The fredric brown collec.., p.13
The Fredric Brown Collection, page 13
Shorty tentatively reached out his left hand again into the aisle and watched it closely. He thought he might as well make sure; he reached out a little farther. The hand was gone. He jerked back his wrist, and sat there sweating.
He was nuts. He had to be nuts.
Again he tried to move his fingers and felt them wriggle very satisfactorily, just as they should have wriggled. They still had feeling, kinetic and otherwise. But— He reached his wrist toward the desk and didn’t feel the desk. He put it in such a position that his hand, if it had been on the end of his wrist, would have had to touch or pass through the desk, but he felt nothing.
Wherever his hand was, it wasn’t on the end of his wrist. It was still out there in the aisle, no matter where he moved his arm. If he got up and walked out of the classroom, would his hand still be out there in the aisle, invisible? And suppose he went a thousand miles away? But that was silly.
But was it any sillier than that his arm should rest here on the desk and his hand be two feet away? The difference in silliness between two feet and a thousand miles was only one of degree.
Was his hand out there?
He took his fountain pen out of his pocket and reached out with his right hand to approximately the point where he thought it was, and—sure enough—he was holding only a part of a fountain pen, half of one. He carefully refrained from reaching any farther, but raised it and brought it down sharply.
It rapped—he felt it—across the missing knuckles of his left hand! That tied it! It so startled him that he let go of the pen and it was gone. It wasn’t on the floor of the aisle. It wasn’t anywhere. It was just gone, and it had been a good five-dollar pen, too.
Gaw! Here he was worrying about a pen when his left hand was missing. What was he going to do about that?
He closed his eyes. “Shorty McCabe,” he said to himself, “you’ve got to think this out logically and figure out how to get your hand back out of whatever that is. You daren’t get scared. Probably you’re asleep and dreaming this, but maybe you aren’t, and, if you aren’t, you’re in a jam. Now let’s be logical. There is a place out there, a plane or something, and you can reach across it or put things across it, but you can’t get them back again.
“Whatever else is on the other side, your left hand is. And your right hand doesn’t know what your left hand is doing because one is here and the other is there, and never the twain shall— Hey, cut it out, Shorty. This isn’t funny”
But there was one thing he could do, and that was find out roughly the size and shape of the—whatever it was. There was a box of paper clips on his desk. He picked up a few in his right hand and tossed one of them out into the aisle. The paper clip got six or eight inches out into the aisle, and vanished. He didn’t hear it land anywhere.
So far, so good. He tossed one a bit lower; same result. He bent down at his desk, being careful not to lean his head out into the aisle, and skittered a paper clip across the floor out into the aisle, saw it vanish eight inches out. He tossed one a little forward, one a bit backward. The plane extended at least a yard to the front and back, roughly parallel with the aisle itself.
And up? He tossed one upward that arced six feet above the aisle and vanished there. Another one, higher yet and in a forward direction. It described an arc in the air and landed on the head of a girl three seats forward in the next aisle. She started a little and put up a hand to her head.
“Mr. McCabe,” said Professor Dolohan severely, “may I ask if this lecture bores you?”
Shorty jumped. He said, “Y—No, professor. I was just—”
“You were, I noticed, experimenting in ballistics and the nature of a parabola. A parabola, Mr. McCabe, is the curve described by a missile projected into space with no continuing force other than its initial impetus and the force of gravity. Now shall I continue with my original lecture, or would you rather we called you up before the class to demonstrate the nature of paraboloid mechanics for the edification of your fellow students?”
“I’m sorry, professor,” said Shorty. “I was… uh… I mean I… I mean I’m sorry.”
“Thank you, Mr. McCabe. And now”— The professor turned again to the blackboard. “If we let the symbol b represent the degree of unpossiblity, in contradistinction to c—” Shorty stared morosely down at his hands—his hand, rather —in his lap. He glanced up at the clock on the wall over the door and saw that in another five minutes the class period would be over. He had to do something, and do it quickly.
He turned his eyes toward the aisle again. Not that there was anything there to see. But there was plenty there to think about. Half a dozen paper clips, his best fountain pen, and his left hand.
There was an invisible something out there. You couldn’t feel it when you touched it, and objects like paper clips didn’t click when they hit it. And you could get through it on one direction, but not in the other. He could reach his right hand out there and touch his left hand with it, no doubt, but then he wouldn’t get his right hand back again. And pretty soon class would be over and—
Nuts. There was only one thing he could do that made any sense. There wasn’t anything on the other side of that plane that hurt his left hand, was there? Well, then, why not step through it? Wherever he’d be, it would be all in one piece.
He shot a glance at the professor and waited until he turned to mark something on the blackboard again. Then, without waiting to think it over, without daring to think it over, Shorty stood up in the aisle.
The lights went out. Or he had stepped into blackness.
He couldn’t hear the professor any more, but there was a familiar buzzing noise in his ears that sounded like a bluebottle fly circling around somewhere nearby in the darkness.
He put his hands together, and they were both there; his right hand clasped his left. Well, whatever he was, he was all there. But why couldn’t he see?
Somebody sneezed.
Shorty jumped, and then said, “Is… uh… anybody there?” His voice shook a little, and he hoped now that he was really asleep and that he’d wake up in a minute.
“Of course,” said a voice. A rather sharp and querulous voice.
“Uh… who?”
“What do you mean, who? Me. Can’t you see— No, of course you can’t. I forgot. Say, listen to that guy! And they say we’re crazy!” There was a laugh in the darkness.
“What guy?” asked Shorty. “And who says who’s crazy? Listen, I don’t get—”
“That guy,” said the voice. “The teacher. Can’t you— No, I forget you can’t. You’ve got no business here anyway. But I’m listening to the teacher telling about what happened to the saurians.”
“The what?”
“The saurians, stupid. The dinosaurs. The guy’s nuts. And they say we are!”
Shorty McCabe suddenly felt the need, the stark necessity, of sitting down. He groped in darkness and felt the top of a desk and felt that there was an empty seat behind it and eased himself down into the seat. Then he said, “This is Greek to me, mister. Who says who’s crazy?”
“They say we are. Don’t you know—that’s right, you don’t. Who let that fly in here?”
“Let’s start at the beginning,” begged Shorty. “Where am I?”
“You normals,” said the voice petulantly. “Face you with anything out of the ordinary and you start asking— Oh, well, wait a minute and I’ll tell you. Swat that fly for me.”
“I can’t see it. I—”
“Shut up. I want to listen to this; it’s what I came here for. He— Yow, he’s telling them that the dinosaurs died out for lack of food because they got too big. Isn’t that silly? The bigger a thing is the better chance it has to find food, hasn’t it? And the idea of the herbivorous ones ever starving in these forests! Or the carnivorous ones while the herbivorous ones were around! And— But why am I telling you all this? You’re normal.”
“I… I don’t get it. If I’m normal, what are you?”
The voice chuckled. “I’m crazy”
Shorty McCabe gulped. There didn’t seem to be anything to say. The voice was all too obviously right, about that.
In the first place, if he could hear outside, Professor Dolohan was lecturing on the positive absolute, and this voice— with whatever, if anything, was attached to it—had come here to hear about the decline of the saurians. That didn’t make sense because Professor Dolohan didn’t know a pixilated pterodactyl from an oblate spheroid.
And— “Ouch!” said Shorty. Something had given him a hard whack on the shoulder.
“Sorry,” said the voice. “I just took a swat at that dratted fly. It lighted on you. Anyway, I missed it. Wait a minute until I turn the switch and let the darned thing out. You want out, too?”
Suddenly the buzzing stopped.
Shorty said, “Listen, I… I’m too darn curious to want out of here until I got some idea what I’m getting out from, I mean out of. I guess I must be crazy, but—”
“No, you’re normal. It’s we who are crazy. Anyway, that’s what they say. Well, listening to that guy talk about dinosaurs bores me; I’d just as soon talk to you as listen to him. But you had no business getting in here, either you or that fly, see? There was a slip-up in the apparatus. I’ll tell Napoleon—”
“Who?”
“Napoleon. He’s the boss in this province. Napoleons are bosses in some of the others, too. You see a lot of us think we’re Napoleon, but not me. It’s a common delusion. Anyway, the Napoleon I mean is the one in Donnybrook.”
“Donnybrook? Isn’t that an insane asylum?”
“Of course, where else would anyone be who thought he was Napoleon? I ask you.”
Shorty McCabe closed his eyes and found that didn’t do any good because it was dark anyway and he couldn’t see even with them open. He said himself, “I got to keep on asking questions until I get something that makes sense or I’m going crazy. Maybe I am crazy; maybe this is what it’s like to be crazy. But if I am, am I still sitting in Professor Dolohan’s class, or… or what?”
He opened his eyes and asked, “Look, let’s see if we can get at this from a different angle. Where are you?”
“Me? Oh, I’m in Donnybrook, too. Normally, I mean. All of us in this province are, except a few that are still on the outside, see? Just now”—suddenly his voice sounded embarrassed—“I’m in a padded cell.”
“And,” asked Shorty fearfully, “is… is this it? I mean, am I in a padded cell, too?”
“Of course not. You’re sane. Listen, I’ve got no business to talk these things over with you. There’s a sharp line drawn, you know. It was just because something went wrong with the apparatus.”
Shorty wanted to ask, “What apparatus?” but he had a hunch that if he did the answer would open up seven or eight new questions. Maybe if he stuck to one point until he understood that one, he could begin to understand some of the others.
He said, “Let’s get back to Napoleon. You say there is more than one Napoleon among you? How can that be? There can’t be two of the same thing.”
The voice chuckled. “That’s all you know. That’s what proves you’re normal. That’s normal reasoning; it’s right, of course. But these guys who think they are Napoleon are crazy, so it doesn’t apply. Why can’t a hundred men each be Napoleon, if they’re too crazy to know that they can’t?”
“Well,” said Shorty, “even if Napoleon wasn’t dead, at least ninety-nine of them would have to be wrong, wouldn’t they? That’s logic.”
“That’s what’s wrong with it here,” said the voice. “I keep telling you we’re crazy.”
“We? You mean that I’m—”
“No, no, no, no, no. By ‘we’ I mean us, myself and the others, not you. That’s why you got no business being here at all, see?”
“No,” said Shorty. Strangely, he felt completely unafraid now. He knew that he must be asleep dreaming this, but he didn’t think he was. But he was as sure as he was sure of anything that he wasn’t crazy. The voice he was talking to said he wasn’t; and that voice certainly seemed to be an authority on the subject. A hundred Napoleons!
He said, “This is fun. I want to find out as much as I can before I wake up. Who are you; what’s your name? Mine’s Shorty.”
“Moderately glad to know you, Shorty. You normals bore me usually, but you seem a bit better than most. I’d rather not give you the name they call me at Donnybrook, though; I wouldn’t want you to come there visiting or anything. Just call me Dopey.”
“You mean… uh… the Seven Dwarfs? You think you’re one of—”
“Oh, no, not at all. I’m not a paranoiac; none of my delusions, as you would call them, concern identity. It’s just the nickname they know me by here. Just like they call you Shorty, see? Never mind my other name.”
Shorty said, “What are your… uh… delusions?”
“I’m an inventor, what they call a nut inventor. I think I invent time machines, for one thing. This is one of them.”
“This is— You mean that I’m in a time machine? Well, yes, that would account for… uh… a thing or two. But, listen, if this is a time machine and it works, why do you say you think you invent them? If this is one—I mean—” The voice laughed. “But a time machine is impossible. It is a paradox. Your professors will explain that a time machine cannot be, because it would mean that two things could occupy the same space at the same time. And a man could go back and kill himself when he was younger, and—oh, all sorts of stuff like that. It’s completely impossible. Only a crazy man could—”
“But you say this is one. Uh… where is it? I mean, where in time.”
“Now? It’s 1958, of course.”
“In— Hey, it’s only 1953. Unless you moved it since I got on; did you?”
“No. I was in 1958 all along; that’s where I was listening to that lecture on the dinosaurs. But you got on back there, five years back. That’s because of the warp. The one I’m going to take up with Napo—”
“But where am I… are we… now?”
“You’re in the same classroom you got on from, Shorty. But five years ahead. If you reach out, you’ll see— Try, just to your left, back where you yourself were sitting.”
“Uh—would I get my hand back again, or would it be like when I reached into here?”
“It’s all right; you’ll get it back.”
“Well—” said Shorty.
Tentatively, he reached out his hand. It touched something soft that felt like hair. He took hold experimentally and tugged a little.
It jerked suddenly out of his grasp, and involuntarily Shorty jerked his hand back.
“Wow!” said the voice beside him. “That was funny!”
“What… what happened?” asked Shorty.
“It was a girl, a knockout with red hair. She’s sitting in the same seat you were sitting in back there five years ago. You pulled her hair, and you ought to’ve seen her jump! Listen—”
“Listen to what?”
“Shut up, then, so I can listen—” There was a pause, and the voice chuckled. “The prof is dating her up!”
“Huh?” said Shorty. “Right in class? How—”
“Oh, he just looked back at her when she let out a yip, and told her to stay after class. But from the way he’s looking at her, I can guess he’s got an ulterior motive. I can’t blame him; she’s sure a knockout. Reach out and pull her hair again.”
“Uh… well, it wouldn’t be quite… uh—”
“That’s right,” said the voice disgustedly. “I keep forgetting you aren’t crazy like me. Must be awful to be normal. Well, let’s get out of here. I’m bored. How’d you like to go hunting?”
“Hunting? Well, I’m not much of a shot. Particularly when I can’t see anything.”
“Oh, it won’t be dark if you step out of the apparatus. It’s your own world, you know, but it’s crazy. I mean, it’s an— how would your professors put it?—an illogical aspect of logicality. Anyway, we always hunt with sling shots. It’s more sporting.”
“Hunt what?”
“Dinosaurs. They’re the most fun.”
“Dinosaurs! With a sling shot? You’re era— I mean, do you?”
The voice laughed. “Sure, we do. Look, that’s what was so funny about what that professor was saying about the saurians. You see, we killed them off. Since I made this time machine, the Jurassic has been our favorite hunting ground. But there may be one or two left for us to hunt. I know a good place for them. This is it.”
“This? I thought we were in a classroom in 1958.”
“We were, then. Here, I’ll inverse the polarity, and you can step right out. Go ahead.”
“But—” Shorty said, and then “Well—” and then took a step to his right.
Sunlight blinded him.
It was a brighter, more glaring sunlight than he had ever seen or known before, a terrific contrast after the darkness he’d been in. He put his hands over his eyes to protect them, and only slowly was he able to take them away and open his eyes.
Then he saw he was standing on a patch of sandy soil near the shore of a smooth-surfaced lake.
“They come here to drink,” said a familiar voice, and Shorty whirled around. The man standing there was a funny-looking little cuss, a good four inches shorter than Shorty, who stood five feet five. He wore shell-rimmed glasses and a small goatee; and his face seemed tiny and weazened under a tall black top hat that was turning greenish with age.
He reached into his pocket and pulled out a small sling shot, but with quite heavy rubber between the prongs. He said, “You can shoot the first one if you want,” and held it out. Shorty shook his head vigorously. “You,” he said.
The little man bent down and carefully selected a few stones out of the sand. He pocketed all but one, and fitted that into the leather insert of the sling shot. Then he sat down on a boulder and said, “We needn’t hide. They’re dumb, those dinosaurs. They’ll come right by here.”
Shorty looked around him again. There were trees about a hundred yards back from the lake, strange and monstrous trees with gigantic leaves that were a much paler green than any trees he’d ever seen before. Between the trees and the lake were only small, brownish, stunted bushes and a kind of coarse yellow grass.
