Читать книгу Fugitive of Time - John Russell Fearn - Страница 6
ОглавлениеCHAPTER ONE
The Photographs
The advertisement was not very attractively worded since it commenced with the words ‘Guinea Pig wanted’. But when at length Gordon Fryer read it all, his interest stirred slightly:
Guinea Pig wanted. Male. Between 20 and 30. Must be intelligent. Scientific experiment. Positively no danger. Monetary Reward. Apply: Dr. Boden Royd, The Larches, Nether Bolling, Berks.
It was a spring morning in 2006 when Gordon Fryer read the advertisement, and the more he thought about it the more it seemed to fit in with his need—which was certainly desperate. A long run of bad luck had practically made him penniless, the London engineering firm for which he worked had gone into liquidation, and Gordon Fryer was flat broke. Hence St. James Park this sunny morning, a daily paper lifted from the nearby wastebasket, and now this.
Gordon Fryer did not look like a guinea pig. He was quite good-looking, black-haired, blue-eyed, ruddy-cheeked.
“Nether Bolling, Berkshire,” he mused. “Fair distance from London. Might thumb a ride and see if there’s anything in this.”
So he got up from the park bench, and thwacking the paper against his thigh, marched vigorously to the main thoroughfare. In another hour, his walk less vigorous, he had gained the city environs and began to look about him for a vehicle. He found it at length when, using up his last reserves, he had lunch at a motel. The burly driver consuming hash next to him would be passing through Nether Bolling on his way to Reading.
“Know anything about a Doctor Royd?” Gordon asked.
“Can’t say I do, chum. What is ’e? Medical bloke?”
“He lives at the Larches in Nether Bolling. There my information ends.”
The driver shrugged. “Nether Bolling’s a cockeyed sort of dump. ’Bout four cottages, a few big swank houses, and that’s it. Sort of place you’d find ’ermits.”
“I see. Good of you to give me a lift.”
“Think nothin’ of it. You don’t get far in this world—or the next—if you don’t ’elp folks out now an’ again.”
So Gordon Fryer received his lift, seated in the cab of the truck as it sped through the green lanes where the buds were ripening with the promise of summer. It was toward two o’clock when Gordon alighted in Nether Bolling and took his farewell of the lorry driver.... And the driver had been right. Nether Bolling was definitely nothing more than a scattering of cottages, farms, and—quite isolated—tall and dignified residences set well back behind still bare-looking trees.
Not knowing a larch from an elm, and certainly not guided by the leaves at this time of year, Gordon had to inspect each solemn-looking residence before he discovered the right one.
It was a mansion of an early period, well kept, the grounds laid out by experts. Gordon walked up the long drive and pressed the gleaming brass of the bell button at the front door.
He waited, and at length, the polished oak portal opened silently, and a tall, hatchet-faced being with somewhat distended nostrils looked out into the sunlight.
“Your pleasure, sir?” he enquired.
“I’m Gordon Fryer. Dr. Royd is asking for a guinea pig.”
“A—” Understanding dawned on the butler’s cadaverous face as he saw the newspaper Gordon was carrying. “Oh, yes, sir. Will you kindly step inside?”
Gordon obeyed, stepping into an enormous hall overweighed with massive furniture, armor, and costly antiques. He found himself wondering, whilst he waited, what kind of a profession Dr. Royd could be in to boast all these evidences of wealth. Then the butler returned.
“If you will step this way, sir?”
Gordon did so and presently entered a magnificent library. The door closed quietly. Gordon’s preconceived notion of some fiftyish man with a prosperous waistline and large cigar was instantly destroyed. Instead, he beheld a quiet-looking man of apparent middle age, his gray hair untidy, his suit creased, his pale gray eyes peering over the tops of old-fashioned steel-rimmed spectacles. He had been seated working at his desk, but he rose to his feet with extended hand as Gordon entered.
“Good afternoon, Mr. Fryer! Have a seat— That’s it!”
Gordon obeyed. Somehow he could not imagine himself doing anything else but as he was told while dealing with this amiable-looking old codger with the high-pitched, meandering voice.
“So you wish to be a guinea-pig, do you?” Dr. Royd reseated himself at the desk.
“I don’t want to be, sir. I have no choice.”
“What prompted you to answer my advertisement?”
“I answered it for the simple reason that I have no money. I’m out of a job and they’re hard to come by at the moment in my profession—”
“What is your profession?”
“I have none right now. Normally I’m a mechanical engineer. They’re ten-a-penny at the moment, as you know.”
“No, I don’t know. I don’t know anything, really, unless it directly relates to my interests. I’m a scientist, Mr. Fryer, as you will have gathered from my advertisement. I am a doctor of physics, not medicine. If anything is wrong with you physically, I wouldn’t be able to diagnose it.”
Gordon smiled uncomfortably. “I—I wouldn’t expect you to, Dr. Royd. But in regard to the advertisement, I’m quite willing.”
Royd peered over his spectacles. “Are you? To do what?”
“Whatever you want, sir. You said a scientific experiment. You want somebody intelligent. I hope I am reasonably that.”
“Yes, yes, I’m sure you are. Forgive my vagueness, young man, but I haven’t spoken to anybody for months, outside the servants. Been utterly absorbed. You get that way viewing the future.”
“Yes, I suppose you—” Gordon stared. “Doing what?”
Dr. Royd chuckled in high falsetto. “My apologies. Maybe I shouldn’t have sprung it on you like that! However, physically and mentally I think you will meet my requirements. What age are you?”
“Twenty-five.”
“Quite satisfactory. Ever had a serious illness?”
“Never. I’m fit, intelligent, and willing. My only trouble is lack of money.”
“And if you had money you wouldn’t be here?” Royd questioned. “Is that it? You are not just here because a scientific experiment appeals to you?”
“In a way it does appeal to me, yes. As an engineer it is bound to. I—er—look, sir, what do I have to do?”
“Well now, I’ll explain.” Royd sat back in his chair. “I am a scientific inventor, with all the money I need to follow that inclination. Unearned money by inheritance from my dear father, who considered science the invention of the devil. No matter. To put it briefly, I have found a way to view future time, but I cannot be sure whether it applies just to my own state of consciousness or whether it can be universal. I have nobody who is willing to help me out. Not even Blessington, my indispensable manservant, who is privately of the opinion that I am cracked.”
“Which makes two of us,” Gordon murmured to himself, endeavoring to look interested.
“Time,” Royd continued absently, hitching himself forward and jamming a bony knee against the desk edge, “is not something to be experienced as we progress: it is something into which we grow in the natural course of unending evolution.”
“Indeed?” Gordon asked, feeling he should say something.
Royd looked over his spectacles. “You haven’t the vaguest idea what I’m talking about, have you? I’ll try it another way.”
Gordon only nodded this time, trying to decide which head needed examining—his or Dr. Royd’s.
“Actually,” Royd said, “Time is not something which unfolds. The past, present, and future are here this very moment. But with every second our brains are shedding tissue that makes us capable of seeing what we think is advancing Time. In reality it has always been there: we are only just seeing it! The process is allied to the decay that brings senility, but we will not go into that now. After all, our bodies shed something every second that we live—hair, water, surface skin. So why shouldn’t the brain?”
For Gordon something dim stirred on the face of the deep and he made a grab at it.
“You mean, sir, that our brains actually have everything stored up in them—future time as well as present—and that this shedding business merely reveals more? Or rather makes us conscious of something which we believe has only just happened?”
Dr. Royd beamed. “My boy, you and I will get along fine! You have a ready grasp of the position. Yes, that is it exactly. By tomorrow our brains will have lost more of their covering and therefore more will be apparent to us—but we will say that Time has moved on. Which is quite erroneous. And, of course, the more shedding there is, the remoter becomes an earlier impression, hence memory fades with advancement.”
Gordon’s brows knitted. “How far does one see the future?”
“Only as far as one’s lifetime. That is obvious. The brain cannot contain impressions of a Time when the brain action itself is extinct.”
“In which case one might know when one is going to die?”
“Yes. I know exactly when I shall die—and how and where. In my laboratory, seven in the evening, at the age of ninety-three on the sixteenth of May.”
Gordon smiled weakly. “You’re very cheerful about it!”
“Why not? To know when you are going to die eliminates all fear of immediate decease. I have about thirty-three years left yet, so I can afford to be cheerful.”
“Then—then what exactly do you wish me to do?”
“I wish to see if it is possible to briefly strip your brain as I have my own, in order to view the future scenes of your life. The scenes are there, you understand, and only need uncovering. The process is painless and electrical. I know I can do it on myself, but as I say, I cannot lay this invention before the Institute of Scientists until I know it can be applied to anybody who desires it. If it is peculiar to me alone, then—” Royd spread his hands.
“And there’s no danger?” Gordon asked uneasily.
“You have my assurance on that. So much so I shall not even ask you to sign a document absolving me from blame if anything should happen to you. Nothing can. It is merely Nature’s process speeded up.”
“I—see.” Gordon could not keep the doubt out of his voice, at which Dr. Royd got to his feet.
“Come with me, Mr. Fryer. I’ll show you what I mean.”
Gordon followed the scientist as he toddled from the library, muttering unintelligible comments as he went. Leading the way across the great hall, he finally paused at a door and opened it. Beyond was a big laboratory, brilliantly sun-lit through high skylights. There was a vast array of gleaming equipment, but to Gordon, though he was an engineer, most of it was alien to him.
“Now,” Royd said, pausing at an object exactly like a gigantic enlarging camera poised over a screwed-down chair. “This is the Brain-Scanner, as I call it. When you are seated in the chair, the vibrations peculiar to that instrument are directed downwards into the brain, and according to the wavelength of the vibration used, higher or lower portions of the accumulated layer of brain-cells are penetrated. I have said that in the normal process they shed themselves, which is true. In this instance they are not shed, because that would create permanent injury and make you only capable of seeing the particular period that had been exposed. So, then, the vibration strikes through the top cell layers and photographs whatever image is in the cells below.”
“Photographs?” Gordon repeated, astonished.
“Just so. You don’t marvel at an X-ray photographing the inside of a body without harming the outside, do you? Why marvel at this striking through the upper layers of cells to photograph the scenes beneath?”
“The marvel to me, sir, is that anything can photograph what must really be only abstract! Surely you can’t get a picture of a future scene, or any scene at all, by just photographing a bunch of brain cells?”
“No, of course not.” Dr. Royd looked contrite. “Forgive me, young man, but I get in the habit of accepting things and not explaining the parts between. The point is: brain cells give forth vibrations which, when interpreted by the nervous system, form into pictures, sensations, sight, hearing, and so on. Correct?”
“I can gather that much, yes.”
“Then there is still hope. Very well; if you have an instrument which duplicates the system used by the human body for interpreting brain sensations, what do you get?”
“A similar effect as a body would, I suppose.”
“Exactly. And here is the main instrument.”
Royd moved across to a rotund tower of complicated apparatus.
To Gordon’s wondering eyes it even looked vaguely human in outline.
Royd said: “Duplicating the functions of a human body mechanically is one of the simplest things to science. I have done that and added inventions of my own. Summing up, when my vibrations penetrate the brain, it takes a reading of the cells being examined and their vibrations are transmitted to this machine. They interpret the vibrations as the body would, and produce the same result. But instead of a picture forming mentally, it is finally produced visibly by specially designed transformers, so that what an eye would normally see is instead photographed, camera-wise.”
“And you get a sort of snapshot of the scene ‘penetrated’?”
“Yes. For example—”
Dr. Royd moved to a filing cabinet, shuffled a series of manilla folders for a while, and then returned with half-a-dozen matte-surfaced prints in full plate size. Gordon took them, studied them, and still wondered what he ought to think. They showed Royd in various postures, in various surroundings, but there was certainly nothing to suggest but what the photographs could have been taken in the ordinary way. They were remarkably clear too, very much like the ‘stills’ put out by a film studio.
“You think I’m crazy, don’t you? That these photographs are so many red herrings?” Royd gave a dry smile. “I can assure you that they are perfectly genuine and have been photographed directly from my own brain. I appear each time because I cannot escape holding my body in my thoughts. Nobody can. We would vanish if we didn’t.”
“Uh-huh,” Gordon agreed, and handed the prints back.
“These photos,” Royd added, “illustrate scenes from my future life where, at one time or another, I shall find myself doing exactly as the scenes depict. I don’t expect you to believe me, but you can prove it by letting me take a scene from your future life. If it works, then anybody on this planet can see a scene from their future life if they wish.”
There was a long silence, and it persisted even after Royd had put the photographs back in their folders. Gordon paced about the laboratory, studying the apparatus, all the time watched by the scientist’s half-amused gray eyes.
“What is the pay for this experiment?” Gordon asked finally.
“How much did you anticipate? Name your figure.”
“That’s difficult: but for nerve strain, expenses, and being unable to rid myself of the fear of death, I’d say it’s worth five thousand pounds.”
“I’ll make it ten, payable now to show you I keep faith.”
Gordon opened his mouth and then closed it again. By the time he had finished another circuit of the laboratory, he found the check was being thrust into his hand.
“Thanks,” he said, nodding. “Now, do I strip or anything?”
“Gracious, no! Just sit in that chair. I don’t even have to darken the room.”
Gordon sat down slowly and found the chair no more uncomfortable than that of a hairdresser’s. There was, however, a certain anguish as he waited whilst Royd fussed about with his apparatus.
“Twenty-five, you say? Right: that means an expectation of life of say fifty years. We’ll have a look at fifty years hence and see what there is.”
Generators hummed, switches sizzled and snapped, then Gordon found himself in a brief golden glare which dazzled him. His scalp crawled as though mites were creeping in his hair.
“Fortunately,” Royd said, switching off again, “I have devised an instantaneous developing and printing system so there will be no waiting.”
Gordon glanced. “There’s no more to it than this?”
“No more. I told you it was perfectly safe.”
Gordon sat back happily. Ten thousand pounds in his pocket and a glorified sun-ray treatment. Money for jam!
“Mmmm,” said Royd presently. “You’ll evidently be dead at seventy-five.”
Gordon sat up again with a jerk. “Eh?”
The scientist came over with a damp print in his fingers. It was totally black.
“This means your brain doesn’t register at the age of seventy-five,” he explained, “which inevitably means it’s got no impressions. At seventy-five you will be dead.”
Gordon shrugged. “Oh, well, that’s fifty years off, so I’m not bothered. Try something else.”
“Yes.... Let me see— We’ll try sixty-five.”
Again the golden glow, the fast developing process, and a totally black print.
“Sorry,” Royd sighed. “You’ll be dead at sixty-five, too.”
“This,” Gordon said uneasily, “is getting a bit too much for me! Sure the thing’s working?”
“Definitely! We’ll try ten years earlier.”
They did. But fifty-five and forty-five were both blank. By this time Gordon was perspiring freely.
“Are you sure I’m alive at all?” he demanded.
“Eh?” Royd peered over his spectacles. “Oh, yes. You’re alive but you won’t be twenty years hence. Sorry, young man, but this machine is quite ruthless. Maybe we’ve done enough.”
“Enough! I haven’t done anything yet! I’ve sat here and been fried, and all I’ve seen has been these damned black prints. Try—try something else.”
“I could try tomorrow,” Royd said, hesitating.
“Okay. If that’s a blank as well, it must mean I’m going to commit suicide—or else the thing only works on your brain and not mine.”
“That is what I must find out. All right, here we go.”
The process was so familiar to Gordon by now that he did not even blink—but he did when he saw the photograph that was handed to him. It depicted him in a white smock busy at a bench in the very laboratory where he now sat.
“Yes, it’s me!” He gave a whistle of amazement. “This is uncanny! Anyway, what would I be doing here tomorrow? I’ll be back in London.”
Royd shook his head. “You’ll be here if this says so. You cannot change the law of constant-Time.”
“I—I see. I suppose you can’t, really.”
“Young man, would you allow me to probe further? I wish to be sure where your continuity ends. In other words, I would like to know when you are going to die. If you do not wish to know the date or time, I will withhold them from you. The picture will not tell you that. But for my own satisfaction, I wish to be sure that those earlier photographs were the outcome of genuine obliteration and not due to a technical fault.”
“All right, Doc, it’s your money. And don’t give me the answer.”
Royd switched on, this time using a different type of lens in the apparatus, presumably to find the exact ‘end of continuity’ he wanted without a lot of probing. At the end of five minutes, he switched off again and stood waiting for the print to be ejected. When it came he studied it and frowned.
Gordon got slowly out of the chair and came over to see the photograph for himself. He started when he did so. It showed the interior of a railway compartment, apparently first class, with two windows visible and flaring light outside. On one window in reverse was a label saying YBGUR, which Gordon quickly turned around in his mind to read RUGBY.
He himself—for he recognized his own features, even though they were plumper and very prosperous-looking—was half slumped from the seat of the compartment, his left arm dangling. On the wrist was a curiously fashioned gleaming watch pointing to 11:03. He was attired in a check overcoat, which had fallen away to reveal a dress suit and bow tie beneath.
“I’ll be damned!” he exclaimed blankly. “That my death scene?”
“Yes,” Royd agreed quietly.
“So I’ll pass out on a train going to Rugby, shall I?”
“At eleven-three, according to that watch. Post meridian, to judge from the darkness outside the window. From the bright light from the carriage, I’d say it might be a train smash with flames lighting the carriage.”
Gordon gave a little shiver. “At least I seem to have passed out before getting burned up or anything. One must be thankful for small mercies, I suppose.”
“I suppose so, yes.”
Long silence. Royd brooded over the print. Then Gordon said slowly:
“Doc, I’m only a human being. I just can’t see a thing like this and not ask when it is going to happen. I’ve got to know, otherwise I’m liable to shun trains for the rest of my life! Plainly, I’m a good deal older than I am now, so—when will it happen?”
The scientist gave him a direct look. “You realize what you are asking, young man?”
“Fully! I’ve got to know!”
“Very well. The date when this happens will be October the nineteenth, 2019.”
Gordon thought for a moment then started. “But that’s only thirteen years hence! I’ll only be thirty-eight!”
“Yes, I’m sorry you asked me. There it is and you cannot alter it.”
“That’s where you’re wrong, Doc!” Gordon’s face was grim. “I deliberately asked you the date so that I can sidestep it. On that date I’ll lock myself in prison, go down a mine, fly to the arctic, or something. That will not come true! Not one bit of it!”
“You cannot alter time, my boy.”
“I believe I can. The only reason people walk blindly into death is because they don’t know when it’s coming. If they did, they’d take steps to avoid it. If you knew a certain bus was going to run you down, you’d go up another street, wouldn’t you?”
“I wouldn’t be able. Time is written and no human power can change it. On October nineteenth, 2019, at eleven-three, you will be in that train—dead!”
Gordon was silent for a moment. “You have your views on that, sir. I have mine.”
Royd put the photographs in a new manilla folder, then placed it in the cabinet. He turned thoughtfully.
“Thank you, young man, for your co-operation. Would you care to see any intermediate scenes from your future life? Prior to the fatal date, that is.”
“After what I’ve seen, Doc, I’d prefer to leave the whole thing severely alone—at least for the moment. You have enough proof now for any Scientific Association, surely? You can satisfy the scientists now that the ‘mind reading’ act isn’t confined to you alone.”
“You have done science an immense service. Now you will depart with your ten thousand and the inerasable memory of a certain day in 2019. I still wish you hadn’t asked me to give you that date.”
Gordon set his jaw. “I’m glad you did, and I’ve told you why. Now I’d better be going.”
Nevertheless Gordon hesitated and he was not sure why. He decided that it was possibly because he had happened on to something utterly extraordinary and for that reason was loath to turn his back on it. Besides, he had somehow developed quite a regard for this pottering old genius with his Time-Camera, Scanner, or whatever he called it. That photograph of October 19, 2019, needed seeing far more than once. It needed profound study. He had to find a way to circumvent its implications.
“You hesitate, Mr. Fryer,” Royd remarked. “Worried over your check? I can assure you it’s quite genuine.”
“I’ve not a second’s doubt on that, sir. I’m just sort of weighing things up. Ten thousand pounds sets me on my feet nicely, of course, and I suppose I can afford to wait for a while until something comes my way. I—I don’t quite know what it is, but there is something about this place and particularly this invention of yours, which gets me. Since I’m an engineer I can appreciate your genius.”
“I’m no genius, my boy: just a research scientist.” Royd peered over his glasses. “You know, you’ve restored a lost pleasure for me and I’m very grateful. I’ve been stewing so long over scientific problems I had about forgotten what companionship could be like, especially the companionship of a young man who has a scientific flair as well.”
Gordon began to wander, inspecting the instruments.
“I’ve always had the idea, Doc, that I might make something of an inventor, given the right place to settle. Tell you what: here’s a proposition. Suppose I return this check, and ask you, instead, to take me on as an assistant? You could perhaps do with one?”
Royd laughed. “Do with one! I’ve been advertising for one for months only you probably haven’t noticed. You are the ideal man for me—already proven in courage, scientific inclinations, and you’re a trained engineer. What more could I ask? That is, if you’re willing to tolerate a rather muddling old fool like me?”
“No muddling fool ever invented a thing like the Time-scanner! Besides I want to know more about it—in regard to my intermediate life, I mean. I also want to stand by you as living proof when you explain your theory to the scientists.”
Royd rubbed his hands. “It’s settled, then. As for your ten thousand pounds, that is yours—for a nerve-racking job well performed. To stand beside me I’ll give you three hundred pounds a week and everything found.”
Gordon spread his hands and grinned. “What could be fairer than that? That being so, I’d better depart for a moment and see if this village can supply me with some decent clothes and a laboratory smock—”
He stopped suddenly, pondering, a surprised look in his eyes.
“Well?” Royd questioned, and Gordon glanced at him sharply.
“I was just thinking, sir. That photograph you took of me as I’ll be tomorrow. It showed me in here, in a smock. It looks as though it would come true.”
“It will, my boy. It’s inevitable.”
“So it begins to appear, which makes it seem that that other date, thirteen years hence, may perhaps be—” Gordon shook his head firmly. “No! I’ll find a way round that in the intervening years, even if I have to go abroad to do it!”
Royd did not say anything. His whole attitude suggested a fatalistic acceptance of immutable law.
