Collected Fiction

by Henry Kuttner

  “Go on, Doctor,” Owen urged. “You’re doing fine. If the clock were a temporal anchor, then what? That draught I drank—or thought I drank—does it suggest anything to you? A sort of temporal lubricant, like the best butter?”

  “When I have Maxi,” Krafft said, “and I concentrate closely with his help, I sometimes succeed in letting my consciousness slip free from this continuum of space-time, as if—as if there were a certain reorientation in a direction that has no equivalent in space. As if I were frictionless, if you like, in time. Now if one accepts as a hypothesis that you did somehow absorb from the clock a draught of some lubricant—it does not make much practical sense, of course—one result might be that you, and only you, are so geared to the clock that you are pulled backward in time by it when you react the hands.”

  “As if the anchor were dragging?” Owen suggested with interest. “Maybe the schooner’s drifting backward in time too, and whenever I reset the hands, the anchor slips and drags into the past, I wonder if they’re noticing it?”

  Krafft chuckled. “Mixing a temporal lubricant would not be easy, my boy.”

  “No, of course not. But you know the fluid clutch? You mix up millions of tiny iron-particles with oil, and when you magnetize the iron the oil freezes solid until it’s released again. What if I drank something like that?”

  “Then you would remain fixed solid in normal time until you turned the clock back, releasing yourself from time, allowing the anchor to drag you back. Yes. I can visualize that. Do not, however, confuse time with space, except to remember that duration is as vast as space, perhaps waster. Whatever keeps us embedded in our normal time-plenum, we should be grateful to it. To be frictionless in time might be very dangerous, Only inertia would keep one from slipping off into past or future or crosstime parallels. Most awkward! The slightest push from anything else that happened to be moving through time with you might send you hurtling away.”

  “But what could V’

  “Well, your schooner might, if you collided with it. Or another time-traveler, which isn’t likely. You must consider the sea upon which that schooner might float as a—a sort of paratime as distinct from the serial times which we live in and perceive in prescient dreams and in memories. When you are frictionless in time, as you are while the clock turns back, arid of course I speak hypothetically, my boy—then you are at the mercy of any casual traveler through paratime who may collide with you and send you sailing off helpless, unable to get any traction to stop yourself. I advise you to look out for time-travelers.”

  “Like a rocketship in space,” Owen murmured. “That’s not important, though. Look here, Doctor—why can’t I get back beyond ten o’clock? If twelve hours is its limit, and I suppose it has to be with this sort of numbering on the dial, why can’t I turn it now to twelve hours ago as of right this minute?”

  “Because you aren’t existing now, obviously, my boy,” Krafft assured him. “Hypothetically, hypothetically, of course. You have not really cheated time. You follow your normal progression through paratime, as the planets follow theirs through space, though still revolving in their orbits and on their axes. I would assume, from the data at hand, that you obey immutable laws by existing legally, as it were, in tomorrow morning at the hour of ten, when you turned back the clock. It returned you—hypothetically—to ten tonight.”

  HE nodded at the blue clock Owen held.

  “If we remain inside our hypothesis, Peter, we might draw all sorts of wondrous inferences from the way that clock is sealed. Arbitrarily we consider a clock a collection of cogs geared to measure time. Inside that clock we might, if we were to open it, find something very different indeed. The space-time plenum, my boy, is basically a matter of frequency, which reminds one irresistibly of the atomic clock, with its monitoring oscilloscope. That operates on quantum transition, as you no doubt know. The symmetric output pulse is produced by the absorption-line frequency of ammonia gas absorbing control signals, so the clock has a potential accuracy of something like one part in ten billion. It tells time, Peter, by the movements of atoms themselves. Frequency, you see! It all fits very neatly together—in hypothesis. A clock is precisely what your time-travelers might well toss overboard for an anchor, a device which could be set to a particular space-time frequency so they would not slip off for lack of friction while they study.”

  ‘“You dreamed,” Owen informed him, “that they were studying the bubbles your tesseract-experiments sent, up to the surface of the sea.”

  “No doubt, no doubt,” Krafft murmured.

  “But Doctor, you did! Wait. Tonight you’ll dream it.”

  Krafft laughed gently. “I should not be surprised if I did, Peter, after this very interesting talk. But you and not I would be its originator!”

  “They’re the originators,” Owen said stubbornly, glancing up as if toward the hull of the hovering ship. “From the future, I wonder?”

  “Perhaps natives of paratime itself,” Krafft suggested in an indulgent voice. “Perhaps they exist only in absolute time, like deep-sea creatures. One might imagine that the pressure of normal time could crush them, as deep-sea pressure would crush a man. Except that the compacting would have to occur through time—they would be squeezed into an instantaneous existence, like mayflies.” He chuckled. “Perhaps that is what mayflies are, Peter—compressed time-travelers, their whole lifetimes crushed together into a day!”

  “If my whole lifetime isn’t going to be crushed,” Owen said, “I’ve got to get back past ten o’clock and stop that burglary. I’ve got to do it, Doctor!”

  “My boy, you cannot,” Krafft said flatly. “Even if your little blue clock were the anchor and the time-vehicle you suggest. If I were you, I would try to make use of it in some better way, such as preventing Edmund from discovering what you cannot prevent from happening. That is my solution to, your very interesting hypothetical problem.” He got up stiffly. “And now, my boy, I shall go down and get Maxi.”

  “Maxi’s gone.”

  “Ah! Well, we shall see. Tomorrow we may find the burglary too a part of your very interesting dream.”

  “But the cypress!” Owen said excitedly. “It’s the only bit of proof I had left, but it at least paid off. You saw it!”

  “Peter, my boy, I did see it. I congratulate you on experiencing a most interesting prescient dream. But no more than that. You are tired, my boy. You are over-excited. So I suggest—yes, yes, you have guessed it, Peter. You had better drink your beer and go to bed.”

  “I’m tired of going to bed!” Owen said in a desperate voice. “Besides, I might wake up yesterday. The time-travelers might catch me. Maybe they’re just fishing for a shore dinner.”

  “Drink your beer,” Krafft said in his imperturbable voice. “I thank you for telling me where to find Maxi.”

  “If he isn’t there,” Owen said, clutching at straws, “will you believe me? If you find burglars actually did break in, will you believe?”

  “But Peter, you speak of an accomplished fact. If it happened at all, it happened before ten tonight. Quite so. Then where does time-travel enter? If you say you were down there and saw the broken window, I will believe you. But you needed no magic clock for that. You should have notified your uncle, not sat down with me to spin eccentric tales. No, no, you are over-excited, Peter. I must go now. Indeed, I must go.”

  He turned toward the door.

  Owen sighed and picked up the dock. He didn’t want to do this, but he had no choice. The good Doctor would find the looted safe, summon Uncle Edmund and the police, and Uncle Edmund’s rage would know no bounds.

  “Good night, Doctor Krafft,” Owen said calmly, and turned back the hands of the dock.

  CHAPTER VI

  Sponge Out the Past

  LATER Peter went to bed. Eventually he slept, his head seething with useless plans and thoughts so complex as to defy, description. He had a distracting dream.

  A flying saucer was drifting on the surface of an odd-looking ocean
where the waves looked unaccountably like minutes, though how he recognized the likeness he didn’t know. Aboard the saucer were three time-travelers named Wynken, Blinken and Nod, and they were all sea-sick.

  At intervals they staggered to the anchor-chain and tried feebly to pull it up. The chain kept swaying and twitching wildly.

  Aside from the obvious fact that the three kept coiling and uncoiling like gastropods, the time-travelers were utterly indescribable.

  * * * * *

  The next morning—so to speak—Owen woke with a much clearer head, but a sense of doom hanging over him which made him feel like a cypress. It was very early. The thin, gray air of a seaside morning, salt-smelling with a hint of lemon-flavored sage from the hills inland, filled the room with complex odors.

  Owen sat up in bed and thought.

  “Doom?” he asked himself inquiringly. “Why?”

  And the answer came to him. Those time-travelers, at the anchor-chain, hauling up the anchor. He snatched swiftly for the blue clock, and as swiftly let it go, fearful of being whisked through the ceiling into paratime in the wink of an eye.

  “It isn’t really true, of course,” he assured himself. “They aren’t actually seasick. We all colored those dreams we had, about them by our own personal warps. I must be worrying about the anchor-slip that happens whenever I jump back in time. But can I be sure they aren’t pulling up the anchor? This clock isn’t a gift. Probably a loan at best, and they may take it back any minute.”

  That was the sense of impending doom. He could lose the clock at any time. And he had come to depend on it. No human agency could possibly unravel the awful skein of his dealings with Lady Pantagruel, Uncle Edmund, Chief Egan and Claire. Even with the clock he wasn’t sure how he could accomplish anything.

  “Oh!” Peter Owen said suddenly, and sat up even straighten.

  Of course he could accomplish something. He could accomplish everything, if he worked fast and kept his wits about him. And he’d have to work fast. Wynken, Blinken and Nod might decide to up-anchor and go home before he got his plan under way.

  Dr. Krafft had given him the clue, after all. Past ten last night he could not go, but the purpose was to thwart the burglars, and if Uncle Edmund didn’t discover the burglary until the sale of Lady Pantagruel could be arranged to Owen’s satisfaction, then the same end would be accomplished.

  Owen blinked excitedly at the gray air of early morning. Presently he would go down to breakfast. Presently Uncle Edmund—unless time had changed more than seemed likely—would insinuate that Claire’s offer for Lady Pantagruel might be acceptable. Then was the time to strike, while. Uncle Edmund’s mood stayed comparatively plastic.

  Somehow Owen would have to keep the robbery secret. Somehow he would have to muzzle Doctor Krafft whenever he seemed about to remember Maxi in the library. Chief Egan had to stay out of the house and Claire had to come in!

  In robe and slippers, moving silently through the silent house, Owen hurried downstairs to the hall telephone. He had a nervous feeling that he might pass himself somewhere in paratime, and a definite neurosis about the chances of finding Peter Owen in bed and asleep when he went back to his room. But he managed to get a call put through to Claire Bishop’s apartment in Los Angeles without any major slip-ups.

  The phone rang, a long time.

  “Hello,” Claire’s cross and sleepy voice said, at the end of several interminable minutes. “Hello—Peter? What on earth do you mean, waking me up at dawn?”

  Hastily Owen spoke. “Now darling, pull yourself together. I couldn’t stand another scene, after yesterday. Take a deep breath and keep your temper. Okay?”

  HESITATING between anger and fondness, Claire laughed uncertainly.

  “I want you to get dressed right away and wake up your lawyer and come down to Las Ondas,” Owen went on rapidly.

  “Peter, you’re mad!”

  “Don’t argue, darling. You’ll never know what I’ve been through since yesterday. I can get Lady Pantagruel for you if you do exactly as I tell you.”

  “I hate Lady Pantagruel!” Claire declared passionately. Owen could picture, as via television, her fluff of yellow curls standing on end and the sudden blaze in her round blue eyes. “I’ll see your disgusting Uncle Edmund dead in his coffin before I appear in that play.”

  This went on for some while. But not forever. Eventually she said:

  “Well, darling, if it weren’t for you I’d. never do it. You’ve got a sweeter nature than I have, Peter dear. What is it you want me to do?”

  “Get down here as fast as you can. Uncle Edmund breakfasts at nine. I’m going to manage things so that by nine-thirty he’ll be prepared to sign the contract of sale. Then I want to reach you in a hurry and get you and your lawyer over here without a minute’s delay. “If you stop for breakfast at—say—the Las Ondas Hotel, I can phone you when I need you.”

  “All right, darling. I’ll do it.”

  “And keep your temper!”

  “I’ll try, Peter.” A pause. Then, “Peter dear!”

  “Yes, darling?”

  “I have a bit of good news for you, dear. Guess what? A job for you managing the Claire Bishop Film Company—if we get Lady Pantagruel.”

  Owen exhaled deeply into the telephone. “How did you work that?”

  “Oh, I’ve been at it quite a while. Your experience with the commercial film company got you a good name in certain, circles, and I’ve been building you up tremendously. Yesterday afternoon I wrung a definite promise out of our most important backer, and all we need, to do is sign up Uncle Edmund. Okay, Peter dear?”

  “Ah,” Owen said, and there was a brief period of verbal smooching.

  * * * * *

  “You need not have been so prompt, Peter,” Uncle Edmund said with a smile of acid, looking up from his plate. “Sit down, sit down. Bad enough to eat oatmeal, without looking at a face like porridge while I do it.” He shuddered ostentatiously.

  “Good morning, uncle. Good morning. Doctor Krafft. Was there any interesting mail?”

  “Yes, there was,” Uncle Edmund said. “I got an offer from Metro for Lady Pantagruel, topping Miss Bishop’s by ten thousand. Naturally, I intend to—” Here he moved his hand suddenly, caught his cuff in the cream-jug and overturned its contents neatly into his lap.

  His roar of rage made the windows rattle.

  “Naturally, I intend to sell the play to Metro the moment Louis gets down to his desk!” he shouted, and leaped up, mopping furiously. “Peter, it’s your job to see that my belongings are set out where I don’t fall over them. I have a good notion to throw this in your face!” Owen placidly slipped his hand in his pocket and turned back the clock . . .

  “—got an offer from Metro for Lady Pantagruel,” Uncle Edmund was saying serenely enough, spooning up oatmeal.

  Owen leaned across the table and moved the cream-jug carefully. Uncle Edmund pierced him with an annoyed look, but before he could speak Dr. Krafft, following some private thought-train, spoke gently.

  “You know,” he said, staring pensively at his thumb-nail, “I have almost remembered something. Wait. Please.” He squeezed his eyes shut. “I think I know where I left my dear little Max!”

  “Oh the beach!” Owen exploded, with such violence that Uncle Edmund Jumped and nearly upset his oatmeal. Dr. Krafft opened his eyes, blinked, and shook his head.

  “No, Peter, you have not guessed it. It was—wait, I almost have—”

  “You took a walk on the beach yesterday morning,” Owen said. “You had some thinking to do. And you took Maxi along, remember?”

  “Ah, but I brought him back again,” Dr. Krafft murmured. “No, I left Maxi on the—I left him—”

  “On the beach,” Owen said firmly. “You didn’t bring him back. I remember noticing. I thought you must have put him in your pocket. But you couldn’t have. You were just wearing swimming trunks. That’s logical, isn’t it?”

  “What?” the confused savant asked. “Po
ckets? No, I have no pockets in my swimming trunks. So Maxi could not be in them, of course. But I am almost—”

  “Well, there you are,” Owen hurried on glibly. “You sat on the beach to think, and put Maxi where you could concentrate on him, and when you were through you just forgot Maxi. He’s probably still sitting on that rock—unless the tide washed him away,” he added cunningly.

  “Ah, my poor little Maxi!” cried Dr. Krafft, struck to the heart.‘He pushed his chair back and cast a troubled glance about the table. “You must excuse me, Edmund. Peter. My poor Maxi, washed away! No, no! I come, Maxi!” And he trotted briskly out of the room.

  STUMM grimly went on with his oatmeal, ignoring the confusion pointedly. Owen coughed.

  “If you’re trying.to attract my attention,” Stumm observed, “remember you’re a rational animal, not a dumb brute. Barking like an airedale is a poor substitute for civilized speech.”

  Repressing an impulse to ask Uncle Edmund what he knew about civilized speech, Owen tactfully broached the subject of Lady Pantagruel again. Stumm said he’d had a better offer and didn’t care to discuss it.

  “There was nothing but bills in the mail,” Owen remarked rather daringly.

  “Hold your tongue,” Uncle Edmund commanded. “The basic postulate of non-allness—” Here he grew slightly confused by the magnitude of the subject he was approaching, changed his mind and drew an envelope from his inner pocket. “You saw some of the mail,” he said. “Not all of it. I opened this before you dragged yourself-tardily down to breakfast. Metro. See?” He held up the envelope, but withdrew it quickly as Owen held out his hand. “Don’t snatch,” he said. “I haven’t the slightest thought of letting you gratify your Peeping-Tom proclivities.”

  Owen thought fast. “That’s not Metro,” he said. “I can see it.”

  His uncle turned the letter over, verified the printing on its face. “Astigmatic?” he inquired acidly. “Here—look.”

  Owen lunged forward, snatched the envelope from his uncle’s hand and tore out the enclosed letter. C. Edmund Stumm, for once inarticulate, sat completely dazed and aghast, as though the oatmeal had cursed him.