by Anthology
Holt, turning right, worked his way south to Prospect Park and then east, toward the lonely beach section between Brighton Beach and Canarsie. Smith, huddled in back, had made no sound.
“So far, so good,” Holt said over his shoulder. “My arm’s in shape again, anyhow.”
“What happened to it?”
“Must have hit my funny-bone.”
“No,” Smith said, “that was a paralyzer. Like this.” He exhibited the cane.
Holt didn’t get it. He kept driving until they were nearly at their destination. He pulled up around the corner from a liquor store.
“I’m getting a bottle,” he said. “It’s too cold and rainy without a shot of something to pep me up.”
“We haven’t time.”
“Sure we have.”
Smith bit his lip but made no further objection. Holt bought a pint of rye and, back in the cab, took a swig, after offering his fare a drink and getting a shake of the head for answer.
The rye definitely helped. The night was intensely cold and miserable; squalls of rain swept across the street, sluicing down the windshield. The worn wipers didn’t help much. The wind screamed like a banshee.
“We’re close enough,” Smith suggested. “Better stop here. Find a place to hide the taxicab.”
“Where? These are all private houses.”
“A driveway . . .”
“O.K.,” Holt said, and found one shielded by overhanging trees and rank bushes. He turned off lights and motor and got out, hunching his chin down and turning up the collar of his slicker. The rain instantly drenched him. It came down with a steady, torrential pour, pattering noisily staccato in the puddles. Underfoot was sandy, slippery mud.
“Wait a sec,” Holt said, and returned to the cab for his flashlight. “All set. Now what?”
“Keaton’s house.” Smith was shivering convulsively. “It ‘isn’t eleven yet. We’ll have to wait.”
They waited, concealed in the bushes on Keaton’s grounds. The house was a looming shadow against the fluctuating curtain of drenched darkness. A lighted window on the ground floor showed part of what seemed to be a library. The sound of breakers, throbbing heavily, came from their left.
Water trickled down inside Holt’s collar. He cursed quietly. He was earning his thousand bucks, all right. But Smith was going through the same discomfort and not complaining about it.
“Isn’t it—”
“Sh-h!” Smith warned. “The others may be here.”
Obediently, Holt lowered his voice. “Then they’ll be drowned, too. Are they after the notebook? Why don’t they go in and get it?”
Smith bit his nails. “They want it destroyed.”
“That’s what the guy in the alley said, come to think of it.” Holt nodded, startled. “Who are they, anyhow?”
“Never mind. They don’t belong here. Do you remember what I told you, Denny?”
“About getting the notebook? What’ll I do if the safe isn’t open?”
“It will be,” Smith said confidently. “Soon, now. Keaton is in his cellar laboratory, finishing his experiment.”
Through the lighted window a shadow flickered. Holt leaned forward; he felt Smith go tense as wire beside him. A tiny gasp ripped from the old man’s throat.
A man had entered the library. He went to the wall, swung aside a curtain, and stood there, his back to Holt. Presently he stepped back, opening the door of a safe.
“Ready!” Smith said. “This is it! He’s writing down the final step of the formula. The explosion will come in a minute now. When it does, Denny, give me a minute to get away and cause a disturbance, if the others are here.”
“I don’t think they are.”
Smith shook his head. “Do as I say. Run for the house and get the notebook.”
“Then what?”
“Then get out of here as fast as you can. Don’t let them catch you, whatever you do.”
“What about you?”
Smith’s eyes blazed with intense, violent command, shining out of the windy dark. “Forget me, Denny! I’ll be safe.”
“You hired me as a bodyguard.”
“I’m discharging you, then. This is vitally important, more important than my life. That notebook must be in your hands—”
“For the War Department?”
“For . . . oh yes. You’ll do that, now, Denny?”
Holt hesitated. “If it’s that important—”
“It is. It is!”
“O.K., then.”
The man in the house was at a desk, writing. Suddenly the window blew out. The sound of the blast was muffled, as though its source was underground, but Holt felt the ground shake beneath him. He saw Keaton spring up, take a half step away and return, snatching up the notebook. The physicist ran to the wall safe, threw the book into it, swung the door shut and paused there briefly, his back to Holt. Then he darted out of Holt’s range of vision and was gone.
Smith said, his voice coming out in excited spurts, “He didn’t have time to lock it. Wait till you hear me, Denny, and then get that notebook!”
Holt said, “O.K.,” but Smith was already gone, running through the bushes. A yell from the house heralded red flames sweeping out a distant, ground-floor window. Something fell crashingly, masonry, Holt thought, He heard Smith’s voice. He could not see the man in the rain, but there was the noise of a scuffle. Briefly Holt hesitated. Blue pencils of light streaked through the rain, wan and vague in the distance.
He ought to help Smith—
He’d promised, though, and there was the notebook. The pursuers had wanted it destroyed. And now, quite obviously, the house was going up in flames. Of Keaton there was no trace.
He ran for the lighted window. There was plenty of time to get the notebook before the fire became dangerous.
From the corner of his eye he saw a dark figure cutting in toward him. Holt slipped on his brass knuckles. If the guy had a gun it would be unfortunate; otherwise, fair enough.
The man—the same one Holt had encountered in the Forty-second Street alley—raised a cane and aimed it. A wan blue pencil of light streaked out. Holt felt his legs go dead and crashed down heavily.
The other man kept running. Holt, struggling to his feet, threw himself desperately forward. No use.
The flames were brightening the night now. The tall, dark figure loomed for an instant against the library window; then the man had clambered over the sill. Holt, his legs stiff, managed to keep his balance and lurch forward. It was agony: like pins and needles a thousand times intensified.
He made it to the window, and, clinging to the sill, stared into the room. His opponent was busy at the safe. Holt swung himself through the window and hobbled toward the man.
His brass-knuckled fist was ready.
The unknown sprang lightly away, swinging his cane. Dried blood stained his chin.
“I’ve locked the safe,” he said. “Better get out of here before the fire catches you, Denny.”
Holt mouthed a curse. He tried to reach the man but could not. Before he had covered more than two halting steps, the tall figure was gone, springing lightly out through the window and racing away into the rain.
Holt turned to the safe. He could hear the crackling of flames. Smoke was pouring through a doorway on his left.
He tested the safe; it was locked. He didn’t know the combination—so he couldn’t open it.
But Holt tried. He searched the desk, hoping Keaton might have scribbled the key on a paper somewhere. He fought his way to the laboratory steps and stood looking down into the inferno of the cellar, where Keaton’s burning, motionless body lay. Yes, Holt tried. And he failed.
Finally the heat drove him from the house. Fire trucks were screaming closer. There was no sign of Smith or anyone else.
Holt stayed, amid the crowds, to search, but Smith and his trackers had disappeared as though they had vanished into thin air.
“We caught him, Administrator,” said the tall man with the dri
ed blood on his chin. “I came here directly on our return to inform you.”
The administrator blew out his breath in a sigh of deep relief.
“Any trouble, Jorus?”
“Not to speak of.”
“Well, bring him in,” the administrator said. “I suppose we’d better get this over with.”
Smith entered the office. His heavy overcoat looked incongruous against the celoflex garments of the others.
He kept his eyes cast down.
The administrator picked up a memo roll and read: “Sol 25, in the year of our Lord 2016. Subject: interference with probability factors. The accused has been detected in the act of attempting to tamper with the current probability-present by altering the past, thus creating a variable alternative present. Use of time machines is forbidden except by authorized officials. Accused will answer.”
Smith mumbled, “I wasn’t trying to change things, Administrator—” Jorus looked up and said, “Objection. Certain key time-place periods are forbidden. Brooklyn, especially the area about Keaton’s house, in the time near 11 P.M., January 10, 1943, is absolutely forbidden to time travellers. The prisoner knows why.”
“I knew nothing about it, Ser Jorus. You must believe me.”
Jorus went on relentlessly, “Administrator, here are the facts. The accused, having stolen a time traveller, set the controls manually for a forbidden space-time sector. Such sectors are restricted, as you know, because they are keys to the future; interference with such key spots will automatically alter the future and create a different line of probability. Keaton, in 1943, in his cellar laboratory, succeeded in working out the formula for what we know now as M-Power. He hurried upstairs, opened his safe, and noted down the formula in his book, in such a form that it could very easily have been deciphered and applied even by a layman. At that time there was an explosion in Keaton’s laboratory and he replaced the notebook in the safe and went downstairs, neglecting, however, to relock the safe. Keaton was killed; he had not known the necessity of keeping M-Power away from radium, and the atomic synthesis caused the explosion. The subsequent fire destroyed Keaton’s notebook, even though it had been within the safe. It was charred into illegibility, nor was its value suspected. Not until the first year of the twenty-first century was M-Power rediscovered.”
Smith said, “I didn’t know all that, Ser Jorus.”
“You are lying. Our organization does not make mistakes. You found a key spot in the past and decided to change it, thus altering our present. Had you succeeded, Dennis Holt of 1943 would have taken Keaton’s notebook out of the burning house and read it. His curiosity would have made him open the notebook. He would have found the key to M-Power. And, because of the very nature of M-Power, Dennis Holt would have become the most powerful man in his world time. According to the variant probability line you were aiming at, Dennis Holt, had he got that notebook, would have been dictator of the world now. This world, as we know it, would not exist, though its equivalent would—a brutal, ruthless civilization ruled by an autocratic Dennis Holt, the sole possessor of M-Power. In striving for that end, the prisoner has committed a serious crime.”
Smith lifted his head. “I demand euthanasia,” he said. “If you want to blame me for trying to get out of this damned routine life of mine, very well. I never had a chance, that’s all.”
The administrator raised his eyebrows. “Your record shows you have had many chances. You are incapable of succeeding through your own abilities; you are in the only job you can do well. But your crime is, as Jorus says, serious. You have tried to create a new probability-present, destroying this one by tampering with a key spot in the past. And, had you succeeded, Dennis Holt would now be dictator of a race of slaves. Euthanasia is no longer your privilege; your crime is too serious. You must continue to live, at your appointed task, until the day of your natural death.”
Smith choked. “It was his fault—if he’d got that notebook in time—” Jorus looked quizzical. “His? Dennis Holt, at the age of twenty, in 1943 . . . his fault? No, it is yours, I think—for trying to change your past and your present.”
The administrator said, “Sentence has been passed. It is ended.”
And Dennis Holt, at the age of ninety-three, in the year of our Lord 2016, turned obediently and went slowly back to his job, the same one he would fill now until he died.
And Dennis Holt, at the age of twenty, in the year of our Lord 1943, drove his taxi home from Brooklyn, wondering what it had all been about. The veils of rain swept slanting across the windshield. Denny took another drink out of the bottle and felt the rye steal comfortingly through his body.
What had it all been about?
Banknotes rustled crisply in his pocket. Denny grinned. A thousand smackeroos! His stake. His capital. With that, now, he could do plenty—and he would, too. All a guy needed was a little ready money, and he could go places.
“You bet!” Dennis Holt said emphatically. “I’m not going to hold down the same dull job all my life. Not with a thousand bucks—not me!”
ENOCH SOAMES: A MEMORY OF THE EIGHTEEN-NINETIES
Max Beerbohn
When a book about the literature of the eighteen-nineties was given by Mr. Holbrook Jackson to the world, I looked eagerly in the index for Soames, Enoch. It was as I feared: he was not there. But everybody else was. Many writers whom I had quite forgotten, or remembered but faintly, lived again for me, they and their work, in Mr. Holbrook Jackson’s pages. The book was as thorough as it was brilliantly written. And thus the omission found by me was an all the deadlier record of poor Soames’s failure to impress himself on his decade.
I dare say I am the only person who noticed the omission. Soames had failed so piteously as all that! Nor is there a counterpoise in the thought that if he had had some measure of success he might have passed, like those others, out of my mind, to return only at the historian’s beck. It is true that had his gifts, such as they were, been acknowledged in his lifetime, he would never have made the bargain I saw him make—that strange bargain whose results have kept him always in the foreground of my memory. But it is from those very results that the full piteousness of him glares out.
Not my compassion, however, impels me to write of him. For his sake, poor fellow, I should be inclined to keep my pen out of the ink. It is ill to deride the dead. And how can I write about Enoch Soames without making him ridiculous? Or, rather, how am I to hush up the horrid fact that he WAS ridiculous? I shall not be able to do that. Yet, sooner or later, write about him I must. You will see in due course that I have no option. And I may as well get the thing done now.
In the summer term of ’93 a bolt from the blue flashed down on Oxford. It drove deep; it hurtlingly embedded itself in the soil. Dons and undergraduates stood around, rather pale, discussing nothing but it.
Whence came it, this meteorite? From Paris. Its name? Will Rothenstein. Its aim? To do a series of twenty-four portraits in lithograph. These were to be published from the Bodley Head, London.
The matter was urgent. Already the warden of A, and the master of B, and the Regius Professor of C had meekly “sat.” Dignified and doddering old men who had never consented to sit to anyone could not withstand this dynamic little stranger. He did not sue; he invited: he did not invite; he commanded. He was twenty-one years old. He wore spectacles that flashed more than any other pair ever seen. He was a wit. He was brimful of ideas. He knew Whistler. He knew Daudet and the Goncourts. He knew everyone in Paris. He knew them all by heart. He was Paris in Oxford. It was whispered that, so soon as he had polished off his selection of dons, he was going to include a few undergraduates. It was a proud day for me when I—I was included. I liked Rothenstein not less than I feared him; and there arose between us a friendship that has grown ever warmer, and been more and more valued by me, with every passing year.
At the end of term he settled in, or, rather, meteoritically into, London. It was to him I owed my first knowledge of that forever-enchanting little world-
in-itself, Chelsea, and my first acquaintance with Walter Sickert and other August elders who dwelt there. It was Rothenstein that took me to see, in Cambridge Street, Pimlico, a young man whose drawings were already famous among the few—Aubrey Beardsley by name. With Rothenstein I paid my first visit to the Bodley Head. By him I was inducted into another haunt of intellect and daring, the domino-room of the Cafe Royal.
There, on that October evening—there, in that exuberant vista of gilding and crimson velvet set amidst all those opposing mirrors and upholding caryatids, with fumes of tobacco ever rising to the painted and pagan ceiling, and with the hum of presumably cynical conversation broken into so sharply now and again by the clatter of dominoes shuffled on marble tables, I drew a deep breath and, “This indeed,” said I to myself, “is life!” (Forgive me that theory. Remember the waging of even the South African War was not yet.)
It was the hour before dinner. We drank vermuth. Those who knew Rothenstein were pointing him out to those who knew him only by name. Men were constantly coming in through the swing-doors and wandering slowly up and down in search of vacant tables or of tables occupied by friends. One of these rovers interested me because I was sure he wanted to catch Rothenstein’s eye. He had twice passed our table, with a hesitating look; but Rothenstein, in the thick of a disquisition on Puvis de Chavannes, had not seen him. He was a stooping, shambling person, rather tall, very pale, with longish and brownish hair. He had a thin, vague beard, or, rather, he had a chin on which a large number of hairs weakly curled and clustered to cover its retreat. He was an odd-looking person; but in the nineties odd apparitions were more frequent, I think, than they are now. The young writers of that era—and I was sure this man was a writer—strove earnestly to be distinct in aspect. This man had striven unsuccessfully. He wore a soft black hat of clerical kind, but of Bohemian intention, and a gray waterproof cape which, perhaps because it was waterproof, failed to be romantic. I decided that “dim” was the mot juste for him. I had already essayed to write, and was immensely keen on the mot juste, that Holy Grail of the period.
