Collected Fiction

by Kris Neville

  “It won’t make a shade of difference,” I said. “The past is immutable. That’s the point of the construct—”

  But, of course, what was the point? How could one really know that the past is immutable? Perhaps it was fluid or semirigid like cold gelatin or something else entirely.

  To pursue our ignorance on this point: How might one account for the way that the Transmitter could only bring back parents and no one else, except once in a great while, grandparents? Was there some psychic force between generations, grown up from an early dependency? And yet, there were occasions when the father who came back was a stranger to the child, and so—was there some transcendent genetic continuity, some scientological myth, that the Transporter responded to? Or was the circle that was necessary like the pentagram of old, and was this black magic entirely, as the world fragmented itself on the New One Thousand, having broken an obscure equivalent of the sound barrier? It’s academic now, I guess, but no one admitted to understanding it, even Fox, any more than anyone admits to understanding time, itself, or, for that matter, Reality, either. Now, of course, Fox is working on a machine to let us visit the future. He seems to be having unexpected problems that perhaps my father also contributed to. I like to think something will continue to go wrong with his research, but maybe this is merely because I have come in other areas to distrust the uses technicians make of science.

  But then I could not admit any ignorance to my father, could I? Was he ever less than certain with me about things of which he knew nothing?

  “Come on, dad,” I continued, mindful of the time, “loosen up, relax, let’s tell a few old yams. Yours is the first generation in recorded history that has been given the advantage of time travel to your descendants, the privilege of seeing your works in their fullest flower, when you’re dead and gone.”

  “Know what I’m going to do?” my father said, managing to make it fully to the top of his warped legs and stand at last. “I’m going to kill myself, that’s what. Right here in your basement. That way, the way I figure it, none of this ever happened, then.”

  I wondered what he thought he was trying to teach me this time.

  He reached into his inner coat pocket. “Get this!” And he waved the knife at me. “Been holding it for the time those draft rioters get too close to the old man, start to mess with him! Been my protection, this little sweetheart: clean and sharp, really does the job! Good luck, son. I can’t take it any more; I can’t spend the rest of my life wondering when you’re going to get the urge to pull the old man all to pieces . . .”

  He held the knife twohanded against his heart and then brought it all the way through his shirt.

  He stiffened in the midst of a good deal of blood and kicked right out on the floor. Despite the fact that he didn’t look good at all, there was a smile on that small fragment of face which hadn’t gone completely white. I was sure then and now that nothing like this had occurred in temporal transport before, and I waited for something awful to happen.

  I was scared. I admit it. If my father had really died here in my basement in 1988 rather than 1993, then my whole life would be ineradicably changed, to say nothing of the consequences of his being found suddenly missing 16 years ago. I would never have had the fight with him that sent me away from home but eventually got me into the job where I had made enough money to rent the Transporter in the first place. But, if so—

  The only thing I could think to do was to get him back. This may have been a bad decision, and if so, then I’ll just have to take the blame for it.

  I picked him up, it was the most disgusting event of my life, and staggered into the circle with him and tossed the corpse in and, putting the Transporter on manual so as not to take any chances, set it for a quick return. Then I pressed the lever and closed my eyes.

  I said, “Thank God,” when he vanished, although who can possibly believe in God any more; of course, I guess there are some who say He’s not really dead, He’s just senile.

  Well, it meant at the worst that the old man would be found dead in 1988 instead of 1993, which would be very bad, but not as bad as the other way, or so I supposed. Perhaps the shock of his death like that would have sent me away from home. Best of all, it could be that the effect was self-negating.

  I sat in the basement in front of the Fox Temporal Couch with all the doors locked, waiting for myself to vanish or something; but sometime later, when nothing had happened and my memories hadn’t changed, as far as I could tell, and it was fairly obvious, I thought, that nothing was going to happen, I let a long breath out and decided that I had beaten it. The Transporter had beaten it. Time, indeed, was immutable, as the brochure claimed, and my father’s action had, for all intents and purposes, never happened.

  I brought my father back twice after that. The second time, decomposition had progressively advanced. On January 4, 1999, I decided that I wanted no more part of it, so I gave up using the Transporter. When the government call-in was announced, I was more than happy to turn it in. It was a pleasant novelty there for a while, but who in hell wanted to see corpses, lots of corpses, coming back, and have to think about all those moms like that, too?

  And I still hope Fox keeps having problems, for there could come a day when some parent may wish to continue his instructions into the far future, thereby succeeding in killing it, too.

  MEDICAL PRACTICES AMONG THE IMMORTALS

  Wouldn’t it be nice to live forever and walk among the stars?

  FELIX WEAVER, M.D., hearing the door chimes, anticipated the repairman. He stood up quickly—the call was costing him money.

  Opening the door, Dr. Weaver was pleased to note that the man was new. The last repairman had not done as well as he might have since the cooker was down again—and the new man (hopefully with a family) might be in need of medical services. With the prospects of immortality assured no man wanted to risk being carried off prematurely because of some correctable defect, no matter how remote the possibility was.

  “It’s the cooker again,” said Dr. Weaver.

  “How do I get to it?”

  “Come along,” said Dr. Weaver. Dr. Weaver lived in one of the older houses, which had required extensive remodeling. What had formerly been the kitchen was now his medical laboratory. Beyond this was his office, a remodeled den, containing two chairs and his mahogany desk. The food-preparation unit was entered from the dining room via a concrete stairway.

  Dr. Weaver lighted the stairway for the repairman and the two of them descended. At the bottom the repairman examined the meal preparer briefly, then went to his bag, which he had put down at the foot of the stairs. He opened it and began unpacking. Soon his instruments lay around him—meters, probes, an oscilloscope and a small computer.

  “Let’s plug this thing in and see,” he said.

  Dr. Weaver drew out his business card and fingered it nervously. One always sought clients—the story of a physician’s life. One spoke of strange diseases that might be encountered as a result of the night air and for which allpurpose injections were administered. Occasionally one could avail oneself of an epidemic scare and business would be good for a week or two. Failing epidemics, all were advised to have their systems depoisoned at least every six months to be on the safe side, since you could never know for sure what lethal agents accidentally got into the air and the food. There was also a fair business in prescription analgesics and oxygen preparations for hangovers and in certain other miscellaneous services. On rare occasions one found a case where surgery of some sort was indicated and managed to snag a finder’s fee. Altogether not the best—but a living.

  Dr. Weaver stood on first one foot and then the other.

  “Bread prices went up again today,” the repairman said. “It’s getting so a working man can’t make ends meet.”

  “That’s certainly true,” Dr. Weaver said. He felt the growth of maniacal rage. Murder, although severely dealt with, was not unknown. Dr. Weaver was a firm supporter of the President.

&n
bsp; “You’ll be glad to know that I’ll have this thing fixed in a jiffy. Computer picked up the trouble.”

  “You’ll have time for a cup of coffee, then?” Dr. Weaver said, knowing he was going to pay for a full hour in any event.

  “That’d be good,” said the repairman.

  “We’ll have it when you finish here,” said Dr. Weaver, shifting his weight and peering over the man’s shoulder.

  The repairman, somewhat displeased with the continuing supervision, stopped and sat down. “Let me tell you what I’m doing,” he said. “You see, this cooker unit is attached to your frozen storage compartment—where the food is kept—and there’s a little trigger that is supposed to start it up when the food comes sliding down that chute over there. Now, this little trigger has caused us a lot of trouble in the—”

  “Just call me when you finish.”

  “—a lot of trouble, I was saying, in development, because the operation is quite complex. You have to consider that the cooker has to maintain different levels of heat in various areas if you want the food all to come out at the same time.”

  “I understand that,” said Dr. Weaver, “and I really have to go now.” He fled the repairman. If angered sufficiently the man might follow him about the house, from room to room, explaining the operation of the equipment. Repairmen had been known to do so.

  DR. WEAVER waited in his laboratory—in what used to be the kitchen when cooking was still done manually. The lab’s contents had been given to him on his graduation from medical school—at the rates possible in his practice it would have taken him ten lifetimes to pay for it. He could, of course, do no major repairs on the equipment. That was for the engineers, who went to school a number of years longer than he did. The human body, when all was said and done, was basically less complex than many electronic devices. In the human organism only a half-dozen important chemical reactions plus a few mechanical things could still go wrong. Like a radio, it was comparatively simple, self-renewing and built to last forever.

  The repairman came up shortly. “There,” he said. “That ought to do it. I thought I might have to replace the trigger unit, but you were lucky this time. Tell your wife to watch for sensitive temperature differences—she works it too hard and it will be down again inside a year. You have to learn to treat these cooker units right if you want them to last.”

  “I’ll tell her.”

  The repairman seated himself, apparently pleased with the speed with which the trouble had been located and repaired. “Here I am working twenty hours a week,” he said, “and the rest of the world is coming along nicely without working this hard. Why do you suppose they spend our tax dollars trying to industrialize Asia?”

  Dr. Weaver thought, suddenly despairing, that the future was shaped by the present. The majority, in the end, would go where they wanted to go. An industrialized Asia would need more repairmen than doctors. There was little Dr. Weaver could do. His anger returned. He drew coffee for the two of them, his hand shaking with the emotion. Thirty minutes were still left of the hundred-and-seventy-five-dollar hour. He knew that some day he was going to kill somebody.

  The repairman said, “And think of how many years we’ve wasted fiddling with science—and the tax dollars down that rathole, too.”

  Dr. Weaver suggested, “In this day and age it’s hard to see how anybody can figure out a new way to go insane.”

  “And it’s difficult, if I may say so as an engineer, imagining the degree of sanity of a man who thinks he’s fiddling around with the fundamental fabric of the space-time continuum and expects to have any success with it.”

  “I’m not too much up on theory,” Dr. Weaver said. “But wouldn’t you like to see us able to explore other star systems, not just our eight other little planets here? Some day we might be able to walk out there, once we get the equipment built—and we may need Asia to help us build the equipment. It seems to me that we ought to support the President completely in this.”

  “Can you tell me why we should do it, though? That’s all I’m asking.”

  Images drifted through Dr. Weaver’s mind of other planets circling other stars. “We’d reap a lot of technological benefits.”

  “We got all we need.”

  THE blind rage filled Dr. Weaver again, but somehow he could never get it out in words and it lay penned. Why should he be so interested in getting to the stars? What more did a man really need than what he already had? Nearly everyone felt like the repairman and yet, to Dr. Weaver, that was wrong. They were all wrong somehow. It was necessary to get the planet into order and go out among the stars.

  “If it weren’t for these high taxes and having to work my butt off every week,” the repairman continued, “I’d be perfectly happy. Let me tell you, I would be.”

  Dr. Weaver felt the rage retreat, followed by despair.

  “Nice place you got here,” said the repairman, putting four spoons of sugar in the coffee, stirring.

  “Thank you, we like it. I’m just a physician, an M.D., and we survive. Do you have any children?”

  “One. He’s two now. We plan our other one when this one’s out of college. I think it’s better to space them out. I know a lot of people wind up not wanting to be bothered with the second one if they wait—but I think I’ll take that route.”

  “We did,” said Dr. Weaver. “Our first is seventeen and we’re seriously thinking about a second now.”

  “Seventeen?” asked the repairman. “What do you think these teenagers are up to? Just don’t understand them. What are they looking for? Running all over these agricultural countries and upsetting whole economies.”

  Dr. Weaver knew that an extended discussion along this line would only alienate beyond recall a potential client. Further more, it would continue to subject him to the alternate waves of fury and despair.

  “May I give you my business card?” he asked. “In case you need the services of a physician. I think you’re right on raising the child. A child really deserves undivided attention for the first fifteen years at least. It’s a wise choice you’ve made. Maybe I could show you my little laboratory? It’s very well finished.”

  “I can see that. That’s a nice model of the cell monitor.”

  “Well, you don’t need to have this stuff described to you, but it is well set up. With this equipment, I can locate any organic defect you can name. Now, obviously, most aren’t important—though one should keep an eye on them—but you can never be sure without professional advice—”

  The repairman prepared to listen with interest, even though—barring accident, poison or irreparable organic defects of a genetic nature—he could live as long as he wanted to. Basically longevity was merely a question of eliminating the death wish and keeping the glands in proper adjustment to prevent aging.

  “The full examination costs only five hundred dollars,” Dr. Weaver said. “And then I give you the shots you need without any other charge—I throw them in free. Now, of course, there’s a routine check, which is virtually as good and which I can handle for seventeen-fifty, with a six-dollar, twenty-five-cent charge for each shot—the total seldom runs over ten. You’ll find that very competitive. Many of my patients let me set up a continuing program, which includes periodic depoisoning and is recommended by the medical association. I think you ought seriously to consider a program of that sort.”

  The repairman promised to think about dropping by. He had gone to a physician about six months ago, but you could never tell. What one man missed another might catch—and he might arrange a visit for his wife and baby to see how they liked it. If they liked the deal he would come himself and try the service.

  “Certainly love to have you,” said Dr. Weaver.

  In that moment Dr. Weaver suddenly wished he had gone into surgery to avoid the necessity for such arrangements as this. Still, a good surgeon was a person of great competence and there was no doubt that one had to have exceptional talent to start with—and worked hard to keep in practice for
the few operations one did. Every film was reviewed and if a man turned in a really awkward performance he was pensioned off—and without the work a man had trained for he usually passed on between sixty-five and seventy, if not earlier.

  So maybe it was better to be just an M.D. instead of a surgeon. Dr. Weaver was looking forward to a good long life. He thanked the repairman at the door, signed the slip and repeated how pleased he would be to meet the repairman’s wife and child.

  He went back to his office. It was a little early for his next appointment—a Mrs. Christianson. She wanted a chemical modifications to her body hair for some strange reason.

  Dr. Weaver flipped on for the news printout.

  The lead story was about a man who’d just turned a hundred and twenty. A real rarity. Dr. Weaver looked over the suicide list to see if there was anyone on it he had known.

  1974

  SAM AND THE LIVE AND THE NOT-ALIVE THINGS

  Sam was running; he had always wanted to run, not like on the treadmill in his room that went around and around without going anywhere, but really run, and not be stopped by walls or barriers, either.

  A barrier was a thing that didn’t look like a wall, a thing you could see through, but a thing that, if you explored with your hands, if you felt, was just like a wall. There was—had been—a big barrier in his room. One whole side of his room had been a barrier. He had picked up the heavy table and thrown it against the barrier. He had thrown it hard, really hard, because the barrier was very strong. But he was strong, too, stronger than the barrier, and he had broken through it.

  For his first dozen awkward strides he had thought he might run into another barrier; so he had pulled the table after him, but when he didn’t run into one, he dropped the table and ran faster and faster, his heart growing in his body as he felt the air hitting on his face.