Time and Again

We said nothing new; we were only obeying a necessity to talk things over. Julia was worried about what her aunt would be thinking now, and hanging unspoken over everything we said was the question of Julia's future. But that needed time to work out, and I said nothing about it because I had nothing to say, though I had a lot to think about.

I had other things to show Julia, and after a while we left, and found a cab. It was still light, and I took Julia down to the Empire State Building, and we went up to the observation floor. In the elevator during the long long express ride past dozens of floors, Julia watched the floor-number panel, trying to believe we were really moving up this fast and this high, and her hand, holding mine, squeezed tight in the realization that we were. On the stone-railed open-air platform some ninety-odd floors above the earth, she looked out over the hazed city, making herself understand that here high over Thirty-fourth Street the distant greenery far ahead was really Central Park, and that the network of car-filled streets spread out far below us was really the city she'd known intimately but here no longer did. She looked out at the city, the park, the rivers. Then she looked around at the sky and pointed out a remarkable cloud; she'd never seen one anything like it before. I looked, and in a sense I suppose it really was a cloud — it had become one. High in the sky the air must have been windless, and a jet trail, its sharp edges gone, had puffed itself up into an absolutely straight, thin, mile-long cloud touched by the lowering sun. And then I, too, saw it not as a jet trail but as a strange elongated, ruler-straight cloud, and had one more glimpse of the different view Julia had of my world.

She was interested when I told her what the cloud really was; and she enjoyed her visit up here, impressed and excited by it. But presently she turned from the railing, sighing a little, and said, "And now it's enough, Si; this is all I can stand right now. Please take me home."

So instead of a restaurant for di

We took our coffee into the living room, and, refreshed and revived, Julia said, "I've seen your world now, Si; I've had a glimpse of it, anyway. Now tell me what's been happening during all the years — it's so strange to say this — between my time and this." She snuggled back into the davenport cushions, looking at me as expectantly as a child about to hear a story.

I suppose I responded to her smile and expectation of pleasure, because — pausing to think, Where do you begin? How do you sum up decades? — I found myself hunting for good things to say. "Well, smallpox has been almost eliminated; you never see pock-marks now. And cholera. I don't suppose there's been even a case of it for years. Not in the United States, anyway." Julia nodded. "And polio — infantile paralysis. It's been just about eliminated, at least in all the big civilized countries."

She nodded again; she seemed to have expected this. "And heart disease, too? And cancer?"

"Well, no, not yet. But we're replacing hearts! Surgically removing the damaged heart and replacing it with another one from someone who just died."

"That's miraculous! And they live?"

"Well, not too long, usually. It doesn't really work very well. But it will."

"And how long do people live? To a hundred or more, I'm sure. I read a prediction in the Atlantic Monthly — "

"Actually, Julia, people don't seem to be living much longer, if at all, than in your time. Matter of fact, there are some new things that, ah — are killing us off and shortening our lives that don't exist in your time. Air pollution, for example. But we have air conditioning."

"What's that?"

"Machines that cool off the air in summer."

"Everywhere?"

"No, no; just indoors. I've got one in the bedroom — that thing in the window, if you noticed it. During a hot spell it'll cool the air to seventy degrees."

"What a luxury."

"Yeah, it's pretty nice. And they have them in most offices now, restaurants, movies, hotels."

"What are movies? You've mentioned them before."

I explained that they were like television only much larger, much clearer, and — every now and then — much better. Then I found myself talking about electric blankets, supermarkets, radar, air travel, automatic washers, dishwashers, and even, Lord forgive me, freeways.

Julia finished the last of her coffee, picked up my empty cup and saucer, and took it with hers to the kitchen. She walked back into the living room saying, "But what's been happening, Si? Tell me about that." As I thought about it, in terms of actual events, she began wandering about the room, fingering the drapes, looking at the back of the television set, flicking the overhead light fixture on and off a few times. I was stuck for an answer. It reminded me of letter writing; you can fill several pages describing a weekend, but try bringing an old friend up-to-date with the events of the last five years, and it's not so easy. What had happened in more than a lifetime?

"Well, there are fifty states now."

"Fifty?"

"Yep," I said as smugly as though I'd created them. "All the territories are states now. Also Alaska and Hawaii. And they've changed the flag; it has fifty stars now."

Julia nodded, interested; she was poking through the magazine rack at the end of the davenport, and now she pulled out a newspaper.

"And, let's see. Well, there was an earthquake in San Francisco in… 1906, I think. The city was pretty well destroyed, mostly by the fire afterward."

"Oh, I'm so sorry; it's a lovely city, I've heard." She nodded at the newspaper in her hand. "You have a way to print photographs, I see." She put down the paper and walked to my bookshelves.

"Yes, also in color. There ought to be an old Life magazine around somewhere with some color photos. And — my God, how could I forget! We're shooting rockets into space! They carry capsules with men in them. A couple of them have traveled to the moon, and landed. With men in them. And returned to earth."

"Do you mean that? To the moon? With men in them?"

"Yes, it's really true." Again I heard the ridiculous note in my voice sounding as though I'd had something to do with it.

She looked delighted. "Have they been on the moon?"

"Yep. Walked around on it."

"That's fascinating!"

I hesitated, then said, "Yeah. I suppose so. But not as much as I'd have thought when I was a kid reading science fiction." She looked puzzled, and I said, "It's hard to explain, Julia, but… it doesn't seem to mean anything. After the excitement of the actual trip — it was on television, if you can imagine that, Julia; we could actually see and hear the men on the moon — I almost forgot about it. Right away, too; I seldom thought about it afterward. It was unbelievably courageous of the men, and yet… somehow the project almost seemed to lack dignity. Because it didn't have any real purpose or point." I stopped because she wasn't listening.

As I'd talked, Julia had been looking over my book titles and presently she'd taken down a novel and begun leafing through it. Now, suddenly, she swung around to face me, and her face and neck were scarlet right down to the white collar of her blouse. "Si. Things like this" — she glanced at the open pages of the book in her hands, horrified — "are said in print?" She clapped the book shut as though the words could crawl off the page. "I would never have believed it!" She couldn't look at me.