The Two Timers Page 3

  "Who are you?" John Breton demanded abruptly. "What do you want?" He stood squarely in Jack Breton's path, his face a deep-shadowed mask of anxiety in the light from the globe that hung above his head.

  Jack Breton fingered the automatic pistol in his overcoat pocket, but -- hearing the uncertainty in the other man's voice -- he left the catch in the safe position. There was no need to deviate from the plan.

  "I've already told you what I want, John," he said pleasantly. "And you must know who I am by this time -- have you never looked in a mirror?"

  "But you look like . . ." John Breton allowed the sentence to tail off, afraid to walk where the words were leading him.

  "Let's go indoors," Jack said impatiently. "I'm cold."

  He walked forward and was rewarded by the sight of John at once moving backwards, floundering. Afraid of me, Jack Breton thought in mild surprise. This being I created in my own image, this creature who changed my name to John, is afraid of his maker. As he entered the familiar, orange-lit hall, Jack noticed the richness of the carpet underfoot and the almost-tangible feel of money about the old house. The work he had done in the library that day, going through directories and files of local newspapers, had suggested that John Breton was considerably better off than he had been nine years ago, but this was even more pleasant than he had expected. Well done, thou good and faithful servant. . . . "This is far enough," John Breton said as they reached the spacious living room. "I would like some explanations."

  "Well, good for you, John."

  Jack surveyed the room as he spoke. The furniture was all new to him, but he remembered the clock and one or two small ornaments. He particularly approved of the deep, high-backed armchairs which had been chosen with no consideration other than comfort in mind. They seemed to extend a welcome to him. Make a mental note, he thought. In spite of the fact that he experiences zero spatial displacement, the time traveler undergoes a substantial psychological dislocation which may manifest itself by the personalization of inanimate objects, e.g. armchairs will extend welcomes to him. Be careful!

  He returned his attention to John Breton, his natural curiosity reviving now that he was adjusting to the miraculous reality of Kate's existence. His other self was heavier than he ought to be, and dressed in expensively tailored slacks, a maroon sports shirt and cashmere cardigan. Nine years, nine divergent years had made differences, Jack thought. I don't look as sleek as that, or as well fed -- but my time is coming. My time.

  "I'm waiting," John Breton said.

  Jack shrugged. "I'd have preferred Kate to be here before I went into the spiel, but I guess she's gone upstairs . . . ?"

  "My wife has gone upstairs." There was a barely noticeable emphasis on the first two words.

  "All right then, John. It's funny, but this is the one part of the whole business I haven't worked out in advance -- how to tell you. You see, John -- I . . . am . . . you.

  "You mean," John said with deliberate inanity, "I'm not myself?"

  "No." He's recovering, Jack Breton thought with reluctant approval, but he's got to take it seriously from the start. He dug deep into his memory.

  "John! When you were thirteen, your cousin Louise stayed at your home for most of a summer. She was eighteen, well-proportioned. Also she had a bath, regular as clockwork, every Friday night. One afternoon about three weeks after she arrived you took a hand drill from the garage, put a three-thirty-seconds bit in it and drilled a hole in the bathroom ceiling. You drilled it at the widest part of the big Y-shaped crack that Dad never got around to fixing, so it wouldn't be noticed.

  "Dad had floored the central area of the roof space for storage, and he had sheeted in the sides, but you found you could move one of the corner panels aside and get over the bathroom. So you took an interest in photography that summer, John, and the roof space made an ideal dark room. Every Friday night -- when Louise was in the bath -- you went up there into the darkness and soft brown dust. You got over the bathroom and took off -- "

  "That's enough!" John Breton took a step forward, pointing with one finger in baffled accusation. He was trembling slightly.

  "Take it easy, John. I'm simply presenting my credentials. Nobody else in the whole world knows the facts I have just mentioned. The only reason I know them is the one I have already given you -- I am you. I did those things, and I want you to listen to me."

  "I'll have to listen to you now," John said dully. "This has been one hell of an evening."

  "That's better." Jack Breton relaxed a little further. "Do you mind if I sit down?"

  "Go ahead. Do you mind if I have a drink?"

  "Be my guest." Jack uttered the words naturally and easily, turning their significance over in his mind. John had been his guest for nine years, as no man had ever been another's guest before -- but all that was coming to an end. When they both were seated he leaned forward in the big chair, making his voice cool, calm and reasonable. A lot depended on how he went about the task of making the unbelievable seem believable.

  "How do you feel about time travel, John?"

  John Breton sipped his drink. "I feel it's impossible. Nobody could travel forward in time to here and now, because if present-day technology couldn't envisage a time machine, nobody in the past could have built one. And nobody could travel back from the future to the present, because the past is unalterable. That's how I feel about time travel."

  "How about in the other direction?"

  "What other direction?"

  "Straight across -- at right angles to the two directions you've mentioned."

  "Oh, that." John Breton took another drink, almost seeming to be enjoying himself. "When I was reading science fiction we didn't really class that as honest-to-God time travel. That's probability travel."

  "All right," Jack said placatingly. "How do you feel about probability travel?"

  "Are you telling me you're from another present? From another time-stream?"

  "Yes, John."

  "But, why? If it were true, what would bring you here?" John Breton raised the glass to his lips, but did not drink. His eyes were thoughtful. "Nine years, you said. Is it anything to do with . . . ?"

  "I heard voices, John." Kate was standing in the doorway. "Who have you got with you? Oh . . ."

  Jack Breton stood up as she entered the room, and the sight of her filled his eyes, just as it had on the last night he had seen her alive, until her image swamped his awareness -- three-dftnensional, glowing, perfect. Kate's gaze met his for an instant, then darted away again, and a single star-shell of pleasure burst in his head.

  He had reached her already. Without saying a word, he had reached her.

  "John?" Her voice was tremulous, uncertain. "John?"

  "You'd better sit down, Kate," John Breton said in a thin, cold monotone. "I think our friend has a story to tell."

  "Perhaps Kate should have a drink, too," Jack Breton suggested. "This is likely to take some time." Kate was watching him with a wariness he found delicious, and he had to work to keep his voice steady. She knows, she knows. While his other self was pouring her a colorless measure, he realized he could be in some danger of making an involuntary trip. He examined his own field of vision and found it clear -- no teichopsia, no black star slowly sinking, no fortification phenomena. It appeared safe.

  Slowly, carefully, he began marshaling his facts, allowing the past nine years to re-create themselves on the taut canvas of his mind.

  III

  Kate was walking away down the street, past blazing store windows. With her silvered wrap drawn tight over the flimsy party dress, and long legs slimmed even further by needle-heeled sandals, she looked like an idealized screen version of a gangster's moll. The ambient brilliance from the stores projected her solidly into his mind, jewel-sharp, and he saw -- with the wonder of a brand-new discovery -- the tiny blue vein behind each of her knees. Breton was overwhelmed by a pang of sheer affection.

  You can't let Kate walk through the city at night looking like that, a
voice told him urgently, but the alternative was to crawl after her, to knuckle under. He hesitated, then turned in the opposite direction, numbed with self-disgust, swearing bitterly.

  It was almost two hours later when the police cruiser pulled up outside the house.

  Breton, who had been standing at the window, ran heavy-footed to the door and dragged it open. There were two detectives, with darkly speculative eyes, and a backdrop of blue uniformed figures.

  One of the detectives flashed a badge. "Mr. John Breton?"

  Breton nodded, unable to speak. I'm sorry, Kate, he thought, so sorry -- come back and we'll go to the party.

  "I'm Lieutenant Convery. Homicide. Do you mind if I come in?"

  "No," Breton said dully. He led the way into the living room, and had to make an effort to prevent himself straightening cushions like a nervous housewife.

  "I don't quite know how to break this to you, Mr. Breton," Convery said slowly. He had a broad, sunburned face and a tiny nose which made scarcely any division between widely spaced blue eyes.

  "What is it, Lieutenant?"

  "It's about your wife. It appears she was walking in the park tonight, without company -- and she was attacked."

  "Attacked?" Breton felt his knees begin to swim. "But where is she now? Is she all right?"

  Convery shook his head. "I'm sorry, Mr. Breton. She's dead."

  Breton sank down into a chair while the universe heaved and contracted around him like the chambers of a vast heart suddenly exposed. I did it, he thought, I killed my wife. He was dimly aware of the second detective taking Convery to one side and whispering to him. A few seconds later Convery returned.

  "My partner reminds me I've jumped the gun a bit, Mr. Breton. Officially, I should have said that the body of a woman had been found with identification on it which suggested she was your wife, but in a clear-cut case I don't like prolonging things. Just for the record, have you any reason to believe that the body of a woman of about twenty-five, tall, black-and-gold hair, wearing a silver-blue cocktail dress, we found near the 50th Avenue entrance of the city park, would not have been that of Mrs. Breton?"

  "No reason. She was out alone this evening, dressed like that." Breton closed his eyes. I did it -- I killed my wife. "I let her go alone."

  "We still have to make a positive identification; if you like, one of the patrolmen will drive you to the morgue."

  "It isn't necessary," Breton said. "I can do that much."

  The refrigerated drawer rolled out easily on oiled bearings, forming an efficient cantilever, and a stray thought intruded determinedly on Breton's mind. A good machine. He looked down at Kate's cold, dreaming face, and at the jewels of moisture curving precisely along her eyebrows. Of its own accord, his right hand moved out to touch her. He saw the blackness of oil rimming the fingernails, and willed his hand to stop. Thou hast not a stain on thee.

  Lieutenant Convery moved into a corner of his field of vision, close at hand yet light-years away across a universe of pulsating fluorescent brilliance, "Is this your wife?"

  "Who else?" Breton said numbly. "Who else?"

  An indeterminate time later he learned Kate had been clubbed, raped and stabbed. A forensic expert added that they could not be sure of the order in which those things had happened. Breton contained the knowledge of his guilt successfully for a matter of days, while going through senseless formalities, but all the while he knew he was a bomb in which the charge had already ignited, that he was living through the nanoseconds preceding his disintegration into human shrapnel.

  It came, with the spurious gentleness of a filmed explosion, on the day after Kate's funeral. He was walking aimlessly through the city's north side, along a street of time-defeated buildings. The day was cold and, although there was no rain, the sidewalks were wet. Near an undistinguished corner he found a clean, new feather and picked it up. It was striped pearly gray and white -- dropped by a bird in haste -- and he remembered how Kate had worn her clothes like plumage. He looked for a windowsill on which to set the feather, like a single lost glove, and saw a man in shabby denims smiling at him from a doorway. Breton let the feather fall, twinkling and tumbling, onto the greasy concrete and covered it with his foot.

  His next action to be guided by his own identity came five weeks later, when he opened his eyes in a hospital bed.

  The intervening time was not completely lost to him, but it was flawed and distorted like a scene viewed through pebbled glass. He had been drinking hard, annihilating self-awareness with raw spirit, contracting the frontiers of consciousness. And somewhere in the midst of that kaleidoscope world was born an idea which, to his fevered mind, had all the simplicity of genius.

  Psychopathic killers were hard to find, the police had told him. They could not hold out much hope in a case like this. A woman who goes into the park at night alone, they seemed to be saying, what did she expect?

  Breton had found himself uneasy in their presence, and decided the dismaying thing about the police mentality was that dealing so much with criminals made them aware of another system of morality. Without sympathizing with it, they nevertheless came to understand to some extent, and the needle of their moral compass was deflected. Not their direction -- because so long as the amount of bias is known it is still possible to steer -- but this, he deduced, was why he felt like a player who did not understand the rules of the game. This was why he was looked at with resentment when he asked what results they were getting -- and at some point early in the last weeks he decided to invent new rules.

  Kate's murderer had not been seen and, as he had no circumstantial motive for the killing, there was nothing to link him physically to the crime. But, Breton reasoned, there was another kind of connection. Breton had no way of knowing the killer -- but the killer must know him. The case had been well covered by the local papers and television services, both of which had carried Breton's picture. It would be impossible for the killer not to have shown interest in the man whose life he had so savagely twisted. And, for a time, Breton came to believe that if he encountered the killer on the street, in the park, in a bar, he would know that man by his eyes.

  The city was not large, and it was possible that in his lifetime he had, at one time or another, glimpsed every man in it. Obviously, he had to get into the streets and keep moving, going everywhere that people went, making a rapid playback of a lifetime's exposure to the city's corporate identity -- and someday he would look into another man's eyes, and he would know. And when that happened . . .

  The mirage of hope glimmered crazily in front of Breton for five weeks, until it was finally extinguished by malnutrition and alcoholic poisoning.

  He opened his eyes and knew by some quality of the light on the hospital ceiling that there was snow on the ground outside. An unfamiliar emptiness was gnawing at his stomach and he experienced a sane, practical desire for a dish of thick farmhouse soup. Sitting up in the bed he looked around him and discovered he was in a private room, which was barely rescued from complete anonymity by several sprays of deep-red roses. He recognized the favorite flowers of his secretary, Hetty Calder, and there was a vague memory swirl of her long homely face looking down at him with concern. Breton smiled briefly. In the past, Hetty had almost visibly lost weight every time he got a head cold -- he hesitated to think how she might have been affected by his performance over the recent weeks. The desire for food returned with greater force and he reached for the call button.

  It was Hetty who, five days later, drove him home from the hospital in his own car.

  "Listen, Jack," she said desperately. "You've just got to come and stay with us for a while. Harry and I would be delighted to have you, and with you not having any family of your own . . ."

  "I'll be fine, Hetty," Breton said. "Thanks again for the offer, but it's time I went back home and began gathering up the pieces."

  "But will you be all right?" Hetty was driving expertly through the slush-walled streets, handling the big old car as if she were a m
an, blowing through her cigarette every now and again to send a flaky cylinder of ash onto the floor. Her sallow face was heavy with anxiety.

  "I'll be all right," he said gratefully. "I can think about Kate now. It hurts like hell, of course, but at least I'm able to accept it. I wasn't able to do that before. It's hard to explain, but I had a feeling there ought to be some government office I could go to -- a sort of Department of Death -- and explain that there'd been a mistake. That Kate couldn't die . . . I'm talking nonsense, Hetty."