The Time Keeper Part 21

"Not yet."

And Dor knew she was starting to heal.

72.

All this time, Victor was watching.

He now understood the girl's shaky composure, her trembling shoulders, her fragile voice. She had tried to kill herself over a boy (he looked like a punk, Victor told himself, but then, he was biased; he was coming to like this Sarah). And she had been shown, in the end, what Victor would have told her a long time ago: No love is worth that trouble. He doubted Grace would end her life over him, no matter what he had done; and much as he deep down loved her, he was looking for a way to live beyond death, even if she didn't come with him.

What he still could not reason was how these hallucinations were being formed and who this clock shop man really was. Victor had noticed a change in him since they'd first met. Behind the store counter, he'd seemed solid, healthy, almost indestructible, but now he looked pale, he was perspiring, and his cough was growing worse. Victor, conversely, had never felt better-which was why he was certain this whole thing was some figment of his wandering brain. One did not simply wake up healthy and start floating through time.

He watched Dor, who was bent over in the sand, moving his fingers through it. Finally, he looked up at Victor. "There is something I must show you, too."

Victor recoiled. He was not interested in seeing the world he'd left behind.

"My story's different," Victor said.

"Come."

"You know I have a plan, right?"

Dor rose without a word, then wiped the sweat from his forehead and looked at his hand as if confused. He resumed his slow pace on the path, which tilted upward like the side of a hill. Victor turned to Sarah, who was still in the stunned throes of seeing her life revealed. Now it was Victor who wanted company.

"Are you coming?" he asked.

She stepped in behind him. They began to ascend.

73.

This time, when the mist cleared, they were back in the cryonics warehouse.

The huge fibergla.s.s cylinders stood like monuments. One of them was slightly smaller and newer than the others.

"What are we seeing?" Victor asked. "Is this the future?"

Before Dor could answer, the door opened and Jed entered. He was followed by Grace, wearing a brown winter coat. She moved cautiously, looking around with every step.

"Is that your wife?" Sarah whispered.

Victor swallowed. He knew Grace would learn of his plan. He never imagined he'd watch her do it.

He saw Jed point out the smaller cylinder. He saw Grace draw her hands together over her mouth. He couldn't tell if she was praying or hiding her disgust.

"In that thing?" she said.

"He insisted on his own." Jed scratched his ear. "I'm sorry. I had no idea he didn't tell you."

Grace held her arms, uncertain whether she should approach the cylinder or move away from it.

"Can you see inside?"

"I'm afraid not."

"But his corpse is in there?"

"Patient."

"What?"

"We say 'patient.' Not 'corpse.'"

"What?"

"Forgive me. I know this must be hard."

They stood together in awkward silence, amid the low humming of electrical current. Finally, Jed cleared his throat and said, "Well ... I'll leave you alone. You're welcome to sit."

He pointed to the mustard couch. Victor shook his head as if to stop him. He felt suddenly embarra.s.sed, not only by the manipulation of his death, but by the ratty condolence chair his wife was being offered.

Grace did not sit down.

She thanked Jed and watched him go. Then she slowly approached the cylinder and let her fingers skim across the fibergla.s.s exterior.

Her lower lip fell. She exhaled so hard, her shoulders drooped forward and she seemed to drop a couple of inches.

"Grace, it's OK," Victor blurted out. "It's-"

She whacked the cylinder with her fist.

She whacked it again.

Then she kicked it so hard she nearly fell backward.

When she straightened up, she sniffed once and walked to the exit, pa.s.sing the mustard couch without so much as a glance.

The door closed. The silence seemed directed toward Victor personally. Dor and Sarah looked at him, but he looked away, feeling exposed. In his race to cheat death, he'd trusted scientists more than his wife. He had denied her their final intimacy. He had not even left a body to bury. How would she grieve him now? He doubted she would ever come to this place again.

He glanced at Sarah, who looked down, as if embarra.s.sed.

He turned to Dor.

"Just show me," Victor growled, "if it worked."

74.

Crowded. Incredibly crowded.

That was Victor's first impression of his future. They had followed the sand through the giant gla.s.s and descended from the void into another clearing mist, revealing ma.s.sive high-rise buildings, packed thickly, block after block, in what Victor a.s.sumed to be a major metropolis centuries from now. There was almost no greenery and little color beyond steel blues and grays. The skies were dotted with unusual small aircraft, and the air itself had a different feel to it. It was thicker, dirtier, and cold as well, although the people did not dress for it. Their faces were different than those of his time, hair tints were like a paint-box a.s.sortment, heads seemed larger. It was difficult to tell men from women.

He saw no one old.

"Is this still Earth?" Sarah asked.

Dor nodded.

"Then I made it?" Victor said. "I'm alive?"

Dor nodded again. They were standing in the middle of a huge urban square, as tens of thousands of people scurried around them, heads down in devices or speaking into dark gla.s.ses that floated in front of their eyes.

"How far in the future is this?" Sarah said.

Victor surveyed the surroundings. "If I had to guess, a few hundred years."

He almost smiled.

Because he judged life by success and failure, Victor believed he had won.

He had eluded death and resurfaced in the future.

"So where am I in all this?" he asked.

Dor pointed and the vista changed. They were now inside a huge, open hall, lit from the sides, silver and white, with ma.s.sive, high ceilings and screens that floated in midair.

Victor appeared on every one.

"What the h.e.l.l is going on?" he asked. The screens were playing moments from Victor's life. He saw himself in his thirties, shaking hands in a boardroom, and in his fifties, delivering a keynote speech in London, and in his eighties, in the doctor's office with Grace, looking at CT scans. Cl.u.s.ters of people studied the screens as if this were an exhibition. Perhaps he'd become a legend in the future? Victor thought. A medical miracle? Who knows? Maybe he owned this building.

But where would they get such images? These moments had never been filmed. He saw a scene from a few weeks ago, Victor staring out the office window at a man sitting on a skysc.r.a.per.

"That was you, wasn't it?" he asked Dor.

"Yes."

"Why were you staring at me?"

"I was wondering why you wished to live beyond a lifetime."

"Why wouldn't I?"

"It is not a gift."

"And how would you know that?"

Dor wiped his brow. "Because I have done it."

75.

Before Victor could respond, a commotion rose from the gallery hall, now completely filled with spectators.

Sitting on floating chairs or crammed against the walls, they reacted loudly to what they were seeing.

On the screens were images of Victor's childhood in France; Victor bounced on his parents' laps, Victor fed by his grandmother with a soup spoon, Victor crying at his father's funeral and praying beside his mother. Make it yesterday. The crowd gave an audible gasp when he said that.

"Why are they watching my life?" Victor asked. "Where am I during all this?"

Dor pointed to a large gla.s.s tube in the corner of the facility.

"What's that?" Victor asked.

"Look and see," Dor said.

Victor approached it haltingly, easing through the crowd like an apparition. He reached the front and leaned into the gla.s.s.

A wave of horror engulfed him.

There, inside the tube, was a pinkish, shriveled version of his body, his muscles atrophied, his skin blotched as if burned, his head wired in multiple places, the wires running to numerous machines. His eyes were open and his lips were parted in a pained expression.