“Oh! Oh, then we’ll know—”
“We’ll know everything! We’ll know what the yellow bands are and what becomes of them and what happens to mankind and—”
“—and we’ll know,” said Lavra, “whether it’s a boy or a girl.”
Vyrko smiled. “Twins probably. It runs in my family—at least one pair to a generation. And I think that’s it—Holt’s already planted the fact of my having a twin named Vrist even though he doesn’t come into the action.”
“Twins . . . That would be nice. They wouldn’t be lonely until we could . . . But get it quick, dear. Read it to me; I can’t wait!”
So he read Norbert Holt’s story to her—too excited and too oddly affectionate to point out that her longstanding aversion for print persisted even when she herself was a character. He read on past the quarrel. He read a printable version of the past hour. He read about himself reading the story to her.
“Now!” she cried. “We’re up to now. What happens next?”
Vyrko read:
The emotional release of anger and love had set Vyrko almost at peace with himself again; but a small restlessness still nibbled at his brain.
Irrelevantly he remembered Kirth-Labbery’s cryptic hint of escape.
Escape for the two of them, happy now; for the two of them and for their . . . say, on the odds, their twins.
He sauntered curiously into the laboratory, Lavra following him. He drew back the curtain and stared at the chair of metal rods. It was hard to see the control board that seemed to control nothing. He sat in the chair for a better look.
He made puzzled grunting noises. Lavra, her curiosity finally stirred by something inedible, reached over his shoulder and poked at the green button.
“I don’t like that last thing he says about me,” Lavra objected. “I don’t like anything he says about me. I think your Mr. Holt is nasty.”
“He says you’re beautiful.”
“And he says you love me. Or does he? It’s all mixed up.”
“It’s all mixed up . . . and I love you.”
The kiss was a short one; Lavra had to say, “And what next?”
“That’s all. It ends there.”
“Well . . . Aren’t you . . . ?”
Vyrko felt strange. Holt had described his feelings so precisely. He was at peace and still curious, and the thought of Kirth-Labbery’s escape method nibbled at his brain.
He rose and sauntered into the laboratory, Lavra following him. He drew back the curtain and stared at the chair of metal rods. It was hard to see the control board that seemed to control nothing. He sat in the chair for a better look.
He made puzzled grunting noises. Lavra, her curiosity finally stirred by something inedible, reached over his shoulder and poked at the green button.
Vyrko had no time for amazement when Lavra and the laboratory vanished. He saw the archaic vehicle bearing down directly upon him and tried to get out of the way as rapidly as possible. But the chair hampered him and before he could get to his feet the vehicle struck. There was a red explosion of pain and then a long blackness.
He later recalled a moment of consciousness at the hospital and a shrill female voice repeating over and over, “But he wasn’t there and then all of a sudden he was and I hit him. It was like he came out of nowhere. He wasn’t there and then all of a sudden . . .” Then the blackness came back.
All the time of his unconsciousness, all through the semi-conscious nightmares while doctors probed at him and his fever soared, his subconscious mind must have been working on the problem. He knew the complete answer the instant that he saw the paper on his breakfast tray, that first day he was capable of truly seeing anything.
The paper was easy to read for a paleolinguist with special training in pulps—easier than the curious concept of breakfast was to assimilate. What mattered was the date. 1948—and the headlines refreshed his knowledge of the Cold War and the impending election. (There was something he should remember about that election . . .)
He saw it clearly. Kirth-Labbery’s genius had at last evolved a time machine. That was the one escape, the escape which the scientist had not yet tested and rather distrusted. And Lavra had poked the green button because Norbert Holt had said she had poked (would poke?) the green button.
How many buttons could a wood poke poke if a wood poke would poke . . . “The breakfast didn’t seem to agree with him, Doctor.”
“Maybe it was the paper. Makes me run a temperature every morning too!”
“Oh, Doctor, you do say the funniest things!”
“Nothing funnier than this case. Total amnesia, as best we can judge by his lucid moments. And his clothes don’t help us—must’ve been on his way to a fancy-dress party. Or maybe I should say fancy-««dress!”
“Oh, Doctor . . . !”
“Don’t tell me nurses can blush. Never did when I was an intern—and you can’t say they didn’t get a chance! But this character here—not a blessed bit of identification on him! Riding some kind of newfangled bike that got smashed up . . . Better hold off on the solid food for a bit—stick to intravenous.”
He’d had this trouble before at ritual dinners, Vyrko finally recalled. Meat was apt to affect him badly—the trouble was he had not at first recognized those odd strips of oily solid which accompanied the egg as meat.
The adjustment was gradual and successful, in this case as in other matters. At the end of two weeks, he was eating meat easily (and, he confessed, with a faintly obscene nonritual pleasure), and equally chatting with nurses and fellow patients about the events (which he still privately tended to regard as mummified museum pieces) of 1948.
His adjustment, in fact, was soon so successful that it could not long endure. The doctor made that clear.
“Got to think about the future, you know. Can’t keep you here forever. Nasty
