Cryptic - The Best Short Fiction of Jack McDevitt

by Jack McDevitt

  I poured a brandy and stared out the window. The snow was coming harder now. I couldn’t believe anyone would think for a moment that I could be capable of such an act. It chilled me.

  In back somewhere, something moved. It might have been a branch scraping against the side of the house, but it sounded inside.

  Snow fell steadily against the windows.

  It came again. A floor board, maybe. Not much more than a whisper.

  I took down a golf club, went out into the hallway, looked up the staircase and along the upper level. Glanced toward the kitchen.

  Wood creaked.

  Upstairs.

  I started up, ascending as quietly as I could, and got about halfway when a movement at the door to the middle bedroom caught my attention. The wardrobe.

  One of the curious phenomena associated with sudden and unexpected death is our inability to accept it when it strikes those close to us. We always imagine that the person we’ve lost is in the kitchen, or in the next room, and that it requires only that we call his name in the customary way to have him reappear in the customary place. I felt that way about Shel. We had lunched with Cervantes and ridden with Washington and lived a thousand other miracles. And when it was over, we always came back through the wardrobe and out onto the landing.

  He came out now.

  Shel stood up there, watching me.

  I froze.

  “Hello, Dave,” he said.

  I hung on to the bannister, and the stairs felt slippery. “Shel,” I said shakily, “is that you?”

  He smiled. The old, crooked grin that I had thought not to see again. Some part of me that was too slow-witted to get flustered started flicking through explanations. Someone else had died in the fire. It was a dream. Shel had a twin.

  “Yes,” he said. “It’s me. Are you okay?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I’m sorry. I know this must be a shock.” He moved toward me, along the top of the landing. I’m not sure what I was feeling. There was a rush of emotions, of joy, of anger, even of fear. He came down a few stairs, took my shoulders, and steadied me. His hands were solid, his smile very real, and my heart sank. Helen’s image rose before me.

  “I don’t understand,” I said.

  Adrian Shelborne was tall and graceful, blessed with the clean-cut features of a romantic hero. His eyes were bright and sad. We slid down into sitting positions. “It’s been a strange morning,” he said.

  “You’re supposed to be dead.”

  He took a deep breath. “I know. I do believe I am, David.”

  Suddenly it was clear. “You’re downstream.”

  “Yes,” he said. “I’m downstream.” He drew his legs up in a gesture that looked defensive. “You sure you’re okay?”

  “I’ve spent several days trying to get used to this. That you were gone—.”

  “It’s true.” He spaced the words, not able to accept it himself.

  “When you go back—.”

  “—The house will burn, and I will be in it.”

  For a long time neither of us spoke. “Don’t do it,” I said at last. “Stay here.”

  “I can’t stay here,” he said. “What does that do to the time stream?”

  Damn the time stream. I was thinking how candle-light filled Helen’s eyes, how she and Shel had walked to the car together at the end of an evening. I was remembering the press of her lips against my cheek.

  “Maybe you’re right,” I said.

  “Of course I am. They just buried me, Dave. They found me in my bed. Did you know I didn’t even get out of my bed?”

  “Yes,” I said. “I heard that.”

  “I don’t believe it.” He was pale, and I noticed his eyes were red.

  My first ride with him had been to Gettysburg to listen to Lincoln. Afterward, when I was still trying to come to terms with the fact that I had really been there, he talked about having dinner with Caesar and drinking with Voltaire.

  He must have felt my company to be of value, because he invited me to go a second time. I’d wondered where we were headed, expecting historic significance, but we went only to 1978 New Haven. We were riding a large misshapen brown chamber then, a thing that looked like a hot water tank. “I want you to meet someone,” he said, as we emerged into streets filled with odd-looking cars. Her name was Martha, and she had been Shel’s fiancée. Six hours after our arrival she would fall asleep at the wheel of her Ford. And Shel’s life would change forever. “She and I had dinner last night at The Mug,” he told me while we waited for her to come out of the telephone company building where she worked. “I never saw her again.”

  It was 5:00 p.m., and the first rush out the door was beginning.

  “What are you going to do?” I’d asked.

  He was in a state of extreme nervous agitation, “Talk to her.”

  I laughed. “Are you serious? What are you going to tell her?”

  “I’ll be careful,” he said. Don’t want to create a paradox. “I just want to see her again.”

  A light rain had begun. People started pouring out through the revolving doors. They looked up at the dark clouds, grimaced, and scattered to cars and buses, holding newspapers over their heads.

  And then Martha came out.

  I knew her immediately, because Shel stiffened and caught his breath. She paused to exchange a few words with another young woman. The rain intensified.

  She was twenty years old and full of vitality and good humor. There was much of the tomboy about her, just giving way to a lush golden beauty. Her hair was shoulder-length and swung easily with every move. (I thought I saw much of Helen in her, in her eyes, in the set of her mouth, in her animation.) She was standing back under the building overhang, protected from the storm. She waved goodbye to the friend, and prepared to run for her car. But her gaze fell on us, on Shel. Her brow furrowed and she looked at us uncertainly.

  Shel took a step forward.

  I discovered I was holding his arm. Holding him back. A gust of wind blew loose dust and paper through the air. “Don’t,” I said.

  “I know.”

  She shook her head as if she recognized a mistake and hurried away. We watched her disappear around the corner out onto the parking lot.

  We had talked about that incident many times, what might have happened had he intervened. We used to sit in the tower at the end of time, and he’d talk about feeling guilty because he had not prevented her death. “Maybe we can’t change anything. But I feel as if I should have tried.”

  Now, starting carefully downstairs, he seemed frail. Disoriented. “They think you were murdered,” I said.

  “I know. I heard the conversation.” In the living room he fell into an armchair.

  My stomach was churning and I knew I wasn’t thinking clearly “What happened? How did you find out about the funeral?”

  He didn’t answer right away. “I was doing some research downstream,” he said finally “in the Trenton Library. In the reference section. I was looking at biographies, so I could plan future flights. You know how I work.”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “And I did something I knew was a mistake. Knew it while I was doing it. But I went ahead anyhow.”

  “You looked up your own biography.”

  “I couldn’t help it.” He massaged his jaw. “It’s a terrible thing,” he said, “to have the story of your entire life lying at your elbow. Unopened. Dave, I walked away from it twice and came back both times.” He smiled weakly. “I will be remembered for my work in quantum transversals.”

  “This is what comes of traveling alone.” I was irritated. “I told you we should never do that.”

  “It’s done,” he said. “Listen, if I hadn’t looked, I’d be dead now.”

  I broke out a bottle of burgundy, filled two glasses and we drank it off and I filled them again. “What are you going to do?”

  He shook his head. “It’s waiting for me back there. I don’t know what to do.” His breathing was loud
. Snow was piling up on the windows.

  “The papers are predicting four inches,” I said.

  He nodded, as if it mattered. “The biography also says I was murdered. It didn’t say by whom.”

  “It must have been burglars.”

  “At least,” he said, “I’m warned. Maybe I should take a gun back with me.”

  “Maybe.”

  “What happens if I change it?”

  “I don’t know,” I said.

  “Well,” He took a deep breath and tried to smile. “Anyway, I thought you’d want to know I’m okay.” He snickered at that. His own joke.

  I kept thinking about Helen. “Don’t go back at all,” I said. “With or without a gun.”

  “I’m not sure that’s an option.”

  “It sure as hell is.”

  “At some point,” he said, “for one reason or another, I went home.” He was staring at the burgundy. He hadn’t touched the second glass. “My God, Dave, I’m scared. I’ve never thought of myself as a coward, but I’m afraid to face this.”

  I just sat.

  “It’s knowing the way of it,” he said. “That’s what tears my heart out.”

  I got up and looked at the storm.

  “Stay here for now,” I said. “There’s no hurry.”

  He shook his head. “I just don’t think the decision’s in my hands.” For a long time, neither of us spoke. Finally, he seemed to make up his mind. “I’ve got a few places to go. People to talk to. Then, when I’ve done what I need to do, I’ll think about all this.”

  “Good.”

  He picked up the glass, drained it, wiped his lips, and drifted back against the sofa. “Let me ask you something: are they sure it’s me?”

  “I understand the body was burned beyond recognition,” I said.

  “There’s something to think about. It could be anyone. And even if it is me, it might be a Schrödinger situation. As long as no one knows for certain, it might not matter.”

  “The police probably know. I assume they checked your dental records.”

  His brows drew together. “I suppose they do that sort of thing automatically. Do me a favor, though, and make sure they have a proper identification.” He got up, wandered around the room, touching things, the books, the bust of Churchill, the P.C. He paused in front of the picture from the Beach Club. “I keep thinking how much it means to be alive. You know, Dave, I saw people out there today I haven’t seen in years.”

  The room became very still.

  He played with his glass. It was an expensive piece, chiseled, and he peered at its facets.

  “I think you need to tell her,” I said gently.

  His expression clouded. “I know.” He drew the words out. “I’ll talk to her. When the time is right.”

  “Be careful,” I said. “She isn’t going to expect to see you.”

  3.

  Friday, November 25. Mid-morning.

  The critical question was whether we had in fact buried Adrian Shelborne, or whether there was a possibility of mistaken identity. We talked through the night. But neither of us knew anything about police procedure in such matters, so I said I would look into it.

  I started with Jerry Shelborne, who could hardly have been less like his brother. There was a mild physical resemblance between the two, although Jerry had allowed the roast beef to pile up a little too much. He was a corporate lawyer in whose view Shel had shuffled aimlessly through life, puttering away with notions that had no reality in the everyday world in which real people live. Even his brother’s sudden wealth had not changed his opinion.

  “I shouldn’t speak ill of the dead,” he’d told me that morning. “He was a decent man, had a lot of talent, but he never really made his life count for anything.” Jerry sat behind a polished teak desk, guarded by an India rubber plant leaning toward a sun-filled window. The furniture was dark-stained, leather-padded, highly polished. Plaques covered the walls, appreciations from civic groups, awards from major corporations, various licenses and testaments. Photos of his two children were prominently displayed on the desk, a boy in a Little League uniform, a girl nuzzling a horse. His wife, who had left him years earlier, was missing.

  “Actually,” I said, “I thought he did pretty well.”

  “I don’t mean money,” he said. (I hadn’t been thinking of money.) “But it seems to me a man has an obligation to live in his community. To make a contribution to it.” He leaned back expansively and thrust a satisfied finger into a vest pocket. “‘To whom much is given’,” he said, “‘much shall be expected.’”

  “I suppose,” I said. “Anyway, I wanted to extend my sympathy.”

  “Thank you.” Jerry rose, signaling that the interview was over.

  We walked slowly toward the paneled door. “You know,” I said, “this experience has a little bit of deja vu about it.”

  He squinted at me. He didn’t like me, and wasn’t going to be bothered concealing it. “How do you mean?” he asked.

  “There was a language teacher at Princeton, where I got my doctorate. Same thing happened to him. He lived alone and one night a gas main let go and blew up the whole house. They buried him, and then found out it wasn’t him at all. He’d gone on an unannounced holiday to Vermont, and turned his place over to a friend. They didn’t realize until several days after the funeral when he came home. Unsettled everybody.”

  Jerry shook his head, amused at the colossal stupidity loose in the world. “Unfortunately,” he said, “there’s not much chance of that here. They tell me the dental records were dead on.”

  I probably shouldn’t have tried to see how Helen was doing, because my own emotions were still churning. But I called her from a drug store and she said yes, how about lunch? We met at an Applebee’s in the Garden Square Mall.

  She looked worn out. Her eyes were bloodshot, and she showed a tendency to lose the thread of conversation. She and Shel had made no formal commitment, as far as I knew. But she had certainly believed they had a future together. Come what may. But Shel had been evasive. And there had been times when, discouraged that she got so little of his time, she’d opened up to me. I don’t know if anything in my life had been quite as painful as sitting with her, listening to her describe her frustration, watching the occasional tear roll down her cheek. She trusted me, absolutely.

  “Are you all right?” she asked me.

  “Yes,” I said. “How about you?”

  The talk was full of regrets, things not said, acts undone. The subject of the police suspicions came up, and we found it hard to subscribe to the burglar theory. “What kind of intruder,” I asked, “kills a sleeping man, and then sets his house on fire?”

  She was as soft and vulnerable that day as I’ve ever seen her. Ironically, by all the laws of nature, Shel was dead. Was I still bound to keep my distance? And the truth was that Shel did not even care enough to ease her suffering. I wondered how she would react if she knew Shel was probably sitting in my kitchen at that moment, making a submarine sandwich.

  I wanted to tell her. There was a possibility that, when she did find out, she would hold it against me. I also wanted to keep Shel dead. That was hard to admit to myself, but it was true. I wanted nothing more than a clear channel with Helen Suchenko. But when I watched her bite down the pain, when the sobs began, when she excused herself with a shaky voice and hurried back to the ladies’ room, I could stand it no more. “Helen,” I said, “are you free this afternoon?”

  She sighed. “I wanted to go into the office today, but people get nervous around weepy physicians. Yes, I’m more or less free. But I’m not in the mood to go anywhere.”

  “Can I persuade you to come out to my place?”

  She looked desperately fragile. “I don’t think so, Dave,” she said. “I need some time.”

  A long silence fell between us. “Please,” I said. “It’s important.”

  More snow was coming. I watched it through the windshield, thick gray clouds drifting toward
us. Approaching cars had their headlights on.

  Helen followed me in her small blue Ford. I watched her in the mirror while I considered all possible scenarios on how to handle this. Tell her first, I finally decided. Leave out the time travel stuff. Use the story I’d told Jerry as an example of how misunderstandings can occur. He’s not dead, Helen. She won’t believe it, of course. But that’s when I get him and bring him into the room. Best not to warn him. God knows how he would react. But get them together, present Shel with a fait accompli, and you will have done your self-sacrificial duty, Dave. You dumb bastard.

  I pulled through blowing snow into my driveway, opened the garage, and went in. Helen rolled in beside me, and the doors closed. “Glad to be out of that,” she said, with a brave smile that implied she had decided we needed something new to talk about.

  The garage opened directly into the kitchen. I stopped before going through the door and listened. There were no sounds on the other side. “Helen,” I said, “I’ve got something to tell you.”

  She pulled her coat around her. Her breath formed a mist. “We aren’t going to go into it out here, I hope, are we?”

  “No,” I said, as if the notion were absurd, and opened the door. The kitchen was empty. I heard no sounds anywhere in the house.

  “It’s about Shel,” I said.

  She stepped past me and switched on the kitchen lights. “I know,” she said. “What else could it be?”

  A white envelope lay on the table, with my name on it, printed in his precise hand. I snatched it up, and she looked at me curiously. “What is it?” she asked.

  “Just a list of things to do.” I pushed it into my pocket. “How about some coffee?”