William Tenn - Time in Advance

Nor, when you came right down to it, for dismal little frightened trollops like Polly.

Frederick Stoddard Stephanson. Frederick Stoddard— Somebody put an arm on his shoulder and he came to, realizing that he was halfway through the lobby.

“Nick,” said a rather familiar voice.

Crandall squinted at the face at the end of the arm. The slight, pointed beard—he didn’t know anyone with a bears like that, but the eyes looked so terribly familiar … .

“Nick,” said the man with the beard. “I couldn’t do it.”

Those eyes—of course, it was his younger brother!

“Dan!” he shouted.

“It’s me all right. Here.” Something clattered to the floor Crandall looked down and saw a blaster lying on the rug, larger and much more expensive blaster than the one be was carrying. Why was Dan toting a blaster? Who was after Dan?

With the thought, there came half-understanding. Am there was fear—fear of the words that might come pouring out of the mouth of a brother whom he had not seen for all these years …

“I could have killed you from the moment you walked into the lobby,” Dan was saying. “You weren’t out of the sights for a second. But I want you to know, Nick, that the post-criminal sentence wasn’t the reason I froze on the firing button.”

“No?” Crandall asked in a breath that was exhaled slowly through a retroactive lifetime.

“I just couldn’t stand adding any more guilt about you. Ever since that business with Polly—”

“With Polly. Yes, of course, with Polly.” Something seemed to hang like a weight from the point of his jaw; it pulled his head down and his mouth open. “With Polly. That business with Polly.”

Dan punched his fist into an open palm twice. “I knew you’d come looking for me sooner or later. I almost went crazy waiting—and I did go nearly crazy with guilt. But I never figured you’d do it this way, Nick. Seven years to wait for you to come back!”

“That’s why you never wrote to me, Dan?”

“What did I have to say? What is there to say? I thought I loved her, but I found out what I meant to her as soon as she was divorced. I guess I always wanted what was yours because you were my older brother, Nick. That’s the only excuse I can offer and I know exactly what it’s worth. Because I know what you and Polly had together, what I broke up as a kind of big practical joke. But one thing, Nick: I won’t kill you and I won’t defend myself. I’m too tired. I’m too guilty. You know where to find me. Anytime, Nick.”

He turned and strode rapidly through the lobby, the metal spangles that were this year’s high masculine fashion glittering on his calves. He didn’t look back, even when he was walking past the other side of the clear plastic that enclosed the lobby.

Crandall watched him go, then said “Hm” to himself in a lonely kind of way. He reached down, retrieved the other blaster and went out to find a restaurant.

As he sat, poking around in the spiced Venusian food that wasn’t one-tenth as good as he had remembered it, he kept thinking about Polly and Dan. The incidents—he could remember incidents galore, now that he had a couple of pegs on which to hang them. To think he’d never suspected—but who could suspect Polly, who could suspect Dan?

He pulled the prison discharge out of his pocket and studied it. Having duly served a maximum penalty of seven years, discounted from fourteen years, Nicholas Crandall is herewith discharged in a pre-criminal status.

—to murder his ex-wife, Polly Crandall?

—to murder his younger brother, Daniel Crandall?

Ridiculous!

But they hadn’t found it so ridiculous. Both of them, so blissfully secure in their guilt, so egotistically certain that they and they alone were the objects of a hatred intense enough to endure the worst that the Galaxy had to offer in order to attain vengeance—why, they had both been so positive that their normal and already demonstrated cunning had deserted them and they had completely misread the warmth in his eyes! Either one could have switched confessions in mid-explanation. If they had only not been so preoccupied with self and had noted his astonishment in time, either or both of them could still be deceiving him!

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw that a woman was standing near his table. She had been reading his discharge over his shoulder. He leaned back and took her in while she stood and smiled at him.

She was fantastically beautiful. That is, she had everything a woman needs for great beauty—figure, facial structure, complexion, carriage, eyes, hair, all these to perfection—but she had those other final touches that, as in all kinds of art, make the difference between a merely great work and an all-time masterpiece. Those final touches included such things as sufficient wealth to create the ultimate setting in coiffure and gown, as well as the single Saturnian paeaea stone glowing in priceless black splendor between her breasts. Those final touches included the substantial feminine intelligence that beat in her steady eyes; and the somewhat overbred, overin-dulged, overspoiled quality mixed in with it was the very last piquant fillip of a positively brilliant composition in the human medium.

“May I sit with you, Mr. Crandall?” she asked in a voice of which no more could be said than that it fitted the rest of her.

Rather amused, but more exhilarated than amused, he slid over on the restaurant couch. She sat down like an empress taking her throne before the eyes of a hundred tributary kings.

Crandall knew, within approximate limits, who she was and what she wanted. She was either a reigning post-debutante from the highest social circles in the System, or a theatrical star newly arrived and still in a state of nova.

And he, as a just-discharged convict, with the power of life and death in his hands, represented a taste she had not yet been able to indulge but was determined to enjoy.

Well, in a sense it wasn’t flattering, but a woman like this could only fall to the lot of an ordinary man in very exceptional circumstances; he might as well take advantage of his status. He would satisfy her whim, while she, on his first night of freedom—

“That’s your discharge, isn’t it?” she asked and looked at it again. There was a moistness about her upper lip as she studied it—what a strange, sense-weary patina for one so splendidly young!

“Tell me, Mr. Crandall,” she asked at last, turning to him with the wet pinpoints on her lip more brilliant than ever. “You’ve served a pre-criminal sentence for murder. It is true, is it not, that the punishment for murder and the most brutal, degraded rape imaginable are exactly the same?”

After a long silence, Crandall called for his check and walked out of the restaurant.

He had subsided enough when he reached the hotel to stroll with care around the transparent lobby housing. No one who looked like a Stephanson trigger man was in sight, although Stephanson was a cautious gambler. One attempt having failed, he’d be unlikely to try another for some time.

But that girl! And Edward Ballaskia!

There was a message in his box. Someone had called, leaving only a number to be called back.

Now what? he wondered as be went back up to his room. Stephanson making overtures? Or some unhappy mother wanting him to murder her incurable child?

He gave the number to the set and sat down to watch the screen with a good of curiosity.

It flickered—a face took shape on it. Crandall barely restrained a cry of delight. He did have a friend in this city from pre-convict days. Good old dependable, plodding, Irv. His old partner.

And then, just as he was about to shout an enthusiastic had greeting, he locked it inside his mouth. Too many things had happened today. And there was something about expression on Irv’s face …