Black Bargain and Other Raw Deals

by Robert Bloch

  "The cost of experimental models reduced my savings. The revelation of my theories cost me my faculty position. An attempt to raise funds to continue my work led me to the last resort—betting on the races, Now I have nothing."

  "You can say that again," Sammy told him. "In about three minutes you're gonna have nothing with lace around it."

  "Wait a moment," the Thinker interrupted. "Experimental models, you said. What have you been building?"

  "I'll show you, if you like."

  "Come on," Sammy ordered. "Boys, keep the heaters warm, in case he pulls a funny."

  But the Professor didn't pull a funny. He led them downstairs to what had been the basement, and was now an ornate private laboratory. He led them up to the large rectangular metal structure, covered with coils and tubing. It had a vague resemblance to an outhouse designed by Frank Lloyd Wright.

  "Jeez," Nunzio commented. "Watchoo doin', buildin' one of them there Frankensteens?"

  "I bet it's a spaceship," Mush hazarded. "Was you gonna make a getaway to Mars?"

  "Please," the Professor sighed. "You're making sport of me."

  "We're making hamburger of you in another minute," Sammy corrected him. "This doojigger ain't no use to us. Couldn't get twenty bucks for it, at a junkyard."

  Thinker Tomaszewski shook his head. "Just what is this object, Professor?"

  Professor Cobbett blushed. "I hesitate to designate it as such, after the rebuffs I received at the hands of supposed authorities, but there is no other intelligible term for it. It is a time machine."

  "Oof!" Sammy put his hand to his forehead. "And this is what we let get into us for eight grand. A nutty scientist, yet!"

  The Thinker frowned at him. "A time machine, you say? An instrument capable of transporting one forward or backwards in time?"

  "Backwards only," the Professor answered. "Forward travel is manifestly impossible, since the future is nonexistent. And travel is not the best word. Transit more closely approximates the meaning, insofar as time possesses no material or spatial characteristics, being bound to a three-dimensional universe by the single observable phenomenon which manifests itself as duration. Now if duration is designated as X, and—"

  "Shuddup!" Nunzio suggested. "Let's kiss off this joker and scram outta here. We're wastin' time."

  "Wasting time." The Thinker nodded. "Professor Cobbett, is this a working model?"

  "I'm practically positive. It has never been tested. But I can show you formulae which—"

  "Never mind that now. Why haven't you tested it?"

  "Because I'm not sure of the past. Or rather, our present relationship to it. If any person or object in present time were sent to the past, alterations would occur. What is here now would be absent, and something added to what was there, then. This addition would alter the past. And if the past were altered, then it would not be the same past we know." He frowned. "It's hard to state without recourse to symbolic logic."

  "You mean you're afraid that by time travel you'd change the past? Or come out in a different past—a past made different because you traveled into it?"

  "That's an oversimplification, but you have the general idea."

  "Then what good is your work on this?"

  "No good, I'm afraid. But I wanted to prove a point. It became an almost monomaniacal obsession. I have no excuses."

  "So." Sammy stepped forward. "Thanks for the lecture, but like you say, you got no excuses. And we got no time. This here basement looks like a nice soundproof place for target practice—"

  The Thinker grabbed Sammy's arm. "What's the sense?" he asked.

  "The guy welshed."

  "So he welshed. Will murder change that? Will murder help us now?"

  "No." Sammy bit his lip. "But what we gonna do? We got no dough. We got Tarantino after us, and also the govmint. We can't go back to town."

  The Thinker looked around. "Why not stay here, then? We're safe, isolated with a nice big roof over our heads. Let's enjoy the Professor's hospitality for a while."

  "Yeah," Mush said. "But how long? We're gonna run out of dough, or food, or somethin'. We'd just be stallin' for time."

  The Thinker smiled. "Stalling for time." He gazed intently at the complicated structure in the center of the cellar. "But here is the logical vehicle for a getaway."

  "You mean jump in that dizzy outfit and beat it?" Sammy demanded. "You're kidding."

  "I'm serious," the Thinker replied. "Some time in the near future we'll be safe in the past."

  3

  It took a lot of figuring. That was the Thinker's job, working with the Professor during the next few days.

  "How do you set the controls up? Is this for steering?"

  "You do not steer—you press the computers. Here, I'll show you again."

  "And you can choose any time in the past, any time at all?" asked the Thinker.

  "Theoretically. The main problem is accurate computation. Remember, we and our Earth are not static. We do not occupy the same position in space that we did an instant ago, let alone a longer period. We must consider the speed of light, planetary motion, inclination, and—"

  "That's going to be your department. But you can establish past position mathematically and set up a guiding plan for the computers accordingly?"

  "I'm reasonably certain of it."

  "Then all that remains is to determine where—or rather, when we're going to."

  Sammy and Nunzio and Mush tacked that problem on their own.

  "Jeez, mebbe alls we gotta do is go back a couple weeks to before when the Professor made his bets. Then we ain't out no dough."

  "Yeah? What about them there back taxes?"

  "So we go to before when we owed 'em."

  "That's when we went into business, stupid. We was broke."

  "Well, if we can go anywheres we want in time, how's about way back, to the Egypians, like? I seen one of them there pitchers, they had all these hot broads runnin' around in their unnerwear —"

  "You talk Egypian, stupid? Besides, we don't wanna stay back someplace forever. Way I figger, we go to some time where we can lay our mitts on some loot, real fast-like. And then come back."

  "Now you got it. That's the angle. Hey, how about that there Gold Rush?"

  The Professor interrupted them. "I'm afraid the Gold Rush wouldn't be of much use to you gentlemen. After all, it occurred in the year eighteen hundred and forty-nine."

  "But you can send us to eighteen forty-nine, can't you?"

  "Conceivably, if my theory is correct. But you would not be in California. You would still be right here in Philadelphia, in the field which stood here before this house was built."

  "Then we gotta find our loot in Philly, huh? Somewheres in the past?"

  "I'm afraid so."

  "Jeez. And we can't show up in no vacant field with that machine, either."

  Then the Thinker took over. "I am beginning to pinpoint our problem," he announced. "Professor, I am going to utilize your library for a day or so. Perhaps I can discover when gold was available in Philadelphia."

  "There's always the Mint."

  "Too well-guarded. We'd never be able to loot it, any more than it could have been looted by past efforts."

  "Banks?" Sammy brightened. "With our heaters, we could knock over one of them big jugs easy—say, a hunnert years ago."

  "And come out with what? Old-fashioned greenbacks? We wouldn't be able to use currency of that era today. Arouse suspicion. No, I'm looking for gold."

  Finally, in a copy of Berkeley's OF THE REVOLUTION, the Thinker found it. He broke in upon the others as they sat guarding Professor Cobbett.

  "Here's the answer!" he exulted. "Remember what happened in Philadelphia on July fourth, seventeen seventy-six?"

  "That's a holiday, ain't it?" Nunzio brightened. "Must be the Phillies took on the Giants in a doubleheader."

  "Seventeen seventy-six, stupid!" Sammy scowled. "Yeah, I remember. They made Washington the President."

  "Nah.
It was the Decoration of Independence," Mush corrected.

  "Right. The Declaration of Independence was presented to the Continental Congress assembled at what is now Independence Hall. And so forth. But here's another little-known fact. At the same place, on the same day, the Revolutionary treasury was turned over to a small group for temporary storage. It consisted of upwards of thirty thousand pounds sterling in smelted ingots. That's about a hundred and fifty thousand dollars in gold."

  "Brother!" Sammy whistled. "What a way to celebrate the Fourth!" Then he frowned. "I'll bet they had plenny guards around."

  "No, that's just the point. It was all a secret—few people know of it to this day. Troops brought it in a wagon, around noon. They thought they were hauling documents. It was carted upstairs, and no guards were posted lest suspicion be aroused. Its presence was known only to Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, and one or two others—probably John Hancock and maybe Charles Thomson, the Secretary of the Congress. It was to be used to pay troops and buy supplies."

  "It sure could help to pay off old Mickey Tarantino and the Feds. And leave us plenny to spare."

  "That is exactly what I had in mind, gentlemen." The Thinker smiled. "Now all that remains is to work out the details. I shall concentrate on the historical aspect and the Professor here can work out the mathematical computations."

  Professor Cobbett blanched. "Mathematical computations? But you're asking the impossible. Why, that was over a hundred and eighty light-years ago; we'll be faced with the problem of billionfold magnitudes, and the slightest error or variation can have serious consequences."

  "Ain't gonna be no errors," Sammy told him. "Or consequences will be really serious. For you." He showed the Professor his heater. "Now get to work. We're going places."

  "Going places." Mush looked at him. "All this here stuff was at Independence Hall. The machine's here in the cellar. We gonna come out on July fourth inna cow-pasture or somethin'?"

  "That's your job," Sammy decided. "Case this joint. See how it's set up for guards at night. Alarm system, the works. Look it over like you would a bank job. I think we can take over. Nobody's gonna think a mob would break into a Hysterical Shrine or whatever. We get things set, we hire us a truck and cart the machine right down to the Hall and take off from there some night soon. Right?"

  "Hey, that's a tough deal."

  "Things are tough all over," Sammy said. "Now get going."

  So Mush got going and the Professor got going and the Thinker got going too. And before the first week was up they were organized.

  Mush made his report. The invasion of Independence Hall could be made without too much trouble. Of course, it would cost money for the truck, and there might be repercussions, but they could try to pull it off.

  And in view of their present hopeless situation—and in view of the possible gain—it was worth the gamble, Sammy decided.

  The Professor presented them with the working manual, based on his computations.

  "Are you sure this gets us there?" Sammy demanded. "And back, too?"

  "Look it over," the Professor said. "See for yourself."

  "It's all right," the Thinker told him. "I've checked it. See, we have no set time for return. Our plans call for us to get the gold and come back as soon after the noon hour as possible. So the Professor has worked out return-variations based on five-minute intervals throughout the early afternoon. It's as foolproof as we can hope to make it."

  "All right, if you say so." Sammy shrugged. "But what I want to know is, what do we do when we get there?"

  "I've been working on that angle," the Thinker said. "Checking all the source books and references I could muster. History texts. Biographical data on Franklin and Jefferson in particular. And I've got a plan. Apparently the first ones to arrive that morning were Jefferson and Thomson. Franklin and John Hancock came in early, too.

  "It's not quite clear whether any of them spent part of the night there. The important thing is that the four men conceivably held an early morning meeting, discussing the Declaration before Congress convened on the fourth. So if we arrive early enough we'll be dealing with just four men. The four men who knew about the gold, by the way."

  "Got it," Sammy said. "We come in, flash our heaters, and take over."

  "Not quite so simple," the Thinker answered. "Remember, Congress will be gathering that morning. We can't hope to hold our guns on these four key figures from that time until noon, any more than we can hope to pass unnoticed in the crowd for such a period."

  He paused as Sammy started to open his mouth, then hastily continued. "I know what you're thinking, and that won't work either. We can't show up at noon and just hijack the shipment. Not in front of fifty or more men, with troops just outside the door."

  "Then what do you figger on us doing?"

  The Thinker took a deep breath, and then he told them.

  "Oh no!" cried Sammy.

  "Me, making like John Hancock?" Mush gasped.

  "I should run around in one of them wigs like a big-shot politician?" Nunzio scoffed.

  The Thinker was calm. "Don't you see, it's the only way? The wigs are perfect disguises. Look I've got pictures of all these men, and we can buy a makeup kit. I'm fortunately bald and approximately Franklin's build. Physically, we'll get by. And don't worry about playing the role of a politician."

  "Yeah." Mush was thoughtful. "After all, what's a politician, anyhow? Just a crook that's learned how to kiss babies."

  "But we won't be kissing no babies that morning," Sammy reminded him. "Me, I been reading up a little on that stuff, too. Them four guys did a lot of things on the fourth. Made speeches, tried to get the rest of the Congress to sign, all kinds of stuff. And they knew everybody, everybody knew them. We'd fluff it for sure, trying to do what they did."

  "That's just the point." Thinker Tomaszewski was triumphant. "We don't have to do what they did! Because we're going back in time, we're changing what happened. I think I'm familiar enough with Franklin's personality. I can talk, if necessary. Sammy, I'll coach you. The other two boys can be absent, if need be—and it may well be necessary to guard our machine and our captives in the rear room. We're not going to merely reenact history. We're going to change it, to suit ourselves. Now do you get it?"

  They got it, eventually, because the Thinker rammed it down their throats.

  And so they got their coaching, got their truck, got their plan, and actually transported the machine bodily into the rear of the vehicle on the evening arranged for departure.

  It wasn't until they stood for the last time in the now open expanse of the cellar that Professor Cobbett voiced a final, timid protest.

  "I hesitate to bring this up," he said, "because you'll very likely suspect my motives. You'll think it's because you're preempting my property, and because you are unwittingly involving me as an accomplice to your crime. You'll think it's because I have patriotic objections to your plans for desecrating our history."

  "Well, haven't you?" Sammy asked.

  "Yes, I admit it."

  Sammy glanced significantly at Nunzio, then back to the Professor as he continued.

  "But what I have to say to you now, I say in my capacity as a scientist. In that capacity I warn you, as I did on the first evening here. Time travel is hazardous. The possibility of alteration of the past due to your invasion cannot be discounted. You may well find yourselves up against unforeseen factors, unexpected problems. That's why I never dared make the attempt myself; not even a journey of one minute, let alone almost two centuries. Should you fail, I must absolve myself of any responsibility. I shall await your return with the utmost trepidation."

  "Don't bother," Sammy told him. "We got that all figgered, too. You plan on waiting for our return with a gang of coppers, don't you?"

  The Professor turned pale. "Don't tell me you gentlemen expect me to come along?" he murmured. "I couldn't do that. I couldn't. I'd—I'd be afraid.

  Frankly, the dangers of dislocation or altera
tion in the past frighten me worse than the prospect of death itself."

  "I'm glad," Sammy said slowly. "On account of it's either-or. And you just made up our minds for us."

  The Thinker was already out in the truck, but Mush and Nunzio stood beside Sammy in the cellar.

  Nunzio took out his heater and Mush smiled. "Well," he said. "Looks like we're starting off our trip with a bang."

  4

  And a bang-up journey it was. There was a route to travel, and guards to knock out and bind, and a heavy machine to cart up into the rear chambers of Independence Hall. Then came the nerve-wracking business of setting it up, and the Thinker's frantic rescanning of the Professor's charts and directions as he set the computers. By the time they were ready to take off—1:45 .M. on the dot—the transition itself was almost an anticlimax.

  Anticlimax it proved to be. They huddled in the machine, the vacuum-lock set and the vacuum-lined walls enclosing them, and a generator hummed and their fluorescent light above the dials dimmed and the Thinker pressed his finger down after endless adjustment of tab-buttons and then—

  Nothing happened.

  Or seemed to happen, until the moment—or century, or eternity—of darkness elapsed. None of them were conscious of a change at all. It was when they opened the compartment and stepped out that the change occurred, or they were aware of its prior occurrence.

  "Thinker!" Nunzio said, blinking in the bright morning sunlight that streamed through the high windows. "We made it!"

  Sammy and the Thinker and Mush didn't even look at him. They were staring at the four men on the other side of the room—four men who stared, in turn, at them.

  Then things happened fast. Things happened with orders and heaters and ropes and gags. Things happened with wigs and shoes and clothing.

  Four writhing figures squirmed on the floor, then calmed to quiescence as Mush used the butt of his heater.

  "Fancy this!" he sighed. "Me knocking out old Ben Franklin hisself!"

  "Never mind fancying it now," the Thinker told him. "We've got to get ready for more action."