Free Galaxies Like Grains of Sand by Brian W. Aldiss

that I’ve taken to worrying about other people’s futures.”
    She clapped her hands at her cat. “Coily, go and find Leg o’Leather. Keep him company.”
    As the leopard bounded away, she caught up her long gown with one hand and motioned Chun Hwa towards a bank which shaped itself comfortably about them while they sat.
    “You have no need to be unsettled. I know it is Cobalt you worry about and, beyond her, the developing world. The world is always brand new, and worrying won’t help it. Be at peace.”
    He tried to laugh. “Please be more impatient with me. Shake me, take from me the sense of the sound of the approach of the hounds of...”
    He would not pronounce that last word, and could not know how the incomplete sentence played upon the boy who had felt compelled to trail him even into his home.
    Clenching his weak fists, he gazed at her, smilingly but searchingly, till she said, “Oh, my Hwa, I despair. We did wrong, didn’t we? — That’s a fine philosophical conclusion to arrive at for one of my years. You’re lonely, I know, lonely whatever happens.”
    He shook his head, giving a dry laugh which caused him to cough. “Loneliness! You make so much of loneliness. It’s not important.” He received a sense that they had worked their way through this conversation before and never quite delivered the confused meanings within them. “Yes, I’m lonely, but it doesn’t matter. All mankind’s activities since the dawn of history have been communication devices to stave off loneliness. Animals don’t feel lonely, so they need no communication, no machines. That human loneliness stems from his knowledge of — lifespan...”
    Wangust shook her head, still smiling. “That is not so. You project your character on civilization and misread it. The world’s dynamism is to do with competition, with crowds, with great affairs and enterprises — ”
    “Well, I’m displaced from my time, so maybe I see things differently. I have spent the last few mornings up on Blighted Profile, overlooking the green present and the black remnants of the past, and trying to think beyond myself. I’ve always been a refugee from reality, as I’m a refugee from my own time. You’re real, Wangust, but otherwise I am not much convinced by reality...” He gave her a sly smile. “Your life has been an inspiration to all of your people, whilst mine has been a walk in your shadow. Necessarily. I suppose I resent that. I resent the favour you did me.
    “In your portmatters, you ventured back to the dark period in which I was born, the war millennia trying to save Earth itself — rescuing animals and birds and fish and plants — and me! I became bric-a-brac. Oh, you saved my life, but by so doing you turned me into a sort of fossil.”
    “Nonsense, your genes — ”
    “Leave my genes out of it and listen to what I say. My epoch is eternally cursed for starting the wars of destruction. You and your people worked heroically, rescuing what you could. By contrast, I just hid away — I hid from a man’s first obligation, which is to face the evils of his own time.”
    “This is your time, Hwa,” Wangust said. “You are of us, your children are here, your sanity has been our mainstay. Forget your guilt. You say I should forget loneliness — I say you should forget guilt. You had no obligations except to fulfil the best side of your nature; that you could not do in your own time. You have forgotten the strength we found and used together, the two of us, when we were young.”
    He turned away, shaking his head. “No, I don’t forget, I don’t forget.”
    He stood with his feet apart, hands locked behind his back, staring into the distance. She recalled his standing in the same attitude long ago, when his hair was thick and black and they swam most days in the sea.
    She left him standing where he was.
    A while later, when ragged red cardinals flew to announce the house, Wangust returned in a greener gown. Chun Hwa was busy