"Let's skip the question of good and bad for a minute," I said, my head
throbbing. "What about this business of going into the future?"
* * * * *
Robert spoke up, his eyes shining. "There isn't any future, Mr. Holmes.
That's what I keep telling Star, but she can't reason--she's just a
girl. It'll all pass. Everything is always past."
Jim stared at him, as though thunderstruck, and opened his mouth in
protest. I shook my head warningly.
"Suppose you tell me about that, Robert," I said.
"Well," he began on a rising note, frowning, "it's kinda hard to
explain at that. Star's a Bright and even she doesn't understand it
exactly. But, you see, I'm older." He looked at her with superiority.
Then, with a change of mood, he defended her. "But when she gets as old
as I am, she'll understand it okay."
He patted her shoulder consolingly. He was all of six years old.
"You go back into the past. Back past Egypt and Atlantis. That's
recent," he said with scorn. "And on back, and on back, and all of a
sudden it's future."
"That isn't the way _I_ did it." Star tossed her head contrarily. "I
_reasoned_ the future. I reasoned what would come next, and I went
there, and then I reasoned again. And on and on. I can, too, reason."
"It's the same future," Robert told us dogmatically. "It has to be,
because that's all that ever happened." He turned to Star. "The reason
you never could find any Garden of Eden is because there wasn't any
Adam and Eve." Then to me, "And man didn't come from the apes, either.
Man started himself."
Jim almost strangled as he leaned forward, his face red and his eyes
bulging.
"How?" he choked out.
Robert sent his gaze into the far distance.
"Well," he said, "a long time from now--you know what I mean, as a
Stupid would think of Time-From-Now--men got into a mess. Quite a mess--
"There were some people in that time who figured out the same kind of
traveling Star and I do. So when the world was about to blow up and
form a new star, a lot of them teleported themselves back to when the
Earth was young, and they started over again."
Jim just stared at Robert, unable to speak.
"I don't get it," I said.
"Not everybody could do it," Robert explained patiently. "Just a
few Brights. But they enclosed a lot of other people and took them
along." He became a little vague at this point. "I guess later on the
Brights lost interest in the Stupids or something. Anyway, the Stupids
sank down lower and lower and became like animals." He held his nose
briefly. "They smelled worse. They worshiped the Brights as gods."
Robert looked at me and shrugged.
"I don't know all that happened. I've only been there a few times.
It's not very interesting. Anyway," he finished, "the Brights finally
disappeared."
"I'd sure like to know where they went," Star sighed. It was a lonely
sigh. I helplessly took her hand and gave my attention back to Robert.
"I still don't quite understand," I said.
He grabbed up some scissors, a piece of cellophane tape, a sheet of
paper. Quickly he cut a strip, gave it a half twist, and taped it
together. Then rapidly, on the Moebius Strip, he wrote: "Cave men. This
men, That men, Mu Men, Atlantis Men, Egyptians, History Men, Us Now
Men, Atom Men, Moon Men, Planet Men, Star Men--"
"There," he said. "That's all the room there is on the strip. I've
written clear around it. Right after Star Men comes Cave Men. It's all
one thing, joined together. It isn't future, and it isn't past, either.
It just plain _is_. Don't you see?"
"I'd sure like to know how the Brights got off the strip," Star said
wistfully.
* * * * *