Adventures in Time and Space

by Raymond J Healy

  The double took a step back. “I think he is a little mad,” he said to Jones.

  The two men faced each other tensely. They were the same person, except that one stood erect, fresh, confident, and in full health and strength, and the other was bruised, battered, bloody, spent, and crouched like a cornered rat about to spring.

  “Give me that needle,” the double said.

  Allison’s head went a little lower. His lips drew back over his teeth like an animal’s. Without warning he jumped and struck out.

  Like a mongoose dodging a cobra the double leaped back, and his own right arm flashed forth, caught the other’s by the wrist and held it. It was his fresh strength against the last reserves of the ethnologist’s, and the balance was all for him. He twisted the wrist; the arm gave backward; and both fell to the floor, he on top. Carefully, still holding the wrist at the breaking point, he removed the sack and threw it out to Jones. Then he dragged his wildly threshing prisoner out in the open.

  Jones was waiting to relieve him. Gently, so as to give no hurt, he enfolded Allison in one hand, took the double up in the other, and carried both over to the desk. There he placed the two on the blotter, ringed them with his hands, and sat down.

  Allison at once shied away from the double.

  “I admire you, 793,” Jones said. “But you’ve put me to an extraordinary amount of trouble.”

  The ethnologist turned and looked up at him. “And look what you’ve done to me!”, he yelled back, panting. “I accepted your offer in all good faith. I was to come to no harm. And the first thing I discovered was that I was just another victim whose mind you intended to pervert. Jones, you’re the system’s lowest, most treacherous skunk!”

  The outworlder smiled a little; but Allison found it impossible to read his face when it was so big. The double at his side startled him, speaking up in defense.

  “No, no‌—‌you’re all wrong! Let him explain.”

  “Explain how he kept his agreement by reducing me to this size?” Allison retorted bitterly. “Who are you, anyway?”

  “Tell him,” the double said to Jones.

  “Will you listen to what I have to say?” the outworlder asked in his slow-creeping voice.

  “I don’t see that I have any choice,” Allison spat back. There was a pause.

  “I’ll have to start far in the past,” the colossus began at last. “Forty-five thousand years ago the human race was one, and lived only on Earth. One segment of that race, living on a great warm island in the South Pacific, developed a mighty civilization. You Earthmen of today who live in what you call the scientific age are but in the early groping stages of the civilization that was your forebears’ at that time.

  “Among other things, the human race had perfected space ships and ventured out into the void. It set up colonies on other planets suitable. And when the day predicted for centuries by its geologists came, and the great island that was its home began to sink under the surface of the sea, it was ready, and in thousands of space ships set forth, some for outworld portions of the solar system, and the rest to other and more stable parts of Earth.

  “There was but one blood. The Mutrantian Titans, who in your work under preparation will be held up as a cousin strain to that of Earthmen, are so in fact. They are the descendants of one colony of the Earthmen of forty-five thousand years ago. Their size resulted from local conditions which I need not get into.

  “I am of a race you would call pygmies; but we, for good reasons, deliberately reduced ourselves to that size. We have for a long time known how to do it. I, to attain my present size, for purposes of mixing among you Earthmen, simply underwent the reverse of the process. But I and my kind are of the human race. We are the descendants of another colony.

  “We have always been a small colony, for our environment did not encourage a great population. In time we were exposed to the dangers of inbreeding. We did the logical thing. Every so often we obtained from our brother colonies new stock, with varied and vigorous hereditary factors different from those in us. This new stock we scientifically infiltrated through our own; and so we kept the fecundity and the vigor of our strain‌—‌”

  “Jones,” interrupted Allison hotly, “you’re lower than a dog to have taken me, and others like me, for use as studs in the series of matings which would be necessary for that result!”

  The outworlder showed no anger. “There are no ‘series of matings,’ and won’t be,” he answered. “And you‌—‌Allison‌—‌were the only Earthman we took.”

  “I have positive knowledge that you mated off other Earthmen while I was there,” contradicted the ethnologist.

  “I know what you know,” the other said. “Miss CB-301 voluntarily came and told me. But in spite of what you saw through the searchbeam, you were the only Earthman concerned.”

  “You’re a liar!” Allison flung back.

  Still the outworlder showed no sign of anger. Patiently he went on:

  “You learned a little, but not enough. When you escaped it became necessary to follow and bring you back, for we could not have you disseminating false information, or indeed any. It was thought most expedient to take you upon your arrival here. To that end I arranged for the private grounding of my space ship, which you had appropriated, and one of my men was there waiting.

  “You know what happened. You got away from him, and went I don’t know where. But it was certain that you would try to return to your home, so I came here and waited for you. And, naturally, your friend, Doctor Heiler, was watched, and your suspicious package brought in to me. “Now;” he concluded, “I am going to take you back.”

  “I prefer to be destroyed!”

  “You won’t, later.”

  “That’s the damnable part of it! What, then, will you do with me?”

  “I will hold you to your part of our agreement.”

  “Meaning, you’ll force me to marry a never-ending series of your disgusting females with the prognathous foreheads‌—‌and like it.” “You will mate only with one.”

  “One is too many. I shall never arrive back there alive.”

  “You will be watched,” the colossus said significantly. He smiled a little.

  “It happens, though,” he went on, “that I have promised you to Miss CB-301. Would that be so painful? She loves you. If,” he added, “you could find it in your heart to love her, I think we might make an exception in your case and not force you by the means we have.”

  Allison was in the man’s power; why should he grant favors? He was skeptical.

  “Jones,” he said, “I don’t trust you and don’t believe you. My mating with that girl‌—‌or any one of your women, no matter how prolific she might be‌—‌would have no effect whatever on the racial stock of a city like yours.”

  Jones smiled. “Doctor Allison has already mated with 1722 of our women,” he said.

  For a moment the ethnologist could not believe his ears. Then he dismissed the remark with an expression of irritation. “You talk crazy!” he said.

  “Do you not know,” the outworlder asked calmly, “that theoretically it is possible to divide in half the various molecules which make up an object and reassemble them to make two of that object, exactly like it, only smaller? Some day you Earthmen will learn to do it; but we can do it already. We can split objects into fifties, hundreds; we can do it with the living human body!

  “Shortly after Doctor Allison had come to us, he, the original 178-pound Doctor Allison, was split up into 1728 little ones, each identical with the original except in the matter of size. You are one of those little ones. Mr. 372, here, is another. You each weigh approximately one and a half ounces.”

  A great light burst over Allison’s mind. He saw again that fearful recurring image of the doll faces. Interminable rows of them. Each face his face, and every one somehow himself.

  They had been those doll faces! Sometime during the process he in the large size had become aware of the scene before him and had s
ubconsciously remembered.

  He gaped foolishly at the outworlder. The new vista of possibilities which his words had opened up was overpowering. Jones smiled.

  “Yes,” he said, “1728 little ones, and 1722 are already mated with our women.

  “I’m sorry,” he added, “but five died, for various reasons out of our control. When you all are eventually recombined, Doctor Allison will weigh several ounces less. I don’t think he will mind, though, for he can more than make that up in one good meal.”

  Allison still stood as if turned to stone. The man really did seem to be telling the truth. He must have been sincere all along.

  “You will recall,” Jones went on, “that I promised Doctor Allison he would be returned here unharmed after four months. He will be. All your‌—‌well, brothers, now so happily married, will just before that time undergo the reverse of the process whereby we made them fall in love; and then all will be assembled. You will be one of them. I am in conscience bound to see that every one of his living partitions are present.”

  The colossal face smiled. “Of course, for all that desire it, there will be a suitable ceremony of divorce.”

  The smile faded. There was a pause. “Has it occurred to you,” Jones asked, “that I am reasoning with you, not just snatching you? On the face of it, I might be telling the truth.”

  Allison no longer doubted, but his thoughts were elsewhere. 1723 matings! That many homes‌—‌angles‌—‌environments! All parts of himself, later to be recombined into himself!

  “Think of the new knowledge!” Jones said.

  Was the man smiling?

  “Why hasn’t anyone ever brought his knowledge back to Earth with him?” Allison asked with sudden sharp suspicion.

  “Before leaving, we removed it from their minds,” came the frank, easy answer. “We’ll of course do that with Doctor Allison too.”

  So! Well, if he ever had that knowledge in one person, he’d come hack with it! Somehow! Somehow.

  He hesitated, still shaken, thinking, a doll beside another doll on the great table over which leaned the colossus who had been his enemy. He felt a touch on his arm. It was 372.

  “Don’t be deterred by thoughts of that ugly young atavism,” the fellow said encouragingly. “They’ll get you some one more beautiful than she.” His face lighted up. “Personally, I’ve had the greatest of luck. I understand about the machine; but deep down I know right well there’s something more than that between KS-971 and myself. It’s beyond words. Even to see her! Her mouth! Her scalp‌—‌not a hair! Her high, wide, wrinkled forehead!”

  He’d been in the machine, all right.

  Allison still hesitated. So all his struggles had come to this! “Service.” “Applied, and very, very practical ethnology.” Yes; and one very, very widely applied ethnologist.

  There was that lovely girl of the numbers. She loved him. Even Jones had said she loved him. He was bruised and weary; he needed very much to have some one lovely and kind and warm.

  “After all, you don’t have any choice,” the outworlder reminded him.

  793 shrugged. “All right,” he said with a sigh. “If you will agree to enlarge Miss CB-301 to earth-size and permit her to return with me.”

  Jones smiled. “As you wish,” he said. He rose and picked up the two tiny men. He put them in a little box in his pocket and walked out of the door.

  AS NEVER WAS

  P. Schuyler Miller

  Consider, for, a moment, the complexities and contradictions of time travel. It involves, for example, your living in a time before you were born; i.e., before you lived! Or, it may involve your traveling to the future and living in a time after you have died. Few illustrations of the completeness of the paradox that is time travel have been so well drawn as Mr. Miller’s story of the knife. That knife of wonderful metal that‌—‌by ordinary logic ‌—‌could never have been placed where‌—‌and when‌—‌it was found.

  * * *

  HAVE YOU ever dreamed of murder?

  Have you ever set your elbows on the desk and let your head slump down on your hands, and closed your eyes, and dreamed of how it would feel to drive a knife up to the hilt in a scrawny, wrinkled throat, and twist it until the thin old blood begins to slime your fingers and drip from your wrist‌—‌until the piercing old eyes roll back and close, and the skinny old legs crumple and sag? Have you felt the blood pounding in your own temples, and savage satisfaction swarming up in you as you stare down on the hideous, sprawling thing you have destroyed?

  And then have you opened your eyes and looked down at the mass of scribbled papers, and the meticulously drawn sectional charts, and the trait tables and correlation diagrams and all the other dead, dry details that make up your life’s work? And picked up your pen and started making more scribbles on the papers and more checks on the charts and more little colored dots on the scattergrams, just as you’ve been doing three days out of every five since you were old enough to start the career for which you’d been tested and picked and trained?

  Maybe I should go to a clinic and let the psychotherapists feed vitamins to my personality. Maybe I should go to a religious center and let the licensed clergy try to put this fear of Humanity into my reputed soul. Maybe I should go to a pleasure palace and let them mix me up an emotional hooker to jar the megrims out of my disposition, or go down and apply for a permit to wed and set about begetting another generation of archeologists who will grow up to be just as tired and bored and murderous as their illustrious father.

  Night after night and day after day I dream of what might have happened that day in the laboratory if I had picked up the knife and slit the gullet of the man who had just injected the time-steam concept into the quietly maturing science of human archeology. If I could have seen ahead‌—‌ If I could have guessed what would happen to all the romantic visions he had worked so hard to inspire in me‌—‌

  Why should I dream? I was a child then; I had no way of looking ahead; the knife was just another knife. And I think if he had known ‌—‌if he had been able to see ahead and watch the science to which he had devoted his every waking moment for a long lifetime degenerate into a variety of three-dimensional bookkeeping‌—‌he’d have cut his own heart-out and offered it to me in apology.

  He was a great old man. He was my grandfather.

  You’ve seen the knife. Everyone has, I guess. I was the first, after him, ever to see it, and I was about ten years old. I was sitting in a chair in his laboratory, waiting for him to come back. It was a wooden chair, something his grandfather had used, and maybe other people before that. The laboratory was just a big room at the back of the house, with a concrete floor and plenty of light from a row of windows over the worktable. There were hundreds of potsherds strewn over the table where he’d been classifying and matching them for restoration. There were trays of stone implements, and cheap wooden boxes full of uncatalogued stuff with the dirt still on it. There was a row of battered-looking notebooks, bound in imitation leather, fraying at the corners and stained with ink and dirt. There was a pot that had been half restored, the sherds joined so neatly that you could barely see where they fitted together, and a little ivory goddess whose cracks and chips were being replaced with a plastic filler until you’d never have known she was five thousand years old.

  That was what an archeologist’s laboratory was like in those days.

  Of course, we’ve outgrown all that. His experiment, and the knife he brought back and tossed down on the table for me to look at, have ended all that. Archeology has found its place among the major sciences. It’s no longer a kind of bastard stepchild of art and anthropology. We got money for the best equipment, the newest gadgets. We have laboratories designed by the best architects to fit the work we do in them. We can call on the technicians of a score of other sciences to do our dirty work, or can train ourselves to know as much as they do if we’re reactionaries like me. We have our own specialists, just as learned and as limited as any hairs
plitter in biochemistry or galactic physics. We have prestige‌—‌recognition‌—‌everything he never had in his day, when he was the acknowledged master in his field, and we have him to thank for it all. But Walter Toynbee, if he were living now, would dry up and die in the kind of laboratory his grandson has. He’d push his charts and his correlations back and drop his head in his hands and dream. He’d plan out his own murder.

  I’d been sitting there for nearly six hours. I’d been over the worktable from one end to the other, three times. I’d picked up every potsherd‌—‌turned them over‌—‌studied them with all the solemn intentness of ten years old‌—‌put them back exactly where I’d found them, as he had taught me. I’d found four shards that would fit onto the pot he was restoring, and two that made an ear for a little clay figurine shaped like a fat, happy puppy. I’d taken down his books, one by one, and looked at the plates and figures as I had done many times before. I had even taken down one of his notebooks and slowly leafed through it, trying to spell out the straggling handwriting and make sense of the precise sketches, until a loose slip of paper fell out from among the pages and I slipped it hurriedly back and put the book away.

  All one corner of the laboratory was taken up by the time shuttle. It had cost more than all the air surveys, all the expeditions, all the books and photographs and restorations of his whole career. The copper bus bars that came in through the wall behind it were like columns in some Mayan colonnade. The instrument panel was like something you’d imagine on‌—‌well, on a time machine. The machine itself was a block of dull gray lead with a massive steel door in one side of it, the time cell floating in a magnetic bearing between the pole pieces which set up the field.

  Ours are neater now, but inside they’re about the same. Old Walter Toynbee was an artist to the core, and Balmer, who built the machine for him from Malecewicz’s notes, had a flair for functional design. It was the first shuttle big enough and powerful enough to push a man and his baggage more than twenty years into the future‌—‌or the past, for that matter. Malecewicz had gone back fifteen years. He never returned. His equations showed why that was, and the archeological world, which had been rubbing its hands in anticipation of striking up a speaking acquaintance with Hatshepsut and Queen Shub-Ad, went back to its trowels and whiskbrooms with sighs of resignation. All but my grandfather. All but Walter Toynbee.