by Fritz Leiber
“Where do you suppose Conrad has been all this time?” Martin idly asked the current cousin—who was passing as his nephew by now.
The young man jumped, then glanced around him uncomfortably. “Conrad’s a very shrewd fellow,” he whispered. “He’s biding his time—waiting until we’re off guard. And then—pow!—he’ll attack!”
“Oh, I see,” Martin said.
He had often fancied that Conrad would prove to be the most stimulating member of the whole generation. But it seemed unlikely that he would ever have a chance for a conversation with the young man. More than one conversation, anyhow.
“When he does show up, I’ll protect you,” the cousin vowed, touching his ray gun. “You haven’t a thing to worry about.”
Martin smiled with all the charm he’d had nothing to do but acquire. “I have every confidence in you,” he told his descendant. He himself had given up carrying a gun long ago.
There was a war in the Northern Hemisphere and so The Interregnum voyaged to southern waters. There was a war in the south and they hid out in the Arctic. All the nations became too drained of power—fuel and man and will—to fight, so there was a sterile peace for a long time. The Interregnum roamed the seas restlessly, with her load of passengers from the future, plus one bored and aging contemporary. She bore big guns now, because of the ever-present danger of pirates.
* * * *
Perhaps it was the traditionally bracing effect of sea air—perhaps it was the sheltered life—but Martin lived to be a very old man. He was a hundred and four when his last illness came. It was a great relief when the family doctor, called in again from the future, said there was no hope. Martin didn’t think he could have borne another year of life.
All the cousins gathered at the yacht to pay their last respects to their progenitor. He saw Ninian again, after all these years, and Raymond—all the others, dozens of them, thronging around his bed, spilling out of the cabin and into the passageways and out onto the deck, making their usual clamor, even though their voices were hushed.
Only Ives was missing. He’d been the lucky one, Martin knew. He had been spared the tragedy that was going to befall these blooming young people—all the same age as when Martin had last seen them and doomed never to grow any older. Underneath their masks of woe, he could see relief at the thought that at last they were going to be rid of their responsibility. And underneath Martin’s death mask lay an impersonal pity for those poor, stupid descendants of his who had blundered so irretrievably.
There was only one face which Martin had never seen before. It wasn’t a strange face, however, because Martin had seen one very like it in the looking glass when he was a young man.
“You must be Conrad,” Martin called across the cabin in a voice that was still clear. “I’ve been looking forward to meeting you for some time.”
The other cousins whirled to face the newcomer.
“You’re too late, Con,” Raymond gloated for the whole generation. “He’s lived out his life.”
“But he hasn’t lived out his life,” Conrad contradicted. “He’s lived out the life you created for him. And for yourselves, too.”
For the first time, Martin saw compassion in the eyes of one of his lineage and found it vaguely disturbing. It didn’t seem to belong there.
“Don’t you realize even yet,” Conrad went on, “that as soon as he goes, you’ll go, too—present, past, future, wherever you are, you’ll go up in the air like puffs of smoke?”
“What do you mean?” Ninian quavered, her soft, pretty face alarmed.
Martin answered Conrad’s rueful smile, but left the explanations up to him. It was his show, after all.
“Because you will never have existed,” Conrad said. “You have no right to existence; it was you yourselves who watched him all the time, so he didn’t have a chance to lead a normal life, get married, have children.…”
* * * *
Most of the cousins gasped as the truth began to percolate through.
“I knew from the very beginning,” Conrad finished, “that I didn’t have to do anything at all. I just had to wait and you would destroy yourselves.”
“I don’t understand,” Bartholomew protested, searching the faces of the cousins closest to him. “What does he mean, we have never existed? We’re here, aren’t we? What—”
“Shut up!” Raymond snapped. He turned on Martin. “You don’t seem surprised.”
The old man grinned. “I’m not. I figured it all out years ago.”
At first, he had wondered what he should do. Would it be better to throw them into a futile panic by telling them or to do nothing? He had decided on the latter; that was the role they had assigned him—to watch and wait and keep out of things—and that was the role he would play.
“You knew all the time and you didn’t tell us!” Raymond spluttered. “After we’d been so good to you, making a gentleman out of you instead of a criminal.… That’s right,” he snarled, “a criminal! An alcoholic, a thief, a derelict! How do you like that?”
“Sounds like a rich, full life,” Martin said wistfully.
What an exciting existence they must have done him out of! But then, he couldn’t help thinking, he—he and Conrad together, of course—had done them out of any kind of existence. It wasn’t his responsibility, though; he had done nothing but let matters take whatever course was destined for them. If only he could be sure that it was the better course, perhaps he wouldn’t feel that nagging sense of guilt inside him. Strange—where, in his hermetic life, could he possibly have developed such a queer thing as a conscience?
“Then we’ve wasted all this time,” Ninian sobbed, “all this energy, all this money, for nothing!”
“But you were nothing to begin with,” Martin told them. And then, after a pause, he added, “I only wish I could be sure there had been some purpose to this.”
He didn’t know whether it was approaching death that dimmed his sight, or whether the frightened crowd that pressed around him was growing shadowy.
“I wish I could feel that some good had been done in letting you be wiped out of existence,” he went on voicing his thoughts. “But I know that the same thing that happened to your worlds and my world will happen all over again. To other people, in other times, but again. It’s bound to happen. There isn’t any hope for humanity.”
One man couldn’t really change the course of human history, he told himself. Two men, that was—one real, one a shadow.
Conrad came close to the old man’s bed. He was almost transparent.
“No,” he said, “there is hope. They didn’t know the time transmitter works two ways. I used it for going into the past only once—just this once. But I’ve gone into the future with it many times. And—” he pressed Martin’s hand—“believe me, what I did—what we did, you and I—serves a purpose. It will change things for the better. Everything is going to be all right.”
* * * *
Was Conrad telling him the truth, Martin wondered, or was he just giving the conventional reassurance to the dying? More than that, was he trying to convince himself that what he had done was the right thing? Every cousin had assured Martin that things were going to be all right.
Was Conrad actually different from the rest?
His plan had worked and the others’ hadn’t, but then all his plan had consisted of was doing nothing. That was all he and Martin had done…nothing. Were they absolved of all responsibility merely because they had stood aside and taken advantage of the others’ weaknesses?
“Why,” Martin said to himself, “in a sense, it could be said that I have fulfilled my original destiny—that I am a criminal.”
Well, it didn’t matter; whatever happened, no one could hold him to blame. He held no stake in the future that was to come. It was other men’s future�
�other men’s problem. He died very peacefully then, and, since he was the only one left on the ship, there was nobody to bury him.
The unmanned yacht drifted about the seas for years and gave rise to many legends, none of them as unbelievable as the truth.
UNCOMMON CASTAWAY, by Nelson S. Bond
Originally published in Avon Fantasy Reader, October, 1949.
Heed Ye! ’Ware and repent, I cry, and woe to him who will not hear my warning! For verily I say unto you that the Day of Judgment neareth, when for your sins and your iniquities shall be visited upon you the fire and the sword of Those whose fury maketh the earth to tremble; yea, the very sea to burn!
* * * *
They shooed us out of Alexandria when Rommel pressed past Mersa Matruh and down the long sandy highway that leads to Cair. Shooed us, but fast. The Admiralty said there was nothing we could do but hide out in safe harbors until events disclosed whether Montgomery’s plan for a last-ditch stand at a dot on the map called El Alamein was sound strategy or—as almost everyone feared—pure desperation.
The Old Man hated like blazes to run. When I handed him the order, he grunted and his teeth met through his pipestem. He didn’t even swear—which just proves how deeply he was moved, because the skipper is an educated man. He cusses fluently in six languages. At trifles.
But this was too big. He just shook his head and said, “Very good, Sparks. Carry on!” And turned and walked forward, very fast.
So the Grampus, under cover of a jet Egyptian night, slipped out to sea and safety. The West Harbor was like a coal pit; even the lighthouse on Raset-Tin was blacked out. But the darkness was alive with sounds. The incessant wash of Mediterranean waters against the crags of Pharos…the high, flat notes of a bosun’s key, piping-thin against the sigh of a westering breeze…the mute ripple of voices from ships that glided dimly past, cheerless as drifting wraiths. Gray sounds, angry sounds. The petulant farewell of vessels evacuating a harbor that had been, but a few short months ago, Britain’s proudest base along the North African coast.
“We’re to be first out,” the Old Man told us. “The fleet will need every sub. Particularly if the Jerries take Alex.” He added, glancing skyward speculatively, “The deck guns will be manned. There may be trouble.”
But there wasn’t. We didn’t lose a single ship or a single man to the enemy action throughout the operation. Funny, too, because we were fish in a barrel for the Stukas. Jammed in the bottleneck too tightly to offer effective resistance, and many of us in foul shape. Like the Grampus, which had put in for G.O. and repairs, and got her sailing orders before the job was half finished.
But maybe it wasn’t so strange after all. The Germans were pretty cocky in those days. And I suppose they had reason to be. But their very cockiness was our salvation. I think they didn’t bomb us during our flight simply because they expected to take Alexandria any day, and didn’t want to move into a shattered naval base.
Anyhow, we cleared the breakwater without a sign of trouble, and were under way. We weren’t told where we were going, but since our course was due nor’east, it was clear to every man aboard that Larnaca was our goal. Cyprus, a mere three hundred sea miles away, should have been a snap day’s journey, but no one was starry-eyed enough to think we’d make it that quickly. There was, for one thing, the constant possibility of encountering enemy craft, aerial or sea-borne. Moreover, a dropping glass warned of weather ahead. And to further louse up an already gloomy picture, our spit-and-prayer-patched engines started coughing and spluttering even before we cleared Pharos’ light.
Auld Rory, our cook, didn’t like the situation, and said as much when I braced him for a cup of tea in the galley after we were safely out to sea.
“’Tis a verra bad business, this,” growled the old Scot, “’Tisna richt for a navvy to roon awa’, wi’oot even makin a fight fo’t. ’Tisna”—he scowled, fumbling for the word he wanted—“’tisna deegnified!”
I grinned and told him, “Maybe not, Rory, but it’s a lot healthier. As Shakespeare says in Paradise Lost, He who fights and pulls his freight, will live to fight some other date.’”
“The noble Bard,” gritted Auld Rory savagely, “didna write Paradise Lost. Twas the great John Milton. Nor is the verse as ye’ve misquoted it, ignorant Yank that ye are!”
“I’ve told you a thousand times, Rory,” I chuckled, “that I’m not an American. I’m British subject, born and diapered in dear old Fogville-on-the-Thames.”
“Your words make ye a liar!” flared Auld Rory. “Ye speak the mither tongue as if it had na feyther.”
“That,” I said, “is because I grew up in Brooklyn.”
“Oh? Ye told me once New York.”
“A suburb of Brooklyn. You must come with me to Flatbush one day, Rory. Quite a place. You ought to hear the Ladies’ Day crowds at Ebbets Field yelling at the umpires. Moider dat bum! Give him de woiks—”
“Bum!” gasped Rory, outraged. “Wi’ ladies present? ’Tis indecent. I’m ashamed o’ ye, Jake Levine!” He brooded darkly as I sipped my tea. “And I still say this is a bad business. In the harbor, at least we had shore batteries and a deefensive position. But that wasna gude eno’ for the brass. No! So here we are, alone and limpin’ in the middle o’ the gory Mediterranean, prey to God knows what yon rascals will send to plague us! ’Tis a wonder we ha’ na already been attacked, that it is.”
“Calm down, Rory,” I laughed, “and give your ulcers a rest. These waters are reasonably safe. Bet you five bob we don’t even sight an enemy, let alone… Hey!”
What a prophet! My forecast ended in a startled yelp as the unmistakable gurr-oom! of a deck gun shuddered through the ship. The Grampus bucked and quivered. Tea scalded my wrists. Voices rose in excited query, and were lost in the strident clamor of the ship’s alarm system.
And over it all: “I’ll take that bet!” bawled Auld Rory.
I broke from the galley and raced toward the radio room. Weaving through the passageway, I met members of the gun crew scurrying from topside to their submersion posts. I grabbed Rob Enslow’s arm.
“Planes?”
“The bloody sky’s full of ’em!”
I heard their motors now, droning with the fretful tumult of a broken wasps’ nest. The Jerries had not wanted to blast us in harbor, but were coming out to catch us in open sea. The Old Man’s clipped, unhurried voice was oddly reassuring.
“All hands, stand by! Rig for diving!” The valves opened, the wheeze of escaping air mingled with the gurgle of ballast water, and we nosed under. I reached my compartment and lurched to the instrument panel. Walt Roberts, ship’s yeoman, was there. He glanced up.
“You all right, Jake?”
“Sure,” I said. “You?”
“Top hole.” Then, after a moment: “We’re under.”
I nodded. “Yeah. We’ll be okay now, unless some of those big babies carry depth bombs.”
“That’s so,” said Walt. “But maybe they didn’t this time.”
“Probably not,” I decided. “It must be a land-based flight, out of Bardia. I’ll bet there’s not a depth bomb in the lot of them…”
Or that’s what I started to say. I don’t know if I ever finished the sentence or not.
For suddenly there sounded a dull booming roar. The Grampus jerked as though struck by a monstrous fist.
Then it seemed to shake itself and leap, like a sailfish fighting the hook. Again the alarm bell dinned—then stopped abruptly as the lights flared to brief, eye-searing brightness and went out. A hot tingling pulsation, like electricity gone mad, flowed through and twisted me in knots. The Grampus tilted, my feet flew out from under me, and I slid head first across the slanting deck. My head struck the bulkhead. That’s all I remember…
The umpire bawled, “Stuh-rike!” I jumped to my feet, roaring fury shared
by a bleachers full of fellow townsmen.
“Go get glasses, you bum!” I hollered. “That ball was a mile outside!”
I picked up my cushion and spun it onto the diamond. A hand fell on my shoulder, and a park cop glared at me malevolently. “Okay, you! Come wit’ me!”
I said, “Get your hands off me!” and struggled to shake myself free. Someone—a friend in the crowd—cried from a distance, “Jake? Are you all right, Jake?”
“Let go!” I snarled. “This is a free country! Let go, before I—”
The hand clutching my shoulder tightened. The voice drew nearer and clearer. “Jake? Are you all right, Jake?” Ebbets Field faded; its sun-drenched bleachers became the lightless, dank interior of the Grampus. The hand and voice belonged to Walt Roberts. “Jake—”
“Okay,” I said. “I’m okay, Walt.” I craned my neck gingerly. “Thanks, pal. You just saved me from ten bucks or ten days.”
“Eh?”
“Skip it,” I said. “Where are we?”
“On the bottom. That depth charge did something to us—I don’t know exactly what. Fortunately it’s not so deep here.”
“That’s swell,” I said. “That’s perfectly ducky!” I was scared spitless, but I wasn’t going to let him know it.
“If we were fish, we wouldn’t have far to go. Are we taking water?”
“No. Apparently not.”
“Then what’s wrong with the batteries? How come no lights?”
“I wouldn’t know,” said Roberts.
“Well, let’s go see,” I suggested.
We felt our way through the ship, and met others doing the same thing. There was tenseness, but no panic. And don’t get the idea that discipline had been relaxed, just because we were allowed to do what we wanted. It was just that the Old Man has brains, as well as braid. He knew how everyone felt, and so long as no one got in the engineer’s way, he allowed us to satisfy our curiosity.
