Fredric Brown - The Fredric Brown Megapack

But there was one thing a thousand times more startling than either of those: It was what last night’s stranger (Could he be the “cousin” of whom the doctor had spoken?) had told him about the accident. “You ran that coupe of yours head-on into a gravel truck.”

The amazing thing, the contradictory thing, was that he knew what a coupe was and what a truck was. Not that he had any recollection of having driven either, of the accident itself, or of anything beyond that moment when he’d been sitting in the tent after Lodi—but—but how could a picture of a coupe, something driven by a gasoline engine, arise to his mind when such a concept had never been in his mind before.

There was that mad mingling of two worlds—the one sharp and clear and definite. The world he’d lived his twenty-seven years of life in, in the world into which he’d been born twenty-seven years ago, on August 15th, 1769, in Corsica. The world in which he’d gone to sleep—it seemed like last night—in his tent at Lodi, as General of the Army in Italy, after his first important victory in the field.

And then there was this disturbing world into which he had awakened, this white world in which people spoke in English—now that he thought of it—which was different from the English he had heard spoken at Brienne, in Valence, at Toulon, and yet which he understood perfectly, which he knew instinctively that he could speak if his jaw were not in a cast. This world in which people called him George Vine, and in which, strangest of all, people used words that he did not know, could not conceivably know, and yet which brought pictures to his mind.

Coupe, truck. They were both forms of—the word came to his mind unbidden—automobiles. He concentrated on what an automobile was and how it worked, and the information was there. The cylinder block, the pistons driven by explosions of gasoline vapor, ignited by a spark of electricity from a generator.

Electricity. He opened his eyes and looked upward at the shaded light in the ceiling, and he knew, somehow, that it was an electric light, and in a general way he knew what electricity was.

The Italian Galvani—yes, he’d read of some experiments of Galvani, but they hadn’t encompassed anything practical such as a light like that. And staring at the shaded light, he visualized behind it water power running dynamos, miles of wire, motors running generators. He caught his breath at the concept that came to him out of his own mind, or part of his own mind.

The faint, fumbling experiments of Galvani with their weak currents and kicking frogs’ legs had scarcely foreshadowed the unmysterious mystery of that light up in the ceiling; and that was the strangest thing yet; part of his mind found it mysterious and another part took it for granted and understood in a general sort of way how it all worked.

Let’s see, he thought, the electric light was invented by Thomas Alva Edison somewhere around— Ridiculous; he’d been going to say around 1900, and it was now only 1796!

And then the really horrible thing came to him and he tried—painfully, in vain—to sit up in bed. It had been 1900, his memory told him, and Edison had died in 1931. And a man named Napoleon Bonaparte had died a hundred and ten years before that, in 1821.

He’d nearly gone insane then.

And, sane or insane, only the fact that he could not speak had kept him out of a madhouse; it gave him time to think things out, time to realize that his only chance lay in pretending amnesia, in pretending that he remembered nothing of life prior to the accident. They don’t put you in a madhouse for amnesia. They tell you who you are, let you go back to what they tell you your former life was. They let you pick up the threads and weave them, while you try to remember.

Three years ago he’d done that. Now, tomorrow, he was going to a psychiatrist and say that he was—Napoleon!

The slant of the sun was greater. Overhead a big bird of a plane droned by and he looked up at it and began laughing, quietly to himself—not the laughter of madness. True laughter because it sprang from the conception of Napoleon Bonaparte riding in a plane like that and from the overwhelming incongruity of that idea.

It came to him then that he’d never ridden in a plane, that he remembered. Maybe George Vine had; at some time in the twenty-seven years of life George Vine had spent, he must have. But did that mean that he had ridden in one? That was a question that was part of the big question.

He got up and started to walk again. It was almost five o’clock; pretty soon Charlie Doerr would be leaving the paper and going home for dinner. Maybe he’d better phone Charlie and be sure he’d be home this evening.

He headed for the nearest bar and phoned; he got Charlie just in time. He said, “This is George. Going to be home this evening?”

“Sure, George. I was going to a poker game, but I called it off when I learned you’d be around.”

“When you learned— Oh, Candler talked to you?”

“Yeah. Say, I didn’t know you’d phone me or I’d have called Marge, but how about coming out for dinner? It’ll be all right with her; I’ll call her now if you can.”

He said, “Thanks, no, Charlie. Got a dinner date. And say, about that card game; you can go. I can get there about seven and we won’t have to talk all evening; an hour’ll be enough. You wouldn’t be leaving before eight anyway.”

Charlie said, “Don’t worry about it; I don’t much want to go anyway, and you haven’t been out for a while. So I’ll see you at seven, then.”

From the phone booth, he walked over to the bar and ordered a beer. He wondered why he’d turned down the invitation to dinner; probably because, subconsciously, he wanted another couple of hours by himself before he talked to anyone, even Charlie and Marge.

He sipped his beer slowly, because he wanted to make it last; he had to stay sober tonight, plenty sober. There was still time to change his mind; he’d left himself a loophole, however small. He could still go to Candler in the morning and say he’d decided not to do it.

Over the rim of his glass he stared at himself in the back-bar mirror. Small, sandy-haired, with freckles on his nose, stocky. The small and stocky part fitted all right; but the rest of it! Not the remotest resemblance.

He drank another beer slowly, and that made it half past five.

He wandered out again and walked, this time toward town. He walked past the Blade and looked up to the third floor and at the window he’d been working out of when Candler had sent for him. He wondered if he’d ever sit by that window again and look out across a sunlit afternoon.

Maybe. Maybe not.

He thought about Clare. Did he want to see her tonight?

Well, no, to be honest about it, he didn’t. But if he disappeared for two weeks or so without having even said good-bye to her, then he’d have to write her off his books; she wouldn’t like that.

He’d better.

He stopped in at a drug store and called her home. He said, “This is George, Clare. Listen, I’m being sent out of town tomorrow on an assignment; don’t know how long I’ll be gone. One of those things that might be a few days or a few weeks. But could I see you late this evening, to say so-long?”

“Why sure, George. What time?”

“It might be after nine, but not much after. That be okay? I’m seeing Charlie first, on business; may not be able to get away before nine.”

“Of course, George. Any time.”

He stopped in at a hamburger stand, although he wasn’t hungry, and managed to eat a sandwich and a piece of pie. That made it a quarter after six and, if he walked, he’d get to Charlie’s at just about the right time. So he walked.