The Tehama and others

by Bob Leman

  We cobbled up a gadget to test the idea. Come and have a look at it.” It was a horizontal flywheel with a paddle attached to its rim, like an extended cleat. As the wheel spun, the paddle swept around a table. There was a hopper hanging above, and at intervals something dropped from the hopper onto the table, where it was immediately banged by the paddle and sent flying. Gilson peered into the hopper and raised an interrogatory eyebrow. “Ice cubes,” Reeves said. “Colored orange for visibility. That thing shoots an ice cube at the interface once a second. Somebody is always on duty with a stopwatch. We’ve established that every fifteen hours and twenty minutes the thing is open for five seconds. Five ice cubes go through and drop on the lawn in there. The rest of the time they just vanish at the interface.”

  “Ice cubes. Why ice cubes?”

  “They melt and disappear. We can’t be littering up the past with artifacts from our day. God knows what the effect might be. Then, too, they’re cheap, and we’re shooting a lot of them.”

  “Science,” Gilson said heavily. “I can’t wait to hear what they’re going to say in Washington.”

  “Sneer all you like,” Krantz said. “The house is there, the interface is there. We’ve by God turned up some kind of time travel. And Culvergast the screwball did it, not a physicist or an engineer.”

  “Now that you bring it up,” Gilson said, “just what was your man Culvergast up to?”

  “Good question. What he was doing was—well, not to put too fine a point upon it, he was trying to discover spells.”

  “Spells?”

  “The kind you cast. Magic words. Don’t look disgusted yet. It makes sense, in a way. We were funded to look into telekinesis—the manipulation of matter by the mind. It’s obvious that telekinesis, if it could be applied with precision, would be a marvelous weapon.

  Culvergast’s hypothesis was that there are in fact people who perform feats of telekinesis, and although they never seem to know or be able to explain how they do it, they nevertheless perform a specific mental action that enables them to tap some source of energy that apparently exists all around us, and to some degree to focus and direct that energy.

  Culvergast proposed to discover the common factor in their mental processes.

  “He ran a lot of putative telekinesists through here, and he reported that he had found a pattern, a sort of mnemonic device functioning at the very bottom of, or below, the verbal level. In one of his people he found it as a set of musical notes, in several as gibberish of various sorts, and in one, he said, as mathematics at the primary arithmetic level. He was feeding all this into the computer, trying to eliminate simple noise and the personal idiosyncrasies of the subjects, trying to lay bare the actual, effective essence. He then proposed to organize this essence into words; words that would so shape the mental currents of a speaker of standard American English that they would channel and manipulate the telekinetic power at the will of the speaker. Magic words, you might say. Spells".

  “He was evidently further along than I suspected. I think he must have arrived at some words, tried them out, and made an attempt at telekinesis—some small thing, like causing an ashtray to rise off his desk and float in the air, perhaps. And it worked, but what he got wasn’t a dainty little ashtray-lifting force; he had opened the gate wide, and some kind of terrible power came through. It’s pure conjecture, of course, but it must have been something like that to have had an effect like this.”

  Gilson had listened in silence. He said, “I won’t say you’re crazy, because I can see that house and I’m watching what’s happening to those ice cubes. How it happened isn’t my problem, anyhow. My problem is what I’ll recommend to the secretary that we do with it now that we’ve got it. One thing’s sure, Krantz: this isn’t going to be your private playpen much longer.”

  There was a yelp of pure pain from Reeves. “They can’t do that,” he said. “This is ours, it’s the professor’s. Look at it, look at that house. Do you want a bunch of damn engineers messing around with that?”

  Gilson could understand how Reeves felt. The house was drenched now with the light of a red sunset; it seemed to glow from within with a deep, rosy blush. But, Gilson reflected, the sunset wasn’t really necessary; sentiment and the universal, unacknowledged yearning for a simple, cleaner time would lend rosiness enough. He was quite aware that the surge of longing and nostalgia he felt was nostalgia for something he had never actually experienced, that the way of life the house epitomized for him was in fact his own creation, built from patches of novels and films; nonetheless he found himself hungry for that life, yearning for that time. It was a gentle and secure time, he thought, a time when the pace was unhurried and the air was clean; a time when there was grace and style, when young men in striped blazers and boater hats might pay decorous court to young ladies in long white dresses, whiling away the long drowsy afternoons of summer in peaceable conversations on shady porches. There would be jolly bicycle tours over shade-dappled roads that twisted among the hills to arrive at cool glens where swift little streams ran; there would be long sweet buggy rides behind somnolent patient horses under a great white moon, lover whispering urgently to lover while nightbirds sang. There would be excursions down the broad clean river, boats gentle on the current, floating toward the sound from across the water of a brass band playing at the landing.

  Yes, thought Gilson, and there would probably be an old geezer with a trunkful of adjectives around somewhere, carrying on about how much better things had been a hundred years before. If he didn’t watch himself he’d be helping Krantz and Reeves try to keep things hidden. Young Reeves—oddly, for someone his age—seemed to be hopelessly mired in this bogus nostalgia. His description of the family in the house had been simple doting. Oh, it was definitely time that the cold-eyed boys were called in. High time.

  “They ought to be coming out any minute, now,” Reeves was saying. “Wait till you see Martha.”

  “Martha,” Gilson said.

  “The little girl. She’s a doll.”

  Gilson looked at him. Reeves reddened and said, “Well, I sort of gave them names. The children. Martha and Pete. And the dog’s Alfie. They kind of look like those names, you know?” Gilson did not answer, and Reeves reddened further. “Well, you can see for yourself.

  Here they come.”

  A fine little family, as Reeves had said. After watching them for half an hour, Gilson was ready to concede that they were indeed most engaging, as perfect in their way as their house.

  They were just what it took to complete the picture, to make an authentic Victorian genre painting. Mama and Papa were good-looking and still in love, the children were healthy and merry and content with their world. Or so it seemed to him as he watched them in the darkening evening, imagining the comfortable, affectionate conversation of the parents as they sat on the porch swing, almost hearing the squeals of the children and the barking of the dog as they raced about the lawn. It was almost dark now; a mellow light of oil lamps glowed in the windows, and fireflies winked over the lawn. There was an arc of fire as the father tossed his cigar butt over the railing and rose to his feet. Then there followed a pretty little pantomime, as he called the children, who duly protested, were duly permitted a few more minutes, and then were firmly commanded. They moved reluctantly to the porch and were shooed inside, and the dog, having delayed to give a shrub a final wetting, came scrambling up to join them. The children and the dog entered the house, then the mother and father. The door closed, and there was only the soft light from the windows.

  Reeves exhaled a long breath. “Isn’t that something,” he said. “That’s the way to live, you know? If a person could just say to hell with all this crap we live in today and go back there and live like that… And Martha, you saw Martha. An angel, right? Man, what I’d give to—” Gilson interrupted him: “When does the next batch of ice cubes go through?”

  “—be able to—Uh, yeah. Let’s see. The last penetration was at 3:15, just before you got here
.

  Next one will be at 6:35 in the morning, if the pattern holds. And it has, so far.”

  “I want to see that. But right now I’ve got to do some telephoning. Colonel!”

  ***

  Gilson did not sleep that night, nor, apparently, did Krantz and Reeves. When he arrived at the clearing at five a.m. they were still there, unshaven and red-eyed, drinking coffee from thermos bottles. It was cloudy again, and the clearing was in total darkness except for a pale light from beyond the interface, where a sunny day was on the verge of breaking.

  “Anything new?” Gilson said.

  “I think that’s my question,” Krantz said. “What’s going to happen?”

  “Just about what you expected, I’m afraid. I think that by evening this place is going to be a real hive. And by tomorrow night you’ll be lucky if you can find a place to stand. I imagine Bannon’s been on the phone since I called him at midnight, rounding up the scientists. And they’ll round up the technicians. Who’ll bring their machines. And the army’s going to beef up the security. How about some of that coffee?”

  “Help yourself. You bring bad news, Gilson.”

  “Sorry,” Gilson said, “but there it is.”

  “Goddam!” Reeves said loudly. “Oh, goddamn!” He seemed to be about to burst into tears.

  “That’ll be the end for me, you know? They won’t even let me in. A damn graduate student?

  In psychology? I won’t get near the place. Oh, damn it to hell!” he glared at Gilson in rage and despair.

  The sun had risen, bringing gray light to the clearing and brilliance to the house across the interface. There was no sound but the regular bang of the ice cube machine. The three men stared quietly at the house. Gilson drank his coffee.

  “There’s Martha,” Reeves said. “Up there.” A small face had appeared between the curtains of a second-floor window, and bright blue eyes were surveying the morning. “She does that every day,” Reeves said. “Sits there and watches the birds and squirrels until I guess they call her for breakfast.” They stood and watched the little girl, who was looking at something that lay beyond the scope of their window on her world, something that would have been to their rear had the worlds been the same. Gilson almost found himself turning around to see what it was that she stared at. Reeves apparently had the same impulse. “What’s she looking at, do you think?” he said. “It’s not necessarily forest, like now. I think this was logged out earlier.

  Maybe a meadow? Cattle or horses on it? Man, what I’d give to be there and see what it is.” Krantz looked at his watch and said, “We’d better go over there. Just a few minutes, now.” They moved to where the machine was monotonously batting ice cubes into the interface. A soldier with a stopwatch sat beside it, behind a table bearing a formidable chronometer and a sheaf of charts. He said, “Two minutes, Dr. Krantz.” Krantz said to Gilson, “Just keep your eye on the ice cubes. You can’t miss it when it happens.” Gilson watched the machine, mildly amused by the rhythm of its homely sounds: plink—a cube drops; whuff—the paddle sweeps around; bang—paddle strikes ice cube. And then a flat trajectory to the interface, where the small orange missile abruptly vanishes. A second later, another. Then another.

  “Five seconds,” the soldier called. “Four. Three. Two. One. Now.” His timing was off by a second; the ice cube disappeared like its predecessors. But the next one continued its flight and dropped onto the lawn, where it lay glistening. It was really a fact, then, thought Gilson. Time travel for ice cubes.

  Suddenly behind him there was an incomprehensible shout from Krantz and another from Reeves, and then a loud, clear, and anguished, “Reeves, no!” from Krantz. Gilson heard a thud of running feet and caught a flash of swift movement at the edge of his vision. He whirled in time to see Reeves’ gangling figure hurtle past, plunge through the interface, and land sprawling on the lawn. Krantz said, violently, “Fool!” An ice cube shot through and landed near Reeves. The machine banged again; an ice cube flew out and vanished. The five seconds of accessibility were over.

  Reeves raised his head and stared for a moment at the grass on which he lay. He shifted his gaze to the house. He rose slowly to his feet, wearing a bemused expression. A grin came slowly over his face, then, and the men watching from the other side could almost read his thoughts: Well, I’ll be damned. I made it. I’m really here.

  Krantz was babbling uncontrollably. “We’re still here, Gilson, we’re still here, we still exist, everything seems the same. Maybe he didn’t change things much, maybe the future is fixed and he didn’t change anything at all. I was afraid of this, of something like this. Ever since you came out here, he’s been-”

  Gilson did not hear him. He was staring with shock and disbelief at the child in the window, trying to comprehend what he saw and did not believe he was seeing. Her behavior was wrong, it was very, very wrong. A man had materialized on her lawn, suddenly, out of thin air, on a sunny morning, and she had evinced no surprise or amazement or fear. Instead she had smiled—instantly, spontaneously, a smile that broadened and broadened until it seemed to split the lower half of her face, a smile that showed too many teeth, a smile fixed and incongruous and terrible below her bright blue eyes. Gilson felt his stomach knot; he realized that he was dreadfully afraid.

  The face abruptly disappeared from the window; a few seconds later the front door flew open and the little girl rushed through the doorway, making for Reeves with furious speed, moving in a curious, scuttling run. When she was a few feet away, she leaped at him, with the agility and eye-dazzling quickness of a flea. Reeves’ eyes had just begun to take on a puzzled look when the powerful little teeth tore out his throat.

  She dropped away from him and sprang back. A geyser of bright blood erupted from the ragged hole in his neck. He looked at it in stupefaction for a long moment, then brought up his hands to cover the wound; the blood boiled through his fingers and ran down his forearms. He sank gently to his knees, staring at the little girl with wide astonishment. He rocked, shivered, and pitched forward on his face.

  She watched with eyes as cold as a reptile’s, the terrible smile still on her face. She was naked, and it seemed to Gilson that there was something wrong with her torso, as well as with her mouth. She turned and appeared to shout toward the house.

  In a moment they all came rushing out, mother, father, little boy, and granny, all naked, all undergoing that hideous transformation of the mouth. Without pause or diminution of speed they scuttled to the body, crouched around it, and frenziedly tore off its clothes. Then, squatting on the lawn in the morning sunshine, the fine little family began horribly to feed.

  Krantz’s babbling had changed its tenor: “Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us…” The soldier with the stopwatch was noisily sick. Someone emptied a clip of a machine pistol into the interface, and the colonel cursed luridly. When Gilson could no longer bear to watch the grisly feast, he looked away and found himself staring at the dog, which sat happily on the porch, thumping its tail.

  “By God, it just can’t be!” Krantz burst out. “It would be in the histories, in the newspapers, if there’d been people like that here. My God, something like that couldn’t be forgotten!”

  “Oh, don’t talk like a fool!” Gilson said angrily. “That’s not the past. I don’t know what it is, but it’s not the past. Can’t be. It’s—I don’t know—someplace else. Some other—dimension?

  Universe? One of those theories. Alternate worlds, worlds of If, probability worlds, whatever you call ’em. They’re in the present time, all right, that filth over there. Culvergast’s damn spell holed through to one of those parallels. Got to be something like that. And, my God, what the hell was its history to produce those? They’re not human, Krantz, no way human, whatever they look like. ‘Jolly bicycle tours.’ How wrong can you be?” It ended at last. The family lay on the grass with distended bellies, covered with blood and grease, their eyelids heavy in repletion. The two little ones fell asleep. The large male appeared to
be deep in thought. After a time he rose, gathered up Reeves’ clothes, and examined them carefully. Then he woke the small female and apparently questioned her at some length. She gestured, pointed, and pantomimed Reeves’ headlong arrival. He stared thoughtfully at the place where Reeves had materialized, and for a moment it seemed to Gilson that the pitiless eyes were glaring directly into his. He turned, walked slowly and reflectively to the house, and went inside.

  It was silent in the clearing except for the thump of the machine. Krantz began to weep, and the colonel to swear in a monotone. The soldiers seemed dazed. And we’re all afraid, Gilson thought. Scared to death.

  On the lawn they were enacting a grotesque parody of making things tidy after a picnic. The small ones had brought a basket and, under the meticulous supervision of the adult females, went about gathering up the debris of their feeding. One of them tossed a bone to the dog, and the timekeeper vomited again. When the lawn was once again immaculate, they carried off the basket to the rear, and the adults returned to the house. A moment later the male emerged, now dressed in a white linen suit. He carried a book.

  “A Bible,” said Krantz in amazement. “It’s a Bible.”

  “Not a Bible,” Gilson said. “There’s no way those—things could have Bibles. Something else.

  Got to be.”

  It looked like a Bible; its binding was limp black leather, and when the male began to leaf through it, evidently in search of a particular passage, they could see that the paper was the thin, tough paper Bibles are printed on. He found his page and began, as it appeared to Gilson, to read aloud in a declamatory manner, mouthing the words.