He stared blankly at me for a moment. “Lucky guess,” he said finally. “Let’s practice until you’re tired.”
I SLEPT THAT night as well as I’d slept in months.
THE NEXT MORNING I went to breakfast in the home’s common room. I sat next to Tim and we ate eggs and drank our coffee together.
He looked bad. He hadn’t dressed; he was in his robe, wearing slippers. Gray-skinned, and he shuffled when he walked and looked as though he were about to fall over at any moment. I wondered if he’d make another month, and it was clear he was wondering the same.
After breakfast I went back to my room and dug out the cube. Most of the files on it were fiction, but a few were documentaries. I pulled up the one I wanted. It was an Earth documentary – they called the planet “Mars” rather than “Barsoom,” but they had what I was looking for.
“That John Carter was from Earth,” the narrator said, “seems evident. He was not a red Martian – who are merely humans themselves, also from Earth, though they were brought to Mars in the distant past. The puzzle of John Carter, how he came to be upon Mars, is not one to be easily solved. Records on Earth indicate that he returned to Earth at least once, after his initial visit to Mars. How he managed this, during an era when no civilization on either planet was capable of space flight, is a mystery that endures. Talk of astral projection is patently foolish, but the options, that he was transported by leftover technology from the more advanced past of Mars, or that he was transported by the beings of some other civilization entirely, are equally hard to credit....”
I paused the video as the image of John Carter appeared on the screen. It was a photo, from the days of the American Civil War on Earth, a now-famous photo found around 2020, long after the fact. It showed a troupe of men in uniform, with one man, standing a bit off to the side, who was alleged to be John Carter. I frame-advanced the video – from the photo they went to the painting which hung in John Carter’s tomb, and then back to the photo.
The photo and painting were clearly of the same man, and that man, John Carter, the Warlord of Mars and Prince of Helium, was the very image of the young man, Jack Voerman, who had been visiting me the last two weeks.
VOERMAN, the cube told me, was Dutch for “carter.”
“I don’t age,” he said. “I don’t know why.”
I half believed him, but only half, even then. “Tell me about my mother.”
“We were friends, Sonja and I. I thought your father was my friend too, but later I found that there was jealousy there – unnecessary jealousy, I tell you. Your mother was faithful to him, and I was respectful of their marriage.” He looked up at me. “There was fire in that woman. She married beneath herself. And your father knew it. It ate at him, and then she died, and left you to be raised by him. He thought you were mine, I suspect, until the day came that he knew better – but it was too late, by then.”
He stood, moving restlessly around the small room. “You asked where I was from at one point. I feel as though I remember knowing, once – but I don’t remember now. I don’t remember being other than I am. I don’t remember a childhood, or parents.”
“What do you remember?”
“Virginia,” he said softly. “I remember Virginia.”
“Where did you go, when I was a child?”
The question brought him back to the present, for a given value of “present,” I suppose. “Titan. I was kidnapped by the Methane Men. They’d caught wind of who I was, that I was John Carter of Barsoom, and not really one of the new crowd from Earth. That was the first of my battles on Titan –” He grinned. “Much better than the pale skirmishes we’ve had there lately. They’re not what they were.”
“Nothing is, I take it.”
“No.” He paused. “I’ve got to leave again. Tomorrow is my last day on Barsoom, I think for a while.”
“Oh.” I wasn’t sure I believed him, even then, but I knew I wanted to. “Jack ... Uncle Jack ... I’ll be dead when you get back.”
“Doctors and scientists,” he said softly. “What do they know about anything?”
“I’m pretty sure they’re right about this one, Jack.”
Those gray eyes drilled into mine. “I’ll see you tomorrow, before I go.”
IT MIGHT HAVE been the longest day of my life. It was certainly the slowest. I half expected him not to show up at all – if it was Uncle Jack, if it was John Carter, he’d hadn’t taken his leave the last time, when I was a child. He’d left me with my father, at the temple, and shook my hand a bit solemnly, and I’d never seen him again.
Tim Burke didn’t even make it to breakfast.
He was in the room next to mine, and I checked on him after I’d eaten. He was gone, already cold in his bed by the time I looked in on him.
I didn’t watch them take his body out. I went back to my room, back to waiting.
I DIDN’T EAT lunch.
By dinner time I still wasn’t hungry. I was due for another round of treatment the next day, and I’d already decided to decline it.
What if it was all a sham? I found myself sitting on the balcony as afternoon shaded into evening. A young man, sick, sadistic, looked a bit like John Carter who looked a bit like my Uncle Jack. I was well known enough, second child to be born on Mars to emigrant parents, and it wouldn’t have been too hard to find out enough about my past to spin a story a dying old man might fall for –
It got cold, and the sun sunk to the horizon, and I didn’t move from my chair.
THERE CAME A knock on the door, and I heard Jill’s voice. “You’ve got a visitor, Jack – your young man. Visiting hours are almost up – do you want to see him?”
I took a deep breath. No point in getting too worked up. Sham or remarkable reality, it was all over after today. I levered myself out of the chair and came in off the balcony.
“Send him up.”
THE LIGHTS WERE off in the room when Jill ushered him in. She hesitated, then turned them on. “Twenty minutes,” the green Martian told Jack.
He nodded. “I won’t be long.”
She closed the door and left us.
He was dressed for travel – a long coat, warm pants, sturdy boots. He’d a gun strapped to his belt, and his sword strapped across his back, the hilt showing over one shoulder. Incongruously, across the other shoulder he had a backpack quite like those young people used when exploring along the canals.
In his right hand he held the second of the two swords we’d practiced with.
“You’re going, then.”
He tossed me the sword. “You’ll need this.”
I caught it by reflex.
Jack unslung the backpack. “You look about my size, so I brought you my clothes.” He pulled a coat and pair of heavy pants from the bag and tossed them toward me. “Put them on.” A gun came out of the bag next, with a holster and belt. “And this.” Finally, a pair of boots, and the bag was empty.
“I take it you’re going somewhere cold?”
He hesitated. “I think so. I’m not completely sure. But we can always shed clothes if it’s hot.”
“We, again. You want me to come with you.”
“Yes.”
“Jack, I’m dying.”
He shrugged. “So is everyone.”
“Except you.”
“Are you coming or not?”
WE STOOD ON the balcony together. “Look,” Ja
ck said. “There.”
He pointed.
“It’s a star.”
He nodded. “It’s a bright star. Capella, they tell me. Not a sun like ours. Four suns. Two giant stars in a binary pair, two red dwarfs in a binary pair orbiting the giant stars. The scientists don’t know if there are planets, but I think there must be, or I wouldn’t feel what I do.”
“Feel what?”
“I’m being pulled there, Jack. I’m being called. We’re heading there, tonight.” He turned slightly to face me, his features lit only by the lights of the city of Helium. “Now.”
At the very end, I did believe, and I had tears in my eyes. “You really are him. You’re my Uncle Jack.”
He smiled at me. “Yes, Jack, and I’m sorry for everything that went wrong, for the life you should have had. Let’s make it right.” He reached out his hand to me. “Hold my hand, son, and we’ll cross the street together.”
WHEN JILL CAME back, just a little later, to tell the visitor it was time to leave, the light was still on in the room, but Jack Anderson’s room was empty, the door to the balcony open, and the wind blew in through the open door.
END
Old Man
“HEY, OLD MAN.”
Richard’s voice was shaky. “Hey, boy. Good to see you.”
Kevin was fifty-three and looked twenty-five. Richard was ninety-three and looked as old as death: his eyes were sunken and yellow outside the blue irises, the wild remnants of his snow-white hair needed to be combed and hadn’t been. He had liver spots everywhere, and little red and white marks where the doctors had excised skin cancer over the years. He was thinner than Kevin had ever seen him before, around 160 pounds. It was the weight more than anything else that Kevin found hard to reconcile; his father had been a bull of a man Kevin’s entire life. Seeing Richard as he descended into his last frailty disturbed Kevin.
“The doctor says you’re not eating, Dad.”
Richard had to laugh at that. A shallow laugh, to keep from coughing. “I’m just dying, that’s all.” He gestured at the chair. “Sit down. Watch the game with me.”
They watched the University of Miami beat Notre Dame for the next two hours. The final score was 57-12. Richard spent the last quarter chuckling while Miami ran the score up. At one point the announcer commented on it and Richard yelled, “Screw the bastards!” at the television set, which set him off coughing for a minute. When he got his breath back, he wheezed at Kevin, “Those boys are just out there playing ball. It’s not their fault Notre Dame can’t stand on the same field with ’em.”
The old man had graduated from the University of Miami 71 years ago. Kevin didn’t care who won the game, but it made him happy to see Miami’s thugs beat Notre Dame’s thugs, because it made the old man happy. Richard was lying in a hospital bed dying of throat cancer. Not a lot of things made him happy these days, except wins by the Hurricanes, and Kevin coming to visit him.
Kevin stayed for five hours, drinking coffee part of the time, while Richard drifted in and out. He had to leave at three – a dinner engagement planned over a month ago, before the severity of his father’s illness had become clear. He didn’t want to go, particularly.
Richard shook his head. “I won’t die tonight. Go. Enjoy your dinner.”
Kevin stood. “Want me to open the curtains?” The room was expensive – on the other side of the window was a view of the California coast – real, not a holo.
“Nah. I’ll have the nurse open it when it gets darker. Washes out the tv during the day.”
“Game’s over, old man.”
Richard grinned at him. “I’m not senile yet either, boy. University of Florida is playing Florida State at 3:30.”
“But you hate both of them.” It was true; Richard hated every team that had ever beaten Miami at anything.
Richard drawled the word with slow satisfaction: “Yeah.” The grin stretched and his eyes gleamed with wicked anticipation. “One of them’s going to lose today, too.”
DOCTOR TAN WAS a tall silver-haired Asian man who had been born and raised in Santa Monica. He had the same flat California accent as Kevin – less of an accent than Richard, who had left New York City seventy-five years ago and still pronounced “dollar” without the r.
Doctor Tan had been a cardiologist forty years ago, when Richard had his first heart attack, a massive coronary that would have killed a man less determined to live. That first heart attack had destroyed forty percent of Richard’s heart muscle, had turned almost half his heart into a rigid wall of scar tissue. Doctor Tan had saved his life then; he’d done it again a few years later when Richard had his second heart attack. Two decades later Doctor Tan had done the triple bypass that had probably saved Richard’s life for the third time. Then he’d retired.
Now Doctor Tan was himself an old man, almost 70. He volunteered for hospice work, caring for the dying. It was sheer chance that he’d been called in to handle Richard’s case – after twenty years Doctor Tan had not recognized the name, hadn’t realized who his dying patient was until he’d found himself in the same room with Richard and Kevin.
Richard found it amusing as hell. Richard found most of life amusing, and he was managing to be amused at the approach of own death, too. “You kept me in this world for the last 40 years, Doc. I guess you can see me out of it.”
Doctor Tan turned to Kevin. “You’re Mr. O’Donnell’s grandson?”
“I’m his son, Kevin. We’ve met.”
“Oh?” Doctor Tan actually looked at him for the first time. “I see,” he said. Kevin felt a little self-conscious as Doctor Tan examined him. “You’re doing well with the treatments?”
“No problems,” said Kevin. “I wanted to talk to you about that.”
“Later.” Doctor Tan set about examining Richard. When he was done he sat down in the chair next to Richard’s bed. “I don’t see any reason you shouldn’t go home. Can you afford a nurse?”
“Yes.”
“Good. Kevin,” said Doctor Tan, “can I speak to your father privately for a moment?”
“What about?”
“If he wants to tell you, he will.”
Kevin glanced at his father; Richard nodded almost imperceptibly. “Okay. There’s a coffee shop across the street. You want anything?”
“Plain coffee, black with cream.”
“The lattes are good.”
“The lattes are expensive. Not buying expensive coffee is why I’m rich and you’re still working for other people.” Richard waved a hand. “Go.”
“Yes, sir.”
When Kevin had gone, Doctor Tan said, “Are you in any pain?”
“It comes and goes. They’ve been giving me drugs for it.”
“Okay. I’ll prescribe a pretty good painkiller to take home with you – a couple week’s supply. You’re going to want to be careful with them. You’ll take one every four hours, no more. Some people take too many at once, that’s no good.”
“How many would ‘too many’ be?”
Doctor Tan appeared to be considering his words. “I’ve seen people survive taking seven, eight at once.”
“So ten would be bad.”
“I surely wouldn’t take fifteen.”
Richard nodded. “Thanks.”
“What’s your son want to talk to me about?”
“He wants me to take the treatment.”
Doctor Tan act
ually looked shocked. “It’d kill you.”
Richard suppressed a laugh, almost a habit now. “Ah, he just wants me to live. I guess I can’t blame him for that.” Richard looked at Doctor Tan. “He says it might cure the cancer.”
Doctor Tan hesitated. “You have Stage IV cancer, Richard. It’s in your throat, in your lymph nodes –”
“I know all that. He says the transform viruses can cure that.”
“Richard, the treatment kills almost half the people who are healthy when they take it.”
“And some of them it cures.”
“I don’t know of anyone your age surviving the treatment. I don’t know of anyone with cancer as advanced as yours having it cured by the treatment.”
Richard looked Doctor Tan over. “You look pretty strong there, Doc.”
Doctor Tan sighed. “Yes. I’m working out. The survival rate for men my age, in good shape, is about 2 out of 5. Asians do a little better than Caucasians for some reason. And your chances are better if you build up muscle ahead of time.”
Richard closed his eyes. “OK. That gives me something to think about.”
“If you decide to go home, have your doctor contact me. I’ll make arrangements for the nurse.”
“Thanks, Doc.”
DOCTOR TAN RAN into Kevin coming back with the coffee. “I doubt your father’ll need that. He was snoring already when I left.”
Kevin stood with a cup in each hand. “He’ll drink it when he wakes up. The nurse microwaves them for him.”
“You’re not doing your father any favors pushing him to take the treatment. He won’t survive it.”
A faint smile touched Kevin’s lips. “My father was a terrible patient, wasn’t he? When he had that first bad heart attack, what sort of odds would you have given him to make it another forty years?”
“Yes, I see your point. He beat the odds, and they weren’t good.”
Tales of the Continuing Time and Other Stories Page 23
