Bob Shaw - The Two Timers

“I.. ” Jack searched for words. “I’ll get you out of that fishing line.”

“I’d appreciate it. I’ll still hate your guts, though.”

“Can’t say I blame you.”

Breton opened the workbench drawer and found another spool of fishing line. He took it to the center of the basement and used its pressure guillotine to cut the line around John’s wrists. It parted with a metallic click. He was fitting the jaws of the guillotine over the line connecting John’s arm to the ceiling joist when he heard a car slither to a halt outside. The sound was followed by the banging of two doors.

Jack Breton shoved the spool into John’s blood-streaked hand and ran to the workbench. He leaped onto it and pulled aside the curtains of the window above. In the garish light from the heavens he saw the outline of Convery’s Plymouth. Kate was already running towards the lodge, the upper surfaces of her body linined in frosty silver. Breton filled his eyes for the last time. The sight of her oval face, long thighs, breasts uplifted by flight, sent pain flooding through him.

He let the curtain fall back in place and jumped down off the bench. In the tool drawer he found a small screwdriver. He pushed his watch further up on his arm, positioned the screwdriver blade directly over the flat lump of the chronomotor module, and hesitated, looking up at John.

“You want to say goodbye?”

“Goodbye.”

“Thanks.”

Jack Breton stabbed the narrow blade deep into his wrist, and the Time B world tilted ponderously away.

Convery got out of the car more slowly than did Kate Breton.

There was no need to hurry at this stage. The answers he had been seeking for nine years were just a few yards from him, and there was no way they could escape him now. He wanted to move gently, with the windows of his mind wide open, drinking it all in — because this was fulfillment.

The shifting light from the sky was bright enough to show each individual pebble. He noted the Turbo-Lincoln parked close to the boathouse, and was turning towards the lodge when he saw a shoe lying at the water’s edge and picked it up. It was the black slip-on he had noticed in Breton’s hand on the previous day. But why was it lying out here? Convery shrugged. Another piece that would have to be fitted into the puzzle when the final reckoning came.

Keeping the shoe in his hand, he jog-trotted towards the lodge behind Kate Breton. He had taken only a few paces when someone drew aside the curtain of a basement window at the front of the lodge, spilling white fluorescent light on the ground. A man’s face appeared at the window. It could have been John Breton, but Convery was not sure. There might have been another man standing behind the one at the window, but at that instant a particularly bright spray of meteors raced across the sky, and their reflections on the glass turned it to beaten silver. The curtain fell back into place again.

Convery saw Kate Breton disappear into the lodge. He ran up the steps and into the central room. It was in darkness and he had to halt and grope for the light switch. When the lights came on he sprinted to the basement door, dragged it open and skidded to a standstill on the small wooden landing.

John and Kate Breton were standing in the center of the basement. They were clinging to each other, and there was no other person present. Convery began to feel a premonition, the first stirrings of dismay.

“All right,” he snapped. “Where is he?”

“Who?” John Breton looked up blankly.

“The guy who brought you here. The kidnapper.”

“Kidnapper?”

“Look — no games, please.” Convery went the rest of the way down the steps. “Is there another way out of this building?”

“No.”

“Then where’s the man who locked your wife in a closet and brought you here?”

“I’m sorry, Lieutenant,” Kate Breton said, raising her head from her husband’s chest. “It’s all been a mistake. This is a… domestic affair.”

“I’m not accepting that for an answer.” Convery kept his voice flat with an effort.

“But what other answer is there?”

“That’s what I intend to find out. Have you looked at yourself in a mirror, John? You’re in a mess — why’s that?”

Breton shrugged. “On weekends I’m a slob. Especially up here at the lake.”

“There’s a piece of fishing line tied around your arm — why’s that?”

“It just happened. I was measuring out some line and I tied myself in knots.”

Convery looked closely at Breton. His face was covered with day-old bruises, but it seemed to have acquired a strength which had never been there before. And there was the way the two Bretons were standing together, almost merged into one. In the nature of Convery’s job, he was not called upon to witness demonstrations of love very often — but he knew it when he saw it. That, too, was something that had been changed by the events of the last few days. Another part of the mystery.

“I’ve given you a lot of trouble for nothing,” Kate Breton said. “Will you stay and have a drink with us?”

Convery shook his head, tasting defeat. “I can see you two want to be alone.” Aware that his irony had been wasted, he turned to leave and remembered the shoe still in his hand. He held it out.

“Here’s your shoe, John. I picked it up close to the water. I suppose you’d noticed you’re going around with only one on?”

“Yes.” John Breton was grinning apologetically. “When I decide to act like a slob, I really act like a slob.”

“That’s what I thought you’d say. Good night!”

Convery went up the wooden steps tiredly, and out into the cool night air, his brow furrowed as he tried to assimilate the wealth of new clues he had received. Overhead, the meteor showers were still burning their way across the dark bowl of the sky, but they scarcely registered on his consciousness.

They were classified, in the filing system of his mind, as: “Not relevant to the problem.”

Convery walked slowly to his car. And as he walked his right hand, of its own accord, began flexing, twisting and unflexing — waiting for the magical voice which would never come.

XVIII

To Jack Breton it seemed that someone had merely turned out the basement lights.

He stood in the sudden darkness, gasping with the intensity of the pain in his wrist, and listening intently for any sound of movement upstairs. After a few seconds he relaxed. The lodge was cold and empty in the Time A universe, and not owned by a Breton. Suppose, the thought came, it isn’t owned by anybody, that the basement is locked up tight from the outside?

Breton took a step forward and, on the instant of moving off balance, felt his legs buckle beneath him. He fell forward helplessly, thudded against what felt like a large packing case, and sprawled on the dusty floor. When he tried to scramble to his feet, his arms and legs trembled violently and gave way, throwing him back down on his face.

The second time he was more cautious, gripping the packing case with both hands and working himself upward inch by inch. On his feet again, he leaned against the rough wood, breathing heavily.

Kate!

He stared around him blindly, chokingly aware that she was probably right there in the basement, separated from him only by the intangible barriers of probability. John Breton would be there, too, and their arms would be around each other.

Jack Breton tensed himself, waiting for the influx of pain; but — miraculously — none came. Instead, he felt the clean, pure taste of reconciliation. He had made a mistake once, but had corrected it. In the end he had put everything right again.

He groped his way towards the stairs and, moving slowly like an old man, reached the top. The door opened when he tried the handle. Beyond it the lodge’s central room was lit by the garish, variable light sweeping in through the windows. The Time A world was experiencing its meteor showers too, but now that he had balanced the cosmic books everything would fall back into place again.