by Anthology
The old man went into his house and sat down and worried. It was three in the morning. He saw his own pale small hands trembling on his knees. He was all joints and angles, and his face, reflected above the mantel, was no more than a pale cloud of breath exhaled upon the mirror.
The children laughed softly outside, in the leaf piles.
He switched out his flashlight quietly and sat in the dark. Why he should be in any way bothered by playing children he could not know. But it was late for them to be out, at three in the morning, playing. He was very cold.
There was a sound of a key in the door and the old man arose to go see who could possibly be coming into his house. The front door opened and a young man entered with a young woman. They were looking at each other softly and tenderly, holding hands, and the old man stared at them and cried, ‘What are you doing in my house?’
The young man and the young woman replied, ‘What are you doing in our house?’ The young man said, ‘Here now, get on out.’ And took the old man by the elbow and shoved him out of the door and closed and locked it after searching him to see if he had stolen something.
‘This is my house, you can’t lock me out.’ The old man beat upon the door. He stood in the dark morning air. Looking up he saw the lights illumine the warm inside windows and rooms upstairs and then, with a move of shadows, go out.
The old man walked down the street and came back and still the small boys rolled in the dark icy morning leaves, not looking at him. He stood before the house and as he watched the lights turned on and turned off more than a thousand times. He counted softly under his breath.
A young boy of about fourteen ran by to the house, a football in his hand. He opened the door without even trying to unlock it, and went in. The door closed.
Half an hour later, with the morning wind rising, the old man saw a car pull up and a plump woman got out with a little boy three years old. They walked across the dark lawn and went into the house after the woman had looked at the old man and said, ‘Is that you, Mr. Terle?’
‘Yes,’ said the old man, automatically, for somehow he didn’t wish to frighten her. But it was a lie. He knew he was not Mr. Terle at all. Mr. Terle lived down the street.
The lights glowed on and off a thousand more times.
The children rustled softly in the dark leaves.
A seventeen-year-old boy bounded across the street, smelling faintly of the smudged lipstick on his cheek, almost knocked the old man down, cried, ‘Sorry!’ and leaped up the steps. Fitting a key to the lock he went in.
The old man stood there with the town lying asleep on all sides of him; the unlit windows, the breathing rooms, the stars all through the trees, liberally caught and held on winter branches, so much snow suspended glittering on the cold air.
‘That’s my house; who are all those people going in it!’ cried the old man to the wrestling children.
The wind blew, shaking the empty trees.
In the year which was 1923 the house was dark, a car drove up before it, the mother stepped from the car with her son William who was three. William looked at the dark morning world and saw his house and as he felt his mother lead him towards the house he heard her say, ‘Is that you, Mr. Terle?’ and in the shadows by the great wind-filled oak tree an old man stood and replied, ‘Yes.’ The door closed.
In the year which was 1934 William came running in the summer night, feeling the football cradled in his hands, feeling the dark street pass under his running feet, along the sidewalk. He smelled, rather than saw, an old man, as he ran past. Neither of them spoke. And so on into the house.
In the year 1937 William ran with antelope boundings across the street, a smell of lipstick on his face, a smell of someone young and fresh upon his cheeks; all thoughts of love and deep night. He almost knocked the stranger down, cried, ‘Sorry!’ and ran to fit a key to the front door.
In the year 1947 a car drew up before the house, William relaxed, his wife beside him. He wore a fine tweed suit, it was late, he was tired, they both smelled faintly of so many drinks offered and accepted. For a moment they both heard the wind in the trees. ‘Is that a light in our house?’ asked the wife. William felt uneasy. ‘Yes,’ he said. They got out of the car and let themselves into the house with a key. An old man came from the living-room and cried, ‘What are you doing in my house?’
‘Your house?’ said William. ‘Here now, old man, get on out.’ And William, feeling faintly sick to his stomach, for there was something to the old man that made him feel all water and nothing, searched the old man and pushed him out of the door and closed and locked it. From outside the old man cried, ‘This is my house, you can’t lock me out!’
They went up to bed and turned the lights out.
In the year 1928, William and the other small boys wrestled on the lawn, waiting for the time when they would leave to watch the circus come chuffing in to the dawn-pale railroad station on the blue metal tracks. In the leaves they lay and laughed and kicked and fought. An old man with a flashlight came across the lawn. ‘Why are you playing here on my lawn at this time of morning?’ asked the old man. Who are you?’ replied William looking up a moment from the tangle.
The old man stood over the tumbling children a long moment. Then he dropped his flashlight. ‘Oh my dear boy, I know now, now I know!’ He bent to touch the boy. ‘I am you, and you are me. I love you, my dear boy, with all of my heart! Let me tell you what will happen to you in the years to come! If you knew! I am you, and you were once me! My name is William, so is yours! And all those people going into the house, they are William, they are you, they are me!’ The old man shivered. ‘Oh, all the dark years and the passing of time!’
‘Go away,’ said the boy. ‘You’re crazy.’
‘But,’ said the old man.
‘You’re crazy. I’ll call my father!’
The old man turned and walked away.
There was a flickering of the house lights, on and off. The boys wrestled quietly and secretly in the rustling leaves. The old man stood on the dark lawn.
Upstairs, in his bed, William Latting did not sleep on his bed in the year 1947. He sat up, lit a cigarette, and looked out of the window. His wife was awake. ‘What’s wrong?’ she asked.
‘That old man,’ said William Latting. ‘I think he’s still down there, under the oak tree.’
‘Oh, he couldn’t be,’ she said.
‘I can’t see very well, but I think he’s there. I can barely make him out, it’s so dark.’
‘He’ll go away,’ she said.
William Latting drew quietly on his cigarette. He nodded. ‘Who are those kids?’
From her bed his wife said, ‘What kidsT
‘Playing on the lawn out there, what a hell of a time of night to be playing in the leaves.’
‘Probably the Moran boys.’
‘Doesn’t look like them.’
He stood by the window. ‘You hear something?’
‘What?’
‘A baby crying. Way off.’
‘I don’t hear anything,’ she said.
She lay listening. They both thought they heard running footsteps on the street, a key to the door. William Latting went to the hall and looked down the stairs but saw nothing.
In the year 1937, coming in the door, William saw a man in a dressing-gown at the top of the stairs looking down, a cigarette in his hand. ‘That you, Dad?’ No answer. The man sighed and went back into some room. William went to the kitchen to raid the ice-box.
The children wrestled in the soft dark leaves of morning.
William Latting said, ‘Listen.’
He and his wife listened.
‘It’s the old man,’ said William. ‘Crying.’
‘Why should he be crying?’
‘I don’t know. Why does anybody cry? Maybe he’s unhappy.’
‘If he’s still down there in the morning,’ said his wife, in the dark room, ‘call the police.’
William Latting went away from the
window, put out his cigarette and lay in the bed, his eyes closed. ‘No,’ he said quietly. ‘I won’t call the police. Not for him, I won’t.’
‘Why not?’
His voice was certain. ‘I wouldn’t want to do that. I just wouldn’t.’
They both lay there and faintly there was a sound of crying and the wind blew and William Latting knew that all he had to do if he wanted to watch the boys wrestling in the dark cool leaves of morning would be reach out with his hand and lift the shade and look, and there they would be, far below, wrestling and wrestling as dawn came pale in the eastern sky.
TIME LOCKER
Henry Kuttner
Gallegher played by ear, which would have been all right had he been a musician—but he was a scientist. A drunken and erratic one, but good. He’d wanted to be an experimental technician, and would have been excellent at it, for he had a streak of genius at times. Unfortunately, there had been no funds for such specialized education, and now Gallegher, by profession an integrator machine supervisor, maintained his laboratory purely as a hobby. It was the damnedest-looking lab in six states. Gallegher had once spent months building what he called a liquor organ, which occupied most of the space. He could recline on a comfortably padded couch and, by manipulating buttons, siphon drinks of marvelous quantity, quality, and variety down his scarified throat. Since he had made the liquor organ during a protracted period of drunkenness, he never remembered the basic principles of its construction. In a way, that was a pity.
There was a little of everything in the lab, much of it incongruous. Rheostats had little skirts on them, like ballet dancers; and vacuously grinning faces of clay. A generator was conspicuously labeled, “Monstro,” and a much smaller one rejoiced in the name of
“Bubbles.” Inside a glass retort was a china rabbit, and Gallegher alone knew how it had got there. Just inside the door was a hideous iron dog, originally intended for Victorian lawns or perhaps for hell, and its hollowed ears served as sockets for test tubes.
“But how do you do it?” Vanning asked.
Gallegher, his lank form reclining under the liquor organ, siphoned a shot of double martini into his mouth. “Huh?”
“You heard me. I could get you a swell job if you’d use that screwball brain of yours.
Or even learn to put up a front.”
“Tried it,” Gallegher mumbled. “No use. I can’t work when I concentrate, except at mechanical stuff. I think my subconscious must have a high I.Q.”
Vanning, a chunky little man with a scarred, swarthy face, kicked his heels against Monstro. Sometimes Gallegher annoyed him. The man never realized his own potentialities, or how much they might mean to Horace Vanning, Commerce Analyst.
The “commerce,” of course, was extra-legal, but the complicated trade relationships of the day left loopholes a clever man could slip through. The fact of the matter was, Vanning acted in an advisory capacity to crooks. It paid well. A sound knowledge of jurisprudence was rare in these days; the statutes were in such a tangle that it took years of research before one could even enter a law school. But Vanning had a staff of trained experts, a colossal library of transcripts, decisions, and legal data, and, for a suitable fee, he could have told Dr. Crippen how to get off scot-free.
The shadier side of his business was handled in strict privacy, without assistants. The matter of the neuro-gun, for example—
Gallegher had made that remarkable weapon, quite without realizing its function. He had hashed it together one evening, piecing out the job with court plaster when his welder went on the fritz. And he’d given it to Vanning, on request. Vanning didn’t keep it long. But already he had earned thousands of credits by lending the gun to potential murderers. As a result, the police department had a violent headache.
A man in the know would come to Vanning and say, “I heard you can beat a murder rap. Suppose I wanted to—”
“Hold on! I can’t condone anything like that.”
“Huh? But—”
“Theoretically, I suppose a perfect murder might be possible. Suppose a new sort of gun had been invented, and suppose—just for the sake of an example—it was in a locker at the Newark Stratoship Field.”
“Huh?”
“I’m just theorizing. Locker Number Seventy-nine, combination thirty-blue-eight.
These little details always help one to visualize a theory, don’t they?”
“You mean—”
“Of course if our murderer picked up this imaginary gun and used it, he’d be smart enough to have a postal box ready, addressed to . . . say . . . Locker Forty, Brooklyn Port. He could slip the weapon into the box, seal it, and get rid of the evidence at the nearest mail conveyor. But that’s all theorizing. Sorry I can’t help you. The fee for an interview is three thousand credits. The receptionist will take your check.”
Later, conviction would be impossible. Ruling 875-M, Illinois Precinct, case of State vs. Dupson, set the precedent. Cause of death must be determined. Element of accident must be considered. As Chief Justice Duckett had ruled during the trial of Sanderson vs.
Sanderson, which involved the death of the accused’s mother-in-law—
Surely the prosecuting attorney, with his staff of toxicological experts, must realize that—
And in short, your honor, I must respectfully request that the case be dismissed for lack of evidence and proof of casus mortis—
Gallegher never even found out that his neuro-gun was a dangerous weapon. But Vanning haunted the sloppy laboratory, avidly watching the results of his friend’s scientific doodling. More than once he had acquired handy little devices in just this fashion. The trouble was, Gallegher wouldn’t work!
He took another sip of martini, shook his head, and unfolded his lanky limbs.
Blinking, he ambled over to a cluttered workbench and began toying with lengths of wire.
“Making something?”
“Dunno. Just fiddling. That’s the way it goes. I put things together, and sometimes they work. Trouble is, I never know exactly what they’re going to do. Tsk!” Gallegher dropped the wires and returned to his couch. “Hell with it.”
He was, Vanning reflected, an odd duck. Gallegher was essentially amoral, thoroughly out of place in this too-complicated world. He seemed to watch, with a certain wry amusement, from a vantage point of his own, rather disinterested for the most part. And he made things—
But always and only for his own amusement. Vanning sighed and glanced around the laboratory, his orderly soul shocked by the mess. Automatically he picked up a rumpled smock from the floor, and looked for a hook. Of course there was none. Gallegher, running short of conductive metal, had long since ripped them out and used them in some gadget or other.
The so-called scientist was creating a zombie, his eyes half-closed. Vanning went over to a metal locker in one corner and opened the door. There were no hooks, but he folded the smock neatly and laid it in the floor of the locker.
Then he went back to his perch on Monstro.
“Have a drink?” Gallegher asked.
Vanning shook his head. “Thanks, no. I’ve got a case coming up tomorrow.”
“There’s always thiamin. Filthy stuff. I work better when I’ve got pneumatic cushions around my brain.”
“Well, I don’t.”
“It is purely a matter of skill,” Gallegher hummed, “to which each may attain if he will . . . What are you gaping at?”
“That—locker,” Vanning said, frowning in a baffled way. “What the—” He got up.
The metal door hadn’t been securely latched and had swung open. Of the smock Vanning had placed within the metal compartment there was no trace.
“It’s the paint,” Gallegher explained sleepily. “Or the treatment. I bombarded it with gamma rays. But it isn’t good for anything.”
Vanning went over and swung a fluorescent into a more convenient position. The locker wasn’t empty, as he had at first imagined. The smock was no longer there, but instead there was
a tiny blob of—something, pale-green and roughly spherical.
“It melts things?” Vanning asked, staring.
“Uh-uh. Pull it out. You’ll see.”
Vanning felt hesitant about putting his hand inside the locker. Instead, he found a long pair of test tube clamps and teased the blob out. It was—
Vanning hastily looked away. His eyes hurt. The green blob was changing in color, shape and size. A crawling, nongeometrical blue of motion rippled over it. Suddenly the clamps were remarkably heavy.
No wonder. They were gripping the original smock.
“It does that, you know,” Gallegher said absently. “Must be a reason, too. I put things in the locker and they get small. Take ’em out, and they get big again. I suppose I could sell it to a stage magician.” His voice sounded doubtful.
Vanning sat down, fingering the smock and staring at the metal locker. It was a cube, approximately 3 X 3 X 5, lined with what seemed to be grayish paint, sprayed on.
Outside, it was shiny black.
“How’d you do it?”
“Huh? I dunno. Just fiddling around.” Gallegher sipped his zombie. “Maybe it’s a matter of dimensional extension. My treatment may have altered the spatiotemporal relationships inside the locker. I wonder what that means?” he murmured in a vague aside. “Words frighten me sometimes.”
Vanning was thinking about tesseracts. “You mean it’s bigger inside than it is outside?”
“A paradox, a paradox, a most delightful paradox. You tell me. I suppose the inside of the locker isn’t in this space-time continuum at all. Here, shove that bench in it. You’ll see.” Gallegher made no move to rise; he waved toward the article of furniture in question.
“You’re crazy. That bench is bigger than the locker.”
“So it is. Shove it in a bit at a time. That corner first. Go ahead.”
Vanning wrestled with the bench. Despite his shortness, he was stockily muscular.
“Lay the locker on its back. It’ll be easier.”
“I . . . uh! . . . O.K. Now what?”
“Edge the bench down into it.”
