Duel

by Richard Matheson

  Wade chuckled. “That reminds me,” he said. “Mary asked me to say hello to Buck Rogers. Anything you’d like me to do?”

  “Just be back in an hour,” growled Randall. He reached in and shook hands with Wade. “All strapped?”

  “All strapped,” Wade answered.

  “Good. We’ll bounce you out of here in, uh—” Randall looked up at the large red-dialed clock on the firebrick wall. “In eight minutes. Check?”

  “Check,” Wade said. “Say goodbye to Doctor Phillips for me.”

  “Will do. Take care, Bob.”

  “See you.”

  Wade watched his friend walk back across the floor to the control room. Then, taking a deep breath, he pulled the thick circular door shut and turned the wheel, locking it. All sound was cut off.

  “Twenty-four seventy-five, here I come,” he muttered.

  The air seemed heavy and thin. He knew it was only an illusion. He looked quickly at the control board clock. Six minutes. Or five? No matter. He was ready. He rubbed a hand over his brow. Sweat dripped from his palm.

  “Hot,” he said. His voice was hollow, unreal.

  Four minutes.

  He let go of the bracing handle with his left hand and, reaching into his back pants pocket, he drew out his wallet. As he opened it to look at Mary’s picture, his fingers lost their grip, and the wallet thudded on the metal deck.

  He tried to reach it. The straps held him back. He glanced nervously at the clock. Three and a half minutes. Or two and a half? He’d forgotten when John had started the count.

  His watch registered a different time. He gritted his teeth. He couldn’t leave the wallet there. It might get sucked into the whirring fan and be destroyed and destroy him as well.

  Two minutes was time enough.

  He fumbled at the waist and chest straps, pulled them open and picked up the wallet. As he started to rebuckle the straps, he squinted once more at the clock. One and a half minutes. Or—

  Suddenly the sphere began to vibrate.

  Wade felt his muscles contract. The slack waist band snapped open and whipped against the bulkhead. A sudden pain filled his chest and stomach. The wallet fell again.

  He grabbed wildly for the bracing handles, exerted all his strength to keep himself pressed to the seat.

  He was hurled through the universe. Stars whistled past his ear. A fist of icy fear punched at his heart.

  “Mary!” he cried through a tight, fear-bound throat.

  Then his head snapped back against the metal. Something exploded in his brain, and he slumped forward. The rushing darkness blotted out consciousness.

  It was cool. Pure, exhilarating air washed over the numbed layers of his brain. The touch of it was a pleasant balm to him.

  Wade opened his eyes and gazed fixedly at the dull gray ceiling. He twisted his head to follow the drop of the walls. Slight twinges fluttered in his flesh. He winced and moved his head back to its original position.

  “Professor Wade.”

  He started up at the voice, fell back in hissing pain.

  “Please remain motionless, Professor Wade,” the voice said.

  Wade tried to speak but his vocal cords felt numb and heavy.

  “Don’t try to speak,” said the voice. “I’ll be in presently.”

  There was a click, then silence.

  Slowly Wade turned his head to the side and looked at the room.

  It was about twenty feet square with a fifteen-foot ceiling. The walls and ceiling were of a uniform dullish gray. The floor was black; some sort of tile. In the far wall was the almost invisible outline of a door.

  Beside the couch on which he lay was an irregularly shaped three-legged structure. Wade took it for a chair.

  There was nothing else. No other furniture, pictures, rugs, or even source of light. The ceiling seemed to be glowing. Yet, at every spot he concentrated his gaze, the glow faded into lusterless gray.

  He lay there trying to recall what had happened. All he could remember was the pain, the flooding tide of blackness.

  With considerable pain he rolled onto his right side and got a shaky hand into his rear trouser pocket.

  Someone had picked his wallet up from the chamber deck and put it back in his pocket. Stiff-fingered, he drew it out, opened it, and looked at Mary smiling at him from the porch of their home.

  The door opened with a gasp of compressed air and a robed man entered.

  His age was indeterminate. He was bald, and his wrinkleless features presented an unnatural smoothness like that of an immobile mask.

  “Professor Wade,” he said.

  Wade’s tongue moved ineffectively. The man came over to the couch and drew a small plastic box from his robe pocket. Opening it, he took out a small hypodermic and drove it into Wade’s arm.

  Wade felt a soothing flow of warmth in his veins. It seemed to unknot ligaments and muscles, loosen his throat and activate his brain centers.

  “That’s better,” he said. “Thank you.”

  “Quite all right,” said the man, sitting down on the three-legged structure and sliding the case into his pocket. “I imagine you’d like to know where you are.”

  “Yes, I would.”

  “You’ve reached your goal, Professor—2475—exactly.”

  “Good. Very good,” Wade said. He raised up on one elbow. The pain had disappeared. “My chamber,” he said, “is it all right?”

  “I dare say,” said the man. “It’s down in the machine laboratory.”

  Wade breathed easier. He slid the wallet into his pocket.

  “Your wife was a lovely woman,” said the man.

  “Was?” Wade asked in alarm.

  “You didn’t think she was going to live five hundred years did you?” said the man.

  Wade looked dazed. Then an awkward smile raised his lips.

  “It’s a little difficult to grasp,” he said. “To me she’s still alive.”

  He sat up and put his legs over the edge of the couch.

  “I’m Clemolk,” said the man. “I’m an historian. You’re in the History Pavilion in the city Greenhill.”

  “United States?”

  “Nationalist States,” said the historian.

  Wade was silent a moment. Then he looked up suddenly and asked, “Say, how long have I been unconscious?”

  “You’ve been ‘unconscious,’ as you call it, for a little more than two hours.”

  Wade jumped up. “My God,” he said anxiously, “I’ll have to leave.”

  Clemolk looked at him blandly. “Nonsense,” he said. “Please sit down.”

  “But—”

  “Please. Let me tell you what you’re here for.”

  Wade sat down, a puzzled look on his face. A vague uneasiness began to stir in him.

  “Here for?” he muttered.

  “Let me show you something,” Clemolk said.

  He drew a small control board from his robe and pushed one of its many buttons.

  The walls seemed to fall away. Wade could see the exterior of the building. High up, across the huge entablature were the words: HISTORY IS LIVING. After a moment the wall was there again, solid and opaque.

  “Well?” Wade asked.

  “We build our history texts, you see, not on records but on direct testimony.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “We transcribe the testimony of people who lived in the times we wish to study.”

  “But how?”

  “By the re-formation of disincarnate personalities.”

  Wade was dumbfounded. “The dead?” he asked hollowly.

  “We call them the bodiless,” replied Clemolk.

  “In the natural order, Professor,” the historian said, “Man’s personality exists apart from and independent of his corporeal frame. We have taken this truism and used it to our advantage. Since the personality retains indefinitely—although in decreasing strength—the memory of its physical form and habiliments, it is only a matter of supplying the organ
ic and inorganic materials to this memory.”

  “But that’s incredible,” Wade said. “At Fort—that’s the college where I teach—we have psychical research projects. But nothing approaching this.” Suddenly he paled. “Why am I here?”

  “In your case,” Clemolk said, “we were spared the difficulty of reforming a long bodiless personality from your time period. You reached our period in your chamber.”

  Wade clasped his shaking hands and blew out a heavy breath.

  “This is all very interesting,” he said, “but I can’t stay long. Suppose you ask me what you want to know.”

  Clemolk drew out the control board and pushed a button. “Your voice will be transcribed now,” he said.

  He leaned back and clasped his colorless hands on his lap.

  “Your governmental system,” he said. “Suppose we start with that.”

  “Yes,” Clemolk said, “it all balances nicely with what we already know.”

  “Now, may I see my chamber?” Wade asked.

  Clemolk’s eyes looked at him without flickering. His motionless face was getting on Wade’s nerves.

  “I think you can see it,” Clemolk said, getting up.

  Wade got up and followed the historian through the doorway into a long similarly shaded and illuminated hall.

  You can see it.

  Wade’s brow was twisted into worried lines. Why the emphasis on that word, as though to see the chamber was all he would be allowed to do?

  Clemolk seemed unaware of Wade’s uneasy thoughts.

  “As a scientist,” he was saying, “you should be interested in the aspects of re-formation. Every detail is clearly defined. The only difficulty our scientists have yet to cope with is the strength of memory and its effect on the re-formed body. The weaker the memory, you see, the sooner the body disintegrates.”

  Wade wasn’t listening. He was thinking about his wife.

  “You see,” Clemolk went on, “although, as I said, these disincarnate personalities are re-formed in a vestigial pattern that includes every item to the last detail—including clothes and personal belongings—they last for shorter and shorter periods of time.

  “The time allowances vary. A re-formed person, from your period, say, would last about three quarters of an hour.”

  The historian stopped and motioned Wade toward a door that had opened in the wall of the hallway.

  “Here,” he said, “we’ll take the tube over to the laboratory.”

  They entered a narrow, dimly lit chamber. Clemolk directed Wade to a wall bench.

  The door slid shut quickly and a hum rose in the air. Wade had the immediate sensation of being back in the time-chamber again. He felt the pain, the crushing weight of depression, the wordless terror billowing up in memory.

  “Mary.” His lips soundlessly formed her name.

  The chamber was resting on a broad metal platform. Three men, similar to Clemolk in appearance were examining its exterior surface.

  Wade stepped up on the platform and touched the smooth metal with his palms. It comforted him to feel it. It was a tangible link with the past—and his wife.

  Then a look of concern crossed his face. Someone had locked the door. He frowned. Opening it from the outside was a difficult and imperfect method.

  One of the students spoke. “Will you open it? We didn’t want to cut it open.”

  A pang of fear coursed through Wade. If they had cut it open, he would have been stranded forever.

  “I’ll open it,” he said. “I have to leave now anyway.” He said it with forced belligerence, as though he dared them to say otherwise.

  The silence that greeted his remark frightened him. He heard Clemolk whisper something.

  Pressing his lips together, he began hesitantly to move his fingers over the combination dials.

  In his mind, Wade planned quickly, desperately. He would open the door, jump in and pull it shut behind him before they could make a move.

  Clumsily, as if they were receiving only vague direction from his brain, his fingers moved over the thick dials on the center of the door. His lips moved as he repeated to himself the numbers of the combination: 3.2—5.9—7.6—9.01. He paused, then tugged at the handle.

  The door would not open.

  Drops of perspiration beaded on his forehead and ran down his face. The combination had eluded him.

  He struggled to concentrate and remember. He had to remember! Closing his eyes, he leaned against the chamber. Mary, he thought, please help me. Again he fumbled at the dials.

  Not 7.6 he suddenly realized. It was 7.8.

  His eyes flashed open. He turned the dial to 7.8. The lock was ready to open.

  “You’d b-better step back,” Wade said, turning to the four men. “There’s liable to be an escape of … locked-in gasses.” He hoped they wouldn’t guess how desperately he was lying.

  The students and Clemolk stepped back a little. They were still close, but he had to risk it.

  Wade jerked open the door and in his plunge through the opening, slipped on the smooth platform surface and crashed down on one knee. Before he could rise, he felt himself grabbed on both sides.

  Two students started to drag him off the platform.

  “No!” he screamed. “I have to go back!”

  He kicked and struggled, his fists flailed the air. Now the other two men held him back. Tears of rage flew from his eyes as he writhed furiously in their grip, shrieking, “Let me go!”

  A sudden pain jabbed Wade’s back. He tore away from one student and dragged the others around in a last surge of enraged power. A glimpse of Clemolk showed the historian holding another hypodermic.

  Wade would have tried to lunge for him, but on the instant a complete lassitude watered his limbs. He slumped down on his knees, glassy-eyed, one numbing hand outflung in vain appeal.

  “Mary,” he muttered hoarsely.

  Then he was on his back and Clemolk was standing over him. The historian seemed to waver and disappear before Wade’s clouding eyes.

  “I’m sorry,” Clemolk was saying. “You can’t go back—ever.”

  Wade lay on the couch again, staring at the ceiling and still turning over Clemolk’s words in his mind.

  “It’s impossible that you return. You’ve been transposed in time. You now belong to this period.”

  Mary was waiting.

  Supper would be on the stove. He could see her setting the table, her slender fingers putting down plates, cups, sparkling glasses, silverware. She’d be wearing a clean, fluffy apron over her dress.

  Then the food was ready. She’d be sitting at the table waiting for him. Deep within himself Wade felt the unspoken terror in her mind.

  He twisted his head on the couch in agony. Could it possibly be true? Was he really imprisoned five centuries from his rightful existence? It was insane. But he was here. The yielding couch was definitely under him, the gray walls around him. Everything was real.

  He wanted to surge up and scream, to strike out blindly and break something. The fury burst in his system. He drove his fists into the couch and yelled without meaning or intelligence, a wild outraged cry. Then he rolled on his side, facing the door. The fierce anger abated. He compressed his mouth into a thin shaking line.

  “Mary,” he whispered in lonely terror.

  The door opened and Mary came in.

  Wade sat up stiffly, gaping, blinking, believing himself mad.

  She was still there, dressed in white, her eyes warm with love for him.

  He couldn’t speak. He doubted that his muscles would sustain him, yet he rose up waveringly.

  She came to him.

  There was no terror in her look. She was smiling with a radiant happiness. Her comforting hand brushed over his cheek.

  A sob broke on his lips at the touch of her hand. He reached out with shaking arms and grasped her, embraced her tightly, pressing his face into her silky hair.

  “Oh, Mary,” he mumbled.

  “Shhh, my darling,�
�� she whispered. “It’s all right now.”

  Happiness flooded his veins as he kissed her warm lips. The terror and lonely fright were gone. He ran trembling fingers over her face.

  They sat down on the couch. He kept caressing her arms, her hands, her face, as though he couldn’t believe it was true.

  “How did you get here?” he asked, in a shaky voice.

  “I’m here. Isn’t that enough?”

  “Mary.”

  He pressed his face against her soft body. She stroked his hair and he was comforted.

  Then, as he sat there, eyes tightly shut, a terrible thought struck him.

  “Mary,” he said, almost afraid to ask.

  “Yes, my darling.”

  “How did you get here?”

  “Is it so—”

  “How?” He sat up and stared into her eyes. “Did they send the time-chamber for you?” he asked.

  He knew they hadn’t, but he clutched at the possibility.

  She smiled sadly. “No, my dear,” she said.

  He felt himself shudder. He almost drew back in revulsion.

  “Then you’re—” His eyes were wide with shock, his face drained of color.

  She pressed against him and kissed his mouth.

  “Darling,” she begged, “does it matter so? It’s me. See? It’s really me. Oh my darling, we have so little time. Please love me. I’ve waited so long for this moment.”

  He pressed his cheek against hers, clutching her to him.

  “Oh my God, Mary, Mary,” he groaned. “What am I to do? How long will you stay?”

  A person, from your period, say, would last about three quarters of an hour. The remembrance of Clemolk’s words was like a whiplash on tender flesh.

  “Forty min—” he started and couldn’t finish.

  “Don’t think about it darling,” she begged. “Please. We’re together for now.”

  But, as they kissed, a thought made his flesh crawl.

  I am kissing a dead woman—his mind would not repress the words—I am holding her in my arms.

  They sat quietly together. Wade’s body grew more tense with each passing second.

  How soon? … Disintegrate … How could he bear it? Yet he could bear less to leave her.