Now + n, Now – n

by Robert Silverberg

All had been so simple, so elegant, so profitable for ourselves. And then we met the lovely Selene and nearly were undone. She came into our lives during our regular transmission hour on Wednesday, October 7, 1987, between six and seven p.m. Central European Time. The moneymaking hour. I was in satisfactory contact with myself and also with myself. (Now – n) was due on the line first, and then I would hear from (now + n).

I was primed for some kind of trouble. I knew trouble was coming, because on Monday, while I was receiving messages from the me of Wednesday, there came an inexplicable and unexplained break in communications. As a result I did not get data from (now + n) concerning the prices of the stocks in our carryover portfolio from last week, and I was unable to take action. Two days have passed, and I am the me of Wednesday who failed to send the news to me of Monday, and I have no idea what will happen to interrupt contact. Least of all did I anticipate Selene.

In such dealings as ours no distractions are needed, sexual or otherwise. We must concentrate wholly. At any time there is steady low-level contact among ourselves; we feel one another’s reassuring presence. But transmission of data from self to self requires close attention.

I tell you my method. Then maybe you understand my trouble.

My business is investments. I do all my work at this same hour. At this hour it is midday in New York; the Big Board is still open. I can put through quick calls to my brokers when my time comes to buy or sell.

My office at the moment is the cocktail lounge known as the Celestial Room in the Henry VIII Hotel, south of the Thames. My office may be anywhere. All I need is a telephone. The Celestial Room is aptly named. The room orbits endlessly on a silent oiled track. Twittering sculptures in the so-called galactic mode drift through the air, scattering cascades of polychromed light upon those who sip drinks. Beyond the great picture windows of this supreme room lies the foggy darkness of the London evening, which I ignore. It is all the same to me, wherever I am: London, Nairobi, Karachi, Istanbul, Pittsburgh. I look only for an adequately comfortable environment, air that is safe to admit to one’s lungs, service in the style I demand, and a telephone line. The individual characteristics of an individual place do not move me. I am like the ten planets of our solar family: a perpetual traveler, but not a sightseer.

Myself who is (now – n) is ready to receive transmission from myself who is (now). “Go ahead, (now + n).” he tells me. ((To him I am (now + n). To myself I am (now). Everything is relative; n is exactly forty-eight hours these days.))

“Here we go, (now – n).” I say to him.

I summon my strength by sipping at my drink. Chateau d’Yquem ’79 in a sleek Czech goblet. Sickly sweet stuff; the waiter was aghast when I ordered it before dinner. Horreurs! Quel aperitif! But the wine makes transmission easier. It greases the conduit, somehow. I am ready.

My table is a single elegant block of glittering irradiated crystal, iridescent, cunningly emitting shifting moire patterns. On the table, unfolded, lies today’s European edition of the Herald Tribune. I lean forward. I take from my breast pocket a sheet of paper, the printout listing the securities I bought on Monday afternoon. Now I allow my eyes to roam the close-packed type of the market quotations in my newspaper. I linger for a long moment on the heading, so there will be no mistake: Closing New York Prices, Tuesday, October 6. To me they are yesterday’s prices. To (now – n) they are tomorrow’s prices. (Now – n) acknowledges that he is receiving a sharp image.

I am about to transmit these prices to the me of Monday. You follow the machination, now?

I scan and I select.

I search only for the stocks that move five percent or more in a single day. Whether they move up or move down is immaterial; motion is the only criterion, and we go short or long as the case demands. We need fast action because our maximum survey span is only ninety-six hours at present, counting the relay from (now + n) back to (now – n) by way of (now). We cannot afford to wait for leisurely capital gains to mature; we must cut our risks by going for the quick, violent swings, seizing our profits as they emerge. The swings have to be violent. Otherwise brokerage costs will eat up our gross.

I have no difficulty choosing the stocks whose prices I will transmit to Monday’s me. They are the stocks on the broker’s printout, the ones we have already bought; obviously (now – n) would not have bought them unless Wednesday’s me had told him about them, and now that I am Wednesday’s me, I must follow through. So I send:

Arizona Agrochemical, 79?, + 6?

Canadian Transmutation, 116, + 4?

Commonwealth Dispersals, 12, – 1?

Eastern Electric Energy, 41, + 2

Great Lakes Bionics, 66, + 3?

And so on through Western Offshore Corp., 99, – 8. Now I have transmitted to (now – n) a list of Tuesday’s top twenty high-percentage swingers. From his vantage-point in Monday, (now – n) will begin to place orders, taking positions in all twenty stocks on Monday afternoon. I know that he has been successful, because the printout from my broker gives confirmations of all twenty purchases at what now are highly favorable prices.

(Now – n) then signs off for a while and (now + n) comes on. He is transmitting from Friday, October 9. He gives me Thursday’s closing prices on the same twenty stocks, from Arizona Agrochemical to Western Offshore. He already knows which of the twenty I will have chosen to sell today, but he pays me the compliment of not telling me; he merely gives me the prices. He signs off, and, in my role as (now), I make my decisions. I sell Canadian Transmutation, Great Lakes Bionics, and five others; I cover our short sale on Commonwealth Dispersals. The rest of the positions I leave undisturbed for the time being, since they will sell at better prices tomorrow, according to the word from (now + n). I can handle those when I am Friday’s me.

Today’s sequence is over.

In any given sequence—and we have been running about three a week—we commit no more than five or six million dollars. We wish to stay inconspicuous. Our pre-tax profit runs at about nine percent a week. Despite our network of tax havens in Ghana, Fiji, Grand Cayman, Liechtenstein, and Bolivia, through which our profits are funneled, we can bring down to net only about five percent a week on our entire capital. This keeps all three of us in a decent style and compounds prettily. Starting with $5,000 six years ago at the age of twenty-five, I have become one of the world’s wealthiest men, with no other advantages than intelligence, persistence, and extrasensory access to tomorrow’s stock prices.

It is time to deal with the next sequence. I must transmit to (now – n) the Tuesday prices of the stocks in the portfolio carried over from last week, so that he can make his decisions on what to sell. I know what he has sold, but it would spoil his sport to tip my hand. We treat ourselves fairly. After I have finished sending (now – n) those prices, (now + n) will come online again and will transmit to me an entirely new list of stocks in which I must take positions before Thursday morning’s New York opening. He will be able to realize profits in those on Friday. Thus we go from day to day, playing our shifting roles.

But this was the day on which Selene intersected our lives.

I had emptied my glass. I looked up to signal the waiter, and at that moment a slender, dark-haired girl, alone, entered the Celestial Room. She was tall, graceful, glorious. She was expensively clad in a clinging monomolecular wrap that shuttled through a complex program of wavelength shifts, including a microsecond sweep of total transparency that dazzled the eye while still maintaining a degree of modesty. Her features were a match for her garment: wide-set glossy eyes, delicate nose, firm lips lightly outlined in green. Her skin was extraordinarily pale. I could see no jewelry on her (why gild refined gold, why paint the lily?) but on her lovely left cheekbone I observed a small decorative band of ultraviolet paint, obviously chosen for visibility in the high-spectrum lighting of this unique room.

She conquered me. There was a mingling of traits in her that I found instantly irresistible: she seemed both shy and steel-strong, passionate and vulnerable, confident and ill at ease. She scanned the room, evidently looking for someone, not finding him. Her eyes met mine and lingered.

Somewhere in my cerebrum (now – n) said shrilly, as I had said on Monday, “I don’t read you, (now + n). I don’t read you!”

I paid no heed. I rose. I smiled to the girl, and beckoned her toward the empty chair at my table. I swept my Herald Tribune to the floor. At certain times there are more important things than compounding one’s capital at five percent per week. She glowed gratefully at me, nodding, accepting my invitation.

When she was about twenty feet from me, I lost all contact with (now – n) and (now + n).

I don’t mean simply that there was an interruption in the transmission of words and data among us. I mean that I lost all sense of the presence of my earlier and later selves. That warm, wordless companionship, that ourselvesness, that harmony that I had known constantly since we had established our linkage five years ago, vanished as if switched off. On Monday, when contact with (now + n) broke, I still had had (now – n). Now I had no one.

I was terrifyingly alone, even as ordinary men are alone, but more alone than that, for I had known a fellowship beyond the reach of other mortals. The shock of separation was intense.

Then Selene was sitting beside me, and the nearness of her made me forget my new solitude entirely.

She said, “I don’t know where he is and I don’t care. He’s been late once too often. Finito for him. Hello, you. I’m Selene Hughes.”

“Aram Kevorkian. What do you drink?”

“Chartreuse on the rocks. Green. I knew you were Armenian from halfway across the room.”

I am Bulgarian, thirteen generations. It suits me to wear an Armenian name. I did not correct her. The waiter hurried over; I ordered chartreuse for her, a sake martini for self. I trembled like an adolescent. Her beauty was disturbing, overwhelming, astonishing. As we raised glasses I reached out experimentally for (now – n) or (now + n). Silence. Silence. But there was Selene.

I said, “You’re not from London.”

“I travel a lot. I stay here a while, there a while. Originally Dallas. You must be able to hear the Texas in my voice. Most recent port of call, Lima. For the July skiing. Now London.”

“And the next stop?”

“Who knows? What do you do, Aram?”

“I invest.”

“For a living?”

“So to speak. I struggle along. Free for dinner?”

“Of course. Shall we eat in the hotel?”

“There’s the beastly fog outside,” I said.

“Exactly.”

Simpatico. Perfectly. I guessed her for twenty-four, twenty-five at most. Perhaps a brief marriage three or four years in the past. A private income, not colossal but nice. An experienced woman of the world, and yet also somehow still retaining a core of innocence, a magical softness of the soul. I loved her instantly. She did not care for a second cocktail. “I’ll make dinner reservations,” I said, as she went off to the powder room. I watched her walk away. A supple walk, flawless posture, supreme shoulderblades. When she was about twenty feet from me I felt my other selves suddenly return. “What’s happening?” (now – n) demanded furiously. “Where did you go? Why aren’t you sending?”

“I don’t know yet.”

“Where the hell are the Tuesday prices on last week’s carryover stocks?”

“Later,” I told him.

“Now. Before you blank out again.”

“The prices can wait,” I said, and shut him off. To (now + n) I said, “All right. What do you know that I ought to know?”

Myself of forty-eight hours hence said, “We have fallen in love.”

“I’m aware of that. But what blanked us out?”

“She’s psi-suppressant. She absorbs all the transmission energy we put out.”

“Impossible! I’ve never heard of any such thing.”

“No?” said (now + n). “Brother, this past hour has been the first chance I’ve had to get through to you since Wednesday, when we got into this mess. It’s no coincidence that I’ve been with her just about one hundred percent of the time since Wednesday evening, except for a few two-minute breaks, and then I couldn’t reach you because you must have been with her in your time sequence. And so—”

“How can this be?” I cried. “What’ll happen to us if? No. No, you bastard, you’re rolling me over. I don’t believe you. There’s no way that she could be causing it.”

“I think I know how she does it,” said (now + n). “There’s a—”

At that moment Selene returned, looking even more radiantly beautiful, and silence descended once more.

We dined well. Chilled Mombasa oysters, salade niçoise, filet of Kobe beef rare, washed down by Richebourg ‘77. Occasionally I tried to reach myselves. Nothing. I worried a little about how I was going to get the Tuesday prices to (now – n) on the carryover stuff, and decided to forget about it. Obviously I hadn’t managed to get them to him, since I hadn’t received any printout on sales out of that portfolio this evening, and if I hadn’t reached him, there was no sense in fretting about reaching him. The wonderful thing about this telepathy across time is the sense of stability it gives you: whatever has been, must be, and so forth.

After dinner we went down one level to the casino for our brandies and a bit of gamblerage. “Two thousand pounds’ worth,” I said to the robot cashier, and put my thumb to his charge plate, and the chips came skittering out of the slot in his chest. I gave half the stake to Selene. She played high-grav-low-grav, and I played roulette; we shifted from one table to the other according to whim and the run of our luck. In two hours she tripled her stake and I lost all of mine. I never was good at games of chance. I even used to get hurt in the market before the market ceased being a game of chance for me. Naturally, I let her thumb her winnings into her own account, and when she offered to return the original stake I just laughed.

Where next? Too early for bed.

“The swimming pool?” she suggested.

“Fine idea,” I said. But the hotel had two, as usual. “Nude pool or suit pool?”

“Who owns a suit?” she asked, and we laughed and took the dropshaft to the pool.

There were separate dressing rooms, M and W. No one frets about showing flesh, but shedding clothes still has lingering taboos. I peeled fast and waited for her by the pool. During this interval I felt the familiar presence of another self impinge on me: (now – n). He wasn’t transmitting, but I knew he was there. I couldn’t feel (now + n) at all. Grudgingly I began to admit that Selene must be responsible for my communications problem. Whenever she went more than twenty feet away, I could get through to myselves. How did she do it, though? And could it be stopped? Mao help me, would I have to choose between my livelihood and my new beloved?

The pool was a vast octagon with a trampoline diving web and a set of underwater psych-lights making rippling patterns of color. Maybe fifty people were swimming and a few dozen more were lounging beside the pool, improving their tans. No one person can possibly stand out in such a mass of flesh, and yet when Selene emerged from the women’s dressing room and began the long saunter across the tiles toward me, the heads began to turn by the dozens. Her figure was not notably lush, yet she had the automatic magnetism that only true beauty exercises. She was definitely slender, but everything was in perfect proportion, as though she had been shaped by the hand of Phidias himself. Long legs, long arms, narrow wrists, narrow waist, small high breasts, miraculously outcurving hips. The Primavera of Botticelli. The Leda of Leonardo. She carried herself with ultimate grace. My heart thundered.

Between her breasts she wore some sort of amulet: a disk of red metal in which geometrical symbols were engraved. I hadn’t noticed it when she was clothed.

“My good-luck piece,” she explained. “I’m never without it.” And she sprinted laughing to the trampoline, and bounded, and hovered, and soared, and cut magnificently through the surface of the water. I followed her in. We raced from angle to angle of the pool, testing each other, searching for limits and not finding them. We dived and met far below, and locked hands, and bobbed happily upward. Then we lay under the warm quartz lamps. Then we tried the sauna. Then we dressed.

We went to her room.

She kept the amulet on even when we made love. I felt it cold against my chest as I embraced her.

But what of the making of money? What of the compounding of capital? What of my sweaty little secret, the joker in the Wall Street pack, the messages from beyond by which I milked the market of millions? On Thursday no contact with my other selves was scheduled, but I could not have made it even if it had been. It was amply clear: Selene blanked my psi field. The critical range was twenty feet. When we were farther apart than that, I could get through; otherwise, not. How did it happen? How? How? How? An accidental incompatibility of psionic vibrations? A tragic canceling out of my powers through proximity to her splendid self? No. No. No. No.

On Thursday we roared through London like a conflagration, doing the galleries, the boutiques, the museums, the sniffer palaces, the pubs, the sparkle houses. I had never been so much in love. For hours at a time I forgot my dilemma. The absence of myself from myself, the separation that had seemed so shattering in its first instant, seemed trivial. What did I need them for, when I had her?

I needed them for the moneymaking. The moneymaking was a disease that love might alleviate but could not cure. And if I did not resume contact soon, there would be calamities in store.

Late Thursday afternoon, as we came reeling giddily out of a sniffer palace on High Holborn, our nostrils quivering, I felt contact again. (Now + n) broke through briefly, during a moment when I waited for a traffic light and Selene plunged wildly across to the far side of the street.

“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 six and seven 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 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 my 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. It’s our anniversary now. Forty-eight hours since we met!”

Gently I pull arm free. I extend arm, show jewelled 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 the 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 also 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 in 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 dropshaft 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 9 points in the final hour of Tuesday’s trading. Meccano Leasing, though, had been rebuffed in the Robomation takeover bid and was off 4 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 10,000 Southwest Power and Fusion at 38, 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 11, 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 a 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 fatigue 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 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 5,000 FSP, 800 CCG, 150 LC, 200 T, 1,000 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 calamitatum! “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 5,000 FSP, 800 CCG, 140 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 it 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 had 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.

And so. She wears her amulet; we are inseparable; I have no contact with my other selves. In handling my investments I merely consult my file of newspapers, which I have reduced to minicap size and carry in the bezel of a ring I wear. For safety’s sake Selene carries a duplicate.

We are very happy. We are very wealthy.

Is only one dilemma. Neither of us use the special gift with which we were born. Evolution would not have produced such things in us if they were not to be used. What risks do we run by thwarting evolution’s design?

I bitterly miss the use of my power, which her amulet negates. Even the company of supreme Selene does not wholly compensate for the loss of the harmoniousness that was

(now – n)

(now)

(now + n)

I could, of course, simply arrange to be away from Selene for an hour here, an hour there, and reopen that contact. I could even have continued playing the market that way, setting aside a transmission hour every forty-eight hours outside of amulet range. But it is the continuous contact that I miss. The always presence of my other selves. If I have that contact, Selene is condemned to oscillate, or else we must part.

I wish also to find some way that her gift will be not terror but joy for her.

Is maybe a solution. Can extrasensory gifts be induced by proximity? Can Selene’s oscillation pass to me? I struggle to acquire it. We work together to give me her gift. Just today I felt myself move, perhaps a microsecond into the future, then a microsecond into the past. Selene said I definitely seemed to blur.

Who knows? Will success be ours?

I think yes. I think love will triumph. I think I will learn the secret, and we will coordinate our vanishings, Selene and I, and we will oscillate as one, we will swing together through time, we will soar, we will speed hand in hand across the millennia. She can discard her amulet once I am able to go with her on her journeys.

Pray for us, (now + n), my brother, my other self, and one day soon perhaps I will come to you and shake you by the hand.

Content

Now + n, Now – n
by Robert Silverberg