by Anthology
His phone rang and Stephanie’s voice said, “Professor Rosenbluth on the line, Mrs. Castleman.”
Castleman gripped the receiver tightly to his ear, looked at the digital clock again—it was 12:31—and heard his own voice say quiveringly, “Professor?” Listen Professor Rosenbluth, about your theory of time snapping backwards . . .”
“Yes, yes,” the voice came back from the receiver, “I know about that, it is my theory, everyone knows that, you do not have to tell me about it. What does Glamdring and Glamdring want of me? I am available on a consulting basis. They can hire me day by day. My rates are very reasonable.”
“Professor, listen please. I happen to know that your theory is absolutely correct, but the bounce has already taken place.”
“Nonsense, nonsense. Are you a mathematician? Are you a scientist? How can you claim to understand my theory? Have you ready my papers? What is your name, young man?”
Castleman swallowed.
“Hah?” asked Professor Rosenbluth.
“My name is Myron Castleman.”
“Of Glamdring and Glamdring? Yes? Yes? That’s a very good firm. I am not prepared to resign my professorship as yet, but I am available on a consulting basis. What precisely do you require, Mr. Castleberry?”
“Professor, what I want to know is, once the bounce happens, when we get back up to the moment we, ah, bounced from, what happens then? Won’t we just bounce again” Won’t we get stuck at one point and just keep repeating that hour?”
“No no no, Castleberry. No, no. The energy of the temporal redisplacement will be dissipated, and we will pass through the point of intersection with the counteruniverse and no one will ever even notice it. That is the beauty of my theory. That is its greatness, its elegance. Do you understand scientific elegance? Economy of detail? Parsimony? How can you comprehend me?”
Castleman looked at his clock. It said 12:51. “Professor,” he said desperately, “once the bounce takes place, everything is restored to its previous condition. The world is set back exactly where it was. Only nobody notices because their minds are set back too. Don’t you see?”
“What are you trying to do, Castleberry, horn in on my theory? I don’t think I can talk to you any more. You are trying to steal ideas. If you want my services, you have to hire me. I cannot afford to give away my thoughts. How can I support myself? How can I support my family, Castleberry?”
“Everybody bounces back and forgets everything that happened during the bounce, but I don’t. I don’t! Do you understand me, professor? The whole world is stuck here, recycling this single hour!”
He looked at his clock. 12:52.
“Professor Rosenbluth,” he said. “in precisely eight minutes the world is going to flash one hour into the past. From one o’clock it’s going to go back to one minute after noon. Everything will be restored to its condition at 12:01. You’ll be back doing what you were doing. I’ll be back outside my office, standing near Grand Central.
“Nobody will remember this hour. It will, uh, unhappen. But I remember! I’ve relived this one hour over and over!”
“Mr. Castleberry,” the professor’s voice came sharply, “I am a very busy man, but I will give you a few more minutes. Here is what you must do. Stay there on the telephone. When the time is up, I will still be here as well. That will disabuse you of your silly notion.”
Defeated, Castleman said. “Very well.” He looked at his clock, waiting for the digital neons to flash 1:00. They did. There was a familiar crackling sound followed by a single, loud report.
With the echo of that crack still in his ears, Castleman looked up at the Grand Central Tower clock. It said 12:01. He turned ninety degrees and sprinted west, bouncing off startled pedestrians and recklessly dodging cars and buses as he crossed the avenues.
At Madison he turned and continued uptown, his sprint slowing to a dogged trot as his breath came with increasing difficulty. At 49th Street he entered the Stoebler Building, mopped his sweating forehead with a soft handkerchief while he waited for the elevator to arrive, rode up to his office and snatched up the telephone after brushing past the receptionist and his secretary with breathless grunts.
“Stephanie,” he gasped, “get me Rosenbluth back!”
“Back, Mr. Castleman? I don’t understand.”
“I was just talking to—him.” Castleman stopped, held the receiver away from his ear and looked at it as if to discover some secret in the official Glamdring and Glamdring beige plastic piece. “No, of course not. I’m sorry, Stephanie.” He looked at the digital clock on his desk. It said 12:06.
“Will that be all, Mr. Castleman?” Stephanie asked.
He thought for a few seconds. “I want you to call Long Island University, physics department, and get me a Professor Nathan Rosenbluth. This is extremely urgent, Stephanie. I’ll stay on the line while you place the call.”
He dragged in a deep lungful of air while he waited. His eyes roamed to the low table where the morning Times and Wall Street Journal lay. In the telephone earpiece he heard Stephanie calling information, then placing the call to Rosenbluth’s office, wheedling a line to the professor from his own secretary.
Then Rosenbluth’s voice came over the line. “This is Rosenbluth. What is it? Who is calling from Glamdring and Glamdring? Don’t you realize that I am a very busy man? What do you want?”
Castleman moaned. Well, give it a try anyway, he thought. “Professor,” he said, “this is Myron Castleman at Glamdring and Glamdring. We were talking on the phone just a few minutes ago, do you remember that?”
“Nonsense,” Rosenbluth’s voice came sharply. “I never heard of any Castleton, never spoke with you, and besides I just arrived here from conducting a doctoral seminar. So I could not have spoken with anyone on the telephone.”
“I’m very sorry to have disturbed you, sir,” said Castleman. Slowly and carefully he hung the receiver back on to the telephone desk set.
His digital clock said 12:22.
He stood up and walked around his office again, stopping to gaze out the window at the grime of industrial Long Island City. Of course, for all that Rosenbluth was the one to discover the time-bounce phenomenon, he was as much subject to its influence as someone who’d never heard of it. Castleman could talk to him all he wanted, could possibly even convince him of what was happening during the hour-long period of a resumption, but once the bounce took place and time resumed its progress—for a single hour—Rosenbluth would be back at 12:01 just like everybody else.
What frustration, Castleman thought, if he ever did succeed in making Rosenbluth realize that the strange phenomenon he had theorized was an actuality, had taken place, and was recurring at one-hour intervals. At the end of the hour the next resumption would find Rosenbluth as ignorant as ever—and Castleman back at his familiar post looking up at the Grand Central Tower, the place where he’d happened to be at one minute after noon. Resumption time.
He picked up the phone again and buzzed his secretary. “Stephanie,” he said to her, “I want to do some heavy thinking for the next few minutes. Please don’t put though any calls or visitors until one o’clock.”
He hung up, paced, started out the window, paced some more and flung himself onto the couch. The peculiarity of the time bounce, as he mulled it over, was that the resumption of the earlier state of being not only set physical objects back to their former positions, it actually wiped out the events of the lost hour. Like daylight saving indeed!
With the lost hour unhappened, even memories of the time were obliterated. As far as anyone else was concerned, the hour hadn’t been spent and then undone—it seemed never to have happened at all!. Thus no one was aware of the bounce. They might be reliving a given moment for the fifth time, the fiftieth, the five millionth, and never notice it! And never get past one o’clock this afternoon, either . . .
The entire universe hung up on a single sixty-minute period, eternally repeating the events of that hour. As Castleman contemplated th
e prospect his head spun.
Strangest of all was the fact that he—and so far as he could tell, no one else in the world—retained his memory of the lost hour even after the bounce. He had already piled up a whole series of memories of that hour, and by recalling those experiences and by understanding the phenomenon, he could vary his behavior each time, while everyone else simply repeated the same hour over and over—except when Castleman influenced them.
Once Miss Dolores Park had a different luncheon companion at Hamer Heaven.
Once the trio on the library steps had a fourth member for part of their debate.
Once—no, twice—Professor Rosenbluth himself had had odd phone calls when he got back to his office from conducting his graduate seminar.
But those aberrations no longer existed even as memories for the persons they had happened to. Only Castleman retained those events in his mind.
It was a curious sort of immortality. Everyone in the world would repeat one hour, forever, and never realize that time had come to a quivering halt at that point. And Myron Castleman would be permitted to live forever, piling up experiences and memories, but each of only an hour’s duration, each resumed at 12:01 PM on this balmy spring day in Manhattan, standing outside near the Grand Central Tower.
He looked at the clock on his desk and sighed. It was nearly one o’clock. He closed his eyes and folded his hands behind his head, waiting for the crackling sound.
A few minutes later—or perhaps it was an hour earlier—he found himself standing in midtown, looking up at the clock. He ran to the corner United Cigar Store, hurled himself into an unoccupied phone booth, dropped a dime in the slot and dialed his own office.
“This is Myron Castleman speaking,” he began as soon as he heard his secretary’s voice. “Now, listen, this is extremely urgent. I want you to telephone Long Island University, physics department. Get hold of Professor Nathan Rosenbluth.”
A query.
“R-o-s-e-n-b-l-u-t-h. Right. Tell him that I’m a big shot at Glamdring and Glamdring, that I have to talk to him immediately about his time-bounce theory. That I’m on my way now, and please to be ready for me in the lobby.
“Tell him that it’s a vital matter, and we must complete our conversation by one o’clock or all is lost.”
A few words in response.
“Fine. Good.”
He pulled open the door and vaulted from the booth, leaving the telephone hanging by its reinforced cord. He ran from the store, into Grand Central, fishing for a subway token as he ran. When he reached the lower level, he jammed the token into its slot, shoved through the turnstile, saw an express at the platform just closing its doors and managed to wedge an arm between the rubber seals.
Reluctantly the doors rolled open again, and Castleman collapsed into a vacant seat on the half-empty noontime train. He sat gasping for breath, feeling sharp pains in his chest and shoulder. With his right hand he pulled a handkerchief from his hip pocket and ran it around the inside of his collar.
When he reached his stop, the pains had partially subsided and he had his breath back. He climbed the stairs laboriously, crossed the wide plaza and pushed his way into the building where he hoped to find Nathan Rosenbluth.
Inside the lobby was a receptionist’s desk manned by a bored-looking student. Castleman gasped his name and asked if Professor Rosenbluth was expecting him.
The student jerked a casual thumb over his shoulder, indicating a shabby-looking figure examining a wall plaque nearby.
Castleman staggered to the man and introduced himself. It was Rosenbluth. Castleman said, “We only have a few minutes.” He looked frantically for a clock in the wall, saw one high on the wall behind the desk. It was eight minutes until one. He put his head into his hands and began to sob.
Rosenbluth said, “What’s the matter? What kind of thing is this? Are you really the man from Glamdring and Glamdring? What’s going on here? I’m a busy man!”
Castleman tried to explain his situation to Rosenbluth, tried to make him understand that the time bounce had occurred, was continuing to occur at hourly intervals. Rosenbluth seemed a mixture of disinterest and hostility.
Castleman’s chest pains were growing worse. He could feel a cold sweat on his brow, feel perspiration dripping down his sleeves from his armpits. He pulled off his jacket and threw in onto the floor, pleading with Rosenbluth to find a way to get time flowing normally again.
“I don’t want immortality,” Castleman wept, “not this way, anyhow! Everybody else has it, but they don’t know it! I know it and it’s unbearable. I can’t go on living this hour over and over!”
Rosenbluth demanded to know what evidence Castleman could give him.
Castleman looked at the clock. It said 12:56. The pain in his chest and shoulder became excruciating; a hot wave seemed to pass through his entire body, and he couldn’t breath.
He pitched forward onto the floor of the room; but before he ever felt the impact of his body on the dirty terrazzo, a roaring filled his ears, a red film seemed to cover his eyes, and then everything went black.
Death! Death was Castleman’s last thought. Death, oblivion would help him to escape from the maddening trap he found himself in, would bring him dissolution and release from the terrible form of immortality that fate had thrust upon him.
There was total oblivion.
For Castleman, time was meaningless, but for the rest of the world just over three minutes ticked away while Rosenbluth and the student receptionist worked over Castleman’s inert form, massaging the chest and forcing air futilely in and out of Castleman’s lungs.
Oblivion.
There was the echo of a single loud sound resembling the report of a small-caliber firearm. Castleman found himself looking up at the clock on the Grand Central Tower. His tweed jacket was back on his body, and an unruly lock of hair stood out over his left ear.
It was 12:01 PM.
“ALL YOU ZOMBIES—”
Robert Heinlein
2217 Time Zone V (EST)—7 Nov. 1970-NTC—Pop’s Place
I was polishing a brandy snifter when the Unmarried Mother came in. I noted the time—10:17 P.M. zone five, or eastern time, November 7th, 1970. Temporal agents always notice time and date; we must.
The Unmarried Mother was a man twenty-five years old, no taller than I am, childish features and a touchy temper. I didn’t like his looks—I never had—but he was a lad I was here to recruit, he was my boy. I gave him my best barkeep’s smile.
Maybe I’m too critical. He wasn’t swish; his nickname came from what he always said when some nosy type asked him his line: “I’m an unmarried mother.” If he felt less than murderous he would add: “At four cents a word. I write confession stories.”
If he felt nasty, he would wait for somebody to make something of it. He had a lethal style of infighting, like a female cop—reason I wanted him. Not the only one.
He had a load on, and his face showed that he despised people more than usual. Silently I poured a double shot of Old Underwear and left the bottle. He drank it, poured another.
I wiped the bar top. “How’s the ‘Unmarried Mother’ racket?”
His fingers tightened on the glass and he seemed about to throw it at me. I felt for the sap under the bar. In temporal manipulation you try to figure everything, but there are so many factors that you never take needless risks.
I saw him relax that tiny amount they teach you to watch for in the Bureau’s training school. “Sorry,” I said. “Just asking, ‘How’s business’ ? Make it, ‘How’s the weather?’ ”
He looked sour. “Business is okay. I write ’em, they print ’em, I eat.”
I poured myself one, leaned toward him. “Matter of fact,” I said, “you write a nice stick—I’ve sampled a few. You have an amazingly sure touch with the woman’s angle.”
It was a slip I had to risk; he never admitted what pen-names he used. But he was boiled enough to pick up only the last: “—Woman’s angle!” he repeated with
a snort. “Yeah, I know the woman’s angle. I should.”
“So?” I said doubtfully. “Sisters?”
“No. You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”
“Now, now,” I answered mildly, “bartenders and psychiatrists learn that nothing is stranger than truth. Why, son, if you heard the stories I do—well, you’d make yourself rich. Incredible.”
“You don’t know what incredible means!”
“So? Nothing astonishes me. I’ve always heard worse.” He snorted again. “Want to bet the rest of the bottle?”
“I’ll bet a full bottle. I placed one on the bar.”
“Well—” I signaled my other bartender to handle the trade. We were at the far end, a single-stool space that I kept private by loading the bar top by it with jars of pickled eggs and other clutter. A few were at the other end watching the fights and somebody was playing the juke box—private as a bed where we were.
“Okay,” he began, “to start with, I’m a bastard.”
“No distinction around here,” I said.
“I mean it,” he snapped. “My parents weren’t married.”
“Still no distinction,” I insisted. “Neither were mine.”
“When—” He stopped, gave me the first warm look I ever saw on him. “You mean that?”
“I do. A one-hundred-percent bastard. In fact,” I added, “no one in my family ever marries. All bastards.”
“Oh, that.” I showed it to him. “It just looks like a wedding ring; I wear it to keep women off. It is an antique I bought in 1985 from a fellow operative. He had fetched it from pre-Christian Crete. The Worm Ouroboros—the World Snake that eats its own tail, forever without end. A symbol of the Great Paradox.”
He barely glanced at it. “If you’re really a bastard, you know how it feels. When I was a little girl.”
“Wups!” I said. “Did I hear you correctly?”