LRC.HJJH@UTEXAS-20.ARPA (01/18/84)
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ A Lost Story ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ Somewhere around 1970-- not too long before Laser Books hit the market, whenever THAT was-- I read but lost track of a short story I particularly liked involving time dilation. Tenuous kinesthetic memory says I read it in hardback, so it would have been a library book. It had something of the flavor of Sturgeon, but I don't t-h-i-n-k it was by him. It's a pity to spoil it here, so I'll tell it just as well as I can manage. This is my only chance of finding it again. It largely takes place as flashbacks while the protagonist is traveling by monorail, alone, somewhere in the environs of West Virginia or Pennsylvania. The loveliness of the revived landscape is new to him because he has just been released from a century of cryogenic imprisonment imposed because of something he had written mildly critical of the then-government. He had been a young college professor, recently and deeply happily married. In the intervening years the repressive regime had been overthrown, but the cryogenic process had been booby-trapped so that any attempt to unfreeze the victims before their terms were up would kill them. He is still as young, and has been assured of any benefit the benevolent contemporary society can provide in making a new life for himself. But that is little comfort to a man whose "just yesterday" when he saw the agonized face of the coltish young girl who had been his bride, determinedly standing where they could share a last look as he was taken to incarceration-- had been a hundred years ago. His thoughts are all of her as he makes this pilgrimage to the little settlement where they had set up their first home. He recalls the furniture, the curtains... the \place/ that enfolded their love. After a hundred years he wonders if even the foundation of their cottage will be left, but even that little would be a preciously poignant relic to him. He alights from the all-automated monorail car and makes his way past the little tree-nestled settlement, glad that there's no one about. Ignoring the sounds of pleasant revelry in the community house, he finds the path to the cottage site... and it's still there! No one answers his knock, but the door is unlatched and he goes in. He is shocked to see everything just as it had been a hundred years before, even the color of the curtains. And he knows it would be impossible. Then he observes minute differences, a slightly different angle on a chair-back, wallpaper pattern which is only similar, not the same. Had she somehow arranged for this before she died however many years ago, he wonders. Had she known he would come and ached to make him welcome in this new world of largely dispersed rural population served by the automated monorails, an uncrowded world, thanks to the great starships which have been settling new worlds during all those years he slept. ..... And there, of course, is the crux of the story-- a ploy unimpressive in 1984, but fresh enough in the late 60's to catch one unexpecting. ..... He hears a step-- turns-- and she is there. Poised, no longer a coltish girl, with all the mature beauty he had foreseen; mature, but not old! It was such a beautiful happy ending! YOU can figure it out-- With everyone pushing to go to fresh new planets, there was great need for personnel to staff the starships, going AND coming, people without ties at either end of the journeys who would not be distressed by the time dilation effect of the FTL drive. She saw in that the way to pass the century in a few perceived years, shipped out and back in such a pattern as to be on hand when he was revived, came back and reconstructed their home, and is HERE! Where can I find this story again!!???! -------
burton@inuxg.UUCP (01/20/84)
I've read that story too! I agree with you, it was a wonderful little story (the ending particularly); just wish I could remember where I read it! I'll be looking through my collections. Doug Burton ATT-CP Indianapolis inuxg!burton
rpw3@fortune.UUCP (01/25/84)
#R:sri-arpa:-1568800:fortune:9900027:000:481
fortune!rpw3 Jan 24 20:11:00 1984
Your description reminds me of the ending of Joe Haldeman's "Forever Wars"
(a VERY good book!), in which (due to the LONG trips involved) if you ever
got separated from someone you could never be rejoined (practically speaking)
in common times again.
There is also a trick ending here, which I will not spoil.
Rob Warnock
UUCP: {sri-unix,amd70,hpda,harpo,ihnp4,allegra}!fortune!rpw3
DDD: (415)595-8444
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