Time Travelers Never Die - Jack McDevitt [60]
But where would humanity be in the far future?
What the hell. He reset the converter to its limit. Took a deep breath. Got on his feet. And pushed the button.
THE stars vanished. Came back. He stumbled forward but did not fall. The flat floor mutated into a grassy slope. The air was cool and clean and smelled of mint. Crickets chirped, and a full moon drifted through the night.
The trees were different. Bigger. There was no sign of his cabin. He looked down at a valley full of light. It came from buildings scattered around the shoreline. But it seemed softer, had less glare, than the sort of artific ial illumination he was used to. Other lights were airborne, moving through the sky, coming and going between a site on the lakeshore and a mountaintop, where they were settling back to earth.
He didn’t recognize any of the constellations. That was, of course, not significant since he didn’t know any back home either, except the Dipper and the Belt of Orion.
The lake was somehow closer. Bigger.
What did people look like in this era? He’d read all the predictions, the notions that humans would plug themselves directly into computers, would shed their skin for titanium shells. That they would achieve virtual immortality.
Should have thought to bring the binoculars. He could still go back and get them, but for the moment he simply stayed and watched.
He wondered about the world outside the Poconos. Philadelphia now would be far older than the pyramids had been in his time. New York and the United States were probably distant memories. If that.
A swirl of light was approaching. He backed against a tree. Keep out of sight. No way to know how friendly these people might be.
It was an aircraft. Flying silently, not more than a few hundred feet high.
Who was in it?
It headed out over the lake. Then he heard the unmistakable sound of a horn. Something like an oboe. And some stringed instruments.
The music was coming from the mountaintop. Where all the lights were.
A voice rose above the trees. He couldn’t make out what it was saying. Then it went quiet, and with a clash of drums and cymbals, a concert began.
Dave sat down, back against a tree, to listen. Despite the fact it was a summer evening, no mosquitoes bothered him.
The music filled the night.
And, most enthralling, each time it stopped, he heard applause.
CHAPTER 16
Here are two points miraculously co-uniting . . . two stories with double Time; separate, and harmonising.
—CHARLES LAMB, THE ESSAYS OF ELIA
IT was time to go home. Dave packed up and locked the cabin. His rib cage delivered only an occasional twinge now, and his eye had long since gotten back to normal. He went down to Starlight Lake and, anxious to get started, settled for coffee and toast. He felt on top of the world. The human race was not only going to survive; it was going to do pretty well for itself.
He told a rather ordinary-looking waitress that she was probably the loveliest woman in the state, left her a fifty-dollar tip, and started for Philadelphia.
He tried driving with the windows halfway down because he loved the air and the smell of the woods, but it was January, and even though it was a relatively nice day, the heater couldn’t begin to compete, so after a few minutes he rolled them back up. He stayed off the expressways and turned onto every two-l ane road he could find, requiring only that it be headed in the right general direction. He passed farmhouses and barns. He cruised through small towns and waved at anybody who looked his way. Some waved back; some might have thought he was a nut. On this third day of the new year, he didn’t care.
Eventually he encountered a series of signs for a place called Shel’s Diner. BEST FOOD NORTH OF THE MASON-DIXON LINE. It sounded like fate calling, so he pulled into the parking area, went inside, and ordered a double cheeseburger. He was way off his diet, but it just didn