A Scatter of Stardust (16 page)

Mary answered the phone, her voice heavy with sleep.

“Yes?”

“Is Jeff there?”

“Who is it?”

“Sam. Sam Howard.” He chewed his lip as faint noises came from the receiver, wondering if he were doing the right thing. Jeff’s voice, hard and strong, came just as he was about to hang up.

“Sam?”

“That’s right. Sorry to have woken you, Jeff, but there’s something I want to know.” Sam paused, conscious that he was speaking too fast. “Would it be possible for Gregor to still be alive?”

“What!” Jeff snorted. “Is this your idea of a joke?”

“No, Jeff, I’m serious. Could he?”

“Not a chance.” Jeff’s voice altered. “Why, have you being seeing things?”

“Yes, no, that is I think so.” Sam dabbed at his forehead, knowing that he had said too much not to say more. “I thought I saw him in the street,” he said carefully. “It was only a glimpse but it gave me a turn and set me wondering. Could there have been a mistake?”

“No.” Jeff was very positive. “You didn’t see him after the explosion, he was a mess. And there’s no way he could have got out of the coffin either. Even if he had you wouldn’t have recognised him, not the shape he was in when they screwed him down.”

“I see,” said Sam. “Thanks.”

Jeff hung up and looked thoughtfully at his wife.

“That was Sam,” he said. “My boss, he’s been seeing ghosts.”

“He sounded drunk to me,” said Mary. She was a woman with little imagination and she didn’t like being woken up.

“He’d been drinking but he wasn’t drunk.” Jeff lit a cigarette and squinted through the smoke. “Sounded as if he’d just had a terrific shock. Now why would he feel shocked at seeing a man who was everything to him?”

“Gregor? But he’s dead isn’t he?”

“Sure, but so is your mother. If you thought you’d seen her you’d be shocked, yes, but not in the same way. Certainly you wouldn’t go out and try to get drunk afterwards.” He blew a thoughtful smoke ring. “I don’t like Sam,” he said. “And I wasn’t too fond of Gregor. I don’t like men who act as if they own another body and soul and I don’t like a man to be so possessed.”

“Sam and Gregor?”

“Yes. I’d have respected Sam more if he’d shown enough guts to tell the old man to go to hell.”

“Would you have done?”

“I did,” said Jeff. “Twice.” He smiled at her expression. “Sorry dear, but there it is. Job or no job a man’s got to remember that he’s a man, not a doormat.” He stubbed out the cigarette. “Anyway, I lost nothing by it so you needn’t worry.” He yawned. “What the hell? Let’s go back to bed.”

Halfway across town Sam finished his brandy and made his way home. He was a little unsteady on his feet but still far from being drunk. He sobered as he found the door to the apartment unlocked He became more than sober as he saw who was waiting for him.

“Hello, Sam.”

Gregor Wantage smiled from the comfort of a chair.

*

It was time travel, of course, Sam should have guessed it all along, The mysterious experiments, the strange reappearances of a man dead and buried, it all made perfect logical sense.

“I stumbled on it a long time ago,” said Gregor. He gestured with his pipe, he always smoked a pipe. “More by luck than judgement I will admit. My first trips were short, a matter of a few years only, but they showed the way.”

Sam sat and listened to the man who, according to Jeff, had been his father, mother, employer and friend. Had been? Was rather, it was difficult to think of a person in the past tense when he sat firm and very solid in the bright lighting of an apartment.

And Jeff, like all the other members of the Institute, was just about as wrong as he could be. Sam hated Gregor, had done for years because he was the better man and had made Sam feel like dirt. He had stuck with the professor from weakness and hope of a legacy and had paid for his weakness over and over again. He had been glad when the old man had died. It had meant a final release from the sarcasm, the barely hidden contempt, the constant needling and false display of affection. Now it appeared that his relief was premature. Gregor was still alive.

“It requires energy, of course,” continued the professor. “Fortunately most of that energy is reclaimed when the object pushed forward in time returns to its own era. You can understand the analogy of a rubber band, Sam? I, in effect, am at one end of a piece of rubber which stretches from the present into the future or, as you would put it, from the present into the past. My past. When the propulsion effect, to coin a phrase, weakens, then I will be snatched back to my laboratory in the Institute.”

“I see.” Sam nodded, the scientist in him overcoming his detestation of the professor. “That accounts for what happened before. We were talking and suddenly you vanished.”

“Indeed?” Gregor tamped the tobacco in his pipe. “When was this?”

“A few hours ago, at the Institute, surely you remember?”

“I don’t remember,” said Gregor casually. “Probably because it has yet to happen.”

“Yet to happen?” Sam was baffled. “But it has happened. I saw it.”

“Your past, my future,” said Gregor calmly. “To you it has already happened, to me it has yet to happen.” Abruptly he changed the subject. “Have you commenced working on the machine yet?”

“No.”

“Why not?” Gregor’s tone held the familiar iron of command. “I distinctly remember ordering you to commence work on the project. Why have you not done so?”

“You ordered no such thing!” Sam controlled the rising of his voice. “How could you? This is only the second time we’ve met, the third if you count the time in the street, and you haven’t explained or ordered anything.”

“In the street?” Gregor frowned then smiled. “Of course, I remember now. It was during one of my early trips and was before I sent for you.” Sam inwardly cringed at the tone of offhand arrogance he had come to detest.

“But you haven’t ordered anything.”

“Haven’t I?” Gregor became thoughtful. “No, perhaps I haven’t. At least I have but you wouldn’t know about it yet.” He shrugged. “It’s due to the variability of the temporal projector. The time jumps are not predictable to a certain degree of accuracy. To me this is the thirty-seventh time we have met, to you the third. Later the ratios will adjust themselves.”

“Will they?” Sam felt that he was living in a nightmare. For the sake of something to do he rose, poured two drinks and offered one to the professor. “Scotch?”

“Don’t be a fool! You know perfectly well that anything I take in this age will remain behind when I return to my own time. That is why I have to memorise all the data and particulars you collect for me.” Gregor gave his deep laugh. “Will keep for me. I keep forgetting that all this is new to you. We have had some amusing conversations at cross-purposes. You should keep a diary and record so that you can keep me up to date.” He corrected himself again. “You will keep such a record.”

“Will I?” Sam felt his hands beginning to quiver.

“Naturally. If you did then you must.” Gregor’s voice deepened. “I want no nonsense about this, Sam. You will do exactly what I order at all times and without question.”

“Like hell I will!” Something, it may have been the knowledge that, despite appearances, this man was dead and buried gave Sam the strength and confidence he had lacked for years. “Don’t count on it, Gregor. I’m a free agent now and don’t you forget it. I’ve eaten dirt for long enough and don’t intend to eat more. We’re finished, understand! Finished!”

Gregor wasn’t annoyed. Instead he was gentle, the gentleness of the cat with a mouse. He sat, calm and solid, his face wreathed in the smoke from his pipe. “Forgotten something, Sam?”

“No.”

“I think you have.” Gregor was still gentle. “You are in charge of the Institute at this moment only because I wished it that way. You were probably surprised that I left you no legacy but that was deliberate.” Gregor knocked out his pipe, heedless of the hot ash ruining the carpet. “You are weak, Sam, I’ve known it for years. You depend on me for everything you have. If you go against me then I shall throw you back into the gutter where you belong.”

“You can’t.” Sam forced himself to remain calm. “You’re dead and buried and you can’t touch me. I’m free, understand! Free of you at last!”

“You talk like a fool,” said Gregor dispassionately. “You can’t help that, of course, but I wish that you would try. Hasn’t it occurred to you that I’m telling you what you will do, not what you may do? Time travel is a peculiar thing, Sam, it appears paradoxical but it isn’t. For example, those inventions I perfected. I didn’t really invent them at all. I learned the details in the future and learned too that I had invented them. So, when I returned, I did.”

“You can’t take away that money,” said Sam. “Nor my job at the Institute.”

“My fortune also,” continued Gregor, he ignored the interruption. “Naturally I was able to learn the winners of various races, stock market valuations, things like that, so I gambled and won. Again no paradox because I had already gambled and won. I merely did what I had to do.” He leaned forward. “The same as you will have to do, Sam, and for the same reason. You will do what you have to do because it will be what you have already done.”

“I’m a free agent,” repeated Sam. He seemed to find comfort in the words.. “I can walk out of here now and there’s nothing you can do to stop me.”

“You won’t because you didn’t.” Gregor glanced at his watch. “And there is another good reason why you will do exactly as I order. You are what you are at this moment because of my will. Refuse to obey me and I will alter that will. You will be ruined. No comfortable apartment, no job at the Institute, nothing.” Gregor smiled and relaxed a little. “You wouldn’t like that to happen, would you, Sam?”

“You swine!” Sam felt the quick sickness of fear as he imagined Gregor carrying out his threat. He was capable of it too and, for him it would be easy. He had merely to alter his will so that, when he died, Sam would be left with nothing.

But if he had done that then Sam wouldn’t have what he now had. So Gregor hadn’t altered his will after all. But if Gregor was alive, and he was, then there could be no security against him not doing it. Sam felt his head swim as he tried to resolve the paradox. Gregor wouldn’t because he hadn’t. He hadn’t because he couldn’t. He couldn’t because...?

Because he was dead and buried and, in law, it is impossible to murder a corpse.

“You’d like to kill me, wouldn’t you, Sam?” Gregor rose and stared mockingly at the other man. “But you won’t, you know. If you had then I’d know it.” He sneered. “Anyway, you haven’t the guts or courage to even try it.”

“You think not?” Sam rose to his feet, the drink still in his hand. He was breathing hard. “You know too damn much,” he said nastily. “Maybe I could tell you a few things. Like the exact hour and date of your death, for example. Shall I?”

“Some other time,” said Gregor coolly. “This visit is about to terminate.” His face darkened. “But I shall remember this, Sam. Believe me, I shall remember.”

“Then remember this too!” Sam felt his right hand move almost of its own volition and the spirit in the glass shot towards Gregor’s eyes. He yelled in rage, staggering as he clawed at his face and as lie moved backwards, his foot caught on a chair, and he toppled heavily towards the floor.

He never reached it. There was a rush of displaced air and, aside from Sam, the apartment was empty. Gregor had gone back to his own time and place. Sam knew just what would happen when he arrived.

Gregor had been falling when he left and would still be falling when he arrived. He would reach out to save himself and grab at the high-voltage equipment in his laboratory. Jeff had already described what he would look like when they found him.

So there was no paradox, none at all; Gregor was dead and would stay dead and Sam had no need to fear him ever again. He poured himself a drink and sat down, smiling into the glass. “To freedom!” he toasted then, with the glass almost to his lips, paused. He had just remembered something. Gregor had said that this was the thirty-seventh time they had met. To Sam it was the third. There were still thirty-four visits to come.

Dully Sam wondered just how long he would be haunted by the man he had indirectly murdered.

If you enjoyed
A Scatter of Stardust
check out E. C. Tubb’s other books, including
CHILD OF SPACE.