by Anthology
“You gonna Sunday school?” Larry asked, mercifully unaware of the fate Allan foresaw for him.
“Why, no. I have some things I want to do at home.” He’d have to watch himself. Larry would spot a difference quicker than any adult. “Heck with it,” he added.
“Golly, I wisht I c’ld stay home from Sunday school whenever I wanted to,” Larry envied. “How about us goin’ swimmin’, at the Canoe Club, ’safter?”
Allan thought fast. “Gee, I wisht I c’ld,” he replied, lowering his grammatical sights. “I gotta stay home, ’safter. We’re expectin’ comp’ny; coupla aunts of mine. Dad wants me to stay home when they come.”
That went over all right. Anybody knew that there was no rational accounting for the vagaries of the adult mind, and no appeal from adult demands. The prospect of company at the Hartley home would keep Larry away, that afternoon. He showed his disappointment.
“Aw, jeepers creepers!” he blasphemed euphemistically.
“Mebbe t’morrow,” Allan said. “If I c’n make it. I gotta go, now; ain’t had breakfast yet.” He scuffed his feet boyishly, exchanged so-longs with his friend, and continued homeward.
As he had hoped, the Sunday paper kept his father occupied at breakfast, to the exclusion of any dangerous table talk. Blake Hartley was still deep in the financial section when Allan left the table and went to the library. There should be two books there to which he wanted badly to refer. For a while, he was afraid that his father had not acquired them prior to 1945, but he finally found them, and carried them onto the front porch, along with a pencil and a ruled yellow scratch pad. In his experienced future—or his past-to-come—Allan Hartley had been accustomed to doing his thinking with a pencil. As reporter, as novelist plotting his work, as amateur chemist in his home laboratory, as scientific warfare research officer, his ideas had always been clarified by making notes. He pushed a chair to the table and built up the seat with cushions, wondering how soon he would become used to the proportional disparity between himself and the furniture. As he opened the books and took his pencil in his hand, there was one thing missing. If he could only smoke a pipe, now!
His father came out and stretched in a wicker chair with the Times book-review section. The morning hours passed. Allan Hartley leafed through one book and then the other. His pencil moved rapidly at times; at others, he doodled absently. There was no question, any more, in his mind, as to what or who he was. He was Allan Hartley, a man of forty-three, marooned in his own thirteen-year-old body, thirty years back in his own past. That was, of course, against all common sense, but he was easily able to ignore that objection. It had been made before: against the astronomy of Copernicus, and the geography of Columbus, and the biology of Darwin, and the industrial technology of Samuel Colt, and the military doctrines of Charles de Gaulle. Today’s common sense had a habit of turning into tomorrow’s utter nonsense. What he needed, right now, but bad, was a theory that would explain what had happened to him.
Understanding was beginning to dawn when Mrs. Stauber came out to announce midday dinner.
“I hope you von’t mind haffin’ it so early,” she apologized. “Mein sister, Jennie, offer in Nippenose, she iss sick; I vant to go see her, dis afternoon, yet. I’ll be back in blenty time to get supper, Mr. Hartley.”
“Hey, Dad!” Allan spoke up. “Why can’t we get our own supper, and have a picnic, like? That’d be fun, and Mrs. Stauber could stay as long as she wanted to.”
His father looked at him. Such consideration for others was a most gratifying deviation from the juvenile norm; dawn of altruism, or something. He gave hearty assent:
“Why, of course, Mrs. Stauber. Allan and I can shift for ourselves, this evening; can’t we, Allan? You needn’t come back till tomorrow morning.”
“Ach, t’ank you! T’ank you so mooch, Mr. Hartley.”
At dinner, Allan got out from under the burden of conversation by questioning his father about the War and luring him into a lengthy dissertation on the difficulties of the forthcoming invasion of Japan. In view of what he remembered of the next twenty-four hours, Allan was secretly amused. His father was sure that the War would run on to mid-1946.
After dinner, they returned to the porch, Hartley père smoking a cigar and carrying out several law books. He only glanced at these occasionally; for the most part, he sat and blew smoke rings, and watched them float away. Some thrice-guilty felon was about to be triumphantly acquitted by a weeping jury; Allan could recognize a courtroom masterpiece in the process of incubation.
It was several hours later that the crunch of feet on the walk caused father and son to look up simultaneously. The approaching visitor was a tall man in a rumpled black suit; he had knobby wrists and big, awkward hands; black hair flecked with gray, and a harsh, bigoted face. Allan remembered him. Frank Gutchall. Lived on Campbell Street; a religious fanatic, and some sort of lay preacher. Maybe he needed legal advice; Allan could vaguely remember some incident—
“Ah, good afternoon, Mr. Gutchall. Lovely day, isn’t it?” Blake Hartley said.
Gutchall cleared his throat. “Mr. Hartley, I wonder if you could lend me a gun and some bullets,” he began, embarrassedly. “My little dog’s been hurt, and it’s suffering something terrible. I want a gun, to put the poor thing out of its pain.”
“Why, yes; of course. How would a 20-gauge shotgun do?” Blake Hartley asked. “You wouldn’t want anything heavy.”
Gutchall fidgeted. “Why, er, I was hoping you’d let me have a little gun.” He held his hands about six inches apart. “A pistol, that I could put in my pocket. It wouldn’t look right, to carry a hunting gun on the Lord’s day; people wouldn’t understand that it was for a work of mercy.”
The lawyer nodded. In view of Gutchall’s religious beliefs, the objection made sense.
“Well, I have a Colt .38-special,” he said, “but you know, I belong to this Auxiliary Police outfit. If I were called out for duty, this evening, I’d need it. How soon could you bring it back?”
Something clicked in Allan Hartley’s mind. He remembered, now, what that incident had been. He knew, too, what he had to do.
“Dad, aren’t there some cartridges left for the Luger?” he asked.
Blake Hartley snapped his fingers. “By George, yes! I have a German automatic I can let you have, but I wish you’d bring it back as soon as possible. I’ll get it for you.”
Before he could rise, Allan was on his feet.
“Sit still, Dad; I’ll get it. I know where the cartridges are.” With that, he darted into the house and upstairs.
The Luger hung on the wall over his father’s bed. Getting it down, he dismounted it, working with rapid precision. He used the blade of his pocketknife to unlock the endpiece of the breechblock, slipping out the firing pin and buttoning it into his shirt pocket. Then he reassembled the harmless pistol, and filled the clip with 9-millimeter cartridges from the bureau drawer.
There was an extension telephone beside the bed. Finding Gutchall’s address in the directory, he lifted the telephone, and stretched his handkerchief over the mouthpiece. Then he dialed Police Headquarters.
“This is Blake Hartley,” he lied, deepening his voice and copying his father’s tone. “Frank Gutchall, who lives at . . . take this down”—he gave Gutchall’s address—“has just borrowed a pistol from me, ostensibly to shoot a dog. He has no dog. He intends shooting his wife. Don’t argue about how I know; there isn’t time. Just take it for granted that I do. I disabled the pistol—took out the firing pin—but if he finds out what I did, he may get some other weapon. He’s on his way home, but he’s on foot. If you hurry, you may get a man there before he arrives, and grab him before he finds out the pistol won’t shoot.”
“O. K., Mr. Hartley. We’ll take care of it. Thanks.”
“And I wish you’d get my pistol back, as soon as you can. It’s something I brought home from the other War, and I shouldn’t like to lose it.”
“We’ll take care of that, too
. Thank you, Mr. Hartley.”
He hung up, and carried the Luger and the loaded clip down to the porch.
“Look, Mr. Gutchall; here’s how it works,” he said, showing it to the visitor. Then he slapped in the clip and yanked up on the toggle loading the chamber. “It’s ready to shoot, now; this is the safety.” He pushed it on. “When you’re ready to shoot, just shove it forward and up, and then pull the trigger. You have to pull the trigger each time; it’s loaded for eight shots. And be sure to put the safety back when you’re through shooting.”
“Did you load the chamber?” Blake Hartley demanded.
“Sure. It’s on safe, now.”
“Let me see.” His father took the pistol, being careful to keep his finger out of the trigger guard, and looked at it. “Yes, that’s all right.” He repeated the instructions Allan had given, stressing the importance of putting the safety on after using. “Understand how it works, now?” he asked.
“Yes, I understand how it works. Thank you, Mr. Hartley. Thank you, too, young man.”
Gutchall put the Luger in his hip pocket, made sure it wouldn’t fall out, and took his departure.
“You shouldn’t have loaded it,” Hartley père reproved, when he was gone.
Allan sighed. This was it; the masquerade was over.
“I had to, to keep you from fooling with it,” he said. “I didn’t want you finding out that I’d taken out the firing pin.”
“You what?”
“Gutchall didn’t want that gun to shoot a dog. He has no dog. He meant to shoot his wife with it. He’s a religious maniac; sees visions, hears voices, receives revelations, talks with the Holy Ghost. The Holy Ghost probably put him up to this caper. I’ll submit that any man who holds long conversations with the Deity isn’t to be trusted with a gun, and neither is any man who lies about why he wants one. And while I was at it, I called the police, on the upstairs phone. I had to use your name; I deepened my voice and talked through a handkerchief.”
“You—” Blake Hartley jumped as though bee-stung. “Why did you have to do that?”
“You know why. I couldn’t have told them, ‘This is little Allan Hartley, just thirteen years old; please, Mr. Policeman, go and arrest Frank Gutchall before he goes root-toot-toot at his wife with my pappa’s Luger.’ That would have gone over big, now, wouldn’t it?”
“And suppose he really wants to shoot a dog; what sort of a mess will I be in?”
“No mess at all. If I’m wrong—which I’m not—I’ll take the thump for it, myself. It’ll pass for a dumb kid trick, and nothing’ll be done. But if I’m right, you’ll have to front for me. They’ll keep your name out of it, but they’d give me a lot of cheap boy-hero publicity, which I don’t want.” He picked up his pencil again. “We should have the complete returns in about twenty minutes.”
That was a ten-minute under-estimate, and it was another quarter-hour before the detective-sergeant who returned the Luger had finished congratulating Blake Hartley and giving him the thanks of the Department. After he had gone, the lawyer picked up the Luger, withdrew the clip, and ejected the round in the chamber.
“Well,” he told his son, “you were right. You saved that woman’s life.” He looked at the automatic, and then handed it across the table. “Now, let’s see you put that firing pin back.”
Allan Hartley dismantled the weapon, inserted the missing part, and put it together again, then snapped it experimentally and returned it to his father. Blake Hartley looked at it again, and laid it on the table.
“Now, son, suppose we have a little talk,” he said softly.
“But I explained everything.” Allan objected innocently.
“You did not,” his father retorted. “Yesterday you’d never have thought of a trick like this; why, you wouldn’t even have known how to take this pistol apart. And at dinner, I caught you using language and expressing ideas that were entirely outside anything you’d ever known before. Now, I want to know—and I mean this literally.”
Allan chuckled. “I hope you’re not toying with the rather medieval notion of obsession,” he said.
Blake Hartley started. Something very like that must have been flitting through his mind. He opened his mouth to say something, then closed it abruptly.
“The trouble is, I’m not sure you aren’t right,” his son continued. “You say you find me—changed. When did you first notice a difference?”
“Last night, you were still my little boy. This morning—” Blake Hartley was talking more to himself than to Allan. “I don’t know. You were unusually silent at breakfast. And come to think of it, there was something . . . something strange . . . about you when I saw you in the hall, upstairs . . . Allan!” he burst out, vehemently. “What has happened to you?”
Allan Hartley felt a twinge of pain. What his father was going through was almost what he, himself, had endured, in the first few minutes after waking.
“I wish I could be sure, myself, Dad,” he said. “You see, when I woke, this morning, I hadn’t the least recollection of anything I’d done yesterday. August 4, 1945, that is,” he specified. “I was positively convinced that I was a man of forty-three, and my last memory was of lying on a stretcher, injured by a bomb explosion. And I was equally convinced that this had happened in 1975.”
“Huh?” His father straightened. “Did you say nineteen seventy-five?” He thought for a moment. “That’s right; in 1975, you will be forty-three. A bomb, you say?”
Allan nodded. “During the siege of Buffalo, in the Third World War,” he said, “I was a captain in G5—Scientific Warfare, General Staff. There’d been a transpolar air invasion of Canada, and I’d been sent to the front to check on service failures of a new lubricating oil for combat equipment. A week after I got there, Ottawa fell, and the retreat started. We made a stand at Buffalo, and that was where I copped it. I remember being picked up, and getting a narcotic injection. The next thing I knew, I was in bed, upstairs, and it was 1945 again, and I was back in my own little thirteen-year-old body.”
“Oh, Allan, you just had a nightmare to end nightmares!” his father assured him, laughing a trifle too heartily. “That’s all!”
“That was one of the first things I thought of. I had to reject it; it just wouldn’t fit the facts. Look; a normal dream is part of the dreamer’s own physical brain, isn’t it? Well, here is a part about two thousand per cent greater than the whole from which it was taken. Which is absurd.”
“You mean all this Battle of Buffalo stuff? That’s easy. All the radio commentators have been harping on the horrors of World War III, and you couldn’t have avoided hearing some of it. You just have an undigested chunk of H. V. Kaltenborn raising hell in your subconscious.”
“It wasn’t just World War III; it was everything. My four years at high school, and my four years at Penn State, and my seven years as a reporter on the Philadelphia Record. And my novels: Children of the Mist, Rose of Death, Conqueror’s Road.’ They were no kid stuff. Why, yesterday I’d never even have thought of some of the ideas I used in my detective stories, that I published under a nom-de-plume. And my hobby, chemistry; I was pretty good at that. Patented a couple of processes that made me as much money as my writing. You think a thirteen-year-old just dreamed all that up? Or, here; you speak French, don’t you?” He switched languages and spoke at some length in good conversational slang-spiced Parisian. “Too bad you don’t speak Spanish, too,” he added, reverting to English. “Except for a Mexican accent you could cut with a machete, I’m even better there than in French. And I know some German, and a little Russian.”
Blake Hartley was staring at his son, stunned. It was some time before he could make himself speak.
“I could barely keep up with you, in French,” he admitted. “I can swear that in the last thirteen years of your life, you had absolutely no chance to learn it. All right; you lived till 1975, you say. Then, all of a sudden, you found yourself back here, thirteen years old, in 1945. I suppose you remember everythin
g in between?” he asked. “Did you ever read James Branch Cabell? Remember Florian de Puysange, in The High Place?”
“Yes. You find the same idea in Jurgen too,” Allan said. “You know, I’m beginning to wonder if Cabell mightn’t have known something he didn’t want to write.”
“But it’s impossible!” Blake Hartley hit the table with his hand, so hard that the heavy pistol bounced. The loose round he had ejected from the chamber toppled over and started to roll, falling off the edge. He stooped and picked it up. “How can you go back, against time? And the time you claim you came from doesn’t exist, now; it hasn’t happened yet.” He reached for the pistol magazine, to insert the cartridge, and as he did, he saw the books in front of his son. “Dunne’s Experiment with Time,” he commented. “And J. N. M. Tyrrell’s Science and Psychical Phenomena. Are you trying to work out a theory?”
“Yes.” It encouraged Allan to see that his father had unconsciously adopted an adult-to-adult manner. “I think I’m getting somewhere, too. You’ve read these books? Well, look, Dad; what’s your attitude on precognition? The ability of the human mind to exhibit real knowledge, apart from logical inference, of future events? You think Dunne is telling the truth about his experiences? Or that the cases in Tyrrell’s book are properly verified, and can’t be explained away on the basis of chance?”
Blake Hartley frowned. “I don’t know,” he confessed. “The evidence is the sort that any court in the world would accept, if it concerned ordinary, normal events. Especially the cases investigated by the Society for Psychical Research: they have been verified. But how can anybody know of something that hasn’t happened yet? If it hasn’t happened yet, it doesn’t exist, and you can’t have real knowledge of something that has no real existence.”
