Time After Time (11 page)

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Authors: Karl Alexander

BOOK: Time After Time
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When H.G. did not immediately reply, Stephenson burst out laughing and patted him on the back. “Go back to the nineteenth century and reread Friedrich Nietzsche, my friend. John Locke, Matthew Arnold and John Stuart Mill have softened your brain.”
H.G. recoiled. “I've had enough of this cynical nonsense! You have used my scientific achievement to escape justice! Therefore, you have damaged my reputation and besmirched my honor!”
“Well, bully for me.” Stephenson laughed.
“It's a matter of principle!”
“Principle?” Stephenson sneered. “Would I be correct in saying that times have changed, Wells?”
“My good man, morality never changes, no matter what you say! You're returning to London to pay your debt to society!”
Stephenson stood and glowered over H.G. “You little fool! Haven't you been observing the world around you? 1979 is overrun with people like me. Rapists, murderers, arsonists, robbers, terrorists, ad infinitum!”
H.G. laughed derisively. “What rubbish!”
“You don't believe me?”
“How could I believe any of your nihilistic diatribes?”
Stephenson made a curt gesture with his hand. “Let me show you something.”
H.G. followed him into the bedroom and saw him go to a large electronic box with a dark-gray screen and turn a switch.
“They call it television.”
H.G. stepped back and gasped, for he was staring at an instant color picture of two people talking. So that was the end result of Marconi's wireless. What a wonderful, graphic, clear way to communicate. “Marvelous! Simply marvelous!”
“I couldn't agree with you more.” Stephenson turned a dial once and produced an image of two men in nineteenth-century western attire facing each other, a street between them. One drew a pistol and shot the other three times. Stephenson gestured from the screen to Wells and smiled smugly.
“I believe that is an illustration of history,” H.G. commented indignantly. Rage began building inside him as he realized what his adversary was up to.
Stephenson turned the dial again. The screen showed a wrestling match where two giant men appeared to be killing each other while an unruly, obsessed crowd urged them to commit even more horrible atrocities. One wrestler threw the other out of the ring into the seats and was declared the winner. Then the scene shifted to an advertisement for a children's doll. This one was a replica of a modern soldier in full battle dress, and he was “on sale for Christmas at Zody's, only $13.95.”
“They sell firearms there, too. In the sporting-goods section. What was the phrase you used the other day? Fait accompli?”
“You haven't proved a thing!” H.G. shouted.
“Haven't I?” he turned off the television and strode back into the living room. “This is my world, Wells!” He turned. “I belong here and you don't! You're a misfit and a relic of the past!”
“You're going back!” H.G. said lividly.
“I'm not going anywhere!”
“The hell you say!” He grabbed Stephenson by the arm and began leading him toward the door. The larger man obliged for several steps, then jerked his arm free and emitted an ironic chuckle.
“My good man, I do believe that you have become irrational.” He brushed off his shirt sleeve. “Perhaps even violent. Have I proven my point now?”
H.G. growled and ran at Stephenson, his arms flailing. Stephenson backed away, then suddenly strode in and backhanded Wells into the wall.
H.G.'s breath whooshed out. He had never realized how strong and physically adept Stephenson was; but then again, he had always been conscious of the rational Stephenson, the sane Stephenson. He was not prepared to deal with the hulking menace that now stood before him. Stephenson took a vicious swing. H.G. ducked and scrambled away. Stephenson's fist punched right through an oil painting and cracked the wall behind it.
H.G. dove for the man's legs, but Stephenson sidestepped and brought a knee up hard into the side of his face. H.G. crumpled, then groggily rose to his knees and desperately tried to steady himself. He heard derisive, scornful laughter that sounded vaguely flat and far away.
His opponent raised a muscular arm and brought one large fist down hard on top of H.G.'s head. Wells emitted a short cry, fell back on the rug, twitched, and then lay still.
 
 
Stephenson gazed at H.G.'s limp form and noticed that he was still breathing. He would have to remedy that. He stepped lightly around Wells and went behind the bar, rummaged in a drawer full of barroom accessories and found an ice pick. He inspected it. The point was fine—almost needle-sharp—but the absence of a blade disappointed him, for he would be able to inflict only puncture wounds on his former schoolmate. The weapon would do, however; it was certainly more acceptable than crushing Wells's head with a piece of heavy furniture.
He went back to H.G. and turned him over so that he could stab into the man's eyes. He raised the ice pick and was about to plunge the weapon home when he had second thoughts. He sighed. Actually, it would be a shame to kill Wells. The little man was so brilliant. After all, hadn't he made time-traveling possible? Was he not the Columbus of a new age and dimension? Hadn't Wells created the very device which had allowed him to elude Scotland Yard?
Suddenly, Stephenson remembered. He slowly grinned, looked down at the prostrate Wells and nodded. Of course! When he had hurriedly scanned the diagrams for the time machine, he had read about the Rotation Reversal Lock and the special key that overrode it. He hadn't really understood the principles then, but now it was all coming clear. That was how Wells had followed him! The time machine had returned to its home hour because he, Stephenson, did not have the key. Therefore, if one did have the key, one could travel anywhere along the fourth dimension and never have to fear pursuit. He grinned. He would take the key. He didn't have to stab Wells to death. He could leave the inimitable little scientist hopelessly mired in the late twentieth century.
His hands trembled with excitement, and he began searching through Wells's pockets. But then H.G. emitted a loud groan. Stephenson frowned and sat back on his haunches. There was no time. He would have to kill the little man and then find the key. What the devil, he told himself and shrugged. The end had always justified the means.
Once again he raised the ice pick.
Suddenly, someone knocked on the door.
“Maid.”
Stephenson dropped the ice pick and scrambled to his feet.
The door opened, and a young girl pushed a cart loaded with cleaning utensils into the room. She saw the two of them—one prone, one upright—abruptly stopped moving and put her hand to
her mouth, more in surprise than in fear. She did not immediately scream.
Stephenson had the presence of mind to shield his face with his hand so that she would be unable to recognize him. Then he rushed by her out into the hallway. He glanced back and saw that Wells was moaning and stirring. With a low curse, he turned on his stacked heel and hurried for the lifts.
H.G. opened his eyes and did not immediately know where he was. The room was a haze—the blue carpet merging with the off-white walls in circles of painful, distant colors. Someone was screaming. He recognized a young girl in a uniform was in front of him on her knees, her eyes wide with concern. She was gently touching his forehead.
“Sir! Are you all right, sir?”
“I've been better, thank you.” He got to his feet, then saw the ice pick on the floor. “Good bloody Christ!” he exclaimed. A chill swept over his body. He realized that he was extremely fortunate to be alive.
“Would you like me to call a doctor?”
“No thank you.”
He became more and more angry by the second. What a monstrous creature, he thought, what a base, unnatural human being. Well, there would be no more appeals to reason and rationality on his part. Not after this.
“Are you sure you don't want to see a doctor?”
“The only physician I'm interested in has already vacated the premises.”
A vengeful H.G. Wells scooped up and pocketed the ice pick, then left the room.
The lift came to a smooth stop at ground level. H.G. hurried out and half ran across the lobby, nimbly cutting through groups of Japanese tourists and dodging clusters of furniture as if he were an elusive halfback on a Rugby field. He went outside and darted across the hotel's circular driveway to the sidewalk that paralleled Van Ness Avenue. He looked both ways and quickly appraised the topography of the city. To the west, the street went upward in a long grade that would be difficult and unpleasant to walk. Moreover, his natural inclination was to proceed downhill, so he began moving to the east where the street sloped down to the handsome buildings of the civic center. Almost immediately, he came to the intersection of Van Ness and Geary. The light was against him, and heavy traffic rolled up Geary Street heading south. Had Stephenson gone north on Geary or continued east on Van Ness? Once again, H.G. looked in both directions. Geary Street was wide and brighter in that it was lit directly by the late-afternoon sun. Van Ness, on the other hand, was bathed in shadows; the buildings were taller and closer together, too, which would make a fugitive in a hurry seem less noticeable. H.G. nodded imperceptibly and crossed the intersection, continuing east on Van Ness.
Two blocks later, H.G. caught sight of Stephenson's Panama hat bobbing above the stream of pedestrians.
He smiled grimly and began running. He crossed O'Farrell Street against the traffic and ignored the horns and curses of the drivers. Then he dodged out into Van Ness Avenue proper—outflanking a meandering mass of pedestrians—and vaulted back onto the sidewalk just ahead of another speeding phalanx of vehicles. Breathing heavily now, he raced along and finally caught up with Stephenson at the corner of Van Ness and Ellis Street waiting for the light to change. He came up behind Stephenson, grabbed him, spun him around and had the ice pick poised an inch from the man's throat. Shocked, Stephenson breathed in sharply and his eyes widened.
H.G. saw the fear in his opponent's face, and he knew that he had won.
He was about to issue a command when a lady standing beside them saw what was happening and screamed. H.G. automatically turned to explain, and that was all Stephenson needed. He slapped the ice pick from H.G.'s hand, then turned and sprinted into Ellis Street against the light. He dodged three speeding cars and had just about reached the opposite corner when a Volkswagen bus made a fast left turn onto Ellis, and smacked into Stephenson head-on at. He was knocked a good twenty feet through the air before crashing down onto the pavement headfirst.
A crowd instantly gathered around the prostrate Stephenson, everyone shouting and yelling, some wondering what they should do, others (curiously detached) only there for the violence of the moment.
From the curb, H.G. watched in a daze. A policeman wearing white gloves hurried over to the scene from his station in the center of the intersection. He quickly dispersed the crowd, then kneeled over Stephenson and loosened his clothing.
H.G. felt leaden, and all he could do was stare. A sadness came over him that he did not immediately understand, for if anyone in the universe deserved to be metallically smacked down, surely it was Leslie John Stephenson. Perhaps it was the manner in which it had happened. Stephenson had not been felled and maimed by another human being. He had been squashed by technology, and the vehicle that had done it just sat there waiting to be driven again. Maybe it was the impersonal nature of the accident that made Stephenson's fate seem so cruel and alien, for H.G. had always regarded the miracle of life as precious and the absurdity of death as personal. Yet here was a badly hurt man on the pavement eighty-six years from home in a futurological city. No one here would care; no one back home would know.
The hapless, long-haired driver of the offending vehicle walked in tight, aimless circles, spasmodically wringing his hands and wondering if he'd just killed someone. After a while, he slumped against the side door of his weather-beaten omnibus while the policeman calmly asked him questions and wrote down information on a note pad. The air was routine, for the policeman was proceeding as if this sort of thing happened all the time. Moreover, the traffic flow had returned to normal, and passers-by were continuing as if nothing had happened.
Yes, H.G. was observing just another performance of a modern (and mundane) ballet featuring a good policeman who was ironically attempting to orchestrate chaos into a logical sequence. The coda to the first half of the drama had just ended.
Act two began when a siren grew louder and louder and became ear-splitting. A shiny, red and white van turned left off Van Ness and stopped in the middle of Ellis Street. A sign on the door read “Paramedic Unit 37, SFFD.” Two lithe young men in dark-blue uniforms leaped out of the vehicle and began attending to Stephenson. They rolled him onto a chrome-tipped stretcher, then lifted him up and inside the van. Their movements were graceful and choreographed. No wasted time or energy. No befuddlement or unnecessary dialogue. In seconds they were back inside their van, and while one spoke into a small metal device and simultaneously swung the vehicle around in a tight circle, the other affixed a mask over Stephenson's face, adjusted dials on metal cylinders, then began checking the victim's vital signs. The van sped down Ellis Street, and the traffic responded to the siren, opening up before the vehicle like the Red Sea parting before Moses.
H.G. was overwhelmed. He recalled reading about the Crimean War where it was common for hundreds of wounded men to lie unattended for hours, even days. Those fortunate enough to find themselves in surgeries were either ignored or had their limbs removed by
overworked and undertrained doctors. Yet here, he had witnessed the functioning of a precise team, obviously very knowledgeable in the business of saving lives. My God, he thought, how wonderful and reassuring it must be for the people of 1979 to know that injury and/or loss of life was not viewed callously.
Then he frowned and was momentarily confused. There was an irony here: Stephenson had been flattened by a product of advanced technology, then picked up and taken away (his life no doubt saved in the process) by a similar machine. One dealt death, whereas the other restored life. The scales were balanced.
H.G. turned and timidly approached the policeman who was at the corner of the intersection talking into a metal box. When the man finished, H.G. accosted him.
“Excuse me, sir, just where did they take that poor wretch who was struck by the motorcar?”
The policeman looked H.G. up and down, then frowned critically. “You know him or something?”
“Oh, no, sir. You see, I'm a newcomer here, and I was curious about the procedure used for such tragedies.”
“The paramedics got him, and he'll end up at San Francisco General. Ain't it the same way in England?”
 
 
H.G. paid his taxi fare and got out in front of the main entrance to San Francisco General Hospital. The sun was setting and a cold fog was rolling in from the bay, but he just stood at the edge of the long walkway and stared. What he saw was completely unexpected.
The complex was vast, the buildings old and forbidding. They were painted a dingy red-orange which over the years had become stained with dirt and smoke. The shrubs and lawns were brown with neglect. And around the entire area was a massive, black-iron fence, its bottom lined with old papers and other debris blown there by the
winds. Behind the buildings, a twelve-story, brick smokestack emitted wisps of white steam.
H.G. shuddered. The place reminded him of a Victorian prison. It was, however, a hospital, for off to his left he saw a brand-new, oblong-shaped sign; against a white, internally lit background, cherry-red letters spelled out “Emergency.” An arrow pointed around to the back side of the main building.
Another red and white van sped up the circular drive and went around the building following the arrow, so H.G. surmised that that was where he would find Stephenson. He quickly moved down the walkway and huddled inside his coat, for the wind was picking up, and the chill was much more noticeable.
In contrast to the hospital's main ingress, the emergency entrance was bustling with activity and thoroughly modern. H.G. was reassured.
The inside was a nineteenth-century scientific-romantic's dream. To H.G.'s immediate front was an island of brushed-silver lifts which signs identified as elevators. With the flash of a light and the ding of a bell, one arrived, its cavernous doors automatically spreading. H.G. saw an attendant push an old man on a stretcher inside. The patient's complexion was as alabaster white as the linen that draped his cadaverous form. From the other side, an expressionless cleaning lady got on board with a cart of mops and buckets. The sweet odor of ammonia was unmistakable. The doors hissed shut. H.G. watched the flashing lights above; the lift descended four levels beneath the ground's surface. He briefly wondered.
Across from the lifts was a “Reception and Information” center. The women behind the low glass partitions were all wearing starched white uniforms and hats. Regardless of age, their faces were serene, and their hair was coiffured. Some of them worked at small machines; the subdued hum and click of electrical energy was pervasive.
From the reception center, two wide, glistening corridors led off into the pristine bowels of the hospital. Stretchers came and went, but the condition of the patients was always ambiguous; there were no telltale signs; all was draped in white. Motorized wheelchairs buzzed along, too, causing H.G. to bubble with delight—whoever would have imagined that the incapacitated would be able to move about on an artificial source of energy? And then there were clusters of people, most of them dressed in the same style smocks, some white, some pink, some green, a few gray and even blue. H.G. quickly figured out that the colors indicated functions. That way in the haste of a serious medical moment, no one had to ask the others what their jobs were. How clever.
He bent over and touched the floor, then ran his hand along a pastel wall. Yes, everything in the hospital was molded out of that same curious substance he had first encountered at the McDonald's. So smooth, so shiny, so soft. It must be the artificial lighting. He wanted to say incandescent, but he wasn't sure that the term would be correct, for the entire area was lit evenly and softly from overhead through large, rectangular sources. There were no shadows or black hallways from which one could hear the pitiful cries of patients racked with pain. Here, one could see everything! And there was music amplifying from boxes affixed to the ceilings. No agonized screams here!
H.G. smiled with pride. This, then, was the future he had predicted. This was what technology could do for mankind. These were the beautiful, sophisticated conditions under which one enlightened human being could help another.
But the most remarkable fact of all was the absolute cleanliness of the hospital. For a moment H.G. was afraid to touch anything for fear of leaving behind some nineteenth-century bacilli.
He recalled his stay at St. George's after his last tuberculosis attack, brought on by overwork and the collapse of his marriage to
Isabel. They had placed him in a long, dismal ward that housed fifty other patients. The room was lit by four gas lamps, and since the high windows were never opened, the air hung heavy and stale. The dominant odor was a suffocating blend of excrement, bile, mildew and smoke. They had him on a lumpy bed with loose springs, wrapped in a plaster that had gone cold and soggy. Blankets were piled over him to break the fever that had consumed him for days. And when he coughed, excruciating pain would shoot through every nerve and muscle in his body. Then the doctor had come through and briskly examined the patients, ignoring the moans of the delirious, for there was nothing he could do that had not already been done. In 1892.
From that to this. Bright lights and starched linens. Music and hygiene. And not a sign, not a whimper of suffering anywhere. H.G. was overwhelmed.
“May I help you, sir?” asked a volunteer nurse's aide.
H.G. was momentarily startled but quickly recovered. “I believe an acquaintance of mine was brought here by two young men dressed in dark blue.” He hesitated. “He had been struck by a motorcar.”

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