The Best Time Travel Stories of the 20th Century (52 page)

At that point I flew to New York, and went to John Kenyon Martindale’s house. I met with Shirley—briefly. She did not recognize me, and I did not try to identify myself. I gave my name as Owen Davies. In John’s absence, I said, I was interested in contacting some of the mathematician friends that he had told me I would like to meet. Could she remember the names of any of them, so I could call them even before John came back?

She looked bored, but she came back with a telephone book and produced three names.

One was in San Francisco, one was in Boston, and the third was here in New York, at the Courant Institute.

He was in his middle twenties, a fit-looking curly-haired man with bright blue eyes and a big smile. The thing that astonished him about my visit, I think, was not the subject matter. It was the fact that I made the visit. He found it astonishing that a spavined antique like me would come to his office to ask about this sort of topic in theoretical physics.

“What you are suggesting is not just
permitted
in today’s view of space and time, Mr. Davies,” he said. “It’s absolutely
required.
You can’t do something to
space
—such as making an instantaneous link between two places, as you have been suggesting—

without at the same time having profound effects on
time.
Space and time are really a single entity. Distances and elapsed times are intimately related, like two sides of the same coin.”

“And the line-vortex generator?” I said. I had told him far less about this, mainly because all I knew of it had been told to us by John Martindale.

“Well, if the generator in some sense approximated an infinitely long, rapidly rotating cylinder, then yes. General relativity insists that very peculiar things would happen there. There could be global causality violations—’before’ and ‘after’ getting confused, cause and effect becoming mixed up, that sort of thing. God knows what time and space look like near the line singularity itself. But don’t misunderstand me. Before any of these things could happen, you would have to be dealing with a huge system, something many times as massive as the sun.”

I resisted the urge to tell him he was wrong. Apparently he did not accept John Martindale’s unshakable confidence in the idea that with better technology came increase in capability
and
decrease in size. I stood up and leaned on my cane. My left hip was a little dodgy and became tired if I walked too far. “You’ve been very helpful.”

“Not at all.” He stood up, too, and said, “Actually, I’m going to be giving a lecture at the institute on these subjects in a couple of weeks. If you’d like to come...”

I noted down the time and place, but I knew I would not be there. It was three months to the day since John Martindale, Helga, and I had climbed the rock face and walked behind the waterfall. Time—my time—was short. I had to head south again.

The flight to Argentina was uneventful. Comodoro Rivadavia was the same as always. Now I am sitting in Alberto McShane’s bar, drinking one last beer (all that my digestion today will permit) and waiting for the pilot. McShane did not recognize me, but the armadillo did. It trundled to my table, and sat looking up at me.
Where’s my
friend John Martindale,
it was saying.

Where indeed? I will tell you soon. The plane is ready. We are going to Trapalanda.

It will take all my strength, but I think I can do it. I have added equipment that will help me to cross that icy field of boulders and ascend the rock face. It is September. The weather will be warmer, and the going easier. If I close my eyes I can see the portal now, behind the waterfall, its black depths and shimmering blue streaks rushing away toward the vanishing point.

Thirty-five years. That is what the portal owes me. It sucked them out of my body as I struggled back against the gravity gradient. Maybe it is impossible to get them back. I don’t know. My young mathematician friend insisted that time is infinitely fluid, with no more constraints on movement through it than there are on travel through space. I don’t know, but I want my thirty-five years. If I die in the attempt, I will be losing little.

I am terrified of that open gate, with its alien twisting of the world’s geometry. I am more afraid of it than I have ever been of anything. Last time I failed, and I could not go through it. But I will go through it now.

This time I have something more than Martindale’s scientific curiosity to drive me on.

It is not thoughts of danger or death that fill my mind as I sit here. I have that final image of Helga, reaching out and taking John Martindale’s hand in hers. Reaching out, to grasp his hand, voluntarily. I love Helga, I am sure of that, but I cannot make sense of my other emotions; fear, jealousy, resentment, hope, excitement. She was
touching
him.

Did she do it because she wanted to go through the portal, wanted it so much that every fear was insignificant? Or had she, after thirty years, finally found someone whom she could touch without cringing and loathing? 

The pilot has arrived. My glass is empty. Tomorrow I will know.

NANCY KRESS

Nancy Kress is the author of twenty-one books: thirteen novels of science fiction or
fantasy, one young-adult novel, two thrillers, three story collections, and two books on
writing. Her books include
Probability Space
—the conclusion of a trilogy that began
with
Probability Moon
and
Probability Sun
—and
Crossfire
. The trilogy concerns
quantum physics, a space war, and the nature of reality.
Crossfire,
set in a different
universe, explores various ways humanity might coexist with aliens, even though
mankind never understands either them or itself very well. Her latest novel,
Nothing Human,
is set on a bleak future earth, where children have to be genetically engineered
and the arrival of an alien race brings with it the frightening thought that humanity’s
next generation may not be human at all.

Her short fiction has won three Nebulas: in 1985 for “Out of All Them Bright Stars,”

in 1991 for the novella version of “Beggars in Spain” (which also won a Hugo), and in
1998 for “The Flowers of Aulit Prison.” Her work has been translated into Swedish,
French, Italian, German, Spanish, Portuguese, Polish, Croatian, Lithuanian, Romanian,
Japanese, and Russian. She is also the monthly Fiction columnist for
Writer’s Digest
magazine, and is a regular teacher at the Science Fiction and Fantasy Clarion Writers’

Workshop.

In “The Price of Oranges,” the epitome of a humanist science-fiction story, time
travel isn’t through hundreds or thousands of years—it begins and ends in the twentieth
century. And yet it is easy to understand the poor traveler’s bewilderment at the events
that have happened in the time that is skipped during his travels, events that are yet to
come in his own time, which may be the most fearful idea of all.

by Nancy Kress

“I’m worried about my granddaughter,” Harry Kramer said, passing half of his sandwich to Manny Feldman. Manny took it eagerly. The sandwich was huge, thick slices of beef and horseradish between fresh slabs of crusty bread. Pigeons watched the park bench hopefully.

“Jackie. The granddaughter who writes books,” Manny said. Harry watched to see that Manny ate. You couldn’t trust Manny to eat enough; he stayed too skinny. At least in Harry’s opinion. Manny, Jackie—the world, Harry sometimes thought, had all grown too skinny when he somehow hadn’t been looking. Skimpy. Stretch-feeling. Harry nodded to see horseradish spurt in a satisfying stream down Manny’s scraggly beard.

“Jackie. Yes,” Harry said.

“So what’s wrong with her? She’s sick?” Manny eyed Harry’s strudel, cherry with real yeast bread. Harry passed it to him. “Harry, the whole thing? I couldn’t.”

“Take it, take it, I don’t want it. You should eat. No, she’s not sick. She’s miserable.”

When Manny, his mouth full of strudel, didn’t answer, Harry put a hand on Manny’s arm.
“Miserable.”

Manny swallowed hastily. “How do you know? You saw her this week?”

“No. Next Tuesday. She’s bringing me a book by a friend of hers. I know from this.”

He drew a magazine from an inner pocket of his coat. The coat was thick tweed, almost new, with wooden buttons. On the cover of the glossy magazine a woman smiled contemptuously. A woman with hollow, starved-looking cheeks who obviously didn’t get enough to eat either.

“That’s not a book,” Manny pointed out.

“So she writes stories, too. Listen to this. Just listen. ‘I stood in my backyard, surrounded by the false bright toxin-fed green, and realized that the earth was dead.

What else could it be, since we humans swarmed upon it like maggots on carrion, growing our hectic gleaming molds, leaving our slime trails across the senseless surface?’ Does that sound like a happy woman?”

“Hoo boy,” Manny said.

“It’s all like that. ‘Don’t read my things, Popsy,’ she says. ‘You’re not in the audience for my things.’ Then she smiles without ever once showing her teeth.” Harry flung both arms wide. “Who else should be in the audience but her own grandfather?”

Manny swallowed the last of the strudel. Pigeons fluttered angrily. “She never shows her teeth when she smiles? Never?” 

“Never.”

“Hoo boy,” Manny said. “Did you want all of that orange?”

“No, I brought it for you, to take home. But did you finish that whole half a sandwich already?”

“I thought I’d take it home,” Manny said humbly. He showed Harry the tip of the sandwich, wrapped in the thick brown butcher paper, protruding from the pocket of his old coat.

Harry nodded approvingly. “Good, good. Take the orange, too. I brought it for you.”

Manny took the orange. Three teenagers carrying huge shrieking radios sauntered past. Manny started to put his hands over his ears, received a look of dangerous contempt from the teenager with green hair, and put his hands on his lap. The kid tossed an empty beer bottle onto the pavement before their feet. It shattered. Harry scowled fiercely but Manny stared straight ahead. When the cacophony had passed, Manny said,

“Thank you for the orange. Fruit, it costs so much this time of year.”

Harry still scowled. “Not in 1937.”

“Don’t start that again, Harry.”

Harry said sadly, “Why won’t you ever believe me? Could I afford to bring all this food if I got it at 1988 prices? Could I afford this coat? Have you seen buttons like this in 1988, on a new coat? Have you seen sandwiches wrapped in that kind of paper since we were young? Have you? Why won’t you believe me?”

Manny slowly peeled his orange. The rind was pale, and the orange had seeds.

“Harry. Don’t start.”

“But why won’t you just come to my room and
see
?”

Manny sectioned the orange. “Your room. A cheap furnished room in a Social Security hotel. Why should I go? I know what will be there. What will be there is the same thing in my room. A bed, a chair, a table, a hot plate, some cans of food. Better I should meet you here in the park, get at least a little fresh air.” He looked at Harry meekly, the orange clutched in one hand. “Don’t misunderstand. It’s not from a lack of friendship I say this. You’re good to me, you’re the best friend I have. You bring me things from a great deli, you talk to me, you share with me the family I don’t have. It’s enough, Harry. It’s
more
than enough. I don’t need to see where you live like I live.” 

Harry gave it up. There were moods, times, when it was just impossible to budge Manny. He dug in, and in he stayed. “Eat your orange.”

“It’s a good orange. So tell me more about Jackie.”

“Jackie.” Harry shook his head. Two kids on bikes tore along the path. One of them swerved towards Manny and snatched the orange from his hand. “Aw riggghhhtttt!”

Harry scowled after the child. It had been a girl. Manny just wiped the orange juice off his fingers onto the knee of his pants. “Is everything she writes so depressing?”

“Everything,” Harry said. “Listen to this one.” He drew out another magazine, smaller, bound in rough paper with a stylized linen drawing of a woman’s private parts on the cover. On the cover! Harry held the magazine with one palm spread wide over the drawing, which made it difficult to keep the pages open while he read. “ ‘She looked at her mother in the only way possible: with contempt, contempt for all the betrayals and compromises that had been her mother’s life, for the sad soft lines of defeat around her mother’s mouth, for the bright artificial dress too young for her wasted years, for even the leather handbag, Gucci of course, filled with blood money for having sold her life to a man who had long since ceased to want it.’ ”

“Hoo boy,” Manny said. “About a
mother
she wrote that?”

“About everybody. All the time.”

“And where
is
Barbara?”

“Reno again. Another divorce.” How many had that been? After two, did anybody count? Harry didn’t count. He imagined Barbara’s life as a large roulette wheel like the ones on TV, little silver men bouncing in and out of red and black pockets. Why didn’t she get dizzy?

Manny said slowly, “I always thought there was a lot of love in her.”

“A lot of that she’s got,” Harry said dryly.

“Not Barbara—Jackie. A lot of... I don’t know. Sweetness. Under the way she is.”

“The way she is,” Harry said gloomily. “Prickly. A cactus. But you’re right, Manny, I know what you mean. She just needs someone to soften her up. Love her back, maybe.

Although
I
love her.”

The two old men looked at each other. Manny said, “Harry....” 

“I know, I know. I’m only a grandfather, my love doesn’t count, I’m just there. Like air. ‘You’re wonderful, Popsy,’ she says, and still no teeth when she smiles. But you know, Manny—you are right!” Harry jumped up from the bench. “You are! What she needs is a young man to love her!”

Manny looked alarmed. “I didn’t say—”