“I have been here thirty months,” said Mr. Ramirez quietly, looking at Mrs. O’Brian’s plump hands.
“That’s six months too long,” said one policeman. “He only had a temporary visa. We’ve just got around to looking for him.”
Soon after Mr. Ramirez had arrived, he bought a radio for his little room; evenings, he turned it up very loud and enjoyed it. And he had bought a wrist-watch and enjoyed that, too. And on many nights he had walked silent streets and seen the bright clothes in the windows and bought some of them, and he had seen the jewels and bought some of them for his few lady friends. And he had gone to picture shows five nights a week for a while. Then, also, he had ridden the streetcars-all night some nights-smelling the electricity, his dark eyes moving over the advertisements, feeling the wheels rumble under him, watching the little sleeping houses and big hotels slip by. Besides that, he had gone to large restaurants, where he had eaten many-course dinners, and to the opera and the theatre. And he had bought a car, which later, when he forgot to pay for it, the dealer had driven off angrily from in front of the rooming house.
“So here I am,” said Mr. Ramirez now, “to tell you that I must give up my room, Mrs. O’Brian. I come to get my baggage and clothes and go with these men.”
“Back to Mexico?”
“Yes. To Lagos. That is a little town north of Mexico City.”
“I’m sorry, Mr. Ramirez.”
“I’m packed,” said Mr. Ramirez hoarsely, blinking his dark eyes rapidly and moving his hands helplessly before him. The policemen did not touch him. There was no necessity for that. “Here is the key, Mrs. O’Brian,” Mr. Ramirez said, “I have my bag already.”
Mrs. O’Brian, for the first time, noticed a suitcase standing behind him on the porch.
Mr. Ramirez looked in again at the huge kitchen, at the bright silver cutlery and the young people eating and the shining waxed floor. He turned and looked for a long moment at the apartment house next door, rising up three stories, high and beautiful. He looked at the balconies and fire escapes and back-porch stairs, at the lines of laundry snapping in the wind.
“You’ve been a good tenant,” said Mrs. O’Brian.
“Thank you, thank you, Mrs. O’Brian,” he said softly. He closed his eyes.
Mrs. O’Brian stood holding the door half open. One of her sons, behind her, said that her dinner was getting cold, but she shook her head at him and turned back to Mr. Ramirez. She remembered a visit she had once made to some Mexican border towns-the hot days, the endless crickets leaping and falling or lying dead and brittle like the small cigars in the shop windows’ and the canals taking river water out to the farms, the dirt roads, the scorched fields, the little adobe houses, the bleached clothes, the eroded landscape. She remembered the silent towns, the warm beer, the hot, thick foods each day. She remembered the slow, dragging horses and the parched jack rabbits on the road. She remembered the iron mountains and the dusty valleys and the ocean beaches that spread hundreds of miles with no sound but the waves -no cars, no buildings, nothing.
“I’m sure sorry, Mr. Ramirez,” she said.
“I don’t want to go back, Mrs. O’Brian,” he said weakly. “I like it here. I want to stay here. I’ve worked, I’ve got money. I look all right, don’t I? And I don’t want to go back!”
“I’m sorry, Mr. Ramirez,” she said. “I wish there was something I could do.”
“Mrs. O’Brian!” he cried suddenly, tears rolling out from under his eyelids. He reached out his hands and took her hand fervently, shaking it, wringing it, holding to it. “Mrs. O’Brian, I see you never, I see you never!”
The policemen smiled at this, but Mr. Ramirez did not notice it, and they stopped smiling very soon.
“Goodbye, Mrs. O’Brian. You have been good to me. Oh, goodbye, Mrs. O’Brian. I see you never”
The policemen waited for Mr. Ramirez to turn, pick up his suitcase, and walk away. Then they followed him, tipping their caps to Mrs. O’Brian. She watched them go down the porch steps. Then she shut the door quietly and went slowly back to her chair at the table. She pulled the chair out and sat down. She picked up the shining knife and fork and started once more upon her steak.
“Hurry up, Mom,” said one of the sons. “It’ll be cold.”
Mrs. O’Brian took one bite and chewed on it for a long, slow time; then she stared at the closed door. She laid down her knife and fork.
“What’s wrong, Ma?” asked her son.
“I just realized,” said Mrs. O’Brian-she put her hand to her face-“I’ll never see Mr. Ramirez again.”
1952
The sign on the wall seemed to quaver under a film of sliding warm water. Eckels felt his eyelids blink over his stare, and the sign burned in this momentary darkness:
TIME SAFARI, INC.
SAFARIS TO ANY YEAR IN THE PAST.
YOU NAME THE ANIMAL.
WE TAKE YOU THERE.
YOU SHOOT IT.
Warm phlegm gathered in Eckels’ throat; he swallowed and pushed it down. The muscles around his mouth formed a smile as he put his hand slowly out upon the air, and in that hand waved a check for ten thousand dollars to the man behind the desk.
“Does this safari guarantee I come back alive?”
“We guarantee nothing,” said the official, “except the dinosaurs.” He turned. “This is Mr. Travis, your Safari Guide in the Past. He’ll tell you what and where to shoot. If he says no shooting, no shooting. If you disobey instructions, there’s a stiff penalty of another ten thousand dollars, plus possible government action, on your return.”
Eckels glanced across the vast office at a mass and tangle, a snaking and humming of wires and steel boxes, at an aurora that flickered now orange, now silver, now blue. There was a sound like a gigantic bonfire burning all of Time, all the years and all the parchment calendars, all the hours piled high and set aflame.
A touch of the hand and this burning would, on the instant, beautifully reverse itself. Eckels remembered the wording in the advertisements to the letter. Out of chars and ashes, out of dust and coals, like golden salamanders, the old years, the green years, might leap; roses sweeten the air, white hair turn Irish-black, wrinkles vanish; all, everything fly back to seed, flee death, rush down to their beginnings, suns rise in western skies and set in glorious easts, moons eat themselves opposite to the custom, all and everything cupping one in another like Chinese boxes, rabbits into hats, all and everything returning to the fresh death, the seed death, the green death, to the time before the beginning. A touch of a hand might do it, the merest touch of a hand.
“Unbelievable.” Eckels breathed, the light of the Machine on his thin face. “A real Time Machine.” He shook his head. “Makes you think, If the election had gone badly yesterday, I might be here now running away from the results. Thank God Keith won. He’ll make a fine President of the United States.”
“Yes,” said the man behind the desk. “We’re lucky. If Deutscher had gotten in, we’d have the worst kind of dictatorship. There’s an anti everything man for you, a militarist, anti-Christ, anti-human, anti-intellectual. People called us up, you know, joking but not joking. Said if Deutscher became President they wanted to go live in 1492. Of course it’s not our business to conduct Escapes, but to form Safaris. Anyway, Keith’s President now. All you got to worry about is-“
“Shooting my dinosaur,” Eckels finished it for him.
“A Tyrannosaurus Rex. The Tyrant Lizard, the most incredible monster in history. Sign this release. Anything happens to you, we’re not responsible. Those dinosaurs are hungry.”
Eckels flushed angrily. “Trying to scare me!”
“Frankly, yes. We don’t want anyone going who’ll panic at the first shot. Six Safari leaders were killed last year, and a dozen hunters. We’re here to give you the severest thrill a real hunter ever asked for. Traveling you back sixty million years to bag the biggest game in all of Time. Your personal check’s still there. Tear it up.“Mr. Eckels looked at the check. His fingers twitched.