Strange travelers, p.33
Strange Travelers, page 33
She studied the drawing, her face thoughtful, then nodded.
“I’m glad you didn’t throw a fit about that,” he told her. “I was afraid you would, but maybe you were under orders not to disturb things back here any more than you could help.”
When she did not react to that, he took another leaf bag from under the sink; to his satisfaction, it was large enough to contain the dead woman. “I had to do that before she got stiff,” he explained to the living one. “She’ll stiffen up in an hour or so. It’s probably better if we don’t have to look at her, anyway.”
Tamar made a quick gesture he did not comprehend, folded her hands, and shut her eyes.
“Tomorrow, before the storm lets up, I’m going to drag her back to your space station and burn it.” He was talking mostly for his own benefit, to clarify his thoughts. “That’s probably a crime, but it’s what I’m going to do. You do what you’ve got to.” He picked up the Sako carbine. “I’m going to clean this and leave it in the other cabin on the way, and throw away the bullet. As far as the sheriffs concerned, my gun shot us both by accident. If I have to I’ll say you bit my face while I was tending your wound. But I won’t be able to shave there anyhow, and by the time they get here my beard may cover it.”
She motioned toward his journal and pen, and when he gave them to her produced a creditable sketch of the third woman.
“Gone,” he said. “She’s dead, too. I’d stuck my thumbs in her eyes—she tried to kill me—and she ran. She must have fallen through the hole in the floor. The water down there was pretty shallow, so she would’ve hit hard. I think she drowned.”
Tamar pointed to the leaf bag that held the dead woman, then sketched her with equal facility, finishing by crossing out the sketch.
Emery crossed out the women in the ziggurat as well, and returned the journal and the pen to Tamar. “You’ll have to live the rest of your life here, I’m afraid, unless they send somebody for you. I don’t expect you to like it—not many of us do—but you’ll have to do the best you can, just like the rest of us.”
Suddenly excited, she pointed to the tiny face of the lion on his pen and hummed, waving the pen like a conductor’s baton. It took him a minute or more to identify the tune.
It was “God Save the Queen.”
Later, when she was asleep, he telephoned an experimental physicist. “David,” he asked softly, “do you remember your old boss? Emery Bainbridge?”
David did.
“I’ve got something here I want to tell you about, David. First, though, I’ve got to say I can’t tell you where I got it. That’s confidential—top secret. You’ve got to accept that. I won’t ever be able to tell you. Okay?”
It was.
“This thing is a little dish. It looks almost like an ashtray.” There was a penny in the clutter on the table; he picked it up. “I’m going to drop a penny into it. Listen.”
The penny fell with a clink.
“After a while, that penny will disappear, David. Right now it looks just a little misted, like it had been outside in the cold, and there was condensation on it.”
Emery moved the dish closer to the kerosene lantern. “Now the penny is starting to look sort of silvery. I think most of the copper’s gone, and what I’m seeing is the zinc underneath. You can barely make out Lincoln’s face.”
David spoke.
“I’ve tried that. Even if you hold the dish upside down and shake it, the penny—or whatever it is—won’t fall out, and I’m not about to reach in and try to pull it out.”
The crackling voice in the receiver sounded louder than Emery’s own.
“I wish you could, David. It’s not much bigger than the end of a pencil now, and shrinking quickly. Hold on—
“There. It’s gone. I think the dish must boil off atoms or molecules by some cold process. That’s the only explanation I’ve come up with. I suppose we could check that by analyzing samples of air above it, but I don’t have the equipment here.
“David, I’m going to start a new company. I’m going to do it on a shoestring, because I don’t want to let any backers in. I’ll have to use my own money and whatever I can raise on my signature. I know you’ve got a good job now. They’re probably paying you half what you’re worth, which is a hell of a lot. But if you’ll come in with me, I’ll give you ten percent.
“Of course you can think it over. I expect you to. Let’s say a week. How’s that?”
David spoke at length.
“Yes, here too. The lights are off, as a matter of fact. It’s just by the grace of God that the phone still works. I’ll be stuck out here—I’m in the cabin—for another three or four days, probably. Then I’ll drive into the city, and we’ll talk.”
“Certainly you can look at it. You can pick it up and try it out, but not take it back to your lab. You understand, I’m sure.”
A last, querulous question.
Emery chuckled. “No, it’s not from a magic store, David. I think I might be able to guess where it’s actually from, but I’m not going to. Top secret, remember? It’s technology way in advance of ours. We’re medieval mechanics who’ve found a paper shredder. We may never be able to make another shredder, but we can learn a hell of a lot from the one we’ve got.”
When he had hung up, he moved his chair back to the side of Tamar’s bunk. She was lying on her back, her mouth and eyes closed, the soft sigh of her respiration distinct against the howling of the wind beyond the log walls.
“Jan’s going to want to come back,” Emery told Tamar, his voice less than a whisper. “She’ll try to kiss and make up two weeks to a month after she finds out about the new company, I’d say. I’ll have to get our divorce finalized before she hears. They’ll back off a little on that property settlement when she gets back to the city, and then I’ll sign.”
Tamar’s left hand lay on the quilt; his found it, stroking the back and fingers with a touch that he hoped was too light to wake her. “Because I don’t want Jan anymore. I want you, Tamar, and you’re going to need me.”
The delicate brown fingers curled about his, though she was still asleep.
“You’re learning to trust me, aren’t you? Well, you can. I won’t hurt you.” He fell silent. He had taught the coyote to trust him; and because he had, the coyote had not feared the smell of Man on the cyanide gun. He would have to make certain Tamar understood that all men were not to be trusted—that there were millions of men who would rob and rape and kill her if they could.
“How did you reproduce, up there in our future, Tamar? Asexually? My guess is artificial insemination, with a means of selecting for females. You can tell me whether I’m right, by and by.”
He paused, thinking. “Is our future still up there? The one you came from? Or did you change things when you crashed? Or when you killed Brook. Even if it is, maybe you and I can change things with some new technology. Let’s try.”
Tamar sighed, and seemed to smile in her sleep. He bent over her to kiss her, his lips lightly brushing hers. “Is that why the crash was so bad that you could never get the ziggurat to fly again? Because just by crashing at all, or by killing my son, you destroyed the future you came from?”
In the movies, Emery reflected, people simply stepped into time machines and vanished, to reappear later or earlier at the same spot on Earth’s surface, as if Copernicus had never lived. In reality, Earth was moving in the solar system, the solar system in the galaxy, and the galaxy itself in the universe. One would have to travel through space as well as time to jump time in reality.
Somewhere beneath the surface of the lake, the device that permitted such jumps was still functioning, after a fashion. No longer jumping, but influencing the speed with which time passed—the timing of time, as it were. The hours he had spent inside the ziggurat had been but a minute or two outside it; that had to be true, because the prints of his snowshoes coming in had still been sharp when he came out, and Aileen had spent half a day at least there in two hours.
He would burn the ziggurat tomorrow. He would have to, if he were not to lose everything he had taken from it, and be accused of the murder of the dead woman in the leaf bag, too—would have to, if he wished to keep Tamar.
But might not the time device, submerged who could say how deep in the lake, perhaps buried in mud at the bottom as well, survive and continue to function as it did now? Fishermen on Haunted Lake might see the sun stand still, while hours drifted past. Had the device spread itself through time to give the lake its name? He would buy up all the lakeside property, he decided, when the profits of the new company permitted him to.
“We’re going to build a new cabin,” he told the sleeping Tamar. “A house, really, and a big one, right on the shore there. We’ll live in that house, you and me, for a long, long time, and we’ll have children.”
Very gently, her fingers tightened around his.
AIN’T YOU ’MOST DONE?
THE HOT-PINK DRAGSTER HAD NOT moved in a minute and a half. It seemed like five; but Benson was careful and accurate in all matters involving time, and it had been one minute and a half. He shifted the transmission into Park and took his foot off the brake. One and a half minutes—ninety seconds—was a long time. In ninety seconds flat, no more, a skilled man in one of the company’s seventeen hundred Magus Muffler and Brake Shops could prep a car for the installation of a new tailpipe, a new exhaust pipe, and a brand-new Magus Muffler—copper, nickel, and chrome plated in successive layers and guaranteed for as long as the customer retained title to the car on which it was installed.
In seven more seconds, the time would be two minutes.
A small carrying case on the rear seat held sixty-four of his favorite compact discs. Benson reached in back for it, got it, and opened it, removing a collection of nineteenth-century sea songs.
The dragster’s brake lights faded, and he shifted his car into Drive. He had counted on an hour, possibly an hour and a half, at his office before the helicopter that would fly him to the airport arrived. Now he would be lucky to get ten minutes. The dragster crawled forward, and his car with it; when both stopped again, they had traversed perhaps fifty feet.
He returned the transmission to Park and put the CD into the dashboard player. His back and neck hurt, presumably from the tension induced by this endless delay, and the pain was creeping down both arms. He would have to learn to relax.
Oh, the smartest clipper that you can find,
A-hee, a-ho, ain’t you ’most done?
Is the Marg’ret Evans of the Blue Cross Line,
So clear the deck and let the bulgine run!
To me hey rig-a-jig in a low-back car,
A-hee, a-ho, ain’t you ’most done?
Benson could play that himself, and sing it, too. Play and sing it pretty well, not that anybody cared. He pictured himself seated on the tarred hatch cover of a transatlantic packet with his guitar on his lap and a villainous black stogie smoldering between thumb and forefinger, ringed by delighted sailors and passengers.
The brake lights of the dragster glowed as obstinately red as ever. Wouldn’t that fool kid ever make it easy on himself? Benson let his head loll to one side, then the other, rolling it upon his shoulders.
Oh the Marg’ret Evans of the Blue Cross Line,
A-hee, a-ho, ain’t you ’most done?
She’s never a day behind the times …
If things had gone differently, perhaps he, too, would be making CDs and giving concerts, appearing occasionally on TV, consulted by authorities on folk music who would want to know where he had learned this song or that and from whom he had learned it: seamen’s songs and rivermen’s songs, songs sung by lumberjacks and Civil War soldiers.
With Liza Lee upon my knee, oh!
So clear the track and let the bulgine run!
He was making ten times more than he could possibly have made like that, but money wasn’t everything; in fact, once you had food and clothes, a warm place to sleep, and a few hundred pocket money, more money meant very little.
One of the dragster’s brake lights had gone out, or perhaps the two had flowed together, condensing into a single cyclops light belonging to a newer car. Sweat trickled down Benson’s forehead into his eyes. The air-conditioning was already set on Max, but he moved the fan control up to High, conscious of increased pain under his breastbone where his stomach joined the esophagus. Acid indigestion. He tried to recall what he had eaten for breakfast. Ham? No, the ham had been on Sunday.
When I come home across the sea,
A-hee, a-ho, ain’t you ’most done?
It’s Liza, will you marry me?
So clear the track and let the bulgine run!
To me hey rig-a-jig in a low-back car,
A-hee, a-ho, ain’t you ’most done?
Benson blinked and closed his eyes, and after one hundred and twenty-three seconds blinked a second time, aware of weakness and pain. He lay on his back; something had been thrust into both nostrils; the ceiling was off-white and very remote.
Wires clung to him like leeches.
After a time that was neither long nor short so far as he was concerned, a nurse appeared at his side. “You had a close call,” she said.
He was not sure what she meant. It seemed best to keep quiet.
“You’re awake, aren’t you, Mister Benson?” She looked at him more closely. “This is real. You’re not dreaming.”
He managed to say, “I never dream.”
“Really?” She turned to scrutinize what appeared to be an oscilloscope.
“I daydream. Of course.” He tried to smile, although he was aware that she was not looking at him. “Much too much, I’m afraid …” Talking was no longer worth the effort.
Still not looking at him, but not looking now (he thought) so that she would not have to see his expression, the nurse said, “You’ve had a heart attack, a bad one. Probably you’ve already figured that out for yourself.”
“It seemed the most likely explanation.” Privately, he was relieved. It was better to know the truth, to be sure. People survived heart attacks and lived for years. Decades in some cases.
“But you’ve come through it.” The nurse turned to face him. “You’re going to be all right.”
“Thank you,” he said.
“You’re a very important man.”
Under the circumstances, that seemed humorous. Smiling took little effort this time.
“We’ve had all sorts of people phoning and trying to get in to see you.”
He could easily imagine what it had been like. He said, “I apologize.”
“Oh, it’s okay, we’re used to it. But for the present, only family members, and no calls. It’s for your own good.”
She bustled away, stopping in the doorway to ask, “You really don’t dream? Ever?”
“No,” he murmured. He tried to make his voice stronger, strong enough to carry to her. “Not even when I was a child. I can’t imagine what it’s like, to tell you the truth.”
She regarded him skeptically.
“Like hallucinating, I suppose.” He had not thought of this before. “But I’ve never done that either.”
“Everyone dreams, Mister Benson. It’s just that sometimes the unconscious mind tells us forget, cuts us off from it.”
I don’t, he said, but the words never reached his lips—she had left too fast.
If she was right, he reflected, somewhere in his memory there was a vast reservoir of unremembered dreams; he searched for it, but it was not there.
A touch woke him. The same nurse was bending over his bed. “Mister Benson?”
He blinked. “Would you do me a favor, Nurse? A great favor?”
That surprised her. “Certainly, if I can.”
“Call me Tim.”
Involuntarily, she glanced at the door. “It says Otis Benson. That’s the name we have you down under.”
It brought back a book that Michael had liked when Michael was young. Benson told her, “Winnie the Pooh lived in a hollow tree in the woods under the name Sanders.” It was easy to smile now. “Or at least, I think it was Sanders.”
She smiled too. “That’s right. I read that to my little nephew.”
“I,” he tried to clear his throat, “on the other hand, have lived under the name Otis Benson. My real name is Timothy Otis Benson. I dropped the Timothy a long time ago.”
“I see.” As though unsure what to say, she added, “My name’s Ruth. You can call me that if you want to, Tim.”
“I will, Ruth. My mother called me Tim. Tiny Tim. I’d like to be Tim again.”
“I understand. Tim, your daughter’s here to see you. I said I’d see if you were strong enough. Are you? We won’t let her stay long.”
Benson, who had no daughter, said, “Of course I am. Send her in,” and watched the doorway with some interest after the nurse had gone.
It was Daisy, and before she came in he had discovered an armless chair of enameled metal beside his bed. As he tried to decide whether the sorrow in her face was genuine he said, “I thought it was you. Won’t you sit down?”
She did, knees primly together, hands folded in the lap her salient chest clearly prevented her from seeing. After a second or two, it occurred to him that she was dressed for the office, and he asked her what time it was.
She raised her left hand to consult the diamond-studded watch he had given her. “Seven o’clock.”
“In the evening?”
She nodded. “We didn’t hear until three—after three. I left when I heard. I left everything in an awful mess, but I left. I told Susan to—to take care of things, and I left. The traffic was terrible.”
He said, “I remember.” A tall, pale-faced man in black had entered without making a sound. An orderly of some sort, Benson thought, although he did not look like an orderly.
