The Fourth Time Travel MEGAPACK®

by Fritz Leiber

  They began to persecute him then. He knew that they were in a state as accelerated from his as his was from the normal. To them he was the almost motionless statue, hardly to be told from a dead man. To him they were by their speed both invisible and inaudible. They hurt him and haunted him. But still he would not answer the summons.

  When the meeting took place, it was they who had to come to him, and they materialized there in his room, men without faces.

  “The choice,” said one. “You force us to be so clumsy as to have to voice it.”

  “I will have no part of you. You all smell of the pit, of that old mud of the cuneiforms of the land between the rivers, of the people who were before the people.”

  “It has endured a long time, and we consider it as enduring forever. But the Garden which was in the neighborhood—do you know how long the Garden lasted?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “That all happened in a single day, and before nightfall they were outside. You want to throw in with something more permanent, don’t you.”

  “No. I don’t believe I do.”

  “What have you to lose?”

  “Only my hope of eternity.”

  “But you don’t believe in that. No man has ever really believed in eternity.”

  “No man has ever either entirely believed or disbelieved in it,” said Charles Vincent.

  “At least it cannot be proved,” said one of the faceless men. “Nothing is proved until it is over with. And in this case, if it is ever over with, then it is disproved. And all that time would one not be tempted to wonder, ‘What if, after all, it ends in the next minute?’”

  “I imagine that if we survive the flesh we will receive some sort of surety,” said Vincent.

  “But you are not sure either of such surviving or receiving. Now we have a very close approximation of eternity. When time is multiplied by itself, and that repeated again and again, does that not approximate eternity?”

  “I don’t believe it does. But I will not be of you. One of you has said that I am too fastidious. So now will you say that you’ll destroy me?”

  “No. We will only let you be destroyed. By yourself, you cannot win the race with destruction.”

  After that Charles Vincent somehow felt more mature. He knew he was not really meant to be a six-fingered thing of the pit. He knew that in some way he would have to pay for every minute and hour that he had gained. But what he had gained he would use to the fullest. And whatever could be accomplished by sheer acquisition of human knowledge, he would try to accomplish.

  And he now startled Dr. Mason by the medical knowledge he had picked up, the while the doctor amused him by the concern he showed for Vincent. For he felt fine. He was perhaps not as active as he had been, but that was only because he had become dubious of aimless activity. He was still the ghost of the libraries and museums, but was puzzled that the published reports intimated that an old ghost had replaced a young one.

  He now paid his mystic visits to Jennifer Parkey less often. For he was always dismayed to hear her exclaim to him in his ghostly form: “Your touch is so changed. You poor thing! Is there anything at all I can do to help you?”

  He decided that somehow she was too immature to understand him, though he was still fond of her. He transferred his affections to Mrs. Milly Maltby, a widow at least thirty years his senior. Yet here it was a sort of girlishness in her that appealed to him. She was a woman of sharp wit and real affection, and she also accepted his visitations without fear, following a little initial panic.

  They played games, writing games, for they communicated by writing. She would scribble a line, then hold the paper up in the air whence he would cause it to vanish into his sphere. He would return it in half a minute, or half a second by her time, with his retort. He had the advantage of her in time with greatly more opportunity to think up responses, but she had the advantage over him in natural wit and was hard to top.

  They also played checkers, and he often had to retire apart and read a chapter of a book on the art between moves, and even so she often beat him; for native talent is likely to be a match for accumulated lore and codified procedure.

  But to Milly also he was unfaithful in his fashion, being now interested (he no longer became enamored or entranced) in a Mrs. Roberts, a great-grandmother who was his elder by at least fifty years. He had read all the data extant on the attraction of the old for the young, but he still could not explain his successive attachments. He decided that these three examples were enough to establish a universal law: that a woman is simply not afraid of a ghost, though he touches her and is invisible, and writes her notes without hands. It is possible that amorous spirits have known this for a long time, but Charles Vincent had made the discovery himself independently.

  When enough knowledge is accumulated on any subject, the pattern will sometimes emerge suddenly, like a form in a picture revealed where before it was not seen. And when enough knowledge is accumulated on all subjects, is there not a chance that a pattern governing all subjects will emerge?

  Charles Vincent was caught up in one last enthusiasm. On a long vigil, as he consulted source after source and sorted them in his mind, it seemed that the pattern was coming out clearly and simply, for all its amazing complexity of detail.

  “I know everything that they know in the pit, and I know a secret that they do not know. I have not lost the race—I have won it. I can defeat them at the point where they believe themselves invulnerable. If controlled hereafter, we need at least not be controlled by them. It is all falling together now. I have found the final truth, and it is they who have lost the race. I hold the key. I will now be able to enjoy the advantage without paying the ultimate price of defeat and destruction, or of collaboration with them.

  “Now I have only to implement my knowledge, to publish the fact, and one shadow at least will be lifted from mankind. I will do it at once. Well, nearly at once. It is almost dawn in the normal world. I will sit here a very little while and rest. Then I will go out and begin to make contact with the proper persons for the disposition of this thing. But first I will sit here a little while and rest.”

  And he died quietly in his chair as he sat there.

  Dr. Mason made an entry in his private journal: “Charles Vincent, a completely authenticated case of premature aging, one of the most clear-cut in all gerontology. This man was known to me for years, and I here aver that as of one year ago he was of normal appearance and physical state, and that his chronology is also correct, I having also known his father. I examined the subject during the period of his illness, and there is no question at all of his identity, which has also been established for the record by fingerprinting and other means. I aver that Charles Vincent at the age of thirty is dead of old age, having the appearance and organic condition of a man of ninety.”

  Then the doctor began to make another note: “As in two other cases of my own observation, the illness was accompanied by a certain delusion and series of dreams, so nearly identical in the three men as to be almost unbelievable. And for the record, and no doubt to the prejudice of my own reputation, I will set down the report of them here.”

  But when Dr. Mason had written that, he thought about it for a while.

  “No, I will do no such thing,” he said, and he struck out the last lines he had written. “It is best to let sleeping dragons lie.”

  And somewhere the faceless men with the smell of the pit on them smiled to themselves in quiet irony.

  RATTLE OK, by Harry Warner, Jr.

  Originally published in Galaxy Science Fiction, December 1956.

  The Christmas party at the Boston branch of Hartshorne-Logan was threatening to become more legendary than usual this Christmas.

  The farm machinery manager had already collapsed. When he slid under the table containing the drinks, Mis
s Pringle, who sold millinery, had screamed: “He’ll drown!”

  One out of every three dirty stories started by party attendees had remained unfinished, because each had reminded someone else of another story.

  The recently developed liquors which affected the bloodstream three times faster had driven away twinges of conscience about untrimmed trees and midnight church services.

  The star salesman for mankies and the gentleman who was in charge of the janitors were putting on a display of Burmese foot-wrestling in one corner of the general office. The janitor foreman weighed fifty pounds less than the Burma gentleman, who was the salesman’s customary opponent. So the climax of one tactic did not simply overturn the foreman. He glided through the air, crashing with a very loud thump against the wall.

  He wasn’t hurt. But the impact knocked the hallowed portrait of H. H. Hartshorne, co-founder, from its nail. It tinkled imposingly as its glass splintered against the floor.

  The noise caused a temporary lull in the gaiety. Several employes even felt a passing suspicion that things might be getting out of hand.

  “It’s all in the spirit of good, clean fun!” cried Mr. Hawkins, the assistant general manager. Since he was the highest executive present, worries vanished. Everyone felt fine. There was a scurry to shove the broken glass out of sight and to turn more attention to another type of glasses.

  Mr. Hawkins himself, acting by reflex, attempted to return the portrait to its place until new glass could be obtained. But the fall had sprung the frame at one corner and it wouldn’t hang straight.

  “We’d better put old H. H. away for safekeeping until after the holiday,” he told a small, blonde salesclerk who was beneath his attention on any working day.

  With the proper mixture of respect and bonhommie, he lifted the heavy picture out of its frame. A yellowed envelope slipped to the floor as the picture came free. Hawkins rolled the picture like a scroll and put it into a desk drawer, for later attention. Then he looked around for a drink that would make him feel even better.

  A sorting clerk in the mail order department wasn’t used to liquor. She picked up the envelope and looked around vaguely for the mail-opening machine.

  “Hell, Milly, you aren’t working!” someone shouted at her. “Have another!”

  Milly snapped out of it. She giggled, suppressed a ladylike belch and returned to reality. Looking at the envelope, she said: “Oh, I see. They must have stuck it in to tighten the frame. Gee, it’s old.”

  Mr. Hawkins had refreshed himself. He decided that he liked Milly’s voice. To hear more of it, he said to her: “I’ll bet that’s been in there ever since the picture was framed. There’s a company legend that that picture was put up the day this branch opened, eighty years ago.”

  “I didn’t know the company ever used buff envelopes like this.” Milly turned it over in her hands. The ancient glue crackled as she did so. The flap popped open and an old-fashioned order blank fell out.

  Mr. Hawkins’ eyes widened. He bent, reached painfully over his potbelly and picked up the order form.

  “This thing has never been processed!” Raising his voice, he shouted jovially, “Hey, people! You’re all fired! Here’s an order that Hartshorne-Logan never filled! We can’t have such carelessness. This poor woman has waited eighty years for her merchandise!”

  * * * *

  Milly was reading aloud the scrawled words on the order form:

  “Best electric doorbell. Junior detective kit. Disposable sacks for vacuum cleaner. Dress for three-year-old girl.” She turned to the assistant general manager, struck with an idea for the first time in her young life. “Let’s fill this order right now!”

  “The poor woman must be dead by now,” he objected, secretly angry that he hadn’t thought of such a fine party stunt himself. Then he brightened. “Unless—” he said it loud enough for the employes to scent a great proposal and the room grew quiet—“unless we broke the rules just once and used the time warp on a big mission!”

  There was a silence. Finally, from an anonymous voice in one corner: “Would the warp work over eighty years? We were always told that it must be used only for complaints within three days.”

  “Then let’s find out!” Mr. Hawkins downed the rest of his drink and pulled a batch of keys from his pocket. “Someone scoot down to the warehouse. Tell the watchman that it’s on my authority. Hunt up the stuff that’s on the order. Get the best of everything. Ignore the catalogue numbers—they’ve changed a hundred times in all these years.”

  Milly was still deciphering the form. Now she let out a little squeal of excitement.

  “Look, Mr. Hawkins! The name on this order—it’s my great-grandmother! Isn’t that wonderful? I was just a little girl when she died. I can barely remember her as a real old woman. But I remember that my grandmother never bought anything from Hartshorne-Logan because of some trouble her mother had once with the firm. My mother didn’t want me to come to work here because of that.”

  Mr. Hawkins put his arm around Milly in a way that he intended to look fatherly. It didn’t. “Well, now. Since it’s your relative, let’s thrill the old girl. We wouldn’t have vacuum sacks any more. So we’ll substitute a manky!”

  * * * *

  Ann Hartley was returning from mailing the letter when she found the large parcel on her doorstep. She put her hands on her hips and stared pugnaciously at the bundle.

  “The minute I write a letter to complain about you, you turn up!” she told the parcel. She nudged her toe peevishly against the brown paper wrappings that were tied with a half-transparent twine she had never seen before.

  The label was addressed in a wandering scrawl, a sharp contrast to the impersonal typing on the customary Hartshorne-Logan bundles. But the familiar RATTLE OK sticker was pasted onto the box, indicating to the delivery man that the contents would make a rattling sound and therefore hadn’t been broken in shipment.

  Ann sighed and picked up her bundle. With a last look at the lovely spring afternoon and the quiet suburban landscape, she went into the house.

  Two-year-old Sally heard the box rattling. She waddled up on chubby legs and grabbed her mother’s skirt. “Want!” she said decisively.

  “Your dress ought to be here,” Ann said. She found scissors in her sewing box, tossed a cushion onto the floor, sat on it, and began to open the parcel.

  “Now I’ll have to write another letter to explain that they should throw away my letter of complaint,” she told her daughter. “And by the time they get my second letter, they’ll have answered my first letter. Then they’ll write again.” Out of consideration for Sally, she omitted the expletives that she wanted to add.

  The translucent cord was too tough for the scissors. Ann was about to hunt for a razor blade when Sally clutched at an intersection of the cord and yanked. The twine sprang away from the carton as if it were alive. The paper wrappings flapped open.

  “There!” Sally said.

  Ann repressed an irrational urge to slap her daughter. Instead, she tossed the wrappings aside and removed the lid from the carton. A slightly crushed thin cardboard box lay on top. Ann pulled out the dress and shook it into a freely hanging position. Then she groaned.

  It was green and she had ordered blue. It didn’t remotely resemble the dress she had admired from the Hartshorne-Logan catalogue illustration. Moreover, the shoulders were lumpier than any small girl’s dress should be.

  But Sally was delighted. “Mine!” she shrilled, grabbing for the dress.

  “It’s probably the wrong size, too,” Ann said, pulling off Sally’s dress to try it on. “Let’s find as many things to complain about as we can.”

  * * * *

  The dress fitted precisely, except for the absurd shoulder bumps. Sally was radiant for a moment. Then her small face sobered and she started to look vac
antly at the distant wall.

  “We’ll have to send it back,” Ann said, “and get the one we ordered.”

  She tried to take it off, but the child squawked violently. Ann grabbed her daughter’s arms, held them above her head and pulled at the dress. It seemed to be stuck somewhere. When Ann released the child’s arms to loosen the dress, Sally squirmed away. She took one step forward, then began to float three inches above the ground. She landed just before she collided with the far wall.

  Sally looked scared until she saw her mother’s face. Then she squealed in delight.

  Ann’s legs were rubber. She was shaking her head and wobbling uncertainly toward her daughter when the door opened behind her.

  “It’s me,” her husband said. “Slow day at the office, so I came home early.”

  “Les! I’m going crazy or something. Sally just—”

  Sally crouched to jump at her father. Before she could leap, he grabbed her up bodily and hugged her. Then he saw the box.

  “Your order’s here? Good. What’s this thing?” He was looking at a small box he had pulled from the carton. Its lid contained a single word: MANKY. The box rattled when he shook it.

  Les pulled off the lid and found inside a circular, shiny metal object. A triangular trio of jacks stuck out from one end.