The Time Masters

by Wilson Tucker

  “He is a tall man, three or four inches taller than myself. Well over six foot, I’d say. Wears his hair in a crew cut, light brown, almost sandy.” Dikty glanced at his superior. “He looks like an Egyptian.”

  “What?”

  “An Egyptian. Tanned skin as though most of his life had been spent out of doors; a strangely hardened or old skin as though he had been living on a desert or the windy plains. I found his eyes quite odd. The corneas are yellow. That is a peculiarity common to people in the Far East and sometimes the Middle East. It strengthened my impression of an Egyptian. Physically, he’s a fine specimen. Lithe—I’d judge his weight at about 175 pounds, evenly distributed. For some queer reason he gives the impression of speed in his build, as though he were constantly poised for flight, or had been a track star in college and continued to keep in practice. Trim and fast, always alert for something.

  “He seems to be a quiet, unassuming man, not married. Drives a two-year-old car and lives alone just outside of town on a rented place, a mile or so beyond the trailer camp. Has a small house and a couple of acres out there—nice rural picture except that he doesn’t follow the pattern set by the neighbours. No garden, no poultry, no livestock—just himself and an apple orchard. He doesn’t visit or encourage visitors. If he has any women friends, I haven’t discovered them. I’ve checked his mail through the post office and he receives little or nothing beyond a mass of technical journals and books. His evenings are as quiet as his days—sometimes at the library, once in a while a movie, occasionally just walking about town, but mostly at home alone. Bookworm type. He is less a part of this town than the people living in the trailers.”

  “You haven’t mentioned his age,” Cummings said.

  “No—I haven’t.” Dikty stared at his supervisor, a wrinkled frown creasing his forehead. “When he first made application to the police for his license in 1942, he stated he was thirty-one.”

  Cummings nodded. “And today?”

  “He seems to be thirty-one.”

  Cummings added in an ironic undertone, “Apparently.”

  “Tell me . . . Why our investigation? What started it?” Cummings had returned to his study of the pool of sunlight. There seemed to be a fascination in it.

  “That, too, was a routine thing,” he answered finally. “Someone discovered that he subscribed to every bulletin and journal of science currently published in the free world.” Cummings waved a broad, sweeping hand. “Archeology, geology, astronomy, meteorology, chemistry, medicine, nuclear physics, everything. It was that last which initially attracted our attention. Someone was checking the subscription lists and stumbled across his name on them all, down to and including a social journal for the atomic scientists. When someone noticed that his address was Knoxville, the routine began.” His hard knuckles rapped the papers on the desk. “And you know the rest.” Dikty was still frowning. “Subject apparently has an overly healthy interest in science. All science.”

  “Subject’s interest might even be an unhealthy one,” Cummings retorted drily. “And so we are continuing the investigation. I want to know the source of his income, so we are checking his tax returns. I want to know how he appeared in Miami without previous trace, so we are checking all ships that put into that port on and before the day of appearance. And checking other Florida ports as well. I want to know what is behind the mysterious coincidences of those dates, so we will continue to investigate him. You stay on the job—stay on him.” He sat up and abruptly turned away from the sunlight to lock eyes with the other man. “I have already assigned another investigator to the case. Here.”

  Dikty said nothing, awaiting clarification.

  “That is no reflection on your ability or your work,” Cummings said decisively. “I’m satisfied you have done all that could be done. But I’m also satisfied that the subject is aware of you and aware of the supposedly secret organization you represent. I can see no other way of explaining that taxicab incident. We will bear in mind that his intentions toward you—and us—are friendly, otherwise he would have let you go to your death. Take note that he made no attempt to prevent the deaths of the woman and the cab driver—only you. But still, the primary purpose of our organization is to protect our atomic structure against all comers, so he must remain under suspicion and investigation. Continue on that basis; meanwhile a new investigator he does not know has been moved in. To approach him in a new way. I prefer that you and the new agent do not know each other—I don’t want to run the risk of having the subject link the two of you together. If an occasion should arise when you must reveal identities, you will be cousins.”

  “My cousin?”

  “Yes, that is safe enough. You have no real cousins.”

  “Very well.”

  “Our procedure from this point forward will be to determine how the subject knew those various important dates in advance. I’ll start Washington digging into the scientific and political circles of 1939 and 1940. Something may come up to connect it all. I hope so.”

  “I’m sorry, but you are way ahead of me.”

  “In 1939 and 1940,” Cummings sketched the outline for him, “only the President and a very tight little knot of scientific and political advisors knew the United States was speculating in nuclear physics; you know the degree of secrecy maintained on that score. But still, our subject appears in public view for the first known time. In 1942, only the President and a slightly larger group of advisors and planners knew that these Tennessee hills would be the future site of an atomic plant. So, our subject appears here and opens an office—an investigator’s office, of all things. Talk about your protective colouration! And finally, about a year and a half ago, an agent of a supersecret security organization barely misses an appointment with death. Again our subject is in the right place at the right time. We find now that he is overly curious of the sciences, follows their discoveries.”

  “He doesn’t seem to age,” Dikty said absently.

  “How did he know of that historic birth in Washington, in 1940?” Cummings demanded. “How did he know Oak Ridge would be built out here, in 1942? How did he know of your existence—and perhaps mine? Believe me, Dikty, when I say this outfit is tight, I mean tight. We don’t so much as have an official name—we just exist. And not all of the President’s Cabinet members know of our existence—only a few of them. We don’t appear on any pay roll; money is secretly siphoned off to us. We aren’t responsible to any government agency, only the next man in line above us. And each of us, every one of us knows only a small handful of fellow agents. We don’t even know who is actually controlling us.” Cummings bounded from his chair and stalked to the window to glare across the intervening blocks at the tall white building down the street. “How did he know of you and why did he save your life?”

  Dikty shook his head worriedly. “I can’t tell you.”

  The supervisor’s fists were clenched behind his back, knotted in an angry ball. “I’m going to find out!” he said savagely. “I’m going to root out everything there is to know about that man, all the way back to the hour of his birth. If he was born! I’m going to find out why his eyes are yellow, why his skin is hardened, why he hasn’t aged, why he lacks a past, why he thought you were worth saving, why he’s in Knoxville. I’m going to do more than that; I’m going to find out why he’s alive. He represents a threat that I refuse to allow to exist; we will either discover exactly who and what he is, or he may cease to exist. I’ll tolerate no half-mysteries about him!” Cummings paused in his tirade and half turned from the window. “Has he seen you—since the taxicab incident?”

  “I’d like to say no.” Dikty was uncomfortable. “I take a deep pride in my training and my job, and under ordinary circumstances I would say no, definitely. I’ve been extremely careful in shadowing him. But considering the unusual abilities of the subject—yes, he has probably spotted me.”

  Cummings turned back to the open window and stood in the sun shine. His outward anger seemed to have vanishe
d, and when he spoke his voice was soft, silken. His eyes sought out the distant office building.

  “What’s his name again? Nash what?”

  “Gilbert Nash. An assumed name, I suppose.”

  II.

  Gilbert Nash was aware of the man’s bewildered footsteps wandering along the corridor just outside, was aware of the stranger’s hesitancy for several minutes before the man actually paused at the door and put his hand on the knob. The steps were slow and somewhat baffled, ill at ease, as though their owner had forced himself this far but didn’t quite know what to do next—or couldn’t make up his mind to do it. They had faded away for some seconds as the man drifted along to the far end of the corridor, and then they returned to pause at last before his office door. The shape of the bewildered man appeared only as a fuzzy haze on the door’s frosted glass pane. Gilbert Nash remained in his chair and watched the indistinct shape, watched to see what it would finally do.

  The knob turned suddenly and the man darted in.

  He stopped just past the doorway staring at Nash, looking to see what a private detective would be like, looking around the room without actually seeing it, still undecided what to do.

  Nash slowly got to his feet. “Come on in. I won’t bite you.” His voice was low, casual and pleasant; it sounded as though the speaker didn’t really care if the stranger entered or not. Whatever the bewildered man chose to do was acceptable.

  The newcomer made a move to push the door shut behind him. “I’m—I came up to see you. My name is—is it quite all right? May I talk?”

  Nash nodded, amused. “Quite all right. You are here with a problem. There is the same confidence between a client and myself as between doctor and patient.” He reached out a casual hand to half turn an empty chair toward the visitor. “Come in and sit down.”

  The man was wearing most of his troubles on his timid face. It needed no second glatice to reveal that he wasn’t merely having domestic difficulties, he was drowning in the miseries. It was in his walk, in his unconscious slouch as he sank into the proffered chair, it hung from his shoulders like the unpressed coat he wore and it preyed on his mind constantly, spilling out over his face. He failed to see Nash’s outstretched hand, may have failed to see the man himself very clearly. He slumped in the chair and ran a moist palm across his forehead, moist from things other than the mild summer heat. Knoxville in the summer could be hot, but not that insufferable.

  “I don’t want this in the papers,” the man said.

  Nash smiled politely. “It won’t be. Unless you’ve murdered someone.”

  “Oh, heavens, no!” His voice and his body had risen with alarm at the suggestion, and now he slowly dropped back into the chair, forcibly relaxing. “Nothing like that, oh no, nothing. It’s my—my name is Gregg Hodgkins. It’s my wife . . .”

  Nash nodded. “Of course.”

  Hodgkins was well dressed but he wasn’t so well pressed. He crushed an expensive straw hat in his hands and occasionally discovered himself worrying his twisted necktie. He wasn’t a soft man by any measure; he possessed no paunch, his fingers were long and sure even though they were nervous now. His eyes were intelligent enough behind their blanket of worry, and his hairline was beginning to recede. He smelled pleasantly of a fresh after-shave lotion and the white shirt he wore was only barely beginning to muss. Hodgkins also wore a small A-C-T pin in his lapel.

  “What about your wife?” Nash prodded gently. “Is she objecting to your work over on the Ridge?”

  Hodgkins shot upright with sudden suspicion. “How did you know about that?”

  Nash indicated the lapel pin. “I recognize that. I know that the American Chemical Trust runs the plant for the government, and I know that not every employee may wear one of those pins. You’re some sort of a scientist out there; I wondered if your wife was objecting to your work.”

  “Oh . . . yes.” Hodgkins fingered the pin absently. “Silly of me not to recognize the public significance of the thing. I’m afraid I’m not thinking very clearly any more. No, it isn’t that—isn’t my work. My wife, she . . . Mr. Nash, you just have to find my wife t”

  “Is she lost?”

  “She ran away.”

  “Oh? When?”

  “Less than . . . I’d say three weeks ago.”

  “Why?”

  Hodgkins seemed to grow more miserable. “That’s a long story, a very long story.”

  “All right. I’ll listen—I’ve got all afternoon. You do want to tell me, don’t you?”

  The scientist sat up stiffly and stared into Nash’s probing, yellowed eyes while the words tumbled eagerly out. “Oh, yes, everything—I want to tell you everything, Mr. Nash. I don’t know where else to turn. But you probably won’t believe me. They didn’t.”

  Gilbert Nash interlaced his fingers and relaxed in the desk chair, seeking comfort. “Who are they?”

  “My doctor, and the company psychiatrist recommended by the doctor.” He jerked out a crumpled handkerchief to swab his face. “I went to my doctor first from force of habit; I grew up in the habit of taking everything to the doctor, and he never failed me before.” Hodgkins hesitated only long enough to risk a glance across the desk at Nash. “I could have saved myself the trouble,” he added bitterly.

  Nash almost folded himself into the chair, seeking the most comfortable position. His eyelids closed and his interlaced fingers were still. “The doctor said perhaps that you were imagining things? That you needed a rest?”

  “Yes.”

  “And the psychiatrist?”

  “He agreed with my doctor,” Hodgkins continued in the bitter voice. “He sent me home. And I haven’t worked for three weeks—that hurts, too. I haven’t worked since she left me.”

  “The psychiatrist?” Nash prodded.

  “He said almost the same thing as my doctor but of course stated it in a different manner; a mild neurosis, he told me, cumulative anxiety brought on by my exacting work and the attendant, continual pressures. Oh, he made it sound impressive, but mild and altogether harmless.” Hodgkins paused again to look across at Nash. “I can’t tell you what my work is.”

  “I’m not going to ask.” He didn’t move, didn’t open his eyes but the hint of amusement returned to his face.

  “Do you know what that silly psychiatrist said to me?” Hodgkins demanded. “He said I would probably be a very happy man in a matriarchal community, but that for the present there was nothing to worry about. And he sent me home from work; he comes around a few times a week to look in on me. Me—a grown man.” He hesitated again. “And Mr. Nash, he reassured me that I am reasonably sane, as sane as any man can be in this world today. I say that because I can’t be sure what you are thinking of me.”

  “Never mind what I’m thinking. Your work and mine are alike in one respect; I don’t form opinions until I’ve heard the entire story. And if it is any comfort to you, sanity is a legal term, it doesn’t properly belong in medical terminology.” Nash nodded his head. “Please go on.”

  “Thank you.” Hodgkins exhibited a minute measure of satisfaction. “I need someone who can place faith in me, in what I have to say.”

  Nash nodded again, still with a faint trace of amusement. “And so you came to me.”

  “Yes. I read a great deal, both fact and fiction. And in a vicarious way I believe I know the detect—the business of investigation fairly well. I have a healthy respect for your profession I’ve come to look upon your kind as trouble shooters, jacks-of-all-trades. Frankly, Mr. Nash, you are the only remaining person I can turn to.” He broke off again to stare intently at the listening man. “Will you do me a very great favour?”

  Nash slowly opened his eyes to regard the scientist with speculation. “If I am able—yes.”

  “Please”—the words were tumbling again, rushed arid unsure—“don’t laugh at me. Don’t laugh at what I’m going to say. I know very well my facts will sound silly and childish, perhaps even fantastic, and under other circumstances I m
ight well laugh myself. But they aren’t silly, they are bare, bald facts, the only things I have left to cling to. And I don’t want you to laugh, no matter what you choose to believe of me. I don’t want you to pat my shoulder and tell me I am imagining things, that I need a long rest, that I would be happy in a matriarchal state.” He paused for breath. If you choose not to believe me, tell me so and I’ll leave. Refuse me—my case, if you so desire, and stop right there. I’ll walk out that door and not bother you again. But don’t laugh at me.”

  Nash nodded assent. “That much is easily granted.” He closed his eyes a second time and relaxed in the chair. “Where are you going to begin?”

  “With my wife, with Carolyn. Everything begins with my wife—and ends there. The entire affair seems to be a complete circle of zero, our marriage, our life together; everything comes right back to her and ends where it began.” He paused, summoning courage for what he had to say next. “She’s too damned smart!”

  With that he came to a full stop, looking for a reaction on the part of Nash. There was none. Nash remained curled in the chair, patiently waiting for him to continue.

  “Have you ever had the misfortune to marry a woman far more intelligent than yourself, Mr. Nash?”

  “No.”

  Hodgkins rushed on. “But surely you can imagine what a man desires in a woman. It has been said before by men more gifted than myself—an inspired chef in the kitchen, a patient mule about the house, a . . .”

  Nash finished for him when he hesitated, “And a whore in the bedroom.”