Time Travel Omnibus, page 200
Aker shouted, “Manx! Look!”
Pete whirled—and stood staring. Danger from the animals was past. The few that remained alive had fled, or were cowering against the walls of the arena. But directly under the royal box was the wounded elephant, trunk waving, tiny eyes blazing, trumpeting in rage. He was must—mad! The tumult in the box must have attracted his attention, and he was charging against the massive stonework wall with titanic, jolting blows, while above him men fought and screamed and sprang to escape.
Caesar himself, attempting to flee, stumbled against Messalina, and Pete had a confused idea that the Empress had hurled Claudius down and overturned the gilded throne upon the squirming Roman. That done, Messalina hurriedly left.
“Hold everything!” Pete called to Aker. “I got an idea.”
The wall was already buckling; masonry cracked and groaned under the onslaught of the great elephant. Pete lit a bomb, gauged his distance carefully, and threw it. The resultant explosion made the elephant whirl, trumpeting, his piggish eyes searching the arena.
He saw Pete. He started forward.
Pete threw three bombs. If they failed, he was lost. He had but one left.
But the home-made gunpowder-and-shrapnel did the trick. The elephant died in a thunderous roar of tearing, blinding explosion.
A little silence fell upon the arena. The beasts were slain; the mob, realizing this, paused tentatively, ready to renew their flight. Pete gripped his last remaining bomb, stepped forward and waited for Claudius to crawl to his feet.
The Emperor of Rome was a wreck. He shot a horrified glance into the arena and started to run. A shout from Pete stopped him.
“Hold! Halt, Caesar!”
Claudius froze. He glared down, shuddering. Pete lifted the bomb menacingly.
“I have destroyed your beasts,” he called, “and I can ruin Rome as easily.”
Claudius gave a terrified squeak. Messalina suddenly appeared, hurried to the Emperor’s side, and whispered to him. Caesar seemed to grasp new hope.
“Petus Manxus!” he called, his voice unsteady. “Do not use your magic! You are pardoned! More—I make you a consul of Imperial Rome—”
Swish!
PETE MANX opened dazed eyes, stared blankly at a face that seemed oddly familiar. For a second he thought the bomb had exploded after all. Then, quite suddenly, he recognized Dr. Mayhem. The Doc! And all around were the wires and gadgets of the Doc’s laboratory. Rome had vanished—Caesar, Messalina, the Colosseum, and all the rest.
“Oh, my head,” Pete moaned, rising unsteadily. “I feel like I been through a knothole. Lemme feel you, Doc, an’ see if you’re real.”
Mayhem chuckled.
“It’s real enough, Manx. You’re back home unharmed, as I promised.” He turned as a hoarse groan sounded. “Oh, here’s Professor Aker. He woke a bit before you did.”
Pete noticed the laboratory was deserted save for the three of them. Aker was leaning against a chair, swallowing convulsively.
“Let me out of here,” he gasped. “Mayhem, I—I—” He turned a virulent green and staggered toward the door.
“Just a moment,” Mayhem called. “Do I get that equipment?”
Aker hesitated.
“You gave your word,” Mayhem reminded. “It was a bet. And in Rome you discovered how necessary the right equipment is. Besides, how would you like the students to learn of your—um—activities as a poisoner?”
“It’s blackmail,” Aker cried. He looked at Pete, grimaced, and threw up his hands. “All right. You get your equipment. I hope it chokes you, Mayhem.”
The professor departed hastily, leaving Mayhem chuckling quietly behind him.
“Here’s your hundred dollars, and a hundred extra for winning out. Thank you!”
Pete counted the money carefully, and then looked sideward at Dr. Mayhem.
“Uh—I was wondering about what you just said to the professor, Doc. How’d you know so much about what happened in Rome, anyway?”
Mayhem snickered. “I didn’t tell Aker all the secrets of my time machine. It can be operated automatically. After I sent you two back into the past, I joined you, just to keep an eye on things. It took me six experimental trips before I arrived in the mind of someone of importance, where I could be sure I’d hear everything that went on in Rome.”
Pete’s eyes widened. “So you were there? But who—who were you? And anyhow,” Pete chuckled reproachfully, “that wasn’t exactly fair, when you come right down to it.”
Dr. Mayhem’s face cracked into a broad grin.
“You shouldn’t say things like that, Pete; it might get you tossed to the lions! I was Messalina! And don’t forget, Messalina was Caesar’s wife. And Caesar’s wife is above reproach!”
THE TIME TWIN
Lyle D. Gunn
Two cycles in Time—and a strange case of double identity—in one Universe!
I stopped short on the threshold of the living room, for it seemed that a large, full-length mirror must have been placed in the doorway. A perfect reflection of myself confronted me. Yet I could see that there was no mirror.
I saw my face, plain of features, and topped by my straight and prematurely thinning black hair. I saw my broad shoulders (of which I am somewhat proud) and my blue, double-breasted suit. Of the suit there could be no doubt. I would recognize it anywhere. It was the only one I owned.
I raised my eyebrows, wrinkling my forehead—a habit I have when, as a serious instructor of astrophysics, I am puzzled by a fact which appears true but inexplicable. My vis-a-vis did likewise.
I felt annoyance at being mocked; yet, as a creature of reason, I had to admit that this other person had the same right to be puzzled as I. I think it is to my credit that, even at the initiation of the remarkable adventure, I did not once consider the possibility that I could be suffering from an hallucination.
“Who are you?” I asked, quite calmly.
I was less calm after the reply, uttered in a voice the exact counterpart of mine.
“Harry Steffens,” said my double.
“Impossible!” I exclaimed. “I am Harry Steffens.”
“Nevertheless, that is my name,” said the other flatly.
“But,” I said with rising excitement, “I don’t understand the meaning of this. Who are you? And who am I? Or, who are we? We look alike, speak alike, and have the same name. And that suit, there’s only one like it . . .”
“Oh, come now,” said my double in the same tone I use when impatient with a dull student in one of my classes at the University, “it’s not so difficult as all that. We are the same Henry Steffens! Or, you might say, we are fourth dimensional twins!”
STRANGELY, all my excitement left me then. I was once more the matter-of-fact scientist. I tried to marshal my thoughts.
“It won’t do. We can’t—” I began.
The other Harry Steffens interrupted rudely. Completely misunderstanding my objection, he declared impatiently, “You know that time is a dimension, that like the other dimensions it has direction. Why can’t you grasp that the whole sidereal Universe exists simultaneously at many different points in this fourth dimension?
“Look!” he swept on, giving me no chance to speak. “The world lives and dies, then repeats the process in another cycle. The Universe runs down, its molecular structure crumbles, and the basic building materials, the atoms, are distributed through space. Then there is combination again into nebulae, condensation resulting in the formation of suns, throwing off of planets, emergence of life, evolution, and so on until each cycle is completed after countless millions of years. Yet all the cycles occur simultaneously at different places in time!”
“Yes,” I said, “but—”
“I know! I know! You are going to tell me of the incalculable possible combinations of the number of atoms—let us say 1027—in a human body alone. And of the incredibly slight chance of an individual being duplicated, let alone the coincidence of two worlds with identical inhabitants and patterns of events. But you forget one thing: the number of combinations that will occur in eternity is infinite. And coincidence then is not a matter of chance—but a certainty!”
“I have forgotten nothing,” I said when I was sure he had finished. “I am well aware of all you say, but it does not answer my one objection. How could you and I, if we were earlier and later concourses of the same atoms, ever exist together at the same place in time?”
“I can’t explain it,” he said, “but it’s enough for me that I’m here—or anywhere—at all! Two hours ago, at just two o’clock, I was in the Loop, walking across Lake Street toward Wabash. It was storming badly. As I passed the power station, east of State Street, there was a blinding flash of lightning. Then came a far greater flash, a pungent smell, a powerful rushing of air, and—”
“And what?” I asked.
“Nothing!” he replied. “I opened my eyes. I was lying on the living room couch. I heard a sound, got up to see who was in my apartment, and came face to face with you.”
“Your apartment!” I echoed. “Well, of all the consummate impudence! I live here.”
“We live here,” he corrected me sharply. “I have as much right to be here as you. An accident has shifted my position in the time frame of the Universe, but in my world I lived in this place, and since I am the same person and it is the same place, I still do! You keep forgetting that I, too, am Harry Steffens. To all practical purposes we are the same person—and I intend to maintain my rights!”
That was my first inkling of the trouble that was to come . . .
UNEASILY I watched this person who was by all evidence identical with myself, and in the back of my mind I was still struggling to reconcile with physical law the fact that we were able to face each other as separate individuals. But it is no wonder that I failed to pick up the clue so close at hand, for I was preoccupied with the practical problems that arose out of his being here.
There was only one job and one salary, and it was little enough for me to live on. How well I knew that. Otherwise Mary and I—Good God! The thought flashed through my mind that this other Harry Steffens, in his own cycle, must have loved a Mary Hudson who was the same person as my Mary. Would he expect—I was afraid to ask him, decided it was better to say nothing unless he did. Then, I told myself, I would indeed be firm!
As to the problem of the consternation that would be caused if we both appeared publicly at one time, that could wait. This was Saturday afternoon, and the rest of the week-end I would be working at home on a monograph. I had just returned from a trip to the library for a book I needed on radius vectors, and—suddenly I remembered something.
“Didn’t you say,” I asked my double, “that there was a bad storm just two hours ago?”
“Yes. Why?” he replied.
I answered him sharply, because I believed I detected a flaw in the story he had told me.
“Because I was on the way back from the library at that time, and it did not rain!”
“You’re crazy,” he said shortly.
I was highly provoked.
“Do you,” I half shouted, “mean to stand there and tell me, a trained observer of physical phenomena, that I can’t tell whether or not it’s raining?”
“You’re crazy,” my double repeated, fully as excited as I, “because the library isn’t open today. This, in case you’ve been asleep, is Sunday, May ninth, nineteen-hundred thirty-eight.”
“It is not, and I’ll prove it to you,” I said triumphantly. “Look at this paper I just bought.”
I took the folded paper from my coat pocket, unfurled it, and pointed to the date line—Saturday, May 8, 1938.”
“Now are you satis—”
“Wait!” he said suddenly, and, taking the paper from my hand, began to study it intently.
I looked over his shoulder and saw what he was staring at. I had hardly paid any attention to it before, since I have no interest in horse racing nor money to gamble on it. But now, because it was the object of my double’s examination, I read the headline stretched in big black type across all eight columns of the newspaper. It said:
SON OF VICTORY FAVORED
IN DERBY TODAY
My fourth dimensional twin turned his eyes from the paper and looked me full in the face. When he spoke, it was with deep seriousness. I was sure of that—why shouldn’t I be? I know how I speak when I am completely in earnest. So it was with a quiver of excitement that I heard his words.
His eyes holding mine, he slowly said: “Son of Victory didn’t win the Kentucky Derby. Polly’s Boy won—and paid eighty-four dollars!”
IMPRACTICAL I may be, but not a fool. If this were true, it could mean a lot to me. Money, unfortunately, is important even to a scientist, especially if he wants a wife and a home.
“Let’s sit down and get this straightened out,” I said.
“Well,” said my double, when we were seated, “in the first place it is Sunday, May ninth . . . Now wait!” he exclaimed as I began to protest, “I grant you that at this moment in the time frame we are within, it is Saturday, the eighth. But a little over two hours ago, before I was torn from my cycle, it was a day later. Either the superficial time factor in the two cycles does not correspond exactly, or the accident that shifted me from one to the other failed to bring me to the identical point. In any case, I have already lived the next twenty-two hours according to your chronology—and we must capitalize on that fact.” I was glad that we were of the same mind, though, I said to myself, we should have been, since we were the same person.
“What,” I asked, “do we do first?” My double thought a moment.
“Let’s start by betting that Polly’s Boy will win or—” he laughed—“or did win the Derby this afternoon.”
I confessed that I didn’t even know how to go about placing a bet, never having indulged before, and my fourth dimensional twin reminded me that his experience was the same as mine.
“How about calling Powers and asking him?” he suggested.
Bill Powers was one of the younger men in the English Department. He had been a reporter for a while before turning to academic work, and knew his way around. As I went to the phone to call him, I could not shake off the peculiar feeling the other Harry Steffens had given me by the suggestion. It again reminded me that everything that had happened to me had also happened to him—we shared every bit of knowledge, every experience.
Powers answered his phone. He was obviously surprised when he learned what I wanted, but said he’d place a bet for me. I told him to play Polly’s Boy to win, and then he really was surprised.
“If you want to throw your money away, however, it’s all right with me,” he said. “How much goes?”
I asked him to hold on and turned to my double. He was looking through a book, making notations on the margins of pages, and I couldn’t attract his attention without addressing him.
“Harry,” I said, and no one in the world will ever know what a queer feeling it gave me to use my own name in speaking to this person who was in all respects myself, “how much money have you?”
He looked through his pocket and said he had three dollars. I had seven dollars, so I told Powers to bet ten. That shows how impractical scientists can be; on a gamble one of course risks no more than he can pay if he loses, Hut we knew we were going to win.
But at the time the thought never entered my mind. Powers called back soon after to say he had placed our bet. I turned on the radio and sat down with my fourth dimensional twin to wait for the broadcast of the Derby. We had quite some time to kill, so we talked a bit.
I discovered two facts. One was that my double knew a little more about our special field of study than I. He mentioned a few books I had never heard of and which, so far as I knew, did not exist. I concluded that there must be some slight variation in the patterns of our two cycles. That thought gave me an uneasy moment. Perhaps, in this cycle, the Derby would turn out differently.
The other fact was that my double differed from me in personality. I am sensitive and warm-hearted. He seemed hard and cold. A shadow gradually crept over my mind, for somehow this discovery about the other Harry Steffens seemed linked with Mary . . .
AFTER an almost interminable account of the weather, the track and grounds at Churchill Downs, spectators of prominence, and the horses entered, the Derby began. I wish I could retell that contest. How Son of Victory jumped into an early lead, how the jockey on Polly’s Boy tried to bring his mount up to challenge, and was sharply cut off on the back turn. I was amazed that I, a serious student, could become so excited over a sporting event. I heard myself calling encouragement, cheering until I was almost hoarse. My double, on the other hand, was quite unemotional about it. Polly’s Boy, he said, had won yesterday—by two lengths.
But the finish, that was almost unbelievable. Near the end of the race—at the furlough pole. I think it is called—Son of Victory still led, but another horse was coming up so fast on the inside that the announcer could not identify it immediately.
Then he called it—Polly’s Boy! Another few strides and the two horses were neck and neck. They flashed over the line so close together that the announcer said it was a “photograph finish” and that the placing would have to be held up until the electric camera’s picture was developed.
My fourth dimensional twin for the first time seemed disturbed. I could see that he had the same thought that had come to me. He had said that Polly’s Boy, in the Kentucky Derby in his cycle, had won by two lengths. Yet no more than two inches could have separated the horses in the race we had just listened to. Obviously here was another example of how events in the two cycles sometimes failed to correspond exactly. And if that was true, perhaps Polly’s Boy had not won just now.
Our doubts were resolved a moment later. The picture showed Polly’s Boy the winner by a nose. At 41 to 1, we had won $410.
THE first excitement over, I began to regret that we had not bet more. But there was still sufficient opportunity to increase our profits, for my fourth dimensional twin would know everything important that had happened up to two o’clock tomorrow afternoon. I would talk to him about that after supper.
