Time Travel Omnibus, page 356
Twenty-eight years had passed since Brandon told me of his plan to shut himself away from the world. I’d been reminded of him often during that time by matters pertaining to The Brandon estate, but such a long interval had elapsed that I doubt I thought of him as an actual, living person. It was more in the Way that one recalls a memory of a person who has been rather than one who is still alive. Now, furnished with a suitable pretext for a visit, I became anxious to see him again, as though he had been away for a long time and had just returned.
The Brandon mansion looked like an unkept mausoleum when I arrived. The old servant who opened the door stared at me in surprise.
“I’d like to see Mr. Brandon,” I said.
“But Mr. Brandon never sees anyone, sir!” he replied.
“I’m sure he’ll see me. This is very important. A matter concerning Mr. Brandon’s finances.”
It. was the word finances that did it. The servant hesitated only a moment further, then opened the door and beckoned for me to enter. The interior of the house, was dark and silent and musty as a tomb. I was led into the kitchen, where a dumb-waiter system was set in the wall.
The servant took a pencil and a pad of paper from a nearby table and held them out to me. “Write down what you wish to say, sir. Mr. Brandon will decide if he wants to see you.”
I scrawled a short note.
“Dick:
Have to see you concerning your money. It’s very important.
Bob.”
The servant sent the note up the dumb-waiter. After some ten minutes during which I fidgeted with impatience, the dumb-waiter descended with an answer.
“Bob,:
I’d rather you hadn’t come, but if it’s as important as you say, I’ll see you.
Dick.”
THE servant led me to the door of a room on the second floor. He motioned for me to knock, then turned away.
I knocked. After a moment the door opened. „I. entered the room to find Brandon standing before me.
I gaped in surprise at sight of him. I was fifty-eight, and my hair was turning white—but he looked the same as when I had last seen him that day in 1901! He seemed pale and a bit thinner, but that was all.
Brandon chuckled softly. “I was right, wasn’t I, Bob?”
“It would seem so,” I managed to answer. “Good Lord, Dick, I can hardly believe it!”
Brandon chuckled again. “Do you doubt the evidence of your eyes?”
“I’m trying not to,” I said.
Brandon gazed at me with sudden sadness. “Change, Bob, it’s written all over you. Your hair is gray, and you’ve put on weight. There are lines in your face.”
“I’ve no regrets,” I told him. “I’ve lived a full life, and in many ways, a happy one.”
Brandon shrugged. “I’m glad you’re satisfied, Bob. As for myself, I have no regrets, either. I’ve managed to escape the hand of time. I conquered it, Bob. I proved I was stronger, wiser, than time, itself.” Exultation rang in his voice.
I wondered if it was true. Had Brandon actually managed to conquer time—or had he effected only a temporary escape?
I did not voice my doubts. I spoke of the business matter which had brought me. Brandon was worried.
“Bob, I wouldn’t want anything to happen which would force me out into the world of change. Are you sure there will be enough money coming in to keep the house and servants?”
“Fairly sure,” I answered. “But we’ll have to be very careful until we know just what sort of conditions will follow the crash. There might be a quick return to normal, or there might be a long period of depression.”
“Watch things, Bob,” Brandon cautioned me anxiously. “Watch them as carefully as you can.”
We spoke of finances a while longer, and then, since Brandon would permit me to reveal nothing of the vast changes that had taken place in the outside world, there was nothing more to say. I rose to leave.
Brandon’s features were somber. “Bob, you brought change in here with you. I don’t like it. Please don’t come again until it amounts practically to a life or death matter.”
I nodded. We shook hands. The door closed behind me, shutting Brandon into his little world of timelessness.
The Depression. Breadlines and poverty and hopelessness. “Mister, can you spare a dime?”
Then Roosevelt, the NRA, and the WPA. The slow and gradual climb back to recovery.
I nursed the Brandon finances along, and with the return to prosperity, the driblets became trickles, and finally a steady flow. Brandon’s expenses were small, and the money began to accumulate, until, with, the boom years ushered in by the Second World War, a quite sizeable fortune had piled up.
Then came catastrophe, as far as Brandon’s hopes for seclusion from the world of change were concerned. It came from a source from which I’d never expected trouble.
THE Brandon family had never been a large one. Dick Brandon had a sister, who had died some years before. The sister had married and had brought two children into the world, a boy and a girl. It was these two who now, obviously despairing of inheriting the Brandon wealth by the normal means of Dick Brandon’s death, were suing to have him declared legally insane and the Brandon estate turned into their hands. The story of Dick Brandon’s strange seclusion was quite common knowledge in Vanceton, and his nephew and niece were using it to profitable advantage.
As Brandon’s lawyer, I was presented with a summons ordering his appearance in court, and was advised that there would be a mental examination by a board of psychiatrists.
It was a crisis. It was the life or death matter of which Brandon had spoken.
I went to see Brandon, and I explained the situation to him. Fifteen years had passed since my last visit, but he was still essentially the Dick Brandon of 1901. His hair was raven black, with no slightest sign of white, and his eyes were clear and gray, and never a wrinkle marred the youthfulness of his face.
Brandon, when I finished explaining, was as near terror as I’ve ever seen in another man. “My God, Bob, I can’t leave here. I just can’t!”
“You’ve got to, Dick, for your own good. The law can compel you. Or it can have you declared insane and strip you of your wealth.”
Brandon covered his face with his hands. “Bob—I’m afraid.”
“Don’t be silly, Dick,” I said impatiently. “You’re just behind the times. You’re just afraid to face a world that’s passed you by. This is something that’s got to be faced. And it shouldn’t take long. You should be able to convince the psychiatrists quickly enough of your sanity.”
I argued the matter from every possible angle, but it wasn’t until I was almost exhausted that I finally won Brandon over. He nodded, weary from the verbal battering I had given him.
“I’ll do it, Bob. I’ll appear in court.” His submittal was at first hopeless and fatalistic, but later, seeming to accept the fact that he had no other alternative than to emerge from his shell of seclusion, he became almost eager.
“I wonder what I’ll find, Bob,” he told me. “A great many changes must have taken place.”
“You’ll see,” I replied.
Brandon’s clothing was of another era, and the first move to bringing him back into the world was to outfit him with modern garments. Everything was new and novel to him, and he exclaimed over every change like an excited boy.
“The collar is fixed to the shirt? Imagine that! This coat—how short they’ve become! What did they do, cut everything down? Look at these shoes. Where are the tops?”
“They’re called oxfords. They have no tops.”
“What’s this thing, here?”
“It’s called a zipper fastener.”
“How do you knot this tie, Bob?”
“I’ll show you.”
Then we left the house and walked to the driveway where I had parked my car. Brandon stared at it, blinking in the sunlight.
“What’s that thing?”
“It’s an automobile, Bob. Runs by itself. Wait’ll you hear a radio and see a movie!”
I stared at Brandon as he climbed into the seat beside me. Was I mistaken, or was he actually older than he had appeared while up in his room?
¥ forgot about it a moment later, for as I started the car, Brandon began exclaiming anew, eager questions bubbling to his lips. The operation of the car fascinated him. The length and smoothness of the concrete road was a delight and a surprise.
An army plane buzzed high overhead as we drove along. Brandon’s eyes followed it out of sight, and when he had gotten over his amazement, he turned to me with more questions. I had a difficult time answering them as fast as they came.
Something about Brandon puzzled me. I’d noticed again the fact that he seemed older, and now I was sure of it. There were lines in his face which had somehow escaped my notice earlier, and I could detect a few strands of gray in his hair.
We were in Vanceton proper, cruising through the downtown district. Traffic lights. Policemen with shrilling whistles. Hurrying crowds. Advertising signs. Storefronts ablaze with color. Brandon absorbed everything with devouring eyes.
“Change, Bob. What wonderful changes! It’s like a dream. I can’t believe it’s real!”
I parked the car, and we walked along the street. Newstands. Colorful stacks of magazines. Newspaper headlines that screamed of war.
“Who are the Nazis? Who is this man Hitler? A movie theatre. Betty Grable. Hedy Lamarr. Tyrone Power. Bing, Crosby.
“What kind of a place is this? Are those people in the pictures actors?”
I stammered slightly as I answered. Brandon’s temples were gray, and the lines were deep in his face.
“Bob, why do you look at me like that? What’s wrong?”
“Nothing. Nothing, Dick.”
Light, color, movement. People walking with feverish haste. Screeching of brakes, blare of horns, shrilling of whistles, in a continuous cacophony of sound. The never-ceasing thunder of a modern city.
Automobiles, aircraft, radio, television, the electric light, movies. Haste, haste, haste! Light and sound in a kaleidoscope that jarred the senses. War. The Second World War. American troops in Africa. American troops landing in Sicily.
Change, change, CHANGE! Change that hit and tore and burned and gnawed. Change that aged.
“Bob—why do you look at me like that? Bob—answer me!”
Change on every hand. Change that met every glance of the eye. Change that roared in the ears.
The courthouse. Brandon and I, walking up the steps.
“What’s wrong with me, Bob? It’s so hard to climb these steps. I’m tired. My eyes, Bob. What’s the matter with my, eyes? Everything is so blurry. I can’t see clearly.”
Raven hair as white as snow. Lines that gouged deep as though torn there by talons. Sunken cheeks, and gray eyes turned bleary. Veined, skinny hands that shook.
“Bob, I can’t go any further. I’ve got to rest awhile, Bob, everything is turning black—I can’t breathe, Bob! Oh God, Bob, what’s wrong? Bob . . .”
He died in my arms, there on the courthouse steps.
THE END
A DOG’S LIFE
George O. Smith
Exploring the future, Jim Forrest finds himself wagging along in a different world and barking up the wrong tree!
ED KNIGHT was scornful of the idea.
“Time travel?” he jeered. “You can’t make it work!”
Jim Forrest smiled with a superior tolerance. “I didn’t say time travel in the first place, and secondly I don’t hope to travel. If I went far enough ahead to make it interesting, I’d have as much trouble making a living as an ignorant Twelfth Century farmer would in this day. And if I went back, I’d be as equally out of place. Frankly, about all that it seems good for would be to go ahead, and then return with a few things that I can use here to make life more comfortable for myself.”
Ed Knight nodded. “There’s only one thing that strikes me wrong,” he said. “Supposing you go into the future and find a gadget that will actually intensify a light beam—such as an amplified telescope—enabling you to see the small details of a distant planet, for instance. Fine. You like the gadget and so you bring all the nifty details back with you and you are shortly acclaimed the inventor, and you receive a huge sum of moola, and retire on the proceeds.”
“Sure, that’s the idea,” said Forrest.
“Yeah? But then in the year when the thing was really invented, it appears that the thing has been in use for a couple of hundred years as a refined production, not even as crude experimental models. Why should any inventor go through the labor of inventing the thing from the beginning when the thing can be brought back, complete and working, from the future? Therefore it is never invented and you couldn’t bring it back. Whereupon it is not there and the inventor can then invent it, which of course means that you can bring it back, thus making its original concept unnecessary. Whereupon if it was never invented, it wouldn’t be there for you to look over and bring back as a good, money-making idea—”
“Wooooah!” yelled Jim Forrest. “You’re talking in circles.”
“Uh-huh. Remember Toynbee’s famous knife? Well, where the devil did that start?”
“We’re off the track,” said Knight. “I have this gadget, and if nothing else, we can see what kind of an answer Nature has to the Paradox.”
“Okay, we’ll see. How does it work?”
FORREST waved his hand at the device.
“I can’t travel, but my mind can. This machine will select some sentient being or animal in the future, that is ready to receive my intellect. For a period I can set beforehand, I will live in that being’s body and be—me.
“I can go where he can go, and when I leave, I bring back with me whatever I can remember from any experiences I have during my term of occupation. The only thing, I don’t want to rush off and leave the thing running unattended. Therefore I want you to sit by and see that nothing goes haywire. Okay?”
Knight nodded. “Just show me what to do.”
“That won’t take long,” said Jim. He handed Knight a few pages of typescript and started to explain certain factors. In an hour, he was ready. He lay down on a small couch and fixed an electrode-studded helmet on his skull. Then with one hand he reached out and snapped a switch.
Thirty seconds later a series of relays clicked home, and the figure stiffened; the eyeballs rolled high into their sockets, and Jim Forrest’s body seemed to sleep . . .
* * * * *
He opened his eyes and found himself sprawled on a thick, comfortable carpet. His front paws were forward and his chin was resting on them. He looked up at a male figure seated in a heavy chair with a book and he felt an uncontrollable, ridiculous impulse to wag his tail. He did, and it felt good.
He looked idly around the room until he saw a woman reclining on a broad couch with a small newspaper. He liked her looks, but the whistle was stifled by the happy fact that his lips would not purse properly. He just put his tongue out and panted.
He stood up and stretched, and wondering what was in the paper, he leaped up on the couch beside the woman. She put out a hand and stroked his head, which he found most pleasing, and he nuzzled her hand before he tinned his face toward the newspaper.
Aside from the date, which was some two hundred years to the future, it held little interest to Jim Forrest. A theft; a notable’s opinion on the state of politics; a publicity squib; a lightly-touched humor-spot. An advertisement—mostly of the female wardrobe and according to Jim Forrest’s memory, quite similar to the wardrobes of periodic style-cycles. They were back to low necklines, high waists, and short skirts again, he observed and he wondered how many vacillations the styles had gone through during the intervening two hundred years.
The woman scratched his ear idly, and then ordered him to get down.
Down! Then it struck him. Jim Forrest was inhabiting the body of a dog! He tried to speak, but all that came out was a plaintive bark.
“Topsy wants out,” said the woman in a musical voice.
“Well, Topsy knows how to get out,” replied the man lazily. “Let her go!”
Topsy! Jim Forrest was stunned. He was—he was a—well, he’d never admit it, period!
The woman stood up, stretched, and went out into the back of the house. Jim followed, filled with curiosity about the house. It was quite the House of Tomorrow, a combination of comfort and utility.
The woman reached into a cupboard and took out a square box, from which she took a bone-shaped biscuit.
“Here, Topsy. Dog Biscuit.”
Jim eyed the biscuit with disfavor.
“Now, don’t refuse your biscuit. It is filled with the vitamin requirements of any city dog. You don’t get them in here, you know.” Jim wondered. Either the woman was inclined to talk to anything that looked as though it had ears, or—Anyway, she was talking to him as though she expected him to understand.
“Must I insist?” she asked him.
JIM reached up and accepted the biscuit.
Very reluctantly he bit into it. He’d bitten into dog biscuit before, and it had all the flavor and texture of well-dried, hard-pressed, shredded cardboard. But this was different. It tasted good, and he polished it off with relish.
“There,” she said. She returned to the living room, sat on the arm of her husband’s chair. “Topsy was reluctant about accepting her biscuit, Edward.”
He put down the book and eyed Jim, who was standing on the floor in front of him.
“What’s the matter with you?” he asked. “Those things are good for you.”
Jim wondered if he were supposed to say something. He tried, but all that came out was that plaintive bark.
“Look, Topsy, don’t sit there and bark at me,” said the man sternly.
Jim thought: What the devil am I supposed to do—sing?
“I think Topsy is ill,” said the woman. “We’ll take her to the veterinarian’s, then,” replied the man. “Come on, Martha. Now’s as good as any time.”
Jim trotted out to the automobile with them, and hopped into the rear seat. The machine was a revised version of the Car of Tomorrow excepting that it had no wheels. The shape was that of a slightly flattened ovoid with quite a bit shaved off of one side—for the bottom.
