Chapter 59

As Linda drives us home I’m silent, lost in thought. I have heard what Linda says to Dr. Graham and his reply, and my head is very busy inside.

“You’re thinking about it, aren’t you, darling?” she asks me.

“Yes,” I admit. “I hide in this time as though I’m ashamed. But I don’t feel shame, I am proud of where I have lived and what I have done there. And I’m proud, too, of my people and what we were able to accomplish and how we were able to live. He shows the wrong picture but he says right that the people of my youth were where modern technology was born, where all this”—I gesture around—”had its beginnings.”

She nods. “I’m proud of you too, Hugo. But this isn’t something we can leap into headlong. Let’s talk some more when we get home.”

We finish our drive in silence, but my mind continues to work. When we walk in I do something I rarely do, I pour a small drink of whisky for myself and one for Linda. I take a sip as we sit down on the couch.

“Don’t get soused again,” she teases me.

I laugh. “This drink only, I didn’t enjoy the other time,” I tell her.

“Seriously, honey, you know how risky it could be,” she warns, the smile leaving her face. “It could get a little nasty if he didn’t believe you, but nothing that couldn’t be fixed. But what if he did believe you?”

“Yes,” I say. “If it becomes known then I am a one-man freak show, unable to walk the streets in peace—if I am even allowed to walk them at all. All come to talk to me, study me, gawk at me, put me under microscope until I no longer have a life of my own, a life with you.”

“That’s about it,” she tells me.

“But if we swear him to secrecy...”

“Come on, Hugo, you know better,” she says. “People promise lots of things, but— Oh.”

“Yes. I will know. I ask him first, and I can judge.”

She’s shaking her head. “I don’t like it, Hugo. He could still change his mind afterwards. You only know about what people say right now, you can’t predict the future.”

I give it thought. “What I hear and see tonight tells me that this man will not take promise lightly. If he gives it, it will require much before he reneges. And...”

She looks at me closely when I stop speaking. “There’s more to this, something you’re not telling me, isn’t there, darling?”

It is a difficult thing to say, but I must. Linda is like M’kamba in one way, that she sees under the surface. But I must say carefully, I will not cause Linda pain if I can avoid.

“Linda, I love you,” I say at last. “I feel for you in ways I have never before known I can feel for anyone. I know I don’t say dear or darling or such other words, endearments, because all of this is to me in your name. But I hope you realize—”

She places her fingers on my lips to stop me. “Sweetheart, I know. I wouldn’t have married you if I weren’t sure. You’re tiptoeing around because you think you’re going to hurt my feelings somehow, but you won’t. It’s about your other life, your life back then, isn’t it?”

“Yes.” I breathe deep. “My life here with you is more full, more wonderful, more ... everything than I ever imagine. But that life was real, too. It was also precious to me in its way. And with every day I’m here, every piece of time that passes, it slips away a little more, it becomes more distant in my mind.”

She nods understanding to me. But I must say more.

“The name of my people, it’s alive in me because it is now my surname. But that’s a name, a word only. My people don’t live by that word, they are long ago dead, so long even the stars in the sky aren’t the same. They live only in my memory, in my mind.