Damon Knight: Beyond the Barrier

Ramsdell shrugged. “Said his name was Churan. Short, swarthy fellow, very polite. But I really wasn’t paying attention.

Well, I must fly.”

“Thanks again,” Naismith called after him, but the little bursar did not seem to hear.

Funny that he should have carried the parcel out of his office, straight to the library—almost too pat for coincidence, as if he had known Naismith would be there; but that was impossible.

Funny, too, that anybody should leave a parcel for him with Ramsdell; he had nothing to do with the bursar’s office, except to collect his pay checks.

Naismith weighed the parcel in his hands, curiously. He had an impulse to open it immediately, but decided not to—problem of disposing of the wrappings, or else carrying them around. Besides, the thing in the parcel might be in more than one piece, awkward to carry unless wrapped. Better wait till he got it home and could examine it properly.

But what could it be? A piece of apparatus? He had several things on order, but was not expecting any of them immediately, and anyhow, when they did come, they would be delivered in the usual way, not left for him at the bursar’s office….

Deep in thought, he walked to the tube entrance. He rode home with the thing on his knees, hard and metallically cool through the wrappings. There was no writing on the paper anywhere; it was neatly sealed with plastic tape.

The tube car sighed to a stop at the Beverly Hills station.

Naismith went aboveground and walked the two blocks to his apartment.

When he opened the door, his visiphone was blinking red.

He put the parcel down and crossed the room with his heart suddenly hammering. He saw that the recorded-call telltale was lit, and touched the playback button.

A voice said urgently. “Naismith, this is Dr. Wells. Please call me as soon as you get in; I want to see you.” The voice stopped; after a moment the mechanism clicked and the neutral machine voice added, “Two thirty-five P.M.” The playback stopped; the telltale winked off.

Wells was the head of the college psychiatric office; Naismith went to him as a patient every two weeks. Two thirty-five this afternoon—that was when Naismith had been in the middle of his temporal energy demonstration. He had a sense that things were happening all around him—first the girl with her disturbing question, and the dark man leaving a package for him at the bursar’s office, and—

At the thought, Naismith turned and looked at the package on the table. At least he could find out about that, and without delay. With a certain grimness, he seized the package, put it on his desk, and with a bronze letter opener began to cut the tape.

The wrapping came away easily. Naismith saw the gleam of blued metal, then spread the papers apart, and caught his breath.

The machine was beautiful.

It was box-shaped, with rounded edges and corners; all its lines flowed subtly and exactly into one another. On the top face there were oval inlays, arranged in a pattern that conveyed nothing to him, and slightly raised from the main shell.

The metal was satiny and cool under his fingers. It looked machined, not stamped: fine, micrometically exact work.

He turned it over, looking for a nameplate or a serial number stamped into the metal, but found nothing. There was no button, dial, or any other obvious way of turning the machine on. He could not see any way of opening it, except by removing the inlays from the top.

Naismith felt cautiously at the inlays, trying to see if they would depress or turn, but without result. He paused, baffled.

After a moment, his fingers began tracing around the outlines of the machine: it was beautiful workmanship, a pleasure just to touch it—and yet it seemed without function, useless, meaningless….

Like the question: “What is a Zug?”

Without warning, Naismith’s heart began hammering again.

He had an irrational feeling that he was being carefully hemmed in—trapped, for some unguessable purpose, and by persons unknown. His fingers left the machine, then gripped it fiercely again, pressing hard, twisting, trying to move some part of the mechanism.

He failed.

The visiphone blinked and brrred.

Naismith swore and hit the switch with his palm; the screen lighted up. It was Wells, with his iron-gray brush-cut and his deeply seamed face. “Naismith!” he said sharply. “I called before—did you get the message?”

“Yes—I just got in—I was about to vise you.”

“I’m sorry, Naismith, but I’m afraid this had better not wait.

Come over to my private office.”

“Now?”

“Please.”

“All right, but what’s it about?”

“I’ll explain when you get here.” Wells’ wide mouth closed firmly, and the screen went gray.

Wells’ private office was a big, sunny room adjoining his home, with a view of the Santa Monica beach and the ocean.

As the door slid open, Wells looked up from his desk, his big, leather-brown face serious and stern. “Naismith,” he said without preamble, “I’m told you insulted and frightened a Mr. Churan today. What about it?”

Naismith continued walking toward the desk. He sat down in the conical chair facing Wells, and planted his hands on his knees. “In the first place,” he said, “I’m not a criminal.

Moderate your tone. In the second place, where do you get your information, and what makes you so positive it’s correct?”

Wells blinked and leaned forward. “Didn’t you burst in on an importer named Churan, over in Hollywood, and threaten to kill him?”

“No, categorically, I did not. What time was I supposed to have done this?”

“Around two o’clock. And you didn’t threaten him, or break anything in his office?”

“I never even heard of your Mr. Churan until today,” said Naismith angrily. “What else does he say I did?”

Wells sat back, put a pipe in his mouth and looked at him meditatively. “Exactly where were you at two?”

“In my classrooms, giving a demonstration.”

“What kind of a demonstration?”

“Temporal energy.”

Wells picked up a gold pen in his big, well-kept fingers and made a note. “At two?”

“Certainly. My afternoon class has been at two since March, when the schedules were changed.”

“That’s right, I seem to remember now.” Wells frowned uncertainly, pulling at his lower lip. “It’s odd that Orvile didn’t seem to know that, although I suppose it might have slipped his mind… You know, Naismith, this could be a serious business. When Orvile called me, around two-thirty, he was shaking all over.” Orvile was the head of the Physics Department, a nervous, white-haired man. “He’d just had a call from the police—this man Churan had complained to them, and naturally, he passed the buck to me. He knows I’m treating you for that amnesic condition of yours. Now, I’ll put it on the line, Naismith—if you did black out and browbeat Churan, as he says you did, we’ve got to find out why.”

Naismith began to stiffen with anger. “I’ve told you, I was in my classrooms at two o’clock. You can check on that, if you don’t choose to believe me—ask my students.”

Wells glanced at his notepad, scratched a couple of aimless lines, then looked up and said, “You used the word ‘classrooms.’ I take it that means you were teaching by the multiple-class method.”

“That’s right. Almost all the undergraduate classes are multiples. You know how crowded we are.”

“Surely. But what I’m getting at is this: at two o’clock you were in several places at once.”

“Nine places, or rather ten,” said Naismith. “It’s the nine-unit duplicator in the East Wing of the Science Building.”

“All right. My question is this: Is there any possibility that you were in eleven places at once, at two o’clock today?”