The Collection (21 page)
Poor Sam. He had a bad moment the very next evening. One of
Aubrey
'
s friends from school was there, and they were playing with
the doll house. Sam watching them, trying to look less interested than he was.
Edith was knitting and Richard, who had just come in, was reading the paper.
Only Sam was listening to the children and heard the suggestion.
... and then let
'
s have a play funeral, Aubrey.
Just pretend one of them is—"
Sam Walters let out a sort of strangled cry and almost fell
getting across the room.
There was a bad moment, then, but Edith and Richard managed
to pass it off casually enough, outwardly. Edith discovered it was time for
Aubrey's little friend to leave, and she exchanged a significant glance with
Richard and they both escorted the girl to the door.
Whispered,
"
Dick, did you
see—
"
"
Something is wrong, Edie. Maybe we shouldn
'
t
wait. After all, Aubrey
has
agreed to give them up, and—
"
Back in the living room, Sam was still breathing a bit hard.
Aubrey looked at him almost as though she was afraid of him. It was the first
time she'd ever looked at him like that, and Sam felt ashamed. He said,
"
Honey,
I'm sorry I— But listen, you'll promise me you'll
never
have a play
funeral for one of your dolls? Or pretend one of them is badly sick or has an
accident—or anything bad at all? Promise?"
"Sure, Papa. I'm—I'm going to put them away for
tonight." She put the lid on the doll house and went back toward the
kitchen.
In the hallway, Edie said,
"
I
'
ll—I
'
ll
get Aubrey alone and fix it with her. You talk to Sam. Tell him—look, let's go
out tonight, go somewhere and get him away from everything. See if he will.
"
Sam was still staring at the doll house.
"
Let
'
s get some excitement, Sam,
"
Richard said.
"
How
'
s about going out somewhere? We
'
ve
been sticking too close to home. It'll do us good."
Sam took a deep breath. "Okay, Dick. If you say so. I—I
could use a little fun, I guess.
"
Edie came back with Aubrey, and she winked at her brother.
"You men go on downstairs and get a cab from the stand around the corner.
Aubrey and I
'
ll be down by the time you bring it.
"
Behind Sam's back, as the men were putting on their coats,
Richard gave Edith an inquiring look and she nodded.
Outside, there was a heavy fog; one could see only a few
yards ahead. Sam insisted that Richard wait at the door for Edith and Aubrey
while he went to bring the cab. The woman and girl came down just before Sam
got back.
Richard asked, "Did you—?"
"Yes, Dick. I was going to throw them away, but I gave
them away instead. That way they're
gone;
he might have wanted to hunt
in the rubbish and find them if I'd just thrown—"
"Gave them away? To whom?"
"
Funniest thing, Dick. I opened the door and
there was an old woman going by in the back hall. Don't know which of the
apartments she came from, but she must be a scrubwoman or something, although
she looked like a witch really, but when she saw those dolls I had in my
hands—"
"Here comes the cab," Dick said. "You gave
them to her?"
"Yes, it was funny. She said,
`Mine? To Keep?
Forever?'
Wasn
'
t that a strange way of asking it? But I laughed
and said, `Yes, ma'am. Yours forev—"'
She broke off, for the shadowy outline of the taxi was at
the curb, and Sam opened the door and called out, "Come on, folks!"
Aubrey skipped across the sidewalk into the cab, and the
others followed. It started.
The fog was thicker now. They could not see out the windows
at all. It was as though a gray wall pressed against the glass, as though the
world outside was gone, completely and utterly. Even the windshield, from
where they sat, was a gray blank.
"
How can he drive so fast?
"
Richard asked, and there was an edge of nervousness in his voice. "By the
way, where are we going, Sam?
"
"By George," Sam said, "I forgot to tell her."
"Her?
"
"
Yeah. Woman driver. They
'
ve got
them all over now. I
'
ll—
"
He leaned forward and
tapped on the glass, and the woman turned.
Edith saw her face, and screamed.
For an instant you think it is temporary blindness, this
sudden dark that comes in the middle of a bright afternoon.
It
must
be blindness, you think; could the sun that
was tanning you have gone out instantaneously, leaving you in utter blackness?
Then the nerves of your body tell you that you are
standing,
whereas only a second ago you were sitting comfortably, almost reclining,
in a canvas chair. In the patio of a friend
'
s house in Beverly
Hills. Talking to Barbara, your fiancée. Looking at Barbara—Barbara in a
swimsuit—her skin golden tan in the brilliant sunshine, beautiful.
You wore swimming trunks. Now you do not feel them on you;
the slight pressure of the elastic waistband is no longer there against your
waist. You touch your hands to your hips. You are naked. And standing.
Whatever has happened to you is more than a change to sudden
darkness or to sudden blindness.
You raise your hands gropingly before you. They touch a
plain smooth surface, a wall. You spread them apart and each hand reaches a
corner. You pivot slowly. A second wall, then a third, then a door. You are in
a closet about four feet square.
Your hand finds the knob of the door. It turns and you push
the door open.
There is light now. The door has opened to a lighted room
... a room that you have never seen before.
It is not large, but it is pleasantly furnished—although the
furniture is of a style that is strange to you. Modesty makes you open the
door cautiously the rest of the way. But the room is empty of people.
You step into the room, turning to look behind you into the
closet, which is now illuminated by light from the room. The closet is and is
not a closet; it is the size and shape of one, but it contains nothing, not a
single hook, no rod for hanging clothes, no shelf. It is an empty,
blank-walled, four-by-four foot space.
You close the door to it and stand looking around the room.
It is about twelve by sixteen feet. There is one door, but it is closed. There
are no windows. Five pieces of furniture. Four of them you recognize—more or
less. One looks like a very functional desk. One is obviously a chair . . . a
comfortable-looking one. There is a table, although its top is on several
levels instead of only one. Another is a bed, or couch. Something shimmering is
lying across it and you walk over and pick the shimmering something up and
examine it. It is a garment.
You are naked, so you put it on. Slippers are part way under
the bed (or couch) and you slide your feet into them. They fit, and they feel
warm and comfortable as nothing you have ever worn on your feet has felt. Like
lamb's wool, but softer.
You are dressed now. You look at the door—the only door of
the room except that of the closet (closet?) from which you entered it. You
walk to the door and before you try the knob, you see the small typewritten
sign pasted just above it that reads:
This door has a time lock
set to open in one hour. For reasons you will soon understand, it is better
that you do not leave this room before then. There is a letter for you on the
desk. Please read it.
It is not signed. You look at the desk and see that there is
an envelope lying on it.
You do not yet go to take that envelope from the desk and
read the letter that must be in it.
Why not? Because you are frightened.
You see other things about the room. The lighting has no
source that you can discover. It comes from nowhere. It is not indirect
lighting; the ceiling and the walls are not reflecting it al all.
They didn't have lighting like that, back where you cam€
from. What did you mean by
back where you came from?
You close your eyes. You tell yourself:
I am Norman
Hastings. I am an associate professor of mathematics at the University of
Southern California. I am twenty-five years old, and this is the year nineteen
hundred and fifty-four.
You open your eyes and look again.
They didn
'
t use that style of furniture in Los
Angeles—or anywhere else that you know of—in 1954.
That thing over
in the corner—you can
'
t even guess what it is. So might your grandfather,
at your age, have looked at a television set.
You look down at yourself, at the shimmering garment that
you found waiting for you. With thumb and forefinger you feel its texture.
It
'
s like nothing you
'
ve ever touched
before.
I am Norman Hastings. This is nineteen hundred and
fifty-four.
Suddenly you must know, and at once.
You go to the desk and pick up the envelope that lies upon
it. Your name is typed on the outside.
Norman Hastings.
Your hands shake a little as you open it. Do you blame them?
There are several pages, typewritten
. Dear Norman
, it
starts. You turn quickly to the end to look for the signature. It is unsigned.
You turn back and start reading.
"
Do not be afraid. There is nothing to fear, but much
to explain. Much that you must understand before the time lock opens that door.
Much that you must accept and—obey.
"
You have already guessed that you are in the future—in
what, to you, seems to be the future. The clothes and the room must have told
you that. I planned it that way so the shock would not be too sudden, so you
would realize it over the course of several minutes rather than read it
here—and quite probably disbelieve what you read.
"The `closet' from
which you have just stepped is, as you have by now realized, a time machine.
From it you stepped into the world of 2004. The date is April 7th, just fifty
years from the time you last remember.
"
You cannot return.
"I did this to you
and you may hate me for it; I do not know. That is up to you to decide, but it
does not matter. What does matter, and not to you alone, is another decision
which you must make. I am incapable of making it.
"Who is writing this
to you? I would rather not tell you just yet. By the time you have finished
reading this, even though it is not signed (for I knew you would look first for
a signature), I will not need to tell you who I am. You will know.
"I am seventy-five
years of age. I have, in this year 2004, been studying
`
time
'
for thirty of those years. I have completed the first time machine ever
built—and thus far, its construction, even the fact that it has been
constructed, is my own secret.
"You have just
participated in the first major experiment. It will be your responsibility to
decide whether there shall ever be any more experiments with it, whether it
should be given to the world, or whether it should be destroyed and never used
again."
End of the first page. You look up for a moment, hesitating
to turn the next page. Already you suspect what is coming.
You turn the page.
"
I constructed the first time machine a week ago. My
calculations had told me that it would work, but not how it would work. I had
expected it to send an object back in time—it works backward in time only, not
forward—physically unchanged and intact.
"
My first experiment showed me my error. I placed a
cube of metal in the machine—it was a miniature of the one you just walked out
of—and set the machine to go backward ten years. I flicked the switch and
opened the door, expecting to find the cube vanished. Instead I found it had
crumbled to powder.
"I put in another
cube and sent it two years back. The second cube came back unchanged, except
that it was newer, shinier.
"That gave me the
answer. I had been expecting the cubes to go back in time, and they had done
so, but not in the sense I had expected them to. Those metal cubes had been
fabricated about three years previously. I had sent the first one back years
before it had existed in its fabricated form. Ten years ago it had been ore.
The machine returned it to that state.
"Do you see how our
previous theories of time travel have been wrong? We expected to be able to
step into a time machine in, say, 2004, set it for fifty years back, and then
step out in the year 1954 . . . but it does not work that way. The machine does
not move in time. Only whatever is within the machine is affected, and then
just with relation to itself and not to the rest of the Universe.
"
I confirmed this with guinea pigs by sending one six
weeks old five weeks back and it came out a baby.