into one, there. I left because I was scared and I wanted to go home.

  "I left because Ben told me the tunnel would be fixed and the choice I made would have to be the final choice. So— back to Manhattan, back to 1962. You always think you can start again, but it turns out you can't. Lawrence was dead. That changed things. And I'd been here, I'd had a look at the future. Even just a tiny look, it leaves you different. For instance, you remember Jerry Soderman? Wrote books nobody would publish? He did okay as a trade editor, actually got into print in the seventies—literary novels hardly anybody read, but he was real proud of them. Couple of months after I got back, Jerry tells me he's gay, he might as well be frank about it. Fine, but the only thought I had was, Hey, Jerry, come 1976 or so you better be careful what you do. I actually phoned him around then, hadn't talked to him for years. I said, Jerry, there's a disease going around, here's how to protect yourself. He said no there's not and how would you know? Anyhow . . . Jerry died a couple of years back." I m sorry, Tom said.

  "It's not your fault, not his fault, not my fault. The point is, I couldn't leave behind what happened with you and me and this place. I tried! I really did. I tried all the good ways of forgetting. And I lived a life. I was married for five years. Nice guy, bad marriage. I did some professional backup vocals, but that was a bad time ... I drank for a while, which kind of screwed up my voice. And, you know, I marched for civil rights and I marched against the war and I marched for clean air. When things leveled out I took a secretarial job at a law firm downtown. Nine to five, steady paycheck, annual vacation, and I'd be there today if I hadn't quit and bought a ticket west. It's amazing: for the longest time I promised myself I wouldn't do it. What was done here was finished. I'd left; I'd made my decision. But I remembered the date on the newspaper I read in your back yard. Every August, I marked the anniversary, if you can call it that. Then, for the last couple of years, I started watching calendars the way you might watch a clock. Watching that date crawl closer. On New Year's Eve last winter I sat home by myself, one lonely lady approaching the half-century mark. I broke open a bottle of champagne and
at midnight I said fuck it, I'm going.

  "Bought plane tickets six months in advance. Gave notice. I don't know what I hoped or expected to find, but I wanted it real bad. Well, the flight was delayed. I missed a connection at O'Hare and had to wait overnight in the airport. When I got to Seattle it was already morning; the newspaper, the one I remembered, was sitting in the boxes staring at me. I rented a car and drove too fast down the coast. Blew out a tire and took a long time changing it. Then I got to Belltower and couldn't find the house. Couldn't remember the name of the road. I guess I thought there'd be signs posted: this way to the time machine.' I asked at a couple of gas stations, looked at a map until I thought my eyes would pop out of my head. Finally I stopped at a little all-night restaurant for coffee and when the waitress came I asked her if she knew anybody named Tom Winter or Cathy Simmons and she said no but there was a Peggy Simmons out along the Post Road and didn't she have a granddaughter named Cathy? I gave her a twenty and came roaring out here. Caught the bad guy in my headlights and I couldn't help myself, Tom: after all those years he still looked like death. I remembered Lawrence lying in a cheap coffin in some funeral parlor in Brooklyn, where his parents lived, and it still hurt, all these years later. So I turned the wheel. I was crying when I hit him." "Saved my life," Tom said.

  "Saved your life and drove on down the road and checked into a hotel room and sat on the bed shaking until noon the next day. By which time my younger self had gone home."

  "Then you came back," Tom said.

  "Scared hell out of Doug and Cathy. Ben didn't seem too surprised, though."

  "You still wanted something."

  "I don't know what I wanted. I think I wanted to look at you. Just look. Does that make any sense? For most of thirty years I'd been thinking about you. What we were. What we might have been. Whether I should love you or hate you for all this."

  He heard the weariness in her voice. "Any conclusions?" "No conclusions. Just memory in the flesh. I'm sorry if I freaked you out."