“I’m
not sure how to explain this, but ...”
He
tried. He showed me the device. “Don’t ask me how it works,
though. I’m an engineer, not a physicist. I didn’t even build
it. Found it. All I know is how to make it send me where I want to
go. Excuse me, when I want
to go.”
The crazy thing was, I wasn’t
scared. I mean, what if someone materialized out of thin air right
in front of you? Especially if it were very late a night and you
were alone? I don’t know; maybe I figured that somebody who could
do that could do any thing he please, so what was the point of being
scared? I he wanted me dead – or whatever – I’d be that way.
So I wasn’t scared.
And like I said, he tried to
explain. Someone who means you harm doesn’t usually do that. But
it was all hopeless. Time travel is one of those things that just
can’t be, according to the way my mind works. It’s like ghosts:
even if I saw one with my own eyes, I probably still wouldn’t
believe it. I’m just not the sort of person who can believe things
like that.
Then
he told me who he was,
and I really didn’t believe it. Jesus Christ, he was an old man,
for crying out loud. And me, I was – am – just a kid. Who can’t
even think of himself as being old, for God’s sakes. So how was I
supposed to … ?
“Forget it, then. I didn’t
come here to talk about dumb things, like time paradoxes and the
nature of reality. I’m here for something more important than
that. Come on, I’ll show you.”
He took off across the dunes.
That was also eerie, the way he knew which direction to do. Ever
since my folks bought our summer house home three years ago, I’d
been taking these nightly strolls along the beach when I can’t
sleep, which is often. There’s something about the salt air
(excuse me, dimethyl sulfide laden air) and the rush and crash of
waves and the rustle of grasses in the sand from the breeze, in the
darkness that thrills me me, that opens my mind to things that seem
impossible by day. But how the hell did he know that? Unless he
really was – I shook my head and took off in a trot to catch up
with him.
“If
you didn’t build it then where’d you get it?” I demanded when
I got to him, and once my breathing had calmed down – that’s
another thing about the strolls, it helps my asthma (though the
doctors didn’t know why). “And don’t tell me you
bought it at a store, or some bullshit like that.” I didn’t need
to be told that, obviously.
“I
told you, I sound it.” He stopped for a few moments, a little
winded himself. At his age, who wouldn’t be: then I realized,
maybe it was more than just age, maybe it really was some of me
coming through – “Don’t ask me that,” he shot back at me.
“That I’m sure as
hell not going to tell you.” The he chuckled, as though at some
private joke. “I don’t know; maybe some careless traveler left
it behind. Or maybe I was supposed to find it, so I could come here
and do what I’m doing.” He shrugged. “More dumb stuff. You
might as well ask why any of us are here, or what’s the meaning of
life. Ah, here we are.”
We’d reached the apex of the
highest dune, and were now looking down of the southeastern edge of
the bay. It, as always, was a pretty sight; a waning,
three-quarter’s moon was rising right over the black waters,
sending a dancing rope of yellow light across the waters right to the
shoreline. A bright star hovered just a couple of degrees over her,
and diamond atop a pearl.
“It
is beautiful, seeing it again,” he said wistfully. I thought I
caught some tears at the corners of his eyes, but maybe it was just
the way the moonlight was reflecting from them. “I can see why …
“ He shook his head
again. “Of course, from here, it’s so small.” The he also
chuckled again. “Of course, from there we’re even tinier.
“Come one, sit down. Take a
load off an old man’s legs.”
So
we sat in the sandy grass. I felt the night moisture seep into my
trousers, the way it had the last hundred times I’d been here. And
damn if the old guy didn’t like it as much as I did, his arms
wrapped around his knees, his heels dug into the ground. Spooky as
hell.
And,
believe it or not, we sat like that for a long time, just gazing into
space and feeling that coolness and saying nothing. Which is also
crazy, I know, but it was like he had me hymnotized or something. I
mean, he really just could not be what and who he claimed to be, but
I knew what I’d seen and was seeing and if there were a better
explanation for it I couldn’t think of it, sitting there like that.
I just couldn’t think of a single thing to say or do.
“Look,”
he finally broke the spell, at just about the time I couldn’t take
it any more. “I just want you to know one thing before I begin.
And that is – you’re not nuts. Understand that? You’re not.
I’m not saying there isn’t such a thing as being nuts – believe
me, there is, as you’re going to find out soon enough – but it’s
got nothing to do with you. Not now, and not ever. Understand?”
He
was staring at me hard as he spoke those words. Hard the way, the
way my father did, when he wanted to make sure I got his point.
Genetics? I swallowed. “Yes, sir.”
“Sir?”
His eyes rolled skyward. “OK. No problem. Call me sir if it
makes you feel more comfortable about this. Actually, people don’t
show respect like that much anymore. Maybe they should.”
“But
I’m getting off the subject. Bad habit I’ve gotten into since I
retired, I’m afraid. Retirement gives you too much time to … “
He grinned. “Piss away. Shit, this isn’t easy.”
A
shock went up my spine; no adult had ever used a word like that in my
presence, at least not so carelessly. I made me – well, maybe not
exactly start to believe, but at least wonder. To the point I had to
ask. “I’m really your grandfather?”
“You
want a DNA analysis or something? No, don’t answer that; I
shouldn’t have said it. Look, maybe if I tell you what I retired
from it’ll make thinks easier. See that point of light above the
moon?” He gestured skyward, at the gleam I’d noticed earlier.
“Well, that’s the planet Jupiter. That’s where I worked.
Well, of course not on Jupiter itself; we were actually in orbit
around Europa, one of the big moons. But that’s not important.
What is important is what I was doing there. You know what that was?
Building the first interstellar space ship. That’s right, the
first ship to go to the stars. There. How does that grab you?”
I
don’t know what made me say it. I guess it was just too much for
me to grasp all at once. But looking back, it was a pretty stupid
thing to say. “It grabs me just fine, I guess.”
“You
guess? You guess? Jesus Christ Almighty! Don’t you have
any idea ... we’re going to the stars, boy! To the stars!”
That’s
really the way he said it. You should have seen his face then: it
was all lit up, as lit up as the moon before us. I swear, you could
have read by the light of his face. All of which, again, I know
should have made me scared, but it didn’t. In fact, I really
didn’t know how to react. I guess it was just too big a thing for
my mind, at least at that moment. The stars? He might as well about
going to the – the – well, about going to the stars.
And
then the strangest thing happened. OK, a lot of strange things
happened that night, but in my mind this was the strangest. Damn if
the old guy didn’t look at me – directly at me, into my eyes,
into my soul, whatever is in me that is me – as if he
understood exactly what was going on inside me. And then he touched
me. He put a hand on my shoulder, squeezed a little, then patted me
before letting go. His eyes were full of understanding. And, though
I did comprehend why at that moment, pity as well. Which finally did
scare me, a little.
“Sorry,”
he said. “You have to understand. I can’t tell you too much;
you could do things with that knowledge that … and the worst thing
is, you’d do them from the best of intentions. That’s – part
of what makes this so hard.
“But
you’ve got to know something to get by. So I’m going to tell you
some stuff. But – and no shitting me here, you have to promise
this and keep your promise like you’ve done before in your life. I
mean, even though you’re still a kid. Because this is serious
stuff. You can’t tell anybody about it, for one thing. Nobody.
Understand? No one else can ever know.”
He
went on and on about how important it was to keep my mouth shut, but
it wasn’t necessary because I’d already decided that. And not
because people would think I was crazy, because I’m smart enough to
know that if you know the future you can prove it; you can bet on
who’s going to win the World serious and things like that. But I’m
also smart enough to know why you shouldn’t. If people really are
going to go to the stars, I’m sure as hell not going to mess that
up.
I
guess my sincerity showed through, too, because finally he stopped
and nodded his head. “OK. This is – what? The late 1950s?
Let’s start by telling you that there’ll be men on the moon in a
little over ten years.”
Ten
years? I nearly gaggedin disbelief. For Christ’s sakes.
But
my reaction didn’t phase him at all. “That’s right, ten years.
The next president of the United States will whip up public
enthusiasm for a crash program, and we’ll do it – well, pretty
much – like he’ll say we will. More or less; nothing ever works
out exactly as planned – you know, Murphy’s Law and all that.
But we’ll do it, almost right on schedule, just like he said. Er,
says.”
He
stopped for a moment and let me work on that. I gazed out again,
into space, at that world hanging in the sky which looked so close
and yet so impossibly far away at the same time. I felt like a baby
just learning how to walk being told he was about to leap across the
Grand Canyon. I mean, the moon … just the though still makes me
dizzy. “Wow.”
He
gave me that look again and grinned. “Knew you’d like
hearing that part.” Then his face got sober, and I mean really
sober. Scary sober. “Now the part you won’t like. You see, you
won’t care very much when it happens. “Because while it is
happening you’re going to be hiding in a jungle halfway around the
world, trying not to get your brains blown out.” He let me work on
that too, and for longer this time. “Oh, you’ll survive. A lot
of your buddies though – guys you really care about, like brothers
– won’t, but you will. And that will mess with your head for a
long time, because you’ll wonder why they died and you didn’t;
but like I said, that’s just dumb stuff. I told you, we’re going
to the stars, and that’s the thing you want to keep in mind, no
matter what happens.”
Again
that look, just like before, only this time he kept his hands to
himself. Then a sort of weird, half grin arose on his face; no a
grin of amusement, but of something else – irony, I think they call
it. “You’re probably wondering why I’m telling you this,
especially after saying I couldn’t tell much at all,” accompanied
the grin. “Part is because you told me I would, of course. But
that’s not the real reason.”
“It
isn’t?” I tried not to tremble when I asked that, but the
shivering came through despite my best efforts. I mean, Jesus, why
he just said to me…
“No.”
He started to explain, then thought some. “You see, being through
a war isn’t the worst thing that’s going to happen to you. I
said we’ll go to the moon. But then – then we’ll pretty much
stop. No more lunar landings, no pushing on to other planets,
building space colonies, or any of the other things a lot of us
thought we’d do. Oh, we’ll still have manned space missions, but
they’ll be routine stuff; the only missions to other worlds will be
unmanned probes – very clever probes, but unmanned nonetheless.
And the politicians will cut back on the space budget more and more
every year. And worst of all, hardly anybody will do anything to
stop it – oh, some daring entrepreneurial types will make some
waves, but that’ll be about it.
“All
of which is going to be unbearable to you. See, you don’t know it
yet, boy – excuse me, grandpa – but you’ve got the soul of a
dreamer inside you. I knew that growing up and listening to your
stories about Apollo--” he bit his lip, as though he’d said
something he knew he shouldn’t “-- and those heady days of humans
first getting their feet off this planet and all that. The way your
face would light up up whenever you talked about it. But even if I
hadn’t, I could tell it now, jst looking at you. “It’s in your
eyes. The way you seem to see beyond whatever mundane things are in
front of you at the moment.
“That’s
why the end of the Moon missions is going to be so hard on you.
You’ll barely be back from Nam – that’s what you’ll call the
place where the war will be – when not only will you realize that
all that fighting for your country was just a scam, but that your
country was throwing away its future too. That your buddies died for
nothing. That’s when … when … there’s no nice way to put it:
that’s when you’ll crack up. End up in a rehab. On dope and
suicidal.”
He
looked apologetic, telling me all this, which, more than anything,
told me he was telling the truth. Which made me start to cry, at
least on the inside …
“Sorry
to be telling you these things,” he said. “But they’re going
to happen whether I tell you or not, so you might as well know.
Besides, and now you’re got to understand, this is the real point
of my being here: believe me, I wouldn’t take the chance, screwing
with history like this, if it weren’t so important.
“See,
you survive all that too. Because, at least it’s what I believe,
you did know. Because I had come back and told you all that’s
going to happen, and that it was going to turn out all right in the
end.”
But
it was too late for comfort. “All right? All right?!” I tell
you, I’ve never raised voice at an adult, and I hope to God I never
do it again because it felt so awful – screaming at an old man with
all my strength. And didn’t care. “God damn you! How
can you come here and tell me all this, and then say it’s all
right! It’s the most horrible thing I’ve heard in my life!
Jesus Christ; I wish I were dead right now. I wish ...”
It
was my chance to go on and on, and I really let him have it, with
all the cursing I could think of between the tears that were flowing
freely from my eyes; until I was bawling incoherently, to nobody and
everybody in particular and the hell with everything and everybody
but mostly I just wanted to kill the old bastard, even if her really
was my grandson. Shit. Fuck.
And here’s the – OK, the
second strangest thing. He just sat there and took it. Try to
imagine what you would happen if you went after an adult that way,
but that’s not what happened at all. He wasn’t even mad. No, it
was weirder than that: he actually seemed scared himself, as though
he were the kid being bawled at and me the adult. He even looked on
the edge of crying himself.
Which was good, because it
calmed me down and let me think: we’re going to the stars,
remember? And that gave him the chance to pull himself together and
tell me the rest. “Jump ahead about forty years from the end of
Apollo – the moon missions. People start talking about going to
other worlds again: this time, Mars. Problem is, it sounds
hopeless: a bunch of experts get together and calculated it will
take a few hundred billion dollars, all of which nobody, not even
most space enthusiasts, wants to do.
“But then along comes people
like Bob Zubrin and Elon Musk, who show it can be done at about a
tenth of that price, and within a decade. And well, never mind mind
the details – like I said, nothing ever works exactly according to
plan – but eventually we do it. And by we, I mean all of humanity
– the French, Chinese, Russians, Japanese … I can’t remember
all of them, but those were the major players, along with a host of
others. We got to Mars and set up a permanent station, then a real
colony, then … then the whole thing just took off. Back to the
moon, the asteroids, then the outer planets ...” He sighed
wistfully. “I wish I could tell you everything. Especially as --”
He stopped there, quite
suddenly. But it was too late, for I already knew why. “Especially
as I won’t be around to see it, you mean,” I finished the
statement for him.
He fought for a few seconds
before conceding with a nod. “Yes. But you’ll see enough.
That’s why I’m here, telling you. You’ve got to get through
the hard times, and you won’t if you don’t know this. Besides,
you don’t have to see it to know it will happen. Besides, you
don’t have to see it to know it’ll happen. Hey, I won’t see us
get to the stars, but I know it will happen; which is what got me
through my hard times.”
There was that twinkle in his
eye again when he said that. And this time, when he looked up at the
sky, it was not at the moon or Jupiter but someplace else; someplace
I couldn’t make out because if there were any stars there they were
too dim for me to see.
I knew he was inviting the
question; hell, daring me to ask it. “How do you know?”
The answer was so obvious I
should have guessed it. He pulled out the device and cradled it in
his hands. “What do you think I do with this thing when I get
back? Toss it out?” He shook his head. “You see, my
grandchild is going to be on that first star ship. Your
great-great-granddaughter. And I know she’s going to make it
because when I was your age I had a visit like the one you’re
having now. And let me tell you, if you think what I’ve told you
is hard to believe … that I wish I could tell you. But she told me
I couldn’t, because of what she said her granddaughter told her.
“But I’ve already said
more than I should.” He struggled to his feet, in that slow,
deliberate way older people do, not like it’s so hard but like they
have to do it just right, and methodically brushed the sand off his
trousers. “It’s time I should be getting back.” He put a hand
out when I leapt to my feet to protest. “It’s been a pleasure
meeting you, grandfather,” he cut me off. “Especially from such
a different perspective than the one I remember.”
“But – “
That was as far as I got,
however. He took a few steps back, touched the device, and faded
into nothingness the same way he’d appeared, leaving me in my dark
solitude. I started to shout something, as though my voice could
carry across the decades, but caught to foolishness of that in time.
He was gone. I’d never see him again until … well, until I was
the elder and he the child with so much future ahead of him. If,
that was, I believed any of what happened this night.
I stood there for a while
longer, trying to take it all in, to make sense of what I’d just
experienced. I finally decided that the only explanation that made
any sense was that I’d fallen asleep out here on the dunes and
dreamed the whole thing. But of course I didn’t really believe
that for one moment; how could I have …. ?
Didn’t matter, though. I
mean, in a few years I’ll know the truth, but standing there,
gazing at those distant worlds and what lay beyond them, I realized
that none of what had just happened had to be true to mean something.
You see, even if it is just a dream, it’s a dream I can live by.
And sometimes that’s all a person needs to keep going. Even for a
kid.
Especially when the dream is
real.
