27 Short Stories Read online

  Rod flung open the door and ran around the front of the truck, hoping to do-- what? There was no hope that the man was alive. But perhaps some identification. A nuthouse freak, turned loose in weird white clothes to wander the mountain roads? But there was no hospital near here.

  And there was no body on the front of his truck.

  He ran his hand across the shiny metal, the clean windshield. A few bugs on the grill.

  Had this dent in the metal been there before? Rod couldn't remember. He looked all around the truck. Not a sign of anything. Had he imagined it?

  He must have. But it seemed so real. And he hadn't drunk anything, hadn't taken any uppers-- no trucker in his right mind ever took stay-awakes. He shook his head. He felt creepy. Watched. He glanced back over his shoulder. Nothing but the trees bending slightly in the wind. Not even an animal. Some moths already gathering in the headlights. That's all.

  Ashamed of himself for being afraid at nothing, he nevertheless jumped into the cab quickly and slammed the door shut behind him and locked it. The key turned in the starter. And he had to force himself to look up through that windshield. He half-expected to see those eyes again.

  The windshield was clear. And because he had a deadline to meet, he pressed on. The road curved away infinitely before him.

  He drove more quickly, determined to get back to civilization before he had another hallucination.

  And as he rounded a curve, his lights sweeping the trees on the far side of the road, he thought he glimpsed a flash of white to the right, in the middle of the road.

  The lights caught her just before the truck did, a beautiful girl, naked and voluptuous and eager. Madly eager, standing there, legs broadly apart, arms wide. She dipped, then jumped up as the truck caught her, even as Rod smashed his foot into the brake, swerved the truck to the side. Because he swerved she ended up, not centered, but caught on the left side, directly in front of Rod, one of her arms flapping crazily around the edge of the cab, the hand rapping on the glass of the side window. She, too, splashed.

  Rod whimpered as the truck again came to a halt. The hand had dropped-- loosely down to the woman's side, so it no longer blocked the door... Rod got out quickly, swung himself around the open door, and touched her.

  Body warm. Hand real. He touched the buttock nearest him. It gave softly, sweetly, but under it Rod could feel that the pelvis was shattered. And then the body slopped free of the front of the truck, slid to the oil and gravel surface of the road-- and disappeared.

  Rod took it calmly for a moment. She fell from the front of the truck, and then there was nothing there. Except a faint (and new, definitely new!) crack in the windshield, there was no sign of her.

  Rodney screamed.

  The sound echoed from the cliff on the other side of the chasm. The trees seemed to swell the sound, making it louder among the trunks. An owl hooted back. And finally, Rod got back into the truck and drove again, slowly, but erratically, wondering what, please Cod tell me what the hell's the matter with my mind.

  * * *

  Harmony rolled off the couch, panting and shuddering violently.

  "Is it better than sex?" one of the men asked her, one who had doubtless tried, but failed, to get into her bed.

  "It is sex," she answered. "But it's better than sex with you."

  Everyone laughed. What a wonderful party. Who could top this? The would-be hosts and hostesses despaired, even as they clamored for a chance at the timelid.

  But the crambox opened then, buzzing with the police override. "We're busted!" somebody shrieked gaily, and everyone laughed and clapped.

  The policeman was young, and she seemed unused to the forceshield, walking awkwardly as she stepped into the middle of the happy room.

  "Orion Overweed?" she asked, looking around.

  "I," answered Orion, from where he sat at the controls, looking wary, Gemini beside him.

  "Officer Mercy Manwool, Los Angeles Timesquad."

  "Oh no," somebody muttered.

  "You have no jurisdiction here," Orion said.

  "We have a reciprocal enforcement agreement with the Canadian Chronospot Corporation. And we have reason to believe you are interfering with timetracks in the eighth decade of the twentieth century." She smiled curtly. "We have witnessed two suicides, and by making a careful check of your recent use of your private timelid, we have found several others. Apparently you have a new way to pass the time, Mr. Overweed."

  Orion shrugged. "It's merely a passing fancy. But I am not interfering with timetracks."

  She walked over to the controls and reached unerringly for the coldswitch. Orion immediately snagged her wrist with his hand. Gemini was surprised to see how the muscles of his forearm bulged with strength. Had he been playing some kind of sport? It would be just like Orion, of course, behaving like one of the lower orders.

  "A warrant," Orion said.

  She withdrew her arm. "I have an official complaint from the Timesquad's observation team. That is sufficient. I must interrupt your activity."

  "According to law," Orion said, "you must show cause. Nothing we have done tonight will in any way change history."

  "That truck is not robot-driven," she said, her voice growing strident. "There's a man in there. You are changing his life."

  Orion only laughed. "Your observers haven't done their homework. I have. Look."

  He turned to the control and played a speeded-up sequence, focused always on the shadow image of a truck speeding down a mountain road. The truck made turn after turn, and since the hologram was centered perpetually on the truck, it made the surrounding scenery dance past in a jerky rush, swinging left and right, up and down as the truck banked for turns or struck bumps.

  And then, near the bottom of the chasm, between mountains, the truck got on a long, slow curve that led across the river on a slender bridge.

  But the bridge wasn't there.

  And the truck, unable to stop, skidded and swerved off the end of the truncated road, hung in the air over the chasm, then toppled, tumbled, banging against first this side, then that side of the ravine. It wedged between two outcroppings of rock more than ten meters above the water. The cab of the truck was crushed completely.

  "He dies," Orion said. "Which means that anything we do with him before his death and after his last possible contact with another human being is legal. According to the code."

  The policeman turned red with anger.

  "I saw your little games with airplanes and sinking ships. But this is cruelty, Mr. Overweed."

  "Cruelty to a dead man is, by definition, not cruelty. I don't change history. And Mr. Rodney Bingley is dead, has been for more than four centuries. I am doing no harm to any living man. And you owe me an apology." Officer Mercy Manwool shook her head. "I think you're as bad as the Romans, who threw people into circuses to be torn by lions--"

  "I know about the Romans," Orion said coldly, "and I know whom they threw. In this case, however, I am throwing my friends. And retrieving them very safely through the full retrieval and reassembly feature of the Hamburger Safety Device built inextricably into every timelid. And you owe me an apology."

  She drew herself erect. "The Los Angeles Timesquad officially apologizes for making improper allegations about the activities of Orion Overweed."

  Orion grinned. "Not exactly heartfelt, but I accept it. And while you're here, may I offer you a drink?"

  "Nonalcoholic," she said instantly, and then looked away from him at Gemini, who was watching her with sad but intent eyes. Orion went for glasses and to try to find something nonalcoholic in the house.

  "You performed superbly," Gemini said.

  "And you, Gemini," she said softly (voicelessly), "were the first subject to travel."

  Gemini shrugged. "Nobody said anything about my not taking part."

  She turned her back on him. Orion came back with the drink. He laughed. "Coca-Cola," he said. "I had to import it all the way from Brazil. They still drink it there, you know.
Original recipe." She took it and drank.

  Orion sat back at the controls.

  "Next!" he shouted, and a man and woman jumped on the couch together, laughing as the others slid the box over their heads.

  * * *

  Rod had lost count. At first he had tried to count the curves. Then the white lines in the road, until a new asphalt surface covered them. Then stars. But the only number that stuck in his head was nine.

  9. NINE. Oh God, he prayed silently, what is happening to me, what is happening to me, change this night, let me wake up, whatever is happening to me make it stop. A gray-haired man was standing beside the road, urinating. Rod slowed to a crawl. Slowed until he was barely moving. Crept past the man so slowly that if he had even twitched Rod could have stopped the truck. But the gray-haired man only finished, dropped his, robe, and waved gaily to Rod. At that moment Rod heaved a sigh of relief and sped up.

  Dropped his robe. The man was wearing a robe. Except for this gory night men did not wear robes. And at that moment he caught through his side mirror the white flash of the man throwing himself under the rear tires. Rod slammed on the brake and leaned his head against the steering wheel and wept loud, wracking sobs that shook the whole cab, that set the truck rocking slightly on its heavy- duty springs.

  For in every death Rod saw the face of his wife after the traffic accident (not my fault!) that had killed her instantly and yet left Rod to walk away from the wreck without a scratch on him.

  I was not supposed to live, he thought at the time, and thought now. I was not supposed to live, and now God is telling me that I am a murderer with my wheels and my motor and my steering wheel.

  And he looked up from the wheel.

  * * *

  Orion was still laughing at Hector's account of how he fooled the truck driver into speeding up.

  "He thought I was conking into the bushes at the side of the road!" he howled again, and Orion burst into a fresh peal of laughter at his friend.

  "And then a backflip into the road, under his tires! How I wish I could see it!" Orion shouted. The other guests were laughing, too. Except Gemini and Officer Manwool.

  "You can see it, of course," Manwool said softly.

  Her words penetrated through the noise, and Orion shook his head. "Only on the holo. And that's not very good, not a good image at all."

  "It'll do," she said.

  And Gemini, behind Orion, murmured, "Why not, Orry? The sound of the old term of endearment was starthng to Orion, but oddly comforting. Did Gemini, then, treasure those memories as Orion did? Orion turned slowly, looked into Gemini's sad, deep eyes. "Would you like to see it on the holo?" he asked.

  Gemini only smiled. Or rather, twitched his lips into that momentary piece of a smile that Orion knew from so many years before (only forty years; but forty years was back into my childhood, when I was only thirty and Gemini was -- what? -- fifteen. Helot to my Spartan; Slav to my Hun) and Orion smiled back. His fingers danced over the controls.

  Many of the guests gathered around, although others, bored with the coming and going in the timelid, however extravagant it might be as a party entertainment ("Enough energy to light all of Mexico for an hour," said the one with the giddy laugh who had already promised her body to four men and a woman and was now giving it to another who would not wait), occupied themselves with something decadent and delightful and distracting in the darker corners of the room.

  The holo flashed on. The truck crept slowly down the road, its holographic image flickering.

  "Why does it do that?" someone asked, and Orion answered mechanically, "There aren't as many chronons as there are photons, and they have a lot more area to cover."

  And then the image of a man flickering by the side of the road. Everyone laughed as they realized it was Hector, conking away with all his heart. Then another laugh as he dropped his robe and waved. The truck sped up, and then a backflip by the manfigure, under the wheels. The body flopped under the doubled back tires, then lay hmp and shattered in the road as the truck came to a stop only a few meters ahead. A few moments later, the body disappeared.

  "Brilliantly done, Hector!" Orion shouted again. "Better than you told it!" Everyone applauded in agreement, and Orion reached over to flip off the holo. But Officer Manwool stopped him.

  "Don't turn it off, Mr. Overweed," she said. "Freeze it, and move the image."

  Orion looked at her for a moment, then shrugged and did as she said. He expanded the view, so that the truck shrank. And then he suddenly stiffened, as did the guests close enough and interested enough to notice. Not more than ten meters in front of the truck was the ravine, where the broken bridge waited.

  "He can see it," somebody gasped. And Officer Manwool slipped a lovecord around Orion's wrist, pulled it taut, and fastened the loose end to her workbelt. "Orion Overweed you're under arrest. That man can see the ravine. He will not die. He was brought to a stop in plenty of time to notice the certain death ahead of him. He will live-- with a knowledge of whatever he saw tonight. And already you have altered the future, the present, and all the past from his time until the present."

  And for the first time in all his life, Orion realized that he had reason to be afraid.

  "But that's a capital offense," he said lamely.

  "I only wish it included torture," Officer Manwool said heatedly, "the kind of torture you put that poor truck driver through!"

  And then she started to pull Orion out of the room.

  * * *

  Rod Bingley lifted his eyes from the steering wheel and stared uncomprehendingly at the road ahead. The truck's light illuminated the road clearly for many meters. And for five seconds or thirty minutes or some other length of time that was both brief and infinite he did not understand what it meant.

  He got out of the cab and walked to the edge of the ravine, looking down. For a few minutes he felt relieved.

  Then he walked back to the truck and counted the wounds in the cab. The dents on the grill and the smooth metal. Three cracks in the windshield.

  He walked back to where the man had been urinating. Sure enough, though there was no urine, there was an indentation in the ground where the hot liquid had struck, speckles in the dirt where it had splashed.

  And in the fresh asphalt, laid, surely, that morning (but then why no warning signs on the bridge? Perhaps the wind tonight blew them over), his tire tracks showed clearly. Except for a manwidth stretch where the left rear tires had left no print at all.

  And Rodney remembered the dead, smashed faces, especially the bright and livid eyes among the blood and broken bone. They all looked like Rachel to him. Rachel who had wanted him to-- to what? Couldn't even remember the dreams anymore?

  He got back into the cab and gripped the steering wheel. His head spun and ached, but he felt himself on the verge of a marvelous conclusion, a simple answer to all of this. There was evidence, yes, even though the bodies were gone, there was evidence that he had hit those people. He had not imagined it.

  They must, then, be (he stumbled over the word, even in his mind, laughed at himself as he concluded) angels. Jesus sent them, he knew it, as his mother had taught him, destroying angels teachmg hun the death that he had brought to his wife while daring, himself, to walk away scatheless.

  It was time to even up the debt.

  He started the engine and drove, slowly, deliberately toward the end of the road. And as the front tires bumped off and a sickening moment passed when he feared that the truck would be too heavy for the driving wheels to push along the ground, he clasped his hands in front of his face and prayed, aloud: "Forward!"

  And then the truck slid forward, tipped downward, hung in the air, and fell. His body pressed into the back of the truck. His clasped hands struck his face. He meant to say, "Into thy hands I commend my spirit," but instead he screamed, "No no no no no!" in an infinite negation of death that, after all, didn't do a bit of good once he was committed into the gentle, unyielding hands of the ravine. They clasped and
enfolded him, pressed him tightly, closed his eyes and pillowed his head between the gas tank and the granite.

  * * *

  "Wait," Gemini said.

  "Why the hell should we?" Officer Manwool said, stopping at the door with Orion following docilely on the end of the lovecord. Orion, too, stopped, and looked at the policeman with the adoring expression all lovecord captives wore.

  "Give the man a break," Gemini said.

  "He doesn't deserve one," she said. "And neither do you."

  "I say give the man a break. At least wait for the proof."

  She snorted. "What more proof does he need, Gemini? A signed statement from Rodney Bingley that Orion Overweed is a bloody hitler?"

  Gemini smiled and spread his hands. "We didn't actually see what Rodney did next, did we? Maybe he was struck by lightning two hours later, before he saw anybody-- I mean, you're required to show that damage did happen. And I don't feel any change to the present--" "You know that changes aren't felt. They aren't even known, since we wouldn't remember anything other than how things actually happened!"

  "At least," Gemini said, "watch what happens and see whom Rodney tells."

  So she led Orion back to the controls, and at her instructions Orion lovingly started the holo moving again.

  And they all watched as Rodney Bingley walked to the edge of the ravine, then walked back to the truck, drove it to the edge and over into the chasm, and died on the rocks.

  As it happened, Hector hooted in joy. "He died after all! Orion didn't change a damned thing, not one damned thing!"

  Manwool turned on him in disgust. "You make me sick," she said.

  "The man's dead," Hector said in glee. "So get that stupid string off Orion or I'll sue for a writ of--"

  "Go pucker in a corner," she said, and several of the women pretended to be shocked. Manwool loosened the lovecord and slid it off Orion's wrist. Immediately he turned on her, snarling. "Get out of here! Get out! Get out!"