Final Reckonings (58 page)

"Never mind." Ben Franklin took the parchment from him and strode to a desk. "I'm going to revise it right now." He rummaged around in the drawer, finding fresh parchment and a quill pen. "I'm not up to copying the lettering style, I'm afraid, but I can explain that to the Congress easily enough. I'll tell them that Jefferson here made his last-minute changes in a hurry. The hurry part of it is no lie."

He bent over the blank parchment and studied the Declaration as it rested alongside. "Got to keep the style," he said. "Very important. But the main thing is to add the provisions at the end."

"Provisions?" John Hancock brightened. "We gonna have some grub, hey? I'm starved."

"That can wait," Jefferson snapped. "Now keep still and let the guy work. This is the most important part of the whole caper, understand?"

Then there was silence in the room — silence except for the busy scratching of the quill pen as Benjamin Franklin wrote.

Jefferson stood over his shoulder, nodding from time to time. "Don't forget to put in that part about me being temporary boss," he said. "And stick in that we need a treasurer."

Franklin nodded impatiently. "I've got it all down here," he answered. "Nothing to worry about."

"Think they'll sign?"

"Sure they'll sign. It's only logical. Right after the part about being free and independent states there should be a mention of a temporary governing arrangement. They can't object to that. Wonder why it was left out in the first place."

"Search me." Jefferson shrugged. "How would I know?"

"Well, you're supposed to have written it."

"Oh, yeah, that's right."

Franklin finished, sat back, and poked at Jefferson's chest with his quill. "Cough," he said. Jefferson coughed.

"Again. Louder."

"What's the big idea?"

"You've got laryngitis," Franklin told him. "A bad case. That's why you're not talking. Anybody asks you any questions, you just cough. Right?"

"Okay. I didn't want to talk anyway."

Franklin gazed at Hancock and Thomson. "You two better sign and disappear. When the gang arrives, you go in the back room and keep an eye on our buddies there. I'll make up some excuse why you're not around — can't take the risk of having you cornered and questioned. Got it?"

The two men nodded. Franklin extended the quill pen. "Here. You two are supposed to sign first." As John Hancock reached for the pen, Franklin chuckled. "Just put your John Hancock right here."

Hancock signed with a flourish. He gave the pen to Charles Thomson.

"Remember, you're the secretary," Franklin said, as Thomson dipped the quill in the inkwell. "What's the matter, that quill too clumsy for you?"

"Sure it's clumsy," Thomson said. "And these clothes are murder, and none of us guys knows how to talk. We can't get away with this, Thinker. We're gonna make mistakes."

Benjamin Franklin stood up. "We're going to make history," he declared. "Just follow orders and everything will be all right." He paused and lifted his hand. "In the immortal words of myself—Benjamin Franklin—we must all hang together, or assuredly we shall all hang separately."

2

They had hung together for a long time in Philly — Sammy, Nunzio, Mush and Thinker Tomaszewski. They shoved a little queer, peddled a few decks, but mostly they made book.

It was a nice setup for all of them, particularly since the Thinker came into the deal. The Thinker was a genuine shyster, with a degree and an office and everything, and he fronted for the outfit. The funny part of it was, Thinker Tomaszewski had a regular law practice too, and he could have made a pretty nice piece of change without cutting corners.

But he worked with them for kicks, at first.

"The only way I can explain it," he told them, "is that I don't seem to have a superego." Always with the two-dollar words, that was the Thinker.

And it was his two-dollar words that finally got them into trouble. In the beginning, everything was fine. Using his law office as a front, he had no difficulty in getting acquainted with a better class of mark — not the two-bucks-on-the-nose working stiff, but heavy bettors. He steered them to Sammy or Nunzio or Mush, and they made a big book.

They made a big buck, too. So big that they just had to place a few bets of their own, with some of the top wheels like Mickey Tarantino. Playing it smart, of course, and working only on inside tips, when they were sure of a horse getting the needle.

Came an afternoon when the needle stuck. And they were stuck for twenty grand. Mickey Tarantino held out his hand and smiled. But the smile vanished when Sammy went to him and said he needed time to pay up.

"Whaddya mean?" Mr. Tarantino had inquired. "You guys are loaded. Look at all the rich suckers you make book with."

"All we got to show for it is markers," Sammy confessed. "It's like your old man's delicatessen. The poor guys pay and the high-class trade puts it on the cuff. You know how those big operators work. Well it's the same in our line. You can't collect from them."

"You damn well better collect," Mr. Tarantino advised. "Because you got until tomorrow morning. Or else you wind up in Plotter's Field, or wherever."

So Sammy went away and called a meeting at Thinker Tomaszewski's office and broke the news.

Thinker had news for them too. "Tarantino isn't the only one who thinks we're rolling in the stuff," he announced. "Uncle Sam is looking down our throats for a little matter of back income taxes."

"Great!" Sammy groaned. "Tarantino's hoods in front of us and the Federal finks behind us. Which way do we turn?"

"I suggest you turn to our clients," Thinker answered. "Call on some of our investors and ask them to redeem their markers."

So Sammy and Nunzio and Mush called. And early that evening they assembled and pooled results.

"Three grand!" Sammy snorted. "Three lousy grand!"

"Is that all?" The Thinker was genuinely mystified. "I should have thought you'd get more than that."

"Sure we got more. Excuses we got, promises we got, brush-offs we got. But here's the moola. Three grand, period."

"How about Cobbett?" Thinker asked.

"Professor Cobbett? He's your baby, isn't he?"

The Thinker nodded. Professor Cobbett was indeed his baby. One of the upper crust.

"What's he into us for?" Sammy demanded. "About eight, I think."

"Eight and three is eleven. Not so hot. But if we could get it fast, maybe Tarantino would hold off for a while."

"Let's get it fast," Mush suggested. "Let's go out and see old Cobbett right now."

So they all piled into Sammy's car and went out to see old Cobbett. The Professor had a country place — a nice layout for a man who lived all alone — and he was cordial and pleasant when he greeted the Thinker on the front porch.

He was not quite so cordial or pleasant when he learned what the Thinker wanted, and he was downright inhospitable when the Thinker beckoned and his three companions appeared out of the darkness.

They had to stick their feet in the door and they had to stick their heaters in his ribs.

"No foolin'," Nunzio told him. "We want our loot."

"Oh dear!" said Professor Cobbett, as they marched him backwards into his own parlor. "But I have no money."

"Don't con us," Mush told him. "Look at this joint, all. this fancy furniture."

"Mortgaged," the Professor sighed. "Mortgaged to the hilt, and past it."

"What about this here school where you teach at?" Mush asked. "You could maybe brace them for some advance dough on your salary, huh?"

"I am no longer connected with the university."

"What gives here?" Sammy wanted to know.

"Yes," Thinker added. "I thought you were a wealthy man."

The Professor shrugged and ran his hand through his graying hair. "Things are not always what they seem," he said. "For example, I considered you to be a reputable professional man. And when I innocently inquired about the possibilities of placing a small bet on the races, I never dreamed you were associated with these ruffians."

"Watch that talk," Sammy warned. "We ain't no more ruffians than eight grand is a small bet. Now whaddya mean about things ain't always what they seem?"

"Well, it's like this," the Professor answered. "I did have a certain sum of money set aside — yes. And I did have a position of some eminence at the university. The fact that both money and position are gone today can be attributed to one thing—my private research project.

"The cost of experimental models reduced my savings. The revelation of my theories cost me my faculty position. An attempt to raise funds to continue my work led me to the last resort — betting on the races. Now I have nothing."

"You can say that again," Sammy told him. "In about three minutes you're gonna have nothing with lace around it."

"Wait a moment," the Thinker interrupted. "Experimental models, you said. What have you been building?"

I'll show you, if you like."

"Come on," Sammy ordered. "Boys, keep the heaters warm, in case he pulls a funny."

But the Professor didn't pull a funny. He led them downstairs to what had been the basement, and was now an ornate private laboratory. He led them up to the large rectangular metal structure, covered with coils and tubing. It had a vague resemblance to an outhouse designed by Frank Lloyd Wright.

"Jeez," Nunzio commented. "Watchoo doin', buildin' one of them there Frankensteens?"

"I bet it's a spaceship," Mush hazarded. "Was you gonna make a getaway to Mars?"

"Please," the Professor sighed. "You're making sport of me."

"We're making hamburger of you in another minute," Sammy corrected him. "This doojigger ain't no use to us. Couldn't get twenty bucks for it, at a junkyard."

Thinker Tomaszewski shook his head. "Just what is this object, Professor?"

Professor Cobbett blushed. "I hesitate to designate it as such, after the rebuffs I received at the hands of supposed authorities, but there is no other intelligible term for it. It is a time machine."

"Oof!" Sammy put his hand to his forehead. "And this is what we let get into us for eight grand. A nutty scientist, yet!"

The Thinker frowned at him. "A time machine, you say? An instrument capable of transporting one forward or backwards in time?"

"Backwards only," the Professor answered. "Forward travel is manifestly impossible, since the future is nonexistent. And travel is not the best word. Transit more closely approximates the meaning, insofar as time possesses no material or spatial characteristics, being bound to a three-dimensional universe by the single observable phenomenon which manifests itself as duration. Now if duration is designated as X, and — "

"Shuddup!" Nunzio suggested. "Let's kiss off this joker and scram outta here. We're wastin' time."

"Wasting time." The Thinker nodded. "Professor Cobbett, is this a working model?"

"I'm practically positive. It has never been tested. But I can show you formulae which — "

"Never mind that now. Why haven't you tested it?"

"Because I'm not sure of the past. Or rather, our present relationship to it. If any person or object in present time were sent to the past, alterations would occur. What is here now would be absent, and something added to what was there, then. This addition would alter the past. And if the past were altered, then it would not be the same past we know." He frowned. "It's hard to state without recourse to symbolic logic."

"You mean you're afraid that by time travel you'd change the past? Or come out in a different past — a past made different because you traveled into it?"

"That's an oversimplification, but you have the general idea."

"Then what good is your work on this?"

"No good, I'm afraid. But I wanted to prove a point. It became an almost monomaniacal obsession. I have no excuses."

"So." Sammy stepped forward. "Thanks for the lecture, but like you say, you got no excuses. And we got no time. This here basement looks like a nice soundproof place for target practice — "

The Thinker grabbed Sammy's arm. "What's the sense?" he asked.

"The guy welshed."

"So he welshed. Will murder change that? Will murder help us now?"

"No." Sammy bit his lip. "But what we gonna do? We got no dough. We got Tarantino after us, and also the govmint. We can't go back to town."

The Thinker looked around. "Why not stay here, then? We're safe, isolated with a nice big roof over our heads. Let's enjoy the Professor's hospitality for a while."

"Yeah," Mush said. "But how long? We're gonna run out of dough, or food, or somethin'. We'd just be stallin' for time."

The Thinker smiled. "Stalling for time." He gazed intently at the complicated structure in the center of the cellar. "But here is the logical vehicle for a getaway."

"You mean jump in that dizzy outfit and beat it?" Sammy demanded. "You're kidding."

"I'm serious," the Thinker replied. "Some time in the near future we'll be safe in the past."

3

It took a lot of figuring. That was the Thinker's job, working with the Professor during the next few days.

"How do you set the controls up? Is this for steering?"

"You do not steer — you press the computers. Here, I'll show you again."

"And you can choose any time in the past, any time at all?" asked the Thinker.

"Theoretically. The main problem is accurate computation. Remember, we and our Earth are not static. We do not occupy the same position in space that we did an instant ago, let alone a longer period. We must consider the speed of light, planetary motion, inclination, and — "

"That's going to be your department. But you can establish past position mathematically and set up a guiding plan for the computers accordingly?"

"I'm reasonably certain of it."

"Then all that remains is to determine where — or rather, when we're going to."

Sammy and Nunzio and Mush tacked that problem on their own. "Jeez, mebbe alls we gotta do is go back a couple weeks to before when the Professor made his bets. Then we ain't out no dough."

"Yeah? What about them there back taxes?"

"So we go to before when we owed 'em."