Alien Abduction, page 5
No matter how much they may disagree about details, everyone who lives a billion years hence is interested in intelligent design. Everyone, the traveler assured me, is trying with all his might to make the design of life and the design of destiny better than any kind of nature could ever contrive unaided. No one then seriously expects that the Phoenix will never die again, but everyone is determined to make sure that it becomes as glorious as possible before some cosmic accident puts an end to their particular adventure. It certainly sounded like a world that was—will be—very different from this one. I think he was trying to be kind when he said I wouldn’t like it, trying to soften the blow of his not being able to take me with him.
Obviously, I couldn’t get my head around all of this immediately, and I knew that we were running out of time. Rather than simply let him ramble on—as he surely would have done—I started asking questions again, in the hope of focusing his account on matters of more immediate interest.
“And the time travel is part of that project, is it?” I asked him. “You’re trying to apply intelligent design to the past as well as the future—laying the foundations for your wonderful world by inventing things like the bacterial flagellum and dumping them in the pre-Cambrian. Why doesn’t it lead to paradoxes? Or are you just hiving off new alternative prehistories into an infinite manifold of possible worlds?”
“Time travel is part of the project,” he agreed, “but not in the way you mean. There’s only one Earth, only one history of life. We need to understand it, but we can’t change it. We can sample it, in certain relatively unobtrusive ways, but it’s mostly a matter of copying information for future use.”
“Only one Earth and only one history of life?” I said. “What about all the other worlds in the universe—all the other Phoenixes? Surely ours will develop space travel eventually, even if humans die out before we can master the trick—and even if our world doesn’t, some of the others surely will.”
“Maybe,” he said. “We don’t know. Our view is that space travel simply isn’t practical.”
“Unlike time travel?”
“Time travel is definitely practical, provided that you’re very careful. The lay-by’s just up ahead.”
If the road was really a road, then the lay-by was probably really a lay-by—but I didn’t believe it. I pulled off just the same, and parked the car. There was nothing outside but the shadows of trees; I couldn’t tell whether they were oaks or ashes.
“Where were you going, in your very careful fashion, when that deer got in your way?” I wanted to know.
“Home,” he said. He was being annoying again, probably to pay me back for the ironic remark about his very careful fashion.
“Where had you been, then?” I asked. “Collecting dinosaurs?”
“Much further back than that,” he told me. “Collecting alternatives to DNA, from the era when there was a chemical contest to determine the fundamentals of Earthly life. You can imagine how many individual moments I had to pass through in a five-billion-year journey. They were all supposed to be vacant of solid material—until you changed history.”
“Me!” At first I was outraged, but then I caught on to what he meant. I’d been supposed to hit the deer. The deer shouldn’t have jumped sideways. But he was still wrong. It hadn’t been me who’s changed history—his history—but the deer. I remembered the way it had looked at me before it left the scene of the accident…if it really had been an accident.
The time traveler had implied that history couldn’t be changed, but what he’d actually said was that he and his kind couldn’t change it, and it seemed to me that his remarks about the practicality of time travel might imply that he actually meant “wouldn’t” rather than “couldn’t”. For them, perhaps, there really might be only one time-track, one history of Earthly life…but they weren’t arrogant enough to think that they would be the end of the Phoenix’s story, or the very last word in intelligent design, and they weren’t stupid enough to think that everything they couldn’t do was necessarily impossible or impractical.
“Your friends might not be able to come and pick you up,” I said. “If that bloody animal wiped out the history of the next billion years, your entire world might have been blanked out of existence.”
“They’re already here,” he countered, smugly, pointing to the driving mirror.
When I’d pulled into the lay-by it had only been big enough to accommodate one car, but now there was an empty space behind us, in which another vehicle was forming. It didn’t have its headlights on, but its shadowy form was uncannily similar to a Volkswagen Polo.
The thing that got out of the driving seat, however, didn’t look anything like me. It was wearing a plastic bag, but it looked vaguely reminiscent of a shaggy crocodile walking on its hind legs, although it bore about as much resemblance to a twenty-first-century croc as a twenty-first-century croc does to a lichen-encrusted warthog.
The time-traveler turned towards me, and stuck out his hand. “I’m truly sorry about the gun,” he said. “I didn’t know you as well then as I do now. You’ve been you for an entire lifetime, so you’re probably used to that awful chaos and confusion of motive and desire, fantasy and perception, but it was all extremely strange and disturbing to me.”
He opened the door as he was speaking. The car’s internal light came on. I saw that the cuts and bruises had almost healed, and that his features were almost exactly like those I see in a mirror when I shave—except, of course, that they were the wrong way round. I’m not the most symmetrical person in the world, alas.
Automatically, I took the hand in my own and shook it.
“You couldn’t give me a few tips, I suppose,” I said. “Tactics for avoiding the worst effects of the world’s impending end—that sort of thing.”
“Study Stone Age survival techniques and move to Antarctica,” he said. “That’s if you want to drag it out. Otherwise, don’t wait too long before buying that antique revolver and blowing your brains out.”
“I really would like to come with you,” I said. “I might not like your world, but.…”
“No can do, Jim,” he said. “Very sorry. Thanks for the lift. Just turn around and go back the way we came. You’ll be home in no time at all.” Then he shut the door, and walked back to the other car with the shaggy crocodile in the plastic bag. They seemed to be arguing about something as they went, but they certainly weren’t doing it in English.
The time-traveler got into the other Volkswagen’s passenger seat. The vehicle moved off a minute or so later, swerving past me and continuing along the road in the direction of the unknown.
For a couple of minutes I thought about following it, but I knew that time travel couldn’t possibly be as simple as that, and that I’d probably get lost in limbo. Doomed or not, the familiar world seemed the more attractive option. I put the car into gear, did another three-point turn, and headed back the way I’d come.
I had a lot to think about, and whatever the time traveler had said about “no time at all” I’d had a very long day. I was so used to the fake road being empty that I wasn’t really paying attention. I didn’t notice the road become real again, and I didn’t see the deer until it was far too late.
It wasn’t a big deer—a roe deer, I think, and not fully grown at that. I braked hard, but I knew it wouldn’t be hard enough, because the damn thing just stood stock still until I hit it. In the last split second before the impact, I stopped wondering whether it might be the same deer as before, realizing that it had to be exactly the same deer. This time, though, it wasn’t going to leap aside. This time, the time traveler’s history would be conserved.
The luckless deer slammed into the windscreen, and the windscreen broke. A deer—even one that’s hardly more than a fawn—can really make a mess of your face when it’s traveling along with the shards of a windscreen at God-only-knows-how-many miles per hour, but it didn’t knock me unconscious. To tell the truth, I think most of the blood must have been the deer’s, not mine. I was able to bring the car to a halt, unbuckle my seat belt and step out on to the road.
“The bastard,” I said. “I wonder whether he and his mate fixed things so that it never bloody happened, or whether the dent in history was just snapping back into shape.” I was glad, though, that I still remembered every moment of what had happened, even if it hadn’t happened any longer. Neither he nor history had been able to take that away from me.
I couldn’t be absolutely sure, of course. How could I begin to guess what the temporal AA, or the natural resilience of the time-stream, might be able to achieve?
I stuck the deer in the boot, although rumor has it that collecting road kill still counts as poaching in the eyes of the law. I got a friend in the business to butcher it for me, and split the legs and rump with him. Unfortunately, every time I eat a bit I remember the way the damn thing looked at me that first time, immediately after it had caused the time machine to crash. I don’t know for sure, but it still seems to me that the deer had known what it was doing. Perhaps, in some parallel universe, it still does—but in ours, it seems, intelligent designers seem to be content to work in less ambitious and more mysterious ways.
CHAPTER THREE
TAKING THINGS SERIOUSLY
In most of the places that Steve had hung out in the course of his life, a story like Jim’s would have got a round of deeply ironic but sincerely admiring applause, assuming that the audience could have tolerated its enormous length—which was unlikely, given the shortage of modern attention spans. Even respectful applause, however, was evidently not de rigueur at AlAbAn meetings. When Jim finished he was greeted with a polite murmur of approval and an assortment of sage nods.
Steve hadn’t been planning to tell his story anyway, even if there had been time left for a second one, but he realized immediately that he was going to have to remember a great deal more, and organize it far more comprehensively, before he could even begin to think about taking the floor in Amelia Rockham’s front room. Even if Jim’s performance wasn’t typical, it had certainly set a standard. Steve wasn’t the kind of person to obsess about the possibility of falling below an established standard, but he felt obliged to make some effort to uphold the honor of the teaching profession, science, and youth.
The group was not only scrupulously polite, Steve observed, but exceedingly stubborn in maintaining its supportive appearances. When Walter Wainwright invited questions and comments, the gist of the opening remarks was that Jim’s experience must have been unusually disturbing, and that he was obviously coping with it extremely well, not only emotionally but intellectually and imaginatively.
Jim, who had obviously been slightly worried about the kind of reception he might get, even though he had scouted out the group before diving in head-first, blossomed in the warmth of the praise. He admitted that he was, indeed, coping very well, not only emotionally but intellectually and imaginatively, and that he was a fortunate man to be able to pass on the legacy of his experience to such understanding people.
Steve was mildly surprised that nobody even ventured to hint, let alone to suggest forthrightly, that Jim might have fallen asleep at the wheel and hallucinated the whole experience—or the ideative seed that he had since nurtured and brought to maturity by careful confabulation—in the split second before or after he hit the deer. Nor did anyone imply, by the merest word or gesture, that he might simply be telling a tall tale. Indeed, it seemed to Steve that some of the private glances exchanged between the group members were signaling that Jim’s story had made even more sense to them than it had to its teller, not just because it dovetailed with their own experiences but because their own experiences cast some light on its murkier elements. Steve was tempted, just for a moment, to throw a spanner into the works by making some slyly snide remark, but he didn’t have to make an effort to suppress the temptation; it withered and died of its own accord.
“That wasn’t quite what I expected,” he whispered in Janine’s ear.
“Nor me,” she replied. She was looking across the room at Milly, who was nodding sagely and making murmurous approving noises along with everyone else, and who seemed to have identified as forcefully with the narrator as anyone else had. Neither of the women who sat to either side of Milly, one of whom looked to be in her thirties and the other in her forties, could match her robust figure, but they didn’t seem at all frail: there was color in their cheeks and a marked liveliness in their manner a they fed on one another’s fascination and good will.
None of which signifies, Steve thought, that they’re anything but completely crazy, intoxicated by the chance to pool their craziness. Such was the atmosphere of the meeting, however, that Steve felt ashamed of the judgment as soon as he’d formulated it. He decided, on due reflection, that it didn’t matter whether he believed Jim’s story or not, or whether anyone else really believed it, or even whether Jim believed it himself. It was the kind of story that had to be treated earnestly and represented as actual experience in order to take full effect. If it were only to be reckoned a traveler’s tale, like a mariner’s account of singing mermaids, a salesman’s account of some farmer’s daughter or a scaremonger’s account of a brief encounter with a maniac serial killer, it had to be treated exactly as the members of AlAbAn were treating it in order to generate its particular frisson—and that frisson was something to be valued in itself, as a kind of intoxication far more delicate than alcohol or ecstasy could produce. As someone who prided himself on being a connoisseur of delicacy, Steve thought, he ought to be wholeheartedly in favor of that kind of thrill.
Amelia Rockham made a second huge pot of tea, although many of her guests politely refused, and began to drift away in ones and twos. Steve and Janine waited politely until Milly signaled that she was ready to depart, and then they bid farewell to their hostess and Walter Wainwright before making their way back to the Citroen.
“Is it always like that?” Janine asked Milly, as they got into the car.
“The group, yes,” Milly said. “The story wasn’t typical, by any means. Most are closer to the stereotype: little aliens in saucer-shaped spaceships, with operating tables and bright lights, with or without lengthy dialogues in which one of the aliens explains the reason for the whole enterprise, usually involving the imminent extinction of the human race by virtue of nuclear war or ecocatastrophe, or both.”
“Is that the sort of thing that happened to you?” Steve asked, tilting his head so that he could see Milly’s face in the mirror.
“Yes and no,” she replied, shortly, blushing.
“Have you told your story to the group yet?” Janine asked, as Steve switched the engine on.
“No,” Milly said. “Nobody hassles you to tell, if you’re not ready, I think Walter might worry about me, a little—he makes paternal comments occasionally—but the others have the patience of saints.”
“I’ve seen that kind of paternal interest before,” Steve said. “Some teachers are the same way—the kind who used to be always patting the kids on the head or the knee, before all physical contact was outlawed. It’s usually harmless, of course—the ones who fantasize about taking it further don’t last long in the profession—but it’s still slightly suspect.”
“Walter’s not like that,” Milly replied, with conviction. “He’s absolutely sincere.”
“That’s the salesman’s motto, isn’t it?” Steve said, as he headed off towards Alderbury. “Sincerity is the key—once you can fake that, you’re made. Did you say that he was an insurance salesman, in his working days?”
“I don’t know,” Milly said. “I think someone mentioned once that he used to work for the Prudential, but I’ve no idea what his job was.”
Steve couldn’t suppress a brief smirk. Walter Wainwright, the man from the Pru, he thought. Back in the days when the outfit prided itself on the individual attention it gave its customers, always sending its agents round to collect premiums, long before England became the Empire of the Financial Advisers. Aloud, he said “Is there something going on between him and Amelia Rockham?”
“I doubt it, at their age” Milly said, dryly. “They’ve known one another for years—since they were our age, at least, and probably since their schooldays. Amelia told me once that they knew one another before they married their respective spouses, and there might have been a wistful note in her voice, but I’d hesitate to drawn any conclusions from that. They’re both widowed now, though, and they seem to be close—they certainly see one another outside the meetings, although I doubt that it involves any hot sex. I’d like to think our friendship would last as long as that, wouldn’t you, Jan?”
“Yes, I would,” Janine replied, “Although it’s bound to be difficult once people start pairing off and getting married.”
“I’ve got no plans,” Milly said, “and Alison seems to specialize in dating men who are already married nowadays. How about you?”
Steve glanced sideways, knowing that it would be Janine’s turn to blush. She didn’t reply to Milly’s provocative question.
“It needn’t matter, anyway,” Milly said, as soon as it became clear that Janine had no comment to make. “None of us would marry the kind of husband who’d monopolize us, would we? We’d carry on being friends no matter what.”
“We ought to get together with Ali next week,” Janine said. “It’s been too long.”
“Absolutely,” Milly said. “She’s bound to have some tales to tell. She’s well on her way to becoming the Town Hall tart. Have you met Alison, Steve?”
“No,” Janine answered for him. “I’ve explained that boy-friends aren’t allowed on our girls’ nights out.”
“We could arrange something more decorous that he wouldn’t find quite as shocking,” Milly suggested. “A weekend excursion to the coast, maybe.”
