Time Travelers Never Die - Jack McDevitt [108]
“No,” he said. No. He didn’t want to call it a night. Didn’t want to say good-bye. He could imagine himself coming back to this evening, watching from across the street as they left the Lamplight, as he had watched himself and Erin at the cabin, regretting he had let her go. And yet what other choice did he have?
“You feel like dancing?” she said.
She knew a good spot, so they went across town. It was his first attempt at doing the Charleston, and she seemed mildly surprised that he was less than accomplished. From there they went to the Flamingo for a nightcap. And then it was over and the taxi was pulling up in front of her apartment house, and she was inviting him in.
But he passed. “Wiped out,” he said. He asked the taxi to wait while he walked her to the door. He kept thinking never again. Thinking how he would miss her. When he drew her into his arms, all the suppleness was gone.
She knew.
“I’ll be in touch,” he said.
HE had an option: He could tell her the truth and bring her forward to 2019. When he got home, he googled her, hoping there’d be no record of her, or at least nothing beyond the time when they’d met. Sandra Myers, a beloved math teacher at Duke who, on a summer night in 1937, vanished utterly. No trace of her was ever found. . . .
Unfortunately, he saw that she’d married in 1939, two years after Durham, to a David Collins.
Another David.
They’d had a son. When World War II broke out, Collins went into the Navy. He apparently spent most of the war in the Pacific , was at Midway and Guadalcanal, won a Purple Heart in the Philippine Sea during the Great Marianas Turkey Shoot, and had been at Leyte Gulf. He’d been decorated, and returned a hero. Eventually, he and Sandy had had another son and a daughter.
After the war, they’d settled in Durham. Sandy stayed on at Duke, and made a reputation as a theorist. She’d written two books on math, Biomath and Universal Mathematics, and eventually made a name for herself as a popular scientific essayist. There were some pictures of her from those early years, including one as a bride.
She’d died in 1993 at the age of 81.
HE went back to Durham one more time after that, took her to dinner again, and told her the story about getting engaged. (He hadn’t been able to bring himself to do it over the phone.) “I’m going to ask her next weekend,” he said. “I wanted you to know.”
She took it well. Better than he’d liked. But she nodded, bit off a piece of steak, and chewed it for a long time. “I’m glad you told me,” she said.
“I’m sorry.”
“I guess it wasn’t easy for you.” She managed a smile, a weak one, and pushed the mostly uneaten dinner away. “Good luck with it.”
“Thank you.”
Then she was gone. He wanted to tell her that “These Foolish Things” would always be their song. But he didn’t dare.
PART THREE
TIME OUT OF JOINT
CHAPTER 32
If the first woman God ever made was strong enough to turn the world upside down all alone, these women together ought to be able to turn it back, and get it right side up again.
—SOJOURNER TRUTH (ISABELLA VAN WAGENER)
THE forays into the historical past continued unabated. In what they’d hoped would be a highlight of their adventures, Shel and Dave introduced themselves to Archimedes, but the conversation never really went anywhere. Archimedes simply had better things to do than entertain two barbarians.
They had no more luck with Solon. The great lawgiver explained that he’d enjoy talking with them, but he was busy at the moment.
Still, those were the exceptions. In the Yukon, in 1911, they spent a week whooping it up in every saloon along the Klondike with Bob Service. Looking for comedy, they took in the A.D. 67 Olympics, which had been hijacked by Nero. The Emperor turned it partially into a musical contest, in which he won every event he entered. And he also won the chariot race, despite falling out of the vehicle during one of the turns.
They visited Alice Paul in a Virginia prison in 1917, and assured her that her cause would triumph. Women would get everything