by Fritz Leiber
“Well, just suppose what you say is true, Benji. If it is, then you used your sneaky machine to two-time me with Daisy last night, eh? I like that. Vera will like that, too. But you expect to bribe me with a share in your rig to help you out. How? With what?”
“Bull, it’s like this. I did go out last night, my first time in a long time. You know Vera. So, considering the past few years, you can understand that I was—uh—maybe a bit reckless last night, ran into a few little problems. Nothing serious, of course. And besides, with your help, the police won’t be able—”
“The police?”
“Yes. But, Bull, you’ve been right here with me all night. You can swear to that. So I couldn’t possibly have driven your car up the steps and through the glass doors into the ancient history section of the museum.”
“My car!”
“Now, Bull, we’ll make money—you can get lots of cars. And I didn’t mean to smash up yours. I simply wanted to give Daisy a rough idea of a time trip back into the past. But you can tell the police I was right here when someone broke out through the window by the Neanderthal exhibit while the police were coming in the front door after us. So someone else must have driven off in the police car.”
“You stole the police car?” I yelped.
* * * *
“Oh, we won’t keep it,” he said airily. “But perhaps they are upset about our borrowing it and about the duet of ‘As Time Goes By’ that Daisy and I sang over the police radio.”
“Lord! And when did you finish all this fun and games?” I demanded.
“When? Let’s see. It’s 6:40 A.M. So we—Daisy and I—are on our way back here now. In the patrol car.”
“Now? You and Daisy? In the patrol car?”
“The one we borrowed. The police—they seem to have a lot of cars—are not far behind. I believe they think they recognized me. You can tell them how wrong they are.”
He stopped to listen. I heard it too, a sound of sirens in the distance, coming closer.
“So, Benji. In a minute or so, you—a second edition of you, when one has always been plenty—you are coming here, with all the cops in town on your tail, and with my girl. And you expect me to step forward and, lying in my teeth, tell these enraged cops that you are innocent. This is quite a request, Benji.”
There was the roar of a car racing down the quiet, Saturday-dawn street. Benji looked at me anxiously. “Here we come. Bull, please! You wouldn’t turn me over to the police. Would you?”
No, I didn’t want the cops to get him. I wanted to get him myself—and let Vera finish him.
There was a sound of running footsteps up the porch stairs. The hallway door opened. Arm in arm, laughing like a pair of idiots, in came Benji—Benji II—and my girl, Daisy. They staggered across the room. Benji II threw his arms around Daisy and kissed her with conviction and assurance. Then, quickly, he stepped away from her and walked over to the time-machine rig.
“Hurry it up,” said the first Benji, “quick. The power will cut off any second now, until they switch in the new line.”
Drunk or not, Benji II knew what he was doing. He dragged the straight chair by the wall to the side of the machine and climbed it. He swayed, almost fell. Then, without touching any of the bars, he managed to step from the chair into the seat of the machine rig. He fiddled with a dial or knob—and vanished. The double exposure look of the machine disappeared too.
“Benji,” said Daisy, staring blankly at the machine.
“Daisy,” said the leftover Benji, walking toward her. The sound of sirens outside sounded loud and louder—and then moaned to a stop in front of the house.
“Benji,” Daisy said again, giving me and the sirens about as much attention as an individual ant gets at a family picnic, “Benji, it was true then! All that you were telling me about going through time was true! And we can—”
“Of course, sweet. I told you I’d be with you, that everything will be all right, with good old Bull to help us. What time have you, Bull?”
“Hah?” I was dazed.
“The time? What time is it?”
“It’s just about seven. But—”
Heavy footsteps pounded up the front stairs and across the porch. The front door knocker thundered.
“Bull,” said Benji, “Bull, old friend. I think there may be someone at the door. Would you see who it is?”
* * * *
I don’t know why I didn’t make him go answer. I still don’t know. But I walked out into the hall from the lab and opened the front door—and nearly got trampled by a squad of four cops, headed by big, tough Sergeant Winesap. There were, I saw through the open door, two squad cars parked out front and another coming down the block, just behind a taxi.
“Oh,” said Winesap, “it’s you, Benton. Say, you weren’t in this crime wave, too, were you? We only saw two, that madman friend of yours, Professor Benjamin, and the girl, in your car.… Look, you know what they did? They knocked off three hydrants whooping about time and the fountain of youth, and wrecked the museum; and the police car—and what they did to Officer Durlin.… Maybe you weren’t in on it, Benton, but we know they came in here. Friend or no friend, don’t try to obstruct justice. Where are they?”
“Yes, officer?” inquired Benji, bland as could be, from the lab door. “What seems to be the trouble? Did you wish to see me?”
His manner must have been disarming. At least they didn’t shoot him on the spot. They just advanced, loosening guns in holsters, like a thoughtful lynching party. Benji strolled back into the lab and over to Daisy, who was standing by the machine at the side of the room.
The officers were confused. Benji, sober or nearly so, in his old lab smock, looked a good deal different to them from the wild man they’d been chasing all over town. But there was Daisy in her evening gown.
“That’s them, all right,” said a young rookie with a fine-blooming shiner. “She’s the one that threw the eggplants. I’d know her anywhere.”
“And that’s Benjamin,” said Winesap, grimly. “Okay, both of you, don’t try to run. Come along and no more nonsense.”
Benji held up one hand—and slipped the other arm around Daisy’s waist. “Gentlemen, please! I have no idea what this is about. But surely it can have nothing to do with me. Mr. Benton and I have been right here in my laboratory all night, working. He can verify that.”
They looked at me. I opened my mouth. I didn’t say a word.
Vera did. She stood there in the doorway. It must have been her in the cab, coming back bright and early from Chicago. She took in the whole scene. Benji. Daisy. Police. Me.
“Benji!!!” she said. You couldn’t imagine what she put into that one word.
Everyone turned then to look at her. Slowly and with infinite menace, she started across the room.
“Now, dear,” said Benji nervously, “now, sweet, take it easy. This is only a little experiment. Not what you are thinking at all.”
We swung back toward Benji. He had boosted Daisy onto the seat of his time rig and swung up beside her. Vera yelled and started to run toward them.
Benji twisted a knob and grinned. “Good-by now,” he said. And they were gone.
Benji was gone again. Daisy was gone. The whole rig was gone.
* * * *
Vera, looking a little forlorn and foolish, ended up her dash stumbling into the empty space where the thing had been. I expect we all looked a little foolish, standing there, gaping. But I had to carry foolishness to the ultimate of idiocy.
Vera at that single moment seemed sort of sad and helpless. And, Lord knows, I was mixed up. I walked over and put an arm around Vera, saying, “There, there, Vera, hon. It’s all right. I’m here.”
I should never have called her attention to it. There I was—and, the hell of it was I ha
d kept playing up to her all this time just to needle Benji. When, that morning, I put my arm around her, I never had a chance.
I was married. To Vera. I still am. It has been a long, long time. Almost five years by the calendar, centuries by subjective time.
I am Vera’s husband, sitting by the light of a kerosene lamp in Dean Milston’s old study, which had been Benji’s lab, writing. Benji and Daisy got away and I got caught. But now I can smile about it. Now, after nearly five years.
You understand?
With the power he got into his machine from the new power line, he said he could go just five years at a jump. Of course, away from Vera. Probably he figured on going further, that he would go the power limit of five years, stop, and then jump again, and again, far enough for complete safety.
But I have had a lot more time to figure than he did. I am figuring on a little party; a little reception in honor of our first intrepid time traveler. A surprise party.
It will be five years to the hour since Daisy and Benji left. Benji will be the surprise, since only I know that he will pop up in our midst. It will surprise Benji. It will surprise Vera—and our guests, among whom I have included Sergeant (Captain now) Winesap and the others of his squad.
Eccentric, a party like that? I suppose. But, to Vera and the others, it is a breakfast anniversary party—the anniversary of the very moment of our engagement. Vera is flattered enough to be tolerant and even pleased at this romantic notion. And, since I know I have only one out and that it is coming, I am a dutiful—cringing and servile, that is—husband. So Vera indulges me in a harmless eccentricity or two.
My other little eccentricity is electric power—I don’t favor it. I use Benji’s lab, the old dean’s study, as my den. I claim to be writing a historical novel. I need realism, atmosphere. I have had all electric power lines removed from that entire section of the house. There is no power. None.
That’s why I’m writing by lamplight.
Our anniversary party will be here. The lamps and candles and the dawn of a bright new day will be light enough when, to the total astonishment of Vera and our guests, Benji and Daisy and the time rig suddenly appear among us. I will greet them with enthusiasm—but this will be as nothing to the greeting they will get from other sources. Benji will work his dials and controls, frantically. Nothing will happen. No power.
Vera will step forward. The hell with whether the statute of limitations may or may not have run out on Benji’s assorted legal crimes and misdemeanors. The wrath of Vera accepts no limitations.
Benji will have run out of time and it will be my time then.
THE SIX FINGERS OF TIME, by R. A. Lafferty
Originally published in If, September 1960.
He began by breaking things that morning. He broke the glass of water on his night stand. He knocked it crazily against the opposite wall and shattered it. Yet it shattered slowly. This would have surprised him if he had been fully awake, for he had only reached out sleepily for it.
Nor had he wakened regularly to his alarm; he had wakened to a weird, slow, low booming, yet the clock said six, time for the alarm. And the low boom, when it came again, seemed to come from the clock.
He reached out and touched it gently, but it floated off the stand at his touch and bounced around slowly on the floor. And when he picked it up again it had stopped, nor would shaking start it.
He checked the electric clock in the kitchen. This also said six o’clock, but the sweep hand did not move. In his living room the radio clock said six, but the second hand seemed stationary.
“But the lights in both rooms work,” said Vincent. “How are the clocks stopped? Are they on a separate circuit?”
He went back to his bedroom and got his wristwatch. It also said six; and its sweep hand did not sweep.
“Now this could get silly. What is it that would stop both mechanical and electrical clocks?”
He went to the window and looked out at the clock on the Mutual Insurance Building. It said six o’clock, and the second hand did not move.
“Well, it is possible that the confusion is not limited to myself. I once heard the fanciful theory that a cold shower will clear the mind. For me it never has, but I will try it. I can always use cleanliness for an excuse.”
The shower didn’t work. Yes, it did: the water came now, but not like water; like very slow syrup that hung in the air. He reached up to touch it there hanging down and stretching. And it shattered like glass when he touched it and drifted in fantastic slow globs across the room. But it had the feel of water, wet and pleasantly cool. And in a quarter of a minute or so it was down over his shoulders and back, and he luxuriated in it. He let it soak his head and it cleared his wits at once.
“There is not a thing wrong with me. I am fine. It is not my fault that the water is slow this morning and other things awry.”
He reached for the towel and it tore to pieces in his hands like porous wet paper.
Now he became very careful in the way he handled things. Slowly, tenderly, and deftly he took them so that they would not break. He shaved himself without mishap in spite of the slow water in the lavatory also.
Then he dressed himself with the greatest caution and cunning, breaking nothing except his shoe laces, a thing that is likely to happen at any time.
“If there is nothing the matter with me, then I will check and see if there is anything seriously wrong with the world. The dawn was fairly along when I looked out, as it should have been. Approximately twenty minutes have passed; it is a clear morning; the sun should now have hit the top several stories of the Insurance Building.”
But it had not. It was a clear morning, but the dawn had not brightened at all in the twenty minutes. And that big clock still said six. It had not changed.
Yet it had changed, and he knew it with a queer feeling. He pictured it as it had been before. The hour and the minute hand had not moved noticeably. But the second hand had moved. It had moved a third of the dial.
So he pulled up a chair to the window and watched it. He realized that, though he could not see it move, yet it did make progress. He watched it for perhaps five minutes. It moved through a space of perhaps five seconds.
“Well, that is not my problem. It is that of the clock maker, either a terrestrial or a celestial one.”
But he left his rooms without a good breakfast, and he left them very early. How did he know that it was early since there was something wrong with the time? Well, it was early at least according to the sun and according to the clocks, neither of which institutions seemed to be working properly.
He left without a good breakfast because the coffee would not make and the bacon would not fry. And in plain point of fact the fire would not heat. The gas flame came from the pilot light like a slowly spreading stream or an unfolding flower. Then it burned far too steadily. The skillet remained cold when placed over it; nor would water even heat. It had taken at least five minutes to get the water out of the faucet in the first place.
He ate a few pieces of leftover bread and some scraps of meat.
In the street there was no motion, no real motion. A truck, first seeming at rest, moved very slowly. There was no gear in which it could move so slowly. And there was a taxi which crept along, but Charles Vincent had to look at it carefully for some time to be sure that it was in motion. Then he received a shock. He realized by the early morning light that the driver of it was dead. Dead with his eyes wide open!
Slowly as it was going, and by whatever means it was moving, it should really be stopped. He walked over to it, opened the door, and pulled on the brake. Then he looked into the eyes of the dead man. Was he really dead? It was hard to be sure. He felt warm. But, even as Vincent looked, the eyes of the dead man had begun to close. And close they did and open again in a matter of about twenty seconds.
This was weird. The slowly closing and opening eyes sent a chill through Vincent. And the dead man had begun to lean forward in his seat. Vincent put a hand in the middle of the man’s chest to hold him upright, but he found the forward pressure as relentless as it was slow. He was unable to keep the dead man up.
So he let him go, watching curiously; and in a few seconds the driver’s face was against the wheel. But it was almost as if it had no intention of stopping there. It pressed into the wheel with dogged force. He would surely break his face. Vincent took several holds on the dead man and counteracted the pressure somewhat. Yet the face was being damaged, and if things were normal, blood would have flowed.
The man had been dead so long however, that (though he was still warm) his blood must have congealed, for it was fully two minutes before it began to ooze.
“Whatever I have done, I have done enough damage,” said Vincent. “And, in whatever nightmare I am in, I am likely to do further harm if I meddle more. I had better leave it alone.”
He walked on down the morning street. Yet whatever vehicles he saw were moving with an incredible slowness, as though driven by some fantastic gear reduction. And there were people here and there frozen solid. It was a chilly morning, but it was not that cold. They were immobile in positions of motion, as though they were playing the children’s game of Statues.
“How is it,” said Charles Vincent, “that this young girl (who I believe works across the street from us) should have died standing up and in full stride? But, no. She is not dead. Or, if so, she died with a very alert expression. And—oh, my God, she’s doing it too!”
For he realized that the eyes of the girl were closing, and in the space of no more than a quarter of a second they had completed their cycle and were open again. Also, and this was even stranger, she had moved, moved forward in full stride. He would have timed her if he could, but how could he when all the clocks were crazy? Yet she must have been taking about two steps a minute.