Time Travel Omnibus, page 382
MANNING STERN committed the second breach of relations first. The fan mail on Norbert Holt’s debut left her no doubt that Surprising would profit by anything he chose to write about.
She’d never seen such a phenomenally rapid rise in author popularity. Or rather you could hardly say rise. Holt hit—the top with his first story and stayed there. He socked the fen (Guest of Honor at the Washinvention), the pros (first President of Science Fiction Writers of America), and the general reader (author of the first pulp-bred science fiction book to stay three months on the best seller list).
And never had there been an author who was more pure damned fun to work with. Not that you edited him; you checked his copy for typos and sent it to the printers. (Typos were frequent at first; he said something odd about absurd illogical keyboard arrangement.) But just being with him, talking about this, that and those . . . Raquel, just turning sixteen, was quite obviously in love with him—praying that he’d have the decency to stay single till she grew up and “You know, Manning-cita, I am Spanish; and the Mediterranean girls . . .”
But there teas this occasional feeling of oddness. Like the potluck and the illogical keyboard and that night at SCWA . . .
“I’ve got a story problem,” Norbert Holt announced there. “An idea, and I can’t lick it. Maybe if I toss it out to the literary lions . . .”
“Story problem?” Manning said, a little more sharply than she’d intended. “I thought everything was outlined for the next ten years.”
“This is different. This is a sort of paradox story, and I can’t get out of it. It won’t end. Something like this: Suppose a man in the remote year X reads a story that tells him how to work a time machine. So he works the time machine and goes back to the year X minus 2000—let’s say, for instance, our time. So in ‘now’ he writes the story that he’s going to read two thousand years later, telling himself how to work the time machine because he knows how to work it because he read the story which he wrote because—”
Manning was starting to say “Hold it!” when Matt Duncan interrupted with, “Good old endless-cycle gimmick. Lot of fun to kick around, but Bob Heinlein did it once and for all in By His Bootstraps. Damnedest tour de force I ever read; there just aren’t any switcheroos left.”
“Ouroboros,” Joe Henderson contributed.
Norbert Holt looked a vain question at him; they knew that one word per evening was Joe’s maximum contribution.
Austin Carter picked it up. “Ouroboros, the worm that circles the universe with its tail in its mouth. The Asgard Serpent, too. And I think there’s something in Mayan literature. All symbols of infinity—no beginning, no ending. Always out by the same door where you went in. See that magnificent novel of Eddison’s, The Worm Ouroboros; the perfect cyclic novel, ending with its recommencement, stopping not because there’s a stopping place, but because it’s uneconomical to print the whole text over infinitely.”
“The Quaker Oats box,” said Duncan. “With a Quaker holding a box with a Quaker holding a box with a Quaker holding a . . .”
It was standard professional shoptalk. It was a fine evening with the boys. But there was a look of infinitely remote sadness in Norbert Holt’s eyes.
That was the evening that Manning violated her first rule of editor-author relationships.
THEY were having martinis in the same bar in which Norbert had, so many years ago, successfully said unsuccessfully.
“They’ve been good years,” he remarked, apparently to the olive. There was something wrong with this evening. No bounce. No yumph. “That’s a funny tense,” Manning confided to her own olive. “Aren’t they still good years?”
“I’ve owed you a serious talk for a long time.”
“You don’t have to pay the debt. We don’t go in much for being serious, do we? Not so dead-earnest-catch-in-the-throat serious.”
“Don’t we?”
“I’ve got an awful feeling,” Manning admitted, “that you’re building up to a proposal, either to me or that olive. And if it’s me, I’ve got an awful feeling I’m going to accept—and Raquel will never forgive me.”
“You’re safe,” Norbert said dryly. “That’s the serious talk. I want to marry you, darling, and I’m not going to.
“I suppose this is the time you twirl your black mustache and tell me you have a wife and family elsewhere?”
“I hope to God I have!”
“No, it wasn’t very funny, was it?” Manning felt very little, aside from wishing she were dead.
“I can’t tell you the truth,” he went on. “You wouldn’t believe it. I’ve loved two women before; one had talent and a brain, the other had beauty and no brain. I think I loved her. The damnedest curse of Ouroboros is that I’ll never quite know. If I could take that tail out of that mouth . . .”
“Go on,” she encouraged a little wildly. “Talk plot-gimmicks. It’s easier on me.”
“And she is carrying . . . will carry . . . my child—my children, it must be. My twins . . .”
“Look, Holt. We came in here editor and author—remember :back when? Let’s go out that way. Don’t go on talking. I’m a big girl, but I can’t take . . . everything. It’s been fun knowing you and all future manuscripts will be gratefully received.”
“I knew I couldn’t say it. I shouldn’t have tried. But there won’t be any future manuscripts. I’ve written every Holt I’ve ever read.”
“Does that make sense?” Manning aimed the remark at the olive, but it was gone. So was the martini.
“Here’s the last.” He took it out of his breast-pocket, neatly folded. “The one we talked about at SCWA—the one I couldn’t end. Maybe you’ll understand. I wanted somehow to make it clear before . . .”
The tone of his voice projected a sense of doom, and Manning forgot everything else. “Is something going to happen to you? Are you going to—Oh, my dear, no! All right, so you have a wife on every space station in the asteroid belt; but if anything happens to you . . .”
“I don’t know,” said Norbert Holt. “I can’t remember the exact date of that issue . . .” He rose abruptly. “I shouldn’t have tried a goodbye. See you again, darling—the next time round Ouroboros.”
She was still staring at the empty martini glass when she heard the shrill of brakes and the excited upspringing of a crowd outside.
SHE read the posthumous fragment late that night, after her eyes had dried sufficiently to make the operation practicable. And through her sorrow her mind fought to help her, making her think, making her be an editor.
She understood a little and disbelieved what she understood. And underneath she prodded herself, “But it isn’t a story. It’s too short, too inconclusive. It’ll just disappoint the Holt fans—and that’s everybody. Much better if I do a straight obit, take up a full page on it . . .”
She fought hard to keep on thinking, not feeling. She had never before experienced so strongly the I have-been-here-before sensation. She had been faced with this dilemma once before, once on some other time-spiral, as the boys in SCWA would say. And her decision had been . . .
“It’s sentimentality,” she protested. “It isn’t editing. This decision’s right. I know it. And if I go and get another of these attacks and start to change my mind . . .”
She laid the posthumous Holt fragment on the coals. It caught fire quickly.
THE next morning Raquel greeted her with, “Manning-cita, who’s Norbert Holt?”
Manning had slept so restfully that she was even tolerant of foolish questions at breakfast.
“Who?” she asked.
“Norbert Holt. Somehow the name popped into my mind. Is he perhaps one of your writers?”
“Never heard of him.”
Raquel frowned. “I was almost sure . . . Can you really remember them all? I’m going to check those bound volumes of Surprising.”
“Any luck with your . . . what was it? . . . Holt?” Manning asked the girl a little later.
“No, Manning-cita. I was quite unsuccessful.”
. . . unsuccessful . . . Now why in. Heaven’s name, mused Manning Stern, should I be thinking of martinis at breakfast time?
DARK INTERLUDE
Fredric Brown and Mack Reynolds
SHERIFF BEN RAND’S eyes were grave. He said, “Okay, boy. You feel kind of jittery; that’s natural. But if your story’s straight, don’t worry. Don’t worry about nothing. Everything’ll be all right, boy.”
“It was three hours ago, Sheriff‘,” Allenby said. “I’m sorry it took me so long to get into town and that I had to wake you up. But Sis was hysterical a while. I had to try and quiet her down, and then I had trouble starting the jalopy.”
“Don’t worry about waking me up, boy. Being sheriff’s a full-time job. And it ain’t late, anyway; I just happened to turn in early tonight. Now let me get a few things straight. You say your name’s Lou Allenby. That’s a good name in these parts, Allenby. You kin of Rance Allenby, used to run the feed business over in Cooperville? I went to school with Rance . . . Now about the fella who said he come from the future . . .”
* * *
THE Presidor of the Historical Research Department was skeptical to the last. He argued, “I am still of the opinion that the project is not feasible. There arc paradoxes involved which present insurmountable—”
Doctor Matthe, the noted physicist, interrupted politely, “Undoubtedly, sir, you are familiar with the Dichotomy?”
The presidor wasn’t, so he remained silent to indicate that he wanted an explanation.
“Zeno propounded the Dichotomy. He was a Greek philosopher of roughly five hundred years before the ancient prophet whose birth was used by the primitives to mark the beginning of their calendar. The Dichotomy states that it is impossible to cover any given distance. The argument: First, half the distance must be traversed, then half of the remaining distance, then again half of what remains, and so on. It follows that some portion of the distance to be covered always remains, and therefore motion is impossible.”
“Not analogous,” the presidor objected. “In the first place, your Greek assumed that any totality composed of an infinite number of parts must, itself, be infinite, whereas we know that an infinite number of elements make up a finite total. Besides—”
Matthe smiled gently and held up a hand. “Please, sir, don’t misunderstand me. I do not deny that today we understand Zeno’s paradox. But believe me, for long centuries the best minds the human race could produce could not explain it.”
The presidor said tactfully, “I fail to see your point, Doctor Matthe. Please forgive my inadequacy. What possible connection has this Dichotomy of Zeno’s with your projected expedition into the past?”
“I was merely drawing a parallel, sir. Zeno conceived the paradox proving that it was impossible to cover any distance, nor were the ancients able to explain it. But did that prevent them from covering distances? Obviously not. Today, my assistants and I have devised a method to send our young friend here, Jan Obreen, into the distant past. The paradox is immediately pointed out—suppose he should kill an ancestor or otherwise change history? I do not claim to be able to explain how this apparent paradox is overcome in time travel; all I know is that time travel is possible. Undoubtedly, better minds than mine will one day resolve the paradox, but until then we shall continue to utilize time travel, paradox or not.”
Jan Obreen had been sitting, nervously quiet, listening to his distinguished superiors. Now he cleared his throat and said, “I believe the hour has arrived for the experiment.”
The presidor shrugged his continued disapproval, but dropped the conversation. He let his eyes scan doubtfully the equipment that stood in the corner of the laboratory.
Matthe shot a quick glance at the time piece, then hurried last minute instructions to his student.
“We’ve been all over this before, Jan, but to sum it up—You should appear approximately in the middle of the so-called Twentieth Century; exactly where, we don’t know. The language will be Amer-English, which you have studied thoroughly; on that count you should have little difficulty. You will appear in the United States of North America, one of the ancient nations—as they were called—a political division of whose purpose we are not quite sure. One of the designs of your expedition will be to determine why the human race at that time split itself into scores of states, rather than having but one government.
“You will have to adapt yourself to the conditions you find, Jan. Our histories are so vague that we can help you but little in information on what to expect.”
The presidor put in, “I am extremely pessimistic about this, Obreen, yet you have volunteered and I have no right to interfere. Your most important task is to leave a message that will come down to us; if you are successful, other attempts will he made to still other periods in history. If you fail—”
“He won’t fail,” Matthe said.
The presidor shook his head and grasped Obreen’s hand in farewell.
Jan Obreen stepped to the equipment and mounted the small platform. He clutched the metal grips on the instrument panel somewhat desperately, hiding to the best of his ability the shrinking inside himself.
* * *
THE sheriff said, “Well, this fella—you say he told you he came from the future?”
Lou Allenby nodded. “About four thousand years ahead. He said it was the year thirty-two hundred and something, but that it was about four thousand years from now; they’d changed the numbering system meanwhile.”
“And you didn’t figure it was hogwash, boy? From the way you talked, I got the idea that you kind of believed him.”
The other wet his lips. “I kind of believed him,” he said doggedly. “There was something about him; he was different. I don’t mean physically, that he couldn’t pass for being horn now, but there was . . . something different. Kind of, well, like he was at peace with himself; gave the impression that where he came from everybody was. And he was smart, smart as a whip. And he wasn’t crazy, either.”
“And what was he doing back here, boy?” The sheriff’s voice was gently caustic.
“He was—some kind of student. Seems from what he said that almost everybody in his time was a student. They’d solved all the problems of production and distribution, nobody had to worry about security; in fact, they didn’t seem to worry about any of the things we do now.” There was a trace of wistfulness in Lou Allenby’s voice. He took a deep breath and went on. “He’d come back to do research in our time. They didn’t know much about it, it seems. Something had happened in between—there was a bad period of several hundred years—and most books and records had been lost. They had a few, but not many. So they didn’t know much about us and they wanted to fill in what they didn’t know.”
“You believed all that, boy? Did he have any proof?”
* * *
IT WAS the dangerous point; this was where the prime risk lay. They had had, for all practical purposes, no knowledge of the exact contours of the land, forty centuries back, nor knowledge of the presence of trees or buildings. If he appeared at the wrong spot, it might well mean instant death.
Jan Obreen was fortunate; he didn’t hit anything. It was, in fact, the other way around. He came out ten feet in the air over a plowed field. The fall was nasty enough, but the soft earth protected him; one ankle seemed sprained, but not too badly. He came painfully to his feet and looked around.
The presence of the field alone was sufficient to tell him that the Matthe process was at least partially successful. He was far before his own age. Agriculture was still a necessary component of human economy, indicating a definitely earlier civilization than his own.
Approximately half a mile away was a densely wooded area; not a park, nor even a planned forest to house the controlled wild life of his time. A haphazardly growing wooded area—almost unbelievable. But, then, he must grow used to the unbelievable; of all the historic periods, this was the least known. Much would be strange.
To his right, a few hundred yards away, was a wooden building. It was, undoubtedly, a human dwelling despite its primitive appearance. There was no use putting it off; contact with his fellow man would have to be made. He limped awkwardly toward his meeting with the Twentieth Century.
The girl had evidently not observed his precipitate arrival, but by the time he arrived in the yard of the farm house, she had come to the door to greet him.
Her dress was of another age, for in his era the clothing of the feminine portion of the race was not designed to lure the male. Hers, however, was bright and tasteful with color, and it emphasized the youthful contours of her body. Nor was it her dress alone that startled him. There was a touch of color on her lips that he suddenly realized couldn’t have been achieved by nature. He had read that primitive women used colors, paints and pigments of various sorts, upon their faces—somehow or other, now that he witnessed it, he was not repelled.
She smiled, the red of her mouth stressing the even whiteness of her teeth. She said, “It would’ve been easier to come down the road ‘stead of across the field.” Her eyes took him in, and, had he been more experienced, he could have read interested approval in them.
He said, studiedly, “I am afraid that I am not familiar with your agricultural methods. I trust I have not irrevocably damaged the products of your horticultural efforts.”
Susan Allenby blinked at him. “My,” she said softly, a distant hint of laughter in her voice, “somebody sounds like maybe they swallowed a dictionary.” Her eyes widened suddenly, as she noticed him favoring his left foot. “Why, you’ve hurt yourself. Now you come right on into the house and let me see if I can’t do something about that. Why—”
He followed her quietly, only half hearing her words. Something—something phenomenal—was growing within Jan Obreen, affecting oddly and yet pleasantly his metabolism.
He knew now what Matthe and the presidor meant by paradox.
