Asimov's Mysteries

Lancelot said with sour amusement, 'I have asked. A trained biologist has performed autopsies on some of my animals and found nothing. Of course, they didn't know where the animal came from and I took care to take it back before anything would happen to give it away. Lord, even my assistants don't know what I've been doing.'

'But why must you keep it so secret?'

'Just because I can't bring objects back alive. Some subtle molecular derangement. If I published my results, someone -eventing such derangement, :• my basic discovery, and achieve a greater fame, because he would bring back a living man who might give information about the future.'

I saw that quite well. Nor need he say it 'might' be done. It would be done. Inevitably. In fact, no matter what he did, he would lose the credit. I was sure of it.

'However,' he went on, more to himself than to me, 'I can wait no longer. I must announce this, but in such a way that it will be indelibly and permanently associated with me. There must be a drama about it so effective that thereafter there will be no way of mentioning time travel without mentioning me no matter what other men may do in the future. I am going to prepare that drama and you will play a part in it.'

'But what do you want me to do, Lancelot?'

'You'll be my widow.'

I clutched at his arm. 'Lancelot, do you mean-' I cannot quite analyze the conflicting feelings that upset me at that moment.

He disengaged himself roughly. 'Only temporarily. I am not committing suicide I am simply going to bring myself back from three days in the future.'

'But you'll be dead then.'

'Only the "me" that is brought back. The real "me" will be as alive as ever. Like that white rat.' His eyes shifted to a dial and he said, 'Ah, Zero time in a few seconds. Watch the second crucible and the dead mouse.'

Before my eyes it disappeared and there was a phfft sound again.

'Where did it go?'

'Nowhere,' said Lancelot. 'It was only a duplicate. The moment we passed that instant in time at which the duplicate was formed, it naturally disappeared. It was the first mouse that was the original, and it remains alive and well. The same will be true of me. A duplicate "me" will come back dead. The original "me" will be alive. After three days, we will come to the instant at which the duplicate "me" was formed, using the real "me" as a model, and sent back dead. Once we pass that instant the dead duplicate "me" will disappear and the live "me" will remain. Is that clear?'

'It sounds dangerous.'

'It isn't. Once my dead body appears, the doctor will pronounce me dead, the newspapers will report me dead, the undertaker will prepare to bury the dead. I will return to life and announce how I did it. When that happens, I will be more than the discoverer of time travel; I will be the man who came back from the dead. Time travel and Lancelot Stebbins will be publicized so thoroughly and so intermingled, that nothing will extricate my name from the thought of time travel ever again.'

'Lancelot,' I said softly, 'why can't we just announce your discovery? This is too elaborate a plan. A simple announcement will make you famous enough and then we can move to the city perhaps-'

'Quiet? You will do what I say.'

I don't know how long Lancelot was thinking of all this before the obituary actually brought matters to a head. Of course, I don't minimize his intelligence. Despite his phenomenally bad luck, there is no questioning his brilliance.

He had informed his assistants before they had left of the experiments he intended to conduct while they were gone. Once they testified it would seem quite natural that he should be bent over a particular set of reacting chemicals and that he should be dead of cyanide poisoning to all appearances.

'So you see to it that the police get in touch with my assistants at once. You know where they can be reached. I want no hint of murder or suicide, or anything but accident, natural and logical accident. I want a quick death certificate from the doctor, a quick notification to the newspapers.'

I said, 'But Lancelot, what if they find the real you?'

'Why should they?' he snapped. 'If you find a corpse, do you start searching for the living replica also?

No one will look for me and I will stay quietly in the temporal chamber for the interval. There are toilet facilities and I can bring in enough sandwich fixings to keep me.'

He added regretfully, 'I'll have to make do without coffee, though, till it's over. I can't have anyone smelling unexplained coffee here while I'm supposed to be dead. Well, there's plenty of water and it's only three days.'

I clasped my hands nervously and said, 'Even if they do find you, won't it be the same thing anyway? There'll be a dead "you" and a living "you" -' It was myself I was trying to console, myself I was trying to prepare for the inevitable disappointment.

But he turned on me, shouting, 'No, it won't be the same thing at all. It will all become a hoax that failed.

I'll be famous, but only as a fool.'

'But Lancelot,' I said cautiously, 'something always goes wrong.'

'Not this time.'

'But you always say "not this time" and yet something always-'

He was white with rage and his irises showed clear all about their circle. He caught my elbow and hurt it terribly but I dared not cry out. He said, 'Only one thing can go wrong and that is you. If you give it away, if you don't play your part perfectly, if you don't follow the instructions exactly, I-I-' He seemed to cast about for a punishment. 'I'll kill you.'

I turned my head away in sheer terror and tried to break loose, but he held on grimly. It was remarkable how strong he could be when he was in a passion. He said, 'Listen to me! You have done me a great deal of harm by being you, but I have blamed myself for marrying you in the first place and for never finding the time to divorce you in the second. But now I have my chance, despite you, to turn my life into a vast success. If you spoil even that chance, I will kill you. I mean that literally.'

I was sure he did. 'I'll do everything you say,' I whispered, and he let me go.

He spent a day on his machinery. 'I've never transported more than a hundred grams before,' he said, calmly thoughtful.

I thought: It won't work. How can it?

The next day he adjusted the device to the point where I needed only to close one switch. He made me practice that particular switch on a dead circuit for what seemed an interminable time.

'Do you understand now? Do you see exactly how it is done?'

'Yes.'

Then do it, when this light flashes and not a moment before.'

It won't work, I thought. 'Yes,' I said.

He took his position and remained in stolid silence. He was wearing a rubber apron over a laboratory jacket.

The light flashed, and the practice turned out to be worth while for I pulled the switch automatically before thought could stop me or even make me waver.

For an instant there were two Lancelots before me, side by side, the new one dressed as the old one was but more rumpled. And then the new one collapsed and lay still.

'All right,' cried the living Lancelot, stepping off the carefully marked spot. 'Help me. Grab his legs.'

I marveled at Lancelot. How, without wincing or showing any uneasiness, could he carry his own dead body, his own body of three days in the future. Yet he held it under its arms without showing any more emotion than if it had been a sack of wheat.

I held it by the ankles, my stomach turning at the touch. It was still blood-warm to the touch; freshly dead. Together we carried it through a corridor and up a flight of stairs, down another corridor and into a room. Lancelot had it already arranged. A solution was bubbling in a queer all-glass contraption inside a closed section, with a movable glass door partitioning it off.