Murray Leinster (16 page)

There wasn’t a trace of criminality about Sam, either. Rosie rode with him, but there wasn’t any love-making. They exchanged not one single hand-squeeze, nor one melting glance, nor did they even play footsie while they were eating lunch in the truck outside a filling station. Their conduct was exemplary, and it wore on Sam. Possibly it wore on Rosie, too.

Once Sam said morosely, as he chewed on a ham sandwich at lunchtime, ‘Rosie, I’m crazy about you, but this feels like I’ve been divorced without ever even getting married first.’

And Rosie snapped, ‘If I told you how I feel, that other you in the week after next would laugh his fool head off. So shut up!’

Things were bad, and they got no better. For nearly a week Rosie rode everywhere with Sam, in Sam’s truck. Their conduct was exemplary. They acted in a manner that Rosie’s parents would in theory have approved, but which they didn’t even begin to believe in. They did nothing the world could not have watched without their being embarrassed, and they said very little that all the world would not have been bored to hear.

It must have been the eleventh of July when they almost snapped at each other and Rosie said bitterly, -Let me drive a while. I need to have to put my mind on something that it don’t make me mad to think about.’

‘Go ahead,’ Sam said gloomily. He stopped the truck and got out the door.
^!
I don’t look for any happiness in this world any more, anyways.’

He went around to the other side of the truck while she slid to the driver’s seat.

She said, ‘Tomorrow’s going to be the twelfth.Do you realize it?’

‘It’ll be the twelfth,’ Sam admitted. ‘But what’s the difference?’

‘That’s the day,’ said Rosie, ‘where the other you was when he called you up the first time.’

‘That’s right,’ said Sam morbidly. ‘It is.’

‘And so far,’ said Rosie, jamming her foot down on the accelerator viciously, ‘I’ve kept you honest. If you change into a scoundrel between now and tomorrow—’

She changed to second gear. The truck jerked and bounced. ‘Hey!’ said Sam. ‘Watch your driving!’

‘Don’t you tell me how to drive, Sam Yoder!’ snapped Rosie. ‘But if I get killed before tomorrow—’

Rosie changed gear again - too soon. The truck bucked, so she jammed down the accelerator again, and it almost leaped off the road.

‘If you get killed before tomorrow,’ raged Rosie, infuriated because of innumerable things and the misbehavior of the truck on top of the rest. ‘If you get killed before tomorrow, it’ll serve you right! I’ve been thinking and thinking and thinking. And -even if I stop you from being a crook, there’ll always be that -other you, knowing everything we say and do—’ She was hitting forty miles an hour and the speed was still going up. ‘So there’d still be no use - no hope anyway—’

She sobbed, partly in rage and partly in despair. The roadway curved sharply just about there, and she swung the truck crazily around it - and there was a car standing only halfway off the road. Sam grabbed for the steering wheel, but there wasn’t time. The light half-truck, still accelerating, hit the parked car with the noise of dozens of empty oil drums falling downstairs. The truck was slued halfway around and bounced back, and then it charged forward and slammed into the parked car a second time. Then it stalled.

Somebody yelled at Sam. He got out of the truck, looked at the damage and tried to figure out how it was that neither he nor Rosie had been killed. Then he tried despairingly to think how he was going to explain to the telephone company that he’d let Rosie drive.

The voice yelled louder. Right at the edge of the woodland there was a reddish-haired character screaming at him and tugging at his hip pocket. The words he used were not fit for Rosie’s shell-like ears - even if they did probably come near matching the way she felt. The reddish-haired man said more naughty words at the top of his voice. His hand came away from his hip pocket with something glittering in it.

Sam was swinging when the glitter began, and he connected before the pistol bore. There was a sort of squashy smacking sound, and the reddish-haired man lay down in the road and was still.

‘Migawd!’ said Sam blankly. ‘This was the fella in front of the bank! He’s one of those bank robbers!’

He stared. There was a loud crashing in the brushwood. The accident had happened at the edge of some woodland, and Sam did not need a high IQ to know that the friends of the red-haired man must be on the way. A second later he saw them. Rosie was just getting out of the car then. She was very pale, and there wasn’t time to tell her to get started up if possible and away from there. One of the two running men was carrying a canvas bag with the words
Bank of Dunnsville
on it. They came for Sam. As they came they expressed opinions of the state of things, of Sam, of the cosmos - of everything but the weather -in terms even more reprehensible than the first man had used.

They saw the reddish-haired man lying down on the ground. One of them - he’d come out into the road behind the truck and was running for Sam - jerked out a pistol. He was in the act of raising it to use it on Sam at a range of something like six feet when there was a peculiar noise behind him. It was a sort of hollow
clunkl
That even at such a time needed to have attention paid to it. The man jerked his head around to see.

And the
clunkl
had been made by Rosie’s monkey wrench, falling imperatively on the head of another man who had come out of the woods. She had carried it to use on Sam. She used it on a total stranger. He fell down and lay peacefully still.

Then Sam swung a second time, on the man behind him.

Then there was silence, save for the sweet singing of birds among the trees and the whirrings and other insect noises of crcatures in the grass and brushwood.

Presently there were other noises, but they were made by Rosie. She wept, hanging onto Sam.

He unwound her arms from around his neck, went thoughtfully to the back of the truck and got some phone wire and his pliers. He fastened the men’s hands together behind them, and then he tied their feet. He piled the three bank robbers in the back of the light truck together with the money they had stolen.

Presently they came to, one by one, and Rosie and Sam explained ‘severely that they must watch their language in the presence of a lady. But the three seemed so dazed by what had befallen them that Sam and Rosie didn’t have much trouble.

Rosie’s parents would have been pleased at how completely proper their behavior was while they took the three bank robbers into town and turned them over to the sheriff. Rosie’s parents would also have been surprised.

That night Rosie sat out on the porch with Sam, and they discussed the particular events of the day in some detail. But Rosie was still cagey about the other Sam. So Sam decided to assert himself.

About half-past nine he said firmly, ‘Well then, Rosie, I guess I’d better be getting along home. I’ve got to try one more time to call myself up on the telephone and tell me to mind my own business.’

‘Says who?’ said Rosie grimly. ‘Oh, no you’re not! You’re staying locked up right here tonight, and I’m riding with you tomorrow.; If I kept you honest this far, I can keep it up till sundown tomorrow! Then maybe it’ll stick!’

Sam protested, but it didn’t work. Rosie was adamant. Not only about keeping him from being a crook, but from having any fun to justify his virtue. She shooed
him
into her brother’s room, and her father locked him in. Sam did not sleep very well, because it looked like virtue wasn’t even its own reward and the future looked dark indeed. He sat up, brooding. It must have been close to dawn when the obvious hit him like a ton of bricks..

Then he gazed blankly at the wall and said, ‘Migawd! O’course!’

He grinned, all by himself, as though he would split his throat. And at breakfast he practically sang as he stuffed himself with pancakes and syrup, and Rosie’s utterly depressed expression changed to one of baffled despair.

He smiled tenderly upon her when she came doggedly out to the truck in her blue jeans and with the monkey wrench in her pocket. They started off just like any other day and he said amiably, ‘Rosie, the sheriff says we get five thousand dollars reward from the bankers’ association, and there’s more from the insurance company, and there’s odd bits of change due for rewards specially offered for those fellas for past performances. We’re going to be right well off.’

Rosie looked at him gloomily. There was still the matter of the other Sam in the middle of the week after next. And just then Sam - who had been watching the telephone-lines beside the road as he drove - pulled off the road and put on his climbing-irons.

‘What’s this?’ asked Rosie mournfully. ‘You know—’

‘You listen,’ said Sam happily.

He climbed zestfully to the top of the pole. He hooked in the little gadget that didn’t make private conversations possible on a party line, but did make it possible for a man to talk to himself two weeks in the future.

Or the past.:

‘Hello!’ said Sam, up at the top of the telephone pole. ‘Sam, this is you.’

A voice he knew perfectly well sounded in the receiver.
‘Huh? Who’s that?’

‘This is you,’ said Sam. ‘You, Sam Yoder. Don’t you recognize your own voice? This is you, Sam Yoder, calling from the twelfth of July. Don’t hang up!’

He heard Rosie gasp, all the way down there in the banged-up telephone-truck. Sam had seen the self-evident at last, and now, on the twelfth of July, he was talking to himself on the telephone. Only instead of talking to himself in the week after next, he was now talking to himself in the week before last - he being back there ten days before, working on the very same telephone-line on this very same pole. And it was the same conversation, word for word.

When he came down the pole, rather expansively, Rosie clung to him weeping.

‘Oh, Sam!’ she sobbed. ‘It was you all the time! Only you!’ ‘Yeah,’ said Sam complacendy. ‘I figured it out last night. That me back there in the second of July, he’s cussing me out. And he’s going to tell you about it, and you’re going to get all wrought up. But I can make that dumb me back yonder do what has to be done. And you and me, Rosie, have got a lot of money coming to us. I’m going to carry on through so he’ll earn it for us. But I’m warning you, Rosie, he’ll be back at my house waiting for me to talk to him tonight, and I’ve got to be home to tell him to go over to your house. I’m goin’ to say ha ha, ha ha at him.’

‘A-all right,’ said Rosie, wide-eyed.
^s
You can.’

‘But,’ said Sam. ‘I remember that when I call me up tonight, back there ten days ago, I’m going to be right busy here and now tonight. I’m going to make me mad, because I don’t want to waste time talking to myself back yonder. Remember?’ Then Rosie turned red. ‘Now what would I be doing tonight that makes me not want to waste time talking to myself ten days ago?’ Sam asked mildly. ‘You got any ideas, Rosie?’

‘Sam Yoder!’ Rosie said. ‘I won’t! I wouldn’t! I never heard of such a thing!’

Sam looked at her and shook his head regretfully.

‘Too bad! If you won’t, I guess I’ve got to call me up in the week after next and find out what’s cooking.’

‘You - you shan’t!’ said Rosie fiercely. ‘You, Sam Yoder -I’ll get even with you! But you shan’t talk to that—’ Then she wailed. ‘Doggone you, Sam! Even if I do have to marry you so you’ll be wanting to talk to that dumb you ten days back, you’re not going to - you’re not—’

Sam grinned. He kissed her. He put her in the truck and they rode off to Batesville to get married. And they did.

But as you’re not supposed to believe all this, and if you ask Sam Yoder about it, he’s apt to say that it’s all a lie. He doesn’t want the question of privacy raised again. And there are other matters. For instance, Sam’s getting to be a pretty prominent citizen these days. He makes a lot of money, one way and another. Nobody around home will ever bet with him on who’s going to win a baseball game, anyhow.

Occult? Very definitely not. As far as records show, Leinster never wrote in this
genre -
although sometimes it seemed as if he was going to (as in
‘The Power’). No, the following is very definitely hard-line SF, very pleasantly laced with humor. Not that Mr. Tedder found the situation very funny
.·..

To this day nobody pretends to understand the Devil of East Lupton, Vermont. There are even differences of opinion about the end to which that devil came. Mr. Tedder is sure he was the fiend in question, and that he ceased to be fiendish when he rid himself of the pot over his head.

Other authorities believe that heavy ordnance did the trick, and point to a quarter-mile crater for proof. It takes close reasoning to decide.

But if by the Devil of East Lupton you mean the Whatever-it-was that came out of Somewhere to Here, and caused all the catastrophes by his mere arrival - why - then the Devil was the Whatever-it-was in the leathery, hidelike covering on the morning Mr. Tedder ran away from the constable.

On that morning, Mr. Tedder ran like a deer - or as nearly like a deer as Mr. Tedder could hope to run. The resemblance was not close. Deer do not hesitate helplessly between possible avenues of escape. Deer do not plunge out of concealing thickets to scuttle through merely shoulder-high brush because a pathway shows. But Mr. Tedder did.