The Two Timers (12 page)

I'm going crazy,
Convery thought.
Auras
aren't evidence -- not unless this telepathy thing that's been in the
news is really beginning to spread.
He leafed through the magazine,
picked up another, then threw it down in disgust.
"Gina," he called. "What time do we eat?"
"About five -- soon enough for you?"
"That's fine. I've got to go out again."
A second later Convery found himself sitting in the middle of a kind of
floury explosion as his wife burst into the room and began waving her
fist under his nose.
"Blaize Convery," she whispered ferociously. "You leave this house over
my dead body."
Convery looked up into her pink, determined face in mild surprise.
"I don't get it."
"Tim's having his birthday party -- why do you think I'm baking these
cookies?"
"But his birthday isn't till next week," Convery protested.
"I know, but Kenneth's birthday was
last
week, and they always have
their party halfway between." Gina stared at him accusingly. "You should
know that by this time."
"I do know it, honey. I'd forgotten, that's all. Look, they won't mind
if I miss it just this once . . ."
"Just this once! You've missed it the past two years, and you aren't
leaving this house tonight."
"But I've got a job to do."
"Not tonight."
Convery looked into his wife's eyes and what he saw there made him give
in, smiling in order to retrieve as much as possible of his dignity. When
she had left the room he shrugged theatrically for the benefit of nobody
but himself and picked up his magazine. John Breton had kept for nine
years -- he could wait a little longer.
X
When the phone rang, splintering the silence of the house, Breton
hurried to it, but paused uncertainly with his fingers on the cool
plastic curvature of the handset.
Two hours alone in the shadowed stillness of the afternoon had filled him
with vague forebodings, which had alternated with moods of chest-pounding
triumph. It was exactly the sort of day on which at one time he could
have expected any moment to see the furtive, fugitive glimmering in his
sight preceding a full-scale attack of hemicrania. But in the year since
he'd had that first massive jump there had been scarcely any trips -- the
reservoir of nervous potential had been discharged, drained away. Now,
with the phone trembling under his hand, there was nothing in his mind
other than a sense of imminence, an awareness of life and death balancing
on a knife-edge. . . .
He picked up the phone and waited without speaking.
"Hello." The male voice on the wire was faintly Anglicized. "Is that you,
John?"
"Yes." Breton spoke cautiously.
"I wasn't sure if you'd be there yet. I called the office and they said
you'd left, but that was only five minutes ago, old boy -- you must have
been burning rubber on the way home."
"I was moving." Breton kept his voice relaxed. "By the way -- who is this?"
"It's Gordon, of course. Gordon Palfrey. Listen, old boy, I've got Kate
with me. Miriam and I bumped into her in the Foodmart -- she wants to
speak to you.
"All right." With an effort Breton remembered that the Palfreys were the
automatic writing enthusiasts who had captured Kate's interests. Miriam
was the one who appeared to have some kind of telepathic facility,
and the thought of perhaps having to speak to her made him feel uneasy.
"Hello . . . John?" Kate sounded slightly breathless, and he knew from her
hesitation over the phone that she knew who had really answered the call.
"What is it, Kate?"
"John, Miriam's been telling me the most fascinating things about her work.
The results she's been getting in the last couple of days are just
fantastic. I'm so excited for her."
How,
Breton thought, with a flicker of annoyance,
did Kate, my Kate,
get herself mixed up with people like that?
Aloud, he said, "That sounds interesting. Is it what you called me about?"
"In a way -- Miriam's giving a demonstration to a few close friends this
evening and she's invited me. I'm so thrilled, John. You won't mind if I
go straight there with them now, will you? You could look after yourself
for one evening?"
Having Kate out of the house for the next few hours suited Breton's
plans perfectly, yet he became angry at her almost religious attitude
towards the Palfreys. Only the fear of sounding like the other Breton
prevented him from protesting.
"Kate," he said calmly. "Are you avoiding me?"
"Of course not -- it's just that I can't pass up this chance."
"You love me?"
There was a pause. "I didn't think you'd have any need to ask that."
"All right." Breton decided to begin positive action. "But Kate, do you
think it's wise to stay out this evening? I wasn't kidding about John, you
know. He's in a mood in which he could pull up stakes tonight and vanish."
"That's up to him. Would you object?"
"No -- but I want you both to be sure about what you're doing."
"I can't think about it," Kate said, with the excitement suddenly gone
from her voice. "I just can't handle it."
"Don't worry, darling." Breton spoke softly. "You go on and have fun.
We'll work this out -- somehow."
He set the phone down and considered his next move. Gordon Pa]frey had
said John had already left the office, which meant he could arrive home
at any minute. Breton sprinted up the stairs and removed the automatic
pistol from its hiding place in the guest bedroom. Its metallic solidity
dragged heavily in the side pocket of his jacket as he came out of the
room. To make it look as though John Breton really had walked out of his
marriage and career in disgust it would be necessary to get rid of the
clothing and other effects he would be likely to take.
Money!
Jack
Breton looked at his watch -- the bank would be closed. He hesitated,
wondering if Kate would notice anything suspicious if John supposedly
took off into the blue without cash. It might not occur to her for a
few days, or even weeks, but in the end it would begin to look strange.
On the other hand, she had never been a money-conscious person and would
be unlikely to inquire too closely into the mechanics of any financial
transaction John was supposed to have made. Jack decided to go to the bank
first thing in the morning, as his other self, and arrange the transfer
of a sizable amount to a bank in Seattle. Later he could, if required,
arrange to make withdrawals from the new account, to lend solidity to
the fiction.
He took two expanding suitcases from a closet, filled them with clothes
and brought them down into the hall. The pistol kept bumping against his
hipbone. One part of his mind realized it was going to be difficult to
use it on John Breton, but the rest of him was savagely aware that this
was the culmination of nine years of agonized dedication, and there was no
turning back. The essential point was that he had
created
John Breton's
life, lent him nine years of existence for which there had never been any
provision in the cosmic scheme, and now the time had come to foreclose
on the loan.
I gave,
the thought came unbidden, and
I take away.
Suddenly Breton felt deathly cold. He stood shivering in the hall,
staring at himself in the long gold-tinted mirror, until -- eons later --
the deep whine of John Breton's Turbo-Lincoln disturbed the still brown
air of the old house. A minute later John came in through the rear door
and walked into the hall, still wearing his car-coat. His eyes narrowed
as he saw the two suitcases.
"Where's Kate?" By tacit agreement, the two Bretons had dropped all the
conventional formalities of greeting.
"She . . . she's having dinner with the Palfreys, and staying over
there for the rest of the evening." Jack found difficulty in forming
the words. He was going to kill John within a matter of seconds, but
the thought of seeing that familiar body torn open by bullets filled
him with an unnerving timidity.
"I see." John's eyes were watchful. "What are you doing with my cases?"
Jack's fingers closed around the butt of the pistol. He shook his head,
unable to speak.
"You don't look well," John said. "Are you all right?"
"I'm leaving," Jack lied, struggling with the newly-made discovery that
he would be unable to pull the trigger. "I'll return your cases later.
I took some clothes as well. Do you mind?"
"No, I don't mind." Relief showed in John's eyes. But do you mean you're
staying in this . . . time-stream?"
"Yes -- as long as I know Kate's still alive somewhere, not too far away,
that'll do me."
"Oh!" There was a baffled expression on John Breton's square face, as
though he had expected to hear something entirely different. "Are you
leaving right now? Do you want me to call you a taxi?"
Jack nodded. John shrugged and turned towards the telephone. The icy
paralysis was dragging at Jack's muscles as he pulled the pistol out
of his pocket. He stepped up close behind his other self and smashed
the heavy butt into John's skull, just behind the ear. As John's knees
buckled he hit him again and, in his uncoordinated numbness, stumbled and
went down with him. He found himself sprawled on top of the other man,
faces almost touching, watching in horror as John's eyes flickered open
in pain-dulled consciousness.
"So it's like that," John whispered in a semblance of drowsy satisfaction,
like a child on the verge of sleep. His eyes closed but Jack Breton hit him
again and again, using his fist, sobbing as he tried to destroy the image
of his own guilt.
When sanity returned he rolled away from John and crouched beside the
inert body, breathing heavily. He got to his feet, went up the shallow
staircase to the bathroom and hunched over the washbasin. The metal of
the taps was ice cold against his forehead, just as it had been when,
as a young man making his first disastrous experiments with liquor,
he had sprawled in the same attitude waiting for his system to cleanse
itself. But this time relief was not to be purchased so easily.
Breton splashed his face with cold water and dried himself, taking special
care over his knuckles, which were skinned and already beginning to exude
clear fluid. He opened the bathroom cabinet in search of medical dressings
and his attention was caught by a bottle of pale green triangles. They had
the unmistakable generic look of sleeping tablets. Breton examined the
label and confirmed his guess.
In the kitchen he filled a glass with water and carried it to the hall
where John Breton was still sprawled on the mustard carpet. He raised
John's head and began feeding him tablets. The task was more difficult
than he had expected. The unconscious man's throat and mouth would fill up
with water and an explosive cough would spew it and the tablets down onto
his chest. Breton was sweating, and an unguessable amount of valuable time
had gone by, before he had managed to get eight tablets down John's throat.
He threw the bottle aside, picked up the pistol, put it in his pocket
and dragged the body into the kitchen. A quick search of John's pockets
provided Breton with a wallet full of the identification he was going
to need later in his dealings with the outside world, and a bunch of
keys including those of the big Lincoln.
He went out to the car and drove it around to the back of the house then
reversed so that the rear bumper was nuzzling the ivy-covered trellis of
the patio. The air was warm from the afternoon sunshine and the distant
lawn mower was still going its unconcerned way beyond the screens of
trees and shrubbery. Breton opened the trunk of the car and went back
into the kitchen. John was very still, as though already dead, and his
face had a luminescent pallor. A single delta of blood extended from
his nose across one cheek.
Breton dragged the body out of the house and manhandled it into the open
trunk. While tucking the legs in he noticed that one of John's slip-on
shoes was missing. He pulled down the lid of the trunk without locking
it and went into the house. The shoe was lying just inside the doorway.
Breton picked it up and was hurrying back to the Lincoln when he walked
straight into Lieutenant Convery.
"Sorry to disturb you again, John." Convery's wide-set blue eyes were
alert, dancing with a kind of malicious energy. "I think I might've left
something here."
"I . . . I didn't notice anything sitting around."
Breton heard the words issuing from his own mouth, and marveled at his
body's ability to continue with the intricacies of communication while
the mind nominally in control was reeling with shock. What was Convery
doing here? This was the second time in one day that he had materialized
on the patio at the worst possible moment.
"It's the fossil. My boy's fossil -- I didn't have it when I got home."
Convery's smile was almost derisive, as if he was challenging Breton
to exercise his prerogative and throw an interfering cop off his property.
"You've no idea of the trouble I got into at home."
"Well, I don't think it's here. I'm sure I would have noticed -- it isn't
the sort of thing you would overlook."
"That's right," Convery said carelessly. "I guess I left it somewhere else."
All this was no coincidence, Breton realized sadly. Convery was dangerous
-- a clever, dedicated cop of the worst type. A man who had instincts
and believed in them, who clung to his own ideas tenaciously in spite
of logic, or evidence. This then was the real reason Convery had been
visiting John Breton at intervals over the past nine years -- he was
suspicious. What vindictive twist of fate, Breton wondered, had brought
this ambling super-cop onto the stage he had so carefully set on that
October night?
"Lost a shoe?"
"A shoe?" Breton followed Convery's gaze and saw the black slip-on gripped
in his own hand. "Oh yes. I'm getting absentminded."
"We all do when we have something on our minds -- look at that fossil."
"I don't have anything on my mind," Breton said immediately.
"What's troubling you?"
Convery walked to the Lincoln and leaned against it, his right hand
resting on the lid of the trunk. "Nothing much -- I keep trying to talk
with my hand."
"I don't get it."
"It's nothing. By the way -- speaking of hands -- those knuckles of
yours are looking a bit raw. Have you been in a fight or something?"