Second Chance (49 page)

Curly took the joint, but only held it, and didn't smoke. "Uh-oh," he said. "Um . . . are you all straight?"

They all looked guilty, as if they should be censured for not instantly flying into the future under the effect of the cannabis. "I don't feel anything," Frank said.

"Me neither," said Diane, and the rest agreed.

Curly eyed the joint suspiciously. "Well, shit, this is the same stuff as before—the same damn stuff we smoked five minutes ago—or twenty-four years from now, as the case may be." He took rolling papers and a baggie full of the grass from the pocket of his chinos, opened the bag, and sniffed it. "What the hell's wrong?"

"I'm wrong."

They all turned to Tracy, who had crossed her hands in her lap and was gazing at the floor. "I'm not supposed to go back," she said, and her words put the taste of metal in Woody's mouth. "I'm not supposed to be there. I know it, and all of you know it. The first time it happened without anybody thinking, but now we all know, we know that things can go wrong."

Woody touched her hand, held her fingers in his. "Maybe things can be better too."

She shook her head, though she didn't take her hand away. "No. It's not natural, what happened. If I don't go back, if Keith and Dale and I stay here, then things will be the way they should have been, for better or for worse."

Dale had come back into the room when he heard their voices, and now he stood in the doorway. "Tracy," he said, "I don't pretend to know what this is all about. I'm not even sure I believe that it's happening. But I do know that you haven't brought any sorrow into the world. There's no reason why you shouldn't go back. I think you all ought to just try again, and keep on trying."

"No," she said. "It didn't work, and it won't work. I don't know the rules either, but it's almost like the first time was some . . . cosmic quirk, some little experiment. But maybe the experimenter didn't like the results, and doesn't want to try it again. Maybe . . . order has to be restored. No. You won't get back with me."

She squeezed Woody's hand. "It's our turn to say goodbye now."

Holding Woody's hand, she got up, and helped him to his feet. They walked down the short hall and into the bedroom, where they sat on the bed and held each other. "I loved my years with you, Orpheus," she said. "Because that's what I remember, what I lived. Not just a few months, but years."

"I remember the months best," he said. "The rest . . . like dreams. Wonderful dreams."

"I love you so much. I always will, wherever . . . whenever I am. Say good—"

She broke off, and he knew what she had been about to say.
Say goodbye to Louisa and Peter for me
. But there would be no Louisa and Peter. They would not be dead, for how could what never existed die?

"Maybe I'll remember," she said against his shoulder, and he breathed in the smell of her, luxuriated in the feel of her against him so that it would last the rest of his life. "Maybe when you're gone I can remember it like a dream, and I can change things . . . keep Keith away from the building, talk him out of it . . . I can try.”

No, he thought, but he didn't say it. When they were gone, the past would take over completely. She would remember nothing, and nothing would change. She would die again. Unless . . .

He moved his hand to his right thigh, felt the thin ridge of the paper in his pocket, then put his arm around her again.

"I'll be with you," he said. "I will be with you."

"I know. Always. Always." She drew back from him and looked into his eyes. "I don't feel like crying, isn't that odd? I feel happy—happy that I had a chance to live a lifetime with the person I love. I wouldn't have had that if you hadn't loved me so much. Loved me enough to come back for me. Oh Woody . . ."

When she kissed him, it was as if the smoke of the drug had suddenly hit him. He wanted only to drown in her embrace, to die in that instant, to hear no other sound forever than her soft breath.

But instead he heard a shout.

"
You bastards!
"

It was Keith
Aarons's
voice. They had waited too long.

Pan was awake.

~*~

Keith Aarons didn't open his eyes when consciousness came to him this time. He had before, but now he heard voices very near him, and his first thought was that it would be wise to learn what was being discussed before revealing his awareness.

His second thought was the memory that he had died, had stuck a gun barrel in his mouth and pulled the trigger before those two old friends of his could take him back—

Take him back.

Back to a time before his life had a purpose, back before Pan existed, before the virus was released, before he had written one word in his book of the mind. They had taken him back so that he would die young, die as he had in his dreams for the last twenty years . . .

It was then that he snapped open his eyes and screamed at them.

The way they jumped was a delight, and he rolled off the couch, landed on his feet, and stood towering over them. "Took me back, didn't you? You really weren't bullshitting, were you, Curly?" Woody and Tracy came into the room, and Keith laughed. "And there's the ringleader of the little plot. Turn back the hands of time and make everything nice again, huh?" He stepped through the people on the floor, who twisted themselves away from him, and stopped in front of Woody.

"Hello, Keith."

"Hello, Keith?" Keith mimicked. "That's all you can say about fucking up my plan? I had the earth saved, Woody. I saved the earth, and then I died, happy and peacefully, if violently, and you have tried to fuck the whole thing up. But it's back there—or
forward
there—waiting. And it's a future that I won't allow to be aborted."

"And what do you plan to do about it?"

"Go back with you. Go back to where I'm dead. Because that's what I lived for—and what I died for."

"What if we won't take you back?"

“Then you don't go back either. I won't let you leave without me."

"Then we'll all stay here. Forever in this limbo if we have to. We won't take you back, Keith. We won't. I don't think we could if we wanted to."

Keith stared into Woody's eyes, trying to break him, but Woody didn't break. He looked back, and Keith saw that he was telling the truth, or the truth as he knew it. "Okay," Keith said. "Then I disappear now, in this time, in this world. I'll have to wait twenty more years, but I can. What goes around comes around. And it will. And so will I." He walked to the door and yanked it open.

And started to walk into a heart of darkness.

He stopped, amazed and terrified. Only his hand had entered the thick blackness that covered the doorway, but that was enough to make him take in a squealing, panicked breath. His hand felt like ice and fire at once, and he pulled it away, back into the apartment.

Then something shattered over his head, and his last waking thought was that he was falling forward, into that darkness, and that if he did he would never see the light again.

~*~

"Get him," Woody cried, leaping to where Keith Aarons lay, his lower legs the only visible part of him. Woody grabbed Keith's ankles and pulled. Curly was at his side in an instant, and together they hauled Keith out of the inky plane and back into the apartment.

There was a wet spot on the back of Keith's head where the
Mateus
bottle had splintered apart, breaking the skin. Diane stood there, the broken neck, with a candle still sticking in it, in her right hand. "Is he okay?" she said. Woody didn't think she sounded very concerned.

"Yeah," said Curly. “Breathing all right. You put him out though. Nice work."

"That's not Keith," she said coldly. "Whoever it is, it's not the Keith I knew."

There was cord in the kitchen, and they tied Keith's hands and feet tightly, then carried him into the hall. When Woody and Curly set him down, he began to come to consciousness, and spoke to the old friends who surrounded him, looking at him with a mixture of fear and pity.

"Let me go," he said when his eyes opened. "You've got to let me go, you don't understand. If I don't go back, it'll be just like it was, the world will die, damn it, and everyone with it. My way, there'll at least be a few who survive. You've got to let me go, Woody!"

"No, Keith."

"God
damn
you—you don't know what you're doing! You
need
me, the
earth
needs me—" He stopped abruptly, staring at an empty spot on the wall, his expression changing from angry pleading to horrified realization.

"What is it?" Woody said. "What's wrong?"

"My book . . ." Keith answered in the tones of a frightened little boy. "My book of the mind . . . it's fading . . . fading . . . I can't remember . . ." Then he shrieked. "I can't
remember
!"

Woody dashed into the kitchen, grabbed a tea towel and some cord from a drawer, then went back to the hall, where he jammed part of the towel in Keith's mouth and wound the cord around his head, tying it tightly in back. Keith gasped for breath, choked on the towel, started to breathe fitfully through his nose. "Woody," Tracy said. "Do you have to? . . ."

"He can't be screaming. We can't have anything else affect the return." He stood up and looked down at Keith. "The earth will have to take its chances without you. It did before. It can again. Maybe we can help it along. You were at least right in that." He looked at the others. "It's time. Time to go home."

He took Tracy's hand and led the others into the living room, all except Dale, who kissed Eddie, and walked alone into the bedroom.

Tracy sat on the couch, and Woody kissed her again, but said nothing. Then he got into the circle with the others. The music played on, repeating as it had before, a psychedelic mantra to focus their attention. There were only five in the circle now—Woody, Eddie, Diane, Frank, and Curly. The others watched as Curly took the baggie and papers from his pocket and rolled what they hoped would be the final joint. When he finished, he held it up and smiled sadly.

"Should be enough for a good half a dozen hits," he said, and lit it, drew in and held the smoke, released, then grinned. "That's more like it," he said. "That's the way. The truth. The light." And he passed it to his right. "Woody?"

Woody did not turn and look at Tracy on the couch behind him. He merely took the joint and drew in, held for as long as he could, holding
Curly's
right hand with his left, passing the joint to Eddie, then taking Eddie's hand, and feeling the links in the chain of souls draw together, and seeing Diane smoking, and the breath of God drifting out upon the air, and knowing that the way was opening, opening, then Frank welcoming the sweet and bitter smoke, and his face drowning in the bliss of oneness, and what remained of the smoke in Woody's lungs and heart and mind now was more than enough, and he saw the walls about him tremble as though they were underwater, but the water was a blue flame that burned so cool, and now there was the sense of mystic union with the others in the circle, as though they once again had but one mind, and the wheel that he and his friends made began to roll, the Great
Mandala
rolling into the future, lifting them up, taking them home . . .

But Woody Robinson
was
home. For Tracy sat behind him.

He pushed himself back and away from the circle, took
Curly's
hand and Eddie's hand, and pressed them together, then released them.

It was like being torn from a cosmic womb. The physical agony was unbelievable, the psychic sensation unbearable, but it lasted for only a moment, and he saw the faces of his friends grimace in sympathy with his pain, then saw the calm return in another instant. He pressed his mouth against
Curly's
ear, and whispered, "None of it has to happen now . . . because I
don't
belong here . . . and I'll know. And I'll remember. But I won't leave her again."

Then
Curly's
face and Diane's face and Eddie's face and Frank's face, all the same, glowed with love and compassion and hope, and their eyes opened, and though Woody saw that they were looking ahead and not at him, he still felt their gaze upon him, their minds in his, and he gave one last thought to Curly who was all of them before they were gone forever

Check . . . on Rooney, will you?

There was a laugh somewhere in their shared consciousness, and an unspoken promise, but just before the four friends faded, their number seemed to increase so that there were other dim shapes in the half-darkness, and then Woody felt Tracy's arms around him, and her warm tears on the back of his neck, and he turned and held her too.

"I couldn't leave you," he said. "I never intended to."

"Oh Woody . . ." She was crying hard, sobbing against him. "Oh God, Woody," she said. Then they looked at each other, and he saw in her eyes that she knew what he had done for the love of her, that he had chosen to remain with her in the past, and face a future in which he might not exist.

"I don't want it without you anymore," he said. "This time Orpheus stays with Eurydice. Once you live in Heaven, earth itself is hell."

"Hell," his word echoed. But it was not his voice.