Jack Finney - Time and Again

I had my arm around her shoulders, saying softly, "Julia, we've escaped. The story I told you last night is true. It was the truth, Julia; I've brought you with me into my own time."

She stared at my face, saw the truth in my eyes, and buried her face on my chest. "Oh, Si, I'm frightened! I can't look!"

Ahead, the whole sky was light now, pinkening the horizon, the tiny whitecaps in the harbor far below suddenly just visible. "Yes, you can," I said, and took her chin, lifting her head, turning it toward the railing to the east. She looked out across it, saw the water and the harbor far below; then she turned to see the blue-green skin of verdigris, the patina of decades, on the giant copper torch and flame behind us, and began to tremble.

Under my arm her shoulders actually shook with fright — yet she couldn't stop looking. Her head turned endlessly from side to side, seeing it all; and all that she said over and again every few seconds was "Oh, Si!" in a frightened, excited, ecstatic wail. Her face was dead-white, and her hand as she raised it to press tight against her cheek was trembling, but she'd begun to smile.

Far out, the first thin edge of sun suddenly touched the rim of the ocean, and now ships were visible. Then, the sun edging up over the horizon as we stared, I took Julia's arm, and we walked around our little railed circle. On the other side Julia stopped to stand stock-still, her breath suddenly caught motionless in her chest as she stared out across the harbor at the astonishing, soaring skyscrapers filling the tip of Manhattan Island, their tens of thousands of windows flashing orange in the dawn.

We took the first sight-seeing boat back to Manhattan, the handful of wintertime tourists who filed off it glancing curiously at Julia's clothes as we stood waiting to board. They ignored me, my overcoat and round fur hat, not much different from plenty of others. This was the one boat of the day returning to New York empty of passengers — except, this time, for us. The next boat would leave its new arrivals and take the first batch back, and so on throughout the day. I was grateful; I didn't feel like being stared at. A little belligerently, the attendant asked where we'd come from. I said we'd missed the last boat yesterday afternoon, and had spent the night on the island. It took him a second or so to decide what he thought about that, then he grinned a little lewdly and motioned us on; our clothes didn't seem to bother him a bit.

The second deck was open, and we climbed the inside stairs to it as the boat nosed out into the channel. Then we moved through the water toward Manhattan, Julia motionless beside me watching the skyscrapers on the tip of Manhattan Island growing impossibly larger and larger. We had a completely unobstructed view of lower Manhattan, and of New Jersey, South Brooklyn, Staten Island, and of the harbor looking toward the Verrazano bridge, and for ten minutes Julia just stared without speaking. Then, leaning toward me but without for an instant taking her eyes from the immense buildings crowding the tip of Manhattan — beautiful now in the full morning sun — she said, "What makes them stand up?" I explained what I knew or thought I knew about steel frameworks, but stopped in mid-sentence. She wasn't listening, hadn't heard a word. She just sat staring, till suddenly she gripped my arm, her face lighting up. "The new bridge!" she said, pointing at the Brooklyn Bridge up the East River, to the right of Manhattan.

A cargo ship heading for the sea was not so much approaching as simply swelling in size, and Julia sat staring at it. When finally it passed, quite close, its steel sides rising up past us forever, Julia shrank close to me, her eyes blinking apprehensively. "Will it tip?" she whispered. "Could it fall?" I told her it was impossible, but as we both stared up at the black clifflike side of the big ship sliding past us, its propellers mumbling, I knew what she felt. It seemed unlikely that anything this big and high out of the water could float, and I wondered what Julia would have said if the new Queen Elizabeth had incredibly steamed by.

And then a plane passed, a four-engined propeller plane not too high, maybe ten thousand feet, drilling away up against the gray sky. I was pleased, glad to show off what is probably the symbol of this particular century. I said, "Julia, look" — she'd heard the sound but didn't know where to look till I pointed upward. "That's a plane, an airplane." I waited, a little smugly I suppose, for her to be astounded. But she stared up at it for a dozen seconds, smiling slightly, interested and pleased to see it, but not surprised. Then she nodded at me. "I've read of them, in Jules Verne. Of course you'd have them by now. I should love to ride on one. Are there many?" She'd already turned back to what really astounded her: the windowed cliffs of Manhattan.

"Quite a few." I was laughing at myself; it served me right.

There were no immigrants in Battery Park as we stepped off the boat. When we crossed the little park and reached the street, Julia stopped suddenly, a hand rising to her chest. At first I thought she'd been overwhelmed by the immediacy of the towering buildings and the narrow streets of cabs, private cars, and pedestrians, and by the sound, which was the normal traffic roar plus the ear-numbing chatter of jackhammers. But she wasn't looking at cars or buildings but at the people, the ordinary people walking past us. I looked at her closely, and understood that it wasn't the way they were dressed that had stopped her. I remembered the sudden awe that had come over me once at seeing the actually living, visibly breathing people of 1882, because now I felt certain I saw the same dizzying wonderment in Julia's face. On Liberty Island she'd been so conscious of her own appearance that the boat passengers getting off had scarcely seemed real. But now, as with me once, there they were passing before her, unnoticing — and they were alive, moving, talking! — the people of more than a lifetime after hers. When she turned to look at me her face was pale again, and she could only shake her head, wordless and frightened.

We walked a short block up Broadway, past what's left of Bowling Green, and I said, "Do you know where you are?"

The question startled her as though asked in a foreign city she'd never before seen. Trying to guess, she looked up and down the street, then turned to me, still half frightened by all she saw, but smiling, too. "No."

"Lower Broadway."

"No! It isn't!" Again she looked up and down the street, and now the smile was gone. "Oh, Si, there's nothing I know; nothing! I —»

I said, "Hold it," took her arm, and we walked quickly uptown, two more short blocks. And then Julia slowed, a hand rising to her mouth in shock, staring ahead and across the street. We walked on fifty yards, stopped at the curb, and Julia and I stood staring across the street at tiny little Trinity Church lost at the bottom of a glass-and-stone canyon. Then her chin rose as she slowly lifted her gaze — up, up, and up at the towers that completely dwarfed the highest place on her Manhattan Island.

Finally she turned to me. "I don't like it, Si. I don't like seeing Trinity like this!" Then once more she looked across the street and up to the distant sky above the great buildings. And now when she turned back to me she was smiling again. "But I'd like to go up in one of those buildings." Still smiling, she squeezed her eyes shut for a moment, making a mock shudder. "Broadway; at least it's noisy as ever." Again she glanced up and down the busy street. "How strange not to see a single horse." Suddenly she noticed. "Si! Everything's going one way!"

We got a cab at the corner, and I explained one-way streets as we drove east toward Nassau Street. Julia was looking appreciatively around at the interior of the cab, and I lowered my voice so the driver wouldn't hear. "This is an automobile."