Джек Макдевитт - Cryptic - The Best Short Fiction of Jack McDevitt

In back somewhere, something moved. It might have been a branch scraping against the side of the house, but it sounded inside .

Snow fell steadily against the windows.

It came again. A floor board, maybe. Not much more than a whisper.

I took down a golf club, went out into the hallway, looked up the staircase and along the upper level. Glanced toward the kitchen.

Wood creaked.

Upstairs.

I started up, ascending as quietly as I could, and got about halfway when a movement at the door to the middle bedroom caught my attention. The wardrobe.

One of the curious phenomena associated with sudden and unexpected death is our inability to accept it when it strikes those close to us. We always imagine that the person we’ve lost is in the kitchen, or in the next room, and that it requires only that we call his name in the customary way to have him reappear in the customary place. I felt that way about Shel. We had lunched with Cervantes and ridden with Washington and lived a thousand other miracles. And when it was over, we always came back through the wardrobe and out onto the landing.

He came out now.

Shel stood up there, watching me.

I froze.

“Hello, Dave,” he said.

I hung on to the bannister, and the stairs felt slippery. “Shel,” I said shakily, “is that you ?”

He smiled. The old, crooked grin that I had thought not to see again. Some part of me that was too slow-witted to get flustered started flicking through explanations. Someone else had died in the fire. It was a dream. Shel had a twin.

“Yes,” he said. “It’s me. Are you okay?”

“Yeah.”

“I’m sorry. I know this must be a shock.” He moved toward me, along the top of the landing. I’m not sure what I was feeling. There was a rush of emotions, of joy, of anger, even of fear. He came down a few stairs, took my shoulders, and steadied me. His hands were solid, his smile very real, and my heart sank. Helen’s image rose before me.

“I don’t understand,” I said.

Adrian Shelborne was tall and graceful, blessed with the clean-cut features of a romantic hero. His eyes were bright and sad. We slid down into sitting positions. “It’s been a strange morning,” he said.

“You’re supposed to be dead.”

He took a deep breath. “I know. I do believe I am , David.”

Suddenly it was clear. “You’re downstream .”

“Yes,” he said. “I’m downstream.” He drew his legs up in a gesture that looked defensive. “You sure you’re okay?”

“I’ve spent several days trying to get used to this. That you were gone—.”

“It’s true.” He spaced the words, not able to accept it himself.

“When you go back—.”

“—The house will burn, and I will be in it.”

For a long time neither of us spoke. “Don’t do it,” I said at last. “Stay here.”

“I can’t stay here ,” he said. “What does that do to the time stream?”

Damn the time stream. I was thinking how candle-light filled Helen’s eyes, how she and Shel had walked to the car together at the end of an evening. I was remembering the press of her lips against my cheek.

“Maybe you’re right,” I said.

“Of course I am. They just buried me, Dave. They found me in my bed. Did you know I didn’t even get out of my bed?”

“Yes,” I said. “I heard that.”

“I don’t believe it.” He was pale, and I noticed his eyes were red.

My first ride with him had been to Gettysburg to listen to Lincoln. Afterward, when I was still trying to come to terms with the fact that I had really been there, he talked about having dinner with Caesar and drinking with Voltaire.

He must have felt my company to be of value, because he invited me to go a second time. I’d wondered where we were headed, expecting historic significance, but we went only to 1978 New Haven. We were riding a large misshapen brown chamber then, a thing that looked like a hot water tank. “I want you to meet someone,” he said, as we emerged into streets filled with odd-looking cars. Her name was Martha, and she had been Shel’s fiancée. Six hours after our arrival she would fall asleep at the wheel of her Ford. And Shel’s life would change forever. “She and I had dinner last night at The Mug,” he told me while we waited for her to come out of the telephone company building where she worked. “I never saw her again.”

It was 5:00 p.m., and the first rush out the door was beginning.

“What are you going to do?” I’d asked.

He was in a state of extreme nervous agitation. “Talk to her.”

I laughed. “Are you serious? What are you going to tell her?”

“I’ll be careful,” he said. Don’t want to create a paradox. “I just want to see her again.”

A light rain had begun. People started pouring out through the revolving doors. They looked up at the dark clouds, grimaced, and scattered to cars and buses, holding newspapers over their heads.

And then Martha came out.

I knew her immediately, because Shel stiffened and caught his breath. She paused to exchange a few words with another young woman. The rain intensified.

She was twenty years old and full of vitality and good humor. There was much of the tomboy about her, just giving way to a lush golden beauty. Her hair was shoulder-length and swung easily with every move. (I thought I saw much of Helen in her, in her eyes, in the set of her mouth, in her animation.) She was standing back under the building overhang, protected from the storm. She waved goodbye to the friend, and prepared to run for her car. But her gaze fell on us, on Shel. Her brow furrowed and she looked at us uncertainly.

Shel took a step forward.

I discovered I was holding his arm. Holding him back. A gust of wind blew loose dust and paper through the air. “Don’t,” I said.

“I know.”

She shook her head as if she recognized a mistake and hurried away. We watched her disappear around the corner out onto the parking lot.

We had talked about that incident many times, what might have happened had he intervened. We used to sit in the tower at the end of time, and he’d talk about feeling guilty because he had not prevented her death. “Maybe we can’t change anything. But I feel as if I should have tried.”

Now, starting carefully downstairs, he seemed frail. Disoriented. “They think you were murdered,” I said.

“I know. I heard the conversation.” In the living room he fell into an armchair.

My stomach was churning and I knew I wasn’t thinking clearly. “What happened? How did you find out about the funeral?”

He didn’t answer right away. “I was doing some research downstream,” he said finally, “in the Trenton Library. In the reference section. I was looking at biographies, so I could plan future flights. You know how I work.”

“Yes,” I said.

“And I did something I knew was a mistake. Knew it while I was doing it. But I went ahead anyhow.”

“You looked up your own biography.”

“I couldn’t help it.” He massaged his jaw. “It’s a terrible thing,” he said, “to have the story of your entire life lying at your elbow. Unopened. Dave, I walked away from it twice and came back both times.” He smiled weakly. “I will be remembered for my work in quantum transversals.”

“This is what comes of traveling alone.” I was irritated. “I told you we should never do that.”

“It’s done,” he said. “Listen, if I hadn’t looked, I’d be dead now.”

I broke out a bottle of burgundy, filled two glasses and we drank it off and I filled them again. “What are you going to do?”

He shook his head. “ It’s waiting for me back there. I don’t know what to do.” His breathing was loud. Snow was piling up on the windows.