Альфред Бестер - Disappearing Act

Scrim was also intransigent in Ward T. He stayed one night, enjoyed three good meals, read the reports, threw them down and began hollering to be let out.

“There’s a job for everyone and everyone must be on the job,” Colonel Dimmock told him. “You don’t come out until you’ve got the secret of time travel.”

“There’s no secret I can get,” Scrim said.

“Do they travel in time?”

“Yes and no.”

“The answer has to be one or the other. Not both. You’re evading the—”

“Look,” Scrim interrupted wearily. “What are you an expert in?”

“Psychotherapy.”

“Then how the hell can you understand what I’m talking about? This is a philosophic concept. I tell you there’s no secret here that the army can use. There’s no secret any group can use. It’s a secret for individuals only.”

“I don’t understand you.”

“I didn’t think you would. Take me to Carpenter.”

They took Scrim to Carpenter’s office where he grinned at the general malignantly, looking for all the world like a red-headed, underfed devil.

“I’ll need ten minutes,” Scrim said. “Can you spare them out of your tool box?”

Carpenter nodded.

“Now listen carefully. I’m going to give you all the clues to something vast, so strange, so new, that it will need all your fine edge to cut into it.”

Carpenter looked expectant.

“Nathan Riley goes back in time to the early twentieth century. There he lives the life of his fondest dreams. He’s a big-time gambler, the friend of Diamond Jim Brady and others. He wins money betting on events because be always knows the outcome in advance. He won money betting on Eisenhower to win an election. He won money betting on a prize fighter named Marciano to beat another prize fighter named La Starza. He made money investing in an automobile company owned by Henry Ford. There are the clues. They mean anything to you?”

“Not without a Sociological Analyst,” Carpenter answered. He reached for the intercom.

“Don’t bother. I’ll explain. Let’s try some more clues. Lela Machan, for example. She escapes into the Roman empire where she lives the life of her dreams as a femme fatale . Every man loves her. Julius Caesar, Brutus, the entire Twentieth Legion, a man named Ben Hur. Do you see the fallacy?”

“No.”

“She also smokes cigarettes.”

“Well?” Carpenter asked after a pause.

“I continue,” Scrim said. “George escapes into England of the nineteenth century where he’s a Member of Parliament and the friend of Gladstone, Canning and Disraeli, who takes him riding in his Rolls Royce. Do you know what a Rolls Royce is?”

“No.”

“It was the name of an automobile.”

“You don’t understand yet?”

“No.”

Scrim paced the floor in exaltation. “Carpenter, this is a bigger discovery than teleportation or time travel. This can be the salvation of man. I don’t think I’m exaggerating. Those two dozen shock victims in Ward T have been H-Bombed into something so gigantic that it’s no wonder your specialists and experts can’t understand it.”

“What the hell’s bigger than time travel, Scrim?”

“Listen to this, Carpenter. Eisenhower did not run for office until the middle of the twentieth century. Nathan Riley could not have been a friend of Diamond Jim Brady’s and bet on Eisenhower to win an election. . . not simultaneously. Brady was dead a quarter of a century before Ike was President. Marciano defeated La Starza fifty years after Henry Ford started his automobile company. Nathan Riley’s time traveling is full of similar anachronisms.”

Carpenter looked puzzled.

“Lela Machan could not have had Ben Hur for a lover. Ben Hur never existed in Rome. He never existed at all. He was a character in a novel. She couldn’t have smoked. They didn’t have tobacco then. You see? More anachronisms. Disraeli could never have taken George Hanmer for a ride in a Rolls Royce because automobiles weren’t invented until long after Disraeli’s death.”

“The hell you say,” Carpenter exclaimed. “You mean they’re all lying?”

“No. Don’t forget, they don’t need sleep. They don’t need food. They are not lying. They’re going back in time all right. They’re eating and sleeping back there.”

“But you just said their stories don’t stand up. They’re full of anachronisms.”

“Because they travel back into a time of their own imagination. Nathan Riley has his own picture of what America was like in the early twentieth century. It’s faulty and anachronistic because he’s no scholar; but it’s real for him. He can live there. The same is true for the others.”

Carpenter goggled.

“The concept is almost beyond understanding. These people have discovered how to turn dreams into reality. They know how to enter their dream realities. They can stay there, live there, perhaps forever. My God, Carpenter, this is your American dream. It’s miracle-working, immortality, Godlike creation, mind over matter. . . It must be explored. It must be studied. It must be given to the world.”

“Can you do it, Scrim?”

“No, I cannot. I’m a historian. I’m noncreative, so it’s beyond me. You need a poet. . . a man who understands the creation of dreams. From creating dreams on paper or canvas it oughtn’t to be too difficult to take the step to creating dreams in actuality.”

“A poet? Are you serious?”

“Certainly I’m serious. Don’t you know what a poet is? You’ve been telling us for five years that this war is being fought to save the poets.”

“Don’t be facetious, Scrim, I—”

“Send a poet into Ward T. He’ll learn how they do it. He’s the only man who can. A poet is half doing it anyway. Once he learns, he can teach, your psychologists and anatomists. Then they can teach us; but the poet is the only man who can interpret between those shock cases and your experts.”

“I believe you’re right, Scrim.”

“Then don’t delay, Carpenter. Those patients are returning to this world less — and less frequently. We’ve got to get at that secret before they disappear forever. Send a poet to Ward T.”

Carpenter snapped up his intercom. “Send me a poet,” be said.

He waited, and waited. . . and waited. . . while America sorted feverishly through its two hundred and ninety millions of hardened and sharpened experts, its specialized tools to defend the American Dream of beauty and poetry and the Better Things in Life. He waited for them to find a poet, not understanding the endless delay, the fruitless search, not understanding why Bradley Scrim laughed and laughed and laughed at this final, fatal disappearance.