The Time Traveler's Almanac (181 page)

And then, most horrible of all, there came a change in these unseen conditions. Anthony was silent now, and from looking straight and fixedly in front of him, he began to glance sideways to where I sat and back again, and with that I felt that the unseen presence had turned its attention from him to me. And now, too, gradually and by awful degrees I began to see …

There came an outline of shadow across the chimney-piece and the panels above it. It took shape: it fashioned itself into the outline of a man. Within the shape of the shadow details began to form themselves, and I saw wavering in the air, like something concealed by haze, the semblance of a face, stricken and tragic, and burdened with such a weight of woe as no human face had ever worn. Next, the shoulders outlined themselves, and a stain livid and red spread out below them, and suddenly the vision leaped into clearness. There he stood, the chest crushed in and drowned in the red stain, from which broken ribs, like the bones of a wrecked ship, protruded. The mournful, terrible eyes were fixed on me, and it was from them, so I knew, that the bitter wind proceeded …

Then, quick as the switching off of a lamp, the spectre vanished, and the bitter wind was still, and opposite to me stood Anthony, in a quiet, bright-lit room. There was no sense of an unseen presence any more; he and I were then alone, with an interrupted conversation still dangling between us in the warm air. I came round to that, as one comes round after an anaesthetic. It all swam into sight again, unreal at first, and gradually assuming the texture of actuality.

“You were talking to somebody, not to me,” I said. “Who was it? What was it?”

He passed the back of his hand over his forehead, which glistened in the light.

“A soul in hell,” he said.

Now it is hard ever to recall mere physical sensations, when they have passed. If you have been cold and are warmed, it is difficult to remember what cold was like: if you have been hot and have got cool, it is difficult to realise what the oppression of heat really meant. Just so, with the passing of that presence, I found myself unable to recapture the sense of the terror with which, a few moments ago only, it had invaded and inspired me.

“A soul in hell?” I said. “What are you talking about?”

He moved about the room for a minute or so, and then came and sat on the arm of my chair.

“I don’t know what you saw,” he said, “or what you felt, but there has never in all my life happened to me anything more real than what these last few minutes have brought. I have talked to a soul in the hell of remorse, which is the only possible hell. He knew, from what happened last night, that he could perhaps establish communication through me with the world he had quitted, and he sought me and found me. I am charged with a mission to a woman I have never seen, a message from the contrite … You can guess who it is…”

He got up with a sudden briskness.

“Let’s verify it anyhow,” he said. “He gave me the street and the number. Ah, there’s the telephone book! Would it be a coincidence merely if I found that at No. 20 in Chasemore Street, South Kensington, there lived a Lady Payle?”

He turned over the leaves of the bulky volume.

“Yes, that’s right,” he said.

BAD TIMING

Molly Brown

Molly Brown has been an armed guard and a stand-up comedienne, in addition to her writing exploits. “Bad Timing” was Brown’s first published story. It won the BSFA (British Science Fiction Association) Award for best short story of 1991, and was in feature film development for several years with Hollywood’s Bel Air Entertainment. It was first published in
Interzone.

“Time travel is an inexact science. And its study is fraught with paradoxes.” Samuel Colson, b. 2301 d. 2197.

Alan rushed through the archway without even glancing at the inscription across the top. It was Monday morning and he was late again. He often thought about the idea that time was a point in space, and he didn’t like it. That meant that at this particular point in space it was always Monday morning and he was always late for a job he hated. And it always had been. And it always would be. Unless somebody tampered with it, which was strictly forbidden.

“Oh my Holy Matrix,” Joe Twofingers exclaimed as Alan raced past him to register his palmprint before losing an extra thirty minutes pay. “You wouldn’t believe what I found in the fiction section!”

Alan slapped down his hand. The recorder’s metallic voice responded with, “Employee number 057, Archives Department, Alan Strong. Thirty minutes and seven point two seconds late. One hour’s credit deducted.”

Alan shrugged and turned back towards Joe. “Since I’m not getting paid, I guess I’ll put my feet up and have a cup of liquid caffeine. So tell me what you found.”

“Well, I was tidying up the files – fiction section is a mess as you know – and I came across this magazine. And I thought, ‘what’s
this
doing here?’ It’s something from the twentieth century called
Woman’s Secrets,
and it’s all knitting patterns, recipes, and gooey little romance stories: ‘He grabbed her roughly, bruising her soft pale skin, and pulled her to his rock hard chest’ and so on. I figured it was in there by mistake and nearly threw it out. But then I saw this story called ‘The Love That Conquered Time’ and I realised that must be what they’re keeping it for. So I had a look at it, and it was…” He made a face and stuck a finger down his throat. “But I really think you ought to read it.”

“Why?”

“Because you’re in it.”

“You’re a funny guy, Joe. You almost had me going for a minute.”

“I’m serious! Have a look at the drebbing thing. It’s by some woman called Cecily Walker, it’s in that funny old vernacular they used to use, and it’s positively dire. But the guy in the story is definitely you.”

Alan didn’t believe him for a minute. Joe was a joker, and always had been. Alan would never forget the time Joe laced his drink with a combination aphrodisiac-hallucinogen at a party and he’d made a total fool of himself with the section leader’s overcoat. He closed his eyes and shuddered as Joe handed him the magazine.

Like all the early relics made of paper, the magazine had been dipped in preservative and the individual pages coated with a clear protective covering which gave them a horrible chemical smell and a tendency to stick together. After a little difficulty, Alan found the page he wanted. He rolled his eyes at the painted illustration of a couple locked in a passionate but chaste embrace, and dutifully began to read.

It was all about a beautiful but lonely and unfulfilled woman who still lives in the house where she was born. One day there is a knock at the door, and she opens it to a mysterious stranger: tall, handsome, and extremely charismatic.

Alan chuckled to himself.

A few paragraphs later, over a candle-lit dinner, the man tells the woman that he comes from the future, where time travel has become a reality, and he works at the Colson Time Studies Institute in the Department of Archives.

Alan stopped laughing.

The man tells her that only certain people are allowed to time travel, and they are not allowed to interfere in any way, only observe. He confesses that he is not a qualified traveller – he broke into the lab one night and stole a machine. The woman asks him why and he tells her, “You’re the only reason, Claudia. I did it for you. I read a story that you wrote and I knew it was about me and that it was about you. I searched in the Archives and I found your picture and then I knew that I loved you and that I had always loved you and that I always would.”

“But I never wrote a story, Alan.”

“You will, Claudia. You will.”

The Alan in the story goes on to describe the Project, and the Archives, in detail. The woman asks him how people live in the twenty-fourth century, and he tells her about the gadgets in his apartment.

The hairs at the back of Alan’s neck rose at the mention of his Neuro-Pleasatron. He’d never told anybody that he’d bought one, not even Joe.

After that, there’s a lot of grabbing and pulling to his rock hard chest, melting sighs and kisses, and finally a wedding and a “happily ever after” existing at one point in space where it always has and always will.

Alan turned the magazine over and looked at the date on the cover. March 14, 1973.

He wiped the sweat off his forehead and shook himself. He looked up and saw that Joe was standing over him.

“You wouldn’t really do that, would you,” Joe said. “Because you know I’d have to stop you.”

*   *   *

Cecily Walker stood in front of her bedroom mirror and turned from right to left. She rolled the waistband over one more time, making sure both sides were even. Great; the skirt looked like a real mini. Now all she had to do was get out of the house without her mother seeing her.

She was in the record shop wondering if she really should spend her whole allowance on the new Monkees album, but she really liked Peter Tork, he was so cute, when Tommy Johnson walked in with Roger Hanley. “Hey, Cess-pit! Whaddya do, lose the bottom half of your dress?”

The boys at her school were just so creepy. She left the shop and turned down the main road, heading toward her friend Candy’s house. She never noticed the tall blonde man that stood across the street, or heard him call her name.

*   *   *

When Joe went on his lunch break, Alan turned to the wall above his desk and said, “File required: Authors, fiction, twentieth century, initial ‘W’.”

“Checking,” the wall said. “File located.”

“Biography required: Walker, Cecily.”

“Checking. Biography located. Display? Yes or no.”

“Yes.”

A section of wall the size of a small television screen lit up at eye-level, directly in front of Alan. He leaned forward and read: Walker, Cecily. b. Danville, Illinois, U.S.A. 1948 d. 2037. Published works: “The Love That Conquered Time”, March, 1973. Accuracy rating: fair.

“Any other published works?”

“Checking. None found.”

Alan looked down at the magazine in his lap.

“I don’t understand,” Claudia said, looking pleadingly into his deep blue eyes. Eyes the colour of the sea on a cloudless morning, and eyes that contained an ocean’s depth of feeling for her, and her alone. “How is it possible to travel through time?”

“I’ll try to make this simple,” he told her, pulling her close. She took a deep breath, inhaling his manly aroma, and rested her head on his shoulder with a sigh. “Imagine that the universe is like a string. And every point on that string is a moment in space and time. But instead of stretching out in a straight line, it’s all coiled and tangled and it overlaps in layers. Then all you have to do is move from point to point.”

Alan wrinkled his forehead in consternation. “File?”

“Yes. Waiting.”

“Information required: further data on Walker, Cecily. Education, family background.”

“Checking. Found. Display? Yes or…”

“Yes!”

Walker, Cecily. Education: Graduate Lincoln High, Danville, 1967. Family background: Father Walker, Matthew. Mechanic, automobile. d. 1969. Mother no data.

Alan shook his head. Minimal education, no scientific background. How could she know so much? “Information required: photographic likeness of subject. If available, display.”

He blinked and there she was, smiling at him across his desk. She was oddly dressed, in a multi-coloured tee-shirt that ended above her waist and dark blue trousers that were cut so low they exposed her navel and seemed to balloon out below her knees into giant flaps of loose-hanging material. But she had long dark hair that fell across her shoulders and down to her waist, crimson lips and the most incredible eyes he had ever seen – huge and green. She was beautiful. He looked at the caption: Walker, Cecily. Author: Fiction related to time travel theory. Photographic likeness circa 1970.

“File,” he said, “Further data required: personal details, i.e. marriage. Display.”

Walker, Cecily m. Strong, Alan.

“Date?”

No data.

“Biographical details of husband, Strong, Alan?”

None found.

“Redisplay photographic likeness. Enlarge.” He stared at the wall for several minutes. “Print,” he said.

*   *   *

Only half a block to go, the woman thought, struggling with two bags of groceries. The sun was high in the sky and the smell of Mrs. Henderson’s roses, three doors down, filled the air with a lovely perfume. But she wasn’t in the mood to appreciate it. All the sun made her feel was hot, and all the smell of flowers made her feel was ill. It had been a difficult pregnancy, but thank goodness it was nearly over now.

She wondered who the man was, standing on her front porch. He might be the new mechanic at her husband’s garage, judging by his orange cover-alls. Nice-looking, she thought, wishing that she didn’t look like there was a bowling ball underneath her dress.

“Excuse me,” the man said, reaching out to help her with her bags. “I’m looking for Cecily Walker.”

“My name’s Walker,” the woman told him. “But I don’t know any Cecily.”

“Cecily,” she repeated when the man had gone. What a pretty name.

*   *   *

Alan decided to work late that night. Joe left at the usual time and told him he’d see him tomorrow.

“Yeah, tomorrow,” Alan said.

He waited until Joe was gone, and then he took the printed photo of Cecily Walker out of his desk drawer and sat for a long time, staring at it. What did he know about this woman? Only that she’d written one published story, badly, and that she was the most gorgeous creature he had ever seen. Of course, what he was feeling was ridiculous. She’d been dead more than three hundred years.

But there were ways of getting around that.

Alan couldn’t believe what he was actually considering. It was lunacy. He’d be caught, and he’d lose his job. But then he realised that he could never have read about it if he hadn’t already done it and got away with it. He decided to have another look at the story.

It wasn’t there. Under Fiction: Paper Relics: 20th Century, sub-section Magazines, American, there was shelf after shelf full of
Amazing Stories, Astounding, Analog, Weird Tales
and
Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine,
but not one single copy of
Woman’s Secrets.