The Infinite Moment (15 page)

"Oh, nono...! No... You're not... You can't be... Youyou told me... You're Mrs Dolderson, aren't you...? You said you were... You can'tyou can't beThelma...?"

Mrs Dolderson said nothing. They gazed at one another. His face creased up like a small child's.

"Oh, God! Ohohoh... I" he cried, and hid his face in his hands.

Mrs Dolderson's eyes closed for a moment. When they opened she had control of herself again. Sadly she looked on the shaking shoulders. Her thin, blueveined left hand reached out towards the bowed head, and stroked the fair hair, gently.

Her right hand found the bellpush on the table beside her. She pressed it, and kept her finger upon it...

At the sound of movement her eyes opened. The venetian blind shaded the room but let in light enough for her to see Harold standing beside her bed.

"I didn't mean to wake you, Mother," he said.

"You didn't wake me, Harold. I was dreaming, but I was not asleep. Sit down, my dear. I want to talk to you."

"You mustn't tire yourself, Mother. You've had a bit of a relapse, you know."

"I dare say, but I find it more tiring to wonder than to know. I shan't keep you long."

"Very well, Mother." He pulled a chair close to the bedside and sat down, taking her hand in his. She looked at his face in the dimness.

"It was you who did it, wasn't it, Harold? It was that experiment of yours that brought poor Arthur here?"

"It was an accident, Mother."

"Tell me."

"We were trying it out. Just a preliminary test. We knew it was theoretically possible. We had shown that if we couldoh, dear, it's so difficult to explain in wordsif we could, well, twist a dimension, kind of fold it back on itself, then two points that are normally apart must coincide... I'm afraid that's not very clear..."

"Never mind, dear. Go on."

"Well, when we had our fielddistortiongenerator fixed up we set it to bring together two points that are normally fifty years apart. Think of folding over a long strip of paper that has two marks on it, so that the marks are brought together."

"Yes?"

"It was quite arbitrary. We might have chosen ten years, or a hundred, but we just picked on fifty. And we got astonishingly close, too, Mother, quite remarkably close. Only a fourday calendar error in fifty years. It's staggered us. The thing we've got to do now is to find out that source of error, but if you'd asked any of us to bet"

"Yes, dear, I'm sure it was quite wonderful. But what happened?"

Oh, sorry. Well, as I said, it was an accident. We only had the thing switched on for three or four secondsand he must have walked slap into the field of coincidence right then. An outside a millionstoone chance. I wish it had not happened, but we couldn't possibly know..."

She turned her head on the pillow.

"No. You couldn't know," she agreed. "And then?"

"Nothing, really. We didn't know until jenny answered your bell to find you in a faint, and this chap, Arthur, all gone to pieces, and sent for me.

"One of the girls helped to get you to bed. Doctor Sole arrived, and took a look at you. Then he pumped some kind of tranquilliser into this Arthur. The poor fellow needed it, tooone hell of a thing to happen when all you were expecting was a game of tennis with your best girl.

"When he'd quietened down a bit he told us who he was, and where he'd come from. Well, there was a thing for you! Accidental living proof at the first shot.

"But all he wanted, poor devil, was to get back just as soon as he could. He was very distressedquite a painful business. Doctor Sole wanted to put him right under to stop him cracking altogether. It looked that way, tooand it didn't look as if he'd be any better when he came round again, either.

"We didn't know if we could send him back. Transference "forward," to put it crudely, can be regarded as an infinite acceleration of a natural progression, but the idea of transference "back" is full of the most disconcerting implications once you start thinking about it. There was quite a bit of argument, but Doctor Sole clinched it. If there was a fair chance, he said, the chap had a right to try, and we had an obligation to try to undo what we'd done to him. Apart from that, if we did not try we should certainly have to explain to someone how we come to have a raving loony on our hands, and fifty years off course, so to speak.

"We tried to make it clear to this Arthur that we couldn't be sure that it would work in reverse and that, anyway, there was this fourday calendar error, so at best it wouldn't be exact. I don't think he really grasped that. The poor fellow was in a wretched state; all he wanted 100 was just a chanceany kind of chanceto get out of here. He was simply onetrack.

"So we decided to take the riskafter all, if it turned out not to be possible he'dwell, he'd know nothing about itor nothing would happen at all...

"The generator was still on the same setting. We put one fellow on to that, took this Arthur back to the path by your room, and got him lined up there.

"Now walk forward," we told him. "Just as you were walking when it happened." And we gave the switchon signal. What with the doctor's dope and one thing and another he was pretty groggy, but he did his best to pull himself together. He went forward at a kind of stagger. Literalminded fellow; he was halfcrying, but in a queer sort of voice he was trying to sing: "Everybody's doin" it, do 7))

"And then he disappearedjust vanished completely." He paused, and added regretfully: "All the evidence we have now is not very convincingone tennisracket, practically new, but vintage, and one strawhat, ditto."

Mrs Dolderson lay without speaking. He said: "We did our best, Mother. We could only try."

"Of course you did, dear. And you succeeded. It wasn't your fault that you couldn't undo what you'd done... No, I was just wondering what would have happened if it had been a few minutes earlieror later, and you had switched your machine on. But I don't suppose that could have happened... You wouldn't have been here at all if it had..."

He regarded her a little uneasily.

"What do you mean, Mother?"

"Never mind, dear. It was, as you said, an accident. At least, I suppose it wasthough so many important things seem to be accidents that one does sometimes wonder if they aren't really written somewhere..

Harold looked at her, trying to make something of that, then decided to ask: "But what makes you think that we did succeed in getting him back, Mother?"

"Oh, I know you did, dear. For one thing I can very clearly remember the day I read in the paper that Lieutenant Arthur Waring Batley had been awarded a D. S. O. sometime in November nineteenfifteen. I think it was.

"And, for another, I have just had a letter from your sister."

"From Cynthia? How on earth does she come into it?"

"She wants to come and see us. She is thinking of getting married again, and she'd like to bring the young manwell, not such a very young man, I supposedown here to show him."

"That's all right, but I don't see"

"She thinks you might find him interesting. Re's a physicist."

"But"

Mrs Dolderson took no notice of the interruption. She went on: "Cynthia tells me his name is Batleyand he's the son of a Colonel Arthur Waring Batley, D.S.0., of Nairobi, Kenya."

"You mean, he's the son of?"

"So it would seem, dear. Strange, isn't it?" She reflected a moment, and added: "I must say that if these things are written, they do sometimes seem to be written in a very queerly distorted way, don't you think.

The sound of a car coming to a stop on the gravel caused Dr Harshom to look at his watch. He closed the book in which he had been writing, put it away in one of his desk drawers, and waited. Presently Stephens opened the door to announce: "Mr Trafford, sir."

The doctor got up from his chair, and regarded the young man who entered, with some care. Mr Cohn Trafford turned out to be presentable, just in his thirties, with brown hair curling slightly, cleanshaven, a suit of good tweed well cut, and shoes to accord. He looked pleasant enough though not distinguished. It would not be difficult to meet thirty or forty very similar young men in a day. But when he looked more closely, as the doctor now did, there were signs of fatigue to be seen, indications of anxiety in the expression and around the eyes, a strained doggedness in the set of the mouth.

They shook hands.

"You'll have had a long drive," said the doctor. "I expect you'd like a drink. Dinner won't be for half an hour yet." The younger man accepted, and sat down. Presently, he said: "It was kind of you to invite me here, Dr Harshom."

"Not really altruistic," the doctor told him. "It is more satisfactory to talk than to correspond by letter. Moreover, I am an inquisitive man recently retired from a very humdrum country practice, Mr Trafford, and on the rare occasions that I do catch the scent of a mystery my curiosity urges me to follow it up." He, too, sat down.

"Mystery?" repeated the young man.

"Mystery," said the doctor.

The young man took a sip of his whisky.

"My enquiry was such as one might receive fromwell, from any solicitor', he said.

"But you are not a solicitor, Mr Trafford."

"No," Cohn Trafford admitted, "I am not."

"But you do have a very pressing reason for your enquiry. So there is the mystery. What pressing, or indeed leisurely, reason could you have for enquiries about a person of whose existence you yourself appear to be uncertainand of whom Somerset House has no record?"

The young man regarded him more carefully, as he went on: "How do I know that? Because an enquiry there would be your natural first step. Had you found a birthcertificate, you would not have pursued the course you have. In fact, only a curiously determined person would have persisted in a quest for someone who had no official existence. So, I said to my. elf: When this persistence in the face of reason addresses itself to me I will try to resolve the mystery."

The young man frowned.

"You imply that you said that before you had my letter?"

"My dear fellow, Harshom is not a common namean unusual corruption of Harvesthome, if you are interested in such thingsand, indeed, I never yet heard of a Harshom who was not traceably connected with the rest of us. And we do, to some extent, keep in touch. So, quite naturally, I think, the incursion of a young man entirely unknown to any of us, but persistently tackling us one after another with his enquiries regarding an unidentifiable Harshom, aroused our interest. Since it seemed that I myself came low on your priority list I decided to make a few enquiries of my own. I"

"But why should you judge yourself low on a list," Cohn Trafford interrupted.

"Because you are clearly a man of method. In this case, geographical method. You began your enquiries with Harshoms in the central London area, and worked outwards, until you are now in Herefordshire. There are only two furtherflung Harshoms now on your list, Peter, down in the toe of Cornwall, and Harold, a few miles from Durhamam I right?"

Cohn Trafford nodded, with a trace of reluctance.

"You are," he admitted.

Dr. Harshom smiled, a trifle smugly.

"I thought so. There is" he began, but the young man interrupted him again.

"When you answered my letter, you invited me here, but you evaded my question," he remarked.

"That is true. But I have answered it now by insisting that the person you seek not only does not exist, but never did exist."

"But if you're quite satisfied on that, why ask me here at all?"

"Because" The doctor broke off at the sound of a gong. "Dear me, Phillips allows one just ten minutes to wash. Let me show you your room, and we can continue over dinner."

A little later when the soup was before them, he resumed: "You were asking me why I invited you here. I think the answer is that since you feel entitled to be curious about a hypothetical relative of mine, I feel no less entitled to be curious about the motives that impel your curiosity. Fair enough? as they say."

"Dubious," replied Mr Trafford after consideration. "To enquire into my motives would, I admit, be not unreasonable if you knew this person to existbut, since you assure me she does not exist, the question of my motives surely becomes academic."

"My interest is academic, my dear fellow, but none the less real. Perhaps we might progress a little if I might put the problem as it appears from my point of view?"

Trafiord nodded. The doctor went on: "Well, now, this is the situation: Some seven or eight months ago a young man, unknown to any of us, begins a series of approaches to my relatives. His concern, he says, is to learn the whereabouts, or to gain any clues which may help him,, to trace the whereabouts of a lady called Ottilie Harshom. She was born, he believes, in 1928, though it could be a few years to either side of thatand she may, of course, have adopted another surname through marriage.

"In his earlier letters there is an air of confidence suggesting his feeling that the matter will easily be dealt with, but as one Harshom after another fails to identify the subject of his enquiries his tone becomes less confident though not less determined. In one or two directions he does learn of young Harshom ladiesnone of them called Ottilie, by the way, but he nevertheless investigates them with care. Can it be, perhaps, that he is as uncertain about the first name as about everything else concerning her? But apparently none of these ladies fulfils his requirements, for he presses on. In the face of unqualified unsuccess, his persistence in leaving no Harshom stone unturned begins to verge upon the unreasonable. Is he an eccentric, with a curious obsession?

"Yet by all the evidence he wasuntil the spring of 1953, at any rate, a perfectly normal young man. His full name is Cohn Wayland Trafford. He was born in 1921, in Soilhull, the son of a solicitor. He went to Chartowe School 1934. Enlisted in the army 1939. Left it, with the rank of Captain 1945. Went up to Cambridge. Took a good degree in Physics 1949. Joined ElectroPhysical Industries on the managerial side that same year. Married Della Stevens 1950. Became a widower 1951. Received injuries in a laboratory demonstration accident early in 1953. Spent the following five weeks in St Merryn's Hospital. Began his first approaches to members of the Harshom family for information regarding Ottilie Harshom about a month after his discharge from hospital."