by Jerry
“At the risk of repeating myself—”
But everybody talked at once so I abandoned the subject in favor of cold chicken and empanadas de Tefritos, washed down with Valdepenas. Not exactly cordon bleu but neither was it steak and kidney pie.
After the first famelic frenzy we relaxed and a wife portioned out the remaining coffee. Outside the wind howled with more enthusiasm than was strictly necessary. With each gust rain rattled on the windows and somewhere a shutter slammed.
“How many candles are left?” a wife asked.
“Plenty, the Byzantine said. At that moment the lights came on. There were agitated eawings and duckings as if they had just gone off instead of on. “You act like you’d seen a ghost,” I said.
“I did.” It was the wife who had not believed.
“What did it look like?”
“I could see through him.”
I was about to ask the Byzantine if a family of resident nuts came with the house when I saw my mad friend’s face. “Were you by having a sight of it too?” I asked in Gaelic.
“Say naught but there’s aught amiss,” he said, then buried the remark under a collation of creations and citations which narration in translation was a formation of orations, in condensation, an aggregation of alliteration.
“Could you go through that again slowly?” the Byzantine asked.
“Whenever you state the fate that created your mandate for this estate.”
“I’m not an agent,” the Byzantine said. “I own it.”
“Do you also own those things that gae boomp i’ the nicht?”
“What things?”
“Really don’t believe in that stuff,” another wife was saying.
I gave up. Our survey had covered part of the upper stories but we hadn’t yet described the hall. My mad friend went to work with tape measure and sketch book. I took a sweep with my sniffer. Satisfied that the baronial hall was not being swept with radar, I began climbing about on the furniture seeking a spot where the Polaroid’s wide-angle lens could include the whole room. Perched in my stocking feet atop a sideboard, I was focussing when some wife said “Mira!”
She said it with such depth of feeling that I fired the camera and descended sooner than I had planned. I ripped film out of the camera and was climbing for a second try when a wife silently handed me the picture I’d just ruined.
I handed it to my mad friend. He studied it in equal silence and gave it to the Byzantine.
“Is that what you wanted me to look at?” I asked.
Wives nodded.
“You do want to sell this house?” my mad friend asked.
The Byzantine’s smile was never more sincere.
“Then let’s cut the ‘B’ picture antics. Even the Truest Believer can see that’s just some down draped in a sheet.”
“But why can you see through him?” a wife asked.
“Double exposure,” I said. And saying it, I realized this camera had the film advance and shutter cocking linked together precisely so there would be no double exposures. Looking at my mad friend, I knew he knew it too.
“All right,” I said loudly, “we’ve got a ghost. Now let’s check out the woodwork and find the rear projection setup and kick some dismal dipdreck out into the rain along with his merry pranks.”
An hour later I was convinced that the woodwork was producing or consuming no electromagnetic energy. “Wouldn’t explain what I thought I saw upstairs anyhow,” my mad friend said.
There was nothing remarkable about the picture: simply a middle-aged man draped toga-style in a sheet with an expression as if he’d just stepped out of the Turkish bath to answer a call and the telephone had attacked him. My mad friend looked at me. We both looked at the Byzantine who smiled and clowned outrageously to distract distraught wives.
I poked through my tools and came upon some Aztec Tranquilizer. “Un trago de tequila?” I asked.
The Byzantine’s smile became even broader as he accepted the bottle. Half a litre’s worth of tragos later my mad friend girded himself.
“The finality of this sale depends strictly on the enforceability of privacy,” he began. “Though specifications were not written with ghosts in mind, I’ve read them and in no place do I find exclusions thereof. In view of current legal thought in our Sovereign Republic, such exclusions would probably, because of their discriminatory nature, be ruled unconstitutional.” Since the Byzantine seemed confused my mad friend repeated the whole shmear in Spanish.
“To put it another way,” I explained, “either we find these ghosts or the sale’s off.”
“But your instruments detect nothing,” the little man insisted.
“There are more things in heaven and earth . . .” my mad friend muttered.
“Every castle has one,” the Byzantine insisted.
“Not the kind that photographs without extra work in the darkroom.”
The Byzantine gave up. “I really don’t know,” he said.
“Is it always the same?”
He helped himself to my Aztec Tranquilizer. “No,” he finally said. “Always dressed the same, always men, but not the same man. Sometimes—”
“Sometimes what?” a wife probed.
“Deja vu, I guess. But sometimes I could swear I knew them.”
Conversation languished until finally my mad friend asked, “Any bedding around here?”
The Byzantine found a linen closet.
“You’re not getting me up in one of those cold dark bedrooms!” a wife said.
“Suit yourself,” my friend said, and disappeared upstairs. She saw the rest of us departing and hastened after him.
I had finally warmed a spot in the bed and was drifting off when a cold, steel-like grip of incredible strength clamped me by the shoulder. “Now what?” I asked.
“Mira!” a wife said.
Arms outstretched and glowing faintly, the wraithlike image of a man in a sheet stumbled along. He seemed even more worried than the wife beside me as he walked through a wall. The commotion on the other side suggested he was still visible.
Minutes later all hands were downstairs again. My mad friend restored order. “Have these things ever menaced you?” he asked the Byzantine.
The small man thought a moment. “No,” he finally said.
The questioning continued and evermore came out by that same door wherein it went. Finally I tried a new tack. “Since when do you possess property in this part of the world?” I asked.
“I needed a pied a terre. The price and other things were right.”
“What other things?”
“Uninterrupted human occupancy, for some centimes.”
My mad friend was mumbling something about rites of exorcism when I finally saw the implications in the Byzantine’s remark.
“The time machine!” I exclaimed. “You found a way to cut it loose from that electrical outlet in Istambul!”
“Marvelous, Holmes,” my mad friend growled.
But the Byzantine was nodding. “Less risky if one can come out at ground level or inside a room. I’ve always worried about materializing underground.”
“What does this have to do with ghosts?” a wife asked. “Nothing,” the little man said.
“How come you no longer need the place?”
“Oh, I’m not vacating.”
My mad friend applied an open palm to his forehead. “I’m moving one day into the future,” the Byzantine explained. “To all intents and purposes the house will be empty.”
Somehow this all made sense providing I didn’t think about it too long. The Byzantine helped himself to Aztec Tranquilizer again. “How’d you happen to leave Istambul?” I finally asked.
“Too crowded. Especially since the Americans put in another big radar station.”
“Where do you keep your time machine?”
“Tomorrow.”
“I mean physically.”
“Upstairs.”
“You seem to know all about this deal. What’
s this building really wanted for?”
The Byzantine shrugged. “A medical research center, I guess.”
“What sort of research?”
“Desordenes mentales.”
“It is a happy hacienda!” my friend said.
“You might put it that way,” the Byzantine said. “From what I’ve seen they’re interested in the place for the same reasons I was.”
“Continuous occupation?” Something else was in the back of my mind but despite valiant efforts it stayed there. “Makes sense,” I murmured.
“How?” my mad friend asked.
“You’ve heard of cancer houses?”
From the uniformly blank stares I guessed nobody had. “It’s well established and documented,” I said. “Apparently certain houses become impregnated with a virus or somesuch. Whoever lives there runs a much higher risk of cancer than the statistical norm.”
“You’re not just making this up?” a wife asked.
“Cross my heart.”
“What’s this got to do with ghosts?” my friend asked.
“Extrapolate. That old Freudian jazz is out Most people know it’s only a matter of time before mental disorders are controlled chemically. If there’s a cancer virus, why not an insanity virus? After all, anybody knows insanity is contagious.”
“Nu?” my mad friend asked.
“People don’t like to face it They don’t even like to discuss hereditary factors.”
“Hereditary my hernia!” my mad friend said.
“You’re absolutely right. It isn’t hereditary. It’s contagious. That’s why shrinks and ward boys go odd so often and they’re not related to the patients. Primitive man knows this instinctively. That’s why he’s afraid of nuts.”
“Even assuming it were true—” my friend began.
“What better place to hunt for an insanity virus than in a house that’s harbored ten generations of nutty dukes?”
“Or built those odd rooms upstairs,” my friend added thoughtfully. “But I still don’t see what this has to do with ghosts.”
“I’ll tell you after I find the library.”
The Byzantine beckoned.
Only craven cowardice and fear of legal reprisals force me to suppress the name of the noble family that misruled from this country seat. In 1066 one earl extended his holdings by selling smutted rye to the soldiers of Harold II, thus tripping them out while Billy Bastard was getting in his licks.
“Billy who?”
“Signed himself Guillaume Batard,” my mad friend parenthesized. “Squeamish schoolmoms call him William the Conqueror.”
“In 1381 a duke Roosevelted his peers by backing Wat Tyler’s peasant revolt,” I continued. “In 1588 another stored supplies for the Armada Invincible. When the Spaniards didn’t show he sold them to the Irish.”
“Bully for him!” my mad friend exclaimed.
“In 1914 a member of this family was winning the war with cavalry. In 1943 one convinced the Admiralty that it was essential to build more battleships.”
“What about now?” my mad friend asked.
“The last duke emigrated in 1959.”
“Is that when the Canadian dollar went back down under par?”
We were interrupted by another ghost. This time wives made no more outcry than they would have at a mercaptan martini. I fired my camera and my mad friend his pistol simultaneously. The sheetclad figure faced us with a look of surprised outrage. Fading, he stumbled through a wall. “You shouldn’t oughta done that,” I said.
“I know,” my mad friend said regretfully. “I think I hurt him.”
I was learning more about the fascinating proprietors of this house when the Byzantine came looking for more Aztec Tranquilizer.
“Are you sure the tenants will never know you’re still living here a day ahead of them?” I asked.
“My apartment in Istambul was geared for multiple occupancy.”
“You don’t think it an odd coincidence that photographable ghosts suddenly appear in the only house in the world with a time machine?” I asked.
“Not the only one,” the little man said with a trace of bitterness.
“Aha!”
“I came home late one night and the envoys of a certain government were trying to dismantle it.”
That thing in the back of my mind took one pace forward. “No radar beams!” I exclaimed. “You left Istambul because it interferes with time travel?”
The little man nodded. “My roommate, who built it five hundred years from now in New Rome, told me never to try to open it, that it was wrapped in some sort of stasis.”
“Have you tried?”
“It looks easy but for some reason a screwdriver won’t go into the slots.”
“How successful were your spies?”
“Not very. I stormed about and allowed myself to be mollified, then waited while they got stop motion cameras and all sorts of equally complicated nonsense. Then I went back a day. They’re probably still waiting.”
“When did this happen?”
“Day after tomorrow.”
“Here?”
He nodded.
“Which government?” my mad friend asked.
The little man was embarrassed. “Yours.”
“Before or after we were sent on this pursuit of the nondomesticated merganser?”
“After.”
“I wonder what went wrong?” my friend muttered.
I could guess.
“Oh, I know,” the Byzantine said. “Your government started experimenting and the inevitable happened: A foreign power learned of it and began their own experiments. When they went back in time and your then-agents got wind of it there was no way of explaining to them that your side had it first albeit later than—” The Byzantine stopped to sort out his tenses.
“Grammar is about to undergo radical changes,” my mad friend grunted.
“That isn’t all that’ll change,” I said. “I’d rather see fissionables in the five and dime than everybody fiddling with time lines.”
“I don’t believe it,” a wife said.
“You didn’t believe in ghosts,” my friend said.
“I still don’t,” I said.
“You see them on TV. Maybe your old s-f gimmick about duplicate receivers is true. Perhaps some time travellers have split so many times they’re ghosts through attenuation.”
I tried to guess whether my friend was serious.
“How does one exorcise a virus?” he asked.
“If you’re going to play it broad,” I said, “Maybe they’re splitting personalities.”
Everyone looked at me.
“Why not? Easy with hypnosis and drugs. Get them split, hold Jeckyll and fire Mr. Hyde off into the past where he’s no problem except to the poor suckers who happen to live there.”
“So that’s where Hitler came from,” my friend said.
It was the Byzantine who brought us back down. “You were sent to find me,” he said.
I looked at my mad friend. Both of us looked at the Byzantine.
“When I disappeared into the past,” he explained. “Don’t you wonder why this place fits your requirements so exactly?”
Light began to dawn.
“That’s what I get for listening to that doubledastardly disinheritor of widows and orphans!” my mad friend said.
“Who?”
“The dipdreck that convinced me I’d be doing my country a service by going off on this junket instead of harassing hashpeddlers back where I belong!”
And now I knew why I got that sudden promotion and transfer. Looking at the sad-eyed Byzantine, I realized we had all taken the same ride. “Why did you let us find you?”
“It does you a favor and costs me nothing.” He took the last swallow of Aztec Tranquilizer and walked out of the library. Before he was quite through the door I saw him coming back in.
Then the smile and suddenly positive attitude prepared me for it even before the little man spoke. “I
’ve been gone three days,” he said, and put down a package.
“Now he tells me there’s a way out of here!” my mad friend said.
“Only if you believe in time machines,” the Byzantine said, and pulled out a litre of Three Star. His earwarping smile was back with a vengeance. “Chantaje,” he said.
“Como?”
“Blackmail,” he repeated. “Against their own grandchildren.”
I sipped Three Star. Outside, rain and wind were still doing the Wuthering Heights bit. My mad friend looked wistfully at the cognac. He brightened when the Byzantine pulled a thermos of coffee from the package. “I probably won’t believe it,” he said.
“Their machine isn’t very good,” the Byzantine began. “They send somebody into the future and a ghost image flies off into the past. The traveller arrives several ounces lighter.”
“How many trips to take off five pounds?” a wife asked.
“Those are our ghosts?” my friend asked.
“But why dressed in sheets?” I asked.
“You were right about the ultimate use of this house,” the Byzantine continued. “Un manicomio. They’re using the time machine for treatment.”
“Sending their nuts into the future for advanced techniques?”
The Byzantine nodded. “Along with threats to diddle their descendants out of existence if they don’t treat these patients promptly.”
“How?”
“Oh, practice continence, for instance, at the moment when a certain person was to be conceived.”
My mad friend said something in Arabic. It sounded like tape running backward at the wrong speed. The Byzantine nodded in furious agreement. “Or worse,” he added.
“These ghost fractions that split off—are they gone forever?”
The Byzantine shrugged. “I suppose our descendants track them down and put them back together. A man would never feel whole again without all his parts.”
A wife looked up sharply then went back to her discussion of the new wraith look.
My mad friend poked absently around the library. Suddenly he withdrew a black leather volume. After a quick look through it he snapped it shut and made ritual gestures of exorcism. The Byzantine gave a sad smile. Remembering some of those decidedly odd rooms upstairs I guessed what my mad friend had discovered. “The Hellfire Club?”
“Oh, let me see!” Several wives exclaimed. And while they were looking through the pornographic hokum of those 18th century seekers after any kind of an answer from the Eternal Silence I wished for a way to let Ben Franklin and company know their curiosity had led to this.