As Time Goes By Page 10

  “This is an amazingly good job of matching,” he said wryly. “I can’t pick the place where the two exposures join. Some people might manage to swallow this. And the theoretic explanation is a lot better. The only trouble is that it couldn’t happen.”

  Jimmy waited.

  Haynes said awkwardly, “The accident in which Jane was killed. You were in your car. You came up behind a truck carrying structural steel. There was a long slim girder sticking way out behind, with a red rag on it. The truck had air brakes. The driver jammed them on just after he’d passed over a bit of wet pavement. The truck stopped. Your car slid, even with the brakes locked—This is nonsense, Jimmy!”

  “I’d rather you went on,” said Jimmy, very white.

  “You—ran into the truck, your car swinging a little as it slid. The girder came through the windshield. It could have hit you. It could have missed both of you. By pure chance, it happened to hit Jane.”

  “And killed her,” said Jimmy very quietly. “Yes. But it might have been me. That diary entry is written as if it had been me. Did you notice?”

  There was a long pause in Haynes’ office. The world outside the windows was highly prosaic and commonplace and normal. Haynes wriggled in his chair.

  “I think,” he said unhappily, “you acted like my girl client—you forged that writing and then forgot it. Have you seen a doctor yet?”

  “Presently,” said Jimmy. “Systematize my lunacy for me first, Haynes. If it can be done.”

  “It’s not accepted science,” said Haynes. “In fact, it’s considered eyewash. But there have been speculations. . . .” He grimaced. “But remember that it was pure chance that Jane was hit. It was just as likely to be you instead, or neither of you. If it had been you—”

  “Jane,” said Jimmy, “would be living in our house alone, and she might very well have written that entry in the diary.”

  “Yes,” agreed Haynes uncomfortably. “I shouldn’t suggest this, but—there are a lot of possible futures. We don’t know which one will come about, for us. When today was in the future, there were a lot of possible todays. The present moment—now—is only one of a lot nows that might have been. So it’s been suggested—mind you, this isn’t science, but pure charlatanry—hit’s been suggested that there may be more than one actual now. Before the girder actually hit, there were three nows in the possible future. One in which neither of you was hit, one in which you were hit, and one—” He paused, embarrassed. “So some people would say, ‘How do we know that the one in which Jane was hit is the only now?’ They’d say that the others could have happened and that maybe they did. And—”

  Jimmy nodded confirmatorily. “If that were true,” he said detachedly, “Jane would be in a present moment, a now, where it was me who was killed. As I’m in a now where she was killed. Is that it?”

  Haynes shrugged.

  Jimmy thought, then said gravely, “Thanks. Queer, isn’t it?”

  He picked up the two pictures and went out.

  Haynes was worried. But it is not easy to denounce someone as insane, when there is no evidence that he is apt to be dangerous. He did go to the trouble to find out that Jimmy acted in a reasonably normal manner. For two weeks he worked industriously and talked quite sanely in the daytime. Only Haynes suspected that of nights he went home and experienced the impossible. Sometimes, Haynes suspected that the impossible might be the fact—that has been an amazingly good bit of trick photography—but it was too preposterous! Also, there was no reason for such a thing to happen to Jimmy.

  Actually, there is still no explanation. But, for a week after Haynes’ pseudo-scientific explanation, Jimmy was almost lighthearted. He no longer had to remind himself that Jane was dead. He had evidence that she wasn’t. She wrote to him in the diary, which he always found on her desk, and he read her message and wrote in return. For a full week the sheer joy of simply being able to communicate with each other was enough.

  But the second week was not so good. To know that Jane was alive was good, but to be separated from her without hope was not. There was no meaning in a cosmos in which one could only write love letters to one’s wife or husband in another now that only might have been. But for a while, both Jimmy and Jane tried to hide this new hopelessness from each other—so Jimmy explained carefully to Haynes before it was all over. Their letters were tender and very natural, and presently there was even time for gossip and actual everyday conversation. . . .

  Haynes met Jimmy on the street one day, after about two weeks. Jimmy looked better, but he was drawn very fine. He greeted Haynes without constraint, but Haynes felt awkward. After a little he said, “Er—Jimmy. That matter we were talking about the other day—those photographs—”

  “Yes. You were right,” said Jimmy casually. “Jane agrees. There is more than one now. In the now I’m in, Jane was killed. In the now she’s in, I was killed.”

  Haynes fidgeted.

  “Would you let me see that picture of the door again?” he asked. “A trick film like that simply can’t be perfect! I’d like to enlarge that picture a little more. May I?”

  “You can have the film,” said Jimmy. “I don’t want it.”

  Haynes hesitated. Jimmy, quite matter-of-factly, told him most of what had happened to date. But he had no idea what had started it. Haynes almost wrung his hands.

  “The thing can’t be so!” he said desperately. “You have to be crazy, Jimmy!”

  But he would not have said that to a man whose sanity he really suspected. Jimmy nodded.

  “Jane told me something, by the way. . . . Did you have a near-accident night before last? Somebody almost ran into you out on the Saw Mill Road?”

  Haynes jumped and went pale.

  “I went around a curve and a car plunged out of nowhere on the wrong side of the road. We both swung hard. He smashed my fender and almost went off the road himself. But he went racing off without stopping to see if I’d gone in the ditch and killed myself. If I’d been five feet nearer the curve when he came out of it—”

  “Where Jane is you were,” said Jimmy. “Just about five feet nearer the curve. It was a bad smash. Tony Shields was in the other car. It killed him—where Jane is.”

  Haynes licked his lips. It was absurd, but he said, “How about me?”

  “Where Jane is,” Jimmy told him, “you’re in the hospital.”

  Haynes swore in unreasonable irritation. There wasn’t any way for Jimmy to know about that near-accident. He hadn’t mentioned it because he’d had no idea who had been in the other car.

  “I don’t believe it!” But then he said pleadingly, “Jimmy—it isn’t so, is it? How the hell could you account for it?”

  Jimmy shrugged.

  “Jane and I—we’re rather fond of each other.” The understatement was so patent that he smiled faintly. “Chance separated us. The feeling we have for each other draws us together. There’s a saying about two people becoming one flesh. If such a thing could happen, it would be Jane and me. After all, maybe only a tiny pebble or a single extra drop of water made my car swerve enough to get her killed—where I am, that is. That’s a very little thing. So with such a trifle separating us, and with so much pulling us together, why—sometimes the barrier wears thin. She leaves a door closed in the house where she is. I open that same door where I am. Sometimes I have to open the door she left closed, too. That’s all.”

  Haynes didn’t say a word, but the question he wouldn’t ask was so self-evident that Jimmy answered it.

  “Why, we’re hoping,” he said. “It’s pretty bad being separated, but the—phenomena keep up. So we hope. Her diary is sometimes in the now where she is and sometimes in the now of mine. Cigarette butts, too. Maybe—” And that was the only time he showed any sign of emotion. He spoke as though his mouther was dry. “If ever I’m in her now or she’s in mine, even for an instant, all the devils in hell couldn’t separate us again! We hope.”

  Which was insanity. In fact, it was the third week of insan
ity. He’d told Haynes quite calmly that Jane’s diary was on her desk every night, that there was a letter to him in it and that he wrote to one to her. He said, quite calmly, that the barrier between them seemed to be growing thinner and that at least once, when he went to bed, he was sure that there was one more cigarette stub in the ashtray than had been there in the evening. They were very near indeed. They were separated only by the difference between what was and what might have been. In one sense, the difference was a pebble or a drop of water. In another, the difference was that between life and death. But they hoped. They convinced themselves that the barrier was growing thinner. Once it seemed to Jimmy that they touched hands. But he was not sure. And he told all this to Haynes in a matter-of-fact fashion and speculated mildly on what had started it all . . .

  Then, one night, Haynes called Jimmy on the telephone. Jimmy answered somewhat impatiently.

  “Jimmy!” said Haynes. He was almost hysterical. “I think I’m in insane! You know you said Tony Shields was in the car that hit me?”

  “Yes,” said Jimmy politely. “What’s the matter?”

  “It’s been driving me crazy,” wailed Haynes feverishly. “You said he was killed—there. But I hadn’t told a soul about the thing! So—so just now I broke down and phoned him. And it had been Tony Shields! That near-crash scared him to death and I gave him hell and—he’s paying for my fender! I didn’t tell him he was killed.”

  Jimmy didn’t answer. It didn’t seem to matter to him.

  “I’m coming over!” said Haynes feverishly. “I’ve got to talk!”

  “No,” said Jimmy. “Jane and I—we’re pretty close to each other. We’ve—touched each other once. We’re hoping. The barrier’s pretty thin. We hope it’s going to break.”

  “But it can’t,” protested Haynes, shocked at the idea of improbabilities in the preposterous. “It—it can’t! What’d happen if you turned up where she is, or—or if she turned up here?”

  “I don’t know,” said Jimmy, “but we’d be together.”

  “You’re crazy! You mustn’t—”

  “Good-by,” said Jimmy, politely. “I’m hoping, Haynes. Something has to happen. It has to!”

  His voice stopped. And then there was a noise in the room behind him—Haynes heard it. Only two words—faintly, and over a telephone—but he swore to himself that it was Jane’s voice apparently sobbing with happiness. The two words Haynes heard were, “Jimmy! Darling!”

  Then the telephone crashed and Haynes heard no more. Even though he called back frantically again and again, Jimmy didn’t answer.

  And that’s all. The whole thing is nonsense, of course. Even granting Jimmy’s sincerity, any psychiatrist can tell you about patients who write letters to themselves, then apparently blot the fact out of their minds and are elated or depressed by the missives of their own composition. There’s no evidence for any other view.

  But Haynes sat up all that night, practically gibbering. He tried to call Jimmy again the next morning, then tried his office and at last went to the police. He explained to them that Jimmy had been in a highly nervous state since the death of his wife. So finally, the police broke into the house. They had to break in because every door and window had been carefully fastened from the inside, as though Jimmy has been very careful to make sure nobody could interrupt what he and Jane hoped would occur. But Jimmy wasn’t in the house. There was no trace of him. It was exactly as if he’d vanished into thin air. Ultimately, the police even dragged ponds and such things for his body, but they never found any clues. Nobody ever saw Jimmy again.

  The thing that really bothers Haynes, though, is the fact that Jimmy told him who’d almost crashed into him on Saw Mill Road—and it was true, and he got a dented fender paid for. Which is hard to take. And there’s that double-exposed picture of Jimmy’s front door, which is much more convincing than any other trick pictures Haynes had ever seen. But, on the other hand, if it did happen, why did it only happen to Jimmy and Jane? What set it off? What started it? Why, in effect, did those oddities start at that particular time, to those particular people, in that particular fashion? In fact, did anything happen at all?

  These are things that Haynes would very much like to know, but he keeps his mouth shut, or the men in white coats would come and take him away for treatment. As they would have taken Jimmy.

  The only thing that is really sure is that it’s all impossible. But, to someone who liked Jimmy and Jane, it’s rather satisfying, too.

  A Dry, Quiet War

  INTRODUCTION

  Soldiers returning home from war often have trouble resuming their civilian lives, and this soldier, back from a time war in the far future, had things even harder. He had a choice of standing by and doing nothing, and losing everything important to him—or fighting back, and still losing everything important . . .

  # # #

  Tony Daniel is the author of seven science fiction books, the latest of which is Guardian of Night, as well as an award-winning short story collection, The Robot’s Twilight Companion. He also collaborated with David Drake on the novel The Heretic, and its sequel, The Savior, new novels in the popular military science fiction series, The General. His story “Life on the Moon” was a Hugo finalist and also won the Asimov’s Reader’s Choice Award. Daniel’s short fiction has been much anthologized and has been collected in multiple year’s best anthologies. Daniel has also co-written screen plays for SyFy Channel horror movies, and during the early 2000s was the writer and director of numerous audio dramas for critically-acclaimed SCIFICOM’s Seeing Ear theater. Born in Alabama, Daniel has lived in St. Louis, Los Angeles, Seattle, Prague, and New York City. He is now an editor at Baen Books and lives in Wake Forest, North Carolina with his wife and two children.

  A Dry, Quiet War

  by Tony Daniel

  I cannot tell you what it meant to me to see the two suns of Ferro set behind the dry mountain east of my home. I had been away twelve billion years. I passed my cabin to the pump well, and taking a metal cup from where it hung from a set-pin, I worked the handle three times. At first it creaked, and I believed it was rusted tight, but then it loosened, and within fifteen pulls, I had a cup of water.

  Someone had kept the pump up. Someone had seen to the house and the land while I was away at the war. For me, it had been fifteen years; I wasn’t sure how long it had been for Ferro. The water was tinged red and tasted of iron. Good. I drank it down in a long draft, then put the cup back onto its hanger. When the big sun, Hemingway, set, a slight breeze kicked up. Then Fitzgerald went down and a cold, cloudless night spanked down onto the plateau. I shivered a little, adjusted my internals, and stood motionless, waiting for the last of twilight to pass, and the stars—my stars—to come out. Steiner, the planet that is Ferro’s evening star, was the first to emerge, low in the west, methane blue. Then the constellations. Ngal. Gilgamesh. The Big Snake, half-coiled over the southwestern horizon. There was no moon tonight. There was never a moon on Ferro, and that was right.

  After a time, I walked to the house, climbed up the porch, and the house recognized me and turned on the lights. I went inside. The place was dusty, the furniture covered with sheets, but there were no signs of rats or jinjas, and all seemed in repair. I sighed, blinked, tried to feel something. Too early, probably. I started to take a covering from a chair, then let it be. I went to the kitchen and checked the cupboard. An old malt-whiskey bottle, some dry cereal, some spices. The spices had been my mother’s, and I seldom used them before I left for the end of time. I considered that the whiskey might be perfectly aged by now. But, as the saying goes on Ferro, we like a bit of food with our drink, so I left the house and took the road to town, to Heidel.

  It was a five-mile walk, and though I could have enhanced and covered the ground in ten minutes or so, I walked at a regular pace under my homeworld stars. The road was dirt, of course, and my pant legs were dusted red when I stopped under the outside light of Thredmartin’s Pub. I took a last breath of cold air
, then went inside to the warm.

  It was a good night at Thredmartin’s. There were men and women gathered around the fire hearth, usas and splices in the cold corners. The regulars were at the bar, a couple of whom I recognized—so old now, wizened like stored apples in a barrel. I looked around for a particular face, but she was not there. A jukebox sputtered some core-cloud deak, and the air was thick with smoke and conversation. Or was, until I walked in. Nobody turned to face me. Most of them couldn’t have seen me. But a signal passed and conversation fell to a quiet murmur. Somebody quickly killed the jukebox.

  I blinked up an internals menu into my peripheral vision and adjusted to the room’s temperature. Then I went to the edge of the bar. The room got even quieter. . . .

  The bartender, old Thredmartin himself, reluctantly came over to me.

  “What can I do for you, sir?” he asked me.

  I looked over him, to the selection of bottles, tubes, and cans on display behind him. “I don’t see it,” I said.

  “Eh?” He glanced back over his shoulder, then quickly returned to peering at me.

  “Bone’s Barley,” I said.

  “We don’t have any more of that,” Thredmartin said, with a suspicious tone.

  “Why not?”

  “The man who made it died.”

  “How long ago?”

  “Twenty years, more or less. I don’t see what business of—”

  “What about his son?”

  Thredmartin backed up a step. Then another. “Henry,” he whispered. “Henry Bone.”

  “Just give me the best that you do have, Peter Thredmartin.” I said. “In fact, I’d like to buy everybody a round on me.”

  “Henry Bone! Why, you looked to me like a bad ’un indeed when you walked in here. I took you for one of them glims, I did,” Thredmartin said. I did not know what he was talking about. Then he smiled an old devil’s crooked smile. “Your money’s no good here, Henry Bone. I do happen to have a couple of bottles of your old dad’s whiskey stowed away in back. Drinks are on the house.”