I said, «That’s wonderful, Ellen. But why didn’t you phone me—I don’t mean about that, but when you decided to have the operation today instead of Saturday?»
«I didn’t decide. When we left the White House Whitlow offered to drop me home in the cab he was taking and I took him up on it. I passed out in the cab and the next thing I knew was when I woke up here this morning. Whitlow had had the cab rush me to an emergency hospital; at the hospital they found a receipted bill from Dr. Grundleman in my handbag and phoned him right away for instructions. He arranged to have me transferred here and phoned Weissach in Lisbon to come as soon as he could. When I woke up this morning everything was arranged. All I could do was to ask Grundleman to phone you right away, as he did. I hoped you’d come and could get here in time, but in case you couldn’t make it I wanted you to know that everything was set about your job on the project.»
I said, «Thank God I got that message in time to come.»
«I’m glad you did, but we could have talked anyway. After I knew you were coming, after it was too late, I realized that I could have had them ran an extension phone in here and that I could have told you myself. If you hadn’t been coming, I’d still have had them arrange for the phone call.»
«This is better,» I said. «I couldn’t have kissed you over the phone.»
«Nor held my hand. Hold it, Max, because now that you’re here there are still a few things I want to tell you.»
I moved my chair closer and held her hand in both of mine.
«They can wait till afterward,» I said. «For now, just tell me again that you love me.»
«You know that already. I’ve never been as close to anybody as I have been, still am, to you. It’s—it’s almost as though I’m you and you’re me; we’re part of one another.»
«I know,» I said. «I feel it too.»
«But if I should—if I don’t come through the operation, don’t let it throw you, darling. You’ve got a job to do, whether I’m with you or not.»
«Woman, don’t talk about—»
«Max, we’ve got to face the fact that there is a chance I won’t come through. Whether it’s one chance in ten or one in a hundred, there are a couple of things I want you to know. Will you let me say them, and then we won’t talk about the possibility any more.»
«All right,» I said. «Get them over with. I’ll listen.» I tightened my grip on her hand.
«First, about my will. I wish I could change it in your favor, but—»
«My God, woman,» I said, «I don’t want to hear about your will.»
«You said you’d listen. I want you to understand why I didn’t change it, despite the fact that it’s in favor of two distant relatives with whom I’m only on casually friendly terms, although they’re the closest relatives I have, even though they’re both relatives by marriage, Ralph Gallagher’s brother and sister.
«The main reason is the fact that if, when my will is probated, the news gets out that I left you my money, such as it is, it would prejudice your chances of getting that job. If some columnist picked it up and made something of it—»
«Okay, I understand.»
«And besides it’s not going to be enough to get excited about after paying for this operation, and after funeral expenses and—»
«My God, woman!»
«We’re discussing ifs, darling, and if I die there’s going to have to be a funeral. And that’s the other thing I want to tell you about. I don’t want you to go to it.»
«Why not? There’d be hundreds of people. Nobody would couple our names just because—»
«That’s not why, Max. It’s just that I wouldn’t want you to. I hate funerals, think they’re pompous and silly and disgusting. I hate the thought of having one myself even though I won’t know about it while it’s happening. Since I’m a public figure I suppose there’ll have to be one, but I don’t want the only person I really love there sharing in it. If I die, I don’t want you to see me dead, either here or in a funeral parlor. I don’t want you to remember a dead body or even the outside of a coffin. I want your last memory of me to be as I am now, alive. I don’t want you even to think about a funeral or send flowers. Will you promise me those things, Max?»
«Yes, if you’ll quit talking about them.»
«All right, I’m through being macabre. From now on we’ll be bright and cheerful. How much time have we got left?»
I glanced at my watch. «Nearly half an hour.»
«Good. Now you do the talking for a while. Tell me a story.»
«A story? I’m no good at telling stories.»
«A true story. There’s one you promised to tell me once and never have. Do you remember?»
I shook my head.
«Last October when you got your degree and we had a party to celebrate and your brother Bill and his wife came down from Seattle, remember? Bill made a crack about sewing machines and you laughed with him, and when I asked you what the joke was you said it was a long story, about something crazy you’d done once, and that you’d tell me sometime but not just then. I never remembered to ask you about it afterwards until this morning I thought of it for some reason after I knew you were coming and decided to ask you if we had time.»
I laughed. «It’s not much of a story, Ellen. I just didn’t want to take out time to tell you in the middle of a party. It started with a book I read in my teens, one of the early science fiction novels. I forget who wrote it but it was called Mad Universe or something like that. One of those alternate time-track stories, where the hero gets switched somehow to another universe that’s been identical with his up to a certain point in history and at that point there’s a split in the time-track; something happens in one universe that doesn’t happen in the other and they go in different directions.
«In this one the change had started early in the nineteenth century with the accidental discovery of a method of interstellar travel by a scientist who was trying to rig a little low-voltage generator out of an old treadle sewing machine. Had a couple of small coils mounted, the treadle to turn one inside the other, and started it going—and the sewing machine disappeared. He’d had it hooked up wrong—wrong for a generator, that is—but he was able to figure out where he’d make his mistake and tried it again, on his wife’s good sewing machine. He lost that too.
«But he kept on experimenting and losing sewing machines until he had the secret of the instantaneous space-warp drive. Ever happen to read the book, Ellen?»
She shook her head slowly.
«You might get a kick out of it, while you’re getting better, if I can find a copy, but I doubt if I can. It’s probably been out of print for forty or fifty years and I’m not even sure of the exact title. Only way I could get hold of it would be a through a collector of early science fiction.
«But anyway, I read it in my teens and didn’t think about it again until I was in my early forties, when I happened to get hold of an old copy and read it again. And one thing about it looked different to me then, because I was different and things were different.
«I was a pretty bitter guy about that time, Ellen. I was bitter about the fact that I was only a one-footed rocket mech and would never get into space again and that I wasn’t getting anywhere, but I was still more bitter about the fact that we weren’t getting anywhere. We’d got to the moon and Mars and Venus, and because we hadn’t found plains strewn with gold and diamonds or alien aborigines or civilizations, we’d almost lost interest. We weren’t going any farther, it looked like, in my lifetime, and in particular we weren’t shooting for the stars, weren’t even trying to work out a stellar drive. The conservationists were worse then, Ellen, than they are now. We’re gradually, I can see now, getting our second wind and getting ready to try again. But that was about the worst point of reaction against space travel and the government seemed on the verge of even pulling in the outposts we already had. Even terrestrial rocketry was at its lowest ebb. A big passenger rocket had just crashed into a crowded Paris street and had killed over a hundred people besides all its own passengers, and there was even talk of banning rockets completely for terrestrial travel. That was in—I think it was in nineteen eighty-four.»