The Best of Joe Haldeman (12 page)

“For an infant, a reasonable perception.”

Respectful chiding mode: “One hundred years makes-ed Faust a very old man, for a Dawn man.”

“As I stand,” same mode, less respect, “yet an infant.” They trade silent symbols of laughter.

After a polite tenth-second interval, Three-phasing uses the light interrogation mode: “The machine of Nine-hover...?”

“It begins to work but so far not perfectly.” This is not news.

Mild impatience: “As before, then, it brings back only rocks and earth and water and plants?”

“Negative, beloved atavism.” Offhand: “This morning she caught two animals that look as man may once have looked.”

“!” Strong impatience, “I go?”

“.” His father ends the conversation just two seconds after it began.

Three-phasing stops off to pick up his teeth, then goes directly to Nine-hover.

A quick exchange of greeting-symbols and Nine-hover presents her prizes. “Thinking I have two different species,” she stands: uncertainty, query.

Three-phasing is amused. “Negative, time-caster. The male and female took very dissimilar forms in the Dawn times.” He touches one of them. “The round organs, here, served-ing to feed infants, in the female.”

The female screams.

“She manipulates spoken symbols now,” observes Nine-hover.

Before the woman has finished her startled yelp, Three-phasing explains: “Not manipulating concrete symbols; rather, she communicates in a way called ‘non-verbal,’ the use of such communication predating even speech.” Slipping into the pedantic mode: “My reading indicates that

“Or the machine,” Nine-hover adds.

Symbol for continuing. “We have no symbol for it but in Dawn days most humans observed ‘xenophobia,’ reacting to the strange with fear instead of delight. We stand as strange to them as they do to us, thus they register fear. In their era this attitude encouraged-s survival.

“Our silence must seem strange to them, as well as our appearance and the speed with which we move. I will attempt to speak to them, so they will know they need not fear us.”

~ * ~

Bob and Sarah Graham were having a desperately good time. It was September of 1951 and the papers were full of news about the brilliant landing of U.S. Marines at Inchon. Bob was a Marine private with two days left of the thirty days’ leave they had given him, between boot camp and disembarkation for Korea. Sarah had been Mrs. Graham for three weeks.

Sarah poured some more bourbon into her Coke. She wiped the sand off her thumb and stoppered the Coke bottle, then shook it gently. “What if you just don’t show up?” she said softly.

Bob was staring out over the ocean and part of what Sarah said was lost in the crash of breakers rolling in. “What if I what?”

“Don’t show up.” She took a swig and offered the bottle. “Just stay here with me. With us.” Sarah was sure she was pregnant. It was too early to tell, of course; her calendar was off but there could be other reasons.

He gave the Coke back to her and sipped directly from the bourbon bottle. “I suppose they’d go on without me. And I’d still be in jail when they came back.”

“Not if—”

“Honey, don’t even talk like that. It’s a just cause.”

She picked up a small shell and threw it toward the water.

“Besides, you read the
Examiner
yesterday.”

“I’m cold. Let’s go up.” She stood and stretched and delicately brushed sand away. Bob admired her long naked dancer’s body. He shook out the blanket and draped it over her shoulders.

“It’ll all be over by the time I get there. We’ll push those bastards—”

“Let’s not talk about Korea. Let’s not talk.”

He put his arm around her and they started walking back toward the cabin. Halfway there, she stopped and enfolded the blanket around both of them, drawing him toward her. He always closed his eyes when they kissed, but she always kept hers open. She saw it: the air turning luminous, the seascape fading to be replaced by bare metal walls. The sand turns hard under her feet.

At her sharp intake of breath, Bob opens his eyes. He sees a grotesque dwarf, eyes and skull too large, body small and wrinkled. They stare at one another for a fraction of a second. Then the dwarf spins around and speeds across the room to what looks like a black square painted on the floor. When he gets there, he disappears.

“What the hell?” Bob says in a hoarse whisper.

Sarah turns around just a bit too late to catch a glimpse of Three-phasing’s father. She does see Nine-hover before Bob does. The nominally female time-caster is a flurry of movement, sitting at the console of her time net, clicking switches and adjusting various dials. All of the motions are unnecessary, as is the console. It was built at Three-phasing’s suggestion, since humans from the era into which they could cast would feel more comfortable in the presence of a machine that looked like a machine. The actual time net was roughly the size and shape of an asparagus stalk, was controlled completely by thought, and had no moving parts. It does not exist any more, but can still be used, once understood. Nine-hover has been trained from birth for this special understanding.

Sarah nudges Bob and points to Nine-hover. She can’t find her voice. Bob stares open-mouthed.

In a few seconds, Three-phasing appears. He looks at Nine-hover for a moment, then scurries over to the Dawn couple and reaches up to touch Sarah on the left nipple. His body temperature is considerably higher than hers, and the unexpected warm moistness, as much as the suddenness of the motion, makes her jump back and squeal.

Three-phasing correctly classified both Dawn people as Caucasian, and so assumes that they speak some Indo-European language.

“GutenTagsprechensieDeutsch?”
he says in a rapid soprano.

“Huh?” Bob says.

“Guten-Tag-sprechen-sie-Deutsch?”
Three-phasing clears his throat and drops his voice down to the alto he uses to sing about the St. Louis woman.
“Guten Tag,”
he says, counting to a hundred between each word.
“Sprechen sie Deutsch?”

“That’s Kraut,” says Bob, having grown up on jingoistic comic books. “Don’t tell me you’re a—”

Three-phasing analyzes the first five words and knows that Bob is an American from the period 1935-1955. “Yes, yes—and no, no—to wit, how very very clever of you to have identified this phrase as having come from the language of Prussia, Germany as you say; but I am, no, not a German person; at least, I no more belong to the German nationality than I do to any other, but I suppose that is not too clear and perhaps I should fully elucidate the particulars of your own situation at this, as you say, ‘time’ and ‘place.’”

The last English-language author Three-phasing studied was Henry James.

“Huh?” Bob says again.

“Ah. I should simplify.” He thinks for a half-second and drops his voice down another third. “Yeah, simple. Listen. Mac. First thing I gotta know’s whatcher name. Whatcher broad’s name.”

“Well...I’m Bob Graham. This is my wife, Sarah Graham.”

“Pleasta meetcha, Bob. Likewise, Sarah. Call me, uh...” The only twentieth-century language in which Three-phasing’s name makes sense is propositional calculus. “George. George Boole.

“I ‘poligize for bumpin’ into ya, Sarah. That broad in the corner, she don’t know what a tit is, so I was just usin’ one of yours. Uh, lack of immediate culchural perspective, I shoulda knowed better.”

Sarah feels a little dizzy, shakes her head slowly. “That’s all right. I know you didn’t mean anything by it.”

“I’m dreaming,” Bob says. “Shouldn’t have—”

“No you aren’t,” says Three-phasing, adjusting his diction again. “You’re in the future. Almost a million years. Pardon me.” He scurries to the mover-transom, is gone for a second, reappears with a bedsheet, which he hands to Bob. “I’m sorry, we don’t wear clothing. This is the best I can do, for now.” The bedsheet is too small for Bob to wear the way Sarah is using the blanket. He folds it over and tucks it around his waist, in a kilt. “Why us?” he asks.

“You were taken at random. We’ve been time-casting”—he checks with Nine-hover—”for twenty-two years, and have never before caught a human being. Let alone two. You must have been in close contact with one another when you intersected the time-caster beam. I assume you were copulating.”

“What-ing?” Bob says.

“No we weren’t!” Sarah says indignantly.

“Ah, quite so.” Three-phasing doesn’t pursue the topic. He knows that humans of this culture were reticent about their sexual activity. But from their literature he knows they spent most of their “time” thinking about, arranging for, enjoying, and recovering from a variety of sexual contacts.

“Then that must be a time machine over there,” Bob says, indicating the fake console.

“In a sense, yes.” Three-phasing decides to be partly honest. “But the actual machine no longer exists. People did a lot of time-travelling about a quarter of a million years ago. Shuffled history around. Changed it back. The fact that the machine once existed, well, that enables us to use it, if you see what I mean.”

“Uh, no. I don’t.” Not with synapses limited to three degrees of freedom.

“Well, never mind. It’s not really important.” He senses the next question. “You will be going back...I don’t know exactly when. It depends on a lot of things. You see, time is like a rubber band.” No, it isn’t. “Or a spring.” No, it isn’t. “At any rate, within a few days, weeks at most, you will leave this present and return to the moment you were experiencing when the time-caster beam picked you up.”

“I’ve read stories like that,” Sarah says. “Will we remember the future, after we go back?”

“Probably not,” he says charitably. Not until your brains evolve. “But you can do us a great service.”

Bob shrugs. “Sure, long as we’re here. Anyhow, you did us a favor.” He puts his arm around Sarah. “I’ve gotta leave Sarah in a couple of days; don’t know for how long. So you’re giving us more time together.”

“Whether we remember it or not,” Sarah says.

“Good, fine. Come with me.” They follow Three-phasing to the mover-transom, where he takes their hands and transports them to his home. It is as unadorned as the time-caster room, except for bookshelves along one wall, and a low podium upon which the volume of
Faust
rests. All of the books are bound identically, in shiny metal with flat black letters along the spines.

Bob looks around. “Don’t you people ever sit down?”

“Oh,” Three-phasing says. “Thoughtless of me.” With his mind he shifts the room from utility mood to comfort mood. Intricate tapestries now hang on the walls; soft cushions that look like silk are strewn around in pleasant disorder. Chiming music, not quite discordant, hovers at the edge of audibility, and there is a faint odor of something like jasmine. The metal floor has become a kind of soft leather, and the room has somehow lost its corners.

“How did that happen?” Sarah asks.

“I don’t know.” Three-phasing tries to copy Bob’s shrug, but only manages a spasmodic jerk. “Can’t remember not being able to do it.”

Bob drops into a cushion and experimentally pushes at the floor with a finger. “What is it you want us to do?”

Trying to move slowly, Three-phasing lowers himself into a cushion and gestures at a nearby one, for Sarah. “It’s very simple, really. Your being here is most of it.

“We’re celebrating the millionth anniversary of the written word.” How to phrase it? “Everyone is interested in this anniversary, but... nobody reads any more.”

Bob nods sympathetically. “Never have time for it myself.”

“Yes, uh...you
do
know how to read, though?”

“He knows,” Sarah says. “He’s just lazy.”

“Well, yeah.” Bob shifts uncomfortably in the cushion. “Sarah’s the one you want. I kind of, uh, prefer to listen to the radio.”

“I read all the time,” Sarah says with a little pride. “Mostly mysteries. But sometimes I read good books, too.”

“Good, good.” It was indeed fortunate to have found this pair, Three-phasing realizes. They had used the metal of the ancient books to “tune” the time-caster, so potential subjects were limited to those living some eighty years before and after 2021 A.D. Internal evidence in the books indicated that most of the Earth’s population was illiterate during this period.