Final Reckonings

by Robert Bloch

  "Big words," I said. "But the fact remains. You stole those paintings."

  "Stole? I saved them! I tell you, before the year is out they'd be utterly destroyed. Your galleries, your museums, your libraries — everything will go. Is it stealing to carry precious articles from a burning temple?" He leaned over me. "Is that a crime?"

  "Why not stop the fire, instead?" I countered. "You know — from historical records, I suppose — that war breaks out tonight or tomorrow. Why not take advantage of your foresight and try to prevent it?"

  "I can't. The records are sketchy, incomplete. Events are jumbled. I've been unable to discover just how the war began — or will begin, rather. Some trivial incident, unnamed. Nothing is clear on that point."

  "But couldn't you warn the authorities?"

  "And change history? Change the actual sequence of events, rather? Impossible!"

  "Aren't you changing them by taking the paintings?" "That's different."

  "Is it?" I stared into his eyes. "I don't see how. But then, the whole thing is impossible. I've wasted too much time in arguing."

  "Time!" He looked at the wall clock. "Almost noon. I've got just nine hours left. And so much to do. The instrument must be adjusted."

  "Where is this precious mechanism of yours?"

  "Out in the bay. Submerged, of course, I had that in mind when it was constructed. You can conceive of the hazards of attempting to move through time and alight on a solid surface; the face of the land alters. But the ocean is comparatively unchanging. I knew if I departed from a spot several miles offshore and arrived there, I'd eliminate most of the ordinary hazards. Besides, it offers a most excellent place of concealment. The principle, you see, is simple. By purely mechanical means, I shall raise the instrument above the stratospheric level tonight and then intercalculate dimensionally when I am free of Earth's orbit. The gantic-drive will be — "

  No doubt about it. I didn't have to wait for the double-talk to know he was crazier than a codfish. A pity, too; he was really a handsome specimen.

  "Sorry," I said. "Time's up. This is something I hate to do, but there's no other choice. No, don't move. I'm calling the police, and if you take one step I'll plug you."

  "Stop! You mustn't call! I'll do anything. I'll even take you with me. That's it, I'll take you with me! Wouldn't you like to save your life? Wouldn't you like to escape?"

  "No. Nobody escapes," I told him. "Especially not you. Now stand still, and no more funny business. I'm making that call."

  He stopped. He stood still. I picked up the phone, with a sweet smile. He smiled back. He looked at me.

  Something happened.

  There has been a great dispute about the clinical aspects of hypnotic therapy. I remember, in school, an attempt being made to hypnotize me. I was entirely immune. I concluded that a certain degree of cooperation or conditioned suggestibility is required of an individual in order to render him susceptible to hypnosis.

  I was wrong.

  I was wrong, because I couldn't move now. No lights, no mirrors, no voices, no suggestion. It was just that I couldn't move. I sat there holding the gun. I sat there and watched him walk out, locking the door behind him. I could see and I could feel. I could even hear him say "Goodbye."

  But I couldn't move. I could function, but only as a paralytic functions. I could, for example, watch the clock.

  I watched the clock from noon until almost seven. Several patients came during the afternoon, couldn't get in, and went away. I watched the clock until its face was lost in darkness. I sat there and endured hysteric rigidity until — providentially — the phone rang.

  That broke it. But it broke me. I couldn't answer that phone. I merely slumped over on the desk, my muscles tightening with pain as the gun fell from my numb fingers. I lay there, gasping and sobbing, for a long time. I tried to sit up. It was agony. I tried to walk. My limbs rejected sensation. It took me an hour to gain control again. And even then, it was merely a partial control — a physical control. My thoughts were another matter.

  Seven hours of thinking. Seven hours of true or false? Seven hours of accepting and rejecting the impossibly possible.

  It was after eight before I was on my feet again, and then I didn't know what to do.

  Call the police? Yes — but what could I tell them? I had to be sure, I had to know.

  And what did I know? He was out in the bay, and he'd leave at nine o'clock. There was an instrument which would rise above the stratosphere —

  I got in the car and drove. The dock was deserted. I took the road over to the Point, where there's a good view. I had the binoculars. The stars were out, but no moon. Even so, I could see pretty clearly.

  There was a small yacht bobbing on the water, but no lights shone. Could that be it?

  No sense taking chances. I remembered the radio report about the Coast Guard patrols.

  So I did it. I drove back to town and stopped at a drugstore and made my call. Just reported the presence of the yacht. Perhaps they'd investigate, because there were no lights. Yes, I'd stay there and wait for them if they wished.

  I didn't stay, of course. I went back to the Point. I went back there and trained my binoculars on the yacht. It was almost nine when I saw the cutter come along, moving up behind the yacht with deadly swiftness.

  It was exactly nine when they flashed their lights — and caught for an incredible instant, the gleaming reflection of the silver globe that rose from the water, rose straight up toward the sky.

  Then came the explosion and I saw the shattering before I heard the echo of the report. They had portable anti-aircraft, something of the sort. It was effective.

  One moment, the globe roared upward. The next moment, there was nothing. They blew it to bits.

  And they blew me to bits with it. Because if there was a globe, perhaps he was inside. With the masterpieces, ready to return to another time. The story was true, then, and if that was true, then —

  I guess I fainted. My watch showed 10:30 when I came to and stood up. It was 11:00 before I made it to the Coast Guard Station and told my story.

  Of course, nobody believed me. Even Dr. Halvorsen from Emergency — he said he did, but he insisted on the injection and they took me here to the hospital.

  It would have been too late, anyway. That globe did the trick. They must have contacted Washington immediately with their story of a new secret Soviet weapon destroyed offshore. Coming on the heels of finding those bomb-laden ships, it was the final straw. Somebody gave the orders and our planes were on their way.

  I've been writing all night. Outside in the corridor they're getting radio reports. We've dropped bombs over there. And the alert has gone out, warning us of possible reprisals.

  Maybe they'll believe me now. But it doesn't matter any more. It's going to be the way he said it was.

  I keep thinking about the paradoxes of time travel. This notion of carrying objects from the present to the future — and this other notion, about altering the past. I'd like to work out the theory, only there's no need. The old masters aren't going into the future. Any more than he, returning to our present, could stop the war.

  What had he said? "I've been unable to discover just how the war began — or will begin, rather. Some trivial incident, unnamed."

  Well, this was the trivial incident. His visit. If I hadn't made that phone call, if the globe hadn't risen—but I can't bear to think about it any more. It makes my head hurt. All that buzzing and droning noise. . . .

  I've just made an important discovery. The buzzing and droning does not come from inside my head. I can hear the sirens sounding, too. If I had any doubts about the truth of his claims, they're gone now.

  I wish I'd believed him. I wish the others would believe me now. But there just isn't any time. . . .

  Where the Buffalo Roam

  MAY HAVE BEEN TWO SEASONS ago, may have been three. This child don't shine at figures much. Doc, now — he's got a passel of books up to his lodge, and even Iron Head
keeps a few in his tipi. But I never did hold with book talk, not even for a white, let alone Injuns.

  This child's happy and sassy as long as he's got his hide in one piece, with plenty of fleece fat to fill it, and a good gun and a few traps to set for the getting of plews. A rifle's all the company you need beyond the Platte. Come winter, of course, I push back to the river with my catch, and then I allow it's slick to hole up in a lodge of my own with a squaw for the fixing and the making of robes. But there's always a might to do and no need for books even then—spite of all Doc's talk.

  Books won't skin a painter for you or cure you of the flux. And books weren't handy agin' them, either. It was books caused all the misery in the first place, I figger. They have books aplenty.

  But it was them I aimed to tell about, to begin with. Like I say, might have been two, could be three seasons back. It was fixing summer anyways, that I know. That's when they come.

  I recollect the night it happened. Doc and Iron Head and I had headed back to the river to see if the team had come with the new guns and the ammunition. It was in, all right, and I got me a brand-new rifle — along with a lot of blankets and such, and even some fancy folderol for Taffy. Taffy was my squaw; still would be, but she died birthing. Taffy had yellow hair, same as me. I guess she was more white than Injun, but they're all squaws.

  Anyways, we'd had a regular powwow for a couple days after the team pulled in, like always, and Jed and Huck did a heap of bragging about the trip. They always fetch some tall stories about the places back Across the River. Doc holds the yarns are true, but I figger they stretch a mite.

  Then we set out again, four party of us. Two headed upriver for the traps; one hit downriver with the team — to trade extry guns and shot with the next camp. Me and Doc and Iron Head struck out west to buffalo country. The grass was in now, and we figgered they'd be ranging this way. We aimed to strike a big herd and drive it back to the river. Then the hull camp'd come out — boys and squaws and old folk alike — and just blaze away until we snagged a smart passel, enough for meat and skinning and curing to hold us through winter.

  That was the scheme of it, and we reckoned on working our way for maybe two, three days.

  But we struck it pretty the afternoon of the first day out. Coming up over a rise, just up from the plains, with the sun scorching our eyeballs fit to fry, and we looked down onto the level with the tall grass stretching for a hundred miles off.

  But we didn't see any grass. Everything was black. Black and moving.

  "Huh!" Iron Head let out a grunt. "Buffler!"

  "Buffalo?" said Doc, squinting through those spectacles he wears. "Sure enough. But look at the size of that herd! You ever see so many, Jake?"

  I had to allow as I hadn't. In all my born days, and I knowed this country ever since I was big enough to tote a rifle, I never did see a sight to match this one.

  There was buffalo as far as sight would stretch, like a big black cloud settled over the land. Cows and calves and yearlings, young bulls with their horns still black and old bulls just lording it over the harems.

  "Reckon we better circle behind?" I asked. But Iron Head grinned. "Walk along," he said. "Take us two days to go around."

  "What if they get riled up?" Doc said.

  "Make noise," Iron Head told him. I allowed as he was right — buffalo always scatter if you fetch them a start. That's how we aimed to stampede them to the river, by shooting guns. But right now we wanted to get on the other side of the herd, so as to drive them in the right direction.

  So we walked down, moving close together, and headed straight for the herd. And Doc told us to sing.

  That's what we did. We traipsed along, singing fit to bust — the old songs, anything that come into our head. Tunes like "Tea for Two" and "Roll Out the Barrel" and "The Sweetheart of Sigma Chi" — all them songs with the crazy words. Made a powerful ruckus too.

  And you know, it worked. It got us into the herd all right, but come a time when this child wondered if we'd ever get out again. Wondered if there was an end to it or if we'd just go wandering and singing along until our voice boxes plumb wore out.

  Because it was a herd the likes of which a hump-hungry old hoss dreams about. Docs the head for figures, so I asked him. "How many you reckon? A million head?"

  "Easy," Doc said. "We been walking close to three hours now. Seems to be no end to it."

  "Strikes me mighty odd," I told him. "I don't allow as I ever saw more'n two-three thousand at a crack before."

  "The herds grow every year," Doc came back. "It's like the old days. Remind me tonight and I'll tell you about it. But something must have happened to force them together this way."

  "Dry," said Iron Head. "Powerful dry ahead. Dust storm, so they move. Buffler heap migratory ruminant."

  He was right. Way off to the west the sun was going down, and from the clouds I reckoned haze. The plains were dry, so the herds came together and moved east to graze. Now, hoofing it through the center, this child could see that it wasn't one big herd at all. Instead, it was thousands of little herds, each one ranging from twenty to two-three hundred head. Old bulls heading their cows and the calves. Young bulls bunched together, hanging on at the fringes and waiting for a chance. And here and there the strays and the cripples.

  We didn't dast break off singing to talk much. I tell you it gave me a might crawly feeling to scrunch along through that grass, with hundreds of thousands of sharp-horned critters less than a holler away from us. They was making their own racket, too — calves a-bawling and them bulls roaring and tossing horn at any cow out of line. We spotted a few fights, too, and every once in a while a bull'd rear up for a mount. They smelled powerful strong that day, but the flies wasn't so bad around account of the wind. That was a fancy fix, because at times you can't nigh breathe for the clouds of flies pestering a herd.

  We kept moving and singing and staring. "Look at those spike bulls," Doc said. "They get bigger every year." It was true. Some of the young ones were crowding six feet, maybe ten long. And I spotted some whopping big full-grown critters with a spread of maybe three feet; them horns run a good two feet long, and I allow as a couple topped a ton weight. That's two thousand pounds, a ton.

  Close up this way I made notice of the robes — regular brown aplenty, but here and there a black, a beaver, a buckskin, and even a blue. Iron Head squinted too; I knew what he was fixing for. He wanted a whitey if he could find one. Them whiteys are the rarest; you can fetch most anything you want with a white, from stale firewater to a fresh squaw.

  But he wouldn't snag one even if he saw it, because a shot might set the whole passel off. It was best we keep on a-singing and a-walking, and so we did until it was raising a powerful dark.

  Then we got through and oozed out the other side, onto a little dried-over crick bed. We didn't figger the herd'd move in the night, and come morning we could start the drive back. So we bedded down.

  But first we made us a fire and broke out supplies.

  Iron Head stuck a pipe in his craw and curled up in his bag, closing his eyes and looking like a hoss gone under for sure — it was always his way, come night at a camp.

  Me and Doc just set there for a spell.

  "I can't shake it," I said. "All them critters, more than this child could count."

  "Nature is fecund," Doc said.

  "Wouldn't know about that," I told him. "But there's a powerful lot of breeding. Beaver, deer, elk, fish. And the flies and skeeters and chiggers too. Even up there." I pointed at the sky. "Look at that big white herd, forever roaming and twinkling down. Doc, do you reckon stars mate too?"

  "I wouldn't know," Doc mumbled. "And I don't want to find out."

  "One thing's mighty dark to this child," I said. "And I been meaning to ask. Seeing that we're animals, too, in a way — how is it that we never breed strong?"

  "There's fifty-five of us on the Platte," Doc said. "And forty downriver, and another forty beyond. It's that way all over, Jake. Thousands of
us, really."

  "But that's just a smidgen compared to the others," I said. "You'd figger maybe there'd be millions."

  Doc sort of sighed. "There were once."

  "You mean like in the book stories? About the cities and all?" I let out a bark. "Don't tell me you put stock in that talk too."

  "It's true, Jake. Where do you think the books came from? And don't Jed and the others take the team back to the ruins to get us guns and ammunition from the arsenals? You heard him tell about it with his own lips."

  "I just can't swaller," I said. "I always figgered he aimed to stuff us with his talk. Thousands of stone tipis in one place, wagons that used to run without a team — it don't hold with nature."

  "That's why everything turned out this way," Doc told me. "Men didn't hold with nature. Jake, I've read it in the books. And my father told me what his father told him — he was alive and saw it when he was a boy. Once there were cities and towns and villages everywhere."

  "What happened?" I asked. "What became of the people, and why?"

  Iron Head opened his eyes for a spell. "People go under," he grunted. "Heap bad medicine called nuclear fission."

  "That's right," Doc said. "They got to fighting, and they had weapons. Atomic bombs, nerve gas. The cities were razed, the survivors scattered. And most of them didn't last long. They couldn't live in the open. They couldn't cope with the wilderness. They died of disease and plague. They froze in the winter, and they starved — "

  "I don't rightly make out the meaning of the words," I told him. "But I'll allow you're talking straight about the fighting and maybe rough ways of killing. Only that part about the starving, now — how could they starve, with all this game here for the taking?"

  Doc smiled. "You'd find it all in the books if you'd only be willing to learn," he said. "Iron Head knows the story, don't you?"