by Steve White
“You have to understand him. I think I do, now. What was important to him was the knowledge itself. Of course, the fact that it tended to validate his theories didn’t hurt! But the point is that what we now know—the final solution to all the mysteries and controversies—will be brought back to our time. You and I will bring it. That will be his legacy.”
“Yes,” she said, almost too quietly to be heard, still staring into the lurid sunset.
*
Winter approached, and so did Jason’s departure.
He could summon up the digital countdown any time he wished. He knew it would happen in the predawn darkness. That would be around noon, Australian time, so it worked out nicely all around. He could simply make sure he was unobserved—no trick, at that time of day—and that would be that.
He came to the realization that he didn’t want to do it that way. Perseus deserved better … and even a lie was better than an unexplained disappearance.
“I find I must return home to Aetolia,” he told Perseus in private one day.
“But why, Jason?” The Hero looked genuinely stricken. “Your foot isn’t healed.”
“I can walk well enough, if I don’t have to do it very fast. And as you know, Synon was distant kin to me. It is my obligation to tell our kindred what happened to him, so that his memory may be properly honored, even though his remains are, of course, lost to us.”
Perseus nodded. He had been given a suitably edited account of how Nagel had died on Kalliste. “Yes, I understand. But as unsettled as things are these days, let me send an escort with you.”
“Thank you. But I’ll be all right alone. I’ll just leave very early, before sunrise, to get a good start.”
“But, Jason—”
“Don’t worry about me, Perseus. I’ll be all right. And now I don’t have to protect the lady Deianeira. I know she’s safe, here with you.”
“Yes.” Perseus brightened. “She’ll always be under my protection—and that of my father, Zeus.”
“Of course,” Jason nodded piously. “By the way, have you seen him lately?”
“No. He hasn’t appeared since Poseidon’s destruction of Kalliste. Neither have any of the other gods.”
Probably making sure to consolidate their power in the other areas of the world where they operate , Jason speculated. Zeus and his allies had paid a price for their little coup. The Teloi pocket universe and everything in it was lost to them forever. Their only resources were whatever advanced equipment was already deployed at the time the portal device ceased to exist. That, and the awe in which humans held them.
From now on, they’ll have to run a bluff, thought Jason with satisfaction. And, as Oannes said, their lifespans are limited . Sooner or later, there’ll be no more gods except in people’s memories, and in the stories they’ll make up.
“Well, Jason, do as you must. Will I ever see you again?”
“Perhaps,” Jason made himself say.
*
In theory, there was no reason for Deirdre to keep vigil with Jason in the predawn darkness as he waited for the time to wind down. But the possibility of her not doing so never even occurred to either of them.
When she entered his room, her dark-auburn hair made ruddier by the light of the oil lamp, he felt no surprise at all. He did, however, feel gratitude. He needed company, if only to fend off the gnawing worry that he had put out of his mind for so long. Admittedly, the chances of there being anything—or anyone—on the displacer stage at the moment he materialized there were slim to the point of statistical insignificance. But it still didn’t bear thinking about.
Because of his preoccupation, he failed to notice the look on her face. It was the look of someone who had something difficult to say.
“Now,” he began, making conversation, “just remember what I told you about your retrieval. It will be completely without warning. It could happen while you’re asleep. Unfortunately, it could also happen when somebody is watching.”
“Jason—”
“But I’m not too worried about that. People at this cultural level are matter-of-fact about the supernatural. A disappearing woman would be nothing compared to some of the things they take for granted!”
“Jason—!”
“There’s something else we’ve both been avoiding talking about. But I want you to try not to worry about it. I’ll explain the situation to Rutherford, and he’ll keep the stage clear until you reappear, no matter how long as it takes.”
” Jason —! “
“The most important thing, though, is that you keep that case holding your TRD tied to you at all times, no matter where you are or what you’re doing. If it’s out of contact with you at the moment the TRD activates, then—”
” JASON ! ” Deirdre took a deep, unsteady breath and, in the midst of the sudden, silence she untied the plastic case and held it out to him. “I’ve been trying to tell you, Jason: I’m not going back.”
The silence returned. Jason stared at her outstretched hand which held the entire world she’d known. And in that compartment of his mind where he never lied to himself, he knew he wasn’t really surprised. And that surprised him.
“Not coming back?” he finally managed.
She nodded.
“Perseus?”
She nodded again.
Not the most scintillating conversation on record , gibed another part of his mind—the part whose function was to gibe. He dismissed it, and took the case from her hand.
“You know, don’t you, that this part of the world is facing a difficult time? But of course you do. You were the one who told me about those two hard winters.”
“Yes, I know. That’s part of the reason I’m staying. I may be able to help.”
“With no equipment or supplies? No access to high technology?”
“I will have knowledge. I never realized how much difference that can make, in a society this far behind ours, until the time I spent in that cave on Mount Ida. I know I can help these people through what’s coming.”
“I’m sure you’re right. But that’s not the real reason.” He didn’t even say it as a question. Nor did she answer. There was no need. After a time, he shook his head and gave a resigned sigh.
“Well,” he said, “if you’re going to make a crazy decision, you might as well make it for someone who’s worthy of it. And I can’t deny that Perseus is.”
“He really is going to live in legend, isn’t he?” she asked softly.
“Oh, yes. Of course, the mythmakers will get things confused, as always. They’ll get his family relationships right; Sidney once told me that was the one part they had to get right, to earn their keep. And they’ll remember—and elaborate—the part about the ‘head of the gorgon.’ But everything else they’ll misinterpret and confuse. In particular, I can already see how they’ll get his legend mixed up with that of Hercules.” Including the name “Deianeira, ” he added silently. And may the God in whom I do not believe grant you a better fate than hers. But of course I’ll never know, will I? He shook off the thought and managed to smile. “Yes, they’ll attach all sorts of monster stories and fairy tales to his name, while leaving out everything he should be remembered for. But, as I say, that’s typical. And I don’t suppose we should complain. At least the people who ought to be remembered sometimes do get remembered, if only for the wrong reasons.”
She smiled tremulously. And he understood that she had asked for a kind of blessing from him, and had received it. He wondered if she understood that herself.
But she seemed happy. That was enough.
Out of habit, be summoned up his neural display. “Hey! I lost track of time. I’m almost down to the short count now.” He stood up, having no desire to arrive in the twenty-fourth century with a pratfall from a couch that was no longer there. Then, on a sudden impulse, he extended his hand that held the plastic case.
“Deirdre, I want you to do one thing for me: keep this.” He hastened on as she started to open her mo
uth. “If you don’t want to use it, nothing could be simpler; just put it on your end table or something, and one fine day it will be gone. But just in case you have second thoughts before that happens … well, this way you’ll still have the option.”
“All right,” she said, and took it from him.
They stood facing each other. The digital count worked its inexorable way down.
“Goodbye, Deirdre,” he said when the count was almost at zero.
“Goodbye. Oh, and … one more thing, Jason.”
“Yes?”
With a lightninglike flick of her wrist, she tossed the plastic case to him.
By sheer reflex action, he caught it.
At that instant, reality dissolved in the way Jason remembered so well. The Bronze Age was gone.
For the barest instant, Deirdre’s green eyes, like the smile of the Cheshire cat, remained in the swirling chaos… .
And then he was under the dome of the temporal displacer installation in twenty-fourth century Australia.
The sudden change from the dim glow of the oil lamps to the glaring electric lights blinded him, and the disorientation of temporal displacement hit him harder than it should have—harder than it had since his first time. He fell to his knees, clutching the plastic case tightly.
Before he could see again, he could hear the uproar in the dome. He got slowly to his feet, blinked away the constellations of exploding stars, and looked around at the banks and tiers of control panels, from which people were streaming toward him from all sides.
In their midst was Kyle Rutherford. He must have been in the dome at this particular moment by sheer chance. It occurred to Jason to wonder how much of his time he’d been spending here since the day the stage had remained inexplicably empty at the moment of their scheduled retrieval.
In a way, it must be even worse for him now , with just me here, Jason reflected. Instead of a solution, another mystery.
He stepped off the stage with the limp he still hadn’t altogether lost, and advanced to meet Rutherford. The latter looked as though he had been missing a lot of sleep.
“Where—?” Rutherford began … and could get no further, having exhausted the subject with that one word.
“Dr. Nagel is dead. He died … heroically.”
“But …” Bewildered, Rutherford gestured at the stage where the historian’s remains should have been.
“His corpse, and his TRD, are in another universe—a small, artificial universe. Permanently.”
“And Ms. Sadaka-Ramirez … ?” Rutherford finally managed after an interval of silence.
“She was alive when I left her. But she won’t be coming back either.” Jason held out the plastic case. Rutherford took it, opened it, and stared at the tiny object it contained.
“Hers,” Jason nodded in confirmation. Had he only known it, his smile seemed strangely inappropriate. “It got cut out of her. It’s only here because I was carrying it. At some point, it will disappear from wherever you decide to put it, and you’ll find it lying here on the stage. I can’t say precisely when that will be.”
Rutherford struggled to form words in the face of yet another manifest impossibility. Finally, as people often do when faced with a surfeit of mysteries, he opted for the lesser one. “But if she was alive—?”
“Oh, yes. She could have kept it. She really could have, you know. In fact, I wanted her to. But she didn’t.”
“Why didn’t she?” breathed Rutherford.
For a time, he thought Jason hadn’t heard him.
“To simplify her life,” Jason finally said. “She was afraid that if she had the option, she might not be able to resist using it. You see, she didn’t trust herself. She knew herself too well.”
After another interval of silence, Rutherford pulled himself together and spoke in quite his old style. “Clearly, you have quite a lot to tell me!”
“Yes, I suppose you might say that. I also have quite a lot to show you, once my brain implant is downloaded. You, and others as well, are going to have to adjust a lot of your ideas. And you may want to reconsider the notion of any more expeditions into the distant past.”
Rutherford started to open his mouth, then closed it, and finally contented himself with a simple “Come with me.” They started to leave. But then Jason paused.
“Kyle, could I ask one favor?”
“Certainly.”
“Can I keep Deirdre’s TRD?”
Rutherford ‘s eyebrows rose into arches of inquiry.
“When it vanishes,” Jason explained, “that will be a kind of … closure. Don’t ask me why I feel that way, but I do.”
“You realize, of course,” Rutherford reminded him, “that if you take it back to Hesperia with you before that happens, it will never happen.”
“I hadn’t thought of that.”
“Well, then: would you want it as a permanent souvenir?”
“I might, at that. You see …” A moment passed before he could continue. “We went through a lot to get it back.”
Jason expected something supercilious from Rutherford. But the older man simply handed the plastic case to him without a word. They departed the dome, and the crowd of curious technicians parted for them like the Red Sea.
THE END
