“Joseph—if you are Joseph—why? You can’t win. They’ll just blow up the world.”
“Why? You stand there, like that, and ask why? As for losing, well, one side always claims it is the ultimate victor, doesn’t it? Particularly when it wants you on its side. They lie, or tell half-truths, just as we must sometime. It’s another part of war. But I’ve seen both sides, and I know death is preferable to what they offer.” He paused a moment. “Good-bye, Mother. Remain here tonight and with your looks you’re sure to get a ride and almost anything else you want.” He pressed his “Home” stud and vanished into the night.
She stood there, looking out at the bay, not really thinking, just crying in the wind. Finally she went back to the car, got in, locked all the doors, curled up, and continued crying in the damp and the dark. Finally, she felt all cried out and just sat there for a while, not really thinking at all, yet the thoughts came anyway.
Who are you?
I—I don’t know.
Why don’t you know?
’Cause I’ve downtimed the night side once too much.
Who were you?
I—I was a small child of the streets, and a nun, and a crucified rebel slave, and countless whores, but mostly I was Ron and Dawn.
But Ron and Dawn were lovers. They were two, not one. Were you truly both of them, or perhaps neither one?
Something seemed to snap inside her. All this shit—it was crazy. It didn’t make no sense at all. It was stupid, like dreams were stupid when you stopped to think on them a little.
She suddenly sat up in the car. “Oh my god!” she said aloud. She’d seen it in others, but never thought about it in herself. Crazy. Around the bend. Looped. She’d seen it before, in Gloria, among others. Girls who just got sick and tired of this kind of life and knew they’d never be anything else. She thought maybe it happened when you got real old, like Gloria—she was almost forty. Not to her.
But it had. It must be. Jesus! She’d really flipped out, and gone to live in cuckoo-land for a while. No use figuring out how she really came to be down here in this car. She looked in the back seat and saw her overnight case, then crawled in back, opened it, and pulled out her makeup case. Switching on the overhead light, she opened the case and looked at the face in the little round mirror.
That’s who I am, she told herself. I’m Holly. I never been nobody else but Holly and I ain’t ever gonna be nobody else neither.
She wiped away the remnants of the tears and made herself presentable once more. When she was satisfied, she packed up the case, unlocked the car door, and got out, taking it with her. It was still quite dark, but she began to walk up the road. There wasn’t any traffic this time of night, but if a car didn’t come along, she’d eventually reach a phone, she was sure—or maybe wait until morning. She no longer felt tired, just anxious to get back to town and pick up her life.
A very old Volkswagen came rattling down the road going in the opposite direction, and she paid it no heed. The driver, however, spotted her in his headlights and slowed, then made a U-turn and came back up to her. She grew suddenly frightened, aware of just how much in the middle of nowhere she was and just how alone and unprotected she was as well.
The VW pulled in just ahead of her, and the right door opened. She approached it nervously, knowing there really was no place to run and just hoping this was someone who was just trying to be helpful—or on the make. She bent down and looked in at the driver.
“Get in, Holly,” said Doc.
“No! You’re not real! You’re part of the dream!” She backed away from the car gingerly.
“I won’t hurt you, Holly, but I’m afraid I must insist. Don’t worry. If nothing else, I’ll take you as far as the bus station in Waldorf.”
“I—I don’t trust you!”
“You shouldn’t. But you don’t have any choice. Now— get in! I have other appointments before this is over, and, as funny as it sounds, I don’t have the time for foolishness.”
Holly sighed. “What the hell,” she muttered, and pushed her case into the cramped back seat and slid into the front passenger side.
As soon as she closed the door, Doc was off into the night.
A QUESTION OF HUMANITY
“It wasn’t a dream, you know,” Doc said at last. “It all really happened.”
She sobered a moment. “I know. I just don’t want it to have.”
“Understandable. I assume Eric got your belt?”
She nodded.
“That’s no catastrophe. He’s about to use it to go back to the old home setting, then attack the base. That’ll cause us to move and you to jump forward, and the loop will be complete.”
“Is it true what he said? About him bein’ Joseph and all?”
He was startled. “I hadn’t heard that.” He thought for a long while. “Well, it would make everything else have some sense out of human actions, although it raises a bunch of those wild cards in time I told you about. If it’s true, then we have a couple of laws to unlearn and a couple of new ones to discover, but that’s par for the course in something this complicated. You get used to it. Or he might have been lying, and our laws are correct. Only— pardon me—time will tell.”
“I ain’t sure I want to know. I only understood a little of what he was sayin’ anyways.”
Doc nodded but said nothing for a while. Finally, he asked, “Are you hungry? There’s a Howard Johnson’s up here that’s open all night.”
“I thought you said you was in a hurry.”
“No, I said I didn’t have the time to fool around back there. I’m on a schedule, and this is part of it.”
They pulled into the parking lot, then went into the restaurant, which was mostly deserted. The few there obviously drew conclusions from the sight of the young sexpot and the older professional man there at this time of night, but they were pretty worldly and served this sort of duo quite often.
Doc ate heartily, but Holly just sipped her coffee and picked at her eggs. Finally, she asked, “What now, Doc? What’s next?” It was said with weary resignation, not true curiosity.
“I know what you’re thinking. You’ve tripped. O.K., you’ve tripped before. I must have tripped a thousand times. It’s no big deal anymore.”
“Maybe not for you. You’ll still Doc, no matter what. You got brains and a real job. I guess I had brains once, but it’s all gone now. I can’t even remember what he looked like, you know that? Every time I do this, I know a little less and think a little slower. I think that’s what gets me most. It ain’t not knowin’ what I once knew so much as bein’ real slow about what I still know now.” She picked up a card on the table. “Clam… back… every… Friday,” she read, pronouncing each word carefully and individually as if separated. “All… you… can… eat… just… Oh, hell, you see? I can’t read no better or faster’n that, and them’s simple words. I can’t cook or sew or nothin’, ’cept some mendin’. How’s that for somebody who went through all that college?”
“Nothing is permanent. Surely you understand that now if nothing else. What’s forgotten can be relearned.”
“C’mon, Doc! Don’t kid me! Every single time I get a little dumber. I ain’t got much left, Doc. I’m near retarded now. I’m too damn scared to do it again.”