She did not seem to understand somehow that the whole conversation was what I was doing about it.
Doug, I must admit, was more direct in his method of objection though no more decisive. As I understand it, he had taken Rose over his knee to whang the daylights out of her with a slipper, and the whole thing was going pretty successfully when her friend Damon came in, attracted by her howls. He quietly picked Doug up by his collar and the slack of his pants, and dropped him out of the window. Then, of course, Rose needed consoling, so the affair really backfired quite a bit.
After that Doug devoted most of his attention to deciding just how much of the land about us would be (or had been, depending how you look at it) occupied by the Solarian Rocket concern, and considering methods of raising capital.
It was on the afternoon of the third day that the man who had spoken to me first strode up the garden from their vehicle with a satisfied expression on his face.
“They’ve traced the error,” he said. “There was a sticky point in one of the computers which made it run wild now and again. It’ll be all okay now.”
“I’m glad you think so,” I said. It didn’t seem to me that a corrected computer was going to set my domestic life to rights again.
“Sure, it will,” he nodded. “They’ll flip you back to where you came from, and then pull in Speckleton in the Solarian offices. I gather Paladanov’s been raising hell. As if it mattered. That poor goop will never get it straight that this is time out for him. However long he has to stay here he can still be returned to within a few minutes of his lift. You, of course, will be returned to the thousandth of a second pretty close tolerance, that.”
“I suppose so,” I said, without zest. “All the same, we’ve been here three days, and during that time my wife”
“Oh, you’ll just have to count that as time out,” he said easily.
“You think so,” I remarked. I felt maybe I had better leave that angle. I looked over the near-desert surrounding us. “It’d be kind of nice to know where and when we spent this time out,” I suggested. “How did the place get this way?”
“This?” he repeated, “I can’t say exactly. It sure caught something, didn’t it? That’d likely be during the Second Atomic War, I guess. Well, I gotta tell the boys we’re pulling out. Where are they?”
“I wouldn’t know, but I could make a goodish guess,” I said bitterly.
Doug and I stood on the narrow terrace path beside his house. The scene at the end of my lopped-off garden was not edifying. Beyond the invisible wall the four men were now climbing into their vehicle. This side of the wall Sylvia and Rose stood clinging together, apparently for mutual support. They had handkerchiefs in their hands. Sometimes they fluttered them at the vehicle, sometimes they dabbed them at their faces. We watched the performance gloomily and in silence. We had already repeated all our comments on the situation to one another a good many times.
“Well, at least they’re going,” said Doug, “I’d begun to wonder if they’d get carried along with us.”
“How much longer have we got?” I asked him.
He looked at his watch. “About five minutes,” he said.
“Ought we to be doing anything special?”
“No. According to them it just happens.”
The vehicle was drawing away now. Sylvia and Rose went on waving, and the men inside waved back. Presently, a couple of hundred yards away, the thing stopped. Apparently that was a safe distance. We could see the four heads under the transparent top turned to watch us. The girls were still clinging together, and still waving.
“Listen,” I said to Doug, “I don’t quite get this. If everything does go back to a thousandth of a second from where we were, how are we going to remember that it ever?”
My sentence was cut off and I had my answer in the same moment. I found myself sitting up in bed. The light was on, and the clock said three-fifteen. Beside my Sylvia was sobbing into her pillow.
I jumped out, and went over to the window. The night was still, and the moon nearly full. Layers of smoky air hung stratified over the valley. Here and there a few lights shone out. I had never before been so glad to see our not very picturesque landscape.
“We’re back,” I said.
Sylvia took no notice. She went on crying into her pillow as if she had not heard.
I decided to remove to the spare room for the rest of the night.
“I shall go and see Groves this afternoon,” I announced at breakfast.
Sylvia looked up. She was not at her best this morning. Very puffy round the eyes, and rather forlornlookingbut I had made up my mind.
“I shall be seeing him about divorce proceedings,” I amplified.
She stared at me. She rallied, and came back absolutely true to form.
“Is this some kind of a joke?” she enquired.
“Joke! Is that what you call your behavier?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said.
I looked hard at her. She didn’t even blink. “Look here,” I said, “you’re not going to pretend to me that you don’t remember your own disgraceful behaviour?”
“Are you trying to insult me?” she asked, coldly.
“I’ve got witnesses, remember. The Saggitts will bear me out.”
“How interesting, George. About what and where and when?”
“Well, of all the barefaced” I began.
Sylvia shook her head reprovingly. “Perhaps I should be angry, but I’ll forgive you, George.”
“You’ll forgive me!”
“Well, it’s hardly fair to hold a person responsible for what he dreams, is it? I expect it has something to do with all those absurd stories you read just before you go to sleep. Now if you were to try reading stories about things that could, really happen, George”
When I set out for the office everything appeared utterly normal. You’d never believe that anything in the least unusual had happened to the place. When I looked carefully at the sidewalk I fancied I could trace the hairline of a crack, but I couldn’t be sure even of that.
Doug came out of his front door just as I was passing.
“Hullo, George.” He looked round at the familiar scene. “It’s Wednesday,” he remarked. “I checked that on the phone—and yesterday was Tuesday. And yet we’ve had three days in between. Queer, isn’t it?”
“I’m glad to hear you say it,” I told him. “I was just beginning to wonder if I am crazy.”
He cocked an eye at me. “So that’s what she’s been telling you. Funny, so has mine.”
We regarded one another.
“It’s… it’s collusion or conspiracy or something,” I said.
“Possibly,” Doug agreed. “But I don’t see what we can do about it. I recommend a good spanking—one wouldn’t be interrupted this time.”
“Er—I don’t think Sylvia” I began.
“Worth trying. Works wonders,” Doug advised. In a different tone of voice, he went on: “I’m just going to start up some tentative enquiries about this property. Are you on?”
For me, the whole recollection was becoming more and more like the dream Sylvia said it was, but Doug evidently meant business.
“Give me a few days,” I suggested.
“Okay. No hurry,” he agreed as our ways parted.
I very nearly dropped out of it. There was such a solidarity of opinion between Sylvia and Roseand the whole occurrence did seem increasingly fantastic in retrospect….
But, fortunately, an announcement in the local paper caught my eye a week or so later. It said: To Ernineline, wife of Alfred Speckleton, a son, Julian.
The End