The Bridge Across Forever: A True Love Story (34 page)

"Let's tell them!" she said. "Put in the notebook, 'Now, Dick, you call Leslie Maria Parrish, she's just moved to Los Angeles, under contract to Twentieth Century-Fox, and her telephone number is CRestview six, two nine nine three.

"And what?" I said. "And tell him to say, 'This is your soulmate, calling'? Leslie was a little star already! Men saw her pictures and fell in love with her! Is she going to invite him to lunch, a kid about to run away from his only year in college?"

"If she's smart, she'll say let's get out of Hollywood fast!"

I sighed. "It would never work. He's got to join the Air Force and fly fighter planes, get married and divorced, unfold who he's starting to be and what he's starting to know. She's got to get her own marriage over and done, learn for herself about business and politics and power."

"Then let's get a letter off to her," she said. " 'Dear Leslie you'll be getting a call from Dick Bach, he's your soulmate so be nice to him, love him always. . . .' "

" 'Always,' wook? Always is . . ."

I looked at her in mid-answer and froze, knowing.

Pictures from forgotten dreams, fragments from lifetimes lost in pasts and futures shone like color slides behind my eyes, -clik, -clik, -clik. . . .

The woman on the bed this moment, this person whom I could right now reach a hand to, touch her face, she's the

one killed with me in the massacre in colonial Pennsylvania, the same woman, she's the dear mortal to whom I've been spirit-guide a dozen times, and who's been guide for me; she's the willow-tree whose branches twined into mine; she the fox and I the vixen, fangs bared, snapping lashing outnumbered, saving the kits from wolves; she the gull who led me higher; she the living light on the road to Alexandria; she the silver lifeform of Bellatrix Five; the starship engineering officer I'd love in my distant future; the flower-deva from my distant past.

-clik and -clik and -clik; frame and frame and frame.

Why my weakness for, my joy in the singular turn of this one mind, in the singular curve of this face and breast, in the singular merry light in her eyes when she laughs?

Because those unique curves and sparkles, Richard, we carry them with us, lifetime to lifetime, they're our trademarks, stamped deep in what each of us believes, and without knowing, we remember them! when we meet again!

She looked at my face, alarmed. "What's wrong, Richard? What's wrong?"

"OK," I said, thunderstruck. "I'm all right, I'm fine. . . ."

I grabbed for paper, dashed words down. What a morning!

Time and again and again we had drawn ourselves to each other, because we had most to learn together, hard learnings and happy ones, too.

How is it that I know, why am I so utterly convinced that dying does not separate us from the one we love?

Because this one I love today . . . because she and I have died a million times before, and we're this second, minute, hour lifetogether again! We're no more separated by death

than we're separated by life! Deep within us, every one of us knows the laws, and one of the laws is this: we shall forever return to the arms of those we love, whether our parting be overnight or over-death.

"Just a minute, wook. Got to get this down. . . ."

The only thing that lasts, is love!

The words ripped out fast as ink could dash.

At the start of the universe . . . Before the Big Bang, was us!

Before all the Big Bangs in all of time, and after the echo of the last has faded, is us. We, dancers in every form, reflecting everywhere, we're the reason for space, the builders of time.

We're the bridge across forever, arching above the sea, adventuring for our pleasure, living mysteries for the fun of it, choosing disasters triumphs challenges impossible odds, testing ourselves over and again, learning love and love and LOVE!,

I lifted the pen, sat out of breath on the bed, looking at my wife.

"You're alive!" I said.

Her eyes sparkled. "We're alive together."

It was quiet for a while, till she spoke once more. "I had stopped looking for you," she said. "I was happy by myself in Los Angeles, with my garden and my music, my causes and my friends. I liked living alone. I thought I'd do that for the rest of my life."

"And I would have been happily strangled on my freedom," I said. "It wouldn't have been bad, it would have been the best that each of us knew. How could we miss what we never had?"

"But we did miss it, Richie! Once in a while, when you

were alone, whether or not there were people around, did you ever feel so sad you could cry, as if you were the only one of your kind in the world?" She reached to touch my face. '

"Did you ever feel," she said, "that you were missing someone you had never met?"

forty-six

HAD stayed up late, the two of us. Leslie was submerged on page 300-something of The Passive Solar Energy Book: Expanded Professional Edition.

I closed A History of the Colt Revolver, put it on the Finished stack and took the top volume from my To-Read-Next pile.

How our books describe us, I thought. At Leslie's bedside: Complete Poems of RE. Cummings, The Global 2000 Report to the President, Muddling Toward Frugality, Carl Sandburg's Abraham Lincoln, Unicorns I Have Known, This Timeless Moment, The Lean Years, Baryshnikov At Work, American Film Directors, 2081.

At mine: The Dancing Wu Li Masters, The Stories of Ray Bradbury, Airman's Odyssey, The Aquarian Conspiracy, The Many-Worlds Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics, Western Edible Wildplants, The Trimtab Factor. When I want to

understand someone swiftly, I need only look at their bookshelf.

The sound of the book change caught her at the end of a calculation. "How was Mister Colt?" she said, moving her solar charts into better light.

"Oh, he's doin' just fine. Do you know that without the Colt Revolver there would be forty-six states in this country today, instead of fifty?"

"We stole four states at gunpoint?"

"That's pretty crass, Leslie. Not stole. Defended some, liberated others. And not we. You and I had nothing to do with it. But a hundred-some years ago, to those people then, the Colt was a fearsome weapon. A repeating handgun faster than any rifle and straighter-shooting than most. I've always wanted an 1851 Navy Colt. Silly, isn't it? Originals are expensive, but Colt does make a replica."

"What would you want with something like that?"

She didn't mean to be sexy that moment, but even a winter nightgown couldn't hide that lovely outline. When will I outgrow my simple-minded fascination with the form she had happened to choose for her body? Never, I thought.

"Something like what?" I said absently.

"Animal," she growled. "Why would you want an old pistol?"

"Oh. The Colt. Funny feeling about it, as long as I can remember. When I realize I don't own one, I feel sort of undressed, vulnerable. It's a habit to be within arm's-reach of one, but I've never even touched a Colt. Isn't that odd?"

"If you want one, we can start saving for it. If it's that important to you."

How often we're led back to our other pasts by bits and pieces of hardware, old machines, buildings, lands that we

passionately love or fiercely hate without knowing why. Does anyone live who hasn't felt magnetic yearnings toward other places, an easy at-home-ness with other times? One of my pasts, I knew, held the brass-and-blue-iron of a Colt's Patent Revolver. Be fun to track that one down, someday.

"I guess not, wookie. Silly thought."

"What are you going to read now?" she said, turning her book sideways to study the next chart.

"It's called Life at Death. Looks like some pretty careful research, interviews with people who nearly died, what it felt like, what they saw. How's your book coming along?"

Angel T. Cat jumped onto the bed, six pounds of white longhair Persian, walked heavily as six tons to Leslie, collapsed on the pages in front of her, purred.

"Fine. This chapter is especially interesting. It says fur fur fur EYES NOSE EYES fur fur fur claws and tail. Angel, do the words you are in my way have any meaning to you? The words you are sitting on my book?"

The cat looked at her drowsily no; purred the louder.

Leslie moved the fluffy weight to her shoulder, and we read in silence for a while.

"Goodnight, little wook," I said, turning out my reading lamp. "I'll meet you on the corner of Cloud Street and Sleepy-Bye Lane. . . ."

"I won't be long, sweetie," she said. "Goodnight."

I squashed my pillow and curled into a sleeping-ball. For some time I had been practicing induced dreams, with minimal success. Tonight I was too tired for practice. I fell off the edge into sleep.

It was a light airy glass house that we saw, high on a greenforest island. Flowers splashed everywhere, a flood

of color through the rooms, over the decks and beyond, spilling downslope to a level meadow. A Lake amphibian in shades of sunrise, parked on the grass. Away over deep water other islands scattered, evergreen to mistblue.

There were trees inside the house as well as out, trees and hanging plants under a great square of roof moved away to let in sunlight and air. Chairs and a couch soft-covered in lemon-vanilla cloth. Shelves of books at easy reach, Bartok's glorious Concerto for Orchestra in the air. The place felt like home to us for the music and the plants, for the airplane outside and the far view, like flying. It was exactly what we wanted for ourselves, some day.

"Welcome the both of you! You made it!"

The two who met us were familiar. They laughed and hugged us joyfully.

We forget in the daytimes, but asleep we can remember dreams from years gone. The man was the same one who first flew me in the Pterodactyl; he was myself in ten years or twenty, but grown younger. The woman was Leslie-by-the-airplane, more beautiful with knowing.

"Sit down, please," she said. "We don't have much time."

The man set hot cider for us, on a driftwood table.

"So this is our future," said Leslie. "You've done a good job!"

"This is one of your futures," said the other Leslie, "and it's you who did the good job."

"You showed the way," said the man. "Gave us chances we wouldn't have had, without you."

"It was nothing, was it, wook?" I smiled at my wife.

"It wasn't nothing," she answered, "it was a lot!"

"The only way we could thank you was to invite you to the house," said Richard-to-be. "Your design, Leslie. Works perfectly."

"Almost perfectly," his wife corrected. "The photovoltaics, they're better than you thought. But I've got some suggestions about the thermal mass. ..."

The two Leslies were about to fall into a deep technical talk of hybrid solar engineering and superinsulation when I realized . . .

"Excuse me," I said, "We're dreaming! Every one of us, isn't that right? Isn't this a dream?"

"Correct," said the future Richard. "This is the first time we've reached you both. We've been practicing this, on and off, for years-we're getting better!"

I blinked. "You've been practicing for years, and this is the first time you've reached us?"

"You'll understand when you do it. For a long time, you'll only meet people'that you haven't seen--future you's, alternate you's, friends who've died. For a long time you'll be learning, before you get into teaching. It will take you twenty years. Twenty years' practice, you can pretty well give direction to your dream-state, when you want. Then you get around to saying thanks to ancestors."

"Ancestors?" Leslie said. "Are we ancient?"

"I'm sorry," he said. "Poor choice of words. Your future is our past. But our future is your past, too. Soon as you get yourself free of this time-belief and on with your dream-practice, you'll understand. As long as we believe in sequential time, we see becoming, instead of being. Beyond time, we're all one."

367

"Glad it's not complicated," said Leslie.

I had to interrupt. "Excuse me. The new book. You know me and book-titles. Did I ever find a title? Did the book ever get written and printed and I can't for the life ofme. . . did I ever find a title?"

The future Richard had not a lot of patience for my doubts. "This dream is not to tell you that. Yes, you found a title; yes, the book got printed."

"That's all I wanted to know," I said. And then, meekly: "What's the title?"

"This dream is to tell you something else," he said. "We got a . . . let's call it a letter . . . from us way out ahead in our future. Your ideas about getting through to young Dick and Leslie, they started something. Now quite a few of us have turned into sort of psychic pen-pals.

"Everything you thought to your younger selves, it got through. Tiny changes, subconscious, but they are alternate people, they may not have to go through the hard times we did. Some hard times, of course, but there's a remote chance that learning how to love won't be one of them."

"The letter we got," said Leslie-to-be, "it said, everything you know, is true!" She was fading; the scene flickered. "There's more, but listen: Never doubt what you know. That wasn't just a pretty book-title, we are bridges. ..."

Then the dream shattered, broke to suitcases stuffed with muffins, a car-chase, a steamboat on wheels. I didn't wake Leslie, but I wrote pages on the pad by my

pillow, remembering in the dark what had happened before the muffins.

When she woke next morning, I said, "Let me tell you about your dream."

"What dream?" she said.

"The one meeting us hi the house you designed."

"Richard!" she said, "I remember! Let me tell you about it! It was a glorious place, deer in the meadow, the pond was a mirror for a field of flowers like we had in Oregon. The design, the solar house will work! There was music inside, and books and trees ... so open and light! It was a beautiful bright-color day and there were Dolly and Angel looking at us, purring back to sleep, fat old cats. I saw the new book, our book, on the shelf!"

"Yes? Yes? What was the title? Say!"

She struggled to remember. "Wookie, I'm so sorry! It's gone. . . ."

"Oh, well. Don't feel bad," I said. "Silly curiosity. Quite a dream, don't you think?"