Bob Shaw - The Two Timers

Kate’s murderer had not been seen and, as he had no circumstantial motive for the killing, there was nothing to link him physically to the crime. But, Breton reasoned, there was another kind of connection. Breton had no way of knowing the killer — but the killer must know him. The case had been well covered by the local papers and television services, both of which had carried Breton’s picture. It would be impossible for the killer not to have shown interest in the man whose life he had so savagely twisted. And, for a time, Breton came to believe that if he encountered the killer on the street, in the park, in a bar, he would know that man by his eyes.

The city was not large, and it was possible that in his lifetime he had, at one time or another, glimpsed every man in it. Obviously, he had to get into the streets and keep moving, going everywhere that people went, making a rapid playback of a lifetime’s exposure to the city’s corporate identity — and someday he would look into another man’s eyes, and he would know. And when that happened…

The mirage of hope glimmered crazily in front of Breton for five weeks, until it was finally extinguished by malnutrition and alcoholic poisoning.

He opened his eyes and knew by some quality of the light on the hospital ceiling that there was snow on the ground outside. An unfamiliar emptiness was gnawing at his stomach and he experienced a sane, practical desire for a dish of thick farmhouse soup. Sitting up in the bed he looked around him and discovered he was in a private room, which was barely rescued from complete anonymity by several sprays of deep-red roses. He recognized the favorite flowers of his secretary, Hetty Calder, and there was a vague memory swirl of her long homely face looking down at him with concern. Breton smiled briefly. In the past, Hetty had almost visibly lost weight every time he got a head cold — he hesitated to think how she might have been affected by his performance over the recent weeks. The desire for food returned with greater force and he reached for the call button.

It was Hetty who, five days later, drove him home from the hospital in his own car.

“Listen, Jack,” she said desperately. “You’ve just got to come and stay with us for a while. Harry and I would be delighted to have you, and with you not having any family of your own…”

“I’ll be fine, Hetty,” Breton said. “Thanks again for the offer, but it’s time I went back home and began gathering up the pieces.”

“But will you be all right?” Hetty was driving expertly through the slush-walled streets, handling the big old car as if she were a man, blowing through her cigarette every now and again to send a flaky cylinder of ash onto the floor. Her sallow face was heavy with anxiety.

“I’ll be all right,” he said gratefully. “I can think about Kate now. It hurts like hell, of course, but at least I’m able to accept it. I wasn’t able to do that before. It’s hard to explain, but I had a feeling there ought to be some government office I could go to — a sort of Department of Death — and explain that there’d been a mistake. That Kate couldn’t die… I’m talking nonsense, Hetty.”

Hetty glanced sideways at him. “You’re talking like a human being, Jack. There’s nothing wrong with that.”

“How do I usually talk?”

“Business has been pretty good the last few weeks,” Hetty said crisply. “You’re going to need extra staff.”

She went on to give him a rundown on the new business and the progress that had been made on the existing survey contracts being handled by Breton’s engineering consultancy. As she talked he realized he was not as concerned as he ought to be about his business. A gadgeteer by instinct, he had taken a couple of degrees without any real effort because it was the economically sound thing to do, had strayed into the geologically-oriented consultancy, and had taken it over when the owner retired. It had all been so easy, so inevitable, yet vaguely dissatisfying. He had always enjoyed making things, giving rein to the intelligence his hands appeared to possess of their own right, but there seemed to be no time for that now.

Breton huddled in his overcoat, staring nostalgically out at the wet black thoroughfares which were like canals cut through banks of soiled snow. As the car gathered speed, white fluffy chunks of new snow broke upwards from the front end, pounded silently on the windshield and swirled away to the rear, disintegrating, vanishing. He tried to concentrate on Hetty’s words, but saw with dismay that a pinpoint of colored, shimmering light had been born in the air ahead of him. Not now, he thought, rubbing his eyes; but the flickering mote of brilliance was already beginning to grow. Within a minute it was like a brand-new coin spinning, coruscating, remaining in the center of the field of vision of his right eye no matter which way he turned his head.

“I went over to your place this morning and turned the heat on,” Hetty said. “At least you’ll be warm.

“Thanks,” he said numbly. “You go to too much trouble over me.

The furtive shimmer was growing faster now, blocking out more of his view, beginning to unfold its familiar patterns — restless prismatic geometries, marching, shifting, opening windows into alien dimensions. Not now, he pleaded silently, I don’t want to make a trip right now. The optical phenomenon was something he had known since childhood. It could happen at intervals of three months, or of a few days — depending on his degree of mental stress — and was generally preceded by a feeling of unusual well-being. Once the euphoria was past, the zigzag shimmering over the field of his right eye would begin, and that would be followed by one of his inexplicable, frightening trips into the past. The knowledge that each trip took only a fraction of a second of real time, and that it must be some freak of memory, made its imminence no easier to bear — for the scenes he relived were never pleasant. Always, they were segments of his life he would have preferred to forget, crisis points. And it was not hard to guess the particular nightmare which was likely to crop up in the future.

By the time the car reached his house, Breton was effectively blinded on the right side by a beautiful blanket of color — geometrical, tremulous, prismatic — which made it difficult for him to judge distances accurately. He persuaded Hetty not to get out of the car, waved to her as she moved off down the snow-covered drive, and fumbled open the front door. With the door locked behind him he walked quickly into the living room and sat down in a deep chair. The shimmering was at its maximum, which meant it would withdraw quite abruptly at any moment, and the trip to God-knows-where would be on. He waited. The vision in his right eye began to clear, he tensed, and the room began to recede, to distort, to exhibit strange perspectives. Ponderously, helplessly, over the edge we go…

Kate was walking away down the street, past blazing store windows. With her silvered wrap drawn tight over the flimsy party dress, and long legs slimmed even further by needle-heeled sandals, she looked like an idealized screen version of a gangster’s moll.,The ambient brilliance from the stores projected her solidly into his mind, jewel-sharp; then he saw — with a vast sense of wrongness — three trees growing in the center of the street beyond her, right in the traffic lanes, where no trees had ever grown. They were elms, almost stripped of leaves, and something about the configuration of their naked limbs made him want to recoil in loathing. Their trunks, he realized, were insubstantial — automobile headlights were shining right through them. The grouping of the trees was still filling him with dread, yet at the same time he was drawn towards them.