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

“Where are we?” demanded Helen, barely able to make herself heard.

Shel was hanging onto a ladder. His clothes were drenched. “A. D. 79,” he said. “Just west of Pompeii.”

His eyes were afire. His silver hair was already streaked with black ash, and I began to suspect he had lost whatever anchor he might have had to reality. Time had become at last perhaps too slippery for him.

The ship rolled to starboard, and would have dumped Helen into the sea had the old man not grabbed her, and hung on, pushing me aside. “Isn’t this glorious?” he asked.

“Why are we here?” Helen demanded, wiping her eyes.

The sea and the wind roared, and the dust was blinding.

“ I will pick the time of my death,” he cried. “And its manner.”

I was having a hard time hanging on.

“I am uniquely qualified—.”

We went down into a trough, and I thought the sea was going to bury us.

“—To make that choice,” he continued, ignoring the ocean. “My death will be an appropriate finale to the symphony of my life.”

A fireball roared overhead, and plowed into the water.

“Don’t do it,” I cried.

“Have no fear, David. I’m not ready yet. But when I am, this will be the way of it.” He smiled at me and touched the Watch. “What better end for a time traveller than sailing with Pliny the Elder?” And he was gone.

“What was that all about?” called Helen. We dipped again and salt water poured across the deck. “Maybe we ought to get out of here too.”

I agreed, and wrapped one arm around a stanchion, something to hold onto while I set the Watch.

“Wait,” she said. “Do you know who Pliny the Elder is?”

“A Roman philosopher.”

“I did a paper on him once. He was an essayist and moralist. Fought a lot for the old values.”

“Helen, can we talk about it later?”

“He was also a naval officer. He’s trying to rescue survivors. Dave, if Shel meant what he said, he’ll be back.”

“I understand that.”

“He’ll be older. But he’ll be back.”

“We can’t do anything about that. I don’t think we want to wait around here.”

We were on the starboard side, near the beam. The sails were down, and a few shadowy figures were moving through the volcanic haze. (I would have expected to hear the roar of the volcano, of Vesuvius, but the only noise came from the sea and the warm dry wind that blew across the deck.) “Let’s try the other side,” I said.

He was there, on the port quarter, clinging to a line, while the wind howled. Even more ancient this time, frail, weary, frightened. Dressed differently than he had been, in slacks and a green pullover that might have come out of the 1930’s.

Cinders stung my eyes.

He saw us and waved. “I’ve been looking for you.” His gaze lingered on Helen, and then drifted toward the sea. His eyes seemed utterly devoid of reasoning. I wondered whether any part of the old Shelborne remained.

“Don’t,” I cried.

She let go her handhold and tried to scramble across the pitching deck.

He was hanging onto a hawser, balanced near the rail.

The ship pitched, went up the front of a wave and down the back. He raised his hand in a farewell gesture, and the sea broke across the deck. I was thrown hard against a gunwale. The night was filled with water.

When it blew off, Shel was gone. The rail was clear, and the line to which he’d clung whipped back and forth.

Helen shouted and pointed. I saw him briefly, rising over a swell, clutching a board and struggling to stay afloat, his white hair trailing in the water. But another wave broke over him and moments later the board popped to the surface, and drifted into the haze.

Something in the ship gave way with a loud crack, and the crewmen cried out. I pulled Helen close.

“Dead again,” she said.

Maybe this time for good. I pressed the stem.

Saturday, November 26. Mid-afternoon.

We returned to the wardrobe in separate, but equally desperate, moods.

Helen could not connect the wild man on the galley with Shel, or even the moody septuagenarian on the dock at the Piraeus. Furthermore, she had not yet accepted either the reality or the implications of time travel. Yet, on a primal level, she had seen him. And for the second time, she mourned him.

And I? I’d lost all feeling. How could I reconcile two graves? I collapsed into a chair and stared helplessly at the costumes, hanging neatly, marked off by period. Damn them. I remembered the planning and research that had gone into their creation. We had felt so well organized in those days. Prepared for anything.

I let it go.

And then I noticed that I was seeing the costumes. There was light in the room. It was gray, not bright, but it meant that the black mist was gone. I threw the curtains back, and looked out at a rain-swept landscape.

The trees, the grounds, the walkway, the garage, were visible, huddled together in the storm. The wall still circled the property. And beyond the wall, I could see most of Carmichael Drive. Most of it. But Ray White’s house was missing. As was the world behind it. Carmichael Drive now skirted the edge of a precipice, its far side gone, broken off into a void. Beyond, I could see only gray sky.

Terrified, we went from room to room. Everywhere, in all directions, the picture was the same. On the east, where my property was most extensive, even the wall was gone. A seldom-used patio had been cut in half, and the stand of elms that used to provide shade for it now lined the limits of the world.

We opened a bottle of brandy and drew all the blinds in the house.

“Can’t we replay that last scene?” she asked. “Go back and rescue him? I mean, that’s the whole point of a time machine, isn’t it? Nothing’s ever irrevocable. You make a mistake, you go back and fix it.”

I was tired and my head hurt and at that moment I hated Adrian Shelborne with every fiber of my being. “No,” I said. “It would just make everything worse. We know what happened. We can’t change that .”

“Dave,” she said, “how could we possibly make things worse ?”

That was a pretty good question.

She eased onto a sofa and closed her eyes. “Time travel,” she said, “isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, is it?”

Rain rattled against the windows. “We need to find a way to eliminate the paradox.”

“Okay,” she said. “What exactly is the paradox?”

I thought it over. “Adrian Shelborne has two graves. One out on Monument Hill. And the other in the Tyrrhenian Sea. We have to arrange things so that there is only one.”

“Can we go back and stop the Friday night fire?”

“Same problem as trying a rescue on the galley. The Friday night fire has already happened, and if you prevent it, then what was the funeral all about?”

“It’s like a big knot,” she said. “No matter where you try to pull, everything just gets tighter.”

We were still wearing our Hellenic robes, which were torn and soiled. And we both needed a shower, but there was no water. On the other hand, we did have rain. And as much privacy as we could ever want.

I got soap, towels, and wash cloths. She took the back yard, which was more sheltered (as if that mattered), and I stood out front. It was late November, but the weather had turned unseasonably warm nevertheless. Hot water would have been nice, but I felt pretty good anyway after I’d dried off and changed into clean clothes.

Then we sat, each in a kind of private cocoon, thinking about options. Or things lost. The rain continued through the afternoon. I watched rivulets form and wondered how much soil was being washed over the edge. Where? Where would it be going? When the weather cleared, I promised myself that I would walk out and look down.