by Rog Philips
"I don't quite follow you," Trowbridge said.
"What I mean is," Jan said, "in a few weeks or months the stenographer will have translated her shorthand notes and my speech last night will be printed in the journal. It will be sent to a few hundred members of the society. Some will go to libraries. They set on shelves for years. Fred Stone, after quite a few years, runs across a copy of the journal, reads my speech, and by means of time travel comes back to attend the meeting and ask me some questions."
"And gets shot," Trowbridge added. "Tell me, doctor, just how far in the future did he come from?"
"Twenty-one sixty-three," Jan said quietly.
"You got that, of course, from the card in his billfold."
"Yes," Jan agreed, "but I confirmed before they were stolen from me. I did that by measuring the radio-activity of the paper and comparing it with charts."
Trowbridge looked at Jan with a sarcastic curve to his smile. Then slowly it was replaced by a frustrated expression.
"That's so absurd," he said, "that I find myself half believing it against my will." He paced around the lab, a frown on his face, while Jan and Paula watched him. "You know," he said, turning toward them abruptly, "if what you say it true, then Fred Stone could have been killed last night and yet be walking around full of life today."
"How?" Jan said. "I don't see how time travel could bring a man back to life after being dead. That's the thing I can't see."
"If he could come to last night from the future, Trowbridge said, "he could go to last night from today."
"That's right!" Jan exclaimed. "The man Paula saw could be Fred Stone then!"
"The way I see it," Trowbridge said, "right now he's trying to find you. That's what he's doing in this neighborhood. He can't find you, so he takes another jump backwards in Time and attends the meeting. Then he gets killed."
He looked at Jan and Paula who were staring at him with horror filled eyes.
"Another thing," Trowbridge said. "It gives his last words some sense. Suppose he does find you--say an hour from now--and you start to tell him he's going to be killed last night"--he chuckled dryly--"but he's scared away and doesn't have time to listen to you. Then last night when he was shot he suddenly realized you had tried to warn him."
Breath exploded from Jan's lungs. He leaned against a bench weakly.
"But now that we know all that," Paula said excitedly, "we can be prepared and force him to listen. Then he will know, and won't go back to last night, and won't be killed."
"You think so?" Trowbridge said dryly. "You forget that his being killed is already a fact. You can't change it."
"But when we see him it won't have happened yet to him," Paula said. "It's still in his future, and he can change that by simply not going back to yesterday."
"Trowbridge is right," Jan said wearily. "We'll see Fred Stone sometime in our future. Maybe today when he locates us. But everything that takes place is unchangeable. His future has already happened. It can't be changed."
"If it could," Trowbridge said, "we could borrow his time travel machine or whatever it is he uses, and whenever there's an accident and someone gets killed we could go back before the accident and warn the victim, and the accident wouldn't happen."
"Maybe that could be done," Paula said earnestly. "And even if you're right, we shouldn't give up. We should try to change what has happened. We must warn him."
"Of course we'll try," Jan said. "But didn't he imply last night with his last words that we tried to warn him?"
"Oh!" Paula said angrily. "You're already giving up. I can just see you, January, trying half-heartedly to warn him, because you're convinced ahead of time that you won't succeed. We've got to really try. We've got to save his life. Do you understand?"
"Miss Morris is right," Trowbridge said. A twisted smile appeared on his lips. "And don't ever say anything about this. If my superiors ever learned I had treated your story seriously they'd put me back on a beat." He sobered. "Fred Stone will probably contact you here. He'll have to if you two stay here, anyway. So what we'll do is this. We'll get some men up here. In the hall and elevators, right in this room, down on the street. The minute Fred Stone shows up we'll grab him and hold him until we can make sure he knows he's going to be killed last night. That's all we can do."
He went to the phone . . .
"Some more coffee, Paula?" Jan asked, holding the thermos invitingly.
Paula looked down at the remains of the meal on her plate and the empty coffee cup. "No, thanks," she said. "I'm so full of it now it's running out of my ears."
Trowbridge punched out a cigarette on the already over filled ashtray. "I'll have another," he said. He stared at the top of Jan's head as the coffee was poured. "You know, Jan," he said slowly, "there's one thing I haven't got straightened out yet. Why was--or will be--Fred Stone killed? The way you painted it he was just curious about your speech and wanted to ask a question or two about it. So he travels back in time to ask those questions. What was your speech about? Why should anyone a couple of hundred years from now be so curious about what you said--or didn't say, to be more exact. And why should he be killed before he could find out what he wanted to know?"
Jan looked at Paula, frowning. "I don't know," he said. "I've been trying to figure out that myself. But there's another possibility. Suppose he was killed to prevent him from revealing something, rather than to prevent him from finding out something." Trowbridge thought this over, lighting another cigarette.
"If that's the way it is," he said, "then the future is able to change. If it couldn't, whatever he might possibly tell you wouldn't matter. It would be a matter of history whether he did or not, and it would be silly of the killer to try to prevent something that had already happened anyway."
"No," Jan said. "I think the future is an open book that can be changed. It's the past that can't be changed."
Paula snorted. "Don't forget all this is the remote past to the time Fred Stone came from," she said. "By the same token it would be unchangeable to him. And to the murderer."
"Paula's right," Trowbridge chuckled.
"Then we come down to this," Jan said. "We know that travel in time is possible now. We could have someone come back to our present time from a million years in the future--or up to the present from a million years in the past. Either none of it is changeable, and our least little thought or action is as unalterable as a movie, or else it's all changeable. If it's unalterable there's no such thing as free will. Even the flutter of an eyelid is as unchangeable as the travel of the planets in their orbits, according to the one picture. In the other picture, the past could be changed. Columbus could be prevented from discovering America at any moment--and we would cease to exist."
"I doubt if it would be that drastic," Trowbridge said. "If Columbus was prevented from discovering America, someone else would. Details could be altered but major trends and developments probably couldn't."
"Maybe," Jan said doubtfully.
"But let's get back to the subject," Trowbridge said. "Do you know anything that a man from the future might be very anxious to find out? Enough so to come back in Time? Something so important that someone else from his Time would follow him and kill him to keep him from finding out? Something the killer knows?"
Jan stiffened in surprise. Trowbridge watched him intently.
"So there is something," he grunted.
"No," Jan said with a supreme effort at being casual. "It's just that I hadn't thought of that possibility before--that the murderer might know something he killed Fred Stone to keep him from finding out." He had gained control of himself now. "How could know what it is? Something hinted at in my speech perhaps. Some little thing I don't know the implications of, that two centuries has brought out in a different light that I can't suspect."
"Or something that you as a scientist have discovered and never given out to the world," Trowbridge suggested. "What's the name of this best seller of yours? I think I'd like something to read whil
e we wait for Fred Stone to show up."
He went to the phone, picked it up, and looked questioningly at Jan. Jan shrugged in defeat.
"You'll find a copy in the top drawer of the desk," fie said glumly. "It's called 'Me and My Robot'."
"Thanks," Trowbridge said, returning the phone gently to its cradle. "Thanks." He opened the drawer.
Trowbridge closed the book slowly. He looked up at Paula, across the laboratory asleep on a cot that had been set up, and at Jan who was heating some fluid in a test tube over a bunsen burner.
"Nice story, Jan," he commented. Jan looked over at him and smiled nervously. "An intriguing story," Trowbridge went on. "So well written that at times I almost became convinced it was a true story. That idea of a recording of the mind--taken from the idea of taking a recording of the voice, no doubt--and placing it in a synthetic brain that controls a robot body. That could be fact. I've seen one of those robot monstrosities they build for the movie and television shows, with its plastic muscles that look and perform just like real muscles." He looked down at the book on his knee and tapped it significantly while Jan watched. "The way you tied it up so neatly, too. All the robots destroyed. The secret safe in the mind of the hero where it was destined to remain, because it was too dangerous to let loose. I suppose your speech last night was about this book?"
"Yes!" Jan said, turning back to the now boiling test tube.
"The hero George couldn't have been you, could it, Jan?" Trowbridge asked dryly.
"Why of course not," Jan said without turning to look at Trowbridge. "It's just a story. That's all."
"And the girl in the story--Louise--she couldn't by any chance be Paula?"
"Well," Jan said, "of course I made her very much like Paula."
"How long has Mr. Morris been dead?" Trowbridge asked. He jumped to his feet abruptly, a startled look on his face. "Wait a minute!" he exclaimed. "A year and a half ago I was on a case. A patient in a hospital that was going to die anyway in a few hours was supposedly killed. The outer layer of his brain was fried in some mysterious way. If he was killed--even the doctors couldn't be positive one way or another--it was just the way it happened in your book when the fellow's mind was transplanted into the synthetic brain, killing him in the process." He nodded slowly. Jan continued to concentrate on the test tube, his back to Trowbridge. Trowbridge smiled at the back sympathetically. "Don't worry, Jan," he said. "Your secret is safe as far as I'm concerned."
"You mean--" Jan said, turning abruptly to stare at the detective with hope dawning in his eyes.
Trowbridge nodded. "If the story in this book is true," he said, "I agree with you that it should be kept secret. Forgotten."
He stretched wearily, laid the book on the desk.
"But it's only fiction," Jan said, smiling queerly. "How could it be anything else? Don't you agree?"
"Of course," Trowbridge said, grinning.
He went to the door and opened it, sticking his head out into the hall with his shoulders against the door edge and the wall. The low rumble of whispered conversation went on for a minute, then he stepped back into the room, two plainclothesmen coming in.
"I'm going home, Mr. Stevens," Trowbridge said. "These men will stay here with you. They'll be relieved at midnight. You and Miss Morris are to remain here until Fred Stone shows up. If you want anything, one of my men will see that you get it." He looked over at Paula who was still asleep, nodded in Jan's direction, and left.
The two men took up positions on either side of the door and pulled up laboratory stools, settling down to a long vigil.
Trowbridge, freshly shaven and alert looking, smiled sympathetically at Jan and Paula. "Too bad you had to stay here all night for nothing," he said. "It'll probably be all over by noon. Then you can go home and get some real rest."
"1 didn't mind," Paula said. "It's worth it if we can save Fred Stone's life."
"I did some work," Jan said. "The time wasn't exactly wasted."
The phone shrilled unexpectedly. The three of them looked at it, then at one another. Jan went to it. Lifting it hesitantly he said, "Hello? Yes, this is Mr. Stevens... That's quite all right . . . Yes. Thanks very much for telling me... It was quite all right... Goodbye." He hung up, an excited expression on his face.
"That was the president of the Society," he said. "About fifteen minutes ago a man called her and asked her where he could get in touch with the author of 'Me and My Robot'. She told him, then got to wondering if she had done the right thing. That's why she called." He looked from Trowbridge to Paula excitedly. "Maybe it was Fred Stone!"
"Did she give him this address?" Trowbridge asked.
"Yes," Jan said. "It was the only one she knew."
"Then he should be here almost any minute!" Paula said.
"My man in the lobby of the building will call up as soon as he gets on the elevator," Trowbridge said. "When he gets on this floor there are men posted out of sight who will prevent him from leaving until and unless I give an okay."
They looked at the door, becoming conscious of the occasional footsteps outside in the hall as people passed by, the vague shadow outline of their forms as they passed the frosted glass of the door.
"They might miss him," Jan said.
"It's possible, of course," Trowbridge said. "But--"
He stopped. Someone had halted outside. The shadow of an arm went up. A knock sounded.
"They missed him in the lobby," Trowbridge said in a low voice, "but my men in the hall will see him and close in as soon as he enters. Go to the door and let him in, Jan."
Jan was already on his way to the door. He opened it wide. Standing framed in the doorway was -- not Fred Stone--but the man who had killed him!
"Are you January Stevens?" the man asked politely.
"Why -- why yes," Jan stammered.
"May I come in Mr. Stevens?" the man asked. "I see you have company, but what I want to see you about is very important."
"Come right in," Trowbridge spoke up, his voice overly loud. Two men had appeared silently behind the man, "Bring him in, boys," Trowbridge added as he saw them.
The man, feeling heavy hands grasp his arms, turned startled but unafraid eyes at them. As they firmly pressured him through the doorway into the laboratory he started to resist, then gave in, a puzzled but tolerant smile on his lips.
"We didn't expect you," Jan said.
"Naturally not," the man said, "Who are these people, the police?"
"Yes," Jan said.
"Yes," Trowbridge echoed. "Jan, is this the man you saw?" When Jan nodded he turned to the man. "I'm arresting you for murder," he said simply. "I'd also like to ask you some questions right now before the boys take you in; but I also have to advise you that anything you say can be used against you as evidence, and you don't have to answer any of the questions before getting an attorney." He looked past the man to one of his two subordinates. "Put the cuffs on him. We don't want to take any chances."
Jan and Paula watched, fascinated, as the handcuffs were snapped on the man.
"What's your name?" Trowbridge asked abruptly.
"Sigmund Archer," the man answered. He looked from Trowbridge to Jan and Paula, his eyes bright--almost laughing. "Would you tell me the name of the person I'm supposed to have killed?" Trowbridge stared at him but didn't answer. "Would it by any chance be Fred Stone?" Sigmund Archer asked.
"You should know," Trowbridge grunted.
"But I don't," Archer said, showing relief. "I just wanted to make sure it won't be--wasn't some innocent party."
"It was Fred Stone," Trowbridge said. "Why did you do it?" Sigmund Archer laughed. Jan fought to keep from smiling, and looked at the puzzled frown on Trowbridge's face.
"Don't you see what he's laughing about?" Jan said. "He hasn't gone back to night before last and killed Fred Stone yet. If you arrest him for that murder it will prevent him from going back and committing the murder. There won't have been any murder, and you can't convict him."
"
So it will be night before last!" Archer said musingly.
"Keep quiet and let me do the talking," Trowbridge said to Jan sternly. Then to Archer, "If that's the way It will be, okay. I'd much rather prevent a killing than catch a killer. You're still under arrest until we can warn Fred Stone."
"If in my future I shoot Fred Stone night before last in your past," Sigmund Archer said, "isn't it a foregone conclusion that you aren't going to be able to hold me and prevent that which has already happened?"
"You're in a better position to answer that than I am," Trowbridge said. "I don't know anything about the mumbo jumbo of time travel. All I know is that a murder has been committed, and that you have been positively identified as the murderer. It's my duty to arrest you and bring you to trial. I intend to carry out my duty."
Sigmund Archer looked at Trowbridge, his smile fading slowly.
"I suppose you have Fred Stone's remains," he said suddenly. "Mind if I look at them for the purpose of identifying them?"
Trowbridge opened his mouth, then clamped it shut, giving Jan and Paula warning looks. He appeared to be thinking for a moment.
"We might arrange that later," he said cautiously.
"In other words you had the body but it's vanished," Archer said calmly. "That would make an interesting point in law, if it ever came to court. But it won't, because if it did there would be a record of it where I come from."
Anger suffused Trowbridge's features. He opened his mouth to make an angry retort. The anger vanished abruptly, to be replaced by shrewdness.
"I nearly forgot the main question I was going to ask you," he said. "Why are you after Fred Stone? Why did you shoot him?"
"I didn'--yet," Archer said. "My reason--I'm quite sure that January Stevens can guess that."
He looked at Jan. Trowbridge smiled knowingly at Jan and said, "It's possible I could guess far more accurately than he could."
"I'm thirsty," Sigmund Archer said abruptly. "Could I have a glass of water?"
"I'll get it," Jan said, going toward the water cooler against the wall. All eyes were oft him for an instant.