The Girl, the Gold Watch and Everything (17 page)

He hefted the watch in his hand. It was the only object in the red world which did not have that odd sticky drag of inertia. And he felt an overwhelming awe at all the things it represented, at all the temptations implicit in its ownership. Here was absolute power, and total corruption. Here was a freedom so complete it became not freedom at all, but enthrallment to the witchery of being able to dislocate time itself. Here was invisibility, voyeurism, invincibility, wealth—in fact, all the night dreamings of adolescence, in one-hour subjective packages. Here was, in a specialized sense, immunity.

The possibilities of it gave him a sense of reckless, dizzy elation, yet at the same time made him distrust himself. The obligations implicit in the possession of such a device were severe. Use of it had to be related to some responsible ethical structure. And a good part of the responsibility was to conceal the power and the purpose of the device from the world.

Suppose, he thought, there were fifty of these in the world, or five hundred? Chaos, anarchy, confusion and fear. It would be as though a new mutation had occurred in mankind, a time of the superman, making privacy meaningless, making all ownership conditional.

Suddenly he was filled with an awed respect for Omar Krepps. For twenty years he'd had this edge, this advantage, and he had kept it as quiet as possible. Had he displayed the abilities this gave him, other men might have conducted research in this same direction. Apparently Uncle Omar had decided that this device would turn the world to a shambles were it released. He could see a pattern in the things Omar had done. He had quieted the publicity about his gambling winnings by returning and purposely losing an amount almost as great as the amount he had first won. He had made amateur magic his hobby—to help cover any slip he might make. He had avoided all personal publicity. And he had hidden behind great wealth, acquired quickly—yet so short was public memory, it was as though Omar Krepps and his ancestors had been rich since an earlier century.

The noise and brightness and movement of reality came into the room, and within the first two seconds he turned the silver hand back, halting reality. Bonny Lee's hand had moved higher on her shoulder. Her head had turned slightly. He had sunk into a sudden softness of the bed and then it became rigid again, but in a more comfortable contour.

How then, had Uncle Omar acquired the money? Wealth, he realized, is a strange abstraction concerned with the exchange of bits of paper, signing them, filing them, recording them at the right times, in the right places. Stock manipulation would not be too difficult, once the procedures were understood. He could imagine Uncle Omar trotting busily through a red hour, inserting the proper orders in the proper files, using the red time to give him the same advantage as hindsight. Once acquisitions had been made, control could be turned over to Krepps Enterprises, and money had a knack of multiplying, when there was enough of it.

But if Omar Krepps had been so aware of the potential menace of the device he had created, why hadn't he let it die with him?

The reason, possibly, was a kind of egotism. Someone had to know. And, long ago, Uncle Omar had apparently selected Kirby as the inheritor of this fantastic power, had judged him capable of using it well, had seen to it that Kirby acquired the academic background which would enhance a judicious use of the device. The courses which his uncle had insisted he take, and which had seemed so impractical at the time now made increasing sense. Sociology, psychology, philosophy, ancient history, comparative religions, ethics and logic, anthropology, archeology, languages, semantics, aesthetics. And then eleven years of the exercise of judgment in a context which required no competitive instinct, and made secrecy, reserve, evasion and rootlessness a habit of life.

He now sensed that it was an ideal background for the new owner of such absolute power. It created a minimum risk of the device being used for violent, random, frivolous, acquisitive purposes. It directed the new owner to use it for the maximum good of mankind.

But, in that case, why had Uncle Omar not explained the whole situation long ago? Perhaps because Uncle Omar had thought him lacking in strength and resolution, had been impatient with him, had even told Mr. Wintermore that his nephew was a ninny. And then, after the warning attack, Uncle Omar had apparently prepared for death by setting up a curiously random situation. The watch first and—a year later—the letter. He knew the letter would relate to the watch. What if he had put it in a drawer and forgotten it? What if he had been in a moving vehicle, a car, train or plane when he had fiddled with the silver hand? Why had Uncle Omar so instructed both Kirby and Wilma Farnham that immediately after his death they would be in grave difficulty? Surely Uncle Omar could have anticipated what would happen.

It all seemed to be some kind of a test, but he could not see any consistent pattern in it.

For the first time he examined the watch with great care. The ornate initials OLK on the back were worn thin. There was a catch near the stem so the back could be opened. He hesitated, put his thumbnail against the catch and snapped it open. There was a second case inside, of smooth gray metal, with absolutely no way to open it. On the interior concavity of the gold back was engraved something else, almost as ornate as the initials, unworn. He translated, with some difficulty, the Latin words. "Time waits for one man." It had that ring of slightly sour humor so typical of Omar Krepps. He snapped the case shut and for the first time he began to wonder about the power source. It would seem plausible to assume that distortions of space, time and energy could be achieved only through expenditures of vast power. The watch seemed to be permanently sealed. It had an old-fashioned bulkiness. Certainly the distortion of time could not be achieved through purely mechanical means. He held it to his ear and again thought he heard the faint musical note, in a minor key, like a faraway wind in high tension wires. And he wondered if its capacities could be used up, if it would work only for so long, or for so many times. That sort of information would probably be in the letter.

What if Wintermore had fiddled with the extra hand?

He felt exasperated at his uncle. It did not seem possible Omar would have left so many things to chance.

What next? The watch, properly and carefully used, with sufficient advance planning, would enable him to solve the problems of the various criminal actions and civil actions. But it would have to be done in a way which would quiet public interest rather than enhance it. A total notoriety—as Uncle Omar had realized—would make life impossible. One would be sought at the ends of the earth by nuts, monsters, shysters, maniacs, fanatics, reporters.

He knew he had started badly. Letting it get into the hands of Bonny Lee had been an inadvertent violation of the implied trust and responsibility. It should be treated with as much gravity, care and respect as a cobalt bomb. Four times he had tried to escape from Uncle Omar's control into a life of normality, of the small goals and pleasures of the average life. He knew that chance was gone, unless he denied the responsibility by smashing the watch, or dropping it into the sea. That was one possible decision, but he could not make it until he had used the watch to remove all pressures, regain anonymity.

Again there were five minutes left. He looked at Bonny Lee and felt a great galloping rush of desire for her. But electric as the urge was, there was a strange placidity about it, an assured and comforting smugness. In Rome last year he had desired the woman named Andy just as much, but there had been no flavor of happiness to it. And because it had made him wretched, it had distorted desire into too significant a thing. So now something new had been discovered. Frustration bloated the role of sex, kept it in the center of the stage and gave it all the lines. It had stunted the other aspects of his life through its false importance. Release had suddenly put it in proper context. It was dwindled, and could now share the lines with the other actors—essential to the play but not obsessional, suitably dramatic but linked to reality, capable of comedy as well.

I was a legless man, he thought, and watched everyone in the world walking and running and climbing, and the attribute of leglessness colored every reaction to some degree. I pretended I had legs, so no one would notice. Now I have legs, and though walking is a joy, legs are now just a part of living, and the awareness of them comes and goes. I accept the fact of having legs.

He went over to Bonny Lee, bent and put his lips against the rigidity of her mouth and pressed the world back to life. The warmth and softness came in a twinkling and she gave a convulsive leap of fright, a small squeak of dismay. The brown eyes narrowed.

"That's right sneaky," she whispered. "Like to jump clean outa my skin, you bassar. It's not a kind of thing anybody is ever going to get used to, sugar."

She wiped her fingers on a tissue and went into the other room and closed the heavy plank door and bolted it. She moved casually into his arms, kissing him lightly on the chin and gave a huge, shuddering yawn. "I'm pooped entire, Kirby." She trudged over and sat heavily on the bed and yawned again and knuckled her eyes. "Don't you go near the window so any of those biddies can see you."

"I've got a lot of problems to think about, Bonny Lee."

She kicked her sandals off and stretched out on the bed. "Can't think of a thing until I get some sleep. Aren't you bushed too?"

"Yes, I guess I am." He went over and sat on the edge of the bed and leaned over her and kissed her with considerable and lengthy emphasis.

She chuckled. "Man, you're not as sprung as I am."

"Bonny Lee?"

"No, sugar. It would be a waste of talent for sure. Please let me sleep, sugar, and then we'll see. You oughta sleep too. Whyn't you go on out on the couch where you can quieten down nice?"

"I shouldn't waste time sleeping, with all that—"

She silenced him with a sudden gesture, bit her lip and said, "Gimme the watch, sugar."

"I really don't think you ought to—"

"I wanta try something, stupid! I'm not going to get cute. I'm too gawddamn tired to get cute. You gotta trust me, or we are going absolutely no place at no time. Hand it over."

He hesitated, gave it to her reluctantly. She grasped the stem of the watch. In something that seemed like a flicker of movement just a little too fast to be visible, she was in an entirely different position, the watch on the bed a few inches from her slack hand, her eyes closed, breathing slowly, deeply, audibly through her parted lips. He spoke to her and she did not answer. He shook her and she whined. When he shook her again she reached for the watch. An instant later she had flickered into a slightly different position, and she was completely bare. One instant she was wearing her clothes. The next instant they were in midair beside the bed, falling to the floor. He woke her again and she mumbled and growled and took the watch and flickered into a different position. He touched her shoulder and she came awake quite easily. Her eyes were slightly puffy with sleep. She yawned and stretched luxuriously. With the awakenings, the entire procedure had taken just a couple of minutes.

She smiled at him and said, her voice soft and husky, "Three whole hours. Mmmmm. Now you." She wriggled over to the wall. "Get comfortable first, sugar, cause the damn bed and pillow get hard as a stone. Better strip on account of clothes feel sorta like cement."

He stretched out and turned the world red. He made the full twist, turning it back the maximum of one hour. She was sculptured of smooth dark red wood, propped on one elbow, smiling at him. He was in the rigid hollow in the bed his weight had made. He tried to go to sleep, but the clothing was oppressive. He got up and tried to take it off, but it was as stubborn as thick lead foil, so he clicked back into the world and stripped rapidly, his back to her, his face hot with the confusion of modesty, of a daylight intimacy he had never known before. In haste and an awkward confusion he stretched out again and flipped into redness and soon drifted into sleep. Suddenly he was awakened and her head was on the pillow, facing him, a few inches away.

"Take another hour, sugar," she whispered. "Take two. I can wait."

He went back into redness and into sleep, and was awakened with her smiling at him as before. "Doesn't it work good?" she whispered.

He yawned, marveling at her quick instinct for the utility of the device. It was something he would never have thought of—or at least not for a long time.

"That was one strange thing about Uncle Omar. Sometimes he seemed to be able to get along on no sleep at all. We wondered about it sometimes."

"That old man had it made, Kirby. It's like only a couple of minutes since I woke up for the last time. You want a little more sleep?"

"N-Not at the moment."

"You know, I din think so, somehow," she whispered. "This must be my day for breaking all the rules there are." She moved closer. She hooked a warm firm silky leg over his. She was so close all he could see was the single huge brown eye, moist and bright, feel the heat and weight of her breath. "It's so nice to love you," she sighed. "Because you're sorta shaky and scared, kinda. And sweet. What you do, you make it
important
, Kirby. And that makes me go all funny, like marshmallows and warm soup, and my heart is way up here going chunk chunk chunk, and I almost wanta cry, and let's make this time all slow and sweet and dreamy and gentle and closer than anybody ever got to either one of us, and be talking to me. Be saying the nice things, and I shall say them back, ever' one."

Chapter Ten

Kirby Winter and Bonny Lee Beaumont made love, took naps in the red world, showered together with a playfulness, with small mischiefs and burlesques, bawdy comedies over soap and shared towels—a playtime so alien to his own estimates of himself that he felt as if he had become another person. He had strode in lonesome severity past all the fiestas, thinking them flavored with evil and depravity to be righteously condemned. But suddenly he had been invited in, where all the warmth and the music was, and had found himself caught up—not in depravity, not in decadence, not in wickedness—but in a holiday flavor of a curious innocence, a wholesome and forthright and friendly pursuit of quite evident pleasures.