Mind Out of Time

by Christopher Stasheff

  "Besides..." Yorick waved his cigar expansively. "You're already paying the price. Why not get the goods?"

  Angus's eyebrows tangled in consternation. "I'm not paying any price!"

  "You have already."

  Angus stared.

  Yorick nodded slowly. "Unpleasant things happened to you, all your life. Now you know why."

  Angus glared, the storm clouds gathering.

  "Now you know the reason, Ang." Yorick smiled sympathetically.

  "What... do... you... mean!"

  "Why do you think you've got that extra leather on your shoe?"

  "That has nothing to do with time travel." Angus's lips barely moved. "There's no possible connection."

  Yorick only smiled.

  "And I am not going to found your damn organization!" Angus's fist slammed down on the table.

  "Right," Yorick said agreeably. "You're going to found your organization."

  "No! I'm going to live my life the way I want to—nice, average, plain, dull life with no bigger responsibilities than anybody else ever gets!"

  "If you survive," Yorick nodded with enthusiasm.

  Angus's face emptied.

  After a moment, he said, "Survive? Survive what?"

  "Bombs," Yorick said casually. "Rifles. Knives. Poison, falling objects, lasers, speeding cars. Human beings ain't so durable, Ang."

  "But... why?" Angus managed to croak. "Why, if I decide not to found GRIPE?"

  Yorick shrugged. "As long as you're alive, there's a chance you'll change your mind and found it after all. That's why SPITE and VETO are doing everything they can to bump you off." He puffed on his cigar reflectively. "Two huge organizations, bending all their resources to killing your own sweet self, Ang... it's one hell of a compliment. If you look at it right."

  Angus shivered.

  "Time agents, all up and down your time line," Yorick mused. "All your life..."

  He puffed on the cigar, giving his words time to sink in, watching out of the corner of his eye as a look of stark terror seeped into Angus's face. Then he asked, "Any close brushes with death?"

  "Huh?" Angus's head snapped up. "Hell, yes! All my life! I damn near didn't get born, even! Breech birth, and all of a sudden all the equipment in the operating room went on the fritz, and..." His voice trailed off, horror drowning the terror in his face.

  Yorick nodded somberly.

  Angus wrenched his gaze away, clasped hands twisting.

  "Averages out to two major attempts on your life every year, Ang," the Neanderthal said quietly. "So far."

  "But... but..." Angus floundered. "How could I have survived this long?"

  Yorick's laugh was dry, mirthless.

  Angus looked up at him, surprised.

  "You don't think GRIPE's about to let you get killed before you've had a chance to found us, do you?" Yorick's smile regained some warmth. "Oh no, no way. We've been watching out for you all along, every minute of your life. Not that we haven't had a few failures—but we've managed to keep you alive."

  "And maneuvering me into doing what you want!"

  Yorick stared. "Of course not, Ang! Just kept you living, that's all. You'll do the rest all on your own!"

  Angus smiled sourly. "And if I don't?"

  Yorick pursed his lips. "Well... I don't suppose we'll ever know about it. Myself, I'll have died when I was twelve years old."

  "Emotional blackmail," Angus said through his teeth.

  "Nothing fatal, though." Yorick chewed his cigar. "At least, for you. Anything like an 'accident' isn't too hard to handle. But a man with lead underwear and a piece of plutonium in his pocket—that's another matter. Enough of them got through to cause the fetus some pretty heavy damage..."

  Angus stiffened.

  "...hunchback, shortened leg, unequal..."

  "All right, all right!" Angus snapped. He glared down at his clenched fist. "Bastards..." He looked up suddenly, wide-eyed. "Hey! That radiation... what did it do to my mother?"

  "Well..." Yorick's mouth twisted. "Didn't improve her health any..."

  Angus's eyes burned. "She died when I was in high school, and my father didn't seem too interested in living, without her... So I owe them his death, too..."

  Yorick's jaw clenched.

  Angus frowned, puzzled; then his eyes widened. "Oh, no, hold on! It makes a great story, but all you had to do was find out my biography and you could fabricate it to order!"

  Yorick looked up, surprised, then weary. "Why would I make it up, Ang?"

  "To get me to do what you want!" Angus snapped.

  Yorick rested his forehead in his palm, shaking his head.

  "Prove it," Angus challenged, "all of it."

  Yorick looked up, his face bleak. "I hadn't realized you were always this pigheaded."

  Angus glared. "What do you mean, 'always'?"

  "I mean, your older self is," Yorick explained, "but I figured that was just because he's getting old and crotchety. Seems I was wrong."

  Angus smile was thin. "Not completely. He's getting old and crotchety. I'm still young and crotchety. And stubborn."

  Yorick closed his fist, nodding, his face sardonic. "From Missouri?"

  "Jug-head mule," Angus agreed. "Show me."

  "All right." Yorick straightened, laying his hands palm-down on the table-edge. "Check the facts. It all hangs together."

  "Except for this." Angus raised a finger. "From what you've said, I shouldn't have managed to survive at all."

  Yorick stared, appalled. "Ang! I told you GRIPE wasn't about to let you get killed, didn't I?" He tried to smile. "No, no, not a chance! Look over there—the little man with the violin."

  Angus followed Yorick's nod and saw the musician in the corner.

  "'Aura Lee,'" Yorick said, "just the way you like it."

  "Thanks, but I think I'll sit this one out." Then Angus looked again. "You mean... he's keeping an eye on me?"

  "Just a precaution."

  "He's one of yours, then?"

  "Oh, yes," Yorick said. "Him, at least, I recognize."

  "You mean you don't..." Angus frowned. "No, of course you wouldn't recognize all the enemy agents."

  "A few," Yorick said. "One or three. Until they realize we're onto them and get plastic surgery."

  "Seems kind of drastic."

  "It's pretty standard, in the fifty-eighth century," Yorick said.

  "But not in the fifty-eighth B.C.E.!" Angus stared as realization struck. "You're here!"

  Yorick stared back. Then he looked down at himself, body, arms, kneecaps... "Yeah." He looked up, nodding vigorously. "Far as I can tell, anyway."

  "Then..." Angus tugged at his lower lip. "This time-travel organization I'm going to found transports bodies."

  Yorick nodded, puzzled.

  "For that," Angus declared, "I need a time machine."

  "Well, it might come in handy, yes."

  "And I don't have a time machine."

  "Yeah, well, I know you try to live on a budget..."

  "So that's it." Angus spread his hands like a magician showing the coin had disappeared. "I can't found GRIPE."

  Yorick frowned. "Why not?"

  "Because I don't have a time machine, you nitwit!"

  Yorick shrugged. "So invent one."

  Angus sat looking at him for the space of three heartbeats. Then his lip curled. "Oh, sure! Just run on home and invent myself a time machine! What do you think I am, a wizard genius?"

  Yorick nodded, and for a moment, his face held a look akin to worship.

  Angus felt the temperature of his blood lower perceptibly.

  Then the look was gone, and Yorick was smiling, nodding. "Yeah. That's right. Genius. What else could you call a man who's going to invent a time machine?"

  "I'm not going to invent a time machine!" Angus snapped.

  Yorick immediately turned wary. "Is... that another one of your—'decisions'—Ang?"

  Angus looked into the Neanderthal's eyes and shuddered. He believes it! He
actually believes I can make a time machine!

  Then he felt his native stubbornness rising again. He would not be buffaloed into...

  "Well, it doesn't really matter," Yorick said hastily. "At least, not just yet. You don't really need a time machine to set up the organization; you've got non-physical time travel already. You can start recruiting agents and setting up the administrative machinery just with that."

  Angus scowled; then his eyes lost focus, and a dreamy smile touched his face. "Y' know, you just might have something there! I could make a start that way, couldn't I?" He hitched forward in his chair. "Yeah! Set up... oh, call 'em sentries. Someone in each major historical period, to watch and report anything interesting—hey, the things you could find out that way!—and, uh, 'get in touch' once a week... Hell, why just the major periods? I could set up a network all down through history—even prehistory! As far back as the Neanderthals, at least, and..."

  Yorick was grinning, nodding vigorously, eyes alight with enthusiasm.

  Angus stared at him, his voice trailing off. Then his eyes narrowed and his jaw tightened. "No." He framed the word carefully. "N - O, No! I will not be conned into doing your scut work!"

  Yorick almost seemed to deflate as his enthusiasm drained away. He closed his eyes, bowing his head and clenching his fists. Then he looked up at Angus with a woebegone smile. "Believe it or not, I'm not trying to con you into anything, Angus. You're going to do it of your own free will, or not at all."

  Foreboding walked its fingers up Angus's back. He was beginning to realize that setting up GRIPE might be an inhuman responsibility, but it would also be work he could really put his heart into, the most satisfying labor he could possibly dream of—seeing Caesar's Rome, ancient Athens, solving the riddle of Atlantis, all the mysteries of history and prehistory. To watch Stonehenge being built...!

  "Not because we want you to," Yorick murmured, "but because you want to. Setting up GRIPE, inventing the time machine—all of it."

  Angus shivered with both excitement and pleasure.

  Then he stiffened, staring through Yorick as a thought occurred to him. He pursed his lips, eyes unfocussed, nodding. "Listen—if I'm going to invent the time machine for GRIPE—who's going to invent one for SPITE? And VETO?"

  "Why, you, of course." Yorick's eyebrows arched in surprise. "Only one time machine ever invented, and that was yours." He smiled. "You're the only man ever had a mind with just the right twist to be able to figure out how to ride through the dimensions."

  Angus glared, then closed his eyes, shook his head violently. "No. No, I won't believe that. Me, give my invention to two organizations that've been trying to wipe me out since before I was born? No!" He glared at Yorick. "Crazy I may be, but not insane!"

  "You're not," Yorick assured him, "and you won't be. Of course you wouldn't give them your time machine. But that doesn't mean they won't get it."

  "They're going to steal it?" Angus clamped his jaw, slammed his fist on the table. "I'll sue them for patent infringement!"

  "No patent." Yorick spread his hands. "You won't dare patent it, Ang. Anybody could get the plans then. That'd be putting it up for grabs."

  "A detail." Angus waved it away. "I invented it, I've got the patent rights! They can't steal my machine!"

  "They're going to," Yorick sang, grinning.

  Angus stared, appalled, aggrieved, wounded to the core. "Why, the bastards! The inchronometrable bastards!"

  Yorick's eyes danced. "Want to do something about it?"

  "Damn right I do!" Angus shot to his feet, leveled a shaking forefinger at Yorick. "They're not going to get away with it. Oh, no. Not my time machine. I'll slam 'em down so hard they won't even know they've been buried!" He spun about and headed for the door, limping fast.

  Yorick was right at his shoulder, grinning like a keyboard. "Kind of gripes you?"

  "Damn right it does!" Angus lashed out at the doorway as he passed through. "Where do those bastards get off, thinking they can steal my damn time machine? And I haven't even invented it yet!"

  Yorick escorted Angus home against his protests that he was perfectly safe (which Yorick doubted—and, for that matter, so did Angus). When they arrived at Angus's apartment, Yorick insisted on giving the room a thorough once-over, agreeing all the while that the search was ridiculous. He gave the room a clean bill of health, bade Angus a cheerful good-night, and left.

  The door closed. Angus spent the first few minutes cursing steadily. Then, mollified but still disgruntled, he sat down at his desk with pencil and paper to try to figure out what was going on. He cast his mind back over everything Yorick had said, decided he couldn't really comprehend it, and let his mind wander, hoping for random correlations.

  They came, but they weren't quite what he had anticipated.

  Five minutes later, he laid down his pencil and looked at the paper before him. He had sketched out the basic organizational structure for GRIPE.

  Exasperated with himself, he crumpled the sheet and threw it into the wastebasket, hard.

  Then he frowned, cocking his head to the side, fought a short interior battle, gave in, and pulled the paper back out. It was a fun thing to fool around with...

  He smoothed the paper and bent over it with a happy smile.

  Then he frowned. No, not right at all; too long a chain from the general to the privates. All right, so maybe the low man couldn't be in direct, constant touch with the head honcho—but they could at least see each other occasionally...

  He scowled, chewing on his lower lip as he mentally rearranged things. Two intermediate bosses, say, or maybe only one. Yeah, only generals, captains, and privates, and all the captains in touch with the general. Make for a busy general, but...

  He shook his head, confused. He needed to get back to basics. He yanked open a file drawer and rooted around for the notes he'd made for the way InterContinental ought to be run...

  Then he froze, staring at the papers.

  Carefully, he took his hands from the drawer and studied what he saw. They were there, all right, his papers, in their usual random, junkheap collection, and in the same order, or lack thereof—but there was something wrong about it. It was a junkheap, all right, but it wasn't his junkheap! There are styles in the stacking of junk, as in everything else, and this just wasn't Angus's style. He couldn't have said why, but it wasn't.

  He frowned and very carefully proceeded to go through the stack, paper by paper, very much on the watch for anything missing.

  Nothing.

  His eyes glittered for a moment, his jaw tightening, as he stared down into the drawer. Then he slammed it shut and yanked his spiral-bound journal from the stack of books on his desk. He opened it, leafed through it impatiently, page by page...

  And froze, staring.

  The page where he'd written down his random thoughts about his mental time-trip and his visit with Alasper was gone.

  He stared at the shreds of paper that showed where the page was missing, stared unbelieving.

  Then he frowned. It didn't make sense—if SPITE, or VETO, or whoever it was who had stolen that page wanted the information, why hadn't they just photographed it and left it in the book? Why take it away and run the risk of raising his suspicions?

  Obviously because they didn't want him to have the information on that page.

  For a moment, his lips twisted with contempt. The fools! Could they really believe there was even a chance he didn't have that information locked safe in his memory?

  Then he frowned, nodded slowly. It was a good try and just might have worked. If he hadn't talked to Yorick that day, the next time he went looking for that page to refresh his memory about the time-trip, he wouldn't have been able to find it. And he would have been exasperated, angry, paranoid—and secretly relieved. He'd half wanted to believe it was all a dream, anyway. So he probably would have decided just that—or, being usually objective and not all that paranoid, he would have decided he'd just ripped the page out and thrown it away
himself, and had forgotten about it (again, because he secretly wanted to). And, quite possibly, he would never have thought seriously about time-travel again.

  It was possible. And, now that he thought about it, maybe not all that improbable.

  He frowned, nodded slowly. Things were beginning to happen fast, now. Fleetingly, he wondered how many times they could try to kill him in one day...

  He jerked bolt-upright in his chair. If they were trying to assassinate him, he was a fool to stay in this room. They might have something planted in here!

  He relaxed again; Yorick had searched.

  But could Yorick have missed something? After all, at this stage in his career, he was still a very young agent.

  Angus bolted from the room like a flushed pheasant and hurried for the phone at the end of the hall. He leafed though the directory frantically; nothing under "Yorick."

  But wait a minute. Was "Yorick" his real name? No, now that be thought or it—there had been another name on the big lug's nametag—Trawl? Tall? Thall!

  Momentarily, he frowned, wondering at the name...

  He shrugged, found the "T's." Yorick had to get over here fast; Angus was going to need protection now, and...

  He stopped abruptly. His head came up slowly; he glared at his own reflection in the cracked mirror that hung over the phone. First thing he knew, he'd be asking Yorick to taste his food for him and maybe give him his bottle and make sure the formula was warmed to the right temperature...

  He slammed the phone book down, disgusted with himself. He'd be blasted if he was going to hide behind anybody! Even... he swallowed nervously... when it was necessary!

  A clammy feeling in the pit of his belly informed him that it probably was necessary—very.

  He turned, growling, and limped down the stairs. If he died, he died—but while he lived, he'd live his own man! No hiding. None.

  Besides, he reminded himself as he went out the door and down the front steps, he probably wasn't in any physical danger here; huge organizations didn't form elaborate conspiracies to bump off one insignificant cripple.

  Let's see, what had Yorick said his address was? 130 East Liberty, that was it.

  Elaborate conspiracies, against him, Angus McAran, of whom no one had ever heard? Ridiculous! He was definitely letting his paranoia get out of hand.