The Infinite Moment (16 page)

Cohn Trafford said coldly: "You are very fully informed, Dr Harshom."

The doctor shrugged slightly.

"Your own information about the Harshoms must by now be almost exhaustive. Why should you resent some of us knowing something of you?"

Cohn did not reply to that. He dropped his gaze, and appeared to study the tablecloth. The doctor resumed: "I said just nowhas he an obsession? The answer has appeared to be yessince sometime last March. Prior to that, there seems to have been no enquiry whatever regarding Miss Ottilie Harshom.

"Now when I had reached this point I began to feel that I was on the edge of a more curious mystery than I had expected." He paused. "I'd like to ask you, Mr Trafford, had you ever been aware of the name Ottilie Barshorn before January last?"

The young man hesitated. Then he said, uneasily: "How can one possibly answer that? One encounters a myriad names on all sides. Some are remembered, some seem to get filed in the subconscious, some apparently fail to register at all. It's unanswerable."

"Perhaps, so. But we have the curious situation that before January Ottilie Harshom was apparently not on your mental map, but since March she has, without any objective existence, dominated it. So I ask myself, what happened between January and March..

"Well, I practise medicine. I have certain connections, I am able to learn the external facts. One day late in January you were invited, along with several other people, to witness a demonstration in one of your Company's laboratories. I was not told the details, I doubt if I would understand them if I were: the atmosphere around the higher flights of modern physics is so rarefiedbut I gather that during this demonstration something went amiss. There was an explosion, or an implosion, or perhaps a matter of a few atoms driven berserk by provocation, in any case, the place was wrecked. One man was killed outright, another died later, several were injured. You yourself were not badly hurt. You did get a few cuts, and bruisesnothing serious, but you were knocked out right out.

"You were, indeed, so thoroughly knocked out that you lay unconscious for twentyfour days "And when at last you did come round you displayed symptoms of considerable confusionmore strongly, perhaps, than would be expected in a patient of your age and type, and you were given sedatives. The following night you slept restlessly, and showed signs of mental distress. In particular you called again and again for someone named Ottilie.

"The hospital made what enquiries they could, but none of your friends or relatives knew of anyone called Ottilie associated with you.

"You began to recover, but it was clear you had something heavily on your mind. You refused to reveal what it was, but you did ask one of the doctors whether he could have his secretary try to find the name Ottilie Barshorn in any directory. When it could not be found, you became depressed. However, you did not raise the matter againat least, I am told you did notuntil after your discharge when you set out on this quest for Ottilie Harshorn, in which, in spite of completely negative results, you continue.

"Now, what must one deduce from that?" He paused to look across the table at his guest, left eyebrow raised.

"That you are even better informed than I thought," Cohn said, without encouragement. "If I were your patient your enquiries might be justified, but as I am not, and have not the least intention of consulting you professionally, I regard them as intrusive, and possibly unethical."

If he had expected his host to be put out he was disappointed. The doctor continued to regard him with interested detachment.

"I'm not yet entirely convinced that you ought not to be someone's patient," he remarked. "However, let me tell you why it was I, rather than another Harshom, who was led to make these enquiries. Perhaps you may then think them less impertinent. But I am going to preface that with a warning against false hopes. You must understand that the Ottilie Harshom you are seeking does not exist and has not existed. That is quite definite.

"Nevertheless, there is one aspect of this matter which puzzled me greatly, and that I cannot bring myself to dismiss as coincidence. You see, the name Ottilie Harshom was not entirely unknown to me. No" He raised his hand. "I repeat, no false hopes. There is no Ottilie Harshom, but there has beenor, rather, there have in the past been, two Ottilie Harshoms."

Cohn Trafford's resentful manner had entirely dropped away. He sat, leaning a little forward, watching his host intently.

"But," the doctor emphasised, "It was all long ago. The first was my grandmother. She was born in 1832, married Grandfather Harshom in 1861, and died in 1866. The other was my sister: she, poor little thing, was born in 1884 and died in 1890..."

He paused again. Cohn made no comment. He went on: "I am the only survivor of this branch so it is not altogether surprising that the others have forgotten there was ever such a name in the family, but when I heard of your enquiries I said to myself: There is something out of order here. Ottilie is not the rarest of names, but on any scale of popularity it would come a very long way down indeed; and Harshom is a rare name. The odds against these two being coupled by mere chance must be some quite astronomical figure. Something so large that I can not believe it is chance. Somewhere there must be a link, some cause...

"So, I set out to discover if I could find out why this young man Trafford should have hit upon this improbable conjunction of namesand, seemingly, become obsessed by it. You would not care to help me at this point?"

Cohn continued to look at him, but said nothing.

"No? Very well. When I had all the available data assembled the conclusion I had to draw was this: that as a result of your accident you underwent some kind of traumatic experience, an experience of considerable intensity as well as unusual quality. Its intensity one deduces from your subsequent fixation of purpose; the unusual quality partly from the pronounced state of confusion in which you regained consciousness, and partly from the consistency with which you deny recollecting anything from the moment of the accident until you awoke.

"Now, if that were indeed a blank, why did you awake in such a confused condition? There must have been some recollection to cause it. And if there was something akin to ordinary dream images, why this refusal to speak of them? There must have been, therefore, some experience of great personal significance wherein the name Ottilie Harshom was a very potent element indeed.

"Well, Mr. Trafford. Is the reasoning good, the conclusion valid? Let me suggest, as a physician, that such things are a burden that should be shared."

Cohn considered for some little time, but when he still did not speak the doctor added: "You are almost at the end of the road, you know. Only two more Rarshoms on the list, and I assure you they won't be able to helpso what then?" Cohn said, in a fiat voice: "I expect you are right. You should know. All the same, I must see them. There might be something, some clue I can't neglect the least possibility... I had just a little hope when you invited me here. I knew that you had a family..."

"I had," the doctor said, quietly. "My son Malcolm was killed racing at Brooklands in 1927. He was unmarried. My daughter married, but she had no children. She was killed in a raid on London in 1941... So there it ends.." He shook his head slowly.

"I am sorry," said Cohn. Then: "Have you a picture of your daughter that I may see?"

She wasn't of the generation you are looking for."

"I realise that, but nevertheless..

"Very wellwhen we return to the study. Meanwhile, you've not yet said what you think of my reasoning."

"Oh, it was good."

"But you are still disinclined to talk about it? Well, I am not. And I can still go a little further. Now, this experience of yours cannot have been of a kind to cause a feeling of shame or disgust, or you would be trying to sublimate it in some way, which manifestly you are not. Therefore it is highly probable that the cause of your silence is fear. Something makes you afraid to discuss the experience. You are not, I am satisfied, afraid of facing it; therefore your fear must be of the consequences of communicating it. Consequences possibly to someone else, but much more probably to yourself..."

Cohn went on regarding him expressionlessly for a moment. Then he relaxed a little and leaned back in his chair. For the first time he smiled faintly.

"You do get there, in the end, don't you, Doctor? But do you mind if I say that you make quite Germanically heavygoing of it? And the whole thing is so simple, really. It boils down to this. If a man, any man, claims to have had an experience which is outside all normal experience, it will be inferred, will it not, that he is in some way not quite a normal man? In that case, he cannot be entirely relied upon to react to a particular situation as a normal man shouldand if his reactions may be nonnormal, how can he be really dependable? He may be, of coursebut would it not be sounder policy to put authority into the hands of a man about whom there is no doubt? Better to be on the safe side. So he is passed over. His failure to make the expected step is not unnoticed. A small cloud, a mere wrack, of doubt and risk begins to gather above him. It is tenuous, too insubstantial for him to disperse, yet it casts a faint, persistent shadow.

"There is, I imagine, no such thing as a normal human being, but there is a widespread feeling that there ought to be. Any organisation has a conception of "the type of man we want here," which is regarded as the normal for its purposes. So every man there attempts more or less to accord to itorganisational man, in factand anyone who diverges more than slightly from the type in either his public, or in his private, life does so to the peril of his career. There is, as you said, fear of the resuTr cc my self: it is, as I said, so simple."

"True enough," the doctor agreed. But you have not taken any care to disguise the consequence of the experiencethe hunt for Ottilie Harshom."

"I don't need to. Could anything be more reassuringly normal than "man seeks girl?" I have invented a background which has quite satisfied any interested friendsand even several Harshoms."

"I dare say. None of them being aware of the "coincidence" in the conjunction of "Ottilie" with "Harshom." But I am."

He waited for Cohn Trafford to make some comment on that. When none came, he went on: "Look, my boy. You have this business very heavily on your mind. There are only the two of us here. I have no links whatever with your firm. My profession should be enough safeguard for your confidence, but I will undertake a special guarantee if you like. It will do you good to unburdenand I should like to get to the bottom of this..."

But Cohn shook his head.

"You won't, you know. Even if I were to tell you, you'd only be the more mystifiedas I am."

"Two heads are better than one. We could try," said the doctor, and waited.

Cohn considered again, for some moments. Then he lifted his gaze, and met the doctor's steadily.

"Very well then. I've tried. You shall try. But first I would like to see a picture of your daughter. Have you one taken when she was about twentyfive?"

They left the table and went back to the study. The doctor waved Cohn to a chair, and crossed to a corner cupboard. He took out a small pile of cardboard mounts and looked through them. He selected three, gazed at them thoughtfully for a few seconds, and then handed them over. While Cohn studied them he busied himself with poiring brandy from a decanter.

Presently Cohn looked up.

"No," he said. "And yet there is something..." He tried covering parts of the fullface portrait with his hand. "Something about the setting and shape of the eyesbut not quite. The brow, perhaps, but it's difficult to tell with the hair done like that..." He pondered the photographs a little longer, and then handed them back. "Thank you for letting me see them"

The doctor picked up one of the others and passed it over.

"This was Malcolm, my son."

It showed a laughing young man standing by the forepart of a car which bristled with exhaust manifold and had its bonnet held down by straps.

"He loved that car," said the doctor, "but it was too fast for the old track there. It went over the banking, and hit a tree."

He took the picture back, and handed Cohn a glass of brandy.

Cohn swirled it. Neither of them spoke for some little time. Then he tasted the brandy, and, presently, lit a cigarette.

"Very well," he said again. "I'll try to tell you. But first I'll tell you what happenedwhether it was subjective, or not, it happened for me. The implications and so on we can look at laterif you want to."

"Good," agreed the doctor. "But tell me first, do we start from the moment of the accidentor was there anything at all relevant before that?"

"No," Cohn Trafford said, "that's where it does start."

It was just another day. Everything and everybody perfectly ordinaryexcept that this demonstration was something a bit special. What it concerned is not my secret, and not, as far as I know, relevant. We all gathered round the apparatus. Deakin who was in charge, pulled down a switch. Something began to hum, and then to whine, like a motor running faster and faster. The whine became a shriek as it went up the scale. There was a quite piercingly painful moment or two near the threshold of audibility, then a sense of relief because it was over and gone, with everything seeming quiet again. I was looking across at Deakin watching his dials, with his fingers held ready over the switches, and then, just as I was in the act of turning my head towards the demonstration again, there was a flash... I didn't hear anything, or feel anything: there was just this dazzling white flash... Then nothing but black... I heard people crying out, and a woman's voice screaming... screaming... screaming...

I felt crushed by a great weight. I opened my eyes. A sharp pain jabbed through them into my head, but I struggled against the weight, and found it was due to two or three people being on top of me; so I managed to shove a couple of them off, and sit up. There were several other people lying about on the ground, and a few more picking themselves up. A couple of feet to my left was a large wheel. I looked further up and found that it was attached to a busa bus that from my position seemed to tower like a scarlet skyscraper, and appeared, moreover, to be tlited and about to fall on me. It caused me to get up very quickly, and as I did I grabbed a young woman who had been lying across my legs, and dragged her to a safer place. Her face was dead white, and she was unconscious.