Time Travelers Never Die - Jack McDevitt [3]
The door opened. And Shel appeared.
“Hi, Dave,” he said.
PART ONE
ALL THE TIME IN THE WORLD
CHAPTER 1
. . . Gone before
To that unknown and silent shore,
Shall we not meet?—as heretofore,
Some summer morning. . . .
—CHARLES LAMB, “HESTER”
ADRIAN Shelborne, at an early age, fell in love with the ancient world. While most of the kids in his school went to the seashore or to theme parks during vacation, his father, Michael Shelborne, M.A., Ph.D., resident genius at Swifton Labs on the northwest side of Philadelphia, used his downtime to take him and his older brother, Jerry, to the Leaning Tower, the Great Wall of China, the Taj Mahal, and the Great Pyramid. They photographed the Sphinx, walked through the Parthenon, and visited the site of the Alexandrian Lighthouse. But Michael’s interests were universal. The family also rode a cruise ship through the Panama Canal and peered down at the Colorado River from the lip of the Grand Canyon. They visited Victoria Falls when he was eight, and he flew past Mt. Fuji at ten. He’d pleaded with his father for a chance to climb Everest, but that, perhaps, in the elder Shelborne’s words, might be better left for another day. Shel was, in most ways, a typical kid and would have loved to be able to say he’d thrown snowballs from the top of the mountain. But, as most of us do, he became more rational, more cautious, as he grew older. By the time he arrived at thirty, there would have been no way to coax him to undertake such a project. Or, for that matter, to venture too close to the edge of the Grand Canyon.
Everest became the end of the line for it all. Jerry had discovered girls and had never much liked the trips anyhow. He’d wanted to go to Wildwood and sit on the beach all summer. He claimed seniority to his brother in such matters. Consequently, Dad had grown tired of the carping, so the boardwalk took over for the Great Buddha and riding camels across the desert.
Shel’s father had hoped his boys would follow in his footsteps but had given up early on Jerry, who made it clear that he was headed for law school. He’d tried not to put any pressure on Shel. Had told him any number of times, “Do what you want; find what’s important to you.” Still, Shel knew what his father hoped for. Knew he was disappointed in his older son. Moreover, Shel was interested in why people fall when they walk off rooftops, or whether the sky really did go on forever, and if it didn’t, what was out there at the edge of space? So he’d gone to Princeton, majored in physics, turned in a mediocre performance, sweated out his doctorate, and come away with the knowledge that he would never be more than someone who confirmed other people’s findings.
His problem with physics was that he could never quite visualize reality, never understood that space was made out of rubber. That he aged more slowly doing seventy than waiting for his car to warm up. He knew these things to be true, if somewhat exaggerated, but he couldn’t see them.
Shel’s mother had died in an automobile accident when he was four. He’d been with her at the time but had escaped without a scratch. She’d secured him in his car seat, but had neglected to belt herself in. He remembered vividly being thrown against his restraints and the screech of metal being wrenched out of shape and the desperate cries of his mother.
His father had not married again. “There’s no way to replace her,” he’d told his sons, who worried for a time that a strange woman would come into their house.
Then one day in October 2018, when both of his sons were out on their own, Jerry in a law offic e and Shel doing public relations for Carbolite Systems, Michael walked out of the world.
THE first indication that something unusual was going on came in the form of a late-evening phone call. It was his father, who’d been away for several weeks consulting on a government project. “Adrian,” he said. “I wanted to let you know I’m home.”
Shel was surprised. “I didn’t know you were coming.”