“Believe me, I wish there was another way!” She handed him the book. “Will you do it?”
Robbins looked at the instructions she’d written on it, then turned it over. It was his copy of Beethoven’s Sonata in E-flat major, Opus 81a. He leafed through the score, remembering the subtitles the composer had given to its three movements. Les Adieux. L’Absence. Le Retour. Then he turned the book back over and reread what she’d written.
“Well, Dr. Robbins? It’s your choice.”
He sighed. “If it’s the only way to make things right—of course I’ll do it.”
With a sense of déjà vu Robbins entered the Portal Room after changing into a NOC suit. Miles, Everett, and Harrison were there again—just like when he’d gone to TCE and prevented Ertmann from injecting Beethoven with the same medicine he was supposed to give him now.
Harrison handed him the injector. “I’ve loaded it with the vaccine-blocker. Inject it the same way you did the vaccine.”
From his place at the control panel Miles said, “The portal is stable and active. Spatial coordinates are the same as when Dr. Robbins translocated to inject the vaccine. Temporal coordinates are set for ... twenty-nine minutes and counting after he returned from that translocation.”
“Let me check those coordinates.” Brushing the technician aside, Everett scrutinized the panel carefully.
Injector in hand, Robbins walked to the entrance of the portal, waiting. He hoped Everett knew what she was doing.
The latter’s hand played briefly over the control panel.
Miles frowned. “Excuse me, Dr. Everett, but why did you change—?”
“Dr. Robbins,” she said, pointedly ignoring Miles. “Do you remember everything I told you?”
“Yes.”
“Then—good-bye!”
As the blackness of the portal enveloped him, Robbins ran over Everett’s instructions once more in his mind. He hoped this wasn’t just going to make things worse. But even if it meant his own destruction, he was determined to set things right. His last thought before he arrived was to remember what Everett said could be sent back into their own past via TCE.
Information.
Suddenly his thoughts were interrupted—he was there. His first breath brought a multitude of unpleasant smells. The NV goggles activated automatically in the dark room.
He was in the kitchen of Beethoven’s quarters. A fireplace filled with musty ashes was set into one wall. The room had several tables and open shelves, with plates, bowls, and utensils on them. A wicked-looking knife lay on one of the tables. In one comer stood a dusty, dilapidated pianoforte. Robbins smiled slightly, thinking how ironic that was.
Slowly, he entered the main living area, carefully avoiding bumping into the small writing desks and chairs scattered around it—.
“Stop.”
Robbins froze, terrified. Slowly, his head swiveled in the direction of the whispered word. His NV goggles revealed another person in the room. Someone about his height, and wearing a NOC suit just like his.
The strange man spoke again. “Don’t go into the bedroom.”
Robbins whispered back, “Who are you? What are you doing here?”
The dark figure stepped closer, and removed its goggles and hood. Robbins blinked, unable to comprehend what he saw.
It was his own face.
The man replaced the goggles over his eyes. “Don’t talk, just listen.”
Robbins nodded as the stranger spoke. Many of the latter’s instructions didn’t make sense but, he was assured by the other man, in time he would understand them. Robbins felt sick when the man told him why he had to do all those things right.
He did protest about injecting the vaccine he carried into the stranger’s bare right arm, but obeyed. “They have to think you really did inject it into Beethoven, so you can’t go back with the injector unused,” the stranger explained, wincing as he rolled his sleeve back down and rubbed his right upper back with his left hand. “If everything works out the way it should, there’s no way that can hurt me. And now you’ve been absent long enough. It’s time for you to return.”
Robbins followed the other man into the kitchen. “Are you coming too?” Robbins asked. The other man replied, “No. If Everett’s right, and this works, I can’t go back.
“Oh, one more thing.” Robbins saw him walk over to Beethoven’s pianoforte, and smile.
“Now, listen very carefully—.”
“Are you disappointed it didn’t work?”
Robbins shrugged. “I’ll live.”
Antonia sat next to him on the couch in his apartment, listening to the music with him. Eyes closed, she smiled dreamily as the symphony ebbed and flowed around them.
Draping his arm lovingly over Antonia’s shoulder, Robbins closed his eyes too. He was still trying to work out in his mind everything that had happened in the three days since the Humanities Committee had approved his proposal. Especially after he’d translocated to TCE intending to give Beethoven the vaccine.
Just as the man in Beethoven’s apartment had told him to do, immediately after he’d returned to Earth he’d gone to find Ertmann. Actually, he didn’t have to “go” anywhere. She was still calmly sitting in that same chair in the Portal Room with Harrison and Miles nearby, just like before he’d entered TCE to inject the vaccine. As soon as she saw him, before he had a chance to say anything, Ertmann “confessed” to them that she’d gone back before and injected Beethoven with something to block the vaccine. At Robbins’s suggestion, they’d called Everett to come to the Room and get her opinion on what they should do next. She had looked at him a bit suspiciously, as if to say she was the one who was supposed to suggest he go back a little “earlier” and confront Ertmann on TCE. But she’d agreed he should do it.
Back again in Beethoven’s apartment, when Ertmann appeared he’d pleaded with her to trust him, said he was on her side, and told her what they had to do. And, he’d said finally, when you go back, please, please don’t hurt yourself!
Then, after returning to Earth himself, he’d changed clothes and translocated back to Vienna on the morning of March 27, 1827. The newspapers there reported that Beethoven had died the day before—naturally, since he’d never injected him with the vaccine. Then he’d returned home once more—to “failure.”
The hardest part was lying at the special humanities committee meeting yesterday that he’d done his best to prolong Beethoven’s life. The others seemed surprised when he’d then asked to withdraw his proposal. He told them he’d had second thoughts about the possible disastrous consequences it might have for both TCE and their own world. He’d even used examples from the stories Billingsley had given him—and, most damning of all, the one the “stranger” in Beethoven’s apartment had told him about.
The vote in favor of withdrawing his proposal was four to two. Lytton and Shimura were the holdouts, disappointed they’d never get a chance to try out their own pet projects. Robbins still wondered if he’d done the right thing, following all the instructions the man who said he was a “future” version of himself had given him. But, if you can’t trust “yourself,” who can you trust?
As he’d asked her, Ertmann had visited him in his apartment earlier this evening. He’d stressed that she should never, ever tell anyone about their “conspiracy.” If anyone found out what really happened, they might try it again—and neither of them wanted that. Dorothy had thanked him for everything, especially the way he’d helped Harrison convince the Executive Committee not to dismiss her from the Institute. Then she’d given him a warm hug, planted a chaste kiss on his cheek, and left.
The memory of that hug lingered vividly in his mind. Robbins found himself having to suppress some very unplatonic thoughts. But no, he was a little too old for her. Besides, he already had a beloved.