The Green Futures of Tycho

by William Sleator

  “We sure will,” Tycho said. It was wonderful to watch Leonardo’s face at the table that evening. His theatrical expression of disdain at the beginning of the meal gave way to absolute, openmouthed shock when the little scene began to play itself out. At first he couldn’t keep his eyes from Tycho’s. Then, as the scene went on in perfect detail, his face grew pale and he kept looking down at his plate, embarrassed and afraid. He was so upset that he didn’t finish his soufflé. After Ludwig made his accusation, Leonardo said, with trembling sincerity, “I think you’re imagining things, Ludwig. Tycho’s just the same as he always was. I think you’re the one with something to hide.”

  The feeling of power that rose within Tycho as he watched it all unfold was intoxicating. All he had to do was flip a few little dials, and his family would behave just as he wished. There was nothing he wouldn’t be able to do now, no problem he couldn’t solve.

  When Leonardo approached him later, his manner was fawning and abject. “Tycho, that was amazing, that was incredible,” he said, slowly shaking his head. “I can still hardly believe it. But I have to believe it. Can you really show me how to do it too?”

  “Sure,” Tycho said casually. “But first you have to prove you really are on my side. Keep tabs on Ludwig, tell me everything he says about me. And keep throwing in those remarks about how he’s imagining things. Then we’ll see how much I can teach you.”

  But the heady sensation of total command lasted only until he undressed for bed and took a good look at the egg. He dropped it as though it were red-hot, the elation vanishing like a popped balloon. The egg had metamorphosed again.

  There was an ominous feeling in the pit of his stomach as he examined it. The green end was more jewellike than before, with a richer, warmer glow. It had a mysterious underwater quality now, that was quite hypnotic. He felt that if he stared into it long enough, he could see dim shapes moving deep within the jewel, far, far away. And around the middle there were two glittering filaments: one silver and the other red.

  Clearly there were powers at work here, over which he had no control at all. He was not in command. The bleakness of the future he had glimpsed the night before came flooding back in a rush.

  But maybe it wasn’t hopeless. After all, he hadn’t seen very much of the future. It was very likely that he had stumbled upon himself during an off moment. Perhaps if he went back, and got a fuller picture, it wouldn’t be so bad after all.

  Still, something urged him to stay away from the future. But once the idea of going back and checking it out more thoroughly occurred to him, he could not get rid of it. And what harm could he do? He had already been there. And this was basically a positive mission: to look for the good things. It was only fair. He owed it to himself.

  He had been there from 11 A.M. to 2 P.M. All he had to do was arrive at 2:30 on the same day to avoid running into himself. And he didn’t even have to make Ludwig more suspicious by sneaking outside again. He knew that his room would be unoccupied and basically unchanged. He could make the jump without even getting out of bed.

  He put on the same traveling clothes. He carefully set the dials. He lay down in bed, pressed down on the jewel, and felt faint. Then he jumped into the future, 19 years, 364 days, and 151/2 hours, exactly.

  And landed painfully on the floor.

  “Huh?” he said aloud, opening his eyes. And then, with a terrified cry, he was on his feet, peering around frantically in all directions. It wasn’t only that the bed had been moved. The room, and the hallway beyond, were utterly different.

  11

  HE CLOSED HIS EYES AND SHOOK HIS HEAD and looked again. The room remained different. It felt unreal, like being in the kind of dream in which everything around you changes without reason, and you never really know where you are. Except that he wasn’t dreaming.

  Maybe he had made a mistake and arrived twenty years later than he thought. He checked and double-checked the dials. There was no mistake. It was exactly the same day as his last trip, only three and a half hours later. The strange-looking calendar clock on the wall confirmed it.

  It made no sense at all. His mind did not want to accept it. But he couldn’t pretend it hadn’t happened; he had to accept it. In a few hours, the familiar room he had seen the last time he was here had been drastically altered.

  The only furniture was a sleek and shining green plastic desk. Part of the desk top curved up to form itself into a printed keyboard like the one he had seen on Judy’s desk last time, but this one had a screen attached to it, like a computer terminal. Piles of printed forms were arranged neatly around the keyboard. One pile was all horse-racing forms and information about different horse races all over the world. Another pile was all dog races. There were piles of information about different sports: boxing and baseball and football. The largest pile was concerned with the stock market and various corporations. Tycho had never known anything about horse racing, nor had he ever been much of a sports fan. Business meant nothing to him. Perhaps this was someone else’s room now. There was a stack of envelopes arranged in a transparent cube. He pulled one out. His own name and this address were printed on the back. Oddly, there was no mention of Lunar Entertainments. Still, this was his desk all right. Somehow, he had become a business and sports enthusiast.

  He stepped cautiously out into the upstairs hall, trying to prepare his mind to accept other impossible alterations. For he had already seen that the hallway had changed in a way that could not have been done in a half hour, or four hours, or even a day. The wooden wainscoting and old flowered wallpaper were gone. The walls were now covered with a starkly gleaming greenish material that took the daylight and reflected it back in strange subtle patterns that seemed to be moving deep within the walls. It was beautiful, but also frightening, and he didn’t want to look at it very long.

  He started across toward what had been Judy and Bobby’s study, and then froze. There was an intense, high-pitched bleeping downstairs, and then quick heavy footsteps. Someone was home. Tycho moved carefully toward the top of the stairs.

  “What is it?” said a man’s voice.

  “Is this Mr. Tycho Tithonus?” said a bland mechanical tone that was neither male nor female.

  “Yes, it is.”

  How could it be? Tycho had left his older self only a short time ago, in the middle of his presentation at Lunar Entertainments. But his mind was quickly becoming adept at accepting the unacceptable. It was pointless to keep pinching himself and wondering if he was going crazy. If he paid attention to what was going on, and did a little careful exploring, then be might be able to come up with an explanation for all these discrepancies. He took a few quiet steps down the stairs. Perhaps from the landing he would be able to see himself.

  “We have a collect call for you from Satellite 619-AKP, a Mr. Leonardo Tithonus. Will you accept the charges?”

  “Well …” Tycho said irritably. “Oh, well, I guess I might as well. Put him on. Oh! Operator, wait a minute.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Tycho reached the landing. It hardly surprised him now that the furnishings downstairs were completely different. It was like the kitchen had been on his last visit. Bulbous shapes grew out of the floor and walls in velvety textured fabrics, mostly in various shades of green. But the furniture didn’t look new. It was shabby and rather threadbare in places. The room had a generally disorganized and sloppy look about it, as though it was rarely dusted or vacuumed or picked up.

  He could see his older self from behind, wearing a kind of jump suit that had a large pouch or pocket attached to it. He had his hand in the pocket. He was facing the five-foot-square wall screen that Tycho had seen the last time. From the landing, Tycho had a good view of the screen. Pink bands of light vibrated across it from left to right.

  “Operator, I’m switching on the privacy code. Last time I went private on satellite frequency, there was a lot of noise. Will you see that it doesn’t happen this time.”

  The bands of light had slowly tu
rned blue. “Privacy code on satellite frequency is occasionally subject to interference by broadcasts from the moon or commands to robot modules in space. I’m sorry, sir, it is beyond our control. If it should happen, simply disconnect and place another—”

  “All right, all right, I know how to do that. I was just trying to get some decent service. For the amount I pay, I deserve that much.”

  The bands of light were purple now. “If you have a question about your bill, please punch—”

  “No, no, I don’t have a question about my bill! Just go away and put the call through. I haven’t got all day.”

  Why was he so irritable? And why did he have to be so nasty to the operator, who was only doing her job? Although the operator was probably not a person at all, but a machine. In that case his rudeness was not objectionable, only rather pitiable.

  There was a burst of static. Red lightning sizzled briefly across the screen, and then it went white. A brightly lit room came into focus, with walls that curved smoothly into the ceiling and floor to form a perfectly spherical interior. There were no windows, only a cushiony white padding that covered everything. Something that looked like a large, pink ball floated in the center of the room. Tycho crept carefully down two more steps to get a better view. Then he saw what it was that floated there, and felt sick.

  It was Leonardo. An inhumanly fat Leonardo, his barely recognizable features swallowed up by the huge mounds of his cheeks. On Earth, his enormous jellylike bulk would have been dragged down by gravity, creating deep folds of flesh and giving him a pear-shaped look. Weightless, in orbit, the fat floated freely around his limbs and torso. Were it not for the occasional gentle undulations that rippled across the vast expanse of his body, he would have looked like a plastic swim toy that had been pumped up with far too much air. Tycho had the uncomfortable feeling that at any second he might pop.

  “Took you long enough to answer,” Leonardo said petulantly.

  “I’m a busy man, you know that, Leo,” Tycho said. “Come on, spit it out. What do you want this time?”

  “I want to come home!” blurted Leonardo. His lower lip quivered, and waves rolled up and down the many layers of chin fanning out below his face.

  “Oh, no, not that again!” moaned Tycho, his shoulders slumping wearily. “If I’d known you were just going to start that garbage all over again, I wouldn’t have accepted the call. In fact, I think I’ll just dis—”

  “No no no!” shrieked Leonardo. “Please, Tycho, please don’t hang up. I promise, that isn’t all I wanted to say. Please don’t hang up; nobody ever calls me. And I …” He was panting heavily. “I thought of some important things I wanted to say.”

  “Like what?”

  “Well, uh … I spoke to Ludwig today, just a little while ago.”

  “Ludwig! But I thought you said nobody ever called you,” Tycho said quickly.

  “Well, hardly anybody ever does. It’s so expensive, you know that.”

  “I sure do.” Tycho laughed. On the steps, his younger self felt like holding his ears, the sound was so unpleasant. “That’s why I can’t believe you spoke to Ludwig. Even if he could get that much money together, he wouldn’t waste it calling you.”

  A small purple sphere floated past Leonardo’s face. He reached out and popped it into his mouth. His little eyes, buried in flesh, swerved away from the screen. “We didn’t talk about how Ludwig paid for the call,” he said slowly. “We talked about you.”

  Tycho tried another laugh, unsuccessfully. His voice had grown rather shrill. “What are you claiming you told him?”

  “Don’t panic, Tycho. I didn’t give away any of your slimy little business secrets … yet. But I could, anytime I wanted. Ludwig’s going to call back. He’s very suspicious. Don’t think you’re safe just because I’m up here, Tycho. You’re more vulnerable now than ever. Bring me back down to Earth, and I won’t talk. But if you leave me up here, I’ll spill it all. Even those crazy secret plans you have, and that thing you want to build. I swear I will!” He clenched his teeth. Concentric ripples flowed across his cheeks, like waves from a pebble tossed into a pond.

  “Why, you stupid blob! I think you’re actually trying to blackmail me.”

  The scene was painful to watch. But it was also compelling, and Tycho could not bring himself to turn away from it. He crept down another step.

  His future self seemed to be at a loss for words, taking deep breaths and tapping his foot nervously as he stared at the screen. Then abruptly he said, “Ludwig must have told you about Tamara. He wouldn’t have called without telling you. The three of you have always been so … close.” He said the word with contempt.

  Bright panic flashed in Leonardo’s eyes. His chins trembled. With an attempt at casualness, he spun almost gracefully in the air, his flesh curling around him in slow motion, to grab at another purple ball. He turned back to the screen, his body continuing to billow languidly as he spoke. “Tamara? What’s to tell? She’s still the same, of course.” His voice was not convincing. “Still teaching. Still mourning the dancing career she never had.”

  The dancing career she never had. On the bottom step, Tycho almost stumbled and fell as the impossibility of that statement punched him in the stomach. It was difficult enough to accept the instant cosmetic changes in the house. But he had seen Tamara dance beautifully. She had done Giselle many times, according to her interview. Now was he expected to believe that all that had never happened? It was too much. The unreality of what he was hearing caused the room to swim dangerously around him.

  His older self was laughing again. “Wrong, Leonardo. Your little game is over. She quit just last week. Ludwig would have told you.”

  “She quit teaching! But what happened? How is she?” In his genuine concern for her, Leonardo seemed to have forgotten that he was giving himself away. “But she always clung to her teaching. She never got a chance to dance, but at least she had that. How is she going to survive?”

  “She went to live with Bobby and Judy, to take care of them,” Tycho said blandly. “She didn’t want them going to a nursing home. I’ll see that she doesn’t starve.”

  “You made her do it, Tycho! You did it to her!” Leonardo shrieked, suddenly out of control. His face grew pink and wet and swelled enormously. His flailing limbs whipped up a maelstrom across his torso. “You didn’t want to waste money on them! It was cheaper to get Tamara to nurse them! You took her away from the only thing she had left!”

  “Cut it out, Leonardo!” Tycho bellowed.

  Leonardo’s mouth slammed shut. He floated, fearful and undulating.

  “I’m bored with your stupid little games!” Tycho went on, his voice stinging like a whip. “I know Ludwig can’t get through to you. I know nobody but me will accept your collect calls. You’re isolated like you never would be on Earth, and that’s the way it has to be. And it’s your own fault. You thought you were smart, figuring out how I operate. It was the dumbest thing you ever did. I’m not going to let you ruin me, expose me. You’re lucky you’re still alive.”

  Leonardo was babbling now. “Please, please, let me come back. You don’t know what it’s like out here. I promise I won’t tell. I’ll never tell.”

  “But Leo, you’re so much more comfortable up there than you’d ever be down here.” Tycho’s voice had taken on a humorous, cajoling quality. “The whole medical profession assures me of that. It was no picnic dragging around those 659 pounds in Earth gravity, now was it, Leo? Out there you float effortlessly, like a bubble. You’ll live a lot longer out there, Leo. Research has demonstrated that. And it’s not cheap, either. I’m doing you a tremendous favor.”

  “But it’s so lonely and boring and awful. It’s driving me nuts, Tycho. I don’t care if I—”

  “But you can eat and eat, and not worry about it, Leo. And you can watch your video screen. And you can do your little drawings. It must be idyllic.”

  “Please, Tycho. You don’t know what it’s like. There’s nothing to dra
w. It’s so endless and awful. Please. I promise I won’t …” Then Leonardo peered closer. He shook his head, and large round droplets of sweat bobbed gently away from him. He swam closer to the screen. His face went crafty again. “But Tycho,” he murmured. “You didn’t tell me you had a visitor.”

  Both Tychos stiffened. “What are you talking about?” demanded the older one. The younger one froze, too terrified to move a muscle.

  Leonardo was grinning now. “I swear, you must be slipping at last, Tycho. So careless. On the stairway behind you. I think I detect a familiar little face.”

  The older Tycho spun around, his hand twitching inside his pocket. For a moment Tycho stared into his grown-up face, hard and cold and afraid, with hooded, red-rimmed eyes and deep lines already etched into the forehead. It was definitely his own face. But it was not the same face he had seen at Lunar Entertainments.

  Then the face started toward him, shouting something. But Tycho wasn’t listening. He was leaping up the stairs, two at a time, adjusting the dials as he went. Don’t panic. Think about what you’re doing. Calculate. He pounded across the upstairs hall. In his room, his hands shook as he checked the dials, trying to ignore the footsteps on the stairs, the footsteps in the hallway.

  His older self burst into the room. The face was maddened by rage, inhuman, the eyes bursting out of their sockets, the mouth a shapeless hole. He was waving something in his hand, but before Tycho had a chance to get a good look at it, he pressed down on the jeweled end and felt faint.

  And returned to his familiar bedroom. His heart racing, he checked the bedside clock. It was thirty seconds after he had left. He was lucky. He had managed to get the calculations right, even in that emergency. Next time, though—if there ever was a next time—it would be a good idea to set the dials for his return as soon as he got there. Just in case he might have to make another quick exit.

  But he didn’t think there would be a next time. This trip had made him more depressed than ever. His intention had been to look for positive things, but everything he had seen was far worse than before. He wasn’t merely a callous fool. He had become a criminal and a monster. How easy it would be to go into the future and find out the results of a race or a stock market transaction. Then return to the present and place his money accordingly, to assure his own profit. What a terrible selfish abuse of this wonderful tool!