Elvissey (25 page)

"I guess not. You all aren't like me, that's for sure."

"Leaving off Dero, then, did you read much science fiction?"

"Some," he said. "Stuff about space ships, Mars. Travelin'
through time to hunt dinosaurs. Long as people got killed
and went flyin' off somewhere I liked it. I had a idea for a
story once but I never wrote it down."

"That's good-"

"This space commander and his girl scientist land on
Mars. It's in the future," he began. I closed my eyes, wishing
my headache might overcome me, so that I wouldn't have to
listen. "He goes outside to explore, she sees this of Martian
comin' up behind him. Big of sucker, got long arms and all
green, scaly, goofy-lookin'. She puts her head through the
porthole and shouts and warn him. He runs off but she gets her head stuck like in a fence and then the Martian sees her
and-"

"The spaceship's portholes are open?"

"After they land."

"There's no atmosphere on Mars," I said. "No Martians,
either."

"You know?" he asked. "Y' been there?"

"What do you think of where you are?" I asked, keen to
distract him from recounting the rest of his tale. "What does
it resemble? Anything you've seen or read of before?"

"Kinda," he said. "You gonna tell me you took me into
the future?"

"Not your future," I said. "Time travel's impossible."

"Nothin's impossible-"

"But you are in our future."

"What're you talkin' about?" he asked, laughing. It disturbed me to see that in reconstructing his lips, the surgeons
had so adapted his embouchure as to allow him to form
without seeming effort the perfect Elvisian sneer; the expression reappeared too often to be deliberate, and I wondered
in what other ways his body had been recut to suit.

"You've read stories about parallel worlds?" He nodded.
"Where you lived exists parallel to our world, and resembles
ours as it was almost a century ago. Do you believe me?"

"Hell, no-"

"The concept's understandable, though."

"This world's like mine but it's in the future, and it's not
my world, right?" I nodded. "So this's what the future'll be
like in my world?"

"Probably not," I said. "Your past doesn't exactly correspond to ours. The worlds are similar, but separate."

"Why're they similar if they're not the same, then?" I
shook my head. "How'd you all come over and how'd we go
back?"

"We have a method of transferral," I said; I still had it. The compact was returned to me along with all materials in
my purse recovered from the crash.

"This is the only parallel world?" he asked.

"One's not enough?"

"Damn," he said. "This's worse'n science fiction-"

"Because it's real," I said. "Hard to explain, harder to
understand."

"You're crazier than he is, Isabel," E said, frowning. "If
you all are Dero, course, then you'd tell me all kinda stories."

"We're not Dero, Elvis-"

"Maybe not that you'll own up to," he said. "I'm not
gonna listen to it."

"It's essentialled that you do-"

"Damn you, I don't haveta do nothin'," he said; had he
not been so harnessed by wires and tubes I might have taken
his anger more seriously. From my bag I retrieved a disk I'd
obtained from research that afternoon, one heard timeover
during our training.

"Here's something for you to hear," I said, slipping the
disk into my player and switching it on.

"I'm not fallin' for it," he said. "You're just like the rest.
Lyin' to me through your teeth ever' chance you-"

He ceased his rant when he heard his voice blaring
around him, permeating the room.

Approaching him, I lifted the disk's container and held it
before his eyes, allowing him to see himself as, mayhap, he
would one day be. The sleevephoto was of this world's Elvis,
jumpsuited and forty, many kilos heavier and closing in on
his life's end. E's lips curled away from his teeth as he listened, forming neither sneer nor smile; expressing emotions
more along the line of anguish, or fear. "As he is, so you'll
be," I said.

"No," he said. "Turn it off. Go away-"

"This is your counterpart's voice as it was," I said, incom-
prehending my position, trapped in one room with the
Once and Future Kings simultaneously. "As you'll sound
soon."

"I don't look like that-"

"You will."

He tried pulling his arms loose of their bonds, to stop his
ears against the song. "Leave me alone-" I took his wrists
in my hands to keep him down; he struggled, but was too
weak to break my grip. "Please turn it off. Turn-"

"You believe me now?" I asked as he tired and ceased his
fight; perspiration dewed his upper lip, soaking into his
face's gauze. "He was here. You're there. Two and the same.
Two worlds. Two of you."

"Where am I?" he pleaded, beginning to cry. "I wanta go
home-"

"This is home now," I said. "Answer. You believe me?"

"Yeah," he said; he cried. "Please don't-"

"You'll listen to what I tell you now?" I asked. "Will you?"

"Don't hurt me. I didn't mean t'hurt her," he unexpectedly said, inarticulating through his sobs. "She wouldn't
stop fussin' at me."

"Killing never essentials," I said. "Hurting people never
essentials."

"Don't hurt me, Isabel. Please don't hurt me-"

"I won't," I said, switching off my player; taking his damp
hand in mine, I held it, standing at his bedside interrogating
myself while he cried himself dry. I knew I had to break him,
but didn't know why; did making him suffer content me?
Had I taken vengeance or pleasure in my act? I'd rarely
looked for answers, fearful of what I'd find; one question led
to others until, at end, nada certained. Had John's mindset
affected mine more than we could admit, or was it as Judy
believed, that my stone was harder than his all along?

E settled at last; what I could see of his face appeared as a boy's, which he was, after all. "My sooties're cold, Isabel,"
he said. "Cover 'em up for me."

"Your what?" I examined his blanketed form, unsure of
what might be exposed; saw his stubby toes protruding from
the edge of his sheet. "Sooties?" I asked; he affirmed. I
tightened his bedding around his toes, thinking I'd prefer to
tag them. Aware of too many untoward emotions coming to
me, I filed them all away.

"Thank you, Isabel," he said. "You'll come see me tomorrow?"

"Yes," I said, replaying the word sooties in my aching head.
"Tomorrow. Sleep now."

As I was driven home that evening I studied the filed material Leverett had given me-translating its obfuscatories as
I read-regarding the other world's recent history as found
in, or inferred from, the history text we'd brought back. In
that world's 1939, as we knew predeparture, the immediate
future grimmed: the Depression was unending, Churchill
and Roosevelt were dead, and Stalin-during the first bor-
derbreak Alekhine kidnapped and returned with him to our
world-was absent, leaving naught to roadblock Hitler.

World War Two came there, as here; Germany invaded the
whole of Europe, Japan swept through Asia. Trotsky returned to Russia from Mexico in Stalin's absence, taking
power, reorganizing his Red Army and converting factories
to war production. A separate peace, agreed to by King
Edward and drawn up by Prime Minister Butler, was rigged
between Great Britain and Germany; that done, Hitler readied his soldiers to invade Russia. A week before their assault
was to begin, Trotsky ordered his own attack. For two years
the forces stalemated along the Eastern Front.

In America, President Willkie, foreseeing unavoidable involvement, reinstituted the draft following his inauguration
in 1941; declared war on Japan and Germany after the at tack on Pearl Harbor, later that year. Matters progressed, for
a time, in like pattern to what had happened here. Then
Willkie coronaried on D-Day, as Allied forces were landing
at Marseilles; Hitler was assassinated by his officers the next
month. A cease-fire was called by Trotsky, new President
McNary and Chancellor Speer. The war continued in the
Pacific; Germany agreed to a conditional surrender and
withdrawal to its original borders. In August 1945, fourteen
atomic bombs were dropped in one week on Japan by America, destroying Tokyo, Kyoto, and other cities; the war
ended.

Our experts inferred, from what I'd told them concerning
E's statements regarding Germans, and from the McCarthyish manner in which communism was spoken of within the
text, that a relationship between Germany and America developed as both readied themselves for possible attack by
Russia, some day in the future.

But what of my people, over there?

The book's later chapters, which I'd not read, told how A.
Philip Randolph, the union leader, called for a general
strike of all black workers in early 1942, threatening a halt
in wartime production unless the American apartheid system was dismantled. They struck, at least in the north, but
not for long. After the riots were calmed an emergency
measure was enacted, interning as potential traitors all black
Americans for the duration of the war. The text never overted what underwayed, but stated that the measure was still
in effect; our experts suspected that after the war German
specialists were consulted regarding the treatment of difficult populations; there, as here, they were likely experienced in such matters.

I cried as my car pulled up before our building, and tried
to imagine a world without me.

John was asleep when I found him; since his release he'd
spent much time in slumber. His copy of Knifelife, its black
cover bleached by battery-acid spillage, lay open before him;
I read the passage, related in Jake's words.

When one kills another, two die. Never forget this.
Even when no blood is shed some inevitably spills. The
drops collect around you over years; each action deepens the pool. Once the bottom is lost, the surface is
unreachable. Accept your drowning time.

"John," I said, tapping his shoulder. Not for the first time
an ever-present possibility intruded itself into my mind, that
in my absence he'd finally lost himself in his pool. "Love-?"
Subconsciously, he seized my wrist; readied to snap it. "No!"
My shout awakened him; he blinked once or twice, staring at
me as if needing to remember who I was before he released.
It surprised me that his fingernails were so darkened; my
housekeeping wasn't so bad that he'd dirty himself, sleeping.
"Forgive, Iz, forgive-"

"Forgotten," I said, massaging my wrist, looking at the
purple welt rising from my deadwhite. "Bed yourself, John,
you'll stiffen."

"I have," he said, smiling, lifting himself from his seat.
"Love me, Iz. Please."

When he enfolded me within his arms I initially thought
of fending him off; shortly decided I didn't want to, and
returned his kiss. Babysitting E would allow me too little
time with my husband, and my condition would soon prevent such play; I wanted to enjoy what moments together
remained to us. Holding one another, we went into our
room. He didn't hurt me; as we loved I stayed inbodied,
consciousing myself full as I once always did when we loved,
as if premonitioned that the next morning's events would
forever steal one of us from the other, and wishing to pleasure so much the last time as we had the first. Afterward we were so commingled as to be immediately uncertain whose
limb belonged to whom.

"What ensued at Montefiore?" he asked. "What's Leverett
want?"

"I've been apprised of new situations."

"Involving?"

"I'm informed E needs an overseer he trusts," I said.
"Against reason and desire, he trusts me. My arguments
inessentialled, and so went unheard. Leverett's drawing my
schedule now."

There was too much darkness in our room for me to read
his expression. His voice was another's, when he did at last
respond. "You're to guide him after what he did to you?"

"He did nothing to me, as told," I said. "His attempt went
for naught. He tore my dress, nothing more."