The Seventh Science Fiction Megapack

by Robert Silverberg

  It was the hour when sleep is lightest, when sleep is sweetest, and Walter Evan Sherwood, who had thus far resisted the call of traffic and sounds of life’s reawakening, finally grudgingly assented to an experimental look-see at the prospect of this day, opening his eyes to mere slits, studying the girl’s black hair and the smooth expanse of flesh beneath it, deciding at once that if this was true this day would lead all the rest. He lay there, unwilling to shatter the illusion of black hair on pillow, the fine line of back that disappeared beneath the covers thinking it’s so real I feel as if I could reach out and touch it oh the fantasies of this end of sleep there she is no doubt manifestation of my repressed desires.

  He looked languishingly but the image did not shimmer or blur or blend into another as he expected it would; instead the hair became more life-like, the flesh more tantalizingly real. Now his eyes were no longer narrowed, his heart no longer the slow, steady heart of sleep, his breathing not that of a sleeping man as he looked away from the shining black hair and neck and shoulders and saw that the room was strange to him. He looked back at the girl as she stirred again, turning to him, a movement of arm dislodging the covers to expose a well-rounded shoulder and breast, eyes still closed in sleep, her full lips petulant, as if she were waiting to be kissed. She was pretty and he let it go at that, forcing his eyes back to the room itself, the pebbly white ceiling, gray walls, blinded windows, desk, drawer, bureau.

  Sherwood slipped quietly from the bed, stood looking down at the sleeping girl, decided she was in her late twenties, then with a shock discovered he was naked, which was not as much of a shock as the discovery that his pajamas were in a heap at his feet—not his pajamas, but a man’s pajamas. He was tempted to put them on, then saw a man’s clothes on a nearby chair: blue shorts, white undershirt, gray herringbone trousers, white shirt, maroon tie, suitcoat to match the pants, maroon socks and black shoes. He had no recollection of owning these particular clothes, did not want to put them on, but knew he could not continue to stand there as he was.

  Where did I go last night? he asked himself as he put on the clothes. How did I end up here I went to sleep after being out with Marion didn’t I then how did I get here? I don’t even know this girl, I never saw her before in my life but she’s prettier than Marion.

  The clothes fitted perfectly, but then he knew somehow they would, and he marveled at the impossibility of it. He turned to look at the girl again, was startled to find her sitting up, her round and frightened blue eyes meeting his, the bedclothes drawn up in two small fists beneath her chin, exposing the curve of both shoulders.

  My God, he thought, from the looks of her I don’t belong here. Could I have lost my way thinking this is my place, coming in and getting in bed with her? No, but I can’t stay here. I don’t want to stay here. Pretty soon she’ll start screaming and then there’ll be trouble and I don’t even know where the door is.

  He found the door in a small alcove, stepped quietly out into bright sun, squinted and tried to orient himself. He’d never been here before. He stood on a red cement stoop with wrought iron railings; there were three steps to the white crushed stone of a driving area. To his right along the drive were other doors with identical stoops and railings, to his left it was no different. His view ahead was obstructed by a larger white frame building.

  Sherwood stepped to the drive, walked along it to the side of the larger building where it curved to a street, a wide street, feeling the whole experience was merely an extension of a dream. He squinted. Something was wrong with his eyes. The street was there but the traffic was blurry and lacked detail. He walked to the street. It looked like Colorado Boulevard, but where on Colorado was he? He turned to see where he had come from. The large white structure had plate glass windows facing the street and a large neon sign above it proclaimed it CORONADO MOTEL. So I took her to a motel. Or did she take me?

  TWO

  He started briskly down the street, his step that of a confident man, looking for landmarks but finding none immediately, his eyes refusing to focus on distant things, and his step slowed as he thought what did she feed me what did we drink I never had a hangover like this before, and he finally came to a full stop at a corner when his mind, obsessed with the strangeness, no longer gave directions to his feet.

  Look, he told himself, yesterday was a fine day where did it go wrong? I’d been out of the army a week and I sat in the contour chair on the patio stewing most of the day away. Let’s begin with that.

  There was the recollection of his mother watching him through the kitchen window. She was worried about him, he knew that, worried about what the army had done to him, and she had craftily tried to draw him out, but he didn’t feel like talking. He could have said yes, Dad’s death did things to me, no, I’m not exhibiting symptoms of what he had it’s just that getting out of the army is quite a jolt, that’s all, but he didn’t say anything and he knew her worry only deepened because of it. The truth was he wanted to think about his father and all the things he’d seen and done, and to weigh the direction he’d decided to go.

  But that wasn’t all. There was Marion, the date with her, and he remembered how she came out of the house, a long-legged, trim figure in a summery cinnamon dress, and how he groaned when he saw the high heels because he wasn’t dressed where those heels wanted to go.

  They hadn’t gone anywhere, except down Colorado, south on Glendale to Sunset and out to Santa Monica where they parked by the beach and he brooded and she had politely asked him what was wrong. He told her a little about it, about how it had been from the time of induction in October, 1942, until plunk went the bomb and the olive-drab life was over abruptly in May, 1946, and how it felt to come home, how it was like being naked on the street out of uniform. But he didn’t tell her about how close he’d been to his father even after his father’s sickness, didn’t tell her how it felt to have him die like that in a sanitarium while he was in the army, how it was in the Medics when he saw men break down just as his father had done and how each cry and scream reminded him of it. He couldn’t have told her about that. He couldn’t even discuss it with his mother.

  Then I went home, didn’t I? I put the convertible in the garage on Colorado and walked up to the house on Dahlia Drive because I wanted to stretch my muscles and think because I ought to do something with myself at twenty-five, and I went up to my room and lay there looking out at the moonlight and the palms. I thought about the way my father used to look at me sometimes, that look of agony and mute plea for help I could never give, and I thought how I’d seen that same look on faces I’d seen in the army, and I remember I—what? Did I fall asleep just then? Why is it so hazy?

  He shook his head as if to clear it, looked around at the buildings shimmering in the sunlight. Remembering yesterday wasn’t helping today. Deciding to go down Colorado until he came to an area he knew, he struck off across the street and walked until he came to a familiar drive-in. This point was three blocks from where he always turned off Colorado on Dahlia Drive. With the drive-in as an anchor, he hurried over the intervening blocks, conscious that the surroundings had somehow changed but trying not to think about it, eventually coming to the garage where he had put his convertible for the night. He hesitated on the sidewalk, but not sure he should enter the garage because it too seemed somehow different. What was wrong with everything?

  It was then he saw himself in the garage window and jerked back in surprise.

  Can that be me?

  He forced himself to stand quietly while he inspected his image. The man who stared back at him was heavier than he, but he was obviously Walter Evan Sherwood, nonetheless, a hatless man with wide eyes, heavy brows, thick hair, wearing a neat suit that didn’t belong to him, but the total man was different from the Walter Evan Sherwood he was used to seeing in mirrors. What was the difference? Trick window? He moved about: there was no distortion. Where was the change? He moved closer, studied his reflection carefully. And suddenly he knew.

  He w
as older.

  But I could not have changed like that overnight, he protested. No one could. But his argument did not erase what he saw before him.

  Deeply troubled and dismayed, Sherwood turned from the window. He walked less briskly now, still tried unsuccessfully to make his eyes pierce the haze and blur of distance, examined the traffic with new interest, finding the cars different, too—newer, shinier and strange.

  He felt a little reassured when he crossed Colorado and started up Dahlia Drive because things hadn’t changed much here. The same bright houses, the same well-kept green lawns and trees and palms.

  At length he reached the house, stood staring at it in disbelief because it had changed so. The gravel driveway they had always wanted to pave was a wide slab of cement now, the house was a maroon with white trim instead of—what was it before? Pastel green with white trim? The rose bushes were gone from the front yard, the window boxes were gone too, and the roof was a new mottled gray. These were not overnight changes, he told himself, and he did not want to think how many nights and days they represented.

  He went up the walk, bypassed the front door, let himself through the white gate, walked along the side of the house, noticing the profusion of growing things, the clipped and clean and watered and thriving plants and flowers and shrubs, eventually emerging to the back yard. The contour chair was not on the patio. Now what the hell had she done with the contour chair? That was his; he had made it a special way so it could be taken apart in the middle and collapsed so it could be carried in a car trunk. And it should have been there.

  Sherwood was on the point of angrily entering the house to demand an accounting when he heard a baby cry inside. A short, whimpering cry. He could not imagine who it could be, mounted the steps slowly, reached for the porch doorknob, then drew his hand away. Things were too changed for casual entry.

  A woman he had never seen before padded out on the porch in slippers and a faded house coat. She was about thirty and probably had been a pretty girl ten years before. Now her face was dull and puffy, there were folds of skin beneath her chin, and she looked as if she didn’t care for her hair any more.

  “Yes?” she inquired coldly through the screen door, making no move to open it.

  “Is—is Mrs. Sherwood at home?” he asked, feeling ridiculous for asking it and wanting to shout what the hell are you doing in my house.

  “Mrs. Who?”

  “Mrs. Sherwood, damn it,” he said, tired of the changes, angry over the missing contour chair, put out with the stranger before him. After a moment he said, “She’s my mother.”

  “Your mother?” She ogled him, backed away a little from the door, saying, “I don’t know any Mrs. Sherwood. You sure you got the right address?”

  “I—I used to live here,” he stammered. “I’ve been away.” She eyed him suspiciously, said nothing.

  Suddenly he remembered something. “Do the Thompsons still live next door?”

  “A Mrs. Thompson does,” the woman said. “You better go see her.”

  “Thanks,” he said emptily. He went down the steps, crossed the yard as he had done thousands of times. There was little change next door. The same bird bath, the same silver ball on its pedestal, the round flower bed in the middle of the yard. This was familiar. That same flower bed used to make old man Thompson mad. He’d get fed up with having to cut around it with the mower, tried to get his wife to abandon it, but she never would.

  He rang the Thompson back door bell.

  The moment Mrs. Thompson saw him she said, “Walter Sherwood!” and opened the door for him. “I was watching you through the window and I thought it was you. Come in, come in!”

  Cheered by the greeting, Sherwood managed a smile, stepped through the door.

  “Sit down, sit down,” she said, pulling out a chair for him. “I’ll warm up some coffee.” She turned on the heater beneath the percolator, saying, “My, it’s good to see you.”

  She paused. “Aren’t you going to sit down?”

  “Yes. Thank you.” He’d just had a good look at her and it startled him. Now he sat and looked at her again. Mrs. Thompson had grown old. Her hair, once only shot through with silver, now was completely white, and her bright red cheeks, once the mark of Mrs. Thompson, had paled and all but collapsed, and the eyes—they had always protruded a bit—were yellowed and veined, and he thought for the thousandth time my God what has happened to everything and everybody?

  “You haven’t changed much, Walter,” she said, taking the chair opposite him. She smiled ruefully and said, “You ought to see Jimmy. He’s blossomed out. Can’t get enough to eat, he says.” She laughed a little.

  Jimmy had been a boyhood friend; he and Sherwood had grown up together. Out of politeness he asked, “Where is Jimmy?”

  “Work. He’ll be home at five-thirty. Can you stay?”

  “No, I’m afraid not.”

  “Oh, that’s too bad. Jimmy’ll be heart-broken he missed you.,’

  “Mrs. Thompson,” he said, digging right in, “do you recall the last time we saw each other? I don’t seem to remember.”

  “Saw each other?” She frowned in recollection. “Why, I just don’t know. Let me see, wasn’t it when the house…no.” She shook her head. “The real estate people handled that, didn’t they? Can’t you remember?”

  “No.”

  Her study deepened. “I don’t seem to either. And it’s not like me to forget a thing like that, Walter. Mmm.” Her eyes closed in intense concentration. Suddenly they blinked open and she said, “I know. It was the funeral.”

  Sherwood swallowed hard and said in a strangled voice, “The funeral?”

  She nodded, lips pressed together in affirmation. “Yes, I’m sure of it now. It was the funeral.”

  Sherwood dropped his hands to the table, pressed the palms down hard on tablecloth, wet his lips and said in a soft voice, “Whose funeral, Mrs. Thompson?”

  She gave him a startled glance. “Whose?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why, your mother’s, of course.” She lowered her eyes. “We felt so had about it, coming so soon after your father’s.” Then her eyes came up with a puzzled look. “Of course you remember that, don’t you?”

  Sherwood stared at the backs of his hands on the table, his mind trying to accept the fact of his mother’s death, feeling suddenly empty, so alive yesterday, so dead today, except that his today was different from Mrs. Thompson’s because hers was so far removed from his yesterdays and he had no recollection of the passage of time to dull the feeling of personal loss.

  “When did she die?”

  “When? Why, the year after you got out of the army. She was left all alone, poor dear, while you went off to school. But I would think you would remember a thing like that.”

  “I don’t remember it at all.”

  Mrs. Thompson sucked in her breath. Then she said, “What’s happened to you?”

  “I don’t know, Mrs. Thompson.”

  The coffee was boiling but she made no move toward the stove. She stared at him with wide eyes instead. She said, “Your father—” and then stopped.

  He looked up. “It started like this with my father, is that what you were going to say?”

  “Well, I—” Her hand went to her throat and in looking away she suddenly spied the coffee pot and turned off the heater. “The coffee’s done.”

  “What year is this?”

  “What year?” Mrs. Thompson’s face had lost a great deal of its color. If her hands had not been occupied with the coffee pot they would have shaken. Her voice was shrill when she said, “Nineteen fifty-seven.”

  “Fifty-seven!”

  She drew-back from pouring the coffee. “Are you sure you’re all right, Walter? Isn’t there someone I could call?”

  “What month is this?”

  “July.” The voice quivered.

  “Day?”

  “The fifteenth.”

  He snorted, fixed her with an unwinking gaze and said, �
��Do you know what day this is?”

  “Whatever do you mean, Walter?” She still stood in the middle of the kitchen floor with the coffee pot, her eyes large and frightened.

  “It’s the day after my birthday, Mrs. Thompson. On your yesterday I was thirty-seven, but I don’t remember anything after May fifteenth, nineteen forty-six, because that’s yesterday to me.”

  “Oh!” Mrs. Thompson looked ready to run from the room with the coffee pot.

  “You were going to pour coffee,” he reminded her.

  “Yes, yes.” She hurriedly filled the cups and then put the percolator back on the stove.

  “You said I went to school,” he prompted, stirring the coffee.

  “Yes.” She was making a valiant effort for control. “You went to Illinois Midwest.”

  “I thought I’d planned to go to UCLA.”

  “No, you went to Illinois Midwest.” She did not touch her coffee but kept her eyes steadily on his.

  “When did I graduate?”

  She said miserably, “I don’t know, Walter.”

  “You’re frightened.”

  “Please tell me who to call.”

  “You think I’m going—you think I’ve gone off my rocker, don’t you?”

  “You need help, Walter.” She chanced a look at the kitchen clock.

  Sherwood didn’t know what the look meant, but he could not risk staying here. She thought he was crazy, there was no doubt of that, and as a result her usefulness to him was ended. There was someone else who could help him, a girl with shiny black hair, the girl he had left at the motel, if she was still there. She had looked at him much the way Mrs. Thompson was, a frightened look—but when the girl had looked at him was it fear caused by his lack of recognition of her or fear caused by her lack of recognition of him?

  “I must be going,” he said, getting up from the table.