Shock III Part 5

A person, from your period, say, would last about three quarters of an hour. The remembrance of Clemolk's words was like a whip lash 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 a" his mind would not repress the words a" I am holding her in my arms.

They sat quietly together. Wade's body grew more tense with each pa.s.sing second.

How soon?a Disintegratea 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?'

She was silent.

'Mary?'

'You don't know? No, of course you don't.'

'Know what?'

'I can't tell you about our child.'

'Why?'

'I died when it was born.'

He tried to speak but the words shattered in his throat Finally he could ask, 'Because I didn't return?'

'Yes,' she replied softly. 'I had no right to. But I didn't want to live without you.'

'And they refuse to let me go back,' he said bitterly. Then he ran his fingers through her thick hair and kissed her. He looked into her face. 'Listen,' he said, 'I'm going to return.'

'You can't change what's done.'

'If I come back,' he said, 'it isn't done. I can change it.'

She looked at him strangely. 'Is it possible -' she began, and her words died in a groan. 'No, no, it can't be!'

'Yes!' he said, 'It is poss -' He stopped abruptly, his heart lurching wildly. She had been speaking of something else.

Under his fingers her left arm was disappearing. The flesh seemed to be dissolving, leaving her arm rotted and shapeless.

He gasped in horror. Terrified, she looked down at her hands. They were falling apart, bits of flesh spiralling away like slender streamers of white smoke.

'No!' she cried, 'Don't let it happen!'

'Mary!'

She tried to take his hands but she had none herself. Quickly she bent over and kissed him. Her lips were cold and shaking.

'So soon,' she sobbed. 'Oh, go away! Don't watch me, Robert! Please don't watch me!' Then she started up, crying out, 'Oh, my dear, I had hoped for -'

The rest was lost in a soft, guttural bubbling. Her throat was beginning to disintegrate.

Wade leaped up and tried to embrace her to hold back the horror, but his clutch only seemed to hasten the dissolution. The sound of her breaking down became a terrible hiss.

He staggered back with a shriek, holding his hands before him as though to ward off the awful sight.

Her body was breaking apart in chunks. The chunks split into fizzing particles which dissolved in the air. Her hands and arms were gone. The shoulders started to disappear. Her feet and legs burst apart and the swirls of gaseous flesh spun up into the air.

Wade crashed into the wall, his shaking hands over his face. He didn't want to look, but he couldn't help himself. Drawing his fingers down, he watched in a sort of palsied fascination.

Now her chest and shoulders were going. Her chin and lower face were flowing into an amorphous cloud of flesh that gyrated like windblown snow.

Last to go were her eyes. Alone, hanging on a veil of grey wall, they burned into his. In his mind came the last message from her living mind: 'Good-bye, my darling. I shall always love you.'

He was alone.

His mouth hung open, and his eyes were circles of dumb unbelief. For long minutes he stood there, s.h.i.+vering helplessly, looking hopefully a" hopelessly a" around the room. There was nothing, not the least sensory trace of her pa.s.sing.

He tried to walk to the couch, but his legs were useless blocks of wood. And all at once the floor seemed to fly up into his face.

White pain gave way to a sluggish black current that claimed his mind.

Clemolk was sitting in the chair.

'I'm sorry you took it so badly,' he said.

Wade said nothing, his gaze never leaving the historian's face. Heat rose in his body, his muscles twitched.

'We could probably re-form her again,' Clemolk said carelessly, 'but her body would last an even shorter period the second time. Besides, we haven't the -'

'What do you want?'

'I thought we might talk some more about 1975 while there's -'

'You thought that, did you!' Wade threw himself into a sitting position, eyes bright with crazed fury. 'You keep me prisoner, you torture me with the ghost of my wife. Now you want to talk!'

He jolted to his feet, fingers bent into arcs of taut flesh.

Clemolk stood up, too, and reached into his robe pocket. The very casualness of the move further enraged Wade. When the historian drew out the plastic case, Wade knocked it to the floor with a snarl.

'Stop this,' Clemolk said mildly, his visage still unruffled.

'I'm going back,' roared Wade. 'I'm going back and you're not stopping me!'

'I'm not stopping you,' said Clemolk, the first signs of peevishness sounding in his voice. 'You're stopping yourself. I've told you. You should have considered what you were doing before entering your time chamber. And, as for your Mary -'

The sound of her name p.r.o.nounced with such dispa.s.sionage smugness broke the floodgates of Wade's fury. His hand shot out and fastened around Clemolk's thin ivory column of neck.

'Stop,' Clemolk said, his voice cracking. 'You can't go back. I tell you -'

His fish eyes were popping and blurred. A gurgle of delicate protest filled his throat as his frail hands fumbled at Wade's clutching fingers. A moment later the historian's eyes rolled back and his body went limp. Wade released his fingers and put Clemolk down on the couch.

He ran to the door, his mind filled with conflicting plans. The door wouldn't open. He pushed it, threw his weight against it, tried to dig his nails along its edge to pull it open. It was tightly shut. He stepped back, his face contorted with hopeless frenzy.

Of course!

He sprang to Clemolk's inert body, reached in the robe pocket, and drew out the small control board. It had no connections in the robe. Wade pushed a b.u.t.ton.

The great sign was above him: history is living. With an impatient gasp, Wade pushed another, still another. He heard his voice.

'a The governmental system was based on the existence of three branches, two of which were supposedly subject to popular votea'

He pushed another b.u.t.ton a" and yet another.

The door seemed to draw a heavy breath and opened noiselessly. Wade ran to it and through it. It closed behind him.

Now to find the machine lab. What if the students were there? He had to risk it.

He raced down the padded hallway, looking for the tube door. It was a nightmare of running. Back and forth he rushed frantically, muttering to himself. He stopped and forced himself back, pus.h.i.+ng b.u.t.tons as he went, ignoring sounds and sights around him a" the fading walls, the speaking dead. He almost missed the tube door as he pa.s.sed it. Its outline blended with the wall.

'Stop!'

He heard the weak cry behind him and glanced hurriedly over his shoulder. Clemolk, stumbling along the hall, waving him down. He must have recovered and got out while Wade was carrying on his desperate search.

Wade entered the tube quickly, and the door slid shut. He breathed a sigh of relief as he felt the chamber rush through its tunnel. Something made him turn around. He gasped at the sight of the uniformed man who sat on the bench facing him. In the man's hand was a dull black tube that pointed straight at Wade's chest.

'Sit down,' said the man.

Defeated, Wade slumped down in a dejected heap. Mary. The name was a broken lament in his mind.

'Why do you re-forms get so excited?' the man asked. 'Why do you? Answer me that?'

Wade looked up, a spark of hope igniting in him. The man thought a"

'I -I expected to go soon,' Wade said hurriedly. 'In a matter of minutes. I wanted to get down to the machine lab.'

'Why there, for heaven's sake?'

'I heard there was a time chamber there,' Wade said anxiously. 'I thought -'

'Thought you'd use it?'

'Yes, that's it. I want to go back to my own time. I'm lonely.'

'Haven't you been told?' asked the man.

'Told what?'

The tube sighed to a halt. Wade started up. The man waved his weapon and Wade sank down again. Had they pa.s.sed it?

'As Soon as your re-formed body returns to air,' the man was saying, 'your psychic force returns to the original moment of death a" hrumph a" separation from the body I mean.'

Wade was distracted by nervous fear. 'What?' he asked vaguely, looking around.

'Personal force, personal force,' b.u.mbled the man. 'At the moment it leaves your re-formed body, it will return to the moment you originally a" uh a" died. In your case that would be a" when?'

'I don't understand.'

The man shrugged. 'No matter, no matter. Take my word for it. You'll soon be back in your own time.'

'What about the machine lab?' Wade asked again.

'Next stop,' said the man.

'Can we go there, I mean?'

'Oh,' grumbled the man, 'I suppose I could drop in and take a look at it. Think they'd let me know. Never any cooperation with the military. Invariably -' His voice trailed off. 'No,' he resumed. 'On second thought, I'm in a hurry.'

Wade watched the man lower his weapon. He clenched his teeth and braced himself to lunge.

'Well,' said the man, 'On third thoughta'

Closing his eyes, Wade slumped back and exhaled a long shuddering breath through his pale lips.

It was still intact, its gleaming metal reflecting the tiers of bright overhead lights a" and the circular door was open.

There was only one student in the lab. He was sitting at a bench. He looked up as they entered.

'Can I help you, Commander?' he asked.

'No need. No need,' said the officer in an annoyed voice. The re-form and myself are here to see the time chamber.' He waved toward the platform. That it?'

'Yes, that's it,' said the student, looking at Wade. Wade averted his face. He couldn't tell whether the student was one of the four who had been there before. They all looked alike. The student went back to his work.

Wade and the Commander stepped up on the platform. The Commander peered into the interior of the sphere.

'Well,' he mused, 'who brought it here, I'd like to know.'

'I don't know,' Wade answered. 'I've never seen one.'

'And you thought you could use it!' The Commander laughed.

Wade glanced around nervously to make sure the student wasn't watching. Turning back, he scanned the sphere rapidly and saw that it wasn't fastened in any way. He started as a loud buzzer sounded and looking around quickly, saw the student push a b.u.t.ton on the wall. He tightened in fear.