Time Exposures

by Wilson Tucker

  A second look revealed that he wasn’t merely having domestic troubles, but was drowning his miseries. It was in his walk, it hung from his shoulders, and it preyed on his mind constantly. He failed to see my outstretched hand— I don’t believe he saw me very clearly. He sat down across the desk from me and ran a palm over his moist forehead. Nashville in the summer was insufferably hot, but Jackson was suffering from more than the heat.

  He was well dressed, though his suit was wrinkled, and he crushed a hat in his hand. He wasn’t soft by any measure, he had no paunch, his fingers were long and sure, and the nails reasonably clean. His eyes were intelligent enough behind the blanket of worry, and his hairline was beginning to recede. Jackson wore a small ACT pin in his lapel, which was what tipped me off that he was an Oak Ridge man. The American Chemical Trust runs things out there for the government

  Finally he looked me straight in the eye. “People say you’re pretty reliable, Mr. Evans.”

  I shrugged and waited

  “I read about you in the papers a few Sundays ago,” he continued. “That was why I came to you. The papers said you had never lost a case, Mr. Evans. That is, they said you have found every man you’ve ever hunted.”

  “Sunday supplement stuff,” I told him.

  “But it is true?” he persisted.

  “Reasonably so,” I nodded. “Those I couldn’t locate later proved to be dead.”

  “I’m having trouble, Mr. Evans,” he said uselessly. “The paper—well, perhaps it was melodramatic, but it claimed your deductive powers were uncanny. Pardon me, Mr. Evans—it said you could almost read minds. You would have to be a mind reader to find my wife!”

  I smiled at him in modest depreciation. “You know the newspapers, Mr. Jackson.” I paused for the right length of time. “How much do you want to tell me?”

  He stared up at me again, directly into my eyes. The words rushed out eagerly.

  “Everything, I want to tell you everything, Mr. Evans, but you probably won’t believe me. They didn’t.”

  “Who didn’t?”

  “My doctor, and a psychiatrist recommended by the doctor.” He pulled out a handkerchief to wipe his forehead. “I went to the doctor first because I grew up in the habit of taking everything to my doctor. I could have saved myself the trouble,” he added bitterly.

  “And the psychiatrist?” I prodded gently.

  “Practically the same. A mild neurosis, he told me. Said I would probably be completely happy in a matriarchy, but there was nothing to worry about. He did assure me that I was reasonably sane— I suppose I should be thankful for that.”

  “And so,” I put in, “you turned to me."

  “Yes—” he was staring at me intently. “Will you do me a favor, Mr. Evans, a very great favor?”

  “If I am able, yes.”

  “Please—’’ the words came tumbling out again. “Don’t laugh at me. Don’t laugh at what I have to tell you. Don’t pat my shoulder and tell me I am imagining things, that I need a long rest. If you choose not to believe me, I’ll leave. Refuse my case and stop right there. But don’t laugh.”

  “That much is easily granted. Where are you going to begin?”

  “With my wife. Everything begins with my wife—and ends there, I’m afraid. She’s—” he hesitated, stole a glance at me, and finished, “she’s too damned smart!”

  He waited for my reaction but I showed none.

  “Have you ever had the misfortune to marry a woman far more intelligent than yourself, Mr. Evans?”

  I shook my head. “Not married.”

  He rushed on. “You can imagine what a man desires in a woman. Among other things, the usual physical things, he wants a smart and intelligent wife, a woman possessing mental abilities sufficient to understand him and his world. A woman who can stride along with him, and understand his problems. But still, and this is a paradox I’ll admit, a woman necessarily inferior to him—the least bit inferior, sort of a balance of ego. A man wants a woman who needs his advice, who needs to lean on him, who needs his greater reasoning powers. That is the kind of woman every healthy man desires, Mr. Evans. I thought I had found such a woman in Marie.”

  I stared past him out the window, at the sunlit street and an idea formed in my mind. “How old is your wife?” I asked him, and his answer was my first clue to her, although it went unrecognized as such, right then.

  “We don’t know, really." He seemed embarrassed. “She is an orphan and we couldn’t locate a birth registration—the situation stirred up a bit of a fuss when I started with the Manhattan people as they looked into everything, you know. Marie and I agreed when we married that she was about five years younger than myself.” He paused in thought. “That would make her thirty-two now ... we think. Sometimes I’m not sure. She hasn’t grown much older than the day— Her physical appearance bears that out, Mr. Evans. Thirty-two.”

  I knew that to be a half-truth for he wasn’t sure in his own mind. “And you?” I asked. “You’re a success in your field?”

  He absently fingered the lapel pin and nodded. Jackson told me about himself, about Manhattan in the days before we got into the war, and afterward: About Oak Ridge now and his position there, the full, fruitful years of his life; about the growing unhappiness and strain between himself and his wife, about his striving to overcome it. He wound up by asserting, “I consider myself an intelligent man, Mr. Evans. You’ll grant me that, leaving false modesty aside.”

  I agreed without quibbling. “Easily granted.” He had told me far more than he realized and I could honestly agree with the statement. “But now—back to your wife?”

  “Yes, my wife.”

  He lapsed into what must have been a painful silence for him and his mind skittered back over those years, tracing the early ripening of his love for her. He made it easy for me to follow him although I was careful to give no outward sign of that; I waited patiently for him to speak. I saw him as a young man holding down a modest-paying position, a young man with reasonable security, a future, and a desire—the not unnatural desire to find a wife to share that future. He discovered Marie in a library.

  “In the evenings after work,” he finally broke the silence, “I studied the technical books and journals I could not yet afford. I wanted to climb as rapidly and as safely as possible and I realized that if I waited until I could afford those books, it might be too late.

  “I met her in the library. She was looking at a schematic drawing in an early radio journal, tracing it with her finger. It startled me when I looked closely to see what she was really doing, and at the same time it pleased me. You must realize it was—and is—very unusual to find a woman interested in such things; I stood behind her chair and watched her finger. She went along splendidly for a few moments and then ran into trouble.

  "I don’t recall now what it was, but it threw her entirely off the track and caused her to lose the thread of thought as well. I could determine that much by the way she reacted. When you lose the thought behind a schematic you may as well start over again.” He paused to look at me.

  “I understand what you mean. Go on.”

  He continued. “Well— She pushed the journal away with a whispered exclamation of annoyance and started to get up. And I, like a damned fool, had to butt in; I leaned over her shoulder and pointed to the trouble spot.

  “ 'No, this way,' I remember saying to her impulsively, and then I stopped and could say no more. She threw me one withering glance over her shoulder and I hurriedly left the library, in some confusion I must admit. She disturbed me.”

  “Was it an act?” I wanted to know.

  “Act? You mean, was she pretending? No, I don’t think so. She was an utter stranger to me. I avoided the library on the following night because I still felt some embarrassment, but on the third evening an overpowering desire to see her again swept away any misgivings I may have had. The desire amounted almost to a pull, a compulsion. She still disturbed me.”

  I pricked up my ear
s and senses. I was beginning to learn things about Jackson’s wife.

  He said, “I went back to the library ...”

  “... and there she was,” I finished for him. He misinterpreted me, and thought I was asking a question.

  “Yes. I found her studying a book I had turned in only a few weeks previously. It was a field closely allied to my own, can you understand that? It had not been easy going for me but there she sat, working through it. I was astonished and I was delighted—and although I carefully avoided her that evening and continued to do so for several nights thereafter, eventually ... well, Mr. Evans, eventually the attraction to her overcame my reticence. I can’t explain it more clearly.”

  “No need,” I assured him. “Easily understandable, and it happens all the time. Mutual interest in your sciences, each of you obviously alone—” I let it hang there.

  He nodded. “Yes, yes, I finally summoned up my courage, approached her and introduced myself. She was not angry.” He closed his eyes, dreaming. “In time we became fast friends. We met there several times, and elsewhere. In a very short while I began to entertain ideas. Frankly, they surprised me for up until that moment I had been rather shy where women were concerned, but Marie’s presence seemed to invite ideas.”

  I’ll just bet— I said to myself.

  “I thought,” he went on without a pause, “she was—or rather she would be—what any intelligent man might call a perfect wife. She was endowed with everything I could ask in a mate, including the remarkable intelligence I desired in my dream woman. I ... I may as well make this brief. We were married.”

  I turned from the window to face the man. He was looking at me, waiting for my reaction thus far.

  “Jackson,” I said, throwing it at him, “you were hooked.”

  “Uh ... hooked?”

  “Hooked,” I nodded without a smile, “but don’t be alarmed, that goes on all the time, too. A million women employ a million ways to hook a million men. Quite common.”

  He wasn’t alarmed at my words, he merely went off on another dream train. His voice trailed off and drifted back across the years to their marriage.

  He married her because he was madly in love with her, with her body, her beauty, her soul and her intelligence quotient. He married her because he would have something few other men could boast—an alert, brainy woman who was practically his equal in any field he chose to explore. He married her because she could read a schematic, but ran into trouble on certain parts of it. That iota of necessary inferiority was there. He married her because she would be a valuable asset to his own standing and mentality. And somewhere along the line, between the honeymoon and the present day, the glorious bubble burst. I saw it blow up in his face as he relived it in his mind.

  “Which brings us to the present,” I reminded him, jolting him out of his silence.

  “Yes,” he echoed bitterly, “the present. Mr. Evans, I love my wife.”

  You are a liar, I said to him, but not aloud. He didn’t love his wife anymore, it was something else now, something akin to love but definitely not affection. However, I said nothing, it wouldn’t do for me to call his cards.

  “Still married?” I prodded.

  He nodded unhappily.

  “Exactly why did you come to me?” I demanded of him.

  Arthur Jackson stared at me. I had forced the crisis on him and had already read his answer, but still had to wait for his torrent of words.

  “Because Marie has surpassed me,” he almost cried, “out-stripped me because she is an unimaginable distance ahead.” He held up a hand. “No—please, don’t mistake me. I’m not mad, not angry, I’m jealous, yes, terribly jealous. But all that aside, Mr. Evans, she won’t let me see her.”

  “Other men?” I wanted to know.

  “I don’t know; I suppose so. She has moved out of our home and lives at some hotel. These other men—if they exist—I’ve never seen them, I can only suspect they exist. But that isn’t what is bothering me. I can’t see her!”

  I caught something there which was startling.

  “What was that?”

  “Mr. Evans, in the many years we lived together, Marie sucked my mind of knowledge like a bat sucks blood. Everything I’ve learned in the past ten years she knew the following day! I would spend weeks working through a technological problem and she would know the full answer in one evening at the dinner table. I just couldn’t keep anything from her.”

  “Wait a moment,” I cut in impatiently, “let’s get back to your first statement. What do you mean, you can’t see her?”

  “Mr. Evans—” he groped in a mental darkness, stammering. “Mr. Evans, you won’t believe me, but—well, Marie blanks out.”

  I couldn’t pretend that didn’t shake me, couldn’t hide my reaction from him. The shock reflected on my face. He was watching that face for disbelief, but whatever else he found there, it wasn’t disbelief. Even though his earlier conversation had prepared me by laying the foundations, this was still a jolt. A jolt curiously marked with wonder, plus the birth of desire.

  So Marie Jackson “blanks out.” How very interesting. She did not have a birth certificate, and she knew every single thing that passed across her husband’s mind—literally. After thirty years, I was near the end.

  “Tell me how she does it,” I suggested.

  He only laughed hollowly. “If I knew that would I have gone to a doctor?”

  “But explain yourself. Blanks out. How?”

  “I honestly don’t know, Mr. Evans. I suppose there is a— I know there is a logical explanation. I’m not superstitious, a believer in black magic and such nonsense. Some of the things we do and have done in the laboratory would startle a layman out of his senses, but behind every phenomena there is an orderly procession of facts.” He sighed. “Mr. Evans, I only wish I could understand such an effect.”

  “How did you discover this ... uh, effect?”

  “It was just after she moved out of the house. I tried to see her, to talk things over, to ask her to come back. She left orders not to admit me and refused my phone calls. I began following her but she soon discovered me, and when she did, she simply blanked out."

  “You mean ... vanished?”

  He nodded in despair. “Vanished—in mid-air, in the middle of the sidewalk, not half a block ahead of me. She didn’t so much as turn around to look at me, to see if I was there. She knew I was there—and disappeared.”

  “Doorways?”

  “No, I thought of that; I’ve thought of a hundred things. Who wouldn’t when the unexplainable happens? No, it was not a doorway. In the middle of the sidewalk, I told you. It happened time and time again, crossing a street, sitting on a park bench, oh, just anywhere.” He looked at me helplessly.

  “How many times?” I wanted to know.

  “Six, maybe seven. Then I visited my doctor, and the psychiatrist, and then I came to you because now I never see her at all. I’ve waited outside her hotel until I’m afraid of the patrolman on the beat, but she never, never allows me to see her any more.”

  I got down to business.

  “In exact words, Mr. Jackson, what do you want me to do?"

  “Find her! See her. Talk to her. Tell her I ... I must see her again. Just once more."

  I didn’t like that last answer. “You want me to attempt a reconciliation?" I questioned.

  He fell over himself in eager assent—in words. But he was a little too eager for my peace of mind.

  “If not," I said, “then arrange a divorce?”

  “Oh, no, no, Mr. Evans. Never that. I would never divorce Marie. I tell you, I love her, Mr. Evans.”

  That wasn’t all of his complaint by any means, that was only the curtain raiser. Arthur Jackson spent a full two hours in my office that afternoon, crying on my shoulder. He told me his wife had always been a remarkable woman, that she was extraordinarily intelligent, and that her mind was so keen as to grasp whole problems before the verbal recital of the initial facts was fully
presented.

  “I can’t keep anything from her!" he cried once, and went on to explain. She knew everything he knew, and more. She could fill his job or the jobs of any of his superiors, and that, to Arthur Jackson, was frightening because he was working on the most secret of government projects.

  I thought I understood, he was unable to continue living with her and yet he lacked the will to give her up. One doesn’t so easily part with a prize, even though that prize becomes increasingly hard to understand and manage. Could a moron mate with a savant, even when the moron was a brilliant atomic specialist in his own right?

  Arthur Jackson had been an engineer in the Manhattan Project since the summer of 1940. He had also acquired a wife in the summer of 1940, although if he but realized the truth, the wife had acquired him. He now lived in Nashville and divided his time between his home here, and Oak Ridge.

  Nashville was as close as I could get to Oak Ridge without raising suspicion. Of what earthly use were private detectives in a city like Oak Ridge, private detectives whose backgrounds could not stand investigation?

  Long before that two hour interview with Jackson had ended I learned a pair of startling facts from him, although he never mentioned either of them aloud. He had aroused my suspicions concerning his wife, to be sure, suspicions which caused me to speculate on what Brigham had told me those many years ago in Washington. But they were as nothing compared to these solid facts.

  Jackson tried to guard his mind during our conversation, not from me, as I knew he did not suspect me, but from force of habit from spending ten years with his wife. It was futile. He had kept no secrets from his wife and he kept none from me.

  I learned first that Marie Jackson possessed a machine in a suitcase. Jackson thought of it that way because he had never been allowed more than a glimpse of it. To him it was just a gray, shapeless mass of machinery which fitted into a suitcase that was always locked. For years he had been curious about that little machine, and now, suddenly I was too.

  Secondly, I learned from him that the United States had begun research on a hydrogen bomb out there at Oak Ridge long before public announcements were made that the government was merely considering it. This was a subtle bit of strategy in itself. The first actual bomb was near completion while Congress was still debating on whether the nation should start research on it!