Collected Fiction

by Kris Neville

  It was only when he was safely back in the car that he spread the paper out and scanned it quickly with the flashlight beam.

  He was closer to his own present than he had counted on.

  It was already later than period six.

  (I’m being tried, he thought; obstacles are put in my way. The testing. A piling up of complications. Blind fate is arrayed against me. But I shall not feel sorry for myself.)

  He took out the last set of identification papers. They were prepared for the period between 1947 and 1950. They would have to do. He read the card bearing the name and address of a hotel; it was probably still in operation. He slipped the other cards into his billfold.

  He started the motor and drove slowly to Washington. The streets were changed, but they were not unfamiliar. He found the hotel easily. He parked on the quiet street.

  In the hotel lobby he set his watch by the clock above the desk. It was almost midnight.

  It took the sleepy night clerk too long to fill out the card. The man irritated him.

  When the clerk asked for payment in advance, he snapped, “I’ve got bags!”

  “Yes, sir.”

  He superintended the bellboy’s handling of the four pieces of luggage. “Be careful,” he cautioned. “Watch that . . . Don’t be so clumsy.”

  The bellboy tested his window and peered into his closet and opened the door to his shower and turned on the light.

  “Don’t fuss around so.”

  The bellboy waited, hands at his sides.

  “No tip. I don’t believe in tipping.”

  The bellboy was gone. He locked the door.

  He went to the shower and drew a glass of water. He carried it back to the bed. He sat down. He drank it.

  He lay back on the bed. He writhed in agony. (God, God, he thought; why must I be made to suffer so? Why must everything be arrayed against me?)

  After five minutes, weak and drenched with perspiration, he was able to relax. His heart hammered, and his lungs worked in huge gasps.

  Trembling, he sat up.

  Careful, watch the heart. It’s old. It could stop.

  I can’t die, he thought suddenly: tortured, wracked with pain—but death, no: not until I am done. Not until I say for it to come.

  He shuddered. Don’t think about it, he told himself.

  He stood up and crossed to the largest of his trunks. He bent down. He was not used to bending down. His body was rusty. He fumbled with the straps. He got the trunk open.

  There were six compartments, only one of which was any good to him. He unloaded that one onto the dresser top. He closed the trunk and pushed it under the bed. He would not need it again. (How odd, he thought, those detailed accounts of well-known historical data will appear when they come to light after my death . . . and the cryptic notes.)

  He picked up the instruction sheets from the dresser and carried them to the bed. (Old men like to sit down, he thought; have to conserve my energy.) But before he could begin to read, his body was shaken by a chill. Come on, damn you, he thought; do your damnedest!

  When the chill passed, he lit a cigarette, noting that at this rate his two cartons would be gone shortly. Shouldn’t have brought any, he thought. Creature comforts; the little things, you get to notice them more as you grow older.

  He glanced at his instructions. There was a summary of the events between 1947 and 1950. He could depend on his own memory of the period for what general information he might need. He turned the page.

  There were outlines of five courses of action. Only two would still be valid. The one, he knew, had an estimated success factor of 80 per cent; the alternate, of 50 per cent. The possibility of accomplishing either was considerably less than that of any course before 1940. He studied the alternate.

  The psychologist, he thought, could he really know that much about the tangled strand of human motivations? But he must be right.

  (I’ve changed a lot through the years, he thought. I see things so much more clearly. I could scarcely recognize myself that once used to exist in the confusions and uncertainties, and how could I reason with that self?)

  He shuddered. The psychologists know so much . . . and more. Don’t trust them, myself. A lot of things they don’t understand, but . . .

  He discarded the alternate.

  The accepted outline consisted of scarcely more than key words. Enough merely to refresh his memory. There was a trunk reference number at the end.

  My contact is Levos, he thought. That’s better than some.

  “Ray Levos,” he read. “Press Club; Shoreham Hotel; Allies Club (after hours: bottle). Home address unknown.”

  He glanced at his watch. If I’m lucky, he thought, Ray will be at the Allies tonight.

  He went to the dresser. Have to convince him, he thought. Mustn’t forget to pick up a bottle for appearances, too.

  He found a membership card for the Allies Club among the material from the trunk. (I wonder where they managed to locate that? he thought.) He pocketed the tin box that contained an ink pad. He filled his billfold from the sheaf of currency. (The silver in his pocket was all minted in the twenties.)

  He slipped his coat off and removed the vest. Not many people still wearing them this late, he thought. He put the coat back on and adjusted the tie.

  He phoned the desk for a cab. He could wait until tomorrow to put his no-longer-necessary car in storage.

  Seated in the Allies Club with a drink before him, he surveyed the room carefully.

  You could depend on Winchell being at the Stork, he thought, but Ray isn’t a Winchell. Perhaps he won’t come in. I’ll have to phone his paper tomorrow.

  The drink went flat.

  I haven’t much time, he thought.

  It was after 2 o’clock when Ray arrived. The man from the future recognized the reporter immediately. But his memory had aged others as his own body had aged; supplying for Ray from imagination the thinning hair, the broadening waist, the sagging face muscles. It was as if this younger Ray had been quaffing youth at the magic fountain. The man from the future hated him.

  He stood up and threaded his way through the crowd to Ray’s table.

  “Ray? Ray Levos?”

  “Yeah?”

  “I think,” the man from the future said in a voice he normally used in addressing undergraduate students who came to his luncheons, “I think we have mutual friends.”

  I must be careful, he thought. Don’t give him a chance to argue, not until I’m in a better position to convince him who I am. That’s the first step: you have to convince somebody.

  Ray studied him.

  His suit was ill-fitting and outdated; his shirt collar was loose and wrinkled above the crudely knotted tie. His fingernails were unkept; there was a day-old gray stubble on his jowls. The eyes in the old, sunken face glittered intently.

  “Yeah?” Ray said. “Sit down.”

  He sees a story, the old man thought. A human interest paragraph for his column: Last night I was approached at my table in the Allies Club by a scholarly looking gentleman who . . . That’s good.

  The old man smiled thinly and eased himself into a chair.

  “Mutual friends?” Ray said. Professional interest was not enough to conceal the vague annoyance in his voice.

  “I know Gene Martin quite well.” Don’t sound so nervous, he thought.

  “Oh, yeah? Last I heard, Gene was teaching at Oregon State, wasn’t it? How is he now?”

  “He’ll be made a full professor next year.”

  “You don’t say . . . Say,” Ray said, looking more closely at the man. “You’re not his father?”

  “No, I’m not his father.”

  “You look a little like Gene. Care for a cigarette?”

  “Thanks,” the man from the future said.

  They lit cigarettes.

  “Gene’s a smart boy,” the reporter said.

  “One of the most brilliant men in the country.” The man from the future began to cough.
>
  Ray half rose from his chair. “Something wrong?”

  “It’s . . . close in here. Have trouble breathing. Be all right in a moment . . .” (Like Job, he thought, I have been afflicted: the degree of my success is in proportion to my suffering. Oh, that damned pain. Hard to get over the reaction: personalize it: puts one in conflict with . . . Fate? Lends one dignity.)

  “I’ll get you a drink.”

  “No. No, don’t bother. I’m better already.”

  “That’s a bad cough.”

  “. . . asthma, I think. Whoooo. That’s better.”

  A vital moment, although you couldn’t tell it by the room, he thought. The tables, the stupidly average people, the heavy pall of blue smoke. Spine-tingling. Once in my life I’m the most important thing that ever lived. It’s awesome.

  He removed the ink-pad tin and opened it. He enjoyed the slowness of his movement. Cliff-hanging, they called it in the early movies, he thought.

  This is no more vital than the preceding moment or any subsequent one until I succeed, he thought. But in the dim smoke-filled room it seems so. My nose prickles. Will I convince him?

  He pressed the fingers of his right hand to the pad and then transferred the ink impression of them to the back of his membership card.

  I decided this was the proper way, he thought. This has the necessary color of intrigue and mystery.

  He looked at the results for a moment and then wiped his fingers on his handkerchief. He handed the card across the table.

  “What’s this?”

  “You’re a reporter, Ray—”

  I’ll be damned if I’ll call him Mr. Levos.

  “You know some police detectives—someone who could rep the—excuse me, check the—”

  Watch the anachronistic slang, he told himself. Stick to dictionary English, at least for tonight. Don’t make him too suspicious.

  “—the identity of this set of prints with the F.B.I.?” he concluded.

  “That’s an odd thing to ask, Mr . . .?”

  “The name’s on the card.”

  “Oh, yes. Mr. Roberts. All right, Mr. Roberts. Now what’s the idea of this funny stuff?”

  He bent forward. “I’m trying to convince you who I am.”

  “You could try telling me.”

  “I want you to phone me at the Wilton Hotel when you check those prints.” He stood up. “Gene was your roommate. I know him very well. He’ll appreciate anything you can do for me.”

  How did that sound? How much of it was sheer indulgence of a hidden desire for melodrama? Did I try hard enough? And: Am I worthy to try? (Mustn’t think of that; they gave me the awesome responsibility: of course I am.) But subconsciously do I hope that Ray won’t check the prints? (How did that thought creep in? Of course I’m worthy.)

  “By God, wait a minute here—”

  But the man from the future was halfway to the door. That’s over, he thought. He’ll call me. I hope I worked it right.

  Ray settled back in the seat and stared at the card.

  Two days later in his hotel room he lay on the bed smoking a cigarette. He had smoked four packs since he had talked to Ray. He was recovering from a cold. He had sent out for food only once, but he was not hungry.

  It took the shot too long to break the cold, he thought. Perhaps I didn’t give it to myself properly; perhaps, in the years of freedom from colds, I’ve lost all resistance. Don’t let there be another forgotten disease!

  He crushed out the cigarette.

  I’ll give him another day to phone. If he doesn’t (within two packages of cigarettes: I’ll ration them, one an hour, no more) I’ll try to find someone else. A Congressman. A Congressman will do.

  But Ray will phone.

  Sitting up weakly, he thought: The cold’s gone, but the seizures keep recurring with undiminished intensity; indeed, with greater severity.

  He lay back. If one gets the math, he thought, one sees that the temporal perceptor is a sensitive jelly and each compression wave in it upsets my compatibility coefficient. The waves roll forward and bounce back against me and my body translates them as chills and fevers.

  He wanted to shake his fists at the wall. It would take too much energy. He lay quiet.

  I ought to have a cigarette.

  I’ve got to eat . . .

  He phoned room service and ordered.

  I’ve already brought about minor changes in the perceptor, he thought. That’s what sets off the compression waves. I’ve created a perceptor time outside of time: a time in which our perceptor time is static. At what point do my actions change the future? It must be at the point of direct interference. Thank God for that! I’d be dead already if it were sequential. It’s logical, though, because otherwise the point of direct interference would never be reached . . .

  If, he thought, we’d had more time to experiment. If the cat could have talked . . . Two damned cats four weeks before the machine was finished. Very unusual to walk into the laboratory and find that Rattler had twinned herself. Well, damned cats, anyway. Hate them.

  If the older Rattler could have talked we might have known that a compression wave killed her. The speed-up must have made the compression wave. Painful death: screeching and yowling and scratching . . . Still, with proof of success, we finished ahead of schedule.

  My compatibility is a guarantee of some sort of temporal tolerance. (A trivial accident in the society of cave men might magnify into a world that never heard of Hitler.) I can’t let myself be destroyed by some unwitting act. I might take a cab that otherwise would have permitted a girl to catch a train, meet a husband, have a baby who would have become . . . It’s hard, he thought, to know.

  I remember thinking as I put Rattler into the machine: You’re going to kill her. But I couldn’t stop: I wasn’t able to.

  The past makes the future, casts it in a hard mold. That’s sure. You can’t escape the past.

  But then, if it hadn’t been for the second Rattler, we wouldn’t have known what the past demanded, and not knowing, we wouldn’t have realized that we were doing merely what had to be done—oh, hell! This is—

  ‘It’s finished,’ I said. ‘Let’s test it.’ I put the dial on minimum power. ‘What with?’ ‘The cat.’ . . . all right,’ I said. My God! Stop thinking about it!

  The steak will be good. Nutritious. I wish room service would hurry.

  . . . After that, we were shaken. We put it on maximum power and sent back an ash tray. Maximum power shorted out half a dozen circuits. How far back, I still don’t know. Figuring from our experience with Rattler, 1929. But the limit of compatibility may have been later. Danny (I never did trust him) and I did the math while the technicians made repairs.

  ‘The cat,’ Danny said. No, I wanted to say. But we used the cat.

  Stop it! Stop thinking!

  His body was drenched with perspiration when he heard the knock and the voice: “Room service.”

  “Oh, come in, come in,” he said desperately . . .

  It was hours later that Ray phoned. “I’m downstairs. May I come up?”

  “Do. Please do,” he said. He was surprised at the sobbing relief in his voice. Shameful. If he hadn’t come, I would have figured out another contact, he thought.

  And then he thought! I hope it isn’t important to the future that he be anywhere else.

  These minor changes of the future, he thought, are being visited upon me: I am doomed to suffer.

  I will stand against them; I shall not bow. They ennoble me.

  (I don’t enjoy them, he thought: the vicious satisfaction isn’t joy.)

  Ray was knocking at the door.

  “Come in.”

  Ray entered.

  “Sit down.” I knew he’d come, the old man thought.

  Ray sat down. “That was a damned clever trick, mister. How did you manage it?”

  “I am Gene Martin.”

  Ray shook his head. “I can’t buy that. Gene’s a year younger than I am.”

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sp; “Look at me.”

  “I’m willing to believe you’re some relation of his.”

  “No, I’m he. I’m what he will be in the future.”

  “Nuts,” Ray said. “What’s the pitch?”

  I’ve got to convince you! Gene thought. If I can’t: big, black abyss, down, down, little boy, terrified, running, huge, hungry birds in the sky, figures in white, terrifying; everything; there’s no ground under my feet! the graveyard—what’s in the graveyard? I’ve got to convince you! “Ask me some questions about Gene.”

  “I checked: Gene’s still at Oregon State.”

  “Ask me some questions,” the old man pleaded.

  “. . . all right, what was the color of Mary’s dress at the senior prom?”

  “No,” Gene said frantically. He cracked his knuckles nervously. “I don’t see how you can expect me to remember that, Ray.” How much have I forgotten? he sobbed to himself.

  “It was blue,” Ray said. “What was the picture above Gene’s bed? Is that a fair question?”

  “The Indian picture,” Gene said eagerly. “The hast Warrior, something like that. You used to call it, Returning from a Conference with the Great White Father in Washington.”

  With deliberate slowness Ray lit a cigarette and inhaled deeply. “You remember what I did the day Ed swiped a copy of the history exam from Doc Ewing?”

  “Yes,” Gene said quickly. “This should convince you: You gave the class a list of wrong answers and cut the test.”

  Ray twisted uncomfortably. “You ought to open a window. It’s stuffy in here.” He put the cigarette on the ash tray. “I think there’s a question only Gene and I know the answer to.”

  “You mean, who was Nelly Striebor Dawes? We were both sophomores that year, Ray.”

  “I’ll be Goddamned,” Ray said. He stood up and walked to the window. He opened it and looked out over the city. Across town, the lights were on around the Washington Monument. The sun had left twilight in the sky. “I’ll be Goddamned.”

  He turned from the city. “It’s a good act. It’s so good I can half believe you are Gene.”

  Of course, Gene thought. I knew I could convince him. I wasn’t worried. “They were Gene’s fingerprints,” he reminded the reporter.