Time Travel Omnibus, page 594
It smelled like spring. Rising, Sally went over by the bicycles and bent to pick a white umbrella of Queen Anne’s lace. She came back twirling the stalk between her fingers. “Ready,” she said.
He set her an easy pace, but did it the hard way himself, not using the lower gears. One of Dave Schenk’s subtler tricks. Fletcher wished he was with them today.
At about eleven o’clock they reached the top. Between the power company’s storage reservoir and the bluffs was a little park that no one else ever seemed to use. Sally spread most of their food on a weathered wooden picnic table. Then she went over and sat on a broad granite shelf. Fletcher set about starting a fire.
It was taking him quite a while, as he’d forgotten the starter and had to whittle some twigs for tinder. He nicked his thumb, frowned, sucked it, looked up.
Sally was on her feet again, picking more flowers. She paused from time to time to gaze out over the river. The view was even more spectacular here, Fletcher knew, even though too far back to see it himself. They were three or four hundred feet straight above the water.
Running a few feet beyond the main line of the bluff was a grassy promontory. Several bunches of Queen Anne’s lace waved above the wild hay and creepers. He wished she’d get away from there and took a breath to tell her to.
Sally screamed as her legs slid out of sight. Twisting midair, she clutched two frantic handfuls of turf.
She was only sixty feet away, but the fireplace and the big old table lay directly between them. Fletcher planted both hands on the smoking stone chimney and vaulted it. The thing was four feet high, but could have been five and he’d still have made it. A dozen running steps, each faster and longer than the last, carried him to the table. He yanked his head down and his right leg up to hurdle it, snapping the leg down on the other side and swinging the weaker one behind. Pain shot through it, and Fletcher nearly sprawled. It took him four steps to straighten out, and in four more he was there.
He hurled himself at the two slender wrists that were falling away, and got one.
Sally screamed again, this time in pain. Fletcher hauled her up to his chin, both sinewy hands around her small white one. Edging backward on his knees, he drew her fully up. Fletcher stood shakily and attempted to help her to her feet. His left leg gave way.
Falling beside her, he lay on the warm granite and tried to catch his breath. It was difficult for some reason. Her face swam before him, and as he lost consciousness he heard himself repeating, “So that’s why, that’s why—”
Fletcher’s eyelids were burning, so he opened them, to look directly into the sun. He must have been lying there an hour. Sally—his mind leapfrogged back and the breath stopped in his throat. But no, it was over, she lay here beside him now. Fletcher rose to an elbow. His leg throbbed between numbness and intolerable pain, and it looked as if someone had taken an axe to it.
But Sally’s wrist looked just as bad. The drying scum near her lips attested to that. As he moved her head gently away from the puddle, she moaned.
It took him ten minutes to crawl over to the table and return with a bottle of wine. They’d brought no water. He sprinkled some on her forehead, then held it to her lips. She came around, fainted, came around again.
Sally had made it about halfway down to the road when she ran into some picnickers. The jeep came at three, and at four they were both in the orthopedic ward at Rockland State.
Fletcher was still dopey with anesthetic and delayed shock. As he told the reporter what had happened, the little man nearly drooled. Their episode had occurred on Saturday. When they were released from the hospital and sent home on Wednesday, their story was still up on page four. On the front porch was a yellow plastic wastebasket full of unopened telegrams and letters.
They hadn’t had much privacy at the hospital. So after Sally had made the coffee she sat down opposite Fletcher at the kitchen table and asked, “How’ve you been?”
“Okay. Still a little disoriented, maybe.”
“Yes.” She stared into her cup. “Fletch, I guess the first time we went through that, I fell?”
Fletcher nodded. “I’d never have made it to you, the old way.” He stared down at the cast on his leg. “Ten years of mine, for all of yours. I’d do it again.”
“It wasn’t cheap,” she said.
“No, it wasn’t cheap.”
They made love that night. Fletcher had been worried about that, and found his fears justified to some extent. Ten years made a difference. But Sally held him long afterward and cried a little, which was the best with her. He fell asleep feeling reassured for then, but knowing what was to come.
Fletcher dyed his hair and had some minor facial surgery done to smooth out his eyes and throat. He gained ten pounds. He looked pretty much like the Fletcher of thirty-six. A certain amount of romance was attached to his reputation now, and when he changed jobs his salary almost doubled.
His broken left leg never healed solidly, though, and for all intents and purposes he was back to where he’d started. He and Sally remained childless right up until their divorce two years later. She was later married to David Schenk, but Fletcher remained alone.
THE TIMESWEEPERS
Keith Laumer
The blindness of a blind alley may be not so much in the alley as in its inhabitants.
The man slid into the seat across from me, breathing a little hard, and said, “Do you mind?” He was holding a filled glass in his hand; he waved it at the room, which was crowded, but not that crowded. It was a slightly run-down bar in a run-down street in a run-down world. Just the place for meeting strangers.
I looked him over, not too friendly a look. The smile he was wearing slipped a little and wasn’t a smile anymore, just a sick smirk. He had a soft, round face, very pale blue eyes, he kind of head that ought to be bald but was covered with a fine blond down, like baby chicken feathers. He was wearing a striped sport shirt with a very wide collar laid back over a bulky plaid jacket with padded shoulders and wide lapels. His neck was smoothskinned, and too thin for his head. The hand that was holding the glass was small and well-lotioned, with short, immaculately manicured fingers. There was a big, cumbersome-looking ring on one of the fingers. The whole composition looked a little out of tune, like something assembled in a hurry by somebody who was short on material and had to make do with what was at hand. Still, it wasn’t a bad job, under the circumstances. It had passed—up until now.
“Please don’t misunderstand,” he said. His voice was like the rest of him: not feminine enough for a woman, but not anything you’d associate with a room full of cigar smoke, either.
“It’s vital that I speak with you, Mr. Starv,” he went on, talking fast, as if he wanted to get it all said before he was thrown out. “It’s a matter of great importance to your future.”
He must not have liked what went across my face then; he started to get up and I caught his wrist—as soft and smooth as a baby’s—and levered him back into his seat.
“You might as well stay and tell me about it,” I said. I looked at him over my glass while he got his smile fixed up and back in position. “My future, eh?” I prompted him. “I wasn’t sure I had one.”
“Oh, yes,” he said, and nodded quickly. “Yes indeed. And I might add that your future is a great deal larger than your past, Mr. Starv.”
“Have we met somewhere?”
He shook his head. “Please—I know I don’t make a great deal of sense; I’m under a considerable strain. But please listen . . .”
“I’m listening, Mr . . . what was the name?”
“It really doesn’t matter, Mr. Starv. I myself don’t enter into the matter at all; I was merely assigned to contact you and deliver the information.”
“Assigned?”
He looked at me with an expression like a slave bringing ill tidings to a bad tempered king.
“Mr. Starv—what would you say if I told you I was a member of a secret organization of supermen?”
“What would you expect me to say?”
“That I’m insane,” he said promptly. “Naturally, that’s why I’d prefer to speak directly to the point. Mr. Starv, your life is in danger.”
“Go on.”
“In precisely”—he glanced at the watch strapped to the underside of his wrist—“one and one half minutes, a man will enter this establishment. He will be dressed in a costume of black, and will carry a cane—ebony, with a silver head. He will go to the bar, order a straight whiskey, drink it, turn, raise the cane and fire three lethal darts into your chest.”
I took another swallow of my drink. It was the real stuff; one of the compensations of the job. “Uh-huh,” I said. “Then what?”
“Then? Then?” my little man said rather wildly. “Then you are dead, Mr. Starv!” He leaned across the table and threw this at me in a hiss, with quite a lot of spit.
“Well, I guess that’s that,” I said. “No!” His fat little hand shot out and clutched my arm with more power than I’d given him credit for. “This is what will happen—unless you act at once to avert it.”
“I take it that’s where the big future you mentioned comes in.”
“Mr. Starv—you must leave here at once.” He fumbled in a pocket of his coat, brought out a card with an address printed on it: 309 Turkon Place.
“It’s an old building, very stable, quite near here. Go to the third floor. You’ll have to climb a wooden stairway, but it’s quite safe. A door marked with the numeral 9 is at the back. Enter the room and wait.”
“Why would I do that?” I asked him.
He wiped at his face with his free hand.
“In order to save your life,” he said.
“What’s the idea—that the boy in black can’t work in rooms marked 9?”
“Please, Mr. Starv—time is short. Won’t you simply trust me?”
“Where’d you get my name?”
“Does that matter more than your life?”
“The name’s a phony. I made it up about an hour and a half ago, when I registered at the hotel across the street.”
His earnest look went all to pieces; he was still trying to reassemble it when the street door of the bar opened and a man in a black overcoat, black velvet collar, black homburg and carrying a black swagger stick walked in.
My new chum’s fingers clamped into the same grooves they’d made last time.
“You see? Just as I said. Now, quickly, Mr. Starv—”
I brushed his hand off me and slid out of the booth. The man in black went to the bar without looking my way, took a stool near the end.
I went across and took the stool on his left.
He didn’t look at me. He was so busy not looking at me that he didn’t even look around when my elbow dug into his side. If there was a gun in his pocket, I couldn’t feel it.
I leaned a little toward him.
“Who is he?” I said, about eight inches from his ear. His head jerked. He put his hands on the bar and turned. His face was thin, white around the nostrils from anger or illness, gray everywhere else. His eyes looked like little black stones.
“Are you addressing me?” he said in a tone with a chill like Scott’s last camp on the ice cap.
“Your friend with the sticky hands is waiting over in the booth. Why not join the party?”
“You’ve made an error,” Blackie said, and turned away.
From the corner of my eye I saw the other half of the team trying a sneak play around left end. I caught him a few yards past the door.
It was a cold night. Half an inch of snow squeaked under our shoes as he tried to jerk free of the grip I took on his upper arm.
“Tell me about it,” I said. “After I bought the mind-reading act, what was to come next?”
“You fool—I’m trying to save your life—have you no sense of gratitude?”
“What made it worth the trouble? My suit wouldn’t fit you, and the cash in my pocket wouldn’t pay cab fare over to Turkon Place and back.”
“Let me go! We must get off the street!” He tried to kick my ankle, and I socked him under the ribs hard enough to fold him against me wheezing like a bagpipe. I took a quick step back and heard the flat whak! of a silenced pistol and the whisper that a bullet makes when it passes an inch from your ear: Blackie’s cane going into action from the door to the bar.
There was an alleymouth a few feet away. We made it in one jump. My little pal had his feet working again, and tried to use them to wreck my knee. I had to bruise his shins a little.
“Easy,” I told him. “That slug changes things. Quiet down and I’ll let go your neck.”
He nodded as well as he could with my thumb where it was and I eased him back against the wall. I put my back against it, beside him, with him between me and the alleymouth. I made a little production of levering back the hammer of my Mauser.
Two or three minutes went past like geologic ages.
“We’ll take a look. You first.” I prodded him forward. Nobody shot at him. I risked a look. Except for a few people not in black overcoats, the sidewalk was empty.
My car was across the street. I walked him across and waited while he got in and slid across under the wheel, then got in after him. There were other parked cars, and plenty of dark windows up above for a sniper to work from, but nobody did.
“309 Turkon Place, you said.” I nudged him with the Mauser. “Let’s go have a look.”
He drove badly, like a middle-aged widow who only learned to drive after her husband died. We clashed gears and ran stoplights across town to the street he had named. It was a badly-lit unpatched brick dead end that rose steeply toward a tangle of telephone poles at the top. The house was tall and narrow, slanted against the sky, showing no lights. I prodded my guide ahead of me along the narrow walk that ran back beside the house, went in via the back door. It resisted a little, but gave without making any more noise than a dropped xylophone.
We stood on some warped linoleum and smelled last week’s cabbage and listened to some dense silence.
“Don’t be afraid,” the little man said. “There’s no one here.” He led me along a passage a little wider than my elbows, past a tarnished mirror and a stand full of umbrellas, up steep steps with black rubber matting held by tarnished brass rods. The flooring creaked on the landing. Another flight brought us into a low-ceilinged hall with gray-painted doors made visible by the pale light coming through a wire-glass skylight.
He found number 9, put an ear against it, opened up and went in. I followed.
It was a small bedroom, with a double bed, a dresser with a doily on it, a straight chair, a rocker, an oval rag rug, a hanging fixture in the center with a colored glass bowl. My host placed the chairs into a cozy tete-a-tete arrangement, offered me the rocker, and perched on the edge of the other.
“Now,” he said, and put his fingertips together comfortably, like a pawnbroker about to beat you down on the value of the family jewels, “I suppose you want to hear all about the man in black, how I knew just when he’d appear, and so on.”
“It was neat routine,” I said. “Up to a point. After you fingered me, if I didn’t buy the act, Blackie would plug me—with a dope dart. If I did—I’d be so grateful, I’d come here.”
“As indeed you have.” My little man looked different now, more relaxed, less eager to please. “I suppose I need not add that the end result will be the same.” He made a nice hip draw and showed me a strange looking little gun, all shiny rods and levers.
“You will now tell me about yourself, Mr. Starv—or whatever you may choose to call yourself.”
“Wrong again—Karge,” I said.
For an instant it didn’t register. Then his fingers twitched and the gun made a spitting sound and needles showered off my chest. I let him fire the full magazine. Then I shot him under the left eye with the pistol I had palmed while he was settling himself on his chair.
He settled further; his head was bent over his left shoulder as if he were trying to admire the water spots on the ceiling. His little pudgy hands opened and closed a couple of times. He leaned sideways quite slowly and hit the floor like a hundred and fifty pounds of heavy machinery.
Which he was, of course.
The shots hadn’t made much noise—no more than the one fired at me by the Enforcer had. I listened, heard nothing in the way of a response. I laid the Karge out on his back—or on its back—and cut the seal on his reel compartment, lifted out the tape he’d been operating on. It was almost spent, indicating that his mission had been almost completed. I checked his pockets but turned up nothing, not even a ball of lint.
It took me twenty minutes to go over the room. I found a brain-reader focused on the rocker from the stained-glass ceiling light. He’d gone to a lot of effort to make sure he cleaned me before disposing of the remains.
I took time to record my scan to four point detail, then went back down to the street. A big, square car went past, making a lot of noise in the silent street, but no bullets squirted from it. I checked my locator and started east, down-slope.
It was a twenty-minute walk to the nearest spot the gauges said was within the acceptable point-point range for a locus transfer.
I tapped out the code with my tongue against the trick molars set in my lower jaw, felt the silent impact of temporal implosion, and was squinting against the dazzling sunlight glaring down on Dinosaur Beach.
My game of cat-and-mouse with the Karge had covered several square miles of the city of Buffalo, New York, T.F. late March, 1936. A quick review of my movements from the time of my arrival at the locus told me that the Timecast station should be about a mile and a half distant, to the southwest, along the beach. I discarded the warmer portions of my costume and started hiking.
