"Do you see them," she ventured to ask him finally, "all thin and gray?" He did not understand, did not take her literally, only shrugged. Warily, she abandoned that questioning at once. She rose to her feet and stared at the horizon, where the smoke bannered on the wind.
"Buy you supper?" he asked.
She turned, prepared for this, and managed a shy, desperate smile. "Yes," she said, knowing what else he reckoned to buy with that—willing, and hating herself, and desperately afraid that he would walk away, tonight, tomorrow. She did not know men. She had no idea what she could say or do to prevent his leaving, only that he would when someday he recognized her madness. Even her parents had not been able to bear with that—visited her only at first in the hospitals, and then only on holidays, and then not at all. She did not know where they were. There was a neighbor boy who drowned. She had said he would. She had cried for it. All the town said it was she who pushed him.
Crazy Alis.
Fantasizes, the doctors said. Not dangerous.
They let her out. There were special schools, state schools.
And from time to time—hospitals.
Tranquilizers.
She had left the red pills at home. The realization brought sweat to her palms. They gave sleep. They stopped the dreams. She clamped her lips against the panic and made up her mind that she would not need them—not while she was not alone. She slipped her hand into his arm and walked with him, secure and strange, up the steps from the park to the streets. And stopped.
The fires were out.
Ghost-buildings rose above their jagged and windowless shells. Wraiths moved through masses of debris, almost obscured at times. He tugged her on, but her step faltered, made him look at her strangely and put his arm about her.
"You're shivering," he said. "Cold?"
She shook her head, tried to smile. The fires were out She tried to take it for a good omen. The nightmare was over. She looked up into his solid, concerned face, and her smile almost became a wild laugh. "I'm hungry," she said.
They lingered over a dinner in Graben's—he in his battered jacket, she in her sweater that hung at the tails and elbows: the spectral patrons were in far better clothes, and stared at them, and they were set in a corner nearest the door, where they would be less visible. There was cracked crystal and broken china on insubstantial tables, and the stars winked coldly in gaping ruin above the wan glittering of the broken chandeliers.
Ruins, cold, peaceful ruin.
Alis looked about her calmly. One could live in ruins, only so the fires were gone. And there was Jim, who smiled at her without any touch of pity, only a wild, fey desperation that she understood—who spent more than he could afford in Graben's, the inside of which she had never hoped to see—and told her—predictably—that she was beautiful. Others had said it. Vaguely she resented such triteness from him, from him whom she had decided to trust. She smiled sadly when he said it; and gave it up for a frown; and, fearful of offending him with her melancholies, made it a smile again.
Crazy Alis. He would learn and leave tonight if she were not careful. She tried to put on gaiety, tried to laugh.
And then the music stopped in the restaurant, and the noise of the other diners went dead, and the speaker was giving an inane announcement.
Shelters. . . shelters. . . shelters.
Screams broke out. Chairs overturned.
Alis went limp in her chair, felt Jim's cold, solid hand tugging at hers, saw his frightened face mouthing her name as he took her up into his arms, pulled her with him, started running. The cold air outside hit her, shocked her into sight of the ruins again, wraith figures pelting toward that chaos where the fires had been worst.
And she knew.
"No!" she cried, pulling at his arm. "No!" she insisted, and bodies half-seen buffeted them in a rush to destruction. He yielded to her sudden certainty, gripped her hand and fled with her against the crowds as the sirens wailed madness through the night—fled with her as she ran her sighted way through the ruin.
And into Kingsley's, where cafe tables stood abandoned with food still on them, doors ajar, chairs overturned. Back they went into the kitchens and down and down into the cellar, the dark, the cold safety from the flames.
No others found them there. At last the earth shook, too deep for sound. The sirens ceased and did not come on again.
They lay in the dark and clutched each other and shivered, and above them for hours raged the sound of fire, smoke sometimes drifting in to sting their eyes and noses. There was the distant crash of brick, rumblings that shook the ground, that came near, but never touched their refuge. And in the morning, with the scent of fire still in the air, they crept up into the murky daylight. The ruins were still and hushed. The ghost buildings were solid now, mere shells. The wraiths were gone. It was the fires themselves that were strange, some true, some not, playing above dark, cold brick, and most were fading.
Jim swore softly, over and over again, and wept.
When she looked at him she was dry-eyed, for she had done her crying already. And she listened as he began to talk about food, about leaving the city, the two of them. "All right," she said.
Then clamped her lips, shut her eyes against what she saw in his face. When she opened them it was still true, the sudden transparency, the wash of blood. She trembled, and he shook at her, his ghost-face distraught.
"What's wrong?" he asked. "What's wrong?"
She could not tell him, would not. She remembered the boy who had drowned, remembered the other ghosts. Of a sudden she tore from his hands and ran, dodging the maze of debris that, this morning, was solid.
"Alis!" he cried and came after her.
"No!" she cried suddenly, turning, seeing the unstable wall, the cascading brick. She started back and stopped, unable to force herself. She held out her hands to warn him back, saw them solid. The brick rumbled, fell. Dust came up, thick for a moment, obscuring everything. She stood still, hands at her sides, then wiped her sooty face and turned and started walking, keeping to the center of the dead streets.
Overhead, clouds gathered, heavy with rain.
She wandered at peace now, seeing the rain spot the pavement, not yet feeling it. In time the rain did fall, and the ruins became chill and cold. She visited the dead lake and the burned trees, the ruin of Graben's, out of which she gathered a string of crystal to wear. She smiled when, a day later, a looter drove her from her food supply. He had a wraith's look, and she laughed from a place he did not dare to climb and told him so.
And recovered her cache later when it came true, and settled among the ruined shells that held no further threat, no other nightmares, with her crystal necklace and tomorrows that were the same as today.
One could live in ruins, only so the fires were gone.
And the ghosts were all in the past, invisible.
II
"I've been thinking about perceptions," you say. We sit again beneath the observation window. The ship is slowly outbound. The view is magnificent, all stars.
"Oh?"
"And time."
"How so?"
"Do you believe in timetravel?"
"Time is all around us. Looking at the stars is looking into time. The light from that red one, say, left home a hundred years ago. Two hundred. If our own sun winked out this moment we would live in their eyes for two hundred years—if they had a powerful telescope to see us with. If the photons didn't scatter. If space didn't curve. Perhaps that star out there has already died, two hundred years ago." I entertain a brief thought of a nova. Of a Shockwave kicking dustclouds into swirls to birth new stars. "Perhaps our sun died eight minutes ago. We'd just now find it out. When we look at the stars we see into time. When we pass lightspeed we travel through the wavefront of a moment that left its star in lightscatter years ago, and we overtake the real, the present moment when we reach another star. But to surpass that moment and arrive beforewe left—that would be a difficult concept. That requires more than simultaneity. The causalties boggle the mind. If time is the motion of particles away from their origin, then timetravel locally requires us to reverse the entire motion of the universe, and the inertia of the moving universe is the most powerful thing I can think of. Besides, when we form the concept of travel in time, you and I, can we have pushed a button in our own future and come here knowingwe pushed it? It all gives me a headache."