Rewrite

by Gregory Benford

  This is an important discovery. He files it with the double clouds and turns to the next problem, the low moan coming out of him. He forces his throat closed, finding a cut in his mouth that stings. Iron taste of blood. Now, without the moan, he can hear the breeze whispering through the pine trees. His breath is wheezing, as if he has run a long way. His head is much better, but the sharp pain wrapping his right temple is shouting at him now to do something. He knows abstractly that scalp wounds bleed a lot, but there is something else, something . . . The problem of Ray, yes.

  He turns his attention to getting his left hand to work. He wobbles his head around, which at least does not hurt a lot more than holding it still, and there is the left hand, lying lazily on its own. He orders it to wiggle, but it is slow, sluggish. It also tingles and the fingers dance when he wants them to clench. This disloyal hand cannot support its own arm’s weight and seems generally insubordinate to his tasks. It needs rest, so he turns to other jobs. He makes his eyes scan all around, even lifting his head a bit to give himself more view. No sign of Ray. He commands the left hand to get a grip on the sandy soil as his left elbow rises to give leverage. Time to move.

  He dispatches his right hand to the job of getting himself upright. His vision lurches; the world spins awhile. Upright, he plots his next step. One move at a time, take it easy.

  And indeed yes, it is surprisingly easy to tear the right arm off his cheap gray work shirt. The stitches come away with a yank. The sleeve is the right length, he figures, and so wraps it around his entire skull, hitching it into place over the crease. The sleeve snares on his right ear, shoots him a lance of pain. So he shifts it, gets it around all right. He ties an awkward big knot in the middle of his forehead. Cinching the sleeve helps tighten the knot further, and his temple sends sharp pains out to stop him. He pulls the sleeve tighter. He will have to stop the bleeding, and this hurts but is right. A quick glance down and to the right shows a brown bloodstain where dry dirt has been eagerly soaking it all up. The dark spot is about the size of a big dinner plate.

  Oh yes, the problem of Ray.

  He tries three times to get up. Each time the horizon tilts and he feels sick and with a thump he is on his back. Clumsy. Where is Ray? Charlie rolls onto his hands and crawls like an old dog across the dirt and needles. He heads for the pine tree he admired most. Its bark is like ash-gray scabs, so he can get his hands onto it. The first time he tries, the bark scabs come away, dumping him back on his ass. He works his feet under himself better. This time his hands spread wide of their own accord, knowing somehow what to do. He huffs with the labor of inching up, pulling himself, leaning forward on the tree and sniffing its pungent turpentine. His face presses into the tree, providing more support for his weight. Carefully he wraps his arms around the tree and inches up it. Lovely tree.

  Once up to new heights, he feels better. He surveys the landscape. When he turns toward where Ray was, he sees no sign of him. The world weaves around some like a lazy carousel and he holds firm to the pine tree. The right side of his scalp still aches and throbs, with occasional shooting pains.

  Take deep breath. Now for the next step—literally. He holds on to the tree and takes a step, wobbles, straightens. His rifle is lying a meter or two away. He steps toward it, lets go of the tree—and falls forward, smack down, his cheek thudding right next to the rifle butt.

  He allows himself several inhalations of the pine needle scent and gets up once again to all fours. With one hand he pulls the rifle into a vertical position, butt down. Hand over hand he climbs up it, grabbing the sling for help. This vertical structure barely sustains him, with the sling strap as a countertorque to use for a shaky stability. His left hand is still tingling, but he can make it work, holding the strap.

  Now he tries a fresh maneuver. He realizes he can use the rifle with the strap in his left hand, as a crutch. He looks around again, still no Ray—then down into the barrel. There is goddamn sand in the barrel. Think, now. Gingerly he reaches down and flicks on the safety. Careful . . . He manages to tilt the rifle and blow the dirt out with puffs of shallow, wheezing breath. Done.

  Now for the expedition toward Ray. He checks, breech loaded, safety off. He takes a dozen steps, careful to keep his balance. Edging around near the bush where the man was when the shooting started is a delicate business, working upslope. No grunts, no wheeze. Crafty. He leans forward a bit for a better angle and sees up ahead the toes of a work boot. The toes point to the sky, beautiful sky. So Ray is on his back.

  Dead? Charlie is maybe fifteen yards away from the boot. He takes two more steps, brings up the rifle-crutch, checks the safety again—and Ray’s voice says shakily, “I hear ya, damn it.”

  Freeze. Silence.

  “Okay . . . take it easy,” Charlie counters. “You’re hurt, right?”

  A long pause. A slight breeze stirs the bushes. Charlie can see no movement of the boot. “I . . . I was trying to just wing you.”

  Then, “Yeah? Well, you sure did.”

  Bad enough that Ray can’t get to his feet, then. Probably bleeding out. “I have no quarrel with you, Ray. We can just walk away from this.”

  A suspicious silence. “Why’d you shoot, then?”

  Maybe Ray doesn’t know Charlie is hit too. “I won’t let King die.”

  At least that’s true, though Charlie wonders where this is going. He is fresh out of plans. His left and right arms are in agreement again, and he doesn’t need the rifle as a crutch anymore. His head is a big beating bass drum, cymbals added, but he can live with that because he has to.

  “They, those two, they already paid me to do King.”

  “Keep the money. Hell, I can pay you some more to just leave.”

  “Sure, and you shoot me from up here when I get in the car.”

  Ray is right. Or would be, if Charlie were a better shot than he is. But Charlie can’t think of a way around Ray’s assumption.

  “I have no reason to, Ray.” He has learned this in movie negotiations; get personal, use first names. “This is just about King.”

  “Y’know, I was gonna enjoy nailin’ that coon.”

  Jesus! The venom in the voice is startling.

  Charlie takes a long breath, fighting the urge to just shoot this man. But . . .

  “That’s why I’ll give you some money. To not do it.” Charlie wishes he could tell Ray what is going to happen to him if he does kill King—but then he has a more important idea. “Hey, are you a reincarnate?”

  “Huh?”

  “Do you know about the Society? Casanova? Einstein?”

  “You crazy? Reincarnation? A Hindu?”

  “The two that you were working with were members of a secret organization. You know anything about that?”

  “Never heard of it. Hey, whaddaya mean, they were members?”

  “I shot them last night.”

  Silence.

  “Forget them.”

  Charlie sees the boot withdraw, as if Ray is pulling himself farther behind the bush. Then, Ray’s voice ragged, “Damn, they were gonna plant some cash for me to pick up, after.” No concern in the voice for his departed collaborators.

  “I’ll give it to you. Just don’t kill King.”

  Is Ray’s voice getting closer? Charlie can’t see the moves. As quickly as he can, he walks over to a large stand of brush, moving uphill a bit. He chooses a tree to lean against and brings the rifle up to what he knows from movieland is the port-arms position. Then he looks out. Nothing visible. Wind stirs the trees. His heart pounds. All the practice and study hasn’t prepared him for this. Ray is wily street trash. Not an even match.

  A hoarse call. “Hey! You! How do I get this money?”

  The breeze hums through the trees and Charlie tries to see movement. Nothing.

  Into the silence he calls, “We can work a deal on this. But you’ve got to stop trying to get closer.”

  The breeze dies away. Charlie feels another whirling round of blurred vision and sags against t
he pine tree. Turpentine cuts in his nose. He makes himself breathe deeply. Use the smell to keep him sharp.

  Carefully he checks again but sees nothing. Maybe Ray has flanked him? But the direction of the voice has not seemed to change. With the wind it is hard to tell, though.

  Ray’s angry voice seems to come from directly ahead. “You’re white! Why you workin’ for those niggers?”

  “I’m not. And you get any closer and . . .” Damn it, you’re a screenwriter! Make something up. “I’ll use my hand grenades.”

  The breeze blows dust into Charlie’s nostrils and prickles his nose. He grabs his nose, presses to stop a sneeze. He strokes the cool stock of his rifle and eases his finger onto the trigger. He knows that he is outclassed here and wonders why he feels fear, since he is immortal. But this is about outcomes, and what Charlie fears most now is futility. Of yet another life trapped and claustrophobic in a world like the last ones he knew.

  “You sure ain’t got hand grenades.” Ray’s tone from straight ahead is sly, sarcastic, oozing with a bully’s contempt.

  Charlie, flat and factual: “Try me. Come any closer, you get one.”

  Silence.

  “In the gut this time.”

  Silence.

  Ray’s boot was pointed upward. Probably that means he has some upper-body wound and is lying down. So the man could be dragging himself around, trying for a good position to fire. Or finishing up binding his wound.

  Charlie slides over just a bit, sees nothing. Crouches.

  “What was that you said about money?”

  Ah! Ray sounds closer, but he cannot judge how much.

  The contempt is gone and there is something else, a canny, nasal tone of calculation.

  “I’ve got five thousand right here. I’ll leave it under a rock. I’m going to move back and head down the side of the ridge away from the house. Five grand, Ray. You get the money, count it. Then you go down the other way, to the farm. Drive out of here.”

  “You don’t have no damn grenades. How’d you get them?”

  “How did I find you three last night? You’re good at what you do, I’m good at what I do.”

  Sunlight beats down. Charlie takes out a wad of fifty hundreds wrapped in a rubber band and slides it half under a stone. The greenbacks are clearly visible. A breeze flutters the bills and he tastes sour fear in his mouth. Ray will take it, he’s sure. Then what?

  Ray has been quiet too long. “You come within throwing range and you get to check the grenade idea. Don’t underestimate me.”

  Without waiting for an answer, Charlie begins slowly limping to the ridge edge, keeping low and watching for movement where he last saw Ray.

  His head throbs ominously. He pats the makeshift bandage and finds it is sopping under a crust of brown blood that has already dried.

  “You sound like a kid.” Ray’s voice comes from somewhere behind Charlie.

  Let him listen and wait. Charlie tries his legs and they are good now. He can walk. But his vision whirls when he moves too fast and his head is booming hard.

  Ray calls, “You just be calm, now. Kid.”

  Charlie reaches the steep drop down the side of the ridge. He looks back. He can see flitting movement. Ray is on his feet about fifty meters away. Slow, moving forward in a low crouch, rifle at the ready in his right hand. Ray limps across an opening and Charlie can see Ray’s shirt has a wide bloodstain on it, covering his left side. The man moves unsteadily, catching himself against trees as he passes them. Intently he edges closer to where Charlie was, off to Ray’s right side. The head does not turn.

  Charlie could shoot him from here.

  Ray calls out in a harsh, demanding bark, “Stay right there. Don’t move.”

  A pure bluff. I have a kid’s voice, but I’m smarter than you and vastly older, good ole boy Ray.

  Charlie brings his rifle around and wonders if he should shoot. It’s close. He doesn’t need the scope, just the sight.

  “Where’s the money?” Ray shouts. “Where? Bring it out with you.”

  Charlie lowers his rifle and slips over the edge. Let Ray waste time trying to intimidate the bushes. Charlie makes his way down the slope, sliding, keeping balanced, rifle held high. He goes around a long flange of tumbled-down debris from an old slide. Easy now, don’t fall.

  He feels good about not killing Ray. Distantly he hears a faint yammering voice from the ridge above. Ray must have found the money and not found his prey, and his tone is snarling, loudmouthed, angry.

  But Ray is not so stupid that he will kill King anyway, now that he understands that someone has scoped out his mission. Charlie learned a lot about low-grade evil in Hollywood. It never rises above the venal because it doesn’t understand anything bigger than that. He trusts Ray’s lack of principles.

  Charlie angles away, careful to keep out of the line of sight from the ridgetop.

  His loyal Dodge Dart is waiting. He eases off the hand brake and lets it roll down the slight slope in neutral. This carries the car over bumps and through sandy furrows, down to the narrow dirt road.

  He turns the key, pops the clutch, and starts the car with its own momentum. He peels out, spitting sand. Nothing in the rearview. The blacktop state road is deserted and he turns north. Home is a long drive away.

  Another Beginning

  Charlie pulls his car off the interstate and heads for his parents’ house. He is bleary eyed from the cross-country drive. The Memphis shoot-out is a day behind him and seems like another life, far ago, behind a gray wall.

  His head is a single swollen bulge. He stopped in southern Illinois for some medical supplies, brushing off a pharmacist’s urgent pleas. Some aspirin, bandages, iodine, disinfectant—that is all he needs. He stopped then at a diner, got food, and slurped up coffee. In the men’s room he studied his pupils, saw they were of the same size, so he has no concussion. The bullet from Ray’s rifle hit him in the skull, all right, but it then deflected and ran around, under the skin, and blew out the back, on its way to its own destiny. As he is.

  He has driven nonstop, listening all the way to AM radio rock, Buddy Holly to the Beatles, whiny choruses and beating bass notes, letting it all wind up into his mind like smoke through the nostrils. He has taken long, sure drafts of America, that endlessly varying aroma, and thought furiously through passing rainstorms while peering into lancing, white-hot truck headlights. Interstate wisdom has penetrated quick and sure through him.

  Now he has made history. He knows that history—no, capitalize that, Mother History—is a yawning timescape stretching far away from easy simplicities. What he has seen and felt are part of something bigger than any mathematical wisdom can comprehend. The timescape.

  He has stopped the killing of Martin Luther King, along this time line, and maybe saved Kennedy, too. That was the next decision.

  So what next? Maybe some perfect liberal state will come about, and maybe not. But once again the rolling parade of history will sing its own song, and who knows what America will come of that?

  The sunset casts luminous yellow glows onto fluffy clouds above his dear old hometown as darkness gathers. He drives the local streets slowly, legs leaden and breath ragged.

  A blare from a large truck shatters his tired musing. He jerks fully awake. A gleaming chrome Ford truck grille bears down on him. Charlie’s Dodge Dart has run a light. He swerves abruptly and his wheels squeal, skidding sideways, then just missing another car. He jams down on the gas and breaks free, surging down a street that opens from the gloom like a birth canal.

  He breathes fast, his head hammering at him, but he has finer things to think about now. Accelerating to get away from the truck brings back his first death.

  He glides to a stop on a quiet, tree-lined avenue.

  The surge of near-collision adrenaline clears his mind. He looks around before driving again. Feral vigilance tightens his throat. By the time his heart stops thumping, he is smoothly moving down his home street. His Avenue of Repeating Lives.<
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  He eases the Dodge Dart to the curb just across from his house, and with a twist the engine dies. He sits looking at the warm glow of the windows, sure and steady against the coming dark. He rolls down the car window, tired and aching. A manual crank, not some fancy electric whisk. Good ol’ analog truth. A cool spring breeze wafts moist scents into the car, aromas that ease the stark memories.

  He knows one thing now clear and sure: a human life is not just a means to produce outcomes; it is an end in itself. So what should Charlie want from his fourth life?

  He has an answer to work with now: look for the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.

  He looks across the dimming street at home. Mom and Dad. He will return yet again, perhaps many more times. On the manifold of his timescape, reincarnation might slice many ways.

  He was stuck in the same world and times as Elspeth, and the Hombre. For now he is free of them. If an infinity of other loops spiral through the timescape, what do they matter? He is here. What was that 1960s mantra? Be here now.

  Gabriel’s crew seem barely human to him, pathetic in their sexual labyrinth, twisting like lusting snakes. Revulsion wells up yet again, his stomach clenching. Then he swallows, pauses, and sucks in the reassuring fragrances of the midwestern spring night. He has time to get over it, in this particular self-time, this fresh loop from which his enemies have been eliminated.

  After all, he is again just a brimming sixteen years old. He will get ready for the next round, decades ahead in his future.

  He can look forward now to finding Albert and Heinlein again, and trying to fathom all the looping weirdness with them. Casanova has hinted of other horizons. There are other reincarnates, great and small, at play in this world. Compared with Albert and Casanova, he is nothing. Better, he knows he’s nothing and that being nothing is fine.

  The past isn’t over. It isn’t even past. Who said that? He can’t recall.