"Of course we did," Jack replied, laying the faintest stress on the pronoun.
"That's one of them over by the window."
"But there was more. The old woman who ran the store gave me something
else, free of charge, because we were on our honeymoon. What was it?"
Kate's face was intent.
"I . . ." Jack floundered, wondering what had gone wrong. She had beaten
him, effortlessly. "I can't remember -- but that doesn't prove anything."
"Doesn't it?" Kate stared at him triumphantly. "Doesn't it?"
"No, it doesn't," John Breton put in. "I can't remember that episode
either, honey. I don't remember that old stick giving us anything."
He sounded regretful.
"John!" Kate turned to him. "That tiny pair of moccasins -- for a baby."
"I still don't remember. I've never seen them around."
"We never had a baby, did we?"
"That's the advantage of family planning." John Breton smirked drunkenly
into his glass. "You don't have any family."
"Your jokes," Kate said bitterly. "Your indestructible, polyeurethane
jokes."
Jack listened with a peculiar sense of dismay. He had created these
two people as surely as if he had stalked the Earth amid Biblical
lightnings and breathed life into handfuls of clay, yet they had lived
independently.
For nine years, he thought, with an indefinable feeling
of having been cheated. He fingered the oily metal of the pistol in his
pocket.
John Breton flicked the rim of his empty glass, making silvery ringing
sounds. "The point is that we know this man is telling the truth. I can
see myself sitting over there;
you
can see me sitting over there. Look
at that tie clip he's wearing -- I'll bet it's that gold wire one you
made at that jewelry class you went to before we were married.
Is it . . . Jack?"
Jack Breton nodded. He opened the worn clip and reached it across to
Kate. She hesitated, then took it from him in such a way that their
hands did not touch. Her eyes narrowed with a look of incongruous
professionalism as she held the clip up to the light and a pang of
affection checked his breathing. She stood up abruptly and left the room,
leaving the two men facing each other across an open hearth with its
dying, whitening logs.
"There's more to tell, isn't there?" John Breton sounded carefully casual.
"Yes. It took another year to modify the chronomotor to make it possible
for me to travel across time. There's a negligible amount of power
involved, but the demand is continuous, I think that to get here I had
to travel back in time for perhaps a millionth of a second -- which is,
of course, just as 'impossible' as going back for a year -- thus causing
a kind of temporal ricochet into -- "
"That's not what I mean," John cut in. "I'm asking you what your plans are.
What happens next?"
"Well, what do you think
ought
to happen? As I told you earlier tonight --
you're living here with my wife, and I want her back." Jack Breton watched
his other self carefully, and saw that his reaction was surprisingly
small.
"But Kate is my wife. You told us yourself that you let your wife go out
and get murdered."
"And so did you, John. But it was I who gave up nine years to finding
a way to go back and correct your mistake. Don't forget that, old friend."
John Breton's mouth tightened obstinately. "There's something terrible
wrong with your reasoning there, but I still want to know what happens
next. Have you got a gun in your pocket?"
"Of course not," Jack said quickly. "I couldn't think of shooting you,
John. It'd be like shooting myself." He paused, listening to the sound
of Kate upstairs opening and slamming drawers. "No, we have an eternal
triangle here, and the only reasonable way to resolve it is for the lady
concerned to choose one corner or the other."
"Some choice!"
"But it
is
a real choice, John. Nine years have changed us both. We're
two different men, each with a claim on Kate. I want to stay here for
a week or so, to let her get used to the idea, and then . . ."
"You're crazy! You can't just move in on us like that!"
John Breton's sudden anger surprised Jack. "But why not? It seems a
reasonable proposition to me."
"Reasonable! You appear out of the blue..
"I appeared out of the blue once before, and Kate was glad of it then,"
Jack interrupted. "Maybe I still have something to offer her. You two
don't seem to be hitting it off too well."
"That's our business."
"I agree -- yours and Kate's and mine. Our business, John."
John Breton jumped to his feet, but Kate came into the room before he
could speak. He turned his back to her and began kicking the burnt-out
logs, sending topaz sparks twisting up into the darkness of the chimney.
"I found it," Kate said quietly. She held out both hands, showing an
identical gold tie clip in each. "They are the same, John. And I know
my own work."
"How do you like that?" John Breton spoke bitterly to the colored stones
of the fireplace. "The tie clip convinced her. Anybody could rustle up a
good facsimile of me -- that meant nothing -- but she knew nobody could
reproduce a complicated thing like her Goddam tie clip."
"This is no time to be childish." Kate stared at John's back, wasting
one of her exaggerated looks of scorn on it.
"We're all tired," Jack said. "I could use some sleep."
Kate hesitantly crossed the room towards him, holding out his clip.
Their fingers touched momentarily as he took it, swamping him with a
fierce yearning to wrap his arms around her achingly familiar body with
its taut, horizontally wrinkled silks. Their eyes met and locked for an
instant, forming an invisible axis around which the rest of the universe
seemed to seethe like clouds in a whirlwind. Before she turned away,
he thought he glimpsed in her face all the compassion and forgiveness
he had needed so desperately for the past nine years.
Later, he stood at the window of the guest room, listening to the
old house settling down for what was left of the night. One week, he
thought. That's how long I'm prepared to wait. By that time I should
be able to step into John Breton's shoes without anyone -- apart from
Kate -- being able to tell the difference.
As he was turning away from the window, the night sky was suddenly
splintered into starry fragments by a shower of criss-crossing meteors.
He got into bed and tried to sleep, but he found himself watching --
with a strange uneasiness -- for further shooting stars.
Finally, he got up, pulled the drapes and allowed himself to sink into
the warm, black ocean of sleep.
V
John Breton opened his eyes slowly and stared through dim amber light,
waiting -- with a kind of pleasant terror -- for the onrushing tides of
identity to return to him. (There's a rectangle of pale luminosity: what
is it? Bedroom window in dim light? Some unfamiliar aspect of disembodied
soul? Movie screen? Extra-dimensional doorway?) He was sometimes convinced
that each night's sleep brought a dissolving of personality, and that
its accurate reformation in the morning depended entirely on his being
given the right clues. If he woke up in different surroundings, with
different possessions -- then he could take up another life altogether,
with nothing more than an uneasy suspicion that something had gone wrong.
There was a movement in the bed beside him and he turned towards it.
Kate's dreaming face. . . .
Breton came fully awake, remembering the previous night and the arrival
of Jack Breton. The man was a thinner, shabbier, more intense version
of himself. He was a cipher, a flawed human being who apparently saw
nothing strange in the idea of asking a man and his wife to accept him
into their home, and presenting them with such a preposterous scheme.
So Kate was supposed to choose one or the other!
Breton tried to recall why he had not driven his fist into the familiar
face. He had been drunk, of course, but there was more to it than that.
Was it something to do with the way in which Kate had seemed to accept
the idea, while pretending not to take it too seriously?
Or was it that the fantastic scheme somehow dovetailed into the flaws in
their marriage? Kate and he had been together for eleven years, during
which time they had seen their ups and downs, and an even more significant
motion -- the drifting apart. The only way they could reach each other
now was by wielding longer and longer knives. It seemed that the more
money he made, the more Kate needed; so he worked even harder, while
she became more distant and disinterested. A frigid, sterile escalation.
The arrival of Jack Breton could mean an effortless and guilt-free escape.
Kate and Jack could go away together, or -- the idea gusted coolly through
Breton's mind --
he
could bow out of the situation and leave them to
it. He could take some money and go anywhere -- Europe, South America,
there was even the Moon. Buzz Silvera's last letters from Florida had
as good as said they were taking any competent practical engineer who
was prepared to go.
Breton was lying in his fleecy tunnel of warmth, bemusedly trying the
concept on for size, when the tardy intellectual realization came that
his other self had not been part of a dream. He would have to be faced,
all day and for many days to come. Shivering slightly, Breton got out
of bed, put on his dressing gown and went down for breakfast.
Kate Breton kept her eyes closed until John had left the room; then,
without getting up, she made walking movements with her legs until
the sheets were a crumpled mound at the foot of the bed, and she was
lying naked, paralleling the grayed white plane of the ceiling. She lay
still for a moment, wondering if John was in the shower or if he had
gone downstairs. He might come back into the room and see her lying in
self-conscious nudity, but that would be a non-event. ("Anthropologically
speaking, you're not quite right," he had said reflectively, only a
month earlier. "The female is characterized by conical things -- and
yours are cylindrical.")
Jack Breton would not have said anything like that, Kate thought,
remembering the thin, shabby figure with the eyes of a latter day
Swinburne. The man projected emotion with silent-screen intensity, but
-- although she had mentally disassociated herself -- she had felt the
responses begin within her, pervasive and unstoppable. Jack Breton was
almost the archetype of the Romance hero, sacrificing his life to an
unattainable vision. And behind that pain-shadowed face was
something
which had driven him to challenge and conquer Time itself, for the sake
of her, Kate Breton. I have become unique, she thought gratefully.
The feeling of excitement centering around her like an emotional cyclone
grew even stronger, triggering slow undulations in her torso: Kate got up
and stared at herself with speculative eyes in the long mirror.
Jack Breton stood at the window of the guest bedroom, gazing out at a world
dressed in its morning grays. The Time B world. It occurred to him that
there must be visible differences in the two time-streams, apart from
the vital one of Kate's existence. In this world a psychopathic killer
had died in strange circumstances, which would have altered some things
-- especially for the future victims he never got around to. There was
also the fact that in the Time B world the Breton engineering consultancy
had prospered in John Bretons hands, giving him the chance to influence
events in possibly significant ways. Jack reminded himself to watch out
for differences and get used to them quickly, so that he could step into
John Breton's shoes with as little fuss as possible.
He frowned at the dark, stolid beeches in the back garden as he considered
the disposal of the body. Apart from the purely mechanical problem, there
was the more delicate question of Kate's reaction. If she ever suspected,
for even an instant, that he had murdered John it would be the end.
She would have to believe that John had agreed to vanish from her life,
or -- if that could not be arranged -- that he had died in an accident.
Jack's eyes suddenly focused on a small silvery dome which could be seen
beyond the line of beech trees. So John had got around to building a proper
observatory in the garden -- that was a thing he had always wanted to do
and had never managed to find the time. His other self had done it, though.
His other self had gone on ahead with Kate and done lots of things.
Feeling cold and lonely, Jack Breton stood at the window a moment longer,
then became aware of movement in other parts of the house. There was
a faint smell of coffee and frying ham in the air. He went out of the
bedroom, down the long stairs and into the kitchen. Although it was
very early, Kate was fully dressed and groomed, wearing a brushed wool
café-au-lait sweater and white skirt. She was laying plates on the kitchen
table as Jack came through the door. The sight of her stilled his heart,
then sent it into a series of great, lumping spasms.
"Good morning, Kate," he said. "Anything I can do to help?"
"Oh . . . hello. No, thanks." He saw tinges of pink appear over her
cheekbones.
"But you shouldn't have to spend your time on housework," he said with
mock gallantry.
"You can set your mind at ease on that score," John Breton said from
near the window, and Jack suddenly became aware of his dressing-gowned
appearance. "We have a cook-housekeeper who acts as a bulwark between
Kate and the necessities of domestic life. What time does Mrs. Fitz get
here, anyway?"
"She won't be coming," Kate answered tartly. "I called and told her we
wouldn't need her for a few days."
John appeared not to hear. He was leaning on the window ledge with his
ear close to a radio, apparently waiting for something. Jack ignored him
and turned back to Kate.
"There you are!" He smiled. "You wouldn't have to do it if I wasn't here.
I'm entitled to help."
"It's all ready. Please sit down."
Kate's eyes met his briefly and he almost reached out to take what was
his. Instead, he sat compliantly at the table while all his instincts
protested their frustration. The exhaustion of the previous night had
lifted, and once again his mind was filled with the wonder of Kate's
existence. She was alive, warm, real; in the aura of her emotional
significance more miraculous than all the starry infinities of the Time B
universe. . . .