Time Travelers Never Die - Jack McDevitt [93]
“I can’t do that, son.”
“You talked about a dentist. You could probably use a physical. In any case, you can’t stay here.”
“Why not?”
“Because this isn’t where you belong.”
“You said you saw my grave ahead somewhere.”
“It’s one more reason we want to get you out of here.”
“If I go back with you—”
“Yes?”
“Who’s in the grave?”
“I don’t know. Does it matter?”
“You want to talk about paradoxes. I’m not sure what would happen if you tried to take me back.” He refilled his glass. “Anyhow, I don’t want to go.”
“Dad—”
“I mean it. I like it here. You might find it hard to believe, but it’s a much more social climate than you have at home.”
“Dad, this is getting off track.”
“No, it isn’t. People here spend time together. They visit. They talk to one another. There’s always a party somewhere. Back in Philly, they all watch TV. Or sit at a computer. I don’t want to go back to that.”
“You’re kidding.”
“Do I look as if I’m kidding? Adrian, listen to me.” It seemed as if Dave were no longer in the room. “No matter what I do now, I’m near the end of my life. I’ve been here thirty years, give or take. Look at me. You can barely recognize me. How do we explain that to the people at the lab? To my customers? My neighbors?” He took a deep breath. “I don’t need all that. Let it go.”
“Dad, I can’t just walk away from you.”
“You’re going to have to.”
“No, I don’t.” He looked down at the converter. “I can go back to the year of the supernova. What was it? 1605?”
“Close. It was 1604.”
“Okay. And I’ll pick you up there. After the converter got wet. I suspect you’d welcome a rescue.”
“Yes, I would have. I’ll admit that was a bad time. But please do not do it. Don’t even think about it.”
“Why not?”
“Haven’t you been listening?”
“Hell with it. We do what we have to.”
“And if you do, you go back there and pick me up on the ice, assuming you’re able to do it at all, which I doubt, what do you think happens to me?”
“What do you mean?”
“Me, Adrian. The Michael Shelborne who’s spent a lifetime in Italy, who’s living the good life right now near Florence. What happens to me?”
“I don’t know.”
“You’re proposing a scenario in which I never existed. You take me back in 1604, and I’m gone. My years here don’t exist anymore. Do me a favor. Just leave it alone.
“And stop feeling sorry for me. Listen, Adrian, I have talked politics with Ben Jonson and Connie Huygens. Played chess with Tom Hobbes. Gone horseback riding with Descartes. I showed up at a party one night and Claudio Monteverdi was playing the viol. I knew John Milton when he was a teenager. I’ve talked about the human condition with John Donne. I was in the Globe for the opening performance of King Lear. And I should add that Florence has some of the loveliest and most talented young women I’ve ever seen. And you want to take me away from them?”
“Okay, Dad. I get the point.”
“Good. And as long as you won’t take my advice and stay away from the damned things—” He got up, left the room, and came back with something wrapped in cloth. “You might as well have this, too.” It was his converter. “In case you need an extra.”
Shel took it reluctantly. “I’d rather leave it with you.”
“I’ve no use for it.”
“All right.”
“As far as I know, all it needs is a power source. But run a test. Make sure.”
Albertino brought wine to the table, and Dave offered a toast to Michael Shelborne, the world’s first time traveler.
They touched glasses and drank. “And never forget,” Michael said, “time travelers never die. No matter what you saw up ahead, about me, I’ll always be here.”
CHAPTER 26
There is some awe mixed with the joy of our surprise, when this poet, who lived in some past world, two or three hundred years ago, says that which lies close to my own soul, that which I also had wellnigh thought and said.
—RALPH WALDO EMERSON, “THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR”
IT would be an overstatement to say that Aspasia and her plays were getting substantial attention from the mass media. Sophocles was not exactly a subject to boost ratings, but the mystery surrounding the appearance of