But although his lust for Lenore might have abated somewhat, his love had not. That had never been just raging hormones; of that he was sure.
Nonetheless, he had an obligation to Sarah that predated Lenore’s birth by decades; he knew that. Sarah needed him, and although he didn’t need her—not in the sense of requiring her assistance with day-to-day living—he did still love her very much. Until recently, the quiet, gentle relationship they’d grown into had been enough, and surely it could still be enough, for whatever time they had left together.
And, besides, the current situation was unfair to Lenore. There was no way that he could be the lover she deserved, her full-time companion, her life partner.
To break up with Lenore, he knew, would feel like amputation—like cutting off a part of himself. But it was the right thing to do, although—
Although a typical young man losing a young woman might console himself by thinking that there are plenty of other fish in the sea, that someone equally or even more wonderful was bound to come along soon. But Don had lived an entire life already, and in all of it, he’d only met two women who had captivated him, one in 1986 and the other in 2048. The chances of meeting a third, even in the many decades he had left, seemed exceedingly slim.
But that was beside the point.
He knew what he had to do.
And he would do it tomorrow, even though…
No, that didn’t matter. No excuses.
He would do it tomorrow.
THE CALENDAR WAITS for no man, and, as it happened, today, Thursday, October fifteenth, was Don’s birthday. He hadn’t told Lenore that it was coming up; he hadn’t wanted her spending any of what little money she had on a present for him, and now, of course, given what he was planning to do today, he was doubly glad that he’d kept it to himself.
And besides, was an eighty-eighth birthday significant, if your body had been rejuvenated? When you’re a kid, birthdays are a big deal. By middle age, they’re given much less importance, with parties only for those that begin new decades, and maybe some moments of quiet reflection when one’s personal clock clicks over to a number ending in a five. But after a certain age, it changes again. Every birthday is to be celebrated, every birthday is an accomplishment…because every birthday might be one’s last—except when you’ve had a rollback. Was his eighty-eighth to be fussed about or ignored?
And it wasn’t as if this automatically meant that his biological age was now twenty-six instead of twenty-five. The twenty-five figure had been a guesstimate, he knew. The rollback was a suite of biological adjustments, not a time machine with digital readouts. Still, he did find himself thinking he was now physically twenty-six, and that was all to the good. Twenty-five had seemed obscenely young; there was something ridiculously insouciant about that age. But twenty-six, why, that was pushing thirty, and starting to get respectable. And even if it were only a guesstimate, he was getting older, just as everyone else did, one day at a time, and those days did need to be bundled together into groups, didn’t they?
Today being his birthday was an unfortunate coincidence, he knew, for he’d be reminded of the end of his relationship with Lenore on each of the many birthdays he still had ahead of him.
He arrived at the Duke of York around noon, and ran into Gabby. “Hi, Don,” she said, smiling. “Thanks for joining us at the food bank last weekend.”
“No problem,” he said. “My pleasure.”
“Lennie’s already here. She’s in the snug.”
Don nodded and headed off to the little room. Lenore had been reading on her datacom, but she looked up as he approached, and immediately got to her feet, stretching up to kiss him. “Happy birthday, sweetheart!” she declared.
“How—how did you know?”
She smiled mischievously—but, of course, almost all information was online somewhere these days. As soon as they sat down, Lenore produced a floppy package wrapped in metallic-blue paper. “Happy birthday,” she said again.
Don looked at the package. “You shouldn’t have!”
“What sort of girlfriend would I be if I missed your birthday? Go ahead, open it.”
He did so. Inside was an off-white T-shirt. It had the familiar red barred-circle symbol for “No” with the word QWERTY written as six Scrabble tiles superimposed on it.
Don’s jaw dropped. He’d told her the first time they played Scrabble that he disapproved of qwerty being in the Official Scrabble Players Dictionary. In his experience, it was always spelled with all caps, and capitalized words weren’t legal in Scrabble. All dictionaries he’d ever consulted agreed with him about the spelling, save one: a note in Webster’s Third New International Dictionary, Unabridged, said the term was “often not capitalized.” But that same far-too-liberal dictionary said “toronto” was acceptable with a lowercase T when used as an adjective, and the OSPD hadn’t included that, thank God. Since countless tournament-level games had been won using qwerty, nobody wanted to hear that it was bogus. As with Don’s “Gunter” campaign, he’d won few converts.
“Thank you!” he said. “This is fabulous.”
Lenore was grinning. “I’m glad you like it.”
“I do. I love it!”
“And I love you,” she said, giving voice to the words for the first time, as she reached across the table and took his hand.
THE LEAVES ON the trees along Euclid Avenue had turned color, a mixture of orange and yellow and brown. The year was old; winter would be upon them soon. Don and Lenore walked along, holding hands. She was chatting animatedly, as usual, but he was too preoccupied to say much, for he knew he was heading back to her place for the very last time.
Dead leaves mixed with litter were blown by an afternoon breeze along the cracked asphalt. They passed houses with boarded-up windows, and a wino camped out by a sewer grate, before they reached her place. They walked around to the side of the ramshackle house and headed down to the basement apartment. When they got in, and their jackets were removed, Lenore set about making coffee, and Don looked around. There really wasn’t much that was personal to Lenore here; he knew the shabby furniture had come with the place. What few belongings she had would probably fit in a couple of suitcases. He shook his head in wonder, remembering when his own life had been so manageable, so uncluttered.
“Here,” said Lenore, handing him a steaming cup. “This should help warm you up.”
“Thanks.”
She perched on the armrest of the couch. “And I know something else that might warm you up, Birthday Boy,” she said, eyes twinkling.
But he shook his head. “Um, how ’bout we play Scrabble instead?”
“Seriously?” asked Lenore.
He nodded.
She looked at him like he was from another planet. But then she smiled and shrugged. “Sure, if you like.”
They lay down on the worn carpeting, and she used her datacom to project a holographic Scrabble board between them. She drew an E to Don’s J, so went first.
Sometimes when playing Scrabble, a player will realize he has some of the letters needed to form a good word, and will set those aside at one end of his rack, hoping to acquire the others in later turns. Early in the game, Don ended up with a Y and a K, worth four and five points respectively. He passed over several opportunities to use them, but ultimately did manage to get most of what he needed, although the serious player in him hated wasting an S. He placed his tiles running to the left from a P that Lenore had put down earlier:
SKY O
“The blank is a T,” Don said, in response to her appropriately blank expression. “Skytop.”
She wrinkled her nose. “Um, I don’t think that’s really in the dictionary.”
He nodded. “I know. I just wanted to, you know, just wanted to…” He stopped, tried again. “For the rest of my life, every time I hear that word, I’m going to think of you.” He paused. “More than anything Rejuvenex’s doctors did, more than any part of the rollback, it was you who made me feel young aga
in, feel alive.”
She smiled that radiant smile of hers. “I do love you,” she said, “with all my heart.”
He replied, echoing as much of her sentiment as he could. “And I love you, too, Lenore.” He looked at her beautiful face, her freckles, her green eyes, her orange hair, committing them to memory. “And,” he added, absolutely sure it was true, “I always will.”
She smiled again.
“But,” he continued, “I—I’m so sorry, darling, but—” He swallowed, and forced himself to meet her gaze. “But this is the last time we can see each other.”
Lenore’s eyes went wide. “What?”
“I’m sorry.”
“Why?”
Don looked at the threadbare carpeting. “I’m about as grownup as it’s possible for a human to be, and it’s time I started acting that way.”
“But, Don…”
“I’ve got an obligation to Sarah. She needs me.”
Lenore began crying softly. “I need you, too.”
“I know,” Don said, very softly. “But I have to do this.”
Her voice cracked. “Oh, Don, please don’t.”
“I can’t give you what you need, what you deserve. I’ve…I’ve got a prior commitment.”
“But we’re so good together…”
“Yes, we are. I know that—and that’s why this hurts so very much. I wish there were another way. But there isn’t.” He swallowed hard. “The stars are aligned against us.”
DON MADE HIS way slowly, sadly back to the subway, bumping into pedestrians, including one robot, on Bloor Street’s sidewalk, and getting honked at as he stepped into traffic without checking the light.
He wasn’t up to changing trains—something he’d have to do if he took the shortest route—and so he decided to go south. He’d go down one side of the great U and then almost all the way up the other side.
He waited for the train to arrive. When it did, there was a mad scrum as passengers jostled to get on while others were still trying to get off. Don remembered how it used to be when he was young: people wanting to get on stood to either side of the subway doors, and waited patiently until all those who wished to get off had done so. Somewhere along the line, that little civility—like so many of those that had once allowed Toronto to actually deserve its nickname of “Toronto the Good”—had fallen by the wayside, despite all the PA announcements urging orderly behavior.
The train was crowded, but he managed to get a seat. And, as the train started up, he thought nothing about that. He was used to people offering him a seat; some few crumbs of goodness still existed, he supposed. But it came to him that although he was indeed eighty-eight, as of today, there were people who looked that old who really needed to sit down. He got up and motioned for an elderly woman wearing a sari to take his seat, and she rewarded him with a very grateful smile.
As it happened, he was in the first car. At Union, lots of people got off the subway, and Don maneuvered close to the front window, next to the driver’s cubicle, with its robot within. Some stretches of the tunnel were cylindrical, and they were illuminated by rings of light at intervals. The effect reminded him of an old TV series, The Time Tunnel, a show he’d enjoyed in the same way he’d enjoyed Lost in Space, for the nifty art direction, while cringing at the stupid stories.
After all, you can’t go back in time.
You can’t undo what’s done.
You can’t change the past.
You can only, to the best of your abilities, try to meet the future head-on.
The train rumbled on, through the darkness, taking him home.
DON CAME INTO the entryway and paused, looking down at the tiles, at where Sarah had once lain, fallen, waiting for him to return. He took the six stairs one at a time, trudging up into the living room.
Sarah was standing by the mantel, looking either at the holos of their grandchildren or at her trophy from Arecibo; with her back to him, it was impossible to tell which. She turned around, smiled, and started walking toward him. Don’s arms opened automatically, and she stepped into them. He hugged her lightly, afraid of breaking her bones. Her arms against his back felt like sapling branches pushed by a gentle breeze. “Happy birthday again,” she said.
He glanced past her, at the foot-high digital display on the wall monitor, and saw it change from 5:59 to 6:00. When they let go of each other, she started a slow walk toward the kitchen. Rather than hurry ahead, Don fell in behind her, taking one step for every two of hers.
“You sit down,” Don said, when they’d finally made it into the kitchen. Although he knew he shouldn’t, he found Sarah’s slow, methodical movements frustrating to watch. And, besides, he ate three times as much food as she did these days; he should do the work. “Gunter,” he said—loudly, but certainly not yelling; it wasn’t necessary to yell. The Mozo appeared almost at once. “You and I are going to make dinner,” he said to the robot.
Sarah slowly lowered herself onto one of the three wooden chairs that encircled the little kitchen table. As Don and Gunter moved about the cramped space, getting down a pot and a frying pan and finding ingredients in the fridge, he felt her eyes upon him.
“What’s wrong?” she asked at last.
He hadn’t said anything, and he’d taken pains not to bang cookware or utensils together. But Sarah had known him for so long now, and even if the veneer on his body had changed his body language doubtlessly hadn’t. Whether it had been the way he’d been hanging his head, or simply the fact that he wasn’t speaking except to give Gunter the occasional perfunctory instruction that tipped her off, he couldn’t say. But he couldn’t hide his moods from her. Still, he tried to deny it, futile though he knew that would be. “Nothing.”
“Did something go wrong downtown today?” she asked.
“No. I’m just tired, that’s all.” He said it while bent over a chopping board, but stole a sideways glance at her, to gauge her reaction.
“Is there anything I can do?” she asked, her brow knitted in concern.
“No,” said Don, and he allowed himself one more, final lie—just this one last time. “I’ll be fine.”
–-- Chapter 36 --–
SARAH WOKE WITH a start. Her heart was pounding probably more vigorously than was healthy at her age. She looked over at the digital clock. It was 3:02 a.m. Next to her lay Don, his breathing making a gentle sound with each exhale.
The idea that had roused her was so exciting she thought about waking him, but, no, she wouldn’t do that. After all, it was a long shot, and he’d been having so much trouble sleeping lately.
Her side of the bed was the one near the window. A million years ago, when they’d chosen who would sleep where, Don had said she should have that side so she could look out at the stars anytime she wished. It was an ordeal getting out of bed. Her joints were stiff, and her back hurt, and her leg was still healing. But she managed it, pushing off her nightstand, forcing herself to her feet as much through an effort of will as through bodily strength.
She took small, shuffling steps toward the door, paused and steadied herself for a moment by holding on to the jamb, then continued out into the corridor and made her way to the study.
The computer’s screen was blank, but it came to life the moment she touched the scroller, bringing up a suitably dim image for viewing in the darkened room.
Within moments, Gunter was there. He’d been downstairs, Sarah imagined, but he’d doubtless heard her stir. “Are you all right?” he asked. He had lowered the volume of his voice so much that Sarah could only just make it out.
She nodded. “I’m fine,” she whispered. “But there’s something I’ve got to check out.”
Sarah loved stories—even apocryphal ones—about ah hah! moments: Archimedes jumping out of his bath and running naked down the streets of Athens shouting “Eureka!,” Newton watching an apple fall (although she preferred the even-less-likely version about him being hit on the head by a falling apple), August Kekule waking up with the s
olution to the structure of the benzene molecule after dreaming of a snake biting its own tail.
In her whole career, Sarah had only ever had one such epiphany: that time, long ago, while playing Scrabble in this very house, when she’d realized how to arrange the text of the first message from Sigma Draconis.
But now, perhaps, she was having another.
Her grandson Percy had asked her about her views on abortion, and she’d told him that she’d gone back and forth on some of the tricky points.
And she had, her whole life.
But what she’d remembered just now was another night, like this one, when she’d woken at 3:00 a.m. That night had been Sunday, February 28, 2010, the day before the response to the initial Dracon message was to be sent from Arecibo. She and Don were in their VSQ cabin at the Arecibo Observatory, the fronds slapping against its wooden walls making a constant background hushing sound.
She’d decided she wasn’t happy with her answer to question forty-six. She’d said “yes,” the mother’s wishes should always trump the father’s during a mutually desired pregnancy, but then she’d found herself leaning toward “no.” And so Sarah had gotten out of the narrow bed. She fired up her notebook, which contained the master version of the data that would be transmitted the next day, changed her answer to that one question, and recompiled the response file. Her notebook would be interfaced to the big dish tomorrow, and this revised version would be the one actually sent.
It didn’t matter much, she’d thought at the time, in the grand scheme of things, what one person out of a thousand said in response to any one question, but Carl Sagan’s words had echoed in her head. “Who speaks for the Earth? We do.” I do. And Sarah had wanted to give the Dracons the truest, most honest answer she could.
By that point, copies of the supposedly finalized reply had already been burned to CD-ROM, and the backup hardcopy printout Don had recently retrieved from U of T had already been made. Sarah had forgotten all about that night in Puerto Rico, some thirty-eight years in the past, until moments ago.