The Star Diaries (20 page)

He glanced at me in a distracted way and bent over his instrument; the fact that he had taken charge of the situation so, and particularly that he didn’t see fit to say something, finally put me out of patience.

“What is the meaning of this?!” I try not to raise my voice.

“I’ll explain in a minute … hold on,” he mutters, then gets up, drags that tube thing over to the lamp, slants the shade to get better light, adjusting the paper while holding the arm in place (he knows, the dog, that the shade will fall, so he has to be me) and touches some knobs with his finger, clearly troubled.

“You might at least apologize!” I can no longer hide my growing irritation. He smiles. He puts aside his contraption, that is, rests it against the wall. He sits in my armchair, opens the middle drawer, takes out my favorite pipe and unerringly reaches for the tobacco pouch.

This is really too much.

“What nerve!!” I say.

With a sweep of the hand he gestures for me to have a seat. I can’t help but take stock of the destruction done—the bindings of two heavy astronomical atlases broken!—however I pull up a chair and twiddle my thumbs, waiting. I’ll give him five minutes for explanations and apologies, and if I’m not satisfied, well, there are other ways to settle things.

“Come now!” remarks my uninvited guest. “You’re an intelligent man! Just how are you going to settle things? Any bruise I get today will only be yours later on!”

I say nothing, but am thinking. If it’s true that he is me and that somehow (but
how,
for God’s sake?) I’ve gotten myself into a time loop again (and why am I the one these things have to happen to?!), then he may indeed have a right to my pipe and even my house. But what reason was there to go and knock over the bookcase?

“That was unintentional,” he says through a cloud of aromatic smoke, examining the tip of his shoe—quite stylish, too. He crosses his legs, swings the top one back and forth. “The chronocycle threw me while braking. Instead of eight-thirty I flew in at eight-thirty and one-hundredth of a second. If they’d set the sight better I would have arrived in the center of the room.”

“I don’t understand. (And I don’t, not any of it.) First of all: are you a telepathist? How can you answer questions which I’m only
thinking
? And secondly: if you really are myself and have come through time, what does that have to do with place? Why did you destroy my books?!”

“If you’d stop a moment and think, you’d figure that all out for yourself. I’m later than you, so I
must
remember what I thought, i.e. what you thought, since I am you, only from the future. And as for time and place, the Earth—after all—is turning! I skidded one-hundredth of a second, perhaps even less, and in that brief interval it had time to move, along with the house, those thirteen feet. I told Rosenbeisser it would be better to land in the garden, but he talked me into this sighting.”

“All right. Supposing that’s true. But what does it all mean?”

“Well obviously I’m going to tell you. However let’s have supper first, it’s a long story and of the utmost importance. I’ve come to you as an emissary on a historic mission.”

I found myself believing him. We went downstairs, made supper, such as it was; all I did was open a can of sardines (and there were a couple of eggs left in the icebox). Afterwards we remained in the kitchen, for I didn’t want to spoil my mood by having to look at the bookcase. He wasn’t overly eager to wash the dishes, but I appealed to his conscience and he finally agreed to wipe. Then we sat at the table, he looked me gravely in the eye and said:

“I come from the year 2661, to make you an offer, an offer which no man has ever heard before, nor will again. The Research Committee of the Temporal Institute wants me—that is, you—to be General Director of its THEOHIPPIP effort, which abbreviation stands for: Teleotelechronistic-Historical Engineering to Optimize the Hyperputerized Implementation of Paleological Programming and Interplanetary Planning. I’m confident that you will accept this high position, for it carries with it extraordinary responsibility towards the human race and history, and I know that I—that is, you—are a man of both initiative and integrity.”

“I’d like to hear something a little more specific first—what I really don’t understand is why they didn’t simply send me a delegate of that institute instead of you—I mean, myself. How did you—that is, how did I—get there in the first place?”

“That I’ll explain at the end and separately. As for the main business, you remember of course Molteris, that poor man who invented a manual time traveling device and, wishing to demonstrate it, perished miserably, for he aged to death immediately upon takeoff?”

I nodded.

“There will be more such attempts. Every new technology entails casualties in its initial stages. Molteris had invented a one-seat time buggy without any shields. He was doing exactly what the medieval peasant did, who climbed the church steeple with his wings and killed himself on the spot. In the 23rd century there were—or rather, from your standpoint, will be—clockcars, calendar sedans and syncoscooters, but the real chronomotive revolution will only begin three hundred years later, thanks to men I will not name—you’ll meet them personally. Time travel over short distances is one thing, expeditions deep into the millennia quite another. The difference is more or less like that between going for a stroll downtown and journeying to the stars. I come from the Age of Chronotraction, Chronomotion and Telechronics. There have been mountains of nonsense written about traveling in time, just as previously there were about astronautics—you know, how some scientist, with the backing of a wealthy businessman, goes off in a corner and slaps together a rocket, which the two of them—and in the company of their lady friends, yet—then take to the far end of the Galaxy. Chronomotion, no less than Astronautics, is a colossal enterprise, requiring tremendous investments, expenditures, planning … but you’ll find this out for yourself when you get there, that is, at the proper time. Enough now of the technical aspect. The important thing is the purpose behind it; we haven’t gone to all this trouble just so someone can frighten Pharaohs or kill his own great-great-grandfather. The social structure of Earth has been regulated, the climate also, in the 27th century—from which I come—things are so good, they couldn’t possibly be better, but our history remains a constant source of aggravation to us. You know the state it’s in; high time, then, we put it into shape!”

“Now wait a minute,” I said, my ears humming. “You’re not happy with history? Well, but what difference does that make? I mean, it’s not something you can change, is it?”

“Don’t be ridiculous. It’s precisely THEOHIPPIP that heads our list of priorities. I already told you, Teleotelechronistic-Historical Engineering to Optimize the Hyperputerized Implementation of Paleological Programming and Interplanetary Planning. For World History to be regulated, cleaned up, straightened out, adjusted and perfected, all in accordance with the principles of humanitarianism, rationalism and general esthetics. You can understand, surely, that with such a shambles and slaughterhouse in one’s family tree it’s awkward to go calling on important cosmic civilizations!”

“The regulation of the Past?…” I said, dumbfounded.

“Yes. If need be, alterations will be made even before the rise of man, so that he arises better. The necessary funds have already been gathered, however the post of General Director of the Project is still vacant. Everyone’s frightened off by the risks connected with that job.”

“There aren’t any volunteers?” My astonishment was growing by the minute.

“Those days are gone, where every jackass wants to rule the world. Without the proper qualifications no one’s anxious to take on a difficult assignment. Consequently the position remains unfilled, yet the matter is pressing!”

“But I don’t know a thing about it. And why me, of all people?”

“You’ll have whole staffs of specialists at your disposal. Anyway the technical side of it will not be your concern; there are many different plans of action, different proposals, policies, methods, what’s needed are carefully thought-out, responsible decisions. And I—that is, you—are to make them. Our Hyperputer examined by psychoprobe every man who ever lived, and concluded that I—you—are the only hope of the Project.”

After a long pause I said:

“This is, I can see, a serious business. Perhaps I
will
accept the position, and then again, perhaps I won’t. World History, h’m! That’ll take a little thought. But how did it happen that I was the one—that is, that you were the one—to approach me?
I
certainly didn’t go anywhere in time. It was only yesterday that I got back from the Hyades.”

“Obviously!” he interrupted. “After all, you’re the
earlier
me! When you accept the offer, I’ll give you the chronocycle, and you’ll go where—that is, when—you’re supposed to.”

“That’s not an answer to my question. I want to know how you ended up in the 27th century.”

“I got there on a time vehicle, how else? And then, from there, I came to your here and now."

“Yes, but if
I
didn’t take any time vehicle anywhere, then you too, who are
me
…”

“Don’t be stupid. I’m
later
than you, so you can’t possibly know
now
what’s going to happen to
you
after you take off for the 27th century.”

“You’re evading the issue!” I muttered. “Look, if I accept this offer, I go straight to the 27th century. Right? There I direct this Theohippip thing and so on. But where do
you
come into the pic—”

“We can go on this way all night! Round and round. Look, here’s what. Ask Rosenbeisser, let him explain it to you. He’s the authority on time anyway, not me. Besides, this problem, hard though it may be to grasp, and time loops are always like that, is nothing in comparison with my mission—with your mission, that is. It’s a Historic Mission we’re talking about, after all! So what do you say? Is it agreed? The chronocycle will work. It wasn’t damaged, I checked.”

“Chronocycle or no, I can’t just up and go like this.”

“You have to! It’s your duty! You must!”

“Ho ho! None of that
must
talk with me, if you please! You know how I dislike it. I will if I want to, when I’m convinced the situation demands it of me. Who is this Rosenbeisser?”

“Research Director at ITS. He’ll be your top assistant.”

“ITS?”

“The Institute of Temporal Studies.”

“And what if I refuse?”

“You can’t refuse … you won’t do that … it would mean, well, it would mean that you hadn’t the courage…”

A smile seemed to flicker on his lips as he said these words. This made me suspicious.

“Really. And why is that?”

“Because … eh, I can’t explain it to you. It has to do with the structure of time itself.”

“Nonsense. If I
don’t
agree, then I don’t go anywhere, and thus this Rosenbeisser of yours will explain nothing to me, nor will I be regulating any history.”

I said this partly to gain time, since one doesn’t make such important decisions at the drop of a hat, but also because, though I was completely in the dark as to why he—that is, I—was the one who came to me, I had the funny feeling that there was some catch, some deception involved here.

“I’ll give you my answer in forty-eight hours!” I said.

He began to urge me to decide at once, but the more he insisted, the more suspicious I became. Eventually I even started having doubts about his identicality with me. He could have been, after all, an agent in disguise! As soon as that occurred to me, I resolved to test him. The trick was to think of some secret that was unknown to any but myself.

“Why does the numbering of the voyages in my
Star Diaries
contain gaps?” I shot the question at him.

“Ha ha!” he laughed. “So now you don’t believe in me? The reason is, old boy, that some of the journeys took place in space, and some in time, therefore there can never be a first; you could always go back to when there were none and set out somewhere, then the one that had been first would become the second, and so on, ad infinitum!”

That was right. However a few persons did have knowledge of this—though true, they were my trusted friends from Professor Tarantoga’s Tichological Club; I asked, then, to see some identification. His papers were all in order, though that still proved nothing; papers can easily be falsified. He weakened my skepticism considerably by being able to sing everything that I was wont to sing while—and only while—traveling great distances, all alone; I noticed however that in the refrain of “Shooting star, shooting star!” he was terribly off key. I told him this; he took offense and said that
I
was the one who always sang off key, not he. Our conversation, till now reasonably peaceful, turned into an argument, then a violent quarrel, finally he got me so furious that I ordered him out of the house. This was said in anger, I didn’t actually mean it, yet he rose without another word, marched upstairs, put his chronocycle into position, sat on it like a bike, moved something or other, and in a twinkling of an eye had vanished in a cloud of smoke, or more precisely a puff, as if from a cigarette. That too was gone in a minute—all that remained was the pile of books strewn every which way. I stood there, feeling foolish, for this I hadn’t expected, and by the time he’d started preparing to leave I couldn’t very well have backed down. Mulling it over a moment or two, I turned around and went back to the kitchen, since we had been talking for three hours at least and I felt hungry again. There were still a couple of eggs in the icebox, a strip of bacon too, but when I turned on the gas and began frying them up, a terrible crash resounded on the second floor.