Her Smoke Rose Up Forever (S.F. MASTERWORKS) (16 page)

“‘Then that winter they came down for Christmas and John said they had something far out. He was excited. A temporal displacement, he called it; some kind of time effect. He said their chief honcho was like a real mad scientist. Big ideas. He kept adding more angles every time some other project would quit and leave equipment he could lease. No, I don’t know who the top company was—maybe an insurance conglomerate, they had all the cash, didn’t they? I guess they’d pay to catch a look at the future, that figures. Anyway, John was go, go, go. Katharine was scared, that’s natural. She pictured him like, you know, H. G. Wells—walking around in some future world. John told her it wasn’t like that at all. All they’d get would be this flicker, like a second or two. All kinds of complications.’—Yes, yes, my greedy piglet, some brew for me too. This is thirsty work!

“So. ‘I remember I asked him, what about Earth moving? I mean, you could come back in a different place, right? He said they had that all figured. A spatial trajectory. Katharine was so scared we dropped it. John told her, don’t worry. I’ll come home. But he didn’t. Not that it makes any difference, of course, everything was wiped out. Salt Lake too. The only reason I’m here is that I went up by Calgary to see Mom, April twenty-ninth. May second it all blew. I didn’t find you folks at MacKenzie until July. I guess I may as well stay. That’s all I know about John, except that he was a solid guy. If that accident started all this it wasn’t his fault.

“‘The second document’—in the name of love, little mother, do I have to read all this? Oh, very well, but you will kiss me first, madam. Must you look so delicious? ‘The second document. Dated in the year eighteen, New Style, written by Carl’—see the old handwriting, my plump plump pigeon? Oh, very well,
very
well.

“‘Written at Bonneville Crater: I have seen my brother John Delgano. When I knew I had the rad sickness I came down here to look around. Salt Lake’s still hot. So I hiked up here by Bonneville. You can see the crater where the labs were, it’s grassed over. It’s different, not radioactive; my film’s okay. There’s a bare place in the middle. Some Indios here told me a monster shows up here every year in the spring. I saw it myself a couple of days after I got here, but I was too far away to see much, except I was sure it’s a man. In a vacuum suit. There was a lot of noise and dust, took me by surprise. It was all over in a second. I figured it’s pretty close to the day, I mean, May second, old.

“‘So I hung around a year and he showed up again yesterday. I was on the face side, and I could see his face through the visor. It’s John, all right. He’s hurt. I saw blood on his mouth and his suit is frayed some. He’s lying on the ground. He didn’t move while I could see him but the dust boiled up, like a man sliding onto base without moving. His eyes are open like he was looking. I don’t understand it anyway, but I know it’s John, not a ghost. He was in exactly the same position each time and there’s a loud crack like thunder and another sound like a siren, very fast. And an ozone smell, and smoke. I felt a kind of shudder.

“‘I know it’s John there and I think he’s alive. I have to leave here now to take this back while I can still walk. I think somebody should come here and see. Maybe you can help John. Signed, Carl Delgano.

“‘These records were kept by the MacKenzie Group, but it was not for several years’—etcetera, first light-print, etcetera, archives, analysts, etcetera—very good! Now it is time to meet your uncle, my edible one, after we go upstairs for just a moment.’”

“No, Serli, I will wait for you downstairs,” said Mira prudently.

When they came into the town park Uncle Laban was directing the installation of a large durite slab in front of the enclosure around The Man John’s appearance-spot. The slab was wrapped in a curtain to await the official unveiling. Townspeople and tourists and children thronged the walks, and a Ride-for-God choir was singing in the band shell. The morning was warming up fast. Vendors hawked ices and straw toys of the monster and flowers and good-luck confetti to throw at him. Another religious group stood by in dark robes; they belonged to the Repentance church beyond the park. Their pastor was directing somber glares at the crowd in general and Mira’s uncle in particular.

Three official-looking strangers who had been at the inn came up and introduced themselves to Uncle Laban as observers from Alberta Central. They went on into the tent which had been erected over the closure, carrying with them several pieces of equipment which the townsfolk eyed suspiciously.

The mechanics teacher finished organizing a squad of students to protect the slab’s curtain, and Mira and Serli and Laban went on into the tent. It was much hotter inside. Benches were set in rings around a railed enclosure about twenty feet in diameter. Inside the railing the earth was bare and scuffed. Several bunches of flowers and blooming poinciana branches leaned against the rail. The only thing inside the rail was a rough sandstone rock with markings etched on it.

Just as they came in, a small girl raced across the open center and was yelled at by everybody. The officials from Alberta were busy at one side of the rail, where the light-print box was mounted.

“Oh, no,” muttered Mira’s uncle, as one of the officials leaned over to set up a tripod stand inside the rails. He adjusted it, and a huge horsetail of fine feathery filaments blossomed out and eddied through the center of the space.

“Oh,
no
,” Laban said again. “Why can’t they let it be?”

“They’re trying to pick up dust from his suit, is that right?” Serli asked.

“Yes, insane. Did you get time to read?”

“Oh, yes,” said Serli.

“Sort of,” added Mira.

“Then you know. He’s falling. Trying to check his—well, call it velocity. Trying to slow down. He must have slipped or stumbled. We’re getting pretty close to when he lost his footing and started to fall. What did it? Did somebody trip him?” Laban looked from Mira to Serli, dead serious now. “How would you like to be the one who made John Delgano fall?”

“Ooh,” said Mira in quick sympathy. Then she said, “Oh.”

“You mean,” asked Serli, “whoever made him fall caused all the, caused—”

“Possible,” said Laban.

“Wait a minute.” Serli frowned. “He did fall. So somebody had to do it—I mean, he has to trip or whatever. If he doesn’t fall the past would all be changed, wouldn’t it? No war, no—”

“Possible,” Laban repeated. “God knows. All
I
know is that John Delgano and the space around him is the most unstable, improbable, highly charged area ever known on Earth, and I’m damned if I think anybody should go poking sticks in it.”

“Oh, come now, Laban!” One of the Alberta men joined them, smiling. “Our dust mop couldn’t trip a gnat. It’s just vitreous monofilaments.”

“Dust from the future,” grumbled Laban. “What’s it going to tell you? That the future has dust in it?”

“If we could only get a trace from that thing in his hand.”

“In his hand?” asked Mira. Serli started leafing hurriedly through the pamphlet.

“We’ve had a recording analyzer aimed at it,” the Albertan lowered his voice, glancing around. “A spectroscope. We know there’s something there, or was. Can’t get a decent reading. It’s severely deteriorated.”

“People poking at him, grabbing at him,” Laban muttered. “You—”

“TEN MINUTES!” shouted a man with a megaphone. “Take your places, friends and strangers.”

The Repentance people were filing in at one side, intoning an ancient incantation, “Mi-seri-cordia, Ora pro nobis!”

The atmosphere suddenly became tense. It was now very dose and hot in the big tent. A boy from the mayor’s office wiggled through the crowd, beckoning Laban’s party to come and sit in the guest chairs on the second level on the “face” side. In front of them at the rail one of the Repentance ministers was arguing with an Albertan official over his right to occupy the space taken by a recorder, it being his special duty to look into The Man John’s eyes.

“Can he really see us?” Mira asked her uncle.

“Blink your eyes,” Laban told her. “A new scene every blink, that’s what he sees. Phantasmagoria. Blink-blink-blink—for god knows how long.”

“Mi-sere-re, pec-cavi,” chanted the penitentials. A soprano neighed. “May the red of sin pa-aa-ass from us!”

“They believe his oxygen tab went red because of the state of their souls,” Laban chuckled. “Their souls are going to have to stay damned awhile; John Delgano has been on oxygen reserve for five centuries—or rather, he
will be
low for five centuries more. At a half-second per year his time, that’s fifteen minutes. We know from the audio trace he’s still breathing more or less normally, and the reserve was good for twenty minutes. So they should have their salvation about the year seven hundred, if they last that long.”

“FIVE MINUTES! Take your seats, folks. Please sit down so everyone can see. Sit down, folks.”

“It says we’ll hear his voice through his suit speaker,” Serli whispered. “Do you know what he’s saying?”

“You get mostly a twenty-cycle howl,” Laban whispered back. “The recorders have spliced up something like
ayt
, part of an old word. Take centuries to get enough to translate.”

“Is it a message?”

“Who knows? Could be his word for ‘date’ or ‘hate.’ ‘Too late,’ maybe. Anything.”

The tent was quieting. A fat child by the railing started to cry and was pulled back onto a lap. There was a subdued mumble of praying. The Holy Joy faction on the far side rustled their flowers.

“Why don’t we set our clocks by him?”

“It’s changing. He’s on sidereal time.”

“ONE MINUTE.”

In the hush the praying voices rose slightly. From outside a chicken cackled. The bare center space looked absolutely ordinary. Over it the recorder’s silvery filaments eddied gently in the breath from a hundred lungs. Another recorder could be heard ticking faintly.

For long seconds nothing happened.

The air developed a tiny hum. At the same moment Mira caught a movement at the railing on her left.

The hum developed a beat and vanished into a peculiar silence and suddenly everything happened at once.

Sound burst on them, raced shockingly up the audible scale. The air cracked as something rolled and tumbled in the space. There was a grinding, wailing roar and—

He was there.

Solid, huge—a huge man in a monster-suit, his head was a dull bronze transparent globe, holding a human face, a dark smear of open mouth. His position was impossible, legs strained forward thrusting himself back, his arms frozen in a whirlwind swing. Although he seemed to be in frantic forward motion nothing moved, only one of his legs buckled or sagged slightly—

—And then he was gone, utterly and completely gone in a thunderclap, leaving only the incredible afterimage in their staring eyes. Air boomed, shuddering; dust rolled out mixed with smoke.

“Oh! Oh, my god,” gasped Mira, unheard, clinging to Serli. Voices were crying out, choking. “He saw me, he saw me!” a woman shrieked. A few people dazedly threw their confetti into the empty dust-cloud, most had failed to throw at all. Children began to howl. “He
saw
me!” the woman screamed hysterically. “Red, oh, Lord have mercy!” a deep male voice intoned.

Mira heard Laban swearing furiously and looked again into the space. As the dust settled she could see that the recorder’s tripod had tipped over into the center. There was a dusty mound lying against it—flowers. Most of the end of the stand seemed to have disappeared or been melted. Of the filaments nothing could be seen.

“Some damn fool pitched flowers into it. Come on, let’s get out.”

“Was it under, did it trip him?” asked Mira, squeezed in the crowd.

“It was still red, his oxygen thing,” Serli said over her head. “No mercy this trip, eh, Laban?”

“Shsh!” Mira caught the Repentance pastor’s dark glance. They jostled through the enclosure gate and were out in the sunlit park, voices exclaiming, chattering loudly in excitement and relief.

“It was terrible,” Mira cried softly. “Oh, I never thought it was a real live man. There he is, he’s
there
. Why can’t we help him? Did we trip him?”

“I don’t know, I don’t think so,” her uncle grunted. They sat down near the new monument, fanning themselves. The curtain was still in place.

“Did we change the past?” Serli laughed, looked lovingly at his little wife. For a moment he wondered why she was wearing such odd earrings; then he remembered he had given them to her at that Indian pueblo they’d passed.

“But it wasn’t just those Alberta people,” said Mira. She seemed obsessed with the idea. “It was the flowers really.” She wiped at her forehead.

“Mechanics or superstition,” chuckled Serli. “Which is the culprit, love or science?”

“Shsh.” Mira looked about nervously. “The flowers were love, I guess. . . . I feel so strange. It’s hot. Oh, thank you.” Uncle Laban had succeeded in attracting the attention of the iced-drink vendor.

People were chatting normally now, and the choir struck into a cheerful song. At one side of the park a line of people were waiting to sign their names in the visitors’ book. The mayor appeared at the park gate, leading a party up the bougainvillea alley for the unveiling of the monument.

“What did it say on that stone by his foot?” Mira asked. Serli showed her the guidebook picture of Carl’s rock with the inscription translated below: W
ELCOME
H
OME
J
OHN
.

“I wonder if he can see it.”

The mayor was about to begin his speech.

Much later when the crowd had gone away the monument stood alone in the dark, displaying to the moon the inscription in the language of that time and place:

O
N THIS SPOT THERE APPEARS ANNUALLY THE FORM OF
M
AJOR
J
OHN
D
ELGANO, THE FIRST AND ONLY MAN TO TRAVEL IN TIME
.

M
AJOR
D
ELGANO WAS SENT INTO THE FUTURE SOME HOURS BEFORE THE HOLOCAUST OF
D
AY
Z
ERO
. A
LL KNOWLEDGE OF THE MEANS BY WHICH HE WAS SENT IS LOST, PERHAPS FOREVER
. I
T IS BELIEVED THAT AN ACCIDENT OCCURRED WHICH SENT HIM MUCH FARTHER THAN WAS INTENDED
. S
OME ANALYSTS SPECULATE THAT HE MAY HAVE GONE AS FAR AS FIFTY THOUSAND YEARS AHEAD
. H
AVING REACHED THIS UNKNOWN POINT MAJOR DELGANO APPARENTLY WAS RECALLED, OR ATTEMPTED TO RETURN, ALONG THE COURSE IN SPACE AND TIME THROUGH WHICH HE WAS SENT
. H
IS TRAJECTORY IS THOUGHT TO START AT THE POINT WHICH OUR SOLAR SYSTEM WILL OCCUPY AT A FUTURE TIME AND IS TANGENT TO THE COMPLEX HELIX WHICH OUR EARTH DESCRIBES AROUND THE SUN
.