Rollback (26 page)

"No actuary would say that Bill was shortchanged in quantity, but it's the quality of his life that really stands out." He paused, wondering how personal he should get, but, hell, this was
all
personal, and he wanted Sarah, and his children, and maybe even God to hear it. "It looks like I might get damn near"—he faltered, realizing he'd just sworn during a service, then went on—"double the number of years my brother did." He looked at the coffin, its polished wood gleaming.

"But," Don continued, "if out of all of that, I can do half as much good, and deserve to be loved half as much as Bill was, then maybe I'll have earned this . . . this . . ." He fell silent, seeking the right word, and, at last, continued: ". . . this gift that I've been given."
 

Don and Sarah went to bed early the night after the funeral, both exhausted. She fell asleep at once, and Don rolled onto his side, looking at her.

He had no doubt the antidepressants Petra had given him were working. He was having a better time dealing with life's little irritations, and, on a larger level, the idea of killing himself now seemed totally alien—the remembered joke about public speaking aside, not for one second had he wished today to trade places with his brother.

The hormone adjustments were working, too; he was no longer hornier than a hoot owl. Oh, he was still frisky, but at least he felt he had some measure of control now.

But although his lust for Lenore might have abated somewhat, his love had not.
That
had never been just raging hormones; of that he was sure.

Nonetheless, he had an obligation to Sarah that predated Lenore's birth by decades; he knew that. Sarah needed him, and although he didn't need her—not in the sense of requiring her assistance with day-to-day living—he
did
still love her very much. Until recently, the quiet, gentle relationship they'd grown into had been enough, and surely it could
still
be enough, for whatever time they had left together.

And, besides, the current situation was unfair to Lenore. There was no way that he could be the lover she deserved, her full-time companion, her life partner. To break up with Lenore, he knew, would feel like amputation—like cutting off a part of himself. But it
was
the right thing to do, although—

Although a typical young man losing a young woman might console himself by thinking that there are plenty of other fish in the sea, that someone equally or even more wonderful was bound to come along soon. But Don had lived an entire life already, and in all of it, he'd only met two women who had captivated him, one in 1986 and the other in 2048. The chances of meeting a third, even in the many decades he had left, seemed exceedingly slim.

But that was beside the point.

He knew what he had to do.

And he would do it tomorrow, even though...

No, that didn't matter. No excuses.

He would do it tomorrow.
 

The calendar waits for no man, and, as it happened, today, Thursday, October fifteenth, was Don's birthday. He hadn't told Lenore that it was coming up; he hadn't wanted her spending any of what little money she had on a present for him, and now, of course, given what he was planning to do today, he was doubly glad that he'd kept it to himself.

And besides, was an eighty-eighth birthday significant, if your body had been rejuvenated? When you're a kid, birthdays are a big deal. By middle age, they're given much less importance, with parties only for those that begin new decades, and maybe some moments of quiet reflection when one's personal clock clicks over to a number ending in a five. But after a certain age, it changes again. Every birthday is to be celebrated, every birthday is an accomplishment ... because every birthday might be one's last—except when you've had a rollback. Was his eighty-eighth to be fussed about or ignored?

And it wasn't as if this automatically meant that his biological age was now twenty-six instead of twenty-five. The twenty-five figure had been a guesstimate, he knew. The rollback was a suite of biological adjustments, not a time machine with digital readouts. Still, he did find himself thinking he was now physically twenty-six, and that was all to the good. Twenty-five had seemed obscenely young; there was something ridiculously insouciant about that age. But twenty-six, why, that was pushing thirty, and starting to get respectable. And even if it were only a guesstimate, he
was
getting older, just as everyone else did, one day at a time, and those days did need to be bundled together into groups, didn't they?

Today being his birthday was an unfortunate coincidence, he knew, for he'd be reminded of the end of his relationship with Lenore on each of the many birthdays he still had ahead of him.

He arrived at the Duke of York around noon, and ran into Gabby. "Hi, Don," she said, smiling. "Thanks for joining us at the food bank last weekend."

"No problem," he said. "My pleasure."

"Lennie's already here. She's in the snug."

Don nodded and headed off to the little room. Lenore had been reading on her datacom, but she looked up as he approached, and immediately got to her feet, stretching up to kiss him. "Happy birthday, sweetheart!" she declared.

"How—how did you know?"

She smiled mischievously—but, of course, almost all information was online somewhere these days. As soon as they sat down, Lenore produced a floppy package wrapped in metallic-blue paper. "Happy birthday," she said again.

Don looked at the package. "You shouldn't have!"

"What sort of girlfriend would I be if I missed your birthday? Go ahead, open it."

He did so. Inside was an off-white T-shirt. It had the familiar red barred-circle symbol for "No" with the word QWERTY written as six Scrabble tiles superimposed on it. Don's jaw dropped. He'd told her the first time they played Scrabble that he disapproved of
qwerty
being in the
Official Scrabble Players Dictionary
. In his experience, it was always spelled with all caps, and capitalized words weren't legal in Scrabble. All dictionaries he'd ever consulted agreed with him about the spelling, save one: a note in
Webster's Third New International Dictionary, Unabridged
, said the term was "often not capitalized." But that same far-too-liberal dictionary said "toronto" was acceptable with a lowercase T when used as an adjective, and the
OSPD
hadn't included
that
, thank God. Since countless tournament-level games had been won using
qwerty
, nobody wanted to hear that it was bogus. As with Don's "Gunter" campaign, he'd won few converts.

"Thank you!" he said. "This is
fabulous
."

Lenore was grinning. "I'm glad you like it."

"I do. I love it!"

"And I love you," she said, giving voice to the words for the first time, as she reached across the table and took his hand.
 

The leaves on the trees along Euclid Avenue had turned color, a mixture of orange and yellow and brown. The year was old; winter would be upon them soon. Don and Lenore walked along, holding hands. She was chatting animatedly, as usual, but he was too preoccupied to say much, for he knew he was heading back to her place for the very last time.

Dead leaves mixed with litter were blown by an afternoon breeze along the cracked asphalt. They passed houses with boarded-up windows, and a wino camped out by a sewer grate, before they reached her place. They walked around to the side of the ramshackle house and headed down to the basement apartment. When they got in, and their jackets were removed, Lenore set about making coffee, and Don looked around. There really wasn't much that was personal to Lenore here; he knew the shabby furniture had come with the place. What few belongings she had would probably fit in a couple of suitcases. He shook his head in wonder, remembering when his own life had been so manageable, so uncluttered.

"Here," said Lenore, handing him a steaming cup. "This should help warm you up."

"Thanks."

She perched on the armrest of the couch. "And I know something else that might warm you up, Birthday Boy," she said, eyes twinkling.

But he shook his head. "Um, how 'bout we play Scrabble instead?"

"Seriously?" asked Lenore.

He nodded.

She looked at him like he was from another planet. But then she smiled and shrugged. "Sure, if you like."

They lay down on the worn carpeting, and she used her datacom to project a holographic Scrabble board between them. She drew an
E
to Don's
I
, so went first.

Sometimes when playing Scrabble, a player will realize he has some of the letters needed to form a good word, and will set those aside at one end of his rack, hoping to acquire the others in later turns. Early in the game, Don ended up with a
Y
and a
K
, worth four and five points respectively. He passed over several opportunities to use them, but ultimately did manage to get most of what he needed, although the serious player in him hated wasting an
S
. He placed his tiles running to the left from a
P
that Lenore had put down earlier:

"The blank is a
T
," Don said, in response to her appropriately blank expression. "Skytop."

She wrinkled her nose. "Um, I don't think that's really in the dictionary." He nodded. "I know. I just wanted to, you know, just wanted to..." He stopped, tried again. "For the rest of my life, every time I hear that word, I'm going to think of you." He paused. "More than anything Rejuvenex's doctors did, more than any part of the rollback, it was you who made me feel young again, feel alive."

She smiled that radiant smile of hers. "I do love you," she said, "with all my heart."

He replied, echoing as much of her sentiment as he could. "And I love you, too, Lenore." He looked at her beautiful face, her freckles, her green eyes, her orange hair, committing them to memory. "And," he added, absolutely sure it was true, "I always will."

She smiled again.

"But," he continued, "I—I'm so sorry, darling, but—" He swallowed, and forced himself to meet her gaze. "But this is the last time we can see each other."

Lenore's eyes went wide. "What?"

"I'm sorry."

"Why?"

Don looked at the threadbare carpeting. "I'm about as grownup as it's possible for a human to be, and it's time I started acting that way."

"But, Don..."

"I've got an obligation to Sarah. She needs me."

Lenore began crying softly. "I need you, too."

"I know," Don said, very softly. "But I have to do this."

Her voice cracked. "Oh, Don, please don't."

"I can't give you what you need, what you deserve. I've ... I've got a prior commitment."

"But we're so good together..."

"Yes, we are. I know that—and that's why this hurts so very much. I wish there were another way. But there isn't." He swallowed hard. "The stars are aligned against us."
 

Don made his way slowly, sadly back to the subway, bumping into pedestrians, including one robot, on Bloor Street's sidewalk,
and
getting honked at as he stepped into traffic without checking the light.

He wasn't up to changing trains—something he'd have to do if he took the shortest route—and so he decided to go south. He'd go down one side of the great U and then almost all the way up the other side.

He waited for the train to arrive. When it did, there was a mad scrum as passengers jostled to get on while others were still trying to get off. Don remembered how it used to be when he was young: people wanting to get on stood to either side of the subway doors, and waited patiently until all those who wished to get off had done so. Somewhere along the line, that little civility—like so many of those that had once allowed Toronto to actually deserve its nickname of "Toronto the Good"—had fallen by the wayside, despite all the PA announcements urging orderly behavior.

The train was crowded, but he managed to get a seat. And, as the train started up, he thought nothing about that. He was used to people offering him a seat; some few crumbs of goodness still existed, he supposed. But it came to him that although he was indeed eighty-eight, as of today, there were people who
looked
that old who really needed to sit down. He got up and motioned for an elderly woman wearing a sari to take his seat, and she rewarded him with a very grateful smile.

As it happened, he was in the first car. At Union, lots of people got off the subway, and Don maneuvered close to the front window, next to the driver's cubicle, with its robot within. Some stretches of the tunnel were cylindrical, and they were illuminated by rings of light at intervals. The effect reminded him of an old TV series,
The Time Tunnel
, a show he'd enjoyed in the same way he'd enjoyed
Lost in Space
, for the nifty art direction, while cringing at the stupid stories.

After all, you can't go back in time.

You can't undo what's done.

You can't change the past.

You can only, to the best of your abilities, try to meet the future head-on.

The train rumbled on, through the darkness, taking him home.
 

Don came into the entryway and paused, looking down at the tiles, at where Sarah had once lain, fallen, waiting for him to return. He took the six stairs one at a time, trudging up into the living room.

Sarah was standing by the mantel, looking either at the holos of their grandchildren or at her trophy from Arecibo; with her back to him, it was impossible to tell which. She turned around, smiled, and started walking toward him. Don's arms opened automatically, and she stepped into them. He hugged her lightly, afraid of breaking her bones. Her arms against his back felt like sapling branches pushed by a gentle breeze. "Happy birthday again," she said.

He glanced past her, at the foot-high digital display on the wall monitor, and saw it change from 5:59 to 6:00. When they let go of each other, she started a slow walk toward the kitchen. Rather than hurry ahead, Don fell in behind her, taking one step for every two of hers.