Time After Time (25 page)

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Authors: Karl Alexander

BOOK: Time After Time
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He opened his eyes. When he focused, he saw that she was clearly and pleasantly surprised by his quick mastery of the dance. He grinned. A celebration lay ahead.
 
 
The alarm rang.
They were both instantly alert and staring at each other. H.G. jerked his wrist between them, gazed at his watch and saw that the time was one o'clock. He sighed with relief, rolled over and punched off her clock alarm (the noise was music, and it seemed ridiculously inappropriate at that hour). They both got out of bed. She went into the kitchen to make him tea and herself coffee. He detoured into the bathroom, where he doused his face, not realizing or expecting how cold water got in the middle of the night.
“Blast!” he exclaimed. Right then he decided to take a hot shower. He and Amy were well ahead of schedule.
Standing under the warm water, he was suddenly nagged with self-doubt and worry. His ploy to stop the horrible Stephenson seemed so divinely simple, but had he let his optimism get in the way of Aristotelian logic? True, he had been the first man in history to conquer time, but that did not necessarily mean that he could overcome either destiny or cause and effect. Specifically, he could not explain the contents of Saturday morning's newspaper except by—what was the colloquialism she used occasionally?—“copping out” to predestination, and that, he was determined not to do. “Free Will” was a song that he had hummed ever since grammar school, like the great British thinkers.
He lathered up with soap, then scowled again, inwardly cursing St. Paul, Thomas Aquinas and the entire bloody lot of the pessimistic yet brilliant Roman Catholic theologians. That didn't help, either, for the specter of the newspaper returned to his mind. How could he rationalize it? Dolores Clark had died and Amy had been butchered too. Those were/would be facts! How could he fight them? Was knowledge of the future worth a damn?
Suddenly his breath whooshed out. Why hadn't it come to him
previously? The entire basis of his fourth-dimensional methodology was that time spheres were geometrically stacked against each other like a massive pile of cord wood. All time was permanent in the universe; events continually occurred over and over again just as the atoms and electrons never stopped dancing in their perpetual swirl. (If time and events were not that way—if they were temporary as opposed to temporal—then travel into the past or the future would be absurd and of no consequence, for there would be no time, hence nothing to travel to.) And since time, events, causes and effects were permanent, that meant that Amy—and himself, too—were already dead somewhere in the universe. What they had discovered in the future, then, was an old event perhaps replayed enumerable times. Thus, the cosmic nature of what he and Amy were going to do was staggering! When he stopped Stephenson from committing a murder, he would be tossing a pebble into the mythic Sea of Tranquility. The ripples would travel across the universe and change everything in their path. When they reached the shores of Eternity, those same ripples would be a tidal wave, and they would shatter the predestined walls once and for all. Man would reign supreme.
He was not, then, just going to change a simplistic “destiny”; rather, he was going to replace an old time pattern with a new one. One newspaper had already been printed on Saturday, next. It would yellow and age with decay and fall from the cosmos, a petrified ash of what once was but would never again be. A second newspaper would take its place.
H.G. left the shower placid, a cosmic grin wrinkling his face. He leisurely dried, then began dressing. His thoughts turned inexorably to Amy, and he wished that he understood emotional patterns as well as he did scientific ones. Did he love her already? If he truly did, and if she felt the same way, how would they solve the problem of being from different centuries? He had seen interracial mixes in 1979 and had accepted them as a natural and inevitable in the great American
experiment called “democracy.” But an intertime mix? Theoretically, it should work, yet he was sophisticated enough to know that when it came to human relations, theory didn't mean a blasted thing.
He frowned. If only this Stephenson matter were finished. Could take Amy back home with him, for someday he would have to return to his own century and pick up the thread of his life. But she would never consent to such a radical uprooting. No, he was certain that she would not go. After all, how could she be happy in the nineteenth century when she was happy here? How would she put up with Victorian ideals and standards? Not to mention the restrictions that his society placed on women. She would not be able to work in a position with any authority. Furthermore, not only was she a woman, she was an American woman. Why, just the accepted code of dress for ladies alone would send Amy rocketing back to 1979 as fast as his device would allow. And if, in 1893, she ever expressed her attitudes about men and the female sexual response, she would be denounced in every social circle in greater London.
“Bah!” he exclaimed with disgust at his rigid Victorian world.
Unfortunately, if she ever did entertain ideas about going with him to 1893, he should convince her to stay here, in 1979 San Francisco. They would both be better off. Unhappy, but that would pass with time and the daily demands of existence. And then he could arrange to time-travel occasionally; hop into the cabin, close the hatch and twirl forward into her arms. Ah, yes, that would be delicious; to steal away for the weekend or the Christmas holidays and to spend such rare moments with a lover eighty-six years removed in time. And when he redesigned and improved The Utopia, they could journey into the distant future together and examine the changes in the inimitable human condition. Who knows? Somewhere along the mysterious fourth dimension, they might find a real Eden where they might make their way hand in hand until they
found the Elysian fields; both might forsake their home centuries for a life of eternal bliss.
He became worried again. What if—for some inexplicable, generic reason—he could not save Amy from Stephenson? What if he was wrong about the fallibility of Fate? What if—and he blushed at the thought—the Catholics had been right all along?
 
 
Amy was in the dining room, wearing loose, warm clothing, her hands wrapped around a steaming mug of coffee. H.G. came into the room, saw that she was dressed, and nodded.
“Ah, good, then. You're ready.”
“There's tea in the kitchen.”
He went and poured himself a hot and stimulating cup. The fog would undoubtedly be thicker across the moors and reaches of McLaren Park, his own mythic Bosworth's field where so much was at stake for him and her.
He sat down next to her at the dining-room table, then checked the time. “I suppose we should be leaving soon.”
She nodded.
He gave his mustache a tug. “All right. To begin with, we are agreed on things in general? Such as the police?”
“If we call them, either they won't believe us or they'll show up and Stephenson will merely do his horrible thing elsewhere.”
“Precisely. Hence, to rely on the police would give destiny an opening, wouldn't it?”
“Yes. And we can't alert Dolores Clark because she's with him and we don't know where they are.”
“Therefore,” he said loftily, “we proceed to the site of the crime. Now, according to the newspaper, the murder occurred”—he stopped and glanced up—“I should say, will occur, shouldn't I?”
“How about won't occur?”
“Ah, yes.” He frowned and briefly started off. “At any rate, the event which is not going to occur happened at approximately half-past two. Hence, we should plan to arrive early.”
“Just what do you intend to do?”
“Why, surprise him and stop the poor girl's murder! What else?”
“But how? We're not armed.”
“I wouldn't want to be.”
“I don't understand.”
“My dear girl, when I confronted him before at the hotel, I cast the first stone, as it were. I stooped to his barbaric level, and I lost. He was right about one thing—violence is contagious.”
“But there comes a time—”
“Look at it this way, Amy. The first man to raise a fist is the man who has run out of ideas.”
“Very nicely put, but Stephenson is bigger than you, H.G., and extremely dangerous! What if you do run out of ideas? And words?”
He sighed. At that moment, he had. Then: “There are two of us. And the intended victim, of course.”
“And if worst comes to worst?”
“I suppose your motorcar could be considered a weapon. He would certainly regard it as such. And”—he concluded ruefully—“Dr. Stephenson's surgical instruments can be used against him.”
She placed her hand over his and gave him a concerned, sympathetic look.
“None of that will be necessary, of course,” he said in clipped tones. “Now. Shall we?”
Three minutes ahead of schedule, they left her apartment descended the stairs and went outside. He sighed, realizing that ultimately his faith in himself and his feelings for her were the most powerful weapons he had.
Before he got into the motorcar, he glanced over the top and saw that she was smiling at him, her eyes full of love. Good Lord, he thought, had she been reading his mind?
He climbed into the Accord and settled himself in the seat. He glanced at her, then quickly looked away, for she was still gazing at him with a tenderness that until this point had been reserved for what she had termed “afterglow.”
“Me, too,” she said quietly.
They drove away. Out in the bay, a foghorn droned. Below in the city, a siren shrieked. Several blocks away a basset hound responded with a mournful howl.
 
 
Leslie John Stephenson and Dolores Clark sat together at his table, sipping drinks, legs pressed tightly together. Their heads almost touched so that they could talk low and still hear each other over the music. She smoked long, dark-brown cigarettes and blew the smoke past him. Occasionally, some would wisp up and fog her facial features, making her seem mysterious. That, he enjoyed.
“Ah, my dear Dolores,” he said in rich tones. “Meeting you has been a sweet, albeit unexpected, pleasure.”
She laughed. “Likewise.”
“Are you enjoying yourself?” he asked, his eyes hooded.
“Unhuh.”
“Well, then.” He drained his glass and smacked his lips. “Shall we?”
“Shall we what?”
“Consider the remainder of the evening as an opportunity to improve on the beginning? Or, as an occasion to celebrate the exciting, the unknown and the uncharted?” He gave her a peck of a kiss and just a touch of his tongue.
She shivered, leaned into him and emitted a small laugh. “You talk like you dance.”
They left the club, and after exchanging the necessary banalities with respect to when, where and how, he let her lead him toward her mode of transportation, which turned out to be—like herself—sleek, black and elegant. The name “Porsche 944” gleamed from the rear of the machine.
He slid into the snug capsule alongside her slender frame and inhaled the heady aroma of the rich leather seats. Now he would let this svelte young lady of color take him somewhere and he would thoroughly enjoy himself. And, on the morrow, he would return to 92
1/2
Green Street, surprise Amy Robbins and abduct her. She would lead him to the inimitable little scientist, Wells. And if she refused to cooperate? Then he would violate her and she would die as had all the others before her.
But that was tomorrow. Now was time for Dolores.
He eased back in the plush seat and adjusted the fall of his shirt as she accelerated hard out of the parking lot, hit the street in second gear and soon was doing seventy miles per hour, the harsh, high echo of the powerful engine disturbing the stillness of Pacific Avenue.
He placed his left hand on her thigh and began caressing her. With his right, he removed his pocket watch and absently fondled it.
 
 
Amy and H.G. left Russian Hill and drove down Jones to Market Street. Thanks to the late hour, the traffic was light. She decided that they would arrive at McLaren Park quicker if she took the freeway, so she headed for the Bayshore, deep in thought. She had racked her brain, trying to discover errors in H.G.'s logic. But how could anyone question “A” exists and is followed by “B” and both
are concluded by “C”? And face it, she told herself, if the man was brilliant enough to build a time machine, there was no reason why he couldn't stop a couple of murders.
She drove up an on ramp and steered south on the Bayshore, increasing their speed to a cautious fifty-eight miles per hour. No need to risk a speeding ticket; that would be disastrous. And besides, they had plenty of time.
The closer they got to McLaren Park, the less apprehensive she became. A bizarre excitement came over her, the likes of which she had never known before. It wasn't just the cosmic nature of their mission or knowledge of the future; it wasn't merely saving a girl's life and hence her own; it wasn't just foiling history's most notorious murderer, either. Rather, it was all those things and more: she had inexorably fallen in love with H. G. Wells. He was a great man. An author and inventor with few equals. She had never really thought in terms of an ideal mate before; she had no checklist of that sort, and she wasn't about to start one now. But to suddenly find that a person of his caliber was taken with her … She was awed. She felt stronger and more capable than she'd ever been before.

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