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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Time and Time Again, by Henry Beam Piper
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Time and Time Again
+
+Author: Henry Beam Piper
+
+Illustrator: Napoli
+
+Release Date: July 15, 2006 [EBook #18831]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK TIME AND TIME AGAIN ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+                          TIME AND TIME AGAIN
+
+                            BY H. BEAM PIPER
+
+                         Illustrated by Napoli
+
+[Transcriber's note:  This etext was produced from Astounding Science
+Fiction April 1947. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
+the copyright on this publication was renewed.]
+
+
+     _To upset the stable, mighty stream of time would probably take an
+     enormous concentration of energy. And it's not to be expected that
+     a man would get a second chance at life. But an atomic might
+     accomplish both--_
+
+
+Blinded by the bomb-flash and numbed by the narcotic injection, he could
+not estimate the extent of his injuries, but he knew that he was dying.
+Around him, in the darkness, voices sounded as through a thick wall.
+
+"They mighta left mosta these Joes where they was. Half of them won't
+even last till the truck comes."
+
+"No matter; so long as they're alive, they must be treated," another
+voice, crisp and cultivated, rebuked. "Better start taking names, while
+we're waiting."
+
+"Yes, sir." Fingers fumbled at his identity badge. "Hartley, Allan;
+Captain, G5, Chem. Research AN/73/D. Serial, SO-23869403J."
+
+"Allan Hartley!" The medic officer spoke in shocked surprise. "Why, he's
+the man who wrote 'Children of the Mist', 'Rose of Death', and
+'Conqueror's Road'!"
+
+He tried to speak, and must have stirred; the corpsman's voice
+sharpened.
+
+"Major, I think he's part conscious. Mebbe I better give him 'nother
+shot."
+
+"Yes, yes; by all means, sergeant."
+
+Something jabbed Allan Hartley in the back of the neck. Soft billows of
+oblivion closed in upon him, and all that remained to him was a tiny
+spark of awareness, glowing alone and lost in a great darkness.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The Spark grew brighter. He was more than a something that merely knew
+that it existed. He was a man, and he had a name, and a military rank,
+and memories. Memories of the searing blue-green flash, and of what he
+had been doing outside the shelter the moment before, and memories of
+the month-long siege, and of the retreat from the north, and memories of
+the days before the War, back to the time when he had been little Allan
+Hartley, a schoolboy, the son of a successful lawyer, in Williamsport,
+Pennsylvania.
+
+His mother he could not remember; there was only a vague impression of
+the house full of people who had tried to comfort him for something he
+could not understand. But he remembered the old German woman who had
+kept house for his father, afterward, and he remembered his bedroom,
+with its chintz-covered chairs, and the warm-colored patch quilt on the
+old cherry bed, and the tan curtains at the windows, edged with dusky
+red, and the morning sun shining through them. He could almost see them,
+now.
+
+He blinked. He _could_ see them!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+For a long time, he lay staring at them unbelievingly, and then he
+deliberately closed his eyes and counted ten seconds, and as he counted,
+terror gripped him. He was afraid to open them again, lest he find
+himself blind, or gazing at the filth and wreckage of a blasted city,
+but when he reached ten, he forced himself to look, and gave a sigh of
+relief. The sunlit curtains and the sun-gilded mist outside were still
+there.
+
+He reached out to check one sense against another, feeling the rough
+monk's cloth and the edging of maroon silk thread. They were tangible as
+well as visible. Then he saw that the back of his hand was unscarred.
+There should have been a scar, souvenir of a rough-and-tumble brawl of
+his cub reporter days. He examined both hands closely. An instant later,
+he had sat up in bed and thrown off the covers, partially removing his
+pajamas and inspecting as much of his body as was visible.
+
+It was the smooth body of a little boy.
+
+That was ridiculous. He was a man of forty-three; an army officer, a
+chemist, once a best-selling novelist. He had been married, and divorced
+ten years ago. He looked again at his body. It was only twelve years
+old. Fourteen, at the very oldest. His eyes swept the room, wide with
+wonder. Every detail was familiar: the flower-splashed chair covers; the
+table that served as desk and catch-all for his possessions; the
+dresser, with its mirror stuck full of pictures of aircraft. It was the
+bedroom of his childhood home. He swung his legs over the edge of the
+bed. They were six inches too short to reach the floor.
+
+For an instant, the room spun dizzily; and he was in the grip of utter
+panic, all confidence in the evidence of his senses lost. Was he insane?
+Or delirious? Or had the bomb really killed him; was this what death was
+like? What was that thing, about "ye become as little children"? He
+started to laugh, and his juvenile larynx made giggling sounds. They
+seemed funny, too, and aggravated his mirth. For a little while, he was
+on the edge of hysteria and then, when he managed to control his
+laughter, he felt calmer. If he were dead, then he must be a discarnate
+entity, and would be able to penetrate matter. To his relief, he was
+unable to push his hand through the bed. So he was alive; he was also
+fully awake, and, he hoped, rational. He rose to his feet and prowled
+about the room, taking stock of its contents.
+
+There was no calendar in sight, and he could find no newspapers or dated
+periodicals, but he knew that it was prior to July 18, 1946. On that
+day, his fourteenth birthday, his father had given him a light .22
+rifle, and it had been hung on a pair of rustic forks on the wall. It
+was not there now, nor ever had been. On the table, he saw a boys' book
+of military aircraft, with a clean, new dustjacket; the flyleaf was
+inscribed: _To Allan Hartley, from his father, on his thirteenth
+birthday, 7/18 '45._ Glancing out the window at the foliage on the
+trees, he estimated the date at late July or early August, 1945; that
+would make him just thirteen.
+
+His clothes were draped on a chair beside the bed. Stripping off his
+pajamas, he donned shorts, then sat down and picked up a pair of
+lemon-colored socks, which he regarded with disfavor. As he pulled one
+on, a church bell began to clang. St. Boniface, up on the hill, ringing
+for early Mass; so this was Sunday. He paused, the second sock in his
+hand.
+
+There was no question that his present environment was actual. Yet, on
+the other hand, he possessed a set of memories completely at variance
+with it. Now, suppose, since his environment were not an illusion,
+everything else were? Suppose all these troublesome memories were no
+more than a dream? Why, he was just little Allan Hartley, safe in his
+room on a Sunday morning, badly scared by a nightmare! Too much science
+fiction, Allan; too many comic books!
+
+That was a wonderfully comforting thought, and he hugged it to him
+contentedly. It lasted all the while he was buttoning up his shirt and
+pulling on his pants, but when he reached for his shoes, it evaporated.
+Ever since he had wakened, he realized, he had been occupied with
+thoughts utterly incomprehensible to any thirteen-year-old; even
+thinking in words that would have been so much Sanscrit to himself at
+thirteen. He shook his head regretfully. The just-a-dream hypothesis
+went by the deep six.
+
+He picked up the second shoe and glared at it as though it were
+responsible for his predicament. He was going to have to be careful. An
+unexpected display of adult characteristics might give rise to some
+questions he would find hard to answer credibly. Fortunately, he was an
+only child; there would be no brothers or sisters to trip him up. Old
+Mrs. Stauber, the housekeeper, wouldn't be much of a problem; even in
+his normal childhood, he had bulked like an intellectual giant in
+comparison to her. But his father--
+
+Now, there the going would be tough. He knew that shrewd attorney's
+mind, whetted keen on a generation of lying and reluctant witnesses.
+Sooner or later, he would forget for an instant and betray himself. Then
+he smiled, remembering the books he had discovered, in his late 'teens,
+on his father's shelves and recalling the character of the openminded
+agnostic lawyer. If he could only avoid the inevitable unmasking until
+he had a plausible explanatory theory.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Blake Hartley was leaving the bathroom as Allan Hartley opened his door
+and stepped into the hall. The lawyer was bare-armed and in slippers; at
+forty-eight, there was only a faint powdering of gray in his dark hair,
+and not a gray thread in his clipped mustache. The old Merry Widower,
+himself, Allan thought, grinning as he remembered the white-haired but
+still vigorous man from whom he'd parted at the outbreak of the War.
+
+"'Morning, Dad," he greeted.
+
+"'Morning, son. You're up early. Going to Sunday school?"
+
+Now there was the advantage of a father who'd cut his first intellectual
+tooth on Tom Paine and Bob Ingersoll; attendance at divine services was
+on a strictly voluntary basis.
+
+"Why, I don't think so; I want to do some reading, this morning."
+
+"That's always a good thing to do," Blake Hartley approved. "After
+breakfast, suppose you take a walk down to the station and get me a
+_Times_." He dug in his trouser pocket and came out with a half dollar.
+"Get anything you want for yourself, while you're at it."
+
+Allan thanked his father and pocketed the coin.
+
+"Mrs. Stauber'll still be at Mass," he suggested. "Say I get the paper
+now; breakfast won't be ready till she gets here."
+
+"Good idea." Blake Hartley nodded, pleased. "You'll have three-quarters
+of an hour, at least."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+So far, he congratulated himself, everything had gone smoothly.
+Finishing his toilet, he went downstairs and onto the street, turning
+left at Brandon to Campbell, and left again in the direction of the
+station. Before he reached the underpass, a dozen half-forgotten
+memories had revived. Here was a house that would, in a few years, be
+gutted by fire. Here were four dwellings standing where he had last seen
+a five-story apartment building. A gasoline station and a weed-grown lot
+would shortly be replaced by a supermarket. The environs of the station
+itself were a complete puzzle to him, until he oriented himself.
+
+He bought a New York _Times_, glancing first of all at the date line.
+Sunday, August 5, 1945; he'd estimated pretty closely. The battle of
+Okinawa had been won. The Potsdam Conference had just ended. There were
+still pictures of the B-25 crash against the Empire State Building, a
+week ago Saturday. And Japan was still being pounded by bombs from the
+air and shells from off-shore naval guns. Why, tomorrow, Hiroshima was
+due for the Big Job! It amused him to reflect that he was probably the
+only person in Williamsport who knew that.
+
+On the way home, a boy, sitting on the top step of a front porch, hailed
+him. Allan replied cordially, trying to remember who it was. Of course;
+Larry Morton! He and Allan had been buddies. They probably had been
+swimming, or playing Commandos and Germans, the afternoon before. Larry
+had gone to Cornell the same year that Allan had gone to Penn State;
+they had both graduated in 1954. Larry had gotten into some Government
+bureau, and then he had married a Pittsburgh girl, and had become
+twelfth vice-president of her father's firm. He had been killed, in
+1968, in a plane crash.
+
+"You gonna Sunday school?" Larry asked, mercifully unaware of the fate
+Allan foresaw for him.
+
+"Why, no. I have some things I want to do at home." He'd have to watch
+himself. Larry would spot a difference quicker than any adult. "Heck
+with it," he added.
+
+"Golly, I wisht I c'ld stay home from Sunday school whenever I wanted
+to," Larry envied. "How about us goin' swimmin', at the Canoe Club,
+'safter?"
+
+Allan thought fast. "Gee, I wisht I c'ld," he replied, lowering his
+grammatical sights. "I gotta stay home, 'safter. We're expectin'
+comp'ny; coupla aunts of mine. Dad wants me to stay home when they
+come."
+
+That went over all right. Anybody knew that there was no rational
+accounting for the vagaries of the adult mind, and no appeal from adult
+demands. The prospect of company at the Hartley home would keep Larry
+away, that afternoon. He showed his disappointment.
+
+"Aw, jeepers creepers!" he blasphemed euphemistically.
+
+"Mebbe t'morrow," Allan said. "If I c'n make it. I gotta go, now; ain't
+had breakfast yet." He scuffed his feet boyishly, exchanged so-longs
+with his friend, and continued homeward.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+As he had hoped, the Sunday paper kept his father occupied at breakfast,
+to the exclusion of any dangerous table talk. Blake Hartley was still
+deep in the financial section when Allan left the table and went to the
+library. There should be two books there to which he wanted badly to
+refer. For a while, he was afraid that his father had not acquired them
+prior to 1945, but he finally found them, and carried them onto the
+front porch, along with a pencil and a ruled yellow scratch pad. In his
+experienced future--or his past-to-come--Allan Hartley had been
+accustomed to doing his thinking with a pencil. As reporter, as novelist
+plotting his work, as amateur chemist in his home laboratory, as
+scientific warfare research officer, his ideas had always been clarified
+by making notes. He pushed a chair to the table and built up the seat
+with cushions, wondering how soon he would become used to the
+proportional disparity between himself and the furniture. As he opened
+the books and took his pencil in his hand, there was one thing missing.
+If he could only smoke a pipe, now!
+
+His father came out and stretched in a wicker chair with the _Times_
+book-review section. The morning hours passed. Allan Hartley leafed
+through one book and then the other. His pencil moved rapidly at times;
+at others, he doodled absently. There was no question, any more, in his
+mind, as to what or who he was. He was Allan Hartley, a man of
+forty-three, marooned in his own thirteen-year-old body, thirty years
+back in his own past. That was, of course, against all common sense, but
+he was easily able to ignore that objection. It had been made before:
+against the astronomy of Copernicus, and the geography of Columbus, and
+the biology of Darwin, and the industrial technology of Samuel Colt, and
+the military doctrines of Charles de Gaulle. Today's common sense had a
+habit of turning into tomorrow's utter nonsense. What he needed, right
+now, but bad, was a theory that would explain what had happened to him.
+
+Understanding was beginning to dawn when Mrs. Stauber came out to
+announce midday dinner.
+
+"I hope you von't mind haffin' it so early," she apologized. "Mein
+sister, Jennie, offer in Nippenose, she iss sick; I vant to go see her,
+dis afternoon, yet. I'll be back in blenty time to get supper, Mr.
+Hartley."
+
+"Hey, Dad!" Allan spoke up. "Why can't we get our own supper, and have a
+picnic, like? That'd be fun, and Mrs. Stauber could stay as long as she
+wanted to."
+
+His father looked at him. Such consideration for others was a most
+gratifying deviation from the juvenile norm; dawn of altruism, or
+something. He gave hearty assent:
+
+"Why, of course, Mrs. Stauber. Allan and I can shift for ourselves, this
+evening; can't we, Allan? You needn't come back till tomorrow morning."
+
+"_Ach_, t'ank you! T'ank you so mooch, Mr. Hartley."
+
+At dinner, Allan got out from under the burden of conversation by
+questioning his father about the War and luring him into a lengthy
+dissertation on the difficulties of the forthcoming invasion of Japan.
+In view of what he remembered of the next twenty-four hours, Allan was
+secretly amused. His father was sure that the War would run on to
+mid-1946.
+
+After dinner, they returned to the porch, Hartley _père_ smoking a cigar
+and carrying out several law books. He only glanced at these
+occasionally; for the most part, he sat and blew smoke rings, and
+watched them float away. Some thrice-guilty felon was about to be
+triumphantly acquitted by a weeping jury; Allan could recognize a
+courtroom masterpiece in the process of incubation.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was several hours later that the crunch of feet on the walk caused
+father and son to look up simultaneously. The approaching visitor was a
+tall man in a rumpled black suit; he had knobby wrists and big, awkward
+hands; black hair flecked with gray, and a harsh, bigoted face. Allan
+remembered him. Frank Gutchall. Lived on Campbell Street; a religious
+fanatic, and some sort of lay preacher. Maybe he needed legal advice;
+Allan could vaguely remember some incident--
+
+"Ah, good afternoon, Mr. Gutchall. Lovely day, isn't it?" Blake Hartley
+said.
+
+Gutchall cleared his throat. "Mr. Hartley, I wonder if you could lend me
+a gun and some bullets," he began, embarrassedly. "My little dog's been
+hurt, and it's suffering something terrible. I want a gun, to put the
+poor thing out of its pain."
+
+"Why, yes; of course. How would a 20-gauge shotgun do?" Blake Hartley
+asked. "You wouldn't want anything heavy."
+
+Gutchall fidgeted. "Why, er, I was hoping you'd let me have a little
+gun." He held his hands about six inches apart. "A pistol, that I could
+put in my pocket. It wouldn't look right, to carry a hunting gun on the
+Lord's day; people wouldn't understand that it was for a work of mercy."
+
+The lawyer nodded. In view of Gutchall's religious beliefs, the
+objection made sense.
+
+"Well, I have a Colt .38-special," he said, "but you know, I belong to
+this Auxiliary Police outfit. If I were called out for duty, this
+evening, I'd need it. How soon could you bring it back?"
+
+Something clicked in Allan Hartley's mind. He remembered, now, what that
+incident had been. He knew, too, what he had to do.
+
+"Dad, aren't there some cartridges left for the Luger?" he asked.
+
+Blake Hartley snapped his fingers. "By George, yes! I have a German
+automatic I can let you have, but I wish you'd bring it back as soon as
+possible. I'll get it for you."
+
+Before he could rise, Allan was on his feet.
+
+"Sit still, Dad; I'll get it. I know where the cartridges are." With
+that, he darted into the house and upstairs.
+
+The Luger hung on the wall over his father's bed. Getting it down, he
+dismounted it, working with rapid precision. He used the blade of his
+pocketknife to unlock the endpiece of the breechblock, slipping out the
+firing pin and buttoning it into his shirt pocket. Then he reassembled
+the harmless pistol, and filled the clip with 9-millimeter cartridges
+from the bureau drawer.
+
+There was an extension telephone beside the bed. Finding Gutchall's
+address in the directory, he lifted the telephone, and stretched his
+handkerchief over the mouthpiece. Then he dialed Police Headquarters.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+"This is Blake Hartley," he lied, deepening his voice and copying his
+father's tone. "Frank Gutchall, who lives at...take this down"--he gave
+Gutchall's address--"has just borrowed a pistol from me, ostensibly to
+shoot a dog. He has no dog. He intends shooting his wife. Don't argue
+about how I know; there isn't time. Just take it for granted that I do.
+I disabled the pistol--took out the firing pin--but if he finds out what
+I did, he may get some other weapon. He's on his way home, but he's on
+foot. If you hurry, you may get a man there before he arrives, and grab
+him before he finds out the pistol won't shoot."
+
+"O. K., Mr. Hartley. We'll take care of it. Thanks."
+
+"And I wish you'd get my pistol back, as soon as you can. It's something
+I brought home from the other War, and I shouldn't like to lose it."
+
+"We'll take care of that, too. Thank you, Mr. Hartley."
+
+He hung up, and carried the Luger and the loaded clip down to the porch.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Look, Mr. Gutchall; here's how it works," he said, showing it to the
+visitor. Then he slapped in the clip and yanked up on the toggle loading
+the chamber. "It's ready to shoot, now; this is the safety." He pushed
+it on. "When you're ready to shoot, just shove it forward and up, and
+then pull the trigger. You have to pull the trigger each time; it's
+loaded for eight shots. And be sure to put the safety back when you're
+through shooting."
+
+"Did you load the chamber?" Blake Hartley demanded.
+
+"Sure. It's on safe, now."
+
+"Let me see." His father took the pistol, being careful to keep his
+finger out of the trigger guard, and looked at it. "Yes, that's all
+right." He repeated the instructions Allan had given, stressing the
+importance of putting the safety on after using. "Understand how it
+works, now?" he asked.
+
+"Yes, I understand how it works. Thank you, Mr. Hartley. Thank you, too,
+young man."
+
+Gutchall put the Luger in his hip pocket, made sure it wouldn't fall
+out, and took his departure.
+
+"You shouldn't have loaded it," Hartley _père_ reproved, when he was
+gone.
+
+Allan sighed. This was it; the masquerade was over.
+
+"I had to, to keep you from fooling with it," he said. "I didn't want
+you finding out that I'd taken out the firing pin."
+
+"You what?"
+
+"Gutchall didn't want that gun to shoot a dog. He has no dog. He meant
+to shoot his wife with it. He's a religious maniac; sees visions, hears
+voices, receives revelations, talks with the Holy Ghost. The Holy Ghost
+probably put him up to this caper. I'll submit that any man who holds
+long conversations with the Deity isn't to be trusted with a gun, and
+neither is any man who lies about why he wants one. And while I was at
+it, I called the police, on the upstairs phone. I had to use your name;
+I deepened my voice and talked through a handkerchief."
+
+"You--" Blake Hartley jumped as though bee-stung. "Why did you have to
+do that?"
+
+"You know why. I couldn't have told them, 'This is little Allan Hartley,
+just thirteen years old; please, Mr. Policeman, go and arrest Frank
+Gutchall before he goes root-toot-toot at his wife with my pappa's
+Luger.' That would have gone over big, now, wouldn't it?"
+
+"And suppose he really wants to shoot a dog; what sort of a mess will I
+be in?"
+
+"No mess at all. If I'm wrong--which I'm not--I'll take the thump for
+it, myself. It'll pass for a dumb kid trick, and nothing'll be done. But
+if I'm right, you'll have to front for me. They'll keep your name out of
+it, but they'd give me a lot of cheap boy-hero publicity, which I don't
+want." He picked up his pencil again. "We should have the complete
+returns in about twenty minutes."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+That was a ten-minute under-estimate, and it was another quarter-hour
+before the detective-sergeant who returned the Luger had finished
+congratulating Blake Hartley and giving him the thanks of the
+Department. After he had gone, the lawyer picked up the Luger, withdrew
+the clip, and ejected the round in the chamber.
+
+"Well," he told his son, "you were right. You saved that woman's life."
+He looked at the automatic, and then handed it across the table. "Now,
+let's see you put that firing pin back."
+
+Allan Hartley dismantled the weapon, inserted the missing part, and put
+it together again, then snapped it experimentally and returned it to his
+father. Blake Hartley looked at it again, and laid it on the table.
+
+"Now, son, suppose we have a little talk," he said softly.
+
+"But I explained everything." Allan objected innocently.
+
+"You did not," his father retorted. "Yesterday you'd never have thought
+of a trick like this; why, you wouldn't even have known how to take this
+pistol apart. And at dinner, I caught you using language and expressing
+ideas that were entirely outside anything you'd ever known before. Now,
+I want to know--and I mean this literally."
+
+Allan chuckled. "I hope you're not toying with the rather medieval
+notion of possession," he said.
+
+Blake Hartley started. Something very like that must have been flitting
+through his mind. He opened his mouth to say something, then closed it
+abruptly.
+
+"The trouble is, I'm not sure you aren't right," his son continued. "You
+say you find me--changed. When did you first notice a difference?"
+
+"Last night, you were still my little boy. This morning--" Blake Hartley
+was talking more to himself than to Allan. "I don't know. You were
+unusually silent at breakfast. And come to think of it, there was
+something ... something strange ... about you when I saw you in the
+hall, upstairs.... Allan!" he burst out, vehemently. "What has happened
+to you?"
+
+Allan Hartley felt a twinge of pain. What his father was going through
+was almost what he, himself, had endured, in the first few minutes after
+waking.
+
+"I wish I could be sure, myself, Dad," he said. "You see, when I woke,
+this morning, I hadn't the least recollection of anything I'd done
+yesterday. August 4, 1945, that is," he specified. "I was positively
+convinced that I was a man of forty-three, and my last memory was of
+lying on a stretcher, injured by a bomb explosion. And I was equally
+convinced that this had happened in 1975."
+
+"Huh?" His father straightened. "Did you say nineteen _seventy_-five?"
+He thought for a moment. "That's right; in 1975, you will be
+forty-three. A bomb, you say?"
+
+Allan nodded. "During the siege of Buffalo, in the Third World War," he
+said, "I was a captain in G5--Scientific Warfare, General Staff. There'd
+been a transpolar air invasion of Canada, and I'd been sent to the front
+to check on service failures of a new lubricating oil for combat
+equipment. A week after I got there, Ottawa fell, and the retreat
+started. We made a stand at Buffalo, and that was where I copped it. I
+remember being picked up, and getting a narcotic injection. The next
+thing I knew, I was in bed, upstairs, and it was 1945 again, and I was
+back in my own little thirteen-year-old body."
+
+"Oh, Allan, you just had a nightmare to end nightmares!" his father
+assured him, laughing a trifle too heartily. "That's all!"
+
+"That was one of the first things I thought of. I had to reject it; it
+just wouldn't fit the facts. Look; a normal dream is part of the
+dreamer's own physical brain, isn't it? Well, here is a part about two
+thousand per cent greater than the whole from which it was taken. Which
+is absurd."
+
+"You mean all this Battle of Buffalo stuff? That's easy. All the radio
+commentators have been harping on the horrors of World War III, and you
+couldn't have avoided hearing some of it. You just have an undigested
+chunk of H. V. Kaltenborn raising hell in your subconscious."
+
+"It wasn't just World War III; it was everything. My four years at high
+school, and my four years at Penn State, and my seven years as a
+reporter on the Philadelphia Record. And my novels: '_Children of the
+Mist_,' '_Rose of Death_,' '_Conqueror's Road_.' They were no kid stuff.
+Why, yesterday I'd never even have thought of some of the ideas I used
+in my detective stories, that I published under a _nom-de-plume_. And my
+hobby, chemistry; I was pretty good at that. Patented a couple of
+processes that made me as much money as my writing. You think a
+thirteen-year-old just dreamed all that up? Or, here; you speak French,
+don't you?" He switched languages and spoke at some length in good
+conversational slang-spiced Parisian. "Too bad you don't speak Spanish,
+too," he added, reverting to English. "Except for a Mexican accent you
+could cut with a machete, I'm even better there than in French. And I
+know some German, and a little Russian."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Blake Hartley was staring at his son, stunned. It was some time before
+he could make himself speak.
+
+"I could barely keep up with you, in French," he admitted. "I can swear
+that in the last thirteen years of your life, you had absolutely no
+chance to learn it. All right; you lived till 1975, you say. Then, all
+of a sudden, you found yourself back here, thirteen years old, in 1945.
+I suppose you remember everything in between?" he asked. "Did you ever
+read James Branch Cabell? Remember Florian de Puysange, in 'The High
+Place'?"
+
+"Yes. You find the same idea in 'Jurgen' too," Allan said. "You know,
+I'm beginning to wonder if Cabell mightn't have known something he
+didn't want to write."
+
+"But it's impossible!" Blake Hartley hit the table with his hand, so
+hard that the heavy pistol bounced. The loose round he had ejected from
+the chamber toppled over and started to roll, falling off the edge. He
+stooped and picked it up. "How can you go back, against time? And the
+time you claim you came from doesn't exist, now; it hasn't happened
+yet." He reached for the pistol magazine, to insert the cartridge, and
+as he did, he saw the books in front of his son. "Dunne's 'Experiment
+with Time,'" he commented. "And J. N. M. Tyrrell's 'Science and
+Psychical Phenomena.' Are you trying to work out a theory?"
+
+"Yes." It encouraged Allan to see that his father had unconsciously
+adopted an adult-to-adult manner. "I think I'm getting somewhere, too.
+You've read these books? Well, look, Dad; what's your attitude on
+precognition? The ability of the human mind to exhibit real knowledge,
+apart from logical inference, of future events? You think Dunne is
+telling the truth about his experiences? Or that the cases in Tyrrell's
+book are properly verified, and can't be explained away on the basis of
+chance?"
+
+Blake Hartley frowned. "I don't know," he confessed. "The evidence is
+the sort that any court in the world would accept, if it concerned
+ordinary, normal events. Especially the cases investigated by the
+Society for Psychical Research: they _have_ been verified. But how can
+anybody know of something that hasn't happened yet? If it hasn't
+happened yet, it doesn't exist, and you can't have real knowledge of
+something that has no real existence."
+
+"Tyrrell discusses that dilemma, and doesn't dispose of it. I think I
+can. If somebody has real knowledge of the future, then the future must
+be available to the present mind. And if any moment other than the bare
+present exists, then all time must be totally present; every moment must
+be perpetually coexistent with every other moment," Allan said.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+"Yes. I think I see what you mean. That was Dunne's idea, wasn't it?"
+
+"No. Dunne postulated an infinite series of time dimensions, the entire
+extent of each being the bare present moment of the next. What I'm
+postulating is the perpetual coexistence of every moment of time in this
+dimension, just as every graduation on a yardstick exists equally with
+every other graduation, but each at a different point in space."
+
+"Well, as far as duration and sequence go, that's all right," the father
+agreed. "But how about the 'Passage of Time'?"
+
+"Well, time _does_ appear to pass. So does the landscape you see from a
+moving car window. I'll suggest that both are illusions of the same
+kind. We imagine time to be dynamic, because we've never viewed it from
+a fixed point, but if it is totally present, then it must be static, and
+in that case, we're moving through time."
+
+"That seems all right. But what's your car window?"
+
+"If all time is totally present, then you must exist simultaneously at
+every moment along your individual life span," Allan said. "Your
+physical body, and your mind, and all the thoughts contained in your
+mind, each at its appropriate moment in sequence. But what is it that
+exists only at the bare moment we think of as _now_?"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Blake Hartley grinned. Already, he was accepting his small son as an
+intellectual equal.
+
+"Please, teacher; what?"
+
+"Your consciousness. And don't say, 'What's that?' Teacher doesn't know.
+But we're only conscious of one moment; the illusory now. This is 'now,'
+and it was 'now' when you asked that question, and it'll be 'now' when I
+stop talking, but each is a different moment. We imagine that all those
+nows are rushing past us. Really, they're standing still, and our
+consciousness is whizzing past them."
+
+His father thought that over for some time. Then he sat up. "Hey!" he
+cried, suddenly. "If some part of our ego is time-free and passes from
+moment to moment, it must be extraphysical, because the physical body
+exists at every moment through which the consciousness passes. And if
+it's extraphysical, there's no reason whatever for assuming that it
+passes out of existence when it reaches the moment of the death of the
+body. Why, there's logical evidence for survival, independent of any
+alleged spirit communication! You can toss out Patience Worth, and Mrs.
+Osborne Leonard's Feda, and Sir Oliver Lodge's son, and Wilfred Brandon,
+and all the other spirit-communicators, and you still have evidence."
+
+"I hadn't thought of that," Allan confessed. "I think you're right.
+Well, let's put that at the bottom of the agenda and get on with this
+time business. You 'lose consciousness' as in sleep; where does your
+consciousness go? I think it simply detaches from the moment at which
+you go to sleep, and moves backward or forward along the line of
+moment-sequence, to some prior or subsequent moment, attaching there."
+
+"Well, why don't we know anything about that?" Blake Hartley asked. "It
+never seems to happen. We go to sleep tonight, and it's always tomorrow
+morning when we wake; never day-before-yesterday, or last month, or next
+year."
+
+"It never ... or almost never ... _seems_ to happen; you're right there.
+Know why? Because if the consciousness goes forward, it attaches at a
+moment when the physical brain contains memories of the previous,
+consciously unexperienced, moment. You wake, remembering the evening
+before, because that's the memory contained in your mind at that moment,
+and back of it are memories of all the events in the interim. See?"
+
+"Yes. But how about backward movement, like this experience of yours?"
+
+"This experience of mine may not be unique, but I never heard of another
+case like it. What usually happens is that the memories carried back by
+the consciousness are buried in the subconscious mind. You know how
+thick the wall between the subconscious and the conscious mind is. These
+dreams of Dunne's, and the cases in Tyrrell's book, are leakage. That's
+why precognitions are usually incomplete and distorted, and generally
+trivial. The wonder isn't that good cases are so few; it's surprising
+that there are any at all." Allan looked at the papers in front of him.
+"I haven't begun to theorize about how I managed to remember everything.
+It may have been the radiations from the bomb, or the effect of the
+narcotic, or both together, or something at this end, or a combination
+of all three. But the fact remains that my subconscious barrier didn't
+function, and everything got through. So, you see, I am obsessed--by my
+own future identity."
+
+"And I'd been afraid that you'd been, well, taken-over by some ... some
+outsider." Blake Hartley grinned weakly. "I don't mind admitting, Allan,
+that what's happened has been a shock. But that other ... I just
+couldn't have taken that."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"No. Not and stayed sane. But really, I am your son; the same entity I
+was yesterday. I've just had what you might call an educational short
+cut."
+
+"I'll say you have!" His father laughed in real amusement. He discovered
+that his cigar had gone out, and re-lit it. "Here; if you can remember
+the next thirty years, suppose you tell me when the War's going to end.
+This one, I mean."
+
+"The Japanese surrender will be announced at exactly 1901--7:01 P. M.
+present style--on August 14. A week from Tuesday. Better make sure we
+have plenty of grub in the house by then. Everything will be closed up
+tight till Thursday morning; even the restaurants. I remember, we had
+nothing to eat in the house but some scraps."
+
+"Well! It is handy, having a prophet in the family! I'll see to it Mrs.
+Stauber gets plenty of groceries in.... Tuesday a week? That's pretty
+sudden, isn't it?"
+
+"The Japs are going to think so," Allan replied. He went on to describe
+what was going to happen.
+
+His father swore softly. "You know, I've heard talk about atomic energy,
+but I thought it was just Buck Rogers stuff. Was that the sort of bomb
+that got you?"
+
+"That was a firecracker to the bomb that got me. That thing exploded a
+good ten miles away."
+
+Blake Hartley whistled softly. "And that's going to happen in thirty
+years! You know, son, if I were you, I wouldn't like to have to know
+about a thing like that." He looked at Allan for a moment. "Please, if
+you know, don't ever tell me when I'm going to die."
+
+Allan smiled. "I can't. I had a letter from you just before I left for
+the front. You were seventy-eight, then, and you were still hunting, and
+fishing, and flying your own plane. But I'm not going to get killed in
+any Battle of Buffalo, this time, and if I can prevent it, and I think I
+can, there won't be any World War III."
+
+"But--You say all time exists, perpetually coexistent and totally
+present," his father said. "Then it's right there in front of you, and
+you're getting closer to it, every watch tick."
+
+Allan Hartley shook his head. "You know what I remembered, when Frank
+Gutchall came to borrow a gun?" he asked. "Well, the other time, I
+hadn't been home: I'd been swimming at the Canoe Club, with Larry
+Morton. When I got home, about half an hour from now, I found the house
+full of cops. Gutchall talked the .38 officers' model out of you, and
+gone home; he'd shot his wife four times through the body, finished her
+off with another one back of the ear, and then used his sixth shot to
+blast his brains out. The cops traced the gun; they took a very poor
+view of your lending it to him. You never got it back."
+
+"Trust that gang to keep a good gun," the lawyer said.
+
+"I didn't want us to lose it, this time, and I didn't want to see you
+lose face around City Hall. Gutchalls, of course, are expendable," Allan
+said. "But my main reason for fixing Frank Gutchall up with a padded
+cell was that I wanted to know whether or not the future could be
+altered. I have it on experimental authority that it can be. There must
+be additional dimensions of time; lines of alternate probabilities.
+Something like William Seabrook's witch-doctor friend's Fan-Shaped
+_Destiny_. When I brought memories of the future back to the present, I
+added certain factors to the causal chain. That set up an entirely new
+line of probabilities. On no notice at all, I stopped a murder and a
+suicide. With thirty years to work, I can stop a world war. I'll have
+the means to do it, too."
+
+"The means?"
+
+"Unlimited wealth and influence. Here." Allan picked up a sheet and
+handed it to his father. "Used properly, we can make two or three
+million on that, alone. A list of all the Kentucky Derby, Preakness, and
+Belmont winners to 1970. That'll furnish us primary capital. Then,
+remember, I was something of a chemist. I took it up, originally, to get
+background material for one of my detective stories; it fascinated me,
+and I made it a hobby, and then a source of income. I'm thirty years
+ahead of any chemist in the world, now. You remember _I. G.
+Farbenindustrie_? Ten years from now, we'll make them look like pikers."
+
+His father looked at the yellow sheet. "Assault, at eight to one," he
+said. "I can scrape up about five thousand for that--Yes; in ten
+years--Any other little operations you have in mind?" he asked.
+
+"About 1950, we start building a political organization, here in
+Pennsylvania. In 1960, I think we can elect you President. The world
+situation will be crucial, by that time, and we had a good-natured
+nonentity in the White House then, who let things go till war became
+inevitable. I think President Hartley can be trusted to take a strong
+line of policy. In the meantime, you can read Machiavelli."
+
+"That's my little boy, talking!"
+
+Blake Hartley said softly. "All right, son; I'll do just what you tell
+me, and when you grow up, I'll be president.... Let's go get supper,
+now."
+
+
+THE END.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Time and Time Again, by Henry Beam Piper
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+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Time and Time Again, by Henry Beam Piper
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Time and Time Again
+
+Author: Henry Beam Piper
+
+Illustrator: Napoli
+
+Release Date: July 15, 2006 [EBook #18831]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK TIME AND TIME AGAIN ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
+
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+</pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<img src="images/illus1.jpg" alt=""/>
+</div>
+
+
+
+<h1>TIME AND TIME AGAIN</h1>
+
+<h2>BY H. BEAM PIPER</h2>
+
+<h3>Illustrated by Napoli</h3>
+
+<p>[Transcriber's note:  This etext was produced from Astounding Science
+Fiction April 1947. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
+the copyright on this publication was renewed.]</p>
+
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p><i>To upset the stable, mighty stream of time would probably take an
+enormous concentration of energy. And it's not to be expected that
+a man would get a second chance at life. But an atomic might
+accomplish both&mdash;</i></p></div>
+
+
+<p>Blinded by the bomb-flash and numbed by the narcotic injection, he could
+not estimate the extent of his injuries, but he knew that he was dying.
+Around him, in the darkness, voices sounded as through a thick wall.</p>
+
+<p>"They mighta left mosta these Joes where they was. Half of them won't
+even last till the truck comes."</p>
+
+<p>"No matter; so long as they're alive, they must be treated," another
+voice, crisp and cultivated, rebuked. "Better start taking names, while
+we're waiting."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, sir." Fingers fumbled at his identity badge. "Hartley, Allan;
+Captain, G5, Chem. Research AN/73/D. Serial, SO-23869403J."</p>
+
+<p>"Allan Hartley!" The medic officer spoke in shocked surprise. "Why, he's
+the man who wrote 'Children of the Mist', 'Rose of Death', and
+'Conqueror's Road'!"</p>
+
+<p>He tried to speak, and must have stirred; the corpsman's voice
+sharpened.</p>
+
+<p>"Major, I think he's part conscious. Mebbe I better give him 'nother
+shot."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, yes; by all means, sergeant."</p>
+
+<p>Something jabbed Allan Hartley in the back of the neck. Soft billows of
+oblivion closed in upon him, and all that remained to him was a tiny
+spark of awareness, glowing alone and lost in a great darkness.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>The Spark grew brighter. He was more than a something that merely knew
+that it existed. He was a man, and he had a name, and a military rank,
+and memories. Memories of the searing blue-green flash, and of what he
+had been doing outside the shelter the moment before, and memories of
+the month-long siege, and of the retreat from the north, and memories of
+the days before the War, back to the time when he had been little Allan
+Hartley, a schoolboy, the son of a successful lawyer, in Williamsport,
+Pennsylvania.</p>
+
+<p>His mother he could not remember; there was only a vague impression of
+the house full of people who had tried to comfort him for something he
+could not understand. But he remembered the old German woman who had
+kept house for his father, afterward, and he remembered his bedroom,
+with its chintz-covered chairs, and the warm-colored patch quilt on the
+old cherry bed, and the tan curtains at the windows, edged with dusky
+red, and the morning sun shining through them. He could almost see them,
+now.</p>
+
+<p>He blinked. He <i>could</i> see them!</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>For a long time, he lay staring at them unbelievingly, and then he
+deliberately closed his eyes and counted ten seconds, and as he counted,
+terror gripped him. He was afraid to open them again, lest he find
+himself blind, or gazing at the filth and wreckage of a blasted city,
+but when he reached ten, he forced himself to look, and gave a sigh of
+relief. The sunlit curtains and the sun-gilded mist outside were still
+there.</p>
+
+<p>He reached out to check one sense against another, feeling the rough
+monk's cloth and the edging of maroon silk thread. They were tangible as
+well as visible. Then he saw that the back of his hand was unscarred.
+There should have been a scar, souvenir of a rough-and-tumble brawl of
+his cub reporter days. He examined both hands closely. An instant later,
+he had sat up in bed and thrown off the covers, partially removing his
+pajamas and inspecting as much of his body as was visible.</p>
+
+<p>It was the smooth body of a little boy.</p>
+
+<p>That was ridiculous. He was a man of forty-three; an army officer, a
+chemist, once a best-selling novelist. He had been married, and divorced
+ten years ago. He looked again at his body. It was only twelve years
+old. Fourteen, at the very oldest. His eyes swept the room, wide with
+wonder. Every detail was familiar: the flower-splashed chair covers; the
+table that served as desk and catch-all for his possessions; the
+dresser, with its mirror stuck full of pictures of aircraft. It was the
+bedroom of his childhood home. He swung his legs over the edge of the
+bed. They were six inches too short to reach the floor.</p>
+
+<p>For an instant, the room spun dizzily; and he was in the grip of utter
+panic, all confidence in the evidence of his senses lost. Was he insane?
+Or delirious? Or had the bomb really killed him; was this what death was
+like? What was that thing, about "ye become as little children"? He
+started to laugh, and his juvenile larynx made giggling sounds. They
+seemed funny, too, and aggravated his mirth. For a little while, he was
+on the edge of hysteria and then, when he managed to control his
+laughter, he felt calmer. If he were dead, then he must be a discarnate
+entity, and would be able to penetrate matter. To his relief, he was
+unable to push his hand through the bed. So he was alive; he was also
+fully awake, and, he hoped, rational. He rose to his feet and prowled
+about the room, taking stock of its contents.</p>
+
+<p>There was no calendar in sight, and he could find no newspapers or dated
+periodicals, but he knew that it was prior to July 18, 1946. On that
+day, his fourteenth birthday, his father had given him a light .22
+rifle, and it had been hung on a pair of rustic forks on the wall. It
+was not there now, nor ever had been. On the table, he saw a boys' book
+of military aircraft, with a clean, new dustjacket; the flyleaf was
+inscribed: <i>To Allan Hartley, from his father, on his thirteenth
+birthday, 7/18 '45.</i> Glancing out the window at the foliage on the
+trees, he estimated the date at late July or early August, 1945; that
+would make him just thirteen.</p>
+
+<p>His clothes were draped on a chair beside the bed. Stripping off his
+pajamas, he donned shorts, then sat down and picked up a pair of
+lemon-colored socks, which he regarded with disfavor. As he pulled one
+on, a church bell began to clang. St. Boniface, up on the hill, ringing
+for early Mass; so this was Sunday. He paused, the second sock in his
+hand.</p>
+
+<p>There was no question that his present environment was actual. Yet, on
+the other hand, he possessed a set of memories completely at variance
+with it. Now, suppose, since his environment were not an illusion,
+everything else were? Suppose all these troublesome memories were no
+more than a dream? Why, he was just little Allan Hartley, safe in his
+room on a Sunday morning, badly scared by a nightmare! Too much science
+fiction, Allan; too many comic books!</p>
+
+<p>That was a wonderfully comforting thought, and he hugged it to him
+contentedly. It lasted all the while he was buttoning up his shirt and
+pulling on his pants, but when he reached for his shoes, it evaporated.
+Ever since he had wakened, he realized, he had been occupied with
+thoughts utterly incomprehensible to any thirteen-year-old; even
+thinking in words that would have been so much Sanscrit to himself at
+thirteen. He shook his head regretfully. The just-a-dream hypothesis
+went by the deep six.</p>
+
+<p>He picked up the second shoe and glared at it as though it were
+responsible for his predicament. He was going to have to be careful. An
+unexpected display of adult characteristics might give rise to some
+questions he would find hard to answer credibly. Fortunately, he was an
+only child; there would be no brothers or sisters to trip him up. Old
+Mrs. Stauber, the housekeeper, wouldn't be much of a problem; even in
+his normal childhood, he had bulked like an intellectual giant in
+comparison to her. But his father&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>Now, there the going would be tough. He knew that shrewd attorney's
+mind, whetted keen on a generation of lying and reluctant witnesses.
+Sooner or later, he would forget for an instant and betray himself. Then
+he smiled, remembering the books he had discovered, in his late 'teens,
+on his father's shelves and recalling the character of the openminded
+agnostic lawyer. If he could only avoid the inevitable unmasking until
+he had a plausible explanatory theory.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>Blake Hartley was leaving the bathroom as Allan Hartley opened his door
+and stepped into the hall. The lawyer was bare-armed and in slippers; at
+forty-eight, there was only a faint powdering of gray in his dark hair,
+and not a gray thread in his clipped mustache. The old Merry Widower,
+himself, Allan thought, grinning as he remembered the white-haired but
+still vigorous man from whom he'd parted at the outbreak of the War.</p>
+
+<p>"'Morning, Dad," he greeted.</p>
+
+<p>"'Morning, son. You're up early. Going to Sunday school?"</p>
+
+<p>Now there was the advantage of a father who'd cut his first intellectual
+tooth on Tom Paine and Bob Ingersoll; attendance at divine services was
+on a strictly voluntary basis.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, I don't think so; I want to do some reading, this morning."</p>
+
+<p>"That's always a good thing to do," Blake Hartley approved. "After
+breakfast, suppose you take a walk down to the station and get me a
+<i>Times</i>." He dug in his trouser pocket and came out with a half dollar.
+"Get anything you want for yourself, while you're at it."</p>
+
+<p>Allan thanked his father and pocketed the coin.</p>
+
+<p>"Mrs. Stauber'll still be at Mass," he suggested. "Say I get the paper
+now; breakfast won't be ready till she gets here."</p>
+
+<p>"Good idea." Blake Hartley nodded, pleased. "You'll have three-quarters
+of an hour, at least."</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>So far, he congratulated himself, everything had gone smoothly.
+Finishing his toilet, he went downstairs and onto the street, turning
+left at Brandon to Campbell, and left again in the direction of the
+station. Before he reached the underpass, a dozen half-forgotten
+memories had revived. Here was a house that would, in a few years, be
+gutted by fire. Here were four dwellings standing where he had last seen
+a five-story apartment building. A gasoline station and a weed-grown lot
+would shortly be replaced by a supermarket. The environs of the station
+itself were a complete puzzle to him, until he oriented himself.</p>
+
+<p>He bought a New York <i>Times</i>, glancing first of all at the date line.
+Sunday, August 5, 1945; he'd estimated pretty closely. The battle of
+Okinawa had been won. The Potsdam Conference had just ended. There were
+still pictures of the B-25 crash against the Empire State Building, a
+week ago Saturday. And Japan was still being pounded by bombs from the
+air and shells from off-shore naval guns. Why, tomorrow, Hiroshima was
+due for the Big Job! It amused him to reflect that he was probably the
+only person in Williamsport who knew that.</p>
+
+<p>On the way home, a boy, sitting on the top step of a front porch, hailed
+him. Allan replied cordially, trying to remember who it was. Of course;
+Larry Morton! He and Allan had been buddies. They probably had been
+swimming, or playing Commandos and Germans, the afternoon before. Larry
+had gone to Cornell the same year that Allan had gone to Penn State;
+they had both graduated in 1954. Larry had gotten into some Government
+bureau, and then he had married a Pittsburgh girl, and had become
+twelfth vice-president of her father's firm. He had been killed, in
+1968, in a plane crash.</p>
+
+<p>"You gonna Sunday school?" Larry asked, mercifully unaware of the fate
+Allan foresaw for him.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, no. I have some things I want to do at home." He'd have to watch
+himself. Larry would spot a difference quicker than any adult. "Heck
+with it," he added.</p>
+
+<p>"Golly, I wisht I c'ld stay home from Sunday school whenever I wanted
+to," Larry envied. "How about us goin' swimmin', at the Canoe Club,
+'safter?"</p>
+
+<p>Allan thought fast. "Gee, I wisht I c'ld," he replied, lowering his
+grammatical sights. "I gotta stay home, 'safter. We're expectin'
+comp'ny; coupla aunts of mine. Dad wants me to stay home when they
+come."</p>
+
+<p>That went over all right. Anybody knew that there was no rational
+accounting for the vagaries of the adult mind, and no appeal from adult
+demands. The prospect of company at the Hartley home would keep Larry
+away, that afternoon. He showed his disappointment.</p>
+
+<p>"Aw, jeepers creepers!" he blasphemed euphemistically.</p>
+
+<p>"Mebbe t'morrow," Allan said. "If I c'n make it. I gotta go, now; ain't
+had breakfast yet." He scuffed his feet boyishly, exchanged so-longs
+with his friend, and continued homeward.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>As he had hoped, the Sunday paper kept his father occupied at breakfast,
+to the exclusion of any dangerous table talk. Blake Hartley was still
+deep in the financial section when Allan left the table and went to the
+library. There should be two books there to which he wanted badly to
+refer. For a while, he was afraid that his father had not acquired them
+prior to 1945, but he finally found them, and carried them onto the
+front porch, along with a pencil and a ruled yellow scratch pad. In his
+experienced future&mdash;or his past-to-come&mdash;Allan Hartley had been
+accustomed to doing his thinking with a pencil. As reporter, as novelist
+plotting his work, as amateur chemist in his home laboratory, as
+scientific warfare research officer, his ideas had always been clarified
+by making notes. He pushed a chair to the table and built up the seat
+with cushions, wondering how soon he would become used to the
+proportional disparity between himself and the furniture. As he opened
+the books and took his pencil in his hand, there was one thing missing.
+If he could only smoke a pipe, now!</p>
+
+<p>His father came out and stretched in a wicker chair with the <i>Times</i>
+book-review section. The morning hours passed. Allan Hartley leafed
+through one book and then the other. His pencil moved rapidly at times;
+at others, he doodled absently. There was no question, any more, in his
+mind, as to what or who he was. He was Allan Hartley, a man of
+forty-three, marooned in his own thirteen-year-old body, thirty years
+back in his own past. That was, of course, against all common sense, but
+he was easily able to ignore that objection. It had been made before:
+against the astronomy of Copernicus, and the geography of Columbus, and
+the biology of Darwin, and the industrial technology of Samuel Colt, and
+the military doctrines of Charles de Gaulle. Today's common sense had a
+habit of turning into tomorrow's utter nonsense. What he needed, right
+now, but bad, was a theory that would explain what had happened to him.</p>
+
+<p>Understanding was beginning to dawn when Mrs. Stauber came out to
+announce midday dinner.</p>
+
+<p>"I hope you von't mind haffin' it so early," she apologized. "Mein
+sister, Jennie, offer in Nippenose, she iss sick; I vant to go see her,
+dis afternoon, yet. I'll be back in blenty time to get supper, Mr.
+Hartley."</p>
+
+<p>"Hey, Dad!" Allan spoke up. "Why can't we get our own supper, and have a
+picnic, like? That'd be fun, and Mrs. Stauber could stay as long as she
+wanted to."</p>
+
+<p>His father looked at him. Such consideration for others was a most
+gratifying deviation from the juvenile norm; dawn of altruism, or
+something. He gave hearty assent:</p>
+
+<p>"Why, of course, Mrs. Stauber. Allan and I can shift for ourselves, this
+evening; can't we, Allan? You needn't come back till tomorrow morning."</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Ach</i>, t'ank you! T'ank you so mooch, Mr. Hartley."</p>
+
+<p>At dinner, Allan got out from under the burden of conversation by
+questioning his father about the War and luring him into a lengthy
+dissertation on the difficulties of the forthcoming invasion of Japan.
+In view of what he remembered of the next twenty-four hours, Allan was
+secretly amused. His father was sure that the War would run on to
+mid-1946.</p>
+
+<p>After dinner, they returned to the porch, Hartley <i>p&egrave;re</i> smoking a cigar
+and carrying out several law books. He only glanced at these
+occasionally; for the most part, he sat and blew smoke rings, and
+watched them float away. Some thrice-guilty felon was about to be
+triumphantly acquitted by a weeping jury; Allan could recognize a
+courtroom masterpiece in the process of incubation.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>It was several hours later that the crunch of feet on the walk caused
+father and son to look up simultaneously. The approaching visitor was a
+tall man in a rumpled black suit; he had knobby wrists and big, awkward
+hands; black hair flecked with gray, and a harsh, bigoted face. Allan
+remembered him. Frank Gutchall. Lived on Campbell Street; a religious
+fanatic, and some sort of lay preacher. Maybe he needed legal advice;
+Allan could vaguely remember some incident&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, good afternoon, Mr. Gutchall. Lovely day, isn't it?" Blake Hartley
+said.</p>
+
+<p>Gutchall cleared his throat. "Mr. Hartley, I wonder if you could lend me
+a gun and some bullets," he began, embarrassedly. "My little dog's been
+hurt, and it's suffering something terrible. I want a gun, to put the
+poor thing out of its pain."</p>
+
+<p>"Why, yes; of course. How would a 20-gauge shotgun do?" Blake Hartley
+asked. "You wouldn't want anything heavy."</p>
+
+<p>Gutchall fidgeted. "Why, er, I was hoping you'd let me have a little
+gun." He held his hands about six inches apart. "A pistol, that I could
+put in my pocket. It wouldn't look right, to carry a hunting gun on the
+Lord's day; people wouldn't understand that it was for a work of mercy."</p>
+
+<p>The lawyer nodded. In view of Gutchall's religious beliefs, the
+objection made sense.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I have a Colt .38-special," he said, "but you know, I belong to
+this Auxiliary Police outfit. If I were called out for duty, this
+evening, I'd need it. How soon could you bring it back?"</p>
+
+<p>Something clicked in Allan Hartley's mind. He remembered, now, what that
+incident had been. He knew, too, what he had to do.</p>
+
+<p>"Dad, aren't there some cartridges left for the Luger?" he asked.</p>
+
+<p>Blake Hartley snapped his fingers. "By George, yes! I have a German
+automatic I can let you have, but I wish you'd bring it back as soon as
+possible. I'll get it for you."</p>
+
+<p>Before he could rise, Allan was on his feet.</p>
+
+<p>"Sit still, Dad; I'll get it. I know where the cartridges are." With
+that, he darted into the house and upstairs.</p>
+
+<p>The Luger hung on the wall over his father's bed. Getting it down, he
+dismounted it, working with rapid precision. He used the blade of his
+pocketknife to unlock the endpiece of the breechblock, slipping out the
+firing pin and buttoning it into his shirt pocket. Then he reassembled
+the harmless pistol, and filled the clip with 9-millimeter cartridges
+from the bureau drawer.</p>
+
+<p>There was an extension telephone beside the bed. Finding Gutchall's
+address in the directory, he lifted the telephone, and stretched his
+handkerchief over the mouthpiece. Then he dialed Police Headquarters.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<img src="images/illus2.jpg" alt=""/>
+</div>
+
+<p>"This is Blake Hartley," he lied, deepening his voice and copying his
+father's tone. "Frank Gutchall, who lives at...take this down"&mdash;he gave
+Gutchall's address&mdash;"has just borrowed a pistol from me, ostensibly to
+shoot a dog. He has no dog. He intends shooting his wife. Don't argue
+about how I know; there isn't time. Just take it for granted that I do.
+I disabled the pistol&mdash;took out the firing pin&mdash;but if he finds out what
+I did, he may get some other weapon. He's on his way home, but he's on
+foot. If you hurry, you may get a man there before he arrives, and grab
+him before he finds out the pistol won't shoot."</p>
+
+<p>"O. K., Mr. Hartley. We'll take care of it. Thanks."</p>
+
+<p>"And I wish you'd get my pistol back, as soon as you can. It's something
+I brought home from the other War, and I shouldn't like to lose it."</p>
+
+<p>"We'll take care of that, too. Thank you, Mr. Hartley."</p>
+
+<p>He hung up, and carried the Luger and the loaded clip down to the porch.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>"Look, Mr. Gutchall; here's how it works," he said, showing it to the
+visitor. Then he slapped in the clip and yanked up on the toggle loading
+the chamber. "It's ready to shoot, now; this is the safety." He pushed
+it on. "When you're ready to shoot, just shove it forward and up, and
+then pull the trigger. You have to pull the trigger each time; it's
+loaded for eight shots. And be sure to put the safety back when you're
+through shooting."</p>
+
+<p>"Did you load the chamber?" Blake Hartley demanded.</p>
+
+<p>"Sure. It's on safe, now."</p>
+
+<p>"Let me see." His father took the pistol, being careful to keep his
+finger out of the trigger guard, and looked at it. "Yes, that's all
+right." He repeated the instructions Allan had given, stressing the
+importance of putting the safety on after using. "Understand how it
+works, now?" he asked.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I understand how it works. Thank you, Mr. Hartley. Thank you, too,
+young man."</p>
+
+<p>Gutchall put the Luger in his hip pocket, made sure it wouldn't fall
+out, and took his departure.</p>
+
+<p>"You shouldn't have loaded it," Hartley <i>p&egrave;re</i> reproved, when he was
+gone.</p>
+
+<p>Allan sighed. This was it; the masquerade was over.</p>
+
+<p>"I had to, to keep you from fooling with it," he said. "I didn't want
+you finding out that I'd taken out the firing pin."</p>
+
+<p>"You what?"</p>
+
+<p>"Gutchall didn't want that gun to shoot a dog. He has no dog. He meant
+to shoot his wife with it. He's a religious maniac; sees visions, hears
+voices, receives revelations, talks with the Holy Ghost. The Holy Ghost
+probably put him up to this caper. I'll submit that any man who holds
+long conversations with the Deity isn't to be trusted with a gun, and
+neither is any man who lies about why he wants one. And while I was at
+it, I called the police, on the upstairs phone. I had to use your name;
+I deepened my voice and talked through a handkerchief."</p>
+
+<p>"You&mdash;" Blake Hartley jumped as though bee-stung. "Why did you have to
+do that?"</p>
+
+<p>"You know why. I couldn't have told them, 'This is little Allan Hartley,
+just thirteen years old; please, Mr. Policeman, go and arrest Frank
+Gutchall before he goes root-toot-toot at his wife with my pappa's
+Luger.' That would have gone over big, now, wouldn't it?"</p>
+
+<p>"And suppose he really wants to shoot a dog; what sort of a mess will I
+be in?"</p>
+
+<p>"No mess at all. If I'm wrong&mdash;which I'm not&mdash;I'll take the thump for
+it, myself. It'll pass for a dumb kid trick, and nothing'll be done. But
+if I'm right, you'll have to front for me. They'll keep your name out of
+it, but they'd give me a lot of cheap boy-hero publicity, which I don't
+want." He picked up his pencil again. "We should have the complete
+returns in about twenty minutes."</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>That was a ten-minute under-estimate, and it was another quarter-hour
+before the detective-sergeant who returned the Luger had finished
+congratulating Blake Hartley and giving him the thanks of the
+Department. After he had gone, the lawyer picked up the Luger, withdrew
+the clip, and ejected the round in the chamber.</p>
+
+<p>"Well," he told his son, "you were right. You saved that woman's life."
+He looked at the automatic, and then handed it across the table. "Now,
+let's see you put that firing pin back."</p>
+
+<p>Allan Hartley dismantled the weapon, inserted the missing part, and put
+it together again, then snapped it experimentally and returned it to his
+father. Blake Hartley looked at it again, and laid it on the table.</p>
+
+<p>"Now, son, suppose we have a little talk," he said softly.</p>
+
+<p>"But I explained everything." Allan objected innocently.</p>
+
+<p>"You did not," his father retorted. "Yesterday you'd never have thought
+of a trick like this; why, you wouldn't even have known how to take this
+pistol apart. And at dinner, I caught you using language and expressing
+ideas that were entirely outside anything you'd ever known before. Now,
+I want to know&mdash;and I mean this literally."</p>
+
+<p>Allan chuckled. "I hope you're not toying with the rather medieval
+notion of possession," he said.</p>
+
+<p>Blake Hartley started. Something very like that must have been flitting
+through his mind. He opened his mouth to say something, then closed it
+abruptly.</p>
+
+<p>"The trouble is, I'm not sure you aren't right," his son continued. "You
+say you find me&mdash;changed. When did you first notice a difference?"</p>
+
+<p>"Last night, you were still my little boy. This morning&mdash;" Blake Hartley
+was talking more to himself than to Allan. "I don't know. You were
+unusually silent at breakfast. And come to think of it, there was
+something ... something strange ... about you when I saw you in the
+hall, upstairs.... Allan!" he burst out, vehemently. "What has happened
+to you?"</p>
+
+<p>Allan Hartley felt a twinge of pain. What his father was going through
+was almost what he, himself, had endured, in the first few minutes after
+waking.</p>
+
+<p>"I wish I could be sure, myself, Dad," he said. "You see, when I woke,
+this morning, I hadn't the least recollection of anything I'd done
+yesterday. August 4, 1945, that is," he specified. "I was positively
+convinced that I was a man of forty-three, and my last memory was of
+lying on a stretcher, injured by a bomb explosion. And I was equally
+convinced that this had happened in 1975."</p>
+
+<p>"Huh?" His father straightened. "Did you say nineteen <i>seventy</i>-five?"
+He thought for a moment. "That's right; in 1975, you will be
+forty-three. A bomb, you say?"</p>
+
+<p>Allan nodded. "During the siege of Buffalo, in the Third World War," he
+said, "I was a captain in G5&mdash;Scientific Warfare, General Staff. There'd
+been a transpolar air invasion of Canada, and I'd been sent to the front
+to check on service failures of a new lubricating oil for combat
+equipment. A week after I got there, Ottawa fell, and the retreat
+started. We made a stand at Buffalo, and that was where I copped it. I
+remember being picked up, and getting a narcotic injection. The next
+thing I knew, I was in bed, upstairs, and it was 1945 again, and I was
+back in my own little thirteen-year-old body."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Allan, you just had a nightmare to end nightmares!" his father
+assured him, laughing a trifle too heartily. "That's all!"</p>
+
+<p>"That was one of the first things I thought of. I had to reject it; it
+just wouldn't fit the facts. Look; a normal dream is part of the
+dreamer's own physical brain, isn't it? Well, here is a part about two
+thousand per cent greater than the whole from which it was taken. Which
+is absurd."</p>
+
+<p>"You mean all this Battle of Buffalo stuff? That's easy. All the radio
+commentators have been harping on the horrors of World War III, and you
+couldn't have avoided hearing some of it. You just have an undigested
+chunk of H. V. Kaltenborn raising hell in your subconscious."</p>
+
+<p>"It wasn't just World War III; it was everything. My four years at high
+school, and my four years at Penn State, and my seven years as a
+reporter on the Philadelphia Record. And my novels: '<i>Children of the
+Mist</i>,' '<i>Rose of Death</i>,' '<i>Conqueror's Road</i>.' They were no kid stuff.
+Why, yesterday I'd never even have thought of some of the ideas I used
+in my detective stories, that I published under a <i>nom-de-plume</i>. And my
+hobby, chemistry; I was pretty good at that. Patented a couple of
+processes that made me as much money as my writing. You think a
+thirteen-year-old just dreamed all that up? Or, here; you speak French,
+don't you?" He switched languages and spoke at some length in good
+conversational slang-spiced Parisian. "Too bad you don't speak Spanish,
+too," he added, reverting to English. "Except for a Mexican accent you
+could cut with a machete, I'm even better there than in French. And I
+know some German, and a little Russian."</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>Blake Hartley was staring at his son, stunned. It was some time before
+he could make himself speak.</p>
+
+<p>"I could barely keep up with you, in French," he admitted. "I can swear
+that in the last thirteen years of your life, you had absolutely no
+chance to learn it. All right; you lived till 1975, you say. Then, all
+of a sudden, you found yourself back here, thirteen years old, in 1945.
+I suppose you remember everything in between?" he asked. "Did you ever
+read James Branch Cabell? Remember Florian de Puysange, in 'The High
+Place'?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. You find the same idea in 'Jurgen' too," Allan said. "You know,
+I'm beginning to wonder if Cabell mightn't have known something he
+didn't want to write."</p>
+
+<p>"But it's impossible!" Blake Hartley hit the table with his hand, so
+hard that the heavy pistol bounced. The loose round he had ejected from
+the chamber toppled over and started to roll, falling off the edge. He
+stooped and picked it up. "How can you go back, against time? And the
+time you claim you came from doesn't exist, now; it hasn't happened
+yet." He reached for the pistol magazine, to insert the cartridge, and
+as he did, he saw the books in front of his son. "Dunne's 'Experiment
+with Time,'" he commented. "And J. N. M. Tyrrell's 'Science and
+Psychical Phenomena.' Are you trying to work out a theory?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes." It encouraged Allan to see that his father had unconsciously
+adopted an adult-to-adult manner. "I think I'm getting somewhere, too.
+You've read these books? Well, look, Dad; what's your attitude on
+precognition? The ability of the human mind to exhibit real knowledge,
+apart from logical inference, of future events? You think Dunne is
+telling the truth about his experiences? Or that the cases in Tyrrell's
+book are properly verified, and can't be explained away on the basis of
+chance?"</p>
+
+<p>Blake Hartley frowned. "I don't know," he confessed. "The evidence is
+the sort that any court in the world would accept, if it concerned
+ordinary, normal events. Especially the cases investigated by the
+Society for Psychical Research: they <i>have</i> been verified. But how can
+anybody know of something that hasn't happened yet? If it hasn't
+happened yet, it doesn't exist, and you can't have real knowledge of
+something that has no real existence."</p>
+
+<p>"Tyrrell discusses that dilemma, and doesn't dispose of it. I think I
+can. If somebody has real knowledge of the future, then the future must
+be available to the present mind. And if any moment other than the bare
+present exists, then all time must be totally present; every moment must
+be perpetually coexistent with every other moment," Allan said.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<img src="images/illus3.jpg" alt=""/>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>"Yes. I think I see what you mean. That was Dunne's idea, wasn't it?"</p>
+
+<p>"No. Dunne postulated an infinite series of time dimensions, the entire
+extent of each being the bare present moment of the next. What I'm
+postulating is the perpetual coexistence of every moment of time in this
+dimension, just as every graduation on a yardstick exists equally with
+every other graduation, but each at a different point in space."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, as far as duration and sequence go, that's all right," the father
+agreed. "But how about the 'Passage of Time'?"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, time <i>does</i> appear to pass. So does the landscape you see from a
+moving car window. I'll suggest that both are illusions of the same
+kind. We imagine time to be dynamic, because we've never viewed it from
+a fixed point, but if it is totally present, then it must be static, and
+in that case, we're moving through time."</p>
+
+<p>"That seems all right. But what's your car window?"</p>
+
+<p>"If all time is totally present, then you must exist simultaneously at
+every moment along your individual life span," Allan said. "Your
+physical body, and your mind, and all the thoughts contained in your
+mind, each at its appropriate moment in sequence. But what is it that
+exists only at the bare moment we think of as <i>now</i>?"</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>Blake Hartley grinned. Already, he was accepting his small son as an
+intellectual equal.</p>
+
+<p>"Please, teacher; what?"</p>
+
+<p>"Your consciousness. And don't say, 'What's that?' Teacher doesn't know.
+But we're only conscious of one moment; the illusory now. This is 'now,'
+and it was 'now' when you asked that question, and it'll be 'now' when I
+stop talking, but each is a different moment. We imagine that all those
+nows are rushing past us. Really, they're standing still, and our
+consciousness is whizzing past them."</p>
+
+<p>His father thought that over for some time. Then he sat up. "Hey!" he
+cried, suddenly. "If some part of our ego is time-free and passes from
+moment to moment, it must be extraphysical, because the physical body
+exists at every moment through which the consciousness passes. And if
+it's extraphysical, there's no reason whatever for assuming that it
+passes out of existence when it reaches the moment of the death of the
+body. Why, there's logical evidence for survival, independent of any
+alleged spirit communication! You can toss out Patience Worth, and Mrs.
+Osborne Leonard's Feda, and Sir Oliver Lodge's son, and Wilfred Brandon,
+and all the other spirit-communicators, and you still have evidence."</p>
+
+<p>"I hadn't thought of that," Allan confessed. "I think you're right.
+Well, let's put that at the bottom of the agenda and get on with this
+time business. You 'lose consciousness' as in sleep; where does your
+consciousness go? I think it simply detaches from the moment at which
+you go to sleep, and moves backward or forward along the line of
+moment-sequence, to some prior or subsequent moment, attaching there."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, why don't we know anything about that?" Blake Hartley asked. "It
+never seems to happen. We go to sleep tonight, and it's always tomorrow
+morning when we wake; never day-before-yesterday, or last month, or next
+year."</p>
+
+<p>"It never ... or almost never ... <i>seems</i> to happen; you're right there.
+Know why? Because if the consciousness goes forward, it attaches at a
+moment when the physical brain contains memories of the previous,
+consciously unexperienced, moment. You wake, remembering the evening
+before, because that's the memory contained in your mind at that moment,
+and back of it are memories of all the events in the interim. See?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. But how about backward movement, like this experience of yours?"</p>
+
+<p>"This experience of mine may not be unique, but I never heard of another
+case like it. What usually happens is that the memories carried back by
+the consciousness are buried in the subconscious mind. You know how
+thick the wall between the subconscious and the conscious mind is. These
+dreams of Dunne's, and the cases in Tyrrell's book, are leakage. That's
+why precognitions are usually incomplete and distorted, and generally
+trivial. The wonder isn't that good cases are so few; it's surprising
+that there are any at all." Allan looked at the papers in front of him.
+"I haven't begun to theorize about how I managed to remember everything.
+It may have been the radiations from the bomb, or the effect of the
+narcotic, or both together, or something at this end, or a combination
+of all three. But the fact remains that my subconscious barrier didn't
+function, and everything got through. So, you see, I am obsessed&mdash;by my
+own future identity."</p>
+
+<p>"And I'd been afraid that you'd been, well, taken-over by some ... some
+outsider." Blake Hartley grinned weakly. "I don't mind admitting, Allan,
+that what's happened has been a shock. But that other ... I just
+couldn't have taken that."</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>"No. Not and stayed sane. But really, I am your son; the same entity I
+was yesterday. I've just had what you might call an educational short
+cut."</p>
+
+<p>"I'll say you have!" His father laughed in real amusement. He discovered
+that his cigar had gone out, and re-lit it. "Here; if you can remember
+the next thirty years, suppose you tell me when the War's going to end.
+This one, I mean."</p>
+
+<p>"The Japanese surrender will be announced at exactly 1901&mdash;7:01 P. M.
+present style&mdash;on August 14. A week from Tuesday. Better make sure we
+have plenty of grub in the house by then. Everything will be closed up
+tight till Thursday morning; even the restaurants. I remember, we had
+nothing to eat in the house but some scraps."</p>
+
+<p>"Well! It is handy, having a prophet in the family! I'll see to it Mrs.
+Stauber gets plenty of groceries in.... Tuesday a week? That's pretty
+sudden, isn't it?"</p>
+
+<p>"The Japs are going to think so," Allan replied. He went on to describe
+what was going to happen.</p>
+
+<p>His father swore softly. "You know, I've heard talk about atomic energy,
+but I thought it was just Buck Rogers stuff. Was that the sort of bomb
+that got you?"</p>
+
+<p>"That was a firecracker to the bomb that got me. That thing exploded a
+good ten miles away."</p>
+
+<p>Blake Hartley whistled softly. "And that's going to happen in thirty
+years! You know, son, if I were you, I wouldn't like to have to know
+about a thing like that." He looked at Allan for a moment. "Please, if
+you know, don't ever tell me when I'm going to die."</p>
+
+<p>Allan smiled. "I can't. I had a letter from you just before I left for
+the front. You were seventy-eight, then, and you were still hunting, and
+fishing, and flying your own plane. But I'm not going to get killed in
+any Battle of Buffalo, this time, and if I can prevent it, and I think I
+can, there won't be any World War III."</p>
+
+<p>"But&mdash;You say all time exists, perpetually coexistent and totally
+present," his father said. "Then it's right there in front of you, and
+you're getting closer to it, every watch tick."</p>
+
+<p>Allan Hartley shook his head. "You know what I remembered, when Frank
+Gutchall came to borrow a gun?" he asked. "Well, the other time, I
+hadn't been home: I'd been swimming at the Canoe Club, with Larry
+Morton. When I got home, about half an hour from now, I found the house
+full of cops. Gutchall talked the .38 officers' model out of you, and
+gone home; he'd shot his wife four times through the body, finished her
+off with another one back of the ear, and then used his sixth shot to
+blast his brains out. The cops traced the gun; they took a very poor
+view of your lending it to him. You never got it back."</p>
+
+<p>"Trust that gang to keep a good gun," the lawyer said.</p>
+
+<p>"I didn't want us to lose it, this time, and I didn't want to see you
+lose face around City Hall. Gutchalls, of course, are expendable," Allan
+said. "But my main reason for fixing Frank Gutchall up with a padded
+cell was that I wanted to know whether or not the future could be
+altered. I have it on experimental authority that it can be. There must
+be additional dimensions of time; lines of alternate probabilities.
+Something like William Seabrook's witch-doctor friend's Fan-Shaped
+<i>Destiny</i>. When I brought memories of the future back to the present, I
+added certain factors to the causal chain. That set up an entirely new
+line of probabilities. On no notice at all, I stopped a murder and a
+suicide. With thirty years to work, I can stop a world war. I'll have
+the means to do it, too."</p>
+
+<p>"The means?"</p>
+
+<p>"Unlimited wealth and influence. Here." Allan picked up a sheet and
+handed it to his father. "Used properly, we can make two or three
+million on that, alone. A list of all the Kentucky Derby, Preakness, and
+Belmont winners to 1970. That'll furnish us primary capital. Then,
+remember, I was something of a chemist. I took it up, originally, to get
+background material for one of my detective stories; it fascinated me,
+and I made it a hobby, and then a source of income. I'm thirty years
+ahead of any chemist in the world, now. You remember <i>I. G.
+Farbenindustrie</i>? Ten years from now, we'll make them look like pikers."</p>
+
+<p>His father looked at the yellow sheet. "Assault, at eight to one," he
+said. "I can scrape up about five thousand for that&mdash;Yes; in ten
+years&mdash;Any other little operations you have in mind?" he asked.</p>
+
+<p>"About 1950, we start building a political organization, here in
+Pennsylvania. In 1960, I think we can elect you President. The world
+situation will be crucial, by that time, and we had a good-natured
+nonentity in the White House then, who let things go till war became
+inevitable. I think President Hartley can be trusted to take a strong
+line of policy. In the meantime, you can read Machiavelli."</p>
+
+<p>"That's my little boy, talking!"</p>
+
+<p>Blake Hartley said softly. "All right, son; I'll do just what you tell
+me, and when you grow up, I'll be president.... Let's go get supper,
+now."</p>
+
+
+<p>THE END.</p>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Time and Time Again, by Henry Beam Piper
+
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Time and Time Again, by Henry Beam Piper
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Time and Time Again
+
+Author: Henry Beam Piper
+
+Illustrator: Napoli
+
+Release Date: July 15, 2006 [EBook #18831]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK TIME AND TIME AGAIN ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+                          TIME AND TIME AGAIN
+
+                            BY H. BEAM PIPER
+
+                         Illustrated by Napoli
+
+[Transcriber's note:  This etext was produced from Astounding Science
+Fiction April 1947. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
+the copyright on this publication was renewed.]
+
+
+     _To upset the stable, mighty stream of time would probably take an
+     enormous concentration of energy. And it's not to be expected that
+     a man would get a second chance at life. But an atomic might
+     accomplish both--_
+
+
+Blinded by the bomb-flash and numbed by the narcotic injection, he could
+not estimate the extent of his injuries, but he knew that he was dying.
+Around him, in the darkness, voices sounded as through a thick wall.
+
+"They mighta left mosta these Joes where they was. Half of them won't
+even last till the truck comes."
+
+"No matter; so long as they're alive, they must be treated," another
+voice, crisp and cultivated, rebuked. "Better start taking names, while
+we're waiting."
+
+"Yes, sir." Fingers fumbled at his identity badge. "Hartley, Allan;
+Captain, G5, Chem. Research AN/73/D. Serial, SO-23869403J."
+
+"Allan Hartley!" The medic officer spoke in shocked surprise. "Why, he's
+the man who wrote 'Children of the Mist', 'Rose of Death', and
+'Conqueror's Road'!"
+
+He tried to speak, and must have stirred; the corpsman's voice
+sharpened.
+
+"Major, I think he's part conscious. Mebbe I better give him 'nother
+shot."
+
+"Yes, yes; by all means, sergeant."
+
+Something jabbed Allan Hartley in the back of the neck. Soft billows of
+oblivion closed in upon him, and all that remained to him was a tiny
+spark of awareness, glowing alone and lost in a great darkness.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The Spark grew brighter. He was more than a something that merely knew
+that it existed. He was a man, and he had a name, and a military rank,
+and memories. Memories of the searing blue-green flash, and of what he
+had been doing outside the shelter the moment before, and memories of
+the month-long siege, and of the retreat from the north, and memories of
+the days before the War, back to the time when he had been little Allan
+Hartley, a schoolboy, the son of a successful lawyer, in Williamsport,
+Pennsylvania.
+
+His mother he could not remember; there was only a vague impression of
+the house full of people who had tried to comfort him for something he
+could not understand. But he remembered the old German woman who had
+kept house for his father, afterward, and he remembered his bedroom,
+with its chintz-covered chairs, and the warm-colored patch quilt on the
+old cherry bed, and the tan curtains at the windows, edged with dusky
+red, and the morning sun shining through them. He could almost see them,
+now.
+
+He blinked. He _could_ see them!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+For a long time, he lay staring at them unbelievingly, and then he
+deliberately closed his eyes and counted ten seconds, and as he counted,
+terror gripped him. He was afraid to open them again, lest he find
+himself blind, or gazing at the filth and wreckage of a blasted city,
+but when he reached ten, he forced himself to look, and gave a sigh of
+relief. The sunlit curtains and the sun-gilded mist outside were still
+there.
+
+He reached out to check one sense against another, feeling the rough
+monk's cloth and the edging of maroon silk thread. They were tangible as
+well as visible. Then he saw that the back of his hand was unscarred.
+There should have been a scar, souvenir of a rough-and-tumble brawl of
+his cub reporter days. He examined both hands closely. An instant later,
+he had sat up in bed and thrown off the covers, partially removing his
+pajamas and inspecting as much of his body as was visible.
+
+It was the smooth body of a little boy.
+
+That was ridiculous. He was a man of forty-three; an army officer, a
+chemist, once a best-selling novelist. He had been married, and divorced
+ten years ago. He looked again at his body. It was only twelve years
+old. Fourteen, at the very oldest. His eyes swept the room, wide with
+wonder. Every detail was familiar: the flower-splashed chair covers; the
+table that served as desk and catch-all for his possessions; the
+dresser, with its mirror stuck full of pictures of aircraft. It was the
+bedroom of his childhood home. He swung his legs over the edge of the
+bed. They were six inches too short to reach the floor.
+
+For an instant, the room spun dizzily; and he was in the grip of utter
+panic, all confidence in the evidence of his senses lost. Was he insane?
+Or delirious? Or had the bomb really killed him; was this what death was
+like? What was that thing, about "ye become as little children"? He
+started to laugh, and his juvenile larynx made giggling sounds. They
+seemed funny, too, and aggravated his mirth. For a little while, he was
+on the edge of hysteria and then, when he managed to control his
+laughter, he felt calmer. If he were dead, then he must be a discarnate
+entity, and would be able to penetrate matter. To his relief, he was
+unable to push his hand through the bed. So he was alive; he was also
+fully awake, and, he hoped, rational. He rose to his feet and prowled
+about the room, taking stock of its contents.
+
+There was no calendar in sight, and he could find no newspapers or dated
+periodicals, but he knew that it was prior to July 18, 1946. On that
+day, his fourteenth birthday, his father had given him a light .22
+rifle, and it had been hung on a pair of rustic forks on the wall. It
+was not there now, nor ever had been. On the table, he saw a boys' book
+of military aircraft, with a clean, new dustjacket; the flyleaf was
+inscribed: _To Allan Hartley, from his father, on his thirteenth
+birthday, 7/18 '45._ Glancing out the window at the foliage on the
+trees, he estimated the date at late July or early August, 1945; that
+would make him just thirteen.
+
+His clothes were draped on a chair beside the bed. Stripping off his
+pajamas, he donned shorts, then sat down and picked up a pair of
+lemon-colored socks, which he regarded with disfavor. As he pulled one
+on, a church bell began to clang. St. Boniface, up on the hill, ringing
+for early Mass; so this was Sunday. He paused, the second sock in his
+hand.
+
+There was no question that his present environment was actual. Yet, on
+the other hand, he possessed a set of memories completely at variance
+with it. Now, suppose, since his environment were not an illusion,
+everything else were? Suppose all these troublesome memories were no
+more than a dream? Why, he was just little Allan Hartley, safe in his
+room on a Sunday morning, badly scared by a nightmare! Too much science
+fiction, Allan; too many comic books!
+
+That was a wonderfully comforting thought, and he hugged it to him
+contentedly. It lasted all the while he was buttoning up his shirt and
+pulling on his pants, but when he reached for his shoes, it evaporated.
+Ever since he had wakened, he realized, he had been occupied with
+thoughts utterly incomprehensible to any thirteen-year-old; even
+thinking in words that would have been so much Sanscrit to himself at
+thirteen. He shook his head regretfully. The just-a-dream hypothesis
+went by the deep six.
+
+He picked up the second shoe and glared at it as though it were
+responsible for his predicament. He was going to have to be careful. An
+unexpected display of adult characteristics might give rise to some
+questions he would find hard to answer credibly. Fortunately, he was an
+only child; there would be no brothers or sisters to trip him up. Old
+Mrs. Stauber, the housekeeper, wouldn't be much of a problem; even in
+his normal childhood, he had bulked like an intellectual giant in
+comparison to her. But his father--
+
+Now, there the going would be tough. He knew that shrewd attorney's
+mind, whetted keen on a generation of lying and reluctant witnesses.
+Sooner or later, he would forget for an instant and betray himself. Then
+he smiled, remembering the books he had discovered, in his late 'teens,
+on his father's shelves and recalling the character of the openminded
+agnostic lawyer. If he could only avoid the inevitable unmasking until
+he had a plausible explanatory theory.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Blake Hartley was leaving the bathroom as Allan Hartley opened his door
+and stepped into the hall. The lawyer was bare-armed and in slippers; at
+forty-eight, there was only a faint powdering of gray in his dark hair,
+and not a gray thread in his clipped mustache. The old Merry Widower,
+himself, Allan thought, grinning as he remembered the white-haired but
+still vigorous man from whom he'd parted at the outbreak of the War.
+
+"'Morning, Dad," he greeted.
+
+"'Morning, son. You're up early. Going to Sunday school?"
+
+Now there was the advantage of a father who'd cut his first intellectual
+tooth on Tom Paine and Bob Ingersoll; attendance at divine services was
+on a strictly voluntary basis.
+
+"Why, I don't think so; I want to do some reading, this morning."
+
+"That's always a good thing to do," Blake Hartley approved. "After
+breakfast, suppose you take a walk down to the station and get me a
+_Times_." He dug in his trouser pocket and came out with a half dollar.
+"Get anything you want for yourself, while you're at it."
+
+Allan thanked his father and pocketed the coin.
+
+"Mrs. Stauber'll still be at Mass," he suggested. "Say I get the paper
+now; breakfast won't be ready till she gets here."
+
+"Good idea." Blake Hartley nodded, pleased. "You'll have three-quarters
+of an hour, at least."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+So far, he congratulated himself, everything had gone smoothly.
+Finishing his toilet, he went downstairs and onto the street, turning
+left at Brandon to Campbell, and left again in the direction of the
+station. Before he reached the underpass, a dozen half-forgotten
+memories had revived. Here was a house that would, in a few years, be
+gutted by fire. Here were four dwellings standing where he had last seen
+a five-story apartment building. A gasoline station and a weed-grown lot
+would shortly be replaced by a supermarket. The environs of the station
+itself were a complete puzzle to him, until he oriented himself.
+
+He bought a New York _Times_, glancing first of all at the date line.
+Sunday, August 5, 1945; he'd estimated pretty closely. The battle of
+Okinawa had been won. The Potsdam Conference had just ended. There were
+still pictures of the B-25 crash against the Empire State Building, a
+week ago Saturday. And Japan was still being pounded by bombs from the
+air and shells from off-shore naval guns. Why, tomorrow, Hiroshima was
+due for the Big Job! It amused him to reflect that he was probably the
+only person in Williamsport who knew that.
+
+On the way home, a boy, sitting on the top step of a front porch, hailed
+him. Allan replied cordially, trying to remember who it was. Of course;
+Larry Morton! He and Allan had been buddies. They probably had been
+swimming, or playing Commandos and Germans, the afternoon before. Larry
+had gone to Cornell the same year that Allan had gone to Penn State;
+they had both graduated in 1954. Larry had gotten into some Government
+bureau, and then he had married a Pittsburgh girl, and had become
+twelfth vice-president of her father's firm. He had been killed, in
+1968, in a plane crash.
+
+"You gonna Sunday school?" Larry asked, mercifully unaware of the fate
+Allan foresaw for him.
+
+"Why, no. I have some things I want to do at home." He'd have to watch
+himself. Larry would spot a difference quicker than any adult. "Heck
+with it," he added.
+
+"Golly, I wisht I c'ld stay home from Sunday school whenever I wanted
+to," Larry envied. "How about us goin' swimmin', at the Canoe Club,
+'safter?"
+
+Allan thought fast. "Gee, I wisht I c'ld," he replied, lowering his
+grammatical sights. "I gotta stay home, 'safter. We're expectin'
+comp'ny; coupla aunts of mine. Dad wants me to stay home when they
+come."
+
+That went over all right. Anybody knew that there was no rational
+accounting for the vagaries of the adult mind, and no appeal from adult
+demands. The prospect of company at the Hartley home would keep Larry
+away, that afternoon. He showed his disappointment.
+
+"Aw, jeepers creepers!" he blasphemed euphemistically.
+
+"Mebbe t'morrow," Allan said. "If I c'n make it. I gotta go, now; ain't
+had breakfast yet." He scuffed his feet boyishly, exchanged so-longs
+with his friend, and continued homeward.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+As he had hoped, the Sunday paper kept his father occupied at breakfast,
+to the exclusion of any dangerous table talk. Blake Hartley was still
+deep in the financial section when Allan left the table and went to the
+library. There should be two books there to which he wanted badly to
+refer. For a while, he was afraid that his father had not acquired them
+prior to 1945, but he finally found them, and carried them onto the
+front porch, along with a pencil and a ruled yellow scratch pad. In his
+experienced future--or his past-to-come--Allan Hartley had been
+accustomed to doing his thinking with a pencil. As reporter, as novelist
+plotting his work, as amateur chemist in his home laboratory, as
+scientific warfare research officer, his ideas had always been clarified
+by making notes. He pushed a chair to the table and built up the seat
+with cushions, wondering how soon he would become used to the
+proportional disparity between himself and the furniture. As he opened
+the books and took his pencil in his hand, there was one thing missing.
+If he could only smoke a pipe, now!
+
+His father came out and stretched in a wicker chair with the _Times_
+book-review section. The morning hours passed. Allan Hartley leafed
+through one book and then the other. His pencil moved rapidly at times;
+at others, he doodled absently. There was no question, any more, in his
+mind, as to what or who he was. He was Allan Hartley, a man of
+forty-three, marooned in his own thirteen-year-old body, thirty years
+back in his own past. That was, of course, against all common sense, but
+he was easily able to ignore that objection. It had been made before:
+against the astronomy of Copernicus, and the geography of Columbus, and
+the biology of Darwin, and the industrial technology of Samuel Colt, and
+the military doctrines of Charles de Gaulle. Today's common sense had a
+habit of turning into tomorrow's utter nonsense. What he needed, right
+now, but bad, was a theory that would explain what had happened to him.
+
+Understanding was beginning to dawn when Mrs. Stauber came out to
+announce midday dinner.
+
+"I hope you von't mind haffin' it so early," she apologized. "Mein
+sister, Jennie, offer in Nippenose, she iss sick; I vant to go see her,
+dis afternoon, yet. I'll be back in blenty time to get supper, Mr.
+Hartley."
+
+"Hey, Dad!" Allan spoke up. "Why can't we get our own supper, and have a
+picnic, like? That'd be fun, and Mrs. Stauber could stay as long as she
+wanted to."
+
+His father looked at him. Such consideration for others was a most
+gratifying deviation from the juvenile norm; dawn of altruism, or
+something. He gave hearty assent:
+
+"Why, of course, Mrs. Stauber. Allan and I can shift for ourselves, this
+evening; can't we, Allan? You needn't come back till tomorrow morning."
+
+"_Ach_, t'ank you! T'ank you so mooch, Mr. Hartley."
+
+At dinner, Allan got out from under the burden of conversation by
+questioning his father about the War and luring him into a lengthy
+dissertation on the difficulties of the forthcoming invasion of Japan.
+In view of what he remembered of the next twenty-four hours, Allan was
+secretly amused. His father was sure that the War would run on to
+mid-1946.
+
+After dinner, they returned to the porch, Hartley _pere_ smoking a cigar
+and carrying out several law books. He only glanced at these
+occasionally; for the most part, he sat and blew smoke rings, and
+watched them float away. Some thrice-guilty felon was about to be
+triumphantly acquitted by a weeping jury; Allan could recognize a
+courtroom masterpiece in the process of incubation.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was several hours later that the crunch of feet on the walk caused
+father and son to look up simultaneously. The approaching visitor was a
+tall man in a rumpled black suit; he had knobby wrists and big, awkward
+hands; black hair flecked with gray, and a harsh, bigoted face. Allan
+remembered him. Frank Gutchall. Lived on Campbell Street; a religious
+fanatic, and some sort of lay preacher. Maybe he needed legal advice;
+Allan could vaguely remember some incident--
+
+"Ah, good afternoon, Mr. Gutchall. Lovely day, isn't it?" Blake Hartley
+said.
+
+Gutchall cleared his throat. "Mr. Hartley, I wonder if you could lend me
+a gun and some bullets," he began, embarrassedly. "My little dog's been
+hurt, and it's suffering something terrible. I want a gun, to put the
+poor thing out of its pain."
+
+"Why, yes; of course. How would a 20-gauge shotgun do?" Blake Hartley
+asked. "You wouldn't want anything heavy."
+
+Gutchall fidgeted. "Why, er, I was hoping you'd let me have a little
+gun." He held his hands about six inches apart. "A pistol, that I could
+put in my pocket. It wouldn't look right, to carry a hunting gun on the
+Lord's day; people wouldn't understand that it was for a work of mercy."
+
+The lawyer nodded. In view of Gutchall's religious beliefs, the
+objection made sense.
+
+"Well, I have a Colt .38-special," he said, "but you know, I belong to
+this Auxiliary Police outfit. If I were called out for duty, this
+evening, I'd need it. How soon could you bring it back?"
+
+Something clicked in Allan Hartley's mind. He remembered, now, what that
+incident had been. He knew, too, what he had to do.
+
+"Dad, aren't there some cartridges left for the Luger?" he asked.
+
+Blake Hartley snapped his fingers. "By George, yes! I have a German
+automatic I can let you have, but I wish you'd bring it back as soon as
+possible. I'll get it for you."
+
+Before he could rise, Allan was on his feet.
+
+"Sit still, Dad; I'll get it. I know where the cartridges are." With
+that, he darted into the house and upstairs.
+
+The Luger hung on the wall over his father's bed. Getting it down, he
+dismounted it, working with rapid precision. He used the blade of his
+pocketknife to unlock the endpiece of the breechblock, slipping out the
+firing pin and buttoning it into his shirt pocket. Then he reassembled
+the harmless pistol, and filled the clip with 9-millimeter cartridges
+from the bureau drawer.
+
+There was an extension telephone beside the bed. Finding Gutchall's
+address in the directory, he lifted the telephone, and stretched his
+handkerchief over the mouthpiece. Then he dialed Police Headquarters.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+"This is Blake Hartley," he lied, deepening his voice and copying his
+father's tone. "Frank Gutchall, who lives at...take this down"--he gave
+Gutchall's address--"has just borrowed a pistol from me, ostensibly to
+shoot a dog. He has no dog. He intends shooting his wife. Don't argue
+about how I know; there isn't time. Just take it for granted that I do.
+I disabled the pistol--took out the firing pin--but if he finds out what
+I did, he may get some other weapon. He's on his way home, but he's on
+foot. If you hurry, you may get a man there before he arrives, and grab
+him before he finds out the pistol won't shoot."
+
+"O. K., Mr. Hartley. We'll take care of it. Thanks."
+
+"And I wish you'd get my pistol back, as soon as you can. It's something
+I brought home from the other War, and I shouldn't like to lose it."
+
+"We'll take care of that, too. Thank you, Mr. Hartley."
+
+He hung up, and carried the Luger and the loaded clip down to the porch.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Look, Mr. Gutchall; here's how it works," he said, showing it to the
+visitor. Then he slapped in the clip and yanked up on the toggle loading
+the chamber. "It's ready to shoot, now; this is the safety." He pushed
+it on. "When you're ready to shoot, just shove it forward and up, and
+then pull the trigger. You have to pull the trigger each time; it's
+loaded for eight shots. And be sure to put the safety back when you're
+through shooting."
+
+"Did you load the chamber?" Blake Hartley demanded.
+
+"Sure. It's on safe, now."
+
+"Let me see." His father took the pistol, being careful to keep his
+finger out of the trigger guard, and looked at it. "Yes, that's all
+right." He repeated the instructions Allan had given, stressing the
+importance of putting the safety on after using. "Understand how it
+works, now?" he asked.
+
+"Yes, I understand how it works. Thank you, Mr. Hartley. Thank you, too,
+young man."
+
+Gutchall put the Luger in his hip pocket, made sure it wouldn't fall
+out, and took his departure.
+
+"You shouldn't have loaded it," Hartley _pere_ reproved, when he was
+gone.
+
+Allan sighed. This was it; the masquerade was over.
+
+"I had to, to keep you from fooling with it," he said. "I didn't want
+you finding out that I'd taken out the firing pin."
+
+"You what?"
+
+"Gutchall didn't want that gun to shoot a dog. He has no dog. He meant
+to shoot his wife with it. He's a religious maniac; sees visions, hears
+voices, receives revelations, talks with the Holy Ghost. The Holy Ghost
+probably put him up to this caper. I'll submit that any man who holds
+long conversations with the Deity isn't to be trusted with a gun, and
+neither is any man who lies about why he wants one. And while I was at
+it, I called the police, on the upstairs phone. I had to use your name;
+I deepened my voice and talked through a handkerchief."
+
+"You--" Blake Hartley jumped as though bee-stung. "Why did you have to
+do that?"
+
+"You know why. I couldn't have told them, 'This is little Allan Hartley,
+just thirteen years old; please, Mr. Policeman, go and arrest Frank
+Gutchall before he goes root-toot-toot at his wife with my pappa's
+Luger.' That would have gone over big, now, wouldn't it?"
+
+"And suppose he really wants to shoot a dog; what sort of a mess will I
+be in?"
+
+"No mess at all. If I'm wrong--which I'm not--I'll take the thump for
+it, myself. It'll pass for a dumb kid trick, and nothing'll be done. But
+if I'm right, you'll have to front for me. They'll keep your name out of
+it, but they'd give me a lot of cheap boy-hero publicity, which I don't
+want." He picked up his pencil again. "We should have the complete
+returns in about twenty minutes."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+That was a ten-minute under-estimate, and it was another quarter-hour
+before the detective-sergeant who returned the Luger had finished
+congratulating Blake Hartley and giving him the thanks of the
+Department. After he had gone, the lawyer picked up the Luger, withdrew
+the clip, and ejected the round in the chamber.
+
+"Well," he told his son, "you were right. You saved that woman's life."
+He looked at the automatic, and then handed it across the table. "Now,
+let's see you put that firing pin back."
+
+Allan Hartley dismantled the weapon, inserted the missing part, and put
+it together again, then snapped it experimentally and returned it to his
+father. Blake Hartley looked at it again, and laid it on the table.
+
+"Now, son, suppose we have a little talk," he said softly.
+
+"But I explained everything." Allan objected innocently.
+
+"You did not," his father retorted. "Yesterday you'd never have thought
+of a trick like this; why, you wouldn't even have known how to take this
+pistol apart. And at dinner, I caught you using language and expressing
+ideas that were entirely outside anything you'd ever known before. Now,
+I want to know--and I mean this literally."
+
+Allan chuckled. "I hope you're not toying with the rather medieval
+notion of possession," he said.
+
+Blake Hartley started. Something very like that must have been flitting
+through his mind. He opened his mouth to say something, then closed it
+abruptly.
+
+"The trouble is, I'm not sure you aren't right," his son continued. "You
+say you find me--changed. When did you first notice a difference?"
+
+"Last night, you were still my little boy. This morning--" Blake Hartley
+was talking more to himself than to Allan. "I don't know. You were
+unusually silent at breakfast. And come to think of it, there was
+something ... something strange ... about you when I saw you in the
+hall, upstairs.... Allan!" he burst out, vehemently. "What has happened
+to you?"
+
+Allan Hartley felt a twinge of pain. What his father was going through
+was almost what he, himself, had endured, in the first few minutes after
+waking.
+
+"I wish I could be sure, myself, Dad," he said. "You see, when I woke,
+this morning, I hadn't the least recollection of anything I'd done
+yesterday. August 4, 1945, that is," he specified. "I was positively
+convinced that I was a man of forty-three, and my last memory was of
+lying on a stretcher, injured by a bomb explosion. And I was equally
+convinced that this had happened in 1975."
+
+"Huh?" His father straightened. "Did you say nineteen _seventy_-five?"
+He thought for a moment. "That's right; in 1975, you will be
+forty-three. A bomb, you say?"
+
+Allan nodded. "During the siege of Buffalo, in the Third World War," he
+said, "I was a captain in G5--Scientific Warfare, General Staff. There'd
+been a transpolar air invasion of Canada, and I'd been sent to the front
+to check on service failures of a new lubricating oil for combat
+equipment. A week after I got there, Ottawa fell, and the retreat
+started. We made a stand at Buffalo, and that was where I copped it. I
+remember being picked up, and getting a narcotic injection. The next
+thing I knew, I was in bed, upstairs, and it was 1945 again, and I was
+back in my own little thirteen-year-old body."
+
+"Oh, Allan, you just had a nightmare to end nightmares!" his father
+assured him, laughing a trifle too heartily. "That's all!"
+
+"That was one of the first things I thought of. I had to reject it; it
+just wouldn't fit the facts. Look; a normal dream is part of the
+dreamer's own physical brain, isn't it? Well, here is a part about two
+thousand per cent greater than the whole from which it was taken. Which
+is absurd."
+
+"You mean all this Battle of Buffalo stuff? That's easy. All the radio
+commentators have been harping on the horrors of World War III, and you
+couldn't have avoided hearing some of it. You just have an undigested
+chunk of H. V. Kaltenborn raising hell in your subconscious."
+
+"It wasn't just World War III; it was everything. My four years at high
+school, and my four years at Penn State, and my seven years as a
+reporter on the Philadelphia Record. And my novels: '_Children of the
+Mist_,' '_Rose of Death_,' '_Conqueror's Road_.' They were no kid stuff.
+Why, yesterday I'd never even have thought of some of the ideas I used
+in my detective stories, that I published under a _nom-de-plume_. And my
+hobby, chemistry; I was pretty good at that. Patented a couple of
+processes that made me as much money as my writing. You think a
+thirteen-year-old just dreamed all that up? Or, here; you speak French,
+don't you?" He switched languages and spoke at some length in good
+conversational slang-spiced Parisian. "Too bad you don't speak Spanish,
+too," he added, reverting to English. "Except for a Mexican accent you
+could cut with a machete, I'm even better there than in French. And I
+know some German, and a little Russian."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Blake Hartley was staring at his son, stunned. It was some time before
+he could make himself speak.
+
+"I could barely keep up with you, in French," he admitted. "I can swear
+that in the last thirteen years of your life, you had absolutely no
+chance to learn it. All right; you lived till 1975, you say. Then, all
+of a sudden, you found yourself back here, thirteen years old, in 1945.
+I suppose you remember everything in between?" he asked. "Did you ever
+read James Branch Cabell? Remember Florian de Puysange, in 'The High
+Place'?"
+
+"Yes. You find the same idea in 'Jurgen' too," Allan said. "You know,
+I'm beginning to wonder if Cabell mightn't have known something he
+didn't want to write."
+
+"But it's impossible!" Blake Hartley hit the table with his hand, so
+hard that the heavy pistol bounced. The loose round he had ejected from
+the chamber toppled over and started to roll, falling off the edge. He
+stooped and picked it up. "How can you go back, against time? And the
+time you claim you came from doesn't exist, now; it hasn't happened
+yet." He reached for the pistol magazine, to insert the cartridge, and
+as he did, he saw the books in front of his son. "Dunne's 'Experiment
+with Time,'" he commented. "And J. N. M. Tyrrell's 'Science and
+Psychical Phenomena.' Are you trying to work out a theory?"
+
+"Yes." It encouraged Allan to see that his father had unconsciously
+adopted an adult-to-adult manner. "I think I'm getting somewhere, too.
+You've read these books? Well, look, Dad; what's your attitude on
+precognition? The ability of the human mind to exhibit real knowledge,
+apart from logical inference, of future events? You think Dunne is
+telling the truth about his experiences? Or that the cases in Tyrrell's
+book are properly verified, and can't be explained away on the basis of
+chance?"
+
+Blake Hartley frowned. "I don't know," he confessed. "The evidence is
+the sort that any court in the world would accept, if it concerned
+ordinary, normal events. Especially the cases investigated by the
+Society for Psychical Research: they _have_ been verified. But how can
+anybody know of something that hasn't happened yet? If it hasn't
+happened yet, it doesn't exist, and you can't have real knowledge of
+something that has no real existence."
+
+"Tyrrell discusses that dilemma, and doesn't dispose of it. I think I
+can. If somebody has real knowledge of the future, then the future must
+be available to the present mind. And if any moment other than the bare
+present exists, then all time must be totally present; every moment must
+be perpetually coexistent with every other moment," Allan said.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+"Yes. I think I see what you mean. That was Dunne's idea, wasn't it?"
+
+"No. Dunne postulated an infinite series of time dimensions, the entire
+extent of each being the bare present moment of the next. What I'm
+postulating is the perpetual coexistence of every moment of time in this
+dimension, just as every graduation on a yardstick exists equally with
+every other graduation, but each at a different point in space."
+
+"Well, as far as duration and sequence go, that's all right," the father
+agreed. "But how about the 'Passage of Time'?"
+
+"Well, time _does_ appear to pass. So does the landscape you see from a
+moving car window. I'll suggest that both are illusions of the same
+kind. We imagine time to be dynamic, because we've never viewed it from
+a fixed point, but if it is totally present, then it must be static, and
+in that case, we're moving through time."
+
+"That seems all right. But what's your car window?"
+
+"If all time is totally present, then you must exist simultaneously at
+every moment along your individual life span," Allan said. "Your
+physical body, and your mind, and all the thoughts contained in your
+mind, each at its appropriate moment in sequence. But what is it that
+exists only at the bare moment we think of as _now_?"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Blake Hartley grinned. Already, he was accepting his small son as an
+intellectual equal.
+
+"Please, teacher; what?"
+
+"Your consciousness. And don't say, 'What's that?' Teacher doesn't know.
+But we're only conscious of one moment; the illusory now. This is 'now,'
+and it was 'now' when you asked that question, and it'll be 'now' when I
+stop talking, but each is a different moment. We imagine that all those
+nows are rushing past us. Really, they're standing still, and our
+consciousness is whizzing past them."
+
+His father thought that over for some time. Then he sat up. "Hey!" he
+cried, suddenly. "If some part of our ego is time-free and passes from
+moment to moment, it must be extraphysical, because the physical body
+exists at every moment through which the consciousness passes. And if
+it's extraphysical, there's no reason whatever for assuming that it
+passes out of existence when it reaches the moment of the death of the
+body. Why, there's logical evidence for survival, independent of any
+alleged spirit communication! You can toss out Patience Worth, and Mrs.
+Osborne Leonard's Feda, and Sir Oliver Lodge's son, and Wilfred Brandon,
+and all the other spirit-communicators, and you still have evidence."
+
+"I hadn't thought of that," Allan confessed. "I think you're right.
+Well, let's put that at the bottom of the agenda and get on with this
+time business. You 'lose consciousness' as in sleep; where does your
+consciousness go? I think it simply detaches from the moment at which
+you go to sleep, and moves backward or forward along the line of
+moment-sequence, to some prior or subsequent moment, attaching there."
+
+"Well, why don't we know anything about that?" Blake Hartley asked. "It
+never seems to happen. We go to sleep tonight, and it's always tomorrow
+morning when we wake; never day-before-yesterday, or last month, or next
+year."
+
+"It never ... or almost never ... _seems_ to happen; you're right there.
+Know why? Because if the consciousness goes forward, it attaches at a
+moment when the physical brain contains memories of the previous,
+consciously unexperienced, moment. You wake, remembering the evening
+before, because that's the memory contained in your mind at that moment,
+and back of it are memories of all the events in the interim. See?"
+
+"Yes. But how about backward movement, like this experience of yours?"
+
+"This experience of mine may not be unique, but I never heard of another
+case like it. What usually happens is that the memories carried back by
+the consciousness are buried in the subconscious mind. You know how
+thick the wall between the subconscious and the conscious mind is. These
+dreams of Dunne's, and the cases in Tyrrell's book, are leakage. That's
+why precognitions are usually incomplete and distorted, and generally
+trivial. The wonder isn't that good cases are so few; it's surprising
+that there are any at all." Allan looked at the papers in front of him.
+"I haven't begun to theorize about how I managed to remember everything.
+It may have been the radiations from the bomb, or the effect of the
+narcotic, or both together, or something at this end, or a combination
+of all three. But the fact remains that my subconscious barrier didn't
+function, and everything got through. So, you see, I am obsessed--by my
+own future identity."
+
+"And I'd been afraid that you'd been, well, taken-over by some ... some
+outsider." Blake Hartley grinned weakly. "I don't mind admitting, Allan,
+that what's happened has been a shock. But that other ... I just
+couldn't have taken that."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"No. Not and stayed sane. But really, I am your son; the same entity I
+was yesterday. I've just had what you might call an educational short
+cut."
+
+"I'll say you have!" His father laughed in real amusement. He discovered
+that his cigar had gone out, and re-lit it. "Here; if you can remember
+the next thirty years, suppose you tell me when the War's going to end.
+This one, I mean."
+
+"The Japanese surrender will be announced at exactly 1901--7:01 P. M.
+present style--on August 14. A week from Tuesday. Better make sure we
+have plenty of grub in the house by then. Everything will be closed up
+tight till Thursday morning; even the restaurants. I remember, we had
+nothing to eat in the house but some scraps."
+
+"Well! It is handy, having a prophet in the family! I'll see to it Mrs.
+Stauber gets plenty of groceries in.... Tuesday a week? That's pretty
+sudden, isn't it?"
+
+"The Japs are going to think so," Allan replied. He went on to describe
+what was going to happen.
+
+His father swore softly. "You know, I've heard talk about atomic energy,
+but I thought it was just Buck Rogers stuff. Was that the sort of bomb
+that got you?"
+
+"That was a firecracker to the bomb that got me. That thing exploded a
+good ten miles away."
+
+Blake Hartley whistled softly. "And that's going to happen in thirty
+years! You know, son, if I were you, I wouldn't like to have to know
+about a thing like that." He looked at Allan for a moment. "Please, if
+you know, don't ever tell me when I'm going to die."
+
+Allan smiled. "I can't. I had a letter from you just before I left for
+the front. You were seventy-eight, then, and you were still hunting, and
+fishing, and flying your own plane. But I'm not going to get killed in
+any Battle of Buffalo, this time, and if I can prevent it, and I think I
+can, there won't be any World War III."
+
+"But--You say all time exists, perpetually coexistent and totally
+present," his father said. "Then it's right there in front of you, and
+you're getting closer to it, every watch tick."
+
+Allan Hartley shook his head. "You know what I remembered, when Frank
+Gutchall came to borrow a gun?" he asked. "Well, the other time, I
+hadn't been home: I'd been swimming at the Canoe Club, with Larry
+Morton. When I got home, about half an hour from now, I found the house
+full of cops. Gutchall talked the .38 officers' model out of you, and
+gone home; he'd shot his wife four times through the body, finished her
+off with another one back of the ear, and then used his sixth shot to
+blast his brains out. The cops traced the gun; they took a very poor
+view of your lending it to him. You never got it back."
+
+"Trust that gang to keep a good gun," the lawyer said.
+
+"I didn't want us to lose it, this time, and I didn't want to see you
+lose face around City Hall. Gutchalls, of course, are expendable," Allan
+said. "But my main reason for fixing Frank Gutchall up with a padded
+cell was that I wanted to know whether or not the future could be
+altered. I have it on experimental authority that it can be. There must
+be additional dimensions of time; lines of alternate probabilities.
+Something like William Seabrook's witch-doctor friend's Fan-Shaped
+_Destiny_. When I brought memories of the future back to the present, I
+added certain factors to the causal chain. That set up an entirely new
+line of probabilities. On no notice at all, I stopped a murder and a
+suicide. With thirty years to work, I can stop a world war. I'll have
+the means to do it, too."
+
+"The means?"
+
+"Unlimited wealth and influence. Here." Allan picked up a sheet and
+handed it to his father. "Used properly, we can make two or three
+million on that, alone. A list of all the Kentucky Derby, Preakness, and
+Belmont winners to 1970. That'll furnish us primary capital. Then,
+remember, I was something of a chemist. I took it up, originally, to get
+background material for one of my detective stories; it fascinated me,
+and I made it a hobby, and then a source of income. I'm thirty years
+ahead of any chemist in the world, now. You remember _I. G.
+Farbenindustrie_? Ten years from now, we'll make them look like pikers."
+
+His father looked at the yellow sheet. "Assault, at eight to one," he
+said. "I can scrape up about five thousand for that--Yes; in ten
+years--Any other little operations you have in mind?" he asked.
+
+"About 1950, we start building a political organization, here in
+Pennsylvania. In 1960, I think we can elect you President. The world
+situation will be crucial, by that time, and we had a good-natured
+nonentity in the White House then, who let things go till war became
+inevitable. I think President Hartley can be trusted to take a strong
+line of policy. In the meantime, you can read Machiavelli."
+
+"That's my little boy, talking!"
+
+Blake Hartley said softly. "All right, son; I'll do just what you tell
+me, and when you grow up, I'll be president.... Let's go get supper,
+now."
+
+
+THE END.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Time and Time Again, by Henry Beam Piper
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