The Two Timers (2 page)
Authors: Bob Shaw
Breton put a cigarette into his mouth and lit it, wondering why the world
had chosen this particular evening to begin drifting out of focus.
"Listen, Carl. We can make two interpretations of these discrepancies.
The first is the one you've already mentioned -- that the limestone
we
know
to lie under that site has changed overnight into salt -- and,
with your support, I'm ruling that one out right now. The other is that
somehow both our gravimeters are out of adjustment -- right?"
"I guess so," Tougher said wearily.
"So we rent a couple of new instruments tomorrow and go over the ground
again."
"I thought you'd say that. Do you know how many miles I covered today,
John? I feel like I've walked clear across the state of Montana."
"I'll go with you next time," Breton replied. "I need the exercise.
See you in the morning, Carl."
"Yeah, see you. Oh, John -- you left out the third possible explanation."
"Which is . . .?"
"That the force of gravity has lessened since yesterday."
"Get some rest, Carl -- even your jokes are getting tired." Breton set
the phone down and smiled in appreciation of the way in which the little
geologist never got depressed or rattled. A telephone crank who picked on
Tougher would have ricocheted off a massive shield of sane practicability
-- yet in this case Tougher was the only suspect Breton had had. His jokes
were usually on the locker room level, but there was the time a couple
of years earlier when Tougher had spent something like fifteen dollars
of his own money in bringing a can of gasoline to work every day and
sneaking it into the office janitor's car. Later Tougher had explained,
matter-of-factly, that he had wanted to study the janitor's reactions when
he discovered his car was apparently manufacturing gas instead of using it
up. Was that particular hoax on a par with
"You have been living with my
wife for almost exactly nine years"?
Breton was uncertain. He went back
along the mustard carpeted hall, automatically touching the wall with his
knuckles at every step to prevent any build-up of static in the dry air.
Kate kept her eyes averted as he entered the room, and Breton felt a
slight pang of guilt over his earlier sarcasm.
"That was Carl," he volunteered. "He's been working late."
She nodded disinterestedly, and his guilt instantaneously transformed
itself into resentment -- not even in the presence of friends would
she pretend to care anything about the business. That's the way, Kate,
he thought furiously, never ease up for a second. Live well off me,
but at the same time reserve the right to despise my work and everybody
connected with it.
Breton stared somberly at his wife and the Palfreys, who were now going
back through all the material Miriam had produced, and suddenly realized
he was beginning to sway slightly. He retrieved his drink, finished it
with one gulp and poured another. I keep on taking this sort of treatment
-- the old, familiar and repetitious anger patterns began to flow redly
on the surface of his mind -- but how much is a man supposed to take? I
have a wife who complains night and day because I spend too much time
at the office, but when I do take an evening off -- this is what I
get. Phony spiritualists and another king-sized dose of her damned,
stinking indifference. To think I wept -- yes sir, actually wept with
relief -- because she was safe that night they found her with Spiedel's
brains scattered through her hair. I didn't know it then, but Spiedel
was trying to do me a favor. I know it now, though. If only I could . . .
Breton chopped the thought off in alarm as he realized he was setting
himself up for a trip.
But he was too late.
Without getting smaller, the subdued orange lights and white-mortared
stone chimney of the living room began to recede into planetary, stellar,
galactic distances. He tried to speak, but the transparent overlay of
language was shifting across the face of reality, robbing nouns of their
significance, making predication impossible. Strange geometries imposed
themselves on the perspectives of the room, snapping him sickeningly from
pole to alien pole. A face in the group turned towards him -- a pale,
meaningless free-form -- man or woman, friend or enemy? Ponderously,
helplessly, over the edge we go. . . .
Breton slammed down the hood of the Buick so savagely that the big car
moved like a disturbed animal, rocking on its gleaming haunches. In the
darkness of its interior Kate was waiting, immobile, Madonna-like --
and because she showed no anger, his own became uncontrollable.
"The battery's dead. That settles it -- we can't go."
"Don't be silly, Jack." Kate got out of the car. "The Maguires are
expecting us -- we can phone for a taxi." Her party clothes were
completely inadequate against the night breezes of late October, and
she huddled in them with a kind of despairing dignity.
"Don't be so damned reasonable, Kate. We're an hour late already, and
I'm not going to a party with my hands like this. We're going back home."
"That's childish."
"Thank you." Breton locked up the car, carelessly smudging the pale blue
paintwork with oil from his hands. "Let's go."
"I'm going on to the Maguires," Kate said. "You can go home and sulk if
that's what you want."
"Don't be stupid. You can't go all the way over there by yourself."
"I can go by myself and I can get back by myself -- I did it all right
for years before I met you."
"I know you've been around, sweetie -- I've always been too tactful to
mention it, that's all."
"Thank
you.
Well, at least you won't have the embarrassment of being
seen in public with me tonight."
Hearing the hopelessness creep into her voice, Breton felt a flicker
of malicious glee. "How are you planning to get there? Did you bring
any money?"
She hesitated, then held out her hand. "Give me something for taxi fare,
Jack."
"Not a chance. I'm childish -- remember? We're going home." He savored
her helplessness for a moment, somehow extracting revenge for his own
cruelty, then the whole thing fell apart in his hands. This is bad,
he thought, even for me. So I arrive late at a party with my face and
hands all black -- a balanced person would see that as a chance to do
an Al Jolson act. Let her ask me just once more and I'll give in and
we'll go to the party.
Instead, Kate uttered one short, sharp word -- filling him with wounded
dismay -- and walked away down the street past blazing store windows. With
her silvered wrap drawn tight over the flimsy dress, and long legs slimmed
even further by needle-heeled sandals, she looked like an idealized
screen version of a gangster's moll. For a moment he seemed to see the
physical presence of her more clearly than ever before, as though some
long-unused focusing mechanism had been operated behind his eyes. The
ambient brilliance from the stores projected Kate 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 hostile 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. But at the same time an incredible
thing was happening. He could feel a sense of relief growing in one
deeply hidden corner of his mind. If she's dead, she's dead. If she's
dead, it's all over. If she's dead, I'm free. . . .
"I'm Lieutenant Convery. Homicide. Do you mind answering a few questions?"
"No," Breton said dully. "You'd better come in." He led the way into the
living room, and had to make an effort to prevent himself straightening
cushions like a nervous housewife.
"You don't seem surprised to see us, 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 do you want, Lieutenant?"
"Do you own a rifle, Mr. Breton?"
"Ah . . . yes." Breton was thunderstruck.
"Do you mind getting it?"
"Look," Breton said loudly. "What's going on?"
Convery's eyes were bright, watchful. "One of the patrolmen will go with
you while you get the rifle."
Breton shrugged and led the way down into his basement workshop. He sensed
the patrolman's tenseness as they stepped off the wooden stair onto the
concrete floor, so he halted and pointed at the tall cupboard in which
he stored a jumble of large tools, fishing rods, archery equipment and
his rifle. The patrolman shouldered quickly past him, opened the doors
and dragged out the rifle. He had to disengage the sling, which had
snagged a fishing reel.
Back in the living room, Convery took the rifle and rubbed a fingertip
in the fine coating of dust which lay over the stock. "You don't use
this much?"
"No. The last time was a couple of years ago. Before I was married."
"Uh-huh. It's a high velocity job, isn't it?"
"Yes." Breton could feel the bewilderment building up inside him to an
almost physical pressure. What had happened?
"Ugly things," Convery commented casually. "They
destroy
animals.
I don't know why people use them."
"It's a good machine, that's all," Breton replied. "I like good machines.
Oh, I forgot -- it isn't working."
"Why not?"
"I dropped the bolt one day and I think it jammed the pin."
"Uh-huh." Convery removed the rifle's bolt, examined it, smelt the breech,
peered through the barrel at a table lamp, then handed the weapon back
to the patrolman. "That the only rifle you own?"
"Yes. Look, Lieutenant, this has gone on long enough. Why are you here?"
Breton hesitated. "Has anything happened to my wife?"
"I thought you'd never ask." Convery's blue eyes roved Breton's face.
"Your wife is all right. She was foolish enough to walk through the park
tonight, without company, and a man attacked her -- but she's all right."
"I don't understand. How . . . how can she be all right if she was attacked?"
"Well, she was very lucky, Mr. Breton. Another man, who incidentally
looked like you, stepped out from behind a tree and blew the attacker's
head off with a rifle."
"What? You don't think . . . Where's the man now?"
Convery smiled. "We don't know that, as yet. He seems to have
vanished. . . ."
A sense of aching vastness, shifting of perspectives and parallax,
unthinkable transitions in which the curvatures of space-time writhe
between negative and positive, and infinity yawns at the mid-point --
numinous, illusory, poignant. . . .
"Look at that guy drink," Gordon Palfrey was saying. "He's really going
into orbit tonight."
The others turned to look at Breton, who -- desperately needing time
to reorient himself -- smiled wanly and sat down in a deep armchair. He
noticed a speculative look in Kate's eyes and wondered if there was any
way for a casual observer to detect that he had been blacked out.
An analyst called Fusciardi had, after an unsatisfactory investigation,
assured him the lapses were unnoticeable, but Breton had found it
difficult to believe because the trips often occupied several hours of
subjective time. Fusciardi's explanation was that Breton had an unusual,
but not unique, capacity for flashes of absolute recall occupying only
split seconds of objective time. He had even suggested referring the
case to a university psychological team, but at that point Breton had
lost interest.
Breton relaxed further into the big old chair, enjoying the comfort of
its sane solidity. That particular episode was cropping up more often
lately and he found it depressing, even though Fusciardi had warned
him that key scenes in his life -- especially those involving emotional
stress -- would be most liable for reclamation. Tonight's trip had been
unusually long, and its impact increased by the fact that he had had so
little warning. There had been none of the visual disturbances which
Fusciardi had told him were commonly the prelude to a migraine attack
in other people.
Chilled by his brush with the past, Breton tried to increase his hold on
the present, but Kate and the Palfreys were still absorbed in the unusual
sample of automatic writing. He listened for a moment as they went through
the ritual of trying to identify the author, then allowed his mind to
drift in a warm alcoholic haze. A lot seemed to have happened in an
evening which had started off in an atmosphere of distilled dullness. I
should have stayed in the office with Carl, he thought. The Blundell
Cement Company survey had to be com pleted in less than a week, and had
been going slowly even before the unlikely twenty milligal discrepancies
in the gravimeter readings showed up. Perhaps they had not been corrected
properly. Carl was good, but there were so many factors to be considered
in gravity surveying -- sun and moon positions, tidal movements, elastic
deformation of the Earth's crust, etc. Anybody could make a mistake,
even Carl. And anybody could send or receive an anonymous phone call. I
was crazy to imagine all those specially engineered connotations -- I
was caught off balance, that's all. The call was a psychological banana
skin and nothing more. Good phrase, that . . . and the whiskey's good
too. Even the Palfreys are all right if you look at them the right way --
especially Miriam. Nice figure. Too bad that she had to let her whole
life be influenced by the fact she was born with that Hollywood Inca
M.G.M. Ancient Egyptian priestess face. If she looked like Elizabeth
Taylor she could come around here every night. . . . Or even Robert
Taylor. . . .
Feeling himself borne up on a malty cloud of benevolence, Breton tuned
in again on the conversation across the room and heard Kate say something
about Oscar Wilde.
had chosen this particular evening to begin drifting out of focus.
"Listen, Carl. We can make two interpretations of these discrepancies.
The first is the one you've already mentioned -- that the limestone
we
know
to lie under that site has changed overnight into salt -- and,
with your support, I'm ruling that one out right now. The other is that
somehow both our gravimeters are out of adjustment -- right?"
"I guess so," Tougher said wearily.
"So we rent a couple of new instruments tomorrow and go over the ground
again."
"I thought you'd say that. Do you know how many miles I covered today,
John? I feel like I've walked clear across the state of Montana."
"I'll go with you next time," Breton replied. "I need the exercise.
See you in the morning, Carl."
"Yeah, see you. Oh, John -- you left out the third possible explanation."
"Which is . . .?"
"That the force of gravity has lessened since yesterday."
"Get some rest, Carl -- even your jokes are getting tired." Breton set
the phone down and smiled in appreciation of the way in which the little
geologist never got depressed or rattled. A telephone crank who picked on
Tougher would have ricocheted off a massive shield of sane practicability
-- yet in this case Tougher was the only suspect Breton had had. His jokes
were usually on the locker room level, but there was the time a couple
of years earlier when Tougher had spent something like fifteen dollars
of his own money in bringing a can of gasoline to work every day and
sneaking it into the office janitor's car. Later Tougher had explained,
matter-of-factly, that he had wanted to study the janitor's reactions when
he discovered his car was apparently manufacturing gas instead of using it
up. Was that particular hoax on a par with
"You have been living with my
wife for almost exactly nine years"?
Breton was uncertain. He went back
along the mustard carpeted hall, automatically touching the wall with his
knuckles at every step to prevent any build-up of static in the dry air.
Kate kept her eyes averted as he entered the room, and Breton felt a
slight pang of guilt over his earlier sarcasm.
"That was Carl," he volunteered. "He's been working late."
She nodded disinterestedly, and his guilt instantaneously transformed
itself into resentment -- not even in the presence of friends would
she pretend to care anything about the business. That's the way, Kate,
he thought furiously, never ease up for a second. Live well off me,
but at the same time reserve the right to despise my work and everybody
connected with it.
Breton stared somberly at his wife and the Palfreys, who were now going
back through all the material Miriam had produced, and suddenly realized
he was beginning to sway slightly. He retrieved his drink, finished it
with one gulp and poured another. I keep on taking this sort of treatment
-- the old, familiar and repetitious anger patterns began to flow redly
on the surface of his mind -- but how much is a man supposed to take? I
have a wife who complains night and day because I spend too much time
at the office, but when I do take an evening off -- this is what I
get. Phony spiritualists and another king-sized dose of her damned,
stinking indifference. To think I wept -- yes sir, actually wept with
relief -- because she was safe that night they found her with Spiedel's
brains scattered through her hair. I didn't know it then, but Spiedel
was trying to do me a favor. I know it now, though. If only I could . . .
Breton chopped the thought off in alarm as he realized he was setting
himself up for a trip.
But he was too late.
Without getting smaller, the subdued orange lights and white-mortared
stone chimney of the living room began to recede into planetary, stellar,
galactic distances. He tried to speak, but the transparent overlay of
language was shifting across the face of reality, robbing nouns of their
significance, making predication impossible. Strange geometries imposed
themselves on the perspectives of the room, snapping him sickeningly from
pole to alien pole. A face in the group turned towards him -- a pale,
meaningless free-form -- man or woman, friend or enemy? Ponderously,
helplessly, over the edge we go. . . .
Breton slammed down the hood of the Buick so savagely that the big car
moved like a disturbed animal, rocking on its gleaming haunches. In the
darkness of its interior Kate was waiting, immobile, Madonna-like --
and because she showed no anger, his own became uncontrollable.
"The battery's dead. That settles it -- we can't go."
"Don't be silly, Jack." Kate got out of the car. "The Maguires are
expecting us -- we can phone for a taxi." Her party clothes were
completely inadequate against the night breezes of late October, and
she huddled in them with a kind of despairing dignity.
"Don't be so damned reasonable, Kate. We're an hour late already, and
I'm not going to a party with my hands like this. We're going back home."
"That's childish."
"Thank you." Breton locked up the car, carelessly smudging the pale blue
paintwork with oil from his hands. "Let's go."
"I'm going on to the Maguires," Kate said. "You can go home and sulk if
that's what you want."
"Don't be stupid. You can't go all the way over there by yourself."
"I can go by myself and I can get back by myself -- I did it all right
for years before I met you."
"I know you've been around, sweetie -- I've always been too tactful to
mention it, that's all."
"Thank
you.
Well, at least you won't have the embarrassment of being
seen in public with me tonight."
Hearing the hopelessness creep into her voice, Breton felt a flicker
of malicious glee. "How are you planning to get there? Did you bring
any money?"
She hesitated, then held out her hand. "Give me something for taxi fare,
Jack."
"Not a chance. I'm childish -- remember? We're going home." He savored
her helplessness for a moment, somehow extracting revenge for his own
cruelty, then the whole thing fell apart in his hands. This is bad,
he thought, even for me. So I arrive late at a party with my face and
hands all black -- a balanced person would see that as a chance to do
an Al Jolson act. Let her ask me just once more and I'll give in and
we'll go to the party.
Instead, Kate uttered one short, sharp word -- filling him with wounded
dismay -- and walked away down the street past blazing store windows. With
her silvered wrap drawn tight over the flimsy dress, and long legs slimmed
even further by needle-heeled sandals, she looked like an idealized
screen version of a gangster's moll. For a moment he seemed to see the
physical presence of her more clearly than ever before, as though some
long-unused focusing mechanism had been operated behind his eyes. The
ambient brilliance from the stores projected Kate 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 hostile 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. But at the same time an incredible
thing was happening. He could feel a sense of relief growing in one
deeply hidden corner of his mind. If she's dead, she's dead. If she's
dead, it's all over. If she's dead, I'm free. . . .
"I'm Lieutenant Convery. Homicide. Do you mind answering a few questions?"
"No," Breton said dully. "You'd better come in." He led the way into the
living room, and had to make an effort to prevent himself straightening
cushions like a nervous housewife.
"You don't seem surprised to see us, 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 do you want, Lieutenant?"
"Do you own a rifle, Mr. Breton?"
"Ah . . . yes." Breton was thunderstruck.
"Do you mind getting it?"
"Look," Breton said loudly. "What's going on?"
Convery's eyes were bright, watchful. "One of the patrolmen will go with
you while you get the rifle."
Breton shrugged and led the way down into his basement workshop. He sensed
the patrolman's tenseness as they stepped off the wooden stair onto the
concrete floor, so he halted and pointed at the tall cupboard in which
he stored a jumble of large tools, fishing rods, archery equipment and
his rifle. The patrolman shouldered quickly past him, opened the doors
and dragged out the rifle. He had to disengage the sling, which had
snagged a fishing reel.
Back in the living room, Convery took the rifle and rubbed a fingertip
in the fine coating of dust which lay over the stock. "You don't use
this much?"
"No. The last time was a couple of years ago. Before I was married."
"Uh-huh. It's a high velocity job, isn't it?"
"Yes." Breton could feel the bewilderment building up inside him to an
almost physical pressure. What had happened?
"Ugly things," Convery commented casually. "They
destroy
animals.
I don't know why people use them."
"It's a good machine, that's all," Breton replied. "I like good machines.
Oh, I forgot -- it isn't working."
"Why not?"
"I dropped the bolt one day and I think it jammed the pin."
"Uh-huh." Convery removed the rifle's bolt, examined it, smelt the breech,
peered through the barrel at a table lamp, then handed the weapon back
to the patrolman. "That the only rifle you own?"
"Yes. Look, Lieutenant, this has gone on long enough. Why are you here?"
Breton hesitated. "Has anything happened to my wife?"
"I thought you'd never ask." Convery's blue eyes roved Breton's face.
"Your wife is all right. She was foolish enough to walk through the park
tonight, without company, and a man attacked her -- but she's all right."
"I don't understand. How . . . how can she be all right if she was attacked?"
"Well, she was very lucky, Mr. Breton. Another man, who incidentally
looked like you, stepped out from behind a tree and blew the attacker's
head off with a rifle."
"What? You don't think . . . Where's the man now?"
Convery smiled. "We don't know that, as yet. He seems to have
vanished. . . ."
A sense of aching vastness, shifting of perspectives and parallax,
unthinkable transitions in which the curvatures of space-time writhe
between negative and positive, and infinity yawns at the mid-point --
numinous, illusory, poignant. . . .
"Look at that guy drink," Gordon Palfrey was saying. "He's really going
into orbit tonight."
The others turned to look at Breton, who -- desperately needing time
to reorient himself -- smiled wanly and sat down in a deep armchair. He
noticed a speculative look in Kate's eyes and wondered if there was any
way for a casual observer to detect that he had been blacked out.
An analyst called Fusciardi had, after an unsatisfactory investigation,
assured him the lapses were unnoticeable, but Breton had found it
difficult to believe because the trips often occupied several hours of
subjective time. Fusciardi's explanation was that Breton had an unusual,
but not unique, capacity for flashes of absolute recall occupying only
split seconds of objective time. He had even suggested referring the
case to a university psychological team, but at that point Breton had
lost interest.
Breton relaxed further into the big old chair, enjoying the comfort of
its sane solidity. That particular episode was cropping up more often
lately and he found it depressing, even though Fusciardi had warned
him that key scenes in his life -- especially those involving emotional
stress -- would be most liable for reclamation. Tonight's trip had been
unusually long, and its impact increased by the fact that he had had so
little warning. There had been none of the visual disturbances which
Fusciardi had told him were commonly the prelude to a migraine attack
in other people.
Chilled by his brush with the past, Breton tried to increase his hold on
the present, but Kate and the Palfreys were still absorbed in the unusual
sample of automatic writing. He listened for a moment as they went through
the ritual of trying to identify the author, then allowed his mind to
drift in a warm alcoholic haze. A lot seemed to have happened in an
evening which had started off in an atmosphere of distilled dullness. I
should have stayed in the office with Carl, he thought. The Blundell
Cement Company survey had to be com pleted in less than a week, and had
been going slowly even before the unlikely twenty milligal discrepancies
in the gravimeter readings showed up. Perhaps they had not been corrected
properly. Carl was good, but there were so many factors to be considered
in gravity surveying -- sun and moon positions, tidal movements, elastic
deformation of the Earth's crust, etc. Anybody could make a mistake,
even Carl. And anybody could send or receive an anonymous phone call. I
was crazy to imagine all those specially engineered connotations -- I
was caught off balance, that's all. The call was a psychological banana
skin and nothing more. Good phrase, that . . . and the whiskey's good
too. Even the Palfreys are all right if you look at them the right way --
especially Miriam. Nice figure. Too bad that she had to let her whole
life be influenced by the fact she was born with that Hollywood Inca
M.G.M. Ancient Egyptian priestess face. If she looked like Elizabeth
Taylor she could come around here every night. . . . Or even Robert
Taylor. . . .
Feeling himself borne up on a malty cloud of benevolence, Breton tuned
in again on the conversation across the room and heard Kate say something
about Oscar Wilde.
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