Poul Anderson - There Will Be Time

VIP免费

2024-12-22 0 0 274.87KB 92 页 5.9玖币

侵权投诉

THERE

WILL

BE TIME

by Poul Anderson

NELSON DOUBLEDAY, INc. Garden City, New York

Published by Arrangement with

THE NEW AMERICAN LIBRARY INC.

1301 Avenue of the Americas New York, New York 10019

Printed in the United States of America

FOREWORD

BE AT EASE. I'm not about to pretend this story is true. First, that claim is

a literary convention which went out with Theodore Roosevelt of happy memory.

Second, you wouldn't believe it. Third, any tale signed with my name must

stand or fall as entertainment; I am a writer, not a cultist. Fourth, it is my

own composition. Where doubts or gaps occur in that mass of notes, clippings,

photographs, and recollections of words spoken which was bequeathed me, I have

supplied conjectures. Names, places, and incidents have been changed as seemed

needful. Throughout, my narrative uses the techniques of fiction.

Finally, I don't believe a line of it myself. Oh, we could get together, you

and I, and ransack official files, old newspapers, yearbooks, journals, and so

on forever. But the effort and expense would be large; the results, even if

positive, would prove little; we have more urgent jobs at hand; our

discoveries could conceivably endanger us.

These pages are merely for the purpose of saying a little about Dr. Robert

Anderson. I do owe the book to him. Many of the sentences are his, and my aim

throughout has been to capture something of his style and spirit, in memoriam.

You see, I already owed him much more. In what follows, you may recognize

certain things from earlier stories of mine. He gave me those ideas, those

backgrounds and people, in hour after hour while we sat with sherry and Mozart

before a driftwood fire, which is the best kind. I greatly modified them, in

part for literary purposes, in part to make the tales my own

work. But the core remained his. He would accept no share of payment. "If you

sell it," he laughed, "take Karen out to an extravagant dinner in San

Francisco, and empty a pony of akvavit for me."

Of course, we talked about everything else too. My memories are rich with our

conversations. He had a pawky sense of humor. The chances are overwhelming

that, in leaving me a boxful of material in the form he did, he was turning

his private fantasies into a final, gentle joke.

On the other hand, parts of it are uncharacteristically bleak.

Or are they? A few times, when I chanced to be present with one or two of his

smaller grandchildren, I'd notice his pleasure in their company interrupted by

moments of what looked like pain. And when last I saw him, our talk turned on

the probable shape of the future, and suddenly he exclaimed, "Oh, God, the

young, the poor young! Poul, my generation and yours have had it outrageously

easy. All we ever had to do was be white Americans in reasonable health, and

we got our place in the sun. But now history's returning to its normal climate

here also, and the norm is an ice age." He tossed off his glass and poured a

refill more quickly than was his wont. "The tough and lucky will survive," he

said. "The rest . . . will have had what happiness was granted them. A medical

man ought to be used to that kind of truth, right?" And he changed the

subject.

In his latter years Robert Anderson was tall and spare, a bit stoop-shouldered

but in excellent shape, which he attributed to hiking and bicycling. His face

was likewise lean, eyes blue behind heavy glasses, clothes and white hair

equally rumpled. His speech was slow, punctuated by gestures of a pipe if he

was enjoying his twice-a-day smoke. His manner was relaxed and amiable.

Nevertheless, he was as independent as his cat. "At my stage of life," he

observed, "what was earlier called oddness or orneriness counts as lovable

eccentricity. I take full advantage of the fact." He grinned. "Come your turn,

remember what I've said."

On the surface, his life had been calm. He was born in Philadelphia in 1895, a

distant relative of my father. Though our

family is of Scandinavian origin, a branch has been in the States since the

Civil War. But he and I never heard of each other till one of his sons, who

happened to be interested in genealogy, happened to settle down near me and

got in touch. When the old man came visiting, my wife and I were invited over

and at once hit it off with him.

His own father was a journalist, who in 1910 got the editorship of the

newspaper in a small upper-Midwestern town (current population 10,000; less

then) which I choose to call Senlac. He later described the household as

nominally Episcopalian and principally Democratic. He had just finished his

premedical studies when America entered the First World War and he found

himself in the Army; but he never got overseas. Discharged, he went on to his

doctorate and internship. My impression is that meanwhile he exploded a bit,

in those hip-flask days. It cannot have been too violent. Eventually he

returned to Senlac, hung out his shingle, and married his longtime fiancée.

I think he was always restless. However, the work of general practitioners was

far from dull-before progress condemned them to do little more than man

referral desks-and his marriage was happy. Of four children, three boys lived

to adulthood and are still flourishing.

In 1955 he retired to travel with his wife. I met him soon afterward. She died

in 1958 and he sold their house but bought a cottage nearby. Now his journeys

were less extensive; he remarked quietly that without Kate they were less fun.

Yet he kept a lively interest in life.

He told me of those folk whom I, not he, have called the Maurai, as if it were

a fable which he had invented but lacked the skill to make into a story. Some

ten years later he seemed worried about me, for no reason I could see, and I

in my turn worried about what time might be doing to him. But presently he

came out of this. Though now and then an underlying grimness showed through,

he was mostly himself again. There is no doubt that he knew what he was doing,

for good or ill, when he wrote the clause into his will concerning me.

I was to use what he left me as I saw fit.

Late last year, unexpectedly and asleep, Robert Anderson took his death. We

miss him.

-P. A.

THERE WILL BE TIME

THE BEGiNNING shapes the end, but I can say almost nothing of Jack Havig's

origins, despite the fact that I brought him into the world. On a cold

February morning, 1933, who thought of genetic codes, or of Einstein's work as

anything that could ever descend from its mathematical Olympus to dwell among

men, or of the strength in lands we supposed were safely conquered? I do

remember what a slow and difficult birth he had. It was Eleanor Havig's first,

and she quite young and small. I felt reluctant to do a Caesarian; maybe it's

my fault that she never conceived again by the same husband. Finally the red

wrinkled animal dangled safe in my grasp. I slapped his bottom to make him

draw his indignant breath, he let the air back out in a wail, and everything

proceeded as usual.

Delivery was on the top floor, the third, of our county hospital, which stood

at what was then the edge of town. Removing my surgical garb, I had a broad

view out a window. To my right, Senlac clustered along a frozen river, red

brick at the middle, frame homes on tree-lined streets, grain elevator and

water tank rearing ghostly in dawnlight near the railway station. Ahead and to

my left, hills rolled wide and white under a low gray sky, here and there

roughened by leafless woodlots, fence lines, and a couple of farmsteads. On

the edge of sight loomed a darkness which was Morgan Woods. My breath misted

the pane, whose chifi made my sweaty body shiver a bit.

"Well," I said half aloud, "welcome to Earth, John Franklin Havig." His father

had insisted on having names ready for either sex. "Hope you enjoy yourself."

Hell of a time to arrive, I thought. A worldwide depression hanging heavy as

winter heaven. Last year noteworthy for the Japanese conquest of Manchuria,

bonus march on Washington, Lindbergh kidnapping. This year begun in the same

style:

Adolf Hitler had become Chancellor of Germany. . . . Well, a new President was

due to enter the White House, the end of Prohibition looked certain, and

springtime in these parts is as lovely as our autumn.

I sought the waiting room. Thomas Havig climbed to his feet. He was not a

demonstrative man, but the question trembled on his lips. I took his hand and

beamed. "Congratulations, Tom," I said. "You're the father of a bouncing baby

boy. I know-I just dribbled him all the way down the hall to the nursery."

My attempt at a joke came back to me several months afterward.

Senlac is a commercial center for an agricultural area; it maintains some

light industry, and that's about the list. Having no real choice in the

matter, I was a Rotarian, but found excuses to minimize my activity and stay

out of the lodges. Don't get me wrong. These people are mine. I like and in

many ways admire them. They're the salt of the earth. It's simply that I want

other condiments too.

Under such circumstances, Kate's and my friends tended to be few but close.

There was her banker father, who'd staked me; I used to kid him that he'd done

so because he wanted a Democrat to argue with. There was the lady who ran our

public library. There were three or four professors and their wives at Holberg

College, though the forty miles between us and them was considered rather an

obstacle in those days. And there were the Havigs.

These were transplanted New Englanders, always a bit homesick; but in the

'30's you took what jobs were to be had. He taught physics and chemistry at

our high school. In addition, he must coach for track. Slim, sharp-featured,

the shyness of youth upon him as well as an inborn reserve, Tom got through

his secondary chore mainly on student tolerance. They

were fond of him; besides, we had a good football team. Eleanor was darker,

vivacious, an avid tennis player and active in her church's poor-relief work.

"It's fascinating, and I think it's useful," she told me early in our

acquaintance. With a shrug:

"At least it lets Tom and me feel we aren't altogether hypocrites. You may've

guessed we only belong because the school board would never keep on a teacher

who didn't."

I was surprised at the near hysteria in her voice when she phoned my office

and begged me to come.

A doctor's headquarters were different then from today, especially in a

provincial town. I'd converted two front rooms of the big old house where we

lived, one for interviews, one for examination and treatments, including minor

surgery. I was my own receptionist and secretary. Kate helped with

paperwork-looking back from now, it seems impossibly little, but perhaps she

never let on-and, what few times patients must wait their turns, she

entertained them in the parlor. I'd made my morning rounds, and nobody was due

for a while; I could jump straight into the Marmon and drive down Union Street

to Elm.

I remember the day was furnace hot, never a cloud above or a breath below, the

trees along my way standing like cast green iron. Dogs and children panted in

their shade. No birdsong broke the growl of my car engine. Dread closed on me.

Eleanor had cried her Johnny's name, and this was polio weather.

But when I entered the fan-whirring venetian-blinded dimness of her home, she

embraced me and shivered. "Am I going crazy, Bob?" she gasped, over and over.

"Tell me I'm not going crazy!"

"Whoa, whoa, whoa," I murmured. "Have you called Tom?" He eked out his meager

pay with a summer job, quality control at the creamery.

"No, I. . . I thought-"

"Sit down, Effie." I disengaged us. "You look sane enough to me. Maybe you've

let the heat get you. Relax-flop loose- unclench your teeth, roll your head

around. Feel better? Okay, now tell me what you think happened."

"Johnny. Two of him. Then one again." She choked. "The other one!"

"Huh? Whoa, I said, Ellie. Let's take this a piece at a time." Her eyes

pleaded while she stumbled through the story. "I, I, I was bathing him when I

heard a baby scream. I thought that must be from a buggy or something,

outside. But it sounded as if it came from the . . . the bedroom. At last I

wrapped Johnny in a towel-couldn't leave him in the water- and carried him

along for a, a look. And there was another tiny boy, there in his crib, naked

and wet, kicking and yeffing. I was so astonished I. . . dropped mine. I was

bent over the crib, he should've landed on the mattress, but, oh, Bob, he

didn't. He vanished. In midair. I'd made a, an instinctive grab for him. All I

caught was the towel. Johnny was gone! I think I must've passed out for a few

seconds. And when I hunted I-found- nothing-"

"What about the strange baby?" I demanded.

"He's. . . not gone. . . I think."

"Come on," I said. "Let's go see."

And in the room, immensely relieved, I crowed: "Why, nobody here but good ol'

John."

She clutched my arm. "He looks the same." The infant had calmed and was

gurgling. "He sounds the same. Except he can't be!"

"The dickens he can't. Ellie, you had a hallucination. No great surprise in

this weather, when you're still weak." Actually, I'd never encountered such a

case before, certainly not in a woman as levelheaded as she. But my words were

not too implausible. Besides, half a GP's medical kit is his confident tone of

voice.

She wasn't fully reassured till we got the birth certificate and compared the

prints of fingers and feet thereon with the child's. I prescribed a tonic,

joffied her over a cup of coffee, and returned to work.

When nothing similar happened for a while, I pretty well forgot the incident.

That was the year when the only daughter Kate and I would ever have caught

pneumonia and died, soon after her second birthday.

Johnny Havig was bright, imaginative, and a loner. The more he came into

command of limbs and language, the less he was inclined to join his peers. He

seemed happiest at his miniature desk drawing pictures, or in the yard

modeling clay animals, or sailing a toy boat along the riverbank when an adult

took him there. Eleanor worried about him. Tom didn't. "I was the same," he

would say. "It makes for an odd childhood and a terrible adolescence, but I

wonder if it doesn't pay off when you're grown."

"We've got to keep a closer eye on him," she declared. "You don't realize how

often he disappears. Oh, sure, a game for him, hide-and-seek in the shrubbery

or the basement or wherever. Grand sport, listening to Mommy hunt up the close

and down the stair, hollering. Someday, though, he'll find his way past the

picket fence and-" Her fingers drew into fists. "He could get run over."

The crisis came when he was four. By then he understood that vanishings meant

spankings, and had stopped (as far as his parents knew. They didn't see what

went on in his room). But one summer morning he was not in his bed, and he was

not to be found, and every policeman and most of the neighborhood were out in

search.

At midnight the doorbell rang. Eleanor was asleep, after I had commanded her

to take a pill. Tom sat awake, alone. He dropped his cigarette-the scorch mark

in the rug would long remind him of his agony-and knocked over a chair on his

way to the front entrance.

A man stood on the porch. He wore a topcoat and shadowing hat which turned him

featureless. Not that that made any difference. Tom's whole being torrented

over the boy who held the man by the hand.

"Good evening, sir," said a pleasant voice. "I believe you're looking for this

young gentleman?"

And, when Tom knelt to seize his son, hold him, weep and try to babble thanks,

the man departed.

"Funny," Tom said to me afterward. "I couldn't have been focusing entirely on

Johnny for more than a minute. You know Elm Street has good lamps and no

cover. Even in a sprint, no-

body could get out of sight fast. Besides, running feet would've set a dozen

dogs barking. But the pavement was empty."

The child would say nothing except that he had been "around," and was sorry,

and wouldn't wander again.

Nor did he. In fact, he emerged from his solitariness to the extent of

acquiring one inseparable friend, the Dunbar boy. Pete fairly hulked over his

slight, quiet companion. He was no fool; today he manages the local A & P. But

John, as he now wanted to be called, altogether dominated the relationship.

They played his games, went to his favorite vacant lots and, later, his chosen

parts of Morgan Woods, enacted the histories of his visionary worlds.

His mother sighed, in my cluttered carbolic-and-leather-smelling office: "I

suppose John's so good at daydreaming that even for Pete, the real world seems

pale by contrast. That's the trouble. He's too good at it."

This was in the second year following. I'd seen him through a couple of the

usual ailments, but otherwise had no cause to suspect problems and was

startled when Eleanor requested an appointment to discuss him. She'd laughed

over the phone:

"Well, you know Tom's Yankee conscience. He'd never let me ask you

professional questions on a social occasion." The sound had been forlorn.

I settled back in my creaky swivel chair, bridged my fingers, and said, "Do

you mean he tells you things that can't be true, but which he seems to believe

are? Quite common. Always outgrown."

"I wonder, Bob." She frowned at her lap. "Isn't he kind of old for that?"

"Perhaps. Especially in view of his remarkably fast physical and mental

development, these past months. However, practicing medicine has driven into

my bones the fact that 'average' and 'normal' do not mean the same. . . .

Okay. John has imaginary playmates?"

She tried to smile. "Well, an imaginary uncle."

I lifted my brows. "Indeed? Just what has he said to you?"

"Hardly anything. What do children ever tell their parents?

But I've overheard him talking to Pete, often, about his Uncle Jack who comes

and takes him on all sorts of marvelous trips."

"Uncle Jack, eh? What kind of trips? To this kingdom you once mentioned he's

invented, which Leo the Lion rules over?"

"N-no. That's another weird part. He'll describe Animal Land to Tom and me; he

knows perfectly well it's pure fantasy. But these journeys with his 'uncle' .

. . they're different. What snatches I've caught are, well, realistic. A visit

to an Indian camp, for instance. They weren't storybook or movie Indians. He

described work they had to do, and the smell of drying hides and dung fires.

Or, another time, he claimed he'd been taken on an airplane ride. I can see

how he might dream up an airplane bigger than a house. But why did he dwell on

its having no propellers? I thought boys loved to go eee-yowww like a diving

plane. No, his flew smooth and nearly noiseless. A movie was shown aboard. In

Technicolor. He actually had a name for the machine. Jet? Yes, I think he said

'jet.'"

"You're afraid his imagination may overcome him?" I asked needlessly. When she

nodded, swallowing, I leaned forward, patted her hand, and told her:

"Ellie, imagination is the most precious thing childhood has got. The ability

to imagine in detail, like those Indians, is beyond valuation. Your boy is

more than sane; he may be a genius. Whatever you do, never try to kill that in

him."

I stifi believe I was right-totally mistaken, but right.

On this warm day, I chuckled and finished, "As for his, uh, jet airplane, I'll

bet you a dozen doughnut holes Pete Dunbar has a few Buck Rogers Big Little

Books."

All small boys were required to loathe school, and John went through the

motions. No doubt much of it did bore him, as must be true of any kid who can

think and is forced into lockstep. However, his grades were excellent, and he

was genuinely gripped by what science and history were offered. ("A star

passed near our sun and pulled out a ribbon of flaming gas that became the

planets. . . . The periods of world civilization are Egypt, Greece, Rome, the

Middle Ages, and modern time, which began in 1492.")

His circle of friends, if not intimates, widened. Both sets of parents

regretted that my Billy was four years older, Jimmy two and Stuart three years

younger, than Johnny. At their stage of life, those gaps dwarfed the Grand

Canyon. John shunned organized games, and by and large existed on the fringes

of the tribe. For instance, Eleanor had to do the entire organizing of his

birthday parties. Nevertheless, between his gentle manner and his remarkable

fund of conversation-when someone else took the initiative and stimulated

him-he was fairly well liked.

In his eighth year he caused a new sensation. A couple of older boys from the

tough side of the tracks decided it would be fun to lie in wait for

individuals on their way back from school and pummel them. Buses only carried

farm children, and Senlac wasn't yet built solid; most walking routes had

lonely spots. Naturally, the victims could never bring themselves to complain.

The sportsmen did, after they jumped John Havig. They blubbered that he'd

called an army to his aid. And beyond doubt, they had taken a systematic

drubbing.

The tale earned them an extra punishment. "Bullies are always cowards," said

fathers to their sons. "Look what happened when that nice Havig boy stood up

and fought." For a while he was regarded with awe, though he blushed and

stammered and refused to give details; and thereafter we called him Jack.

Otherwise the incident soon dropped into obscurity. That was the year when

France fell.

"Any news of the phantom uncle?" I asked Eleanor. Some families had gotten

together for a party, but I wanted a respite from political talk.

"What?" She blinked, there where we stood on the Stock-tons' screened porch.

Lighted windows and buzzing conversation at our backs didn't blot out a full

moon above the chapel of Holberg College, or the sound of crickets through a

warm and green-odorous dark. "Oh." She dimpled. "You mean my son's. No, not

for quite a while. You were right, that was only a phase."

"Or else he's learned discretion." I wouldn't have uttered my thought aloud if

I'd been thinking.

Stricken, she said, "You mean he may have clammed up completely? He is

reserved, he does tell us nothing important, or anybody else as far as I can

learn-"

"I.e.," I said in haste, "he takes after his dad. Well, Ellie, you got

yourself a good man, and your daughter-in-law will too. Come on, let's go in

and refresh our drinks."

My records tell me the exact day when, for a while, Jack Havig's control broke

apart.

Tuesday, April 14, 1942. The day before, Tom had made the proud announcement

to his son. He had not mentioned his hope earlier, save to his wife, because

he wasn't sure what would happen. But now he had the notice. The school had

accepted his resignation, and the Army his enlistment, as of term's end.

Doubtless he could have gotten a deferment. He was over thirty, and a teacher,

of science at that. In truth, he would have served his country better by

staying. But the crusade had been preached, the wild geese were flying, the

widowmaker whistled beyond the safe dull thresholds of Senlac. I also,

middle-aged, looked into the possibility of uniform, but they talked me out of

trying.

Eleanor's call drew me from bed before sunrise. "Bob, you've got to come,

right away, please, please. Johnny. He's hysterical. Worse than hysterical.

I'm afraid . . . brain fever or-Bob, come!"

I hurried to hold the thin body in my arms, try to make sense of his ravings,

eventually give him an injection. Before then Jack had shrieked, vomited,

clung to his father like a second skin, clawed himself till blood ran and

beaten his head against the wall. "Daddy, Daddy, don't go, they'll kill you, I

know, I know, I saw, I was there an' I saw, I looked in that window right

there an' Mother was crying, Daddy, Daddy, Daddy!"

I kept him under graduated sedation for the better part of a week. That long

was needed to quiet him down. He was a listless invalid until well into May.

This was absolutely no normal reaction. Other boys whose fathers were off to

war gloried, or claimed they did. Well, I thought, Jack wasn't any of them.

He recovered and buckled down to his schoolwork. He was in Tom's company at

every imaginable opportunity, and some that nobody would have imagined

beforehand. This included furloughs, spent at home. Between times, he wrote

almost daily letters to his father-

-who was killed in Italy, August 6, 1943.

A DOCTOR cannot endure having made his inevitable grisly blunders unless he

recalls enough rescues to offset them. I count Jack Havig among those who

redeemed me. Yet I helped less as a physician than as a man.

My special knowledge did let me see that, beneath a tight-held face, the boy

was seriously disturbed. Outside the eastern states, gasoline was not rationed

in 1942. I arranged for a colleague to take over my practice, and when school

closed, Bill and I went on a trip. . . and we took Jack along.

In Minnesota's Arrowhead we rented a canoe and entered that wilderness of

lakes, bogs, and splendid timber which reaches on into Canada. For an entire

month we were myself, my thirteen-year-old son, and my all but adopted son

whom I believed to be nine years of age.

It's rain and mosquito country; paddling against a headwind is stiff work; so

is portaging; to make camp required more effort than if we'd had today's

ingenious gear and freeze-dried rations. Jack needed those obstacles, that

nightly exhaustion. After fewer days than might have been awaited, the land

could begin to heal him.

Hushed sunrises, light gold in the uppermost leaves and ashiver across broad

waters; birdsong, rustle of wind, scent of evergreen; a squirrel coaxed to

take food from a hand; the soaring departure of deer; blueberries in a bright

warm opening of forest, till a bear arrived and we most respectfully turned

the place over to him; moose, gigantic and unafraid, watching us glide by;

sunsets which shone through the translucent wings

of bats; dusk, fire and stories and Bill's young wonderings about things,

which showed Jack better than I could have told him how big a world lies

beyond our sorrows; a sleeping bag, and stars uncountable.

It was the foundation of a cure.

Back home again, I made a mistake. "I hope you're over this notion about your

father, Jack. There's no such thing as foreknowing the future." He whitened,

whirled, and ran from me. I needed weeks to regain his confidence.

His trust, at any rate. He confided nothing to me except the thoughts, hopes,

problems of an ordinary boy. I spoke no further of his obsession, nor did he.

But as much as time and circumstance allowed, I tried to be a little of what

he so desperately lacked, his father.

We could take no more long excursions while the war lasted. However, we had

country roads to tramp, Morgan Woods to roam and picnic in, the river for

fishing and swimming, Lake Winnego and my small sailboat not far off. He could

come around to my garage workshop and make a bird feeder for himself or a

broom rack for his mother. We could talk.

I do believe he won to a measure of calm about Tom's death by the time it

happened. Everybody assumed his premonition was coincidental.

Eleanor had already taken a job in the library, plus giving quite a few hours

per week to the hospital. Widowhood struck her hard. She rallied gamely, but

for a long while was subdued and unsocial. Kate and I tried to get her out,

but she declined invitations more often than not.

When at last she began to leave her shell, it was mostly in the company of

others than her old circle. I couldn't keep from remarking: "You know, Ellie,

I'm damn glad to see you back in circulation. Still-forgive me-your new

friends are kind of a surprise."

She reddened and looked away. "True," she said low.

"Perfectly good people, of course. But, uh, not what you'd call intellectual

types, are they?"

"N-no. . . . All right." She straightened in her chair. "Bob, let's be frank.

I don't want to leave here, if only because of what you are to Jack. Nor do I

want to be buried alive, the way I was that first couple of years. Tom

influenced me; I don't really have an academic turn of mind like his. And . .

. you who we went with. . . you're all married."

I abandoned as useless my intention in raising the matter- to tell her how

alien her son was to those practical-minded, loud-laughing men who squired her

around, how deeply he was coming to detest them.

He was twelve when the nuclear thunderbolts slew two cities and man's last

innocence. Though the astonishing growth rate I had noted in him earlier had

slowed down to average since 1942, its effects remained to make him

precocious. That reinforced the extreme solitariness which had set in. No

longer was Pete Dunbar, or any schoolmate, more than a casual associate.

Politely but unshakably, Jack refused everything extracurricular. He did his

lessons, and did them well, but his free time was his and nobody else's: his

to read enormously, with emphasis on history books; to take miles-long hikes

by himself; to draw pictures or to shape things with the tools I'd helped him

collect.

I don't mean he was morbid. Lonely boys are not uncommon, and generally become

reasonably sociable adults. Jack was fond of the Amos 'n' Andy program, for

instance, though he preferred Fred Allen; and he had a dry wit of his own. I

remember various of his cartoons he showed me, one in particular suggested by

a copy of The Outsider and Others which I lent him. In a dark, dank forest

were two human figures. The first, cowering and pointing, was unmistakably H.

P. Lovecraft. His companion was a tweedy woman who snapped: "Of course they're

paffid and mushroomlike, Howard. They are mushrooms."

While he no longer depended on me, we saw a good bit of each other; and the

age difference between him and Bifi was less important now, so that they two

sometimes went together

for a walk or a swim or a boat ride-even, in 1948, a return to northern

Minnesota with Jim and Stuart.

Soon after he came back from this, my second son asked me: "Dad, what's a good

book on, uh, philosophy?"

"Eh?" I laid down my newspaper. "Philosophy, at thirteen?"

"Why not?" Kate said across her embroidery. "In Athens he'd have started

younger."

"Well, rn-rn, philosophy's a mighty wide field, Jim," I stalled. "What's your

immediate question?"

"Oh," he mumbled, "free will and time and all that jazz. Jack Havig and Bill

talked a lot about it on our trip."

I learned that Bill, being in college, had begun by posing as an authority,

but soon found himself entangled in problems

-was the history of the universe written before its beginning? if so, why do

we know we make free choices? if not, how can we affect the course of the

future . . . or the past?-which it didn't seem a high school kid could have

pondered as thoroughly as Jack had done.

When I asked my protégé what he wanted for Christmas, he answered: "Something

I can understand that explains relativity."

In 1949, Eleanor remarried. Her choice was catastrophic.

Sven Birkelund meant well. His parents had brought him from Norway when he was

three; he was now forty, a successful farmer in possession of a large estate

and fine house ten miles outside town, a combat veteran, and a recent widower

who had two boys to raise: Sven, Jr., sixteen, and Harold, nine. Huge,

red-haired, gusty, he blazed forth maleness-admitted Kate to me, though she

couldn't stand him-and he was not unlettered either; he subscribed to

magazines (Reader's Digest, National Geographic, Country Gentleman), read an

occasional book, like travel, and was a shrewd businessman.

And . . . Eleanor, always full of life, had been celibate for six years.

You can't warn someone who's tumbled into love. Neither Kate nor I tried. We

attended the wedding and reception and

offered our best wishes. Mostly I was conscious of Jack. The boy had grown

haggard; he moved and talked like a robot.

In his new home, he rarely got a chance to see us. Afterward he would not go

into detail about the months which followed. Nor shall I. But consider: Where

Eleanor was a dropout from the Episcopal Church, and Jack a born agnostic,

Birkelund was a Bible-believing Lutheran. Where Eleanor enjoyed gourmet

cooking and Jack the eating, Birkelund and his sons wanted meat and potatoes.

Tom spent his typical evening first with a book, later talking with her. If

Birkelund wasn't doing the accounts, he was glued to the radio or, presently,

the television screen. Tom had made a political liberal of her. Birkelund was

an ardent and active American Legionnaire-he never missed a convention, and if

you draw the obvious inference, you're right-who became an outspoken supporter

of Senator Joseph McCarthy.

And on and on. I don't mean that she was disillusioned overnight. I'm sure

Birkelund tried to please her, and gradually dropped the effort only because

it was failing. The fact that she was soon pregnant must have forged a bond

between them which lasted a while. (She told me, however, I being the family

doctor, that in the later stages his nightly attentions became distasteful but

he wouldn't stop. I called him in for a Dutch uncle lecture and he made a

sulky compromise.)

For Jack the situation was hell from the word go. His step-brothers,

duplicates of their father, resented his invasion. Junior, whose current

interests were hunting and girls, called him a sissy because he didn't like to

kill and a queer because he never dated. Harold found the numberless ways to

torment him which a small boy can use on a bigger one whose fists may not

defend.

More withdrawn than ever, he endured. I wondered how.

In the fall of 1950, Ingeborg was born. Birkelund named her after an aunt

because his mother happened to be called Olga. He expressed disappointment

that she was a girl, but threw a large and drunken party anyway, at which he

repeatedly declared, amidst general laughter, his intention of trying for a

son the minute the doctor allowed.

The doctor and his wife had been invited, but discovered a prior commitment.

Thus I didn't see, I heard how Jack walked out on the celebration and how

indignant Birkelund was. Long afterward, Jack told: "He cornered me in the

barn when the last guest had left who wasn't asleep on the floor, and said he

was going to beat the shit out of me. I told him if he tried, I'd kill him. I

meant that. He saw it, and went off growling. From then on, we spoke no more

than we couldn't avoid. I did my chores, my share of work come harvest or

whatever, and when I'd eaten dinner I went to my room."

And elsewhere.

The balance held till early December. What tipped it doesn't matter-something

was bound to-but was, in fact, Eleanor's asking Jack if he'd given thought to

the college he would like to attend, and Birkelund shouting, "He can damn well

get the lead out and go serve his country like I did and take his GI if they

haven't cashiered him," and a quarrel which sent her upstairs fleeing and in

tears.

Next day Jack was not there.

He returned at the end of January, would say no word about where he had been

or what he had done, and stated that he would leave for good if his stepfather

took the affair to the juvenile authorities as threatened. I'm certain he

dominated that scene, and won himself the right to be left in peace. Both his

appearance and his demeanor were shockingly changed.

Again the household knew a shaky equilibrium. But six weeks later, upon a

Sunday when Jack had gone for his usual long walk after returning from church,

he forgot to lock the door to his room. Little Harold noticed, entered, and

rummaged through the desk. His find, which he promptly brought to his father,

blew apart the whole miserable works.

Snow fell, a slow thick whiteness filling the windows. What daylight seeped

through was silver-gray. Outdoors the air felt almost warm-and how utterly

silent.

Eleanor sat on our living-room couch and wept. "Bob, you've got to talk to

him, you, you, you've got to help him . . . again.

What happened when he ran away? What did he do?"

文档加载中……请稍候！
如果长时间未打开，您也可以点击刷新试试。

下载文档到电脑，查找使用更方便

5.9 玖币 0人已下载

立即下载 VIP免费下载

摘要：

THEREWILLBETIMEbyPoulAndersonNELSONDOUBLEDAY,INc.GardenCity,NewYorkcopyluojrr(c)1972BYPOULANDERSONPublishedbyArrangementwithTHENEWAMERICANLIBRARYINC.1301AvenueoftheAmericasNewYork,NewYork10019PrintedintheUnitedStatesofAmericaFOREWORDBEATEASE.I'mnotabouttopretendthisstoryistrue.First,thatclaimisalite...

展开>> 收起<<

Poul Anderson - There Will Be Time.pdf

共92页,预览19页

还剩页未读，继续阅读

声明：本站为文档C2C交易模式，即用户上传的文档直接被用户下载，本站只是中间服务平台，本站所有文档下载所得的收益归上传人(含作者)所有。玖贝云文库仅提供信息存储空间，仅对用户上传内容的表现方式做保护处理，对上载内容本身不做任何修改或编辑。若文档所含内容侵犯了您的版权或隐私，请立即通知玖贝云文库，我们立即给予删除！

Poul Anderson - There Will Be Time

相关推荐

开通VIP享超值会员特权

作者详情

相关内容

热门标签

举报选择: