Time Tunnel (4 page)

“But of course,
M’sieur
Ybarra,” said Valerie. “All of them are for sale. At one hundred francs the copy. You will find there the months of March and April, 1804.”

“This one I buy!” said Pepe. “Of April second.”

“They run, I think,” said Valerie helpfully, “to the twenty-fifth. But when my uncle returns there will be later ones.”

Pepe made an inarticulate sound.

“My great-great-grandfather Ybarra,” he said after a moment, “visited Paris during Napoleon’s time. He fought a duel with the Compte de Froude, and had his ear sliced. The account of the affair is here! I did not know the details, before.”

“Indeed?” said Valerie politely. “That is doubtless interesting!”

She turned back to Harrison. She asked questions about what he had done with himself and what had happened to him in the past dozen years. He told her. He asked about Madame Carroll. He recalled her without affection. She’d been an acid personality, even then, with no patience with children. But since she was now Valerie’s whole family—he did not think of her brother—it would be well to be informed.

Valerie explained with faint amusement that a small inheritance had fallen to her aunt, a tiny cottage in the town of St. Jean-sur-Seine, and that her aunt had gone there to make sure that she was not cheated of a single franc or centime. She left her brother in Paris. Then something happened.
Un Américain
, said Valerie, had been taken ill in the town. There was no hospital. There was no one to tend him. Since her aunt had to stay in St. Jean-sur-Seine anyhow, she undertook to care for the sick man for a reasonable fee.

It would be so much clear profit. Eventually she came back to Paris, married to him. He was a M. Carroll, and Valerie liked him very much. He was most intelligent. In fact, in
les Êtats-Unis
he had been a professor in a university. But now he had no post. He possessed a small income, to be sure, but he would not attempt to secure a position in a university or even a
lycée
. Still, he was a very pleasant man. Valerie regretted that he remained at St. Jean-sur-Seine while Madame Carroll operated the shop in Paris.

Harrison came out of the absorption with which he’d listened.

“Wait!” he said uneasily. “This M. Carroll! He would not be called Henry? He would not be a professor of methodology? The university would not have been Brevard?”

But it was. He was ex-Professor Henry Carroll, formerly of Brevard University, who had given courses in methods of research, including statistical analysis, when Harrison and Pepe were undergraduates. He was married to Madame Carroll, who was Valerie’s aunt, who was the sister of the M. Dubois who attended to purchases of stock for Carroll, Dubois et Cie, importers and exporters to the year 1804.

Harrison found the news startling. When Pepe disturbedly said that he would come back later about the thing he wanted made, Harrison hastily made arrangements with Valerie for the meeting that for today must be deferred. He went out of the shop with Pepe.

“This,” said Pepe in an irritated tone, “this has me standing on my head! I have read the account of my great-great-grandfather’s duel, and you are quite right. I have seen nothing that could not be explained away if you had not found those insane particulars in the Bibliothèque Nationale! But I no longer believe those explanations. I displease myself! I cannot tell you why, but I no longer disbelieve in anything, or else I believe in everything! I am not sure which!”

Harrison said:

“The Carroll of Carroll, Dubois and Company is Professor Henry Carroll, late of Brevard. We took a course in statistical analysis under him, as you recalled yesterday.”

Pepe stared. Then he said slowly:

“He was thrown out of his job, as I remember. There was some scandal which would not have been scandal had it happened to us, but was a very grave matter for a professor of statistical analysis and allied subjects.”

“He’s at St. Jean-sur-Seine,” said Harrison, “wherever that may be!”

“He was a good guy,” said Pepe. “He didn’t flunk anybody without good reason.”

“A very good guy,” agreed Harrison. “What made you change your mind about the stuff in the shop?”

“I did not say, but—you are right. I have changed my mind. I cannot tell you why. Cumulative evidence that not everything that is insane is necessarily untrue. More than that, I feel that action of some sort is necessary. We have credible proof of the starkly incredible. What do we do?”

Harrison frowned. He was at least as much upset as Pepe.

But besides, there was Valerie. Unless the shop could be explained completely, past all suspicion that it existed upon the impossible, Harrison would be uneasy for himself but desperately uneasy for Valerie. He would be wondering in panicky fashion if his—and Valerie’s—having been born might not be rescinded.

“I think,” he said uncomfortably, “that we’d better go to see Carroll. It seems to follow. We found each other, by accident, which led to my finding Valerie, by accident, and brought it about, by accident, that she told me where he was. It seems to make a sort of pattern. I think we ought to follow it along.”

“I didn’t know you were superstitious,” observed Pepe.

“Anyhow,” said Harrison without conviction, “as former students of his, it would be only natural for us to pay him a visit. Pay our respects, so to speak.”

“Oh, yes!” said Pepe ironically. “Oh, definitely! I spend much of my time looking up professors who used to try to educate me, to thank them for their efforts and display their lack of success. But in this case I agree. Absolutely!”

“Let’s get a cab,” said Harrison. “The American Express can tell us how to get there.”

They walked until a raffish Parisian taxicab hove into sight. They climbed into it, with dignity. It took off at that hair-raising speed all Parisian taxicabs affect.

On the way, Harrison said reflectively, “Do you know, Pepe, this is a silly sort of thing for us to do! Carroll will probably think us crazy!”

“If he will only convince me of it,” said Pepe, “I will be grateful to him forever!”

He sank back in his seat. The taxicab hurtled onward.

Somewhere very high overhead, a jet-plane dove and circled and dove again. Somewhere on the high seas, the multi-nation crew of a NATO rocket-carrying surface ship went through a launching-drill, theoretically getting away all their missiles at imaginary targets at intervals of twenty-two seconds each. There were atomic submarines under the arctic ice-pack. There were underground silos ready to fire trans-continental rockets if or when they received properly authenticated orders to do so. It was officially admitted that enough atomic warheads existed to make, if detonated, the very atmosphere of the earth lethal to all animal and vegetable life.

In a universe designed for human beings to live in, there would have to be safety-devices. People being as they are, it would be necessary. Harrison and Pepe found out where St. Jean-sur-Seine happened to be and promptly arranged to be transported there. They did not feel any high sense of mission, or that they acted with particular wisdom or to great effect. Perhaps there was no reason for any such sensations. Perhaps their journey was just another thing that happened.

A decision on whether or not the happenings that gave them so much concern amounted to a safety-device, of course, would depend on whether one considers that the universe makes sense, or that it does not.

The town of St. Jean-sur-Seine was remarkably like very many other small municipalities over the length and breadth of the French republic. When—as rarely happened—tourists stumbled upon it, they found it both unspoiled and unattractive. Some ate one meal at the principal café. Very, very few returned for a second. It had once had a foundry which had cast some guns for Napoleon’s army. The guns were unsatisfactory, and the foundry closed down. For a time there had been a traffic in truffles, found by misguided pigs and subdued trained dogs for the benefit of men. But truffles, whose mode of propagation has never been satisfactorily settled, did not propagate with much energy near St. Jean-sur-Seine. That traffic died out. In the 1880’s there was an epidemic of measles in which the entire civic body, including the mayor and the whole municipal administration, was simultaneously incapacitated. There had been a murder in the town in the early 1900’s. There was no other history to impress a visitor.

Harrison and Pepe Ybarra arrived on an asthmatic bus in mid-afternoon. It took an inordinate time to locate
M. le Professeur
Carroll. Eventually they found someone who made the identification of
M. le Professeur
with the pleasantly regarded
Américain
Carroll. “
Il frequente le chien et le chat
,” explained the citizen who finally realized whom they sought. “He talks to everyone.” And therefore he had not been thought of a professor.

He escorted them to point out, helpfully, a not particularly trim cottage built upon the site of some former industrial complex. It could only have been the cannon foundry of Napoleonic times. By that time the hour was not far from sunset. There was a bed of flowers outside the cottage, badly in need of attention. There was a section of antique stone wall with the remnants of window-openings to be detected. There were piles of stone, once painstakingly separated from the walls whose upper courses they had formed. Now they were moss-grown and grass-penetrated while they waited for purchasers to cart them away for other structures. No purchaser had appeared. Perhaps no new houses had been built.

Pepe said:

“
Dios mio!
He lives here?”

“I think,” admitted Harrison, “that we’re making fools of ourselves.”

“Nothing,” said Pepe, “would give me greater pleasure than to find proof of exactly that statement! Let’s hope!”

He advanced to the door of the cottage. He knocked. There was a rustling inside. He knocked again. Dead silence. He knocked a third time.

There were footsteps. They seemed reluctant. The door opened a crack. An eye peered out. That was all. Then a voice said irritably, within:

“
Bien! Q’est?
”

Pepe turned astonished eyes to Harrison. There are voices one does not forget and which one recognizes even when they are speaking in French and one has heard them speaking only Mid-Western English with the words “Mary,” “marry” and “merry” not to be told from one another. Harrison nodded. He swallowed.

The single eye continued to regard the two of them around the barely-cracked door. The familiar voice said impatiently:

“
Q’il est?
”

The possessor of the eye did not answer. Harrison raised his voice, in English:

“Professor Carroll, my name is Harrison and I have Pepe Ybarra with me. We took statistical analysis under you at Brevard. Remember?”

Silence for a moment. Then the familiar voice said:

“Now, what the hell?” It paused. “Wait a minute!”

There were scufflings. A woman’s voice. Carroll’s voice said in an undertone something like, “
Il n’parle
.” There was a grunting, and footsteps moved heavily away. Less heavy footsteps went with them. The eye at the cracked door removed itself, but the door remained stationary, as if some one had his foot firmly against it to prevent its being opened by force. Carroll’s voice said something indistinguishable again in French—and then there were sounds as if someone had been impatiently brushed out of the way. Then the door opened. Carroll stared unbelievingly at Harrison and at Pepe on his doorstep.

He was tall and broad as Harrison remembered him, but he was clothed like a Frenchman, which is to say as no professor of methodology and statistical analysis would ordinarily be clothed. He wore corduroy trousers, and his shirt looked as if his wife had made it. He wore French shoes.

He looked from one to the other, and shook his head in astonishment.

“It is Harrison!” he said profoundly. “And Ybarra! Who’d have believed it? What in hell are you doing in France? Particularly, what the hell are you doing in St. Jean-sur-Seine? And what are you doing on my door-step? Come in!”

He stepped aside. Harrison entered with Pepe close behind him. The room contained furniture of the sort an inhabitant of St. Jean-sur-Seine would consider tasteful. It was atrocious. It contained a short, plump Frenchman in a state of apparently desperate agitation. He was attired like a minor and not-too-prosperous
bourgeois
of the year approximately 1800. His shoes were clumsy. His stockings were of coarse worsted. The cloth of his major garments was homespun. He seemed to be entirely unconscious of any oddity in his apparel, and his costume had the look of having been worn as a matter of course. It did not look like fancy-dress. And he looked like a man in acute distress. As Harrison and Pepe entered, he wrung his hands. A door to another room closed decisively.

Carroll ignored the short man for a moment. He shook hands with his two visitors.

“This is a surprise!” he said in a tone compounded of curiosity and vexation. “I didn’t think anybody knew where I was, or would give a damn if he did. How on earth did you happen to find me? And when you found out, why on earth… No. I won’t ask why you bothered. You’ll tell me.”

Then he said abruptly, “This is my brother-in-law, M. Dubois.” In French he said briskly, “These gentlemen were students of mine, some years ago. They have come to pay their respects.”

The plump Frenchman in the astonishing costume seemed a trifle, a small trifle, relieved, without being wholly reassured. He said uncomfortably, “
Enchanté, messieurs
.”

“Have a chair,” said Carroll, with the same briskness. He continued to ignore the plump man’s costume. “Tell me what you’ve been doing, and that sort of thing. I take it you graduated, and you’re doing Europe, and somehow—but Heaven knows how!—you heard of me pining away in obscurity and disgrace, and you’ve called on me for some irrational reason.”

Pepe sat down, rather gingerly. He eyed the man in the antique-style garments. Harrison said awkwardly:

“I’m afraid you’ll think I’m crazy, sir.”

“Not at all! Not at all!” said Carroll. “Why should I?”