Джек Макдевитт - A Voice in the Night

“I thought I remembered this place,” the guy said. “Came here every morning for five years.”

Andy concentrated on his coffee cup and said nothing. Give ’em an inch, and they’ll take a mile. Ten miles.

The guy looked down at him. “Hi, Andy. How’s it going?”

“You know my name?”

“Sure. I’m you.”

“What?” His face was lined and seamed, age spots, hardly any hair. Fifty years older than Andy. “Would you please go away?”

“We’ll get time travel in about thirty years.” He smiled. “I need a favor.”

If this had been an email, he would have hit delete. “Go away, gramps!”

The guy sighed. “I knew you would react that way. That I would. That I had. But I’m not a scammer. I don’t want your money. And I already have your ID.” He pulled out a chair and lowered himself into it. Then he produced a wallet. “See?”

Driver’s license. His picture with the name Andrew Pharon. Birth date was correct. Issue date: 2072. That would make him over eighty.

Andy stared at him. The guy was smiling. “What do you want?”

The smile faded. “Some of your blood.”

Andy sat frozen. Had his life turned into a vampire fantasy?

“Just some plasma, actually.”

“Why?”

“Your people are already working on it. Putting young plasma into an old body can turn the clock back.”

Andy nodded. It was true… “But why me?” Even as he spoke, he knew the answer. His own young plasma would work better than anyone else’s. He really was a time-traveler.

Andrew grinned and delivered his standard thumbs-up, removing all doubt.

“Andy!” Martha waved at him. “You gonna be late!”

He waved back. This was one reason he liked Larry’s. They cared.

The old guy was still sitting there, waiting for his response. But it was ridiculous. Time travel wasn’t possible. “You have got to be pulling my leg.”

The guy shook his head. “No. I just need a couple of pints today, and again next week and the week after.” He looked at his bag. “The equipment’s right here.”

“I’m sure it is. But there’s no way I’m letting you stick needles in me. And I’ve got to run.” Andy tucked his tablet into his briefcase and stood.

“But…!” He looked stricken, as if he had never dreamed that his own self would turn him down. “But I’m you! We’re even closer than blood kin!”

“Pardon me. I have to leave.” Incredibly, the guy was smiling as Andy went out the door.

He glanced over his shoulder and headed down the sidewalk, barely noticing the fumes of the remaining gasburners or the fragrance of the vagrant at the corner. The old guy wasn’t following him. Thank God. Maybe he should switch coffee shops for a few days. But then the guy might just show up on his doorstep. That would freak the hell out of his girlfriend.

Okay. Now he had to come up with an idea for Sarah.

BioFutures focused on the microbiome. Their last big success was a probiotic ointment for getting rid of acne. Lately they’d been working on figuring out how to manipulate bacteria in the gut to control obesity. They were close, which was why they needed new ideas. Had to keep the pipeline flowing.

Maybe the old guy had something? Not time travel. But he recalled reading something about plasma and aging. It wouldn’t take long to check.

Once in the building, he went directly to his cube and started the search. And yes, they were working on it, testing it on people, and making slow progress. The idea went back a century, when someone spliced the veins of a young mouse and an old mouse together. The old one got perkier, healthier, younger. The young one aged.

And plasma could be frozen.

He almost laughed.

It took him an hour to write the proposal: Start with some research into whether one’s own young plasma is really better than a stranger’s. Use mice, since the difference between young and old isn’t great. If it checks out, then start collecting plasma, freeze it, store it, and when the donor turns into an old guy…

He thought Sarah would like it. It was the perfect business plan, complete with references and links. Sell a promise, much like the old cryonics scam. Collect the money now, and worry later about whether the product actually works. Though this one seemed a much more likely success than cryonics ever had.

He would be among the very first to bank his plasma. And his older self knew how it had worked out. No wonder he’d sat there smiling when Andy walked out.

The second shock hit as Ward stepped off the ladder onto lunar rock.

“Look out.” Amy’s startled voice rang in his earphones.

The ground swayed. Dust rose. He looked up at her.

“Twice in one day,” she said. “Is it always like this?”

“Didn’t used to be.” Ward had lived here almost five years, before they’d automated everything, and moved everyone back to Moonbase. Or Earth. He didn’t think there’d been more than a dozen quakes during that whole time.

“Glad to hear it. Maybe we need to do a seismic survey.”

“I hate to put it this way, but it’s your problem now.” As of noon, Amy Quinn had become the new director of the NASA/Smithsonian Farside Observatory. Ward was officially on his way home.

The ground steadied.

The observatory, a dome and a smaller saddle-shaped building and a field of eighty-six radio telescopes on tracks, had been humanity’s most remote penetration, unless you counted computers and robots. And Ward never counted them.

It was located on the far side of the moon just south of Moscoviensse. A place its one-time inhabitants had cheerfully called World’s End.

The complex lay atop a group of low gray hills. The dome was sixty-one meters high, roughly fourteen stories. The outer lens of the magnificent twenty-seven meter multiple-mirror Schramm reflector penetrated its polished surface, black and smooth. The Schramm was the biggest optical telescope in existence.

The saddle-shaped building had provided living quarters and technical support for the crew and staff of seven. This was the annex, and it was connected with the dome by a ground level passageway. Starlight shone through the passageway’s walls.

Solar collectors crowded the roof of the annex. A laserburst antenna turned slowly on its axis, tracking a comsat. Its windows were dark and empty. Beyond, the tracked telescopes pointed their dishes toward the radio galaxy Perseus Alpha.

Home.

Amy climbed cautiously down the ladder, and dropped to the ground. “It feels depressing,” she said. “You actually lived out here?”

“Five years.”

Her expression registered sympathy, admiration, and astonishment.

“It was a good experience,” Ward said. “We had top people, and we were in on everything that was happening.” Moreover they had all liked one another, and they were away from the bureaucratic pressures and monumental egos one normally found in terrestrial facilities. Ward had never understood how it happened that so exemplary a staff would be assembled at one site: Bentwood and Kramer and the two Andersons and Mau-Tai and Ali. And when they retired or moved on, the replacements also seemed extraordinary: people with talent and a sense of humor and a willingness to jump in and do any kind of job.

“I’m glad to hear it,” she said, doubtfully.

The first quake, eight hours earlier, had hit while she and Ward were admiring the sharp clarity of the image of the irregular galaxy NGC-1198. One of the technicians was pointing out a Cepheid variable when the Cepheid abruptly faded back into the river of light, and the river dimmed to a smudge.