Time Travelers Never Die - Jack McDevitt [109]
“I’d like to believe you,” she said. “We’ll see what happens.”
Shel ached to tell her what he knew, to take her out of there and show her what the future held. But he simply asked her to keep the faith.
After the visit, they moved several weeks upstream and watched the demonstration outside the White House that had provoked the arrests. A mob of angry men screaming insults at women carrying signs demanding the right to vote. Calling them pigs and traitors.
Shel just stared as one oversized guy had to be restrained by police from physically attacking Alice.
ARTHUR’S Camelot had an element of danger. But they decided to take a chance on it anyhow. They made several efforts but never found it. Nobody had ever established a precise geographical location for it, nor was there any certainty about the dates of its existence. For that matter, there was serious doubt whether it had existed at all. “If we could take a decent means of transportation back with us,” said Shel, “maybe we could nail it down. But trying to walk all over England isn’t a very efficient way to do this.”
It was while they were wandering around the British forests that Dave surprised him. “It’s good to be away from my classes. It’s one of the advantages of the converters. I can wander off for weeks and not even think about the next essay exam.”
“You don’t like your new classes?” It was September, both at home and here in Britain.
“It’s not the kids. They don’t change from year to year. And I shouldn’t expect them to arrive with unbridled enthusiasm. Instilling that is my job. It’s just—”
“What?”
“When you’ve been looking for Lancelot and Guinevere, declensions get pretty dull.” He stopped for a minute to listen to a scuffle in the branches. “This is going to be my last semester.”
“You’re going to quit?”
“I think so. The time has come.”
“What are you going to do?”
“I’ve made some money at the track.”
“The horses? You’ve been playing the horses?”
“Yes.”
“You’ve been downstream, reading the race results.”
“Once or twice.”
Dave looked as if he didn’t want to say any more. But he shrugged and plowed ahead. “Shel, I have an original oil, a hawk in flight, by N. C. Wyeth. It took everything I had to buy it, back in the twenties. But it’s priceless now. I have bids for it that are out of the world. I’m going to take some of what it sells for, go back, and pick up an abstract desert landscape by Georgia O’Keeffe. I’m going to become an art dealer.”
Shel didn’t like it. But he couldn’t see any harm. “Good luck,” he said, reluctantly.
Dave grinned, pleased that Shel had taken it so well. “There’s room for both of us,” he said.
“Thanks.” Shel didn’t really need the money.
They gave up on Camelot, and made the final stop on their grand tour, though neither knew it at the time, on the beach at Cape Kennedy, July 16, 1969, where they relaxed and watched the launch of Apollo 11.
And the subject came up again. “You know,” said Shel, when it was over and the applause had died down, “I like the idea of collecting art.”
“What did you have in mind?”
“Michelangelo.”
“That’s a good place to start.”
“I mean, why bother with some relatively minor-l eague stuff when we could go get a portrait or something by him?”
“I’m with you.”
“He was only twenty-one when he first went to Rome.”
“And—?”
“Nobody knew yet what he could do. We could pay a visit. Give him a commission. Let him do a sculpture for us. It wouldn’t cost much, and it would encourage him.” He paused and looked out to sea. A freighter was passing. “What do you think?”
“A sculpture of what?”
“I don’t know. Athena would be nice. Maybe we could have him do an Aphrodite, too. One for each of us.”
SHEL, in fact, had been spending time in Philadelphia, circa 2100. It was lovely, delicate, strong, beautiful. All the dire predictions of his own era had proven wrong. Yes, there were still problems, overpopulation primary among them. But world leaders had apparently long since gotten serious, and steps either had been, or were being, taken. Global warming