Time Travel Omnibus Volume 1

by Anthology

  MAN IN HIS TIME

  Brian W. Aldiss

  His absence

  Janet Westermark sat watching the three men in the office: the administrator who was about to go out of her life, the behaviourist who was about to come into it, and the husband whose life ran parallel to but insulated from her own.

  She was not the only one playing a watching game. The behaviourist, whose name was Clement Stackpole, sat hunched in his chair with his ugly strong hands clasped round his knee, thrusting his intelligent and simian face forward, the better to regard his new subject. Jack Westermark.

  The administrator of the Mental Research Hospital spoke in a lively and engaged way. Typically, it was only Jack Westermark who seemed absent from the scene.

  Your particular problem, restless

  His hands upon his lap lay still, but he himself was restless, though the restlessness seemed directed. It was as if he were in another room with other people, Janet thought. She saw that he caught her eye when in fact she was not entirely looking at him, and by the time she returned the glance, he was gone, withdrawn.

  “Although Mr. Stackpole has not dealt before with your particular problem,” the administrator was saying, “he has had plenty of field experience. I know”

  “I’m sure we won’t,” Westermark said, folding his hands and nodding his head slightly.

  Smoothly, the administrator made a penciled note of the remark, scribbled the precise time beside it, and continued. “I know Mr. Stackpole is too modest to say this, but he is a great man for working in with people”

  “If you feel it’s necessary,” Westermark said. “Though I’ve seen enough of your equipment for a while.”

  The pencil moved, the smooth voice proceeded. “Good. A great man for working in with people, and I’m sure you and Mr. Westermark will soon find you are glad to have him around. Remember, he’s there to help both of you.”

  Janet smiled, and said from the island of her chair, trying to smile at him and Stackpole, “I’m sure that everything will work” She was interrupted by her husband, who rose to his feet, letting his hands drop to his sides and saying, turning slightly to address thin air, “Do you mind if I say good-bye to Nurse Simmons?”

  Her voice no longer wavered

  “Everything will be all right, I’m sure,” she said hastily.

  And Stackpole nodded at her, conspiratorially agreeing to see her point of view.

  “We’ll all get on fine, Janet,” he said. She was in the swift process of digesting that unexpected use of her Christian name, and the administrator was also giving her the sort of encouraging smile so many people had fed her since Westermark was pulled out of the ocean off Casablanca, when her husband, still having his lonely conversation with the air, said, “Of course, I should have remembered.”

  His right hand went half way to his forehead or his heart Janet wondered and then dropped, as he added, “Perhaps she’ll come round and see us some time.” Now he turned an was smiling faintly at another vacant space with just the faintest nod of his head, as if slightly cajoling. “You’d like that, wouldn’t you, Janet?”

  She moved her head, instinctively trying to bring her eye into his gaze as she replied vaguely, “Of course, darling.” He voice no longer wavered when she addressed his absent attention.

  There was sunlight through which they could see each other

  “There was sunlight in one corner of the room, coming through the windows of a bay angled towards the sun. For a moment she caught, as she rose to her feet, her husband’s profile with the sunlight behind it. It was thin and withdrawn.

  Intelligent: she had always thought him over-burdened with his intelligence, but now there was a lost look there, and she thought of the words of a psychiatrist who had been called in on the case earlier: “You must understand that the waking brain is perpetually lapped by the unconscious.”

  Lapped by the unconscious

  Fighting the words away, she said, addressing the smile of the administratorthat smile must have advanced his career so much”You’ve helped me a lot. I couldn’t have got through these months without you. Now we’d better go.”

  She heard herself chopping her words, fearing Westermark would talk across them, as he did: “Thank you for your help.

  If you find anything . . .”

  Stackpole walked modestly over to Janet as the administrator rose and said. “Well, don’t either of you forget us if you’re in any kind of trouble.”

  “I’m sure we won’t.”

  “And, Jack, we’d like you to come back here to visit us once a month for a personal check-up. Don’t want to waste all our expensive equipment, you know, and you are our star er, patient.” He smiled rather tightly as he said it, glancing at the paper on his desk to check Westermark’s answer.

  Westermark’s back was already turned on him, Westermark was already walking slowly to the door, Westermark had said his good-byes, perched out on the lonely eminence of his existence.

  Janet looked helplessly, before she could guard against it, at the administrator and Stackpole. She hated it that they were too professional to take note of what seemed her husband’s breach of conduct. Stackpole looked kindly in a monkey way and took her arm with one of his thick hands.

  “Shall we be off then? My car’s waiting outside.”

  Not saying anything, nodding, thinking, and consulting watches

  She nodded, not saying anything, thinking only, without the need of the administrator’s notes to think it, “Oh yes, this was when he said, ‘Do you mind if I say good-bye to Nurse’ who’s-it? Simpson?” She was learning to follow her husband’s footprints across the broken path of conversation. He was now out in the corridor, the door swinging to behind him, and to empty air the administrator was saying, “It’s her day off today.”

  “You’re good on your cues,” she said, feeling the hand tighten on her arm. She politely brushed his fingers away, horrid Stackpole, trying to recall what had gone only four minutes before. Jack had said something to her; she couldn’t remember, didn’t speak, avoided eyes, put out her hand and shook the administrator’s firmly.

  “Thanks,” she said.

  “Au revoir to both of you,” he replied firmly, glancing swiftly: watch, notes, her, the door. “Of course,” he said. “If we find anything at all. We are very hopeful . . .”

  He adjusted his tie, looking at the watch again.

  “Your husband has gone now, Mrs. Westermark,” he said, his manner softening. He walked towards the door with her and added, “You have been wonderfully brave, and I do realisewe all realisethat you will have to go on being wonderful. With time, it should be easier for you; doesn’t Shakespeare say in Hamlet that ‘Use almost can change the stamp of nature’ ? May I suggest that you follow Stackpole’s and my example and keep a little notebook and a strict check on the time?”

  They saw her tiny hesitation, stood about her, two men round a personable woman, not entirely innocent of relish.

  Stackpole cleared his throat, smiled, said, “He can so easily feel cut off you know. It’s essential that you of all people answer his questions, or he will feel cut off.”

  Always a pace ahead

  “The children?” she asked.

  “Let’s see you and Jack well settled in at home again, say for a fortnight or so,” the administrator said, “before we think about having the children back to see him.”

  “That way’s better for them and Jack and you, Janet,”

  Stackpole said. ‘Don’t be glib,’ she thought; ‘consolation I need, God knows, but that’s too facile.’ She turned her face away, fearing it looked too vulnerable these days.

  In the corridor, the administrator said, as valediction, “I’m sure Grandma’s spoiling them terribly, Mrs. Westermark, but worrying won’t mend it, as the old saw says.”

  She smiled at him and walked quickly away, a pace ahead of Stackpole.

  Westermark sat in the back of the car outside the administrative block. She cl
imbed in beside him. As she did so, he jerked violently back in his seat.

  “Darling, what is it?” she asked. He said nothing.

  Stackpole had not emerged from the building, evidently having a last word with the administrator. Janet took the moment to lean over and kiss her husband’s cheek, aware as she did so that a phantom wife had already, from his viewpoint, done so. His response was a phantom to her.

  “The countryside looks green,” he said. His eyes were flickering over the grey concrete block opposite.

  “Yes,” she said.

  Stackpole came bustling down the steps, apologising as he opened the car door, settled in. He let the clutch back too fast and they shot forward. Janet saw then the reason for Westermark’s jerking backwards a short while before. Now the acceleration caught him again; his body was rolled helplessly back. As they drove along, he set one hand fiercely on the side grip, for his sway was not properly counterbalancing the movement of the car.

  Once outside the grounds of the institute, they were in the country, still under a mid-August day.

  His theories

  Westermark, by concentrating, could bring himself to con-form to some of the laws of the time continuum he had left.

  When the car he was in climbed up his drive (familiar, yet strange with the rhododendrons unclipped and no signs of children) and stopped by the front door, he sat in his seat for three and a half minutes before venturing to open his door.

  Then he climbed out and stood on the gravel, frowning down at it. Was it as real as ever, as material? Was there a slight glaze on it? As if something shone through from the interior of the earth, shone through all things? Or was it that there was a screen between him and everything else? It was important to decide between the two theories, for he had to live under the discipline of one. What he hoped to prove was that the permeation theory was correct; that way he was merely one of the factors comprising the functioning universe, together with the rest of humanity. By the glaze theory, he was isolated not only from the rest of humanity but from the entire cosmos (except Mars?). It was early days yet; he had a deal of thinking to do, and new ideas would undoubtedly emerge after observation and cogitation. Emotion must not decide the issue; he must be detached. Revolutionary theories could well emerge from this suffering.

  He could see his wife by him, standing off in case they happened embarrassingly or painfully to collide. He smiled thinly at her through her glaze. He said, “I am, but I’d prefer not to talk.” He stepped towards the house, noting the slippery feel of gravel that would not move under his tread until the world caught up. He said, “I’ve every respect for The Guardian, but I’d prefer not to talk at present.”

  Famous Astronaut Returns Home

  As the party arrived, a man waited in the porch for them, ambushing Westermark’s return home with a deprecatory smile. Hesitant but business-like, he came forward and looked interrogatively at the three people who had emerged from the car.

  “Excuse me, you are Captain Jack Westermark, aren’t you?”

  He stood aside as Westermark seemed to make straight for him.

  “I’m the psychology correspondent for The Guardian, if I might intrude for a moment.”

  Westermark’s mother had opened the front door and stood there smiling welcome at him, one hand nervously up to her grey hair. Her son walked past her. The newspaper man stared after him.

  Janet told him apologetically, “You’ll have to excuse us.

  My husband did reply to you, but he’s really not prepared to meet people yet.”

  “When did he reply, Mrs. Westermark? Before he heard what I had to say?”

  “Well, naturally notbut his life stream . . . I’m sorry, I can’t explain.”

  “He really is living ahead of time, isn’t he? Will you spare me a minute to tell me how you feel now the first shock is over?”

  “You really must excuse me,” Janet said, brushing past him. As she followed her husband into the house, she heard Stackpole say, “Actually, I read The Guardian, and perhaps I could help you. The Institute has given me the job of remaining with Captain Westermark. My name’s Clement Stackpoleyou may know my book. Persistent Human Relations, Methuen. But you must not say that Westermark is living ahead of time. That’s quite incorrect. What you can say is that some of his psychological and physiological processes have somehow been transposed forward”

  “Ass!” she exclaimed to herself. She had paused by the threshold to catch some of his words. Now she whisked in.

  Talk hanging in the air among the long watches of supper

  Supper that evening had its discomforts, although Janet Westermark and her mother-in-law achieved an air of melancholy gaiety by bringing two Scandinavian candelabra, relics of a Copenhagen holiday, onto the table and surprising the two men with a gay-looking hors d’oeuvre. But the conversation was mainly like the hors d’oeuvre, Janet thought: little tempting isolated bits of talk, not nourishing.

  Mrs. Westermark senior had not yet got the hang of talking to her son, and confined her remarks to Janet, though she looked towards Jack often enough. “How are the children?” he asked her. Flustered by the knowledge that he was waiting a long while for her answer, she replied rather incoherently and dropped her knife.

  To relieve the tension, Janet was cooking up a remark on the character of the administrator at the Mental Research Hospital, when Westermark said, “Then he is at once thoughtful and literate. Commendable and rare in men of his type. I got the impression, as you evidently did, that he was as interested in his job as in advancement. J suppose one might say one even liked him. But you know him better, Stackpole; what do you think of him?”

  Crumbling bread to cover his ignorance of whom they were supposed to be conversing, Stackpole said, “Oh, I don’t know; it’s hard to say really,” spinning out time, pretending not to squint at his watch.

  “The administrator was quite a charmer, didn’t you think, Jack?” Janet remarkedperhaps helping Stackpole as much as Jack.

  “He looks as if he might make a slow bowler,” Westermark said, with an intonation that suggested he was agreeing with something as yet unsaid.

  “Oh, him”’ Stackpole said. “Yes, he seems a satisfactory sort of chap on the whole.”

  “He quoted Shakespeare to me and thoughtfully told me where the quotation came from,” Janet said.

  “No thank you, Mother,” Westermark said.

  “I don’t have much to do with him,” Stackpole continued.

  “Though I have played cricket with him a time or two. He makes quite a good slow bowler.”

  “Are you really?” Westermark exclaimed.

  That stopped them. Jack’s mother looked helplessly about, caught her son’s glazed eye, said, covering up, “Do have some more sauce, Jack, dear,” recalled she had already had her answer, almost let her knife slide again, gave up trying to eat.

  “I’m a batsman, myself,” Stackpole said, as if bringing an old pneumatic drill to the new silence. When no answer came, he doggedly went on, expounding on the game, the pleasure of it. Janet sat and watched, a shade perplexed that she was admiring Stackpole’s performance and wondering at her slight perplexity; then she decided that she had made up her mind to dislike Stackpole, and immediately dissolved the resolution.

  Was he not on their side? And even the strong hairy hands became a little more acceptable when you thought of them gripping the rubber of a bat handle; and the broad shoulders swinging . . . She closed her eyes momentarily, and tried to concentrate on what he was saying.

  A batsman himself

  Later, she met Stackpole on the upper landing. He had a small cigar in his mouth, she had two pillows in her arms. He stood in her way.

  “Can I help at all, Janet?”

  “I’m only making up a bed, Mr. Stackpole.”

  “Are you not sleeping in with your husband?”

  “He would like to be on his own for a night or two, Mr. Stackpole. I shall sleep in the children’s room for the time
being.”

  “Then please permit me to carry the pillows for you. And do please call me Clem. All my friends do.”

  Trying to be pleasanter, to unfreeze, to recall that Jack was not moving her out of the bedroom permanently, she said, “I’m sorry. It’s just that we once had a terrier called Clem.”

  But it did not sound as she had wished it to do.

  He put the pillows on Peter’s blue bed, switched on the bedside lamp, and sat on the edge of the bed, clutching his cigar and puffing at it.

  “This may be a bit embarrassing, but there’s something I feel I should say to you, Janet.” He did not look at her. She brought him an ashtray and stood by him.

  “We feel your husband’s mental health may be endangered, although I hasten to assure you that he shows no signs of losing his mental equilibrium beyond what we may call an inordinate absorption in phenomena and even there, we cannot say, of course we can’t, that his absorption is any greater than one might expect. Except in the totally unprecedented circumstances, I mean. We must talk about this in the next few days.”

  She waited for him to go on, not unamused by the play with the cigar. Then he looked straight up at her and said, “Frankly, Mrs. Westermark, we think it would help your husband if you could have sexual relations with him.”

  A little taken aback, she said, “Can you imagine” Correcting herself, she said, “That is for my husband to say. I am not unapproachable.”

  She saw he had caught her slip. Playing a very straight bat, he said, “I’m sure you’re not, Mrs. Westermark.”

  With the light out, living, she lay in Peter’s bed

  She lay in Peter’s bed with the light out. Certainly she wanted him: pretty badly, now she allowed herself to dwell on it. During the long months of the Mars expedition, while she had stayed at home and he had got farther from home, while he actually had existence on that other planet, she had been chaste. She had looked after the children and driven round the countryside and enjoyed writing those articles for women’s magazines and being interviewed on TV when the ship was reported to have left Mars on its homeward journey. She had been, in part, dormant.