The Two Timers

by Bob Shaw

  "Blaize Convery," she whispered ferociously. "You leave this house over my dead body."

  Convery looked up into her pink, determined face in mild surprise. "I don't get it."

  "Tim's having his birthday party -- why do you think I'm baking these cookies?"

  "But his birthday isn't till next week," Convery protested.

  "I know, but Kenneth's birthday was last week, and they always have their party halfway between." Gina stared at him accusingly. "You should know that by this time."

  "I do know it, honey. I'd forgotten, that's all. Look, they won't mind if I miss it just this once . . ."

  "Just this once! You've missed it the past two years, and you aren't leaving this house tonight."

  "But I've got a job to do."

  "Not tonight."

  Convery looked into his wife's eyes and what he saw there made him give in, smiling in order to retrieve as much as possible of his dignity. When she had left the room he shrugged theatrically for the benefit of nobody but himself and picked up his magazine. John Breton had kept for nine years -- he could wait a little longer.

  X

  When the phone rang, splintering the silence of the house, Breton hurried to it, but paused uncertainly with his fingers on the cool plastic curvature of the handset.

  Two hours alone in the shadowed stillness of the afternoon had filled him with vague forebodings, which had alternated with moods of chest-pounding triumph. It was exactly the sort of day on which at one time he could have expected any moment to see the furtive, fugitive glimmering in his sight preceding a full-scale attack of hemicrania. But in the year since he'd had that first massive jump there had been scarcely any trips -- the reservoir of nervous potential had been discharged, drained away. Now, with the phone trembling under his hand, there was nothing in his mind other than a sense of imminence, an awareness of life and death balancing on a knife-edge. . . .

  He picked up the phone and waited without speaking.

  "Hello." The male voice on the wire was faintly Anglicized. "Is that you, John?"

  "Yes." Breton spoke cautiously.

  "I wasn't sure if you'd be there yet. I called the office and they said you'd left, but that was only five minutes ago, old boy -- you must have been burning rubber on the way home."

  "I was moving." Breton kept his voice relaxed. "By the way -- who is this?"

  "It's Gordon, of course. Gordon Palfrey. Listen, old boy, I've got Kate with me. Miriam and I bumped into her in the Foodmart -- she wants to speak to you.

  "All right." With an effort Breton remembered that the Palfreys were the automatic writing enthusiasts who had captured Kate's interests. Miriam was the one who appeared to have some kind of telepathic facility, and the thought of perhaps having to speak to her made him feel uneasy.

  "Hello . . . John?" Kate sounded slightly breathless, and he knew from her hesitation over the phone that she knew who had really answered the call.

  "What is it, Kate?"

  "John, Miriam's been telling me the most fascinating things about her work. The results she's been getting in the last couple of days are just fantastic. I'm so excited for her."

  How, Breton thought, with a flicker of annoyance, did Kate, my Kate, get herself mixed up with people like that?

  Aloud, he said, "That sounds interesting. Is it what you called me about?"

  "In a way -- Miriam's giving a demonstration to a few close friends this evening and she's invited me. I'm so thrilled, John. You won't mind if I go straight there with them now, will you? You could look after yourself for one evening?"

  Having Kate out of the house for the next few hours suited Breton's plans perfectly, yet he became angry at her almost religious attitude towards the Palfreys. Only the fear of sounding like the other Breton prevented him from protesting.

  "Kate," he said calmly. "Are you avoiding me?"

  "Of course not -- it's just that I can't pass up this chance."

  "You love me?"

  There was a pause. "I didn't think you'd have any need to ask that."

  "All right." Breton decided to begin positive action. "But Kate, do you think it's wise to stay out this evening? I wasn't kidding about John, you know. He's in a mood in which he could pull up stakes tonight and vanish."

  "That's up to him. Would you object?"

  "No -- but I want you both to be sure about what you're doing."

  "I can't think about it," Kate said, with the excitement suddenly gone from her voice. "I just can't handle it."

  "Don't worry, darling." Breton spoke softly. "You go on and have fun. We'll work this out -- somehow."

  He set the phone down and considered his next move. Gordon Pa]frey had said John had already left the office, which meant he could arrive home at any minute. Breton sprinted up the stairs and removed the automatic pistol from its hiding place in the guest bedroom. Its metallic solidity dragged heavily in the side pocket of his jacket as he came out of the room. To make it look as though John Breton really had walked out of his marriage and career in disgust it would be necessary to get rid of the clothing and other effects he would be likely to take. Money! Jack Breton looked at his watch -- the bank would be closed. He hesitated, wondering if Kate would notice anything suspicious if John supposedly took off into the blue without cash. It might not occur to her for a few days, or even weeks, but in the end it would begin to look strange.

  On the other hand, she had never been a money-conscious person and would be unlikely to inquire too closely into the mechanics of any financial transaction John was supposed to have made. Jack decided to go to the bank first thing in the morning, as his other self, and arrange the transfer of a sizable amount to a bank in Seattle. Later he could, if required, arrange to make withdrawals from the new account, to lend solidity to the fiction.

  He took two expanding suitcases from a closet, filled them with clothes and brought them down into the hall. The pistol kept bumping against his hipbone. One part of his mind realized it was going to be difficult to use it on John Breton, but the rest of him was savagely aware that this was the culmination of nine years of agonized dedication, and there was no turning back. The essential point was that he had created John Breton's life, lent him nine years of existence for which there had never been any provision in the cosmic scheme, and now the time had come to foreclose on the loan. I gave, the thought came unbidden, and I take away.

  Suddenly Breton felt deathly cold. He stood shivering in the hall, staring at himself in the long gold-tinted mirror, until -- eons later -- the deep whine of John Breton's Turbo-Lincoln disturbed the still brown air of the old house. A minute later John came in through the rear door and walked into the hall, still wearing his car-coat. His eyes narrowed as he saw the two suitcases.

  "Where's Kate?" By tacit agreement, the two Bretons had dropped all the conventional formalities of greeting.

  "She . . . she's having dinner with the Palfreys, and staying over there for the rest of the evening." Jack found difficulty in forming the words. He was going to kill John within a matter of seconds, but the thought of seeing that familiar body torn open by bullets filled him with an unnerving timidity.

  "I see." John's eyes were watchful. "What are you doing with my cases?"

  Jack's fingers closed around the butt of the pistol. He shook his head, unable to speak.

  "You don't look well," John said. "Are you all right?"

  "I'm leaving," Jack lied, struggling with the newly-made discovery that he would be unable to pull the trigger. "I'll return your cases later. I took some clothes as well. Do you mind?"

  "No, I don't mind." Relief showed in John's eyes. But do you mean you're staying in this . . . time-stream?"

  "Yes -- as long as I know Kate's still alive somewhere, not too far away, that'll do me."

  "Oh!" There was a baffled expression on John Breton's square face, as though he had expected to hear something entirely different. "Are you leaving right now? Do you want me to call you a taxi?"

  Ja
ck nodded. John shrugged and turned towards the telephone. The icy paralysis was dragging at Jack's muscles as he pulled the pistol out of his pocket. He stepped up close behind his other self and smashed the heavy butt into John's skull, just behind the ear. As John's knees buckled he hit him again and, in his uncoordinated numbness, stumbled and went down with him. He found himself sprawled on top of the other man, faces almost touching, watching in horror as John's eyes flickered open in pain-dulled consciousness.

  "So it's like that," John whispered in a semblance of drowsy satisfaction, like a child on the verge of sleep. His eyes closed but Jack Breton hit him again and again, using his fist, sobbing as he tried to destroy the image of his own guilt.

  When sanity returned he rolled away from John and crouched beside the inert body, breathing heavily. He got to his feet, went up the shallow staircase to the bathroom and hunched over the washbasin. The metal of the taps was ice cold against his forehead, just as it had been when, as a young man making his first disastrous experiments with liquor, he had sprawled in the same attitude waiting for his system to cleanse itself. But this time relief was not to be purchased so easily.

  Breton splashed his face with cold water and dried himself, taking special care over his knuckles, which were skinned and already beginning to exude clear fluid. He opened the bathroom cabinet in search of medical dressings and his attention was caught by a bottle of pale green triangles. They had the unmistakable generic look of sleeping tablets. Breton examined the label and confirmed his guess.

  In the kitchen he filled a glass with water and carried it to the hall where John Breton was still sprawled on the mustard carpet. He raised John's head and began feeding him tablets. The task was more difficult than he had expected. The unconscious man's throat and mouth would fill up with water and an explosive cough would spew it and the tablets down onto his chest. Breton was sweating, and an unguessable amount of valuable time had gone by, before he had managed to get eight tablets down John's throat.

  He threw the bottle aside, picked up the pistol, put it in his pocket and dragged the body into the kitchen. A quick search of John's pockets provided Breton with a wallet full of the identification he was going to need later in his dealings with the outside world, and a bunch of keys including those of the big Lincoln.

  He went out to the car and drove it around to the back of the house then reversed so that the rear bumper was nuzzling the ivy-covered trellis of the patio. The air was warm from the afternoon sunshine and the distant lawn mower was still going its unconcerned way beyond the screens of trees and shrubbery. Breton opened the trunk of the car and went back into the kitchen. John was very still, as though already dead, and his face had a luminescent pallor. A single delta of blood extended from his nose across one cheek.

  Breton dragged the body out of the house and manhandled it into the open trunk. While tucking the legs in he noticed that one of John's slip-on shoes was missing. He pulled down the lid of the trunk without locking it and went into the house. The shoe was lying just inside the doorway.

  Breton picked it up and was hurrying back to the Lincoln when he walked straight into Lieutenant Convery.

  "Sorry to disturb you again, John." Convery's wide-set blue eyes were alert, dancing with a kind of malicious energy. "I think I might've left something here."

  "I . . . I didn't notice anything sitting around."

  Breton heard the words issuing from his own mouth, and marveled at his body's ability to continue with the intricacies of communication while the mind nominally in control was reeling with shock. What was Convery doing here? This was the second time in one day that he had materialized on the patio at the worst possible moment.

  "It's the fossil. My boy's fossil -- I didn't have it when I got home." Convery's smile was almost derisive, as if he was challenging Breton to exercise his prerogative and throw an interfering cop off his property. "You've no idea of the trouble I got into at home."

  "Well, I don't think it's here. I'm sure I would have noticed -- it isn't the sort of thing you would overlook."

  "That's right," Convery said carelessly. "I guess I left it somewhere else."

  All this was no coincidence, Breton realized sadly. Convery was dangerous -- a clever, dedicated cop of the worst type. A man who had instincts and believed in them, who clung to his own ideas tenaciously in spite of logic, or evidence. This then was the real reason Convery had been visiting John Breton at intervals over the past nine years -- he was suspicious. What vindictive twist of fate, Breton wondered, had brought this ambling super-cop onto the stage he had so carefully set on that October night?

  "Lost a shoe?"

  "A shoe?" Breton followed Convery's gaze and saw the black slip-on gripped in his own hand. "Oh yes. I'm getting absentminded."

  "We all do when we have something on our minds -- look at that fossil."

  "I don't have anything on my mind," Breton said immediately. "What's troubling you?"

  Convery walked to the Lincoln and leaned against it, his right hand resting on the lid of the trunk. "Nothing much -- I keep trying to talk with my hand."

  "I don't get it."

  "It's nothing. By the way -- speaking of hands -- those knuckles of yours are looking a bit raw. Have you been in a fight or something?"

  "Who with?" Breton laughed. "I can't fight myself."

  "Well, I thought maybe the guy who delivered your car." Convery slapped the metal and the unsecured lid of the trunk vibrated noisily. "The way those grease-monkeys speak to customers I often feel like belting them myself -- that's one of the reasons I do all my own maintenance."

  Breton felt his mouth go dry. So Convery had noticed the car had not been around on his earlier visit. "No," he said. "I'm on the best of terms with my service station."

  "What were you getting done to her?" Convery eyed the Lincoln with a practical man's disdain.

  "Brakes needed adjusting."

  "Is that so? I thought the brakes on these things were self-adjusting."

  "Perhaps they are -- I never looked to see." Breton began to wonder how long this could go on. "All I know is she wasn't stopping too well."

  "Do you want some advice? Make sure the wheels are bolted on properly before you take her out on the road. I've seen cars come back from a brake job with the wheels' nuts hanging on by a single thread."

  "I'm sure it'll be all right."

  "Don't trust 'em, John -- if there's anything they can leave loose without it actually falling off, they'll do it."

  Convery suddenly uncoiled himself and whipped around to the rear of the car before Breton could move. He caught the handle of the trunk lid, raised it -- staring triumphantly at Breton -- and slammed it down hard, twisting the handle into the locked position.

  "See what I mean? That could have sprung up while you were traveling fast -- very dangerous."

  "Thanks," Breton said faintly. "I'm obliged."

  "Think nothing of it -- all part of the service to the taxpayers." Convery pulled thoughtfully on one of his ears. "Well, I've got to go. My kids are having a birthday party, and I'm not supposed to be out at all. Be seeing you."

  "Any time," Breton replied. "Look me up any time."

  He waited uncertainly, then followed Convery around the side of the house, reaching the front in time to see a green saloon surge down the street with a grumbling of exhausts. A cool breeze scattered dry leaves before him as he turned and walked back to the car. Convery's last remark had been a significant one. It had revealed that his call had been neither social nor accidental, and Convery was unlikely to give away information without a reason. Breton was left with the distinct impression that he had been given a warning -- which left him in a strange and potentially lethal situation.

  He could not risk killing John Breton with Lieutenant Convery possibly circling the block, waiting for something to happen.

  Yet he could not let John Breton live after what had happened -- and there was very little time in which to resolve the dilemma.
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  XI

  Several decades had gone by since General Theodor Abram had actually set foot on a field of battle, but he thought of himself as living in an ephemeral no-man's-land separating two of the greatest war machines ever seen in the region's ancient and bloody history.

  There was never an hour, a minute, a single instant in which his mind was not dominated by the realization that he was a vital part of his country's front line defenses. If the ultimate conflict was ever joined he would not be required to press any buttons; the tools of his trade were made of paper, not steel; but he was a warrior nonetheless because the burden of responsibility for technical preparedness was such that only a patriot and a hero could have borne it.