“What?” said Simon Cross.
“No,” I said. “Where!”
Swiftly, I hit the tabs: year/month/day/hour/ minute; and just as swiftly: state/town/street/block/ number; and yanked the backward/turn/backward bar.
And we were off, dials spinning, unspinning suns, moons, and years until the Machine melted to silence.
Simon Cross, stunned, glanced around.
“Why,” he said, “this is my place.”
“Your home, yes.”
I dragged him up the front walk.
“And there, yes, there, do you see?” I said.
On the front porch, in his sunbright sailor’s suit, stood the beautiful young man with a clutch of story pages in his hands.
“That’s me!” cried the old, old man.
“You. Simon Cross.”
“Hello,” said the young man in the fresh white sailor’s suit. He scowled at me, curious, then puzzled. “Hold on. Why do you look—different?” He nodded at his older self. “And who’s this?”
“Simon Cross,” I said.
In silence, youth looked at age, age looked at youth.
“That’s not Simon Cross,” said the young man.
“That can’t be me,” said the old one.
“Yes.”
Slowly, both turned to look at me.
“I don’t understand,” said Simon Cross, nineteen years old.
“Take me back!” the old man exclaimed.
“Where?”
“To where we were, wherever that was,” he gasped wildly.
“Go away.” The young man backed off.
“I can’t,” I said. “Look close. This is what you will become after you’ve lost yourself. Simon Cross, yes, forty years on.”
The young sailor stood for a long moment, his eyes searching up and down the old man’s body and fixing on his eyes. The young sailor’s face reddened. His hands became fists, relaxed, became fists again. Words did not convince, but some intuition, some power unseen, an invisible vibration between the old man and himself.
“Who are you really?” he said at last.
The old, old man’s voice broke.
“Simon Cross.”
“Son of a bitch!” cried the young man. “Damn you!”
And struck a blow to the older man’s face, and then another and another and the old, old man stood in the rain, the downpour of blows, eyes shut, drinking the violence, until he fell on the pavement with his young self astride him staring at the body.
“Is he dead?” he wondered.
“You killed him.”
“I had to.”
“Yes.”
The young man looked at me. “Am I dead, too?”
“Not if you want to live.”
“Oh God, I do, I do!”
“Then get away from here. I’ll take him with me, back to where we came from.”
“Why are you doing this?” said Simon Cross, only nineteen.
“Because you’re a genius.”
“You keep saying that.”
“True. Run, now. Go.”
He took a few steps and stopped.
“Second chance?” he said.
“Oh, God, I hope so,” I said.
And then added, “Remember this. Don’t live in Spain or become the champion dove shooter in Madrid.”
“I would never be a champion dove shooter anywhere!”
“No?”
“No!”
“And never become the old, old man I must drag through Time to meet himself.”
“Never.”
“You’ll remember all this and live by it?”
“It’s remembered.”
He turned and ran down the street.
“Come,” I said to the body, the scarecrow, the silent thing. “Let’s get you in the Machine and find you an unmarked grave.”
In the Machine, I stared up the now empty street.
“Simon Cross,” I whispered. “Godspeed.”
And threw the switch and vanished in the future.
The end
