Time Travel Omnibus, page 475
They married.
Marianne’s previous husband and Alun’s girl friend were not often mentioned. They asked one another a few questions, and answered more honestly than they had done during the course of their original investigations. Alun admitted that his girl had been only one of many (at which Marianne frowned dubiously) and that she had been by no means the best of the bunch; while Marianne said that even on her honeymoon she had begun to feel a bit apprehensive about life with Patrick, who talked at great length about spaceships and his theories about Venus and what it would be like when the atmospheric conditions were conquered and man could settle there.
“Atmospheric conditions!” said Marianne. “He could quote figures about the darned place until you’d have thought he’d spent his life there. It was his one real ambition—to travel to Venus.”
“People get these kinks,” said Alun tolerantly. He could afford to be tolerant towards a non-existent Patrick.
“He’d have left me like a shot if someone had said there was an expedition setting off for Venus tomorrow. I’m sure he would.”
“Well, anyway, I’ll never leave you,” said Alun.
That seemed to be a good way of looking at it, and it made them both happy, and they didn’t worry about the past.
In due course a son was born to Alun and Marianne, and they both thought how lucky they were, and hoped that young Martin was aware of his own good fortune. Alun prospered. When Martin was a year old they found themselves abruptly transported to a new house. Somewhere the Adjusters must have found it necessary to make a revision of past events, and as an indirect result Alun had a better job and a better home. It was one of the paradoxes of the time-shift that they did not forget their earlier surroundings, although they were able to accept the new ones with complete assurance, just as Alun was able to cope with the vastly extended ramifications of his job.
“One day I’m going to read a book about this Time business,” said Alun.
He bought several books and microtapes, but he always seemed to be too busy to read them. Still, they would come in useful for Martin one day. Martin was going to be clever.
“You can see it in his expression,” said Marianne bending over Him as he blew strange noises at her through pursed lips. “He’s going to be a genius, is our boy.”
Alun nodded. Everything was going to be wonderful.
And then, when Martin was almost two, they had a visitor. It was a warm summer evening, and they had been sitting on the balcony. Somebody came up the drive, and Alun cursed.
“Thought we were going to have a quiet evening. Who the blazes is it?”
Marianne stared and went pale. When she had found her voice she said:
“It couldn’t be.”
But it was. Patrick Westing had been restored to existence.
Marianne installed the child in the regulo sleeper, and then the three of them—her two husbands and herself—went in person to get things cleared up at the Ministry of Adjustment.
The clerk had some difficulty in sorting out the facts, as all three of the complainants spoke at once. In the end it was Marianne who indignantly prevailed.
“You told us,” she said with virtuous fury, “that my husband—my first husband, that is—couldn’t come back. When I wanted him back, you were quite definite that it couldn’t be arranged.”
“By which you mean,” growled Patrick, “that you don’t want me now. Is that it?”
“Really, Patrick, it’s so awkward. You ought to realise that I’ve got used to you not being . . . well, not being . . .”
The clerk sighed, punched a couple of buttons, and said: “This is a complicated case.”
“That’s what you said before,” Marianne snapped. “And now it’s more complicated than ever, and it’s all your fault. You’ve got to get rid of this man.”
Patrick’s face became puffed and crimson. “Now just a minute. If you imagine—”
“We were opposed to this readjustment from the start,” said the clerk. “If it hadn’t been for the insistence of the Ministry of Geopolicy who claimed that the rational development of the new national devisions could not be carried out without a re-assessment of the emigration scheme three years ago, we would never have considered it. But the Minister is a man of great influence. He meant to get his own way, and he got it.”
Alun frowned. “What’s this—er—Mr. Westing got to do with emigration?”
Patrick himself looked baffled.
The clerk gave a terse explanation. He had given it many times before, but one got the impression that for once he was glad to fall back on it: he was not at all anxious to get down to the serious business of unravelling this problem before him.
Patrick, he explained, was only one digit in a colossal equation. Thousands of possibilities, reduced to mathematical symbols, had to be taken into consideration when the Time travel squad was preparing a readjustment. Patrick himself was insignificant; so were hundreds of other people caught up in the calculation. But the loss of one of them could throw the whole thing out. “What is the meaning of a colossal numeral?” demanded the clerk with rhetorical splendour. “A million is not an entity in itself: it has no meaning other than a million times one. And each one of those ones is equally important in the million. The subtraction of any one of the ones ruins the conception of the million.”
They nodded vaguely, and he went on to explain that to go back in Time and alter it so that the present was thereby modified meant the bringing together of an incalculable number of small events. A man who crossed a road in May of a certain year might hesitate on the far side and then make up his mind to turn to the right. This began a chain of circumstances which ensured that he would meet with an accident to his leg and be confined to hospital for three months. If, on the other hand, he turned to the left, he would meet a woman who would later become his wife, and their son would discover a new mineral and alter the whole course of economic and scientific history.
“That, of course,” said the clerk with airy satisfaction, “is only an example.”
Alun licked his lips. “Of course,” he muttered.
“And I’m only a cipher,” said Patrick.
“One which cannot be ignored or struck out.”
At this point they all three began to talk again. This time the clerk’s patience cracked. He hammered on the desk and shouted:
“It’s no good yelling at me. Listen.”
They stopped. Marianne took advantage of the lull, and said swiftly: “I suppose we can arrange a divorce. It will be purely a formality. I can divorce Patrick for—well, desertion.”
The clerk shook his head. “Divorce is no mere formality nowadays,” he pointed out. “I have been checking on the situation while you’ve all been—er—talking. The ruling is that Mr. Westing is your rightful husband. No trumped-up divorce suit will be even considered by the authorities. If Mr. Westing wishes you to return to him—”
“I do,” said Patrick with unexpected fervour. “When I got back, it took me a month to find her. I went round everywhere. I just had to get to her. And now I’ve found her, and I want her.”
Alun groaned. Marianne said: “This is fantastic. Alun and I have a son, we can’t just strike out everything that’s happened—”
“We can make you forget,” said the clerk quietly, smoothly. “That is the recommended course. We can, with no great difficulty, arrange an adjustment which will blot out all your memories of one another.”
“No,” said Alun and Marianne together.
“We will make arrangements for the child—”
“No.”
The clerk sighed. “You will have to make up your minds to cope sensibly with this problem.”
Now it was Alun’s turn to hammer the desk.
“We’ll go away,” he snapped. “We’ll move off where you can’t get at us. Why not? We’re not harming anyone—”
“The regulations cannot be flouted,” said the clerk primly. “As for going away, it makes no difference where you go. If it is considered that you have flouted authority and that for the safety of the pattern of the future you should be checked, all we have to do is go back and arrange for your parents never to meet. You will thereby be painlessly eliminated.”
“You smug little rat,” said Alun. “If I get my hands on you—”
“Even if you were to kill me, our emergency squad would go back—only a few hours or so—and arrange things so that you did no such thing. And”—it was as though he had caught an echo of what was passing through Alun’s mind—”if you kill Patrick Westing, he too can be restored in the same way.” He glanced meaningly at the clock and then at a group of people waiting. “I’m afraid there’s nothing more to be said. I would advise you to go off and talk this over intelligently. It is no further concern of ours. The Bureau of Marital Welfare will of course expect a report from you, and no doubt an inspector will be sent round if you have any real trouble in sorting things out.”
The three of them turned and left the building, and went home. Martin slept soundly, with a blissful smile. The three adults did not smile. They sat down and glared at one another. Then Alun got up and opened a bottle of pola. They drank; and continued to glare.
It was Patrick who resolutely opened the argument. He had been staring hungrily at Marianne ever since he returned. Alun realised, with a shock, that in Patrick’s mind very little time had passed since his last meeting with Marianne—which had been on their honeymoon. Since then there had been a timeless blank, and then he had found himself back in existence . . . and had set out to look for his wife.
His wife . . .
Patrick said: “Let’s face it, I’ve got my rights. The law is on my side—and so it darned well ought to be—”
“Why divorce can’t be as easy as it was in the twentieth century, I don’t know,” Marianne wailed. “We could get this all straightened out then.”
“Oh no we couldn’t,” said Patrick grimly. “I’m not going to give you up now I’ve found you again. You mean too much to me. Wait and see, darling—when we’ve been together a little while, everything will work out all right, and—”
“Don’t talk to my wife like that!” shouted Alun.
Patrick said: “I saw her first. You’ve been lucky to have her for this time, and now it’s only fair to give her back. I’ll take on your boy as my own, and do the best I can for him.”
Marianne stared wretchedly at Alun. He put his glass down and wagged his head in despair. At last Marianne said: “What else can we do?”
“You won’t be sorry,” said Patrick persuasively. “Let’s look at it sensibly. We’re all intelligent, reasonable adults, and we don’t want to feel bitter about what’s happened . . .”
There were suddenly four people in the room instead of three. The fourth, dressed in clothes such as none of them could recall having seen before, had appeared in the corner by the table bearing the bottle of pola and the siphon. The appearance was such a shock that Alun would have grabbed for the bottle and poured himself a stiff drink if only that had not meant passing the apparition.
“I trust I did not alarm you,” said the newcomer.
Alun was glad to have the opportunity of venting his wrath on someone. He burst out:
“What the blazes d’you mean by bobbing up like that? This is a private dwelling—”
“The intrusion is regretted but unavoidable,” said the stranger with unruffled courtesy. “I am from the Ministry of Adjustment—”
“Get out,” said Marianne.
“I think it would be as well for you to hear what I have to say.”
“You heard my wife,” said Alun.
“My wife,” said Patrick.
The stranger smiled. “It is that very question which I have come to settle. I have come from a considerable distance in the future in order to put things right.”
Marianne stared. “Now, wait a minute. You mean we’re going to be . . . to be adjusted, to fit some cockeyed scheme in the future?”
The answer was a grave, friendly nod.
“As if it’s not bad enough having to cope with the present and the past!” cried Marianne. “Now we’ve got the future to reckon with as well.”
“What I have come to say,” their visitor went on with some determination, “is that our predecessors in the Ministry made an unfortunate error. They could not realise, of course, what repercussions their decision would have. They acted according to their lights in restoring Mr. Westing to life and in insisting that his wife should rejoin him. Mr. Westing undoubtedly did his best for the boy Martin . . . but it was not—will not be, that is, according to your time view—good enough.”
“I knew,” Alun said to Patrick, “that you’d make a mess of things with my son.”
“Martin,” said the stranger, “will be one of our great men. It is his knowledge that will enable us to conquer the problem of the Venusian atmosphere. The poison that holds men back from exploiting that planet will be defeated by Martin. But only if—” a warning note came into his voice, “—he remains with his actual parents. You, Mr. Westing, mean well; but in one or two unfortunate incidents you will implant certain psychological fixations in the boy’s mind. He will be brilliant, but maladjusted. At the crucial moment he will, because of those psychological disturbances, relax his grip . . . and die in an accident, before his work is completed. Whereas all our potentiality charts confirm that if left with his mother and his rightful father he will succeed—will go right on to the end.”
Marianne was radiant with joy. She did not hesitate. She waved one imperious hand at Patrick and said: “Take him away. Get rid of him.”
“Just a minute, now,” said Alun uneasily. “You can’t just . . . well, I mean, you can’t rub the man out just like that.”
“I’ve been murdered once,” said Patrick with justifiable anger. “If you try that again—”
“We would deplore any such course,” came the firm assurance. “What we are offering is something rather unusual. It has rarely been the practice to remove people from their usual surroundings and transport them to the future, but in this case we are prepared to do it.” Patrick gasped. He licked his lips. “The future? You mean you’re going to shanghai me into—”
“I believe you have always had a dream of going to Venus. In our time, if Martin is brought up by his parents, such a visit will be possible. You can be one of the pioneers in the development of Venus.”
“You . . . say, you can really do that for me?”
“In the unusual circumstances, we feel such a step would be justified.”
Patrick’s spreading grin was the answer to the question in Marianne’s eyes. She heaved a great sigh, and took Alun’s hand.
Patrick turned to than both. “I’ll be off, then. I won’t see you again. But you can give the boy a message from me. Tell him I’ll be seeing him one day—on Venus.”
The suspicion of a pout rested on Marianne’s lips. The stranger repressed a smile, and said:
“You will agree that we knew what we were doing in offering this to Mr. Westing?”
“All right, all right,” said Marianne. “I do think you might have looked a little more reluctant to go, Patrick, after all you were saying, but . . . Well, good luck.”
“A report on this incident will be filed with the Ministry before we go,” said the stranger. “Just to make sure they do not query Mr. Westing’s disappearance.” He beckoned to Patrick, and together they went out.
It was over. As quickly and efficiently as that.
“Well,” said Marianne. “Well.”
Alun eyed her uneasily. He had been taken aback by her ruthless manner. While he himself had certainly considered murdering Patrick, it had been no more than a thought—a vague longing which he had known he could not fulfil. But Marianne would have had Patrick wiped out without any hesitation whatsoever. He could only hope there would never come a time when she wanted him out of the way.
Then he relaxed. Of course there was no danger of that. It had been ordained that Martin was to be brought up by the two of them. If there was any trouble, someone from the Ministry of Adjustment would come scuttling back from the future to put things right. Everything was going to be fine.
Marianne kissed him and said: “We always knew our son was going to be a genius. It’s wonderful, isn’t it?”
“Wonderful,” he said. “A guaranteed genius.”
“We’ve got to concentrate on him,” she said passionately. “Nothing is going to be too good for him. It gives us a real purpose in life, doesn’t it? Isn’t it . . . well . . . wonderful?”
“Wonderful,” repeated Alun.
He hoped Patrick would like it on Venus. And for a moment—one fleeting, disturbing moment only—he rather envied Patrick.
TIME AND TIMOTHY
R.W. Balderston
Things are liable to happen when you get a mixture of—Time and Timothy.
“IT’S CORN,” I REPEATED firmly, “pure, undiluted corn, and it just about puts you on a par with the alchemists of the Middle Ages. Moreover, the whole business is the stand-by of every science fiction hack who has ever put pen to paper.”
Tim Swanson shook his head in protest, trying to stem the tide.
“Oh no, Jim, I wouldn’t go so far as to say that. After all, flight was dreamt about and talked about long before the Wright Brothers put over their stuff at Kitty Hawk. Take, for instance, Pegasus—Diedalus and his son Icarus—the flying dove of Achytas, which, by the way, convinces me that the ancients were well up on aerostation by means of hot air. And then—”
“Let us,” I injected coldly, “stop airing our knowledge of mythology and come down to earth and this crazy set-up of yours. I take it that your extensive study of myths has not prevented you from reading the works of H.G. Wells in general, and his ‘Time Machine’ in particular?” Swanson shook his head again and said, quietly: “But that’s fiction, Jim. This”—he looked round the room confidently—“this is reality.”
