“Here,” he said. “I’ll get more tomorrow morning, and give you that too. Arrange a trip for us to some other country, France, Spain, England, wherever you’d like to go, it makes no difference which one, so long as it is far from here. You will understand how to do such things, with which I have had no experience. Buy airplane tickets—is that the right term, airplane tickets?—get us a hotel room, do whatever is necessary. But we must depart no later than this time tomorrow. When you pack, pack as though you may never return to this house: take your most precious things, the things you would not want to leave behind, but only as much as you can carry yourself. If you have money on deposit, take it out, or arrange for it to be transferred to some place of deposit in the country that we will be going to. Call me when everything is ready, and I’ll come for you and we’ll go together to the place where the planes take off.”
Her expression was frozen, her eyes glazed, rigid. “You won’t tell me what’s going to happen?”
“I have already told you vastly too much. If I tell you more—and you tell others—and the news spreads widely, and the pattern of the future is greatly changed by the things that those people may do as a result of knowing what is to come—no. No. I do not dare, Christine. You are the only one I can save, and I can tell you no more than I have already told you. And you must tell no one else at all.”
“This is like a dream, Thimiroi.”
“Yes. But it is very real, I assure you.”
Once again she stared. Her lips worked a moment before she could speak.
“I’m so terribly afraid, Thimiroi.”
“I understand that. But you do believe me? Will you do as I ask? I swear to you, Christine, your only hope lies in trusting me. Our only hope.”
“Yes,” she said hesitantly.
“Then will you do as I ask?”
“Yes,” she said, beginning the single syllable with doubt in her voice, and finishing it with sudden conviction. “But there’s something I don’t understand.”
“What is that?”
“If something awful is going to happen here, why must we run off to England or Spain? Why not take me back to your own country, Thimiroi? Your own time.”
“There is no way I can do that,” he said softly.
“When you go back, then, what will happen to me?”
He took her hand in his. “I will not go back, Christine. I will stay here with you, in this era—in England, in France, wherever we may go—for the rest of my life. We will both be exiles. But we will be exiles together.”
She asked him to stay with her at her house that night, and he refused. He could see that the refusal hurt her deeply; but there was much that he needed to do, and he could not do it there. They would have many other nights for spending together. Returning to his hotel, he went quickly to his rooms to contemplate the things that would have to be dealt with.
Everything that belonged to his own era, of course, packed and sent back via his suitcase: no question about that. He could keep some of his clothing with him here, perhaps, but none of the furniture, none of the artifacts, nothing that might betray the technology of a time yet unborn. The room would have to be bare when he left it. And he would have to requisition more twentieth-century money. He had no idea how much Christine might have above what he had already given her, nor how long it would last; but certainly they would need more as they began their new lives. As for the suitcase, his one remaining link to the epoch from which he came, he would have to destroy that. He would have to sever all ties. He would—
The telephone rang. The light jingling of its bell cut across his consciousness like a scream.
Christine, he thought. To tell him that she had reconsidered, that she saw now that this was all madness, that if he did not leave her alone she would call the police—
“Yes?” he said.
“Thimiroi! Oh, I am glad you’re there.” A warm, hearty, familiar masculine voice. “Laliene said I might have difficulty finding you, but I thought I’d ring your room anyway—”
“Antilimoin?”
“None other. We’ve just arrived. Ninth floor, the Presidential suite, whatever that may be. Maitira and Fevra are here with me, of course. Listen, old friend, we’re having a tremendous blast tonight—oh, pardon me, that’s a sick thing to say, isn’t it?—a tremendous gathering, you know, a soiree, to enliven the night before the big night—do you think you can make it?”
“Well—”
“Laliene says you’ve been terribly standoffish lately, and I suppose she’s right. But look, old friend, you can’t spend the evening moping by yourself, you absolutely can’t. Lesentru’ll be here, do you know that? And Kuiane. Maybe even Broyal and Hammin, later on. And a rumor of Cenbe, too, though I suspect he won’t show up until the very last minute, as usual. Listen, there are all sorts of stories to tell. You were in Canterbury, weren’t you? And we’ve just done the Charlemagne thing. We have some splendid tips on what to see and what to avoid. You’ll come, of course. Room 941, the end of the hall.”
“I don’t know if I—”
“Of course you will! Of course!”
Antilimoin’s gusto was irresistible. It always was. The man was a ferociously social being: when he gave a party, attendance was never optional. And Thimiroi realized, after a moment, that it was better, perhaps, for him to go than to lurk here by himself, tensely awaiting the ordeals that tomorrow would bring. He had already brought more than enough suspicion upon himself. Antilimoin’s party would be his farewell to his native time, to his friends, to everything that had been his life.
He spent a busy hour planning what had to be planned.
Then he dressed in his formal best—in the clothes, in fact, that he had planned to wear tomorrow night—and went upstairs. The party was going at full force. Antilimoin, dapper and elegant as always, greeted him with a hearty embrace, and Fevra and Maitira came gliding up from opposite sides of the room to kiss him, and Thimiroi saw, farther away, Lesentru and Kuiane deep in conversation with Lutheena, Denvin, and some others. Everyone seemed buoyant, excited, energetic. There was tension, too, the undercurrent of keen excitement that comes on the eve of a powerful experience.
Voices were pitched a little too high, gestures were a trifle too emphatic. A great screen on one wall was playing one of Cenbe’s finest symphonias, but no one seemed to be watching or listening. Thimiroi glanced at it and shivered. Cenbe, of course: that connoisseur of disaster, assembling his masterpieces out of other people’s tragedies—he was the perfect artist for this event. Doubtless he was in the city already, skulking around somewhere looking for the material he would need to complete his newest and surely finest work.
I will never see any of these people again after tonight, Thimiroi thought, and the concept was so difficult to accept that he repeated it to himself two or three more times, without being able to give it any more reality.
Laliene appeared beside him. There was no sign on her face of the earlier unpleasantness between them; her eyes were glowing and she was smiling warmly, even tenderly, as though they were lovers.
“I’m glad you came,” she murmured. “I hoped you would.”
“Antilimoin is very persuasive.”
“You must have some tea. You look so tense, Thimiroi.”
“Do I?”
“Is it because of our talk before?”
He shrugged. “Let’s forget all about that, shall we?”
Laliene let the tips of her fingers rest lightly on his arm. “I should never have put that transmitter in your room. It was utterly stupid of me.”