The Toynbee Convector

“You—” Jonathan Hughes started and stopped. “You— killed her?”

“We did. Both of us. But if I have my way, if I can convince you, neither of us will, she will live, and you will grow old to become a happier, finer me. I pray for that. I weep for that. There’s still time. Across the years, I intend to shake you up, change your blood, shape your mind. God, if people knew what murder is. So silly, so stupid, so—ugly. But there is hope, for I have somehow got here, touched you, begun the change that will save our souls. Now, listen. You do admit, do you not, that we are one and the same, that the twins of time ride this train this hour this night?”

The train whistled ahead of them, clearing the track of an encumbrance of years. The young man nodded the most infinitely microscopic of nods. The old man needed no more.

“I ran away. I ran to you. That’s all I can say. She’s been dead only a day, and I ran. Where to go? Nowhere to hide, save Time. No one to plead with, no judge, no jury, no proper witnesses save—you. Only you can wash the blood away, do you see? You drew me, then. Your youngness, your innocence, your good hours, your fine life still un touched, was the machine that seized me down the track. All of my sanity lies in you. If you turn away, great God, I’m lost, no, we are lost. Well share a grave and never rise and be buried forever in misery. Shall I tell you what you must do?”

The young man rose.

“Plandome,” a voice cried. “Plandome.”

And they were out on the platform with the old man running after, the young man blundering into walls, into people, feeling as if his limbs might fly apart.

“Wait!” cried the old man. “Oh, please.”

The young man kept moving.

“Don t you see, we’re in this together, we must think of it together, solve it together, so you won’t become me and I won’t have to come impossibly in search of you, oh, it’s all mad, insane, I know, I know, but listen!”

The young man stopped at the edge of the platform where cars were pulling in, with joyful cries or muted greetings, brief honkngs, gunnings of motors, lights vanishing away. The old man grasped the young man’s elbow.

&

nbsp; “Good God, your wife, mine, will be here in a moment, there’s so much to tell, you can’t know what I know, there’s twenty years of unfound information lost between which we must trade and understand! Are you listening? God, you don’t believe!”

Jonathan Hughes was watching the street A long way off a final car was approaching. He said: “What happened in the attic at my grandmother’s house in the summer of nineteen fifty-eight? No one knows that but me. Well?”

The old man’s shoulders slumped. He breathed more easily, and as if reciting from a promptboard said: “We hid ourselves there for two days, alone. No one ever knew where we hid. Everyone thought we had run away to drown in the lake or fall in the river. But all the tune, crying, not feeling wanted, we hid up above and...listened to the wind and wanted to die.”

The young man turned at last to stare fixedly at his older self, tears in his eyes. “You love me, then?”

“I had better,” said the old man. “I’m all you have.”

The car was pulling up at the station. A young woman smiled and waved behind the glass.

“Quick,” said the old man, quietly. “Let me come home, watch, show you, teach you, find where things went wrong, correct them now, maybe hand you a fine life forever, let me—”

The car horn sounded, the car stopped, the young woman leaned out. “Hello, lovely man!” she cried.

Jonathan Hughes exploded a laugh and burst into a manic run. “Lovely lady, hi—”

“Wait”

He stopped and turned to look at the old man with the newspaper, trembling there on the station platform. The old man raised one hand, questioningly.

“Haven’t you forgotten something?”

Silence. At last: “You,” said Jonathan Hughes. “You.”

The car rounded a turn in the night. The woman, the old man, the young man, swayed with the motion. “What did you say your name was?” the young woman said, above the rush and run of country and road.

“He didn’t say,” said Jonathan Hughes quickly.

“Weldon,” said the old man, blinking.

“Why,” said Alice Hughes. “That’s my maiden name.”

The old man gasped inaudibly, but recovered. “Well, is it? How curious!”