Breathing heavily, and dabbing the scratches on his face with his
handkerchief, Breton ran downstairs and out to the car. He had one more
task to perform that day.
The relatively simple one of projecting John Breton, not into Time A,
but into eternity.
XV
Blaize Convery carried a tapering plastic cup of coffee to his desk and
placed it carefully at the right-hand side.
He sat down on the creaking swing-chair and opened the desk's flat
central drawer. From it he took his pipe, tobacco pouch, lighter, pipe
tamper and a bundle of white woolly cleaners. These he arranged in an
orderly square, formating with the vaporing coffee cup, with the air of
a master craftsman setting out his tools. He then opened a deep drawer,
took out a thick oatmeal-colored file, and placed it in the center of the
little quadrangle he had so carefully prepared. With all the necessary
formalities completed, he gave a deep sigh of contentment and began to
leaf through the file.
It had been a dull, routine sort of a day -- most of it spent doing
legwork on a case which had been successfully prosecuted a month earlier,
but which had involved a mammoth tangle of legal loose-ends. He had been
in and out of his car fifty times in the pursuit of three unimportant
signatures, his back hurt and his feet felt swollen inside his shoes.
But this was his part of the day -- the extra hour he often took when
his shift had officially ended, the hour in which he was free to follow
his instincts along any ghost-trail they could discern.
He sipped his coffee, filled and lit his pipe, and allowed their subtle
influences to carry him into realms of concentration where the yellowed
sheets and blurred carbon characters seemed to come to life and whisper
the innermost thoughts of the men whose names they preserved. Within
minutes, Convery was caught up in his own form of time travel, and the
big, crowded office bleached away as he burrowed into the past, paring
it gently, layer by layer. . . .
"Come on, Blaize," a voice boomed in his ear. "Snap out of it, boy."
Convery looked up, struggling to wrench his mind back into his body,
and saw the sandy eyebrows and splay-toothed smile of Boyd Leyland,
another lieutenant in the homicide division.
"Hi, Boyd." Convery concealed his annoyance -- Leyland was a good friend
and an able cop. "I didn't know you were on today."
"I'm not!" Leyland always sounded triumphant. "I got Saturdays off this
month, but I wouldn't let the team down. Not me, boy, not me."
Convery stared at him blankly for a second, then he remembered. This
was October and the Saturday night bowling sessions were on again.
"Oh, we're bowling tonight.".He failed to sound enthusiastic.
"Of course we are. Let's go, boy!"
"Look, Boyd, I don't think I can make it tonight."
Leyland was instantly sympathetic. "Are they working the ass off you, too?
Last week I had to do three . . ." He broke off as his gaze took in the file
opened in front of Convery. His jaw dropped and he beckoned excitedly to a
group of men standing nearby.
"Hey, fellows -- he's at it again! You know how old Professor Convery's
spending his Saturday night? He's back on the Spiedel case!" Incredulity
made Leyland's voice almost falsetto. "He's back on the Goddam Spiedel
case!"
"I'm too beat to bowl tonight," Convery announced defensively. "I just
want to sit here."
"Bull!" Leyland shot out his big red hands, closed the old file and
dragged Convery out of his chair. "We need all the steady men we can
get this year. The exercise'll do you good, anyway."
"All right, all right."
Convery saw he had no chance of winning. While the others waited, he
regretfully tidied up his desk then joined them as they rolled down the
corridor towards the elevator. The noisy delight his workmates were
taking in the prospects of an evening of bowling and beer failed to
communicate itself to him.
Yesterday he had talked to a guilty man.
Convery was coldly certain of Breton's guilt, and he also now believed
he would never be able to bring Breton to justice -- but these were not
the things which gnawed at his soul. It was the fact that he could not
understand the nature of the crime.
Something very strange had happened in the Breton household nine years
ago, and the effects of it were being felt to this day, flaring up to
their own occult rhythm like the symptoms of an ineradicable disease.
But what had happened? Convery had blunted his mental armory on the
problem, and he was left with a baffled yearning to penetrate that
household, to live there, to grill and sift and analyze until he knew
both its members better than they knew themselves. . . .
"Come on, Blaize." Leyland opened the door of his car. "I'll give you
a ride to the alley."
Convery glanced around the police parking lot, suddenly aware of the old
icy churning in his belly. "No thanks. I'll take my own -- I might have to
leave early."
"Hop in," Leyland commanded. "You won't be leaving early, boy."
Convery shook his head. "I might be leaving late, then. Go ahead --
I'll see you there."
Leyland shrugged and folded himself into his car. Convery found his
Plymouth in the rapidly growing dusk and slid in behind the wheel, with
the siren-song loud in his ears. At the first intersection he swung
away from behind Leyland's car and gunned the Plymouth across town,
fleeing as though his friends would come after him. They would not do
that, of course, but they would be hurt and caustic; just as Gina had
been when he'd walked out of the kids' birthday party. But his demon
was perched firmly on his shoulder, and his destiny was never to resist
its blandishments.
Reaching the avenue in which the Bretons lived, Convery slowed down
and drifted his car between the walls of trees with an almost silent
engine. The big house was in complete darkness. Disappointment welled up
in him as he brought the car to a halt. So the demon had deceived him,
as had happened so many times in the past. Convery glanced at his watch
and calculated he could reach the bowling alley in time to get away with
a claim to have been filling up with gas. It was the sensible thing to
do, and yet . . .
"Ah, hell!"
He exclaimed in disgust as he found himself getting out of the car to walk
back to the house. Above him the darkening sky was teeming with meteorites,
but they scarcely registered on his brain. The gravel of the drive crunched
underfoot as he moved up the shadowed tunnel of shrubbery and along the
side, past the porch.
He stepped onto the patio and surveyed the rear of the house. No lights
there, either -- which was what he had expected. The garage doors were
open, showing that John Breton's Turbo-Lincoln was gone and that
Mrs. Breton's sports model was still there. Obviously, the Bretons had
gone out together. Convery flicked his teeth with a thumbnail. He had a
definite impression that the Bretons did not go around much together, but
there was nothing to stop them spending an evening in each other's company
if they wanted to try it out. There was certainly no law against it --
which was not the case where snooping on private property was concerned.
Convery rocked on his heels, undecided, and was turning away when the
kitchen door creaked faintly.
He went closer and saw it was ajar and moving slightly in the evening
breeze. It swung wide open, emitting a billow of warm air, when he pushed
it gingerly with his toe. At last provided with a vestige of a reason
for being there, Convery went into the dark kitchen and put on the lights.
"Anybody there?" he shouted, feeling slightly self-conscious.
A frenzy of hammering broke out immediately in the upper part of the
house, and he thought he could hear a woman's cries. Flicking lights on
as he went, Convery ran up the stairs and followed the sound to a front
bedroom. The hammering was coming from a closet. He tried to open it
and discovered unbreakable fishing line lapped around the handles. The
steel-hard knots flaked his fingernails away as he tried to open them.
He stood back and kicked one of the handles completely off the door.
A fraction of a second later, Kate Breton was in his arms, and the arctic
exultation was pouring through him as he realized the demon was going to be
kind to him after all.
"Mrs. Breton," he said urgently. "What's going on here? Who locked you
in the closet?"
"Jack Breton," she said. Her eyes were empty, drained.
"You mean your husband did this?"
"No -- not my husband. It was . . ." She stopped, drew a shuddering
breath and he saw awareness flood back into her, subtly altering the
lines of her face. Invisible barriers clanged into place between them.
"Tell me what happened, Mrs. Breton."
"You've got to help me, Lieutenant." She was still afraid, but the period
of mindless panic had passed. "I think my husband has been kidnapped. He's
at Lake Pasco. Will you drive me there? Will you drive me to Lake Pasco?"
"But . . ."
"Have mercy on me, Lieutenant -- I'm asking you for my
husband!"
"Let's go," he said grimly. An opportunity had passed, but he had a
feeling that Lake Pasco was the place where he would finally learn to
talk with his hands.
XVI
In the first part of the journey to the lodge, Breton came near to death
several times through trying to take corners in powered drifts which would
have been beyond the design limits of a racing jet.
He was well clear of the city before he regained enough control of his
right foot to let him lift it off the floor, and the big car slowed its
nightmare rush through the darkness. To get killed in a car crash at this
stage would be pathetic, he reminded himself, although it would have some
interesting consequences. As soon as the activity of his central nervous
system came to an end, the chronomotor module embedded in his left wrist
would be robbed of its energy source -- and his body would vanish back
into Time A.
The situation could be even more intriguing if his death was not
instantaneous, but occurred in an ambulance rushing him to a hospital.
How, he wondered, would the ambulance team even begin to explain the
disappearance of one full-size John Doe?
The mental game calmed Breton's nerves sufficiently to let him think
constructively about what had to be done within the next hour. In outline,
the schedule of events was simple -- kill John Breton, transport his
body to the large-bore drilling site, and get rid of it. But there could
be practical difficulties. Suppose, for instance, that the drilling
operation was running behind its timetable and there was a crew working
around the clock . . .?
Relieved at finding himself a rational being again, Breton began looking
for the side road where he had earlier noticed the construction company's
sign. As soon as he began to pay attention to it the road started to seem
unfamiliar. He slowed the car even further and scanned the east side of
the road, hesitating at every winding side track, until he saw the looming
gray-white square of the sign. His headlights picked out the name of the
Breton Consultancy in one of the panels allocated to the sub-contractors,
and he swung the car off the highway. It waltzed gently along the deep
ruts made by heavy construction vehicles, sending dust clouds curling
away on each side.
Less than five minutes from the highway the side road petered out
into a flat, chewed-up area where earth-moving equipment had been at
work. Breton zigzagged the car, its headlights searching through ranges
of building materials, until he saw the familiar turret-shaped structures
of the boring rigs. There was nobody near them or anywhere else on the
machine-scarred site. He wheeled around and drove back to the highway,
contented with his return on the few minutes the detour had taken.
As he drove north, he felt his confidence grow stronger. For a time it had
seemed as though things were going wrong, as though the Time B world was
going to betray its creator, but it had been his own fault. Somehow the
days John, Kate and he had spent together had robbed him of his former
strength and certainty. . . .
The night sky ahead of the car was suddenly lit up with a pulsing brilliance.
A miniature sun arced across his vision on a descending curve, huge
writhing blankets of flame breaking away behind it as it vanished behind
a tree-clad ridge less than a mile away. The trees were outlined in the
rayed light of an explosion, and then the awful sound of it engulfed
the car, paralyzing Breton with primeval fears. A series of diminishing
thunderclaps followed the original explosion, dying away into Olympian
grumbles and growls, in the air all around.
Breton found himself drenched with sweat, hurtling on through the night
in unearthly silence. Several seconds pounded by before his power of
reason re-emerged timidly from its cave into the twentieth century and
told him he had witnessed a meteorite impact. He swore feebly under his
breath and tightened his grip on the steering wheel.
The sky,
he thought with abrupt, baffled conviction,
is my enemy.
He reached the crest of the ridge and far away to his left saw topaz
fragments of flame stirring on the sloping grasslands.
Within a matter of minutes the whole area would be overrun with curious
sightseers. Breton knew the mentality of the average Montana city-dweller
-- even a simple brushfire was enough to bring them pouring out of
their dessicated houses, ridiculously grateful at having somewhere to
go in their brand-new cars, which -- big and fast though they were --
were unable to perform their function as magic carpets in the face of
the prairie vastness.
An event like a meteor strike would draw them in from a hundred miles,
and even further when the local radio stations got hold of the news.
It meant that on the return journey along this same road, with a dead
man in the trunk, he would probably be working his way through heavy
traffic. There was a strong possibility that the police would have had
to set up traffic control points. Breton got a vision of hard-faced,
blue-uniformed men slapping the trunk lid as he crawled by, just as
Lieutenant Convery had done the day before.
The prospect alarmed him, yet -- in a way -- the meteorite had done him
a favor. There would be little likelihood of anybody taking note of, or
remembering, the movements of one car. He increased his speed slightly
to get clear of the area before the traffic began to pile up.