Robert Silverberg - In Another Country

“No.”

“No what?”

“I wasn’t making anything up. But do you believe that, Christine? Do you?”

“I said I did, this afternoon.”

“But you’ve had a few hours to think about it. Do you still believe it?”

She made no immediate reply. At length she said, glancing at him warily, “I’ve been napping, Thimiroi. I haven’t been thinking about anything at all. But since it seems to be so important to you: Yes. Yes, I think that what you told me, weird as it was, was the truth. There. If it was just a joke, I swallowed it. Does that make me a simpleton in your eyes?”

“So you trust me.”

“Yes. I trust you.”

“Will you go away with me, then? Leave here with me tomorrow, and possibly never come back?”

“ Tomorrow? ” The word seemed to have struck her like an explosion. She looked dazed. “Never—come—back—?”

“In all likelihood.”

She put the palms of her hands together, rubbed them against each other, pressed them tight: a little ritual of hers, perhaps. When she looked up at him again her expression had changed: the confusion had cleared from her face and now she appeared merely puzzled, and even somewhat irritated.

In a sharp tone she said, “What is all this about, Thimiroi?”

He drew a deep breath. “Do you know why we chose the autumn of 1347 for our Canterbury visit?” he asked. “Because it was a season of extraordinarily fine weather, yes. But also because it was a peak time, looking down into a terrible valley, the last sweet moment before the coming of a great calamity. By the following summer the Black Death would be devouring England, and millions would die. We chose the timing of our visit to Augustus the same way. The year 19—19 B.C., it was—was the year he finally consolidated all imperial power in his grasp. Rome was his; he ruled it in a way that no one had ruled that nation before. After that there would be only anticlimax for him, and disappointments and losses; and indeed just after we went to him he would fall seriously ill, almost to the edge of death, and for a time it would seem to him that he had lost everything in the very moment of attaining it. But when we visited him in 19 B.C., it was the summit of his time.”

“What does this have to do with—”

“This May, here, now, is another vintage season, Christine. This long golden month of unforgettable weather—it will end tomorrow, Christine, in terror, in destruction, a frightful descent from happiness into disaster, far steeper than either of the other two. That is why we are here, do you see? As spectators, as observers of the great irony—visiting your city at its happiest moment, and then, tomorrow, watching the catastrophe.”

As he spoke, she grew pale and her lips began to quiver; and then color flooded into her face, as it will sometimes do when the full impact of terrible news arrives. Something close to panic was gleaming in her eyes.

“Are you saying that there’s going to be nuclear war? That after all these years the bombs are finally going to go off?”

“Not war, no.”

“What then?”

Without answering, Thimiroi drew forth his wallet and began to stack currency on the table in front of him, hundreds of dollars, perhaps thousands, all the strange little strips of green-and-black paper that they had supplied him with when he first had arrived here. Christine gaped in astonishment. He shoved the money toward her.

“Here,” he said. “I’ll get more tomorrow morning, and give you that too. Arrange a trip for us to some other country, France, Spain, England, wherever you’d like to go, it makes no difference which one, so long as it is far from here. You will understand how to do such things, with which I have had no experience. Buy airplane tickets—is that the right term, airplane tickets?—get us a hotel room, do whatever is necessary. But we must depart no later than this time tomorrow. When you pack, pack as though you may never return to this house: take your most precious things, the things you would not want to leave behind, but only as much as you can carry yourself. If you have money on deposit, take it out, or arrange for it to be transferred to some place of deposit in the country that we will be going to. Call me when everything is ready, and I’ll come for you and we’ll go together to the place where the planes take off.”

Her expression was frozen, her eyes glazed, rigid. “You won’t tell me what’s going to happen?”

“I have already told you vastly too much. If I tell you more—and you tell others—and the news spreads widely, and the pattern of the future is greatly changed by the things that those people may do as a result of knowing what is to come—no. No. I do not dare, Christine. You are the only one I can save, and I can tell you no more than I have already told you. And you must tell no one else at all.”

“This is like a dream, Thimiroi.”

“Yes. But it is very real, I assure you.”

Once again she stared. Her lips worked a moment before she could speak.

“I’m so terribly afraid, Thimiroi.”

“I understand that. But you do believe me? Will you do as I ask? I swear to you, Christine, your only hope lies in trusting me. Our only hope.”

“Yes,” she said hesitantly.

“Then will you do as I ask?”

“Yes,” she said, beginning the single syllable with doubt in her voice, and finishing it with sudden conviction. “But there’s something I don’t understand.”

“What is that?”

“If something awful is going to happen here, why must we run off to England or Spain? Why not take me back to your own country, Thimiroi? Your own time.”

“There is no way I can do that,” he said softly.

“When you go back, then, what will happen to me?”

He took her hand in his. “I will not go back, Christine. I will stay here with you, in this era—in England, in France, wherever we may go—for the rest of my life. We will both be exiles. But we will be exiles together.”

She asked him to stay with her at her house that night, and he refused. He could see that the refusal hurt her deeply; but there was much that he needed to do, and he could not do it there. They would have many other nights for spending together. Returning to his hotel, he went quickly to his rooms to contemplate the things that would have to be dealt with.

Everything that belonged to his own era, of course, packed and sent back via his suitcase: no question about that. He could keep some of his clothing with him here, perhaps, but none of the furniture, none of the artifacts, nothing that might betray the technology of a time yet unborn. The room would have to be bare when he left it. And he would have to requisition more twentieth-century money. He had no idea how much Christine might have above what he had already given her, nor how long it would last; but certainly they would need more as they began their new lives. As for the suitcase, his one remaining link to the epoch from which he came, he would have to destroy that. He would have to sever all ties. He would—

The telephone rang. The light jingling of its bell cut across his consciousness like a scream.

Christine, he thought. To tell him that she had reconsidered, that she saw now that this was all madness, that if he did not leave her alone she would call the police—

“Yes?” he said.

“Thimiroi! Oh, I am glad you’re there.” A warm, hearty, familiar masculine voice. “Laliene said I might have difficulty finding you, but I thought I’d ring your room anyway—”

“Antilimoin?”

“None other. We’ve just arrived. Ninth floor, the Presidential suite, whatever that may be. Maitira and Fevra are here with me, of course. Listen, old friend, we’re having a tremendous blast tonight—oh, pardon me, that’s a sick thing to say, isn’t it?—a tremendous gathering, you know, a soiree , to enliven the night before the big night—do you think you can make it?”