Time and Again (48 page)

"Well, maybe they should be asked, too."

He genuinely didn't understand. "What do you mean?"

"Maybe it's wrong to force a man to join an army and kill other people against his own wishes."

They just looked at me. What I was saying was really incomprehensible to them, and I realized I'd been arguing the wrong point. I said, "Colonel, Rube, Mr. Fessenden and Professor Messinger — listen. Would it be —
right
to alter past events? I mean who
knows
it's a good thing to do? Who can be
sure
of it, I mean."

"Why, dammit,
we
can be sure!" Esterhazy said. "Do you deny that it would be one hell of a lot better if Cuba were long since a U.S. possession instead of a Communist country ninety miles from our mainland?"

I shrugged uneasily. "No, it isn't that I deny it. The point is it doesn't matter what I think; because I might be wrong. Who can be sure Cuba will ever do us any harm? It's awfully tiny, and hasn't hurt us yet."

"They tried, didn't they?" Esterhazy very nearly shouted.

Gently, trying to calm things down, Fessenden said, "The missile crisis," as though politely reminding me of something that might have slipped my mind.

I said, "Well, yeah. Though according to Robert Kennedy it was the military who tried to make JFK think the danger was greater than perhaps it might have been. But I don't want to bog down into a debate about Cuba. Whatever the truth there, I just don't think
anyone
has the godlike wisdom to actually rearrange the present by altering the past. It's going too far! My God, look what has already happened. The scientists make fantastic new discoveries which are immediately taken over by a group, almost a
breed
of men, who always know what's best for the rest of us. Science learns how to split the atom, and they immediately
know
that the best thing to do with that new knowledge is blow up Hiroshima!"

"Don't you think it was?" Esterhazy said coldly. "Or should we have allowed hundreds of thousands of American troops to die on the shores of Japan?"

"I don't know!
Who
does
know? I think the most enormous kinds of decisions are being made by people who
don't know either.
Only in their own opinions do they know. They
know
it's right and necessary to poison the atmosphere with radioactivity. They
know
we should use our scientists' genetic discoveries to breed new and terrible kinds of disease. And that they don't even have to ask the consent of the ninety-nine and nine-tenths percent of the rest of us. And now that still another scientist, Dr. Danziger, has made
this
enormous discovery, he sits at home, squeezed out, unfit to decide what should be done with it. But you aren't. Once again you
know
that the best thing to do with his discovery is eliminate Castro Cuba. Well,
how
do you know? Who's given this new little breed of men who've polluted the entire environment and who may actually wipe out the human race — who
gave
them the power of God to control the lives and futures of the rest of us? Most of them we never heard of, and we sure as hell didn't elect them!" I sat looking from one to the other, then lowered my voice. "Even if you're right about Cuba, as you may be, look what it leads to. It leads directly to bigger and bigger changes, with a handful of military minds rewriting the past, present, and future according to their
ideas
of what's best for the rest of the entire human race. No, sir, gentlemen; I refuse."

Esterhazy's nostrils were so rigidly flared in rage that the edges were white. His teeth clenched, he drew a long sighing breath, a prolonged inhalation through his nostrils, filling his lungs to explode at me. Rube saw it and before Esterhazy could speak he said, "Let me!" and I heard the ring of command, and understood in astonishment that it was an order — from Major Prien to Colonel Esterhazy — and I knew I hadn't begun to understand the real relationships here in the project. Esterhazy forced his lips tight together, obeying. Rube turned to me and spoke in a flat calm voice; not catering to me one bit, not out to mollify me at all, but simply explaining the facts, take it or leave it.

He said, "We'll be sorry if you refuse; you're the best operative we have. Our recruiting has continued without letup, and it hasn't become one bit easier to find qualified people. But still… they
can
be found, and they have been. Furthermore, other portions of the project have continued; yours hasn't been the only one. The man who spent a few seconds in medieval Paris has done it again. Four days ago we reached Denver, 1901, for twenty minutes. We failed in North Dakota, failed at Vimy Ridge, failed in Montana. And we've had important trouble with the Winfield, Vermont, project. The man there succeeded. He made the transition twice, and never returned the second time. We don't know why; there is an obvious guess, but we don't know. Now, what am I driving at? I tell you frankly and honestly that we have serious difficulties and problems. I tell you that you may be the best operative by far that we will ever find. I tell you that we hope very much that you will reconsider. But I also tell you that
if you do not —
" He stopped, and sat looking at me, no smile at all in his eyes; then he finished the sentence, quietly and flatly: " — we'll simply get somebody else. And if the experiment cannot be made in New York City, 1882, with Jacob Pickering, then another will be made at some other place, some other time, and with somebody else. I'm not interested in arguing with you. Just understand this: It is
going
to be done."

Rube sat for several seconds, not moving, staring directly into my eyes. Then he allowed just a ghost of the old smile to appear. He said, "I agree with — not all, and not the most important part — but with a very great deal of what you said, and what you think. What you feel does you credit. But, Si, I can only repeat: With every possible precaution we are nevertheless going to do it. Now, take your time; sit and think; then tell us what you want to do. Whatever it is, it will be accepted instantly with no further argument or discussion."

I sat there for several very long slow minutes; and I thought more intensely, I suppose, than I'd ever done before. Once Messinger started to speak, but Colonel Esterhazy's hand shot up, and he said, "Hold it!" I'd looked up, and Esterhazy sat back in his chair, deliberately relaxing, taking his time, to let me know I had all the time I wanted. Silence again, for a long time, then presently I looked up at them.

I said, "All right; my conscience is clear. I did my best. I did my very utmost to persuade you of what I still feel is right. And if any record is to be made of these proceedings, I'd like the record to show that I did. But now — all right, Rube; there's no answer to what you say. If this is going to be done no matter what I think, feel, or do, then I want to be in on it. I started this, and rather than someone else finishing it, I want to. Because there's one thing I can do better than anyone else, and I ask now that I be allowed to. I'll do what you want because I know it, or something else like it, is going to be done anyway, but I ask you to let me be as easy as I possibly can on Jake Pickering. I came into his life unasked, and I've done him harm, though I think it was justified. But I don't care to destroy him. Let me do just enough so that he is discredited only in the immediate circle that matters to you. It will accomplish what you want just as much as wrecking the man completely. His future is grim enough; let's let him keep something, for crysake. If you'll agree to that, I'll do it. But then I resign."

Everyone was pleased, Rube and Esterhazy agreeing immediately. We were all standing then, everyone shaking my hand, assuring me I wouldn't be sorry, that they weren't foolhardy, that they'd had to convince some very sober, responsible, and extremely important people in Washington that every safeguard would be taken. They'd be phoning Washington again now; when could I leave? I said I had to have a little time to take care of my own affairs; how about a week? And Rube said a week was fine. I asked about Oscar Rossoff then, and Martin Lastvogel; I liked them, and would have liked to see them. But Esterhazy told me Oscar had left the project; he had his own practice to take care of, and the time he'd agreed to stay was up, unfortunately. It was possible, of course, even probable, but I didn't believe it; the thought rose up in my mind, though I knew I might be wrong, that Oscar had quit in protest against the course the project was taking. Martin was gone, too: back to teaching.

Standing in the office, all of us chattering away, I'd managed a smile by now, and I made what amounted to a miniature three-sentence speech, I suppose. I said, "Well. We're all set now. I did my best to change your minds; I think I had to do that. But I have to admit… since you're going on with or without me, I'd one hell of a lot rather have it be with me." And they all grinned, and actually applauded with a quiet token clap or two.

I'm not going to say too much about my visit with Kate. It was awkward, for one thing; she was waiting for a delivery and couldn't leave the shop, so we had to talk there for quite a while, occasionally interrupted when a customer would come in. Then I'd have to wander around the shop, waiting for the customer to get the hell out and trying not to show it.

I told Kate about the "trip," of course — the project word for it that I'd gotten into the habit of using, too. And of course she was fascinated. The delivery arrived during the last of it, and Kate had to check through four cartons of carefully wrapped antique glassware, verifying the contents and condition before she signed for it. And then, finally — it wasn't closing time but late enough — Kate locked up, and we went upstairs.

First thing she did upstairs after starting some coffee was to go to her bedroom and bring out her red-cardboard accordion folder. And while I finished my story we looked once more at the long blue envelope and the note inside it. When finally I finished talking, Kate read the last sentence aloud: "
'So, with this wretched souvenir of that Event before me, I now end the life which should have ended then.' "
She looked up at me and nodded; the questions she'd wondered about most of her life were answered now. She said, "I've pictured it so often: The shot sounded, and the woman who lived as his wife came running."

"To the body
with Julia
tattooed across the chest."

She nodded. "Yes. So she washed, dressed and laid him out alone: No one else was to see that tattoo."

I had the blue envelope in my hand, and I gave it a last look, then handed it back to Kate, and took the little snapshot she held. Again I stared down at the clear sharp image of the tombstone under which Mrs. Andrew Carmody had finally laid Jake. No name on it; she'd live with him as her husband but she wouldn't bury him that way. There on the face of the stone outside Gillis, Montana, were the dots, the time-eroded pits forming a nine-pointed star in a circle. Only now it no longer looked like a tombstone. Rounded at the top, the sides straight, the short little stone looked to me as it had looked to the woman who ordered it made: It was Jake Pickering's boot heel in stone, the final touch to the melodrama of his nineteenth-century life.

Kate put her folder away, she poured our coffee, we sat sipping it, talking, waiting till what had to be said was spoken. And presently I said it, clumsily. "It hasn't worked out for us, has it, Kate?"

She said, "No. I don't know why. Do you?"

I shook my head. "I thought it was going to; I was sure of that. But it reached the point when it ought to have…"

She didn't want to go on about it. "And it didn't. Well. It happens, Si. What else can be said? It's not a matter of fault; it can't be forced. Don't blame yourself."

We talked much more, of course; quite a lot, surprisingly, even laughing at things that had happened in the past. And when I left, finally, I think we felt pretty good about each other, and I knew that when some time had passed, our new relationship an old fact, I'd be pleased if I saw Katie again someday.

On the walk home, the doubts struck, and everything turned bleak. Was it possible for me to go back and live out my life with Julia? Could I do that, knowing the future? Could I live in nineteenth-century New York and look at infants in their carriages, knowing what lay ahead for them? It was a vanished world, actually, nearly every soul in it long since dead: Could I ever really join it?

During the next week I let the question lie in the back of my mind, not trying to force an answer. Instead, I finished up several sketches and began this account, working steadily and rapidly in longhand since I had no typewriter, stopping for meals and taking a walk now and then, but not doing much else. In an oblique way it was helping me think what to do, my mind on what mattered yet not directly. Occasionally I thought about Rube Prien, and was amused; if he knew what I was doing he'd want every page stamped CLASSIFIED — or, better yet, burned. Which is what I'd have to do with it unless I joined Julia and took it with me. I have a friend, a writer, and I'm very certain he is the only man ever to look through a great decaying stack of ancient religious pamphlets in the rare-book section of the New York Public Library. If I were to join Julia, I could finish this, I thought, and then whenever it was — 1911? — that the library was built, I could place this where I knew he'd come onto it someday. Sitting at my kitchen table working, I smiled, liking the idea; it gave the feeling, at least, of a little further purpose to the doing of it. But the real purpose wasn't achieved; the question in my mind didn't answer itself.

Rube phoned each day, and dropped in on me twice during that week. He was careful to phone first to avoid any appearance of checking up on me, which was just what he was doing, of course. Each time we talked I took the trouble to let him know I hadn't changed my mind.

On the last day I phoned Dr. Danziger. He was in the book, and he answered on the fifth ring, just as I was thinking of hanging up, my conscience clear. As we spoke I wished I'd hung up one ring sooner because, in the mysterious way that this sometimes happens, he'd suddenly turned old, I realized, and I was relieved not to see him. His voice had a quaver now, he was old and beaten, and it struck me with the force of certain knowledge that he was living the very last of his life. I told him what Esterhazy and Rube had told me — he insisted; and I thought he deserved that knowledge if he wanted it. He hadn't known, nobody had told him. And he was so disturbed, his voice trembling almost to breaking, that I was horribly afraid he might actually cry but of course he did not. I should have known he wouldn't; he was old suddenly and very likely dying, but this wasn't a man to let himself change that much. He was angry. "Stop them!" he cried, his voice tiny in the receiver at my car.
"You've got to stop them!
Promise it, Si! Say you'll stop them!" And of course I said yes, I certainly would, listening to my own voice, hoping it sounded as though I really meant it.