The Time Traveler's Almanac

“You were too young when he left. I was what, eight? You, though, you were too young. That’s your problem. That’s why you can’t see.”

“He used to play with us though, remember? He used to build things with us, little ships that flew through the air, orbited that old planet we had hanging in our room. Remember that?”

Leila grimaces a moment. “He hit mum. Remember that? He hit mum.”

“She loved him. She waited for him all her life.”

“You’re both as bad as each other. Both of you. Look where it got her, Marek.”

“You’re the one calling to find out.”

“Fine. Listen, gotta go. Why don’t you come over for dinner?”

But I’m off the phone and I put Mozart on with the volume up. I close my eyes and lean back in the chair as the chorus comes in: Requiem aeternam dona eis, Domine, et lux perpetua luceat eis.

*   *   *

I meet Dany again the following week up in the Towers. His makeup is gone, he is in the latest fashion – as far as I can tell – all straight sharp lines and black, of course. It’s always black.

“Have you seen this holographic porn?” he asks. “It’s amazing, really, I mean, God.”

I lean from one foot to the other, wondering what to say.

“God,” he says, “some of those girls. Some of those positions.” He shakes his head.

To change the subject I say, “Remember we used to play with little ships that flew around a toy planet?”

He cocks his head. “Do you still have those?”

I nod.

“Christ, I loved those little things,” he says.

“You can come to my place and see them if you want.”

“No, can’t. I’ve got to get ready.”

“What for?”

“We’re going back.”

“Back?”

“The machine. We’re supposed to examine the alien machine.”

“But there is no machine,” I say, calling his bluff.

He shakes his head for a second, then adds, “No, you’re right. There isn’t.” He walks into the bedroom and I am left shifting my balance from foot to foot. Then he’s back again: “Here, I have something for you: I brought it back for her, but now I want you to have it. It’s from Centauri.” He leans over and passes me a piece of strange, black swirling rock, attached to a chain, alien and beautiful.

“She died of cancer, you know. Even now cancer takes people.” I hold the rock in my hand, and now I want to cry again, but in a different way. I want to reach out to him.

“Wanna go to a strip show?”

“Uh, I don’t know.”

“I know! I know just the place: baths! That’s one thing you miss in space: real water to float in. Come on.”

So I follow him to the elevator, and we rise, past the eighteen hundreds, nineteen hundreds, and then at twenty-two hundred we’re off the elevator and into the cavernous deck of the shuttle-port. Shuttles taxi around like strange beetles threatening to burst into flight at any moment. Others line a far wall at an angle.

“What are we doing?”

“We’re going to Holsen’s Tower, north.”

“By shuttle?”

“Yep.”

There is a line of taxis along the walkway and Dany presses a button, there’s a quick sound as the pressurised door opens – shhht – and we hop in.

The shuttle is a lot smaller on the inside than I imagined, only one long seat facing forward, a series of panels across the back of the seat in front. A glass window so we can see the driver, who has great rolls of fat at the back of his head and neck. The taxi shuttles across the tarmac, turns left, and I can see the runway, which opens out into the clear blue of the sky. We sit for a moment and another shuttle emerges slightly in front of us, lines itself up with the runway, stops for a minute and then suddenly its burners are a deep red, the air behind it shimmers, and it is gone.

Our taxi starts to shudder and I take a gasp of breath: surely we’re not going to be able to fly. We’ll get to the end of the runway and plummet to our deaths. This taxi, I realise, will crash. This is the one, the one out of a million that will break down in mid-flight, lose power, send us to our deaths. The unbelievable shuddering as we power along the runway confirms this, and I close my eyes. Suddenly the shuddering stops and I open them again, afraid of what I might see, and sure enough, beneath us the great metropolis lies like a model of itself. I gasp. Good God, there’s nothing holding us up.

“You can let go of my hand now.” Dany laughs.

“This is the first time I’ve flown.”

“It’s all right. It’ll be all right.” He gives my hand a squeeze and I feel calmer.

“Look,” he says. “Look at the city off there in the distance. Isn’t it beautiful? Like a ruined civilisation.”

The little city does look like an ancient ruin. As if it has been through a storm that left some of the weaker buildings as rubble, or just a few walls surrounding a mess, while others it stripped of their outer layer, leaving their mottled undercoats visible.

“I have a son down there.”

“Really? What’s his name?”

“Max.”

“You didn’t want to give him a Czech name? Keep your mother’s tradition?”

“No. We’re not Czechs anymore. Would you like to meet him?”

He sits for a while in silence, and then says, “You know, I think I would.”