by Anthology
“Betsy, I’ve never got around to tell you much. I should have, but . . . well, what do you know already? I mean . . .”
From sounds heard clearly, late at night, Elizabeth knew her mother enjoyed sex well enough; she simply couldn’t talk about it. The problem was, how to make things easy.
“I know how not to get in trouble like Sheila across the street last year. I mean, I know what it is they do.” No point in discussing the ovulation cycle—she wasn’t sure her mother knew how it worked. And contraceptives? Forget it.
“That’s good,” said her mother. “I’m so glad we had this nice talk, Betsy.” Another embrace; Mrs. Wilson wiped her eyes.
“Yes, Mother. So am I.” She went to her room; it was time for homework.
Her mother wasn’t stupid, she thought, nor ignorant. She was merely a product of her times. Elizabeth opened her notebook, then closed it, lost in thought . . .
Unless she had lied to Ralph, she came to him virgin. And she wouldn’t have to lie; she knew him too well. So what if—was this her chance to test her future?
She thought about it. There was no hurry; she would wait for her body to ready itself more fully. There was still nearly half a decade, before Ralph.
She had chances to do things she hadn’t done—knew she hadn’t done—but she didn’t, somehow. Once she watched Sharon and two other girls, giggling over a newspaper picture of a fashion model, cut each other’s hair into an imitation of the scalplock worn by the girl in the picture—but she went away with her own hair intact. The three were suspended from school and pictured in the local press, but not she. Now why, she thought, didn’t I? It would have been harmless enough . . .
At fourteen, crushed under sixteen-year-old Ricky Charlton in the back seat of his car, she wished she’d chosen an easier way. “Please, Beth!” In the heat, sweat trickled down her sides. She’d guessed Ricky to be a good choice for her gambit, but his hand on her labia was clumsy and downright painful. She’d have to be the one to make sure the condom was worn properly; Ralph had used them, sometimes.
And from Ralph’s experience she knew she couldn’t acquiesce too soon; Ricky had to believe he alone had won, could have won the goal. That was the way boys thought, at his age in this time. She had her reputation to think of, at school.
Too soon or not, neither of them could take much more of this. Silently she consented, and helped him fit the necessary appliance. Against his heedless urgency, she tried to arrange them both for better comfort.
Alongside the car, a series of explosions; someone had thrown a string of firecrackers. When it was done, she waited. “Ricky?”
“I don’t know—it won’t—it’s your fault! Why did you make me wait?”
Oh, the hell with it
She met Ralph when she was sixteen, he twenty. As the time neared she thought of those days, over fifty years past on the one hand and rapidly approaching on the other. At times she found herself remembering scenes between them from her own viewpoint; the phenomenon worried her—was she losing her firsthand memory of Ralph’s lifetime? Then she realized that her mind was composing the events from a mixture of memory, empathy and extrapolation. As well as anticipation . . .
Tom Gilchrist, a stocky good-humored boy of her own age, escorted her to the “social” at the neighborhood dance hall. It was their third date—and, as she recalled, their last; their friendship was only lightly tinged with romance. At the entrance they paid admission—Dutch treat—and were given nametags.
They danced, talked, sipped sweet insipid punch. Constantly she looked to find Ralph Ascione; if she could remember where in the large hall she first met him, she would find that spot and stay there. And when she saw him she did not recognize him.
She saw the nametag, yes. But he so young, ears leaping out from the thin face, hair cut and slicked in a fashion she’d long forgotten seeing above that face, was almost a total stranger.
How had it gone, before? Seeing the person she had been, she could not remember. How old? Twenty? But he was turning away, she had to make her move.
“I think I know him, Tom.” Pointing. “I should say hello.”
Young Gilchrist obliged; he touched Ralph’s shoulder, turned him and brought him to her, and read the nametag as he saw it. “Ralph Askeony.”
“No,” she said, “it’s Ash-own.” Yes, she thought, that’s exactly what she said to me.
Ralph smiled as he took her hand. “How did you know that?”
Constantly, within the limitations of her school and his work, they were together. To be with my earlier self, she thought—and I know, and he doesn’t, J wish I could, tell him; that would break the pattern, that ends with me lying in my blood as a baby lies in its wet—only, so much more of it . . .
But he couldn’t possibly believe; I know. And there will be other ways. There is time; my world can’t outwit me forever.
And one day he will know. This day, when he is me. But that is now. No, it’s all too complex . . .
She gave herself to the situation and found it charming, trying to recall events from his viewpoint so long-ago to her, Watching his reactions from outside him and remembering what he felt, seeing her as she was now. She knew her own beauty both from inside and outside.
The years between dimmed but never vanished. As before, she was not certain as to how the decision of marriage was reached so quickly. Her parents were startled, but agreed with surprising readiness.
Had ever such a marriage been? She knew him, and as if in reflection he seemed to know her as well. She had indeed come virgin to him, but from his period of their life she drew comparisons that confirmed the joy she found in their sex together.
She could share his hobbies—spelunking, rockhounding, ham radio—she knew them from his life. And the companionship, the talking—I talk to myself, she thought—yes, but I love that self and its answers.
She found she had to be careful not to answer questions before he asked them. It was not that her memories over fifty-plus years were so detailed, but that empathy built upon her recalls, almost to a semblance of precognition.
Absorbed in her present, she forgot to expect pregnancy. And she realized that since meeting Ralph she’d also forgotten to look for ways to test the shape of the future. How many chances she’d wasted, she couldn’t know. Well, there was time enough yet, and now was no time to take risks with a small life for the later sake of her own. No, not now.
Tiny events, she thought, are less certain. What if I have conceived a daughter? Then—God, no! I can’t give up Carl. We both loved him so much.
That night and several more, her sleep was troubled.
Pregnancy was more difficult than she expected, but she didn’t complain. One day she realized that her reticence, seen by Ralph as sign that all was well with her, had misled her into expecting an easier time. She could almost laugh, but came to dread the birth itself.
It was neither as easy as she hoped nor as bad as she feared. At the last moment she was put under by the anesthetist; she could not recall clearly the moment she saw the baby and felt it laid onto her collapsed belly. Relaxed, still to a great extent under the effects of the drug, she heard Ralph’s congratulations and reassurances from a far distance. There was something . . . why couldn’t she remember?
She had complications, dangerous and painful. The sedatives did not allow her mind to clear. Dazed, she came partially awake at intervals, to be allowed to cuddle her baby. Was it Carl? She could not summon energy to ask.
One day she awoke almost fully, knowing, somehow, that now she would live. The baby was brought to her. “You can nurse the little one now, Mrs. Ascione.” What a sweet ache it was!
Then the baby lay at her side, her arm around it and its hand tightly gripping her finger, then relaxing, rhythmically. No, not quite rhythmically. In fact, not rhythmically at all.
Squeeeze, squeeze. Squeeeze, sqmeeze, squeeeze. Squeeeze. Pause. Squeeeze, squeeze, squeeze. Squeeze, squeeze. Squeeze. Pause . . .
>
Something old memories surfaced. Squeeze, squeeeze.
Dot-dash. Morse code! The sedatives had given her strange thoughts before this . . .
The patterns resonated with Ralph’s memories. Letters, words, came to her.
. . . not die . . . freeway . . . more years . . . I know . . . as you will . . . hello myself . . .
Elizabeth hugged herself to her, still wondering if it were daughter or son she held.
But either way, she thought, I know where I’m going.
ROBOT VISIONS
Isaac Asimov
I suppose I should start by telling you who I am. I am a very junior member of the Temporal Group. The Temporalists (for those of you who have been too busy trying to survive in this harsh world of 2030 to pay much attention to the advance of technology) are the aristocrats of physics these days.
They deal with that most intractable of problems—that of moving through time at a speed different from the steady temporal progress of the Universe. In short, they are trying to develop time-travel.
And what am I doing with these people, when I myself am not even a physicist, but merely a—? Well, merely a merely.
Despite my lack of qualification, it was actually a remark I made some time before that inspired the Temporalists to work out the concept of VPIT (“virtual paths in time”).
You see, one of the difficulties in traveling through time is that your base does not stay in one place relative to the Universe as a whole. The Earth is moving about the Sun; the Sun about the Galactic center; the Galaxy about the center of gravity of the Local Group—well, you get the idea. If you move one day into the future or the past—just one day—Earth has moved some 2.5 million kilometers in its orbit about the Sun. And the Sun has moved in its journey, carrying Earth with it, and so has everything else.
Therefore, you must move through space as well as through time, and it was my remark that led to a line of argument that showed that this was possible; that one could travel with the space-time motion of the Earth not in a literal, but in a “virtual” way that would enable a time-traveler to remain with his base on Earth wherever he went in time. It would be useless for me to try to explain that mathematically if you have not had Temporalist training. Just accept the matter.
It was also a remark of mine that led the Temporalists to develop a line of reasoning that showed that travel into the past was impossible. Key terms in the equations would have to rise beyond infinity when the temporal signs were changed.
It made sense. It was clear that a trip into the past would be sure to change events there at least slightly, and no matter how slight a change might be introduced into the past, it would alter the present; very likely drastically. Since the past should seem fixed, it makes sense that travel back in time is impossible.
The future, however, is not fixed, so that travel into the future and back again from it would be possible.
I was not particularly rewarded for my remarks. I imagine the Temporalist team assumed I had been fortunate in my speculations and it was they who were entirely the clever ones in picking up what I had said and carrying it through to useful conclusions. I did not resent that, considering the circumstances, but was merely very glad—delighted, in fact—since because of that (I think) they allowed me to continue to work with them and to be part of the project, even though I was merely a—well, merely.
Naturally, it took years to work out a practical device for time travel, even after the theory was established, but I don’t intend to write a serious treatise on Temporality. It is my intention to write of only certain parts of the project, and to do so for only the future inhabitants of the planet, and not for our contemporaries.
Even after inanimate objects had been sent into the future—and then animals—we were not satisfied. All objects disappeared; all, it seemed, traveled into the future. When we sent them short distances into the future—five minutes or five days—they eventually appeared again, seemingly unharmed, unchanged, and, if alive to begin with, still alive and in good health.
But what was wanted was to send something far into the future and bring it back.
“We’d have to send it at least two hundred years into the future,” said one Temporalist. “The important point is to see what the future is like and to have the vision reported back to us. We have to know whether humanity will survive and under what conditions, and two hundred years should be long enough to be sure. Frankly, I think the chances of survival are poor. Living conditions and the environment about us have deteriorated badly over the last century.”
(There is no use in trying to describe which Temporalist said what. There were a couple of dozen of them altogether, and it makes no difference to the tale I am telling as to which one spoke at anyone time, even if I were sure I could remember which one said what. Therefore, I shall simply say “said a Temporalist,” or “one said,” or “some of them said,” or “another said,” and I assure you it will all be sufficiently clear to you. Naturally, I shall specify my own statements and that of one other, but you will see that those exceptions are essential.)
Another Temporalist said rather gloomily, “I don’t think I want to know the future, if it means finding out that the human race is to be wiped out or that it will exist only as miserable remnants.”
“Why not?” said another. “We can find out in shorter trips exactly what happened and then do our best to so act, out of our special knowledge, as to change the future in a preferred direction. The future, unlike the past, is not fixed.”
But then the question arose as to who was to go. It was clear that the Temporalists each felt himself or herself to be just a bit too valuable to risk on a technique that might not yet be perfected despite the success of experiments on objects that were not alive; or, if alive, objects that lacked a brain of the incredible complexity that a human being owned. The brain might survive, but, perhaps, not quite all its complexity might.
I realized that of them all I was least valuable and might be considered the logical candidate. Indeed, I was on the point of raising my hand as a volunteer, but my facial expression must have given me away for one of the Temporalists said, rather impatiently, “Not you. Even you are too valuable.” (Not very complimentary.) “The thing to do,” he went on, “is to send RG-32.”
That did make sense. RG-32 was a rather old-fashioned robot, eminently replaceable. He could observe and report—perhaps without quite the ingenuity and penetration of a human being—but well enough. He would be without fear, intent only on following his orders, and he could be expected to tell the truth.
Perfect!
I was rather surprised at myself for not seeing that from the start, and for foolishly considering volunteering myself. Perhaps, I thought, I had some sort of instinctive feeling that I ought to put myself into a position where I could serve the others. In any case, it was RG-32 that was the logical choice; indeed, the only one.
In some ways, it was not difficult to explain what we needed. Archie (it was customary to call a robot by some common perversion of his serial number) did not ask for reasons, or for guarantees of his safety. He would accept any order he was capable of understanding and following, with the same lack of emotionality that he would display if asked to raise his hand. He would have to, being a robot.
The details took time, however.
“Once you are in the future,” one of the senior Temporalists said, “you may stay for as long as you feel you can make useful observations. When you are through, you will return to your machine and come back with it to the very moment that you left by adjusting the controls in a manner which we will explain to you. You will leave and to us it will seem that you will be back a split-second later, even though to yourself it may have seemed that you had spent a week in the future, or five years. Naturally, you will have to make sure the machine is stored in a safe place while you are gone, which should not be difficult since it is quite light. And you will have to remember where you stored the machine and how to get
back to it.”
What made the briefing even longer lay in the fact that one Temporalist after another would remember a new difficulty. Thus, one of them said suddenly, “How much do you think the language will have changed in two centuries?”
Naturally, there was no answer to that and a great debate grew as to whether there might be no chance of communication whatever, that Archie would neither understand nor make himself understood.
Finally, one Temporalist said, rather curtly, “See here, the English language has been becoming ever more nearly universal for several centuries and that is sure to continue for two more. Nor has it changed significantly in the last two hundred years, so why should it do so in the next two hundred? Even if it has, there are bound to be scholars who would be able to speak what they might call ‘ancient English’. And even if there were not, Archie would still be able to make useful observations. Determining whether a functioning society exists does not necessarily require talk.”
Other problems arose. What if he found himself facing hostility? What if the people of the future found and destroyed the machine, either out of malevolence or ignorance?
One Temporalist said, “It might be wise to design a Temporal engine so miniaturized that it could be carried in one’s clothing. Under such conditions one could at any time leave a dangerous position very quickly.”
“Even if it were possible at all,” snapped another, “it would probably take so long to design so miniaturized a machine that we—or rather our successors—would reach a time two centuries hence without the necessity of using a machine at all. No, if an accident of some sort takes place, Archie simply won’t return and we’ll just have to try again.”
This was said with Archie present, but that didn’t matter, of course. Archie could contemplate being marooned in time, or even his own destruction, with equanimity, provided he were following orders. The Second Law of Robotics, which makes it necessary for a robot to follow orders, takes precedence over the Third, which makes it necessary for him to protect his own existence.
