From time to time, p.9
From Time to Time, page 9
part #2 of Time and Again Series
On the top floor, the sixth, they walked along a vinyl-tiled corridor, the tall older man glancing around, eyes sharp with interest. He carried his hat in his hand now, was bald, the top of his head freckled, his side hair dyed black. This looked like a floor of an office building, directional arrows stenciled on the walls indicating groups of office numbers; black-and-white plastic nameplates beside some of the closed doors. Danziger nodded at one that read: K. Veach. “Katherine Veach. Katie,” he said, “nice girl,” and stopped. “I’ll just step in for a moment, say hello.”
“ ’Fraid she’s not here today, Doctor.”
Just ahead Danziger stopped again, at an unmarked door. “This leads to the catwalks, I believe. I’d like to go in again, Rube, look down at the Big Floor.”
“Well—”
But Danziger stood stubbornly shaking his head with something of the old authority he had once held here. “Rube, I want to see it. It won’t take long.”
“What I was going to say, Dr. D, is that I didn’t bring my keys today.”
For a moment Danziger stood looking at Rube; then they walked on, turned a corner, and stopped at the conference room door. Danziger would not open it, and Rube Prien reached past him to turn the knob, and gestured him in. For a moment longer Danziger stood looking up and down the long corridor, then walked in saying, “Rube, where is everybody today?”
“Well”—Rube followed him, closing the door—“it’s the weekend, Doctor. So I expect they’re home. Sleeping late. Reading the paper. Whatever.” He stepped toward a chair at the long table, on which an attaché case lay, motioning Danziger to a place opposite.
Walking around the end of the table, taking off his coat, Danziger looked at the walls, overhead skylights, the carpeting. He said, “Weekends didn’t mean that much when I was here, Rube.” He placed hat and coat on a chair, and sat down on the chair beside them; he wore a blue suit, white shirt, and blue-and-white-striped tie. “I was here every day for at least a few hours even on Sundays, usually a lot longer. So were you. And Oscar. Most everyone on the staff. Here at the Project because it was where we wanted to be.” Facing Rube, he sat back comfortably, one long arm extended on the tabletop—a posture familiar to Rube.
“Well, it’s been several years since you left. And since Si left.” Rube shoved his attaché case aside and lay his forearms, hands folding, on the tabletop. “And things have settled down. Fallen into place. So that we’ve all gotten pretty much used to . . .” His voice trailed off because Danziger, arm still lying on the table, was writing in the dust with the forefinger of his speckled old hand.
Rube had to lean to one side, finding the angle; then the word Dr. Danziger had printed popped up for him, clearly defined against the dust: Bullshit. Their eyes met, and the big old man said, “You’re going to have to tell me eventually, Rube. Eventually, why not now? as the old ads used to say—remember? Maybe you don’t. Pillsbury flour, I think.”
“Okay.” Rube sat nodding. “Okay. I didn’t really hope to fool you, Dr. D. Or even intend to. I just put it off because I’m embarrassed. Humiliated. If you wanted vengeance, then maybe you’ve got it.” In sudden decision, he shoved back his chair to stand. “You want to see the Big Floor? All right: I’ll show you the Big Floor!”
Down on the main floor again, they walked along a narrow concrete-floored tunnel-like corridor lighted by ceiling bulbs in wire cages. At a metal door labeled, Keep Out. Absolutely Keep Out, they stopped; Rube brought out a key, unlocked the door, and stepped in, holding the door open with a foot while stooping to pick something up from the floor just inside. Following, Danziger had immediately stopped to wait because the interior stood dark—solid unrelieved blackness. Then Rube switched on the big five-cell flashlight which had been standing on its wide lens-end on the floor by the door. Swinging the hard solid beam, searching, Rube said, “This is how we have to look at the Big Floor these days. If at all.” His light found a small frame house, clapboard sides, wooden-shingled, an old house of the twenties, and Danziger said, “McNaughton’s hou—” He went silent because the trembling white circle had steadied on the low porch roof, caved in, broken-backed over the stump of the post that had once helped support it. Then the light swung on along the side of the house across the windows glinting black and mirrorlike, then held on a smashed pane, the window frame jagged with glass shards.
Neither spoke. Rube lowered his flash to make a rhythmically skipping oval of light on the floor ahead as they walked on. He stopped again, playing his light over an Indian tepee, painted with buffalo silhouettes and sticklike figures of men, and torn to long ragged tongues of hanging cloth. Inside it the chromed wire basket of a tipped-over shopping cart reflected dully. The flash swung away to play over another tepee, collapsed on its side. “Rube, I hate this,” Danziger said, his voice thinned and echoless in the great space they stood in. “Hate it. Turn that damn thing off.”
The light vanished, and in the utter blackness Danziger said, “All right. What happened?”
“We went broke. Our funding cut off. Every dime. And the Project canceled. We’re out of business, Doctor. There is no Project. I’m just kind of a squatter here now; I can’t keep away. I expect they know I come in sometimes. At least they haven’t changed the front-door lock. But they’ve cut off most of the electricity, all the big lines. And the whole place is on a government surplus list. They just haven’t found a buyer for a gutted warehouse with no interior floors.”
“Rube, this is worse; turn the thing back on.” Rube switched on the flash, and swung the beam upward. With it he searched for and found the catwalk five stories above, then slid the beam along till it reached a section with a gap of a dozen feet. “That came loose. A bolt rusted or worked loose, there’ve been no inspections, it dropped a little, and other bolts yanked out, I suppose. And the section fell, grazing our Denver storefront. Smashed it up good. There’s no maintenance at all, and now the catwalks are permanently locked.” He sent the beam along the floor before them, and they walked on. They passed without stopping what looked like a section of farmland with split-rail fencing, and a tree, but in places the soil was gone, exposing the concrete floor underneath. Two beer cans lay in the no-man’s-land before a World War I trench. “Okay, Rube, enough. Let’s get out.”
In the conference room Dr. Danziger said, “All right, tell me.”
“They started saying we’d had no results.”
“No results!”
“That’s right. That we’d spent a lot of mon—”
“No results! What the hell do they mean!”
“They said we didn’t. I don’t know who said it first: somebody. And it was like the kid saying the emperor has no clothes—they all joined in. Yeah, look! No clothes! Hell, they’re mostly politicians, Dr. D, what do you expect! The kind who beat the rats off the ship! Remember Si? Simon Morley?”
“Of course.”
“Well, he never came back, God damn him. Just stayed there back in the fucking nineteenth century. If he’d only come back! The way he was supposed to. The way he said he would. He was committed to it! Dr. D, if he had come back with proof, as only he could, why, hell—they’d have given us everything but the Washington Monument.”
“Instead . . .”
“Instead, it was how did we know where Si was? Or McNaughton? Maybe all Si ever did was hole up in the Dakota apartment building for a while—at taxpayers’ expense—going through the motions, lying to us, pretending he was about to make the transition. Then he ducks out one night, shows up at the Project a few days later, and says, Hooray for me, I did it! And we fell for it. In an access of wishful thinking. This senator, this guy got wind of the Project, and for a while it looked like he was going to give us that stupid Golden Fleece award. A Pentagon major general career man saw his third star fading away, and covered his ass fast, said he never had believed us and told us so, the lying son of a bitch. Oh, they came after us good and fast. Even the academics. Prove it, prove it! God, I got sick of that word. And we couldn’t. At our very last board meeting—they shut us down a day and a half later—this wormy little congressman, you remember him, really got on me. Si was supposed to go back and—well, of course you know what Si was supposed to do.”
“Know? I hated it.”
“Yeah, well, I’m sorry. But the thing is, we had to brief the congressman. Had to. So he knew Si was supposed to go back and . . .” Rube glanced at the old man. “Go back and very slightly alter one past event, and damn it, Dr. D, it was small.”
“Yes, well, let it go, let it go. Alter the past just enough so that Cuba would have become an American possession. Wonderful. As though you could predict the consequences of that. Ridiculous. Ridiculous and almighty dangerous. But go on.”
“This little congressman kept saying stuff like, ‘Major, what’s Cuba now? The fifty-first state? Yuk, yuk. And where’s Fidel these days? Pitching for the Mets?’ ”
Danziger sat grinning at him. “Served you right.”
“Yeah, well, the thing is, we had no proof. No nothin’.”
“What about our Denver man? He made it. And came back.”
“Didn’t help. Never happened either, you see, same as Si. Where’s the proof, where’s the proof? Goddamn bunch of parrots. As for our boy made it to medieval Paris for—what? Ten seconds?—they laughed in our faces at that one. Make a politician look even slightly wrong, and believe me, you have not gained a friend.”
“Yep. Well, Rube”—he began gathering up his hat and folded topcoat from the chair beside him—“that’s that, then. It was great while it last—”
“Wait.”
“Oh, Rube, Rube, Rube. The Project is finished. Forever. Can you possibly wander around it with your flashlight and see it all rebuilt? The Big Floor restored? The School back in business, Oscar Rossoff back, a new batch of candidates arriving? It’s dead! With a stake through its heart.”
“Sure. I know that. But we don’t need the Project.”
“ ‘We’?”
“It’ll be ‘we’ when you find out why.”
“Oh? And if ‘we’ don’t need the Project, what do we need?”
Rube leaned forward over the tabletop, holding Dr. Danziger’s eyes. “Si.”
“Si Morley?”
Rube sat back, nodding. “Yep. Si Morley, the best we ever had. That’s who we need, and that’s all we need. Can you reach him, Dr. D? Can you?”
“Reach him? How? How reach him back in the nineteenth century?”
“I don’t know.” Rube sat looking at him. “I don’t know, damn it! You thought up the whole Project! It was your theory. If anyone can figure out how to reach Si Morley, it has to be you.”
“Rube,” he said gently. “Short of actually going back myself, how could I reach him?”
“You’ve tried going back?”
“Of course. And so have you, I’m certain.”
“More than once. I’d give anything I have or ever will have to be able to do it. Just once. Even for only a minute.” He sat looking across the table at the old man, then said, “It’s funny; you and I made the Project. Made it work. Yet we can’t do it: we need Si.” With his clenched fist he softly, soundlessly pounded the tabletop. “We need Si. You can’t reach him? No way at all?”
The old man looked away, moving a shoulder in almost but not quite a shrug. He looked uncomfortable, frowning a little, arranging his topcoat over one arm, and Rube Prien leaned forward, watching him intently. Then, his voice very soft now, and beginning to smile, Rube Prien said, “Oh, Doctor, Doctor: you can’t quite lie, can you? You don’t really know how. You know you ought to. You’d like to. And you try, but you can’t fool me. You can reach Si Morley!”
“If I can, it won’t help you.” Danziger glanced around the room. “The Project actually succeeded; I’ll always know that. But then the troublemakers took over. You. Esterhazy. And whoever else was behind you, I never did know who: I am an innocent. But the Project is gone now, and if I can’t quite say I’m glad, I’m close.” He stood up, coat over an arm, hat in hand. “I’ll never help you. I like you, Rube, God knows why. But you’d alter the past. In order to alter the present according to your own godlike understanding of what’s best for the rest of us. Well, if there can be an idiot savant, there can be a sane madman. And there are always some around. Quite often brave men in uniform. Patriots. But still the enemy.” He leaned toward Rube, extending his hand. “So I’ll just say goodbye, thanking you for an interesting morning.”
Rube stood up, face genial, shook Dr. Danziger’s extended hand, and said, “Sit down, Dr. D. Because you are going to help me. You’re going to get me in touch with Si Morley because you’ll want to.” He pulled over his attaché case, Dr. Danziger, still standing, watching him. Rube snapped up the two brass fasteners, lifted the lid, and began removing the contents, tossing them to the table before Danziger: a glossy black-and-white photograph of what appeared to be a small-town Main Street; an old newspaper, edges browned; a campaign button; a sheaf of letters clipped together; an envelope with a triangular stamp; a tape cassette; an old book with a loose binding; a rubber-banded coil of black-and-white film. “Look at this stuff, Doctor. The photograph, take a look at that.”
Face and movement reluctant, Dr. Danziger put down his coat and picked up the photograph. “Yes?”
“Well, look at it. A small-town Main Street, right? And taken in the forties, wouldn’t you say? Look at the cars.”
“Yes. There’s a ’42 Plymouth roadster; I once had one.”
“Now look at the movie marquee: can you read it?”
“Of course; I’m not quite—”
“Okay. Read the title of the movie they’re showing.”
Twenty minutes later, Dr. Danziger—standing with a coil of movie film held up to the overhead fluorescent light, examining the frames of the final foot—finished, and tossed the film onto the table with the other things. “All right,” he said irritably, sitting down. “These all say the same thing. In different ways. Events that apparently once happened one way seem now to have happened in another. Where’d you get them?” he asked curiously.
Rube shrugged. “A friend, a young army friend; they’re more or less on loan.”
“And what’ve they got to do with Si Morley?”
“Isn’t that obvious?”
“No.”
Rube nodded at the objects on the table. “He’s doing this. He and maybe McNaughton—one more guy who broke his word and didn’t come back! They’re back there in the past, trampling around, changing things, aren’t they? They don’t know it. They’re just living their happy lives, but changing small events. Mostly trivial, with no important effects. But every once in a while the effect of some small changed event moves on down to the—” He stood, frowning: Dr. Danziger was shaking his head, smiling. “Why not!? What the hell, I’m quoting you!”
“Misquoting. It takes more than a trivial event. It isn’t Si. Or McNaughton. Look at these things.”
“I have. Most of last night. Looked till—”
“Well, look again. You shouldn’t need this spelled out by a senile old man.”
“You? That’ll be the day.” Rube Prien picked up the white campaign button and looked at the printed faces of John Kennedy and Estes Kefauver; looked at the front page of the old newspaper. Touched the tape cassette, the old film, the packet of letters, his expression growing irritable. Then he sat back, hooking an arm over the back of his chair. “Dr. D. You know I was never in your league. Just tell me.”
“Not one of these artifacts predates the early years of the century. That didn’t occur to you? If Si, back in the 1880s, were causing this”—he gestured at the scattered things on the table—“some, at least, should have occurred much earlier. And if McNaughton, then none could predate the twenties.” His face and voice had grown interested. “Something happened, sometime around 1912, it appears. Some kind of . . . what? Some very important event, a kind of Big Bang, to steal a term. Something that altered the course of many subsequent events; these and undoubtedly others.”
“What kind of Big Bang?”
“Who can say? You’ve read Si Morley’s published account, his book?”
“Twice. Making notes. And cursing him out at least once a page.”
“Yet an accurate account, wouldn’t you say?”
“Oh, I don’t know. What about that last chapter?”
Danziger laughed. “Oh, you’re right, you’re right! Not quite accurate there, thank the Lord. Keep my parents from ever meeting! Thus effectively preventing the Project itself. I enjoyed that. But everything else was accurate, including your own grandiose ideas. So why do you suppose he wrote that final chap—”
“Wishful thinking. The way he’d have liked it to happen.”
“I don’t know: if he’d really wanted to do that, what could possibly have stopped him?”
Rube shook his head. “I have no way of knowing.” They sat silent, reflecting; then Rube said, “Okay. But who did cause your Big Bang?”
“Anyone who read Si’s account of how he succeeded. And who then tried it himself. Or herself, as we are obliged to add now. Tried and, unlike you and me . . . succeeded.”
“Oh, come on! Are you serious? Just from reading his account?”
“Oh, I know the difficulties. And how few ever managed even with the facilities we once had here: the School, the researchers, the Big Floor mockups. Virtually re-creating the whole town for McNaughton. And yet just possibly, some reader, absolute amateur, was actually able—” He couldn’t finish, breaking into laughter. “Of course I’m not serious! I’m teasing you, Rube!” Still amused, he turned to gather up his coat and hat. “Well, it’s been fascinating.” He pushed back his chair to stand. “But now—so long, Rube. Thanks for everything, as we say.”
