Bob Shaw - The Two Timers

Breton shrugged to show himself how little he cared, then flicked the cigarette butt out on to the lawn, where it was extinguished by the dewy grass. He took a final breath of the leaf-scented air and turned to go inside.

“Don’t close the door, John.” The voice came from the black-tunneled shrubbery beside the drive. “I’ve come to collect my wife. Had you forgotten?”

“Who’s that?” Breton rapped the question out anxiously as the figure of a tall man came towards the light, but he had already recognized the voice. The anonymous phone caller. He felt a surge of dismayed anger.

“Don’t you know yet, John?” The stranger reached the porch, and slowly came up the steps. The overhead light suddenly made his identity very clear.

Breton — transfixed by a vast and inexplicable fear — found himself staring into his own face.

Jack Breton discovered a slight shakiness in his legs as he walked up the steps towards the man called John Breton.

It could, he decided, have been caused by crouching in the draughty, conspiratorial darkness of the shrubbery for more than an hour. But a more likely explanation was that he had not been prepared for seeing Kate again. No amount of forethought or preparation could have cushioned the impact, he realized. The sound of her voice as she said goodbye to the visitors seemed to have flooded his nervous system with powerful harmonics, eliciting new levels of response from his being as a whole, and from the discrete atoms of which it was composed. I love you, whispered every molecule of his body, along a billion enzymic pathways. I love you, Kate.

“Who are you?” John Breton demanded abruptly. “What do you want?” He stood squarely in Jack Breton’s path, his face a deep-shadowed mask of anxiety in the light from the globe that hung above his head.

Jack Breton fingered the automatic pistol in his overcoat pocket, but — hearing the uncertainty in the other man’s voice — he left the catch in the safe position. There was no need to deviate from the plan.

“I’ve already told you what I want, John,” he said pleasantly. “And you must know who I am by this time — have you never looked in a mirror?”

“But you look like…” John Breton allowed the sentence to tail off, afraid to walk where the words were leading him.

“Let’s go indoors,” Jack said impatiently. “I’m cold.”

He walked forward and was rewarded by the sight of John at once moving backwards, floundering. Afraid of me, Jack Breton thought in mild surprise. This being I created in my own image, this creature who changed my name to John, is afraid of his maker. As he entered the familiar, orange-lit hall, Jack noticed the richness of the carpet underfoot and the almost-tangible feel of money about the old house. The work he had done in the library that day, going through directories and files of local newspapers, had suggested that John Breton was considerably better off than he had been nine years ago, but this was even more pleasant than he had expected. Well done, thou good and faithful servant… “This is far enough,” John Breton said as they reached the spacious living room. “I would like some explanations.”

“Well, good for you, John.”

Jack surveyed the room as he spoke. The furniture was all new to him, but he remembered the clock and one or two small ornaments. He particularly approved of the deep, high-backed armchairs which had been chosen with no consideration other than comfort in mind. They seemed to extend a welcome to him. Make a mental note, he thought. In spite of the fact that he experiences zero spatial displacement, the time traveler undergoes a substantial psychological dislocation which may manifest itself by the personalization of inanimate objects, e.g. armchairs will extend welcomes to him. Be careful!

He returned his attention to John Breton, his natural curiosity reviving now that he was adjusting to the miraculous reality of Kate’s existence. His other self was heavier than he ought to be, and dressed in expensively tailored slacks, a maroon sports shirt and cashmere cardigan. Nine years, nine divergent years had made differences, Jack thought. I don’t look as sleek as that, or as well fed — but my time is coming. My time.

“I’m waiting,” John Breton said.

Jack shrugged. “I’d have preferred Kate to be here before I went into the spiel, but I guess she’s gone upstairs…?”

“My wife has gone upstairs.” There was a barely noticeable emphasis on the first two words.

“All right then, John. It’s funny, but this is the one part of the whole business I haven’t worked out in advance — how to tell you. You see, John — I… am… you.

“You mean,” John said with deliberate inanity, “I’m not myself?”

“No.” He’s recovering, Jack Breton thought with reluctant approval, but he’s got to take it seriously from the start. He dug deep into his memory.

“John! When you were thirteen, your cousin Louise stayed at your home for most of a summer. She was eighteen, well-proportioned. Also she had a bath, regular as clockwork, every Friday night. One afternoon about three weeks after she arrived you took a hand drill from the garage, put a three-thirty-seconds bit in it and drilled a hole in the bathroom ceiling. You drilled it at the widest part of the big Y-shaped crack that Dad never got around to fixing, so it wouldn’t be noticed.

“Dad had floored the central area of the roof space for storage, and he had sheeted in the sides, but you found you could move one of the corner panels aside and get over the bathroom. So you took an interest in photography that summer, John, and the roof space made an ideal dark room. Every Friday night — when Louise was in the bath — you went up there into the darkness and soft brown dust. You got over the bathroom and took off — “

“ That’s enough! ” John Breton took a step forward, pointing with one finger in baffled accusation. He was trembling slightly.

“Take it easy, John. I’m simply presenting my credentials. Nobody else in the whole world knows the facts I have just mentioned. The only reason I know them is the one I have already given you — I am you. I did those things, and I want you to listen to me.”

“I’ll have to listen to you now,” John said dully. “This has been one hell of an evening.”

“That’s better.” Jack Breton relaxed a little further. “Do you mind if I sit down?”

“Go ahead. Do you mind if I have a drink?”

“Be my guest.” Jack uttered the words naturally and easily, turning their significance over in his mind. John had been his guest for nine years, as no man had ever been another’s guest before — but all that was coming to an end. When they both were seated he leaned forward in the big chair, making his voice cool, calm and reasonable. A lot depended on how he went about the task of making the unbelievable seem believable.

“How do you feel about time travel, John?”

John Breton sipped his drink. “I feel it’s impossible. Nobody could travel forward in time to here and now, because if present-day technology couldn’t envisage a time machine, nobody in the past could have built one. And nobody could travel back from the future to the present, because the past is unalterable. That’s how I feel about time travel.”

“How about in the other direction?”

“What other direction?”

“Straight across — at right angles to the two directions you’ve mentioned.”

“Oh, that.” John Breton took another drink, almost seeming to be enjoying himself. “When I was reading science fiction we didn’t really class that as honest-to-God time travel. That’s probability travel.”