Murray Leinster

by The Best of Murray Leinster (1976)

  Suddenly his throat was dry for a new reason. He listened with a desperate intentness for Limpy’s answer. The shaft of sunlight was close enough, now, for him to reach, but he did not put out his hands. He licked his lips.

  ‘I said the theory’s all right, Limpy! How’d Fellenden do it?’ Limpy said heavily:

  ‘That’s where I’m mixed up. You’ on a train, he says. It’s movin’ through time. Before you can go back you got to slow up. But the train won’t slow. You see a station slidin’ by -Wednesday maybe - an’ you wanna go back. You got on the wrong train Tuesday. Desperate, you start runnin’ for the back of the train. At first you don’t see no difference. But you keep runnin’. Presendy the station ain’t goin’ past you quite so fast. Then you run harder. You hold it even, runnin’ with all you got. An’ all of a sudden you get to the back of the train. The door’s open. You jump down to the tracks, an’ don’t get hurt because you’re runnin’ back as fast as the train runs ahead. An’ then you go high-tailin’ it back along the railroad track to where you got on the wrong train. An’ the right one’s there—’

  ‘It hasn’t left?’ asked Rodney, cynically.

  ‘No,’ said Limpy flatly. ‘I dunno why, but Feilenden said no.’

  Rodney’s pose of cynicism dropped away. Limpy could not possibly have worked out a theory like this. Feilenden must have worked it out, and phrased it carefully in such homely terms for Limpy’s untutored understanding. It was pure logic on a familiar foundation of speculation. You did something, and it had evil consequences. You went back in time, before the event which had the evil consequences. You avoided that event. Then, necessarily, you took a branching time track. You went into another of the innumerable futures which at that point in time were possible for you. The evil consequences of the event you avoided could not be in those other time tracks. And you would cease to exist in the first time track at the point where you turned about and went back.

  Granted the fact of time travel in this way, which was the only possible way in which time travel could take place, it was sound! Limpy could not have imagined it. Someone of the caliber of Feilenden must have devised it. And Feilenden had made that indeterminacy field, which nobody else yet surely understood—

  Rodney licked his lips. It was the answer, if he could get it -and he had one of the four best brains in the country. But it was enraging that he’d had to be instructed by a common criminal like Limpy!

  ‘Tve got it,’ said Rodney curtly. ‘1 see the idea.’

  There was a clanking of the outer doors of the death-cell house. A guard came in. He gave the two prisoners their food. Rodney regarded him with the burning eyes of hatred, in silence. The guard went out.

  Rodney heard the sounds of Limpy, feeding. Himself, he could not eat. He had three days to live - if he did not solve the problem of time travel as Feilenden had solved it. He could believe in the theory, now. If he did not believe, he would go mad! But besides that, there was evidence that it could be done! Feilenden had done it!

  He paced up and down his cell. Time travel. Fellenden had vanished from a death cell in Joliet by traveling back to the time before the killing of his wife. Then he had not killed her. There had been at least two possible futures for him at that point; in one of which he killed her, and in one of which he did not. Rodney lived and moved in the future in which the murder had taken place. In the other - which to Fellenden was now the actual future - Fellenden had not committed a murder, and was doubdess a respected citizen and a prominent physicist instead of an escaped murderer. That other time track was like but not the same as this. It was possible to get into that other time track. Fellenden had done it! Galileo heard that a telescope had been invented, and took thought on the principles of optics, and made a telescope in some ways superior to the original. He, Rodney, now knew that time travel was possible, and he had one of the four best brains—

  Time passed. Sweat came out on his forehead. Escape to a parallel time track would be escape of unparalleled completeness. One would have nothing to fear. The very cause of one’s fear would no longer be real. Not only the penalty, but the event which called for penalty could be wiped out. But there must be a starting point.

  He forgot to put his hands into the slender shaft of sunlight. The sunlight died, and he did not notice it. He paced his cell. Three paces this way. Three paces that. A starting point— A starting point—

  It grew dark. Rodney was tense and growing desperate. It was possible! The theory of parallel time tracks was almost orthodox! And Fellenden had proved its verity! But how? Given the beginning, Rodney knew he could go on. Given the principle by which experiment could be made, he could envision every detail that experiment should uncover. But he could not devise a beginning for experiment! He was like someone dying of cold with a fire ready laid but lacking a match, and not knowing how to make a fire drill to produce a spark. It grew maddening!

  Night had long fallen when he said sharply into the blackness: ‘Limpy!’

  He heard Limpy stir.

  Yeah?’

  ‘I’ve got it,’ said Rodney, harshly. ‘But I’m curious about Fellenden. Tell me how he started to work. I want to see if I’ve got a better way than he had?’

  Limpy’s voice rolled sonorously among the unseen walls. ‘You’ lyin’, guy. A fella who got that trick would want to tell everybody who’d listen.’

  Rodney could not imagine it. He snarled:

  ‘Altruism, eh? A part of it is to be kind and good?’

  ‘No!’ Limpy spat. Rodney heard him. ‘Just - you can’t take baggage. Fellenden said so. He said: We got all kinda anchors to this time track we’re in - we’re hitched tight to the train we’re on. We got to cut those bonds loose first. We can’t hang on to anything in this time track. It’s gonna be imaginary presently. We gotta not care about it any more’n something that’s imaginary now. Like’ - Limpy’s voice was unresentful -‘like you gotta get rid of feelin’ proud you got more brains than me. That ties you to me. I’m in this time track. You wanna leave it. You gotta let go of me. I ain’t on the train you wanna get!’ In the darkness, Rodney seethed even as this fitted into the pattern of logic. There was a patch of moonlight on the wall above the opposite cell tier. It was the only light anywhere. Limpy’s voice rolled on drearily:

  ‘I guess it’s no go, guy. I gave you just about all the stuff Fellenden told me. If you can’t make it work—’ Then Limpy said dubiously, ‘There’s just one other thing he kinda harped on. He says, how do we know we’re on this time track anyhow? How’d we know if we got on another one? What’s the difference between ’em, to us? How do we know time’s passin’? How do we know we’re travelin’ in time, anyhow? Does that make sense?’

  Rodney’s throat hurt when he swallowed.

  ‘B-bishop Berkeley!’ he said hoarsely. ‘I see and hear and feel the place I’m in. Therefore it is real to me. What I experience is real, to me. What I do not experience—’

  Then he cried out. He found himself clutching the bars of his cell. His voice babbled in triumph:

  ‘That’s it! That’s how you slow yourself in time! Listen! When you listen to a clock tick, seconds are long! When you notice things between the tickings, they’re longer! If you speed up your perceptions by noting ever more trivial things, you slow your rate of travel in time! That’s the first step!’

  His own voice echoed and re-echoed in the darkness. The little patch of moonlight was very sharp and very clear. It was inches from the top of the cell door opposite him. He said exultantly:

  ‘Then you break away from current time entirely. Reality is real because it matters. You’ve got to push away the mattering of everything in the present. A thing which has no sensible effect has no sensible existence. When you shear away every anchor to the present, you’re leaving all baggage behind. In effect, you run to the back of the train, empty-handed and unhindered. When you slow down time and cut every tie with the present, you get ready to jump, to leave— And then you’ll be able to
change your memory of an event a half-second ago to a perception of an event a half-second ago. And when you’ve done that, you’ve won! You’ve started to travel back in time!’

  He shook the bars of his cell, crying exultantly into the darkness. This was logic! This was reason! This was infallibly the experimental method he’d needed! His eyes gleamed.

  Limpy’s voice came quiedy:

  ‘An’ then what, guy?’

  ‘Then,’ cried Rodney, in exultation, lwhen you’re no longer anchored to the present by clinging to it, you go back to the last thing you do cling to! You’ll have to pick it out before you start! You won’t have a chance on the way! You’ll think of the moment before you - took the wrong train! You’ll stop there! You’ll have a chance to take the right train, if you’re quick! And then … then you’ll come back to present parallel time, to this day and hour, but in an alternate existence resulting from the different course you took! Another time track, Limpy! And that’s where I’m going to go!’

  A long silence. Then Limpy’s voice, rumbling soberly in the blackness.

  “Yeah … I see. Cut loose from now. From everything since the time you wish you’d done different— Yeah! That’s it! I didn’t realize. I got some cash cached away— All the time I’ been tryin’ this, I been rememberin’ that cache as a stake for me to get started on again. But if I go back to where I gotta go, that stuff won’t be on the track my train’ll be travelin’ on. I got it now—’

  Rodney’s hands closed tightly on the bars of his cell. He stared at the slowly creeping patch of moonlight. With a fierce satisfaction he listened to his own breathing, noting differences in every breath. He listened, in the monstrous stillness of the deathhouse, to the beating of his own heart.

  Limpy’s voice came; very grave and very sober.

  ‘1’ got to go a long way back. To when I was a kid, I guess. Yeah… a long way. All the way!’

  Silence. Rodney summoned all the resources of his brain. There were not many brains as good or as disciplined. He knew, and reveled in the knowledge, that all the events that had happened as the consequence of a certain specific instant would soon be unreal. They would be in another time track. They would be might-have-beens, to which no bond could fasten him. Knowing of their coming unreality, he could renounce them. They no longer mattered. They were merely imaginings which would presently have no meaning, and therefore had no meaning now. He viewed them with increasing remoteness, listening to his own breathing and his own heartbeat; watching the creeping patch of moonlight on the wall.

  Time slowed. There were intervals between his heartbeats. There were pauses between his breaths. He could distinguish different parts of the heartbeat cycle. He could distinguish parts of the parts— The patch of moonlight ceased to move.

  It did not mcrve! There were monstrous intervals between his heartbeats. Triumph filled him. The last instant that counted in his scheme of things was enormously vivid. Nothing was important but that. He clung to the thought of it with a fierce intensity, picturing vividly every detail of it.

  The moonlight patch receded a little. It moved with a vast deliberation - backward! Its rate of movement - backward -increased with a smooth acceleration.

  Suddenly there was confusion which was not confusion, and chaos was not chaos at all. It was night and it was day and it was day again. He moved here and there without volition and without effort, like a weightless object upon an insanely charted course at dizzying speed. He was like a phantom on the screen, movable at incredible rates without resistance. Days and nights went by. He flashed through elaborate evolutions with effortless, infinite speed - backward. His speed increased. He could perceive only in flashes. An instant in a car in the open. The car backed with incredible speed. An instant in the courtroom. He was on trial. Flashes of infinitesimal duration before that and before that and before that—

  The confusion and the chaos ended suddenly. He was in the room where Professor Adner Hale lay dead. He, Rodney, had committed the murder in the one fashion no one would possibly associate with him. He had done it with insensate, maniacal violence. It seemed the deed of a brutish and almost mindless fiend. It was inconceivable that one of the best brains in the country should have directed senseless, flailing blows which had continued long after Professor Adner Hale was dead. It was a perfect alibi.

  And this was the instant when he had made his mistake. He surveyed the blood-spattered, violence-smashed room. He saw a chair which was not overturned in the simulated struggle. He regarded it with satisfaction.

  Before, he had toppled it over, without noticing that under it lay the poker with which Professor Hale had been beaten to death. That had been his mistake. It proved that the chair had not been knocked over in Professor Hale’s death struggle. It proved that the effect of mania was the result of calculation. It set the police to work to discover, not a maniac but a coldly functioning brain which had duplicated in every detail but that one the working of a homicidal maniac’s frenzy. That one small flaw had led to the discovery of clue after clue and the condemnation of the country’s greatest physicist to death. But—

  Now he laid the chair gently on its side. The poker was not under it, now. He pulled gently at a chair leg to bring the poker more plainly into view. Now there was nothing but the handiwork of madness.

  He laughed softly. One of the four best brains in the country. He’d been overconfident. That was all. Now this small blunder was corrected. He would go into another time track. The discovery Professor Adner Hale had helped with - on the drudgery only, of course - and which he insisted must be published for all the world to know, would not be published now. With it as his secret, in the time track into which he would now move.

  He felt his return to attained time begin. Time moved swiftly. It was dawn, and he was somewhere else. It was night, and he was in another place. Dawn and midday and night. His body whirled here and there and everywhere, without resistance. There was confusion which was not confusion and chaos which was not chaotic at all. While his body whirled frenziedly through the sequence of events which lay between the significant moment and the instant from which he had traveled back - but now he moved in another time track entirely - his mind was calmly exultant. He was in the midst of crowds, and in solitude. He was in a room which flickered like a kaleidoscope - which was a courtroom. There was an instant when he was in a car being driven somewhere. He passed through months in flashes of infinitely short duration. Then—

  Time steadied. All was normal again. He was in a cell. In a death cell. It was not the cell he had occupied before, but the deathhouse was the same. It was dawn, and a gray light came in the skylight high overhead. He wore prison garb - but not the same garments he had worn before. The stenciled numbers were different. He was in a different time track, but he was in a death cell.

  There were clankings. Footsteps. Three guards and a trusty appeared before his cell. The trusty, twitching, carried a basin of water and safety razor and a pair of shears. He was to shave Rodney’s temples and slit his trouser legs for the convenience of those who would presently - today - take him through that green door and strap him in that horrible squat chair, in which after a little his body - already dead - would struggle convulsively against its doom …

  He was paralyzed. He could not move. The door of his cell opened. They came in. He could not stir. He barely breathed. He was almost in a coma of pure, incredulous horror.

  One of the guards handed him a note.

  ‘Professor Fellenden,’ he said curtly, ‘you know, the fella who fought so hard for you, got permission to send you this.’ Rodney breathed hoarsely. It was almost impossible to move. For an instant he seemed unconscious of the offered message. Then one of the guards stirred, and he snatched it. They would wait while he read it— They would wait that long. No longer— His eyes were hard to focus. Almost he did not try to read but only to delay, to gain precious seconds of life. But then he saw an equation, and he reacted with a stunned swiftness. And Fellende
n had written down for him, in concise equations and precise, scientific phrasing, the theory of time travel with such absolute clarity that a trained brain could grasp it in a single reading. On the very brink of execution, a scientific mind could comprehend and use this, and escape death by the simple process of going back in time and - not committing murder. But nothing else would suffice. He must not commit murder!

  Rodney shifted his eyes and stared unseeingly at the opposite wall. So that was it! He’d been wrong, not in a trivial detail of a murder, but in a basic fact. Execution was a consequence of murder, not of a fumbled clue. And Fellenden, who’d been a murderer himself, had to tell him so with pious urgency! Rodney raged coldly. Very well, he’d go back again! Not to a moment just after he’d murdered Hale, but to a time long before! Before Hale had found out anything for which he would need to be murdered.

  The guards lifted him to his feet and bound his hands behind him. He was very calm, now. Ragingly calm. With the clarity of conception that Fellenden had made possible, he knew that it would be infinitely easy to escape. Even in the chair itself. With his brains—

  He said scornfully:

  ‘Just for curiosity, I’d like to know what set the police on my

  trail after the murder. Something trivial - but I’ve forgotten.’ A guard said awkwardly:

  ‘You laid down a chair to look like it’d been knocked over. You pulled it where you wanted it by one leg. The cops knew it wasn’t knocked over because a loose cushion didn’t fall out. An’

  - your fingerprints were on the leg you pulled it by.’

  Rodney shrugged. Proof enough. He’d have to go back beyond the murder and not commit it. Too bad! Professor Adner Hale had been a righteous old fool whom it had been a positive pleasure to bludgeon to death. Now he’d have to live in a third time track—