The Fury Out of Time

by Biggle Jr. , Lloyd

  “No, sir. I don’t suppose so.”

  “Time, gentlemen,” Colonel Vukin said.

  Colonel Stubbins ignored him. “Have you anything else to tell us about this, Major?”

  Karvel hesitated for a moment, shook his head. “No, sir.”

  “Thank you, Major. Except for that fat tavern owner, you’re our only witness of any consequence. If you think of anything else, I want to know about it immediately.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Stubbins got to his feet, pushed his chair back, and started for the door. Sergeant Gore closed her notebook with a snap and followed him. Colonel Frazier walked over to the bed.

  He said softly, “I have a message of commendation for you from the governor. Your prompt action in getting the rescue work started saved some lives, not to mention bringing speedy aid and comfort to the injured. I also want to apologize for what I said last night. On reflection, I decided that there was no way for you to know that Force X wouldn’t reach the base, and considering the destruction you’d seen, your action in suggesting a tornado alert was entirely proper.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  “I also want to compliment you for resisting what must have been a powerful urge to wave that damned butterfly under Colonel Stubbins’s nose.”

  “Thank you, sir, but you deserve the credit. You convinced me last night that I shouldn’t wave it.”

  Frazier turned away, his facial expression enigmatic. Colonel Rogers stood waiting in the doorway. “Coming?” Frazier asked Haskins.

  Haskins shook his head. “I’ll walk back.”

  Frazier nodded, and went out. Haskins moved a chair close to the bed, and calmly seated himself. When Colonel Vukin advanced on him, he said good-naturedly, “Cut the act, Colonel. I’m not part of the chain of command. I have one question for the major.”

  “How do you feel, Karvel?” Vukin asked.

  “No worse than I did an hour ago.”

  “Ring when you want him thrown out .”

  “Let me know as soon as you hear from the professor,” Karvel said. He turned to Haskins. “What’s the question?”

  Haskins felt his hand reaching for a cigar. He moved it away reluctantly. “What are you holding back, Major?”

  Karvel met his eyes steadily. Vukin left, muttering something that Haskins did not understand. A nurse opened the door, said, “Oh, excuse me,” and closed it. Still Karvel’s gaze did not waver. Haskins, who spent his waking hours meticulously evaluating those human animals who attracted his attention, knew that he was being measured himself, and he resented it.

  “Who are you?” Karvel asked finally.

  “Gerald Haskins, just as I was when Colonel Frazier introduced us. Shall I have him come back and vouch for me?”

  “No. Your credentials must carry some impact, or you wouldn’t have gotten in here.”

  “And so I say again, Major—what are you holding back?”

  Karvel closed his eyes. “I don’t really know if I’m holding anything back,” he said slowly. For the first time Haskins became aware of his rapid, shallow breathing, and realized that Colonel Vukin had not been pulling hospital rank on his superiors for the fun of it. Karvel was a sick man, and— after his interview with the colonels—a very tired one. “Until I find out,” he went on, “I’m going to keep my mouth shut. How about letting me ask a few questions.”

  “Go ahead.”

  “What are the chances that the U.O. came from outer space?”

  “None at all,” Haskins said, “unless it was enclosed in something else. The external surface is a relatively soft alloy. It would have burned in the upper atmosphere.”

  “I suppose you won’t know if the thing is self-propelled until you break into it.”

  “We’ve already broken into it,” Haskins said. “That was no problem. All we had to do was open a hatch. It was a bit more complicated than it sounds, but only because no one ever saw a hatch like this one. It operates on the principle of an iris diaphragm—something like the adjustment on the lens aperture of a camera. We opened it, but we still don’t know if the U.O. is self-propelled.”

  “Hatch? You mean a passenger hatch? Was the thing designed to carry passengers?”

  “It was designed to carry one passenger.”

  “Then you really have a problem. Was there a passenger, and if so, what happened to him?”

  “No problem at all,” Haskins said peacefully. “There was a passenger, and when we opened the hatch he was still there. Unfortunately, he was dead. Extremely dead. Smashed the way those cattle were smashed, only more so. The U.O. required extensive cleaning before we could begin to study it comfortably. Now may I ask you a question?”

  Karvel nodded.

  “What are you holding back?”

  “I won’t know until I’ve talked with an expert. I’ve invited one, a college professor, and he’s promised to come as soon as he can get away. When and if he arrives, you can ask him about it.”

  “Give me his name and address, and I’ll hurry him up.”

  “He’s detained by the circumstance of his wife’s having a baby,” Karvel said. “I don’t question the potency of your influence, sir, but I doubt that even you can hurry that.”

  “What kind of an expert is he?”

  “A lepidopterologist.”

  “It sounds like an extremely rare species of expert,” Haskins said dryly. “I was thinking of drafting a substitute, but I doubt that a…lepidopterologist, was it?…is that easy to locate on a Sunday morning. I’ll wait for your professor. And because he is a…lepidopterologist…that means you are holding back—”

  “One butterfly,” Karvel said. He raised a hand tiredly as Haskins started to speak. “No amplification, and no more questions. Please.”

  Haskins obediently moved toward the door. “Thank you, Major. I’ll be seeing you.”

  Chapter 3

  Professor Kent Alexander arrived shortly after two, and was detained in the lobby until Haskins reached the hospital. Colonel Vukin introduced them, and Alexander gave Haskins a cigar, told him it was a boy, seven pounds four ounces, and asked what had happened to Karvel.

  “He was in an accident,” Haskins said.

  “He sounded incoherent on the telephone. Or maybe it was a bad connection. I thought he said he’d found—”

  “Let’s see it before we talk about it,” Haskins said. “I’ll take him up, Colonel. Thank you.”

  He hurried the professor away before Vukin could object.

  “Are you interested in butterflies?” Alexander asked.

  “Only in this one,” Haskins said.

  The professor was something of a disappointment to him. Gangly, youthful-looking, shy, he had the appearance of a flustered undergraduate—or, Haskins reminded himself, of a new father. He decided to postpone judgment.

  The professor bounded into Karvel’s room ahead of him and burst into laughter. “Aren’t you getting a little old for this sort of thing? What does the other guy look like? Here—have a cigar.”

  “I didn’t touch him,” Karvel said. “And no, thanks. It may be weeks before I can inhale properly. What took you so long?”

  Haskins closed the door, and unobtrusively took possession of a chair in the corner.

  “I was driving carefully,” Alexander said. “I want my son to be at least a day old before he’s an orphan. And man, am I tired. Didn’t get a wink of sleep last night. Hospital waiting room. Gruesome experience. It’s enough to give one a wholesome respect for nature. Who’d want to go through that more than once a year?”

  “Your wife probably agrees with you,” Karvel said.

  “At least she had an anesthetic. Where is it, man? If you’ve made me drive a hundred miles just to investigate one of your hallucinations, I’ll choke you.”

  Karvel opened the nightstand drawer, took out a small cardboard box, and opened it. The professor stared, whipped out a pocket lens, and stared again. His breath hissed audibly. “Bowden,” he whispered
. “I’ll name the boy Bowden, though Doris swears he’ll go through life answering to his middle name if I do.”

  “What do you think of it?” Karvel asked.

  “I don’t know what I think. I can’t think. The thing is absolutely impossible. It’s a monster. Where’d you get it?”

  “I was sitting on a fallen tree, and it circled me a couple of times and lit right beside me.”

  “You’re sure you saw it fly?”

  “Positive. What I’d like to know is whether such a drastic mutation can occur at one crack, or whether it would require gradual evolutionary changes over a large number of generations.”

  “You’ve got me. I’m no geneticist.”

  “What’s your answer as a lepidopterologist?”

  “Yes to both questions. Because the changes are so drastic, it’s hard to believe that they all occurred in a single mutation. On the other hand, if a long series of evolutionary changes had taken place, some of the intermediate stages should have come to light. A lot of people collect butterflies, and someone, somewhere, would have found a monarch with a thorax like this one, or eyes—did you notice the eyes?—or wings, or…” He paused. “I’m not sure even now that you’re not pulling my leg. It’s hard to believe this even when I’m looking at it. My God—a bialate, bipedal butterfly!”

  “It’s real. I told you—it flew around me a couple of times and landed right beside me, which was a colossal piece of luck. If I’d had to take even one step to catch it, it would have gotten away.”

  “Why?”

  “I couldn’t walk.”

  “You lack the true scientific spirit. I’d run a mile to catch this, whether I could walk or not.”

  “Sure you would,” Karvel said disgustedly. Haskins chose that moment to leave his chair. “May I see it?” he asked.

  Alexander held the box under his nose. Haskins scrutinized the impaled butterfly, shrugged, and returned to his place in the corner. He was wondering if Karvel, with the professor’s assistance, was trying to pull his leg.

  “If it did require a series of evolutionary changes,” Karvel asked, “how long would they take?”

  “I haven’t the faintest idea,” Alexander said. “As I said before, I’m no geneticist.”

  “I’m not asking for a scientific paper. Just an educated guess.”

  “I haven’t got that kind of an education.”

  “An uneducated guess, then.”

  “I can’t even give you that. I’ll make some inquiries, though. Can I take it with me?”

  “You might as well,” Karvel said. “If a certain colonel sees it again, he’ll try to make me eat it. Push those inquiries, will you?”

  “Sure. There’s a man at the college who might be able to help. Ferguson, his name is. He’ll know whom to ask, anyway. What do you think of it, Mr. Haskins?”

  “It looks like a butterfly,” Haskins said.

  “I suppose so,” Alexander said, with a puzzled frown. “It looks like a butterfly, it is a butterfly, and yet it can’t be a butterfly. Put another way, it doesn’t look like a butterfly, it isn’t a butterfly, and yet it’s got to be a butterfly.”

  “Are you sure he’s an expert?” Haskins asked Karvel.

  Karvel nodded. “Stop talking nonsense, and tell Mr. Haskins what’s different about this particular butterfly.”

  Alexander seated himself on the edge of the bed, bent over the box with his pocket lens, and announced in hushed tones, “It has two wings!”

  “Don’t most butterflies?” Haskins asked. “They’d have a little trouble getting around on one, wouldn’t they?”

  “Good God! All of the Lepidoptera—moths and butterfles—have four wings!”

  “Is that so? Sounds like a good point. I’ve never paid much attention to moths and butterflies.”

  “And it has only two legs,” Alexander went on. “It should have six. The thorax has only a single segment. It should have three, each of them with a pair of legs and two of them with pairs of wings. The abdomen is shortened— not just smaller, but structurally simplified, with fewer segments. The eyes—the damned eyes aren’t even compound! This is obviously a monarch butterfly, but it’s only about a fourth as large as it should be.”

  “In other words,” Haskins said, “it’s a freak.”

  “Freak isn’t strong enough. It’s a dratted monster!”

  “Abnormalities occur in all living things. Man has two legs, but babies have been born without legs. A butterfly with only two wings—”

  “It isn’t that kind of abnormality,” Alexander protested. “It isn’t a butterfly with two wings missing. It’s a butterfly with a single pair of wings shaped and adapted to do the work of two pair.”

  “All right. You’re the expert, and I’m not equipped to ask intelligent questions, much less argue with you. It’s a mutation, a sport, or maybe it’s the result of a long process of evolution. Could such a mutation be induced by radiation, Professor?”

  “I don’t know. I’d have to consult a geneticist.”

  Haskins smiled, shaking his head. “Consulting experts is exactly like running into debt. Once you get started, there’s no end to it. I gather that you favor the mutation theory over the evolution theory.”

  “I don’t remember saying so, but I suppose I do, mainly because no butterfly has ever been found with any of these changes.”

  “The professor knows nothing about related events,” Karvel said to Haskins.

  Haskins met his eyes squarely. “Are you assuming that the events are related, Major?”

  “I am. No butterfly has ever been found with any of these changes. Suddenly one is found, with all of them, in close association with an object and an occurrence that are equally strange. Aren’t we entitled to make such an assumption?”

  “I’d be the last to deny it.”

  “What the devil are you two talking about?” Alexander demanded.

  Haskins ignored him. “You’re entitled to make any assumption you like. Assumptions, or suppositions, or hypotheses are highly useful work animals, but for display purposes they aren’t worth a damn. Can you put your assumption to work?”

  “Look at it this way. Say an airplane of unknown design crashes in the valley below Whistler’s. We don’t know where it came from, but nearby we find a butterfly that has previously been identified only in Tibet. Wouldn’t it be rational to form a working assumption that the plane came from Tibet?”

  “I doubt it,” Haskins said. “I’d want a guarantee signed by the butterfly itself that it actually did come from Tibet, and hadn’t been an unnoticed local resident for years. I’d also want to know what world travelers had passed through the neighborhood recently. In actual fact, I’d probably ignore tie butterfly and concentrate on the airplane. I have a bias against assumptions involving animate objects.”

  “He had a whack on the head,” Alexander said. “Are you humoring him, or what?”

  “I’m humoring myself. Go ahead, Major. For the moment we’ll assume that the Tibetan butterfly proves the airplane came from Tibet. What then?” He watched Karvel closely. Either the man was better-tempered than he had any right to expect, or his self-control was impressive.

  “How about it, Alex?” Karvel said. “Do you deny that this butterfly could be the result of a long period of evolutionary change?”

  “Not really. Evolution seems to move toward simplification and specialization, and most of these changes are actually anticipated in many current species. Butterflies once had six wings, perhaps even eight. Today they have four, and the hind wings are frequently smaller and of little use in flying. Some species already have their front legs reduced to small brushes. Maybe the evolutionary trend toward a bialate, bipedal butterfly with a simplified body is already under way, but one just doesn’t expect to come face to face with the end product. Even that couldn’t account for what’s happened to this butterfly’s eyes, unless you want to say that evolution had to make them better because they couldn’t get much worse. As
for your related events—”

  Karvel cut him off with a wave of his hand. “The reason none of the intermediary stages of this butterfly have come to light could be because they haven’t occurred yet, and this butterfly hasn’t occurred yet, either. It will occur only in the future.”

  “Are you sure this isn’t a mental hospital?” Alexander asked, in an uneasy aside to Haskins.

  “Not today,” Haskins said, “though I’m not making any guarantee about tomorrow. How far into the future, Major?”

  “Consult your friendly geneticist. A few years, a few centuries—perhaps thousands of years.”

  Haskins glanced at his watch, thinking that it was time he got back to Hangar Seven. He said absently, “Continue, please.”

  “I’ve finished. If a Tibetan butterfly in connection with an airplane would suggest that the plane came from Tibet, then a future butterfly, in connection with the inexplicable arrival of an inexplicable U.O., would suggest that the U.O. came from the future. As a working assumption, of course. If any inconsistencies turn up—”

  “You back down easily, Major.”

  “So far I haven’t been able to find a single inconsistency.”

  “What about Force X? Did that come from the future?”

  “In a sense. If an object smashes through a brick wall, you’ll expect to see a few bricks fly. If an object smashes through a temporal barrier, you might reasonably expect some comparable reaction.”

  “A few bricks—of time?”

  “Or an eddy of time. Or a whirlpool.”

  “A whirlpool,” Haskins mused. “A spiral of time. I’m sorry Colonel Stubbins isn’t here. His reaction would be interesting to watch.”

  “I only told you because you asked for it.”

  “So I did. And having gotten it, I couldn’t complain even if I wanted to, which I don’t. Tell me this, Professor. While this future butterfly is evolving, what changes might take place in the human race?”

  “What a question to ask a lepidopterologist! Oh, I vaguely recall some speculation on the subject. The man of the future may be totally bald. Vestiges such as the appendix and perhaps the tailbone might disappear altogether. There may be changes in the teeth, as one devastating result of the civilized diet. The feet will be modified by the corrosive restrictions of shoes. Experts have produced long lists of such things, but I don’t remember much about them except that they always give me the impression that I’d rather not be around to meet their subject.”