John D. MacDonald
Amphiskios[1]
Any diagrammatic presentation of the time concept must perforce be a simplification. Time is neither pulsations nor is it a winding river nor yet coiled upon itself like a spring. To best understand it and to free it of metaphysical confusions we must revert a full five thousand years to the basic Einstein conjectures, many of them since disproven in the mighty laboratory of stellar space. Draw two lines intersecting. An X. Where they cross is the “now”.
The upper half is the past, the lower half the future.
Both the understandable past and the forseeable future are severely limited by the sides which form a crude, angular hour-glass. The sidelines represent the speed of light, the infinite Fitzgerald Contraction, the bitter barrier of existence.
Each soul is a grain of sand in this hour-glass, but suspended forever at the point of “now”. Since the origin of this concept twenty-five generations of experimentation have proved that man, pinned in the focal point of existence, can move timewise neither up into the past nor down into the future.
Thus it has been conceded that escape from this trap of time, from the jaws of inevitability, lies in the possibility of a lateral movement, which, of course, assumes a penetration of the barrier of the speed of light.
Assuming the possibility of lateral movement, this movement could thus be reversed and the person which had existed for a moment OUTSIDE the time barrier would return at an alien focal point, thus completing the illusion of a “journey” within time.
All this is, of course, a simplification to extreme as to render the entire exposition almost meaningless.
“Narración de Viajes en Tiempo” — Agabanzo Historical Collection — Martian Micro-library
Chapter I
Four Are Chosen
Howard Loomis glanced down at the dashboard clock and cursed the long-winded customer who had delayed him for over two hours. His sample cases packed the back seat. He had already reported to the sales manager that he would spend the night in Alexandria, seventy miles away.
He yawned, lit a cigarette and ran the window down, hoping the cold air would keep sleep away. He was a thin and nervous young man with a mobile mouth, a receding hairline and driving ambition.
He began to think of the prospects in Alexandria then as sleep welled up over him. His hands relaxed on the wheel. He awakened with a start as his front right wheel went off onto the shoulder. The big car swerved and he fought it back under control.
It was a clear cold night — below freezing. It had rained during the afternoon but the road was dry.
He decided to increase his speed, depending on the added responsibility to keep him awake.
In the white glow of his headlights he saw a bridge ahead — a bridge over railroad tracks.
The tires whined on the concrete, changed tone as they hit the steel tread of the bridge.
The bridge was coated with thin clear ice.
As the back end began to swing Howard Loomis bit down on his lower lip, fighting both panic and sheer disbelief that this could be happening to him.
The back end swung in the other direction and there was a grinding smash as it tore through the side railing.
The big car tipped. Howard Loomis caught a glimpse of the steel tracks far below. Ridiculously the thought that he could not live through the fall was intermingled with the thoughts of the potential customers in Alexandria.
There was the spinning silence of the fall, the sickening lunge through space, and…
The third show was coming up and she knew that it would be rough and unpleasant. During the second show a drunk who fancied himself a comic, after chanting, “Take it off!” had come out onto the floor to offer assistance. There would be more drunks for the third show.
Her name was Mary Callahan — Maurine Callaix on the bill — and she was a tall girl with the blue-black hair, milky skin and blue eyes of her race.
She was checking the concealed hooks in her working dress when Sally, the new singer, came into the dressing room and stood watching her.
“How can you do it, Mary?” she asked.
“Do what, kid?”
“I mean, get out there in front of all those people and—”
Mary smiled tightly. “It’s just a business. I was the gal who was going to knock them dead in ballet. But I grew too big. It doesn’t bother me any more.”
Sally looked at her, shook her head and said, “I could never do it.”
Mary Callahan stared at the smaller girl for a moment. Mary Callahan thought of the last three years, of the ten months’ hospital bill her mother had accumulated while dying, of the money for milk and meat and bread for the twin nephews.
“I hope you don’t have to do it. Ever.”
“How about Rick?” Sally asked.
Mary Callahan frowned. “The guy worries me. I don’t know what gave him the idea that I was his prize package. He’s a hophead, dearie. He stopped me at the door tonight and I had to slap him across the teeth to get by him.”
“Was that safe?” Sally asked.
“He hasn’t got the nerve to try anything. I hope.”
She got the call and went on, pausing just off the floor for the blue spot to pick her up, then walking on in a slow half dance to the sultry beat of the tom-tom, wearing the mechanical lascivious smile, reaching gracefully for the first concealed snap on the evening gown.
When Rick came into the glow of the spot the music faltered and stopped.
Mary Callahan watched his hand, watched the gun.
Suddenly she knew that he would shoot She saw his pinpoint pupils, the twisted mouth, the stained teeth.
She saw the gun come up. She looked down the barrel, saw his finger whiten on the trigger, saw the first orange-red bloom of the flower of death and…
Joe Gresham padded across the I beam, his eyes fixed on the upright opposite him. He had learned three years before that when you’re on the high iron you never look at your feet. Because then you’d see the cars below, like beetles, the people like small slow bugs, and something would happen to your stomach.
He was a sun-hardened man, with wide shoulders, knotted hands and an impassive though good-humored face.
Above him he heard the rivets clanking into the bucket, the buck of the hammer. The sun was bright.
When he heard the shout, he stopped dead. The red-hot rivet struck him just above the right ear.
For long seconds he fought for balance, gave up, tried to drop in such a way that his hands would clasp the girder on which he had been walking.
But he had waited too long, and his hands merely slapped the girder.
He spun down through the warm morning air and it was as though the earth spun slowly around him. Each time he saw the street it was startlingly closer. And as he fell he thought, “This isn’t happening to me. This can’t be the end of Joe Gresham!”
And…
Stacey Murdock took three more smooth crawl strokes, rolled over onto her back and looked back at the lake shore, at the vast white house, the wide green lawns.
She grinned as she wondered if the two muscle-men her father had hired were still sitting in the house waiting for her to get up. Nothing could be more ridiculous than Daddy’s periodic kidnaping scares. Why kidnaping was out of fashion! Even when the gal in question would one day inherit more millions than she had fingers and toes.
Stacey was a trim, small girl with pale blond hair, a rather sallow face and a wide, petulant mouth.
The party last night had been a daisy. The cold water of the lake felt good. Best thing in the world for a hangover.