The Dealings of Daniel Kesserich

by Fritz Leiber

“Kramer,” he said swiftly. “Old haunts—old friends.”

  And then I knew that it was Daniel Kesserich.

  But before I go further let me describe his voice and the strange way it affected me. This came even before I was sure that it was Kesserich.

  Briefly, his voice had a bizarre quality, a power, very difficult to describe. It was as if he hummed when he spoke, as if he spoke to the accompaniment of a harsh, cacophonous, but exceedingly mighty organ, whose music I could not hear but felt I might hear at any moment if only I could stretch the capacity of my hearing apparatus a very little. Moreover, he seemed to be speaking softly and to be clipping his words, as if in order to conceal the very quality that so impressed me. So much for his voice. There was also something strange about his person, something that I was inclined to attribute to my semi-intoxicated state. He seemed, not too fat, but too thick, too dense, for his clothes (I know that this description cannot be anything but enigmatical; however, it is the best I can do).

  Rousing myself from the abstraction into which I had fallen, I greeted Kesserich with a calmness that was almost casual; a manifestation of that unconscious care and paradoxical fact characteristic of certain stages of slight intoxication.

  Apparently my calmness put his mind at ease, for he leaned back in his chair and ceased to drum nervously on the table.

  All agog now and determined not to scare him off with questions (he was ever the sensitive recluse), I asked him if he would join me in a drink. He immediately refused and, further, made me promise not to call the proprietor and, if he happened to approach our booth on his own initiative, to warn him off in some way. I agreed. There was in any case little chance of being overheard or even observed, the proprietor being distinguished by an almost morbid tact.

  These things having been settled, Kesserich burst forth in a torrent of questions, some of which surprised me greatly for they dealt with things that any person might have read in the newspaper. However, it did set me thinking that he might have been suffering from a temporary loss of memory, an aphasia dating possibly from some shock that might have occurred in Smithville.

  But when I started to answer his questions it was only a moment before he jerked his hands at me in a peculiarly irritated gesture, grimaced quickly, and said, “It’s futile. Don’t try.”

  Put at a loss by this attitude I let slip the question that had been teetering on my lips: “What was it, Kesserich, that happened to you at Smithville?”

  He stiffened, looked at me, then sank back, saying, “No, no; there are things… a person could not think reasonable… unless he saw; besides…”

  Again I marveled at the strangeness of Kesserich’s voice. It seemed to have acquired a timbre and a humming quality that were, to me, unique. Perhaps it was due to my own condition; I noticed I was still having a little trouble with my eyes.

  “There’s something you don’t know,” I pressed on. “It’s this: I saw with my own eyes things that were in no way reasonable.” And I told him of my experience with the pebbles and of the beginning of Ellis’s story.

  There upon he laughed with a kind of sardonic woe and, “that it should happen to you. O, that it should happen to you. That puts all three of us in the same boat. All three: you. Ellis, and myself. Should I tell you the rest? Why not? You could even make a story of it,” here his laughter took on an almost unearthly convulsiveness, “and then no one would ever, ever believe it! Men would say that it would be impossible and, were the method ever rediscovered, minds would be forewarned and able to forget it; forget it at all costs. Yes, yes, yes, it is the way of all ways to keep the secret!”

  And when his chuckles died, he began.

  Only at one point was his conversation interrupted, or, rather, almost interrupted. That was when I heard the gentle tread of the proprietor’s step approaching our table. However, at the time, I had not been so gripped by what I was listening to, I might have speculated upon why the footsteps moved off at a shuffle that was almost a run. Perhaps the old Hungarian saw something that I, in my drunkenness… no matter; my task now is to reproduce Kesserich’s conversation.

  CHAPTER 12 - KESSERICH: AN AFTERMATH

  (THE STATEMENT OF THE MAN WITH THE BANDAGED FACE)

  So Ellis broke off his story at the crucial moment? Crucial for you. Characteristic of him; always had a way of messing things. Messed me—by making Mary his wife. I could try to unmess it. Probably succeed. No matter.

  Know what I’m doing now, Kramer? Remember your old argument? One I used to dispute. That science was progressing fast, geometrical rate, and would inevitably discover a way of destroying the world. Well, you’re right. Must admit it. Especially since I’m devoting my whole life to squelching science’s advance in certain directions.

  All because I chanced on that damned electrical trick.

  Chanced, I say. Couldn’t be gotten at by a theoretical approach. Firmly convinced that the theory, if one’s possible, is a thousand years ahead of us. Maybe not so far though; anyway, I didn’t understand it. Just chanced on it. One in a million.

  Did Ellis tell you about the apparatus? You must have seen the power line yourself. Way I got started is this:

  Well-known fact that when an electric field is jolted, shifted suddenly, there’s an infinitesimal energy loss. Where does this energy go? No one knows. I think to find out. By pure chance discover a terribly complex arrangement of fields that makes the loss surprisingly great. Great enough to make objects in the field disappear when the jolt comes. Where do they go? Difficult to say, but I find a way of making them come back by subtly reversing shift. Come back from where? The scientist shrugs his shoulders and experiments further. The young wizard is excited. Things like x-hashish seem less than toys.

  My reasons for all this hectic activity? My old desire to get the better of time. Why not walk it like space? Acrobatically minded youngster, was Kesserich. Little knowing the things that walk the inner ways of the world. Asking for it.

  My general theory? In broad, sweeping gestures. Thusly, gentlemen, does the Herr Professor believe: that we people can move in our three-dimensional world because we have some thickness, be it slight, in time, in the fourth dimension. That is, we comprise in ourselves a little future and a little past, we are four-dimensional worms; that’s old stuff.

  Next step: How are we to move in time, the fourth dimension?

  Answer by analogy obvious, namely: to achieve some thickness, be it however slight, in supertime; that is, in the fifth dimension; the dimension that is to our time as our time is to our space. Don’t bother if you can’t picture it to yourself; I was once as badly off.

  But what’s all this loose talk got to do with the energy loss resulting from the field jolt? That’s the question you ought to ask me. Here’s the way my thought went:

  The field jolt invests local time with inertia; the time in the field slows up. That is, whatever’s in the jolted field has its time thicknesses pile up on one another; a drag, an accumulation like that of snow on a snowball rolling in snow. What then? When the pile gets big, its pressure gets big and something has to give. Something does give, namely resistance in the direction of supertime, the fifth dimension. Objects in that jolted field have a new body created for them, a five-dimensional body. They begin to move in supertime and are therefore free to move in the old fourth-dimension time just as if it were space. They can go back into the dead past or forward into the dead future. I say dead because our past and our future are changeless with respect to supertime; it’s only when you move in ordinary time that you think there’s a difference between the past and the future; actually both are equally predetermined and predestined. We live in a universe that is, as you might say, frozen in four dimensions; our universe is located in a calm of dimensional activity; it is like cross-section of…

  But why should I drivel on, trying to make you understand what I don’t? Anyhow, you’ve read part of my diary. In short, I found in my jolting electric fields, a method of giving people
access to the future and the past. People, I say. Tried animals first to see if it was reasonably safe. And access, I say, not transportation. Once through, one had to walk. Walk back across ordinary time. Imbecile. Magnificent. That diary you got hold of describes my first experiences. I was in a hurry and only made sure that the pages describing my apparatus would be burned. Anyhow, you’ve read it; can imagine my wonder. So I’ll skip ahead. Never have time for details. Even now.

  Mary Ellis’s death. I loved her, Kramer. Wanted her. And when she died I saw a way. I could go back in time. Had already done that twice. I would go back to the orchard where she died as it was just before her death! I would remove the cause of her death, the poison on the fruit. That would make her future course through space-time living and not dead. Do you begin now, Kramer, to see the powers of a fifth dimensional creature? He can change the past or the future just as easily as you or I change the present. Mary Ellis couldn’t be dead with source of death—poison—removed. Removed by me, Kesserich.

  That would win her, make her love me. Kesserich a god, resurrecting the woman he loved. She his god-bride. Both on a level above the common herd. Common herd, including one John Ellis, her husband.

  Rotten delusion, all of it. I’m no god, only member of the common herd, member who stumbled on a grandiose discovery. And so that other member of the common herd, one John Ellis, husband, comes to claim his own.

  Why did he come on the night of nights, night I was going back, like a hero or saint, to Mary? Ironic coincidence? Telepathy? Jealous warp in space-time? Which? Can’t guess.

  Come he did. Just as he told you. In a storm. To my door, knocking.

  Why didn’t I send him about his business? Easiest thing in the world, you’d think, but I couldn’t. I was beginning to break, go to pieces, all that. The godlike power was too great for lucky member of common herd, one Daniel Kesserich. The sight of Ellis, distracted, made me feel like just another child. Had to tell him everything; had to! Would have gone to pieces from sheer weight of responsibility otherwise. I couldn’t stand the coincidence of his coming just when he did.

  We both went through, through the path that leads to future and past. Had to take Ellis along, share everything with him, all responsibilities. No initiative left, but still the desire to rescue the woman I loved, even if it was for another.

  About my machine for getting through? That’s one thing I don’t talk about. It’s both simple and complicated; though it wasn’t much to look at, outside of the coils. You just stood in a field of force that was jolted automatically by a time-operated control. There was something about the automatic control in my diary, wasn’t there? That was what made it possible for one to get back, to slough his five-dimensional body. After one got through, time control automatically reversed the direction of the field jolt. What happened then was just the opposite of what happened when one went through. Ordinary time pressure, instead of being increased, was diminished. To relieve this look of pressure, this time-vacuum, there came a flow from the fifth dimension… so all one had to do was to relocate the field of force… and wait for the jolt… You see?

  Sensations on going through? Described in what you read in my diary. Everything opened up immensely, like coming out of a narrow tunnel. As if the world had been as thin as paper before; only now it took on thickness. Could see my room, my laboratory, stretching out into past and future, alternating day and night. Also, time when there was no house there, only desert; could only see that dimly; a blurring effect.

  I’m reminded of another thing: the terrible inertia. Hard for us to walk, hard to make any movement; must be similar to feelings a diver has when undersea. Remember that. Inertia! Got it? Important. Very important point.

  How really to describe it? I can’t. Impossible. Lack proper words, adjectives. Could walk in regular space, or into future or past, or both ways at once. Why weren’t we noticed in Smithville? Because I was careful that we always kept to the past and never touched on the present. A change in our own bodies? There must have been one, but we couldn’t notice it since our sense organs changed at the same time our bodies did. Partakers of the super-dimension, the fifth. Something no person or thing in our world has. Divine power—as you will see. God. Idiots.

  Ellis takes it calmly enough. The calm of shock. Emotions exhausted. Having something to do that takes up all the energy left, nothing startles him.

  Then comes the trip to the orchard where Mary ate the poisoned fruit. Our objective. We walk, we plunge, we plow through the past, and through space. Both ways at once. I said that before. Sometimes it’s night; sometimes day. Remember, we have to go back more than a week in time. But I can’t describe what it felt like. All blurs and is hard to remember, like the things that beat on the sense organs of a newborn baby.

  We leave our track by pebbles that I’d pocketed before. Might get lost. 0 yes, those were the pebbles that you saw appear and that so surprised you. As soon as we’d dropped them they began to grow into the future. At a definite rate. Also the footprints. You mentioned seeing one appear, didn’t you? You see, you just got there when it chanced to catch up with the present. Different time rate. Don’t know the exact difference, except it’s different from ordinary time rate. No matter.

  Important thing is that pebbles and footprints did catch up with the present. Everything we five-dimensional hybrids did in the past had its effect on the present. Ellis tossed a pebble away once. Know what happened—’spite of the inertia? It sped into the future and hit a woman named Peterson. Ellis had to iodine her later. You read about it?

  Damned nerve-racking, as you can see. Anything we did might have its effect, good or bad, on the present. Godlike powers. I step on a worm back in the past and wreck an empire, maybe. Can’t tell what the results of the simplest actions will be. Powers like that too much for member of common herd, one Kesserich.

  Anyhow, we find the fruit that poisoned Mary. Locate it by spotting Mary. Her body stretching out of the past into the future, all continuous. Four-dimensional worm. Even at that Ellis wants to grab her. I hold him; keep telling him that we mustn’t touch more than we absolutely need to touch. It is becoming an obsession with me already. Afraid of those delightfully godlike powers. Naughty Kesserich, don’t touch!

  I will only let Ellis wipe and cleanse the fruit she ate with his handkerchief. You saw that handkerchief too, didn’t you? All popped out of the past for your wondering gaze.

  Have him cleanse the fruit—that is, the fruit as it was before she ate it, but after it had been sprayed. Strangely difficult job for even a five-dimensional Ellis.

  Why all these precautions? Your eyes ask me, Kramer, why? Why didn’t we take her back to the present from a time at which she was still living? Impossible, I tell you. Would mean taking a three-dimensional section out of her four-dimensional body. For now it was four-dimensional to us, a four-dimensional time-snake. Take a whole Mary out of that? A whole Mary, neither more nor less? Impossible. Like trying to cut a single cell out of a human organ with the aid of a butcher knife. We had no four-dimensional surgical instruments. We had to be clever instead.

  So we cleansed the fruit and then went ahead in time to where Mary lay dead. Watching, watching for a result. Praying. Wonder lost in anxiety.

  Then it came. A flush on her death-pale face. A flush, delicate, but a flush. It went through me like light. A miracle! Daniel Kesserich had performed a miracle!

  Then anxiety and worry close in around my godlike feeling. I have performed a miracle, yes, but I have not rescued Mary. What is it to the member of the common herd, Kesserich, that he has, by luck and luck alone, stumbled on a miracle? The woman he loves is not yet safe; safe for another, yes, but safe.

  What to do? What to do? It is the time for caution, stupendous caution. Every move we make changes the future by changing the past. A false step and we wreck—wreck anything, we know not what, perhaps our own lives. For yes! A man can go back and change his own past and so himself. We are as children in an
evil land of faery, Ellis and myself. A false step and Mary, living again, goes forward to die again in a smothering grave or under an embalmer’s knife. I remember she was not embalmed—that is one thing I worry about.

  But the grave. We have made her alive, but will that life reach the present? And if it reaches the present it will find her in the grave. Will we be able to rescue her before that new life is blotted out? Or will the future be changed more radically? Will we go back to find that she had never died, that there has been no death, no funeral, that she still lives as ever. I think not. There is an inertia that works against those changes one makes in the past, especially if they be changes in the thoughts of living creatures. As if nature abhors those lawless changes of the past as she abhors the time-vacuum. She makes them die out, if she can.

  If she can!

  She will kill the reborn Mary, if she can!

  There is but one thing to do. One lone course having a chance in its favor, though all other chances be against it. We cannot take the living Mary out of her four-dimensional body. We cannot tamper further. We must go back to the present and get the body of Mary out of the grave, then wait for the life we gave her to catch up with that lifeless body we steal.

  Begging with Ellis, commanding, finally dragging, I bring him back along the trail of pebbles, through space and time, to my laboratory.

  We stand in the field of force.

  How do we, on the five-dimensional side, locate the right time, as well as place, in which we stand and await the automatic returning jolt? Simple. We find the trail of our own bodies in space, the bodies we have left. We find a time-break in those bodies, a missing segment in the four-dimensional worm. What is that missing segment? It is the spot from which we departed. So—it is also the spot at which there is room for us to return, at which the force-field is operating.

  But the waiting for the return. Nerve-racking. The device is untested, too new; there is always a hideous danger. Then the rush of force; for the first time I feel its crude power and am afraid—but then we are back in the present; the break naturally keeps up with the present, you see.