Time and Time Again Read online

couple ofprocesses that made me as much money as my writing. You think athirteen-year-old just dreamed all that up? Or, here; you speak French,don't you?" He switched languages and spoke at some length in goodconversational slang-spiced Parisian. "Too bad you don't speak Spanish,too," he added, reverting to English. "Except for a Mexican accent youcould cut with a machete, I'm even better there than in French. And Iknow some German, and a little Russian."

  * * * * *

  Blake Hartley was staring at his son, stunned. It was some time beforehe could make himself speak.

  "I could barely keep up with you, in French," he admitted. "I can swearthat in the last thirteen years of your life, you had absolutely nochance to learn it. All right; you lived till 1975, you say. Then, allof a sudden, you found yourself back here, thirteen years old, in 1945.I suppose you remember everything in between?" he asked. "Did you everread James Branch Cabell? Remember Florian de Puysange, in 'The HighPlace'?"

  "Yes. You find the same idea in 'Jurgen' too," Allan said. "You know,I'm beginning to wonder if Cabell mightn't have known something hedidn't want to write."

  "But it's impossible!" Blake Hartley hit the table with his hand, sohard that the heavy pistol bounced. The loose round he had ejected fromthe chamber toppled over and started to roll, falling off the edge. Hestooped and picked it up. "How can you go back, against time? And thetime you claim you came from doesn't exist, now; it hasn't happenedyet." He reached for the pistol magazine, to insert the cartridge, andas he did, he saw the books in front of his son. "Dunne's 'Experimentwith Time,'" he commented. "And J. N. M. Tyrrell's 'Science andPsychical Phenomena.' Are you trying to work out a theory?"

  "Yes." It encouraged Allan to see that his father had unconsciouslyadopted an adult-to-adult manner. "I think I'm getting somewhere, too.You've read these books? Well, look, Dad; what's your attitude onprecognition? The ability of the human mind to exhibit real knowledge,apart from logical inference, of future events? You think Dunne istelling the truth about his experiences? Or that the cases in Tyrrell'sbook are properly verified, and can't be explained away on the basis ofchance?"

  Blake Hartley frowned. "I don't know," he confessed. "The evidence isthe sort that any court in the world would accept, if it concernedordinary, normal events. Especially the cases investigated by theSociety for Psychical Research: they _have_ been verified. But how cananybody know of something that hasn't happened yet? If it hasn'thappened yet, it doesn't exist, and you can't have real knowledge ofsomething that has no real existence."

  "Tyrrell discusses that dilemma, and doesn't dispose of it. I think Ican. If somebody has real knowledge of the future, then the future mustbe available to the present mind. And if any moment other than the barepresent exists, then all time must be totally present; every moment mustbe perpetually coexistent with every other moment," Allan said.

  "Yes. I think I see what you mean. That was Dunne's idea, wasn't it?"

  "No. Dunne postulated an infinite series of time dimensions, the entireextent of each being the bare present moment of the next. What I'mpostulating is the perpetual coexistence of every moment of time in thisdimension, just as every graduation on a yardstick exists equally withevery other graduation, but each at a different point in space."

  "Well, as far as duration and sequence go, that's all right," the fatheragreed. "But how about the 'Passage of Time'?"

  "Well, time _does_ appear to pass. So does the landscape you see from amoving car window. I'll suggest that both are illusions of the samekind. We imagine time to be dynamic, because we've never viewed it froma fixed point, but if it is totally present, then it must be static, andin that case, we're moving through time."

  "That seems all right. But what's your car window?"

  "If all time is totally present, then you must exist simultaneously atevery moment along your individual life span," Allan said. "Yourphysical body, and your mind, and all the thoughts contained in yourmind, each at its appropriate moment in sequence. But what is it thatexists only at the bare moment we think of as _now_?"

  * * * * *

  Blake Hartley grinned. Already, he was accepting his small son as anintellectual equal.

  "Please, teacher; what?"

  "Your consciousness. And don't say, 'What's that?' Teacher doesn't know.But we're only conscious of one moment; the illusory now. This is 'now,'and it was 'now' when you asked that question, and it'll be 'now' when Istop talking, but each is a different moment. We imagine that all thosenows are rushing past us. Really, they're standing still, and ourconsciousness is whizzing past them."

  His father thought that over for some time. Then he sat up. "Hey!" hecried, suddenly. "If some part of our ego is time-free and passes frommoment to moment, it must be extraphysical, because the physical bodyexists at every moment through which the consciousness passes. And ifit's extraphysical, there's no reason whatever for assuming that itpasses out of existence when it reaches the moment of the death of thebody. Why, there's logical evidence for survival, independent of anyalleged spirit communication! You can toss out Patience Worth, and Mrs.Osborne Leonard's Feda, and Sir Oliver Lodge's son, and Wilfred Brandon,and all the other spirit-communicators, and you still have evidence."

  "I hadn't thought of that," Allan confessed. "I think you're right.Well, let's put that at the bottom of the agenda and get on with thistime business. You 'lose consciousness' as in sleep; where does yourconsciousness go? I think it simply detaches from the moment at whichyou go to sleep, and moves backward or forward along the line ofmoment-sequence, to some prior or subsequent moment, attaching there."

  "Well, why don't we know anything about that?" Blake Hartley asked. "Itnever seems to happen. We go to sleep tonight, and it's always tomorrowmorning when we wake; never day-before-yesterday, or last month, or nextyear."

  "It never ... or almost never ... _seems_ to happen; you're right there.Know why? Because if the consciousness goes forward, it attaches at amoment when the physical brain contains memories of the previous,consciously unexperienced, moment. You wake, remembering the eveningbefore, because that's the memory contained in your mind at that moment,and back of it are memories of all the events in the interim. See?"

  "Yes. But how about backward movement, like this experience of yours?"

  "This experience of mine may not be unique, but I never heard of anothercase like it. What usually happens is that the memories carried back bythe consciousness are buried in the subconscious mind. You know howthick the wall between the subconscious and the conscious mind is. Thesedreams of Dunne's, and the cases in Tyrrell's book, are leakage. That'swhy precognitions are usually incomplete and distorted, and generallytrivial. The wonder isn't that good cases are so few; it's surprisingthat there are any at all." Allan looked at the papers in front of him."I haven't begun to theorize about how I managed to remember everything.It may have been the radiations from the bomb, or the effect of thenarcotic, or both together, or something at this end, or a combinationof all three. But the fact remains that my subconscious barrier didn'tfunction, and everything got through. So, you see, I am obsessed--by myown future identity."

  "And I'd been afraid that you'd been, well, taken-over by some ... someoutsider." Blake Hartley grinned weakly. "I don't mind admitting, Allan,that what's happened has been a shock. But that other ... I justcouldn't have taken that."

  * * * * *

  "No. Not and stayed sane. But really, I am your son; the same entity Iwas yesterday. I've just had what you might call an educational shortcut."

  "I'll say you have!" His father laughed in real amusement. He discoveredthat his cigar had gone out, and re-lit it. "Here; if you can rememberthe next thirty years, suppose you tell me when the War's going to end.This one, I mean."

  "The Japanese surrender will be announced at exactly 1901--7:01 P. M.present style--on August 14. A week from Tuesday. Better make sure wehave plenty of grub in the house by then. Everything will be closed upt
ight till Thursday morning; even the restaurants. I remember, we hadnothing to eat in the house but some scraps."

  "Well! It is handy, having a prophet in the family! I'll see to it Mrs.Stauber gets plenty of groceries in.... Tuesday a week? That's prettysudden, isn't it?"

  "The Japs are going to think so," Allan replied. He went on to describewhat was going to happen.

  His father swore softly. "You know, I've heard talk about atomic energy,but I thought it was just Buck Rogers stuff. Was that the sort of bombthat got you?"

  "That was a firecracker to the bomb that got me. That thing exploded agood ten miles away."

  Blake Hartley whistled softly. "And that's going to happen in thirtyyears! You know, son, if I were you, I wouldn't like to have to knowabout a thing like that." He looked at Allan for a moment. "Please, ifyou know, don't ever tell me when I'm going to die."

  Allan smiled. "I can't. I had a letter from you just before I left forthe front. You were seventy-eight, then, and you were still hunting, andfishing, and flying your own plane. But I'm not going to get killed inany Battle of Buffalo, this time, and if I can prevent it, and I think Ican, there won't be any World War III."

  "But--You say all time exists, perpetually coexistent and totallypresent," his father said. "Then it's right there in front of you, andyou're getting closer to it, every watch tick."

  Allan Hartley shook his head. "You know what I remembered, when FrankGutchall came to borrow a gun?" he asked. "Well, the other time, Ihadn't been home: I'd been swimming at the Canoe Club, with LarryMorton. When I got home, about half an hour from now, I found the housefull of cops. Gutchall talked the .38 officers' model out of you, andgone home; he'd shot his wife four times through the body, finished heroff with another one back of the ear, and then used his sixth shot toblast his brains out. The cops traced the gun; they took a very poorview of your lending it to him. You never got it back."

  "Trust that gang to keep a good gun," the lawyer said.

  "I didn't want us to lose it, this time, and I didn't want to see youlose face around City Hall. Gutchalls, of course, are expendable," Allansaid. "But my main reason for fixing Frank Gutchall up with a paddedcell was that I wanted to know whether or not the future could bealtered. I have it on experimental authority that it can be. There mustbe additional dimensions of time; lines of alternate probabilities.Something like William Seabrook's witch-doctor friend's Fan-Shaped_Destiny_. When I brought memories of the future back to the present, Iadded certain factors to the causal chain. That set up an entirely newline of probabilities. On no notice at all, I stopped a murder and asuicide. With thirty years to work, I can stop a world war. I'll havethe means to do it, too."

  "The means?"

  "Unlimited wealth and influence. Here." Allan picked up a sheet andhanded it to his father. "Used properly, we can make two or threemillion on that, alone. A list of all the Kentucky Derby, Preakness, andBelmont winners to 1970. That'll furnish us primary capital. Then,remember, I was something of a chemist. I took it up, originally, to getbackground material for one of my detective stories; it fascinated me,and I made it a hobby, and then a source of income. I'm thirty yearsahead of any chemist in the world, now. You remember _I. G.Farbenindustrie_? Ten years from now, we'll make them look like pikers."

  His father looked at the yellow sheet. "Assault, at eight to one," hesaid. "I can scrape up about five thousand for that--Yes; in tenyears--Any other little operations you have in mind?" he asked.

  "About 1950, we start building a political organization, here inPennsylvania. In 1960, I think we can elect you President. The worldsituation will be crucial, by that time, and we had a good-naturednonentity in the White House then, who let things go till war becameinevitable. I think President Hartley can be trusted to take a strongline of policy. In the meantime, you can read Machiavelli."

  "That's my little boy, talking!"

  Blake Hartley said softly. "All right, son; I'll do just what you tellme, and when you grow up, I'll be president.... Let's go get supper,now."

  THE END.