The Time Traveler's Almanac

Black Elk took the pipe into his mouth. He closed his eyes for a moment and declared that the Great Spirit would give them a sign if they were meant to go to war. As soon as he said the word, “war”, a paleface materialised among them. They all saw him. The white man’s body was covered in a strange bright garment such as they had never seen, and he rode a fleshless horse with silver bones. The vision vanished as suddenly as it had appeared, leaving them with this message to ponder: Oops.

*   *   *

There was no one home, so he waited on the porch. It was a beautiful day, with a gentle breeze that carried the scent of roses: certainly better than that smoke-filled teepee.

A woman appeared in the distance. He wondered if that was her. But then he saw that it couldn’t be, the woman’s walk was strange and her body was misshapen. She’s pregnant, he realised. It was a common thing in the days of overpopulation, but he couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen a pregnant woman back home – it must have been years. She looked at him questioningly as she waddled up the steps balancing two paper bags. Alan thought the woman looked familiar; he knew that face. He reached out to help her.

“Excuse me,” he said. “I’m looking for Cecily Walker.”

“My name’s Walker,” the woman told him. “But I don’t know any Cecily.”

Matrix, what a moron, Alan thought, wanting to kick himself. Of course he knew the woman; it was Cecily’s mother, and if she was pregnant, it had to be 1948. “My mistake,” he told her. “It’s been a long day.”

*   *   *

The smell of roses had vanished, along with the leaves on the trees. There was snow on the ground and a strong northeasterly wind. Alan set the thermostat on his jumpsuit accordingly and jumped off the bike.

“So it’s you again,” Cecily said ironically. “Another case of perfect timing.” She was twenty pounds heavier and there were lines around her mouth and her eyes. She wore a heavy wool cardigan sweater over an oversized tee-shirt, jeans, and a pair of fuzzy slippers. She looked him up and down. “You don’t age at all, do you?”

“Please can I come in? It’s freezing.”

“Yeah, yeah. Come in. You like a cup of coffee?”

“You mean liquid caffeine? That’d be great.”

He followed her into the living room and his mouth dropped open. The red sofa was gone, replaced by something that looked like a giant banana. The television was four times bigger and had lost the rabbit-ears. The floral wallpaper had been replaced by plain white walls not very different from those of his apartment. “Sit,” she told him. She left the room for a moment and returned with two mugs, one of which she slammed down in front of him, causing a miniature brown tidal wave to splash across his legs.

“Cecily, are you upset about something?”

“That’s a good one! He comes back after fifteen years and asks me if I’m upset.”

“Fifteen years!” Alan sputtered.

“That’s right. It’s 1994, you bozo.”

“Oh darling, and you’ve been waiting all this time…”

“Like hell I have,” she interrupted. “When I met you, back in 1979, I realised that I couldn’t stay in that sham of a marriage for another minute. So I must have set some kind of a record for quickie marriage and divorce, by Danville standards, anyway. So I was a thirty-year-old divorcee whose marriage had fallen apart in less than two months, and I was back to washing my hair alone on Saturday nights. And people talked. Lord, how they talked. But I didn’t care, because I’d finally met my soul-mate and everything was going to be all right. He told me he’d fix it. He’d be back. So I waited. I waited for a year. Then I waited two years. Then I waited three. After ten, I got tired of waiting. And if you think I’m going through another divorce, you’re crazy.”

“You mean you’re married again?”

“What else was I supposed to do? A man wants you when you’re forty, you jump at it. As far as I knew, you were gone forever.”

“I’ve never been away, Cecily. I’ve been here all along, but never at the right time. It’s that drebbing machine; I can’t figure out the controls.”

“Maybe Arnie can have a look at it when he gets in, he’s pretty good at that sort of thing – what am I saying?”

“Tell me, did you ever write the story?”

“What’s to write about? Anyway, what difference does it make? Woman’s Secrets went bankrupt years ago.”

“Matrix! If you never wrote the story, then I shouldn’t even know about you. So how can I be here? Dammit, it’s a paradox. And I wasn’t supposed to cause any of those. Plus, I think I may have started an Indian war. Have you noticed any change in local history?”

“Huh?”

“Never mind. Look, I have an idea. When exactly did you get divorced?”

“I don’t know, late ’79. October, November, something like that.”

“All right, that’s what I’ll aim for. November, 1979. Be waiting for me.”

“How?”

“Good point. Okay, just take my word for it, you and me are going to be sitting in this room right here, right now, with one big difference: we’ll have been married for fifteen years, okay?”

“But what about Arnie?”