by Anthology
“Now who,” he said, “has been scattering powdered sulphur around the lab?”
De Witt could have told him. He could also have told him that the sulphur was radioactive.
Russell F. R. Hedges marched through the laboratory on the way to his office. He nodded and smiled at the technicians, saying: “Ah, my dear Hutchinson. Ah, my dear Jones.”
When he passed De Witt, giving his laboratory’s most recent recruit a look of suspicion, De Witt stared at Hedges’ wrist. He shut his good eye—the right one—tight, then blinked it several times.
Then he went back to his artificial eye.
When he got home, he at once took out his fake eye. The shell unscrewed into two parts, and inside it was a neat little X-ray camera, full of exposed one millimeter film. He developed this and printed a series of enlargements. They showed X-rays of Hedges’ wrist, and of the remarkable wrist-watch worn thereupon. The photographs were mere black-and-gray silhouettes, made by the emanations from the radio-active sulphur that De Witt had scattered around. Each showed the inside of the watch as a jumble of coils and cogwheels, and would have been useless by itself. But De Witt, by comparing a number of pictures taken at different angles, formed a good idea of the workings of the gadget. It was Hedges’ time-travel machine all right. On its face were number-disks like those on the odometer of an automobile, reading years and days of the year. All Hedges had to do was set the thing forward or back.
De Witt promptly set about duplicating the machine. It took him three weeks. Collingwood got pretty impatient by the end of that time.
De Witt explained: “You see, chief, all I wanna do is chase this guy out of his own time. Then I’ll fix him so he won’t do nothing.”
“But, De Witt, don’t you remember what His Efficiency said about not molesting—”
“Yeah, I know. But that only has to do with what T do to him now. His Efficiency couldn’t kick about what I did to Hedges five hundred years ago, now could he?”
“Hmmm. Yes. I see your point. Of course I believe in following His Efficiency’s orders, but in combatting a sinister force like this . . .”
De Witt finished his duplicate time-watch. He strapped it on his wrist and spun the setter.
Nothing happened, though the dial showed 2360—five years before. The C. B. I. man cursed softly and spun the disks some more, and still some more. Nothing happened until he reached 2298. Then, whoosh, the room blurred into frantic motion.
De Witt found himself sitting in empty air twelve feet above the ground of a vacant lot, to whose surface he dropped, thump.
He picked himself up. The explanation dawned upon him. He’d gone back to a date before the boarding-house where he lived was built. Thank God he hadn’t tried the stunt in a skyscraper—or on the former site of another building. He wondered what it would feel like to find yourself occupying the same bit of space as a steel I-beam. Probably there’d be a hell of an explosion.
Then he wondered why the gadget had not worked until he had gone back thirty-seven years. He was thirty-six years old—that must be it: you couldn’t occupy your own stretch of time more than once. It wouldn’t do to have two Mendez S. D. De Witts running around simultaneously.
To check, he reversed the direction of the control and advanced the setter slowly. Nothing happened until it registered 2365 again; then whoosh, his boarding-house scrambled into existence, like a movie of a blowing-up in reverse.
Then he finished his paralyzer. It proved something of a disappointment. It worked, but only at a range of a meter or less. And you had to aim carefully at the victim’s neck-vertebrae.
But he inclosed the paralyzer in its eye-shaped case, put the case in his left eye-socket, and walked in on Hedges unannounced.
“Ah, my dear De Witt—” said Hedges, smiling.
“Okay, skip it. I guess you know who I am, buddy.”
“A C. B. I. man? I suspected it. What do you want?”
“You’re coming with me, get me?”
“Yes?” Hedges raised his eyebrows, and touched his wrist-watch. He vanished.
But so did Mendez De Witt.
It was damn funny, sitting there and spinning the setter, and looking at the shadowy form of Hedges on the other side of the desk. As De Witt was only a second or two behind Hedges in his pursuit, he could keep him in sight. When Hedges speeded up his time-travel, De Witt’s strong and agile fingers spun the setter faster; when Hedges vanished for a second, De Witt quickly reversed motion of the setter and picked up Hedges going the other way. When Hedges stopped, De Witt stopped too.
The C. B. I. man grinned at Hedges. “Gotcha, huh?”
“Not quite,” said Hedges. He fished a hand-grenade from his pocket, and started to pull the pin. Dc Witt just sat there, holding the setter. Hedges put the bomb back in his pocket.
De Witt laughed. “Thought you’d turn that thing loose and skip, huh? I can skip just as fast as you can.”
Hedges went back to his time-watch. Forward and backward he spun the disks. De Witt followed him. The next time Hedges stopped, there was a third man in the room; a startled-looking old man.
Hedges looked at him, and jerked a thumb. “One of my predecessors. I recognize his picture.”
“You damn fool,” said De Witt. “If he’d been sitting in that chair too it’d have been blooey for both of you.”
“I suppose so, De Witt. It’s a bit crowded here, don’t you think?” And he began spinning the setter again.
This time De Witt lost him. He went back to the time he’d been at when he last saw Hedges, and went over it carefully. At last he picked up a glimpse of Hedges bouncing out of his chair and running for the door. De Witt adjusted the setter carefully, and managed to stop just as Hedges reached the door.
De Witt ran after him. He had to keep him in sight, not only in the three spacial dimensions, but in time also. Although he was a better runner than Hedges, as he caught up with his victim, Hedges twirled the dial on his wrist and began to fade.
De Witt did the almost impossible feat of running after Hedges and spinning his setter at the same time. They were” outside the Bureau of Standards building. De Witt knew that if he once thoroughly lost his man, he’d never find him.
They stopped running. Hedges slowed down his setter to where De Witt could glimpse motor-vehicles flashing backwards past them. Several went right through them.
“Look out!” yelled De Witt, as Hedges almost stopped his time-travel at a point that intersected the space-time track of a big truck. No sound came; you could move while traveling in time, but you couldn’t hear. Hedges saw his danger and speeded up again.
Hedges gave up time-flight: since it had only one dimension, you could always find a man by moving back and forth along it far enough. He began running physically again, De Witt after him. They raced down Pennsylvania Avenue. De Witt stole a glance at his watch. It read 1959, Hedges, he thought, must have had that bomb ready so that he could carry out his threat by going into the past and blowing up some innocent bystanders. De Witt, tough as he was, was shocked. He reached for his pistol, which he had hoped not to have to use.
Hedges was getting winded. He bumped into a pedestrian. De Witt felt a psychic jar run through him.
Hedges bumped another pedestrian. The pistol vanished from De Witt’s grasp, and an umbrella took its place. He knew what had happened: the bumping of the pedestrian, a trivial matter in itself, was one of those first links in a chain of events that change history.
They were approaching a traffic-circle. In the middle of this was a circular bit of park with an ornamental fountain. A lot of people were sitting around the fountain. De Witt grasped Hedges’ intention when Hedges pulled out his bomb. If he couldn’t get away, he was going to change history right there.
De Witt dodged a couple of automobiles, and with straining lungs caught up with Hedges. He hooked the umbrella-handle around Hedges’ ankle. Brakes squealed and Hedges fell in front of a car. De Witt leaped on him. Again came that ja
rring sensation. De Witt knew that they Were both changing as they struggled. People were looking at them, and the sight was entering into their histories . . .
Hedges got the pin out of his bomb just as De Witt remembered his paralyzing eye. He blinked his real eye, and sighted the phoney on the back of Hedges’ neck. The bomb fell to the asphalt. De Witt snatched it up and tossed it into the fountain. He screamed: “Duck!” People looked at him blankly. Then the bomb went off, sending up a fountain of water and tossing a statue of a Triton high in the air.
The jarring sensation became almost unbearable. De Witt was horrified to feel that he had grown a beard.
A couple of people were cut a little by flying shreds of concrete. But the heavy concrete rim of the fountain had stopped all the bomb-fragments.
A police-car appeared. De Witt became aware, in that second, of many things he hadn’t had time to notice—the ancient appearance of the motor-cars; the colorful costume of the people (colorful, that is, in comparison with the grim black-and-white of his own time).
Hedges lay on the asphalt looking blankly up at him. De Witt stooped down, took the setter of Hedges’ time-watch between the fingers of his left hand, and grasped the setter of his own watch with his right fingers. He gave both setters a twist.
They were still in the traffic-circle. But it was early morning, and almost nobody in sight. The fountain supported another Triton, very new-looking. De Witt had tried to send them ahead one year, and had succeeded.
The effect of the paralysis wore off Hedges; he crawled over to the curb around the fountain and sat on it with his head in his hands.
De Witt looked at him sharply. “Say,” he said, “you aren’t the same guy.”
“You aren’t cither.”
There was little doubt of that; De Witt was six inches taller than he had been, and he still had the horrible beard. His hair was disgustingly long. Mixed up with his memory of his career as a C. B. I. man came another memory, of an easy-going life on a microscopic income, devoted to disreputable friends and the writing of quantities of stickily sentimental poetry.
“I don’t know why I did it,” said Hedges. “I’m not ambitious. All I want is a quiet place in the country.”
“That’s because you aren’t the same man,” said De Witt. “I’m not cither. I’m a damned poet.” He looked at the flower-bed around the fountain, and began to compose:
“The buttercup looks at the yellow rose,
“And loves, as I love thee, who knows?
“But the bee won’t fly to both at once,
“And the buttercup’s love—”
“What rhymes with ‘once’?”
“Dunce,” said Hedges. “Are you going to do that all the time?”
“Probably.”
“It’s awful. But aren’t you going to arrest me or something?”
“N-No. I’m not a policeman any more.” He ran his hand through his long hair. “I think I’ll just stay here and be a poet.”
“I really ought to be arrested.”
“You’ll have to go back—or forward—to your own time and give yourself up, then. I don’t want you.”
Hedges sighed. “The best-laid schemes of mice and men—in changing the history leading up to our time, we of course changed our own history and background. I think I’d like this time too. I brought quite a wad of money along; it ought to be good. I’ll buy a little place in the country and raise flowers, and you can come out and write poetry about them.”
“Russell!”
“Mendez!” Friends for life, they shook hands.
The soundless, motionless earthquake brought Coordinator Bloss and Vincent M. S. Collingwood to their feet. They stared at each other in terror until the disturbance subsided.
“You’ve changed,” said Bloss.
“So have you, Your Efficiency.”
“Not very much though.”
“No, thank God. I imagine Hedges has done all the damage he can. What’s this?”
On the Chief Executive’s desk appeared two time-watches, and a pencilled note. The note read:
To His Efficiency the Co-ordinator of North America, or to Vincent M. S. Collingwood, Director of the C.B.I.:
We’ve decided to stay here, in 1960. We will try not to disturb the space-time structures any more than is necessary for the rest of our lives. The time watches we are sending back to you, as a means of transporting this note. We advise you to destroy them utterly.
If you want to see how I made out, look up a late twentieth century poet of my name. Regards.
MENDEZ S. D. DE WITT
Bloss pulled out volume Dam to Edu of the encyclopedia. “Here he is,” he announced. “Yes, he was quite a well-known poet. Married in 1964, no children. Died in 1980. It even mentions his friend Hedges. I bet that story wasn’t in the encyclopedia last week. What did you do with those watches?”
Collingwood was staring popeyed at the blank desk. “Nothing—they up and disappeared. That’s the most sinister thing I ever saw.”
“Not at all,” said the Co-ordinator. “Hedges and De Witt disturbed the history between their time and ours to the point where Hedges never did any timetravel backwards in our time. So those time-watches never existed.”
“Let’s see—the watches never existed—but they were on the desk a minute ago—but—they took Hedges back so he could make it impossible for him to have done the thing he did to enable him to go back to make it impossible for him to go back—”
Bloss got out a bottle and a couple of glasses. “My dear Collingwood,” he said, “don’t drive yourself crazy trying to resolve the paradoxes of time travel. The watches are one, and I for one say it’s a good thing. Have a drink.”
Collingwood snatched up his glass. “Now, Your Efficiency, you’re talking sense!””
THE CATCH
Kage Baker
The barn stands high in the middle of back-country nowhere, shimmering in summer heat. It’s an old barn, empty a long time, and its broad planks are silvered. Nothing much around it but yellow hills and red rock.
Long ago, somebody painted it with a mural. Still visible along its broad wall are the blobs representing massed crowds, the green diamond of a baseball park, and the primitive-heroic figure of an outfielder leaping, glove raised high. His cartoon eyes are wide and happy. The ball, radiating black lines of force, is sailing into his glove. Above him is painted the legend:
WHAT A CATCH!
And, in smaller letters below it:
1951, The Golden Year!
The old highway snakes just below the barn, where once the mural must have edified a long cavalcade of DeSotos, Packards and Oldsmobiles. But the old road is white and empty now, with thistles pushing through its cracks. The new highway runs straight across the plain below.
Down on the new highway, eighteen-wheeler rigs hurtle through, roaring like locomotives, and they are the only things to disturb the vast silence. The circling hawk makes no sound. The cottonwood trees by the edge of the dry stream are silent too, not a rustle or a creak along the whole row; but they do cast a thin gray shade, and the men waiting in the Volkswagen Bug are grateful for that.
They might be two cops on stakeout. They aren’t. Not exactly.
“Are you going to tell me why we’re sitting here, now?” asks the younger man, finishing his candy bar.
His name is Clete. The older man’s name is Porfirio.
The older man shifts in his seat and looks askance at his partner. He doesn’t approve of getting stoned on the job. But he shrugs, checks his weapon, settles into the most comfortable position he can find.
He points through the dusty windshield at the barn. “See up there? June 30, 1958, family of five killed.’46 Plymouth Club Coupe. Driver lost control of the car and went off the edge of the road. Car rolled seventy meters down that hill and hit the rocks, right there. Gas tank blew. Mr and Mrs William T. Ross of Visalia, California identified from dental records. Kids didn’t have any dental records. No rel
atives to identify bodies.
“Articles in the local and Visalia papers, grave with the whole family’s names and dates on one marker in a cemetery in Visalia. Some blackening on the rocks up there. That’s all there is to show it ever happened.”
“Okay,” say the younger man, nodding thoughtfully. “No witnesses, right?”
“That’s right.”
“The accident happened on a lonely road, and state troopers or whoever found the wreck after the fact?”
“Yeah.”
“And the bodies were so badly burned they all went in one grave?” Clete looks pleased with himself. “So . . . forensic medicine being what it was in 1958, maybe there weren’t five bodies in the car after all? Maybe one of the kids was thrown clear on the way down the hill? And if there was somebody in the future going through historical records, looking for incidents where children vanished without a trace, this might draw their attention, right?”
“It might,” agrees Porfirio.
“So the Company sent an operative to see if any survivors could be salvaged,” says Clete. “Okay, that’s standard Company procedure. The Company took one of the kids alive, and he became an operative. So why are we here?”
Porfirio sighs, watching the barn.
“Because the kid didn’t become an operative,” he says. “He became a problem.”
1958. Bobby Ross, all-American boy, was ten years old, and he loved baseball and cowboy movies and riding his bicycle. All-American boys get bored on long trips. Bobby got bored. He was leaning out the window of his parents’ car when he saw the baseball mural on the side of the barn.
“Hey, look!” he yelled, and leaned way out the window to see better. He slipped.
“Jesus Christ!” screamed his mom, and lunging into the back she tried to grab the seat of his pants. She collided with his dad’s arm. His dad cursed; the car swerved. Bobby felt himself gripped, briefly, and then all his mom had was one of his sneakers, and then the sneaker came off his foot. Bobby flew from the car just as it went over the edge of the road.
