The Two Timers (15 page)

"Why?"
"The only reason you got a toehold with Kate and me was that we were
ripe for somebody like you to come along. But Kate'll see through you
any day -- and when that happens she'll run. She'll run hard, Jack."
Jack stared down at his other self. "You're trying to talk your way out
of this. It won't work. This isn't one of your old movies.
"I know. I know it's real. Remember the way Granddad Breton looked that
morning I . . . we . . . found him in bed?"
Jack nodded. Involuntary propulsion of the eyeballs, they had called
it. He had been eight years old at the time, and the technical jargon
had not been much comfort.
"I remember."
"That morning, I decided never to die."
"I know. Do you think I don't know?" Jack took a deep breath. "Listen,
why don't you cut out?"
"What do you mean?"
"If I let you go -- would you take off? Would you vanish altogether
and leave Kate and me alone?" Having uttered the words, Jack felt an
overwhelming surge of benevolence towards his other self. This was
the way to handle the situation -- surely John would gladly accept life
elsewhere in preference to death here in this basement. He watched John's
reactions carefully.
"Of course I would." John's eyes became alive. "I'd go anywhere --
I'm not stupid."
"Well, then."
The two men looked into each other's faces and Jack Breton felt something
very strange take place inside his head. His mind and John Breton's mind
touched.
The contact was fleeting and feather-light, yet frightening.
It was the first time anything remotely like it had ever happened to him,
but he understood it with perfect certitude. He understood, too, that
John had been lying to him when he said he was prepared to bow out.
"I suppose we were naturals for this telepathy thing that seems to be
going around," John said quietly. "Our brains must be practically
identical, after all."
"I'm sorry.
"I'm not. I'm almost grateful to you, in fact. I didn't realize how
much Kate meant to me, but now I know -- and it's too much to let me
walk out and leave her to someone like you.
"Even if the alternative is dying."
"Even if the alternative is dying." John Breton managed to smile as
he spoke.
"So be it," Jack said flatly. "So be it."
"You weren't going to let me go, anyway."
"I . . ."
"Telepathy is a two-way thing, Jack. A moment ago I found out as much
about you as you did about me. You're convinced you couldn't really take
the risk of having me running around loose -- and there's something else."
"Such as?" Jack Breton had an uneasy feeling that he was losing the
initiative in a conversation in which he ought to have been completely
on top.
"At heart, you
want
to kill me. I represent your own guilt. You're in the
unique position of being able to pay the supreme penalty -- by executing me
-- yet to live on.
"That, if I may coin a phrase, is double-talk."
"It isn't. I don't know what you went through after Kate died in your
time-stream, but it made you into a psychological cripple, Jack. When
you're faced with a problem you blind yourself to all solutions except
the one which satisfies your own need to kill."
"Nonsense." Jack Breton began making sure the curtains on the basement's
small windows were well secured.
"You've demonstrated this already -- by your own admission." John was
beginning to sound drowsy.
"Go on."
"When you made that big trip back through time -- there was no need for
you to take a rifle and shoot Spiedel. You could have accomplished as
much, or more, by going back to the scene of that stupid row I had with
Kate when the car broke down. All you had to do was warn me."
"I thought I had explained the limitations of chronomotive physics to
you," Jack replied. "There is no conscious selection of destination --
the mind is drawn towards the key event, the turning point."
"Precisely what I'm saying! I'm a victim of
hemicrania sine dolore,
too. I've seen the marching colored angles dozens of times in the last
nine years, and I've made dozens of trips -- always to the scene of the
argument, because I knew that was where it started. That was where my
guilt lay, but you couldn't face that, Jack.
"You accepted it for a while, then -- you told us about it the night
you arrived at the house -- you began to focus on the scene of the
killing. You began to see the trees of the park projecting up through
the traffic lanes. The reason was that the murder scene had a powerful
attraction for you. It had Spiedel -- a ready-made vehicle for the
transference of your guilt; it was a moment of danger for Kate -- in
which there was no time to weigh up right and wrong. There was only time
to kill . . ."
"You're wrong," Jack whispered.
"Face up to it, Jack -- it's your only chance. You and I were one man
at that time, so I know what lay right at the back of your mind. You
wanted Kate to die. When Convery came to the door that first time you
heard the same inner voice as I did, the one telling you you had been
set free. But there's nothing so terrible about it . . ." John's eyes
closed again, and his voice began to fade. ". . . You can't love a woman
without wanting to kill her sometime . . . she won't always be what you
want her to be . . . sometimes she wants to be herself . . . trick is to
learn to adjust . . . you gotta adjust. . . ." John Breton fell asleep,
his bruised face pressed against the floor.
"You fool," Jack said. "You poor fool."
He went up the stairs and paused with his hand on the light switch,
checking the arrangements he had made to keep John imprisoned. When
the other man recovered consciousness he would be able to move around
the central part of the basement, but he would be unable to reach any
tools with which he might free himself. John Breton would be extremely
uncomfortable, Jack reflected grimly, but it would not be for very long.
He clicked out the light and went back outside, carefully locking the
door of the lodge behind him.
It had grown much darker while he was inside, but the sky was literally
alive with light. Above the northern horizon, ghostly curtains of red
and green brilliance spread their shimmering folds across the heavens,
twitching and flailing in response to the awesome solar winds. The
aurora was so bright that it screened out the polar stars. Familiar
constellations shone in the rest of the sky, but they too had dimmed in
comparison to the vast, silent pyrotechnics of the meteor display. The
night world was being bombarded with fire by a frantic giant, divergent
showers tracing their paths across the atmospheric shield in an unsteady
rhythm, punctuated by brighter projectiles which spanned the horizons
in mind-quailing arcs.
The whole fantastic scene was reflected in the waters of the lake,
turning its surface into a seething mirror. Breton faced it unseeingly
for a moment, then got into the car. His hand brushed against a smooth,
dark object lying on the front seat. It was John Breton's shoe --
the one which had caught Lieutenant Convery's attention earlier in
the day. Opening the window, he threw the shoe out towards the water,
but it fell short and he heard it bounce on the pebbles. He shrugged,
started the car and slewed it around in a gravel-spitting circle.
Driving south on the Silverstream highway, he found himself continually
glancing in the mirror with a feeling of being followed -- even though
there was nothing behind but the pulsing lights of the aurora.
XIII
Breton was relieved to find the house in darkness when he got back.
He put the car in the garage and went into the house by the back door.
A glance at his watch showed him that he had been away less than three
hours -- it had seemed much longer. Walking through the hall, he noticed
the bottle of sleeping tablets lying where he had thrown it. He picked
it up and took it back to the bathroom.
The sight of himself in the bathroom mirror gave Breton a shock. His face
was haggard and shaded with stubble, his clothing rumpled and streaked
with dust. He looked around the room and noted with approval that, as well
as a shower stall, it was fitted with a deep tub. While hot water was
thundering from the tap, he searched closets and produced clean underwear,
a soft, dark-green shirt and a pair of slacks belonging to John Breton. He
carried them into the bathroom, locked the door and proceeded to have
the hottest bath he could remember. Half an hour later he was clean,
relaxed and freshly-shaven -- and it felt good.
He went downstairs into the friendly, soft-toned spaciousness of the big
living room and stood, hesitating, before the cocktail cabinet. He had
been avoiding alcohol almost completely for years because, as far as
he was concerned, drinking and hard work were mutually exclusive. But
that phase of his life had passed -- he had now achieved just about
everything he had set out to achieve, and could afford to relax a little.
He inspected the whiskey, found it was Johnny Walker Black Label and
nodded in satisfaction. John and he had diverged in many ways over the
nine years, but his other self was still a good judge of liquor. He poured
a generous measure, carried it over to the deepest armchair and began
sipping. The evocative aroma, and the warmth of distilled sunlight
seeping through his system, relaxed him still further. He took another
glass. . . .
Breton awoke with a start of panic, wondering where he was. It took
several seconds for his surroundings to register, and when they did,
he felt worried. The wall-clock told him it was past two in the morning,
and obviously Kate had not come home yet. He got to his feet, shivering
after the long sleep, then heard the faint sound of the garage doors
being closed. Kate had arrived, after all, and the sound of her car's
high-compression engine coming up the drive must have been what had
awakened him.
Self-consciously, nervously, he went through to the back of the house
and opened the kitchen door. She came towards the light, the belt of her
tweed suit untied and the jacket lying open to reveal the horizontal
tensions of her tangerine-colored sweater. Breton had never seen Kate
look so much like Kate.
"John," she said uncertainly, shielding her eyes. "Oh . . . Jack."
"Come in, Kate," he said gently. "John has gone."
"Gone?"
"Well, I did warn you. I told you the sort of mood he was in today."
"I know you did -- but I didn't expect . . . Are you sure he's gone?
The car's still out in the garage.
"He took a taxi. To the airport, I think. He wasn't communicative."
Kate peeled off her gloves and dropped them on the kitchen table.
Breton automatically locked the kitchen door, like an ordinary husband
sealing up his little fortress for the night, then found Kate staring
at him, somberly, in a way which invested his familiar action with
significance. He made a show of carelessly flinging the key onto the
table, and ensured that it ended up nestling into the fingers of her
gloves. What a start, he thought. A clash of symbols.
"I don't understand," she said. "You mean he's just walked out? For good?"
"This is what I was warning you about, Kate. John was reaching the point
where he had to make some pretty massive adjustments to his emotional
circumstances. He probably interpreted your staying away from the house
today as a lack of concern.". Breton made himself sound contrite. "You
can imagine how I feel."
Kate walked through to the living room and stood at the stone chimney,
staring down into the unlit fire. Breton followed her and positioned
himself at the other side of the room, carefully gauging her reactions.
A too-sudden advance at this stage could trigger off the antagonism he
had noticed in her earlier in the day. Kate had a conscience.
"You're wearing John's clothes,' she said, almost abstractedly.
"He took all he wanted and left me the rest." Breton was amazed to find
himself 'on the defensive. "He filled two cases."
"But what about the business? Are you . . .?"
"That's John's idea. I take it over."
"You would." Kate's eyes were unreadable.
Breton decided it was time to shift his attack. "I don't want you to
get the idea that John's completely unhappy about all this. He's been
feeling trapped -- by his career and marriage -- for years. Now he isn't
trapped. He's made an effortless, guilt-free escape from a situation
that was becoming intolerable to him, and it didn't even cost him
divorce fees."
"Just a million dollar business."
"The point is, he didn't have to quit the business. I didn't come here
looking for money, Kate. I threw away every cent I owned, just to reach
you."
Kate turned to face him and her voice had softened. "I know. I'm sorry
I said that. So much has happened."
Breton moved towards her and put his hands on her shoulders. "Kate,
darling, I . . ."
"Don't do that," she said quietly.
"I
am
your husband."
"There are times when I don't want my husband to touch me."
"Of course."
Breton let his arms fall by his sides. He had a feeling he had been
taking part in an undeclared battle, and that Kate had won it through
sheer superior generalship.
During the long hours of that night, as he lay alone in the guest room,
he was brought face-to-face with a disturbing truth. Nine years of
separate existence in the Time B world had left their mark on Kate,
making her a difFerent person than the girl he had lost and conquered
Time itself to recover.
And there was nothing in the whole wide universe he could do about it.
XIV
Breton had forgotten that days of the week existed.
Consequently he was surprised, on opening his eyes in buttery morning
sunlight, to be immediately aware that the day was Saturday. He lay,
between consciousness and sleep, considering the implications of his
apparently
a priori
knowledge.
Of the four major divisions of time -- day, week, month and year -- week
was the odd man out. All the others were based on recurring astronomical
phenomena, but the week was a purely human measure, the distance between
market days. An alert animal waking from sleep might be expected to know
the position of the sun, the phase of the Moon, or the season -- but to be
aware of Saturday? Unless his subconscious had its own seven-day clock,
or had picked up a variation in the pattern of traffic sounds drifting
through the partially-open window . . .