Joe Haldeman - The Accidental Time Machine

“Not related,” Matt said quickly. “I gave him the phone number.”

Reed nodded. “Yes; your fingerprints were all over the card. The professor said you used to work for him. You stole some valuable equipment and disappeared.”

“Oh boy. It wasn’t like that at all.” Except that it was, come to think of it.

“Nobody’s seen you in a month or more.”

“Thirty-nine and a half days. I’ve been … Look, this is being recorded, right?” He nodded. “Let me tell you the whole story. From the very beginning.”

The detective looked at his watch. “Give you ten minutes. It was a dark and stormy night?”

“Dark and snowy …”

In fact, it was over twenty minutes before Matt wound down. Detective Reed flipped through his notes and looked at the one-way mirror on the wall. “Harry? You wanta come in here?”

The door opened a moment later and an angular man in tweeds walked in. “Mr. Fuller, I am Lieutenant Sterman. Dr. Sterman.”

“A psychiatrist,” Matt said.

“Psychologist. Ph.D.” He rolled a chair over quietly and sat down next to Detective Reed. “That was a very interesting story.”

“All of it true.”

“I’m sure you think so.” He looked at Matt as an entomologist might look at a bug whose species was not quite familiar.

“We called Professor Marsh, as Detective Reed mentioned. He did verify that a laboratory assistant named Matthew Fuller had disappeared a couple of weeks before.”

“That’s good.”

“He fired you for instability and drug dependence. Your name came up, in fact, when we asked him to explain why his name was in the pocket of a dead drug dealer—”

“He wasn’t my drug dealer!”

“—and you’ve since become rather a legend in your department. Crazy Matt who lost it and killed his drug dealer and ran away with his big antique car. They said you were babbling about time travel then, too.”

“Okay. How do you explain my materializing in the middle of Mass Avenue in this antique wheelless car?”

“Nobody saw you materialize,” the detective said. “The assumption is that you were being towed and fell off the truck. There was a tow truck in front of you, which we’re trying to find. There was quite a traffic jam when you … ‘materialized.’ ”

“What about the cabbie who hit the car door?”

“He’s sure you fell off the truck.”

“Jesus! And the wetsuit. What kind of crazy person would be sitting in a towed car wearing a wetsuit in the middle of winter?”

They both just looked at him.

“What about the camera? You must have taken it as evidence. It shows me and the car disappearing!”

Reed looked at his top page. “It was under your fat friend. ‘Beyond repair,’ it says here.”

“Oh, shit. Denny saw the car disappear and had a fucking heart attack! That’s how he died, isn’t it?”

“We don’t know,” Dr. Sterman said. “He’d been dead for more than two weeks. Many causes of death were possible, I suppose—I’m not a pathologist—but the autopsy indicated drug overdose.”

“Well, I sure didn’t drug him. He didn’t need any help for that.”

“It’s not that simple. When someone is as deeply connected with organized crime as Mr. Peposi was, any death is suspicious. Especially drug-related.”

“So go round up some Mafia guys. I’m just an innocent time traveler. Or a crazy graduate student in a wetsuit. I don’t see how you can hold me for murder.”

“We can book you for grand theft auto,” Reed said, “and meanwhile include you as a suspect in the murder investigation. ”

“Hey, I’ll admit to taking the car! Denny loaned it to me. You must have gotten the crystal out of the camera. It’ll show me and the car disappearing.”

Reed actually smiled. “That would be a first. Using a video of you disappearing in a car to prove that you didn’t take the car. But there’s no evidence record of a data crystal.”

“But I know it had one.” Or did it? He’d had Denny use the optical viewfinder, to conserve power. “Maybe it rolled out when the camera broke.”

“I’m sure they would have found it during the investigation. They’re pretty thorough.”

Matt wondered how thorough anybody would be, stuck in a room with a three-hundred-pound rotting corpse.

Dr. Sterman rose. “Ron, I have to get to a meeting. Let me know how this turns out.” He bobbed his head at Matt.

“Good day, Mr. Fuller.”

“I’d hate to have a bad one.” He watched the man leave. “So what now? I get one phone call?”

He slid a cell over. “Take two. You want to call a lawyer?”

“People like me don’t have lawyers. I guess the court appoints me one?”

“When they set bail, later today.”

“Better not be more than two hundred bucks.” He punched in Kara’s number, but she hung up without a word.

His mother wouldn’t be any help. The only person he knew who knew lawyers was the guy he evidently killed by surprise. He called Professor Marsh and got sputtering incoherence. The police hadn’t been too respectful when they first contacted him, after finding his name and number in the pocket of the huge rotting corpse of a drug dealer.

Detective Reed watched his discomfort with a neutral expression. He took the cell back. “I didn’t take much physics in school, just basic physical science. They said that time travel wasn’t possible, I remember. Paradoxes.”

“Well, I’m here. Whether you believe me or not, a few hours ago I was in Denny’s garage and it was 9:38 on December 14.

“If this thing’s a time machine, though, it’s an utterly useless one. As long as it’s one-way.”

“Yeah, I get that. If you could take a newspaper back to December 14, just the business section, you could clean up on the stock market.”

“And that’s your paradox. It plays hell with cause and effect. Unless every time you use the machine, it starts a new universe—one where you’re a rich guy.”

“But then when you got up here, the second of February, wouldn’t there be two of you?”

“Some say yes and some say no. Let’s see whether I walk through the door there.”

Somebody knocked on the door and they both jumped. But it was only a uniformed police officer, an attractive blond woman. “Lieutenant, they sent me up to get Matthew Fuller, if you’re done with him.”

“Yeah.” He came around to unlock the handcuffs.

“I could tell you about Kurt Gödel and Albert Einstein.”

“Close personal friends, I’m sure. Stand up and turn around, hands behind your back.”

She put a pair of soft plastic cuffs on him. “Is he dangerous? ”

“No. Just let me know if he suddenly disappears into thin air.”

“I might, you know. I don’t understand the process.”

“I half believe you. Otherwise, I may see you at the arraignment, or afterward.”

She touched him on the shoulder. “Come on, Matthew. Your room’s ready.”

His cellmate was a small man with a red face and white stubble, named Theo Hockney. He actually said, “What you in for?”

“Murder.” Saying the word made his heart skip. “And grand theft auto. What actually happened, I borrowed a friend’s car and he died right after I left.”

“Now that’s a bitch. I’m innocent, too.” As they always said, the place was chock-full of innocent people. “I ran into a guy with my car. Hell, he jumped in front of me, crazy. So he commits suicide, and I wind up in the slammer.”

“Did you know the guy?”

“Yeah, well, that’s the problem. He was sort of my ex-brother-in-law. We weren’t exactly pals. But you wanta kill someone, you don’t go hunting him with no goddamned car . I mean, I can carry a gun. I got a permit and all. So I’m gonna kill this bastard with a car ?”