by Anthology
“You may be in no loop,” Dr. Fein pointed out.
“But we may be,” Crayne said.
Doug, still on his feet, said to Crayne and Benz, “Could we include Merry Lou in our decision-making?”
“Why?” Benz said.
“I can’t think too clearly anymore,” Doug said. “Merry Lou can help me; I depend on her.”
“Sure,” Crayne said. Benz, too, nodded.
General Toad examined his wristwatch stoically and said, “Gentlemen, this concludes our discussion.”
Soviet chrononaut Gauki removed his headphones and neck mike and hurried toward the three U.S. tempunauts, his hand extended; he was apparently saying something in Russian, but none of them could understand it. They moved away somberly, clustering close.
“In my opinion you’re nuts, Addi,” Benz said. “But it would appear that I’m the minority now.”
“If he is right,” Crayne said, “if—one chance in a billion—if we are going back again and again forever, that would justify it.”
“Could we go see Merry Lou?” Addison Doug said. “Drive over to her place now?”
“She’s waiting outside,” Crayne said.
Striding up to stand beside the three tempunauts, General Toad said, “You know, what made the determination go the way it did was the public reaction to how you, Doug, looked and behaved during the funeral procession. The NSC advisors came to the conclusion that the public would, like you, rather be certain it’s over for all of you. That it’s more of a relief to them to know you’re free of your mission than to save the project and obtain a perfect reentry. I guess you really made a lasting impression on them, Doug. That whining you did.” He walked away, then, leaving the three of them standing there alone.
“Forget him,” Crayne said to Addison Doug. “Forget everyone like him. We’ve got to do what we have to.”
“Merry Lou will explain it to me,” Doug said. She would know what to do, what would be right.
“I’ll go get her,” Crayne said, “and after that the four of us can drive somewhere, maybe to her place, and decide what to do. Okay?”
“Thank you,” Addison Doug said, nodding; he glanced around for her hopefully, wondering where she was. In the next room, perhaps, somewhere close. “I appreciate that,” he said.
Benz and Crayne eyed each other. He saw that, but did not know what it meant. He knew only that he needed someone, Merry Lou most of all, to help him understand what the situation was. And what to finalize on to get them out of it.
Merry Lou drove them north from Los Angeles in the superfast lane of the freeway toward Ventura, and after that inland to Ojai. The four of them said very little. Merry Lou drove well, as always; leaning against her, Addison Doug felt himself relax into a temporary sort of peace.
“There’s nothing like having a chick drive you,” Crayne said, after many miles had passed in silence.
“It’s an aristocratic sensation,” Benz murmured. “To have a woman do the driving. Like you’re nobility being chauffeured.”
Merry Lou said, “Until she runs into something. Some big slow object.”
Addison Doug said, “When you saw me trudging up to your place . . . up the redwood round path the other day. What did you think? Tell me honestly.”
“You looked,” the girl said, “as if you’d done it many times. You looked worn and tired and—ready to die. At the end.” She hesitated. “I’m sorry, but that’s how you looked, Addi. I thought to myself, he knows the way too well.”
“Like I’d done it too many times.”
“Yes,” she said.
“Then you vote for implosion,” Addison Doug said.
“Well—”
“Be honest with me,” he said.
Merry Lou said, “Look in the back seat. The box on the floor.”
With a flashlight from the glove compartment the three men examined the box. Addison Doug, with fear, saw its contents. VW motor parts, rusty and worn. Still oily.
“I got them from behind a foreign-car garage near my place,” Merry Lou said. “On the way to Pasadena. The first junk I saw that seemed as if it’d be heavy enough. I had heard them say on TV at launch time that anything over fifty pounds up to—”
“It’ll do it,” Addison Doug said. “It did do it.”
“So there’s no point in going to your place,” Crayne said. “It’s decided. We might as well head south toward the module. And initiate the procedure for getting out of ETA. And back to reentry.” His voice was heavy but evenly pitched. “Thanks for your vote, Miss Hawkins.”
She said, “You are all so tired.”
“I’m not,” Benz said. “I’m mad. Mad as hell.”
“At me?” Addison Doug said.
“I don’t know,” Benz said. “It’s just—Hell.” He lapsed into brooding silence then. Hunched over, baffled and inert. Withdrawn as far as possible from the others in the car.
At the next freeway junction she turned the car south. A sense of freedom seemed now to fill her, and Addison Doug felt some of the weight, the fatigue, ebbing already.
On the wrist of each of the three men the emergency alert receiver buzzed its warning tone; they all started.
“What’s that mean?” Merry Lou said, slowing the car.
“We’re to contact General Toad by phone as soon as possible,” Crayne said. He pointed. “There’s a Standard Station over there; take the next exit, Miss Hawkins. We can phone in from there.”
A few minutes later Merry Lou brought her car to a halt beside the outdoor phone booth. “I hope it’s not bad news,” she said.
“I’ll talk first,” Doug said, getting out. Bad news, he thought with labored amusement. Like what? He crunched stiffly across to the phone booth, entered, shut the door behind him, dropped in a dime and dialed the toll-free number.
“Well, do I have news!” General Toad said when the operator had put him on the line. “It’s a good thing we got hold of you. Just a minute—I’m going to let Dr. Fein tell you this himself. You’re more apt to believe him than me.” Several clicks, and then Dr. Fein’s reedy, precise, scholarly voice, but intensified by urgency.
“What’s the bad news?” Addison Doug said.
“Not bad, necessarily,” Dr. Fein said. “I’ve had computations run since our discussion, and it would appear—by that I mean it is statistically probable but still unverified for a certainty—that you are right, Addison. You are in a closed time loop.”
Addison Doug exhaled raggedly. You nowhere autocratic mother, he thought. You probably knew all along.
“However,” Dr. Fein said excitedly, stammering a little, “I also calculate—we jointly do, largely through Cal Tech—that the greatest likelihood of maintaining the loop is to implode on reentry. Do you understand, Addison? If you lug all those rusty VW parts back and implode, then your statistical chances of closing the loop forever is greater than if you simply reenter and all goes well.”
Addison Doug said nothing.
“In fact, Addi—and this is the severe part that I have to stress—implosion at reentry, especially a massive, calculated one of the sort we seem to see shaping up—do you grasp all this, Addi? Am I getting through to you? For Chrissake, Addi? Virtually guarantees the locking in of an absolutely unyielding loop such as you’ve got in mind. Such as we’ve all been worried about from the start.” A pause. “Addi? Are you there?”
Addison Doug said, “I want to die.”
“That’s your exhaustion from the loop. God knows how many repetitions there’ve been already of the three of you—”
“No,” he said and started to hang up.
“Let me speak with Benz and Crayne,” Dr. Fein said rapidly. “Please, before you go ahead with reentry. Especially Benz; I’d like to speak with him in particular. Please, Addison. For their sake; your almost total exhaustion has—”
He hung up. Left the phone booth, step by step.
As he climbed back into the car, he heard their two alert receivers sti
ll buzzing. “General Toad said the automatic call for us would keep your two receivers doing that for a while,” he said. And shut the car door after him. “Let’s take off.”
“Doesn’t he want to talk to us?” Benz said.
Addison Doug said, “General Toad wanted to inform us that they have a little something for us. We’ve been voted a special Congressional Citation for valor or some damn thing like that. A special medal they never voted anyone before. To be awarded posthumously.”
“Well, hell—that’s about the only way it can be awarded,” Crayne said.
Merry Lou, as she started up the engine, began to cry.
“It’ll be a relief,” Crayne said presently, as they returned bumpily to the freeway, “when it’s over.”
It won’t be long now, Addison Doug’s mind declared.
On their wrists the emergency alert receivers continued to put out their combined buzzing.
“They will nibble you to death,” Addison Doug said. “The endless wearing down by various bureaucratic voices.”
The others in the car turned to gaze at him inquiringly, with uneasiness mixed with perplexity.
“Yeah,” Crayne said. “These automatic alerts are really a nuisance.” He sounded tired. As tired as I am, Addison Doug thought. And, realizing this, he felt better. It showed how right he was.
Great drops of water struck the windshield; it had now begun to rain. That pleased him too. It reminded him of that most exalted of all experiences within the shortness of his life: the funeral procession moving slowly down Pennsylvania Avenue, the flag-draped caskets. Closing his eyes he leaned back and felt good at last. And heard, all around him once again, the sorrow-bent people. And, in his head, dreamed of the special Congressional Medal. For weariness, he thought. A medal for being tired.
He saw, in his head, himself in other parades too, and in the deaths of many. But really it was one death and one parade. Slow cars moving along the street in Dallas and with Dr. King as well . . . He saw himself return again and again, in his closed cycle of life, to the national mourning that he could not and they could not forget. He would be there; they would always be there; it would always be, and every one of them would return together again and again forever. To the place, the moment, they wanted to be. The event which meant the most to all of them.
This was his gift to them, the people, his country. He had bestowed upon the world a wonderful burden. The dreadful and weary miracle of eternal life.
A MATTER OF TIME
Robert Reginald
It was 3:15 on a Sunday afternoon when Jake Smith decided that his neighbor had finally gone over the edge and he would have to do something about it. The Rams had just scored the go-ahead touchdown with three minutes to play, and San Francisco was driving to the forty, when there was a sputtering “ka-ka-pftt” next door, and the set went dead.
“That’s it!” Jake yelled, “that’s the last time I put up with this.”
“Put up with what, dear?” said Martha, his occasionally loving wife.
Smith banged out the back door, maiming the dog in the process. “Aubrey,” he shouted, “just what the hell are you doing over there?” He peered over the falling-down slat fence that divided their properties.
Stratton Bundford Aubrey, Ph.D., Emeritus Professor of Physics at the University of Santo Verdugo, grinned happily from a seared patch of his nearly non-existent lawn. “I did it,” he chirped.
“Did what?” said Jake.
“I traveled through time,” Aubrey said. “You see, it’s merely a proper application of a force sideways against the space-time continuum . . .”
Jake tried to humor his obviously demented neighbor. “Just how far did you go?” he asked.
“About ten seconds,” Aubrey said. “Didn’t have very much power, and . . .”
“What?” Jake said. “You blew a transformer just so you could travel a few seconds into the past?”
“The past?” said Aubrey. “Oh, no, the past is much easier. It’s the future that takes so much energy, because . . .”
Jake climbed over the fence. “Just a minute,” he said, “D’you mean this thing”—he pointed at a spindly contraption full of poles stuck in at all the wrong angles—“You mean this piece of junk can actually send somebody into the past?”
“Why, yes,” Aubrey said, “or some thing—of the proper size and weight, of course. For example, if I put this rock just so”—Aubrey picked up a stone the size of his hand, and placed it into the machine—“and make the proper adjustments”—he fiddled with the controls—“and type in the proper instructions, then . . .”—there was another pfft—“Voilà!”—and the rock abruptly disappeared.
“Where’d it go?” asked Jake.
“Oh, about forty years back, I should think,” the physicist said, “somewhere in the middle of the South Pacific. We don’t want to change history, now, do we?” Aubrey grinned.
“Saaayyy,” said Jake, suddenly standing up very straight, “Just how far back could a guy go?”
“Well,” the doctor said, “there are only three variables: mass, distance, and time.”
“Time?” asked Jake.
“Yes, time,” Aubrey said. “You see, everything you send into the past eventually returns to the present, unless you exert a constant force to keep it there. Like that rock . . .”—there was a pop and an audible thump, and they both turned around to see a small stone draped with seaweed sitting in the middle of the lawn. “Well, sometimes they don’t come back exactly on target.” He chortled.
“I’ll be . . .” Jake said, and he grinned. “You know, Doc,” he added, “I’ve been tracing my family tree, and I’ve reached this dead end, because Smith is such a common name, and I’d really like to volunteer to make the first manned expedition into the past.”
“Well, I don’t know,” said Aubrey, “Insurance could be difficult . . .”
“Hey, no problem, I’ll sign a waiver,” Jake said. “Besides, I just need a couple of minutes to ask my ancestor where he came from.”
It took Smith another five minutes of pleading and threats (during which the Forty-Niners scored, sending the game into overtime), but he finally convinced the good doctor that the experiment was beneficial for science in general, and for the reputation of Dr. Stratton Aubrey in particular. He raced home and grabbed a canteen, hunting knife, and knapsack, then quickly returned. “Everything ready?” Jake asked.
Aubrey looked at his instruments. “Well, I think so. Taking into account your weight, available power, and the year you want to reach—1760—I can send you back for no more than five or ten minutes. After that, you’ll automatically return. OK?”
“Yeah, sure,” Jake said.
“Everything’s ready,” said the physicist, “all you have to do is sit here.”
Jake got in, fastened the seatbelt, and looked around nervously. “You sure this won’t hurt?”
“Well, I guess we’ll soon see, won’t we?” The scientist smiled, and as Jake started to protest, Dr. Aubrey pressed ENTER on his terminal.
The world went black and red and green all over, and then Jake Smith was sitting in the middle of a cow pie in a pasture in eighteenth-century Virginia.
“My God, it worked!” he said, and quickly looked around. Fifty feet away an old man was plowing the field, plodding along behind a decrepit horse. Jake picked himself up, brushed away the good Southern sod, and hurried on over. “Six minutes,” he muttered to himself, checking his watch.
“ ’Scuse me,” he shouted, “Excuse me!” The farmer stopped his horse, gaping at this strangely dressed man from the future. “I’m looking for Meredith Smith,” Jake said.
“Ay?” the old coot said.
“Are you Meredith Smith?”
“Well, there’s them that calls me that,” old Smith said. “Some of them calls me other things too.” He wheezed a few times before Jake realized he was laughing at his own joke. “Who’re you?” he asked.
“I’m, um, Jacob Smith,
” Jake said. “Your, ah, your cousin.”
Old Merry Smith looked his “cousin” up and down very carefully with his watery blue eyes. “Well, ya must be from Willyburg in the East, cuz I ain’t never seen anything like you ’round here before, cuzz. And these here duds are pretty fancy things for my kinfolk.” He grabbed Jake’s shirt with his grimy fingers, leaving smudges everywhere he touched. “What kinda cloth is this, anyhow?” he asked. “And who dya say your pappy was?”
“I didn’t,” Jake said, backing off. “Look, Mr. Smith, cousin, I’m in kind of a hurry now, so I’d really appreciate it if you answer a few of my questions.” Five minutes were left on his watch.
“Well, son, things move kinda slow in these here parts,” said Meredith Smith, “And me and the missus are pretty much all alone now, ’cept for old Lightning here, and Buster our yaller dawg.” He whistled, and started wheezing again when the mangy old mutt came ambling over. “But the young’uns, they’re all livin’ over in Stafford now, near the city, and they hardly ever come back to see us folk no how . . .”
“Yeah, yeah, that’s great,” Jake said. He was beside himself as he watched the seconds ticking away. “Look, all I really want to know is where you’re from.”
The old man shook his head in disbelief. “Gad, boy, where ya been livin’? We’re all loyal servants of his Majesty King George here. You ain’t one o’ dem Jacobites, is you?” He looked at Jake rather closely, then wheezed a third time. “Or some kind of Papist maybe? Or one of them Dissenters?”
Jake threw up his hands in disgust. “No, no, no, of course not!” he said. “Uh, what I mean is”—there were only four minutes left—“just precisely where were you born?”
Old Meredith Smith scratched the stubble on his chin, and popped a wad of vile-smelling tobacco into his mouth, exposing the half-dozen rotted teeth still dotting the front of his face. A stream of the brown crud oozed through one of the gaps and rolled down his chin. He looked at his visitor in disbelief. “Why, that’s easy, son,” he said, “I was a-borned in bed!”
