The Best Time Travel Stories of the 20th Century (28 page)

“Baiti?” she asked, her voice rising. “Baiti,” she answered, convinced.

So here it ends, thought Litwak, just beginning to recognize the rancid odor in the room as sweat.

Litwak ran out of the apartment before she turned into something more terrible.

Changes, he had expected. Things change and shift—that’s logic. But not so fast. He had slowed down natural processes in the past (he thought), but now he was slipping, sinking like the rest of them. A bald Samson adrift on a raft.

Time isn’t a river, Litwak thought as he pushed his way through larger crowds, all adrift, shouting, laughing, blipping in and out, as old men were replaced by ancient monsters and fears; but dinosaurs occupied too much space, always slipped, and could enter the present world only in torn pieces—a great ornithischian wing, a stegosaurian tail with two pairs of bony spikes, or, perhaps, a four-foot-long tyrannosaurus head.

Time is a hole, Litwak thought. He could feel its pull.

Whenever Litwak touched a stranger—someone who had come too many miles and minutes to recognize where he was—there was a pop and a skip, and the person disappeared. Litwak had disposed of three gilded ladies, an archdeacon, a birdman, a knight with Norman casque, and several Sumerian serfs in this manner. He almost tripped over a young boy who was doggedly trying to extract a tooth from the neatly severed head of a tyrannosaurus.

The boy grabbed Litwak’s leg, racing a few steps on his knees to do so, and bit him.

Screaming in pain, Litwak pulled his leg away, felt an unfamiliar pop, and found the synagogue closer than he had remembered. But this wasn’t his shul; it was a cathedral, a caricature of his beloved synagogue.

“Catch him,” shouted the boy with an accent so thick that Litwak could barely make out what he said. “He’s the thief who steals from the shul.”

“
Gevalt,
this is the wrong place,” Litwak said, running toward the cathedral.

A few hands reached for him, but then he was inside. There, in God’s salon, everything was, would be, and had to be the same: large clerestory windows; double aisles for Thursday processions; radiating chapels modeled after Amiens 1247; and nave, choir, and towers, all styled to fit the stringent requirements of halakic law.

Over the altar, just above the holy ark, hung a bronze plate representing the egg of Khumu, who created the substance of the world on a potter’s wheel. And standing on the plush pulpit, his square face buried in a prayer book, was Rabbi Rhampsinitus.

“Holy, holy, holy,” he intoned. Twenty-five old men sang and wailed and prayed on cue. They all had beards and earlocks and wore conical caps and prayer garments.

“That’s him,” shouted the boy.

Litwak ran to the pulpit and kissed the holy book.

“Thief, robber, purloiner, depredator.”

“Enough,” Rhampsinitus said. “The service is concluded. God has not winked his eye. Make it good,” he told the boy.

“Well, look who it is.”

Rhampsinitus recognized Litwak at once. “So it is the thief. Stealer from God’s coffers, you have been excommunicated as a second-story man.”

“But I haven’t stolen from the shul. This is not even my time or place.”

“He speaks a barbarian tongue,” said Rhampsinitus. “What’s shul?”

“This Paley Litwak is twice, or thrice, removed,” interrupted Moishe Hodel, who could timetip at will to any synagogue God chose to place around him. “He’s new. Look and listen.
This
Paley Litwak probably does not steal from the synagogue. Can you blame him for what someone else does?”

“Moishe Hodel?” asked Litwak. “Are you the same one I knew from Beth David on King’s Highway?”

“Who knows?” said Hodel. “I know a Beth David, but not on King’s Highway, and I know a Paley Litwak who was stuck in time and had a wife named Golde who raised hamsters.”

“That’s close, but—”

“So don’t worry. I’ll speak for you. It takes a few hours to pick up the slang, but it’s like Yinglish, only drawled out and spiced with too many Egyptisms.”

“Stop blaspheming,” said Rhampsinitus. “Philosophy and logic are very fine indeed,”

he said to Hodel. “But this is a society of law, not philosophers, and law demands reparations.”

“But I have money,” said Litwak.

“There’s your logic,” said Rhampsinitus. “Money, especially such barbarian tender as yours, cannot replace the deed. Private immorality and public indecency are one and the same.”

“He’s right,” said Hodel with a slight drawl.

“Jail the tergiversator,” said the boy.

“Done,” answered Rhampsinitus. He made a holy sign and gave Litwak a quick blessing. Then the boy’s sheriffs dragged him away.

“Don’t worry, Paley,” shouted Moishe Hodel. “Things change.”

Litwak tried to escape from the sheriffs, but he could not change times. It’s only a question of will, he told himself. With God’s help, he could initiate a change and walk, or slip, into another century, a friendlier time.

But not yet. Nothing shifted; they walked a straight line to the jail, a large pyramid still showing traces of its original limestone casing.

“Here we are,” said one of the sheriffs. “This is a humble town. We don’t need ragabrash and riffraff—it’s enough we have foreigners. So timetip or slip or flit somewhere else. There’s no other way out of this depository.”

They deposited him in a narrow passageway and dropped the entrance stone behind him.

It was hard to breathe, and the damp air stank. It was completely dark. Litwak could not see his hands before his eyes.

Gottenyu,
he thought, as he huddled on the cold stone floor. For a penny they plan to incarcerate me. He recited the
Shma Yisroel
and kept repeating it to himself, ticking off the long seconds with each syllable.

For two days he prayed; at least it seemed like two days. Perhaps it was four hours.

When he was tired of praying, he cursed Moishe Hodel, wishing him hell and broken fingers. Litwak sneezed, developed a nervous cough, and his eyes became rheumy. “It’s God’s will,” he said aloud.

Almost in reply, a thin faraway voice sang, “Oh, my goddess, oh, my goddess, oh, my goddess, Clem-en-tine!”

It was a familiar folk tune, sung in an odd Spanish dialect. But Litwak could understand it, for his mother’s side of the family spoke in Ladino, the vernacular of Spanioli Jews.

So there, he thought. He felt the change. Once he had gained God’s patience, he could slip, tip, and stumble away.

Litwak followed the voice. The floor began to slope upward as he walked through torchlit corridors and courtyards and rooms. In some places, not yet hewn into living quarters, stalactite and stalagmite remained. Some of the rooms were decorated with wall paintings of clouds, lightning, the sun, and masked dancers. In one room was a frieze of a great plumed serpent; in another were life-size mountain lions carved from lava. But none of the rooms were occupied.

He soon found the mouth of the cave. The bright sunlight blinded him for an instant.

“I’ve been waiting for you,” said Castillo Moldanado in a variation of Castilian Spanish. “You’re the third. A girl arrived yesterday, but she likes to keep to herself.”

“Who are you?” asked Litwak.

“A visitor, like you.” Moldanado picked at a black mole under his eye and smoothed his dark, thinning hair.

Litwak’s eyes became accustomed to the sunlight. Before him was desert. Hills of cedar and pinon were mirages in the sunshine. In the far distance, mesa and butte overlooked red creeks and dry washes. This was a thirsty land of dust and sand and dirt and sun, broken only by a few brown fields, a ranch, or an occasional trading post and mission. But to his right and left, and hidden behind him, pueblos thrived on the faces of sheer cliffs. Cliff dwellings and cities made of smooth-hewn stone commanded valley and desert.

“It looks dead,” Moldanado said. “But all around you is life. The Indians are all over the cliffs and desert. Their home is the rock itself. Behind you is Cliff Palace, which contains one hundred and fifty rooms. And they have rock cities in Canon del Muerto and, farther south, in Walnut Canyon.”

“I see no one here but us,” Litwak said.

“They’re hiding,” said Moldanado. “They see the change and think we’re gods.

They’re afraid of another black kachina, an evil spirit.”

“Ah,” Litwak said. “A dybbuk.”

“You’ll see natives soon enough. Ayoyewe will be here shortly to rekindle the torches, and for the occasion, he’ll dress in his finest furs and turkey feathers. They call this cave Keet Seel, mouth of the gods. It was given to me. And I give it to you.

“Soon there will be more natives about, and more visitors. We’ll change the face of their rocks and force them out. With greed.”

“And logic,” said Litwak.

Moldanado was right. More visitors came every day and settled in the desert and caves and pueblos. Romans, Serbs, Egyptians, Americans, Skymen, Mormons, Baalists, and Trackers brought culture and religion and weapons. They built better buildings, farmed, bartered, stole, prayed, invented, and fought until they were finally visited by governors and diplomats. But that changed, too, when everyone else began to timetip.

Jews also came to the pueblos and caves. They came from different places and times, bringing their conventions, babel, tragedies, and hopes. Litwak hoped for a Maimonides, a Moses ben Nachman, a Luria, even a Schwartz, but there were no great sages to be found, only Jews. And Litwak was the first. He directed, instigated, ordered, soothed, and founded a minion for prayer. When they grew into a full-time congregation, built a shul and elected a rabbi, they gave Litwak the honor of sitting on the pulpit in a plush-velvet chair.

Litwak was happy. He had prayer, friends, and authority.

Nighttime was no longer dark. It was a circus of laughter and trade. Everything sparkled with electric light and prayer. The Indians joined the others, merged, blended, were wiped out. Even a few Jews disappeared. It became faddish to wear Indian clothes and feathers.

Moldanado was always about now, teaching and leading, for he knew the land and native customs. He was a natural politico; when Litwak’s shul was finished, he even attended a mairev service. It was then that he told Litwak about “forty-nine” and Clementine.

“What about that song?” Litwak had asked.

“You know the tune.”

“But not the words.”

“Clementine was the goddess of Los Alamos,” Moldanado said. “She was the first nuclear reactor in the world to utilize fissionable material. It blew up, of course. ‘Forty-nine’ was the code name for the project that exploded the first atom bomb. But I haven’t felt right about incorporating ‘forty-nine’ into the song.”

“I don’t think this is a proper subject to discuss in God’s house,” Litwak said. “This is a place of prayer, not bombs.”

“But this is also Los Alamos.”

“Then we must pray harder,” Litwak said. 

“Have you ever heard of the atom bomb?” asked Moldanado.

“No,” said Litwak, turning the pages in his prayer book.

Moldanado found time to introduce Litwak to Baptista Founce, the second visitor to arrive in Los Alamos. She was dark and fragile and reminded Litwak of his first Golde.

But she was also a shikseh who wore a gold cross around her neck. She teased, chased, and taunted Litwak until he had her behind the shul in daylight.

Thereafter, he did nothing but pray. He starved himself, beat his chest, tore his clothes, and waited on God’s patience. The shul was being rebuilt, so Litwak took to praying in the desert. When he returned to town for food and rest, he could not even find the shul. Everything was changing.

Litwak spent most of his time in the desert, praying. He prayed for a sign and tripped over a trachodon’s head that was stuck in the sand.

So it changes, he thought, as he stared at the rockscape before him. He found himself atop a ridge, looking down on an endless field of rocks, a stone tableau of waves in a gray sea. To his right was a field of cones. Each cone cast a flat black shadow. But behind him, cliffs of soft tuff rose out of the stone sea. A closer look at the rock revealed hermitages and monasteries cut into the living stone.

Litwak sighed as he watched a group of monks waiting their turn to climb a rope ladder into a monastic compound. They spoke in a strange tongue and crossed themselves before they took to the ladder.

There’ll be no shul here, he said to himself. This is my punishment. A dry goyish place. But there was no thick, rich patina of sophisticated culture here. This was a simple place, a rough, real hinterland, not yet invaded by dybbuks and kachinas.

Litwak made peace with the monks and spent his time sitting on the top of a stone-tuff church in Goreme six hundred years in the past. He prayed, and sat, and watched the monks. Slowly he regained his will, and the scenery changed.

There was a monk that looked like Rhampsinitus.

Another looked like Moldanado.

At least, Litwak thought, there could be no Baptista Founce here. With that (and by an act of unconscious will), he found himself in his shul on King’s Highway.

“Welcome back, Moishe,” said Hoffa. “You should visit this synagogue more often.” 

“Moishe?” asked Litwak.

“Well, aren’t you Moishe Hodel, who timetips to synagogue?”

“I’m Paley Litwak. No one else.” Litwak looked at his hands. They were his own.

But he was in another synagogue. “Holy, holy, holy,” Rabbi Rhampsinitus intoned.

Twenty-five old men sang and wailed and prayed on cue. They all had beards and earlocks and wore conical caps and prayer garments.

“So, Moishe,” said Rhampsinitus, “you still return. You really have mastered God’s chariot.”

Litwak stood still, decided, and then nodded his head and smiled. He thought of the shul he had built and found himself sitting in his plush chair. But Baptista Founce was sitting in the first row praying.

Before she could say, “Paley,” he was sitting on a stone-tuff church six hundred years in the past.

Perhaps tomorrow he’d go to shul. Today he’d sit and watch monks.

CONNIE WILLIS

Connie Willis burst onto the science-fiction scene in the early 1980s with her powerful
short stories featuring all-too-human characters. Her work has won multiple Nebula
and Hugo awards, and she edited
The New Hugo Winners (Vol. III)
. Her first solo
novel,
Lincoln’s Dreams,
featured a woman who shares dreams about the Civil War. It
showed her assured characterization and deft plotting skills, and hinted of powerful
books to come. Her later novels have not disappointed; they include the powerful
Doomsday Book,
a time-travel novel featuring a future researcher trapped back in
medieval times during the Black Plague;
Uncharted Territory,
about the exploration of
an alien planet; and
Remake,
her look at retroactive censorship and a possible version
of political correctness in the future. Her short fiction has been collected in
Fire Watch, Distress Call, Daisy, in the Sun,
and
Impossible Things
.