Time and Again

  The floor swayed beneath Sutton's feet and he felt Eva's small fist digging hard into his arm.

  The Zag spoke to them and his words were dead and hollow sounds dripping from a mummied husk.

  "What is it that you wish? Here you live the lives you yearn for…find any escape that you may seek…possess the things you dream of."

  "There is a stream," said Sutton. "A little creek that ran…"

  The light changed to green, a faerie green that glowed with soft, quiet life, exuberant, springtime life and the hint of things to come, and there were trees, trees that were fringed and haloed with the glistening, sun-kissed green of the first bursting buds.

  Sutton wiggled his toes and knew the grass beneath them, the first tender grass of spring, and smelled the hepaticas and bloodroot that had almost no smell at all…and the stronger scent of sweet Williams blooming on the hill across the creek.

  He told himself, "It's too early for sweet Williams to be in bloom."

  The creek gurgled at him, as it ran across the shingle down into the Big Hole and he hurried forward across the meadow grass, cane pole tight-clutched in one hand, the can of worms in the other.

  A bluebird flashed through the trees that climbed the bluff across the meadow and a robin sang high in the top of the mighty elm that grew above the Big Hole.

  Sutton found the worn place in the bank, like a chair with the elm's trunk serving as a back, and he sat down in it and leaned forward to peer into the water. The current ran strong and dark and deep, swirling in to hug the higher bank, gurgling and sucking with a strength that set up tiny whirlpools.

  Sutton drew in his breath and held it with pent-up anticipation. With shaking hands he found the biggest worm and pulled it from the can, baited up the hook.

  Breathlessly, he dropped the hook into the water, canted the pole in front of him for easy handling. The bobber drifted down the swirling slide of water, floated in an eddy where the current turned back upon itself. It jerked, almost disappeared, then bobbed to the surface and floated once again.

  Sutton leaned forward, tensed, arms aching with the tenseness. But even through the tenseness, he knew the goodness of the day…the utter peace and tranquillity…the freshness of the morning, the soft heat of the sun, the blue of sky and the white of cloud. The water talked to him and he felt himself grow and become a being that comprehended and became a part of the clean, white ecstasy that was the hills and stream and meadow…earth, cloud, water, sky and sun.

  And the bobber went clear under!

  He jerked and felt the weight of the fish that he had caught. It sailed in an arc above his head and landed in the grass behind him. He laid down his pole, scrambled to his feet and ran.

  The chub flopped in the grass and he grabbed the line and held it up. It was a whopper! A good six inches long!

  Sobbing in his excitement, he dropped to his knees and grasped the fish, removed the hook with fingers that fumbled in their trembling.

  A six-inch one to start with, he said, talking to the sky and stream and meadow. Maybe every one I catch will be that big. Maybe I'll catch as many as a dozen and all of them will be six inches long. Maybe some of them will be even bigger. Maybe…

  "Hello," said a childish voice.

  Sutton twisted around, still on his knees.

  A little girl stood by the elm tree and it seemed for a moment that he had seen her somewhere before. But then he realized that she was a stranger and he frowned a little, for girls were no good when it came to fishing. He hoped she wouldn't stay. It would be just like her to hang around and spoil the day for him.

  "I am," she said, speaking a name he did not catch, for she lisped a little.

  He did not answer.

  "I am eight years old," she said.

  "I am Asher Sutton," he told her, "and I am ten…going on eleven."

  She stood and stared at him, one hand plucking nervously at the figured apron that she wore. The apron, he noticed, was clean and starched, very stiff and prim, and she was messing it all up with her nervous plucking.

  "I am fishing," he said and tried very hard to keep from sounding too important. "And I just caught a whopper."

  He saw her eyes go large in sudden terror at the sight of something that came up from behind him and he wheeled around, no longer on his knees, but on his feet, and his hand was snaking into the pocket of his coat.

  The place was purple-gray and there was shrill woman-laughter and there was a face in front of him…a face he had seen that afternoon and never would forget.

  A fat and cultured face that twinkled even now with good fellowship, twinkled despite the deadly squint, despite the gun already swinging upward in a hairy, pudgy fist.

  Sutton felt his fingers touch the grip of the gun he carried, felt them tighten around it and jerk it from the pocket. But he was too late, he knew, too late to beat the spat of flame from a gun that had long seconds' start.

  Anger flamed within him, cold, desolate, deadly anger. Anger at the pudgy fist, at the smiling face…the face that would smile across a chessboard or from behind a gun. The smile of an egotist who would try to beat a robotic that was designed to play the perfect game of chess…an egotist who believed that he could shoot down Asher Sutton.

  The anger, he realized, was something more than anger…something greater and more devastating than the mere working of human adrenal. It was a part of him and something that was more than him, more than the mortal thing of flesh and blood that was Asher Sutton. A terrible thing plucked from nonhumanity.

  The face before him melted…or it seemed to melt. It changed and the smile was gone and Sutton felt the anger move out from his brain and slam bullet-hard against the wilting personality that was Geoffrey Benton.

  Benton's gun coughed loudly and the muzzle-flash was blood-red in the purple light. Then Sutton felt the thud of his own gun slamming back against his wrist, slapping at the heel of his hand as he pulled the trigger.

  Benton was falling, twisting forward, bending at the middle as if he had hinges in his stomach, and Sutton caught one glimpse of the purple-painted face before it dropped from sight to huddle on the floor. There were surprise and anguish and a terrible overriding fear printed on the features that had been twisted out of shape and were not human any more.

  The crashing of the guns had smashed the place to silence, and through the garish light that swirled with powder smoke, Sutton saw the white blobs of many faces staring at him. Faces that mostly were without expression, although some of them had mouths and the mouths were round and open.

  He felt a tugging at his elbow and he moved, guided by the hand upon his arm. Suddenly he was limp and shaken and the'anger was no more and he told himself, "I have just killed a man."

  "Quick," said Eva Armour's voice. "We must get out of here. They'll be swarming at you now. The whole hell's pack of them."

  "It was you," he told her. "I remember now. I didn't catch the name at first. You mumbled it…or I guess you lisped, and I didn't hear it."

  The girl tugged at his arm. "They had Benton conditioned. They figured that was all they needed. They never dreamed you could match him in a duel."

  "You were the little girl," Sutton told her, gravely. "You wore a checkered apron and you kept twisting it as if you might be nervous."

  "What in heaven's name are you talking about?"

  "Why, I was fishing," Sutton said, "and I had just caught a big one when you came along…"

  "You're crazy," said the girl. "You were never fishing."

  She pushed open a door and shoved him out and the cool air of night slapped him across the face.

  "Wait a second," he cried. He wheeled around and caught the girl's arms roughly in his hands.

  "They?" he yelled at her. "What are you talking about? Who are they?"

  She stared at him wide-eyed.

  "You mean that you don't know?"

  He shook his head, bewildered.

  "Poor Ash," she said.

  Her copper h
air was a reddish flame, burnished and alive in the flicker of the sign that flashed on and off above the Zag House facade.

  DREAMS TO ORDER

  Live the life you missed.

  Dream up a tough one for us.

  An android doorman spoke to them softly. "You wished a car, sir?"

  Even as he spoke, the car was there, sliding smoothly and silently up the driveway like a black beetle winging from the night. The doorman reached out a hand and swung wide the door.

  "Quick is the word," he said.

  There was something in the soft, slurred tone that made Sutton move. He stepped inside the car and pulled Eva after him. The android slammed the door.

  Sutton tramped on the accelerator and the car screamed down the curving driveway, slid onto the highway, roared with leashed impatience as it took the long road curving toward the hills.

  "Where?" asked Sutton.

  "Back to the Arms," she said. "They wouldn't dare to try for you there. Your room is rigged with rays."

  Sutton chuckled. "I have to be careful or I would trip on them. But how come you know?"

  "It is my job to know."

  "Frind or foe?" he asked.

  "Friend," she said.

  He turned his head and studied her. She had slumped down in the seat and was a little girl…but she didn't have a checkered apron and she wasn't nervous.

  "I don't suppose," said Sutton, "that it would be any use for me to ask you questions?"

  She shook her head.

  "If I did, you'd probably lie to me."

  "If I wanted to," she said.

  "I could shake it out of you."

  "You could, but you won't. You see. Ash, I know you very well."

  "You just met me yesterday."

  "Yes, I know," she said, "but I've studied you for all of twenty years."

  He laughed. "You haven't thought of me, at all. You just…"

  "And Ash."

  "Yes?"

  "I think you're wonderful."

  He shot a quick glance at her. She was still in her corner of the seat and the wind had blown one strand of copper hair across her face…and her body was soft and her face was shining. And yet, he thought, and yet…

  "That's a nice thing for you to say," he told her. "I could kiss you for it."

  "You may kiss me, Ash," she told him, "any time you want to."

  After a startled moment he slowed the car and did.

  XII

  THE TRUNK CAME in the morning when Sutton was finishing his breakfast.

  It was old and battered, the ancient rawhide covering hanging in tatters to reveal the marred steel skeleton, flecked here and there with rust. A key was in the lock and the straps were broken. Mice had gnawed the leather completely off one end.

  Sutton remembered it…it was the one that had stood in the far corner of the attic when he had been a boy and gone there to play on rainy afternoons.

  He picked up the neatly folded copy of the morning edition of the Galactic Press that had come with his breakfast tray and shook it out.

  The item he was looking for was on the front page, the third item in the Earth news column:

  Mr. Geoffrey Benton was killed last night in an informal meeting at one of the amusement centers in the university district. The victor was Mr. Asher Sutton, who returned only yesterday from a mission to 61 Cygni.

  There was a final sentence, the most damning that could be written of a duelist.

  Mr. Benton fired first and missed.

  Sutton folded the paper again and laid it carefully on the table. He lit a cigarette.

  I thought it would be me, he told himself. I never fired a gun like that before…scarcely knew a gun like that existed. Although I had read about them and knew about them. But I wasn't interested in dueling, and duelists and collectors and antiquarians are the only ones who would know about an ancient weapon.

  Of course, I didn't really kill him. Benton killed himself. If he hadn't missed—and there was no excuse for missing—the item would have read the other way around.

  Mr. Asher Sutton was killed last night in an encounter…

  We'll make an evening of it, the girl had said, and she might have known. We'll have dinner and make an evening of it. We'll make an evening of it and Geoffrey Benton will kill you at the Zag House.

  Yes, said Sutton to himself, she might have known. She knows too many things. About the spy traps in this room, for instance. And about someone who had Benton conditioned to challenge me and kill me.

  She said friend when I asked her friend or foe, but a word is an easy thing. Anyone at all can speak a single word and there is no way to know if it is true or false.

  She said she had studied me for twenty years and that is false, of course, for twenty years ago I was setting out for Cygni and I was unimportant. Just a cog in a great machine. I am unimportant still, unimportant to everyone but myself and a great idea that no human but myself could possibly know about. For no matter if the manuscript was photostated, there is not a soul who can read it.

  She said friend when I asked her friend or foe. And she knew that Benton had been conditioned to challenge me and kill me. And she had called me up and made a dinner date.

  And words are easy things to say. But there are other things than words that are not easy to twist from lie to truth…the way her lips felt beneath my lips, the tenderness of fingertips that slide along the cheek.

  He snubbed out the cigarette and rose and walked over to the trunk. The lock was rusty and the key turned hard, but he finally got it open and lifted up the lid.

  The trunk was half full of papers very neatly piled. Sutton, looking at them, chuckled. Buster always was a methodical soul. But, then, all robots were methodical. It was the nature of them. Methodical and, what was it Herkimer had said? Stubborn, that was it. Methodical and stubborn.

  He squatted on the floor beside the trunk and rummaged through the contents. Old letters tied neatly in bundles. An old notebook from his college days. A sheaf of clipped-together documents that undoubtedly were outdated. A scrapbook littered with clippings that had not been pasted up. An album half filled with a cheap stamp collection.

  He squatted back on his heels and turned the pages of the album lovingly, childhood coming back again. Cheap stamps because he had had no money to buy the better ones. Gaudy ones because they had appealed to him. Most of them in poor condition, but there had been a time when they had seemed wonderful.

  The stamp craze, he remembered, had lasted two years…three years at the most. He had pored over catalogues, had traded, had bought cheap packets, picked up the strange lingo of the hobby…perforate, imperforate, shades, watermarks, intaglio.

  He smiled softly at the happiness of memory. There had been stamps he'd wanted but could never have, and he had studied the illustrations of them until he knew each of them by heart. He lifted his head and stared at the wall and tried to remember what some of them were like, but there was no recollection. The once all-important thing had been buried by more than fifty years of other all-important matters.

  He laid the album to one side, went at the trunk again.

  More notebooks and letters. Loose clippings. A curious-looking wrench. A well-chewed bone that at one time probably had been the property and the solace of some well-loved but now forgotten family dog.

  Junk, said Sutton. Buster could have saved a lot of time by simply burning it.

  A couple of old newspapers. A moth-eaten pennant. A bulky letter that never had been opened.

  Sutton tossed it on top of the rest of the litter he had taken from the trunk, then hesitated, put out his hand and picked it up again.

  That stamp looked queer. The color, for one thing.

  Memory ticked within his brain and he saw the stamp again, saw it as he had seen it when a lad…not the stamp, itself, of course, but the illustration of it in a catalogue.

  He bent above the letter and caught a sudden, gasping breath.

  The stamp was old, incredibly
old…incredibly old and worth…good Lord, how much was it worth?

  He tried to make out the postmark, but it was so faint with time that it blurred before his eyes.

  He got up slowly and carried the letter to the table, bent above it, puzzling out the town name.

  BRIDGEP—, WIS.

  Bridgeport, probably. And WIS.? Some old state, perhaps. Some political division lost in the mist of time.

  July—198 .

  July, 1980-some thing!

  Six thousand years ago!

  Sutton's hand shook.

  An unopened letter, mailed sixty centuries ago. Tossed in with this heap of junk. Lying cheek by jowl with a tooth-scarred bone and a funny wrench.

  An unopened letter…and with a stamp that was worth a fortune.

  Sutton read the postmark again. Bridgeport, Wis. July, it looked like 11…July 11, 198-. The missing numeral in the year was too faint to make out. Maybe with a good glass it could be done.

  The address, faded but still legible, said:

  Mr. John H. Sutton,

  Bridgeport,

  Wisconsin.

  So that was what WIS. was. Wisconsin.

  And the name was Sutton.

  Of course, it would be Sutton.

  What had Buster's android lawyer said? A trunkful of family papers.

  I'll have to look into historic geography, Sutton thought. I'll have to find out just where Wisconsin was.

  But John Sutton? John H. Sutton. That was another matter. Just another Sutton. One who had been dust these many years. A man who sometimes forgot to open up his mail.

  Sutton turned the letter and examined the flap. There was no sign of tampering. The adhesive was flaking with age and when he ran a fingernail along one corner the mucilage came loose in a tiny shower of powder. The paper, he saw, was brittle and would require careful handling.

  A trunkful of family papers, the android Wellington had said when he came into the room and balanced himself very primly on the edge of a chair and laid his hat precisely on the tabletop.

  And it was a trunkful of junk instead. Bones and wrenches and paper clips and clippings. Old notebooks and letters and a letter that had been mailed six thousand years ago and never had been opened.