Nine Tomorrows

by Isaac Asimov

  Worse than that, he could never leave Earth; the acceleration of a spaceship's take-off would kill him.

  Talliaferro was marked for the Moon, Ryger for Ceres, Kaunas for Mercury. Only Villiers stayed behind, a life-prisoner of Earth.

  They had tried telling their sympathy and Villiers had rejected it with something approaching hate. He had railed at them and cursed them. When Ryger lost his temper and lifted his fist, Villiers had sprung at him, screaming, and had broken Ryger's nose.

  Obviously Ryger hadn't forgotten that, as he caressed his nose gingerly with one finger.

  Kaunas's forehead was an uncertain washboard of wrinkles. "He's at the Convention, you know. He's got a room in the hotel—405."

  "I won't see him," said Ryger.

  "He's coming up here. He said he wanted to see us. I thought—He said nine. He'll be here any minute."

  "In that case," said Ryger, "if you don't mind, I'm leaving." He rose.

  Talliaferro said, "Oh, wait a while. What's the harm in seeing him?"

  "Because there's no point. He's mad."

  "Even so. Let's not be petty about it. Are you afraid of him?"

  "Afraid!" Ryger looked contemptuous.

  "Nervous, then. What is there to be nervous about?"

  "I'm not nervous," said Ryger.

  "Sure you are. We all feel guilty about him, and without real reason. Nothing that happened was our fault." But he was speaking defensively and he knew it.

  And when, at that point, the door signal sounded, all three jumped and turned to stare uneasily at the barrier that stood between themselves and Villiers.

  The door opened and Romero Villiers walked in. The others rose stiffly to greet him, then remained standing in embarrassment, without one hand being raised.

  He stared them down sardonically.

  He's changed, thought Talliaferro.

  He had. He had shrunken in almost every dimension. A gathering stoop made him seem even shorter. The skin of his scalp glistened through thinning hair, the skin on the back of his hands was ridged crookedly with bluish veins. He looked ill. There seemed nothing to link him to the memory of the past except for his trick of shading his eyes with one hand when he stared intently and, when he spoke, the even, controlled baritone of his voice.

  He said, "My friends! My space-trotting friends! We've lost touch."

  Talliaferro said, "Hello, Villiers."

  Villiers eyed him. "Are you well?"

  "Well enough."

  "And you two?"

  Kaunas managed a weak smile and a murmur. Ryger snapped, "All right, Villiers. What's up?"

  "Ryger, the angry man," said Villiers. "How's Ceres?"

  "It was doing well when I left. How's Earth?"

  "You can see for yourself," but Villiers tightened as he said that.

  He went on, "I am hoping that the reason all three of you have come to the Convention is to hear my paper day after tomorrow."

  "Your paper? What paper?" asked Talliaferro.

  "I wrote you all about it. My method of mass-transference."

  Ryger smiled with one corner of his mouth. "Yes, you did. You didn't say anything about a paper, though, and I don't recall that you're listed as one of the speakers. I would have noticed it if you had been."

  "You're right. I'm not listed. Nor have I prepared an abstract for publication."

  Villiers had flushed and Taliaferro said soothingly, "Take it easy, Villiers. You don't look well."

  Villiers whirled on him, lips contorted. "My heart's holding out, thank you."

  Kaunas said, "Listen, Villiers, if you're not listed or abstracted—"

  "You listen. I've waited ten years. You have the jobs in space and I have to teach school on Earth, but I'm a better man than any of you or all of you."

  "Granted—" began Talliaferro.

  "And I don't want your condescension either. Mandel witnessed it. I suppose you've heard of Mandel. Well, he's chairman of the astronautics division at the Convention and I demonstrated mass-transference for him. It was a crude device and it burnt out after one use but—Are

  you listening?"

  "We're listening," said Ryger coldly, "for what that counts."

  "He'll let me talk about it my way. You bet he will. No warning. No advertisement. I'm going to spring it at them like a bombshell. When I give them the fundamental relationships involved it will break up the Convention. They'll scatter to their home labs to check on me and build devices. And they'll find it works. I made a live mouse disappear at one spot in my lab and appear in another. Mandel witnessed it."

  He stared at them, glaring first at one face, then at another. He said, "You don't believe me, do you?"

  Ryger said, "If you don't want advertisement, why do you tell us?"

  "You're different. You're my friends, my classmates. You went out into space and left me behind."

  "That wasn't a matter of choice," objected Kaunas in a thin, high voice.

  Villiers ignored that. He said, "So I want you to know now. What will work for a mouse will work for a human. What will move something ten feet across a lab will move it a million miles across space. I'll be on the Moon, and on Mercury, and on Ceres and anywhere I want to go. I'll match every one of you and more. And I'll have done more for astronomy just teaching school and thinking, than all of you with your observatories and telescopes and cameras and spaceships."

  "Well," said Talliaferro, "I'm pleased. More power to you. May I see a copy of the paper?"

  "Oh, no." Villiers' hands clenched close to his chest as though he were holding phantom sheets and shielding them from observation. "You wait like everyone else. There's only one copy and no one will see it till I'm ready. Not even Mandel."

  "One copy," cried Talliaferro. "If you misplace it—"

  "I won't. And if I do, it's all in my head."

  "If you—" Talliaferro almost finished that sentence with "die" but stopped himself. Instead, he went on after an almost imperceptible pause, "—have any sense, you'll scan it at least. For safety's sake."

  "No," said Villiers, shortly. "You'll hear me day after tomorrow. You'll see the human horizon expanded at one stroke as it never has been before."

  Again he stared intently at each face. "Ten years," he said. "Good-by."

  "He's mad," said Ryger explosively, staring at the door as though Villiers were still standing before it.

  "Is he?" said Talliaferro thoughtfully. "I suppose he is, in a way. He hates us for irrational reasons. And, then, not even to scan his paper as a precaution—"

  Talliaferro fingered his own small scanner as he said that. It was just a neutrally colored, undistinguished cylinder, somewhat thicker and somewhat shorter than an ordinary pencil. In recent years, it had become the hallmark of the scientist, much as the stethoscope was that of the physician and the micro-computer that of the statistician. The scanner was worn in a jacket pocket, or clipped to a sleeve, or slipped behind the ear, or swung at the end of a string.

  Talliaferro sometimes, in his more philosophical moments, wondered how it was in the days when research men had to make laborious notes of the literature or file away full-sized reprints. How unwieldy!

  Now it was only necessary to scan anything printed or written to have a micro-negative which could be developed at leisure. Talliaferro had already recorded every abstract included in the program booklet of the Convention. The other two, he assumed with full confidence, had done likewise.

  Talliaferro said, "Under the circumstances, refusal to scan is mad."

  "Space!" said Ryger hotly. "There is no paper. There is no discovery. Scoring one on us would be worth any lie to him."

  "But then what will he do day after tomorrow?" asked Kaunas.

  "How do I know? He's a madman."

  Talliaferro still played with his scanner and wondered idly if he ought to remove and develop some of the small slivers of film that lay stored away in its vitals. He decided against it. He said, "Don't underestimate Villiers. He's a brain." />
  "Ten years ago, maybe," said Ryger. "Now he's a nut. I propose we forget him."

  He spoke loudly, as though to drive away Villiers and all that concerned him by the sheer force with which he discussed other things. He talked about Ceres and his work—the radio-plotting of the Milky Way with new radioscopes capable of the resolution of single stars.

  Kaunas listened and nodded, then chimed in with information concerning the radio emissions of sunspots and his own paper, in press, on the association of proton storms with the gigantic hydrogen flares on the sun's surface.

  Talliaferro contributed little. Lunar work was unglamorous in comparison. The latest information on long-scale weather forecasting through direct observation of terrestrial jet-streams would not compare with radioscopes and proton storms.

  More than that, his thoughts could not leave Villiers. Villiers was the brain. They all knew it. Even Ryger, for all his bluster, must feel that if mass-transference were at all possible then Villiers was a logical discoverer.

  The discussion of their own work amounted to no more than an uneasy admission that none of them had come to much. Talliaferro had followed the literature and knew. His own papers had been minor. The others had authored nothing of great importance.

  None of them—face the fact—had developed into space-shakers. The colossal dreams of school days had not come true and that was that. They were competent routine workmen. No less. Unfortunately, no more. They knew that.

  Villiers would have been more. They knew that, too. It was that knowledge, as well as guilt, which kept them antagonistic.

  Talliaferro felt uneasily that Villiers, despite everything, was yet to be more. The others must be thinking so, too, and mediocrity could grow quickly unbearable. The mass-transference paper would come to pass and Villiers would be the great man after all, as he was always fated to be apparently, while his classmates, with all their advantages, would be forgotten. Their role would be no more than to applaud from the crowd.

  He felt his own envy and chagrin and was ashamed of it, but felt it none the less.

  Conversation died, and Kaunas said, his eyes turning away, "Listen, why don't we drop in on old Villiers?"

  There was a false heartiness about it, a completely unconvincing effort at casualness. He added, "No use leaving bad feelings—unnecessarily—"

  Talliaferro thought: He wants to make sure about the mass-transference. He's hoping it is only a madman's nightmare so he can sleep tonight.

  But he was curious himself, so he made no objection, and even Ryger shrugged with ill grace and said, "Hell, why not?"

  It was a little before eleven then.

  Talliaferro was awakened by the insistent ringing of his door signal. He hitched himself to one elbow in the darkness and felt distinctly outraged. The soft glow of the ceiling indicator showed it to be not quite four in the morning.

  He cried out, "Who is it?" The ringing continued in short, insistent spurts. Growling, Talliaferro slipped into his bathrobe. He opened the door and blinked in the corridor light. He recognized the man who faced him from the trimensionals he had seen often enough.

  Nevertheless, the man said in an abrupt whisper, "My name is Hubert Mandel."

  "Yes, sir," said Talliaferro. Mandel was one of the Names in astronomy, prominent enough to have an important executive position with the World Astronomical Bureau, active enough to be Chairman of the Astronautics section here at the Convention.

  It suddenly struck Talliaferro that it was Mandel for whom Villiers claimed to have demonstrated mass-transference. The thought of Villiers was somehow a sobering one.

  Mandel said, "You are Dr. Edward Talliaferro?"

  "Yes, sir."

  "Then dress and come with me. It is very important. It concerns a mutual acquaintance."

  "Dr. Villiers?"

  Mandel's eyes flickered a bit. His brows and lashes were so fair as to give those eyes a naked, unfringed appearance. His hair was silky-thin, his age about fifty. He said, "Why Villiers?"

  "He mentioned you last evening. I don't know any other mutual acquaintance."

  Mandel nodded, waited for Talliaferro to finish slipping into his clothes, then turned and led the way. Ryger and Kaunas were waiting in a room one floor above Talliaferro's. Kaunas's eyes were red and troubled. Ryger was smoking a cigarette with impatient puffs.

  Talliaferro said, "We're all here. Another reunion." It fell flat.

  He took a seat and the three stared at one another. Ryger shrugged.

  Mandel paced the floor, hands keep in his pockets. He said, "I apologize for any inconvenience, gentlemen, and I thank you for your co-operation. I would like more of it. Our friend, Romero Villiers, is dead. About an hour ago, his body was removed from the hotel. The medical judgment is heart failure."

  There was a stunned silence. Ryger's cigarette hovered halfway to his lips, then sank slowly without completing its journey.

  "Poor devil," said Talliaferro.

  "Horrible," whispered Kaunas hoarsely. "He was—"

  His voice played out.

  Ryger shook himself. "Well, he had a bad heart. There's nothing to be done."

  "One little thing," corrected Mandel quietly. "Recovery."

  "What does that mean?" asked Ryger sharply.

  Mandel said, "When did you three see him last?"

  Talliaferro spoke. "Last evening. It turned out to be a reunion. We all met for the first time in ten years. It wasn't a pleasant meeting, I'm sorry to say. Villiers felt he had cause for anger with us, and he was angry."

  "That was—when?"

  "About nine, the first time."

  "The first time?"

  "We saw him again later in the evening."

  Kaunas looked troubled. "He had left angrily. We couldn't leave it at that. We had to try. It wasn't as if we hadn't all been friends at one time. So we went to his room and—"

  Mandel pounced on that. "You were all in his room?"

  "Yes," said Kaunas, surprised.

  "About when?"

  "Eleven, I think." He looked at the others. Talliaferro nodded.

  "And how long did you stay?"

  "Two minutes," put in Ryger. "He ordered us out as though we were after his paper." He paused as though expecting Mandel to ask what paper, but Mandel said nothing. He went on. "I think he kept it under his pillow. At least he lay across the pillow as he yelled at us to leave."

  "He may have been dying then," said Kaunas, in a sick whisper.

  "Not then," said Mandel shortly. "So you probably all left fingerprints."

  "Probably," said Talliaferro. He was losing some of his automatic respect for Mandel and a sense of impatience was returning. It was four in the morning, Mandel or no. He said, "Now what's all this about?"

  "Well, gentlemen," said Mandel, "there's more to Villiers' death than the fact of death. Villiers' paper, the only copy of it as far as I know, was stuffed into the cigarette flash-disposal unit and only scraps of it were left. I've never seen or read the paper, but I knew enough about the matter to be willing to swear in court if necessary that the remnants of unflashed paper in the disposal unit were of the paper he was planning to give at this Convention. —You seem doubtful, Dr. Ryger."

  Ryger smiled sourly. "Doubtful that he was going to give it. If you want my opinion, sir, he was mad. For ten years he was a prisoner of Earth and he fantasied mass-transference as escape. It was all that kept him alive probably. He rigged up some sort of fraudulent demonstration. I don't say it was deliberate fraud. He was probably madly sincere, and sincerely mad. Last evening was the climax. He came to our rooms—he hated us for having escaped Earth—and triumphed over us. It was what he had lived for for ten years. It may have shocked him back to some form of sanity. He knew he couldn't actually give the paper; there was nothing to give. So he burnt it and his heart gave out. It is too bad."

  Mandel listened to the Cerian astronomer, wearing a look of sharp disapproval. He said, "Very glib, Dr. Ryger, but quite wrong. I am not as
easily fooled by fraudulent demonstrations as you may believe. Now according to the registration data, which I have been forced to check rather hastily, you three were his classmates at college. Is that right?"

  They nodded.

  "Are there any other classmates of yours present at the Convention?"

  "No," said Kaunas. "We were the only four qualifying for a doctorate in astronomy that year. At least he would have qualified except—"

  "Yes, I understand," said Mandel. "Well, then, in that case one of you three visited Villiers in his room one last time at midnight."

  There was a short silence. Then Ryger said coldly, "Not I." Kaunas, eyes wide, shook his head.

  Talliaferro said, "What are you implying?"

  "One of you came to him at midnight and insisted on seeing his paper. I don't know the motive. Conceivably, it was with the deliberate intention of forcing him into heart failure. When Villiers collapsed, the criminal, if I may call him so, was ready. He snatched the paper which, I might add, probably was kept under his pillow, and scanned it. Then he destroyed the paper itself in the flash-disposal, but he was in a hurry and destruction wasn't complete."

  Ryger interrupted. "How do you know all this? Were you a witness?"

  "Almost," said Mandel. "Villiers was not quite dead at the moment of his first collapse. When the criminal left, he managed to reach the phone and call my room. He choked out a few phrases, enough to outline what had occurred. Unfortunately I was not in my room; a late conference kept me away. However, my recording attachment taped it. I always play the recording tape back whenever I return to my room or office. Bureaucratic habit. I called back. He was dead."

  "Well, then," said Ryger, "who did he say did it?"

  "He didn't. Or if he did, it was unintelligible. But one word rang out clearly. It was 'classmate.' "

  Talliaferro detached his scanner from its place in his inner jacket pocket and held it out toward Mandel. Quietly he said, "If you would like to develop the film in my scanner, you are welcome to do so. You will not find Villiers' paper there."

  At once, Kaunas did the same, and Ryger, with a scowl, joined.

  Mandel took all three scanners and said dryly, "Presumably, whichever one of you has done this has already disposed of the piece of exposed film with the paper on it. However—"