Shadows of the New Sun: Stories in Honor of Gene Wolfe (41 page)

Adele shook her head.

“We edit things out. It’s a door eraser. The memory is a door that lets in things we don’t want to remember, so there’s no door.”

“I need a ‘you’ eraser.” It was too soft, probably, for him to hear. She stood and walked away.

Mike was in a courtyard driving a stake with a power hammer. He stopped as Adele approached him. “Hi, Adele. Okay if I ask you a question?”

She nodded.

“How did we get here? Do you know?”

“On a ship. Across the sea.”

Mike smiled, encouraging her. His teeth were large and white and a little too regular. “That’s right, across the sea of space. Did our ship have sails?”

She nodded, remembering.

“That’s right again. Mylar sails a thousand miles across to catch the star winds. Where did we sleep?”

“On the ship.” Did he want her to talk more? She decided he did. “I loved sleeping on the ship. There was this stuffed koala bear, all soft and cuddly. I hugged it in bed and stroked its fur until it fell asleep.”

“You fell asleep,” Mike said.

Another Mike came up behind Adele. “I remember this conversation,” he told her. “It upset you badly. Why don’t you go?”

“I will.” Adele thought for a moment. “Another place than here. Can I go back to the ship? I’d like that.”

“There isn’t any other place,” the other Mike told her. “Then I can’t go.”

“I told you this would upset her,” the first Mike said. “No, I told you that.”

This was the time to leave, Adele decided, but she stayed.

The Mikes separated, and one tried to take her arm very gently. The Mike on her left said, “I’ve figured this out, or I think I have.”

“So have I,” the other Mike affirmed.

“Like, why are there two of me on this planet.” Mike paused, looking thoughtful. At length he said, “There may be more. Hell, there probably are.”

“You’re going at it wrong,” the other Mike told him. “There are not two of you. Nor are there two of me. I am you and you are me. There is only one Mike, and no time.”

Adele’s indifference drowned in curiosity. “No time for what?”

“No time for anything,” the Mike who had tried to hold her left arm said. “Eternity for everything.”

His twin said, “Eternity means forever.”

“No, it doesn’t. Forever means endless years, endless centuries. Time piling up, on and on.” Ted had joined them.

“Eternity means no time, timelessness,” the Mikes said.

“Without time,” Ted scoffed, “everything would happen at once.”

“Exactly,” the Mikes said in chorus.

Adele paid little attention. She was looking across the sand at the girl standing ever so still upon her rock. She had red hair that seemed almost brown, long, straight hair that the wind blew about her.

“Hi,” a new voice said, “what are you guys up to here?”

No one answered him.

“I-I’m Jeff.” He was big, and thick at the waist.

“Hello, Jeff.” Adele felt sorry for him. She held out her hand. “I’m very pleased to meet you.”

He tried to hold it between his own. He had large hands, medium hard. “I was in the probe. Suspended and frozen. All those things they do, I guess. Only I didn’t feel any of it. I blacked out.”

Adele looked around for the Mikes, but they had gone.

“Me, too,” she said.

“And then I was here,” Jeff told her. “This shirt? These pants? These are the kind of things I always wore before I got involved in the probe program.” He pulled three keys on a ring out of a pocket. “See this key here? It’s the key to my old apartment, only where is it? Where’s my old apartment?” He held up the key so that she could see it.

“Back in time.”

“You mean we slept for hundreds of years. That’s right; they said we would. Thousands, actually.”

“No, Jeff.” Adele shook her head, and it moved ever so slightly.

“We didn’t?”

“I don’t know. This is hard to explain.”

“But you can.” Jeff’s voice was raspy, and very serious. “I want to hear your explanation.”

“I can’t prove it to you, but I know.” Adele turned to walk nearer the girl who stood looking at the sea.

“I want to hear your explanation,” Jeff said. He sounded more serious than ever. “I may not agree, but I won’t ridicule you. I’ve been wrong before.”

“All right.” Adele stopped, took a deep breath of sea air, and turned to face him. “Do you understand time?”

Jeff shook his head. “Einstein said that time was the fourth dimension, but it’s nothing like the other three. A particle physicist I talked to one time said that time was really different things we were lumping together. I think he said five.”

“I don’t know about that.”

“Neither do I, Adele. I don’t understand time, and I doubt anybody really does.”

“I don’t either.” Adele was confident now. “But I know this about it: It’s not everywhere. Sy thinks it may snow here, and I think he may be right. But there are places where it doesn’t snow.”

She saw that Jeff did not understand her. Another deep breath. “Where’s your watch, Jeff?”

He stared out to sea, but Adele did not speak again. At last he said, “I think they took it from me before I got into the pod.”

“If you had it here . . .” She paused, trying to order her thoughts and so make them clear.

“I don’t.”

“I think it would still run. It would tick away and the hands would move, but it wouldn’t work.” She repeated, “There are places where it never snows.”

Jeff nodded. “Sure.”

“My mother’s boyfriend had a yardstick he kept in the garage. Whenever we got a big snow, he got it out and took measurements. Then he would tell us how deep the snow was.”

Jeff nodded again.

“In a place where it never snowed, his yardstick would still work. It could measure how tall a child was or push something out from under his pickup, but it couldn’t measure snow.”

“Without time . . .”

“Everything happens at once. Ted said that, and he was right. Anything you do, you do.” Adele pointed. “See that girl over there looking at the sea? I stood there looking at the sea, then I went over to where the guys were putting up a Putman Shelter. Only I’m still there, looking at the sea.”

Jeff whistled softly.

“When you got on the ship, did they say you might die? That it would take the ship thousands of years to get there, and you might die right there in the pod?”

He nodded. “There were things back on Earth that I wanted to get away from. Forever.”

“I understand.” Adele tried to take his hand. “Kiss me!”

Jeff tried to put his arms around her. It was like being wrapped in fog. Mist brushed her lips.

When they parted, he gasped and stared, reached for her, and drew his hand back.

“We’re dying.” Adele’s tone was flat, neither sad nor happy. “We’re dying one by one in the pods. When we die, we go here.”

The girl on the rock turned to face them. “I know the name!” Her voice might have been a distant trumpet. “It’s the Sea of Memory!”