The Time Traveler's Almanac

The Ottoman Ice has rapture in it, and before long everything has that tinge of silver, those floating motes of light dancing around the room like emblems of joy. I have another and the waves of heat begin to course up and down my body.

“Are you his brother? You look just like him,” one of the skip-girls asks me. They’re not that quick, skip-girls.

“What’s your name?” I say.

“Sandy.”

All the skip-girls have names like that: Sandy, Cherry, Peta, Ruby. Her lips are full and red and suddenly her little cherubic face sets off some reaction in my stomach. Skip-girls, I think, are gorgeous.

The Ottoman Ice no longer burns in my throat. Now it’s just a soft warmth, as if my throat is adjusting itself to the heat emanating from my body. Through a window on my left the mini-desert stretches out and in the distance I can see a little oasis.

“Can you see that?” I say, but there’s no one beside me. Everyone is at a table about ten feet away. When did we arrive at the observation deck? I wonder. I join them at the table. Dany is still entertaining: he’s charismatic, just as I imagined.

“And there, on the asteroid,” he says, “was what looked like a complex machine or engine, too structured to be natural, I swear. But how much fuel did we have? Who knew? Let’s go down, I said. I mean, here we were, how many light years from home, and there, within arm’s reach is evidence of alien civilisation. Let’s go, I said. Take it now, seize our chance. No, said the captain. Yes, said I. No, he said. When else will we get this chance? I said. We can’t risk it, said the captain. So that was that.” He grins his childlike grin.

Breaths of amazement. I look out over the desert again, not believing a word of it and suddenly we’re in the Turkish steam baths and soaking everything up and my body is on fire. All I can do is lie there, head back as the steam invades my body and I feel like I’m somehow dissolving and becoming the water and the water is me and I’m suddenly aware of Dany above me leaning down and he says, “Look, I’m sorry, okay? I’m sorry.” He touches my shoulder and then walks off quickly and Sandy is looking at me from the sofa as I look over to the Towers from Dany’s penthouse while Christy and Dany are in the bedroom next door.

“You skip-girls,” I say. “You’re so full of life.” I notice her lips again, and this time the freckles on her little round cheeks. She must be in her early twenties, like most skip-girls employed to advertise the Tower, to give it a sense of glamour and sex. She looks out over the city and yawns.

“Do you and Christy work tandem?”

She ignores me and walks to the window. She looks across at the opposite Tower. “It’s amazing, isn’t it? That over there, there’s a whole ’nother city, and that people don’t ever have to leave if they don’t want to. A whole world.”

I walk up behind her, and there are little muscles outlined just so on her back, perfect, as if sculpted from marble.

“I’ve been to all of them,” I say, “every Tower.”

“Wow.”

From the bedroom, I can hear a high-pitched whining, and then I think I hear Christy say, “Oh, yes, that.”

“Each one has my own little mark,” I say. “Soundscape Design. I’m part of the Soundscape Design Team.”

“Really?” Her eyes flicker with interest for a moment.

“Well, you know, part of the team.”

I’m looking down at her and have an urge to lean forward and touch her hair, metallic green and artificial, a typical mark of a skip-girl.

“I’ll be back in a minute,” she says, and she walks swiftly across to the bedroom and is gone. I wait for five minutes and then let myself out.

*   *   *

The next day I spend at home, occasionally staring at my computers and synths, turning them on, pretending I’m going to compose. But it’s too hard and my head feels like it’s been squeezed like a lemon. Oh no, I think, I’m getting old. Once I would have been fine on a day like today, but now my body has perfected the art of sabotage. I wander around distracted, moving from thing to thing, unable to settle. The synths sit in the corner of the room accusingly.

In the afternoon the phone rings and I shuffle towards it, press the button.

“So, what’s he like?” I can see Leila leaning forward, so she can see my expression more clearly on the screen.

“I don’t know.”

“Oh, come on, what’s he like?”

“He’s a great storyteller, I guess. I mean, he had a fan-club all around. You know, charismatic, I guess, kept everyone mesmerised.” I think of Sandy the skip-girl and her full lips, her cherubic face, her metallic hair. Some feeling washes over me that I’d prefer not to acknowledge.

“Is he immature? I bet he’s immature.”

“I don’t know.”

“Christ, Marek, listen to you. It’s always the same with you. You’re still under his spell.”

“I guess he’s young.”

“He must be. He left when he was young.”

“It’s like looking at me, only fifteen years ago … really, like looking back in time. I am, you know, older than him.”

“Yeah: the bastard.” Leila spits the words with satisfaction.

“He’s okay.”