by William Tenn
Professor Ruddle looked at him carefully and moistened his lips. "Certainly, Noodleneck," he said. "Why—why, of course!"
"Gooseneck. How many times do I have to tell you it's Gooseneck McCarthy? Only make the check out to me with my real first name."
"Which is?"
"Huh? Oh, you have to know now, I guess. Only kinda don't spread it around. It's, uh—" the tall vagrant's voice dropped to a delicate whisper, "—it's Galahad."
The physicist added a final scribble to the green paper rectangle, ripped it out and handed it to McCarthy. Pay to the order of Galahad McCarthy one hundred dollars and 00 cents. On the Beet and Tobacco Exchange Bank of North Carolina.
Ruddle watched while the check was carefully placed in the outer breast pocket of the ancient sweater. He picked up an expensive miniature camera and hung its carrying strap around his employee's neck. He patted the camera. "Now, this is fully loaded. Are you certain you can operate the shutter? All you do—"
"I know all right. Fooled around with these doohickeys before. Been playing with this 'un for two days. You want me to step out of the machine, take a couple of snaps of the scenery, and move a rock."
"And nothing else! Remember, you're going back a hundred and ten million years and any action on your part might have an incalculable effect on the present. You might wipe out the whole human race by stepping on one furry little animal who was its ancestor. I think that moving a rock slightly will be a good first innocuous experiment, but be careful!"
They moved toward the great transparent housing at the end of the laboratory. Through its foot-thick walls, the red, black, and silver equipment in one corner shone hazily. An enormous lever protruded from the maze of wiring like a metallic forefinger.
"You should arrive in the Cretaceous Period, the middle period of the age of reptiles. Most of North America was under water, but geological investigation shows an island on this spot."
"You been over this sixteen times. Just show me what dingus to pull and let me go."
Ruddle executed a little dance. "Dingus!" he screeched. "You don't pull any dingus! You gently depress—gently, you hear—the chronotransit, that large black lever, thus sliding the quartzine door shut and starting the machine. When you arrive you lift it—again gently—and the door will open. The machine is set to go back a given number of years, so that fortunately you have no thinking to do."
McCarthy stared down at him easily. "You make a lot of cracks for a little guy. I'll bet you're scared stiff of your wife."
"I'm not married," Ruddle told him shortly. "I don't believe in the institution." He remembered. "Who was talking about marriage? At a time like this... When I think of allowing a stubborn, stupid character like yourself to run loose with a device having the immense potentialities of a time machine—Of course, I'm far too valuable to be risked in the first jerry-built model."
"Yeah," McCarthy nodded. "Ain't it the truth." He patted the check protruding from his sweater pocket and leaped up into the machine. "I'm not."
He depressed the chronotransit lever—gently.
The door slid shut on Professor Ruddle's frantic last word, "Goodbye, Noodleneck, and be careful, please!"
"Gooseneck," McCarthy automatically corrected. The machine seemed to jerk. He had a last, distorted glimpse of Ruddle's shaggy, white head through the quartzine walls. The Professor, alarm and doubt mixed on his face, seemed to be praying.
—|—
Incredibly bright sunlight blazed through thick, bluish clouds. The time machine rested on the waterline of a beach to whose edge the lushest jungle ever had rushed—and stopped abruptly. The semi-transparent walls enabled him to see enormous green masses of horsetails and convoluted ivy, giant ferns, and luxuriant palms, steaming slightly, rich and ominous with life.
"Lift the dingus gently," McCarthy murmured to himself.
He stepped through the open doors into an ankle-depth of water. The tide was evidently in and white-flecked water gurgled around the base of the squat edifice that had brought him. Well, Ruddle had said this was going to be an island.
"Reckon I'm lucky he didn't build his laboratory shack fifty or sixty feet further down the mountain! I might be real wet."
He sloshed ashore, avoiding a little school of dun-colored sponges. The professor might like a picture of them, he decided. He adjusted the speed of the lens and focused it on the sponges. Then some pictures of the sea and the jungle.
Huge leathery wings beat over a spot two miles in from the edge of the luxuriant vegetation. McCarthy recognized the awesome, bat-like creature from drawings the Professor had shown him. A pterodactyl, the reptilian version of bird life.
McCarthy snapped a hasty photograph and backed nervously toward the time machine. He didn't like the looks of that long pointed beak, so ferociously armed with jagged teeth. Some living thing moved in the jungle under the pterodactyl. It plummeted down like a fallen angel, jaws agape and slavering.
McCarthy made certain that it was being kept busy, then moved rapidly up the beach. Near the edge of the jungle, he had observed a round, reddish rock. It would do.
The rock was heavier to budge than he had thought. He strained against it, cursing and perspiring under the hot sun. His feet sank into the clinging loam.
Abruptly the rock tore loose. With a sucking sound it came out of the loam and rolled over on its side. It left a moist, round hole out of which a centipede fully as long as his arm scuttled away into the underbrush. A nauseous stink arose from the spot where the centipede had lain. McCarthy decided he didn't like this place. Not at all.
Might as well head back.
Before he depressed the lever, the tramp took one last look at the red rock, the underside somewhat darker than the rest. A hundred bucks worth of tilt.
"So this is what work is like," he soliloquized. "Maybe I been missing out on something."
—|—
After the rich sunlight of the Cretaceous, the laboratory seemed smaller than he remembered it. The Professor came up to him breathlessly as he stepped from the time machine.
"How did it go?" he demanded eagerly.
McCarthy stared down at the top of the old man's head. "Everthin' OK," he replied slowly. "Hey, Professor Ruddle, what for did you go and shave your head? There wasn't much of it, but that white hair looked sorta distinguished."
"Hair? Shave? I've been completely bald for years. Lost my hair long before it turned white. And my name is Guggles, not Ruddle—Guggles: try and remember that for a while. Now let me see the camera."
As he slipped the carrying strap over his head and handed the instrument over, McCarthy pursed his lips. "Coulda sworn that you had a little patch of white up there. Coulda sworn. Sorry about the name, Prof; we never seem to be able to get together on those things."
The Professor grunted and started for the darkroom with the camera. Halfway there, he stopped and almost cringed as a huge female form stepped through the far doorway.
"Aloysius!" came a voice that approximated a corkscrew to the ear. "Aloysius! I told you yesterday that if that tramp wasn't out of my house in twenty-four hours, experiment or not, you'd hear from me. Aloysius! You have exactly thirty-seven minutes!"
"Y-yes, dear," Professor Guggles whispered at her broad, retreating back. "We—we're almost finished."
"Who's that?" McCarthy demanded the moment she had left.
"My wife, of course. You must remember her—she made our breakfast when you arrived."
"Didn't make my breakfast. Made my own breakfast. And you said you weren't married!"
"Now you're being silly, Mr. Gallagher. I've been married for twenty-five years and I know how futile it is to deny it. I couldn't have said any such thing."
"Name's not Gallagher—it's McCarthy, Gooseneck McCarthy," the vagrant told him querulously. "What's happened here? You can't even remember my last name now, let alone my first; you change your own name; you shave your head; you get married in a hurry; and—and you try 'n tell me that I let some
female woman cook my breakfast when I can rassle up a better-tastin', better-eatin'—"
"Hold it!" The little man had approached and was plucking at his sleeve eagerly. "Hold it, Mr. Gallagher or Gooseneck or whatever your name is. Suppose you tell me exactly what you consider this place to have been like before you left."
Gooseneck told him. "And that thingumajig was layin' on that whatchamacallit instead of under it," he finished lamely.
The Professor thought. "And all you did when you went back into the past was to move a rock?"
"That's all. One hell of a big centipede jumped out, but I didn't touch it. Just moved the rock and headed back like you said."
"Yes, of course. Hmmm. That may have been it. The centipede jumping out of the rock may have altered subsequent events sufficiently to make me a married man instead of a blissful single one, to have changed my name from Ruddle to Guggles. Or the rock itself. Such an intrinsically simple act as moving the rock must have had much larger consequences than I had imagined. Just think if that rock had not been moved, I might not be married! Gallagher—"
"McCarthy," the tall vagabond corrected resignedly.
"Whatever you call yourself—listen to me. You're going back in the time machine and shift that rock back to its original position. Once that's done—"
"If I go back again, I get another hundred."
"How can you talk of money at a time like this?"
"What's the difference between this and any other time?"
"Why, here I am married, my work interrupted, and you chatter about—Oh, all right. Here's the money." The Professor tore his checkbook out and hastily scribbled on a blank. "Here you are. Satisfied?"
McCarthy puzzled over the check. "This isn't like t'other. This is on a different bank—The Cotton Growers Exchange."
"That makes no important difference," the Professor told him hastily, bundling him into the time machine. "It's a check, isn't it? Just as good, believe me, just as good."
As the little man fiddled with dials and adjusted switches, he called over his shoulder. "Remember, get that rock as close to its original position as you can. And touch nothing else, do nothing else."
"I know. I know. Hey, Prof, how come I remember all these changes and you don't, with all your science and all?"
"Simple," the Professor told him, toddling briskly out of the machine. "By being in the past and the time machine while these temporal adjustments to your act made themselves felt, you were in a sense insulated against them, just as a pilot suffers no direct, personal damage from the bomb his plane releases over a city. Now, I've set the machine to return to approximately the same moment as before. Unfortunately, my chronotransit calibrations can never be sufficiently exact—Do you remember how to operate the apparatus? If you don't—"
McCarthy sighed and depressed the lever, shutting the door on the Professor's flowing explanations and perspiring bald head.
—|—
He was back by the pounding surf off the little island. He paused for a moment before opening the door as he caught sight of a strange transparent object just a little farther up the beach. Another time machine—and exactly like his!
"Oh, well. The Professor will explain it."
He started up the beach toward the rock. Then he stopped again—a dead-stop this time.
The rock lay ahead, as he remembered it before the shifting. But there was a man straining at it, a tall, thin man in a turtleneck sweater and brown corduroy pants.
McCarthy got his loosened jaw back under control. "Hey! Hey, you at the rock! Don't move it. It's not supposed to be moved!" He hurried over.
The stranger turned. He had the ugliest face McCarthy remembered having seen on a human being; his neck was ridiculously long and thin. He examined McCarthy slowly. He reached into his pocket and came out with a soiled package. He bit off a chew of tobacco.
McCarthy reached into his pocket and came up with an identically soiled mass of tobacco. He also took a bite. They chewed and stared at each other. Then they spat, simultaneously.
"What do you mean this rock ain't supposed to be moved? Professor Ruddle told me to move it."
"Well, Professor Ruddle told me not to move it. And Professor Guggles," McCarthy added as a triumphant clincher.
The other considered him for a moment, his jaw working like a peculiar cam. His eyes traveled up McCarthy's spare body. Then he spat contemptuously and turned to the rock. He grunted against it.
McCarthy sighed and put a hand on his shoulder. He spun him around. "What for you have to go and act so stubborn, fella? Now I'll have to lick you."
Without changing his vacant expression to one of the slightest hostility, the stranger aimed a prodigious kick at his groin. McCarthy dodged easily. That was an old stunt! He'd done that himself, dozens of times. He chopped out rapidly against the man's face. The stranger ducked, moved away, and came back fighting.
This was a perfect spot for the famous McCarthy one-two. McCarthy feinted with his left, seemingly concentrating all his power at the other's middle. He noticed that his opponent was also making some awkward gesture with his left. Then he came up out of nowhere with a terrific right uppercut.
WHAM!
Right on the—
—on the button. McCarthy sat up and shook his head clear of bright little lights and happy hums. He had connected, but—So had the other guy!
He sat several feet from McCarthy, looking dazed and sad. "You are the stubbornest cuss I ever saw! Where did you learn my punch?"
"Your punch!" They rose, glowering at each other. "Listen, Bub, that there is my own Sunday punch, copyrighted, patented and in-corporated! But this ain't getting us nowhere."
"No, it ain't. What do we do now? I don't care if I have to fight you for the next million years, but I was paid to move that rock and I'm going to move it."
McCarthy shifted the quid of tobacco. "Looky here. You've been paid to move that rock by Professor Ruddle or Guggles or whatever he is by now. If I go back and get a note from him saying you're not to move that rock and you can keep the check anyways, will you promise to squat still until I get back?"
The stranger chewed and spat, chewed and spat. McCarthy marveled at their perfect synchronization. They both spat the same distance, too. He wasn't such a bad guy, if only he wouldn't be so stubborn! Strange—he was wearing a camera like the one old Ruddle had taken from him.
"OK. You go back and get the note. I'll wait here." The stranger dropped to the ground and stretched out.
McCarthy turned and hurried back to the time machine before he could change his mind.
—|—
He was pleased to notice, as he stepped down into the laboratory again, that the Professor had rewon his gentle patch of white hair.
"Saaay, this is gettin' real complicated. How'd you make out with the wife?"
"Wife? What wife?"
"The wife. The battle-axe. The ball and chain. The steady skirt," McCarthy clarified.
"I'm not married. I told you I consider it a barbarous custom entirely unworthy of a truly civilized man. Now stop babbling and give me that camera."
"But," McCarthy felt his way very carefully, "but, don't you remember takin' the camera from me, Professor Ruddle?"
"Not Ruddle—Roodles, Roodles. Oo, as in Gooseface. And how could I have taken the camera from you when you've just returned? You're dithering, McCarney, I don't like ditherers. Stop it!"
McCarthy shook his head, forbearing to correct the mispronunciation of his name. He began to feel a vague, gnawing wish that he had never climbed aboard this merry-go-round.
"Look, Prof, sit down." He spread a great hand against the little man's chest, forcing him into a chair. "We're gonna have another talk. I gotta bring you up to date."
Fifteen minutes later, he was winding up. "So this character says he'll wait until I get back with the note. If you want a wife, don't give me the note and he'll move the rock. I don't care one way or t'other, myself. I just want to get out of here!"
Professor Ruddle (Guggles? Roodles?) closed his eyes. "My," he gasped. Then he shuddered. "Married. To that—battle-axe! That st-steady skirt! No! McCarney—or McCarthy—listen! You must go back. I'll give you a note—another check—here!" He tore a page from his notebook, filled it rapidly with desperate words. Then he made out a check.
McCarthy glanced at the slips. "'Nother bank," he remarked wonderingly. "This time The Southern Peanut Trust Company. I hope all these different checks are gonna be good."
"Certainly," the Professor assured him loudly. "They will all be good. You go ahead and take care of this matter, and we'll settle it to everybody's satisfaction when you return. You tell this other McCarney that—"
"McCarthy. Hey! What do you mean—'this other McCarney'? I'm the only McCarthy—only Gooseneck McCarthy, anyway. If you sent a dozen different guys out to do the same job..."
"I didn't send anyone but you. Don't you understand what happened? You went back into the Cretaceous to move a rock. You returned to the present—and, as you say, found me in somewhat unfortunate circumstances. You returned to the past to undo the damage, to approximately the same spot in space and time as before—it could not be exactly the same spot because of a multitude of unknown factors and because of the inescapable errors in the first time machine. Very well. You—we'll call you You I—meet You II at the very moment You II is preparing to move the rock. You stop him. If you hadn't, if he hadn't been interrupted in any way and had shifted that stone, he would have been You I. But because he—or rather you—didn't, he is slightly different from you, being a You who has merely made one trip into the past and not even moved the rock. Whereas you—You I—have made two trips, have both moved the rock yourself and prevented yourself from moving it. It's really very simple, isn't it?"
McCarthy stroked his chin and sucked in a great gasp of air. "Yeah," he mumbled wildly. "Simple ain't the word for it!"
