Button in the Fabric of Time (18 page)

Ulto made the knowledge transfer. I felt an
electrical sensation in my head and was able to see things in a
different way. Jan-3’s eyes were wide with recognition and
appreciation. I now saw her physically, emotionally, and
spiritually, and she was vastly more beautiful. We were able to
embrace without physically embracing, but we embraced physically
anyway.

In a way strange and new to me, I understood
Ulto to ask:
“Would you come with us to retrieve our
bodies?”

* * *

Without the sensation of moving, and not
knowing how I knew, I knew that we were on a different spot on
planet Ergo. It was much like the place we had left. Strange and
terrible animals roamed here also. A Lōōg saw Jan-3 and was
stalking her. She stared at it and the Lōōg froze in place,
standing still as a stone.

I read Ulto’s thoughts: “
She learns
quickly! Now we’ll move back in time to when we had bodies. Prepare
yourselves for a shock.”

Humanoids started to appear, popping up here
and there, faster and faster, until a vast crowd of Antons stood in
front of Jan-3 and me. The only voice we had heard previously was
the voice of Ulto. Now all the bodies that had been retrieved were
speaking and creating a jumbling roar in our heads. The Antons were
pushing and shoving, trying to get an advantage.

Ulto appeared before us in his body. He was a
tall, thin, two-legged, two-armed being with a bulbous head, two
huge round eyes, and a perpetual smile on his thin-lipped mouth.
His garment was just a strip of material wrapped Gandhi-style. It
served the purpose of comfort and concealment, but had no esthetic
value. His wife, Leyon, looked and dressed the same as Ulto, but
smaller, and with mammary glands.

I thought-transferred to Ulto: “Ulto, you
know what Jan-3 and I know; we know what you know. Now would be a
good time to start training your people. You have vocal cords now,
so you can communicate verbally. The first thing you must do is do
away with the ability to read thoughts. Remember the law, DO NO
HARM. Reading another person’s thought harms that person. Neither
Jan-3 nor I want that ability. You must command your people to end
thought reading. Anyone who fails to comply will be in violation of
the law.”

“
Anyone who does not comply,”
Ulto
noted,
“will have an advantage over those of us who do. How will
we know if they failed to comply, and what should their punishment
be?”

Jan-3 responded, “If anyone feels that his or
her thoughts have been read, that person should make it known to
your select group. The group then decides the punishment.”

“That’s why we use thought-reading robots,” I
replied. “The robots are programmed to respond only to the
questions they are asked. No one is ever forced to do anything, but
if they fail to obey the law, they are denied membership in the
society. They can do whatever they want, other than return to
planet Duos with the rest of the Antons.”

“
They would have to stay here on planet
Ergo with the Ergons, and the Ergons will destroy them,”
Ulto
thought.

Ulto’s wife, Leyon, communicated mentally for
the first time with Jan-3 and me, and said,
“They could seek
another planet.”

“That would be an option,” Jan-3 agreed.

“
With this new method, the women who have
children fathered by Ergons could bring their children with them,
and we could purify them and take them to Duos with us.”

The Anton women’s thoughts were expressed in
unison:
“You must find a way. We’ll have bodies again, and we’ll
want to bear children. The Anton men will want the pleasure of
fathering them.”

A male Anton said:
“They’ll have Ergon
minds and human bodies—that will create a problem.”

A female thought ensued:
“We’ll have Anton
minds and human bodies, so what is the difference? If you want to
make life worth living, you’d better find a way.”

The jumble of thoughts was maddening. There
was no privacy, and no conclusions could be reached.

Ulto saw the wisdom of privacy and, knowing
that every Anton knew what had been discussed, decided to abandon
thought reading. He was their leader, and the Antons would do as he
asked. He forcefully held out the thought: “
On my command
‘DELETE,’ all thought-reading ability is canceled!”
He held up
his right hand and for the last time mentally emitted the thought:
“DELETE
!”

At first, confusion reigned. This was the
first time in thousands of years that no one could read the
thoughts of anyone else. Pandemonium ruled until the Antons began
to understand that each needed time to audibly voice their
thoughts. Questions had to be asked, and time had to be given to
receive an answer.

To Jan-3 and me, it seemed odd to be able to
see and communicate with the Antons. There was a shrewd,
calculating look on the face of Leyon, Ulto’s wife.

Jan-3 whispered to me, “I wouldn’t trust her
if I couldn’t see what she was doing.”

I smiled at Jan-3 and said, “You’re not
supposed to read minds.”

“I wasn’t reading her mind. That opinion was
arrived at by feminine intuition. I’m ready to go home, aren’t
you?”

I addressed Ulto. “Thank you for giving Jan-3
and me the knowledge your civilization has acquired. We’ll build
our own time-travel devices, as you have taught us, and travel
throughout the universe to benefit all beings worthy of being
benefited, and restrain those whose intent is to do harm. Since you
know everything we know, you no longer need Jan-3 and me. We want
to return to Earth and do what we can to advance humankind. We’ll
strive always to work in alliance and in unity of purpose with both
the Antons and the Ergons.”

Ulto now spoke aloud: “With the knowledge we
received from you, we can clear the atomic radiation from planet
Ergo and, with our advanced technology, we can do it in much less
time than it took you earthlings to clean up Earth.”

“Will you come to Earth to get the DNA, or
would you like us to bring it to you?” I asked.

“Thank you for the offer,” Ulto replied, “but
we have changed our minds about using your DNA. Now that we have a
way to clean up our planets and our bodies, we have decided to
remain as we have always been. It will take time but, by perfecting
our own bodies, they will be more acceptable to us
esthetically.”

This time Jan-3 winked and whispered, “Beauty
is in the eyes of the beholder.”

I took Jan-3’s hand. We bid farewell to the
Antons and, while concentrating on the purification station on
Earth, rubbed the button.

* * * * *

Chapter 23

We arrived at the entrance to the
purification station and immediately undressed and entered the
purification tunnels at the same time. The tingling I had felt
before was no surprise this time, and it felt exhilarating. Jan-3’s
feminine beauty was always arousing. She smiled when she noticed my
response; only this time she did nothing to hide the fact that she
noticed.

The dressing chamber had an area with
full-length mirrors, and this was the first time in a long time
that I had had an opportunity to really look at myself. I was
surprised and pleased to see that my muscle tissue rippled under
smooth, youthful-looking skin. Upon close examination, I found that
the few gray hairs I had were gone, as well as the slight wrinkling
I had acquired around my eyes. I remembered Roc-2 saying, when I
went through the purification tunnel the first time, that I would
have more energy. He was right—I almost never feel tired. Jan-3
watched me examine myself. I liked the admiring look she gave
me.

We dressed and went immediately to the
chamber of the Council of Twelve. They were pleased to see us.
Domer and his engineers had reported on their activities, but Roc-2
and the Council were eager to hear our story.

Jan-3 expresses herself better than I, so she
did most of the talking. We spent hours going over every detail.
The Council sat fascinated, listening like children, as Jan-3 told
the story of the Lōōg and how we acquired the knowledge to
manufacture time-travel devices.

I had thought that Roc-2 could never be
flamboyant, but he spoke eloquently when he said, “Gus, you came to
learn from us, but we have learned from you. You have brought back
the courage we had lost. You have returned to us a sense of
adventure, and you have made the whole universe our frontier. We
would like both you and Jan-3 to become associate members of the
Council.”

“That is an honor greater than I had ever
hoped to receive,” I said. “Thank you. With the knowledge Jan-3 and
I have—I think I speak for Jan-3 when I say—we will work with you
to make Earth the paradise we know it can be. As soon as we impart
the knowledge we have received from the Antons, and from our
experiences, to the libraries and to the builders of our
civilization, I’m going to ask Jan-3 to be my eternal companion. I
want her to go back to the Earth of my time, and marry me in the
chapel in my hometown with my mother, father, and grandfather in
attendance. All of the good people I knew as a child will be there.
I want them to meet Jan-3, and I want Jan-3 to meet them.”

Jan-3 ran to me, hugged me so tightly I
couldn’t breathe, and said, “If that’s a proposal of marriage, my
answer is yes! Yes! Yes!”

“You have earned the undying gratitude of all
humanity,” Roc-2 smiled. “As soon as you have recorded the
information, take as long as you wish.”

Jan-3 said, “We’ll let you know before we
leave, but since we can return at any time, we’ll return to this
time and work with you to explore the universe for habitable
planets.”

Jan-3 and I then went to a recording studio
and recorded visually and orally everything Ulto had installed in
our minds. We knew about things that I never realized existed.
Thousands of volumes would be necessary to contain the knowledge,
but only one computer chip.

* * *

Jan and I had our own travel buttons and
carried them with us all the time, but we used only one button when
we traveled together. We spent several nights discussing and
planning our wedding. The only things we would take with us were
our clothing, the buttons, and some special clothing and jewelry
that Jan especially liked. We bade farewell to our friends in the
thirty-first century. I took Jan-3 in my arms and thought of my
living room on July 7, 2007, as I rubbed the button.

* * * * *

Chapter 24

We were next aware of standing at my window
in Los Angeles, looking at the cars going by on the street. Jan-3
was fascinated, jumped up and down in excitement, while I went to
my phone stand and crumpled the message I had left, explaining what
I was doing. I was thinking
, It seems as though I left here ages
ago, but I have returned at the same instant that I left.

“I want to see everything,” Jan said, as she
excitedly hugged me.

“Come with me,” I said as I took her hand,
leading her to the garage where I had left my car. “This is not
like the keris you have, but it will take us to where I work, and I
can introduce you to my boss and my fellow engineers. . . . Just a
moment! I’m forgetting to pick up my briefcase.”

My car fascinated Jan-3. The streets, the
houses, the traffic—everything fascinated her. I think the freeways
frightened her a little, and the noise of the traffic assaulted her
ears. We arrived at the office as the workday was beginning. When I
walked in with Jan-3 on my arm, everybody stopped working and
stared. I introduce her all around as Jan-3.

One of the men said, “She’s gorgeous! Where
did you find her? Surely you didn’t find her at Castle Rock?”

Not wanting to go into the whole story at
that time, I replied. “Nah, something just dropped out of the sky,
hit me on the hand, and she is the result.”

“Well, if you ever get caught in a rain like
that again, let me know. I sure want to be with you, and I won’t
bring an umbrella.”

The girls all gathered around Jan-3, wanting
to look at her dress and her jewelry. They had never seen material
like the fabric of her dress, and her gemstones astonished
them.

“Where do you do your shopping?” one of the
girls asked.

Another girl whispered, “Her family must be
wealthy.”

Joe, my boss, came hurrying out of his office
and grabbed my arm. “Come with me,” he said, “I want to hear about
how things went at the Castle Rock Hotel.”

Jan-3 was pleased by all the attention and
was smiling. She nodded to me, indicating she was doing okay, so I
went with Joe. As usual, Joe wanted to talk business.

“You must have made a good presentation; the
sales crew got a signed contract, but where did you go? Everybody
wanted to buy you a drink and talk. They said you went to your room
and didn’t return.” Joe looked through the glass partition at
Jan-3, and said, “After seeing that girl, I think I
understand.”

“It’s a long story, Joe, but can I tell you
about it over a beer another time? I’d like to introduce you to my
future wife.”

Joe looked stunned, then said, “Ah, come on,
Gus, what’s the joke? You’re not the marrying kind. You’ve got a
string of women. Why would you want to get married?”

“After you meet her, you won’t ask that
question,” I laughed.

“Well, come on; this I’ve got to see.”

Joe saw the office staff all crowded around
Jan-3 and said, “All right, everybody, back to work!”

They returned to their desks, and Jan walked
to us, smiling.

“Jan-3, this is my boss, Joe Shannon. . . .
Joe, this is Jan-3.”

Again Joe was stunned into silence, but after
a moment he said, “I see what you mean . . . she’s out of this
world! . . . Have you set a date for the wedding?”