A Handful of Time

by Rosel George Brown

  Phyllis nodded, her mouth beginning to tremble.

  “Dead!” Dr. Hodges said triumphantly. “Gone. Nothing to worry about any more.”

  “Vffvfft!” Phyllis cried, unable to contain any longer whatever was in her mouth. She began to sob a little.

  “Oh, sorry,” Dr. Hodges said. “Shock. De mortuis, of course, but after all, it is rather a windfall for all of us, isn’t it? Anaximander! Bring the lady a paper napkin or something.”

  Anaximander rushed in with the wine and one of those new paper napkins that curl around your face when you try to use them.

  “I know he’s dead,” Phyllis finally managed. “In your office. That’s why I came to see you. That’s the ghastly thing I wanted to tell you. St… st… stabbed.”

  “Oh, that. See here, Phyllis. I don’t blame you a bit. Fine thing for all of us. And about the paper cutter‌—‌well, there are other things in the world besides genuine Mycenean daggers. We’ll just forget it. No regrets?”

  “Dr. Hodges, you don’t… I didn’t do it.”

  “You didn’t? Well, then, I guess we’ll never know who did. Anybody walking down the hall might have popped in and…”

  “Don’t be ridiculous. Just anybody doesn’t step in an office and commit murder. You get jetted off to a penal asteroid for that sort of thing.”

  “Well, maybe he did it himself. Be just like Smith.”

  “It happens,” Phyllis said, “that I know who did it. And it also happens that my fingerprints are on that dagger.”

  “So are mine, come to think of it.”

  “It’s your paper cutter. That’s easy to explain.”

  “If you know who did it, then who? And why are your fingerprints on the dagger?”

  “That pilot student robot did it, that’s who. The humanoid one that’s sent around to test lecture content.”

  “I’ve heard the administration had those things planted around. And I always said even the administration wouldn’t stoop so low.”

  “They did. Everybody in Joachim’s class knew about it. It’s your advanced-Greek Drama course. The other boys used to kid Joachim about looking like a robot himself.”

  “He did, you know.”

  “Yes, and the real robot didn’t like it one bit. You see, this student robot has some built in infantile reactions. That’s so his lecture absorption is normalized to average student level. And as soon as Joachim found out he could get a rise out of this robot by teasing him‌—‌well, you know Joachim.”

  “Ah, yes,” Dr. Hodges answered with a shudder.

  “So today after class I met Joachim. He leaves his extra books on my desk where I work over in the library, and I had to bring them to him between classes. Well, this student robot was there and apparently Joachim had been needling him about something because he had that jerky arm movement robots have when their tapes move too fast. And the robot said, ‘O.K. Can you do this?’ And he picked up that antique coat rack with one hand and then Joachim laughed and picked it up with one hand, too, because you know he’s terribly muscular and I remember that’s the thing that struck me about him that time when he was waiting for me at the bottom of the laundry chute.”

  “Leave that part out,” Dr. Hodges said painfully, “and get back to what happened after my ten o’clock Greek Drama class.”

  “Well, the robot didn’t like that at all, and he recited the entire second chorus of the Agamemnon and Joachim laughed and said that part was easy, though I happen to know Joachim would never have been able to do it. The only part Joachim knew at all was the death scene and that isn’t much at all because you just hear Agamemnon say he’s been struck down, but Joachim managed to give the impression that he could have recited on for pages. He’s good at that, you know.”

  “Was,” Dr. Hodges commented laconically.

  “Then Joachim told the robot that he, Joachim, was actually the pilot student robot and the other was an outmoded model, ready to be reprocessed. I really thought the robot was going to hit Joachim and frankly, I was on the robot’s side. But Joachim is terribly muscular and it might have turned out the other way, so I said, ‘Speaking of death scenes, Dr. Hodges has the very dagger that stabbed Agamemnon.’ And Joachim said, ‘It wasn’t a dagger at all, it was an ax.’ And the robot said, ‘Not necessarily,’ and I said, ‘It has bloodstains on it.’ ”

  “Where did you get all this about my paper cutter?”

  “I made it up,” Phyllis said, as though it were the most natural thing in the world for a gilt shepherdess to make up complicated lies. “So they went in your office and of course Joachim sat in the only chair, because you have papers stacked all over all the others. And I said, ‘Well, I’ve used up my coffee break and I have to get back to the library.’ But before I left I picked up the paper cutter and handed it to the robot. And the thing is, robots don’t have fingerprints.”

  “Phyllis,” Dr. Hodges said admiringly, “you are not as innocent as you look. You are like… like Medea.”

  “Well, I didn’t actually do it myself. And if it weren’t for those fingerprints there wouldn’t be any problem. I mean, there would be no suspicion I might have rigged the robot for a confession, or anything like that.”

  “There’d be only my fingerprints on the dagger.”

  “Oh, no one would ever suspect you, Dr. Hodges. You’re so‌—‌well, scholarly and all.”

  “I don’t know why everyone thinks scholars are so innocuous. Don’t you think I’ve read those plays I lecture on? Why, I’ve been steeped in incest and murder and adultery and cannibalism since I was an undergraduate. Not to speak of parricide and infanticide. The stuff I read about on the microtapes these days,” Dr. Hodges went on, baring his teeth a little, “is mere child’s play.”

  “I do believe,” Phyllis said, a little color seeping into her face, “you’re the man Joachim was not.”

  “That sentence,” Dr. Hodges mused, “could be reduced to two words in Greek. I can just see Thucydides…”

  “This is all very well,” Phyllis said, paling again, “but there’s a dead body over in your office and a town full of policemen to find out how it got that way. Medea had her Deus ex machina.”

  “And you,” Dr. Hodge said, trying to look modest, “have me. I have already seen to the machine.”

  “You have Joachim… it… in your car?”

  “No. I got Morris over in physics to put the thing in his time machine and send it back to Mycenae, or thereabouts.”

  “You are fiendishly clever. Honestly, Dr. Hodges, I don’t know how I can ever thank you…”

  “I’ve got a few little ideas,” Dr. Hodges said, striving to look like a man fiendishly clever, “that I picked up from Ovid. Great thing, this scholarship.”

  “Maybe I’d better call the police,” Phyllis said thoughtfully, “in case somebody finds out from the robot what happened.”

  “That isn’t likely, you know. Unless the robot is asked specifically for that bit of information, he won’t spout it. And who’s to know Smith has disappeared? Or more to the point, who’s to care enough to look for him?”

  “It would look suspicious if the police did get on to it and I hadn’t reported him absent.”

  “No, it won’t. You can just say you were so relieved not to find him around…”

  “That doesn’t sound well, Dr. Hodges. Things have changed in the last few thousand years.”

  “I’ll tell you what. Let’s catch the news and if there’s anything about it, then you can report Joachim missing. But if there’s any scandal, we’ll get our budget cut.”

  Dr. Hodges toed a button somewhere under the amoeboid sofa and yelled at the radio until it found some news.

  “…will never go to war,” the commentator said. “And now we have a most interesting bit of news from a group of archeologists who have been digging in a tell near the ancient city of Mycenae. A skeleton has been found with a dagger in the breast, and Professor Audley tells us there is no doubt that this is the a
ctual remains of Agamemnon, the ancient King of Mycenae and one of the heroes of the Trojan War. This find, not to be confused with the so-called ‘Tomb of Agamemnon’ excavated in…”

  Dr. Hodges threw his wine glass across the room. It did not give a satisfactory shatter, being plastic, but it did spill wine all over.

  “That damned Smith!” he cried, “has pulled the worst fraud in history and I’m going to have to spend the rest of my life listening to him referred to as Agamemnon, King of Men, or the Authentic Agamemnon. I tell you, Phyllis, there’s no justice in the world.”

  “Maybe,” Phyllis said, toying with her wine glass, “we ought to be glad.”

  THE DEVALUATION OF THE SYMBOL

  DR. BARNES was a good father. Being a sociologist probably made him a better father. He was not surprised to find that he did not understand his seventeen-year-old son. There were some things, however, which he had considered to be universal among adolescents.

  “You mean to tell me,” he asked Jack, “that you have never been in love?”

  “Gee, Pop, what’s the percentage? A few cubes around school do it. But I’m president of the senior class. I wouldn’t be seen dead mushing around a girl.”

  “Oh, well, maybe it’s the style now to act like girls are a pain in the neck. But if that’s what’s bothering you now‌—‌well, for God’s sake. I’ve educated you. You shouldn’t be thrown by a few biological urges.”

  “Aw, Pop!” Jack grinned. Parents are so naive. “You told me about that when I was four. My generation doesn’t have biological urges. That stuff went out with hot rods and hooch.”

  “I date back to hot rods,” Dr. Barnes said stiffly, “but not hooch.” Then he grinned. “My daddy didn’t understand me either, son. But give me credit for trying. I don’t want to pull something out of you if you don’t want to tell it. But put it on the record that I know something’s bothering you and I want to help you if I can.”

  Jack strode to the other end of the room, his Balzac robe hanging like a tent around his big, bony, awkward frame. He hunched his shoulders and drew his chin to one side, a childish gesture of embarrassment that dated, unconsciously, to the childhood period of magic, when he thought he could make himself disappear if he achieved the fight position. Dr. Barnes remembered how, when Jack was a sprawling toddler, he thought when he closed his eyes he became invisible.

  “Now, don’t laugh, Dad.”

  Dr. Barnes would rather have died in silent convulsion than laugh at that moment. Only a parent knows the intensity of the suspense when he might or might not be told.

  “I want to shave,” Jack said finally, staring out of the glassene roof at the rolling summer clouds.

  You have to be a parent, too, to know all the things Dr. Barnes had braced himself to hear. Dr. Barnes did not laugh. But he did blow his nose rather audibly and he was mightily intent about filling his pipe.

  He dropped a lighter in and sucked until it flared, lighting his strongly boned face which had a certain character from the almost invisible pock marks that were the dim remains of an agonizing acne forgotten for twenty-five years. The skin beneath his jaws was beginning to loosen and he wore his sandy hair clipped to the scalp. But still, perhaps because of the eternal look of curiosity in his mild blue eyes, there were times when he looked almost pathetically young‌—‌to women of indeterminate age.

  Not to Jack, of course. Jack had not yet found out that anyone could change besides himself, and he considered his father ancient and immutable.

  Dr. Barnes blew out a plume of green smoke. He didn’t buy the tobacco for the green smoke. But he didn’t let the green smoke keep him from buying it, either.

  “You’ve been shaving for two years,” Dr. Barnes pointed out.

  “No. Really shave.” There was a strange look on Jack’s face. Dr. Barnes didn’t like it. He reached back into his own adolescence and found nothing to match.

  “Jack, if you want to say something, say it. What do you mean, really shave?”

  Jack turned. His face was bony and too triangular ever to be handsome. But his teeth were straight and he would never have acne. His eyes were dark, as his mother’s had been, and intense, like hers.

  “With Whiskoff!” His tone was almost exultant. “The foaming pink, like the touch of a lovely lady.”

  He lighted a herbal filterene at the wall convenience. He lounged against the resting stand and his eyes slitted a little. He didn’t know he looked about as debonair as a calf.

  “You mean you want an old razor? With a blade? Instead of your air blast shaver?”

  “Old razor? Pop, it’s the latest thing! Charlie’s got one. With a double edge.”

  “Look, son, you don’t want to make a switch knife or anything…?”

  Jack laughed. “Still in the 50’s, Pop. Nobody knows what a switch knife is anymore.”

  “You mean you want a plain, old-fashioned double edged razor to shave with? That’s all there is to it?”

  “And Whiskoff. ‘There’s a new thrill waiting for you in Whiskoff,’ ” he quoted.

  “Do you eat it?” Dr. Barnes asked, a suspicion dawning in him. “Or inject it into a vein? Or maybe let it get into a cut accidentally?”

  “Aw, Pop. Nobody’s a junkie any more. You’ve told me all about that stuff.”

  “You just want to shave with a safety razor and this Whiskoff shaving cream? That’s all?”

  “That’s all.” Jack let out a deep breath and made a little ceremony of flipping his cigarette neatly into the wall convenience., “Well?”

  “Well, of course! Why in heaven’s name did you think you had to ask? Why do you think it matters to me what you shave with?”

  “I don’t know.” Jack was eager to be off now, his foot poised on the treadle to slide the door up. “Some fathers are… funny about some things.”

  Dr. Barnes could hear Jack stomp into his outside shoes at the front door and clatter impatiently along the slow moving sidewalk.

  “For God’s sake!” Dr. Mark Barnes exclaimed to the empty room. He wondered why he felt a little frightened instead of relieved at what Jack’s problem had turned out to be.

  He wished for the millionth time that Juliette was there. Juliette had been the soft, quiet sort of woman who always knew what people were thinking but never disturbed their thoughts.

  He had one of those instants that comes to everyone sometimes when time slips its crystal lattice and some moment of the past pokes through.

  It was Juliette, smelling of mint and bay leaf and warm from the kitchen.

  “We’ve been married five years!” she cried, and he could feel even through his overcoat that she was sleek all over, like a cat. “Isn’t it incredible!”

  He looked down at her happiness and pulled her to him. It was incredible.

  Then, simply because he turned his head a little, the moment of Juliette was gone.

  No wonder children believe in magic, he thought. If you hold your head right…

  He shook himself to brush off his mood.

  He plugged the straight telephone line he had to his office and turned up the volume a little. Miss Carson was on duty and she wouldn’t talk above a hasty whisper.

  “Yesterday’s figures in from the west coast yet?”

  “Yes, sir. I’ve just fed them to the computer. If you could possibly…”

  “I can easily.”

  She was back in a moment. “National Population down three per cent. That’s one half per cent over yesterday. If I might say so, sir, it’s amazing. I mean fantastic. No, marvelous. Your success, I mean.” She ran out of breath.

  “Marriages?”

  “Down four per cent. Roughly. When you think of how the figures were running just five years ago! But I won’t run on. I do tend to run on. Anything you want done here? I fed the correspondence you left into the duplicator. Oh, and a Mr. Brandon called. Was that it? No, Brancter. He wants you to make a personal appearance on ‘Quality Not Quantity.’ In April.”

&
nbsp; “Just leave me a memo on it. No, that’s all. And Miss Carson…”

  “Yes?”

  “It wasn’t just me that did it.” He was leading up to a compliment, but actually he wondered for the hundredth time just what had made P.C. a success. As a sociologist he’d never expected to cut down the birth rate merely by telling people to control themselves. The most he’d expected was to begin educating people to the need for P.C. The next step would have been compulsive legislation. But, surprisingly enough, this had proved unnecessary. P.C. had succeeded by mere propaganda. Or had it? Dr. Barnes sometimes wondered if his equation balanced so nicely only because some of the factors were left out.

  “But Dr. Barnes, who else?” Perfect straight man.

  “Your help has been invaluable.” No use catching Miss Carson up in his worries.

  She gasped a little and he was glad he had a telephone and not a telephane. She was probably blushing and pulling at invisible threads in her shoulder hung tweeds.

  Dr. Barnes unplugged and tried not to feel uncomfortable. He was not a vain enough man to suspect women of being in love with him. On the other hand, he wished Miss Carson wasn’t quite so devoted.

  Still, why should he wish that? His pipe had burned itself out. He knocked the light ashes into the wall convenience and refilled it. He still hadn’t got used to pipes that went on burning when you put them down.

  He should have remarried long ago. Jack should have had a mother, particularly when he was starting into adolescence. Even now‌—‌

  But there had been no women in Mark Barnes’ life after Juliette. Or none except that one he had run to in a spasm of loneliness during that first bleak year. Lillian? Was that her name? She was silly and she always smelled of chemical perfumes. And she had a way of tweaking and poking at his thoughts that eventually irritated him into discarding her rudely. Something he couldn’t have thought himself capable of.

  “ ‘Arise, fair sun, and kill the envious moon.’ ” Against the memory of Juliette, there were no other women. If she had not been named Juliette, would it have been any different?