From Time to Time

8

RUBE PRIEN SAT in the windowless little street-level office of the Project; sat on the edge of the worn oak desk, swinging a foot, looking around: at the out-of-date wall calendar still reading Beekey’s, at the framed photographs of long-gone moving crews. He was nervous, therefore irritable; hated waiting. He stood, walked a step or two to the street door, and opened it wide, turning back to the desk. He sat down and hopped right up again, back to the door to almost close it, leaving it ajar by an inch. He studied this narrow gap of daylight, then opened the door perhaps half an inch more, and returned to his desk.

Outside, approaching along the walk on the same side of the street, Dr. E. E. Danziger walked toward this door fairly rapidly, a tall, thin, elderly but not-quite-old man in a dark topcoat and tan felt hat. This was late morning, temperature around fifty, the sky a high-up even gray. He glanced at a band of faded black-and-white lettering—BEEKEY BROTHERS, MOVING AND STORAGE—running around the roofline edge of the great blank-walled brick building that filled the block just ahead. It looked the same: Was it possible that it was? That for the past three years the Project had gone on very well without him?

Now he stopped at the corner of the building to look at the weathered gray door there, and thought he knew why it stood invitingly ajar. Thought he knew that if he accepted this tacit invitation, pushing the door open and stepping in, he would seem to have agreed that he belonged here still, still had the right to walk in. But he was not going to make this meeting so easy for Ruben Prien; the major had some crow to eat.

Without stepping closer he reached forward and with a big blunt forefinger pushed the door hard enough to swing it wide, but he stood where he was, looking in at Rube hopping quickly from the desk, smiling that sudden fine Rube Prien smile, mouth opening to welcome him. But Dr. Danziger, face blankly unresponsive, spoke first. “May I come in?”

It flustered Rube; Danziger saw him blink. “Of course, of course! Come in!”

Walking in slowly, Danziger said, “Oh no; there’s no of course anymore about me coming in here uninvited. You threw me out, didn’t you?” Then, voice neutral: “How are you, Rube?”

“I’m fine, Dr. Danziger. And you’re looking good.”

“No I’m not. I was old when you saw me last, and now I’m older.” He looked carefully around the little anteroom. “Looks the same. No change.”

“Oh, it is, it is. Dr. D, we could still go have lunch somewhere. Be a lot pleasanter to talk.”

“No. I’m not ready to break bread with you, Rube: I’m still puzzling out my feelings.”

“Oh?” Face uncomfortable, Rube stood wanting to ask his guest to sit down, wanting to be hospitable, to get this off dead center, but not quite daring.

“Of course. I felt confused when you phoned. Wondering as I heard your voice whether I hated you. Should I refuse right then and there to ever even look at you again? Or come here and look my fill, indulging my hatred, feeding it. And thinking of revenge.” He smiled. “Or vengeance; I like that form better, don’t you? And yet as we spoke, I thought maybe what I felt wasn’t hate but only powerful dislike. So unforgiving I wouldn’t be able to take the sight of you. Or, if I could stand it, would still rather not. Or maybe, as you continued, your voice so happy to be speaking to me again, I wondered if perhaps the passage of time had only left a permanent but healed-over scar. The pain finally gone so now I could—what? —tolerate the sight of you? Come here and look at you with only simple distaste now? Curiosity with the lip curled?” Rube’s courteous smile remained and—he managed this—seemed without strain. “Or maybe none of those. When I thought of Rube Prien these days was it, I asked myself, with only a kind of mental shrug? A feeling of: Oh well, it was all some time ago, so what the hell.”

“And what did you decide?” Now Rube indicated a wooden upright chair. “Sit down, please, Doctor.”

“No, I want to go upstairs and look around. See the Project again. It’s why I decided to come. And therefore decided also on an attitude of tolerant curiosity, Rube. On viewing you with an air of faint cold amusement. That’s what I’m doing now, if you can’t tell. Looking you over, a little amused at your presumption. Wondering how the hell you could possibly have the nerve to speak to me even by phone. Let alone ask me to lunch! So—speaking calmly, Rube, tolerantly amused at your presumption—what the hell do you want?”

“Your help. And, if it’s possible . . . to make a beginning at restoring a friendship that at least I still feel.”

“You know, maybe I really am amused. The nerve. The fucking nerve of you. Now, once again—what do you want?”

For a moment, eyes pleasant, Rube stood looking at Danziger. Then, on apparent impulse, he put out his hand. “To make a new start.”

Danziger stood shaking his head incredulously. Then, continuing to shake his head, began to grin reluctantly. “The nerve,” he said, but took Rube’s hand. “Come on.” He turned away toward a metal-sheathed door in the wall opposite the street-side wall. “Let’s go up.” Rube moved ahead to pull the door open, holding it for Danziger, who stepped through to stand glancing curiously around the tiny, concrete-floored space before the closed elevator doors. Grinning now, Rube stepped in, and Danziger said, “You treacherous bastard: something I didn’t quite anticipate in all my ruminations, but it seems I still retain some sort of senile liking for you. Who’da thunk it.” He poked the elevator button, and the doors slipped open.

On the top floor, the sixth, they walked along a vinyl-tiled corridor, the tall older man glancing around, eyes sharp with interest. He carried his hat in his hand now, was bald, the top of his head freckled, his side hair dyed black. This looked like a floor of an office building, directional arrows stenciled on the walls indicating groups of office numbers; black-and-white plastic nameplates beside some of the closed doors. Danziger nodded at one that read: K. Veach. “Katherine Veach. Katie,” he said, “nice girl,” and stopped. “I’ll just step in for a moment, say hello.”

“ ’Fraid she’s not here today, Doctor.”

Just ahead Danziger stopped again, at an unmarked door. “This leads to the catwalks, I believe. I’d like to go in again, Rube, look down at the Big Floor.”

“Well—”

But Danziger stood stubbornly shaking his head with something of the old authority he had once held here. “Rube, I want to see it. It won’t take long.”

“What I was going to say, Dr. D, is that I didn’t bring my keys today.”

For a moment Danziger stood looking at Rube; then they walked on, turned a corner, and stopped at the conference room door. Danziger would not open it, and Rube Prien reached past him to turn the knob, and gestured him in. For a moment longer Danziger stood looking up and down the long corridor, then walked in saying, “Rube, where is everybody today?”

“Well”—Rube followed him, closing the door—“it’s the weekend, Doctor. So I expect they’re home. Sleeping late. Reading the paper. Whatever.” He stepped toward a chair at the long table, on which an attaché case lay, motioning Danziger to a place opposite.

Walking around the end of the table, taking off his coat, Danziger looked at the walls, overhead skylights, the carpeting. He said, “Weekends didn’t mean that much when I was here, Rube.” He placed hat and coat on a chair, and sat down on the chair beside them; he wore a blue suit, white shirt, and blue-and-white-striped tie. “I was here every day for at least a few hours even on Sundays, usually a lot longer. So were you. And Oscar. Most everyone on the staff. Here at the Project because it was where we wanted to be.” Facing Rube, he sat back comfortably, one long arm extended on the tabletop—a posture familiar to Rube.

“Well, it’s been several years since you left. And since Si left.” Rube shoved his attaché case aside and lay his forearms, hands folding, on the tabletop. “And things have settled down. Fallen into place. So that we’ve all gotten pretty much used to . . .” His voice trailed off because Danziger, arm still lying on the table, was writing in the dust with the forefinger of his speckled old hand.

Rube had to lean to one side, finding the angle; then the word Dr. Danziger had printed popped up for him, clearly defined against the dust: Bullshit. Their eyes met, and the big old man said, “You’re going to have to tell me eventually, Rube. Eventually, why not now? as the old ads used to say—remember? Maybe you don’t. Pillsbury flour, I think.”

“Okay.” Rube sat nodding. “Okay. I didn’t really hope to fool you, Dr. D. Or even intend to. I just put it off because I’m embarrassed. Humiliated. If you wanted vengeance, then maybe you’ve got it.” In sudden decision, he shoved back his chair to stand. “You want to see the Big Floor? All right: I’ll show you the Big Floor!”

Down on the main floor again, they walked along a narrow concrete-floored tunnel-like corridor lighted by ceiling bulbs in wire cages. At a metal door labeled, Keep Out. Absolutely Keep Out, they stopped; Rube brought out a key, unlocked the door, and stepped in, holding the door open with a foot while stooping to pick something up from the floor just inside. Following, Danziger had immediately stopped to wait because the interior stood dark—solid unrelieved blackness. Then Rube switched on the big five-cell flashlight which had been standing on its wide lens-end on the floor by the door. Swinging the hard solid beam, searching, Rube said, “This is how we have to look at the Big Floor these days. If at all.” His light found a small frame house, clapboard sides, wooden-shingled, an old house of the twenties, and Danziger said, “McNaughton’s hou—” He went silent because the trembling white circle had steadied on the low porch roof, caved in, broken-backed over the stump of the post that had once helped support it. Then the light swung on along the side of the house across the windows glinting black and mirrorlike, then held on a smashed pane, the window frame jagged with glass shards.

Neither spoke. Rube lowered his flash to make a rhythmically skipping oval of light on the floor ahead as they walked on. He stopped again, playing his light over an Indian tepee, painted with buffalo silhouettes and sticklike figures of men, and torn to long ragged tongues of hanging cloth. Inside it the chromed wire basket of a tipped-over shopping cart reflected dully. The flash swung away to play over another tepee, collapsed on its side. “Rube, I hate this,” Danziger said, his voice thinned and echoless in the great space they stood in. “Hate it. Turn that damn thing off.”

The light vanished, and in the utter blackness Danziger said, “All right. What happened?”

“We went broke. Our funding cut off. Every dime. And the Project canceled. We’re out of business, Doctor. There is no Project. I’m just kind of a squatter here now; I can’t keep away. I expect they know I come in sometimes. At least they haven’t changed the front-door lock. But they’ve cut off most of the electricity, all the big lines. And the whole place is on a government surplus list. They just haven’t found a buyer for a gutted warehouse with no interior floors.”

“Rube, this is worse; turn the thing back on.” Rube switched on the flash, and swung the beam upward. With it he searched for and found the catwalk five stories above, then slid the beam along till it reached a section with a gap of a dozen feet. “That came loose. A bolt rusted or worked loose, there’ve been no inspections, it dropped a little, and other bolts yanked out, I suppose. And the section fell, grazing our Denver storefront. Smashed it up good. There’s no maintenance at all, and now the catwalks are permanently locked.” He sent the beam along the floor before them, and they walked on. They passed without stopping what looked like a section of farmland with split-rail fencing, and a tree, but in places the soil was gone, exposing the concrete floor underneath. Two beer cans lay in the no-man’s-land before a World War I trench. “Okay, Rube, enough. Let’s get out.”

In the conference room Dr. Danziger said, “All right, tell me.”

“They started saying we’d had no results.”

“No results!”

“That’s right. That we’d spent a lot of mon—”

“No results! What the hell do they mean!”

“They said we didn’t. I don’t know who said it first: somebody. And it was like the kid saying the emperor has no clothes—they all joined in. Yeah, look! No clothes! Hell, they’re mostly politicians, Dr. D, what do you expect! The kind who beat the rats off the ship! Remember Si? Simon Morley?”

“Of course.”

“Well, he never came back, God damn him. Just stayed there back in the fucking nineteenth century. If he’d only come back! The way he was supposed to. The way he said he would. He was committed to it! Dr. D, if he had come back with proof, as only he could, why, hell—they’d have given us everything but the Washington Monument.”

“Instead . . .”

“Instead, it was how did we know where Si was? Or McNaughton? Maybe all Si ever did was hole up in the Dakota apartment building for a while—at taxpayers’ expense—going through the motions, lying to us, pretending he was about to make the transition. Then he ducks out one night, shows up at the Project a few days later, and says, Hooray for me, I did it! And we fell for it. In an access of wishful thinking. This senator, this guy got wind of the Project, and for a while it looked like he was going to give us that stupid Golden Fleece award. A Pentagon major general career man saw his third star fading away, and covered his ass fast, said he never had believed us and told us so, the lying son of a bitch. Oh, they came after us good and fast. Even the academics. Prove it, prove it! God, I got sick of that word. And we couldn’t. At our very last board meeting—they shut us down a day and a half later—this wormy little congressman, you remember him, really got on me. Si was supposed to go back and—well, of course you know what Si was supposed to do.”

“Know? I hated it.”

“Yeah, well, I’m sorry. But the thing is, we had to brief the congressman. Had to. So he knew Si was supposed to go back and . . .” Rube glanced at the old man. “Go back and very slightly alter one past event, and damn it, Dr. D, it was small.”

“Yes, well, let it go, let it go. Alter the past just enough so that Cuba would have become an American possession. Wonderful. As though you could predict the consequences of that. Ridiculous. Ridiculous and almighty dangerous. But go on.”

“This little congressman kept saying stuff like, ‘Major, what’s Cuba now? The fifty-first state? Yuk, yuk. And where’s Fidel these days? Pitching for the Mets?’ ”

Danziger sat grinning at him. “Served you right.”

“Yeah, well, the thing is, we had no proof. No nothin’.”

“What about our Denver man? He made it. And came back.”

“Didn’t help. Never happened either, you see, same as Si. Where’s the proof, where’s the proof? Goddamn bunch of parrots. As for our boy made it to medieval Paris for—what? Ten seconds?—they laughed in our faces at that one. Make a politician look even slightly wrong, and believe me, you have not gained a friend.”

“Yep. Well, Rube”—he began gathering up his hat and folded topcoat from the chair beside him—“that’s that, then. It was great while it last—”

“Wait.”

“Oh, Rube, Rube, Rube. The Project is finished. Forever. Can you possibly wander around it with your flashlight and see it all rebuilt? The Big Floor restored? The School back in business, Oscar Rossoff back, a new batch of candidates arriving? It’s dead! With a stake through its heart.”

“Sure. I know that. But we don’t need the Project.”

“ ‘We’?”

“It’ll be ‘we’ when you find out why.”

“Oh? And if ‘we’ don’t need the Project, what do we need?”

Rube leaned forward over the tabletop, holding Dr. Danziger’s eyes. “Si.”

“Si Morley?”

Rube sat back, nodding. “Yep. Si Morley, the best we ever had. That’s who we need, and that’s all we need. Can you reach him, Dr. D? Can you?”

“Reach him? How? How reach him back in the nineteenth century?”

“I don’t know.” Rube sat looking at him. “I don’t know, damn it! You thought up the whole Project! It was your theory. If anyone can figure out how to reach Si Morley, it has to be you.”

“Rube,” he said gently. “Short of actually going back myself, how could I reach him?”

“You’ve tried going back?”

“Of course. And so have you, I’m certain.”

“More than once. I’d give anything I have or ever will have to be able to do it. Just once. Even for only a minute.” He sat looking across the table at the old man, then said, “It’s funny; you and I made the Project. Made it work. Yet we can’t do it: we need Si.” With his clenched fist he softly, soundlessly pounded the tabletop. “We need Si. You can’t reach him? No way at all?”

The old man looked away, moving a shoulder in almost but not quite a shrug. He looked uncomfortable, frowning a little, arranging his topcoat over one arm, and Rube Prien leaned forward, watching him intently. Then, his voice very soft now, and beginning to smile, Rube Prien said, “Oh, Doctor, Doctor: you can’t quite lie, can you? You don’t really know how. You know you ought to. You’d like to. And you try, but you can’t fool me. You can reach Si Morley!”

“If I can, it won’t help you.” Danziger glanced around the room. “The Project actually succeeded; I’ll always know that. But then the troublemakers took over. You. Esterhazy. And whoever else was behind you, I never did know who: I am an innocent. But the Project is gone now, and if I can’t quite say I’m glad, I’m close.” He stood up, coat over an arm, hat in hand. “I’ll never help you. I like you, Rube, God knows why. But you’d alter the past. In order to alter the present according to your own godlike understanding of what’s best for the rest of us. Well, if there can be an idiot savant, there can be a sane madman. And there are always some around. Quite often brave men in uniform. Patriots. But still the enemy.” He leaned toward Rube, extending his hand. “So I’ll just say goodbye, thanking you for an interesting morning.”

Rube stood up, face genial, shook Dr. Danziger’s extended hand, and said, “Sit down, Dr. D. Because you are going to help me. You’re going to get me in touch with Si Morley because you’ll want to.” He pulled over his attaché case, Dr. Danziger, still standing, watching him. Rube snapped up the two brass fasteners, lifted the lid, and began removing the contents, tossing them to the table before Danziger: a glossy black-and-white photograph of what appeared to be a small-town Main Street; an old newspaper, edges browned; a campaign button; a sheaf of letters clipped together; an envelope with a triangular stamp; a tape cassette; an old book with a loose binding; a rubber-banded coil of black-and-white film. “Look at this stuff, Doctor. The photograph, take a look at that.”

Face and movement reluctant, Dr. Danziger put down his coat and picked up the photograph. “Yes?”

“Well, look at it. A small-town Main Street, right? And taken in the forties, wouldn’t you say? Look at the cars.”

“Yes. There’s a ’42 Plymouth roadster; I once had one.”

“Now look at the movie marquee: can you read it?”

“Of course; I’m not quite—”

“Okay. Read the title of the movie they’re showing.”

Twenty minutes later, Dr. Danziger—standing with a coil of movie film held up to the overhead fluorescent light, examining the frames of the final foot—finished, and tossed the film onto the table with the other things. “All right,” he said irritably, sitting down. “These all say the same thing. In different ways. Events that apparently once happened one way seem now to have happened in another. Where’d you get them?” he asked curiously.

Rube shrugged. “A friend, a young army friend; they’re more or less on loan.”

“And what’ve they got to do with Si Morley?”

“Isn’t that obvious?”

“No.”

Rube nodded at the objects on the table. “He’s doing this. He and maybe McNaughton—one more guy who broke his word and didn’t come back! They’re back there in the past, trampling around, changing things, aren’t they? They don’t know it. They’re just living their happy lives, but changing small events. Mostly trivial, with no important effects. But every once in a while the effect of some small changed event moves on down to the—” He stood, frowning: Dr. Danziger was shaking his head, smiling. “Why not!? What the hell, I’m quoting you!”

“Misquoting. It takes more than a trivial event. It isn’t Si. Or McNaughton. Look at these things.”

“I have. Most of last night. Looked till—”

“Well, look again. You shouldn’t need this spelled out by a senile old man.”

“You? That’ll be the day.” Rube Prien picked up the white campaign button and looked at the printed faces of John Kennedy and Estes Kefauver; looked at the front page of the old newspaper. Touched the tape cassette, the old film, the packet of letters, his expression growing irritable. Then he sat back, hooking an arm over the back of his chair. “Dr. D. You know I was never in your league. Just tell me.”

“Not one of these artifacts predates the early years of the century. That didn’t occur to you? If Si, back in the 1880s, were causing this”—he gestured at the scattered things on the table—“some, at least, should have occurred much earlier. And if McNaughton, then none could predate the twenties.” His face and voice had grown interested. “Something happened, sometime around 1912, it appears. Some kind of . . . what? Some very important event, a kind of Big Bang, to steal a term. Something that altered the course of many subsequent events; these and undoubtedly others.”

“What kind of Big Bang?”

“Who can say? You’ve read Si Morley’s published account, his book?”

“Twice. Making notes. And cursing him out at least once a page.”

“Yet an accurate account, wouldn’t you say?”

“Oh, I don’t know. What about that last chapter?”

Danziger laughed. “Oh, you’re right, you’re right! Not quite accurate there, thank the Lord. Keep my parents from ever meeting! Thus effectively preventing the Project itself. I enjoyed that. But everything else was accurate, including your own grandiose ideas. So why do you suppose he wrote that final chap—”

“Wishful thinking. The way he’d have liked it to happen.”

“I don’t know: if he’d really wanted to do that, what could possibly have stopped him?”

Rube shook his head. “I have no way of knowing.” They sat silent, reflecting; then Rube said, “Okay. But who did cause your Big Bang?”

“Anyone who read Si’s account of how he succeeded. And who then tried it himself. Or herself, as we are obliged to add now. Tried and, unlike you and me . . . succeeded.”

“Oh, come on! Are you serious? Just from reading his account?”

“Oh, I know the difficulties. And how few ever managed even with the facilities we once had here: the School, the researchers, the Big Floor mockups. Virtually re-creating the whole town for McNaughton. And yet just possibly, some reader, absolute amateur, was actually able—” He couldn’t finish, breaking into laughter. “Of course I’m not serious! I’m teasing you, Rube!” Still amused, he turned to gather up his coat and hat. “Well, it’s been fascinating.” He pushed back his chair to stand. “But now—so long, Rube. Thanks for everything, as we say.”

“I can’t believe you’re walking out on this. You, the fanatic about any least change in the past.” He swept his hand over the scattered objects on the table. “What about these changes!”

“You’ve never really understood, have you? Yes, these things seem to indicate a past that has been changed. Thus altering our present. And if I could have prevented it, no doubt I would have.” He set the palms of his hands flat on the table edge to lean forward, stiff-armed, toward Rube. “But now that altered order of events is our present. Would you change it again? Send Si Morley back if you could to . . . do something, you don’t even know what, and produce some new order of events? Whose consequences you can’t possibly foresee?”

Rube picked up the campaign button, saying, “What about this?” and tossed it to slide across the tabletop and stop faceup before Danziger.

Danziger glanced down at the two pictured faces, and took his hands from the table. “Yes. I liked that young man. It was a pleasure having a President who could speak his own language. Fluently and properly. Often with grace and wit. When he stood speaking somewhere representing the United States, it was possible to feel proud. We haven’t had many like that since Franklin Roosevelt. Yet in a fairly short time this charming young man took us closer to nuclear war than we’ve ever been before or since. And did it on defective information. Took us into the most foolish, badly planned venture, in Cuba, that I can easily conceive of. So what next, Rube? If he’d lived out his first term and had a second? Would he have improved? Maybe. He might have grown into that enormous job. And the present we’d be living in now would have been something glorious. Or catastrophic. You can’t say, you see, you can’t say! But you want to gamble? Reach into the grab bag and find out?” He gestured at the photograph, the letters, the old newspaper, all the things on the table between them. “I’d love to know the cause of these: what event, what Big Bang, back in the early years of this century brought these changes about. And others undiscovered, no doubt. I’d love to know, but never will. And I won’t help you to know. You’re a lovely man, Rube, as the Irish are supposed to say. But a troublemaker, a shit-disturber.” He began getting himself into his coat, movements stiff. “So pick up your marvels, Rube, and go home. Let well enough alone. The Project is over.”

“Okay.” Rube smiled as he stood, so genuinely that Danziger smiled back in equal friendship. Rube began gathering the things on the table, dropping them into his leather case. “I’ll walk down with you.”

In the little street-level office Dr. Danziger, hat on now, stood buttoning his coat, glancing around. “Well. The Project’s finished and I’ll never be back. But whatever I ought to feel, mostly I’m just relieved.” He looked questioningly at Rube, who stood waiting, his tan cloth cap in hand, but Rube merely shrugged, and Danziger nodded. “Yes,” he said. “It actually meant more to you than even to me. A very great deal more, I think. Ready?”

Rube nodded, pulled on his cap, but continued to stand looking around, unable, it seemed to Danziger, to take the last steps. He reached forward to a wall and lifted off a small framed photograph of a mustached crew standing or squatting beside an old chain-drive moving truck; the photo was labeled The Gang in white ink. “Here”—he offered it to Danziger. “You want a souvenir?”

Danziger hesitated, then nodded. “Yes. Thank you.” He took the photograph and slid it into his overcoat pocket. Rube took another framed photograph for himself, walked to the door, and when Danziger stepped out, switched off the light. Outside on the walk, he pulled the door closed, then locked it with a key he brought out from the breast pocket of his coat. “Which way you headed, Dr. D?”

“East, then a bus to home.”

“Well, I hope to see you again sometime, Dr. Danziger.”

“Yes, I hope to see you, Rube. I do. But let’s just leave that to fate, all right?”

“Right. Okay.” They shook hands, said goodbye, and turned away. After half a dozen steps Rube stopped to look down at the key in his hand. He glanced back to see Danziger walking away, then looked up the blank brick wall beside him to the weathered lettering painted around the roofline. He tightened his fingers on the key in his palm, turned and threw it, high and hard as he could, across the street. Stood listening, then heard it strike metal somewhere within the tall rows of stacked squashed car bodies behind the chain fence across the street. Then he walked away.