Bob Shaw - Who Goes Here?

“This is quite a place,” he said. “What sort of work do you do?”

Legge stepped back from the chair and picked up his gun. “Do you think I’d be mad enough to tell you?”

“But I thought we’d established that I’m not a spy.”

“Is that any reason for me to tell you the things a spy would want to find out?”

“I guess not.” Not wanting the little man to become any more nervous and twitchy while he had a gun in his hand, Peace decided to steer the conversation on to neutral ground. He unfastened the pink brassiere from around his chest, held it up and whistled in mock admiration.

“With a bit more work,” he said, “you’ll be able to get the whole machine into this thing.”

“You filthy over-sexed swine!” Legge cried, his face changing from red to a dangerous puce.

“How dare you insult my daughter!”

“Professor, I didn’t know…”

“Disgusting, that’s what it is.” Legge waved the gun, its muzzle tracing a circle of menace.

“I’ve done my utmost to shield my little baby, my pretty little child, my sweet innocent little…”

“She can’t be all that little,” Peace said reasonably, trying to take the emotional heat out of the situation. “I mean…”

“My God, is there no end to your lasciviousness and lechery? Even with a gun pointing at you, all you can think about is the size of…” Legge stopped in mid-sentence and a new light of determination appeared in his eyes as he steadied his aim with the pistol. “I’ve had all I can stand of you. This is where we say goodbye goodbye.”

Peace cowered back from him. “You can’t shoot an unarmed man.”

“Don’t you believe it.” An ominous coldness had appeared in Legge’s voice. “Come on—start walking.”

“Where to?”

“Back into the time machine, of course. My daughter will never be safe while you’re around.”

“You can’t put me back into that thing. You can’t be that inhuman.”

“Start walking walking.”

Peace glanced around in desperation. “At least let me put my clothes on.”

“Do you think I’m a fool?” Legge said. “The old ‘Do you mind if I have a cigarette?’ ploy won’t work with me—I’ve been to the movies too many times, junior. You press a button on your cigarette case and it squirts tear gas into my eyes. It’s a cunning trick, but it isn’t going to work this time, because I’m too smart for you you.”

“I don’t want a cigarette,” Peace replied. “I just want to get my clothes on.”

“And squirt tear gas at me from a shirt button? Get moving!”

Peace started walking towards the door, with Legge behind him. On reaching the workbench near the door, he tried to salvage something of his dignity by picking up the newspaper he had previously examined, shaking the last crumbs of pork pie from it, and wrapping it around his middle. He allowed himself to be shepherded along the landing, but paused at the toilet door, his dread of the unknown overcoming his concern about what Legge might do to him if he refused to go inside. “Listen,” he said, turning to face the little man, “we’re quite a distance above the ground on this floor—and I think you should give some thought to what will happen if I go back to a time before this building was constructed.”

“All right, I’ll give it some thought.” Legge mused for a moment, and a smile appeared on his face. “I like it! I like it!”

“You’re willing to see me fall to my death?”

“Unfortunately I’ll be denied that spectacle. In any case, the time machine is probably going through a phase of damping oscillations—they’re inclined to do that, you know. You’ll probably come out in the future near the time you went in.”

“You’re just guessing.” Peace accused. “Anyway, I’ve got a feeling you wouldn’t have the nerve to pull that trigger, so…”

“So?”

“So I refuse to go into the time machine.” Legge shrugged. “It’s your funeral.” He cocked the pistol, giving a very good impression of a man who was preparing to commit murder. Peace, beginning to suspect that he had made a very serious misjudgement, took an involuntary step backwards. There was a nerve-racking pause, at the end of which the gun muzzle began to waver uncertainly. Peace exhaled quietly with relief.

At that instant footsteps sounded close by on the stairs leading to the upper floor, and a large, pink female version of Professor Legge came into view, bristling with hair curlers and billowing with quilted nylon.

“Oh, Daddy,” she said in an incongruous baritone, “you’ve taken my best bra again for your silly old…” She stopped speaking as she espied Peace, a look of incredulous joy spreading over her features, and she lumbered towards him with arms thrown wide. “Norman, you’ve come back to me!”

Peace’s reaction was completely instinctive.

He leapt backwards into the toilet, lost his footing and sat down hard on the decrepit wooden seat. There was a loud humming noise, the light began to flicker, and the bulbous figures of Professor Legge and his daughter faded from view in the doorway. Peace gave a moan of apprehension as he realized that—clad in only a newspaper—he was once again voyaging through time.

Under Peace’s fascinated scrutiny the walls of the little room began to exhibit colour changes.

One of his major worries was removed when he saw that the general condition of his surroundings was deteriorating. This meant he was travelling into the future and that the building was not going to leave him in mid-air by snapping out of existence. He relaxed for a moment, glad of the breathing space in which to sort out his jumbled thoughts, then came the realization that all buildings are eventually torn down. If he went too far into the future he could either be dashed to the ground or, worse still, find his body bisected by one of the walls of a replacement building.

Alarmed and aggrieved by the way in which life had been reduced to a succession of leaps from frying pans into fires, Peace hurriedly got to his feet, and to Peace’s eyes the room looked exactly as it had done when he first saw it. He glanced towards the door, half expecting to see two dreadful bronze-gold giants glaring at him with ruby eyes, but the landing outside was deserted. The stillness would have been tomb-like but for the faint murmur of city traffic outside.

Holding his improvised kilt in place around his loins, he advanced cautiously on to the landing. A thick layer of dust lay over everything, and it gave Peace a crawling sensation on the nape of his neck when he realized that Legge and his daughter, alive only one subjective minute ago, had probably seen out their allotted spans and now were resident in grave or funeral urn. He turned left, opened a door and went into the large room he had known as Legge’s laboratory. Some of the workbenches were still in place, but the jumble of equipment—with the exception of some small items and wiring—had long since been removed. Gazing around the time-ravaged walls, Peace tried to assimilate the items of half-knowledge he had gained.

Professor Legge’s daughter had recognized him, and she too had addressed him as Norman.

Did this mean that his name really was Norman? Or was it an alias he had used in a previous trip into that era? What reason could he have had for doing that? If Professor Legge had known him, why had he tried to disguise the fact? Come to think of it, how could he be sure he was not actually a citizen of the late twenty-third century who had somehow been displaced into the late twenty-fourth century? Had he been running from the law in the twenty-third century, too, and been forced to flee into the future? What crime had he committed? Was he—unbearable thought—really a confirmed molester of small children, as the cinema manageress had stated?