For a moment Walt’s young face seemed whiter against the pillow and at last he shook his head. “I can’t do either. I can’t stop until I know where this is leading. And one of the things I need most is Mom’s understanding of it. Don’t you understand?”
“Yes—I do, but I don’t know what you can do about it.”
“Why couldn’t I teach her to read these books? It seems to me that this language or whatever it is should be so simple to understand. Don’t you think so?”
“I don’t know. I had never thought of that. Why don’t you see?”
Surely it would be worth a try, Starbrook thought. He had never supposed that it would be possible for anyone not possessing the particular mutation to be able to read the language. But it was worth hoping for. Walt needed all the understanding he could get. It was beginning to tell on the boy’s face, the uncertainty and the glimpsing of new worlds that were terrifying in their impact upon his mind. His yearning and his gift of understanding went out towards his son, but there was so little that was tangible that he could do. He wondered what would happen when the full impact of knowledge of what he was expected to do came to him. But Starbrook had no thought that Walt would turn down the opportunity. In spite of the terrifying aspects of it, Walt would leap at the chance to join the mutants. There was no doubt of that. If only Rose could come to some understanding before it happened—
“Try it tomorrow,” said Starbrook suddenly. “Try to get your mother interested in learning the language of the books.”
During the forenoon of the following day, Starbrook was forced to return his attention to his work at the plant. Development on a police transceiver was in a boggle, and he spent the whole morning in the lab working with the engineers on it. By early afternoon he broke away long enough to go down to the photo lab.
“Got my stuff ready?” he asked Joe Coppers. “Here’s another one for you.”
“I hope you and your Chinese friends know what this is all about,” grinned the technician. He handed. Starbrook the thick piles of photostats.
Starbrook looked at them. “This isn’t the stuff I gave you!”
Joe Coppers looked, startled. “Sure it is. Here’s your original. Same stuff. What’s the matter—?”
Starbrook continued to stare at the photostats—and at the original copy. Then he knew what the trouble was. The photostats were absolutely unintelligible to him. Only the original books provided the proper stimuli for his senses. There was something beside the mere form of the symbols—something in the very materials of the book itself.
Slowly, he picked up the books and nodded towards the pile of photostats. “Toss that junk away, Joe. I was wrong. There won’t be any more. This stuff won’t photograph.”
The technician gaped as Starbrook walked out. After the door closed, he swore volubly.
In his office once more, Starbrook faced the problem that the only way to record the material he wanted to preserve would be for him to read it aloud. He ordered up one of the long time magnetic recorders which would run a full day without attention. It would take endless hours of his time. Perhaps he could get Walt to do some of it after the boy was a little farther along.
He began the long task with the volumes at hand and worked until long after everyone else had gone. He called Rose and told her he’d be late. It was after eleven that night when he finally decided to quit and go home.
He expected the lights to be out in the house. Walt would be asleep, and Rose always went to bed early when she was alone. But when he drove in the driveway the front of the house was ablaze with light.
As he entered the front door, Rose looked up. With somewhat of a start, Starbrook noticed she had one of the mutants’ books on her lap.
She saw his glance go towards it at once.
“I’m afraid, Bill,” she said in a thin, fear ridden voice. “I’ve never been so afraid in my life.”
“Rose—!”
“Walt wanted to try to teach me to read these books. Just to humor him I let him and I found out that I can learn it. Already I can pick out words and sentences, even whole paragraphs here and there. Oh, Bill, I don’t want to read it!”
“But you must—now that you know you can,” he said quietly. “You know that, don’t you?”
She nodded, her face tight with terror. “That story you told me yesterday. It can’t be true—!”
“Please, Rose.” He sat down beside her and tightened his arm around her shoulders. “We’ve got to realize that we’ve had a very wonderful privilege in knowing Walt—in bringing him into the world, because he’s going to do something wonderful for all of mankind.”
“I just can’t think of it that way. I just can’t. He’s my baby.”
“Yeah,” said Starbrook thickly. “He’s mine, too—”
He wondered how long it would be now. Walt’s cold was soon better and he returned to school. He brought home new books regularly from the Children’s Room, at the rate which the mutants allowed.
Starbrook labored fiercely to keep up with Walt’s speed in understanding the new science revealed in tantalizing snatches and mere introductory expositions. He had to depend now on Walt’s interpretations to a great extent and the work of transcribing the information to the recorders went slowly, even with Walt’s assistance in the reading and segregation of material.
In growing tension, Starbrook began to greet each day somehow as if it were the last he would ever know. He tried to suck the essence of living from each passing moment, for he knew that almost any time now the mutants would reveal their purposes to Walt and claim him for their own. And in that moment something of Starbrook would be eternally dead.
His admiration for Rose increased as she continued doggedly her study of the mutant language. It had seemed easy for her at first, but now it became apparent that she would never get past the first volumes in which the situation of the mutants scattered throughout the Earth was presented in fantasy and allegory.
But Starbrook was not prepared for the change which was becoming more apparent in Rose day by day. The terror was slowly giving way to a strange serenity, almost a resignation that was in itself somehow frightening to Starbrook. It seemed as if she had found some secret of her own in those pages, which neither he nor Walt had discovered.
He wanted to ask her about it, but he knew that when this new feeling came to a focus she’d tell him.
She did. It was just two weeks after Walt had started back to school. They were sitting in the early twilight on the front steps watching Walt riding away on his bicycle to join the baseball game in the park two blocks away.
“It will be lonesome,” said Rose suddenly, “but there’ll be happiness in memory.”
Rose!
“It seems like I’ve found out just this moment what those stories in your mutants’ books have been saying all this time. I’ve read them over and over, and I can’t go beyond the stories, but I understand them now.”
“What do you understand?” said Starbrook.
“I understand that Walt is different. I think I’ve always known it, really. Not just his high intelligence, but other things, too. I understand now that he is one of the lonely men whom the book has been sent into the world to gather. I know that unless he goes with his own kind he’ll be forever lonely and his life will be wasted. I wouldn’t want that, no matter what the pain of sending him away might be.”
“The—story—convinced you of that?”
Starbrook pondered the semantic power of the mutant language. What secrets lay behind its powers to shape the human will to the wishes of the writers might never be known, but he knew there was a vast science evident here that was hardly dreamed of in his age. Semantics that could reduce all Rose’s fears to a calm serenity and persuade her that her only child should be sacrificed to the unknown future of the race. There was no understanding such powers yet—
He said, “It will be easier on Walt when he knows, now that you are willing for him to pursue his own destiny
.”
“We’ve had him for ten happy years. It’s been a lot. When will they tell him?”
“I don’t know. Whenever they think he’s ready. It might be any day now.”
Starbrook had told himself that he was prepared, but when the moment came he knew that he could never have been equipped to accept the fact unemotionally.
It was the very next day when he came home from the plant that he found Rose and Walt together in the living room. Something went dead within him at the sight of their white faces. They had both been crying.
“They told me today,” said Walt without waiting for him to speak. “They told me what you already knew all the time.”
Starbrook fought down the tight swelling in his throat. “Yes, I knew. I’ve been waiting for you to become ready.”
“But you’re not going?” Walt looked in agonized despair from his father to his mother and back again. “Somehow I’d always thought because you could read them, too—that you were like me—”
Starbrook shook his head and smiled wanly. ‘No. I’m just a sort of freak that they’ve never run into before. I’m no good to them, so I won’t be going. Besides, your mother will need me—”
“I’ll miss you—!” Tears sprang again into his reddened eyes.
“You won’t be lonely,” said Starbrook with a calm that surprised himself. “That’s why you’re going away. If you stayed here you would be the loneliest of men because you have a thousand talents and abilities that would only be smothered and subdued. You’d be misunderstood, despised for your superior attributes and your whole life would be bitter. It will be far better where you are going. They will understand you and will be your own kind.”
“Yes, I know all that,” said Walt thinly, “—but I’ll still be lonely for you—”
It would pass, Starbrook thought. It had to pass. In the end it would be the best. He knew that what he had said was true.
“You don’t have to go—” he said.
“Oh, but I do! It’s just kind of hard right now—”
That’s what Starbrook wanted to be sure of. He smiled approvingly. “Do you know when?”
“Right away. Tonight!”
“Tonight!” All Starbrook’s defenses seemed to collapse before that single word.
“In less than a couple of hours from now. Some emergency has come up. I don’t know what, exactly. They’ve got to move the Children’s Room to some other age right away—something about picking up an important mutant who is about to be destroyed in some future time. They’re holding the movement now just for me.”
“Then there’s time for dinner together,” said Starbrook. “Let’s have it a time to remember.”
“It’s all ready,” said Rose, drying her eyes. “We were waiting for you.”
It was a time to remember—and a time for remembering. They went back and picked out the gems from the thousand moments of happiness they had known together and touched them again, fondling them, hugging them close in their memories.
And swiftly the moments passed until there were no more left.
Walt glanced at the clock. “I’ve got to be going.”
They got into the car and Starbrook drove slowly away from the curb. With each new moment it seemed as if the impact of realization came all over again—the realization that Walt would not be riding back this way with them. These houses and this street, those friends who were waving to Walt from across the way, none of them would ever know his presence again. And suddenly, Starbrook wondered how his absence would be explained—
Sounds all about them seemed to be suppressed as if it were a dream and the car was floating soundlessly through space. Almost as if without Starbrook’s conscious direction it approached the college campus and came to a halt before the library where lights were visible in the main reading room.
“Maybe you won’t want to come in,” said Walt hesitantly.
“Of course we will,” said Rose in a steady voice.
Starbrook remembered that she had never seen an entry into the Children’s Room. He wondered how it would appear to her.
With Walt between them they walked slowly towards the building.
“Gee, Dad,” said Walt suddenly. “I forgot to put my bike up. It looks like rain. Will you put it away for me?”
“Yeah. Yeah—sure—”
The futility of that impulsive request washed over them in a suffocating wave of desolation. Silently, they mounted the steps and entered the foyer.
“It’s here.” Starbrook touched his wife’s hand.
“Where? I don’t see anything. But, of course—’
He pointed to the inscription over the door.
She shook her head. “I can’t quite make it out. That blank wall, Bill! How can there be a door there that I can’t see—?”
Some of the old fear was returning to her eyes.
“It’s there. Walt’s going towards it, now. Perhaps he’ll disappear to your eyes.”
The boy turned for one final, backward glance. He smiled warmly and confidently and held up a hand. Then he walked on into the room.
Rose gave a little cry as he vanished from her sight. “Bill—can you see him? Where did he go?”
“He’s right there, darling. He’s talking to Miss Edythe and Dr. Rogers. There are a lot of the other boys in there, too. There’s a Chinese boy and some that are European. This library must have doors into all the world.”
“What’s Walt doing now?”
“Just waiting. Dr. Rogers has his arm around his shoulders. He looks happy, darling. He is happy. This is the way it should be.”
Suddenly, while he spoke, the doorway into the Children’s Room seemed to grow milky. It wavered and blurred as if his vision were failing. Impulsively, he took a step forward and waved. He glimpsed Walt’s face, smiling and joyous, and his hand waving in farewell.
“He’s gone.”
Rose crumpled against him. Her face buried in his shoulder and she stood there sobbing uncontrollably for a moment. Then at last she raised, her head and looked at Starbrook. Her eyes were shining in spite of the longing in them.
“I’m sorry, Bill. I just couldn’t help that one.”
“Shall we go back, now?”
They started down the steps as the light drizzle began to fall.
“It’s raining,” said Rose. “And Walt’s bike is still out. You mustn’t forget to bring it in for him.”
Yes, Starbrook thought. I mustn’t forget that. It’s the last thing I can ever do for him.
He glanced towards the curb, at their car which they had left empty. With a start, he realized it wasn’t empty now. There was a figure in the back seat, a face watching them through the window.
Rose saw it, too, and cried out in momentary fright.
A chill of terror swept through Starbrook.
The homolog.
He had forgotten it. He had supposed that Rogers had destroyed it because he’d said they wouldn’t want it.
He closed his eyes a moment and prayed silently that this nightmare monster might vanish, this parody of Walt—
It was looking at them with Walt’s face, Walt’s eyes, and Walt’s smile was upon its lips.
And it called to them.
Walt’s voice.
“I hurried and got my books. I thought you wanted to get back home right away. Let’s hurry now, because I left my bike out in the rain.”
The hard knot within Starbrook seemed to soften. This was not the staring, empty face he had seen in Rogers’ laboratory that day. He remembered how Rogers had warned him that it hadn’t been completed. When it was, he’d said it would be every feeling, every emotion, every memory that had been Walt. It would react in every way exactly as Walt would have reacted.
And Rose had not seen the homolog before its completion. Something of that first shock was leaving her face as she recognized what it was. She moved forward slowly.
“It’s Walt,” she said in a half whisper. “It’s everything of Walt
that could have been ours anyway. And I thought it would be some crude mechanical thing from what you said. Oh, darling, they’ve taken their mutant and given our son back to us!”
Semantic control—wish fulfillment—whatever it was, Starbrook thought, the Rose who hadn’t read the mutants’ books would not have accepted the homolog so readily.
And yet—perhaps it was some influence they’d exercised over him, too—why not? Wasn’t the homolog everything that Walt had been? The exact pattern of his instincts, reactions, emotions, memories. What else was there that constituted a human being?
Even the question of identity seemed to diminish as he thought of that last vision of Walt standing content and happy amid the other mutants about to begin their long journey.
. The homolog got out of the car. He ran towards them as they moved slowly towards it.
“What’s the matter? Mother—Dad, you look so strange. Is anything wrong?”
Starbrook smiled. “Not a thing in the world—son. Your mother and I were just thinking how lucky we are—in a lot of ways. Come on, we’d better beat it home and get that bike in out of the rain.”
SIDETRACK IN TIME, by William P. McGivern
First published in the July 1941 issue of Amazing Stories.
Philip Kingley’s hand was moist as it closed over the cold butt of the automatic that nestled in the flap pocket of his lab jacket. He swallowed nervously and licked his dry lips. Everything was ready. The old man was washing his hands in the next room and in a few seconds he would step back into the laboratory, muttering absent-mindedly to himself and peering near-sightedly about with bright blue eyes as he always did.
Then—raise the gun quickly and fire and it would be all over!
Kingley knew there was nothing to worry about but he wished the cold tight knot in his stomach would stop bothering him. He wiped his free hand across his damp forehead and then clenched it fiercely and jammed it into his trouser pocket to keep it from shaking. “Well, well,” a dry, old voice sounded behind him, “you look as pale as a ghost. Matter? Trip tomorrow got you scared?”
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