I decided to goose him a little.
"What's that junk pile?" I said with a nasty smile. "The famous time machine? Can you bring back Cleopatra and things like the Atlantis Treasures, maybe? How about King Tut or something?"
He woke up a little and looked serious, but not really angry.
"No," he said slowly, "no, it won't do that. I'm not quite sure what it will do. I built it with a legacy from a great aunt, you know, had the thing constructed and assembled over in Jacksonville to my own specs. But it's funny. It goes back about eighty to one hundred and fifty million years, and I can't seem to change it. I can't get it closer and I can't make it go forward either, not at all. There must be something I haven't figured out yet." This calm statement made a prickle of ice run down my spine. I'd been discounting this silly jerk all the way, but he sounded so sure!
"You mean," I said, in what I hoped sounded like a relaxed voice, "this box goes back into time, real time, eighty million years?"
"No, no," he said petulantly, "not the box, as you call it. That's the gate. It's what you put into the box that goes back." There was a silence while I tried to think.
"OK," I said, after a minute, "so how do you know it's like eighty million years, say, not ten minutes or a million, million years?"
"I don't know, not exactly," he said in weary tones. "I'm not a geologist, a botanist, or a paleontologist either, and I'd really need to be all these to be anything like sure." He eyed the paper bag. "Let's have a little snort. I'll go get some ice from the house. While I'm gone, you look into this stuff and I'll try and explain it when I come back." He pushed a box like an oversized foot locker into the light and unlocked it. Then he turned the air conditioner on and unbolted the door and left. He seemed to be making a lot more sense since we'd reached his workshop, and I didn't know whether that was good or bad.
Meanwhile, I looked into the box, and since there was a lot of junk inside, I began to lift things into the light.
First came some dried plants, tall round things, like reeds or cattails, but with short spiky leaves all the way around, arranged in rings. They meant pure nothing to me. Next came some dried branches of a pine tree, with huge flat needles. I dumped this with the other dead vegetables. Next, so help me, was a big stoppered jar, filled with alcohol or some such preservative gorp, and floating in it was a dead rat! It had an open mouthful of sharp, pointy teeth and a furry tail, but was still a reject from the local drainage system, for my money.
Now I was down to a small cardboard box. I opened this and it was full of little broken pieces of something like coarse yellow paper, but with a pebble-grain surface like my English shoes. Some of the pieces were round or even dimpled.
There only was one more box, a large one, that took up most of the big container's bottom. I opened this, and for the first time found something that really shook me. It was some bones, and they were impressive all right. I took them out and carefully put them on the floor, just as I heard Motley return. He was carrying a plastic ice bucket and some bottles of soda, which I guess were for me. While he re-bolted his door, I took a hard look at those bones again.
They smelled terrible and had brown pieces of gut, muscle or whatever, dried onto them. But they were obviously part of a leg or maybe arm or foot. There were two great big round claws, something like a chicken's but three times that size, and places where some more had been broken off. I felt Motley relieving me of the gin, and the clink of ice, but I didn't look up, even. I laid out the two long bones again, and one was broken like the foot or hand thing. They were at least three inches around the middle and, even broken, three feet long. I felt that old creepy chill on the spine again and reached up for a drink which Motley handed me in silence.
"All right, Professor," I said in as nice and easy a voice as I could, "what is all this crap? Take it from the top; start with the dried leaves."
"I'm not sure," he said, pouring a second dram for himself, and me too. I didn't turn it down.
"I had to find a lot of my data in books I wasn't trained to use, my dear chap. None of this is in my field, you know." He inhaled some gin, but his voice was steady enough as he went on.
"Those round plants, like reeds with a trim, are called horsetails, I think, Equisetums or something. The only modern ones found now are about six inches long, I believe. Notice that both ends of the stalks are shaved off smoothly? That's the time machine. The plants may have been twenty feet high. They were green when I got them."
I looked at the stalky plants and he was right. They'd been cut off real smooth at each end.
"So what," I growled. "I've seen bamboos that big here in Florida. What's with this pine tree?"
"Well, that one is a puzzler. But I think it's a sequoia, a sort of Redwood, very like the big trees in California. They used to grow all over the world, it seems. Just a guess, of course." The gin bottle gurgled again. I removed it politely.
"The little box full of things are certainly broken egg shells. We have tortoises—turtles, you know—right here, on the campus actually, that lay eggs like that. But these seem to be much bigger in diameter. Much bigger."
I held up the bottle with the dead rat in silence, and he began to laugh hoarsely. When he managed to stop, he choked out, "Ellen-Sue really had a fit. That was running around our bedroom. I killed it, but not before she had had hysterics."
"I bet she did," I said, "but so what, Motley? Most chicks don't make it big with rats."
"Rats?" he said in a funny way. "What rats? Oh, I see what you mean, old chap. My mistake too, at first. But it's not a rat, not a rat at all."
I waited, as patiently as I could, while he peered at the jar. "Look here," he said, pointing. "See those pointed teeth. No rodent or rat has those. Look at the feet. They're like tiny human hands. Some rats have furry tails, but none around here. I looked it up."
"So it's not a rat," I snapped. "Why not a, well, a possum or a, well, raccoon or something?"
"Very sharp, old boy, very sharp," he giggled at me. "As a matter of fact, a possum may well be what it is, or was. But if so, it's a sort of possum no human ever saw alive. Maybe a remote possum ancestor, but if the books are right, nothing like it has lived for many millions of years. How about a shot, old boy? Getting a bit dry, all this talking?"
I gave him a slug in his glass but kept tight hold of the bottle. Then I fed myself another. I was thinking. I was thinking about old movies. Movies like King Kong, One Million, B.C. and The Lost World. I was thinking about those fucking bones! "And the bones?" I said.
"I found them down the road a little way, one evening. It was after I'd sent a ham and some other stuff through, the biggest load I'd sent, as a matter of fact." He paused. "I suppose you can see they aren't very old. Not much older than the beef bones you'd find in a dump, say." He didn't elaborate on what had owned the bones in the first place. From the look on my face he didn't need to. I'm no scientist, but I have been to a museum or two in my life.
This was so big I got kind of numb all over for a minute or two. While I was deciding what to do next, I fed Motley another drink and walked over to look at his machine. It had, when I got close, a sort of homemade look about it. It could have been an experimental dishwasher or something. That meant nothing. Bell's first phone looked that way too. Two very thick armored cables led from it into a special plug in the wall, which I also looked at.
"It takes a lot of power for its size," said my host, who had followed me. "About four times the amount a big central air conditioner would, I've estimated. I had to have a special line put in. That took the last of my legacy," he added sadly. "But I don't need to have it on long, of course. Only a few minutes."
Something else stirred in my mind, something he'd said which had grabbed my attention previously.
"Hey, wait a minute. You found that rat thing or whatever it is alive and in your bedroom, right? So I guess it got out of the machine. But what about those bones? What the hell, how could they be out in the road? You did say
'road', didn't you?"
"Yes," he said, "I did. And that ancient pre-opossum didn't get out of the machine, either. It couldn't. There's a lug and a locking wheel on the door. Nothing could get out." Here, he was wrong, but not by much.
"The way I figure it," he went on, not forgetting to hold out his glass, "is something like this: when the Chronocron sends something back, it gets replaced in our time, and it gets replaced by something of the same exact mass. Say, ten pounds of coal gets sent back. OK, then ten pounds, no more, no less, of something, anything, alive or dead, comes out of the past. But there's a catch. And the catch is the time lag. Somehow it's uncertain, in a way I don't yet understand. Some replacements have never turned up here at all. They must have been dumped a ways off, maybe a long way. Maybe it's the earth's rotational spin. Maybe something else." He sunk back into his glass, mumbling about "Heisenberg" or someone.
My thoughts were still tripping over themselves, when a terrific bang hit the door. I almost jumped over the time machine, thinking some dinosaur (all right, I said it, finally) was coming home for lunch.
"Ah heeah you in theah, Motleee!" came a voice like worn truck brakes. Southern, worn, truck brakes.
"You come out heeah, rait naaow, you stinkin', no good, runty, licker-haid!" I won't do any more misspelled dialogue, but that's the sound. Mrs. Motley van D'Alliance III was home in force, and from the pitch in her screech, my precious ideas about dealing with her might need a bit of overhaul.
Motley was shrunk into a corner. So I put my finger to my mouth, then patted myself on the chest, to let him know I'd handle things. He looked grateful but also doubtful.
I slipped the bolt and ran up the door just in time to nearly get caught on the noggin with one of those heavy brown palm stems that littered the yard. It whanged past me and into the wall with impressive force.
Mrs. van D'Alliance seemed stunned at her near-miss or an unknown target, or maybe both. It gave me a second to look her over and figure out what to do about it.
I dunno what the first, or Newport, Mrs. van D' had been like, but this was an item from the bottom of the list. Any list. "Used hard and put away wet," described her, in the classic words of an old pal in the horse-raising business.
She was a blobby, tightly corseted job, with orange-dyed hair, pulled up in one of those beehive things. She had purple lipstick and too much eye shadow on a pale washed-out face. A dirty green dress and wedgie-type shoes, plus cracked purple toenails, completed the picture. A semiretired hooker, recently drafted to the Tijuana League, would describe her.
"Who in hell are you and where's that lousy drunken Motley?" was her greeting. "I could smell that gin ten yards off and I know he's in there hiding behind his crazy, nut gadgets which cost Keerrist knows how much when I ain't got hardly money to eat on and ..."
I held up my hand in a solemn way and put on a look of sober dignity, something like some funeral parlor manager.
"Mrs. van D'Alliance," I said in a deep, vibrant voice, "your husband, Madam, has been doing very secret work for a long time." I lowered my voice. "There are things it is not safe for you to know, but I can tell you this much, anyway. Vast sums might possibly be involved, vast sums indeed. Your husband has done some high-class inventing which may well interest people in high places, and people who don't welcome idle chatter."
Her mouth opened, but not in speech, just simple surprise.
"At this time, Madam, I am in the employ of the ATE. But I have worked for other agencies and may again, if you take my meaning?" If she wanted to think Amalgamated Tourist Enterprises was the CIA, that was her business. And my ultimate employers certainly disliked chatter about their business, idle or otherwise.
Motley had advanced behind me and now took on a little courage. He'd probably never seen his private hot-air outlet shut up before.
"You hear that, Ellen-Sue," he said, sticking out his shrunken chest, "Mr. Doakes and I were discussing finances, big finances. You've never understood my work, so let's hear no more of this. Mr. Doakes and I are going in town to dinner, eh, old chap? We may be discussing plans late into the night, so don't wait up." He had me in a corner, but I wasn't unhappy about it. I had things to do and I wanted him under my eye.
I handed her a card, which had my name, ATE, and a phony Park Avenue address on it, and smiled in a tight, restrained way.
"I'll take good care of old Mot," I said. "We have much to discuss and I'll be at the XYZ Motel with him later on. But remember, please, no gossip, none at all. There are penalties, you understand?"
She could only nod, with her mouth still open. As we drove away, after locking the workshop very carefully, she was still standing in the drive next to the chewed-up '54 Plymouth, looking at my card. Motley was laughing and singing to himself. I'd given him back the whole bottle. Now, I wanted him drunk, dead drunk. By the time we reached the motel, after stopping for more booze, he was half gone. In another fifteen minutes he was totally gone and snoring unattractively on my couch. I loosened his grubby tie and went out to a public booth to do some long-distance phoning.
I got Barnstaffel on a very private line, only to be used in emergencies, and talked for a half-hour without a break. Then I listened for a minute, hung up and waited. Twenty minutes later, the phone rang and I did some more listening, but not to Barnstaffel. This was a voice I'd never heard before, but George Raft or Edward G. Robinson would have appreciated it. I especially disliked the ending, which went: "and if this is some kind of con or something, Doakes, you'll be the sickest sickie in the business!"
I tried to convey my true sincerity in my answer, and it was no acting.
I had dinner sent in from a nearby burger joint. It was for one, naturally. Then I watched television until bedtime and retired, after piling furniture in front of the door.
I needn't have bothered because Motley was still out cold, come the dawn. Breakfast was also sent in, but with it came some visitors.
One was Barnstaffel, as big as life and twice as repulsive. With him were two other guys, and if old B. B. made me sick, they just made me very nervous. They were dark, nattily dressed types in their thirties and they didn't say "dese" and "dose". They don't any longer. They were supposed to take orders from Barnstaffel, but he was very nervous about giving them any.
"Choe, my boy," he cried. "Where iss this famous discoverer?" I won't give you any more of his Katzenjammer dialect crap either, but that's the way he talked. I pointed to repulsive van D'Alliance on the couch and they all went over and peered at him. When he exhaled noisily, they moved back quickly.
"This scumbag invented something besides halitosis?" said the taller one. His name, I discovered, was Leo.
"He looks pretty terrible," I admitted. "But I'll be screwed if he hasn't got something I don't understand, and I'm damned if I think anyone in the world but him does either."
"You may wish you was only getting screwed, Doakes, if this is a bust," said the short one. His name was Goldy, but don't ask me why. He had black hair.
"Now, now," said Bushveldt, "that's no nice way to talk. Joe finds something that looks good. He tells me and I tell—some other people. We both do our best. So let's go look at what this professor has to show us, eh?"
"OK," said Leo, "let's. But first let's get Lushwell here up on his feet. I want him along and someone's supposed to watch him anyway."
"Hell, I watched him all night," I answered. "All we have to do is comb that scruddy wife of his out of the way. Wait till you see her!"
"Wait till she sees us," said Goldy. Leo laughed in a hearty way and slapped him on the back.
The two of them simply undressed the guy and stuffed him into the shower, which they ran alternately boiling hot and ice cold for ten minutes, with the television turned up to muffle his screams. When they hauled him out, I thought he'd bought a coronary, but they knew what they were doing. He didn't know where, or what he was for a bit, but Barnstaffel laid on his greasy charm over four cups of black coffee, and at the end of it,
he was in something like human shape.
Next, they had him call in at West Dugong College and report himself sick. Then we poured ourselves into Bushveldt's big rented limo, and headed out to Palazzo van D'Alliance.
It looked even scummier at nine thirty a.m., and we pounded on the door for a while until it opened creakingly.
Madam van D' looked a hell of a lot worse than the estate. Her breath was as bad as Motley's, and I figured a mutual hobby had brought them together in the first place. Her eyes were bleary and she had on a once-orange housecoat that might have seen the laundry the previous fall. Her bare feet peeped shyly out from under the frazzled hem. The bags under her eyes were a deep beige, and with her ratty snarled hair, she was a figure to frighten a sadist bill collector.
Barnstaffel stepped forward, gut out, ready to take the lead, but his two anchormen knew better. Leo elbowed him gently out of the way and blocked him off.
"You this man's wife?" he said. He made 'wife' sound like 'accomplice'. "We need him on some top-secret work. You cleared by the government, lady?"
Once again, I watched fascinated, as the jaw dropped. Of course these boys had advantages I didn't. Like her hangover, for one. She was not pushed out of the way, she was ignored out of the way. It was kind of interesting to watch. We all went in to the Florida Room, which is what they call a messy room to watch TV and get blasted in, down on the Sunny Peninsula. This was as big a mess as one might dream up, replete with empty bottles, full ashtrays, and assorted bad smells, all distributed over a cracked terrazzo floor, and interrupted by broken pseudo-bamboo type furniture.
The COMPLEAT Collected Short SFF Stories Page 15
