Time Travelers

by Peter Haining (ed)

  “But you see,” Dr. Fein said, “this subjective sensation of being trapped is perhaps all we would have.” This was the research physicist whose basic work had laid the theoretical foundation for the project. “If a closed loop did unfortunately lock into being.”

  “The general,” Addison Doug said, “is using words he doesn’t understand.”

  “I researched the one I was unfamiliar with.” General Toad said. “The technical psychiatric terms… I know what they mean.”

  To Addison Doug, Benz said, “Where’d you get all those VW parts, Addi?”

  “I don’t have them yet,” Addison Doug said.

  “Probably picked up the first junk he could lay his hands on,” Crayne said. “Whatever was available, just before we started back.”

  “Will start back,” Addison Doug corrected.

  “Here are my instructions to the three of you,” General Toad said. “You are not in any way to attempt to cause damage or implosion or malfunction during reentry, either by lugging back extra mass or by any other method that enters your mind. You are to return as scheduled and in replica of the prior simulations. This especially applies to you, Mr. Doug.” The phone by his right arm buzzed. He frowned, picked up the receiver. An interval passed, and then he scowled deeply and set the receiver back down, loudly.

  “You’ve been overruled,” Dr. Fein said.

  “Yes, I have,” General Toad said. “And I must say at this time that I am personally glad because my decision was an unpleasant one.”

  “Then we can arrange for implosion at reentry,” Benz said after a pause. “The three of you are to make the decision,” General Toad said. “Since it involves your lives. It’s been entirely left up to you. Whichever way you want it. If you’re convinced you’re in a closed time loop, and you believe a massive implosion at reentry will abolish it —” He ceased talking, as tempunaut Doug rose to his feet. “Are you going to make another speech, Doug?” he said.

  “I just want to thank everyone involved,” Addison Doug said. “For letting us decide.” He gazed haggard-faced and wearily around at all the individuals seated at the table. “I really appreciate it.”

  “You know,” Benz said slowly, “blowing us up at reentry could add nothing to the chances of abolishing a closed loop. In fact that could do it, Doug.”

  “Not if it kills us all,” Crayne said.

  “You agree with Addi?” Benz said.

  “Dead is dead,” Crayne said. “I’ve been pondering it. What other way is more likely to get us out of this? Than if we’re dead? What possible other way?”

  “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 still 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.

  MR. STENBERRY’S TALE

  J.B. Priestley

  ‘And thank you,’ said the landlady, with the mechanical cheerfulness of her kind. She pushed across the counter one shilling and four coppers, which all contrived to get wet on the journey. ‘Yes, it’s quite enough. Sort of weather to bring them in too, though it’s a bit early yet for our lot. Who’s in the Private Bar?’ She craned her fat little neck, peered across the other side, and then returned, looking very confidential. ‘Only one. But he’s one of our reg’lars. A bit too reg’lar, if you ask me, Mr. Strenberry is.’

  I put down my glass, and glanced out, through the open door. All I could see was a piece of wet road. The rain was falling now with that precision which suggests it will go on for ever. It was darker too. ‘And who is Mr. Strenberry?’ I inquired, merely for want of something better to do. It did not matter to me who Mr. Strenberry was.

  The landlady leaned forward a little. ‘He’s the schoolmaster from down the road,’ she replied, in a delighted whisper. ‘Been here—oh, lemme see—it must be four years, might be five. Came from London here. Yes, that’s where he came from, London. Sydenham, near the Crystal Palace, that’s his home. I know because he’s told me so himself, and I’ve a sister that’s lived near there these twenty years.’

  I said nothing. There did not seem to be anything to say. The fact that the local schoolmaster came from Sydenham left me as uninterested as it found me. So I merely nodded, took another sip, and filled a pipe.

  The landlady glanced at me with a faint reproach in her silly prominent eyes. ‘And he’s queer is Mr. Strenberry,’ she added, with something like defiance. ‘Oh yes, he’s queer enough. Clever, y’know—in a sort of way, book-learning and all that, if you follow my meanin’—but, well—he’s queer.’

  ‘In what way is he queer?’ It was the least I could do.

  She put her hand up to her mouth. ‘His wife left him. That’s about two years ago. Took their little boy with her too. Gone to stay with relations, it was given out, but we all knew. She left him all right. Just walked out one fine morning and the little boy with her. Nice little boy, too, he was. He lives alone now, Mr. Strenberry. And a nice mess, too I’ll be bound. Just look at his clothes. He won’t be schoolmastering here much longer neither. He’s been given a few warnings, that I do know. And you can’t blame ‘em, can you?’

  I replied, with the melancholy resignation that was expected of me, that I could not blame them. Clearly, Mr. Strenberry, with his nice mess, his clothes, his general queerness, would not do.

  The landlady shook her head and tightened her lips. ‘It’s the same old trouble now. Taking too much. I don’t say getting drunk—because, as far as I can see, he doesn’t—but still, taking too much, too reg’lar with it. A lot o’ people, temperancers and that sort,’ she went on, bitterly, ‘think we want to push it down customers’ throats. All lies. I never knew anybody that kept a
decent house that didn’t want people to go steady with it. I’ve dropped a few hints to Mr. Strenberry, but he takes no notice. And what can you do? If he’s quiet, behaves himself, and wants it, he’s got to have it, hasn’t he? We can’t stop him. However, I don’t want to say too much. And anyhow it isn’t just what he takes that makes him queer. It’s the way he goes on, and what he says— when he feels like saying anything, and that’s not often.’

  ‘You mean, he talks queerly?’ I said, casually. Perhaps a man of ideas, Mr. Strenberry.

  ‘He might go for a week, he might go a fortnight, and not a word— except “Good evening” or “Thank you”, for he’s always the gentleman in here, I must say—will you get out of him. Some of the lively ones try to draw him out a bit, pull his leg as you might say—but not a word. Then, all of a sudden, he’ll let himself go, talk your head off. And you never heard such stuff. I don’t say I’ve heard much of it myself because I haven’t the time to listen to it and I can’t be bothered with it, but some of the other customers have told me. If you ask me, it’s a bit of a shame, the way they go on, because it’s getting to be a case of—’ And here she tapped her forehead significantly. ‘Mind you, it may have been his queerness that started all his troubles, his wife leaving him and all that. There’s several that knows him better than I do will tell you that. Brought it all on himself, they say. But it does seem a pity, doesn’t it?’