The Mammoth Book of Time Travel SF

by Mike Ashley

  The uniforms are lining people up, herding them like sheep toward the back. We join the line and inch forward. The glare of headlights through the half-open back door cuts through the smoky room like the beam from a movie projector. There is an icy draft and I reach back for my sweater, but the railing is too far away, and the crush of people too solid to move any direction but forward. Jimmy sees me shivering and drapes his sportcoat over my shoulders.

  We are in line for more than an hour, as the cops at the back door check everyone’s ID. Sara leans against Jimmy’s chest, squeezing my hand tightly once or twice, when no one’s looking. I am scared, shaking, but the uniforms seem to be letting most people go. Every few seconds, a car starts up in the parking lot, and I can hear the crunch of tires on gravel as someone leaves Hazel’s for the freedom of the highway.

  As we get closer to the door, I can see a line of black vans parked just outside, ringing the exit. They are paneled with wooden benches, filled with the men who are not going home, most of them sitting with their shoulders sagging. One van holds a few women with crew cuts or slicked-back hair, who glare defiantly into the night.

  We are ten people back from the door when Jimmy slips a key into my hand and whispers into my ear. “We’ll have to take separate cars. Drive Sara’s back to the city and we’ll meet at the lobby bar in your hotel.”

  “The bar will be closed,” I whisper back. “Take my key and meet me in the room. I’ll get another at the desk.” He nods as I hand it to him.

  The cop at the door looks at Sara’s elegant dress and coat, barely glances at her outstretched ID, and waves her and Jimmy outside without a word. She pauses at the door and looks back at me, but an MP shakes his head and points to the parking lot. “Now or never, lady,” he says, and Sara and Jimmy disappear into the night.

  I’m alone. Antonio is a total stranger, but his strong arm is my only support until a man in a suit pulls him away. “Nice try, sweetie,” the man says to him. “But I’ve seen you in here before, dancing with your pansy friends.” He turns to the khaki-shirted deputy and says, “He’s one of the perverts. Book him.” The cop pulls Antonio’s arm up between his shoulder blades, then cuffs his hands behind his back. “Time for a little ride, pretty boy,” he grins, and drags Antonio out into one of the black vans.

  Without thinking, I take a step towards his retreating back. “Not so fast,” says another cop, with acne scars across both cheeks. He looks at Jimmy’s jacket, and down at my pants and my black basketball shoes with a sneer. Then he puts his hands on my breasts, groping me. “Loose ones. Not all tied down like those other he-shes. I like that.” He leers and pinches one of my nipples.

  I yell for help, and try to pull away, but he laughs and shoves me up against the stack of beer cases that line the back hallway. He pokes his nightstick between my legs. “So you want to be a man, huh, butchie? Well just what do you think you’ve got in there?” He jerks his nightstick up into my crotch so hard tears come to my eyes.

  I stare at him, in pain, in disbelief. I am too stunned to move or to say anything. He cuffs my hands and pushes me out the back door and into the van with the other glaring women.

  Sunday, February 19, 1956. 10:00 a.m.

  I plead guilty to being a sex offender, and pay the $50 fine. Being arrested can’t ruin my life. I don’t even exist here.

  Sara and Jimmy are waiting on a wooden bench outside the holding cell of the San Mateo County jail. “Are you all right, love?” she asks.

  I shrug. “I’m exhausted. I didn’t sleep. There were ten of us in one cell. The woman next to me – a stone butch? – really tough, Frankie – she had a pompadour – two cops took her down the hall – when she came back the whole side of her face was swollen, and after that she didn’t say anything to anyone, but I’m okay, I just—” I start to shake. Sara takes one arm and Jimmy takes the other, and they walk me gently out to the parking lot.

  The three of us sit in the front seat of Jimmy’s car, and as soon as we are out of sight of the jail, Sara puts her arms around me and holds me, brushing the hair off my forehead. When Jimmy takes the turnoff to the San Mateo bridge, she says, “We checked you out of the hotel this morning. Precious little to check, actually, except for the briefcase. Anyway, I thought you’d be more comfortable at my house. We need to get you some breakfast and a bed.” She kisses me on the cheek. “I’ve told Jimmy everything, by the way.”

  I nod sleepily, and the next thing I know we’re standing on the front steps of a brown shingled cottage and Jimmy’s pulling away. I don’t think I’m hungry, but Sara makes scrambled eggs and bacon and toast, and I eat every scrap of it. She runs a hot bath, grimacing at the purpling, thumb-shaped bruises on my upper arms, and gently washes my hair and my back. When she tucks me into bed, pulling a blue quilt around me, and curls up beside me, I start to cry. I feel so battered and so fragile, and I can’t remember the last time someone took care of me this way.

  Sunday, February 19, 1956. 5:00 p.m.

  I wake up to the sound of rain and the enticing smell of pot roast baking in the oven. Sara has laid out my jeans and a brown sweater at the end of the bed. I put them on, then pad barefoot into the kitchen. There are cardboard boxes piled in one corner, and Jimmy and Sara are sitting at the yellow formica table with cups of tea, talking intently.

  “Oh good, you’re awake.” She stands and gives me a hug. “There’s tea in the pot. If you think you’re up to it, Jimmy and I need to tell you a few things.”

  “I’m a little sore, but I’ll be okay. I’m not crazy about the 50s, though.” I pour from the heavy ceramic pot. The tea is some sort of Chinese blend, fragrant and smoky. “What’s up?”

  “First a question. If my paper isn’t entirely – complete – could there possibly be any repercussions for you?”

  I think for a minute. “I don’t think so. If anyone knew exactly what was in it, they wouldn’t have sent me.”

  “Splendid. In that case, I’ve come to a decision.” She pats the battered brown briefcase. “In exchange for the extraordinary wad of cash in here, we shall send back a perfectly reasonable sounding paper. What only the three of us will know is that I have left a few things out. This, for example.” She picks up a pen, scribbles a complex series of numbers and symbols on a piece of paper, and hands it to me.

  I study it for a minute. It’s very high-level stuff, but I know enough physics to get the gist of it. “If this really works, it’s the answer to the energy problem. It’s exactly the piece Chambers needs.”

  “Very, very good,” she says smiling. “It’s also the part I will never give him.”

  I raise one eyebrow.

  “I read the first few chapters of his dissertation this afternoon while you were sleeping,” she says, tapping the manuscript with her pen. “It’s a bit uneven, although parts of it are quite good. Unfortunately, the good parts were written by a graduate student named Gilbert Young.”

  I raise the other eyebrow. “But that paper’s what Chambers wins the Nobel for.”

  “Son of a bitch.” Jimmy slaps his hand down onto the table. “Gil was working for me while he finished the last of his dissertation. He was a bright guy, original research, solid future – but he started having these headaches. The tumor was inoperable, and he died six months ago. Ray said he’d clean out Gil’s office for me. I just figured he was trying to get back on my good side.”

  “We can’t change what Ray does with Gil’s work. But I won’t give him my work to steal in the future.” Sara shoves Chambers’s manuscript to the other side of the table. “Or now. I’ve decided not to present my paper in the morning.”

  I feel very lightheaded. I know she doesn’t give her paper, but . . . “Why not?” I ask.

  “While I was reading the manuscript this afternoon, I heard that fat sheriff interviewed on the radio. They arrested ninety people at Hazel’s last night, Carol, people like us. People who only wanted to dance with each other. But he kept bragging about how they cleaned out a nes
t of perverts. And I realized – in a blinding moment of clarity – that the university is a branch of the state, and the sheriff is enforcing the state’s laws. I’m working for people who believe it’s morally right to abuse you – or me – or Jimmy. And I can’t do that any more.”

  “Here, here!” Jimmy says, smiling. “The only problem is, as I explained to her this morning, the administration is likely to take a very dim view of being embarrassed in front of every major physicist in the country. Not to mention they feel Sara’s research is university property.” He looks at me and takes a sip of tea. “So we decided it might be best if Sara disappeared for a while.”

  I stare at both of them, my mouth open. I have that same odd feeling of déjà vu that I did in the car last night.

  “I’ve cleaned everything that’s hers out our office and the lab,” Jimmy says. “It’s all in the trunk of my car.”

  “And those,” Sara says, gesturing to the boxes in the corner, “are what I value from my desk and my library here. Other than my Nana’s teapot and some clothes, it’s all I’ll really need for a while. Jimmy’s family has a vacation home out in West Marin, so I won’t have to worry about rent – or privacy.”

  I’m still staring. “What about your career?”

  Sara puts down her teacup with a bang and begins pacing the floor. “Oh, bugger my career. I’m not giving up my work, just the university – and its hypocrisy. If one of my colleagues had a little fling, nothing much would come of it. But as a woman, I’m supposed to be some sort of paragon of unsullied Victorian virtue. Just by being in that bar last night, I put my ‘career’ in jeopardy. They’d crucify me if they knew who – or what – I am. I don’t want to live that way any more.”

  She brings the teapot to the table and sits down, pouring us each another cup. “End of tirade. But that’s why I had to ask about your money. It’s enough to live on for a good long while, and to buy all the equipment I need. In a few months, with a decent lab, I should be this close,” she says, holding her thumb and forefinger together, “to time travel in practice as well as in theory. And that discovery will be mine – ours. Not the university’s. Not the government’s.”

  Jimmy nods. “I’ll stay down here and finish this term. That way I can keep tabs on things and order equipment without arousing suspicion.”

  “Won’t they come looking for you?” I ask Sara. I feel very surreal. Part of me has always wanted to know why this all happened, and part of me feels like I’m just prompting the part I know comes next.

  “Not if they think there’s no reason to look,” Jimmy says. “We’ll take my car back to Hazel’s and pick up hers. Devil’s Slide is only a few miles up the road. It’s—”

  “It’s a rainy night,” I finish. “Treacherous stretch of highway. Accidents happen there all the time. They’ll find Sara’s car in the morning, but no body. Washed out to sea. Everyone will think it’s tragic that she died so young,” I say softly. My throat is tight and I’m fighting back tears. “At least I always have.”

  They both stare at me. Sara gets up and stands behind me, wrapping her arms around my shoulders. “So that is how it happens?” she asks, hugging me tight. “All along you’ve assumed I’d be dead in the morning?”

  I nod. I don’t trust my voice enough to say anything.

  To my great surprise, she laughs. “Well, I’m not going to be. One of the first lessons you should have learned as a scientist is never assume,” she says, kissing the top of my head. “But what a terrible secret for you to have been carting about. Thank you for not telling me. It would have ruined a perfectly lovely weekend. Now let’s all have some supper. We’ve a lot to do tonight.”

  Monday, February 20, 1956. 12:05 a.m.

  “What on earth are you doing?” Sara asks, coming into the kitchen and talking around the toothbrush in her mouth. “It’s our last night – at least for a while. I was rather hoping you’d be waiting in bed when I came out of the bathroom.”

  “I will. Two more minutes.” I’m sitting at the kitchen table, rolling a blank sheet of paper into her typewriter. I haven’t let myself think about going back in the morning, about leaving Sara, and I’m delaying our inevitable conversation about it for as long as I can. “While we were driving back from wrecking your car, I had an idea about how to nail Chambers.”

  She takes the toothbrush out of her mouth. “It’s a lovely thought, but you know you can’t change anything that happens.”

  “I can’t change the past,” I agree. “But I can set a bomb with a very long fuse. Like forty years.”

  “What? You look like the cat that’s eaten the canary.” She sits down next to me.

  “I’ve retyped the title page to Chambers’s dissertation – with your name on it. First thing in the morning, I’m going to rent a large safe deposit box at the Wells Fargo Bank downtown, and pay the rent in advance. Sometime in 1995, there’ll be a miraculous discovery of a complete Sara Baxter Clarke manuscript. The bomb is that, after her tragic death, the esteemed Dr Chambers appears to have published it under his own name – and won the Nobel Prize for it.”

  “No, you can’t. It’s not my work either, it’s Gil’s and—” she stops in mid-sentence, staring at me. “And he really is dead. I don’t suppose I dare give a fig about academic credit anymore, should I?”

  “I hope not. Besides, Chambers can’t prove it’s not yours. What’s he going to say – Carol McCullough went back to the past and set me up? He’ll look like a total idiot. Without your formula, all he’s got is a time machine that won’t work. Remember, you never present your paper. Where I come from it may be okay to be queer, but time travel is still just science fiction.”

  She laughs. “Well, given a choice, I suppose that’s preferable, isn’t it?”

  I nod and pull the sheet of paper out of the typewriter.

  “You’re quite a resourceful girl, aren’t you?” Sara says, smiling. “I could use an assistant like you.” Then her smile fades and she puts her hand over mine. “I don’t suppose you’d consider staying on for a few months and helping me set up the lab? I know we’ve only known each other for two days. But this . . . I . . . us . . . Oh, dammit, what I’m trying to say is I’m going to miss you.”

  I squeeze her hand in return, and we sit silent for a few minutes. I don’t know what to say. Or to do. I don’t want to go back to my own time. There’s nothing for me in that life. A dissertation that I now know isn’t true. An office with a black and white photo of the only person I’ve ever really loved – who’s sitting next to me, holding my hand. I could sit like this forever. But could I stand to live the rest of my life in the closet, hiding who I am and who I love? I’m used to the 90s – I’ve never done research without a computer, or cooked much without a microwave. I’m afraid if I don’t go back tomorrow, I’ll be trapped in this reactionary past forever.

  “Sara,” I ask finally. “Are you sure your experiments will work?”

  She looks at me, her eyes warm and gentle. “If you’re asking if I can promise you an escape back to your own time someday, the answer is no. I can’t promise you anything, love. But if you’re asking if I believe in my work, then yes. I do. Are you thinking of staying, then?”

  I nod. “I want to. I just don’t know if I can.”

  “Because of last night?” she asks softly.

  “That’s part of it. I was raised in a world that’s so different. I don’t feel right here. I don’t belong.”

  She kisses my cheek. “I know. But gypsies never belong to the places they travel. They only belong to other gypsies.”

  My eyes are misty as she takes my hand and leads me to the bedroom.

  Monday, February 20, 1956. 11:30 a.m.

  I put the battered leather briefcase on the floor of the supply closet in LeConte Hall and close the door behind me. At 11:37 exactly, I hear the humming start, and when it stops, my shoulders sag with relief. What’s done is done, and all the dies are cast. In Palo Alto an audience of restless physicists i
s waiting to hear a paper that will never be read. And in Berkeley, far in the future, an equally restless physicist is waiting for a messenger to finally deliver that paper.

  But the messenger isn’t coming back. And that may be the least of Chambers’s worries.

  This morning I taped the key to the safe deposit box – and a little note about the dissertation inside – into the 1945 bound volume of The Astrophysical Journal. My officemate Ted was outraged that no one had checked it out of the Physics library since 1955. I’m hoping he’ll be even more outraged when he discovers the secret that’s hidden inside it.

  I walk out of LeConte and across campus to the coffee shop where Sara is waiting for me. I don’t like the political climate here, but at least I know that it will change, slowly but surely. Besides, we don’t have to stay in the 50s all the time – in a few months, Sara and I plan to do a lot of traveling. Maybe one day some graduate student will want to study the mysterious disappearance of Dr Carol McCullough. Stranger things have happened.

  My only regret is not being able to see Chambers’s face when he opens that briefcase and there’s no manuscript. Sara and I decided that even sending back an incomplete version of her paper was dangerous. It would give Chambers enough proof that his tempokinetic experiment worked for him to get more funding and try again. So the only thing in the case is an anonymous, undated postcard of the St Francis Hotel that says:

  “Having a wonderful time. Thanks for the ride.”

  THE CATCH

  Kage Baker

  Science-fiction writers soon realized that in order to prevent, or at least minimize, the creation of paradoxes by manipulating the past there needed to be some kind of time police, someway of monitoring the entirety of time to retain equilibrium. Isaac Asimov created the existence of Eternity, an organization that monitored time in The End of Eternity (1955), and there have been many similar stories and books since then including Guardians of Time (1960) by Poul Anderson, Times Without Number (1962) by John Brunner and Lord Kalvan of Otherwhen (1965) by H. Beam Piper. The most famous Time Lord of all is, of course, Dr Who.