Time After Time (17 page)

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Authors: Karl Alexander

BOOK: Time After Time
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“Great Scott!” he exclaimed and sat up straight. What the devil was he doing sleeping with a lady of the future anyway? It was dishonorable! Certainly he could make no commitment to a woman who was perhaps one hundred years younger than he. He had to return to 1893 and get on with his life. He had no business breaking sexual bread with a lass who ultimately could expect nothing in return from him.
He groped for his shirt on the floor, then suddenly straightened up again. What if she didn't want anything from him? What if her sense of freedom extended far beyond the confines of her bedroom? Could she share her body with another as casually as she could indulge in a gourmet meal and a premium bottle of wine? Moreover, was he to be judged on such a basis as that? He frowned and lay back again, his hands under his head, his eyes staring at the ceiling
once more. He genuinely liked her. He didn't want her coupling with some strange man on this bed or any other! He didn't even want to know about what she had done in the past. Yes, he wanted her to expect a commitment from him, even though he could not offer one. He sighed.
“Blast.” What a dilemma. To be removed a century in time from one's ideal lover. And if he did try to bridge the gap by revealing his identity, she would no doubt consider him insane; thus any chance for a serious relationship would be shattered, the pieces left to drift along the vast, alien emptiness of the fourth dimension.
His brain grew weary. He rolled onto his side. His last thought for the night was that this lovemaking with Amy had been Utopian—a brief romp through the meadows of Eden. The only problem was that the apple had been eaten some time ago and the tree shaken bare of its fruit.
He slept deeply, but not well.
 
 
Something soft and light touched H.G.'s face, a moist, gentle pressure on his lips that felt wonderful. Was he dreaming of her already? He must be. No one else had ever kissed him like that.
His eyes fluttered open, and he saw her delicate face above him. If every future morning promised this exotic return to consciousness, he might not ever go back home, or get out of bed, either. Come to think of it, he could stay here for the next thirty years and still unfailingly return to 1893. After all, what was past was past, and no one would know that he was gone until after he returned. He bubbled with laughter.
“Good morning,” she said after breaking the kiss.
He looked up at her and grinned. “If you could fashion an alarm clock that felt like that, you'd make a million pounds.”
She laughed lightly, then gestured at the bedside table. “I brought you some tea.” Sweet-smelling steam rose out of a tall, blue and gray mug.
“Why, thank you.” He rose up on one elbow.
“And the paper.” She dropped the morning edition of the Chronicle beside him.
He picked up the front section then realized that Amy's pale-blue robe was open all the way down the front. He stared at her nude torso and willowy thighs. Then he swept away the paper between them. It floated into the air and fell to the floor, a confusion of stories and sections. He pulled her down beside him, kissed her and caressed her. She began to respond. He held her tightly. She pressed her body against his. He couldn't wait. He rolled on top of her, but was so eager that he failed to check his momentum. He kept right on going and fell off the bed.
Surprised, she rose up on one elbow and looked down at him. “Are you okay?” Then she began to giggle; she put her hand to her mouth, but could not suppress her mirth.
H.G. did not share her humor, however, for he was staring at the San Francisco Chronicle.
“Herbert, are you okay?”
The jumble of flying newspaper had fallen open to a page-three story. The headline had captured his full attention. “GIRL FOUND MURDERED IN MASSAGE PARLOR. Police say ‘Jack the Ripper' style slaying has no motive.” H.G. slumped. He put his head in his hands and softly moaned.
“What's wrong?”
Dr. Leslie John Stephenson was alive.
Number 13 Nob Hill Circle was a stately, narrow and tall residence, recently renovated into five spacious apartments, complete with the latest in security systems to prevent the dangerous and unwanted from even getting past the hedgerow surrounding the place. Freshly painted brown with a gray roof and trim, the structure glistened in the sun as it had done over one hundred years ago when first built.
On the top floor, a window opened as the building's newest tenant let the crisp morning sea breeze into the beige and rust decor of his kitchen.
Leslie John Stephenson stood naked, leaning over the sink with his nose up to the good salt air. He turned, stretched and pounded his rock-hard belly. In the microwave range he brewed himself tea, then took the cup and padded through his one-bedroom flat, not just furnished, but decorated. He loved the feel of the thick shag on his feet, the look of the hanging chrome lamps, the pastel colors on the walls, the contemporary furniture that was designed for sprawling instead of sitting. He smiled. The place was dark Victorian on the outside and opulent modern on the inside. He could not have chosen better living quarters to start his new life.
He set his tea on a glass table. Then he lit a Danish fireplace (the instructions had identified it as such), and basked in the instant
glow. He settled into a chair in front of the fire, spread his muscular legs and let the heat warm his lower body. The uninhibited feel of being nude was exhilarating, for if his father had ever caught him undressed he had been immediately beaten. But that was past now. He sipped his tea and recalled how he had arrived on Nob Hill—high above exotic San Francisco—and how the final break had come.
The night before last, he had awakened in a hospital ward. After a brief, catlike inspection of the room, he had realized that he was being kept inside something called “Intensive Care” and that everyone there, including himself, had been designated “John Doe.” He had scanned his chart and discovered that he was number sixteen, was suffering from a concussion and was being held for observation, yet he felt fine.
But there was more: he had heard a noise and ducked down behind his bed. After a moment, he had peeked over the top and seen a nurse push open one of the double glass doors, look inside, then leave. He knew he must leave the place before they discovered who he was. Wells was no doubt somewhere in the hospital trying to find him. He must disappear from the medical facility just as he had outfoxed Scotland Yard in the late nineteenth century.
He straightened up, then looked at the chart of the patient next to him. The poor chap was suffering from emphysema. Stephenson clucked his tongue, remembering that that particular form of lung disease was incurable. He saw that the thin, elderly man was encased in a translucent, tentlike affair that rose and fell with his labored breathing. How marvelous, he thought.
The man was actually being kept alive by a mechanical device that governed his breathing, fed him an oxygen mixture and prevented infection. Remarkable!
Stephenson had retrieved his clothes out of the ward's common closet, quickly dressed, then gone back to his bed. He had taken his
chart and switched it with that of the emphysema victim, then destroyed the poor soul's records and buried them in a waste receptacle.
Next, Stephenson had gone back to the oxygen system and admired it all over again. What enormous strides medicine must have taken in the last eighty-six years. Despite the dim light, he read the rather simple instructions and traced the series of valves and tubes, then checked the pressure gauges and indicators. He clucked his tongue again; the technician who had last calibrated the machine had done so incorrectly. The patient had not been getting enough oxygen. Stephenson carefully adjusted the machine until it was working properly. He noticed that the emphysema victim began to breathe easier almost immediately. He smiled broadly.
Yes, he had been so taken with the automatic oxygen system that he almost hated himself for turning it off.
After he had left the hospital, he had gone back to the Jack Tar Hotel, retrieved his belongings, then checked out. Then he hired a cab driver to take him through the city despite the late hour. They rode along the dark streets of the Mission District, and Stephenson saw trash and slime in the streets and gangs of brown youths strutting in the shadows, charged with bravado and evil. He observed drunks in doorways—half-living testaments to the god of human despair. There were also policemen, which, he sensed, were all that kept this section of the city from being overrun by the denizens of chaos and anarchy.
Then they toured the Fillmore District where Stephenson witnessed similar monuments to the wretchedness of the human condition, only here the few people on the street were black, and the police did not hesitate to arrest them. As before: trash in the gutters was the decor here, and slime was the mortar that kept it from blowing into other sections of town.
He laughed gleefully. So the blacks were still enslaved, were they?
And the nobleness of an Abraham Lincoln had all gone for naught. True, they had obviously made it out of the cotton fields, but into what? Like their eastern European counterparts who had gone to London to escape oppression in the late nineteenth century, these blacks had fled their rural chains only to be dumped into the bowels of a city and kept there by the invisible walls of a faceless ruling class.
The cornucopia of violence and crime that he had watched on the Jack Tar Hotel's television was a true barometer. Satan had not let him down. If anything, conditions here were worse than they had ever been in London's East End.
H.G. Wells had said that technology was the salvation and the redemption of mankind. What a simpering, incorrect fool. Technology hadn't erased urban blight, it had been used to create it!
But, oh, Wells had been right about one thing: science was indeed a wonderful tool. The powerful few could use it to distance and shield themselves from the stench and anger of the masses. Stephenson was exhilarated. He really did belong—here, in 1979.
His tour ended with a cruise down North Beach's Broadway. He felt an instant affinity for the area. The lights were bright and gaudy, yet the alleys and side streets were dark. And the majority of small establishments advertised commodities of an illicit sexual nature! How simply smashing!
He gaped at several scantily clad ladies curved into doorways who beckoned passers-by in off the street. Yes, he definitely had to be near Broadway. Within walking distance.
He had rented his flat within hours after leaving North Beach. Granted, the twelve hundred and fifty dollars for one month's rent was outrageous, but money was no object. In addition to his pound notes, he had three thousand pounds in gold in his money belt. If perchance he ever came up a bit short, he could always go back to 1895 and get more. Yes, Nob Hill was the perfect location for him.
Such tranquility, such elegance, and only a mere six blocks away from Broadway.
He shuddered with pleasure, then sprang to his feet and headed for the bathroom. The time machine, he thought, what a simply marvelous invention. If one used it properly, one need never lack anything worldly at all. (Not that anything spiritual was worth a damn.) One need never even die.
He looked up and smiled at his rugged visage in the vanity mirror. Imagine the potential! In a matter of hours, he could be back in ancient Egypt, lurking through the palace antechambers, easily disposing of the guards with an automatic weapon, surprising Cleopatra in her boudoir. He could be assaulting and butchering her voluptuous body before Antony ever reached the shores of the Nile. A few minutes further along the fourth dimension, and he could be sodomizing Helen of Troy and cutting up the face that launched a thousand ships. Mary Magdalene could he his, too, raped and slaughtered before Jesus ever had a chance to save her wretched soul. But why stop there? Just a few centuries away, and he could violate and murder the simple peasant girl Joan of Arc, saving the British the trouble of a stake and a fire at Rouen, not to mention several thousand lives.
He leaned against the vanity, for the prospect made his knees weak. He envisioned all of history laid out before him like an obscure street in Whitechapel. He could pick any woman from any era; and when he had finished with her, he would have changed the course of human events. And what man had ever accomplished that? He could choose a queen or a princess. Isabella or Elizabeth, Catherine or Mary Queen of Scots. Think of it!
If only he had the special key that overrode the Rotation Reversal Lock.
He looked down and discovered that he had reached into the
vanity, picked up and was fondling the surgical knives that he had stolen from the hospital.
 
 
“I'll tell you what's wrong,” said H.G., getting to his feet. “Dr. Leslie John Stephenson is alive, that's what's wrong!” He put on his trousers.
“I don't understand.”
He gave her the newspaper, then went to the bedroom window and stared out, but did not appreciate the morning sunlight shining through the delicate trees and making shadow patterns on Green Street.
She quickly read the article but was still puzzled. “This doesn't say anything about Leslie John Stephenson.”
“Of course, it doesn't!” he exclaimed. “The man obviously committed another horrible crime and then escaped! It's not as if he would leave a calling card, you know.”
She came up behind him and placed her arms around him. “Would you mind telling me what's going on?” she asked gently.
He broke away from her and paced by the window. How much could he tell her? After all, she would need some explanation. He decided to proceed as if the notorious Whitechapel murders had occurred just a few years ago. And—in his reality—they had.
“Amy, Dr. Leslie John Stephenson is actually a pathological killer who came to San Francisco several days ago. I am here to apprehend him and see that justice is properly served.”
“Oh. Then you work for Scotland Yard.”
He cleared his throat. “Their interests are involved, although I am accountable only to myself, and Dr. Stephenson is totally my responsibility.”
“It really doesn't matter who you work for.” She could not hide the disappointment in her voice. “What's important is that you're
not a writer or a world traveler at all, are you? And you told me that you were.”
He was stung. He sat beside her and took her hand. “Amy, I wasn't lying to you! You must believe me!”
“Then if you are what you say you are, why are you—of all people—chasing a murderer?”
He groaned. “You might say that it is a personal vendetta.”
“Did he do something to someone in your family?”
“No. The fact of the matter is that I allowed him to flee to San Francisco.”
“How?”
“Amy, please. I can't explain just yet, but please give me your trust.”
“First you tell me that this Stephenson is a traveling companion of yours. Then you tell me that he's dead. Now you tell me that he's alive and is a killer. And all because the newspaper says some poor prostitute was murdered.” She paused. “If I hadn't actually seen him, I'd wonder if he existed or not.”
“No one else but Stephenson could have committed that crime!” he interjected.
“Okay, okay, you've made your point.”
“You'll trust me, then?”
“Why is that so important?”
“Amy, I might need your help.”
“I'm not related to Sherlock Holmes, Herbert.”
“You don't believe a word I've said, do you?”
“Hey! I'm not involved in this, remember? So what does it matter?”
“Oh, blast!” He threw up his hands. “If only—”
“Herbert, if you're really convinced that Dr. Stephenson is responsible for this murder, why don't you just go to the police and be done with it?”
“I don't think they'd understand,” he replied vaguely with a distant glint in his eyes.
“Oh, damn!”
“Amy—”
She scowled at him. “I'm going to be late to work! And I've never been late to work before!” She hurried out of the room.
He caught up with her in the hallway, turned her around and held her gently, but tightly. She resisted at first, then relaxed, for she could feel his concern, his need for another human being to understand. She didn't understand, but her sudden anger had melted away.
“Amy, I—”
“Shhhh!” She placed a finger over his lips. “Don't say anything. None of this makes any sense to me right now, but that's not important. You feel genuine, therefore you are. And whatever you do, take care of yourself and don't get hurt. I'm a lousy nurse.” She kissed him as she had done when she first woke him up. Then she turned, quickly went into the bathroom and closed the door.
He stared blankly at where she had been and heard the shower running. He grinned and felt a rush of emotion; tears rolled down his cheeks and into his mustache.

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