Time Travel Omnibus, page 559
Gefty slumped a little. He rubbed his hands slowly down his face and muttered a few words. Then he shook his head.
“Gefty,” Kerim whispered, “what is it? Where are we?”
Gefty looked at her.
“After we got hauled into that time current,” he said hoarsely, “I tried to find out which way in space we were headed. The direction indicators over there seemed to show we were trying to go everywhere at once. You remember Maulbow’s control unit wasn’t working right, needed adjustments. Well, all those little impulses must have pretty well canceled out because we weren’t taken really far. In the last hour and a half we’ve covered roughly the distance the Queen could have gone on her own in, say, thirty days.”
“Then where . . .”
“Home,” Gefty said simply. “It’s ridiculous! Other side of the Hub from where we started.” He nodded at the plate. “Eastern Hub Quadrant. Section Six Eight. The G2 behind the green dot—that’s the Evalee system. We could be putting down at Evalee Interstellar three hours from now if we wanted to.”
Kerim was laughing and crying together. “Oh, Gefty! I knew you would . . .”
“A fat lot I had to do with it!” Gefty leaned forward suddenly, switched on the transmitter. “And now let’s pick up a live newscast. There’s something else I . . .”
His voice trailed off. The transmitter screen lit up with a blurred jumble of print, colors, a muttering of voices, music and noises. Gefty twisted a dial. The screen cleared, showed a newscast headline sheet. Gefty blinked at it, glanced sideways at Kerim, grimaced.
“The something else,” he said, his voice a little strained, “was something I was also worried about. Looks like I was more or less right.”
“Why, what’s wrong?”
“Nothing really bad,” Gefty assured her. He added, “I think. But take a look at the Federation dateline.”
Kerim peered at the screen, frowned. “But . . .”
“Uh-huh.”
“Why, that . . . that’s almost . . .”
“That,” Gefty said, “or rather this is the day after we started out from the Hub, headed roughly Galactic west. Three weeks ago. We’d be just past Miam.” He knuckled his chin. “Interesting thought, isn’t it?”
Kerim was silent for long seconds. “Then they . . . or we . . .”
“Oh, they’re us, all right,” Gefty said. “They’d have to be, wouldn’t they?”
“I suppose so. It seems a little confusing. But I was thinking. If you send them a transmitter call . . .”
Gefty shook his head. “The Queen’s transmitter isn’t too hot, but it might push a call as far as Evalee. Then we could arrange for a Com-Web link-up there, and in another ten minutes or so . . . but I don’t think we’d better.”
“Why not?” Kerim demanded.
“Because we got through it all safely, so we’re going to get through it safely. But if we receive that message now and never go on to Maulbow’s moon . . . you see? There’s no way of knowing just what would happen.”
Kerim looked hesitant, frowned. “I suppose you’re right,” she agreed reluctantly at last. “So Mr. Maulbow will have to stay dead now. And that janandra.” After a moment she added pensively, “Of course, they weren’t really very nice—”
Gefty shivered. One of the things he’d learned from Maulbow’s ravings was the real reason he and Kerim had been taken along on the trip. He didn’t feel like telling Kerim about it just yet, but it had been solely because of Maulbow’s concern for his master’s creature comforts. The janandra could go for a long time without food, but after fasting for several years on the moon, a couple of snacks on the homeward run would have been highly welcome.
And the janandra was a gourmet. It much preferred, as Maulbow well knew, to have its snacks still wriggling-fresh as it started them down its gullet.
“No,” Gefty said, “I couldn’t call either of them really nice.”
TIME HAS NO BOUNDARIES
Jack Finney
Tonight he could mail his letter back through 75 years into the past.
When I walked into Sergeant Ihren’s office, he stood up reluctantly, as though he weren’t sure but that he’d be throwing me into a cell in the next few minutes and would regret such politeness. “I’m Bernard Weygand,” I said brightly, stopping at his desk, but he didn’t smile.
“Yeah,” he said. “Nice of you to come,” he added suspiciously and gestured at the chair before his desk. We both sat down.
“Glad to come,” I said, “though I have no idea why you want to see me.”
He didn’t rise to that: he just sat looking me over. “Pretty young to be a professor, aren’t you?” he said.
“Well, actually I’m an assistant professor.”
“Young for that too, aren’t you?”
“Sure. That’s the reason for these metal-rimmed professor-style glasses and the burlap suit; it helps the image, as the political-science boys say.” He didn’t smile; I had the sudden feeling that he was absolutely uninterested in anything but his work; that, except for crime news, he read nothing; that he was intelligent, shrewd, perceptive and humorless; and that he probably knew no one but other policemen and didn’t think much of most of them. He was a young-middle-aged, undistinguished, formidable man and, if he’d murmured boo just then, I’d have leaped from my chair and confessed to anything.
He said, “There’s some people we can’t find, and I thought maybe you could help us.” I looked politely puzzled, but he ignored it. “One of them worked in Haring’s restaurant; you know the place, been there for years. He was a waiter, and he disappeared at the end of a three-day weekend with their entire receipts—nearly $5000. Left a note saying he liked Haring’s and enjoyed working there, but they’d been underpaying him for ten years, and now he figured they were even. Guy with an oddball sense of humor, they tell me.” Ihren leaned back in his swivel chair and frowned at me. “We can’t find that man. He’s been gone over a year now and not a trace of him.”
I thought he expected me to say something, and I did my best. “Maybe he moved to some other city and changed his name.”
Ihren looked startled, as though I’d said something even more stupid than he expected. “That wouldn’t help!” he said, irritated.
I was tired of feeling intimidated. Bravely I said, “Why not?”
“People don’t steal in order to hole up forever; they steal money to spend it. His money’s gone now, he feels forgotten, and he’s got a job again somewhere as a waiter.” I looked skeptical, I suppose, because Ihren said, “Certainly as a waiter; he won’t change jobs. That’s all he knows, all he can do. Remember John Carradine, the movie actor? Used to see him a lot. Had a face a foot long, all chin and long jaw; very distinctive.” I nodded, and Ihren turned in his swivel chair to a filing cabinet. He opened a folder, brought out a glossy sheet of paper and handed it to me. It was a police WANTED poster and, while the photograph on it did not really resemble the movie actor, it had the same remarkable long-jawed memorability, Ihren said, “He could move, and he could change his name, but he could never change that face. Wherever he is, he should have been found months ago; that poster went everywhere.”
I shrugged, and Ihren swung to the file again. He brought out and handed me a large old-fashioned sepia photograph mounted on heavy gray cardboard. It was a group photo of a kind you seldom see any more; all the employees of a small business lined up on the sidewalk before it, There were a dozen moustached men in this and a woman in a long dress, smiling and squinting in the sun as they stood before a small building, which I recognized. It was Haring’s restaurant, looking not too different than it does now. Ihren said, “I spotted this on the wall of the restaurant office: I don’t suppose anyone has really looked at it in years. The big guy in the middle is the original owner who started the restaurant in 1885, when this was taken; no one knows who anyone else in the picture was, but take a good look at the other faces.”
I did and saw what he meant; a face in the old picture almost identical with the one in the WANTED poster. It had the same astonishing length, the broad chin seeming nearly as wide as the cheekbones, and I looked up at Ihren. “Who is it? His father? His grandfather?”
Almost reluctantly he said, “Maybe. It could be, of course. But he sure looks like the guy we’re hunting Tor, doesn’t he? And look how he’s grinning! Almost as though he’d deliberately got a job in Haring’s restaurant again and was back in 1885, laughing at me!”
I said, “Sergeant, you’re being extremely interesting, not to say downright entertaining. You’ve got my full attention, and I am in no hurry to go anywhere else. But I don’t quite see——”
“Well, you’re a professor, aren’t you? And professors are smart, aren’t they? I’m looking for help anywhere I can get it. We’ve got half a dozen unsolved cases like that; people that absolutely should have been found, and found easy! William Spangler Greeson is another one; you ever heard of him?”
“Sure; who hasn’t in San Francisco?”
“That’s right; big society name. But did you know he didn’t have a dime of his own?”
I shrugged, “How should I know? I’d have assumed he was rich.”
“His wife is; I suppose that’s why he married her, though they tell me she chased him. She’s older than he is, quite a lot. Disagreeable woman; I’ve talked to her. He’s a young, handsome, likable guy, they say, but lazy; so he married her.”
“I’ve seen him mentioned in Herb Caen’s column; had something to do with the theater, didn’t he?”
“Stage-struck all his life; tried to be an actor and couldn’t make it. When they got married, she gave him the money to back a play in New York, which kept him happy for a while; used to fly East a lot for rehearsals and out-of-town tryouts. Then he started getting friendly with some of the younger stage people, the good-looking female ones. His wife punished him like a kid. Hustled him back here, and not a dime for the theater from then on. Money for anything else, but he couldn’t even buy a ticket to a play any more; he’d been a bad boy. So he disappeared with $175,000 of hers, and not a sign of him since, which just isn’t natural. Because he can’t—you understand, he can’t—keep away from the theater. He should have shown up in New York long since with a fake name, dyed hair, a mustache, some such nonsense. We should have had him months ago, but we haven’t; he’s gone too.” Ihren stood up. “I hope you meant it when you said you weren’t in a hurry, because——”
“Well, as a matter of fact——”
“——because I made an appointment for both of us. On Powell Street near the Embarcadero; come on.” He walked out from behind his desk, picking up a large Manila envelope lying on one corner of it. There was a New York Police Department return address on the envelope, I saw, and it was addressed to him. He walked to the door without looking back, as though he knew I’d follow. Down in front of the building he said, “We can take a cab; with you along I can turn in a chit for it. When I went by myself, I rode the cable car.”
“On a day like this, anyone who takes a cab when he can ride the cable car is crazy enough to join the police force.”
Ihren said, “O.K., tourist,” and we walked all the way up to Market and Powell in silence. A cable car had just been swung around on its turntable, and we got an outside seat, no one near us; presently the car began crawling and clanging leisurely up Powell. You can sit outdoors on the cable cars, you know, and it was nice out, plenty of Sun and blue sky; a typical late-summer San Francisco day. But Ihren might as well have been on the New York subway. “So where is William Spangler Greeson?” he said, as soon as he’d paid our fares. “Well, on a hunch I wrote the New York police, and they had a man put in a few hours Tor me at the city historical museum.” Ihren opened his Manila envelope, pulled out several folded sheets of grayish paper and handed the top one to me. I opened it; it was a Photostatic copy of an old-style playbill, narrow and long, “Ever hear of that play?” Ihren said, reading over my shoulder. The sheet was headed. TONIGHT & ALL WEEK! SEVEN GALA NIGHTS! Below that, in big type: MABEL’S GREENHORN UNCLE!
“Sure, who hasn’t?” I said. “Shakespeare, isn’t it?” We were passing Union Square and the Si. Francis Hotel.
“Save the jokes for your students and read the cast of characters.”
I read it, a long list of names; there were nearly as many people in old-time plays as in the audiences. At the bottom of the list it said, MEMBERS OF THE STREET CROWD, followed by a dozen or more names in the middle of which appeared WILLIAM SPANGLER GREESON.
Ihren said, “That play was given in 1906. Here’s another from the winter of 1901.” He handed me a second Photostat, pointing to another listing at the bottom of the cast. ONLOOKERS AT THE BIG RACE, this one said, and it was followed by a half inch of names in small type, the third of which was WILLIAM SPANGLER GREESON. “I’ve got copies of two more playbills,” Ihren said, “one from 1902, the other from 1904, each with his name in the cast.”
The car swung off Powell, and we hopped off and continued walking north on Powell. Handing back the Photostat.
I said. “It’s his grandfather. Probably Greeson inherited his interest in the stage from him.”
“You’re finding a lot of grandfathers today, aren’t you, professor?” Ihren was replacing the stats in their envelopes.
“And what are you finding, sergeant?”
“I’ll show you in a minute.” he said, and we walked on in silence. We could see the bay ahead now, beyond the end of Powell Street, and it looked beautiful in the sun, but Sergeant Ihren didn’t look at it. We were beside a low concrete building, and he gestured at it with his chin; a sign beside the door read. STUDIO SIXTEEN; COMMERCIAL TV. We walked in, passed through a small office in which no one was present and into an enormous concrete-floored room in which a carpenter was building a set, the from wait of a little cottage. On through that room—the sergeant had obviously been here before—then he pulled open a pair of double doors, and we walked into a tiny movie theater. There was a blank screen up front, a dozen seats and a projection booth. From the booth a man’s voice called. “Sergeant?”
“Yeah. You ready?”
“Soon as I thread up.”
“O.K.” Ihren motioned me to a seat and sat down beside me. Conversationally he said, “There used to be a minor character around town name of Tom Veeley, a sports fan, a nut. Went to every fight, every Giant and Forty-Niners game, every auto race, roller derby, and jai-alai exhibition that came to town—and complained about them all. We knew him, because every once in a while he’d leave his wife. She hated sports, she’d nag him, he’d leave, and we’d have to pick him up on her complaint for desertion and nonsupport; he never got far away. Even when we’d nab him, all he’d talk about was hew sports were dead, the public didn’t care any more and neither did the players, and he wished he’d been around in the really great days of sports. Know what I mean?”
I nodded, the tiny theater went dark, and a beam or sharp white light flashed out over our heads. Then a movie appeared on the screen before us. It was black and white, square in shape, the motion somewhat more rapid and jerky than we’re used to, and it was silent. There wasn’t even any music, and it was eerie to watch the movement, hearing no sound but the whir of the projector. The picture was a view of Yankee Stadium taken from far back of third base, showing the stands, a man at bat, the pitcher winding up. Then it switched to a close-up, Babe Ruth at the plate, bat on shoulder, wire backstop in the background, fans behind it. He swung hard, hit the ball, and—chin rising as he followed its flight—he trotted forward. Grinning, his fists pumping rhythmically, he jogged around the bases. Type matter flashed onto the screen; THE BABE DOES IT AGAIN! it began and went on to say that this was his fifty-first home run of the 1927 season and that it looked as though Ruth would set a new record.
The screen went blank except for some meaningless scribbled numbers and perforations flying past, and Ihren said, “A Hollywood picture studio arranged this Tor me, no charge. Sometimes they film cops-and-crooks television up here, so they like to cooperate with us.”
Jack Dempsey suddenly appeared on the screen, sitting on a stool in a ring corner, men working over him. It was a poor picture; the ring was outdoors and there was too much sun. But it was Dempsey, all right; maybe twenty-four years old, unshaven and scowling. Around the edge of the ring, the camera panning over them now between rounds, sat men in flat-topped straw hats and stiff collars; some had handkerchiefs tucked into their collars and others were mopping their faces. Then, in the strange silence, Dempsey sprang up and moved out into the ring, crouching very low, and began sparring with an enormous slow-moving opponent; Jess Willard, I imagined. Abruptly the picture ended, the screen illuminated with only a flickering white light. Ihren said, “I looked through nearly six hours of stuff like this; everything from Red Grange to Gertrude Ederle. I pulled out three shots; here’s the last one.”
On the screen the scratched flickering film showed a golfer sighting for a putt; spectators stood three and four deep around the edge of the green. The golfer smiled engagingly and began waggling his putter; he wore knickers well down below his knees, and his hair was parted in the middle and combed straight back. It was Bobby Jones, one of the world’s greatest golfers, at the height of his career back in 1930. He tapped the ball; it rolled, dropped into the cup, and Jones hurried after it as the crowd broke onto the green to follow him—all except one man. Grinning, one man walked straight toward the camera, then stopped, doffed his doth cap in a kind of salute and bowed from the waist. The camera swung past him to follow Jones, who was stooping to retrieve his ball. Then Jones moved on, the man who had bowed to us hurrying after him with the crowd, across the screen and out of sight forever. Abruptly the picture ended, and the ceiling lights came on.
Ihren turned to face me. “That was Veeley,” he said, “and it’s no use trying to convince me it was his grandfather, so don’t try. He wasn’t even born when Bobby Jones was winning golf championships, but just the same that was absolutely and indisputably Tom Veeley, the sports fan who’s been missing from San Francisco for six months now.” He sat waiting, but I didn’t reply; what could I say to that? Ihren went on, “He’s also sitting just back of home plate behind the screen when Ruth hit the home run, though his face is in shadow, And I think he’s one of the men mopping his face at ringside during the Dempsey fight, though I’m not absolutely certain.”
