by Damon Knight
“Not long, Signor. One hour, no more.”
“Oh, very well, then,” said Harold pettishly, turning half away. He paused. “One thing more,” he said, taking the gun out of his pocket as he turned, “put your hands up and stand against the wall there, will you?”
The first two complied slowly. The third, the lean one, fired through his coat pocket, just like the gangsters in the American movies.
It was not a sharp sensation at all, Harold was surprised to find; it was more as if someone had hit him in the side with a cricket bat. The racket seemed to bounce interminably from the walls. He felt the gun jolt in his hand as he fired back, but couldn’t tell if he had hit anybody. Everything seemed to be happening very slowly, and yet it was astonishingly hard to keep his balance. As he swung around he saw the two stocky ones with their hand half inside their jackets, and the lean one with his mouth open, and Tomaso with bulging eyes. Then the wall came at him and he began to swim along it, paying particular attention to the problem of not dropping one’s gun.
As he weathered the first turn in the passageway the roar broke out afresh. A fountain of plaster stung his eyes; then he was running clumsily, and there was a bedlam of shouting behind him.
Without thinking about it he seemed to have selected the laboratory as his destination; it was an instinctive choice, without much to recommend it logically. In any case, he realized halfway across the central hall, he was not going to get there.
He turned and squinted at the passageway entrance; saw a blur move and fired at it. It disappeared. He turned again awkwardly, and had taken two steps nearer an armchair which offered the nearest shelter, when something clubbed him between the shoulderblades. One step more, knees buckling, and the wall struck him a second, softer blow. He toppled, clutching at the tapestry that hung near the fireplace.
When the three guards, whose names were Enrico, Alberto and Luca, emerged cautiously from the passage and approached Harold’s body, it was already flaming like a Viking’s in its impromptu shroud; the dim horses and men and falcons of the tapestry were writhing and crisping into brilliance. A moment later an uncertain ring of fire wavered toward them across the carpet.
Although the servants came with fire extinguishers and with buckets of water from the kitchen, and although the fire department was called, it was all quite useless. In five minutes the whole room was ablaze; in ten, as windows burst and walls buckled, the fire engulfed the second storey. In twenty a mass of flaming timbers dropped into the vault through the hole Peter had made in the floor of the laboratory, utterly destroying the time-sphere apparatus and reaching shortly thereafter, as the authorities concerned were later to agree, an intensity of heat entirely sufficient to consume a human body without leaving any identifiable trace. For that reason alone, there was no trace of Peter’s body to be found.
The sounds had just begun again when Peter saw the light from the time-sphere turn ruddy and then wink out like a snuffed candle.
In the darkness, he heard the door open.
SPECIAL DELIVERY
Len and Moira Connington lived in a rented cottage with a small yard, a smaller garden and too many fir trees. The lawn, which Len seldom had time to mow, was full of weeds, and the garden was overgrown with blackberry brambles. The house itself was clean and smelled better than most city apartments, and Moira kept geraniums in the windows; however, it was dark on account of the firs and on the wrong side of town. Approaching the door one late spring afternoon, Len tripped on a flagstone and scattered examination papers all the way to the porch.
When he picked himself up, Moira was giggling in the doorway. “That was funny.”
“The hell it was,” said Len. “I banged my nose.” He picked up his Chemistry B papers in a stiff silence; a red drop fell oil the last one. “God damn it!”
Moira held the screen door for him, looking contrite and faintly surprised. She followed him into the bathroom. “Len, I didn’t mean to laugh. Does it hurt much?”
“No,” said Len, staring fiercely at his scraped nose in the mirror, although in point of fact it was throbbing like a gong.
“That’s good. It was the funniest thing—I mean, funny-peculiar,” she said hastily.
Len stared at her; the whites of her eyes were showing. “Is there anything the matter with you?” he demanded.
“I don’t know,” she said on a rising note. “Nothing like that ever happened to me before. I didn’t think it was funny at all, I was worried about you, and I didn’t know I was going to laugh—” She laughed again, a trifle nervously. “Maybe I’m cracking up?”
Moira was a dark-haired young woman with a placid, friendly disposition; Len had met her in his senior year at Columbia, with—looking at it impartially, which Len seldom did—regrettable results. At present, in her seventh month, she was shaped like a rather bosomy kewpie doll.
Emotional upsets, he remembered, may occur frequently during this period. He leaned to get past her belly and kissed her forgivingly. “You’re probably tired. Go sit down and I’ll get you some coffee.”
… Except that Moira had never had any hysterics till now, or morning sickness, either—she burped instead—and anyhow, was there anything in the literature about fits of giggling?
After supper he marked seventeen sets of papers desultorily in red pencil, then got up to look for the baby book. There were four dog-eared paperbound volumes with smiling infants” faces on the covers, but the one he wanted wasn’t there. He looked behind the bookcase and on the wicker table beside it. “Moira!”
“Hm?”
“Where the bloody hell is the other baby book?”
“I’ve got it.”
Len went and looked over her shoulder. She was staring at a mildly obscene drawing of a fetus lying in a sort of upside-down Yoga position inside a cutaway woman’s body.
“That’s what he looks like,” she said. “Mama.”
The diagram was of a fetus at term. “What was that about your mother?” Len asked, puzzled.
“Don’t be silly,” she said abstractedly.
He waited, but she didn’t look up or turn the page. After a while he went back to his work.
He watched her. Eventually she leafed through to the back of the book, read a few pages, and put it down. She lighted a cigarette and immediately put it out again. She fetched up a resounding belch.
“That was a good one,” said Len admiringly. Moira’s belches surpassed anything ever heard in the men’s locker rooms at Columbia; they shook doors and rattled windows.
Moira sighed.
Feeling tense, Len picked up his coffee cup and started toward the kitchen. He halted beside Moira’s chair. On the side table was her after-dinner cup, still full of coffee: black, scummed with oil droplets, stone cold.
“Didn’t you want your coffee?”
She looked at the cup. “I did, but…” She paused and shook her head, looking perplexed. “I don’t know.”
“Well, do you want another cup now?”
“Yes, please. No.”
Len, who had begun a step, rocked back on his heels. “Which, damn it?”
Her face got all swollen. “Oh, Len, I’m so mixed up,” she said, and began to tremble.
Len felt part of his irritation spilling over into protectiveness. “What you need,” he said firmly, “is a drink.”
He climbed a stepladder to get at the top cabinet shelf which housed their liquor when they had any; small upstate towns and their school boards being what they were, this was one of many necessary precautions.
Inspecting the doleful three fingers of whisky in the bottle, Len swore under his breath. They couldn’t afford a decent supply of booze, or new clothes for Moira, or—The original idea had been for Len to teach for a year while they saved enough money so that he could go back for his master’s; more lately, this proving unlikely, they had merely been trying to put aside enough for summer school, and even that was beginning to look like the wildest optimism.
Hig
h-school teachers without seniority weren’t supposed to be married. Or graduate physics students, for that matter.
He mixed two stiff highballs and carried them back into the living room. “Here you are. Skoal.”
“Ah,” she said appreciatively. “That tastes—Ugh.” She set the glass down and stared at it with her mouth half open.
“What’s the matter now?”
She turned her head carefully, as if she were afraid it would come off. “Len, I don’t know. Mama.”
“That’s the second time you’ve said that. What is this all—”
“Said what?”
“Mama. Look kid, if you’re—”
“I didn’t.” She looked a little feverish.
“Sure you did,” said Len reasonably. “Once when you were looking at the baby book, and then again just now, after you said ugh to the highball. Speaking of which—”
“Mama drink milk,” said Moira, speaking with exaggerated clarity.
Moira hated milk. Len swallowed half his highball, turned and went silently into the kitchen.
When he came back with the milk, Moira looked at it as if it contained a snake. “Len, I didn’t say that.”
“Okay.”
“I didn’t. I didn’t say mama and I didn’t say that about the milk.” Her voice quavered. “And I didn’t laugh at you when you fell down.”
“It was somebody else.”
“It was.” She looked down at her gingham-covered bulge. “You won’t believe me. Put your hand there. A little lower.”
Under the cloth her flesh was warm and solid against his palm. “Kicks?” he inquired.
“Not yet. Now,” she said in a strained voice. “You in there. If you want your milk, kick three times.”
Len opened his mouth and shut it again. Under his hand there were three squirming thrusts, one after the other.
Moira closed her eyes, held her breath and drank the milk down in one long horrid gulp.
“Once in a great while,” Moira read, “cell cleavage will not have followed the orderly pattern that produces a normal baby. In these rare cases some parts of the body will develop excessively, while others do not develop at all. This disorderly cell growth, which is strikingly similar to the wild cell growth that we know as cancer—” Her shoulders moved convulsively. “Bluh.”
“Why do you keep reading that stuff if it makes you feel that way?”
“I have to,” she said absently. She picked up another book from the stack. “There’s a page missing.”
Len attacked the last of his egg in a noncommittal manner. “Wonder it’s held together this long,” he said. This was perfectly just; the book had had something spilled on it, partially dissolving the glue, and was in an advanced state of anarchy; however the fact was that Len had torn out the page in question four nights ago, after reading it carefully: the topic was” Psychoses in Pregnancy” .
Moira had now decided that the baby was male, that his name was Leonardo (not referring to Len but to da Vinci), that he had informed her of these things along with a good many others, that he was keeping her from her .favourite foods and making her eat things she detested, like liver and tripe, and that she had to read books of his choice all day long in order to keep him from kicking her.in the bladder.
It was miserably hot; Commencement was only two weeks away, Len’s students were fish-eyed and galvanic by turns. Then there was the matter of his contract for next year, and the possible opening at Oster High, which would mean more money, and the Parent—Teacher’s thing tonight at which Superintendent Greer and his wife would be regally present…
Moira was knee-deep in Volume I of Der Untergang des Abendlandes, moving her lips; an occasional guttural escaped her.
Len cleared his throat. “Moy?”
“…und also des tragichen—what in God’s name he means by that—What, Len?”
He made an irritated noise. “Why not try the English edition?”
“Leo wants to learn German. What were you going to say?”
Len closed his eyes for a moment. “About this PTA business—you sure you want to go?”
“Well, of course .It’s pretty important, isn’t it? Unless you think I look too sloppy—”
“No. No, damn it. But are you feeling up to it?”
There were faint violet crescents under Moira’s eyes; she had been sleeping badly. “Sure,” she said.
“All right. And you’ll go see the sawbones tomorrow.”
“I said I would.”
“And you won’t say anything about Leo to Mrs. Greer or anybody—”
She looked slightly embarrassed. “No. Not till he’s born, I think, don’t you? It would be an awful hard thing to prove—you wouldn’t even have believed me if you hadn’t felt him kick.”
This experiment had not been repeated, though Len had asked often enough; all little Leo had wanted, Moira said, was to establish communication with his mother—he didn’t seem to be really interested in Len at all. “Too young,” she explained.
And still… Len recalled the frogs his biology class had dissected last semester. One of them had had two hearts. This disorderly cell growth… like a cancer. Unpredictable: extra fingers or toes—or a double helping of cortex?
“And I’ll burp like a lady, if at all,” Moira said cheerfully.
When the Conningtons arrived, the room was empty except for the ladies of the committee, two nervously smiling male teachers and the impressive bulk of Superintendent Greer: Card-table legs skreeked on the bare floor; the air was heavy with wood polish and musk.
Greer advanced, beaming fixedly. “Well, isn’t this nice. How are you young folks this warm evening?”
“Oh, we thought we’d be earlier, Mr. Greer,” said Moira with pretty vexation. She looked surprisingly schoolgirlish and chic; the lump that was Leo was hardly noticeable unless you caught her in profile. “I’ll go right now and help the ladies. There must be something I can still do.”
“No, now, we won’t hear of it. But I’ll tell you what you can do—you can go right over there and say hello to Mrs. Greer. I know she’s dying to sit down and have a good chat with you. Go ahead now—don’t worry about this husband of yours; I’ll take care of him.”
Moira receded into a scattering of small shrieks of pleasure, at least half of them arching across a gap of mutual dislike.
Greer, exhibiting perfect dentures, exhaled Listerine. His pink skin looked not only scrubbed but disinfected; his gold-rimmed glasses belonged in an optometrist’s window, and his tropical suit had obviously come straight from the cleaner’s. It was impossible to think of Greer unshaven, Greer smoking a cigar, Greer with a smudge of axle grease on his forehead, or Greer making love to his wife.
“Well, sir, this weather…”
“When I think of what this valley was like twenty years ago…”
“At today’s prices…”
Len listened with growing admiration, putting in comments where required; he had never realized before that there were so many absolutely neutral topics of conversation.
A few more people straggled in, raising the room temperature about half a degree per capita. Greer did not perspire, he merely glowed.
Across the room Moira was now seated chummily with Mrs. Greer, a large-bosomed woman in an outrageously unfashionable hat. Moira appeared to be telling a joke; Len knew perfectly well that it was a clean one, but he listened tensely, all the same, until he heard Mrs. Greer yelp with laughter. Her voice carried well. “Oh, that’s priceless! Oh, dear, I only hope I can remember it!”
Len, who had resolutely not been thinking of ways to turn the conversation toward the Oster vacancy, stiffened again when he realized that Greer had abruptly begun to talk shop. His heart began pounding absurdly; Greer was asking highly pertinent questions in a good-humoured but businesslike way—drawing Len out, and not even bothering to be Machiavellian about it.
Len answered candidly, except when he was certain he knew what the superintendent wante
d to hear; then he lied like a Trojan.
Mrs. Greer had conjured up a premature pot of tea; and oblivious to the stares of the thirstier teachers present, she and Moira were hogging it, heads together, as if they were plotting the overthrow of the Republic or exchanging recipes.
Greer listened attentively to Len’s final reply, which was delivered with as pious an air as if Len had been a Boy Scout swearing on the Manual; but since the question had been “Do you plan to make teaching your career?” there was not a word of truth in it.
He then inspected his paunch and assumed a mild theatrical frown. Len, with that social sixth sense which is unmistakable when it operates, knew that his next words were going to be: “You may have heard that Oster High will be needing a new science teacher next fall…”
At this point Moira barked like a seal.
The ensuing silence was broken a moment later by a hearty scream, followed instantly by a clatter and a boneshaking thud.
Mrs. Greer was sitting on the floor; legs sprawled, hat over her eye, she appeared to be attempting to perform some sort of orgiastic dance.
“It was Leo,” Moira said incoherently. “You know she’s English—she said of course a cup of tea wouldn’t hurt me, and she kept telling me to go ahead and drink it while it was hot, and I couldn’t—”
“No. No. Wait,” said Len in a controlled fury. “What—”
“So I drank some. And Leo kicked up and made me burp the burp I was saving. And—”
“Oh, Christ.”
“Then he kicked the teacup out of my hand into her lap, and I wish I was dead.”
On the following day, Len took Moira to the doctor’s office, where they read dog-eared copies of The Rotarian and Field and Stream for an hour.
Dr. Berry was a round little man with soulful eyes and a twenty-four hour bedside manner. On the walls of his office, where it is customary for doctors to hang at least seventeen diplomas and certificates of membership, Berry had three; the rest of the space was filled with enlarged, coloured photographs of beautiful, beautiful children.
When Len followed Moira determinedly into the consulting room. Berry looked mildly shocked for a moment, then apparently decided to carryon as if nothing outre had happened. You could not say that he spoke, or even whispered; he rustled.