Assignment In Eternity ( Collected Stories) Part 9

the man who can beat me hasn't been born.

I'd like to try. He slowed down before he came near the guard's station. "Hi, Jim!"

it's a deal.

"Well, if it taint Joey boy! Got a match?"

"Here." He reached out a hand-then, as the guard fell. he eased him to the ground and made sure that he would stay out.

Gail! It's got to be now!

The voice in his head came back in great consternation:

Joe! She was too tough, she wouldn't crack. She's dead!

good! get that belt, break the arming circuit, then see what else you find. I'm going to break in. He went toward the door of the temple.

it's disarmed, Joe. I could spot it; it has a time set on it. I can't tell

about the others, they aren't marked and they all look alike. He took from his pocket a small item provided by Baldwin's careful planning.-twist them all from where they are to the other way. You'll probably hit it.

* oh, Joe, I hope so! He had placed the item against the lock; the metal around it turned red and now was melting away. An alarm clanged somewhere.

Gail's voice came again in his head; there was urgency in it but no fear: *.

Joe! they're beating on the door. I'm trapped.

McCinty! be our witness! He went on:

I, Joseph, take thee. Gail, to be my lawfully wedded wife-He was answered in tranquil rhythm:

I, Gail, take thee, Joseph, to be my lawfully wedded husband-

to have and to hold, he went on.

to have and to hold, my beloved!

for better, for worse-

for better, for worse-Her voice in his head was singing . . . -till death do us part. I've got it open, darling, I am going in.

till death do us part! They are breaking down the bedroom door, Joseph my dearest.

hang on! I'm almost through here.

they have broken it down, Joe. They are coming toward me. Good-bye

my darling! I am very happy. Abruptly her "voice stopped. He was facing the box that housed the disarming circuit, alarms clanging in his ears; he took from his pocket another gadget and tried it.

The blast that shattered the box caught him full in the chest.

The letters on the metal marker read: TO THE MEMORY OF MR. AND MRS. JOSEPH GREENE WHO, NEAR THIS SPOT, DIED FOR ALL THEIR FELLOW MEN

ELSEWHEN.

Excerpt from the Evening, STANDARD: SOUGHT SAVANT EVADES POLICE City Hall Scandal Looms Professor Arthur Frost, wanted for questioning in connection with the mysterious disappearance from his home of five of his students, escaped today from under the noses of a squad of police sent to arrest him. Police Sergeant Izowski claimed that Frost disappeared from the interior of the Black Maria under conditions which leave the police puzzled. District Attorney Kames labeled Izowsld's story as preposterous and promised the fullest possible investigation.

"But, Chief, I didn't leave him alone for a second!" "Nuts!" answered the Chief of Police. "You claim you put Frost in the Wagon, stopped with one foot on the tailboard to write in your notebook, and when you looked up he was gone. D'yuh expect the Grand Jury to believe that? D'yuh expect me to believe that?"

"Honest, Chief," persisted Izowski, "I just stopped to write down-"

"Write down what?"

"Something he said. I said to him, 'Look, Doc, why don't you tell us where you hid 'em? You know we're bound to dig 'em up in time.' And he just gives me a funny faraway look, and says, Time-ah, time . . . yes, you could dig them up, in Time.' I thought it was an important admission and stops to write it down. But I was standing in the only door he could use to get out of the Wagon. You know, I ain't little; I kinda fill up a door."

"That's all you do," commented the Chief bitterly. "Izowski, you were either drunk, or crazy-or somebody got to you. The way you tell it, it's impossible!"

Izowski was honest, nor was he drunk, nor crazy.

Four days earlier Doctor Frost's cla.s.s in speculative metaphysics had met as usual for their Friday evening seminar at the professor's home. Frost was saying, "And why not? Why shouldn't time be a fifth as well as a fourth dimension?"

Howard Jenkins, hard-headed engineering student, answered, "No harm in speculating, I suppose, but the question is meaningless."

"Why?" Frost's tones were deceptively mild.

"No question is meaningless," interrupted Helen Fisher.

"Oh, yeah? How high is up?"

"Let him answer," meditated Frost.

"I will," agreed Jenkins. "Human beings are const.i.tuted to perceive three spatial dimensions and one time dimension. Whether there are more of either is meaningless to us for there is no possible way for us to know-ever. Such speculation is a harmless waste of time."

"So?" said Frost. "Ever run across J. W. Dunne's theory of serial universe with serial time? And he's an engineer, like yourself. And don't forget Ouspensky. He regarded time as multi-dimensional."

"Just a second, Professor," put in Robert Monroe. "I've seen their writings-but I still think Jenkins offered a legitimate objection. How can the question mean anything to us if we aren't built to perceive more dimensions? It's like in mathematics-you can invent any mathematics you like, on any set of axioms, but unless it can be used to describe some sort of phenomena, it's just so much hot air."

Fairly put," conceded Frost. "I'll give a fair answer. Scientific belief is based on observation, either one's own or that of a competent observer. I believe in a two-dimensional time because I have actually observed it."

The clock ticked on for several seconds.

Jenkins said, "But that is impossible. Professor. You aren't built to observe two time dimensions."

"Easy, there ..." answered Frost. "I am built to perceive them one at a time-and so are you. I'll tell you about it, but before I do so, I must explain the theory of time I was forced to evolve in order to account for my experience. Most people think of time as a track that they run on from birth to death as inexorably as a train follows its rails-they feel instinctively that time follows a straight line, the past lying behind, the future lying in front. Now I have reason to believe-to know-that time is a.n.a.logous to a surface rather than a line, and a rolling hilly surface at that. Think of this track we follow over the surface of time as a winding road cut through hills. Every little way the road branches and the branches follow side canyons. At these branches the crucial decisions of your life take place. You can turn right or left into entirely different futures. Occasionally there is a switchback where one can scramble up or down a bank and skip over a few thousand or million years-if you don't have your eyes so fixed on the road that you miss the short cut.

"Once in a while another road crosses yours. Neither its past nor its future has any connection whatsoever with the world we know. If you happened to take that turn you might find yourself on another planet in another s.p.a.ce-time with nothing left of you or your world but the continuity of your ego.

"Or, if you have the necessary intellectual strength and courage, you may leave the roads, or paths of high probability, and strike out over the hills of possible time, cutting through the roads as you come to them, following them for a little way, even following them backwards, with the past ahead of you, and the future behind you. Or you might roam around the hilltops doing nothing but the extremely improbable. I cannot imagine what that would be like- perhaps a bit like Alice-through-the-Looking-Gla.s.s.

"Now as to my evidence- When I was eighteen I had a decision to make. My father suffered financial reverses and I decided to quit college. Eventually I went into business for myself, and, to make a long story short, in nineteen-fifty-eight I was convicted of fraud and went to prison."

Martha Ross interrupted. "Nineteen-fifty-eight, Doctor? You mean forty-eight?"

"No, Miss Ross. I am speaking of events that did not take place on this time track."

"Oh." She looked blank, then muttered, "With the Lord all things are possible."

"While in prison I had time to regret my mistakes. I realized that I had never been cut out for a business career, and I earnestly wished that I had stayed in school many years before. Prison has a peculiar effect on a man's mind. I drifted further and further away from reality, and lived more and more in an introspective world of my own. One night, in a way not then clear to me, my ego left my cell, went back along the time track, and I awoke in my room at my college fraternity house.