The Technicolor Time Machine

by Harry Harrison

  “A Bloody Mary,” he told the vampire-garbed waiter. “Is the Spiderman here yet?”

  “I fink he’s in a dressing room,” the creature mumbled around its plastic fangs.

  “Tell him I want to see him, Barney Hendrickson of Climactic.”

  Spiderman Spinneke arrived before the drink, a lean, black-garbed, scuttling figure with large dark glasses. “Long time no see, man,” he said, letting his dank fingers flap against Barney’s palm. “How’z the pix biz?” he sank into a chair.

  “Keeping body and soul together. Tell me, Spider, is it true you scored a couple of films?”

  “It is true I did the music for a ragged piece of class-X crap name of Teen-age Beatniks’ Hophead Rumble, but I keep hoping people will forget about it. Why you ask? Can’t be you’re interested in the poor old Spiderman?”

  “Might be, Spinneke, just might be. Do you think you could write the music for a picture and record it with your own group?”

  “Anything’s possible, Dad. But that takes time, we got commitments.”

  “Don’t worry about the time, I’ll fix it so you won’t miss a single show. I thought you might have the right sound for a picture I’m doing, a stirring story of the Vikings. You’ve heard of them?”

  “Cert. Hairy cats with axes, go around chopping people.”

  “That’s roughly it. Primitive stuff, strong. They have a kind of brass horn and that gave me the idea. An all brass score complete with drums, hammering away with primitive savagery.”

  “Real cool.”

  “Think you can handle it?”

  “A natural.”

  “Good. Here’s a C as a down payment.” Barney took five twenties from his billfold and dropped them onto the table. Spiderman’s fingers oozed across the black cloth and absorbed them. “Let’s grab your boys and go around to the studio now and I’ll give you the scoop. You’ll be back here inside an hour.” Where else they would be during that hour of twentieth-century time Barney did not trouble to say.

  “No can do. Doody and I just fake up until the rest come in around eleven. After that we’re on until three. We can’t split before then.”

  The Bloody Mary slid down smoothly and Barney looked at his watch and convinced himself there was no point in going away and coming back again, and 3 a.m. on Sunday morning would still be okay because they had until Monday to turn the film in. It was all going to work out. Spiderman slid back into the recesses of the club, and at ten Barney got on the phone and talked to Professor Hewett and arranged a new appointment for three, then went back to his table and relaxed, as much as he could relax with the hot tuba, brass section and amplified drums. The Bloody Marys helped.

  At two o’clock he stirred himself and went out for a breath of air that wasn’t solid with cigarette smoke and vibrating with wailing rhythms. He even managed to arrange for two cabs to come to the club just after three. Things were working out very well.

  It was close to four before they pulled up in front of the warehouse, and Professor Hewett was pacing up and down staring at his watch. “Very precise,” he snapped.

  “Not too bad, Prof old boy,” Barney said, slapping him on the back, then turning to help pull the bass drum out of the cab. Then, in single file, they marched into the warehouse, with Doody on the trombone playing “Colonel Bogey.”

  “What’s the raft?” Spiderman asked, bleary-eyed and tired.

  “Transportation. Just climb aboard. We’ll just be gone a few minutes from here, that I promise.” Barney smiled slyly behind his hand as he said it.

  “Enough already,” Spiderman said, pulling the trombone away from Doody’s fluttering lips. Doody kept playing for at least five seconds before he realized he wasn’t making a sound. “Flying on pot,” Spiderman exclaimed.

  Hewett snorted as the funerally robed musicians climbed aboard the time platform, then went into the control cubicle to start the vremeatron.

  “Is this the waiting room?” Doody asked, following him into the cramped quarters.

  “Get out you oaf!” the professor snapped, and Doody mumbled something and tried to oblige. But as he turned, the slide extended from his trombone and swiped along the top row of exposed electronic tubes. Two of them popped and fizzled sparkily.

  “Yow!” Doody said, and dropped the instrument. Its brass length fell across the exposed innards of the tubes and sparks jumped as the circuits shorted. All of the lights on the controls went out.

  Barney was completely sober in less than a second. He pulled the musician out of the instrument room and herded him, and all the others, to the far end of the platform.

  “How is it, Professor?” he asked softly when he came back, but there was no answer. He didn’t ask again but only looked on as Hewett tore off inspection hatches and hurled the broken tubes out of the door.

  He sent the musicians away after he received a grudging “yes” in answer to his question, when he asked if it would be at least a couple of hours before the vremeatron would be fixed.

  By nine o’clock Sunday morning Professor Hewett admitted that the repairs would probably take most of the day, not including the time needed to find replacement tubes on a Sunday in Los Angeles. Barney, hollowly, said that, after all, they had plenty of time. After all the picture wasn’t due until the following morning.

  Late Sunday night Barney fell asleep for the first time, but he woke up with a start after only a few minutes and could not get back to sleep again.

  At 5 A.M. on Monday morning the professor announced that the rewiring was complete and that he was going to sleep for an hour. After that he would leave and try to obtain the missing tubes.

  At 9 A.M. Barney phoned and discovered that the representatives of the bank had arrived and were waiting for him. He gurgled and hung up.

  At nine-thirty the phone rang, and when he picked it up the girl on the switchboard told him that the entire studio was being turned upside down trying to locate him, and that L.M. himself had personally talked to her and asked her if she knew where Mr. Hendrickson was. Barney hung up on her too.

  At ten-thirty he knew it was hopeless. Hewett had not returned, nor had he phoned. And even if he arrived at that moment it was too late. The picture could not possibly be finished in time.

  It was all over. He had tried, and he had failed. Walking over to L.M.’s office was like trodding the last mile—which it really was.

  He hesitated outside L.M.’s door, considered suicide as an alternative, decided he did not have the guts, then pushed the door open.

  16

  “Don’t go in there,” a voice said, and a hand reached past Barney and pulled his away from the door, which sighed shut automatically in his face.

  “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” he shouted, anger bubbling over, spinning about to face the other man.

  “Just preventing you from making a mistake, stupid,” the other said, and grinned widely as Barney stumbled backward, with his jaw dropping and his eyes opening wide.

  “A very nice take,” the man said. “Maybe you should be acting in films, not directing them.”

  “You’re… me…” Barney said weakly, looking at himself wearing his best pair of whipcord slacks, his horsehide Air Force pilot’s jacket and carrying a can of film under his arm.

  “Very observant,” the other Barney said, smiling wickedly. “Hold this a sec.” He held out the can to Barney, then dug into his hip pocket to get out his wallet.

  “What… ?” Barney said. “What… ?” looking at the label on the can, which read Viking Columbus—Reel One.

  The other Barney took a folded scrap of paper out of his wallet and held it out to Barney—who noticed for the first time that his right hand was covered with a bulky, reddened bandage.

  “What happened to my hand—your hand?” Barney asked, gazing in horror at the bandage while the can was snatched away from him and the piece of paper was thrust into his palm.

  “Give that to the Prof,” the duplicate Barney said, “and
stop horsing around and finish the picture, will you?” He held L.M.’s office door open as a page came down the hall pushing a handcart loaded with a dozen cans of film. The page glanced back and forth at the two men, shrugged, and went in. The other Barney followed him and the door swung shut.

  “The hand, what happened to the hand?” Barney said weakly to the closed door. He started to push it open, then shuddered and changed his mind. The scrap of paper caught his attention and he unfolded it. It was part of a sheet of ordinary writing paper, torn along one edge and blank on one side. There was no writing on the other side either, just a sketch that had been drawn quickly with a ball-point pen.

  It meant nothing to Barney. He folded it and put it away in his wallet—and with a sudden jar he remembered the cans of film.

  “I’ve finished the picture!” he cried aloud. “It’s done and I’ve just delivered it on time.” Two passing secretaries turned their heads and giggled at him; he scowled back at them and walked away.

  What had the other Barney said to him? Stop horsing around and finish the film. Would he finish it? It looked like he would—if there had been anything in the cans. But how could he finish it now, after the deadline, and still turn it in on time?

  “I don’t understand,” he mumbled to himself as he walked across the lot to sound stage B. Even the sight of the professor working on the vremeatron did not disturb his whirling thoughts. He stood on the time platform and tried to understand what had happened, or what was going to happen, but fatigue combined with the shock of talking to himself had temporarily disconnected his reasoning powers.

  “The repairs are finished,” Professor Hewett said, wiping his hands on a rag. “We can return now to the year 1005.”

  “Take it away,” Barney said, and reached for his wallet.

  Even though it was a sunny day in Newfoundland it appeared dull after the California sunlight, and the air was certainly a good deal cooler.

  “What time did we leave the studio just now?” Barney asked.

  “1203 hours on Monday. And no complaints, if you please. That was very fast work I did on the repairs when you consider the damage done by that microcephalic musical oaf.”

  “No complaints, Prof. I’m beginning to think we still stand a chance to get this picture in by the deadline. I met myself in the building, and I saw myself delivering cans of film labeled Viking Columbus.”

  “Impossible!”

  “Very easy to say, but maybe you have as big a shock coming as I had. I told me, or he told me or however the hell you say it, to give this to you. Can you figure it out?”

  The professor took one glance at the paper and smiled broadly. “Of course,” he said. “How stupid of me. The facts were obvious, right under my nose all the time, so to speak, and I never saw them. How simple the problem is.”

  “Could you bring yourself to explain it to me?” Barney said impatiently.

  “The diagram represents two voyages through time, and the smaller arc on the right is the one that is of interest because it explains where the other ‘you’ came from with the cans of film. Yes, it is possible to still complete the film and deliver it before the specified deadline.”

  “How?” Barney asked, squinting at the diagram, which conveyed exactly nothing to him.

  “You will now complete the picture, and it is of no importance how much time you consume after the deadline. When the picture is complete you will be at point B on this diagram. Point A is the time the film is due, and you simply return to a time before A, deliver the picture, then return to B. How magnificently simple.”

  Barney clutched the paper. “Let me get this straight. Are you telling me that I can make the film after the deadline, then return to a time before the deadline to deliver the film?”

  “I am.”

  “It sounds nuts.”

  “Intelligence resembles insanity only to the stupid.”

  “I’ll forget that remark—if you can answer me one thing. This piece of paper with the diagram”—he shook it under the professor’s nose—“who drew it.”

  “I’m sure I do not know, having just seen it for the first time.”

  “Then think. I was handed this paper on Monday morning in front of L.M.’s office. I show it to you now. Then I’m going to put it in my wallet and carry it around until the picture is finished. Then I’ll travel back in time to deliver the picture to L.M. I meet the old me in front of the office, take the diagram out of my wallet and hand it over to myself to be put back into the wallet and so forth. Now does that make sense to you?”

  “Yes. I see nothing to get disturbed about.”

  “You don’t. If that is the way it is going to happen, then no one ever drew this diagram. It just travels around in this wallet and I hand it to myself. Explain that one,” he added triumphantly.

  “There is no need to, it explains itself. The piece of paper consists of a self-sufficient loop in time. No one ever drew it. It exists because it is, which is adequate explanation. If you wish to understand it I will give you an example. You know that all pieces of paper have two sides—but if you give one end of a strip of paper a 180-degree twist, then join the ends together, the paper becomes a Mobius strip that has only one side. It exists. Saying it doesn’t cannot alter the fact. The same thing is true of your diagram, it exists.”

  “But—where did it come from?”

  “If you must have a source, you may say that it came from the same place that the missing side of the Mobius strip has gone to.”

  Barney’s thoughts tied themselves into a tight knot and the ends flapped loosely. He stared at the diagram until his eyes hurt. Someone had to have drawn it. And every piece of paper had to have two sides… With slightly palsied fingers he put the diagram into his wallet, slid the wallet into his pocket and hoped that he would be able to’ forget about it.

  “Ready for the time jump whenever you give the word,” Dallas said.

  “What time jump?” Barney asked, blinking at the stunt man, who was standing before him.

  “The jump to next spring, 1006, that we were talking about half an hour ago. The food has been turned over to Ottar, and the company is all loaded up and ready to go when you say the word.” He pointed to the waiting rows of trucks and trailers.

  “To next spring, yes, you’re right. Do you know what a paradox is, Dallas?”

  “The Spanish barber who shaves every guy in town who doesn’t shave himself—so who shaves the barber?”

  “That’s the idea—only worse.” Then Barney suddenly remembered the bandaged hand and he held up his right hand and examined it carefully on both sides. “What happened to my hand?”

  “It looks great to me,” Dallas said. “You want a drink?”

  “It wouldn’t help. I just met myself with a bloody, bandaged hand and I wouldn’t even tell myself how it happened or how bad it was. Do you realize what that means?”

  “Yeah, You need maybe two drinks.”

  “No matter what you and your Iron Age buddies think, alcohol is not the answer to all problems. It means that I am something unique in the universe. I am a sadomasochist. Everyone else, poor slobs, is limited to being masochistic to themselves or sadistic to others. But I can get a masochistic kick by being sadistic to myself. No other neurotic can make this statement.” He shivered. “I think I can use that drink.”

  “I got it right here.”

  The drink turned out to be a bargain brand of cheap rye that tasted like formic acid, and it etched such a burning track down Barney’s throat that it did take his mind oft the paradoxes of time and his own sado-compensatory inclinations. “Go take a look, will you Dallas?” he said. “Jump forward to March and find out if any Indians have been sighted yet. If Ottar says no, keep moving forward, a week at a time, until they have been seen, then report back.”

  Barney stood clear while the time platform flickered and settled down a few feet from its original position. Dallas climbed down from it and walked over, rasping his palm across his b
lack growth of beard.

  “The Prof figures we were away about ten hours in all,” Dallas said. “That will be overtime after eight—”

  “Save it! What did you find out?”

  “They got a wall put up, all logs like one of those forts in an Indian movie. Everything’s quiet in the beginning of March, but on the last stop, the twenty-first, they spotted a couple of those skin boats.”

  “Good enough. Let’s move. Tell the Prof to start shuttling the whole company through to the twenty-second. Is everything and everybody here?”

  “Betty checked the invoices and she says okay to that part. Me and Tex called the roll and everyone’s present and accounted for and in the trailers, except for the drivers that is.”

  “How’s the March weather?”

  “Sunny, but still with a nip in the air.”

  “Pass the word about that, to dress up warmly. I don’t want the whole company down with colds.”

  Barney walked back to his trailer and found his overcoat and gloves. By the time he returned to the head of the convoy the shuttle was in operation. He rode through into the spring of the year 1006, and a good northern spring it was, too. Watery sunshine did not do much to take the chill out of the air, and there was snow in the hollows and against the north side of the log palisade in the valley below. It did look like a Western fort. Barney signaled to the driver of the pickup that had just arrived on the time platform.

  “Take me down there, will you?” he said.

  “Next stop Fort Apache,” the driver told him.

  Some of the northmen were beginning to straggle up the hill toward the arriving movie company, and the pickup drove past them and pulled up before a narrow opening where a loose log had been pulled aside to make an entrance into the stockade. Ottar was squeezing out through it when they arrived.