John Wray - The Lost Time Accidents

“Sure.”

He nodded to himself for a while, exactly like Ben the Seer in the scene in Timestrider II when the Timestrider finds out that he’s secretly a prince. I concentrated on the little plastic handle.

“I’m not a physicist, thank Christ. I’m just a writer. I have no use for Enzie’s quote-unquote ‘work,’ and I don’t subscribe to her ideas about the timestream.” He chewed on his lip. “But that doesn’t make my sisters any less dangerous — especially for you.”

“For me?” I said, feeling more like the Timestrider than ever. My fingers closed on something cool and metallic in the glove compartment.

“Listen to me, Waldy. There’s a reason why we’ve been to Harlem so few times in all these years. When you were first born, we took you down to your aunts—”

I brought the object in my hand up to the light. It was a pair of nail clippers, the kind designed to double as a key chain, missing its nail-file attachment.

“—and Enzie said she had the perfect name for you. I asked her what she’d come up with, and she smiled at me for the first time since I’d run away from home. Then, when she told me what the damn name was —”

I reached into the glove compartment a second time and retrieved a balled-up Kleenex. I turned it this way and that, noting every detail, looking down at it as if from a great height. I dropped it into the molded plastic pocket of the door, where it came to rest between a scrap of tinfoil and a capless ballpoint pen.

“—I protested, of course. The Kraut raised no objection — keeping the peace, as always — but I wanted at least to know why. ‘Tradition,’ Enzie said. ‘It’s a family name.’ But that didn’t cut it with me. ‘Why him and not someone else?’ I demanded. ‘Why call him Waldemar and not me?’”

“Orson—”

“I’ll tell you what she said to that, Waldy. It gives me the creeps, but I’ll tell you.”

“It doesn’t matter anymore. Please don’t get—”

“Enzie looked into my eyes with real regret. ‘We couldn’t name you Waldemar,’ she told me. ‘We’d have liked to so much, Orson, but we couldn’t. It wasn’t up to you to close the circle.’”

I could barely make out my father’s voice now, or the rumble of the road, or anything but a deep, hydraulic hiss — the sound I’d heard inside the whitewashed box. Things around me went black but their outlines stayed bright, the way the sun looks at the height of an eclipse. The sensation was a new one to me, without precedent in my experience, but I never doubted what was happening. It was up to me, and no one else, to close the circle. I was remembering what was going to happen next.

Monday, 09:05 EST

“What does it feel like?” I asked the Timekeeper.

“What does what feel like, Waldy?”

I watched him as he lay on the bed, popping sprouts into his mouth as if they were gumdrops, smacking his dewy lips with satisfaction. He genuinely seemed to find the things delicious.

“Chrononavigation,” I got out finally.

“That’s an awfully big word. Did those Jewy aunts of yours teach you that?”

“Time travel,” I said, biting back my disgust.

“Ah!” He worked himself upright, keeping his glaucoma-clouded eyes on mine. “I was wondering when you’d think to ask me that.” He bobbed his head, leering in just the way I’d been afraid of. “Are you certain you won’t have a sprout?”

If he were a product of my own mind , I thought, I should be able to make him put those things away. If this were a dream — if I knew I was dreaming — I ought to be able to do it .

“All right, then.” He set the container aside. “I’ll tell you, Nefflein , if you ask me nicely.”

I steadied myself. “What does it feel like, Uncle?”

“Excellent question!” He frowned and pressed his fingertips together. “You feel nothing at all, strange to say, while it’s happening. Your eyes and ears and ganglia are still open to stimulus, of course, but it takes time — however minuscule a span — to communicate sense impressions to the brain, and you’ve excused yourself from time, for the time being.” He snuffled.

“Go on.”

“When you arrive at the transfer point — the interzone, the place of exchange— that’s when your sense impressions catch up. You sit stricken and dumb for the length of time it takes to process them. Every inch of skin, exposed or not, has been chapped and burned with interdimensional cold — the coldest cold, Nefflein , that you can possibly imagine. You thank chance and fate and Providence for the transfer point’s existence, for its warmth and its calm. I can promise you that.” He sighed. “Then you take your bearings, select an entry point, and start again.”

I considered what he’d told me. “Tell me more about that place.”

“The transfer point? Ah. Well.” He closed his eyes. “The transfer point is marvelous. I don’t quite know how to describe it. Nothing ever happens there — time doesn’t appear to be passing — but there is time, of a certain kind. Transfer Time, I like to call it. You can breathe and see and think, but nothing happens.”

“Nothing happens,” I murmured. “Just like where we are now.”

He nodded. “You can stay there as long as you like, and you won’t age a day. Entry points are all around, evenly and conveniently spaced, waiting on your pleasure and convenience. To me it’s always seemed like the depths of a wood, mild and peaceful and quiet, with shallow, perfect pools between the trees. It takes a while to recover your senses, as though you’re gradually rising out of sleep, and you never manage to wake up completely. The temptation is great to remain there, in that beautiful limbo, forever.”

I stared at him when he’d finished. He returned my look affably.

“A peaceful patch of woods,” I said. “With little pools inside it.”

He shrugged.

“Can I ask something else?”

“I shall answer with pleasure.”

“How do you reenter the timestream?”

“Nothing’s simpler than that. You lower yourself into one of the pools. You’ll come out in some other world, some other universe, some other time.”

“ The Magician’s Nephew .”

“Beg pardon?”

“ The Magician’s Nephew ,” I repeated through clenched teeth. “My favorite book when I was ten years old. You’re describing a place in chapter seven called the Wood Between the Worlds. You’re describing it exactly, down to the slightest detail.”

“Right you are, Nefflein !” He snuffled again. “You’ll have to allow me my fun. I like to tell you what you want to hear.”

“Is anything you’ve told me true? Have you ever time-traveled at all?” I stood over him now. “Answer me, Uncle! Do you even exist?”

He grew thoughtful at that, and his eyes lost the last of their light.

“It’s painful,” he said.

“What does that mean? What’s painful?”

“It’s a leave-taking from things,” he went on, as if I hadn’t spoken. “The pain comes beforehand, of course — but especially after. While it’s happening you feel nothing at all.”

The mischief drained out of his features as he spoke, and I saw how time-ravaged he was. He looked ready to crumble into a pile of ash, like a Hollywood vampire in the first ray of dawn.

“The pain is more than anyone deserves,” he said in a whisper. “Like the pain of ordinary loss, but compacted — accordioned together. There’s just one thing that makes it bearable.”

I kept my eyes trained on his face, searching for any hint of deceit. I couldn’t help it, Mrs. Haven. I believed him.