A Small Anthoogy of Science Fiction

by Flyboy707

  “Only, Keith is different. He didn’t choose this way, he was only visiting. His dreams were all tied up with the cities, with poetry and music and people and noise. And he’s lost his world; everything he did and wanted to do is gone. And…and well, there was this girl. Sandra, but he called her Sandi. She and Keith lived together for two years, traveled together, did everything together. They only split for a summer, so she could go back to college. Then they were going to join up again. You understand?”

  Winters understood. “And then the Blast?”

  “And then the Blast. Keith was here, in the middle of nowhere. Sandi was in New York City. So he lost her, too.

  I think sometimes that if Sandi had been with him, he’d have gotten over the rest. She was the most important part of the world he lost, the world they shared together. With her here, they could have shared a new world and found new beauties and new songs to sing. But she wasn’t here, and…”

  I shrugged.

  “Yeah,” said Winters solemnly. “But it’s been four years, Gary. I lost a lot too, including my wife. But I got over it. Sooner or later, mourning has to stop.”

  “Yes,” I said. “For you, and for me. I haven’t lost that much, and you…you think that things will be good again.

  Keith doesn’t. Maybe things were too good for him in the old days. Or maybe he’s just too romantic for his own good. Or maybe he loved harder than we did. All I know is that his dream tomorrow is like his yesterday, and mine isn’t. I’ve never found anything I could be that happy with. Keith did, or thinks he did. Same difference.

  He wants it back.”

  I drank some more water, and rose. “I’ve got to get back to work,” I said quickly, before Winters could continue the conversation. But I was thoughtful as I walked back to the fields.

  There was, of course, one thing I hadn’t told Winters, one important thing. The time-tripping. Maybe if Keith was forced to settle for the life he had, he’d come out of it. Like the rest of us had done.

  But Keith had an option; Keith could go back. Keith still had his Sandi, so he didn’t have to start over again.

  That, I thought, explained a lot. Maybe I should have mentioned it to Winters. Maybe.

  * * *

  Winters skipped the singing that night. He and Crazy Harry were set to leave the next morning, to go searching to the west. They were off somewhere stocking their jeep and making plans.

  Keith didn’t miss them any. He sat on his rock, warmed by a pile of burning autumn leaves, and out-sung the bitter wind that had started to blow. He played hard and loud, and sang sad. And after the fire went out, and the audience drifted off, he took his guitar and his cigar box and went off toward the creek.

  I followed him. This time the night was black and cloudy, with the smell of rain in the air. And the wind was strong and cold. No, it didn’t sound like people dying. But it moved through the trees and shook the branches and whipped away the leaves. And it sounded…restless.

  When I reached the creek, Keith was already rolling up his sleeve.

  I stopped him before he took his needle out. “Hey, Keith,” I said, laying a hand on his arm. “Easy. Talk first, okay?”

  He looked at my hand and his needle, and returned a reluctant nod. “Okay, Gary,” he said. “But short. I’m in a rush. I haven’t seen Sandi for a week.”

  I let go his arm and sat down. “I know.”

  “I was trying to make it last, Gar. I only had a month’s worth, but I figured I could make it last longer if I only time-tripped once a week.” He smiled. “But that’s hard.”

  “I know,” I repeated. “But it would be easier if you didn’t think about her so much.”

  He nodded, put down the box, and pulled his denim jacket a little tighter to shut out the wind. “I think too much,” he agreed. Then, smiling, he added, “Such men are dangerous.”

  “Ummm, yeah. To themselves, mostly.” I looked at him, cold and huddled in the darkness. “Keith, what will you do when you run out?”

  “I wish I knew.”

  “I know,” I said. “Then you’ll forget. Your time machine will be broken, and you’ll have to live today. Find somebody else and start again. Only it might be easier if you’d start now. Put away the chronine for a while.

  Fight it.”

  “Sing cheerful songs?” he asked sarcastically.

  “Maybe not. I don’t ask you to wipe out the past, or pretend it didn’t happen. But try to find something in the present. You know it can’t be as empty as you pretend. Things aren’t black and white like that. Winters was part right, you know—there are still good things. You forget that.”

  “Do I? What do I forget?”

  I hesitated. He was making it hard for me. “Well…you still enjoy your singing. You know that. And there could be other things. You used to enjoy writing your own stuff. Why don’t you work on some new songs? You haven’t written anything to speak of since the Blast.”

  Keith had picked up a handful of leaves and was offering them to the wind, one by one. “I’ve thought of that.

  You don’t know how much I’ve thought of that, Gary. And I’ve tried. But nothing comes.” His voice went soft right then. “In the old days, it was different. And you know why. Sandi would sit out in the audience every time I sang. And when I did something new, something of mine, I could see her brighten. If it was good, I’d know it, just from the way she smiled. She was proud of me, and my songs.”

  He shook his head. “Doesn’t work now, Gary. I write a song now, and sing it, and…so what? Who cares? You?

  Yeah, maybe you and a few of the others come up after and say, “Hey, Keith, I liked that.” But that’s not the same. My songs were important to Sandi, the same way her acting was important to me. And now my songs aren’t important to anyone. I tell myself that shouldn’t matter. I should get my own satisfaction from composing, even if no one else does. I tell myself that a lot. But saying it doesn’t make it so.”

  Sometimes I think, right then, I should have told Keith that his songs were the most important thing in the world to me. But hell, they weren’t. And Keith was a friend, and I couldn’t feed him lies, even if he needed them.

  Besides, he wouldn’t have believed me. Keith had a way of recognizing truth.

  Instead, I floundered. “Keith, you could find someone like that again, if you tried. There are girls in the commune, girls as good as Sandi, if you’d open yourself up to them. You could find someone else.”

  Keith gave me a calm stare, more chilling than the wind. “I don’t need someone else, Gary,” he said. He picked up the cigar box, opened it, and showed me the needle. “I’ve got Sandi.”

  * * *

  Twice more that week Keith time-tripped. And both times he rushed off with a feverish urgency. Usually he’d wait an hour or so after the singing, and discreetly drift off to his creek. But now he brought the cigar box with him, and left even before the last notes of “Me and Bobby McGee” had faded from the air.

  Nobody mentioned anything, of course. We all knew Keith was time-tripping, and we all knew he was running out. So we forgave him, and understood. Everybody understood, that is, except Pete, Winters’ former corporal.

  He, like Winters and Crazy Harry, hadn’t been filled in yet. But one evening at the singing, I noticed him looking curiously at the cigar box that lay by Keith’s feet. He said something to Jan, the girl he’d been sleeping with. And she said something back. So I figured he’d been briefed.

  I was too right.

  Winters and Crazy Harry returned a week, to the day, after their departure. They were not alone. They brought three young teen-agers, a guy and two girls, whom they’d found down west, in company with a group of rats.

  “In company,” is a euphemism, of course. The kids had been slaves. Winters and Crazy had freed them.

  I didn’t ask what had happened to the rats. I could guess.

  There was a lot of excitement that night and the night after. The kids were a little fri
ghtened of us, and it took a lot of attention to convince them that things would be different here. Winters decided that they should have their own place, and he and Pete began planning a second new cabin. The first one was nearing its crude completion.

  As it turned out, Winters and Pete were talking about more than a cabin. I should have realized that, since I caught Winters looking at Keith very curiously and thoughtfully on at least two occasions.

  But I didn’t realize it. Like everyone else, I was busy getting to know the newcomers and trying to make them feel at ease. It wasn’t simple, that.

  So I didn’t know what was going on until the fourth evening after Winters’ return. I was outside, listening to Keith sing. He’d just barely finished “They Call the Wind Maria,” and was about to swing into a second song, when a group of people suddenly walked into the circle. Winters led them, and Crazy Harry was just behind him with the three kids. And Pete was there, with his arm around Jan. Plus a few others who hadn’t been at the concert when it started but had followed Winters from the common house.

  Keith figured they wanted to listen, I guess. He began to play. But Winters stopped him.

  “No, Keith,” he said. “Not right now. We’ve got business to take care of now, while everybody’s together.

  We’re going to talk tonight.”

  Keith’s fingers stopped, and the music faded. The only sounds were the wind and the crackle of the nearby burning leaves. Everyone was looking at Winters.

  “I want to talk about time-tripping,” Winters said.

  Keith put down his guitar and glanced at the cigar box at the base of concert rock. “Talk,” he said.

  Winters looked around the circle, studying the impassive faces, as if he was weighing them before speaking. I looked too.

  “I’ve been told that the commune has a supply of chronine,” Winters began. “And that you use it for time-tripping. Is that true, Keith?”

  Keith stroked his beard, as he did when he was nervous or thoughtful. “Yeah,” he said.

  “And that’s the only use that’s ever been made of this chronine?” Winters said. His supporters had gathered behind him in what seemed like a phalanx.

  I stood up. I didn’t feel comfortable arguing from the ground. “Keith was the first one to find the chronine,” I said. “We were going through the town hospital after the Army had gotten through with it. A few drugs were all that were left. Most of them are in the commune stores, in case we need them. But Keith wanted the chronine.

  So we gave it to him, all of us. Nobody else cared much.”

  Winters nodded. “I understand that,” he said very reasonably. “I’m not criticizing that decision. Perhaps you didn’t realize, however, that there are other uses or chronine besides time-tripping.”

  He paused. “Listen, and try to judge me fairly, that’s all I ask,” he said, looking at each of us in turn. “Chronine is a powerful drug; it’s an important resource, and we need all our resources right now. And time-tripping—anyone’s time-tripping—is an abuse of the drug. Not what it was intended for.”

  That was a mistake on Winters" part. Lectures on drug abuse weren’t likely to go over big in the commune. I could feel the people around me getting uptight.

  Rick, a tall, thin guy with a goatee who came to the concerts every night, took a poke at Winters from the ground. “Bullshit,” he said. “Chronine’s time travel, Colonel. Meant to be used for tripping.”

  “Right,” someone else said. “And we gave it to Keith. I don’t want to time-trip, but he does. So what’s wrong with it?”

  Winters defused the hostility quickly. “Nothing,” he said. “If we had an unlimited supply of chronine. But we don’t. Do we, Keith?”

  “No,” Keith said quietly. “Just a little left.”

  The fire was reflected in Winters" eyes when he looked at Keith. It made it difficult to read his expression. But his voice sounded heavy. “Keith, I know what those time trips mean to you. And I don’t want to hurt you, really I don’t. But we need that chronine, all of us.”

  “How?” That was me. I wanted Keith to give up chronine, but I’d be damned before I’d let it be taken from him. “How do we need the chronine?”

  “Chronine is not a time machine,” Winters said. “It is a memory drug. And there are things we must remember.”

  He glanced around the circle. “Is there anyone here who ever worked in a hospital? An orderly? A candy-striper? Never mind. There might be, in a group this size. And they’d have seen things. Somewhere in the back of their skulls they’d know things we need to know. I’ll bet some of you took shop in high school. I’ll bet you learned all sorts of useful things. But how much do you remember? With chronine, you could remember it all.

  We might have someone here who once learned to make arrows. We might have a tanner. We might have someone who knows how to build a generator. We might have a doctor!”

  Winters paused and let that sink in. Around the circle, people shifted uneasily and began to mutter.

  Finally Winters continued. “If we found a library, we wouldn’t burn the books for heat, no matter how cold it got. But we’re doing the same thing when we let Keith time-trip. We’re a library—all of us here, we have books in our heads. And the only way to read those books is with chronine. We should use it to help us remember the things we must know. We should hoard it like a treasure, calculate every recall session carefully, and make sure—make absolutely sure—that we don’t waste a grain of it.”

  Then he stopped. A long, long silence followed; for Keith, an endless one. Finally Rick spoke again. “I never thought of that,” he said reluctantly. “Maybe you have something. My father was a doctor, if that means anything.”

  Then another voice, and another; then a chorus of people speaking at once, throwing up half-remembered experiences that might be valuable, might be useful. Winters had struck paydirt.

  He wasn’t smiling, though. He was looking at me.

  I wouldn’t meet his eyes. I couldn’t. He had a point—an awful, awful point. But I couldn’t admit that, I couldn’t look at him and nod my surrender. Keith was my friend, and I had to stand by him.

  And of all of us in the circle, I was the only one standing. But I couldn’t think of anything to say.

  Finally Winters" eyes moved. He looked at concert rock. Keith sat there, looking at the cigar box.

  The hubbub went on for at least five minutes, but at last it died of its own weight. One by one the speakers glanced at Keith, and remembered, and dropped off into awkward silence. When the hush was complete, Keith rose and looked around, like a man coming out of a bad dream.

  “No,” he said. His voice was hurt and disbelieving; his eyes moved from person to person. “You can’t. I don’t…don’t waste chronine. You know that, all of you. I visit Sandi, and that’s not wasting. I need Sandi, and she’s gone. I have to go back. It’s my only way, my time machine.” He shook his head.

  My turn. “Yes,” I said, as forcefully as I could manage. “Keith’s right. Waste is a matter of definition. If you ask me, the biggest waste would be sending people back to sleep through college lectures a second time.”

  Laughter. Then other voices backed me. “I’m with Gary,” somebody said. “Keith needs Sandi, and we need Keith. It’s simple. I say he keeps the chronine.”

  “No way,” someone else objected. “I’m as compassionate as anyone, but hell— how many of our people have died over the last few years "cause we’ve bungled it when they needed doctoring? You remember Doug, two years ago? You shouldn’t need chronine for that. A bad appendix and he dies. We butchered him when we tried to cut it out. If there’s a chance to prevent that from happening again—even a long shot—I say we gotta take it.”

  “No guarantee it won’t happen anyway,” the earlier voice came back. “You have to hit the right memories to accomplish anything, and even they may not be as useful as you’d like.”

  “Shit. We have to try.…”

  “I think we hav
e an obligation to Keith.…”

  “I think Keith’s got an obligation to us.…”

  And suddenly everybody was arguing again, hassling back and forth, while Winters and Keith and I stood and listened. It went on and on, back and forth over the same points. Until Pete spoke.

  He stepped around Winters, holding Jan. “I’ve heard enough of this,” he said. “I don’t even think we got no argument. Jan here is gonna have my kid, she tells me. Well, damnit, I’m not going to take any chances on her or the kid dying. If there’s a way we can learn something that’ll make it safer, we take it. Especially I’m not gonna take no chances for a goddamn weakling who can’t face up to life. Hell, Keithie here wasn’t the only one hurt, so how does he rate? I lost a chick in the Blast too, but I’m not begging for chronine to dream her up again. I got a new chick instead. And that’s what you better do, Keith.”

  Keith stood very still, but his fists were balled at his sides. “There are differences, Pete,” he said slowly. “Big ones. My Sandi was no chick, for one thing. And I loved her, maybe more than you can ever understand. I know you don’t understand pain, Pete. You’ve hardened yourself to it, like a lot of people, by pretending that it doesn’t exist. So you convinced everybody you’re a tough guy, a strong man, real independent. And you gave up some of your humanity, too.” He smiled, very much in control of himself now, his voice sure and steady.

  “Well, I won’t play that game. I’ll cling to my humanity, and fight for it if I must. I loved once, really loved.

  And now I hurt. And I won’t deny either of those things, or pretend that they mean any less to me than they do.”

  He looked to Winters. “Lieutenant, I want my Sandi, and I won’t let you take her away from me. Let’s have a vote.”

  Winters nodded.

  It was close, very close. The margin was only three votes. Keith had a lot of friends.

  But Winters won.

  Keith took it calmly. He picked up the cigar box, walked over, and handed it to Winters. Pete was grinning happily, but Winters didn’t even crack a smile.