The lock clicked, the door opened, and Mimi walked out and folded
herself into his arms. He held her until she stopped shaking, then until
he himself stopped shaking and until his breath came more easily. He
kept all the while his back toward Donald and the gun, and his arms
folded around her so that she was safe from him. Then he turned and
calmly as he could, he asked what in the holy hell was going on.
"He wants me to go back with him, right now," Mimi said. She was
shivering in his arms. "I'm not going, I'm not going with him."
"Of course, you're not," Victor said. He turned back to Donald. "What's
the rush all of a sudden?" he asked. "What's the big emergency?" he
smiled.
"Don't turn on the personality, Dr. Quink," Fairfield said. "It's too
complicated to explain, but time's run out on us. We've got to go
tonight, and I'm taking her with me dead or alive, I don't give a damn
which way anymore, she's coming with me dead or alive."
Victor let go of Mimi and took a step toward him, but the hand with the
gun came up and gun was pointed straight at him, and the voice was flat
and tired and desperate, "I can't leave her here, you can see what it
would mean. They're very strict about time traveling, they have to be,
and she can't stay here. She hasn't lost her memory, she knows damned
well where she comes from, and she's going back now, one way or the
other. I don't know what'll happen to me when we get back if I kill her,
but it's my decision and I can't let her stay behind, no matter what."
His voice started to rise and the words began to come faster. He was
working himself up dangerously near the breaking point.
"If you'll just calm down for a few moments," Victor tried, "I'm sure we
can talk this out sensibly enough."
"It won't work, Dr. Quink, it won't work. You're trying to talk it out
like I'm nuts, you're trying to reassure me, but it won't work because
you can't. Because I'm _not_ nuts! I'm telling the truth and she knows
it! Damn you, Mimi, tell him!"
* * * * *
"All right! All right, I'll tell him," she cried. "And I'll tell you,
too. And I'm not going back with you, you'll see. Because I planned this
from the start. My God, what a day," she sighed, and sat down on the
bed. "Now listen, both of you, you, too, Donald, because you don't know
it all either."
"He's not crazy, Victor, we do come from the future. I was reading about
all the Nobel prize winners, darling, and of course, I came across you,
and right from the beginning you fascinated me. Do you know you were the
first psychiatrist ever to win the award, and then you won it twice?
Oh, I can tell you, I was terribly impressed! And when I saw your
picture, you know the one, the portrait by Videl in the Museum of
Ancient--oh, but of course, it hasn't been done yet. You have gray
sideburns then, and there's not a touch of gray in your hair now.
Anyway, you look absolutely distinguished with gray, it's certainly your
color. And I thought you were just the handsomest Nobel winner I had
ever seen, and darling, you are, not the slightest doubt about it. Don't
you think so, Donald?"
"He's charming," Donald replied. "Just terribly, terribly charming.
Would you mind getting on with it?"
"Please," Victor started to interrupt.
"Don't be modest, darling," Mimi went on. "So then I read a biography,
and then another, and soon I was doing nothing but studying you. I fell
in love with you, dear, I fell in love with you a thousand years after
you were dead. You never married, you know, and you needed me, and I
guess that helped, but at any rate I fell, and I fell all the way.
"We're not married, Donald and I. There's no sex then, so there's no
need for marriage. Right, Donald? Right. But he was coming here on
vacation and he was nice enough to take me along, and we had to fit in,
so we came as husband and wife. Just a matter of convenience, really.
But then we were here for all those months, and I didn't get to meet
you, and something about this age just got into my bones, I loved it so,
people really _live_ now, not like back home. And I nearly forgot about
you, Victor dear, although I can't understand that now, and all I wanted
was to live here like a normal person, a normal wife. But _he_ couldn't
understand that. At any rate, I went native, I went whole hog native.
"And then it was time to go home. But I wasn't going. So I made up this
story about forgetting everything and I pretended I thought he was nuts
or something and he went and got you and suddenly there you were in my
living room and it all came back, darling, it came back so fast and
strong I thought I'd die on the spot. And I love you now, darling, I
love you now and forever, and I won't go back alive, I swear that."
* * * * *
"Mimi," Donald begged, "think of the future. If you don't go back it'll
be all upset. We can't have people just popping up in the past from the
future, there has to be discipline. It's one thing to come here quietly
for a few months of harmless vacation, and then just as quietly to
disappear. But to settle down brazenly in another time, to ... to
immigrate, as it were, well, it just can't be done. There's no
precedent, just none at all. _No_body would think of doing such a thing.
Why, who knows what would happen if you stayed here? It could upset the
whole pattern of the future!"
"The future will just have to take care of itself," Mimi answered. "I
love him, and you can't argue with that. There's nothing you can say
that can argue with that. I don't care poof for the future."
* * * * *
Victor sat down quietly on the edge of the bed, he felt a bit weak
around the general vicinity of the knees. Mimi stood up and strode over
to the window, her back to the conversation. "Mimi," Donald pleaded,
"just think of what you're doing. You'll lose your immortality, for one
thing. You know, it's not something you're just _born_ with, it's the
result of careful medical science. Why, almost _any_thing could happen
to you here. They have all _sorts_ of ugly diseases. And if you should
last just a few years longer, just maybe fifty or sixty more years, your
heart will almost certainly pop off. They don't have any sort of
arterial rejuvenation now, nothing at all. You're trading immortality
for a mere _moment_."
"I don't give a damn or a wild pig's snort," she replied.
"Don't be vulgar," Donald said. "Let's keep this on a civilized plane."
"That's not vulgarity," she answered. "It's poetry. 'I don't give a damn
or a wild pig's snort, but you cut just one strand and the fashions be
damned, I swear that I'll boil three in lime!'"
"Lime?" Victor asked rather weakly.
"I think so, dear," Mimi said. "Would you care for a martini?"
"How about the toilet!" Donald suddenly thundered. "How about _that_,
hey?"
"I beg your pardon," Mimi replied.
"The toilets, the toilets," he repeated impatiently. "Do you want to
spend the rest of your short life with this old-fashioned plumbing?" He
waved wildly toward the tile bathroom. "It's all right roughing it for a
few months like we did, but can you honestly imagine spending the rest
of your _life_ under such vile conditions? Ha, you didn't think of that,
did you?" he continued when he saw the sudden stricken expression on her
face. "You don't like the idea, do you?"
Mimi clenched her fists at her side and stamped her little foot. "I
don't _care_," she spit out, "I absolutely do not care! I will stay with
him, I will, I will, I _will_." She turned and looked at the bathroom
that opened off the bedroom, and blanched for one moment, then she shut
her eyes, gave another kick, and insisted. "I will, I will, I will!"
* * * * *
Donald sighed and slapped his hands at his side. He turned around,
hesitated for a few seconds, then said to the wall, "I've tried. I've
tried everything I could think of." He turned again and faced them, and
he raised his gun. "You're coming, Mimi. One way or another, you're
coming."
So quietly he hardly realized what he was doing, but thankful that the
gas pain had vanished, Victor stepped between the gun and the girl.
"You'll have to kill me, Donald," he said. "You won't take her out of
here without killing me, I promise you that, and what will that do to
your future? A man from the future killing somebody here? Oh, no,
that'll upset everything. And before I've become famous? Your whole
history will be changed. You'd better think twice, Donald."
The gun wavered, and lowered.
"Would you care for a martini, Donald, dear?" Mimi asked.
Donald turned and ran from the room. They heard his feet slipping down
the stairs, they heard the front door slam behind him.
Victor started after him, but Mimi held him back. "What are you going to
do," she cried, "chase after him? What will you do when you catch him?
You're needed more here. After all," she continued, "think what I just
went through? I'm a nervous wreck, almost getting carted off to God
knows where like that. I need the care of a competent physician."
He turned back to her in a daze, she clucked and patted his cheek, and
pushed him down onto the bed. She pulled out his handkerchief and mopped
his face. "Aren't you proud of me?" she said. "Wasn't that fast
thinking? How did you like that little story I told? It really threw
him, didn't it? He didn't know _what_ to think."
"You mean," Victor stammered, "you mean you didn't mean it, you just
made it up? Just like that?"
"Darling," she began to giggle, "you didn't bel_ieve_ that wild story?
About the future? Oh, _darling_, you couldn't possibly believe it."
"Of course not," he said. "Of course not. Quick thinking, Mimi, yes,
very quick thinking. It _was_ a convincing story, you know. Very good.
But, my God! I've got to catch him."
"Don't be silly," she said, pushing him down. "You'll never find him,
you'll never see him again. He'll be lost in the crowd. One more
screwball in New York, they'll never notice him. He'll fit right in. He
may even become President some day, or at least Dean of Students at some
small New England College. You just take my word for it, darling, and
relax a moment. I'll rush downstairs and bring you up a martini. We
deserve one. He'll be all right now. As long as he's made up his mind
that he can leave me here, he'll trot off somewhere and dig up another
neurosis, or psychosis, or whatever. He's not dangerous anymore. And you
heard him say we were never married, and we have no marriage
certificate, so I guess we're not. Can't we just forget about him, just
as if he never existed? Maybe he never _did_ exist. Maybe he was just a
figment of our imagination. Maybe he was just an instrument of kismet to
bring us together. Maybe he was just a wandering minstrel, or a memory
looking for a chance to be real?"
"Maybe you'd better not talk so much, but just bring up the martini.
Better bring a pitcher. Green ones."
And so she did. Their first honeymoon they spent in Bermuda; they took
their second on a trip to Sweden ten years later, when Victor went to
accept his first Nobel prize.