In the Cards Part 2

Of course it was impossible to avoid knowing future news whether you wanted to hear it or not. The newspapers, in trying to beat each other to scoops, could only find good headline material among the Diehards; the rest of us all knew what would happen to us. Most of the papers carried two separate sections--one for future events and the other for present "news."

We still had crime with us. The crooks who knew they were going to jail always went there at the appointed time, regardless of their elaborate precautions and so-called foolproof systems. Others who knew they were going to stay free for a couple of years at least led fabulously successful lives of crimes, made more daring by the fact that they knew they were temporarily safe from the law. The police, on the other hand, never bothered to chase these characters, knowing in advance that they weren't going to catch them anyway.

This naturally set the Diehards to hollering. For a time, they talked of forming vigilante groups to do their own policing, but n.o.body worried about this. It was in the cards, you see, that they weren't going to do it.

The final blow to the Diehards came during the Federal Elections of 2017, when the Neo-Republicans just got up and walked out of office and the United North-South Democrats walked in without a single election speech being made. I know a few votes were cast, but everyone knew what the results would be long before it happened.

The part that annoyed the Diehards so much was that it was _their_ handful of votes that decided the results.

Toward the end of the first two years, Marge and I began to have our first samples of that bitter quarrel we had both witnessed on our first time trip. I had almost forgotten about what I had seen, but soon I saw how I was going to be taking part in such quarrels quite frequently.

Marge just wouldn't stop making those time trips and it seemed to me she spent hours every day in her Projector. There was something in the future that worried her and, naturally that worried me, too. I was almost tempted to get my own Projector out of the bas.e.m.e.nt and find out for myself. Marge was beginning to look sick and pale all the time. She got much thinner and weaker and I knew she cried a lot when I wasn't around.

I tried my best to find the cause of the trouble, but I got nowhere.

Trying to cheer her up with little surprises was a waste of time. It's no fun trying to surprise anyone who knows better than yourself what the surprise is going to be.

Finally, when out of desperation I had almost decided to take my first time trip in nearly two years, I came home from the office to find Marge sobbing hysterically beside the Projector.

"We're going to die, Gerry!" she said, when I managed to get her fairly coherent. "I've been looking ahead for months now and I just don't see us _anywhere_ in the future!"

So there it was. I didn't know what to do or say. I was scared and mad and sorry for Marge for keeping such a secret bottled up inside herself for so long.

The first thing I said was, "There must be a mistake--" until I remembered that there were _never_ any mistakes with Grundy Projectors.

Nevertheless, I still tried to find a way out of the situation. "Maybe you couldn't find us because we moved," I said quickly. "Maybe I got another job and left town or was transferred to the Boston office. Mr.

Atkins has mentioned it a couple of times."

"I looked," Marge said miserably. "I looked everywhere and I just couldn't see us anywhere."

"But how do you know we're going to die?" I argued. "Did you see it happen?"

She shook her head. "I didn't dare look that close. I got it pinned down to somewhere in the next month and I didn't dare look any closer, afraid I might have to see something horrible. All I know is we just won't be around sometime after the next four or five weeks."

"Has anyone mentioned anything to you about our death?" I asked. It was considered improper to even hint at another person's death just in case that person hadn't found out. Still, you know how tactless some people can be.

Marge just shook her head and went right on sobbing.

"Listen," I said, "I'll bet you're getting all worked up for nothing.

Anything--absolutely anything--could happen in the next few weeks.

There's probably a perfectly simple explanation for the whole thing."

I guess I wasn't very convincing because Marge just stared dumbly at me, tears spilling out of her eyes. "Gerry, would--would you go and look? If it's something harmless, you can come right back and tell me. If it's something awful, I won't ask about it."

"No," I said. "That would be just the same as telling you what's going to happen. Besides, I don't want to know."

[Ill.u.s.tration]

We just sat around the house for the rest of that evening. After Marge had gone to bed, I went down to the bas.e.m.e.nt and smashed both our Bilbo Grundy Time Projectors into little pieces. I'd seen the hopelessness and despair in people who had learned just how and when they would die.

Smashing the things wouldn't change the future--I realized that--but I didn't want Marge obeying the impulse to find out. Or myself, for that matter.

Shortly after that, the quarreling started in earnest. Marge wouldn't let up on the business of dying, and as well as being scared, I was also sick of hearing about our short and questionable future. Marge was furious with me for destroying her Projector and blamed me constantly for making her suffer by preventing her from looking into the future.

"Now we won't know what's going to happen until it's too late!" she shrieked at me.

"That's right!" I yelled back. "And that's just the way I want it!

What's the use of knowing and worrying in advance if there's no way of doing anything about it?"

Then, one night, we had the identical fight that we had watched two years earlier, on our first time trip. Marge, as usual, was crying hysterically about not having long to live and I was shouting at her about wishing herself into the grave. She seemed to have forgotten that I was going to go, too, and had taken all the suffering on her own shoulders.

When I was hollering and stamping about the room, I had a funny, eerie feeling as I suddenly remembered that my younger unmarried self had watched--or was watching--the same scene.

I just stopped doing anything for a moment and stared around the room.

Naturally I saw nothing, because there was nothing to see, and I remembered how quickly my younger self had fled when I had looked up like that. Ashamed, I tried to soothe Marge, but she was too far gone to be comforted.

I was glad to get out of the house every day and spend a few hours at the office. I must admit that I was scared to be with Marge because it looked as though we were going to go together and I felt safer away from her. I know it's nothing to be proud of, but it helped ease the tension, for Marge as well as myself.

One day, Mr. Atkins stopped in at my office and sat down to talk. There was nothing unusual about this; he often visited me for a chat, even though he wasn't so friendly with the other employees.

We talked for a while about the usual things, department business and some of the staff members.

Then Mr. Atkins turned the conversation away from business matters. "Do you have one of those newfangled Time Projector things, Gerald?" he asked. Mr. Atkins was getting on in years and called everything introduced in the last thirty years "newfangled."

"No," I said. "I did have one, but I stopped using it soon after I got it."

"Didn't you like it?"

I shrugged. "It wasn't that. I just preferred to find out for myself what would happen to me." I didn't want to tell him the true story or my other troubles.

Mr. Atkins sat back in his chair and sighed. "Ah, yes. I don't suppose you remember too much about the old days, not after the last two years we've been through. People had problems in those days and they used to have to solve them for themselves. People don't have to make decisions any more, you know. Do you think you could still make a decision, Gerald?"

I got a little excited and found it difficult to stop fidgeting and stay quietly seated. I began to suspect that he was leading up to something important. It could have been the transfer to another branch or an out-of-town a.s.signment which would explain our disappearance in the future.

"I still try to make plans and direct my own future whenever I can," I stalled.

"It's difficult, I know," Mr. Atkins went on, "especially when all the news is about something that's going to happen a day or a week or a year from now. It's not so bad for an old man like me, but it must be tough on you young fellows. Too bad this Bilbo--uh--"

"Grundy," I said. "Bilbo Grundy." Mr. Atkins knew the name as well as I did, but it was one of his little tricks to pretend he was getting old and forgetful, although he really wasn't. It used to be a good business tactic before the Grundy Projector came out. It wasn't any more--not with people being able to see outcomes of dealings--but he couldn't get rid of the habit.

"It's too bad he had to invent that fool time gadget," he went on. "I suppose your wife uses it all the time. They seem to be very popular with women."