Nova 2 Read online

  “—the amulet’s what does it,” he said. “That’s the word I get from—”

  Selene rushed back to my side of the street. “Come on, silly! Why’d you wait?”

  Two hours later, as she lay in my arms, I swept my hand up from her satiny haunch to her silken breast, and caught the plaque of red metal between two fingers. “Love, won’t you take this off?” I said innocently. “I hate the feel of a piece of cold slithery metal coming between us when—”

  There was terror in her dark eyes. “I couldn’t, Aram! I couldn’t!”

  “For me, love?”

  “Please. Let me have my little superstition.” Her lips found mine. Cleverly she changed the subject. I wondered at her tremor of shock, her frightened refusal.

  Later we strolled along the Thames and watched Friday coming to life in fogbound dawn. Today I would have to escape from her for at least an hour, I knew. The laws of time dictated it. For on Wednesday, between 6 and 7 p.m. Central European Time, I had accepted a transmission from myself of (now + n), speaking out of Friday, and Friday had come, and I was that very same (now + n), who must reach out at the proper time toward his counterpart at (now—n) on Wednesday. What would happen if I failed to make my rendezvous with time in time, I did not know. Nor wanted to discover. The universe, I suspected, would continue regardless. But my own sanity—my grasp on that universe—might not.

  It was a narrowness. All glorious Friday I had to plot how to separate myself from radiant Selene during the cocktail hour, when she would certainly want to be with me. But in the end it was simplicity. I told the concierge, “At seven minutes after six send a message to me in the Celestial Room. I am wanted on urgent business, must come instantly to computer room for intercontinental data patch, person-to-person. So?” Concierge replied, “We can give you the patch right at your table in the Celestial Room.” I shook head firmly. “Do it as I say. Please.” I put thumb to gratuity account of concierge and signaled an account-transfer of five pounds. Concierge smiled.

  Seven minutes after six, message-robot scuttles into Celestial Room, comes homing in on table where I sit with Selene. “Intercontinental data patch, Mr. Kevorkian,” says robot. “Wanted immediately. Computer room.” I turn to Selene. “Forgive me, love. Desolated, but must go. Urgent business. Just a few minutes.”

  She grasps my arm fondly. “Darling, no! Let the call wait. Ifs our anniversary now. Forty-eight hours since we met!”

  Gently I pull arm free. I extend arm, show jeweled timepiece. “Not yet, not yet! We didn’t meet until half past six Wednesday. I’ll be back in time to celebrate.” I kiss tip of supreme nose. “Don’t smile at strangers while I’m gone,” I say, and rush off with robot.

  I do not go to computer room. I hurriedly buy a Friday Herald-Tribune in lobby and lock myself in men’s washroom cubicle. Contact now is made on schedule with (now—n), living in Wednesday, all innocent of what will befall him that miraculous evening. I read stock prices, twenty securities, from Arizona Agrochemical to Western Offshore Corp. I sign off and study my watch. (Now—n) is currently closing out seven long positions and the short sale on Commonwealth Dispersals. During the interval I seek to make contact with (now + n) ahead of me on Sunday evening. No response. Nothing.

  Presently I lose contact with (now—n). As expected; for this is the moment when the me of Wednesday has for the first time come within Selene’s psi-suppressant field. I wait patiently. In a while (Selene—n) goes to powder room. Contact returns.

  (Now—n) says to me, “All right. What do you know that I ought to know?”

  “We have fallen in love,” I say.

  Rest of conversation follows as per. What has been, must be. I debate slipping in the tidbit I have received from (now + n) concerning the alleged powers of Selene’s amulet. Should I say it quickly, before contact breaks? Impossible. It was not said to me. The conversation proceeds until at the proper moment I am able to say, “I think I know how she does it. There’s a—”

  Wall of silence descends. (Selene—n) has returned to the table of (now—n). Therefore I (now) will return to the table of Selene (now). I rush back to the Celestial Room. Selene, looking glum, sits alone, sipping drink. She brightens as I approach.

  “See?” I cry. “Back just in time. Happy anniversary, darling. Happy, happy, happy, happy!”

  When we woke Saturday morning we decided to share the same room thereafter. Selene showered while I went downstairs to arrange the transfer. I could have arranged everything by telephone without getting out of bed, but I chose to go in person to the desk, leaving Selene behind. You understand why.

  In the lobby I received a transmission from (now + n), speaking out of Monday, October 12. “It’s definitely the amulet,” he said. “I can’t tell you how it works, but it’s some kind of mechanical psi-suppressant device. God knows why she wears it, but if I could only manage to have her lose it we’d be all right. It’s the amulet. Pass it on.”

  I was reminded, by this, of the flash of contact I had received on Thursday outside the sniffer palace on High Holborn. I realized that I had another message to send, a rendezvous to keep with him who has become (now —n).

  Late Saturday afternoon, I made contact with (now—n) once more, only momentarily. Again I resorted to a ruse in order to fulfill the necessary unfolding of destiny. Selene and I stood in the hallway, waiting for a dropshaft. There were other people. The drop-shaft gate raised open and Selene went in, followed by others. With an excess of chivalry I let all the others enter before me, and “accidentally” missed the closing of the gate. The dropshaft descended, with Selene. I remained alone in the hall. My timing was good; after a moment I felt the inner warmth that told me of proximity to the mind of (now—n).

  “—the amulet’s what does it,” I said. “That’s the word I get from—”

  Aloneness intervened.

  During the week beginning Monday, October 12, I received no advance information on the fluctuations of the stock market at all. Not in five years had I been so deprived of data. My linkings with (now—n) and (now + n) were fleeting and unsatisfactory. We exchanged a sentence here, a blurt of hasty words there, no more. Of course, there were moments every day when I was apart from the fair Selene long enough to get a message out. Though we were utterly consumed by our passion for one another, nevertheless I did get opportunities to elude the twenty-foot radius of her psi-suppressant field. The trouble was that my opportunities to send did not always coincide with the opportunities of (now—n) or (now + n) to receive. We remained linked in a 48-hour spacing, and to alter that spacing would require extensive discipline and infinitely careful coordination, which none of ourselves were able to provide in such a time. So any contact with myselves had to depend on a coincidence of apartnesses from Selene.

  I regretted this keenly. Yet there was Selene to comfort me. We reveled all day and reveled all night. When fatigue overcame us we grabbed a two-hour deepsleep wire and caught up with ourselves, and then we started over. I plumbed the limits of ecstasy. I believe it was like that for her.

  Though lacking my unique advantage, I also played the market that week. Partly it was compulsion: my plungings had become obsessive. Partly, too, it was at Selene’s urgings. “Don’t you neglect your work for me,” she purred. “I don’t want to stand in the way of making money”

  Money, I was discovering, fascinated her nearly as intensely as it did me. Another evidence of compatibility. She knew a good deal about the market herself, and looked on, an excited spectator, as I each day shuffled my portfolio.

  The market was closed Monday: Columbus Day. Tuesday, queasily operating in the dark, I sold Arizona Agrochemical, Consolidated Luna, Eastern Electric Energy, and Western Offshore, reinvesting the proceeds in large blocks of Meccano Leasing and Holoscan Dynamics. Wednesday’s Tribune, to my chagrin, brought me the news that Consolidated Luna had received the Copernicus franchise and had risen nine and three-quarters points in the final hour of Tuesday’s trading. Meccano Leas
ing, though, had been rebuffed in the Robomation takeover bid and was off four and one-half since I had bought it. I got through to my broker in a hurry and sold Meccano, which was down even further that morning. My loss was $125,000—plus $250,000 more that I had dropped by selling Consolidated Luna too soon. After the market closed on Wednesday, the directors of Meccano Leasing unexpectedly declared a five-for-two split and a special dividend in the form of a one-for-ten distribution of cumulative participating high-depreciation warrants. Meccano regained its entire Tuesday-Wednesday loss and tacked on 5 points beyond.

  I concealed the details of this from Selene. She saw only the glamor of my speculations: the telephone calls, the quick computations, the movements of hundreds of thousands of dollars. I hid the hideous botch from her, knowing it might damage my prestige.

  On Thursday, feeling battered and looking for the safety of a utility, I picked up ten thousand Southwest Power and Fusion at thirty-eight, only hours before the explosion of SPF’s magnetohydrodynamic generating station in Las Cruces, which destroyed half a county and neatly peeled $90,000 off the value of my investment when the stock finally traded, after a delayed opening, on Friday. I sold. Later came news that SPF’s insurance would cover everything. SPF recovered, whereas Holoscan Dynamics plummeted eleven and one-half points, costing me $140,000 more. I had not known that Holoscan’s insurance subsidiary was the chief underwriter for SPF’s disaster coverage.

  All told that week I shed more than $500,000. My brokers were stunned. I had a reputation for infallibility among them. Most of them had become wealthy simply by duplicating my own transactions for their own accounts.

  “Sweetheart, what happened?” they asked me.

  My losses the following week came to $1,250,000. Still no news from (now + n). My brokers felt I needed a vacation. Even Selene knew I was losing heavily, by now. Curiously, my run of bad luck seemed to intensify her passion for me. Perhaps it made me look tragic and byronic to be getting hit so hard.

  We spent wild days and wilder nights. I lived in throbbing haze of sensuality. Wherever we went we were the center of all attention. We had that burnished sheen that only great lovers have. We radiated a glow of delight all up and down the spectrum.

  I was losing millions.

  The more I lost, the more reckless my plunges became, and the deeper my losses became.

  I was in real danger of being wiped out, if this went on.

  I had to get away from her.

  Monday, October 26. Selene has taken the deepsleep wire and in the next two hours will flush away the fatigues of three riotous days and nights without rest. I have only pretended to take the wire. When she goes under, I rise. I dress. I pack. I scrawl a note for her. “Business trip. Back soon. Love, love, love, love ” I catch noon rocket for Istanbul.

  Minarets, mosques, Byzantine temples. Shunning the sleep wire, I spend the next day and a half in bed in ordinary repose. I wake and it is forty-eight hours since parting from Selene. Desolation! Bitter solitude! But I feel (now -n) invading my mind.

  “Take this down,” he says brusquely. “Buy 5000 FSP, 800 CCG, 150 LC, 200 T, 1000 TXN, 100 BVI. Go short 200 BA, 500 UCM, 200 LOC. Clear? Read back to me.”

  I read back. Then I phone in my orders. I hardly care what the ticker symbols stand for. If (now + n) says to do, I do.

  An hour and a half later the switchboard tells me, “A Miss Hughes to see you, sir.”

  She has traced me! Calamitas calamitatium! “Tell her I’m not here,” I say. I flee to the roofport. By copter I get away. Commercial jet shortly brings me to Tel Aviv. I take a room at the Hilton and give

  absolute instructions am not to be disturbed. Meals only to room, also Herald-Trib every day, otherwise no interruptions.

  I study the market action. On Friday I am able to reach (now—n). “Take this down,” I say brusquely. “Buy 5000 FSP, 800 CCG, 150 LC, 200 T—”

  Then I call brokers. I close out Wednesday’s longs and cover Wednesday’s shorts. My profit is over a million. I am recouping. But I miss her terribly.

  I spend agonizing weekend of loneliness in hotel room.

  Monday. Comes voice of (now + n) out of Wednesday, with new instructions. I obey. At lunchtime, under lid of my barley soup, floats note from her. “Darling, why are you running away from me? I love you to the ninth power. S.”

  I get out of hotel disguised as bellhop and take El Al jet to Cairo. Tense, jittery, I join tourist group sightseeing Pyramids, much out of character. Tour is conducted in Hebrew; serves me right. I lock self in hotel. Herald-Tribune available. On Wednesday I send instructions to me of Monday, (now—n). I await instructions from me of Friday (now + n). Instead I get muddled transmissions, noise, confusions. What is wrong? Where to flee now? Brasilia, McMurdo Sound, Anchorage, Irkutsk, Maograd? She will find me. She has her resources. There are few secrets to one who has the will to surmount them. How does she find me?

  She finds me.

  Note comes: “I am at Abu Simbel to wait for you. Meet me there on Friday afternoon or I throw myself from Rameses’ leftmost head at sundown. Love. Desperate. S.”

  I am defeated. She will bankrupt me, but I must have her.

  On Friday I go to Abu Simbel.

  She stood atop the monument, luscious in windswept white cotton.

  “I knew you’d come,” she said.

  “What else could I do?”

  We kissed. Her suppleness inflamed me. The sun blazed toward a descent into the western desert.

  “Why have you been running away from me?” she asked. “What did I do wrong? Why did you stop loving me?”

  “I never stopped loving you,” I said.

  “Then—why?”

  “I will tell you,” I said, “a secret I have shared with no human being other than myselves.”

  Words tumbled out. I told all. The discovery of my gift, the early chaos of sensory bombardment from other times, the bafflement of living one hour ahead of time and one hour behind time as well as in the present. The months of discipline needed to develop my gift. The fierce struggle to extend the range of extrasensory perception to five hours, ten, twenty-four, forty-eight. The joy of playing the market and never losing. The intricate systems of speculation; the self-imposed limits to keep me from ending up with all the assets in the world; the pleasures of immense wealth. The loneliness, too. And the supremacy of the night when I met her.

  Then I said, “When I’m with you, it doesn’t work. I can’t communicate with myselves. I lost millions in the last couple of weeks, playing the market the regular way. You were breaking me.”

  “The amulet,” she said. “It does it. It absorbs psionic energy. It suppresses the psi field.”

  “I thought it was that. But who ever heard of such a thing? Where did you get it, Selene? Why do you wear it?”

  “I got it far, far from here,” said Selene. “I wear it to protect myself.”

  “Against what?”

  “Against my own gift. My terrible gift, my nightmare gift, my curse of a gift. But if I must choose between my amulet and my love, it is no choice. I love you, Aram, I love you, I love you!”

  She seized the metal disk, ripped it from the chain around her neck, hurled it over the brink of the monument. It fluttered through the twilight sky and was gone.

  I felt (now—n) and (now + n) return.

  Selene vanished.

  For an hour I stood alone atop Abu Simbel, motionless, baffled, stunned. Suddenly Selene was back. She clutched my arm and whispered, “Quick! Let’s go to the hotel!”

  “Where have you been?”

  “Next Tuesday,” she said. “I oscillate in time.”

  “What?”

  “The amulet damped my oscillations. It anchored me to the timeline in the present. I got in 2459 A.D. Someone I knew there, someone who cared very deeply for me. It was his parting gift, and he gave it knowing we could never meet again. But now—”

  She vanished. Gone eighteen minutes.

  “I was
back in last Tuesday,” she said, returning. “I phoned myself and said I should follow you to Istanbul, and then to Tel Aviv, and then to Egypt. You see how I found you?”

  We hurried to her hotel overlooking the Nile. We made love, and an instant before the climax I found myself alone in bed. (Now + n) spoke to me and said, “She’s been here with me. She should be on her way back to you.” Selene returned. “I went to—”

  “—this coming Sunday,” I said. “I know. Can’t you control the oscillations at all?”

  “No. I’m swinging free. When the momentum really builds up, I cover centuries. It’s torture, Aram. Life has no sequence, no structure. Hold me tight!”

  In a frenzy we finished what we could not finish before. We lay clasped close exhausted. “What will we do?” I cried. “I can’t let you oscillate like this!”

  “You must. I can’t let you sacrifice your livelihood!”

  “But—”

  She was gone.

  I rose and dressed and hurried back to Abu Simbel. In the hours before dawn I searched the sands beside the Nile, crawling, sifting, probing. As the sun’s rays crested the mountain I found the amulet. I rushed to the hotel. Selene reappeared.

  “Put it on,” I commanded.

  “I won’t. I can’t deprive you of—”

  “Put it on.”

  She disappeared. (Now + n) said, “Never fear. All will work out wondrous well.”

  Selene came back. “I was in the Friday after next,” she said. “I had an idea that will save everything.”

  “No ideas. Put the amulet on.”

  She shook her head. “I brought you a present,” she said, and handed me a copy of the Herald-Tribune, dated the Friday after next. Oscillation seized her. She went and came and handed me November 19’s newspaper. Her eyes were bright with excitement. She vanished. She brought me the Herald-Tribune of November 8. Of December 4. Of November 11. Of January 18, 1988. Of December 11. Of March 5, 1988. Of December 22. Of June 16, 1997. Of December 14. Of September 8, 1990. “Enough!” I said. “Enough!” She continued to swing through time. The stack of papers grew. “I love you,” she gasped, and handed me a transparent cube one inch high. “The Wall Street Journal, May 19, 2206,” she explained. “I couldn’t get the machine that reads it. Sorry.” She was gone. She brought me more Herald-Tribunes, many dates, 1988-2002. Then a whole microreel. At last she sank down, dazed, exhausted, and said, “Give me the amulet. It must be within twelve inches of my body to neutralize my field.” I slipped the disk into her palm. “Kiss me,” Selene murmured.