The Girl, the Gold Watch and Everything

by John D. MacDonald

  “My darlings!” she said. “How terribly fortunate I left that circuit open! And how glad I am we had the patience to listen. Dear Joseph even had the presence of mind to begin taping it after the first few words. We can play it back for clues, you know, but possibly we have enough. How did you put it, dear? A way to make time take time out. I have suddenly lost my respect for Omar Krepps. With that ability, he did very little with it, comparatively. While I’m talking I can’t hear you, of course. That sound you must have heard was a timber being wedged between your door and the opposite side of the corridor. Apparently your miracle will not melt prison walls. I hope not. So at least we have created an impasse, have we not? And it will give us all time to think.”

  Kirby shuddered and looked at Betsy. Her eyes were closed and she was biting down on a bloodless lip. “I didn’t know,” she whispered. “I didn’t know. But, knowing her, I should have guessed.”

  He went over to her and put his lips close to her ear. “All we have to do is get them to open that door.”

  “It is really quite amusing,” Charla said, “that what I should have been looking for is actually that old gold watch you showed me, Kirby dear. The little telescope is a rather nice disarming touch. Really, I expected some sort of procedural thing, notes and formulae, something like that. But this really seems far more practical, a portable, useful, innocent-appearing device. What did you say, Joseph? Excuse me a moment, darlings.”

  “Damned witch,” Betsy said distinctly.

  Charla spoke through the concealed speaker again. “Joseph has had a fruitful idea. We shall have a hole burnt in your steel door, darlings, just large enough for the watch, and then you can pass it out through the hole. Otherwise I think you might find things becoming highly unpleasant.”

  When the hiss of the circuit stopped, Kirby said, “Before I’ll do that, Charla, I’ll take the end of the chain and I’ll slam it against the inside of this steel door until I’m damned well certain it’s unusable, unidentifiable junk.”

  “Dog in the manger?” Charla asked.

  “Precisely.”

  “You bluff well, Kirby.”

  “No bluff, Charla. I’m infected by a chronic disease called a sense of responsibility. I’m a very noble fellow. I’d rather destroy it than have you have it to use.”

  “Nobility confuses me,” Charla said. “Isn’t it the traditional disease of adolescence? Aren’t you rather old for it, Kirby?”

  “I’m having a delayed adolescence, Mrs. O’Rourke. But you can check it out, if you don’t believe me. Cut the hole in the door. The minute the chunk falls out, I start battering this gizmo to bits.”

  There was no answer, no faint hiss that preceded each speech.

  “You’ve got her worried,” Betsy whispered.

  “She should be worried,” Kirby said in a normal tone. “I mean every damn word of it. I can’t get out of here. Okay. So nobody gets to use it.”

  Charla spoke again. “It would make me terribly angry, Kirby,” she said with a tone of gentle regret. “I think both of you would have to die in the most unimaginable agony. You see, Betsy would have to share your heroics. And Miss Farnham. And Miss Beaumont. It’s quite a heavy responsibility upon you, dear Kirby. I know it will trouble you.”

  When the hiss stopped Betsy asked in a thin and shaking voice, “What if he gives it to you, Charla?”

  “Freedom, my dear. And a generous gift of money. I shan’t be small about it.”

  He whispered to Betsy. “She won’t want anybody around to tell what she has.” Betsy sat quite still, then gave a nod of dreadful comprehension.

  Charla laughed softly. “Or, if that seems to be too good to be true, I can at least promise something so quick and so painless you’ll never know what happened. We have a lot of time for you to think it over, dears. No one will come aboard until we ask for clearance. So do talk it over for a bit.”

  “Charla?” Betsy called. “Charla!”

  The speaker remained silent.

  Twelve

  BETSY ALDEN LAY in the bunk on her back, her eyes wide open, her face expressionless, while Kirby Winter prowled the stateroom. It was fifteen feet long by eleven feet wide. There was an alcove with a sliding door containing a head, a small stainless steel lavatory, and a medicine cabinet. He inspected the two sealed portholes, too small for escape even if he could find something to shatter the heavy glass. He located the air-conditioning inlet and the exhaust vent. Twice he put himself into the red world of stasis.

  One idea began to seem more and more feasible. He sat on the bunk and said, “I think I’ve got something.”

  “Nothing will work,” she said listlessly.

  “Listen to it, at least.”

  “We’re whipped, Kirby.”

  He yanked her up and slapped her face sharply. “Damn you, Betsy. At least listen!”

  She listened. She thought the plan was madness. But she could think of nothing better. Once she had accepted it, her help was efficient. They soaked blankets in water, getting them as saturated as possible. They spread them in one corner. She helped him heap all the other bedding and combustibles near the door. The fire started slowly at first, but when they were certain it had caught, they crawled under the sodden blankets, and had wet towels ready to wrap around their faces. Smoke became thick in the cabin.

  Suddenly Charla spoke, with anger in her tone. “Very clever, dears, but it won’t work, you know. Are you holding rags by the outlet?”

  When the hiss stopped, Kirby began to cough, trying to sound as if he were choking to death. The furniture was beginning to crackle, and he hoped she could hear that. He felt heat on his face. He prodded Betsy. She was ready for her cue. She gave a scream of such convincing agony he wondered for a moment if the fire had somehow reached her. “Help!” she screamed. “Help me! Let me out!” She screamed again, and faded it off into a grisly bubbling sound.

  He heard the commotion in the corridor. He knew what would happen next. They would feel the steel door, and feel the heat coming through it. The blankets were beginning to steam. There were shouts and a sound of hammering and then the door which he had unlatched was burst open, and just as he worked the watch to stop it all, he saw something aimed toward him in the murk, heard a sharp cracking sound. The flame stopped. The steam was motionless. The heat was gone. The blankets felt like slabs of molded oak. He worked his way out. Joseph stood just inside the door, almost in the static flames, aiming a long-barreled pistol with a rigid little tongue of flame protruding from the muzzle. Staying below the layer of smoke, Kirby searched the air between himself and the muzzle, and found the small slug suspended at the midway point. Assuming, he thought with a hollow feeling in his belly, a velocity of a thousand feet per second, and it had another seven feet to go before catching me squarely in the face, had I been seven one thousandths of a second slower—

  Suddenly, to his astonishment, he saw that the bullet had a perceptible movement. He glanced at the gold watch and saw he had given himself a little over a half hour. It was the first thing he had seen move in the red world. He went close to it and timed its velocity, and it seemed to him that as he counted off ten seconds, it moved almost one full inch. It was a clue to the ratio between the two worlds. Two minutes per foot. Or a ratio of two minutes to one one thousandth of a second. Thus, one full hour of red time equalled three hundredths of a second of objective time. Suddenly he stirred out of his speculative trance. When he moved his face into smoke it felt like thick rubbery cobwebs. He pulled the girl up to a convenient height and, crouched below the smoke, pulled her past Joseph and into the corridor. Charla stood beyond the door, her expression anxious. The emotion he felt toward her was not fear or hate or anger, but merely a vast impatience, an irritability. He left Betsy suspended and went back in and plucked the lead snail out of the air and took it out into the corridor, aimed it at Charla’s bland honeyed forehead and pushed it as forcefully as he could, releasing it an inch from the center of her forehead. He went b
ack toward the flames, slowly bent Joseph’s golden arm until the muzzle was directly under Joseph’s chin, aimed upward, the silent tongue of blue flame a half inch from the jowl. He gave the trigger finger a forceful tug. He towed the girl along the corridor to the steps up to the cockpit hatch. It was ajar. He pushed it open and went back and got her and forced her out into the night. The sun had set over the land and the sky was like a banked fire but it was not as difficult to see as he had anticipated.

  As he towed her along the dock he staggered with his weariness. He did not know how long he could continue. He had to find a safe place. He moved off the dock and into deep shadows and set her upright and leaned her against a tree. He peered at the dial of the gold watch and found there were a few minutes left. He put his thumb on the watch stem and he knew it was a trigger. They deserved to die. Yet he had the curious feeling that he would also be destroyed if he pressed it. Why should he pass ultimate judgment?

  Suddenly, in all his weariness, he had a feeling of antic pleasure, of a wild exhilaration. Bonny Lee was free. Wilma was safe. Betsy was safe. The world was new again, and there was nothing able to stop him. He turned and ran through the bloody twilight as fast as he could. He went back into the yacht. The lead slug was touching her smooth forehead. He pulled it away, pushed it toward the flames. He pulled the muzzle away from Joseph’s chin. He stepped back just as the red time ended. The pistol cracked, the flames crackled, Charla’s face was changed by a look of vast alarm. He spun the world red again, stilling the flames. He looked at them as he now knew his uncle must have looked at them in times past. Ridiculous people. Fair game. A mildly interesting irritant in a greedy world. Death had too much stature, too much dignity, to be awarded them now. The watch could provide more suitable punishments. But at the moment he was too exhausted to follow through. He found a cabin and stretched out, set the watch to a full hour, suspended a heavy ashtray a few inches over his chest and went peacefully to sleep.

  He awoke much refreshed, stopped objective time again and went to see what he could do about Charla and Joseph. He took Charla off the yacht. When he was near where he had left Betsy, he took a breathing space and walked over and looked at her. She had taken three steps away from the tree, and she looked terribly confused.

  He tugged the stubborn burden of Charla all the way to the nearest intersection, stopping frequently to look around for something suitable. He found it at the intersection, waiting for the light to change. It was a big gray truck with Navy markings. He peered in over the tailgate. About thirty men sat on the benches that ran along either side of the truck. They were not recruits. They had that bronzed competent look of career men, who, when faced with any unusual situation, would not be at a loss.

  Sadly, slowly, he bent the short robe off the suspended figure of Charla. After the fevered dreams of performing this very act, it seemed wasteful that it had to be done with so little emotion. Regretfully he admired the exquisite structure and texture of her. He pushed her into a handy position, clambered over the tailgate and hauled her inside. He stretched her out across five military laps, pressed her down solidly, and climbed back out of the truck. It would give her, he thought, some unforgettable moments. He looked into the truck at the tableau in red marble, the bored male faces unaware of the rich burden. If he had gauged their reactions properly, the very first response would be the firm clasp of a bronzed hairy hand, right over her startled mouth.

  It had taken twenty minutes to dispose of Charla. He went back after Joseph. He was not only a more difficult burden, but it was troublesome to think of some situation which would be as memorable to him as Charla’s awakening would be to her. He pushed and tugged and floated Joseph all the way to the intersection, then left him suspended in air while he scouted a nearby cocktail lounge. It was doing an excellent business. He walked through to the back beyond the rest rooms and found a storeroom. The door was ajar. The key was in the lock. He went back among the throng and selected three women. He picked three mature ones without wedding rings, three who looked glossy and competent and somewhat virulent. They had style, prominent jaw lines and a few well-concealed traces of erosion. He trudged them back to the hallway outside the storeroom, one at a time. As he undressed them, one at a time, in midair, and levered them into the small dark room, it occurred to him that he was becoming so adept at it he could apply for a position fixing department store windows. The third one gave him pause. She had a truly astonishing tattoo.

  By the time he plodded in with Joseph, time was growing short. He stripped him hastily, shouldered him in with his new acquaintances and slowly pulled the door shut. Clothing was suspended in the air all around him. He tried to turn the key, but he could not. Time had almost run out anyway. He switched the watch to normal time, turned the key and took it out of the lock and immediately switched back to enough red time to leave and get back to Betsy. The second touch on the watch stem cut short the very beginning of a scream. The clothing had fallen to the hallway floor.

  He walked back to Betsy. He stood beyond her line of vision and turned the world on. She turned and saw him and gasped. “This—this is something nobody could ever get used to! But the damned thing works!”

  He looked toward the intersection. The light changed. The Navy truck started up and moved slowly away through the dusk. He looked over and saw the billowing of smoke against the dark sky. He heard a distant sound of sirens approaching.

  “It worked,” he said.

  “We came within an inch of getting murdered or fried and you stand there grinning like a moron! What’s the matter with you?”

  “Murdered, fried or shot.”

  “Shot?”

  “You missed that part of it, Betsy dear.”

  She looked at him with a haggard, accusing face. “And you carried me right past them?”

  “Yes indeed.”

  “And they just—stood there?”

  “Like statues.”

  She moved closer to him. “Could you have killed them?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you didn’t?”

  He thought her mouth had an exceptionally ugly look. They were in a small park area sheltered from the flow of headlights and the blue glare of the mercury vapor lights on the avenue. Her damp stained orange coveralls smelled of smoke. Her hair was tangled and her face was smudged.

  “I had that idea, to tell you the truth.”

  “You fool! You do it again, you hear? Make everything stop. Go back aboard and kill them. Who could ever prove anything? Go kill both of them. They’ll never give up. They’ll never give up until they’re dead.”

  He studied her. And he remembered how close he had come to doing just what she now suggested. Nothing would have ever been the same again. The watch, Bonny Lee, all would have been changed. And he would have lost one of the most precious attributes of this unique ability to make time stand still—the additive of wry mischief, of ironic joy. Bonny Lee had understood that instinctively. Murder would have turned the watch into a perpetual solemnity and a perpetual guilt—because, regardless of provocation, the owner of the watch was beyond the need to kill.

  “Betsy dear, Charla and Joseph are too busy right now.”

  “Busy!”

  “Aunt Charla is sort of riding around enjoying the evening. And Joseph is making some new friends.”

  “You act as if this is all some kind of a joke!” she said furiously.

  He heard men shouting on the dock. The fire trucks arrived. He took Betsy by the arm and walked her away from there, staying in the shadows and on the darker sides of the streets. When they came to a shopping area where a cut-rate department store was open late, he left her in a shadowy place and went into the frozen silence and stillness of the store and found fresh clothing for himself, taking care to select the lightest weight sandals he could find. He changed, selected clothing for her, packed it into a lightweight suitcase and towed it on out. He realized he had been careful not to take anything that anyone was looking directly
at. He was acquiring the habit of a basic ethic of using the time-stop. Do not frighten the innocent unnecessarily. With Charla and Joseph he had violated this concept. The sailors were the innocents, and he did not imagine they would seriously question the origin of the gift. And there was enough subjective phenomena in cocktail lounges to make objective magic almost unnoticeable.

  When he returned to Betsy he did not bother to reappear in the same place and position. She started violently. They walked further into a small park. He opened the suitcase on a bench. She went behind bushes and changed to the cotton dress and Orlon cardigan he had brought her, and stuffed Charla’s sodden playsuit under a bush. At a drinking fountain under a street lamp he held the mirror he had brought her while she wiped the smudges from her face and used the hair brush he had brought her, and used the stolen lipstick.

  He risked a cruising cab and had the driver stop a block away from the Hotel Birdline. She went in with the money he gave her and rented a room, using a name they had agreed upon. He loafed in the shadows for ten minutes, and then halted time and went into the hotel. He looked at the register and saw they had given her room 303. He went up the stairs. She had left the door ajar as agreed. When he materialized instantaneously in front of her, her leap of surprise was smaller than before. He closed the door and said, “You’re doing better, Miss Betsy.”

  “I think I’m just too tired to react. What is the world like when you’re—doing that?”

  “Absolutely silent. Red light. No motion anywhere. It’s like being in a strange kind of a dream.”

  “Does it seem evil? Or is that a silly question.”

  “It could be evil. I don’t think it’s a silly question. I guess it would depend on the person using it. I guess it would sort of—multiply whatever you are by ten. Because it’s absolute freedom. You can make your fantasies come true. And if your fantasies are—sick, then that’s the way you’ll use it. Maybe it’s just like any other kind of power. I haven’t really had time to think about the implications. And not much time now. You’ll be safe here and I have a girl to find.”