Clifford Simak - A Death in the House - And Other Stories

“Not on your life,” I said. “If it should happen that the three of us are caught up in time and whisked very swiftly hence, someone must be left to explain it all. And you are the man to do that. You explain everything so well. You’ve been doing it for years.”

It was insane, of course. If we had taken all of thirty seconds to really talk it over, we would not have done it. But each of us had got caught up in the excitement and each of us had invested some ego in the project, and we couldn’t back away. Leonard could have, probably, but he’d got caught up in a sort of stubborn pride. If he had said, “No, I won’t go along with it,” that might have ended it. But if he’d done that he’d have confessed to cowardliness, and he couldn’t quite do that.

We didn’t draw straws. We put three pieces of paper in Old Prather’s hat, the pieces of paper marked, 1, 2, and 3.

Mary got the 1, Leonard the 2, and I came up with 3.

“Well, that settles it,” said Mary. “I’m the first to try it. Which is only right, since I suggested it.”

“The hell with that,” I said. “Just tell me which way it should be turned—if it can be turned, that is.”

“Charles,” said Mary, primly, “after all these years you are being chauvinistic, and you know very well I’ll insist upon my right.”

“Oh, for Christ sake,” said Leonard, “let her go ahead! She’s the one who’s sure.”

“I still do not approve,” said Old Prather, rather fussily, “but you did draw numbers. I wash my hands of the matter. I disassociate myself from it.”

“Bully for you,” I said.

“I shall turn it clockwise,” said Mary. “After all, that is the way—”

“You can’t be sure,” said Leonard. “Just because that is a human convention.”

Before I could reach out to stop her, she darted into the clump of birch and was bending over to reach the control circle. Fascinated, I watched in that split second when her fingers gripped and turned. I distinctly saw the control circle move. So she had been right, after all, I thought: fingers were better than a tool.

But even as I thought it, Mary disappeared, and around the cylinder there was a sudden flurry of many different articles dredged out of time and moved into the present from the past and future and—once arrived—shunted to the past or future, continuing the direction of their flow. There was a pocket radio, a brightly colored shirt, a knapsack, a couple of children’s blocks, a pair of spectacles, a woman’s purse and, so help me God, a rabbit.

“She turned it the wrong way!” I shouted. “It’s no longer idling.”

Leonard took a quick step forward, then paused, took another slow step. For an instant more I waited, and when he didn’t move, I reached out an arm and swept him to one side. Then I was in the clump of birch and reaching down. I felt my fingers on the circle, felt the flesh sink into the little nibs, and my brain roared at me: counterclockwise, counterclockwise, counterclockwise…

I don’t really remember turning the control circle, but suddenly the time debris that had been washing over and around my feet was no longer there, and neither was the cylinder.

Slowly I straightened up and backed out of the clump of birch. “What the hell happened to the engine?” I asked. And as I said it, I turned around to catch the response of the others, but there were no others.

I stood alone and shivered. Everything was the way it had been before. The day was still a sunny day, the birch clump looked the same as ever, and the pond was the same as well, although not quite the same, for now a small rowboat was pulled up on the shore.

I shivered at the sight of it, then held myself stiff and straight to forestall further shivering. My mind clicked over reluctantly and told me what I fought against believing.

Had I done the job? I wondered. Had I turned the engine off, or had Leonard had to go in and complete the job? Then I knew I must have done it, for neither Leonard nor Old Prather would have followed up.

The cylinder was gone and gone how long ago? I wondered. And where was Mary? And what about the boat?

I headed across the slope toward Cramden Hall, and as I went along I kept a sharp outlook for changes. But if there were changes, they were not pronounced enough for me to notice them. I remembered that through the years Coon Creek did not change. It stayed stodgy and a bit ramshackle and tried its humble best to seem of no account. It wore an ancient coat of protective coloration.

There were a few students about. As I came down to the sidewalk that led to the curving driveway, I met one face to face; but he paid no attention to me. He was carrying a clutch of books underneath his arm and seemed in something of a hurry.

I climbed the stairs in front of the hall and let myself into the hushed twilight of the foyer. There was no one around, although I heard the sound of footsteps going down a hall that was out of sight.

Standing there, I felt unaccountably an outsider, as if I had no right to be there. Just down the hall was Old Prather’s office. He would have the answer, and whether I belonged or not, I told myself, I was entitled to the answer.

But there was a chilliness in the place that I didn’t like, a chilliness and, now that the sound of distant footsteps had ceased, a silence that went with the chilliness.

I half turned to leave, then turned back, and as I turned, a man came out of the door of Old Prather’s office. He headed down the hall toward me, and I stayed standing there, not knowing what to do, not wanting to turn about and leave, wishing in a frantic moment that the man coming down the hall should fail to see me there, although I knew that undoubtedly he had seen me.

It was time displacement, I knew, a sense of time displacement. It was something we had often talked about in idle moments back at Time Research. If a man were moved in time, would he feel out of place? Would he sense a different time frame? Was man aware of time? Was a specific temporal bracket an unseen factor of personal environment?

The light in the hall was dim, and the face of the man who was approaching me was a very ordinary face—a stereotype, one of those faces that one sees on thousands of different people, with so little remarkable about them that there is nothing to remember, with the end result that all of these faces come to look alike.

The man slowed his pace as he came nearer to me. Then he said, “Is there any way I can help you? Are you looking for someone?”

“Prather,” I said.

A change came over his face, a sudden change that was at once fear and wonderment. He stopped and stared at me.

“Charley?” he asked, questioningly. “You are Charley Spencer?”

“That is who I am,” I said. “And now about Old Prather.”

“Old Prather’s dead,” he said.

“And you?”

“‘You should remember me. I am Kirby Winthrop. I took over Prather’s place.”

“Fast work,” I said. “I saw you just the other night.”

“Fifteen years ago,” said Kirby. “Our meeting on Observatory Hill was fifteen years ago.”

It staggered me a little, but I guess I was prepared for it. I hadn’t really thought about it; I had not allowed myself to think about it. If I had any real reaction, it would have been relief that it was not a hundred years.

“What about Mary?” I asked. “Has she shown up yet?”

“I think perhaps you could stand a drink,” said Kirby. “I know damn well I could. Let’s go and have a drink.”

He came up to me and linked his arm in mine, and we went marching down the hall to the room he’d left.

He said to the girl in the outer office, “Hold all calls. I’m in to no one.”

Then he hustled me into the inner office.