Time Travel Omnibus, page 339
Considered together, these things to Barry added up to nothing. Although he had written a lot of popularized scientific articles, he was after all only a reporter.
Well, he would know soon enough. The “other party” obviously had arrived. He could hear Carsten speaking.
“Please come inside, my dear. We’ve been waiting for you, a little impatiently, I’m afraid.”
Barry felt a sharp blow when he saw Joyce. The entire situation had become awkward and he wished he were out of it.
“I didn’t come because you sent for me,” Joyce said to Carsten.
“Good. You were coming anyway. I was afraid that after last night perhaps you wouldn’t.” Carsten flashed his smile at her and motioned toward Barry. “Aren’t you two speaking?”
Joyce seemed to have noticed him for the first time.
“Hello, Mike.”
Barry nodded.
“Carsten,” he said, “you apparently have the stage set the way you want it. Suppose you get the play over with.”
“Of course, we’re all impatient.” Carsten led them across the room. “I suppose, Joyce, that you have naturally wondered during the past two months what the workmen have been doing. Very soon we shall see.”
Barry was rapidly losing any enthusiasm he might have had about getting a story. He couldn’t imagine what Carsten was up to, but it could make little difference to him. He studied Joyce thoughtfully and admitted all over again that she was a most attractive girl. Something was wrong though. He could tell that from her face.
SOMETHING, he thought wryly, was wrong with all of them. They were an ill-assorted threesome. Carsten interrupted his confused thoughts.
“Michael, suppose you were in my place.
If you had the chance for everlasting life at the expense of destroying—say, most of the universe—would you take it?”
“Carsten, have you gone crazy?”
“No. It sounds melodramatic, but in a few minutes, my friends, the entire history of the universe will be changed.” His voice sank to a whisper. “And what a history it has been! Do you know, Michael, how many times you have lived the same life, the one you’re living now, over and over? How many times more you would normally go through the identical pattern again?
“You, Michael, Joyce, myself, all of us have lived precisely the same lives so many times that it’s impossible to conceive of. We have always lived the same lives because time is a circle. It returns on itself. There was never any beginning and never any end or any change—up to this moment.”
“Mike,” Joyce said, and her voice was edged with hysteria, “he was crazy all the time. I understand now.”
Barry was getting nervous. He didn’t understand—a lot of things.
“What are you driving at, Carsten?” he asked.
“Just this. What came before the beginning of time? What comes after the end?” His eyes glittered at them like tiny black stars. “I quote your late father’s notes, Joyce. ‘The combination of factors present at the death of the universe is precisely the combination of factors present at its birth. The universe is beginning or ending at any time. When is the start or the end of a circle? Last year the universe started, or yesterday—or today!’ ”
Carsten slowly twisted a dial on the instrument panel.
“But what a large circle it is. How small a part of it we are, and how many eternities we wait for the factors causing our births to reappear so that we may once again go through our brief role!”
Barry wrinkled his forehead. This surely was not the suave financier who had so subtly exploited Dr. Winthrop’s genius for the sake of his own pyramiding wealth. Carsten’s hands were trembling and he talked like a Shakespearean actor.
Carsten snapped a stud on the instrument panel. Barry stepped back as the air began to crackle. A greenish glow appeared between the needles, reached out slowly like a malignant growth toward the basin below.
“Just before his death,” Carsten was saying, “Joyce’s father succeeded in producing a force which could affect the fabric of time itself. To prove his theory of the universe he wanted a beam that would probe the darkness of time—and he finally succeeded. By determining the curvature of that force he determined the time circumference of the universe. A staggering figure really. National debts are nothing in comparison to it. The life of a man or a nation or of a world are less than nothing to the extent of the circle of time.”
Barry heard the door buzzer. Carsten turned and shrugged.
“Winthrop and I did not see eye to eye concerning the application of that force. Because, you see, it is perfectly capable of creating a loop in that circle, a loop that for example could be made to coincide exactly with the span of a man’s life. My life.”
If this was a joke, Barry thought, it was a good one. Something warned him that it was not. What Carsten said was too pointless and fantastic.
The buzzer sounded again and someone knocked at the door. Carsten shook his head in annoyance and vanished into the outer office.
“What a story!” thought Barry. “What a crazy story! Headline: ‘Financier possessed with the idea of personal immortality rearranges time circle to coincide with his life. Sub-head: It’s done with needles and a wash-basin.’ ”
He laughed.
Then his eye caught the utter blackness in the basin. Peering over the edge he saw that the metal was no longer visible. He stood at the rim of blackness unimaginable, of nothingness unlimited brimming over the confines of a ten-foot metal bowl. He gripped the edge of that bowl, swept by a feeling of nausea, a feeling that that blackness could engulf him, draw his body away to the ends of space and time.
HE FORCED himself away and walked drunkenly to the switchboard. He turned the thing off. Then he realized that Joyce was crying.
“Mike,” she said, “I can’t do it.”
“Can’t do what?”
“Kill him. I came here to kill Carsten.”
Barry swallowed. “You came here—to kill—Carsten?”
“Father didn’t die of heart failure. Carsten killed him!”
“Joyce, my dear, what are you saying?” Carsten had come back. “You can’t possibly mean—” He looked at Joyce’s eyes and his shoulders slumped wearily. “Yes, I see that somehow you do know.”
“Carsten, you dirty murderer!” Barry struck him across the face.
The financier winced and staggered backward. Then his lips tightened and there was suddenly a gun in his hand.
“Get away from me, Michael.”
“The police know, too.” Joyce’s voice was defiant.
Barry watched Carsten closely. The financier looked suddenly tired and haggard, as though the flame that had burned devastatingly within him the past two months had consumed itself and left only bitter ashes.
“The police were just here,” he said. “They told me a woman had called saying that she was going to kill a man on the top floor of this building and wait for them to come for her. They didn’t believe the story, of course. I sent them away. I didn’t believe it either. Now I do.” Carsten shook his head slowly “So I must alter my plans again.”
He looked into the bowl and then went to the switchboard.
“Ah, you turned it off? You felt it then. Michael? When this was built I knew that Winthrop was right. That blackness he called the raw fabric of space-time. Through that blackness he projected the beam which could see into the future.”
Carsten snapped the switch again and the needles began to glow. As he adjusted the verniers Barry took a step toward him.
“You’d better move across the room,” Carsten said. “Ordinarily I don’t carry one of these, but I thought you might become emotional.” He waved the automatic. “I won’t hesitate to use it. You see, Michael, you have only a few hours left anyway.” He turned to Joyce with a look of infinite sadness in his eyes. “You too, my dear.”
The silver sphere began to move away from the basin. It swung slowly on its cable upward along the metal arc toward the center of the room.
Carsten straightened his shoulders, his self-pity gone. From where Barry watched him half a room away—just as well half a world away, he thought—he saw again only the little man with bright sparkling eyes who was about to attempt immortality, and in so doing destroy all of eternity except for that infinitesimal fraction that coexisted with his own brief life.
Carsten spoke again, and once more seemed to enjoy his role of lecturer.
“The silver sphere before you is a perfect pendulum, its motion exactly adjusted by magnetic currents in the metal rail beneath it. The length of the time loop varies directly with the rate at which the sphere passes through the basin. The sphere actuates the force which will warp time into a loop coinciding exactly with the span of my life.”
Barry watched the sphere as it neared the end of the arc. He seemed helpless and alone in a vast room with a megalomaniac whom a little knowledge had converted into a dangerous psychotic. Then he felt Joyce’s hand on his arm and the room became reality again. Would Carsten, he wondered, kill them, as he had killed Joyce’s father? Undoubtedly he would.
Carsten pointed dramatically to the sphere as it hung poised to begin its descent toward the basin. He spoke swiftly.
“The two of you will die knowing that this performance will be repeated over and over, every time I live my life. I had hoped, Michael, not to involve you at all. Last night I asked Joyce to marry me. When she refused I knew that she never would as long as you remained alive. So it became necessary to eliminate you. Now, since Joyce would turn me over to the police, she must also stay in this room when I leave.
“Because today at two o’clock this entire floor will be demolished by a tremendous explosion, and the two of you will be locked in here together. A year ago Winthrop saw the flash of white fire which will destroy this room a few hours from now.”
“Carsten,” said Barry, “it doesn’t make sense. Why couldn’t he see what’s happening now and, knowing what you would do, circumvent it?”
“His beam was electronic in nature. Electrical currents from all over the building caused interference. Naturally, he couldn’t prevent it, because that interference was in the future. Only the tremendous white light of the explosion was bright enough to overcome it.”
BARRY thought rapidly. If he could delay Carsten for a few more seconds there might be a chance.
“Just one more question,” he said. “You’ve given me a good story, even if I don’t believe it, and even though I obviously won’t ever be able to write it. But one thing I don’t understand. I realize how you know the date of your birth, but it seems the date of your death is a little less certain.”
Carsten shook his head. “The date of a man’s death is predetermined by the links in the chain of cause and effect which start from the beginnings of time. I had a duplicate of Winthrop’s machine built for my own use. I set it up in my home. Fortunately there was no interference there to bother me. More fortunately still I am to die in my own bedroom. I saw my own death scene, Michael!”
“A perfect story.” Barry moved toward the metal track. He shifted his weight to the balls of his feet. “Time—the new eternity—will rotate about your life. Perfect to a mind as completely unbalanced as yours, but with one flaw which makes the whole thing absurd.”
Carsten set the sphere into motion.
Barry laughed. “Carsten, you don’t honestly believe that collection of hardware can change the universe, do you?”
“Who was it said a child’s finger can move the universe? It takes little power to disturb a perfectly balanced system. And powerful forces are going to be used when the sphere passes through . . . Look out! You fool!”
Barry’s body had been balanced perfectly. Now in one stride he took the only course of action open to him. He grasped the silver sphere with his hands.
“Here, Carsten! Here comes your universe!”
The heavy ball left the track, hurtled toward Edmund Carsten. The financier hesitated a fraction of a second too long. The sphere smashed into his chest, sent him stumbling backward.
Barry felt his legs pumping frantically. It seemed a long way across the room. Before he reached Carsten, the man had regained his balance. Barry saw the snout nose of the automatic pointing directly at him.
The roar of the gun was loud. He felt a stinging pain in his shoulder. Then his hand seized Carsten’s wrist and the gun dropped to the floor. The financier jumped to the rim of the basin and kicked Barry in the face.
The reporter staggered backward, in time to see the rebounding silver sphere, like a gleaming pendulum of death, come toward him. His hands clutched the ball, hurled it this time straight at Carsten’s head.
Carsten screamed and fell backward. The sphere hurtled past him, flashed through the basin, between the silver needles, and crashed against the far wall.
A fraction of a second later a brilliant flash of light filled the room. There was a noise like the crack of thunder, and Barry was thrown to the floor. In the instant before his mind went black he saw Carsten, his face twisted in agony, caught between the needles, caught in the middle of a bolt of lightning . . .
Joyce was bending over Michael Barry when he opened his eyes.
He felt the bump on his head and managed a grin. He got up slowly and, peering into the basin, saw the charred thing that had once been Carsten lying in the bottom. He led Joyce to the outer office.
Barry wondered what Carsten’s twisted mind had actually caused to be built in that basin. Probably no more than what it had turned out to be—something for a most unpleasant means of electrocution.
“I suppose he got no more than he deserved,” he said somberly.
“I couldn’t kill him,” Joyce said, “even knowing that he killed my father.”
“The doctors said heart failure caused your father’s death. How could you know it did not?”
“When I worked for my father he used to amuse me by writing complicated looking equations and leaving them on my desk. Actually they were in our private code and were notes thanking me for being a good secretary, or inviting me to lunch. This morning I saw in his diary the last thing my father ever wrote—a long, complicated equation. Carsten knew about Father’s weak heart, forced him to take a drug that made his death appear to be heart failure.”
JOYCE hid her head on Barry’s chest. “Mike, it’s all been so terrible, Carsten told me that you and Father had argued violently just before his death, and that the excitement had been too much for his bad heart. I guess I believed him. I couldn’t bear to see you after that, so I came here with Carsten, thinking he was trying to finish my father’s work.”
Barry put his arms around her. “While I, not being able to understand anything, tried to dissolve your memory in alcohol.”
“Mike, you don’t believe what Carsten said?”
“No. He sounded almost convincing, but there was a flaw in his argument. He said for the first time today the order of the universe would be changed. If time duplicated itself endlessly in a perfect circle it could never be changed. All this would have had to happen before. It would have happened always. There could never be a first time.”
“Mike, your shoulder is bleeding.”
“He wasn’t a very good shot,” Barry said. “The bullet only grazed me. But we’d better get out of here. I know a doctor on the far side of town who won’t ask questions. Then I’ll call the police, but we won’t be here. There’ll be a lot of explaining to do, and today I don’t even feel like trying to explain.”
Barry went back into the laboratory. He glanced about the place, but there was absolutely nothing there to cause an explosion. He thought of the possibility of fire from a short-circuited cable, found the master switch and cut off the electric current.
The lights went out. The blinds had been drawn, and as he left the room there was no light except a glow at the tip of one of the needles which had not yet cooled.
“Even Carsten’s talk about your father’s time beam must have been hallucination,” he said, as he opened the door. “Certainly Carsten couldn’t have seen himself die in his bedroom.”
The door closed on the darkened laboratory. The electric clock had stopped and there was no sound except for the slow drip of a faucet across the room from the basin and the silver needles . . .
The white spark at the end of one of the needles did not extinguish itself. It grew slowly, feeding on the metal. It was the flame of which suns are made, the fire of disintegrating atoms which, feeding on itself, grows larger and larger.
The faucet continued to drip, and the flame grew more brilliant. It was becoming an unstable thing which would suddenly engulf the entire sliver of metal and burst into energy as primordial as the fabric of space and time itself.
It was nearly two when the scout car swung around the corner and the two policemen saw the Empire Building three blocks ahead.
“Same place again,” the driver said. “I’m sure tired of these crackpot calls. First the dame with her story she’s going to kill somebody there, and this time a man says the body is waitin’ there.”
“Somebody’s having a joke with the Police Department, I’m thinking. I wouldn’t know what to do any more if something really happened.”
A concussion shook the street and the tires of the car screeched as the driver clamped on the brakes.
“Do you see that, man!” he yelled.
“The Empire Building—it’s—” His words were lost in a deafening roar . . .
After leaving the doctor’s office Barry and Joyce went into the nearest show, then had dinner in a small cafe beside the theatre. When they came out his shoulder throbbed dully and he felt tired and numb.
Newsboys were shouting extras in the streets. Barry bought a paper and hailed a cab. He glanced at the headline:
