by C. L. Moore
"Let me see it." Rufus held out his hand. Something very strange happened then. Bill laid the tintype in his father's palm, and Rufus lifted it and looked into the shadowy features of the picture. And almost in the same motion he cried violently, "No! No, that's ridiculous!" and hurled the thing to the floor. It bounced once, with a tinny sound, and lay face down on the bare boards.
Nobody spoke. The silence was tense for half a minute. Then Rufus said in a perfectly reasonable voice, "Now what made me do that?"
The other two relaxed just perceptibly, and Morgan said, "You tell us. What did?"
Rufus looked at him, the tilted black eyes puzzled. "It was just ... wrong, somehow. Not what I expected. Not at all what I expected. But what I did expect I couldn't tell you now." He sent a distracted glance about the room. The window caught his eye and he looked out at the pattern of leaves and branches beyond the porch. "That looks wrong to me," he added helplessly. "Out there. I don't know why, but when I see it suddenly I know it isn't right. It's the first glance that does it. Afterward, I can tell it's just the way it's always been. But just for a minute—" He drew his shoulders together in a shrug of discomfort, and grimaced at the two men appealingly. "What's wrong with me, boys?"
Neither of them answered for a moment, then both spoke together.
"Nothing to worry about," Bill said, and Morgan declared in the same breath,
"Your memory hasn't caught up with your body yet, that's all. It's nothing that won't straighten out in a little while. Forget it as much as you can."
"I'll try." Rufus sent a bewildered look about the room again. For a moment he seemed not only a stranger to the house and the street outside, but a stranger to his own body. He looked so sleek and handsome, so solidly assured of his place in the world. But there was nothing but bewilderment behind the facade.
"I think I'll take a walk," he said, and turned toward the door. On the way he stooped and picked up the tintype of his mother's face, pausing for an instant to look again at the unfamiliar picture. He shook his head doubtfully and laid the tintype down again. "I don't know," he said. "I just don't know."
-
When the door had closed behind him, Morgan looked at Bill and whistled a long, soft note.
"Well, you'd better get the record book," he said. "We ought to put it all down before we forget it."
Bill glanced at him unhappily and went out of the room without a word. When he came back, carrying the big flat notebook in which they had been keeping, detail by detail, the record of their work, he was scowling.
"Do you realize how impossible all that was?" he asked. "Rufus wasn't remembering his past. He never had a past like that. Forgetting all the other aberrations, the thing isn't possible. He grew up in a Methodist minister's household. He believed theaters were houses of sin. He's often told me he never set his foot inside one until long after he was married. He couldn't have known a girl who was—all spangles. He never had any affairs—Mother was his first and last love. He's told me that often. And he was telling the truth. I'm sure he was."
"Maybe he led a double life," Morgan suggested doubtfully. "You know the proverbs about preachers' sons."
"Anybody but Rufus. It just isn't in character."
"Do you know?"
Bill looked at him. "Well, I've always understood that Rufus was—"
"Do you know? Or is it hearsay evidence? You weren't there, were you?"
"Naturally," Bill said with heavy irony, "I wasn't around before I was born. It's just possible that up to that time Rufus was a black magician or Jack the Ripper or Peter Pan. If you want to go nuts, you can build up a beautiful theory that the world didn't exist until I was born, and you can make it stick because nobody can disprove it. But we're not dealing with blind faith. We're dealing with logic."
"What kind of logic?" Morgan wanted to know. He looked gloomy and disturbed.
"My kind. Our kind. Homo sapiens logic. Or are you implying that Rufus—" He let the thought die.
Morgan picked it up. "I'm willing to imply. Suppose Rufus was different when he was young."
"Two heads?" Bill said flippantly. And after a pause, in a soberer voice, "No, you've got the wrong pig by the tail. I see your point. That there might be ... some biological difference, some mutation in Rufus that ironed itself out as he grew older. But your theory breaks down. Rufus lived in this town most of his life. People would remember if he'd ... had two heads."
"Oh. Yeah, of course. Well, then ... it could have been subtler. Something not even Rufus knew about. Successful minor mutations aren't noticed, because they are successful. I mean ... a different, more efficient metabolic rate, or better optical adjustment. A guy with slightly super vision wouldn't be apt to realize it, because he'd take it for granted everybody else had the same kind of eyes. And, naturally, he wouldn't ever need to go to an optometrist, because his eyes would be good."
"But Rufus has had eye tests," Bill said. "And every other kind. We gave him a complete check-up. He was normal."
Morgan sampled his lower lip and apparently didn't like it. "He was when we ran the tests, yes. But back in the Nineties? All I'm saying is, it's not inconceivable that he started out with some slight variations from the norm which may have been adjusted even by the time he reached adolescence. But the potentialities were there, like disease germs walled off behind healthy tissue, waiting for a lowering of resistance to break out again. Maybe that happens oftener than we know. Maybe it happens to nearly everybody. We do know that for every child that's born there've been many conceptions that would have produced nonviable fetuses if they'd gone to full term. These are discarded too early to be recognized. Maybe even in normal children adjustments have to be made sometimes before the adolescent perfectly fits into our pattern. And when something as revolutionary as what we did to Rufus takes place, the weak spots in the structure—the places where adjustments were made—break down again. Or say the disease germs are turned loose and rebuild the old disease. I'm mixing my metaphors. There isn't any perfect analogy. Am I making sense at all?"
"I wish you weren't," Bill said uncomfortably. "I don't like it."
"All we can do is guess, at this stage. Guess—and wait. We can't tell without a control, and we haven't got any control. There's only Rufus. And—"
"And Rufus is changing," Bill finished for him. "He's changing into someone else."
"Don't talk like a fool," Morgan said sharply. "He's changing into Rufus, that's all. A Rufus we never knew, but perfectly genuine. My guess is that most of the adjustments took place in adolescence, and he isn't going back that far. I'm only suggesting that the stories you heard about his young days may have been—well, not entirely true. He's confused now. We'll have to wait until the changes stop and his mind clears up to find out what really happened."
"He's changing," Bill said stubbornly as if he had not been listening. "He's going back, and we don't know where it will end."
"It's ended already. He's on his last series of shots now. You haven't any reason to think he won't stop at thirty-five, when we wind up the treatments, have you?"
Bill laid down the book and looked at it thoughtfully. "No reason," he said. "Only—the current's so strong. Biological time flows so fast when you reach the midpoint. Like the river flowing toward Niagara. I wonder if you can go too far. Maybe there's a point beyond which you can't stop. I'm an alarmist, Pete. I have a feeling we've saddled a tiger."
"Now you're mixing metaphors," Morgan said dryly.
-
In June Bill said, "He won't let me in his room any more."
Morgan sighed. "What now?"
"The decorators finished two days ago. Dark-purple hangings all around the walls. I'm sure they thought he was a little crazy, but they didn't argue. Now he's got an old clock up there he's been tinkering with, and he found a table somewhere with a chessboard top, and he's making the strangest calculations on it."
"What kind of calculations?"
Bill shrugged irritably. "How
do I know? I'd thought he was getting better. Those spells of ... of false memory haven't seemed to bother him so much lately. Or if they do, he doesn't talk about it."
"When was the last?"
Bill opened his desk drawer and flipped the notebook cover. "Ten days ago he said the view from his windows wasn't right. Also that his room was ugly and he didn't know how he'd stood it all these years. It was about then that he began to complain of these pains, too."
"Oh, the 'growing pains.' And they began to localize—when?"
"A week ago." Bill scowled. "I don't like 'em. I thought it was gastric—I still think it is. But he shouldn't be having any trouble at all. He's perfect, inside and out. Those last X-rays—"
"Taken a week ago," Morgan reminded him.
"Yes, but—"
"If he keeps having a bellyache after meals, something may have gone wrong only a few days ago. Remember, Rufus is unique."
"He's that, all right. Well, I'll start all over, if I can catch him. He's getting very skittish these days. I can't keep up with him any more."
"Is he out now? I'd like to have a look at his room."
Bill nodded. "You won't find out anything. But come on up."
-
Purple curtains inside clogged the door for a moment, as if the room itself were trying to hold them out. Then the door came open, and a draft from the hall made the four walls billow and shiver with rich, dark-purple folds, as if things had run to hiding everywhere an instant before the two men entered. The only light came in a purple glow through curtains across the windows, until Bill crossed the room and put back the draperies that covered them. Then they could see more clearly the big carved bed, the chest of drawers, the few chairs.
At the bed's foot stood the chessboard table, chalk marks scrawled across the squares. At the back of the table stood the clock, an old-fashioned mantelpiece ornament that filled the room with a curious sort of hiccupping tick. They listened a moment, then Morgan said, "That's funny. Wonder if it's accidental. Do you hear a ... a halfbeat between the ticks?" They listened again. Ticki-ti-tock went the clock.
"It's old," Bill said. "Probably something wrong with it. What I want you to look at is the second hand. See?"
A long sweep-hand was moving very slowly around the broad face. It did not match the other two. The presumption was that Rufus had found it elsewhere and added it very inefficiently, for as they watched it leaped about three seconds and resumed its slow crawl. A little farther on it leaped again. Then it made almost a complete circuit, and jumped five seconds.
"I hope Rufus isn't keeping any dates by this thing," Morgan murmured. "Lucky for him he doesn't repair clocks for a living. What's the idea?"
"I wish I knew. I asked, of course, and he said he was just tinkering. It looks like it, too, in a way. But here's something funny." He stooped and opened the glass. "Look. It's very small. Here, and over here, see?"
Bending, Morgan made out upon the face of the clock, irregularly spaced between the numerals, a series of very tiny colored markings painted upon the dial. Red and green and brown, tiny and intricate, with curled lines like Persian writing. All around the face they went, varicolored and enigmatic. Morgan pulled his mustache and watched the erratic second-hand twitch around its path. Whenever it jumped it came to rest somewhere upon a twist of colored lines.
"That can't be accidental," he said after a moment. "But what's the idea? What does it record? Did you ask him?"
Bill gave him a long look. "No," he said finally, "I didn't."
Morgan regarded him narrowly. "Why not?"
"I'm not sure. Maybe ... maybe I didn't want to know." He closed the glass face. "It looks crazy. But when it comes to machinery that measures time—Well, I wonder if Rufus doesn't know more than we do." He paused. "You turned his mind loose to explore time," he said almost accusingly.
Morgan shook his head. "You're losing your perspective, Bill."
"Maybe. Well—what do you make of the chessboard?"
They looked at it blankly. Careful scrawls had been traced almost at random within the squares, though it seemed evident that to the mind which directed that scrawling, purpose had been clear.
"He could just be working out some chess problem, couldn't he?" suggested Morgan.
"I thought of that. I asked him if he'd like to play, and he said he didn't know how and didn't want to be bothered. That was when he threw me out. I think it's got something to do with the clock, myself. You know what I think, Pete? If the clock measures hours, maybe the squares measure days. Like a calendar."
"But why?"
"I don't know. I'm not a psychiatrist. I've got one idea, though. Suppose during the hypnosis he imagined he did see something that—disturbed him. Say he did see something. Posthypnotic commands stopped him from remembering it consciously, but his subconscious is still worried. Couldn't that emerge into a conscious, purposeless tinkering with things that have to do with time? And if it could, do you think maybe he may suddenly remember, some day, what's behind it all?"
Morgan faced him squarely across the table and the hiccupping clock.
"Listen, Bill. Listen to me. You're losing your perspective badly over this. You won't do Rufus any good if you let yourself get lost in a morass of mysticism."
-
Bill said abruptly, "Pete, do you know anything about Faust?"
If he had expected a protest, he was surprised. Morgan grimaced, the heavy lines deepening around his mouth.
"Yeah. I looked him up in the encyclopedia. Interesting."
"Suppose for a minute that the legend's got a basis of fact. Suppose that somewhere back three hundred years there really were two men who tried this same experiment and made a record of it in code. Does that give you any ideas?"
Morgan scowled. "Nothing applicable. The legend's basis is the old medieval idea that knowledge is essentially evil. 'Thou shalt not eat of the fruit of the Tree.' Faust, like Adam, was tempted and tasted the fruit, and got punished. The moral's simply that to know too much is to go against God and nature, and God and nature will exact a penalty."
"That's just it. Faust paid with his soul. But the point is that the experiment didn't run smoothly up to the end, and then suddenly collapse. Mephistopheles didn't really present a bill and carry off his reward. Their experiment went wrong almost from the start—like ours. Faust was an intelligent man. He wouldn't have bartered his immortal soul for a short fling on earth. It wouldn't have been worth while. The whole point was that Faust never took Mephisto seriously until it was too late. He deliberately let Mephistopheles spread out his trumpery pleasures, perfectly sure that they wouldn't give him enjoyment enough to matter any. And of course if they didn't the bargain was void. It was when he actually began to enjoy what Mephistopheles had to offer that he lost his soul, not at the end, when the bill was paid." Bill thumped the chess table emphatically. "Could a code tell you any plainer that the thing got out of hand almost at the beginning?" He looked at Morgan with narrowed eyes. "All we've got to do now is find out what the code for 'soul' means."
"Got any ideas?" Morgan inquired sardonically. "I'm worried more about you, Bill, than I am about Rufus. I'm beginning to wonder if we haven't made a mistake in our subject. You're too close to Rufus."
He was surprised at the look that came over Bill's face. He watched him frown a little, thump the table again, and then walk to the window and back without saying anything. Morgan waited. Presently,
"I'm not, really," Bill said. "Father and I never were very close emotionally. He wasn't the type. Rufus, I think, could be. Rufus has all the warmth that Father lacked. I like him. But it's more than that, Pete. There's something in the relationship between us that affects me as Rufus is affected. It's a physical thing. Rufus is my closest living relative, though he's a stranger now even in appearance. Half my chromosomes are his. If I hated him, I'd still be linked to him by that much heritage. Things are happening to him now that never happened to a human being before, so far as we know. It'
s as if, when you pull him out of the straight course of human behavior, you pull me too. I can't look at the thing abstractly any more." He laughed almost apologetically. "I keep dreaming about rivers. Deep, swift waters running faster and faster, with the abyss just ahead and no way on earth to escape it."
"Dream-symbolism—" began Morgan.
"Oh, I know Freud, of course. But the river itself is a symbol. Sometimes it's Rufus on the raft, sometimes it's me. But the riptide has always caught us. We've gone too far to turn back. I wonder if—"
"Stop wondering. You've worked too hard. What you need is a rest from Rufus and everything connected with him. After you get those X-rays and figure out what's wrong with him, suppose you get away for awhile. When you come back Rufus will be thirty-five going-on-forty again and you can forget about the river and start dreaming about snakes or teeth or something normally Freudian. O.K.?"
Bill nodded doubtfully. "O.K. I'll try."
-
Three days later, in the Westerfield study, Morgan held an X-ray plate against the light and squinted at the shadowy maze of outlines. He looked a long time, and his hand was shaking when he laid the plate down carefully, scowling at Bill under brows so heavy they almost hid the expression of his eyes. It was an expression of bewilderment that verged on fear.
"You faked these!"
Bill made a futile gesture. "I wish I had."
Morgan gave him another piercing glance and turned back to the light for a second look. His hand was still shaking. He steadied it with the other and stared. Then he took up another plate and looked at that.
"It's impossible," he said. "It never happened. It couldn't."
"The ... the simplification—" began Bill in an uncertain voice.
"The wonder is he can digest anything, with this set-up. Not that I believe it for a minute, of course."