The Woman Who Knew October

When Dr. Elara Voss opened her eyes, the first thing she noticed was that Manhattan smelled wrong. There was coal smoke in the air, gasoline that had never passed through an emissions scrubber, horses somewhere nearby despite the fact that she was quite certain there had not been working horses in central Manhattan for almost two hundred years, and beneath all of it came that peculiar combination of hot pavement, tobacco, perfume, roasting chestnuts and thousands upon thousands of human beings occupying the same few square miles without environmental filtration. The second thing she noticed was the automobile bearing down on her. A horn shrieked. Elara jumped backward. “Lady!” The enormous black machine missed her by perhaps three feet, its driver leaning halfway out his window and shouting something considerably less polite than lady as Elara stumbled onto the sidewalk, staring after the automobile with her heart pounding. “No,” she whispered. People were staring. That was understandable. Elara wore the graphite-gray one-piece transit suit she had been wearing inside the Chronometric Research Chamber, a garment without buttons, seams, visible pockets or anything else that clothing in September of 1929 was expected to possess, and on her feet were low silver composite boots that looked as though someone had asked a very imaginative costume designer to invent shoes for the year 3000. Elara touched the thin band around her wrist. Dark. She tapped it. Nothing. “Oh, no.” A woman passing beside her glanced over. Elara caught her arm. “Excuse me. What year is this?” The woman recoiled. “What?” “The year.” “Are you drunk?” “I sincerely hope so.” The woman hurried away. Elara looked upward. Buildings she knew from photographs surrounded her. Automobiles filled Fifth Avenue. Men wore hats. Women wore calf-length dresses and close-fitting cloche hats. A newspaper boy stood at the corner shouting headlines. Elara crossed toward him so quickly that he stepped backward. “What is the date?” “September twenty-seventh.” “Year.” The boy frowned. “Nineteen twenty-nine.” Elara closed her eyes. “Oh, hell.” Someone laughed. Not the boy. A woman's laugh. Bright, amused and completely unrestrained. Elara turned. Three women stood near a gleaming automobile outside a fashionable hotel, all beautifully dressed, all obviously wealthy, and all looking directly at her. The woman in the center was perhaps thirty-one, with dark chestnut hair arranged beneath a cream cloche, intelligent hazel eyes, a long burgundy coat over an ivory dress, and the effortless posture of someone who had never in her life wondered whether a restaurant would allow her through the front door. She was beautiful. Not beautiful in the symmetrical, optimized way Elara's century had learned to manufacture almost casually, but alive, imperfect and astonishingly expressive, with one eyebrow lifting as Elara approached. “I apologize,” Elara said. “Could you tell me where I might find a public information terminal?” The woman blinked. “A what?” “A terminal. Network access. Public communications would be sufficient.” One of her companions covered her mouth. The other giggled. The chestnut-haired woman stared at Elara's clothing. “Are you performing somewhere?” “No.” “A theater company?” “No.” “A political demonstration?” “No.” The other women laughed again. Elara should have walked away. Instead she continued staring at the woman in burgundy because apparently temporal displacement had not damaged the portion of her brain responsible for making disastrous romantic decisions. “What is your name?” Elara asked. That caused another burst of laughter. The woman herself joined them this time. “You haven't even told me yours.” “Elara Voss.” “How very dramatic.” “It is simply my name.” “And you genuinely don't have any money, do you?” Elara checked the pockets that technically were not pockets. Nothing. “No.” The woman's expression softened just slightly. She opened her handbag, removed a dollar bill and offered it. Elara looked at it. Then at her. “What am I supposed to do with that?” This produced the loudest laughter yet. “Oh, darling,” one of the companions said, “wherever she's from, apparently they don't have money.” Elara took the bill. “Apparently they don't.” The woman in burgundy smiled. “You might begin by buying yourself breakfast.” “I will repay you.” “Keep it.” “I don't accept charity.” “You just accepted a dollar.” Elara looked down at it. “That was a tactical error.” The woman laughed again, although this time Elara found she liked the sound. A chauffeur opened the automobile door. “Miss Avery?” Elara memorized the name instantly. Miss Avery stepped toward the car, then looked back. “Good luck, Miss Voss.” “Catherine.” She stopped. “You didn't tell me your first name.” The woman stared at her. Her companion said, “Catherine, come along.” Elara smiled. “Apparently your friends do.” For the first time, Catherine Avery looked genuinely interested. Only for a second. Then she climbed into the automobile. As it disappeared into traffic, Elara stood on Fifth Avenue with one dollar, a dead temporal locator on her wrist and absolutely no idea whether she would ever see the twenty-second century again. She looked at the newspaper boy. “May I buy one of those?” “Two cents.” Elara handed him the dollar. He stared. “Change?” “Please.” Elara opened the newspaper. Then she saw the financial pages. She stopped breathing. Radio Corporation of America. General Electric. General Motors. United States Steel. Prices she knew. Dates she knew. Patterns she had taught. Dr. Elara Voss, Professor of Applied Economic History at the North Atlantic Institute, had spent fourteen years studying financial panics, speculative bubbles and cascading market failures. And she had just arrived in New York four weeks before the most famous market collapse of the twentieth century. Elara slowly folded the newspaper. “Well,” she murmured. The newspaper boy looked up. “What?” “I may not be homeless for very long.” Her first real stake consisted of a little over seven thousand dollars, obtained by sacrificing several components from her clothing and damaged equipment whose materials, tolerances and manufacturing methods were decades beyond anything the men examining them had ever seen. It began with the decorative clasp from one of her boots, which she sold to a jeweler who became extraordinarily interested in the metal alloy Elara assured him was merely an unusually pure grade of platinum. “It has almost no impurities,” he said, examining it again. “I know.” “Where did you get it?” “Switzerland.” “You don't sound Swiss.” “My mother traveled.” He looked suspicious. Elara smiled. “Do you want it or not?” He wanted it. More importantly, he knew people who wanted the other things she reluctantly offered over the following two days: another clasp, two tiny conductive contacts from the dead temporal apparatus, and a narrow strip of material from inside one of her boots that several men spent nearly an hour arguing over before finally agreeing that none of them had the slightest idea how it had been manufactured. By the time Elara stopped selling pieces of her future, she had a little over seven thousand dollars in cash and securities, one increasingly damaged pair of boots, and the uncomfortable realization that twentieth-century capitalism was considerably easier when one possessed twenty-second-century scrap metal. Two days later, wearing a secondhand navy dress that fit badly and shoes that Elara considered instruments of medieval punishment, she entered a brokerage office on Broad Street. The man behind the desk looked her over. “Your husband sending you?” “I don't have one.” “Father?” “No.” “Brother?” “No.” “Then what exactly can I do for you?” “I want to buy put privileges.” He looked surprised. “On what?” “Radio Corporation.” His eyebrows rose. “RCA?” “Yes.” “You think Radio is going down?” “Not today. Not tomorrow. But before November, you are going to wish you had listened to me.” He laughed. Elara did not. “How much?” “One hundred fifty dollars.” “You understand you can lose every cent?” “Yes.” “You understand Radio has been one of the greatest stocks in America?” “Yes.” “You understand half of Wall Street thinks it's going higher?” “Yes.” The broker leaned backward. “And what exactly do you know that they don't?” Elara smiled. “October.” By the end of the following week, the broker had stopped laughing. Elara returned with money. Then more money. She predicted a sharp decline and bought protection before it happened, took profits, rolled them into increasingly aggressive positions, and when the market temporarily recovered she did something that frightened even her broker. She bet against it again. “Miss Voss,” he said, “if you're wrong—” “I'm not.” “You have nearly eleven thousand dollars now.” “I know.” “You could walk away.” “No.” “You could buy a house.” “I intend to buy several.” “You're risking everything.” Elara leaned across his desk. “Sell United States Steel short.” He stared at her. “How much?” “As much as the account will carry.” “Elara—” “Use every dollar of margin you can give me.” For the first time he used her first name. She smiled. “Now you're beginning to trust me.” “I think you're insane.” “That too.” By October eighteenth, Elara Voss had more money than she knew how to explain. By October twenty-third, several brokers knew her name. By October twenty-fourth, Wall Street knew it. And by the afternoon of Black Thursday, while crowds gathered outside the Exchange and men shouted into telephones and fortunes disappeared faster than anyone could calculate them, Elara sat silently in a private office watching numbers move across a ticker she had seen reproduced in textbooks since childhood. Her broker entered. He closed the door. “You did it.” Elara said nothing. “You actually did it.” “How much?” He swallowed. “Six hundred and eighty thousand, approximately, once everything settles.” In 1929. Elara stared at him. “You could stop now,” he said. “I am stopping.” He looked relieved. “Thank God.” Elara stood. “Close everything.” “Everything?” “Everything.” “But if you're right about what comes next—” “I know exactly what comes next.” “Then you could make twice this.” Elara looked at the ticker. “I have enough.” Catherine Avery heard the name three days later. Everyone had. The mysterious Miss Voss, the foreign-looking woman nobody could quite place, had somehow anticipated the collapse and emerged from it not merely intact but enormously wealthy. Catherine was attending a charity reception when she saw her. At first she didn't recognize her. Elara wore black. Not the strange gray garment from Fifth Avenue, nor the cheap navy dress Catherine had unknowingly passed three days later outside a department store, but an exquisite black evening gown cut with almost architectural simplicity, a diamond bracelet at one wrist and nothing at her throat. She stood beside a window holding champagne. Men surrounded her. She appeared bored by all of them. Catherine stopped. Her friend Marjorie followed her gaze. “My God.” “What?” “That's her.” “Who?” “The lunatic.” Marjorie looked again. Then gasped. “Oh.” Catherine walked toward Elara. Halfway across the room, Elara noticed her. Their eyes met. Elara smiled. Catherine suddenly wished the floor would open beneath her. “Miss Avery.” “Miss Voss.” “You remember me.” Catherine winced. “I deserve that.” “Yes.” “I was hoping you might have forgotten.” “I have an excellent memory.” “So I've gathered.” Elara glanced around the ballroom. “Would you like a dollar?” Catherine stared at her. Then she laughed. Not cruelly this time. “Oh, I deserved that too.” Elara's mouth twitched. “I've been saving it.” “For four weeks?” “Three weeks and six days.” “You counted?” “I told you. Excellent memory.” Catherine lowered her voice. “I behaved terribly.” “Your friends behaved terribly.” “I laughed.” “Yes.” “I thought you were mad.” “I was asking strangers what year it was.” “That is not helping your case.” Elara smiled. Catherine looked at her for several seconds. “What happened to you?” “A great many things.” “You were penniless.” “Yes.” “And now people are saying you made a million dollars.” “People exaggerate.” Catherine looked relieved. “Six hundred and eighty thousand.” Catherine's mouth fell open. Elara took a sip of champagne. “In the wrong direction.” “How?” “I knew something other people didn't.” “What?” “That the world was about to change.” Catherine studied her. “You are the strangest woman I have ever met.” “That's unfortunate.” “Why?” “Because I've been thinking about you since the day you laughed at me.” Catherine stopped breathing. Elara continued calmly. “I noticed you before I understood almost anything else about where I was, which is embarrassing because I was facing several more immediate problems.” “Elara.” “Yes?” “You cannot say things like that.” “Why?” Catherine glanced around them. “Because people will hear.” Elara's expression changed. It was subtle. But Catherine saw it. “Ah,” Elara said. “You really don't understand.” “No.” “Women don't simply tell other women that they—” Catherine stopped. Elara waited. “That they what?” Catherine's cheeks reddened. Elara smiled. “Miss Avery, are you attempting to explain your century to me?” Catherine stared. “My century?” Elara's smile disappeared. “Figure of speech.” “No, it wasn't.” For a moment neither woman spoke. Then Catherine whispered, “Who are you?” Elara looked around the ballroom. “Would you like dinner?” “That does not answer my question.” “I know.” “Tonight?” “Yes.” “Why?” “Because I'm still smitten with you.” Catherine nearly dropped her champagne. “You really must stop doing that.” “I don't think I can.” Dinner became supper. Supper became midnight. Midnight became two women sitting in Elara's enormous hotel suite overlooking Central Park, their shoes abandoned somewhere between the dining table and the sofa, while Catherine listened to Elara describe things she assumed were jokes. “You're telling me women become presidents.” “Yes.” “Several?” “Many.” “And women marry women?” “Yes.” “Legally?” “Yes.” “Everywhere?” “Almost everywhere that matters by my time.” Catherine stared at her glass. “And nobody cares?” “Oh, people always find something to care about.” Catherine smiled faintly. “But not that?” “Not particularly.” “That sounds impossible.” Elara looked at her. “So did flying.” Catherine leaned back. “And where exactly is this miraculous place?” Elara hesitated. “Home.” “Europe?” “No.” “California?” “No.” “Then where?” Elara looked toward the windows. “Two hundred and fifty-nine years from now.” Silence. Catherine stared at her. Elara continued. “I was born in 2161.” Catherine blinked. “You expect me to believe that?” “No.” “Good.” “I would be concerned if you did.” Catherine laughed despite herself. “You're serious.” “Yes.” “You're completely insane.” “Possibly.” “Elara.” “I arrived on Fifth Avenue wearing clothing that doesn't exist, asking for a communications terminal, knowing almost nothing about ordinary life in 1929, and then made a fortune by correctly predicting one of the worst financial collapses in history.” Catherine's smile faded. Elara removed the dark band from her wrist and placed it on the table. “What is that?” “My way home.” Catherine looked at it. “Does it work?” “No.” The answer came too quickly. Too quietly. Catherine looked at Elara's face. “Oh.” “I don't think it ever will.” For all the impossible things Elara had told her, that was the first Catherine immediately believed. “Are you alone?” Elara laughed once. “I know no one born in this century except you, my broker, a jeweler on Forty-Seventh Street and a hotel manager who believes I am either royalty or a criminal.” Catherine smiled. “Which are you?” “Currently?” Elara considered. “Rich.” Catherine moved closer. “You were frightened that first day.” “Terrified.” “And we laughed at you.” “Yes.” “I am sorry.” Elara looked at her. “I know.” “No. I mean it.” “I know.” Catherine touched her hand. Elara became absolutely still. Perhaps because Catherine had never touched a woman like that. Perhaps because Elara had never expected anyone from this century to do it. Catherine whispered, “You really were smitten with me?” “Immediately.” “Even while I was laughing?” “That part was inconvenient.” Catherine smiled. “And now?” “Much worse.” Their hands remained together. Catherine looked down at them. “In your time, what happens now?” “That depends.” “On what?” “Whether you want me to kiss you.” Catherine's eyes rose. Elara waited. “You would really ask?” “Always.” Catherine looked toward the windows, toward the enormous city and the century that had taught her a thousand rules about what women were permitted to want. Then she looked back. “Yes.” Elara kissed her. Carefully at first. Catherine's fingers tightened around hers. Then Catherine kissed her again. And this time there was nothing careful about it. The following Tuesday the market collapsed again. Catherine arrived at Elara's suite shortly after noon and found her standing beside three telephones while her broker shouted through one of them. “You knew,” Catherine said. Elara covered the receiver. “Yes.” “You knew today would be worse.” “Yes.” “And you aren't trading?” “No.” “You could make even more.” Elara looked through the window at the city. “I already have more.” “More what?” “Money than I need.” She returned to the telephone. “Mr. Bell, purchase the buildings.” Catherine frowned. “What buildings?” Elara waved her toward a folder. Inside were addresses. Apartment buildings. Boarding houses. Small factories. “Why?” “Because they're going to become very cheap.” “That doesn't sound particularly charitable.” “It isn't.” Elara ended the call. “Not yet.” Catherine waited. Elara sat beside her. “The crash isn't the disaster.” “What?” “The disaster comes afterward.” “How bad?” Elara hesitated. “Bad enough that I wish I didn't know.” Catherine slowly understood. “And you're buying the buildings.” “Yes.” “To make money?” “No.” “Then why?” “To keep the people in them.” Catherine stared. Elara shrugged. “I can't stop what is coming, Catherine, and I cannot rewrite an entire century because I happen to remember how it unfolded, but I can keep a few hundred families from being thrown into the street, I can keep several factories operating, and I can invest in things that I know will matter later.” “What things?” “Medicine. Refrigeration. Communications. Better housing.” Catherine smiled. “What?” “You arrived with one dollar.” “Yes.” “You've become one of the richest women in New York.” “Apparently.” “And your first great ambition is becoming the world's most irritating landlord.” Elara laughed. “I may finally understand capitalism.” Catherine moved closer. “You are impossible.” “So you've mentioned.” “And arrogant.” “Occasionally.” “Strange.” “Frequently.” Catherine kissed her. Elara smiled against her lips. When they separated, Catherine remained close enough that their foreheads almost touched. “My mother wants me to marry Charles Pembroke.” “I dislike him already.” “You've never met him.” “He wants to marry you.” “That is generally considered a compliment.” “Not in my century.” Catherine laughed. “And what would happen in your century?” Elara thought. “I would take you somewhere very expensive, order something neither of us needs, tell you that I love you far too soon, and spend several weeks pretending I am not terrified you might change your mind.” Catherine's laughter disappeared. “Love?” Elara's eyes widened slightly. “That slipped out.” “Yes.” “I blame the twentieth century.” Catherine touched her cheek. “Say it again.” Elara looked at her. “I love you.” Catherine's eyes filled. “You hardly know me.” “I know.” “You may regret it.” “I know.” “You're supposed to argue.” “I come from the future. We improved honesty.” Catherine laughed through her tears. Then she kissed her again. Three weeks later, Elara's temporal band awakened. They were in bed. A blue light suddenly illuminated the bedside table. Elara froze. Catherine sat upright. “What is that?” Elara already knew. The band projected a thin column of light, flickering rapidly. TEMPORAL ANCHOR ACQUIRED. RETURN WINDOW: 04:00. Catherine read only the numbers. “What does it mean?” Elara did not answer. Catherine looked at her. “Elara.” “It means I can go home.” Neither woman moved. “How long?” “Four minutes.” Catherine swallowed. “Oh.” Elara reached for the band. “Four minutes before it disappears.” “You should go.” Elara turned. Catherine's face had gone pale. “You should.” “Do you want me to?” “No.” “Then why did you say it?” “Because your family is there. Your life. Your world.” “Everyone I knew believes I died in an accident nearly two months ago.” “They would have you back.” “Yes.” Catherine's voice broke. “And you would have everything.” Elara looked around the room. “No.” The blue light continued blinking. 03:21. Catherine climbed from the bed and pulled on her robe. “I won't ask you to stay.” “Catherine—” “I can't.” Elara followed her. “Look at me.” Catherine shook her head. “Look at me.” She did. Elara held up the temporal band. “In my century I had an apartment overlooking the Atlantic, a position people spent their entire careers trying to obtain, access to every library ever digitized, medicine that will sound like witchcraft to you, cities without smoke, machines that think, trains faster than airplanes, and a bathroom that heated the floor before I stepped out of the shower.” Catherine laughed despite herself. Elara's eyes filled. “And I was lonely.” 02:34. “Elara.” “I didn't know I was lonely because everyone around me lived exactly the way I did.” 02:11. “Then I fell through two and a half centuries, nearly got killed by a Packard, met the rudest beautiful woman in Manhattan, became obscenely wealthy and discovered that apparently history's greatest financial catastrophe was necessary for me to finally acquire a social life.” Catherine laughed and cried simultaneously. 01:42. “You'll lose your world.” “I already did.” 01:31. “You'll never see it again.” “I know.” 01:17. Catherine whispered, “I'm frightened that one day you'll hate me for this.” Elara removed the band. “No.” 00:59. She placed it on the table. Catherine stared. “Elara.” 00:43. Elara took Catherine's face between her hands. “I am not choosing 1929.” 00:35. She kissed her. “I am choosing you.” 00:22. Catherine held her. 00:11. The room filled briefly with blue light. Then darkness. The band went dead. Forever. Catherine buried her face against Elara's neck. “You're certain?” Elara smiled. “I've already seen the future.” Catherine pulled back. “And?” Elara kissed her forehead. “I prefer this one.” Outside their windows, New York was entering one of the darkest decades in its history, fortunes were vanishing, banks would fail, families would struggle and the world would change in ways Catherine could not yet imagine. But Elara knew what was coming. She knew which technologies would succeed, which investments would matter, which medicines could be accelerated, which mistakes might perhaps be softened, and which battles she absolutely must never interfere with. There were limits to how much history one woman ought to change. Her own history, however, was another matter entirely. Catherine slipped her hand into hers. “What do we do now?” Elara looked at the dead temporal band. Then at the woman who had once laughed at her because she possessed nothing. “First?” “Yes.” “We buy you a better apartment.” Catherine stared. “I have a perfectly good apartment.” “It has one bathroom.” “That is normal.” “It is barbaric.” “Elara.” “And then we're going to Paris.” “Why?” “Because women like us will have an easier time there.” Catherine smiled slowly. “And after Paris?” Elara drew her closer. “After Paris, Miss Avery, I intend to make you scandalously happy.” Catherine kissed her. “You know, for a woman from the future, you're remarkably old-fashioned.” Elara laughed. “Give me time.” Catherine raised an eyebrow. “You've already had plenty of that.” And for once, Dr. Elara Voss had absolutely no answer.