Lifehouse

by Spider Robinson

  “This is my meditation room,” Moira said.

  He nodded.

  “If the beginning of this conversation goes well,” Wally said, “we can continue it in more congenial surroundings. Over ‘caffy.’ But you did drop in without an appointment.”

  The stranger said nothing.

  “We caught a burglar once,” Wally said. “We left him in here for a week. Took the Buddha out, left him an empty wastebasket. He was very very contrite when we let him go. We had to help him to the sidewalk. Nothing much but solids in the basket by that point…”

  “I understand,” the hairless man said. “Come, let us reason together.”

  “When are you from?” Wally asked. “Originally, I mean.”

  The hairless man did a creditable imitation of puzzlement. “What do you mean, ‘when’ am I from, Daddy-o? I’m from Frisco; I’m part of a team of long-hairs hacking on a matter transporter at the University of Frisco, and while I was there after hours there was this terrible—”

  “It’s possible to pipe sound in here,” Moira said. “Are you by any chance familiar with the work of the Gyuto Monks?”

  Beside her, Wally visibly shuddered. The Gyuto Monks, chanting, sound very much like a sustained short in the circuit that powers the world. Like the Grand Canyon: anyone will be impressed by them, but few can endure them at any length.

  The hairless man sighed, and his shoulders drooped. He might not have known the Gyuto Monks, but he knew a threat when he heard it. “In your reckoning it would be the year 2287.”

  Wally and Moira each outsmiled the Buddha.

  “I’m Wallace Kemp, and this is my wife Moira Rogers,” Wally said.

  “I am Jude,” the time traveler said.

  Wally and Moira exchanged a glance. “Hey,” Wally said softly, making his Paul McCartney face, and she glared at him. To Wally’s surprise, Jude seemed to catch the reference too, and looked suddenly wary.

  “What was your purpose in time-traveling, Jude?” Wally went on, louder.

  “The information would be of no value to you.”

  “Let us decide that. Unless you’re in a hurry to get started meditating? We could get you a wastebasket—”

  “I came back in order to drive a taxicab, one time,” Jude said. “There. That is the complete truth. Satisfied?”

  Wally digested that. “You know how to drive a car?” Moira asked.

  Jude sneered. “Primitive mobile—myocontrol—how hard can it be?”

  “Does it have to be a cab?” Wally asked.

  Jude’s face fell. “The discussion is pointless,” he said. “My mission is a failure.”

  “Why?” they asked together.

  He rubbed his forehead, where his eyebrows ought to have been. “Because there was a major snowcrash—” He glanced suddenly at Moira. “—pardon me, madam, a fuckup, and I undershot. This is the wrong ficton.”

  Wally nodded, pleased to have confirmed that Robert Heinlein’s term for a place-and-time, “ficton,” would one day pass into the language. “Yes, I got that. So it was necessary that your cab ride take place in a ficton earlier in history than this?”

  “Yes, by several years.”

  “What year?”

  Jude looked stubborn.

  “Look,” Wally said reasonably. “You must see our problem. I told you we are Secret Masters of Fandom. You are obviously a time traveler. There can only be four kinds of time traveler: idiots, fanatics, criminals and very careful historians—which last does not seem to describe you. Anyone else would know it’s too risky. Before we can let you go, we need to know which kind you are.”

  Jude frowned. “In your terms, I suppose I am a fanatic. I would call myself a religious martyr.”

  Wally nodded. “And you plan to alter history, for theological reasons. By driving a taxicab. Even though that will annihilate reality.”

  “My reality,” Jude pointed out. “Not yours. If I had succeeded, my ficton would have vanished utterly, yes—but yours would merely have turned out somewhat differently.”

  “True,” Wally agreed. “Still, you’re going to have to tell us about it, if you want to leave this room.”

  Jude looked distinctly uncomfortable. “May I first ask you a question? Matters of religion can be volatile. I know it is a little early in history for this question to be truly meaningful, but…may I ask both of you your views regarding…Elvis?”

  Looking back on all this in years to come, one of the small things Wally and Moira would be proud of was the fact that neither of them cracked a smile at this juncture. They did exchange a momentary glance which was a promissory note for a shared belly-laugh later, but Wally answered seriously, after only a second’s hesitation, “He has left the building. If he were alive, he’d have stopped his daughter’s wedding.”

  “And while he was here,” Moira said, “he was a relatively talentless nutbar who happened to get struck by lightning, and didn’t do anything important with the energy. Why?”

  “Praise John!” Jude said fervently. “Are you, then, by any chance…Fab?”

  Wally and Moira exchanged another glance. It was getting harder and harder not to grin. The idea that there would be a Church of Elvis in the not-too-distant future had become something of a cliché in recent science fiction—but until now only Wally, in on-line forums and in his column in LMSFSazine, had ever suggested that it might and should be countered by an equally fervent cult that worshipped the Beatles.

  “I think you could say that,” Wally agreed slowly. “Washed in the Juice of the Apple, you mean? I wouldn’t call us devout, strictly speaking—we’re fen; we must remain skeptical on all matters of religion, by policy—but I own the Black Album, and all the Christmas Fan Club Messages.” He saw that register. “And I was at Shea Stadium in ’65, if that helps.”

  “Twenty-three August, yeah yeah yeah!” Jude cried excitedly. “Oh, thank The Four, some gear luck at last! You must help me—it may yet be accomplished!”

  “What may?” Wally asked, but his eyes were already starting to gleam.

  “The Reunification!” Jude said. “The Healing…the Reforging of the Bond…the utter destruction of the forces of Elvis!”

  Suddenly Wally knew what he was talking about. It all…well, came together, over him. “Oh my God,” he breathed, thunderstruck. For the third time he met his wife’s eyes, and was startled to see that she hadn’t caught up yet. “Don’t you get it, love? In the future, there’s a major showdown between the Church of Elvis and the Church of The Beatles—the anti-Asian Christians versus the pro-Asian Pagans—and we’re looking at a kamikaze samurai. God, the most awful Beatles anecdote of all—and Jude here came back through time to change it.”

  Moira was lost, but game. “‘…most awful Beatles anecdote…’ John’s death? Or something to do with Stu Sutcliffe?”

  “No, no—you’ve heard this one, I’m sure; I’ve told it a hundred times. John and Paul have buried the hatchet; they’re sitting around in the Dakota one night in ’79, getting stoned and watching telly while the wives chat in the kitchen. Lorne Michaels comes on the tube: it’s the Saturday after Bernstein offered the Beatles a million to reunite, and Michaels makes a counteroffer on the air, live: if the Beatles will come down and play on Saturday Night Live, now, he’s prepared to pay them…union scale, a thousand bucks or so apiece. Rim shot. And across town at the Dakota, John looks at Paul and Paul looks at John and they both start to grin—”

  “Oh my God, I remember now,” Moira said, “And they called a cab—but it never showed up…” She turned pale.

  “One of the great Lost Moments of history,” Wally said, his voice trembling.

  Jude broke the silence which followed. “It’s plaintext, right? If the cab had arrived, John and Paul would have appeared on Saturday Night Live that night. The planet would have convulsed in its orbit, a generation gone mad with joy. George and Ringo both would have been on the phone before the credits rolled—and sooner or later, The Four would have go
tten together again! John would have gone back home to England, and that Presleyan crot would never have gotten a shot at him there.” His voice was rising “And sooner or later, they’d have learned the truth about Eppy’s death, and in their holy wrath crashed the forces of Elvis forever—”

  Wally couldn’t help interrupting. “Wait a minute—are you saying that Elvis Presley was behind Brian Epstein’s—”

  “Indisputable proof will be uncovered in another eight years,” Jude said, “but isn’t it obvious? Faggot Jew Commie…creator of the Anti-Elvis…pills as the instrument of death…did you think it coincidence that Eppy died just as The Four were communing publicly with an Eastern, non-Christian religious figure in India?”

  “Elvis did approach J. Edgar Hoover, and volunteer to spy on the Beatles for the DEA, that’s documented,” Wally said softly. He was talking to himself. “And his daughter’s flaky husband is the guy who stole the Beatles’ publishing rights out from under his mentor, Paul McCartney—”

  “Elvis Presley made his evil plans in full, the day he read John’s Jesus Quote…and from beyond the grave, he triumphed,” Jude said in a vaguely chanting tone, clearly quoting from scripture.

  Moira noticed that her hand hurt, from crushing Wally’s hand, but forgot it almost at once, distracted by horror. “You mean…you mean He Whose Name We Must Never Mention really shot John as an agent of—of—”

  Jude nodded solemnly. “It will be the chance discovery of his secret memoirs by a prison guard in 2003 that blows the story. I meant to undo all of that—and with your help, I still can.”

  As unconsciously as they had mangled them, Wally and Moira let go of each other’s hands, and sat up straighter, hearts hammering.

  “You’ve got the time machine on you,” Wally suggested. “Or in you. Implanted, or something.”

  Jude shook his ironically bald head. “All the assets I have, you see.”

  “So you’re going to automatically slingshot back to the future, or something, and try again.”

  Another headshake. “Return to my ficton is fundamentally impossible, time travel only works backwards. Even if I had another machine, I could not travel to the future—it isn’t there yet.”

  “You’re stuck in this ficton, then? But then it’s too late, right? John’s been dead for fifteen years!”

  Jude looked sly. “But there is another time machine—in this ficton—and in this city.”

  “No shit,” Wally and Moira chorused. “I mean,” Wally went on, “‘speak on, sir, omitting no detail however slight.’ Where? And why?”

  “Let me table the question of its location for a moment,” Jude temporized, “and address your last input first. Authorized time travelers—as opposed to myself—are naturally hyperconscious of the danger of corrupting history. Therefore a clandestine machine is maintained throughout all periods of historical interest—so that if a researcher’s cover story should collapse, at worst they can make their way there and escape to an earlier ficton, aborting the hang.”

  “Smart,” Wally said. “So all you really need is a ride across town somewhere?”

  Jude sighed. “Well, no. I am not an authorized time traveler.”

  Slowly, Wally nodded. “So then, what you need is…?”

  Jude hesitated…then took the plunge. “A substantial bribe.”

  “In what form?” Wally asked.

  “Cash. Small bills would be best…”

  Wally boggled, shamelessly. He had been very good for a long time, but this just didn’t seem logical. “Cash? You mean, 1995 dollars? What the hell would time travelers want with cash?”

  “Think it through,” Jude suggested.

  Wally frowned fiercely. That one stung: a science fiction fan should never need to be told to think it through. “Apparently I lack data,” he said stiffly.

  “Okay. You’re the guardian of the time machine, stuck in this primitive ficton forever, and if The Fabs are good you will have very little actual work to do: the need for your services had better be rare. Sooner or later you go native. Now: what can I bribe you with? Money in 2287 dollars, that you can bury for your descendants? Unnameable futuristic comforts and delights that you may never even risk letting any local observe you enjoying? Or the means to render this Stone Age existence as tolerable as possible?”

  “But why can’t I generate as much cash as I want?” Wally said, falling into the Socratic spirit of the thing. “If I’m from the future, surely I was smart enough to pack some market tips, memorize some important dates—”

  “—which you could only capitalize on at the cost of altering history,” Jude pointed out. “Calling that kind of attention to yourself is precisely what you must not do. You must be a kind of invisible man—yet you must earn a living, in a ficton with all the privacy of a large bedroom, for altruism’s sake. This is a recipe for bribery.”

  “Ah,” Wally said. “I get it. And you’re willing to take the risk they aren’t, to get money to bribe them with. If you show up with a barrel of cash, they’ll think it over and decide what’s done is done, and the smartest thing to do with that money is quietly slip it back into the system—by spending it themselves. I guess if I were tending a time machine in the Court of Herod, I might take a hundred goats to bend a rule. You might pull it off.”

  “If you will help me,” Jude agreed. “I need valid financial entities of this ficton to act as my agents. If you will let me give you market advice, I will make us…let me see, ’95, ’95…say, two hundred thousand Canadian dollars, and give you half. And—Julia willing!—the joy of having undone the anagrammatic Evils of Elvis and saved Saint Jock. Will you help?”

  Wally’s heart was beating very fast. “Hold the phone. Check me out on this: you go back in time sixteen-odd years. You show up at the Dakota in a Yellow cab. Johnny and Paulie make the curtain, and history changes. And this ficton—here, now, sixteen years later—ceases to exist, right? Moira and I and everybody we know all disappear like Boojums?”

  Jude did not hesitate. “These avatars of you, yes. But there will still be a Wally and a Moira. Have your lives been so good since John’s Murder that you would not have them different? In a world with four strong Beatles to inspire it? Stack all the music recorded since 1972 against Rubber Soul…”

  Husband and wife both started to answer, and fell silent. They had met, fallen in love and married well before the date in question. It wasn’t as though the proposed alteration in history would cost them their marriage. Merely some dispiriting shared history…which would be replaced with—

  “You live here; I don’t. Is this ficton, in your opinions, gear? Or grotty? When do you believe the Sixties died, and why? Would you not see that undone, the Yellow Submarine relaunched?”

  Wally found that tears were trickling, silently and unobtrusively, down his cheeks.

  “Please help me,” Jude said softly. “It is my destiny. I was born and named to do as Paul commanded: to make the sad song better.”

  “We’ll do it,” Wally and Moira both said at once, and took each other’s hands again. They shared a grin that began as a promissory note for a kiss, and began inflating in value almost at once. Perhaps they had not been so happy since the day Moira proposed.

  Jude, for his part, appeared to go into something like religious ecstasy. He shivered all over, smiled hugely, and began rocking gently from side to side, seeming to glow. “Then you shall live out the year,” he said happily.

  Through his own warm glow, those words reached Wally. He stopped grinning long enough to say, “Beg pardon?”

  Jude waved his hands in the air, as one who would say, no, no, it’s nothing. “Vancouver will be destroyed later this year. Not a problem.”

  “The Big One?” Moira squealed. “Juan de Fuca Fault? This year?”

  “Yes, yes—but you will have a hundred thousand dollars with which to flee. And I will tell you when. Save as many friends as you like—as long as they are absolutely discreet.”

  An extraord
inary cascade of thoughts went through Wally’s brain in a short time.

  Jesus, they do say it’s overdue—the whole Pacific Rim’s going up lately—

  —Our home here in Point Grey sits on the only rock around: the only part of the greater Vancouver area that would not immediately liquefy and submerge in the event of a quake. Of course, we’d get some thirsty by and by—

  —After we agree to help Jude, he gets around to mentioning cataclysmic earthquakes in the near future?—

  Oh no, I see: he wanted us to be able to know and honestly say that our choice was pure, wasn’t based on selfish motives—

  —except for a piddling hundred grand—

  —ohmyGod, to have the Beatles back! How many albums would they have put out between 1979 and now? Oh Jesus…imagine hearing Tug of War without “Here Today”—but with John himself! Hell, those new tracks we’re supposed to hear next month could have been out fifteen years ago—

  —get a grip, boy. Now which, if any, of my friends can I trust to keep their mouth shut about this? Oh, shit—

  —can I condemn the rest to death for being gabby? Justice, perhaps, but rather harsh—

  —is there some way to get them a warning at the last possible moment? Or can I come up with some alternate explanation for how I know for sure a quake is coming? A prediction I got from the Internet, maybe? Or—

  —I’ll miss this soggy town—

  —where the hell will we go? Will Vancouver Island survive? Go-to-the-States or tolerate-Canadian-weather is a choice it’s been nice not to have to make—

  —no wonder Jude freaked when he learned what year it is—

  —that’s funny…why did he calm down, though, almost at once? He didn’t even ask me the exact date: he just thought for a second, and relaxed—

  —oh my dear God, he’s not from Vancouver! And there’s not much of 1995 left anymore—

  “Jude,” he said, enunciating carefully, feeling his lips and tongue starting to go numb, “what is the date of the earthquake?”

  Jude was still ecstatic. “Oh, we’ll have more than enough time, I should think, assuming you have any reasonable amount of capital. Point two megabucks shouldn’t take more than a few weeks. You do know…um…a flexible broker?”