But it couldn't. It was over. We both knew it.
* * *
I'm not going back anymore.
Whatever there was between us is gone. We both know it. The bad moments
outweigh the good. There is no joy left.
Besides, she isn't there all the time anyway.
I have brought my son forward with me. I will find him a home in the
twentieth century. And I will watch over him. I will be very careful not to
accidentally excise him. He is all I have left.
It's not without regret that I do this. I miss my Diane terribly. But
something happened to us. The magic disappeared, the joy faded, and the
delight we had found in each other ceased to exist.
The last night... we made love mechanically, each seeking only our own
physical release. Somehow, my feelings had become more important to me than
hers. I wonder why?
Was it because I knew that I would never could never experience it from
her side? Perhaps. . . .
Love with Diane was . . . sad. I could see the me in her, but I could
never be that me.
And that meant that she wasn't really me. Not really. She was somebody
else.
I couldn't communicate with her. We used the same words, but our
meanings were different. (They must have been different. She wasn't me.)
I'm sorry, Diane. I wanted it to work. I did. But I couldn't reach you.
I couldn't reach you at all. So.
I'll go back to my Danny. He'll understand. He's been waiting patiently
for so long. . . .
* * *
Oh God, I feel alone.
* * *
Grow old along with me!
The best is yet to be,
The last of life, for which the first was made .
Robert Browning
Rabbi Ben Ezra, from stanza 1
* * *
It's been years since I last added anything to this journal. I wonder
how old I am now. I really have no way of telling.
Forty? Fifty? Sixty? I'm not sure. The neo-procaine treatments I've
been taking in 2101 seem to retard all physical evidence of aging. I could
still be in my late thirties. But I doubt it. I've done so much. Seen so
much.
I've been living linearly semi-linearly. Instead of bouncing
haphazardly around time, I've set up a home in 1956, and as it travels
forward through time at its stately day-to-day pace, I am traveling with it.
Oh, I'm still using the future and the past, but not as before.
Before, I was young, foolish. I was like a barbarian at the banquet. I
gulped and guzzled; I ate without tasting. I rushed through each experience
like a tourist trying to see twenty-one European cities in two weeks and
enjoying none of them.
Now, I'm a gourmet. I savor each day. I taste the robustness of life,
but not so hurriedly as to lose its delicate overtones. I've given up the
hectic seventies for the quiet fifties the fifties are as early as I dare go
without sacrificing the cultural comforts I desire. They are truly a magic
moment in time, a teeterboard suspended between the wistful past and the
soaring future.
* * *
I have not abandoned the use of the timebelt. I use it for amusement.
(The lady who cut me off on the freeway this morning. She suddenly had four
flat tires.) And justice.
The man who walked into a schoolyard and started firing his rifle. He
thought he had cleaned it, but somehow a wad of wet modeling clay had been
jammed up the barrel. The gun exploded in his face. (I like that trick, I
use it a lot. There are an awful lot of exploding guns in the world.)
I read the news every day. I don't like seeing tragedies. I don't like
plane crashes and murders and kidnappings and bizarre accidents. So, they
don't happen anymore. I go and I see and I fix.
Planes that might have crashed get delayed for odd reasons. One of my
insurance companies watchdogs the airlines, demanding fixes of things that
might not be discovered until after a plane goes down.
Murderers and kidnappers disappear. Missing children are found.
Terrorists have their bombs blow up in their faces. Rapists never mind, you
don't want to know. Serial killers never get a chance to start. Devastating
building fires don't happen without warning. People who start accidental
forest fires get caught. Famous actors do not die in car crashes. Great rock
stars don't lose their talent to drugs. Sometimes it's tricky, but I like
the challenges. I like making things better. And I never leave any evidence.
I can't fix it all, but I do my part.
The odd thing is, I don't do it because I care. I can't
care. These people aren't real to me. They're pieces on
the playing board. I just do it because it satisfies my
sense of rightness.
Because it makes me feel a little bit more like a god to be doing
something useful.
And because I want my son to have a reason to respect me.
* * *
The fifties are a great time to live. They are close enough to the
nations adventurous past to still bear the same strident idealism, yet they
also bear the shape of the developing future and the promise of the
technological wonders to come. Transistor radios are still marvelous devices
and color television is a delicious miracle, but blue skies are commonplace
and the wind blows with a freshness from the north that hints at something
wild and suggests that the city is only a temporary illusion, a mirage
glowing against a western desert.
Brave highways crisscross the state and (I thank myself again) with a
minimum of billboards. The roads are still new; they are the foundation for
the great freeways of the future. This is the threshold of that era, but it
is still too soon for them to be overburdened with traffic and ugliness.
Driving is still an adventure.
The hills around Los Angeles are still uncut and
green with the city's own special color of vegetation. The
dark trees hover, the dry grass smell permeates the cool
days. The fifties are a peaceful time, a quiet sleeping
time between two noisy bursts of years, a blue and white
time filled with sweet yellow days, innocent music, and
bright popcorn memories . . .
* * *
It is 1961 as I write this. The fifties have ended and their magic is
fading quickly. A young President has stamped a new dream on the nation and
the frenetic stamp and click of the seventies can already be heard rustling
in the distance. The years are impatient; they tumble over each other like
children, each rushing eagerly for its turn and each in turn tumbling
inexorably into the black whirlpool of forevertime lost. Well, not forever
lost, not to me.
I have watched the fading of the fifties three times now, and perhaps I
shall return again for a fourth. Perhaps . . .
* * *
Last week, in a mood of wistfulness for times lost, I went jaunting
again. I went back to the past, to the house where Diane and I lived for
such a short, short, long time.
One of the walls had collapsed and the wind blew through the rooms. A
fine layer of clean, dry dust covered everything. The pillars and drapes
stood alone on the cold plain.
My own doing, of course. I had not come back far enough, but I was
afraid if I journeyed too far back, I would see her again.
And yet I do want to see her again.
Just a little bit farther back . . .
* * *
And this time, the house was not ruined. Just abandoned. It stood
alone, empty and waiting. My footsteps echoed hollowly across the marble
floors.
Was she here? Had she been here at all?
There was no way of knowing.
I found my way to her rooms. Despite the acrid sunlight, her chambers
were cold. I opened closets at random, pulled out drawers. Many of her silks
were still here. Forgotten? Or just discarded?
A shimmering dress, ice-cream pastel and deep forest-green I pressed my
nose into the sleek shining material, seeking a long-remembered smell, a
sweetlemony fragrance with an undertone of musk. The clean smell of a woman
. . .
Her smell is there, but faint. I dropped the dress. I am touched with
incredible sadness.
And then a sound, a step
I ran for the other room, calling.
Perhaps, perhaps, just a little bit farther back.
The day after the last day I was there. So many years ago . . .
* * *
The air conditioner hums. The house is alive again.
And my Diane is beautiful, even prettier than I remembered. Her auburn
hair shimmers in the sunlight. She moves with the grace of a goddess, and
she wears even less, a filmy thing of lace and silk. I can see the sweet
pinkness of her skin.
She hasn't seen me yet. I am here in the shadows, deep within the
house. It has been too long. It hurts too much to watch.
Abruptly, puzzlement clouds her face. She comes rushing in from the
patio. "Danny? Is that you?" Eagerness. "Are you back?"
And then she saw me.
"Danny? What's happened? Are you all right? You look" and then she
realized "old."
"Diane," I blurted. "I came back because I loved
you too much to stay away anymore."
She was too startled to answer. She dropped her eyes and whispered, "I
loved you too, Danny." Then she looked at me again. "But you're not Danny
anymore. You're someone else."
"But I am Danny " I insisted.
She shook her head. "You're not the same one."
I took a step forward. I reached as if to embrace her.
She took a quick step back. "No, please, don't."
"Diane, what's the matter?"
"Danny " There were tears running down her
cheeks. "Danny, why did you stay away so long? Look
what you've done to yourself. You've gotten old. You're
not my Danny anymore. You're you're not young." She
sniffled and wiped quickly. "I came back, Dan. I couldn't
stay away either. I came back to wait for you and hope
that you'd come back too. But look at you. You waited too
long to come back."
"Diane, you loved me once. I'm still me. I'm still
Danny. I have the same memories. Remember how you cried in my arms the
last night we were together? Remember how we used to fix dinner together in
the kitchen? Remember the "
"Stop. Oh, stop. Please " And suddenly she was in my arms. Crying. "I
loved you so much. So much. But you went away. How could you how could you
stay away so long? I thought you loved me too."
"Oh, sweetheart, yes. I did. I do. I love you too much. That's why I
came back " I held her tightly to me. She was so warm.
"But why not sooner? Why did you stay so long?"
"I was stupid. Forgive me. Let me be with you, please. That's all
that's important." My hands could feel the tender silkiness of her skin. I
remembered how I used to caress her and I slid into the motions almost
automatically. Her breasts were soft. Her hips were boyish. Her skin was so
smooth
"What are you doing?" She made as if to pull away.
"Oh, baby, baby, please "
"Oh, no not now, I couldn't. Please don't make
me."
"Diane, I still love you " The youthfulness of her body . . .
"Oh, no. It's only words. You're only saying them as if they're some,
kind of magic charm to get me into bed." She backed away, wiping at her
eyes. "I'm sorry, Danny, I really did love you, but I can't anymore. You've"
she hesitated here "changed. You're someone else. You don't really care
about me anymore, do you?" She grabbed a robe and pulled it about her. "No,
don't come any closer. Just listen a moment. There's a poem. It goes, 'Grow
old along with me, the best is yet to be, the last of life for which the
first was made . . .' I had thought hoped that was how it would be for us."
Her voice caught. "But you've ruined it. It only took you a day to destroy
both of our lives."
"No." I shook my head. "It didn't take a day. It took years. Diane, I'm
sorry! Couldn't we ... ?"
But she was gone. She had fled into the bedroom.
"Diane "
And then the gentle pop! of air rushing in to fill an empty space told
me how completely she was gone. How far she-had fled.
* * *
Oh God. What have I done?
I could try again. All I need to do is go back just a little earlier. I
wouldn't make the same mistake this time.
I want my Diane. I must have my Diane.
I will have my Diane.
* * *
He's tried to talk me out of it, but I'm not going to let him stop me.
I know why he wants to keep me from going back.
He's jealous of her. Because she'll have me and he won't.
But his way is wrong. I know that now. A man should have a woman. A
real man needs a real woman.
Diane, sweet Diane. Please don't reject me again. I'm not old. I'm not.
And you're so young . . .
* * *
Oh God, why?
Am I really that old and ugly?
No. I can't be. I can't be.
Do I dare go back and try again?
* * *
And again he tries to talk me out of it.
Damn him anyway!
* * *
Somewhere there is a Dan who is getting older and older. And he's
working his way back through time, chasing Diane.
And each time Diane is that much younger and he's that much older. The
gulf between them widens.
Oh, my poor, poor Dan. But he won't listen. He just won't listen.
I'm afraid to think of where he is heading. He'll work his way back
through all the days of Diane, and every day she'll reject him. And Dan,
poor Dan, he'll experience them all. Each time she rejects him will be the
last day she'll spend in the fading past. So every day he'll go back one
more day, and every day he'll be too old for her
Until he gets back to the very first day. And then she'll be gone.
There won't be any Diane at all. Just a memory.
And, in the end, he'll be there waiting for her even before the first
Danny. Waiting patiently for her first appearance, trying to re-create his
lost love. But she won't show up. No, she'll have warned herself. Don't go
back in time looking for a variant Diane. A grizzled old ghoul waits for
you. No, she'll never come back at all. Poor Dan. Poor, poor Dan.
* * *
And yet, the one I feel sorriest for is young Dan. He'll never know
what he's missing.
Because, when he gets there, there won't be anyone there at all.
He'll never have a Diane. Ever. Old Dan will have chased them all away.
* * *
I wish I could change it all. I wish I could.
But I can't.
Dammit.
Now I know what it's like to have an indelible past
one that can't be erased and changed at will. It's frustrating. It's
maddening. And it makes me wish I had been more careful and thoughtful.
But when you can erase your mistakes in a minute, you tend to get
careless.
Until you make one you can't erase.
I feel uneasy because I think I didn't try hard enough, and yet, I
can't think of anything I didn't do. I tried everything I could do to stop
old Danny.
But it wasn't enough, and now I'm left with the results of what he's
done.
We're all left with those results.
I could find young Danny in a minute, and I could warn him to go back
to Diane right away, before it's too late, before he gets too old; but it
wouldn't do any good. All he would find would be old Danny, sitting and
waiting. Sitting and waiting.
Diane is gone. Forever. There's no way we can reach her. Old Danny has
seen to that.
And there's no other place to look for her.
Any time. Any place. Any when that Diane might
have thought to visit, there's an old Danny. Sitting and
waiting.
I'll never see my Diane again.
(Can I content myself with Danny? My Danny? I'll
have to.)
* * *
And yet, I wonder . . .
Perhaps somewhere there is an older Diane, one who has aged like me. .
. .
I wonder how I might find her.
Ah, but that way lies old Danny and madness.
It's not the answer.
* * *
There is a party at my house, the big place in 1999.
A hundred and fifty-three acres of forest, lake, and meadow. I don't
know how many me's there are. The number varies.
The party is spread out across the whole summer. Several days in April
and May, quite a few in June and July, and also some in August. I think
there may be a few in September too. Generally it starts about ten in the
morning and lasts until I don't know when. It seems as if there's always a
constant number of Dans and Dons arriving and leaving.
It's like Grand Central Terminal, with passengers arriving and
departing all the time, to and from destinations all over the world. Only,
all the passengers are all me and all the destinations are the same place,
only years removed.
The younger Dans show up in May and June. They like the swimming and
water-skiing and motorcycling. They like the company of each other.
I prefer July. Most of the younger versions have faded by then. They're
too nervous for me and they remind me too much of Diane. They're too active,
I can't keep up with them, and sometimes I think they're talking on a
different plane. I prefer the men of July; they're more my age, they're more
comfortable, and they're more moderate. We still do a lot of swimming and
riding; I remember, I used to enjoy that very much; but most of the time we
just like to take it easy.
* * *
I don't like the men of August. I've been there a few times, and
they're too sedentary. No, they're too old. They just sit around and drink.
And talk. And drink some more. Some of them look positively wasted.
Actually, itТs the men of late August I really don't like. The men of
early August aren't that bad. It's just the old ones that bother me. Some of
them are filthy. Their minds, their mouths, their bodies. They want to touch
me too much. And they call me their Danny, their little boy. (Several of
them even seem senile.)
The men of early August are all right. They make
me a little uncomfortable, but lately I've been visiting
them more and more. Partly because it seems as if the
younger men are taking over July and partly because I'm
in August enough now to compensate for the older ones.
Several of them are very nice though. Very understanding. We've had
some interesting talks. (And that surprises me too that there are still
things I can talk about with myself. I had thought I would have exhausted
all subjects of conversation long ago. Apparently not.)
In the evenings we go indoors (there's a pool inside too) and listen to
music (I have several different listening rooms) or play poker, or
billiards, or chess.
When I get tired (and when I want to sleep alone), there's a chart on
the wall indicating which days and which beds are still unused. (The chart
covers a span of several years. Well, I have to sleep somewhere . . .) I
make a mark in any space still blank and that closes that date. Then I
bounce to that point in time. (Generally I try and use those days in serial
order. I have servants in the house then and it wouldn't do to confuse
them.)
I'm still doing most of my living in the fifties, but when I'm in the
mood for a party and that's been more and more lately I know where to find
one. The poker games, for instance, are marathons. Or maybe it's only one
poker game that's been going on since the party started. Whenever I get
tired and want to quit, there's always a later me waiting for the seat.
But my endurance isn't what it used to be. I get tired too fast these
days. That's why I find the men of August so restful.
* * *
On August 13 a very strange thing happens. Has happened. Will happen.
I'd known about it for some time that is, I'd known that something
happens, because I don't attend the party linearly. I stay in a range of a
week or two and bounce around within it. There's more variety that way.
After August 13 the mood of the party is changed. Subdued. Almost
morbid. Most of me seem to know why, but they don't refer to it very often.
The last time something like this happened was just before I met Diane
when all the other versions of me had disappeared. I knew something was
about to happen, but I didn't know what until I got there.
I have that same kind of feeling now. Too many of
the older me's are acting strange. Very strange. The more
I hang around them, the more I see it.
I'm going to have to investigate August 13.
* * *
Is this it?
Three or four of the youngest Dannys are here.
They're in a quieter mood than usual though, almost grim.
A couple of us frowned at them they really weren't welcome here; they
should have stayed in their own part of the party; but most of the rest of
us tried at least to tolerate them, hoping that they would lose interest
soon and go back to their own time. "They're here to gape at us," complained
one of me.
"Well, some of us are gaping right back," snapped another.
"God," whispered a third. "Were we ever really that young?"
And then there was a pop! as another me appeared.
It was a common enough sound. Somebody was always appearing or
disappearing at any given moment. But this one was different. A hush fell
over the room. I turned and saw two of me reaching to support a third who
had suddenly appeared between them. He was pale and gray. He was half
slumped and holding his heart.
* * *
Apparently the jump-shock had been too much for
him; that sudden burst of temporal energy that jolts you sharply every
time you bounce through time. They helped him to a chair. Somebody was
already there with a glass of water, somebody who had been through this
before, I guess. And the younger Dans were murmuring among themselves; was
this what they had come to see?
"Are you all right, old fellow?" someone asked the newcomer.
He grunted. He was old. He was very old. His
hands were thin and weak. His forearms were parchment-covered bones, so
were his legs. The skin of his face hung in folds and he was mottled with
liver spots. "Aaah," he gasped. "What day is it?"
"August thirteenth."
"Thirteenth?" Slowly he pulled his features into a grimace. "Then I'm
too soon. It's the twenty-third I want. I must have made the wrong setting."
"Take it easy. Just relax."
The oldster did so. It wasn't a matter of recognizing the wisdom of
their words; he simply knew that he didn't have to hurry. A timebelt is a
very forgiving device. Besides, he was too exhausted to move.
"What were you looking for?" asked one of the younger Dans. (They
weren't me. I didn't remember ever having done this before, so they must
have been variations from another timeline.)
The fragile gray man peered at them, abruptly frowning. "No," he
croaked. "Too young. Too young. Got to talk to someone older. Those are just
just children."
Some of us shouldered the younger ones aside then. "What is it?" they
asked. (Others hung back; had they heard it before? The room seemed emptier
now. There were less than ten of me remaining. Several of us had left.)
'Too tired," he gasped. "Came to warn you, but I'm too tired to talk.
Let me rest ..."
"Hey, have a heart, you guys. Don't press him."
That was one of the quieter ones of us. I recognized him by his
business suit; he had been hanging back and just watching most of the
evening. "Take him in the bedroom and let him lie down for a while." He
shoved through and picked up the frail old man God, was he that light? and
carried him off to the downstairs bedroom. "You can talk to him later," he
promised.
Out of curiosity, I followed. I helped him put the old man to bed, then
he led me out. "You know what's going on, don't you?" I asked him.
He didn't answer, just got himself a chair and a
book, and stationed himself in front of the door. "It might
be too soon for you to worry about this," he said to me.
"Why don't you go back to your party?" He opened the
book and proceeded to ignore me.
There was nothing else to do, so I shrugged and
went back into the other room. A little later a couple of
other me's tried to see how the old man was doing, but
the business-suit-me wouldn't let them. He sat outside
the room all night.
The party was considerably dampened by this incident. Most of the Dans
faded away and the house became strangely deserted. Here and there, one or
two of me were picking up dirty glasses and empty potato-chip dishes, but
they only served to heighten the emptiness. They were like caretakers in a
mausoleum.
I bounced forward to the morning, but the bedroom was empty and the
business suit was gone too.
So I bounced back an hour. Then another. This time
he was there, still outside the door, still reading. When I
appeared, he glanced up without interest. "Hmm? Is it
that late already?" He opened his belt to check the time.
I started to ask him something, but he cut me off.
"Wait a minute." He was resetting his belt. Before I
could stop him he had tapped it twice and vanished.
I opened the bedroom door; the old man had vanished too.
My curiosity was too much. I bounced back fifteen minutes. Then fifteen
minutes more. He was sleeping quietly on the bed. His breath rasped slowly
in and out.
I felt no guilt as I woke him; he'd had more than six hours
undisturbed. I wanted to know what was so important. He came awake suddenly.
"Where am I?" he demanded.
"August fourteenth," I told him.
That seemed to satisfy him, but he frowned at me in suspicion. "What do
you want? Why'd you wake me?" "What was supposed to happen last night? "Last
night?"
"The thirteenth. You came to warn us of something. ..." I prompted.
"The thirteenth? That was a mistake. I wanted the twenty-third."
"Why? What happens on the twenty-third?"
He peered at me again. "You're too young." He pushed himself off the
bed and stood unsteadily. And tapped his belt and vanished.
Damn.
* * *
Naturally, I went straight to the twenty-third.
My old man was there, of course. A dozen times over. Wrinkled, gnarled,
and white. Their hands hovered in the air, or scrabbled across their laps
like spiders. They clawed, they plucked.
But not all of them were that old. There were one or two that even
looked familiar.
"Don?" I asked one who was wearing a faded shirt.
If I remembered correctly, he had gotten that ketchup stain on it just
a few hours ago at the poker table of the thirteenth.
He looked at me, startled. "Dan? You shouldn't be here. You're still
too young. I mean, let us take care of this for now. You go back to the
party."
"Huh?" I tried to draw him aside. "Just tell me what's going on."
"I can't," he whispered. "It wouldn't be a good idea "
Abruptly, a familiar business suit was standing before us. Was it the
same one? Probably. "I'll take over," he said to Don.
"Thanks," Don said, and fled in relief.
I looked at the other. "What's going on here?"
He looked at the clock in his timebelt. "In a few more minutes you'll
find out." He took me by the arm and led me across the room. "Stand here.
I'll stay right by you the whole time. Don't say anything. Don't do
anything. Just watch, this time around."
I shut my mouth and watched.
The air in the room was heavy. The few conversations still going on
were the merest of whispers. The supposedly silent hum of the air
conditioner was deafening. Almost all of these wrinkled faces, pale faces,
were deathly. The few tan ones stood out like spotlights. They were grim
too.
The old men, their eyes were like holes in lampshade faces, but nothing
glowed within. Their expressions were bleary. Uniform. Frightened.
And there were so many of them. More and more; the room was filling up.
This house, so often a happy place, was now a cloister house of the infirm.
The laughter of youth had shaded into the garish cackling of senility. What
had been a firm grip on life had degenerated into a plucking and desperate
claw, scratching on the edge of terror.
Who were these men why could I not accept what
I was seeing? And what drove them together here?
How old am I? (And here is the fear ) I don't know. I don't know.
Am I one of the tan faces or the pale ones? Does my skin hang in pale
folds, bleached by age? (I touch my cheek hesitantly.)
As the air pops! softly
and the body that crumples to the floor is me.
* * *
Of course.
It was the jump-shock that killed him. Will kill me.
He was old. The oldest of them all. (But not so old as to be
distinguishable from the rest. He could have been any of them. Us.)
There was silence in the room. Then a soft shad-
owed sigh, almost a sound of relief, as too many ancient
lungs released their burden of breaths held too long.
They'd been expecting this, waiting for it eagerly? the curiosity of
the morbid draws them again and again until the room is crowded with fearful
old men. Each praying that, somehow, this time it won't happen. And each
terrified that it will.
And perhaps perhaps each is most afraid that the next time he comes to
this moment, he will not be a witness, but the guest of honor himself. . . .
* * *
Two of the younger men (younger? They were older than I or were they?)
moved to the body. It was still warm. One of them clicked the belt open; the
last setting on it was 5:30, March 16, 1975. (Meaningless, of course. He
could have come from there, or it could have been a date held in storage.
There was no way of knowing.)
They took charge efficiently, as if they had done this before. Many
times before. (And in a way, they had.) They slung the body between them,
tapped their belts and vanished.
"What're they going to do with him?" I asked the
Don in the business suit,
"Take him back to his own time, to a place where he can be buried."
"Where?"
He shook his head. "Uh-uh. When the time comes youll know. Right now it
wouldn't be a good idea." "But the funeral "
"Listen to me." He gripped my arm firmly. "You cannot go to the
funeral. None of us can." "But why?"
"There'll be others there," he said. "Others. A man should attend his
own funeral only once. Do you understand?"
After I thought about it awhile, I guessed I did.
* * *
As for me . . .
I'm almost afraid to use the timebelt now.
* * *
But now I know who I am.
I guess I've known for some time. I'm not sure when
I realized; it was a gradual dawning, not a sudden flash of aha. I just
sort of slipped into it as if it had been waiting for me all my life. I'd
been heading toward it without ever once stopping to consider how or why.
And even if I had, would it have changed anything?
I don't think so.
At first I tried to ignore the events of August 23. I went back to the
earlier days of the party, but burdened as I was with the knowledge of what
lurked only a few weeks ahead, I could not recapture the mood. (And that was
sensed by the others; I was shunned as being an irritable and temperamental
old variant. Nor was I the only one; there were several of us. We put a
damper on the party wherever we went.)
For a while I brooded by myself. For a while I was terribly scared. In
fact, I still am.
I don't want to die. But I've seen my own dead body. I've seen myself
in the act of dying. Death comes black and hard, rushing down on me from the
future, with no possible chance of escape. I wake up cold and shuddering in
the middle of the night, and were it not for the fact that I am always there
to hold and comfort myself, I would go mad. (And I still may do so ) Uncle
Jim once told me that a man must learn to live with he fact of his own
mortality. A man must accept the fact of death.
But does that mean he must welcome it?
I'd thought that the measure of the success of any
life form was its ability to survive in its ecological niche.
But I'd been wrong. That doesn't apply to individuals, not at all only
to a species as a whole.
If you want to think in terms of individuals, you have to qualify that
statement. The measure of the success of any individual animal is based on
its ability to survive long enough to reproduce. And care for the young
until they are able to care for themselves. I have met half that
requirement. I've reproduced.
(It's said that the only immortality a man can achieve is through his
children. I understand that now.)
* * *
I went back to 1956 to bring up my son. He was right where I had left
him.
I named him Daniel Jamieson Eakins, and I told him I was his uncle. His
Uncle Jim.
Yes. That's who I am.
In many ways, Danny is a great joy to me. I am learning as much from
him as he is learning from me. He is a beautiful child and I relish every
moment of his youth. I relive it by watching it. Sometimes I stand above his
crib and just watch him sleep. I yearn to pick him up and hug him and tell
him how much I love him but I let him sleep. I must avoid smothering him. I
must let him be his own man.
* * *
I yearn to leap ahead into the future and meet the young man he will
become. It will be me, of course, starting all over again. Wondrously, I
have come full circle. Once more I am in a timeline where I exist from birth
to death. So I must avoid tangling it. I will try to live as. serially as
possible for my child.
(No, that's not entirely true. Several times I have bounced forward and
observed him from a distance. But only from a distance.)
On occasion I still flee to the house in 1999. But I no longer do so
desperately. I go only for short vacations. Very short. I know what awaits
me there. But I also know that I will live to see my son reach manhood, so I
am not as fearful as I once was. I know I have time; so death has lost its
immediacy.
And the party has changed.too. The mood of it is no longer so morbid.
Not even grim. Just quiet. Waiting. Yes, many of these men have come here to
die. No to await death in the company of others like themselves. They help
each other. And that's good. (I don't need their help, not yet, so right now
I can be objective about it. Maybe later, I won't.)
So I'm relaxed. At ease with myself. Happy. Because I know who I am.
I'm Dan and Don and Diane and Donna.
And Uncle Jim too. And somewhere, Aunt Jane.
And little Danny. I diaper him; I powder his pink little fanny and
wonder that my skin was ever that smooth. I clean up his messes. My messes.
I've been doing that all my life. I'm my own mother and my own father. I'm
the only person who exists in my world but isn't it that way for all of us?
Me more than anyone.
* * *
How did this incredible circle get started?
(Or has it always existed? Could it have begun in the same way the
timebelt began in a world that I excised out of existence? In a place so far
distant and so almostpossible that the traces of the might-have-been are
buried completely in the already-is?)
Many years ago I pondered the reason for my own existence. (Why "me"?
Why me as "me"? Why do I perceive myself and why do I experience me as "me"
and not somebody else? Why was I born at all? It could have been anyone!) It
almost drove me mad. I had to have a meaning. I was sure I had to. Variants
of me did go mad seeking that meaning but only those of me who could accept
the gift of life without questioning it too intensely would survive to find
the answer.
I wrote in these pages that if there were an infinite number of
variations of myself, then what meaning could any one of us have? I wondered
about that then. I know the answer now. I know my answer.
I am the baseline.
I am the Danny from which all other Dannys will spring.
I am a circle, complete unto itself. I have brought life into this
world, and that life is me. And from this circle will spring an infinite
number of tangents. All the other Dannys who have ever been and ever will
be.
Who the others are, what they are that is for each of them to decide.
But as for me, I know who I am. I am the center of it all.
I am the end.
I am the beginning.
* * *
So, before it is over, I will have done it all and been it all.
I will take the body back to the summer of 1975 and lay it gently in my
bed, to be discovered in the morning by the maid. I will take his timebelt
and put it in a box, wrap it up for my nephew and take it back a month to
give it to my lawyer, Biggs-or-Briggs-or-whatever-hisname-is. I will leave
Danny the legacy of ... our life.
Later I will go back in time and visit him again. This time, though, I
will handle the situation properly. It's not enough to just give him the
timebelt after my death; I must visit him early in 1975 and explain to him
how to use it wisely. Especially in the case of Diane.
I've already spoken to the nineteen-year-old Danny once, but I felt I
mishandled it, so I went back and talked myself out of it. Later I will try
again. Perhaps a little earlier. May of 1975. Or April. (I must be careful
though. Each time I change my mind about how to tell Danny, I have to go
back earlier and earlier. That way I excise the later tracks, the incorrect
ones. But I must be careful not to go back too early I must give him a
chance to mature. I think of the old Dan who went chasing after the young
Diane. I must be careful, careful.)
Perhaps I should just leave him this manuscript instead. These pages
will tell the story better than I can. Maybe that would be the best way.
* * *
There is just one last thing . . .
What is it like to die?
There is no Don to come back and tell me.
And I'm scared.
It's the one thing I will have to face alone. Totally alone.
There will be absolutely no foreknowledge.
Nor will there be any hindknowledge. The terrible thing about death is
that you don't know you've died.
Or is that the terrible thing? Maybe that's the blessing.
It's the jump-shock that will kill me. I know that. I will tap my belt
twice and I will cease to exist. Cease to exist.
Cease to exist.
The words echo in my head.
Cease to exist.
Until they lose all meaning.
I try to imagine what it will be like.
No more me.
The end of Danny.
The end.
(What happens to the rest of the universe?)
I am afraid of it more than anything else in my life.
Absence of
me.
* * *
Dear Danny,
Time travel is not immortality.
It will allow you to experience all the possible variations of your
life. But it is not an unlimited ticket. There will be an end.
My body has not experienced its years in sequence.
But it has experienced years. And it has aged. And my mind has been
carried headlong with it this lump of flesh travels through time its own
way, in a way that no man has the power to change.
I've had to learn to accept that, Danny, in order to find peace within
my mind.
My mind?
Perhaps I'm not a mind at all. Perhaps I'm only a body pretending the
vanity of being something more. Perhaps it's only the fact that language,
which allows me to manipulate symbols, ideas, and concepts, also provides
the awareness of self that precedes the inevitable analysis.
Hmm.
I have spent a lifetime analyzing my life. Living it. And rewriting it
to suit me.
I once compared time travel to a subjective work of art. That was truer
than I realized. I am the artist of time. I choose the scenes I wish to
play. Even the last one.
And that scares me too. Just a little.
I don't know when that body was coming from. It he tapped the belt and
came back to August 23 Thinking he was going to witness the arrival of
himself. Thinking he was going to witness his death.
Or maybe he was seeking it.
I don't know when that body came from. I don't know when it's starting
point is/was/will be.
I don't know when I'm going to die. But I do know it will be soon. I
admit it. I'm scared.
But perhaps it will be a gentle way to go.
I will never know what happened. I will never really know when. And I
will die much as I lived in the act of jumping across time. It will be a
fitting way to go.
Danny, you cannot avoid mortality. But you can choose your way of
meeting it. And that is the most that any man can hope for.
Live well, my son.
* * *
Maybe this will be the last page. I think I should add something to
"Uncle Jim's" diary.
Uncle Jim has given his life back to himself that is, to me. Now that I
know the directions in which I will go no, can go the decisions are mine.
I need do none of the things that Uncle Jim has described. (In fact,
some of them shock me beyond words.) Or I could do all of them I may change
as I grow older. The point is, I know what I am beginning if I put on this
belt.
I feel a strange empathy for that frightening old man. He was bizarre
and perverse and lost. But he was me and all those things he did and felt
and wrote about echo profoundly in my own soul. I feel a terrible sadness at
his loss, greater than I did before I knew who he was. And not just sadness;
fear and horror too. I cannot be this person in this manuscript. This is too
much to assimilate. Is this me? I am drawn to it and simultaneously
repelled. It can't be true.
But I know it is.
My god. What have I wrought? What will I?
I wish he were here now. I wish there were some way to reach him punish
him, scream at him, berate him. How dare he do this to me?
And ... at the same time, I want to hug him and thank him and tell him
how much he means to me. Even though I know he knows knew.
I saw him in his coffin. I sat through his funeral. He's dead. And he
isn't. I could go looking for him. . . . Should I?
I want to reassure him. And be reassured by him.
And the tears roll down my cheeks. I'm crying for myself now more than
him because now I know how truly isolated I really am. I am abandoned by the
universe. There is no god who can save me.
I am so alone I cannot bear the pain of it. Now I know how desperately
isolated one human being can be. What have I done to deserve this?
I will surely go mad.
* * *
No. I will not.
I can't escape that way either.
I know what choice I have. And it is no choice at all.
The decision is mine.
A world awaits me.
The future beckons.
All right, I accept.
I am going to put on the belt.
* * *
About the Author
David GerroldТs Career began when, as a
college student in 1967, he sold his first television script, "The
Trouble with Tribbles," to
Star Trek. He went on to write more television scripts, as well as such
novels as The Man who
Folded Himself, the Hugo-nominated When
HARLIE Was One, When HARLIE Was One:
Release 2.0, and the first three books in The
War Against the Chtorr series: A Matter for
Men, A Day for Damnation, and A Rage for
Revenge. He is currently working on the fourth novel in the series.
* * *
I'm not going back anymore.
Whatever there was between us is gone. We both know it. The bad moments
outweigh the good. There is no joy left.
Besides, she isn't there all the time anyway.
I have brought my son forward with me. I will find him a home in the
twentieth century. And I will watch over him. I will be very careful not to
accidentally excise him. He is all I have left.
It's not without regret that I do this. I miss my Diane terribly. But
something happened to us. The magic disappeared, the joy faded, and the
delight we had found in each other ceased to exist.
The last night... we made love mechanically, each seeking only our own
physical release. Somehow, my feelings had become more important to me than
hers. I wonder why?
Was it because I knew that I would never could never experience it from
her side? Perhaps. . . .
Love with Diane was . . . sad. I could see the me in her, but I could
never be that me.
And that meant that she wasn't really me. Not really. She was somebody
else.
I couldn't communicate with her. We used the same words, but our
meanings were different. (They must have been different. She wasn't me.)
I'm sorry, Diane. I wanted it to work. I did. But I couldn't reach you.
I couldn't reach you at all. So.
I'll go back to my Danny. He'll understand. He's been waiting patiently
for so long. . . .
* * *
Oh God, I feel alone.
* * *
Grow old along with me!
The best is yet to be,
The last of life, for which the first was made .
Robert Browning
Rabbi Ben Ezra, from stanza 1
* * *
It's been years since I last added anything to this journal. I wonder
how old I am now. I really have no way of telling.
Forty? Fifty? Sixty? I'm not sure. The neo-procaine treatments I've
been taking in 2101 seem to retard all physical evidence of aging. I could
still be in my late thirties. But I doubt it. I've done so much. Seen so
much.
I've been living linearly semi-linearly. Instead of bouncing
haphazardly around time, I've set up a home in 1956, and as it travels
forward through time at its stately day-to-day pace, I am traveling with it.
Oh, I'm still using the future and the past, but not as before.
Before, I was young, foolish. I was like a barbarian at the banquet. I
gulped and guzzled; I ate without tasting. I rushed through each experience
like a tourist trying to see twenty-one European cities in two weeks and
enjoying none of them.
Now, I'm a gourmet. I savor each day. I taste the robustness of life,
but not so hurriedly as to lose its delicate overtones. I've given up the
hectic seventies for the quiet fifties the fifties are as early as I dare go
without sacrificing the cultural comforts I desire. They are truly a magic
moment in time, a teeterboard suspended between the wistful past and the
soaring future.
* * *
I have not abandoned the use of the timebelt. I use it for amusement.
(The lady who cut me off on the freeway this morning. She suddenly had four
flat tires.) And justice.
The man who walked into a schoolyard and started firing his rifle. He
thought he had cleaned it, but somehow a wad of wet modeling clay had been
jammed up the barrel. The gun exploded in his face. (I like that trick, I
use it a lot. There are an awful lot of exploding guns in the world.)
I read the news every day. I don't like seeing tragedies. I don't like
plane crashes and murders and kidnappings and bizarre accidents. So, they
don't happen anymore. I go and I see and I fix.
Planes that might have crashed get delayed for odd reasons. One of my
insurance companies watchdogs the airlines, demanding fixes of things that
might not be discovered until after a plane goes down.
Murderers and kidnappers disappear. Missing children are found.
Terrorists have their bombs blow up in their faces. Rapists never mind, you
don't want to know. Serial killers never get a chance to start. Devastating
building fires don't happen without warning. People who start accidental
forest fires get caught. Famous actors do not die in car crashes. Great rock
stars don't lose their talent to drugs. Sometimes it's tricky, but I like
the challenges. I like making things better. And I never leave any evidence.
I can't fix it all, but I do my part.
The odd thing is, I don't do it because I care. I can't
care. These people aren't real to me. They're pieces on
the playing board. I just do it because it satisfies my
sense of rightness.
Because it makes me feel a little bit more like a god to be doing
something useful.
And because I want my son to have a reason to respect me.
* * *
The fifties are a great time to live. They are close enough to the
nations adventurous past to still bear the same strident idealism, yet they
also bear the shape of the developing future and the promise of the
technological wonders to come. Transistor radios are still marvelous devices
and color television is a delicious miracle, but blue skies are commonplace
and the wind blows with a freshness from the north that hints at something
wild and suggests that the city is only a temporary illusion, a mirage
glowing against a western desert.
Brave highways crisscross the state and (I thank myself again) with a
minimum of billboards. The roads are still new; they are the foundation for
the great freeways of the future. This is the threshold of that era, but it
is still too soon for them to be overburdened with traffic and ugliness.
Driving is still an adventure.
The hills around Los Angeles are still uncut and
green with the city's own special color of vegetation. The
dark trees hover, the dry grass smell permeates the cool
days. The fifties are a peaceful time, a quiet sleeping
time between two noisy bursts of years, a blue and white
time filled with sweet yellow days, innocent music, and
bright popcorn memories . . .
* * *
It is 1961 as I write this. The fifties have ended and their magic is
fading quickly. A young President has stamped a new dream on the nation and
the frenetic stamp and click of the seventies can already be heard rustling
in the distance. The years are impatient; they tumble over each other like
children, each rushing eagerly for its turn and each in turn tumbling
inexorably into the black whirlpool of forevertime lost. Well, not forever
lost, not to me.
I have watched the fading of the fifties three times now, and perhaps I
shall return again for a fourth. Perhaps . . .
* * *
Last week, in a mood of wistfulness for times lost, I went jaunting
again. I went back to the past, to the house where Diane and I lived for
such a short, short, long time.
One of the walls had collapsed and the wind blew through the rooms. A
fine layer of clean, dry dust covered everything. The pillars and drapes
stood alone on the cold plain.
My own doing, of course. I had not come back far enough, but I was
afraid if I journeyed too far back, I would see her again.
And yet I do want to see her again.
Just a little bit farther back . . .
* * *
And this time, the house was not ruined. Just abandoned. It stood
alone, empty and waiting. My footsteps echoed hollowly across the marble
floors.
Was she here? Had she been here at all?
There was no way of knowing.
I found my way to her rooms. Despite the acrid sunlight, her chambers
were cold. I opened closets at random, pulled out drawers. Many of her silks
were still here. Forgotten? Or just discarded?
A shimmering dress, ice-cream pastel and deep forest-green I pressed my
nose into the sleek shining material, seeking a long-remembered smell, a
sweetlemony fragrance with an undertone of musk. The clean smell of a woman
. . .
Her smell is there, but faint. I dropped the dress. I am touched with
incredible sadness.
And then a sound, a step
I ran for the other room, calling.
Perhaps, perhaps, just a little bit farther back.
The day after the last day I was there. So many years ago . . .
* * *
The air conditioner hums. The house is alive again.
And my Diane is beautiful, even prettier than I remembered. Her auburn
hair shimmers in the sunlight. She moves with the grace of a goddess, and
she wears even less, a filmy thing of lace and silk. I can see the sweet
pinkness of her skin.
She hasn't seen me yet. I am here in the shadows, deep within the
house. It has been too long. It hurts too much to watch.
Abruptly, puzzlement clouds her face. She comes rushing in from the
patio. "Danny? Is that you?" Eagerness. "Are you back?"
And then she saw me.
"Danny? What's happened? Are you all right? You look" and then she
realized "old."
"Diane," I blurted. "I came back because I loved
you too much to stay away anymore."
She was too startled to answer. She dropped her eyes and whispered, "I
loved you too, Danny." Then she looked at me again. "But you're not Danny
anymore. You're someone else."
"But I am Danny " I insisted.
She shook her head. "You're not the same one."
I took a step forward. I reached as if to embrace her.
She took a quick step back. "No, please, don't."
"Diane, what's the matter?"
"Danny " There were tears running down her
cheeks. "Danny, why did you stay away so long? Look
what you've done to yourself. You've gotten old. You're
not my Danny anymore. You're you're not young." She
sniffled and wiped quickly. "I came back, Dan. I couldn't
stay away either. I came back to wait for you and hope
that you'd come back too. But look at you. You waited too
long to come back."
"Diane, you loved me once. I'm still me. I'm still
Danny. I have the same memories. Remember how you cried in my arms the
last night we were together? Remember how we used to fix dinner together in
the kitchen? Remember the "
"Stop. Oh, stop. Please " And suddenly she was in my arms. Crying. "I
loved you so much. So much. But you went away. How could you how could you
stay away so long? I thought you loved me too."
"Oh, sweetheart, yes. I did. I do. I love you too much. That's why I
came back " I held her tightly to me. She was so warm.
"But why not sooner? Why did you stay so long?"
"I was stupid. Forgive me. Let me be with you, please. That's all
that's important." My hands could feel the tender silkiness of her skin. I
remembered how I used to caress her and I slid into the motions almost
automatically. Her breasts were soft. Her hips were boyish. Her skin was so
smooth
"What are you doing?" She made as if to pull away.
"Oh, baby, baby, please "
"Oh, no not now, I couldn't. Please don't make
me."
"Diane, I still love you " The youthfulness of her body . . .
"Oh, no. It's only words. You're only saying them as if they're some,
kind of magic charm to get me into bed." She backed away, wiping at her
eyes. "I'm sorry, Danny, I really did love you, but I can't anymore. You've"
she hesitated here "changed. You're someone else. You don't really care
about me anymore, do you?" She grabbed a robe and pulled it about her. "No,
don't come any closer. Just listen a moment. There's a poem. It goes, 'Grow
old along with me, the best is yet to be, the last of life for which the
first was made . . .' I had thought hoped that was how it would be for us."
Her voice caught. "But you've ruined it. It only took you a day to destroy
both of our lives."
"No." I shook my head. "It didn't take a day. It took years. Diane, I'm
sorry! Couldn't we ... ?"
But she was gone. She had fled into the bedroom.
"Diane "
And then the gentle pop! of air rushing in to fill an empty space told
me how completely she was gone. How far she-had fled.
* * *
Oh God. What have I done?
I could try again. All I need to do is go back just a little earlier. I
wouldn't make the same mistake this time.
I want my Diane. I must have my Diane.
I will have my Diane.
* * *
He's tried to talk me out of it, but I'm not going to let him stop me.
I know why he wants to keep me from going back.
He's jealous of her. Because she'll have me and he won't.
But his way is wrong. I know that now. A man should have a woman. A
real man needs a real woman.
Diane, sweet Diane. Please don't reject me again. I'm not old. I'm not.
And you're so young . . .
* * *
Oh God, why?
Am I really that old and ugly?
No. I can't be. I can't be.
Do I dare go back and try again?
* * *
And again he tries to talk me out of it.
Damn him anyway!
* * *
Somewhere there is a Dan who is getting older and older. And he's
working his way back through time, chasing Diane.
And each time Diane is that much younger and he's that much older. The
gulf between them widens.
Oh, my poor, poor Dan. But he won't listen. He just won't listen.
I'm afraid to think of where he is heading. He'll work his way back
through all the days of Diane, and every day she'll reject him. And Dan,
poor Dan, he'll experience them all. Each time she rejects him will be the
last day she'll spend in the fading past. So every day he'll go back one
more day, and every day he'll be too old for her
Until he gets back to the very first day. And then she'll be gone.
There won't be any Diane at all. Just a memory.
And, in the end, he'll be there waiting for her even before the first
Danny. Waiting patiently for her first appearance, trying to re-create his
lost love. But she won't show up. No, she'll have warned herself. Don't go
back in time looking for a variant Diane. A grizzled old ghoul waits for
you. No, she'll never come back at all. Poor Dan. Poor, poor Dan.
* * *
And yet, the one I feel sorriest for is young Dan. He'll never know
what he's missing.
Because, when he gets there, there won't be anyone there at all.
He'll never have a Diane. Ever. Old Dan will have chased them all away.
* * *
I wish I could change it all. I wish I could.
But I can't.
Dammit.
Now I know what it's like to have an indelible past
one that can't be erased and changed at will. It's frustrating. It's
maddening. And it makes me wish I had been more careful and thoughtful.
But when you can erase your mistakes in a minute, you tend to get
careless.
Until you make one you can't erase.
I feel uneasy because I think I didn't try hard enough, and yet, I
can't think of anything I didn't do. I tried everything I could do to stop
old Danny.
But it wasn't enough, and now I'm left with the results of what he's
done.
We're all left with those results.
I could find young Danny in a minute, and I could warn him to go back
to Diane right away, before it's too late, before he gets too old; but it
wouldn't do any good. All he would find would be old Danny, sitting and
waiting. Sitting and waiting.
Diane is gone. Forever. There's no way we can reach her. Old Danny has
seen to that.
And there's no other place to look for her.
Any time. Any place. Any when that Diane might
have thought to visit, there's an old Danny. Sitting and
waiting.
I'll never see my Diane again.
(Can I content myself with Danny? My Danny? I'll
have to.)
* * *
And yet, I wonder . . .
Perhaps somewhere there is an older Diane, one who has aged like me. .
. .
I wonder how I might find her.
Ah, but that way lies old Danny and madness.
It's not the answer.
* * *
There is a party at my house, the big place in 1999.
A hundred and fifty-three acres of forest, lake, and meadow. I don't
know how many me's there are. The number varies.
The party is spread out across the whole summer. Several days in April
and May, quite a few in June and July, and also some in August. I think
there may be a few in September too. Generally it starts about ten in the
morning and lasts until I don't know when. It seems as if there's always a
constant number of Dans and Dons arriving and leaving.
It's like Grand Central Terminal, with passengers arriving and
departing all the time, to and from destinations all over the world. Only,
all the passengers are all me and all the destinations are the same place,
only years removed.
The younger Dans show up in May and June. They like the swimming and
water-skiing and motorcycling. They like the company of each other.
I prefer July. Most of the younger versions have faded by then. They're
too nervous for me and they remind me too much of Diane. They're too active,
I can't keep up with them, and sometimes I think they're talking on a
different plane. I prefer the men of July; they're more my age, they're more
comfortable, and they're more moderate. We still do a lot of swimming and
riding; I remember, I used to enjoy that very much; but most of the time we
just like to take it easy.
* * *
I don't like the men of August. I've been there a few times, and
they're too sedentary. No, they're too old. They just sit around and drink.
And talk. And drink some more. Some of them look positively wasted.
Actually, itТs the men of late August I really don't like. The men of
early August aren't that bad. It's just the old ones that bother me. Some of
them are filthy. Their minds, their mouths, their bodies. They want to touch
me too much. And they call me their Danny, their little boy. (Several of
them even seem senile.)
The men of early August are all right. They make
me a little uncomfortable, but lately I've been visiting
them more and more. Partly because it seems as if the
younger men are taking over July and partly because I'm
in August enough now to compensate for the older ones.
Several of them are very nice though. Very understanding. We've had
some interesting talks. (And that surprises me too that there are still
things I can talk about with myself. I had thought I would have exhausted
all subjects of conversation long ago. Apparently not.)
In the evenings we go indoors (there's a pool inside too) and listen to
music (I have several different listening rooms) or play poker, or
billiards, or chess.
When I get tired (and when I want to sleep alone), there's a chart on
the wall indicating which days and which beds are still unused. (The chart
covers a span of several years. Well, I have to sleep somewhere . . .) I
make a mark in any space still blank and that closes that date. Then I
bounce to that point in time. (Generally I try and use those days in serial
order. I have servants in the house then and it wouldn't do to confuse
them.)
I'm still doing most of my living in the fifties, but when I'm in the
mood for a party and that's been more and more lately I know where to find
one. The poker games, for instance, are marathons. Or maybe it's only one
poker game that's been going on since the party started. Whenever I get
tired and want to quit, there's always a later me waiting for the seat.
But my endurance isn't what it used to be. I get tired too fast these
days. That's why I find the men of August so restful.
* * *
On August 13 a very strange thing happens. Has happened. Will happen.
I'd known about it for some time that is, I'd known that something
happens, because I don't attend the party linearly. I stay in a range of a
week or two and bounce around within it. There's more variety that way.
After August 13 the mood of the party is changed. Subdued. Almost
morbid. Most of me seem to know why, but they don't refer to it very often.
The last time something like this happened was just before I met Diane
when all the other versions of me had disappeared. I knew something was
about to happen, but I didn't know what until I got there.
I have that same kind of feeling now. Too many of
the older me's are acting strange. Very strange. The more
I hang around them, the more I see it.
I'm going to have to investigate August 13.
* * *
Is this it?
Three or four of the youngest Dannys are here.
They're in a quieter mood than usual though, almost grim.
A couple of us frowned at them they really weren't welcome here; they
should have stayed in their own part of the party; but most of the rest of
us tried at least to tolerate them, hoping that they would lose interest
soon and go back to their own time. "They're here to gape at us," complained
one of me.
"Well, some of us are gaping right back," snapped another.
"God," whispered a third. "Were we ever really that young?"
And then there was a pop! as another me appeared.
It was a common enough sound. Somebody was always appearing or
disappearing at any given moment. But this one was different. A hush fell
over the room. I turned and saw two of me reaching to support a third who
had suddenly appeared between them. He was pale and gray. He was half
slumped and holding his heart.
* * *
Apparently the jump-shock had been too much for
him; that sudden burst of temporal energy that jolts you sharply every
time you bounce through time. They helped him to a chair. Somebody was
already there with a glass of water, somebody who had been through this
before, I guess. And the younger Dans were murmuring among themselves; was
this what they had come to see?
"Are you all right, old fellow?" someone asked the newcomer.
He grunted. He was old. He was very old. His
hands were thin and weak. His forearms were parchment-covered bones, so
were his legs. The skin of his face hung in folds and he was mottled with
liver spots. "Aaah," he gasped. "What day is it?"
"August thirteenth."
"Thirteenth?" Slowly he pulled his features into a grimace. "Then I'm
too soon. It's the twenty-third I want. I must have made the wrong setting."
"Take it easy. Just relax."
The oldster did so. It wasn't a matter of recognizing the wisdom of
their words; he simply knew that he didn't have to hurry. A timebelt is a
very forgiving device. Besides, he was too exhausted to move.
"What were you looking for?" asked one of the younger Dans. (They
weren't me. I didn't remember ever having done this before, so they must
have been variations from another timeline.)
The fragile gray man peered at them, abruptly frowning. "No," he
croaked. "Too young. Too young. Got to talk to someone older. Those are just
just children."
Some of us shouldered the younger ones aside then. "What is it?" they
asked. (Others hung back; had they heard it before? The room seemed emptier
now. There were less than ten of me remaining. Several of us had left.)
'Too tired," he gasped. "Came to warn you, but I'm too tired to talk.
Let me rest ..."
"Hey, have a heart, you guys. Don't press him."
That was one of the quieter ones of us. I recognized him by his
business suit; he had been hanging back and just watching most of the
evening. "Take him in the bedroom and let him lie down for a while." He
shoved through and picked up the frail old man God, was he that light? and
carried him off to the downstairs bedroom. "You can talk to him later," he
promised.
Out of curiosity, I followed. I helped him put the old man to bed, then
he led me out. "You know what's going on, don't you?" I asked him.
He didn't answer, just got himself a chair and a
book, and stationed himself in front of the door. "It might
be too soon for you to worry about this," he said to me.
"Why don't you go back to your party?" He opened the
book and proceeded to ignore me.
There was nothing else to do, so I shrugged and
went back into the other room. A little later a couple of
other me's tried to see how the old man was doing, but
the business-suit-me wouldn't let them. He sat outside
the room all night.
The party was considerably dampened by this incident. Most of the Dans
faded away and the house became strangely deserted. Here and there, one or
two of me were picking up dirty glasses and empty potato-chip dishes, but
they only served to heighten the emptiness. They were like caretakers in a
mausoleum.
I bounced forward to the morning, but the bedroom was empty and the
business suit was gone too.
So I bounced back an hour. Then another. This time
he was there, still outside the door, still reading. When I
appeared, he glanced up without interest. "Hmm? Is it
that late already?" He opened his belt to check the time.
I started to ask him something, but he cut me off.
"Wait a minute." He was resetting his belt. Before I
could stop him he had tapped it twice and vanished.
I opened the bedroom door; the old man had vanished too.
My curiosity was too much. I bounced back fifteen minutes. Then fifteen
minutes more. He was sleeping quietly on the bed. His breath rasped slowly
in and out.
I felt no guilt as I woke him; he'd had more than six hours
undisturbed. I wanted to know what was so important. He came awake suddenly.
"Where am I?" he demanded.
"August fourteenth," I told him.
That seemed to satisfy him, but he frowned at me in suspicion. "What do
you want? Why'd you wake me?" "What was supposed to happen last night? "Last
night?"
"The thirteenth. You came to warn us of something. ..." I prompted.
"The thirteenth? That was a mistake. I wanted the twenty-third."
"Why? What happens on the twenty-third?"
He peered at me again. "You're too young." He pushed himself off the
bed and stood unsteadily. And tapped his belt and vanished.
Damn.
* * *
Naturally, I went straight to the twenty-third.
My old man was there, of course. A dozen times over. Wrinkled, gnarled,
and white. Their hands hovered in the air, or scrabbled across their laps
like spiders. They clawed, they plucked.
But not all of them were that old. There were one or two that even
looked familiar.
"Don?" I asked one who was wearing a faded shirt.
If I remembered correctly, he had gotten that ketchup stain on it just
a few hours ago at the poker table of the thirteenth.
He looked at me, startled. "Dan? You shouldn't be here. You're still
too young. I mean, let us take care of this for now. You go back to the
party."
"Huh?" I tried to draw him aside. "Just tell me what's going on."
"I can't," he whispered. "It wouldn't be a good idea "
Abruptly, a familiar business suit was standing before us. Was it the
same one? Probably. "I'll take over," he said to Don.
"Thanks," Don said, and fled in relief.
I looked at the other. "What's going on here?"
He looked at the clock in his timebelt. "In a few more minutes you'll
find out." He took me by the arm and led me across the room. "Stand here.
I'll stay right by you the whole time. Don't say anything. Don't do
anything. Just watch, this time around."
I shut my mouth and watched.
The air in the room was heavy. The few conversations still going on
were the merest of whispers. The supposedly silent hum of the air
conditioner was deafening. Almost all of these wrinkled faces, pale faces,
were deathly. The few tan ones stood out like spotlights. They were grim
too.
The old men, their eyes were like holes in lampshade faces, but nothing
glowed within. Their expressions were bleary. Uniform. Frightened.
And there were so many of them. More and more; the room was filling up.
This house, so often a happy place, was now a cloister house of the infirm.
The laughter of youth had shaded into the garish cackling of senility. What
had been a firm grip on life had degenerated into a plucking and desperate
claw, scratching on the edge of terror.
Who were these men why could I not accept what
I was seeing? And what drove them together here?
How old am I? (And here is the fear ) I don't know. I don't know.
Am I one of the tan faces or the pale ones? Does my skin hang in pale
folds, bleached by age? (I touch my cheek hesitantly.)
As the air pops! softly
and the body that crumples to the floor is me.
* * *
Of course.
It was the jump-shock that killed him. Will kill me.
He was old. The oldest of them all. (But not so old as to be
distinguishable from the rest. He could have been any of them. Us.)
There was silence in the room. Then a soft shad-
owed sigh, almost a sound of relief, as too many ancient
lungs released their burden of breaths held too long.
They'd been expecting this, waiting for it eagerly? the curiosity of
the morbid draws them again and again until the room is crowded with fearful
old men. Each praying that, somehow, this time it won't happen. And each
terrified that it will.
And perhaps perhaps each is most afraid that the next time he comes to
this moment, he will not be a witness, but the guest of honor himself. . . .
* * *
Two of the younger men (younger? They were older than I or were they?)
moved to the body. It was still warm. One of them clicked the belt open; the
last setting on it was 5:30, March 16, 1975. (Meaningless, of course. He
could have come from there, or it could have been a date held in storage.
There was no way of knowing.)
They took charge efficiently, as if they had done this before. Many
times before. (And in a way, they had.) They slung the body between them,
tapped their belts and vanished.
"What're they going to do with him?" I asked the
Don in the business suit,
"Take him back to his own time, to a place where he can be buried."
"Where?"
He shook his head. "Uh-uh. When the time comes youll know. Right now it
wouldn't be a good idea." "But the funeral "
"Listen to me." He gripped my arm firmly. "You cannot go to the
funeral. None of us can." "But why?"
"There'll be others there," he said. "Others. A man should attend his
own funeral only once. Do you understand?"
After I thought about it awhile, I guessed I did.
* * *
As for me . . .
I'm almost afraid to use the timebelt now.
* * *
But now I know who I am.
I guess I've known for some time. I'm not sure when
I realized; it was a gradual dawning, not a sudden flash of aha. I just
sort of slipped into it as if it had been waiting for me all my life. I'd
been heading toward it without ever once stopping to consider how or why.
And even if I had, would it have changed anything?
I don't think so.
At first I tried to ignore the events of August 23. I went back to the
earlier days of the party, but burdened as I was with the knowledge of what
lurked only a few weeks ahead, I could not recapture the mood. (And that was
sensed by the others; I was shunned as being an irritable and temperamental
old variant. Nor was I the only one; there were several of us. We put a
damper on the party wherever we went.)
For a while I brooded by myself. For a while I was terribly scared. In
fact, I still am.
I don't want to die. But I've seen my own dead body. I've seen myself
in the act of dying. Death comes black and hard, rushing down on me from the
future, with no possible chance of escape. I wake up cold and shuddering in
the middle of the night, and were it not for the fact that I am always there
to hold and comfort myself, I would go mad. (And I still may do so ) Uncle
Jim once told me that a man must learn to live with he fact of his own
mortality. A man must accept the fact of death.
But does that mean he must welcome it?
I'd thought that the measure of the success of any
life form was its ability to survive in its ecological niche.
But I'd been wrong. That doesn't apply to individuals, not at all only
to a species as a whole.
If you want to think in terms of individuals, you have to qualify that
statement. The measure of the success of any individual animal is based on
its ability to survive long enough to reproduce. And care for the young
until they are able to care for themselves. I have met half that
requirement. I've reproduced.
(It's said that the only immortality a man can achieve is through his
children. I understand that now.)
* * *
I went back to 1956 to bring up my son. He was right where I had left
him.
I named him Daniel Jamieson Eakins, and I told him I was his uncle. His
Uncle Jim.
Yes. That's who I am.
In many ways, Danny is a great joy to me. I am learning as much from
him as he is learning from me. He is a beautiful child and I relish every
moment of his youth. I relive it by watching it. Sometimes I stand above his
crib and just watch him sleep. I yearn to pick him up and hug him and tell
him how much I love him but I let him sleep. I must avoid smothering him. I
must let him be his own man.
* * *
I yearn to leap ahead into the future and meet the young man he will
become. It will be me, of course, starting all over again. Wondrously, I
have come full circle. Once more I am in a timeline where I exist from birth
to death. So I must avoid tangling it. I will try to live as. serially as
possible for my child.
(No, that's not entirely true. Several times I have bounced forward and
observed him from a distance. But only from a distance.)
On occasion I still flee to the house in 1999. But I no longer do so
desperately. I go only for short vacations. Very short. I know what awaits
me there. But I also know that I will live to see my son reach manhood, so I
am not as fearful as I once was. I know I have time; so death has lost its
immediacy.
And the party has changed.too. The mood of it is no longer so morbid.
Not even grim. Just quiet. Waiting. Yes, many of these men have come here to
die. No to await death in the company of others like themselves. They help
each other. And that's good. (I don't need their help, not yet, so right now
I can be objective about it. Maybe later, I won't.)
So I'm relaxed. At ease with myself. Happy. Because I know who I am.
I'm Dan and Don and Diane and Donna.
And Uncle Jim too. And somewhere, Aunt Jane.
And little Danny. I diaper him; I powder his pink little fanny and
wonder that my skin was ever that smooth. I clean up his messes. My messes.
I've been doing that all my life. I'm my own mother and my own father. I'm
the only person who exists in my world but isn't it that way for all of us?
Me more than anyone.
* * *
How did this incredible circle get started?
(Or has it always existed? Could it have begun in the same way the
timebelt began in a world that I excised out of existence? In a place so far
distant and so almostpossible that the traces of the might-have-been are
buried completely in the already-is?)
Many years ago I pondered the reason for my own existence. (Why "me"?
Why me as "me"? Why do I perceive myself and why do I experience me as "me"
and not somebody else? Why was I born at all? It could have been anyone!) It
almost drove me mad. I had to have a meaning. I was sure I had to. Variants
of me did go mad seeking that meaning but only those of me who could accept
the gift of life without questioning it too intensely would survive to find
the answer.
I wrote in these pages that if there were an infinite number of
variations of myself, then what meaning could any one of us have? I wondered
about that then. I know the answer now. I know my answer.
I am the baseline.
I am the Danny from which all other Dannys will spring.
I am a circle, complete unto itself. I have brought life into this
world, and that life is me. And from this circle will spring an infinite
number of tangents. All the other Dannys who have ever been and ever will
be.
Who the others are, what they are that is for each of them to decide.
But as for me, I know who I am. I am the center of it all.
I am the end.
I am the beginning.
* * *
So, before it is over, I will have done it all and been it all.
I will take the body back to the summer of 1975 and lay it gently in my
bed, to be discovered in the morning by the maid. I will take his timebelt
and put it in a box, wrap it up for my nephew and take it back a month to
give it to my lawyer, Biggs-or-Briggs-or-whatever-hisname-is. I will leave
Danny the legacy of ... our life.
Later I will go back in time and visit him again. This time, though, I
will handle the situation properly. It's not enough to just give him the
timebelt after my death; I must visit him early in 1975 and explain to him
how to use it wisely. Especially in the case of Diane.
I've already spoken to the nineteen-year-old Danny once, but I felt I
mishandled it, so I went back and talked myself out of it. Later I will try
again. Perhaps a little earlier. May of 1975. Or April. (I must be careful
though. Each time I change my mind about how to tell Danny, I have to go
back earlier and earlier. That way I excise the later tracks, the incorrect
ones. But I must be careful not to go back too early I must give him a
chance to mature. I think of the old Dan who went chasing after the young
Diane. I must be careful, careful.)
Perhaps I should just leave him this manuscript instead. These pages
will tell the story better than I can. Maybe that would be the best way.
* * *
There is just one last thing . . .
What is it like to die?
There is no Don to come back and tell me.
And I'm scared.
It's the one thing I will have to face alone. Totally alone.
There will be absolutely no foreknowledge.
Nor will there be any hindknowledge. The terrible thing about death is
that you don't know you've died.
Or is that the terrible thing? Maybe that's the blessing.
It's the jump-shock that will kill me. I know that. I will tap my belt
twice and I will cease to exist. Cease to exist.
Cease to exist.
The words echo in my head.
Cease to exist.
Until they lose all meaning.
I try to imagine what it will be like.
No more me.
The end of Danny.
The end.
(What happens to the rest of the universe?)
I am afraid of it more than anything else in my life.
Absence of
me.
* * *
Dear Danny,
Time travel is not immortality.
It will allow you to experience all the possible variations of your
life. But it is not an unlimited ticket. There will be an end.
My body has not experienced its years in sequence.
But it has experienced years. And it has aged. And my mind has been
carried headlong with it this lump of flesh travels through time its own
way, in a way that no man has the power to change.
I've had to learn to accept that, Danny, in order to find peace within
my mind.
My mind?
Perhaps I'm not a mind at all. Perhaps I'm only a body pretending the
vanity of being something more. Perhaps it's only the fact that language,
which allows me to manipulate symbols, ideas, and concepts, also provides
the awareness of self that precedes the inevitable analysis.
Hmm.
I have spent a lifetime analyzing my life. Living it. And rewriting it
to suit me.
I once compared time travel to a subjective work of art. That was truer
than I realized. I am the artist of time. I choose the scenes I wish to
play. Even the last one.
And that scares me too. Just a little.
I don't know when that body was coming from. It he tapped the belt and
came back to August 23 Thinking he was going to witness the arrival of
himself. Thinking he was going to witness his death.
Or maybe he was seeking it.
I don't know when that body came from. I don't know when it's starting
point is/was/will be.
I don't know when I'm going to die. But I do know it will be soon. I
admit it. I'm scared.
But perhaps it will be a gentle way to go.
I will never know what happened. I will never really know when. And I
will die much as I lived in the act of jumping across time. It will be a
fitting way to go.
Danny, you cannot avoid mortality. But you can choose your way of
meeting it. And that is the most that any man can hope for.
Live well, my son.
* * *
Maybe this will be the last page. I think I should add something to
"Uncle Jim's" diary.
Uncle Jim has given his life back to himself that is, to me. Now that I
know the directions in which I will go no, can go the decisions are mine.
I need do none of the things that Uncle Jim has described. (In fact,
some of them shock me beyond words.) Or I could do all of them I may change
as I grow older. The point is, I know what I am beginning if I put on this
belt.
I feel a strange empathy for that frightening old man. He was bizarre
and perverse and lost. But he was me and all those things he did and felt
and wrote about echo profoundly in my own soul. I feel a terrible sadness at
his loss, greater than I did before I knew who he was. And not just sadness;
fear and horror too. I cannot be this person in this manuscript. This is too
much to assimilate. Is this me? I am drawn to it and simultaneously
repelled. It can't be true.
But I know it is.
My god. What have I wrought? What will I?
I wish he were here now. I wish there were some way to reach him punish
him, scream at him, berate him. How dare he do this to me?
And ... at the same time, I want to hug him and thank him and tell him
how much he means to me. Even though I know he knows knew.
I saw him in his coffin. I sat through his funeral. He's dead. And he
isn't. I could go looking for him. . . . Should I?
I want to reassure him. And be reassured by him.
And the tears roll down my cheeks. I'm crying for myself now more than
him because now I know how truly isolated I really am. I am abandoned by the
universe. There is no god who can save me.
I am so alone I cannot bear the pain of it. Now I know how desperately
isolated one human being can be. What have I done to deserve this?
I will surely go mad.
* * *
No. I will not.
I can't escape that way either.
I know what choice I have. And it is no choice at all.
The decision is mine.
A world awaits me.
The future beckons.
All right, I accept.
I am going to put on the belt.
* * *
About the Author
David GerroldТs Career began when, as a
college student in 1967, he sold his first television script, "The
Trouble with Tribbles," to
Star Trek. He went on to write more television scripts, as well as such
novels as The Man who
Folded Himself, the Hugo-nominated When
HARLIE Was One, When HARLIE Was One:
Release 2.0, and the first three books in The
War Against the Chtorr series: A Matter for
Men, A Day for Damnation, and A Rage for
Revenge. He is currently working on the fourth novel in the series.