Time and Again (15 page)

Almost matter-of-factly Kate murmured, "It's impossible." She looked up at me. "It's
impossible!"
she said again, her voice suddenly angry, and I knew what she felt; this was so far from any sensible explanation that it made you mad, and I nodded.

"I know," I said. "But there it is." And there it still was; we bent forward to stare at it. All we could do was stand looking at that shape in the snow; straight-edged at bottom and sides, the top perfectly rounded in a cartoonist's tombstone shape, and, in its interior, the design formed of dozens of tiny dots, a nine-pointed star contained in a circle.

The cab was long gone when I looked up, lost in the traffic and dark. I stood staring, eyes narrowed, but I wasn't looking after it. A second or so before, above the iron rattle of the thinning Broadway street traffic, I'd heard a sound, a familiar sound at the very edge of my attention, and now I realized what it had been. I said, "Kate, would you like a drink? In front of a great big fire?"

"Yes. Oh, my God,
yes,"
she said, and I took her arm, and we walked half a dozen yards ahead to the corner. Across the street one of the illuminated signs framing the streetlamp read BROADWAY, the other PARK PLACE. And a short block west on Park Place I saw the source of that familiar clackety-racketing sound. Its three tall slim windows were lighted redly, the familiar gabled shape of its roof black against the night sky: There, perched over the street, was an El station like an old old friend.

We crossed Broadway — it wasn't hard now, the traffic sparse — and on the other side I turned to look back. This was a dark city, but just beyond the rear of the post office on the far side of City Hall Park I saw a five-story building that still stands in twentieth-century New York. But now the upper floors were brilliant with the light of hundreds of gas jets. Carved in the stone of the side of the building, clearly readable in the light streaming out the upper windows, was THE NEW YORK TIMES. They were up there now — I could walk back, climb a wooden staircase, and actually see them — derbied reporters scribbling in longhand; dozens and dozens of typesetters in sleeve protectors standing in long rows plucking type letter by letter from wooden cases, their hands blurred by motion as they set every word, sentence, paragraph, column and page of what would presently be, ink still wet, tomorrow morning's
New York Times.
They were there now as I stared across the darkness at those brilliantly lighted windows, preparing a paper I might already and long since have seen brown and crumbling at the edges, lying forgotten in an old file. I shivered, turning away, and we walked on a short block to the El station.

As I climbed the steps, even the ironwork of the railings seemed wonderfully familiar. I'd visited New York often as a boy, ridden the El many times. And now here again, inside the little station, were the bare worn floorboards, the wooden tongue-and-groove walls, the little scooped-out wooden shelf projecting from under the change-booth window, grained and polished from ten thousand hands. There was a cuspidor on this floor and the station was lighted by a single tin-shaded kerosene ceiling lamp. But even the dimness was familiar; as late as the 1950's I'd been in stations just like this.

I shoved two nickels in through the little half-moon hole at the bottom of the wide-meshed grill between me and the mustached man in the booth. He took them without looking up from his paper, and shoved out two printed tickets. Then we walked out to the platform, and for just an instant it was once again a tiny shock to see the dozen or so passengers: the women in skirts that nearly brushed the platform, wearing bonnets and shawls, some carrying muffs; and the whiskered men in their derbies, silk hats, and fur hats, smoking cigars, carrying canes. Then a whistle toot-toot-tooted, a high happy sound, we turned to look down the tracks, and I was astounded. Martin had told me, shown me pictures, but I'd forgotten; a short, squat, toy locomotive was chuff-chuffing toward us, red sparks flaring into the night from its miniature stack. Its brakes grabbed, the
chuff-chuff
slowing, white steam jetting from its sides, and the train — engineer leaning out its side window — slid into the station and on past us.

There were three cars, enameled light green and trimmed with gilt arabesques. Inside, seats ran the length of the car; they were upholstered in brown, and at intervals along the backs
New York Elevated Rail Road
was elaborately woven into the cloth; there was a kerosene ceiling lamp at each end of the car. We'd hardly sat down before a conductor in a low-crowned, flat-brimmed uniform cap came through, walking fast, collecting tickets.

The car was nearly filled, but once more I was used to the way people looked, and glancing at Kate's face, I could see that she was, too. It didn't pop into my mind that the brown-bearded man directly across the aisle from us might be going to a wedding; the shiny silk topper he wore was the hat he wore every day, of course, like many another man in this very car. Next to him, staring absently into space, sat a woman wearing a navy-blue scarf tied under her chin, brown knit shawl, a long dark-green dress, and — I caught a glimpse — between the end of her skirt and the tops of her black button shoes she wore heavy white knit stockings with broad horizontal red stripes. But I could see more than the clothes now; I could see the girl who wore them. And see that in spite of the clothes she was young and pretty. I even thought I could tell — I don't know how, but I thought so — that she had a nice figure.

Kate was nudging me. "No ads." She nodded toward the spaces over the windows.

I looked, and said, "I wonder how long before some genius thinks of them?"

We'd taken a right-angled curve to the left almost immediately after starting up, then a curve to the right a block or so farther on. I didn't know where we were, or what street we were over now. But we were heading in the right direction, steadily and rapidly north, stopping for only seconds at each station. We were no longer curious about the people around us, but just sat staring out the windows. We were facing west, and looking past the shiny topper of the man opposite, I peered through the shiny window out at the strange nighttime New York sliding past us.

There were lights, thousands of them, but of no brightness: these were thousands of tiny flecks affecting the darkness not at all; they were gaslights, most of them, white at this distance and almost steady; but there was candlelight, too, and, I supposed, kerosene. No colors, no neon, nothing to read, just a vast blackness pricked with lights, and all of them, I realized, below us. This was a Manhattan in which we looked out over the rooftops, its tallest structures the dozens of church spires silhouetted against — yes, the Hudson River, just becoming visible under a rising moon. A few minutes later — we couldn't see the moon, but it was higher now — the river brightened, its dark surface glinting, and suddenly I saw the darker bulk of sailing ships anchored offshore, and the silhouettes of their bare masts. I shivered then, staring out that window at the strangeness of the city flowing past. This was Manhattan and there lay the Hudson, but I was a very long way from anything I knew.

We got off at the last stop, Sixth Avenue and Fifty-ninth Street, only a block from where we'd come out of Central Park this afternoon. We crossed the street and again entered the park, walking through it silently, postponing anything we had to say till we reached the sanctuary of the Dakota; we could see it far ahead, towering alone against the moonlit sky.

Then Kate and I sat in my living room, our second drinks in our hands: good stiff drinks, whiskey and water. The fire was going again, and we'd said, and then said once more, all there was to say about the blue envelope and the man who'd mailed it, and the tiny image of the Gillis tombstone marked in the snow. Now, after a little silence, I said, "What's the one single thing of all you saw that made the strongest impression? The streets, the people? The buildings? The way the city looked from the El?"

Kate took a sip of her drink, thinking, then said, "No; their faces." I looked at her questioningly. "They aren't like the faces we're used to," she said, shaking her head as though I were disputing her. "The faces we saw today were different."

I thought possibly she was right, but I said, "An illusion. They dress so differently. The women have hardly any makeup. The men have beards, chin whiskers, side-whiskers —»

"It's not that, Si, and we're used to beards. Their faces are actually
different;
think about it."

I sipped at my drink, then said, "You may be right. I think you are. But different how?"

We couldn't say, either of us. But staring at the fire, sipping my drink and remembering the faces we'd seen — on the bus, the sidewalks of Fifth Avenue, on the El, in the gaslighted marble-and-dark-wood lobby of that strange vanished post office — I knew Kate was right. Then I realized something: "Vanished," I'd just said to myself, and I looked over at Kate. Testing her impression, I said, "Katie, where are we? What's outside the windows right now? Are we in 1882 still?"

For a moment she considered it, then shook her head.

"Why not?"

"Because…" She shrugged. "Because we came back, that's all. We were finished, so we came back to the apartment, and we came back in our minds, too." Suddenly doubtful, she said, "Haven't we?"

We got up and, glasses in hand, walked over to the windows and looked down into the blackness of Central Park, hesitating. Then we leaned forward and, foreheads touching the windowpane, looked straight down into the street. And saw the long string of traffic lights, red as far as we could see in both directions. They all flicked green, the cars starting up, and a cab horn shrieked in rage at a car speeding out of the Park to beat the light at Seventy-second. I turned to Kate, shrugging, lifting my drink to finish it. "Yep," I said. "We're back."

11

We'd inevitably begun calling it my "debriefing," and I sat as I'd done before, a microphone hung on my chest, reciting names and random facts onto tape. As I spoke, I watched the people who sat or stood leaning against the walls; every one of them was staring at me. My voice droned on, the muffled clatter of the electric typewriter accompanying it, and they watched me, knowing I was different from all of them now. Staring back at them, so did I.

Rube was there in faded, very clean sharply pressed army pants, and shirt without insignia. He lay tilted back in a molded-plastic chair, hands clasped behind his head, looking at me. He grinned when our eyes met once, quirking a mouth corner and shaking his head in mock awe and wonder, his eyes filled with friendly aching envy. Dr. Danziger just stood there, his great hands hung on the lapels of his double-breasted brown suit; his eyes, blazing with fierce joy, never left me. Colonel Esterhazy, neat and cool in a gray suit, stood against a wall, a hand clasping a wrist, regarding me thoughtfully. The Columbia and Princeton history men were there, too; so was the U.S. senator, several others I'd met, and even three or four neatly dressed strangers.

After I'd finished we waited in the cafeteria for forty minutes or so. I sat with Rube, Danziger, and Colonel Esterhazy, and had three, maybe even four, cups of coffee. Every chair at the other tables was occupied, and people were sitting on the radiator cover against the far wall. I had to respond to a good many jokes from people pausing at our table, most of them being questions about whether I'd bought any Manhattan real estate at bargain prices. Oscar sat down with us for a minute. He said, "What one thing hit you the hardest?" and I tried to tell him about the man, the living
actuality
of the man, who had sat opposite us on the bus, and who might have remembered Andrew Jackson as President. Oscar sat nodding, smiling a little; he knew what I meant. As soon as he'd left, Rube leaned toward me and said, " 'Us'? Who else was there, Si?" and I told him there were one or two other passengers on my side of the bus.

The tall bald man of the day before came hurrying in, the room going silent as he stopped at our table. Grinning, he said that everything they'd been able to investigate so far had checked out okay. He felt certain now that the rest would, too, and the room broke into an excited gabble.

At one fifteen the board assembled, I sat at an end of the long conference-room table, and for the fourth time today I began describing what had happened. Every chair at the table was filled, and along one side there was a second row of folding chairs, all occupied. As far as I could tell, looking around the table as I talked, everyone I'd met here before was here again today plus at least a dozen others I didn't know. One of them, Danziger told me later, was a personal representative of the President.

Again I spoke in the singular, saying nothing about Kate. I'd have to tell Danziger what she'd done but I wanted to do that when we were alone. I described every move I'd made, every sight I'd seen and sound I'd heard, the room silent. Something like two dozen men sat around that table or on the folding chairs and no one coughed or glanced away from me. It may be that some of them lighted cigarettes during the twenty minutes I spoke, or sat back in their chairs, shifted position, crossed their legs; I expect they did. But my impression was of motionless silence, complete except for my voice, and of a focused concentration on me so absolute I felt I was talking with a kind of invisible searchlight bathing me in the glare of their attention.

I finished, then sat answering questions for half an hour more. Mostly, whatever the specifics, it was the same unanswerable question: What was it
like?
What was it
really like?
And now they
were
restless. They stirred, frowned, whispered, lighted cigarettes. Because no matter how I tried or how complete the detail, I couldn't give them the essence of what had happened to me; the mystery remained.

One set of questions, the senator's, had a tone different from the others. For reasons I don't understand he was antagonistic. It was as though he suspected or thought it was a possibility at least that I might be hoaxing them. I suppose it wasn't an unreasonable suspicion under the circumstances, though no one else showed it. But the senator, for example, didn't remember his grandfather's ever mentioning the kind of bus I'd described. He sat looking at me shrewdly then, as though he'd caught me. All I could do, of course, was shrug politely and reply that nevertheless that's what I'd seen. I suspect he was simply following the politician's sleazy instinct to protect himself in case something later went wrong. Presently Esterhazy cut in on him smoothly with some minor question, and then forgot to give him the floor back. He simply thanked me, and asked if I'd mind keeping myself available here in the building till the meeting ended. When I said yes, of course, he thanked me again, and I understood that I was dismissed, and left. There was actually a little applause as I walked out, and my face flushed.

I sat forever in Rube's office then, turning the pages of old copies of
Life,
discovering again, as in a doctor's waiting room, that it's very hard to tell, looking through back issues of
Life,
whether or not you've seen them before. I looked through a
Playboy,
a copy of the
U.S. Infantry Journal,
and I walked out once and down the corridor to the cafeteria for a Coke I didn't want. Rube's girl came in twice, wanting to know, of course, what it had been like,
really
like, and once again I did my damnedest to find the words that would convey it. It was after four o'clock when she came in the third time. She'd just gotten the call: Could I come back to the conference room, please?

I've never really walked into a jury room after they've been locked up for hours, but I think this must have been like it in appearance and atmosphere. The room was air-conditioned so it wasn't full of smoke, but the ashtrays overflowed and the air smelled of cigarettes. And ties were pulled down now, coats were off, note pads were doodle-filled, crumpled paper balls lay on the table, and I noticed a pencil snapped in half; faces were set, some actually sullen. Esterhazy stood up as I came in, smiling affably, looking unruffled.
His
suit coat was still on, his tie and shirt neat as ever. He gestured me to the chair I'd had before, waited till I'd sat down, then he sat down too, resting his forearms on the tabletop, his hands loosely clasped, very relaxed.

He said, "I'm sorry to have kept you waiting like this; you must be quite tired, physically and mentally." He sounded as though he meant it, and I murmured a polite response. I realized that I'd expected it would be Danziger who'd speak, and I glanced down the table at him. One big hand lay on the tabletop at the edge; his chair was pushed back from the table as though — the thought popped into my mind — he were disassociating himself from the meeting. Did he look angry? No, I decided; actually his face was expressionless. There was no way to know what he was feeling or thinking; he might only be tired. Esterhazy was talking. "We have had to hear,
wanted
to hear, every shade of opinion in reaching a decision as important as the one" — he looked slowly around the table — "that we are now agreed upon."

Then he smiled and sat looking at me for a moment or so, and I had the sudden feeling that he was interested in me as a person as well as just someone who'd done what I had. "Your first 'visit,' if that's the term, couldn't have been more cautiously made. No one so much as glimpsed or heard you, and no least trace of your brief presence was left behind. There was no interference whatever in even the smallest events of the past, and you had no effect upon it. But your second visit — deliberately, by design — was more bold. Again you made no interference with events, except" — he unclasped his hands to raise his forefinger, a West Point lecturer requiring attention — "that your very presence was an event. A tiny one, but this time people saw you, and spoke to you, momentarily at least. What trains of thought might possibly have resulted? Influencing events that followed in what ways, large or small? It was a danger and a profound one, but" — soundlessly striking the table with his fist, he emphasized each slow word — "if
is a risk already over and past.
We accepted the risk, the full report is now in, and once again there is no least evidence that your presence affected subsequent events in even the slightest way."

He sat silent for a moment, then again smiled, suddenly and very pleasantly, adding, "And I'm not a bit surprised. This confirms, most of us feel — and as all of us, I'm certain, will come to feel — a theory we've been calling 'twig-in-the-river.' Would you like to hear it?" I nodded. "Well, time is often compared to a river, a stream, as you know. What happens at any one point in the stream depends at least partly on what happened upstream earlier. But a tremendous number of events occur every day and every moment; billions of events, some of them enormous. So if time is a river, it's infinitely bigger than even a Mississippi at full raging flood. While you" — he smiled at me — "are the very tiniest of twigs dropped into that torrent. It's possible, or would seem so, that even the smallest of twigs might have an effect; might lodge, for example, and eventually cause a barrier that could affect the entire course of even that great stream. The possibility, the
danger,
of important change seems to exist. But does it really? What are the chances? There is virtually a one-hundred-percent probability that a twig tossed into that enormous and incredibly powerful current, into the inconceivable momentum of that vast Mississippi of events, will not and
cannot
affect it
one goddam bit!"

For just an instant his face had pinkened; then it was white and almost pale again, and he sat back in his chair, an arm lying relaxed on the tabletop, and said quietly, "That is the theory, and that is the fact."

The room was silent then, of course, for as long as six or seven seconds; if there'd been a clock we'd have heard it tick. Then without moving his hand lying on the table edge and without sitting forward, Danziger said gently, "That is the theory. And I agree with it. As I should, since it's largely mine. But is it a fact?" He nodded slightly. "I think so, I suspect so." He turned his head slowly, looking all around the table. "But what if we're wrong?"

I was surprised. Esterhazy murmured, "Yes," and nodded gravely in agreement. "It's an enormous possibility. A real one and a terrible one. And yet" — he moved one shoulder in a slow reluctant shrug — "unless we are simply to abandon the project, abandon it actually
because
it has succeeded —»

"No, of course not," Dr. Danziger said just a little brusquely. "And no one argues for that, least of all me. I say —»

"I know," Esterhazy said, voice regretful, and he nodded in agreement again. "Go slow," he said, finishing Danziger's sentence. "Proceed, but with infinite caution. Over a period of weeks, months, even
years,
if that's necessary to be absolutely sure. Well, I might very well think so, too… if that were an option open to us. But as the senator knows, as I and a good many of us know, and as perhaps you, Dr. Danziger, haven't ever had the opportunity to know — it is simply not the way government works." He gestured to indicate the entire building around us. "This has cost
money,
that's the trouble. So that now, simply because it
has
succeeded, it must justify its cost with practical results. Mr. Morley is to go back; we're all agreed on that. It's unthinkable that he should not. But… he is to continue at a pace faster and bolder than we might all wish. Pure research, left to itself, would proceed with infinite patience. But this is money. Federally appropriated. Secretly spent. Without even the consent of Congress. Now it damn well better provide some provably practical results."

He looked first at me; then, head slowly turning, he looked around the entire table as he continued. "But I want to say to Mr. Morley and to everyone else but Dr. Danziger, who has always understood this, that while decisions vitally affecting this project cannot be his alone, which is probably unfortunate, this is still as it always has been very much his project. He runs it, he is the boss, only the board can overrule him, will seldom do so, and when rarely it does, it will happen after only the most intense and serious consideration of his views. So that now, Mr. Morley" — he smiled at me — "I'll turn you back to him." He stood up, stretching his shoulders as he rose, and then everyone slowly got up, general conversation beginning, and the meeting was over.

In Danziger's office I spoke first. He, Rube, and I walked along through the corridors together after finally breaking away from the conference room, talking about nothing of importance till we reached Danziger's office. There Danziger sat down behind his desk, got out half a cigar from his top drawer and looked at it, obviously thinking about lighting it. But instead, once more, he put it into his mouth unlighted. I sat waiting till he'd done this; then I sat forward in my chair, leaning across the desk edge toward him. Rube sat facing me, off to Danziger's left and slightly behind him, chair tilted back against the wall. I said, "Dr. Danziger, I don't even know who Colonel Ester-hazy is. For all I know to the contrary, he's a colonel in the Ecuadorian reserves." Rube smiled; he liked that. "Whoever he is, I didn't pledge allegiance to him and whatever he may or may not stand for. You and Rube recruited me, I'm working for you, and I'll do what you say."

Danziger was grinning broadly by the time I was through, very pleased. He said, "Thank you, Si. A very great deal." He sat comfortably back in his swivel chair, pulled out a bottom desk drawer, and put his foot on it. "You know, until we actually had a success, yours, things went routinely. Wonderfully smoothly, in fact." He smiled. "My reports were accepted without comment, the board considered whatever problems I brought up, usually having to do with a little more money. Which they generally produced, though not always as much as I asked. We often met with barely a quorum, adjourning in half an hour or so. I doubt that most of the board had any real faith in the project at all; most of them were assigned to it." He nodded several times as he continued. "So maybe I did get to thinking or at least feeling that this was my project solely and entirely." Dr. Danziger took his half cigar from his mouth, studied it, then replaced it, and sat forward, clasping his hands on the desk top. "But of course Esterhazy is right. This isn't just our toy; we've got to show some practicality. And I know it. I'd prefer to go very very slowly. But, really, I'm as convinced as the others that we are most probably proceeding quite safely. 'Probably,' I say: I'd prefer taking no risk whatsoever if I had my druthers.