The Mammoth Book of Time Travel SF

by Mike Ashley

  To his surprise his major feeling was not fear but relief. He understood now why condemned prisoners sometimes sacked their lawyers and actively sought their execution rather than trying to delay it.

  He felt he would prefer to be at home when it happened, so he turned back into Marlborough Street. As he passed number 6 a voice called out his name. It was Mr McDonald, a friendly and gregarious pensioner who lived there with his equally good-natured wife. Norton had always got on well with them on a pleasant superficial level. Lacking transport, the McDonalds had been unable to evacuate even if they had wanted to.

  Mr McDonald was busily giving the sitting room windows a second coat of whitewash. “Just putting the final touches,” he said cheerily. The McDonalds had spent the last eight days as they had spent the week before, turning part of their house into a fallout shelter, following an official instruction leaflet. To them the last week seemed to be a God-given opportunity to finish the job properly. Their house did not have a cellar, so they had fitted out the large cupboard under the stairs, protecting it with countless black dustbin bags filled with earth. Inside were carefully arranged supplies of food, water and medicine; bedding and primitive cooking equipment; and even a portable chemical toilet. Before retirement made such recreations impossible to afford the McDonalds had been keen campers, and regarded their expertise and lovingly stored equipment as particular good fortune. A few days ago Mr McDonald had insisted on showing off their impressively well-organised shelter to Norton; had even offered to squeeze up and make room for three if he hadn’t the materials to build his own defences. What was more, although the offer was made only out of politeness, Norton was sure the McDonalds would have gone through with it if he had pressed them. But he had declined politely, assuring them of the adequacy of his own preparations.

  Now, with the image of Carver vivid in his mind, he felt like shouting at Mr McDonald, shocking him into a realisation of how futile his efforts were in the face of the kind of forces held delicately in check all around him. But it would only hurt and confuse the old man, who was simply following the instructions which he had been told would keep him safe.

  Norton waved goodbye to Mr McDonald and started to walk away. But even as his foot lifted, the air seemed to shudder and split around him, and before his senses were able properly to register the phenomenon the world was filled with an instantaneous, consuming brilliance, a white fire that was neither cool nor pure.

  “IN THE BEGINNING, NOTHING LASTS . . .”

  Mike Strahan

  I have already made reference to Camille Flammarion’s Lumen (1872) which suggested (wrongly) that if you could travel faster than light you would, via historic light, see events in the past, though those events would be in reverse. The idea that various catastrophes on Earth might disrupt time and start it running backwards was explored by Albert Robida in L’horloge des siècles (1902), only recently translated as The Clock of the Centuries (2008). Other writers have related it to individuals who find their lives running backwards as in The Tower of Oblivion (1921) by Oliver Onions, “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button” (1922) by F. Scott Fitzgerald or, more recently, Time’s Arrow (1991) by Martin Amis. There are many more examples, but I have not encountered one so powerful or as potent as the following. The author tells me that it was his desire to correct his mistakes that inspired this story.

  April 7, 1936

  Beulah Irene wept as the workers pulled up shovels of rust red dirt from her son’s grave. She covered her dark face with her hands, not wanting the men to see her. Thick bandages wrapped her arms from fingers to elbows; the skin underneath burned and itched.

  The four gravediggers gave her odd glances between pulls. They were all grim men, with dirty faces and hands. Patches of sweat and red mud stained their denim trousers and cotton shirts.

  Irene removed her hands from her face and focused her eyes on the men, wanting to watch until they finished. It was important to her, even though her son would not die until yesterday.

  His headstone was a pitiful thing, a small square of concrete embedded in the grass and lined with dead leaves. A tall, worn, bent-back tree cast little shade. Her husband’s old grave was a few feet away, empty for decades.

  She closed her eyes again, and remembered her son. He had always been a pleasant child, and clever.

  His first word had been coffee.

  He took his first step when he was eleven months old.

  His secret tickle spot was on the back of his thigh.

  He was three years old when he died.

  The memories had stuffed Irene’s brain since her resurrection. On the surface, they were pleasant thoughts, but time played funny tricks on her these days. Old memories would crop up, pop in her head like long forgotten debts. They treated her all the same, no matter where she was, what she was doing; she would often turn to tears.

  “We’re done for the day, ma’am.” One of the men interrupted her thoughts. Despite the dust covering his face, his eyes and smile were bright. Behind him, his friends were collecting their shovels and brooms, their jackets and lunch refuse.

  “Thank you.” Her mouth was dry. She turned around to look toward the eastern horizon and was surprised to see the sun a hand or so from setting. The morning was clear and hot, with a strong breeze tugging at the dry Oklahoma yellow grass. Where has the time gone? She wondered.

  “You okay, ma’am?” He asked.

  Irene shook her head and shrugged, “Just nervous.” Her bandages itched; they were dirty again. Red dirt rimmed the frayed edges of the white gauze covering her arms. It looked like dried blood.

  “Reckon so. It’s hard sometimes.” The laborer turned and raised a hand in goodbye to his departing friends. A spare denim coat and a dusty lunch pail remained. “Don’t know if you recall, but I was one of the fellas that worked on your husband.” His mouth creased, as though he wanted to say more.

  Irene looked closely at him and shook her head, “I’m sorry, I don’t remember you.” Irene had a hard time remembering. Like most people, the future was a harsh muddle; she remembered senses better than events. Colors, smells, textures. Sounds. It surprised her when someone remembered something so far ahead.

  “No offense taken, ma’am.” He held up his hands. “I was blessed with a good memory, must’ve been forty years.”

  “It’s been that long?” She asked.

  “Sure has. Easier then. Job like this would’ve taken an hour, back when we had machines.” He scratched at his ear again and looked over Irene’s shoulder to the East. His eyes fell on her and for a moment, he held her gaze. “Should head home, ma’am. I’ll see you.”

  He stepped toward the edge of the open grave and crouched down to pick up his jacket and pail. Without giving Irene another glance, he walked away with his coat flung over his shoulder.

  “Thank you! For today!” Irene remembered.

  He turned, walked backwards, smiled. “It’s never easy, ma’am.”

  Irene nodded and looked down at the open grave. She was alone with her son.

  Sparing a shudder, she walked home. The road into town was straight, wide enough for two autos to squeeze past each other. Most of the houses and farms she passed were empty, the families having left for the West, to work healthier land. There had been no rain in months.

  The sun was almost beyond the horizon when she reached town. The buildings lining the street sagged against each other, their wooden siding faded the color of driftwood. The town’s main street was a packed dirt road of choked, blood red dust.

  A group of children rushed by her on the sidewalk, chasing a mongrel with an aluminum can tied to its neck. Irene gave them a sad smile as they passed.

  The young were always so full of life, the first time because they thought they were immortal, the second time because they knew exactly when their end would come. Irene found it hard to watch children. They reminded her of her son.

  There were other people on the street, walking dogs or riding horses, and
a few older automobiles. Most of the machines from the future were artifacts now, their metal skeletons wired together in museums, the leather and rubber and plastic all rotted away.

  Others had tried to rebuild things, piece back together what little the future had left them. The results were nothing but showpieces, sad monuments to a time they would never see again.

  Her house was two blocks off the center of town, on the wrong side of the railroad tracks. It was a Sears’s kit home, an ugly square of faded white stucco walls and sticky brown shingles. It had three rooms: a den, a kitchen, a bedroom.

  She pushed open their crooked screen door. Her husband was in the den, sitting in an old easy chair, a hulk of a radio mirroring him across the room. He sighed when she entered and set yesterday’s paper across his lap.

  Irene ignored him. She could sense her anger from earlier in the afternoon, but the memory of their argument had faded.

  He folded his arms hard across his chest and said nothing, but kept his eyes on her, his mouth set in a scowl.

  Irene stepped over to the sink, and unwound her dirty bandages. She bit her lip as the heavy gauze separated from her arms and fingers, leaving behind ugly purple flesh. The doctor had been surprised that she could do anything with her hands. Her body was remembering the accident that had killed her son and scarred her for life.

  The doctor had said that the resurrected body was like a book; whether you read it backward or forward, the words were always the same. If you broke a bone, or suffered a cut in your first life, your body would suffer the hurt again in the second.

  Our son will suffer his hurts again, too, she reminded herself for the thousandth time.

  Irene dipped her arms into a stainless steel bowl of water. The muscles in her back relaxed as the cool water took some of the edge off her pain. She pulled her bandages off the wood counter and ran them under. She had to grit her teeth as she rubbed out the dirt between her thumb and forefinger. The pain was getting worse.

  Nothing lasts forever. Things will get better, easier. The thought was a salve, calming.

  She tried to reapply the bandages herself, but only grew frustrated as the gauze clung awkwardly to her tender flesh.

  “Can you help me?” She finally asked, her back to her husband. Her voice was raw, cracked.

  Her husband pushed himself up from his chair. He was a big man; strong, with wide set shoulders and large hands. He was getting younger, and had just gotten his full head of black hair back. He had another twenty-five years until his birthday, until he returned to his mother, giving himself up to her pregnant embrace. Irene doubted that was what he wanted, but it would be his mother’s decision.

  Resurrection always led back to the beginning: death, life, birth. She had already decided that when her son’s birth came, she would take him back into her, because she couldn’t bear the thought of burying him again.

  She hissed as her husband took her right arm into his rough hands and coiled the first bandage around her forearm and between her fingers. The cool, clean cloth comforted her skin.

  He dipped the second bandage into the metal basin. It was one of their few prized possessions, an artifact from the future. Metal and stone and wood from older trees were the only things that could survive their own creation; everything else rotted away at the anniversary of its making.

  Irene looked up at him, then away. “He’s our son,” she said, recalling their argument. She closed her eyes. How could I forget?

  “I know.” His voice was quiet and firm.

  “Our baby,” she added.

  “I know.”

  “Then show it!” Irene turned her head up again, the muscles in her arms tensed. She wanted to lash out. “Why don’t you want this?”

  “It’s a hard world,” he sighed. His eyes shifted right, then closed, “The pain isn’t worth it. Not for us to lose him again in three years.”

  “That’s not an excuse! I’ve been waiting seventy years for this.” Irene’s words choked in her throat. “I need him. I need to see him again, even if it’s only three years.”

  Her husband shook his head and crossed his arms, “He never had a first chance at life. With only three years, he won’t have a second.”

  “No. No. No!” Irene wanted to hit something, to strike out at his indifference. “You don’t want him back because you resent me, you resent what God has given us. You wish you had never been resurrected!”

  “I do not . . .”

  “You do,” Irene continued, the heat building in her throat. “You’ve been miserable ever since you came back. You’ve been mad at me ever since I let them pull you from the ground!”

  “No, I—”

  “You—” Irene interrupted.

  “Let me finish.” Her husband jutted a finger in her face. He towered over her, his cheeks flushed red. “I don’t think any such thing. I love you. I love our son.” His breath was heavy; his words were even.

  “Say his name,” she ordered.

  “What?”

  “Say his name. It’s been forty years and you have called him your kid, your boy, your son.” Irene held up a fist and jutted out her fingers, counting the strikes. “You have never called him by his name. His Christian name that we gave him the day he was born. You have never said that name in this house. You’ve been back for forty years and you have never said his name. Not once.”

  “Stop it,” her husband turned away from her and clenched his fists. “I don’t need this.”

  “What’s his name?!” Irene cried.

  “I don’t need this.” He stalked away. He grabbed his coat off a peg next to the stove and slammed the screen behind him, rattling the door’s wooden frame.

  Run away! Irene thought. That’s all you do is run!

  Irene stumbled toward the table and pulled out a chair. She collapsed on it and laid her head on their red and white checkered tablecloth. Great racking sobs constricted her lungs as she wept. He resents me, she thought.

  Do you blame him? she chided.

  Her husband had suffered through black depression since he had returned to the living. The doctor thought there was a problem when his body was regenerating, as if the brain had not wired itself back together properly.

  But that wasn’t the answer. Her husband had not been happy before his death, living a life of failure and depression until he passed away in 1978. When he was reborn, it came as a shock, like a sick joke that he would have to relive his miserable life again as punishment. If anyone had wanted to remain in the ground, absent from the second chance God had given them, it was her husband, even if that meant waking up from death buried, suffocating, and dying again.

  It was a predicament Irene had no problem remembering. She bore witness to his bitterness every day.

  He thought it was a better alternative for him, thought it was best for their son. He can say what he wants, about pain, about how hard the world is, but in the end, he’s afraid. He’s afraid of being hurt again.

  Aren’t you afraid? she argued.

  Irene didn’t let her husband stay in the ground; when his time came she had the diggers uncover his grave. She needed him, to share the burden she carried, to help her life feel normal again.

  And he has resented it ever since.

  What her husband wanted for their son was horrible. She couldn’t stand to imagine it: her son, waking up from his resurrection in his coffin, buried alive. He would survive for hours, in the dark, in the heat, alone, before he would succumb to death again.

  Irene wept at the thought, and imagined what it would be like to have six feet of dirt separating her from her resurrected son, to hear his muffled cries, to claw at the red ground until her fingers were nothing but wells of blood.

  She had failed him once, and couldn’t fail him again.

  The kitchen was dark when her husband returned, scraping the metal screen against the wood door. Outside, the crickets sang in the green of late morning.

  Irene had fallen asleep at the table, he
r head cradled in her arms, her chin resting on the tablecloth. She woke up when her husband entered.

  “Back already?” She yawned, stretching her sore arms across the table, their fight almost forgotten. She shook herself and grimaced. She hated that, when the passage of time made her forget.

  “Bar was closed. Dick had an accident or something.” He hung his coat up on its peg and tossed his billfold onto the counter.

  “Is he alright?” Her husband had found a bottle somewhere. The stench of scotch clung to him, and permeated the tight kitchen air.

  “I don’t know.” He coughed; “they were closed.” He crossed to the other side of the table and collapsed into the chair opposite her. When he was sitting at their table he always looked like a giant, with his shoulders towering above the surface and his knees packed in tight underneath. He placed his head in his hands.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, without meaning it.

  “He’s been gone a long time,” he said.

  “I need this, Del, more than anything. I miss him.”

  Her husband rubbed at his eyes with the palms of his hands. “I’m sorry.” He grimaced.

  They looked at each other, silent. “Please?” Irene asked.

  “Please?”

  The quiet stretched, and Irene knew not to interrupt again. She kept her eyes on the tablecloth, focusing on a yellow stain near the table’s edge. Her husband couldn’t stop her, but she wanted him there, needed him. Their son was coming home.

  April 6, 1936

  The wind was blowing again like the day before, pushing Irene’s skirt hard against her knees, shaking the tall tree that stood sentinel over her son’s grave. The high grass of the plain was flat from the wind. In the distance, a farmer trawled his field for seeds to use the next fall, to resurrect the wheat.

  The morning was hot for late spring. The cemetery wasn’t far from town, but the heat and the dirt road made the journey difficult. Thick beads of sweat coated Irene’s neck and daubed at the armpits of her dress. She waved her thin hands at her face absently, using the motion to settle the nervousness boiling in her belly. Her arms had been stiff and sore all afternoon, and the motion loosened them. The burning sensation had worsened through the night, waking her up several times from her shallow sleep.