by Anthology
What had we missed in Villon, I wondered, what might we have missed in many other events and men? What could be the significance that we had missed and which had been recognized and now was sought by our far descendants in that black and frozen world up ahead of us? Sought by those who now came back among us to sift through the dustbins of our history, seeking what we unknowingly might have thrown away.
If we could only talk with them, I thought, if only they would talk with us—and even as I thought it, I knew how impossible it was. There was about them a supercilious quality that would not allow them to, that we would never stand for in that it scarcely masked the contempt that they felt for us. It would be akin to a radio astronomer going back to ancient Babylon to talk with a priest-astronomer. In both cases, I knew, the gulf would not be only one of knowledge but of attitude.
A faithful whippoorwill that clocked in every evening shortly after dusk began his haunted chugging. Listening to it, I sat and let the woodland peace creep in. I’d forget it all, I told myself, I’d wipe it from my mind—I had a book to write. There was no purpose and no need to fret about something that would not happen for God knows how many millennia from now.
I knew, of course, that I was wrong. This was not something that could be forgotten. Too much had happened, too much remained unsaid for the incident to be ignored. There probably was, as well, too much at stake, although when I tried to sort out what specifically might be at stake, I had no luck at all. There were questions that needed answering, explanations to be given, a fuller story to be told. And there was just one place to get those questions answered.
I went down off the porch and got into the car. The Lodge was dark when I pulled into the driveway. There was no answer to my knock; when I tried the latch the door came open. I stepped inside and stood in the dark, not calling out. I think I knew there was no one there. My eyes became somewhat accustomed to the dark. Moving cautiously, alert to chairs that might trip me up, I went into the room. My foot crunched on something and I stopped in midstride. Then I saw it—the shattered wreckage of the time-map. I found a pack of matches in my pocket and struck one of them. In the brief flaring of its light I saw that the cubicle had been smashed. Someone, I guessed, had taken a maul, or perhaps a rock, to it
The match burned down and I shook it out. I turned about and left, shutting the door behind me. And now, I thought, the people of the hills would have another mystery about which to speculate. There was the shattered time-map, of course, which when it was found would be a topic of conversation for a year or more at most. The real mystery, however, would be the question of what had happened to the people of the Lodge—the story of how one summer they had disappeared, leaving the Cadillac standing in the garage, and had not come back again. The unpaid taxes would pile up, and at some time in the future someone might pay up the taxes and get title to the place, but that would make no difference to the legend. Through many years to come the story would be told at the Trading Post, and given time the Lodge might become a haunted house and thus the story would be ensured a special kind of immortality.
Back at the cabin, with the fireflies winking in the woods and the faithful whippoorwill chunking from across the hollow, I tried to console myself by thinking I had done everything that a man could do, although I had the horrid feeling I had failed. And I realized, as well, that now I had lost any chance I might have to do anything at all. This, then, had to be the end of it. The best thing for me, I told myself, was to get back to the book in the hope that as I worked I might forget—or, if not forget, ease the sharpness of the memory.
I tried. For three whole days I tried. I drove myself and got some writing done. When I read it over, I tore it up and wrote it once again. The second draft was no better than the first.
While I sat working at the kitchen table I could feel the saddle in the closet sneaking up on me. I took it out of the closet and, dragging it down the hill, chucked it in a deep ravine. It didn’t help; it still sneaked up on me. So I went down into the ravine and retrieved it, throwing it back into the closet.
Running out of groceries, I went to the Trading Post. Humphrey was sitting outside the door, his chair tipped back against the building. I picked up the groceries and a letter from Neville. I sat an hour or two with Humphrey while he talked about the mine. I let him do the talking; I was afraid to say anything for fear I’d make a conversational slip and tip him off to what I knew about it.
The letter from Neville was short, written by a man who was in a hurry. He was off for Greece, he wrote—“I need to see Marathon again.”
Returning home with the groceries, I bundled up the notes and drafts I had been working on and jammed them in the briefcase, then went fishing. Fishing helped, I think. If I could have gone on fishing, it would have been all right. If I could have spent the summer fishing, I might have worked it out. But the fishing didn’t last long.
I had picked up three fairly good trout by the time I reached the place from which, sitting on a log, I had spotted the protruding log ends that had led me to the mine.
Standing in the stream and looking up the hill, I could see the entrance to the mine, and a short distance below it the rock shelter into which the squirrel had dived.
Then my mind played a sneaky trick on me. Looking at the rock shelter, the thought suddenly struck me—that hidden, obscure bit of evidence that had been lying in the back part of my mind, unnoticed until now. I have often wondered since why it could not have passed me by, why it could not have remained hidden, why the computer in my brain felt compelled to haul it forth.
When I had glanced into the shelter, I recalled, I had seen the drifting feathers and the chalky droppings of the birds that had used it for a shelter, while toward the farther end there had been a small rockfall. And it was something about this rockfall that my mind had pounced upon—something that at the time I must subconsciously have noted, but which my brain, in the excitement of the moment, had tucked away for consideration later.
Now, suddenly, it brought forward for consideration the fact that while the roof of the shelter had been limestone, the rockfall had not been limestone, but green shale instead. Green shale, the kind of stone that could be picked up from this very stream bed, chunks of soft, smooth rock eroded from the Decorah beds that lay atop the Platteville. The shale could not have been the product of the rockfall; it had been carried there.
Incredible as it may seem, I believe that in that moment I sensed exactly what had happened—an incredible hypothesis rising full-blown out of an incredible situation.
I rebelled against it. To hell with it, I thought; I have had enough; I don’t need any more. But even so, I knew I had to have a look; I would never rest until I’d had a look. Not knowing would haunt me. I hoped,
I think (it’s hard to remember now), that I would find the fall was limestone and not shale at all.
When I went to look, I found my subconscious had been right. The rock was shale, worn smooth by water action. And underneath the little pile of rocks were hidden two of Stefan’s photographic cubes.
I squatted there and looked at them, remembering back to what Charles had said. A psychopath, he’d said. A psychopath and he did this filthy thing, then hid the cubes away so we couldn’t find them.
Strangely, I couldn’t be absolutely sure of the words he had used. Had he said psychopath? Had filthy been the word he had used, or some other word that was very much like it? I remembered he had said violence, but realized he had meant something more than violence, something perhaps so subtle that he could not explain it to me in terms I would understand. And that was the crux of it, of course, illustrative of the gulf between his time and mine.
I tried to imagine a twentieth-century social worker attempting to explain compassion for the poor to an aristocrat of Rome who only thought in terms of bread and circuses, then knew the analogy was a bad one, for the gulf of understanding between the social worker and the Roman would have been narrow compared to the gulf between m
yself and Charles.
So here, this day, I sit at the kitchen table, nearly done with writing, with the two cubes beside the pile of paper. I wonder at the blind course of circumstance that could have led me to them. And I wonder, too, rather bitterly, about the burden of knowledge that one man must carry, knowing it is true and yet unable to speak a word of it, condemned to write of it in secret for his own salvation (and I’m beginning to think it is no salvation).
I wonder, as well, why I cannot feel compassion for these people of the future, why I cannot see them as our descendants, children of our children many times removed. Why I cannot wish them well. But, no matter what I do, I can’t. As if they were alien, as alien as that other people who had broadcast cylinders to the stars—aliens in time rather than in space.
Now about the cubes.
One of them, I am fairly certain, although I cannot be entirely sure since I’m no historian, contains a photo of that moment on Christmas Day in the Year of Our Lord 800 when Charlemagne was crowned by Leo III as emperor of the West. Charlemagne (if it indeed is he) is a thug, a massive brute that one dislikes instinctively, while Leo is a fussy little person who seems more overwhelmed by the situation than is Charlemagne.
I cannot be sure, of course, but a number of things make me believe the photo is of Charlemagne and Leo, not the least of which is that this would be, in historic context, the one coronation that a man going into time would want to photograph. Or, rather, perhaps the coronation a man of my own time would want to photograph. I realize that with Stefan there can be no telling. If his thinking and his viewpoint were as twisted as the viewpoint of the others of his time, God knows what his reasons might have been for doing anything at all. Although he did photograph Marathon—and the thought occurs to me that his doing so may mean he did think somewhat along the lines we do and may possibly supply a clue to his so-called psychosis. Could the fact that he was believed psychotic by the people of his time mean no more than that he was a throwback?
I find small comfort in the thought. I would prefer to think he was not a throwback. Knowing he was not, I could feel more comfortable about the remaining cube.
I wish now I had taken the time to know Stefan better; as it stands, no one really knew him. He had been around for years, and all we ever did was wave at him as we went driving past. He was a difficult man, of course. Humphrey said he was the sort of man who would not even tell his name. But we, all of us, could have made a greater effort than we did.
Sitting here, I try to reconstruct him. I try to envision his sneaking down the hollow to hide his cubes. He must have been on the way to cache the Marathon cube when he met his death. Illogical as it may seem, I have even wondered if he was engaged in some ghastly joke, if he had deliberately planted an intentional clue by being killed just below the bridge to enable me, or someone else, to find the hidden cubes. Could there have been two authentic and historic cubes that were intended to lend some credence to the third? This is all insane, of course, but under stressful circumstances a man thinks insanity. My own thinking must be going faulty; I am clutching at any evidence that will enable me to discount the third cube.
The photograph shows a crucifixion. The cross is not a tall one; the feet of the man upon it are no more than two feet or so above the ground. The wrists are nailed to the crossbar, but the ankles are tied to the post, with no support for the feet. To support the body so that the nails will not tear out, a wooden peg has been passed beneath the crotch and driven in the post. In the distance lies an ancient city. Half a dozen bored and listless soldiers—I take them to be Roman soldiers—lounge about, leaning on their spears, there apparently to prevent interference with the execution. Besides the soldiers there are only a few others, a small band of silent men and women who simply stand and watch. A dog is sniffing at the post and one knows, instinctively, that in a little while he’ll lift his leg against it.
There is no mocking placard nailed upon the cross. There is no crown of thorns. There are no other crosses, bearing thieves, to flank the single cross. There is no sign of glory.
And yet—and yet—and yet . . . Stefan filmed a moment out of Marathon, snatched for posterity the significance of that far-gone Christmas day, proving that indeed he had a keen sense of the historical as it might be interpreted by the culture of the present. The present, not the future. If he had been so right about the other two, could he have been wrong about the third? There had been, of course, many crucifixions, the punishment reserved for slaves, for thieves, for the contemptibles. But of all of them, in the context of history, only one stands out. Could Stefan have missed that one? Much as I might like to think so, I do not believe he did.
The thing that saddens me, that leaves in me a feeling of chilling emptiness, is that nothing of importance seems to be transpiring. There is the sense of shoddy death (if death can be shoddy, and I think it often is). Here the soldiers wait for the dying to be done, so they can be off to better things. The others simply wait, with resignation on their faces; there is nothing one can do against the power of Rome.
And yet, I tell myself, if this is the way it really was, this is the way it should have stayed, this is the way the event should have been transmitted to us. Out of this sad and empty happening, Christianity might have built a greater strength than it has from all the trappings of imagined glory.
The head of the victim on the cross has fallen forward, with the chin resting on the chest. Turn the cube as I may, I cannot see the face.
If I could look upon the face, I think that I would know. Not by recognizing the face, for we do not know the face—all we have is the imaginings of long-dead artists, not all of them agreeing. But from some expression on the face, from something in the eyes.
I wonder about the saddle. Could it somehow be fixed? Could it be made to function once again? Could I figure out, from scratch, how to operate it?
(Editor’s note: This manuscript was found in the briefcase of Andrew Thornton, along with notes for a book he had been writing, after Thornton’s disappearance. Police theorize he may have wandered off and been killed by a bear in some densely wooded and remote area where there would be little hope of finding his body. The possibility he may have wandered off is supported by his distraught frame of mind, which the manuscript reveals. Thornton’s disappearance was reported by his close friend, Neville Piper, upon his return from Greece. The saddle mentioned in the manuscript has not been found; there is some question it existed. Neither have the cubes been found. Dr. Piper, who presently is engaged in writing a book on the Battle of Marathon, setting forth some new findings, disclaims any knowledge of the so-called Marathon Photograph.)
MATING HABITS OF THE LATE CRETACEOUS
Dale Bailey
They’d come to the Cretaceous to save their marriage.
“Why not the Paleogene?” said Peter, who had resolutely refused to look at any of the material Gwyneth had sent him. “Or the Little Ice Age for that matter? Some place without carnivores.”
“There are only two resorts,” Gwyneth said, waving a brochure at him. “Jurassic and Cretaceous. People want to see dinosaurs.”
She wanted to see dinosaurs.
“And I’m afraid travel to inhabited eras is no longer permitted, Mr. Braunmiller,” the agent put in. “Ever since the Eckels Incident. So the Little Ice Age is out.”
“Besides,” Gwyneth said. “I wouldn’t mind a few carnivores.”
Peter sighed.
Cool air misted down from unseen vents. The agent’s desk, a curved wedge of gleaming mahogany, floated in emptiness. Surround screens immersed them in sensory-enhanced three-dimensional renderings from the available eras. One moment the hot siroccos of some time-vanished desert stung their skin. The next, the damp, shrieking hothouse of a Jurassic jungle sprang sweat from their brows.
“Why not a sim?” Peter asked.
“I’ve had enough of simulations, Peter,” Gwyneth said, thinking of the expense. Over Peter’s protests, she had mortgaged the
house they’d bought three years ago, cashed in retirement and savings accounts, taken on loans they couldn’t afford.
All for this.
“You’re certain, then?” the agent asked.
Peter opened his mouth and closed it again.
Twilight waters washed the barren shingles of some ancient inland sea.
“We’re certain,” Gwyneth said.
Tablets materialized in front of them.
“Just a few releases to sign,” the agent said. “Warranties, indemnities against personal injury—”
“I thought the yoke—” Peter said, and a fresh draft of whispering air blew down upon them.
“The lawyers insist,” the agent said, smiling.
An hour later, forms signed in triplicate, notarized, and filed away, the agent ushered them into an airlock. When they stripped, Gwyneth could feel Peter’s gaze upon her; she didn’t so much as glance at him, though he was lean and fit, as well muscled at thirty-five as he had been at their wedding seven years before. Stinging jets of anti-bacterial spray enveloped them. Industrial-strength compressors blasted them dry. They dressed in tailored, featherweight safari gear, and cycled through another airlock, their luggage hovering behind them. The adjoining chamber was bereft of luxury—no surround screens or polished mahogany, no calming mists of murmuring air. Their boots rang on polished concrete. Fluorescent globes floated high in the latticed spaces above them, leaching color from their faces. White-clad technicians looked up from their tablets as the airlock dilated. Behind them crackled the time machine, more impressive than Gwyneth had thought it would be, a miracle of sizzling yellow-green energy, the raw stuff of creation itself, harnessed by human ingenuity and bound screaming into colossal spider arms of curving steel and iron.
The technicians took charge of them. The hiss of hypodermic injections followed, then diaphanous bands of black that melted closed around their wrists like wax. The technician touched Gwyneth’s; far down in its polished depths a series of lights—orange and red and green—flashed once and was gone.
