The Fourth Time Travel MEGAPACK®

by Fritz Leiber

  “Is this the doorbell? I’ve never seen a plug like this. And there’s no wire.”

  “I don’t know,” Ann said. “Les, listen. A minute ago, Sally—”

  He peered into the box for an instruction sheet, uselessly. “They must have made a mistake. It looks like some kind of farm equipment.”

  He tossed the manky onto the hassock and delved into the carton again. Sally was still in his arms.

  “That’s the doorbell, I think,” he said, looking at the next object. It had a lovely, tubular shape, a half-dozen connecting rods and a plug for a wall socket.

  “That’s funny,” Ann mused, her mind distracted from Sally for a moment. “It looks terribly expensive. Maybe they sent door chimes instead of the doorbell.”

  The bottom of the carton contained the detective outfit that they had ordered for their son. Ann glanced at its glaringly lithographed cover and said: “Les, about Sally. Put her down a minute and watch what she does.”

  Les stared at his wife and put the child onto the rug. Sally began to walk, then rose and again floated, this time toward the hassock on which the manky lay.

  His jaw dropped. “My God! Ann, what—”

  Ann was staring, too, but not at her daughter. “Les! The hassock! It used to be brown!”

  The hassock was a livid shade of green. A neon, demanding, screaming green that clashed horribly with the soft browns and reds in which Ann had furnished the room.

  “That round thing must be leaking,” Les said. “But did you see Sally when she—”

  Ann’s frazzled nerves carried a frantic order to her muscles. She jumped up, strode to the hassock and picked up the manky with two fingers. She tossed it to Les. Immediately, she regretted her action.

  “Drop it!” she yelled. “Maybe it’ll turn you green, too!”

  Les kicked the hassock into the hall closet, tossed the manky in after it and shut the door firmly. As the door closed, he saw the entire interior of the dark closet brighten into a wet-lettuce green.

  When he turned back to Ann, she was staring at her left hand. The wedding band that Les had put there a dozen years ago was a brilliant green, shedding its soft glow over the finger up to the first knuckle.

  Ann felt the scream building up inside her. She opened her mouth to let it out, then put her hand in front of her mouth to keep it in, finally jerked the hand away to prevent the glowing ring from turning her front teeth green.

  She collapsed into Les’s arms, babbling incomprehensibly.

  He said: “It’s all right. There must be balloons or something in the shoulders of that dress. I’ll tie a paperweight to Sally’s dress and that’ll hold her down until we undress her. Don’t worry. And that green dye or whatever it is will wash off.”

  Ann immediately felt better. She put her hands behind her back, pulled off her ring and slipped it into her apron pocket. Les was sentimental about her removing it.

  “I’ll get dinner,” she said, trying to keep her voice on an even keel. “Maybe you’d better start a letter to Hartshorne-Logan. Let’s go into the kitchen, Sally.”

  Ann strode resolutely toward the rear of the house. She kept her eyes determinedly off the tinge of green that was showing through the apron pocket and didn’t dare look back at her daughter’s unsettling means of propulsion.

  * * * *

  A half-hour later, when the meal was almost ready, two things happened: Bob came home from school through the back door and a strange voice said from the front of the house, “Don’t answer the front door.”

  Ann stared at her son. He stared back at her, the detective outfit under his arm.

  She went into the front room. Her husband was standing with fists on hips, looking at the front door, chuckling. “Neatest trick I’ve seen in a long time. That voice you heard was the new doorbell. I put it up while you were in the kitchen. Did you hear what happened when old lady Burnett out there pushed the button?”

  “Oh. Something like those name cards with something funny printed on them, like ‘Another hour shot.’ Well, if there’s a little tape in there repeating that message, you’d better shut that part off. It might get boring after a while. And it might insult someone.”

  Ann went to the door and turned the knob. The door didn’t open. The figure of Mrs. Burnett, half-visible through the heavy curtain, shifted impatiently on the porch.

  Les yanked at the doorknob. It didn’t yield for him, either. He looked up at the doorbell, which he had installed just above the upper part of the door frame.

  “Queer,” he said. “That isn’t in contact with the door itself. I don’t see how it can keep the door from opening.”

  Ann put her mouth close to the glass, shouting: “Won’t you come to the back door, Mrs. Burnett? This one is stuck.”

  “I just wanted to borrow some sugar,” the woman cried from the porch. “I realize that I’m a terrible bother.” But she walked down the front steps and disappeared around the side of the house.

  “Don’t open the back door.” The well-modulated voice from the small doorbell box threatened to penetrate every corner of the house. Ann looked doubtfully at her husband’s lips. They weren’t moving.

  “If this is ventriloquism—” she began icily.

  “I’ll have to order another doorbell just like this one, for the office,” Les said. “But you’d better let the old girl in. No use letting her get peeved.”

  The back door was already open, because it was a warm day. The screen door had no latch, held closed by a simple spring. Ann pushed it open when Mrs. Burnett waddled up the three back steps, and smiled at her neighbor.

  “I’m so sorry you had to walk around the house. It’s been a rather hectic day in an awful lot of ways.”

  * * * *

  Something seemed to impede Mrs. Burnett as she came to the threshold. She frowned and shoved her portly frame against something invisible. It apparently yielded abruptly, because she staggered forward into the kitchen, nearly falling. She stared grimly at Ann and looked suspiciously behind her.

  “The children have some new toys,” Ann improvised hastily. “Sally is so excited over a new dress that she’s positively feverish. Let’s see now—it was sugar that you want, wasn’t it?”

  “I already have it,” Bob said, handing a filled cup to his mother. The boy turned back to the detective set which he had spread over the kitchen table.

  “Excitement isn’t good for me,” Mrs. Burnett said testily. “I’ve had a lot of troubles in my life. I like peace and quiet.”

  “Your husband is better?”

  “Worse. I’m sure I don’t know why everything happens to me.” Mrs. Burnett edged toward the hall, trying to peer into the front of the house. Ann stood squarely in front of the door leading to the hall. Defeated, Mrs. Burnett left. A muffled volley of handclapping, mixed with a few faint cheers, came from the doorbell-box when she crossed the threshold.

  Ann went into the hall to order Les to disconnect the doorbell. She nearly collided with him, coming in the other direction.

  “Where did this come from?” Les held a small object in the palm of his hand, keeping it away from his body. A few drops of something unpleasant were dripping from his fingers. The object looked remarkably like a human eyeball. It was human-size, complete with pupil, iris and rather bloodshot veins.

  “Hey, that’s mine,” Bob said. “You know, this is a funny detective kit. That was in it. But there aren’t instructions on how it works.”

  “Well, put it away,” Ann told Bob sharply. “It’s slimy.”

  Les laid the eyeball on the table and walked away. The eyeball rolled from the smooth, level table, bounced twice when it hit the floor, then rolled along, six inches behind him. He turned and kicked at it. The eyeball rolled nimbly out of the path of the kick.

 
“Les, I think we’ve made poor Mrs. Burnett angry,” Ann said. “She’s so upset over her poor husband’s health and she thinks we’re insulting her.”

  Les didn’t hear her. He strode to the detective set, followed at a safe distance by the eyeball, and picked up the box.

  “Hey, watch out!” Bob cried. A small flashlight fell from the box, landed on its side and its bulb flashed on, throwing a pencil of light across Les’s hands.

  * * * *

  Bob retrieved the flashlight and turned it off while Les glanced through an instruction booklet, frowning.

  “This toy is too complicated for a ten-year-old boy,” Les told his wife. “I don’t know why you ordered such a thing.” He tossed the booklet into the empty box.

  “I’m going to return it, if you don’t smudge it up,” she replied. “Look at the marks you made on the instructions.” The black finger-marks stood out clearly against the shiny, coated paper.

  Les looked at his hands. “I didn’t do it,” he said, pressing his clean fingertips against the kitchen table.

  Black fingerprints, a full set of them, stood out against the sparkling polished table’s surface.

  “I think the Detectolite did it,” Bob said. “The instructions say you’ve got to be very careful with it, because its effects last for a long time.”

  Les began scrubbing his hands vigorously at the sink. Ann watched him silently, until she saw his fingerprints appear on the faucet, the soap and the towel. She began to yell at him for making such a mess, when Sally floated into the kitchen. The girl was wearing a nightgown.

  “My God!” Ann forgot her tongue before the children. “She got out of that dress herself. Where did she get that nightgown?”

  Ann fingered the garment. She didn’t recognize it as a nightgown. But in cut and fold, it was suspiciously like the dress that had arrived in the parcel. Her heart sank.

  She picked up the child, felt the hot forehead, and said: “Les, I think it’s the same dress. It must change color or something when it’s time for a nap. It seems impossible, but—” She shrugged mutely. “And I think Sally’s running a temperature. I’m going to put her to bed.”

  She looked worriedly into the reddened eyes of the small girl, who whimpered on the way to the bedroom. Ann carried her up the stairs, keeping her balance with difficulty, as Sally threatened to pop upward out of her arms.

  The whole family decided that bed might be a good idea, soon after dinner. When the lights went out, the house seemed to be nearly normal. Les put on a pair of gloves and threw a pillowcase over the eyeball. Bob rigged up trestles to warn visitors from the front porch. Ann put small wads of cotton into her ears, because she didn’t like the rhythmic rattle, soft but persistent, that emerged from the hall closet where the manky sat. Sally was whining occasionally in her sleep.

  * * * *

  When daylight entered her room, Sally’s nightgown had turned back into the new dress. But the little girl was too sick to get out of bed. She wasn’t hungry, her nose was running, and she had a dry cough. Les called the doctor before going to work.

  The only good thing about the morning for Ann was the fact that the manky had quieted down some time in the night. After she got Bob to school, she gingerly opened the closet door. The manky was now glowing a bright pink and seemed slightly larger. Deep violet lettering stood out on its side:

  “Today is Wednesday. For obvious reasons, the manky will not operate today.”

  The mailman brought a letter from Hartshorne-Logan. Ann stared stupidly at the envelope, until she realized that this wasn’t an impossibly quick answer to the letter she had written yesterday. It must have crossed in the mail her complaint about the non-arrival of the order. She tore open the envelope and read:

  We regret to inform you that your order cannot be filled until the balance you owe us has been reduced. From the attached form, you will readily ascertain that the payment of $87.56 will enable you to resume the purchasing of merchandise on credit. We shall fill your recent order as soon.…

  Ann crumpled the letter and threw it into the imitation fireplace, knowing perfectly well that it would need to be retrieved for Les after work tonight. She had just decided to call Hartshorne-Logan’s complaint department when the phone rang.

  “I’m afraid I must ask you to come down to the school, Mrs. Morris,” a voice said. “Your son is in trouble. He claims that it’s connected with something that his parents gave him.”

  “My son?” Ann asked incredulously. “Bob?”

  “Yes. It’s a little gadget that looks like a water pistol. Your son insists that he didn’t know it would make clothing transparent. He claims it was just accident that he tried it out when he was walking by the gym during calisthenics. We’ve had to call upon every family in the neighborhood for blankets. Bob has always been a good boy and we believe that we can expel him quietly without newspaper publicity involving his name, if you’ll—”

  “I’ll be right down,” Ann said. “I mean I won’t be right down. I’ve got a sick baby here. Don’t do anything till I telephone my husband. And I’m sorry for Bob. I mean I’m sorry for the girls, and for the boys, too. I’m sorry for—for everything. Good-by.”

  Just as she hung up the telephone, the doorbell rang. It rang with a normal buzz, then began to play soft music. Ann opened the door without difficulty, to admit Dr. Schwartz.

  “You aren’t going to believe me, Doctor,” Ann said while he took the child’s temperature, “but we can’t get that dress off Sally.”

  “Kids are stubborn sometimes.” Dr. Schwartz whistled softly when he looked at the thermometer. “She’s pretty sick. I want a blood count before I try to move her. Let me undress her.”

  Sally had been mumbling half-deliriously. She made no effort to resist as the doctor picked her up. But when he raised a fold of the dress and began to pull it back, she screamed.

  The doctor dropped the dress and looked in perplexity at the point where it touched Sally’s skin.

  “It’s apparently an allergy to some new kind of material. But I don’t understand why the dress won’t come off. It’s not stuck tight.”

  “Don’t bother trying,” Ann said miserably. “Just cut it off.”

  Dr. Schwartz pulled scissors from his bag and clipped at a sleeve. When he had cut it to the shoulder, he gently began to peel back the edges of the cloth. Sally writhed and kicked, then collapsed in a faint. The physician smoothed the folds hastily back into place.

  He looked helpless as he said to Ann: “I don’t know quite what to do. The flesh starts to hemorrhage when I pull at the cloth. She’d bleed to death if I yanked it off. But it’s such an extreme allergy that it may kill her, if we leave it in contact with the skin.”

  The manky’s rattle suddenly began rhythmically from the lower part of the house. Ann clutched the side of the chair, trying to keep herself under control. A siren wailed somewhere down the street, grew louder rapidly, suddenly going silent at the peak of its crescendo.

  Dr. Schwartz glanced outside the window. “An ambulance. Looks as if they’re stopping here.”

  “Oh, no,” Ann breathed. “Something’s happened to Les.”

  “It sure will,” Les said grimly, walking into the bedroom. “I won’t have a job if I can’t get this stuff off my fingers. Big black fingerprints on everything I touch. I can’t handle correspondence or shake hands with customers. How’s the kid? What’s the ambulance doing out front?”

  “They’re going to the next house down the street,” the physician said. “Has there been sickness there?”

  Les held up his hands, palms toward the doctor. “What’s wrong with me? My fingers look all right. But they leave black marks on everything I touch.”

  The doctor looked closely at the fingertips. “Every human has natural oil on the skin. That’s how detec
tives get results with their fingerprint powder. But I’ve never heard of nigrification, in this sense. Better not try to commit any crimes until you’ve seen a skin specialist.”

  * * * *

  Ann was peering through the window, curious about the ambulance despite her own troubles. She saw two attendants carry Mr. Burnett, motionless and white, on a stretcher from the house next door into the ambulance. A third member of the crew was struggling with a disheveled Mrs. Burnett at the door. Shrieks that sounded like “Murder!” came sharply through the window.

  “I know those bearers,” Dr. Schwartz said. He yanked the window open. “Hey, Pete! What’s wrong?”

  The front man with the stretcher looked up. “I don’t know. This guy’s awful sick. I think his wife is nuts.”

  Mrs. Burnett had broken free. She dashed halfway down the sidewalk, gesticulating wildly to nobody in particular.

  “It’s murder!” she screamed. “Murder again! He’s been poisoned! He’s going to die! It means the electric chair!”

  The orderly grabbed her again. This time he stuffed a handkerchief into her mouth to quiet her.

  “Come back to this house as soon as you deliver him,” Dr. Schwartz shouted to the men. “We’ve got a very sick child up here.”

  “I was afraid this would happen,” Les said. “The poor woman already has lost three husbands. If this one is sick, it’s no wonder she thinks that somebody is poisoning him.”

  Bob stuck his head around the bedroom door. His mother stared unbelievingly for a moment, then advanced on him threateningly. Something in his face restrained her, just as she was about to start shaking him.

  “I got something important to tell you,” Bob said rapidly, ready to duck. “I snuck out of the principal’s office and came home. I got to tell you what I did.”

  “I heard all about what you did,” Ann said, advancing again. “And you’re not going to slip away from me.”