It was getting dark. I closed the curtains over the open windows and opened the book again. "The world is a long corridor, and time is a lantern carried steadily along the hall," it said, and, a few pages later, "If time were simply an extension of the universe, was tomorrow as real as yesterday? If one could leap forward—"
Or back, I thought. "Jack Williamson lived in this house from 1947 to ..." Tonia'd said, and paused and then said, "... the present," and I'd thought the sideways glance was to see my reaction to his name, but what if she'd intended to say, "from 1947 to 1998"? Or "2015"?
What if that was why she kept pausing when she talked, because she had to remember to say "Jack Williamson is" instead of "Jack Williamson was," "does most of his writing" instead of "did most of his writing," had to remember what year it was and what hadn't happened yet?
"'If the field were strong enough,'" I remembered Tonia saying out at the ranch, "'we could bring physical objects through space-time instead of mere visual images.'" And the tour group had all smiled.
What if they were the physical objects? What if the tour had traveled through time instead of space? But that didn't make any sense. If they could travel through time they could have come on a weekend Jack Williamson was home, or during the week of the Williamson Lectureship.
I read on, looking for explanations. The book talked about quantum mechanics and probability, about how changing one thing in the past could affect the whole future. Maybe that was why they had to come when Jack Williamson was out of town, to avoid doing something to him that might change the future.
Or maybe Nonstop Tours was just incompetent and they'd come on the wrong weekend. And the reason they didn't have cameras was because they all forgot them. And they were all really tourists, and The Legion of Time was just a science fiction book and I was making up crackpot theories to avoid thinking about Cross and the job.
But if they were ordinary tourists, what were they doing spending a day staring at a tumbledown shack in the middle of nowhere? Even if they were tourists from the future, there was no reason to travel back in time to see a science fiction writer when they could see presidents or rock stars.
Unless they lived in a future where all the things he'd predicted in his stories had come true. What if they had genetic engineering and androids and spaceships? What if in their world they'd terraformed planets and gone to Mars and explored the galaxy? That would make Jack Williamson their forefather, their founder. And they'd want to come back and see where it all started.
The next morning, I left my stuff at the Portales Inn and went over to the library. Checkout wasn't till noon, and I wanted to wait till I'd found out a few things before I made up my mind whether to take the job or not. On the way there I drove past B. and J. Drugs and then College Drug. Neither of them were open, and I couldn't tell from their outsides how old they were.
The library opened at eight and the room with the Williamson collection in it at 9:30, which was cutting it close. I was there at 9:15, looking in through the glass at the books. There was a bronze plaque on the wall and a big mobile of the planets.
Tonia had said the collection "isn't very big at this point," but from what I could see, it looked pretty big to me. Rows and rows of books, filing cabinets, boxes, photographs.
A young guy in chinos and wire-rimmed glasses unlocked the door to let me in. "Wow! Lined up and waiting to get in! This is a first," he said, which answered my first question.
I asked it anyway. "Do you get many visitors?"
"A few," he said. "Not as many as I think there should be for a man who practically invented the future. Androids, terraforming, antimatter, he imagined them all. We'll have more visitors in two weeks. That's when the Williamson Lectureship week is. We get quite a few visitors then. The writers who are speaking usually drop in."
He switched on the lights. "Let me show you around," he said. "We're adding to the collection all the time." He took down a long flat box. "This is the comic strip Jack did, Beyond Mars. And here is where we keep his original manuscripts." He opened one of the filing cabinets and pulled out a sheaf of typed yellow sheets. "Have you ever met Jack?"
"No," I said, looking at an oil painting of a white-haired man with a long, pleasant-looking face. "What's he like?"
"Oh, the nicest man you've ever met. It's hard to believe he's one of the founders of science fiction. He's in here all the time. Wonderful guy. He's working on a new book, The Black Sun. He's out of town this weekend, or I'd take you over and introduce you. He's always delighted to meet his fans. Is there anything specific you wanted to know about him?"
"Yes," I said. "Somebody told me about him seeing the magazine with his first story in it in a drugstore. Which drugstore was that?"
"It was one in Canyon, Texas. He and his sister were going to school down there."
"Do you know the name of the drugstore?" I said. "I'd like to go see it."
"Oh, it went out of business years ago," he said. "I think it was torn down."
"We went there yesterday," Tonia had said, and what day exactly was that? The day Jack saw it and bought all three copies and forgot his groceries? And what were they wearing that day? Print dresses and double-breasted suits and hats?
"I've got the issue here," he said, taking a crumbling magazine out of a plastic slipcover. It had a garish picture of a man being pulled up out of a crater by a brilliant crystal. "December, 1928. Too bad the drugstore's not there anymore. You can see the cabin where he wrote his first stories, though. It's still out on the ranch his brother owns. You go out west of town and turn south on State Highway 18. Just ask Betty to show you around."
"Have you ever had a tour group in here?" I interrupted.
"A tour group?" he said, and then must have decided I was kidding. "He's not quite that famous."
Yet, I thought, and wondered when Nonstop Tours visited the library. Ten years from now? A hundred? And what were they wearing that day?
I looked at my watch. It was 9:45. "I've got to go," I said. "I've got an appointment." I started out and then turned back. "This person who told me about the drugstore, they mentioned something about Number 5516. Is that one of his books?"
"5516? No, that's the asteroid they're naming after him. How'd you know about that? It's supposed to be a surprise. They're giving him the plaque Lectureship week."
"An asteroid," I said. I started out again.
"Thanks for coming in," the librarian said. "Are you just visiting or do you live here?"
"I live here," I said.
"Well, then, come again."
I went down the stairs and out to the car. It was 9:50. Just enough time to get to Cross's and tell him I'd take the job.
I went out to the parking lot. There weren't any tour buses driving through it, which must mean Jack Williamson was back from his convention. After my meeting with Cross I was going to go over to his house and introduce myself. "I know how you felt when you saw that Amazing Stories in the drugstore," I'd tell him. "I'm interested in the future, too. I liked what you said about it, about science fiction lighting the way and science making the future real."
I got in the car and drove through town to Highway 70. An asteroid. I should have gone with them. "It'll be fun," Tonia said. It certainly would be.
Next time, I thought. Only I want to see some of this terraforming. I want to go to Mars.
I turned south on Highway 70 towards Cross's office. roswell 92 miles, the sign said.
"Come again," I said, leaning out the window and looking up. "Come again!"