There was a sodden thump near by. Gallegher whirled, startled. A body had fallen out of empty air and lay staring blankly up in the middle of his rose garden. His stomach cold, Gallegher investigated.
The corpse was that of a middle-aged man, between fifty and sixty, with a silky dark mustache and eye-glasses. Unmistakably, though, it was Gallegher. A Gallegher aged and altered by time variable c—c, now, not b any more — and with a hole burned through the breast by a heat-ray projector.
At that precise moment, Gallegher realized, corpse b must have vanished from the police morgue, like its predecessor.
Uh-huh. In time-pattern c, then, he wasn’t to die till he was over fifty — but even then a heat-ray would kill him. Depressing. Gallegher thought of Cantrell, who’d taken the ray projector, and shivered, slightly. Matters were growing more and more confusing.
Well, presently the police would arrive. In the meantime, he was hungry. With a last shrinking glance at his own dead, aged face, Gallagher returned to the laboratory, picked up the Lybblas on the way, and herded them into the kitchen, where he fixed a makeshift supper. There were steaks, luckily, and Lybblas gobbled their portions like pigs, talking excitedly about their fantastic plans. They’d decided to make Gallegher their Grand Vizier.
“Is he wicked?” the fat one demanded.
“I don’t know. Is he?”
“He’s gotta be wicked. In the novels the Grand Vizier’s always wicked. Wheel” The fat Lybbla choked on a bit of steak. “Ug…uggle…ulp! The world is ours!” Deluded little creatures, Gallegher mused. Incurable romanticists. Their optimism was, to say the least, remarkable.
His own troubles engrossed him as he slid the plates into the Burner—“It Burns Them Clean”—and fortified himself with a beer. The mental hookup device should work. He knew of no reason why it shouldn’t. His genius subconscious had really built the thing—
Hell, it had to work. Otherwise the Lybblas wouldn’t have mentioned that the gadget had been invented by Gallegher, long in their past. But he couldn’t very well use Hellwig as a guinea pig.
A rattle at the door made Gallegher snap his fingers in triumph. Grandpa, of course! That was the answer.
Grandpa appeared, beaming. “Had fun. Circuses are always fun. Here’s a couple of hundred for you, stupid. Got to playing stud poker with the tattooed man and the guy who dives off a ladder into a tank. Nice fellows. I’m seeing ’em tomorrow.”
“Thanks,” Gallegher said. The two hundred was penny-ante stuff, but he didn’t want to antagonize the old guy now. He managed to lure Grandpa into the laboratory and explain that he wanted to make an experiment.
“Experiment away,” said Grandpa, who found the liquor organ.
“I’ve made some charts of my own mental patterns and located my bump of mathematics. It amounts to that. The atomic structure of pure learning, maybe — It’s a bit vague. But I can transfer the contents of my mind to yours, and I can do it selectively. I can give you my talent for mathematics.”
“Thanks,” Grandpa said. “Sure you won’t be needing it?”
“I’ll still have it. It’s the matrix, that’s all.”
“Matrix?”
“Matrix Pattern. I’ll just duplicate that pattern in your brain. See?”
“Sure,” Grandpa said, and allowed himself to be led to a chair where a wired helmet was fitted over his head. Gallegher donned another helmet and began to fiddle with the device. It made noises and flashed lights. Presently a low buzzing rose to a erescendo scream, and then stopped. That was all.
Gallegher removed both helmets. “How do you feel?” he asked.
“Fit as a fiddle.”
“No different?”
“I want a drink.”
“I didn’t give you my drinking ability, because you already had your own. Unless I doubled it—” Gallegher paled. “If I gave you my thirst, too, you couldn’t stand it. You’d die.”
Muttering something about blasted foolishness, Grandpa replenished his dry palate. Gallegher followed him and stared perplexedly at the old fellow.
“I couldn’t have made a mistake. The charts — What is the value of pi?” He snapped suddenly.
“A dime is plenty,” Grandpa said. “For a big slice.”
Gallegher cursed. The machine must have worked. It had to work, for a number of reasons, chief of which was the question of logic. Perhaps—
“Let’s try it again. I’ll be the subject this time.”
“O.K.,” Grandpa said contentedly.
“Only — hm-m-m. You haven’t got any talents. Nothing unusual. I couldn’t be sure whether it worked or not. If you’d only been a concert pianist or a singer,” Gallegher moaned.
“Hah!”
“Wait a minute. I’ve an idea. I’ve got connection at a teleview studio — maybe I can wangle something.” Gallegher used the visor. It took some time, but presently he managed to induce Senor Ramon Firez, the Argentine tenor, to hop an air-taxi and come down to the laboratory in a hurry.
“Firez!” Gallegher gloated. “That’ll prove it, one way or the other. One of the greatest voices in the hemisphere! If I suddenly find myself signing like a lark, I’ll know I can use the gadget on Hellwig.”
Firez, it seemed, was nightclubbing, but at the studio’s request he shelved his nocturnal activities for the nonce and appeared within ten minutes, a burly, handsome man with a wide, mobile mouth. He grinned at Gallegher.
“You say there is trouble, that I can help with my great voice, and so I am at your service. A recording, is it?”
“Something of the sort.”
“To win a bet, perhaps?”
“You can call it that,” Gallegher said, easing Firez into a chair. “I want to record the mental patterns of your voice.”
“Ah-h, that is something new! Explain, please!”
The scientist obediently launched into a completely meaningless jargon that served the purpose of keeping Señor Firez pacified while he made the necessary charts. That didn’t take long. The significant curves and patterns showed unmistakably. The graph that represented Firez’s singing ability — his great talent.
Grandpa watched skeptically while Gallegher made adjustments, fitted the helmets into place, and turned on the device. Again lights flashed and wires hummed. And stopped.
“It is a success? May I see—”
“It takes awhile to develop the prints,” Gallegher lied unscrupulously. He didn’t want to burst into song while Firez was still present. “I’ll bring the results out to your apartment as soon as they’re done.”
“Ah-h, good. Muy bien.” White teeth flashed. “I am always happy to be of service, amigo!”
Firez went away, Gallegher sat down and looked at the wall, waiting. Nothing happened. He had a slight headache, that was all.
“Through fiddling?” Grandpa demanded.
“Yeah. Do-re-mi-fa-so—”
“What?”
“Shut up. I Pagliacci—”
“You’re crazy as a bedbug.”
“I love a parade!” howled the frantic Gallegher, his tuneless voice cracking. “Oh, hell! Seated one day at the organ—”
“She’ll be coming ’round the mountain,” Grandpa chimed in chummily. “She’ll be coming ’round the mountain—”
“I was weary and ill at ease—”
“She’ll be coming ’round the mountain—”