The Two Timers

by Bob Shaw

  "All right, Kate -- you win." He fought to control the twisting of her body below him. "You win, I tell you."

  "What have you done to John?"

  "Nothing. I've given him my chronomotor, that's all. He's up at the lodge learning to use it, so that he can take my place in Time A. It was his own idea, his own way of bowing out."

  "I'm going there." Kate fought harder, almost toppling him onto the floor.

  "Sorry, Kate -- not until I've been there first to make sure John has made the crossing."

  Even in the heat of the moment, the weakness of the story appalled him -- but it provided the single thread he needed. With John Breton dead and safely atomized, nobody in the world would believe the kind of story Kate would have to tell should she ever accuse him of murder. And, in time, he could allay any suspicions she might have. The pounding certainty in his destiny, nurtured over nine agonized years, surged through him again, sweeping away all the doubts of the past few days. He had created the Time B universe, he had created Kate -- and still held both in the palm of his hand. It was going to take a little longer than he had anticipated, that was all. . . .

  He raised his head from the struggle with Kate and glanced around the bedroom. A closet door was open where she had been taking out clothes for her proposed trip to the lodge. He dragged Kate off the bed, pushed her into the closet and slid the doors together. As an afterthought, he took the spool of fishing line from his pocket and lapped it around the door handles, converting the closet to a miniature prison.

  Breathing heavily, and dabbing the scratches on his face with his handkerchief, Breton ran downstairs and out to the car. He had one more task to perform that day.

  The relatively simple one of projecting John Breton, not into Time A, but into eternity.

  XV

  Blaize Convery carried a tapering plastic cup of coffee to his desk and placed it carefully at the right-hand side.

  He sat down on the creaking swing-chair and opened the desk's flat central drawer. From it he took his pipe, tobacco pouch, lighter, pipe tamper and a bundle of white woolly cleaners. These he arranged in an orderly square, formating with the vaporing coffee cup, with the air of a master craftsman setting out his tools. He then opened a deep drawer, took out a thick oatmeal-colored file, and placed it in the center of the little quadrangle he had so carefully prepared. With all the necessary formalities completed, he gave a deep sigh of contentment and began to leaf through the file.

  It had been a dull, routine sort of a day -- most of it spent doing legwork on a case which had been successfully prosecuted a month earlier, but which had involved a mammoth tangle of legal loose-ends. He had been in and out of his car fifty times in the pursuit of three unimportant signatures, his back hurt and his feet felt swollen inside his shoes. But this was his part of the day -- the extra hour he often took when his shift had officially ended, the hour in which he was free to follow his instincts along any ghost-trail they could discern.

  He sipped his coffee, filled and lit his pipe, and allowed their subtle influences to carry him into realms of concentration where the yellowed sheets and blurred carbon characters seemed to come to life and whisper the innermost thoughts of the men whose names they preserved. Within minutes, Convery was caught up in his own form of time travel, and the big, crowded office bleached away as he burrowed into the past, paring it gently, layer by layer. . . .

  "Come on, Blaize," a voice boomed in his ear. "Snap out of it, boy."

  Convery looked up, struggling to wrench his mind back into his body, and saw the sandy eyebrows and splay-toothed smile of Boyd Leyland, another lieutenant in the homicide division.

  "Hi, Boyd." Convery concealed his annoyance -- Leyland was a good friend and an able cop. "I didn't know you were on today."

  "I'm not!" Leyland always sounded triumphant. "I got Saturdays off this month, but I wouldn't let the team down. Not me, boy, not me."

  Convery stared at him blankly for a second, then he remembered. This was October and the Saturday night bowling sessions were on again. "Oh, we're bowling tonight.".He failed to sound enthusiastic.

  "Of course we are. Let's go, boy!"

  "Look, Boyd, I don't think I can make it tonight."

  Leyland was instantly sympathetic. "Are they working the ass off you, too? Last week I had to do three . . ." He broke off as his gaze took in the file opened in front of Convery. His jaw dropped and he beckoned excitedly to a group of men standing nearby.

  "Hey, fellows -- he's at it again! You know how old Professor Convery's spending his Saturday night? He's back on the Spiedel case!" Incredulity made Leyland's voice almost falsetto. "He's back on the Goddam Spiedel case!"

  "I'm too beat to bowl tonight," Convery announced defensively. "I just want to sit here."

  "Bull!" Leyland shot out his big red hands, closed the old file and dragged Convery out of his chair. "We need all the steady men we can get this year. The exercise'll do you good, anyway."

  "All right, all right."

  Convery saw he had no chance of winning. While the others waited, he regretfully tidied up his desk then joined them as they rolled down the corridor towards the elevator. The noisy delight his workmates were taking in the prospects of an evening of bowling and beer failed to communicate itself to him. Yesterday he had talked to a guilty man.

  Convery was coldly certain of Breton's guilt, and he also now believed he would never be able to bring Breton to justice -- but these were not the things which gnawed at his soul. It was the fact that he could not understand the nature of the crime.

  Something very strange had happened in the Breton household nine years ago, and the effects of it were being felt to this day, flaring up to their own occult rhythm like the symptoms of an ineradicable disease. But what had happened? Convery had blunted his mental armory on the problem, and he was left with a baffled yearning to penetrate that household, to live there, to grill and sift and analyze until he knew both its members better than they knew themselves. . . .

  "Come on, Blaize." Leyland opened the door of his car. "I'll give you a ride to the alley."

  Convery glanced around the police parking lot, suddenly aware of the old icy churning in his belly. "No thanks. I'll take my own -- I might have to leave early."

  "Hop in," Leyland commanded. "You won't be leaving early, boy."

  Convery shook his head. "I might be leaving late, then. Go ahead -- I'll see you there."

  Leyland shrugged and folded himself into his car. Convery found his Plymouth in the rapidly growing dusk and slid in behind the wheel, with the siren-song loud in his ears. At the first intersection he swung away from behind Leyland's car and gunned the Plymouth across town, fleeing as though his friends would come after him. They would not do that, of course, but they would be hurt and caustic; just as Gina had been when he'd walked out of the kids' birthday party. But his demon was perched firmly on his shoulder, and his destiny was never to resist its blandishments.

  Reaching the avenue in which the Bretons lived, Convery slowed down and drifted his car between the walls of trees with an almost silent engine. The big house was in complete darkness. Disappointment welled up in him as he brought the car to a halt. So the demon had deceived him, as had happened so many times in the past. Convery glanced at his watch and calculated he could reach the bowling alley in time to get away with a claim to have been filling up with gas. It was the sensible thing to do, and yet . . .

  "Ah, hell!"

  He exclaimed in disgust as he found himself getting out of the car to walk back to the house. Above him the darkening sky was teeming with meteorites, but they scarcely registered on his brain. The gravel of the drive crunched underfoot as he moved up the shadowed tunnel of shrubbery and along the side, past the porch.

  He stepped onto the patio and surveyed the rear of the house. No lights there, either -- which was what he had expected. The garage doors were open, showing that John Breton's Turbo-Lincoln was gone and that Mrs. Breton's sports model was still th
ere. Obviously, the Bretons had gone out together. Convery flicked his teeth with a thumbnail. He had a definite impression that the Bretons did not go around much together, but there was nothing to stop them spending an evening in each other's company if they wanted to try it out. There was certainly no law against it -- which was not the case where snooping on private property was concerned.

  Convery rocked on his heels, undecided, and was turning away when the kitchen door creaked faintly.

  He went closer and saw it was ajar and moving slightly in the evening breeze. It swung wide open, emitting a billow of warm air, when he pushed it gingerly with his toe. At last provided with a vestige of a reason for being there, Convery went into the dark kitchen and put on the lights.

  "Anybody there?" he shouted, feeling slightly self-conscious.

  A frenzy of hammering broke out immediately in the upper part of the house, and he thought he could hear a woman's cries. Flicking lights on as he went, Convery ran up the stairs and followed the sound to a front bedroom. The hammering was coming from a closet. He tried to open it and discovered unbreakable fishing line lapped around the handles. The steel-hard knots flaked his fingernails away as he tried to open them. He stood back and kicked one of the handles completely off the door. A fraction of a second later, Kate Breton was in his arms, and the arctic exultation was pouring through him as he realized the demon was going to be kind to him after all.

  "Mrs. Breton," he said urgently. "What's going on here? Who locked you in the closet?"

  "Jack Breton," she said. Her eyes were empty, drained.

  "You mean your husband did this?"

  "No -- not my husband. It was . . ." She stopped, drew a shuddering breath and he saw awareness flood back into her, subtly altering the lines of her face. Invisible barriers clanged into place between them.

  "Tell me what happened, Mrs. Breton."

  "You've got to help me, Lieutenant." She was still afraid, but the period of mindless panic had passed. "I think my husband has been kidnapped. He's at Lake Pasco. Will you drive me there? Will you drive me to Lake Pasco?"

  "But . . ."

  "Have mercy on me, Lieutenant -- I'm asking you for my husband!"

  "Let's go," he said grimly. An opportunity had passed, but he had a feeling that Lake Pasco was the place where he would finally learn to talk with his hands.

  XVI

  In the first part of the journey to the lodge, Breton came near to death several times through trying to take corners in powered drifts which would have been beyond the design limits of a racing jet.

  He was well clear of the city before he regained enough control of his right foot to let him lift it off the floor, and the big car slowed its nightmare rush through the darkness. To get killed in a car crash at this stage would be pathetic, he reminded himself, although it would have some interesting consequences. As soon as the activity of his central nervous system came to an end, the chronomotor module embedded in his left wrist would be robbed of its energy source -- and his body would vanish back into Time A.

  The situation could be even more intriguing if his death was not instantaneous, but occurred in an ambulance rushing him to a hospital. How, he wondered, would the ambulance team even begin to explain the disappearance of one full-size John Doe?

  The mental game calmed Breton's nerves sufficiently to let him think constructively about what had to be done within the next hour. In outline, the schedule of events was simple -- kill John Breton, transport his body to the large-bore drilling site, and get rid of it. But there could be practical difficulties. Suppose, for instance, that the drilling operation was running behind its timetable and there was a crew working around the clock . . .?

  Relieved at finding himself a rational being again, Breton began looking for the side road where he had earlier noticed the construction company's sign. As soon as he began to pay attention to it the road started to seem unfamiliar. He slowed the car even further and scanned the east side of the road, hesitating at every winding side track, until he saw the looming gray-white square of the sign. His headlights picked out the name of the Breton Consultancy in one of the panels allocated to the sub-contractors, and he swung the car off the highway. It waltzed gently along the deep ruts made by heavy construction vehicles, sending dust clouds curling away on each side.

  Less than five minutes from the highway the side road petered out into a flat, chewed-up area where earth-moving equipment had been at work. Breton zigzagged the car, its headlights searching through ranges of building materials, until he saw the familiar turret-shaped structures of the boring rigs. There was nobody near them or anywhere else on the machine-scarred site. He wheeled around and drove back to the highway, contented with his return on the few minutes the detour had taken.

  As he drove north, he felt his confidence grow stronger. For a time it had seemed as though things were going wrong, as though the Time B world was going to betray its creator, but it had been his own fault. Somehow the days John, Kate and he had spent together had robbed him of his former strength and certainty. . . .

  The night sky ahead of the car was suddenly lit up with a pulsing brilliance.

  A miniature sun arced across his vision on a descending curve, huge writhing blankets of flame breaking away behind it as it vanished behind a tree-clad ridge less than a mile away. The trees were outlined in the rayed light of an explosion, and then the awful sound of it engulfed the car, paralyzing Breton with primeval fears. A series of diminishing thunderclaps followed the original explosion, dying away into Olympian grumbles and growls, in the air all around.

  Breton found himself drenched with sweat, hurtling on through the night in unearthly silence. Several seconds pounded by before his power of reason re-emerged timidly from its cave into the twentieth century and told him he had witnessed a meteorite impact. He swore feebly under his breath and tightened his grip on the steering wheel.

  The sky, he thought with abrupt, baffled conviction, is my enemy.

  He reached the crest of the ridge and far away to his left saw topaz fragments of flame stirring on the sloping grasslands.

  Within a matter of minutes the whole area would be overrun with curious sightseers. Breton knew the mentality of the average Montana city-dweller -- even a simple brushfire was enough to bring them pouring out of their dessicated houses, ridiculously grateful at having somewhere to go in their brand-new cars, which -- big and fast though they were -- were unable to perform their function as magic carpets in the face of the prairie vastness.

  An event like a meteor strike would draw them in from a hundred miles, and even further when the local radio stations got hold of the news. It meant that on the return journey along this same road, with a dead man in the trunk, he would probably be working his way through heavy traffic. There was a strong possibility that the police would have had to set up traffic control points. Breton got a vision of hard-faced, blue-uniformed men slapping the trunk lid as he crawled by, just as Lieutenant Convery had done the day before.

  The prospect alarmed him, yet -- in a way -- the meteorite had done him a favor. There would be little likelihood of anybody taking note of, or remembering, the movements of one car. He increased his speed slightly to get clear of the area before the traffic began to pile up.

  The lodge would have been in darkness when he arrived had it not been for the uneasily shifting brilliance of the aurora in the north, and the manic tracer-fire of meteors carving the night sky into diamond-shaped fragments. Breton got out of the car and walked quickly towards the lodge, pressing one hand on the outside of his jacket pocket to prevent the pistol from jarring against his hip.

  In the variable, unnatural light the solid lines of the fishing lodge seemed to shrink, quiver and expand in a kind of plasmatic glee. Once more Breton felt cold and desperately tired. He opened the front door and went into the sentient darkness, some instinct making him take the pistol out of his pocket. At the head of the basement stairs he hesitated before turning on the light.
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  The blinking, then steadying, glow of the fluorescents revealed John Breton lying on his side in the center of the floor. His stained and dusty clothing gave him the appearance of a dead creature, but his eyes were intelligent, watchful.

  "I tried to get away," he said, almost casually, as Jack went down the stairs. "Nearly cut my hands off."

  He moved as if to try to exhibit his wrists, then his eyes took in the pistol in Jack's hand.

  "Already?" His voice was sad rather than afraid.

  Jack realized he had been half-hiding the weapon behind his body. Reluctantly, he brought it into full view.

  "Are you going to stand up?"

  "There hardly seems much point." John seemed aware that he had some obscure psychological advantage. "What would it achieve?"