Duel (9 page)

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Authors: Richard Matheson

BOOK: Duel
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“Nationalist States,” said the historian.
Wade was silent a moment. Then he looked up suddenly and asked, “Say, how long have I been unconscious?”
“You've been ‘unconscious,' as you call it, for a little more than two hours.”
Wade jumped up. “My God,” he said anxiously, “I'll have to leave.”
Clemolk looked at him blandly. “Nonsense,” he said. “Please sit down.”
“But—”
“Please. Let me tell you what you're here for.”
Wade sat down, a puzzled look on his face. A vague uneasiness began to stir in him.
“Here for?” he muttered.
“Let me show you something,” Clemolk said.
He drew a small control board from his robe and pushed one of its many buttons.
The walls seemed to fall away. Wade could see the exterior of the building. High up, across the huge entablature were the words: HISTORY IS LIVING. After a moment the wall was there again, solid and opaque.
“Well?” Wade asked.
“We build our history texts, you see, not on records but on direct testimony.”
“I don't understand.”
“We transcribe the testimony of people who lived in the times we wish to study.”
“But how?”
“By the re-formation of disincarnate personalities.”
Wade was dumbfounded.
“The dead?”
he asked hollowly.
“We call them the bodiless,” replied Clemolk.
“In the natural order, Professor,” the historian said, “Man's personality exists apart from and independent of his corporeal frame. We
have taken this truism and used it to our advantage. Since the personality retains indefinitely—although in decreasing strength—the memory of its physical form and habiliments, it is only a matter of supplying the organic and inorganic materials to this memory.”
“But that's incredible,” Wade said. “At Fort—that's the college where I teach—we have psychical research projects. But nothing approaching this.” Suddenly he paled. “Why am
I
here?”
“In your case,” Clemolk said, “we were spared the difficulty of reforming a long bodiless personality from your time period. You reached our period in your chamber.”
Wade clasped his shaking hands and blew out a heavy breath.
“This is all very interesting,” he said, “but I can't stay long. Suppose you ask me what you want to know.”
Clemolk drew out the control board and pushed a button. “Your voice will be transcribed now,” he said.
He leaned back and clasped his colorless hands on his lap.
“Your governmental system,” he said. “Suppose we start with that.”
 
“Yes,” Clemolk said, “it all balances nicely with what we already know.”
“Now, may I see my chamber?” Wade asked.
Clemolk's eyes looked at him without flickering. His motionless face was getting on Wade's nerves.
“I think you can
see
it,” Clemolk said, getting up.
Wade got up and followed the historian through the doorway into a long similarly shaded and illuminated hall.
You can
see
it.
Wade's brow was twisted into worried lines. Why the emphasis on that word, as though to see the chamber was all he would be allowed to do?
Clemolk seemed unaware of Wade's uneasy thoughts.
“As a scientist,” he was saying, “you should be interested in the aspects of re-formation. Every detail is clearly defined. The only difficulty
our scientists have yet to cope with is the strength of memory and its effect on the re-formed body. The weaker the memory, you see, the sooner the body disintegrates.”
Wade wasn't listening. He was thinking about his wife.
“You see,” Clemolk went on, “although, as I said, these disincarnate personalities are re-formed in a vestigial pattern that includes every item to the last detail—including clothes and personal belongings—they last for shorter and shorter periods of time.
“The time allowances vary. A re-formed person, from your period, say, would last about three quarters of an hour.”
The historian stopped and motioned Wade toward a door that had opened in the wall of the hallway.
“Here,” he said, “we'll take the tube over to the laboratory.”
They entered a narrow, dimly lit chamber. Clemolk directed Wade to a wall bench.
The door slid shut quickly and a hum rose in the air. Wade had the immediate sensation of being back in the time-chamber again. He felt the pain, the crushing weight of depression, the wordless terror billowing up in memory.
“Mary.” His lips soundlessly formed her name.
 
The chamber was resting on a broad metal platform. Three men, similar to Clemolk in appearance were examining its exterior surface.
Wade stepped up on the platform and touched the smooth metal with his palms. It comforted him to feel it. It was a tangible link with the past—and his wife.
Then a look of concern crossed his face. Someone had locked the door. He frowned. Opening it from the outside was a difficult and imperfect method.
One of the students spoke. “Will you open it? We didn't want to cut it open.”
A pang of fear coursed through Wade. If they had cut it open, he would have been stranded forever.
“I'll open it,” he said. “I have to leave now anyway.” He said it with forced belligerence, as though he dared them to say otherwise.
The silence that greeted his remark frightened him. He heard Clemolk whisper something.
Pressing his lips together, he began hesitantly to move his fingers over the combination dials.
In his mind, Wade planned quickly, desperately. He would open the door, jump in and pull it shut behind him before they could make a move.
Clumsily, as if they were receiving only vague direction from his brain, his fingers moved over the thick dials on the center of the door. His lips moved as he repeated to himself the numbers of the combination: 3.2—5.9—7.6—9.01. He paused, then tugged at the handle.
The door would not open.
Drops of perspiration beaded on his forehead and ran down his face. The combination had eluded him.
He struggled to concentrate and remember. He had to remember! Closing his eyes, he leaned against the chamber. Mary, he thought, please help me. Again he fumbled at the dials.
Not 7.6 he suddenly realized. It was 7.8.
His eyes flashed open. He turned the dial to 7.8. The lock was ready to open.
“You'd b-better step back,” Wade said, turning to the four men. “There's liable to be an escape of … locked-in gasses.” He hoped they wouldn't guess how desperately he was lying.
The students and Clemolk stepped back a little. They were still close, but he had to risk it.
Wade jerked open the door and in his plunge through the opening, slipped on the smooth platform surface and crashed down on one knee. Before he could rise, he felt himself grabbed on both sides.
Two students started to drag him off the platform.
“No!” he screamed. “I have to go back!”
He kicked and struggled, his fists flailed the air. Now the other two
men held him back. Tears of rage flew from his eyes as he writhed furiously in their grip, shrieking, “Let me go!”
A sudden pain jabbed Wade's back. He tore away from one student and dragged the others around in a last surge of enraged power. A glimpse of Clemolk showed the historian holding another hypodermic.
Wade would have tried to lunge for him, but on the instant a complete lassitude watered his limbs. He slumped down on his knees, glassy-eyed, one numbing hand outflung in vain appeal.
“Mary,” he muttered hoarsely.
Then he was on his back and Clemolk was standing over him. The historian seemed to waver and disappear before Wade's clouding eyes.
“I'm sorry,” Clemolk was saying. “You can't go back—ever.”
 
Wade lay on the couch again, staring at the ceiling and still turning over Clemolk's words in his mind.
“It's impossible that you return. You've been transposed in time. You now belong to this period.”
Mary was waiting.
Supper would be on the stove. He could see her setting the table, her slender fingers putting down plates, cups, sparkling glasses, silverware. She'd be wearing a clean, fluffy apron over her dress.
Then the food was ready. She'd be sitting at the table waiting for him. Deep within himself Wade felt the unspoken terror in her mind.
He twisted his head on the couch in agony. Could it possibly be true? Was he really imprisoned five centuries from his rightful existence? It was insane. But he was
here
. The yielding couch was definitely under him, the gray walls around him. Everything was real.
He wanted to surge up and scream, to strike out blindly and break something. The fury burst in his system. He drove his fists into the couch and yelled without meaning or intelligence, a wild outraged cry. Then he rolled on his side, facing the door. The fierce anger abated. He compressed his mouth into a thin shaking line.
“Mary,” he whispered in lonely terror.
The door opened and Mary came in.
Wade sat up stiffly, gaping, blinking, believing himself mad.
She was still there, dressed in white, her eyes warm with love for him.
He couldn't speak. He doubted that his muscles would sustain him, yet he rose up waveringly.
She came to him.
There was no terror in her look. She was smiling with a radiant happiness. Her comforting hand brushed over his cheek.
A sob broke on his lips at the touch of her hand. He reached out with shaking arms and grasped her, embraced her tightly, pressing his face into her silky hair.
“Oh, Mary,” he mumbled.
“Shhh, my darling,” she whispered. “It's all right now.”
Happiness flooded his veins as he kissed her warm lips. The terror and lonely fright were gone. He ran trembling fingers over her face.
They sat down on the couch. He kept caressing her arms, her hands, her face, as though he couldn't believe it was true.
“How did you get here?” he asked, in a shaky voice.
“I'm here. Isn't that enough?”
“Mary.”
He pressed his face against her soft body. She stroked his hair and he was comforted.
Then, as he sat there, eyes tightly shut, a terrible thought struck him.
“Mary,” he said, almost afraid to ask.
“Yes, my darling.”
“How did you get here?”
“Is it so—”
“How?” He sat up and stared into her eyes. “Did they send the time-chamber for you?” he asked.
He knew they hadn't, but he clutched at the possibility.
She smiled sadly. “No, my dear,” she said.
He felt himself shudder. He almost drew back in revulsion.
“Then you're—” His eyes were wide with shock, his face drained of color.
She pressed against him and kissed his mouth.
“Darling,” she begged, “does it matter so? It's me. See? It's really me. Oh my darling, we have so little time. Please love me. I've waited so long for this moment.”
He pressed his cheek against hers, clutching her to him.
“Oh my God, Mary, Mary,” he groaned. “What am I to do? How long will you stay?”
A person, from your period, say, would last about three quarters of an hour
. The remembrance of Clemolk's words was like a whiplash on tender flesh.
“Forty min—” he started and couldn't finish.
“Don't think about it darling,” she begged. “Please. We're together for now.”
But, as they kissed, a thought made his flesh crawl.
I am kissing a dead woman—his mind would not repress the words—I am holding her in my arms.
They sat quietly together. Wade's body grew more tense with each passing second.
How soon? … Disintegrate … How could he bear it? Yet he could bear less to leave her.
“Tell me about our baby,” he said, trying to drive away the fear. “Was it a boy or a girl?”

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