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

“Okay, Shel. Help me relax. If you’re going to take care of everything, tell me what’s causing the weather conditions back home? Why the power is out? Why I can’t find my way across the street?”

“I know about all that,” he said.

“And—?”

“Look. Maybe it has nothing to do with me.”

The Hellenic squadrons were still filing in, their bright mail dusty from the journey north.

“I doubt it,” I said.

He nodded. “As do I. But I’ve promised to go back. What more do you want?”

“Maybe you should do it now.”

He glanced up at a promontory about a hundred feet over our heads. “What is now to you and me, Dave? What does the word mean?” When I did not respond, he knelt down and broke off a blade of grass. “Would you be willing to throw yourself from the top of that rock?”

“That has nothing to do with the business between us,” I said.

“Not even if I pleaded with you to do so? If the world depended on it?”

I looked at him.

“What if it didn’t matter whether you did it today or tomorrow? Or next month? Or forty years from now?”

“We don’t have forty years.”

“I’m not asking for forty of your years. I’m asking for forty of mine . I’ll do it, Dave. God help me, I’ll do it. But on my own schedule. Not yours.”

I turned away from him, and he thought I was going to travel out. “Don’t,” he said. “Dave, try to understand. I’m scared of this.”

“I know,” I said.

“Good. I need you to know.”

We passed ourselves off as traveling law-givers. We moved among the Hellenic troops, wishing them well, assuring them that Hellas would never forget them. We first glimpsed Leonidas sitting with his captains around a campfire.

People accustomed to modern security precautions would be amazed at how easy it was to approach him. He accepted our good wishes and observed that, considering our physical size, we would both have made excellent soldiers had we chosen that line of work. In fact, both Shel and I towered over him.

He had dark eyes and was only in his thirties. He brimmed with confidence, as did his men. There was no sense here of a doomed force.

He knew about the road that circled behind the pass, and he had already dispatched troops to cover it. The Phocians, as I recalled. Who would run at the first onset.

He invited us to share a meal. This was the third day of the standoff, before any blood had yet been spilt. We talked with him about Sparta’s system of balancing the executive by crowning two kings. And whether democracy would really work in the long run. He thought not. “Athens cannot stay the course,” he said. “They have no discipline, and their philosophers encourage them to put themselves before their country. God help us if the poison ever spreads to us.” Later, over wine, he asked where we were from, explaining that he could not place the accent.

“America,” I said.

He shook his head. “It must be far to the north. Or very small.”

We each posed with Leonidas, and took pictures, explaining that it was a ritual that would allow us to share his courage. Sparks crackled up from the campfires, and the soldiers talked about home and the future.

Later, I traded a gold coin to one of the Thespian archers for an arrow. “I’m not sure that’s a good idea,” Shel said. “He may need the arrow before he’s done.”

I knew better. “One arrow more or less will make no difference. When the crunch comes, the Thespians will refuse to leave their Spartan allies. They’ll die too. All fifteen hundred of them.”

And history will remember only the Spartans.

We watched them, exercising and playing games in full view of their Persian enemies. Shel turned to me, and his face was cold and hard. “You know, David,” he said, “you are a monster.”

Saturday, November 26. Mid-afternoon.

“This is not just heavy fog,” she said. “It’s midnight out there.” Helen bit down on a grape.

I sat staring at the window, wondering what lay across Carmichael Drive.

She was lovely in the candlelight. “My guess is that a volcano erupted somewhere,” she said. “I know that sounds crazy in South Jersey, but it’s all I can think of.” She was close to me. Warm and vulnerable and open. I reached out and touched her hair. Stroked it. She did not draw away. “I’m glad I was here when it happened, Dave. Whatever it is that’s happened.”

“So am I,” I said.

She smiled appreciatively. And after a moment: “So what do you think?”

I took a deep breath. “I think I know what it is.”

“I’m listening.”

“Helen, there’s a lot about Shel you don’t know. To put it mildly.” Her eyes widened. “Not other women,” I added hurriedly. “Or anything like that.”

That’s not the kind of statement, I suppose, that gets any kind of reaction. Helen just froze in place. “I mean it,” I said. “He has a working time machine.” I was speaking of him in the present tense. With Shel it gets sort of confused.

“I could almost believe it,” she said, after a moment.

I’d been debating whether to destroy my own unit. It would have been the rational thing to do, and the day after Shel’s death I’d even gone down to the river with it. But I hadn’t been able to bring myself to throw it into the water. Next week, I’d thought. There’s plenty of time. “Here,” I said. “I’ll show you one.” I took it out of the desk and handed it to her. It looks like an oversized watch. “You just strap it on, connect it to the power pack, here. Set the destination, and punch the stem.”

She looked at it curiously. “What is it really, Dave? A notebook?”

“Hell with this,” I said. I have to walk to keep my weight down. Three miles a day, every day. Other people walk around the block, or go down to a park. I like Ambrose, Ohio, near the beginning of the century. It’s a pleasant little town with tree-lined streets and white picket fences, where straw hats are in vogue for the men, and bright ribbons for the ladies. Down at the barber shop, the talk is mostly about the canal they’re going to build through Panama.

I pulled Helen close, brought up Ambrose’s coordinates, and told her to brace herself. “The sensation’s a little odd at first. But it only lasts a few seconds. And I’ll be with you.”

The living room froze. She stiffened.

The walls and furniture faded to a green landscape with broad lawns and shingled houses and gas street lamps.

When we came out of it, she backed into me. “What happened?” she asked, looking wildly around.

“We’ve just gone upstream. Into the past. It’s 1905. Theodore Roosevelt is President.”

She didn’t say anything for a long time. Birds sang, and in the distance we could hear the clean bang of church bells. We were standing outside a general store. About a block away there was a railroad siding.

The wind blew against us.

Her breathing had gone somewhat irregular. “It’s okay,” I said. “It just takes a little getting used to.”

It was late September. People were working in yards, talking over back fences. “We’re really here, aren’t we?”

“Yes,” I said. “We are.”

“My God.” She took a long, deep breath. The air smelled of burning leaves. I saw hurt come into her eyes. “Why didn’t he ever say anything?”

“He kept it a secret for twenty years, Helen. It was habitual with him. He wanted to tell you, and he would have got around to it in his own good time.” I shrugged. “Anyway, no one else knows. And no one should. I’ll deny this whole thing if anyone ever asks.”