It was a new copy, printed beautifully by a publisher I’d never heard of. I opened it to the middle and out of habit sniffed the pages. There is no smell like book.
I turned to the copyright page.
And closed my eyes.
Wall of Riverswas in its thirty-seventh printing, with a copyright renewal in the name of the Estate of Tyler Boothe Mayall. And a print date more than fifty years in the future.
I turned to the back of the book, to the author photo on the inside flap of the dust jacket. The picture was mine – one Tyler had talked me into having taken only a few weeks earlier. “Because you’re so pretty,” he said, “and when you’re famous, you’re going to want a nice picture of you when you were young to go inside your books.”
It was the stupidest reason I’d ever heard for someone wanting a photo. I figured he’d just wanted it for himself.
But . . . there it was. I turned to the first page. The words were my words.
I handed the book back to Per, and saw how badly my hand was shaking.
Per took it, and touched my fingers lightly in the process. What he said next was the biggest understatement I’d ever heard.
“We need to talk.”
We went to an all-night diner – one of those chains where you can have breakfast or dinner twenty-four hours a day. It had the advantage of being public while still being anonymous.Wall of Riverswas the manuscript Tyler had asked to read the night he stayed over because he said he was having trouble getting to sleep. I would have been insulted, but Tyler did not exactly have a way with tact. I’d put it down to him being him, and hadn’t thought about it again.
But now I needed an explanation. How and where had my novel come to be published, what did the date and number of printings on the copyright page mean, why did Tyler’s estate own the copyright? How had Per gotten his hands on it?
I ordered a diet drink. I didn’t think I was going to like what hewould say, and diet cola was all I could trust my stomach to keep down.
Per, on the other hand, ordered half of everything on the menu.
He started by saying, “I’m not supposed to be here, and I’m screwing things up by doing this. But I love your books. You’ve been my favourite author for years.”
I shivered. He was heading into the territory I’d feared.
“You want a sweater?” he asked. “I have one in my bag.”
“I’m . . . fine,” I lied, which was clearly the stupidest thing anyone has ever said. I was a long damn way from fine. He shook his head, his half-smile telling me I wasn’t fooling either of us.
“No, you’re not. How could you be?”
“I started out being fine,” I amended. And that was true enough. He’d sat beside me at Thorsday Night, he’d smiled at me, and he’d made my heart beat faster. But now everything had gotten scary, and I had to ask. “You’re not from . . . here . . . are you?”
“Swedish Institute of Historical Research, Time Validation Division,” he said. “In Helsingborg.”
“That’s where. How aboutwhen?” I’d written time travel. I was proud of myself for making the leap so sensibly, for not falling apart over the situation that was presenting itself to me. I was, I thought, at least as cool as my characters right then. I was a bit freaked out. But I’d seen one of my future books. So at least I knew I was going to eventually get up the nerve to send out my work. And that when I did, at least one of them would sell.
The idea that I might also end up marrying Tyler, though, wasn’t doing too much for the residual pizza churning in my stomach.
Per nodded. “I’m from about sixty years ahead. But you and I don’t have much time. We mustn’t talk about me. You have to know the truth about you before you go hometonight.”
Something about the way he said “tonight” made my skin crawl.
“Why tonight . . . specifically?”
He reached into his bag and pulled out a ring binder. It was gunmetal grey, and made of a material as cool and hard as metal, but as pliant as plastic, impressively space-age-y.
He handed it to me, and said, “Skim. You’ll get the gist of this quickly.”
The binder held copies of newspaper articles far more exotic than the originals had ever been: the paper was creamy with asemi-gloss finish, and the words on the first page scrolled down as I read them. I didn’t have to touch anything. The paper seemed to be tracking my eye movement and helpfully putting the next words I needed to read where I needed them to be.
Any doubts I had about the legitimacy of my printed book were laid to rest by the binder with its tech-we-don’t-have-yet paper. Per Tordönssonwasfrom the future.
