Time Travel Omnibus, page 261
I didn’t know. I had supposed the plaza would be packed with a vast multitude. Was it possible that Jipfur had slid out of his proposition to stand before the gods?
“On top of the ziggurat is the palace to stand before the gods,” said the Third Serpent. “That’s why so many people have been passing us. Most of the crowd is ahead of us.”
“Ahead of us!” I was already dizzy from the four hundred and fifty feet of climbing. This remark gave me a whirling sensation as if I were spiralling down on a roller coaster.
“The king changed the place of the test,” said the Third Serpent, adding in the same dry voice. “Why are you suddenly hurrying?”
“You wouldn’t understand,” I said. “But we’ve got a certain spot reserved. We’ve got to get there—and—and clear it!”
THE Third Serpent was right, the crowd was ahead of us, a good five thousand strong—an ample number to witness Jipfur’s challenge to the gods.
The ceremony was already in progress. The five thousand spectators sat close-packed on the brick floor—a vast circle of sky gazers, their eyes intent on the big fluffy clouds that passed—almost low enough to touch.
Jipfur was looking up, too, shouting into the heavens, calling the names of the Babylonian deities, challenging them brazenly.
“Come, Shamash, if you have any accusations against me, strike me with lightning. Come, Ishtar—”
I saw the anxiety flash through Betty’s face. She knew it must be only a matter of minutes until our departure.
Very well, in a few minutes we would be ready. The watchman had told us the exact point where the glass message had been deposited. We had only to take a few measurements—
But how could we? This vast throng packed every inch of circumference around the tower-top!
“Quick!” Betty whispered. “We’ve got to disregard them.”
I knew she was right. I forced my way through to a specified point at the outer edge, tried to take measured steps across the thicket of spectators.
“Down! Down!” the people hissed. They were intent on the show at the center of the ring. Jipfur was waving his arms, bellowing into the skies.
Betty moaned, “We’ve got to wait. Maybe they’ll leave soon.”
“I’m afraid not,” I said. “The bull moose means to keep it up till he wears them out. Listen to him!”
“Strike me down, if you dare, Oh Marduk! Stab me with fire if I have ever been guilty of an unkind deed!”
He tossed his pudgy head from side to side. The wavy locks beneath his cone-shaped cap fluttered in the breeze. The brass necklace, “Bull Moose,” dangled from his throat, swinging with each boastful beckon of his arms.
“In their blindness,” Jipfur roared, “my fellowmen have accused me of murdering Slaf-Carch, my beloved uncle. If I did this deed, strike me dead this inst—”
It came! It flashed down out of the sky—a veritable spiral of lightning. Five thousand people caught the quick glimpse—a cylinder of red fire!
Then it was gone.
Betty clutched my hand and I felt the awful throb of disappointment in her grip. Our chance had come and gone—and here we sat, helpless, surrounded by five thousand Babylonians, viewing the sham-religious antics of Jipfur—
What had happened?
Jipfur was lying down, motionless—but not all of him. Only the lower half of his body was there. The top half was gone!
NO BLOOD ran, no muscles twitched, there was no life in that weird looking mass of trunk, hips, and legs. But the rest of the body—chest, arms, and head—had vanished with the flash of heavenly fire.
“Jipfur! Jipfur!”
Scores of voices called the name at once, but the shrill cry of the patesi’s haughty sister rang out above the rest. Several persons started toward the grotesque, lifeless object, then drew back in fear and trembling. Hundreds of people began to mumble prayers aloud.
Suddenly, above the welter of excited clamoring, an old familiar voice sounded, loud and clear. It was the never-to-be-forgotten voice of Slaf-Carch.
“Today the gods have spoken!”
A chorus of murmurs echoed the words, like a chant. Then there was a tense silence of waiting, broken at last by a throbbing outcry from Jipfur’s sister.
“Speak on, Slaf-Carch! We are listening.”
Again the voice of Slaf-Carch spoke and as his gentle words came forth, Betty’s hand, held tightly in mine, ceased to tremble.
“Today Jipfur has been taken from you,” said the voice. “Let his passing bring peace to all who were once my laborers and my slaves. I am still with you in spirit. My helpers may carry on for me if they are willing. Even those of you who have come from a foreign land—and a foreign time—may find your ultimate place here. If you believe in me, stay and become my chosen leaders.”
BETTY and I were among the last to descend the lofty tower that afternoon. There was so much to talk about, so much to plan. Somehow Slaf-Carch’s words made the world look fresh and new for both of us, now that all Betty had feared and dreaded was gone.
“As long as you’re here, Hal,” she said, looking up at me, starry-eyed, “I don’t care whether I ever go back to the twentieth century.”
“What?” I said with a wink. “Haven’t you any feelings for your poor uncle, the Colonel?”
“The Colonel!” Betty laughed. “We’ve sent him a bull moose. What more could he ask? . . .”
ONE day after Betty, Kish and I had gotten the business reorganization of Borbel palace well under way—Jipfur’s sister having generously honored us with managerial responsibilities and a share of ownership—I invited the Third Serpent to come in for an interview.
He closed the door behind him, settled his misshapen back within a comfortable chair, and apparently stared at me through his ring-eyed mask.
I said, “I’ve been looking over the records. You are fairly new to this Serpent clique, I see.”
“I joined early last fall, shortly before you and Jipfur met us by the marsh.”
“This job of gouging peasants for money apparently didn’t agree with you. You were very easy on them, I find.”
“You are welcome to fire me,” said the Third Serpent dryly, “if my work is unsatisfactory.”
“I’ve fired the others,” I replied. “In your case, however, certain other services are not to be overlooked. You are deserving of something over and above a Serpent’s salary. Have you ever considered taking a vacation to—say, the twentieth century?”
The Third Serpent gave a gurgling chuckle and settled more comfortably in his chair. “As a matter of fact, I have. I’d like to go back for a facial surgery job sometime—” he supplemented his smooth Babylonian words with a sprinkling of English—“sometime after the Colonel grows a bit steadier at the controls. Naturally, I’d give anything to get out of this mask.”
“Is it—quite bad?”
The Third Serpent nodded. “I never allow anyone to see me. Of course I had to learn to talk all over. Does she suspect?”
“Not at all,” I said. “The voice of Slaf-Carch is the real McCoy with her. You know how she loves that river legend.”
“Childlike!” he mused. “That’s why she’s a good Babylonian.” He rose to go.
“That hunched back of yours, Professor,” I said, “is it another Babylonian legend?”
He laughed. “It might be some day. I developed it the same week you traded off the vocoder. It’s made of leather-detachable, of course—and a splendid place to keep my magic. By the way, your machine’s a wonder. It tones down so soft that my fellow Serpents never heard me practicing my Slaf-Carch.”
“You were perfect. And to think you’ve actually made Slaf-Carch live on.”
“He deserves to live on.” He moved to the door, then turned back. “You won’t say anything to my daughter, of course. If she knew, she’d want to see me. For the present it’s better that she believe me dead.”
“For the present,” I nodded. “But I’ll insist that the Third Serpent be present at our Babylonian wedding.”
[*] The breeding season begins in September, and mating goes on through the fall. At this season the bulls lose their natural timidity, become savage, and will readily attack any animal or even man, if their rage is aroused.”—From the New International Encyclopedia description of the moose.
TIME PUSSY
Isaac Asimov
This was told me long ago by old Mac, who lived in a shack just over the hill from my old house. He had been a mining prospector out in the Asteroids during the Rush of ’37, and spent most of his time now in feeding his seven cats.
“What makes you like cats so much, Mr. Mac?” I asked him.
The old miner looked at me and scratched his chin. “Well,” he said, “they reminds me o’ my leetle pets on Pallas. They was something like cats—same kind of head, sort o’—and the cleverest leetle fellers y ever saw. All dead!”
I felt sorry and said so. Mac heaved a sigh.
“Cleverest leetle fellers,” he repeated. “They was four-dimensional pussies.”
“Four-dimensional, Mr. Mac? But the fourth dimension is time.” I had learned that the year before, in the third grade.
“So you’ve had a leetle schooling, hey?’ He took out his pipe and filled it slowly. “Sure, the fourth dimension is time. These pussies was about a foot long and six inches high and four inches wide and stretched somewheres into middle o’ next week. That’s four dimensions, ain’t it? Why, if you petted their heads, they wouldn’t wag their tails till next day, mebbe. Some o’ the big ones wouldn’t wag till day after. Fact!”
I looked dubious, but didn’t say anything.
Mac went on: “They was the best leetle watchdogs in all creation, too. They had to be. Why, if they spotted a burglar or any suspicious character, they’d shriek like a banshee. And when one saw a burglar today, he’d shriek yesterday, so we had twenty-four hours’ notice every time.”
My mouth opened. “Honest?”
“Cross my heart I Y’ want to know how we used to feed them? We’d wait for them to go to sleep, see, and then we’d know they was busy digesting their meals. These leetle time pussies, they always digested their meals exactly three hours before they ate it, on account their stomachs stretched that far back in time. So when they went to sleep, we used to look at the time, get their dinner ready and feed it to them exactly three hours later.”
He had lit his pipe now and was puffing away. He shook his head sadly. “Once, though, I made a mistake. Poor leede time pussy. His name was Joe, and he was just about my favorite, too. He went to sleep one morning at nine and somehow I got the idea it was eight. Naturally, I brought him his feed at eleven. I looked all over for him, but I couldn’t find him.”
“What had happened, Mr. Mac?”
“Well, no time pussy’s insides could be expected to handle his breakfast only two hours after digesting it. It’s too much to expect. I found him finally under the tool kit in the outer shed. He had crawled there and died of indigestion an hour before. Poor leetle feller! After that, I always set an alarm, so I never made that mistake again.”
There was a short, mournful silence after that, and I resumed in a respectful whisper: “You said they all died, before. Were they all killed like that?”
Mac shook his head solemnly. “No! They used to catch colds from us fellers and just die anywhere from a week to ten days before they caught them. They wasn’t too many to start with, and a year after the miners hit Pallas they wasn’t but about ten left and them ten sort o’ weak and sickly. The trouble was, leetle feller, that when they died, they went all to pieces; just rotted away fast. Especially the little four-dimensional jigger they had in their brains which made them act the way they did. It cost us all millions o’ dollars.”
“How was that, Mr. Mac?”
“Y’ see, some scientists back on Earth got wind of our leetle time pussies, and they knew they’d all be dead before they could get out there next conjunction. So they offered us all a million dollars for each time pussy we preserved for them.”
“And did you?”
“Well, we tried, but they wouldn’t keep. After they died, they were just no good any more, and we had to bury them. We tried packing them in ice, but that only kept the outside all right. The inside was a nasty mess, and it was the inside the scientists wanted.
“Natur’lly, with each dead time pussy costing us a million dollars, we didn’t want that to happen. One of us figured out that if we put a time pussy into hot water when it was about to die, the water would soak all through it. Then, after it died, we could freeze the water so it would just be one solid chunk o’ ice, and then it would keep.” My lower jaw was sagging. “Did it work?”
“We tried and we tried, son, but we just couldn’t freeze the water fast enough. By the time we had it all iced, the four-dimensional jigger in the time pussy’s brain had just corrupted away. We froze the water faster and faster but it was no go. Finally, we had only one time pussy left, and he was just fixing to die, too. We was desperate—and then one of the fellers thought o’ something. He figured out a complicated contraption that would freeze all the water just like that—in a split second.
“We picked up the last leetle feller and put him into the hot water and hooked on the machine. The leetle feller gave us a last look and made a funny leetle sound and died. We pressed the button and iced the whole thing into a solid block in about a quarter of a second.” Here Mac heaved a sigh that must have weighed a ton. “But it was no use. The time pussy spoiled inside o’ fifteen minutes and we lost the last million dollars.”
I caught my breath. “But Mr. Mac, you just said you iced the time pussy in a quarter of a second. It didn’t have time to spoil.”
“That’s just it, leetle feller,” he said heavily. “We did it too dog-goned fast. The time pussy didn’t keep because we froze that hot water so damned fast that the ice was still warm!”
24 TERRIBLE HOURS
David Wright O’Brien
Professor Campbell loved his wife, but he was aware that she didn’t love him. This led him to a strange act—he gave her the freedom she wanted, via a time machine!
ON THE morning of July 1st, Professor Calvin Campbell rose at five o’clock. He had slept with the alarm beneath his pillow, and its ringing had been loud enough to wake him but soft enough not to wake his wife, who still slept soundly in the twin bed on the other side of the night table.
Professor Campbell dressed quietly, quickly. A few moments later he stood over his wife, looking down at her gravely. This was a sort of farewell. He’d never see Kathleen alive again, except for one last moment when he’d be beside her yesterday.
Kathleen was much younger than Professor Campbell. All of twenty years younger. And in her sleep she never looked more youthfully lovely.
Campbell sighed. He deeply regretted what was to happen. But the situation as it was had finally become unendurable. He couldn’t stand it any longer. Loving Kathleen the way he did, it was impossible to go on like this.
Kathleen sighed in her sleep and turned over on her side. Her blonde hair glistened against the white pillow like golden webs of silk.
Kathleen had been out with young Vickers until three in the morning. Campbell had been awake when his wife came in. He hadn’t let her know that, however. Young Vickers had taken Kathleen to that meeting in Marshall Township, just on the other side of the mountains. They’d wanted Campbell to come, of course, or said they did, but the older Professor had excused himself, pleading work to be done.
Campbell couldn’t find it in him to hate Vickers. Vickers was a pleasant enough chap. He was handsome, youthful, around Kathleen’s age. And in his daily contact with Vickers at the College Laboratory, Campbell was aware that the young man had a brilliant future in store for him; knew this, also knowing that Vickers was in love with Kathleen.
Vickers had come to teach at the college over a year ago. He’d started as an instructor. Campbell had been responsible for his rise to a professorship; had made sort of a protege of him until he finally realized what was going on.
Campbell even found it hard to blame Kathleen for liking the handsome and personable young Vickers. He himself was neither young nor handsome. He was just a rather old professor in a somewhat obscure college, holding down a young and beautiful wife.
Kathleen had never complained. She wasn’t the sort to complain. But Campbell had realized that it wasn’t working out, that it could never really work out. And when Vickers joined the staff of the College, Campbell had calmly faced the inevitable.
THREE months ago Campbell had made up his mind. That had been the week when the older professor learned that young Vickers was slated to take the head professorship from him at the start of the following term.
Campbell had been bitter. But he kept his knowledge to himself. He didn’t even let Vickers in on the fact that he knew. But Vickers had been told. The fact that it made the younger man sincerely and sickly unhappy, didn’t alter the circumstances for Campbell. This was the final blow.
And Vickers had gone to Kathleen, had told Kathleen that he’d been elected to replace her husband. Kathleen, also, hadn’t found the courage to bring it up before Campbell. She felt sorry for him, terribly sorry, Campbell knew. But he didn’t want pity from her. He’d never told Kathleen that he knew.
There had been planning, then; careful and thoughtful planning. The other thing had worked in admirably. He’d thought that the other thing would some day reap for him the rich reward of everlasting scientific fame and fortune. He’d never told a soul about the other thing, even Kathleen. He’d wanted to keep it from her until he was certain. He’d planned to tell her when the experiments were positively completed. It would have been what he’d always wanted to give her—riches and success. He’d been certain that it would have compensated to her for the fact that he was an older and more drab man.
It all changed, however, even to the other thing, when Campbell discovered that Kathleen and Vickers had found one another. It made the other thing too late. It made it worthless. For what was fame and fortune when he didn’t have Kathleen?
