The Wheels of If And Other Science-Fiction

THE BEST-LAID SCHEME

Russell F. R. Hedges did not look like a world-destroyer. He was in fact an almost annoyingly harmless-looking soul, a plump person of forty-five in neat blue serge, with dark hair streaked with gray and in need of cutting, hanging down over his steel-rimmed glasses.

The folly of trying to judge people by their looks has been pointed out by generations of psychologists and such people. Rut this form of judgment seems to be ingrained in human folkways. Perhaps that is why Coordinator Ronald Q. M. Bloss underestimated Hedges. When the chief executive officer of the great North American continent is told by the head of the Bureau of Standards to do thus-and-so, thus-and-so being a program designed to put the affairs of the continent in the said head's hand, the Coordinator's natural reaction is to ring the buzzer and have the erring subordinate carted off to the hatch.

Bloss was curious. Finger poised over the button, he asked: "How, my dear Hedges, do you propose to destroy the world?"

Hedges smiled amiably. He spoke in barely more than a whisper, suspecting the presence of dictaphones: "Simple, my dear Bloss." (He was being offensively familiar; people normally addressed the Coordinator as "your Efficiency".) "You recall my investigations into the nature of Time. The process of temporal forward-jumping, vulgarly known as vanwinkling, has been an established fact for several decades, being a favorite occupation among those who are dissatisfied with the present world and hope to find a better one in the future."

"I know all that," said Bloss irritably. "You may as well calm yourself, my dear Bloss. Being in a position to be as verbose in my explanations as I please, I intend to indulge my whims in that direction. As I was about to say, the problem of backward-jumping has not hitherto been solved. It involves an obvious paradox. If I go back and slay my own grandfather, what becomes of me? It's all very well to say he wasn't killed, and that something will happen to prevent my carrying out my design. Who shall see to it that my design is in fact frustrated, once I have actually gotten back to his time and located him? Yet, if I kill him, I obviously disarrange subsequent history. Subsequent history is a tough fabric, and will no doubt try to adhere to its original pattern. That it will altogether succeed in doing so, I presume to doubt. In fact, any action on my part in bygone times that affects other persons will set in train a series of events that will ultimately wrench subsequent history of its normal channels. Someone will marry or fail to marry the spouse he would otherwise have chosen, and a great statesman will be born or will fail to be born, as the case may be. So, all I have to do is go far enough back, commit a few sufficiently significant acts, and presto! you and all the other inhabitants of the continent cease to be; or rather, you cease to be the persons you now are. You see, my dear Bloss?"

Bloss thought he saw very well. He pressed the button.

Hedges saw him do so. The Chief of the Bureau of Standards looked at his wrist-watch. It was a large wrist-watch, with a lot of buttons and things around its circumference. His fingers moved to one of these.

"Ah, well," he said, "it seems a demonstration is needed." And he vanished.

When the guards bounced in three seconds later, they found a worried-looking coordinator. He was not especially disturbed over Hedges' vanishment—he'd seen people do that before when they vanwinkled—but he was wondering if by some remote chance the man might not have actually gone back instead of forward.

He sent for Vincent M. S. Collingwood, head of the Continental Bureau of Investigation.

Collingwood pulled a sheaf of papers out of his briefcase. "Hah!" he said. "Here are the files on Russell F. R. Hedges. Our staff psychologist has him down as 'shrewd, ambitious, resourceful, and persevering beneath a deceptively mild exterior.' " Collingwood fixed his chief with a glittering eye. "That, Your Efficiency, is what I call sinister!"

"I don't know," said Bloss. "Maybe I'm foolish to get excited; maybe he was bluffing and did a vanwinkle on us."

"Hah!" grated Collingwood. "But did he? If it was an ordinary vanwinkle, he'd be stranded in the future and unable to get back. No, I'm sure there's a dastardly plot behind this."

Bloss began: "If—" He stopped with his mouth open. Through the White House ran a silent, motionless earthquake, if you can imagine such a thing.

Bloss stared at the wall behind Collingwood. "That picture," he said. "That picture behind you."

Collingwood scowled at the blank wall. "I don't see any picture."

"That's just it. It was there a second ago. And you are wearing a different necktie."

"Hah! So I am. This is sinister. He's gone back and done something—it doesn't matter much what—and changed subsequent history. Hah!"

"Stop saying 'hah' all the time," complained Bloss. "I want you to do something."

"Hah, you don't have to worry about my doing something, your Efficiency. Doing something is just my job."

"Well, what did you have in mind?"

"Why—uh—I don't just know. But don't worry."

"But I am worrying. Can't you at least put some of your men to following Hedges?"

"Of course, your Efficiency," cried Collingwood. "Just what I had in mind, hah! I'll put de Witt after him. He's the toughest man we have. Besides, he has an artificial eye."

"What's that got to do with it?"

"Hah! Wouldn't you like to know!"

Hedges popped back into sight, in the chair just recently vacated by Collingwood. Bloss jumped.

"Ah, my dear Bloss," said Hedges. "The demonstration was convincing, I trust?"

"Uh—huh," said Bloss warily. "What do you want me to do now?"

"I've told you already. Force a bill through giving the head of the Bureau" of Standards the powers I enumerated."

"All right. But it will take time to prepare it and to get it passed."

"I know that. I'm in no rush. I shall continue with my usual duties. You will of course not try anything so rash as to have me arrested—or assaulted. If you do, I shall go back quite a way, and I shall devote my efforts particularly to your own ancestors, all of whom I have looked up to be sure I can locate them. Good-day, Your Efficiency."

Bloss watched him leave in a more conventional manner. The Coordinator thought of telling Collingwood to dispose of Hedges in any way he chose, so long as Hedges was gotten rid of. But he had hesitated. He was a stickler for legality, and the assassination of inconvenient citizens without due process of law was highly felonious in the North America of 2365. Besides, there was a close election coming up, and his opponents would be sure to find his sins out and use them.

Now, there was an even better reason for preserving Hedges' immunity: if the C. B. I. attacked Hedges with gun or blackjack, but were not successful at the very first try, Hedges would disappear into the past, and would, in revenge, do something really drastic to the fabric of history. Maybe Bloss would find himself no longer Coordinator—or no longer Bloss. As Bloss had considerable affection for himself, the thought of such separation was painful.

Meanwhile Vincent M. S. Collingwood had called in his toughest operative, Mendez S. D. de Witt. This de Witt was in disgrace for having killed a man; he said it was necessary to keep the man from escaping; others said it was not. Nothing had been done to de Witt, but he was made to feel that he'd have to go some to get back in the Department's graces. He was a thick-bodied man with short black hair standing on end. Nobody would have suspected his artificial eye, which he had made some curious uses of in his work. He had a carefully cultivated slovenliness of dress and manner.

"This Hedges," said Collingwood impressively, "is a dastardly scoundrel. He threatens not merely the foundations of our government and the fabric of our society, but our very existence."

"Yeah," said Mendez de Witt.

"He must be stopped! Our glorious land cannot tolerate such a viper in her bosom."

"Yeah."

"You have been selected for this—" Collingwood's 'phone rang, and he listened to Bloss. Bloss told him that under no circumstances must R. F. R. Hedges be assaulted, assassinated, kidnapped, or otherwise molested.

Collingwood continued: "You have been selected for the perilous task of unmasking this sinister force. But in the accomplishment of your aim, Hedges must on no account be assaulted, assassinated, kidnapped, or otherwise molested. You understand?"

"Yeah," said de Witt. "Whatcha wamme to do, stick out my tongue at him?"

"Hah! You're as funny as a wheel-chair, de Witt. No, you will first go to work in the Bureau of Standards, where you can keep an eye on him. You will learn whence he derives his time-traveling power, and whether he can be deprived of it without much risk."

"That ail?"

"That's all. Good luck, my boy."

"Some day," said de Witt, "a guy is gonna call another guy 'my boy' once too often. Be seem' ya."

Mendez S. D. de Witt had several artificial eyes, none of which was quite what it seemed. He occupied a section of laboratory desk in the B. of S. building, and, with soldering-iron and tweezers, deftly assembled the mechanism for yet another spurious optic. This one was to be a paralyzing-ray machine. The mechanism would be installed in the methyl-methacrylate shell at another time; he didn't want the other Bureau of Standards technicians to learn about his eyes.

One of these technicians sneezed. He ran a finger around the base of his faucet and held it up with a faint smudge of yellow powder on it. He crumbled this trace of powder over his burner, and sniffed.

"Now who," he said, "has been scattering powdered sulphur around the lab?"

De Witt could have told him. He could also have told him that the sulphur was radioactive.

Russell F. R. Hedges marched through the laboratory on the way to his office. He nodded and smiled at the technicians, saying: "Ah, my dear Hutchinson. Ah, my dear Jones."

When he passed de Witt, giving his laboratory's most recent recruit a look of suspicion, de Witt stared at Hedges' wrist. He shut his good eye—the right one—tight, then blinked it several times.

Then he went back to his artificial eye.

When he got home, he at once took out his fake eye. The shell unscrewed into two parts, and inside it was a neat little X-ray camera, full of exposed one millimeter film. He developed this and printed a series of enlargements. They showed X-rays of Hedges' wrist, and of the remarkable wrist-watch worn thereupon. The photographs were mere black-and-gray silhouettes, made by the emanations from the radio-active sulphur that de Witt had scattered around. Each showed the inside of the watch as a jumble of coils and cogwheels, and would have been useless by itself. But de Witt, by comparing a number of pictures taken at different angles, formed a good idea of the workings of the gadget. It was Hedges' time-travel machine all right. On its face were number-disks like those on the odometer of an automobile, reading years and days of the year. All Hedges had to do was set the thing forward or back.

De Witt promptly set about duplicating the machine. It took him three weeks. Collingwood got pretty impatient by the end of that time.

De Witt explained: "You see, chief, all I wanna do is chase this guy out of his own time. Then I'll fix him so he won't do nothing."

"But, de Witt, don't you remember what His Efficiency said about not molesting—"

"Yeah, I know. But that only has to do with what T do to him now. His Efficiency couldn't kick about what I did to Hedges five hundred years ago, now could he?"

"Hmmm. Yes. I see your point. Of course I believe in following His Efficiency's orders, but in combatting a sinister force like this ..."

De Witt finished his duplicate time-watch. He strapped it on his wrist and spun the setter.

Nothing happened, though the dial showed 2360— five years before. The C. B. I. man cursed softly and spun the disks some more, and still some more. Nothing happened until he reached 2298. Then, whoosh, the room blurred into frantic motion.

De Witt found himself sitting in empty air twelve feet above the ground of a vacant lot, to whose surface he dropped, thump.

He picked himself up. The explanation dawned upon him. He'd gone back to a date before the boarding-house where he lived was built. Thank God he hadn't tried the stunt in a skyscraper—or on the former site of another building. He wondered what it would feel like to find yourself occupying the same bit of space as a steel I-beam. Probably there'd be a hell of an explosion.

Then he wondered why the gadget had not worked until he had gone back thirty-seven years. He was thirty-six years old—that must be it: you couldn't occupy your own stretch of time more than once. It wouldn't do to have two Mendez S. D. de Witts running around simultaneously.

To check, he reversed the direction of the control and advanced the setter slowly. Nothing happened until it registered 2365 again; then whoosh, his boarding-house scrambled into existence, like a movie of a blowing-up in reverse.

Then he finished his paralyzer. It proved something of a disappointment. It worked, but only at a range of a meter or less. And you had to aim carefully at the victim's neck-vertebrae.

But he inclosed the paralyzer in its eye-shaped case, put the case in his left eye-socket, and walked in on Hedges unannounced.

"Ah, my dear de Witt—" said Hedges, smiling.

"Okay, skip it. I guess you know who I am, buddy."

"A C. B. I. man? I suspected it. What do you want?"

"You're coming with me, get me?"

"Yes?" Hedges raised his eyebrows, and touched his wrist-watch. He vanished.

But so did Mendez de Witt.

It was damn funny, sitting there and spinning the setter, and looking at the shadowy form of Hedges on the other side of the desk. As de Witt was only a second or two behind Hedges in his pursuit, he could keep him in sight. When Hedges speeded up his time-travel, de Witt's strong and agile fingers spun the setter faster; when Hedges vanished for a second, de Witt quickly reversed motion of the setter and picked up Hedges going the other way. When Hedges stopped, de Witt stopped too.

The C. B. I. man grinned at Hedges. "Gotcha, huh?"

"Not quite," said Hedges. He fished a hand-grenade from his pocket, and started to pull the pin. Dc Witt just sat there, holding the setter. Hedges put the bomb back in his pocket.

De Witt laughed. "Thought you'd turn that thing loose and skip, huh? I can skip just as fast as you can."

Hedges went back to his time-watch. Forward and backward he spun the disks. De Witt followed him. The next time Hedges stopped, there was a third man in the room; a startled-looking old man.

Hedges looked at him, and jerked a thumb. "One of my predecessors. I recognize his picture."

"You damn fool," said de Witt. "If he'd been sitting in that chair too it'd have been blooey for both of you."

"I suppose so, de Witt. It's a bit crowded here, don't you think?" And he began spinning the setter again.

This time de Witt lost him. He went back to the time he'd been at when he last saw Hedges, and went over it carefully. At last he picked up a glimpse of Hedges bouncing out of his chair and running for the door. De Witt adjusted the setter carefully, and managed to stop just as Hedges reached the door.

De Witt ran after him. He had to keep him in sight, not only in the three spacial dimensions, but in time also. Although he was a better runner than Hedges, as he caught up with his victim, Hedges twirled the dial on his wrist and began to fade.

De Witt did the almost impossible feat of running after Hedges and spinning his setter at the same time. They were" outside the Bureau of Standards building. De Witt knew that if he once thoroughly lost his man, he'd never find him.

They stopped running. Hedges slowed down his setter to where de Wilt could glimpse motor-vehicles flashing backwards past them. Several went right through them.

"Look out!" yelled dc Witt, as Hedges almost stopped his time-travel at a point that intersected the space-time track of a big truck. No sound came; you could move while traveling in time, but you couldn't hear. Hedges saw his danger and speeded up again.

Hedges gave up time-flight: since it had only one dimension, you could always find a man by moving back and forth along it far enough. He began running physically again, de Witt after him. They raced down Pennsylvania Avenue. De Witt stole a glance at his watch. It read 1959, Hedges, he thought, must have had that bomb ready so that he could carry out his threat by going into the past and blowing up some innocent bystanders. De Witt, tough as he was, was shocked. He reached for his pistol, which he had hoped not to have to use.

Hedges was getting winded. He bumped into a pedestrian. De Witt felt a psychic jar run through him.

Hedges bumped another pedestrian. The pistol vanished from de Witt's grasp, and an umbrella took its place. He knew what had happened: the bumping of the pedestrian, a trivial matter in itself, was one of those first links in a chain of events that change history.

They were approaching a traffic-circle. In the middle of this was a circular bit of park with an ornamental fountain. A lot of people were sitting around the fountain. De Witt grasped Hedges' intention when Hedges pulled out his bomb. If he couldn't get away, he was going to change history right there.

De Witt dodged a couple of automobiles, and with straining lungs caught up with Hedges. He hooked the umbrella-handle around Hedges' ankle. Brakes squealed and Hedges fell in front of a car. De Witt leaped on him. Again came that jarring sensation. De Witt knew that they Were both changing as they struggled. People were looking at them, and the sight was entering into their histories ...

Hedges got the pin out of his bomb just as de Witt remembered his paralyzing eye. He blinked his real eye, and sighted the phoney on the back of Hedges' neck. The bomb fell to the asphalt. De Witt snatched it up and tossed it into the fountain. He screamed: "Duck!" People looked at him blankly. Then the bomb went off, sending up a fountain of water and tossing a statue of a Triton high in the air.

The jarring sensation became almost unbearable. De Witt was horrified to feel that he had grown a beard.

A couple of people were cut a little by flying shreds of concrete. But the heavy concrete rim of the fountain had stopped all the bomb-fragments.

A police-car appeared. De Witt became aware, in that second, of many things he hadn't had time to notice—the ancient appearance of the motor-cars; the colorful costume of the people (colorful, that is, in comparison with the grim black-and-white of his own time).

Hedges lay on the asphalt looking blankly up at him. De Witt stooped down, took the setter of Hedges' time-watch between the fingers of his left hand, and grasped the setter of his own watch with his right fingers. He gave both setters a twist.

They were still in the traffic-circle. But it was early morning, and almost nobody in sight. The fountain supported another Triton, very new-looking. De Witt had tried to send them ahead one year, and had succeeded.

The effect of the paralysis wore off Hedges; he crawled over to the curb around the fountain and sat on it with his head in his hands.

De Witt looked at him sharply. "Say," he said, "you aren't the same guy."

"You aren't cither."

There was little doubt of that; de Witt was six inches taller than he had been, and he still had the horrible beard. His hair was disgustingly long. Mixed up with his memory of his career as a C. B. I. man came another memory, of an easy-going life on a microscopic income, devoted to disreputable friends and the writing of quantities of stickily sentimental poetry.

"I don't know why I did it," said Hedges. "I'm not ambitious. All I want is a quiet place in the country."

"That's because you aren't the same man," said de Witt. "I'm not cither. I'm a damned poet." He looked at the flower-bed around the fountain, and began to compose:

"What rhymes with 'once'?"

"Dunce," said Hedges. "Are you going to do that all the time?"

"Probably."

"It's awful. But aren't you going to arrest me or something?"

"N-No. I'm not a policeman any more." He ran his hand through his long hair. "I think I'll just stay here and be a poet."

"I really ought to be arrested."

"You'll have to go back—or forward—to your own time and give yourself up, then. I don't want you."

Hedges sighed. "The best-laid schemes of mice and men—in changing the history leading up to our time, we of course changed our own history and background. I think I'd like this time too. I brought quite a wad of money along; it ought to be good. I'll buy a little place in the country and raise flowers, and you can come out and write poetry about them."

"Russell!"

"Mendez!" Friends for life, they shook hands.

The soundless, motionless earthquake brought Coordinator Bloss and Vincent M. S. Collingwood to their feet. They stared at each other in terror until the disturbance subsided.

"You've changed," said Bloss.

"So have you, Your Efficiency."

"Not very much though."

"No, thank God. I imagine Hedges has done all the damage he can. What's this?"

On the Chief Executive's desk appeared two time-watches, and a pencilled note. The note read:

To His Efficiency the Co-ordinator of North America, or to Vincent M. S. Collingwood, Director of the C.B.I.:

We've decided to stay here, in 1960. We will try not to disturb the space-time structures any more than is necessary for the rest of our lives. The time watches we are sending back to you, as a means of transporting this note. We advise you to destroy them utterly.

If you want to see how I made out, look up a late twentieth century poet of my name. Regards.

MENDEZ S. D. DE WITT

Bloss pulled out volume Dam to Edu of the encyclopedia. "Here he is," he announced. "Yes, he was quite a well-known poet. Married in 1964, no children. Died in 1980. It even mentions his friend Hedges. I bet that story wasn't in the encyclopedia last week. What did you do with those watches?"

Collingwood was staring popeyed at the blank desk. "Nothing—they up and disappeared. That's the most sinister thing I ever saw."

"Not at all," said the Co-ordinator. "Hedges and de Witt disturbed the history between their time and ours to the point where Hedges never did any timetravel backwards in our time. So those time-watches never existed."

"Let's see—the watches never existed—but they were on the desk a minute ago—but—they took Hedges back so he could make it impossible for him to have done the thing he did to enable him to go back to make it impossible for him to go back—"

Bloss got out a bottle and a couple of glasses. "My dear Collingwood," he said, "don't drive yourself crazy trying to resolve the paradoxes of time travel. The watches are one, and I for one say it's a good thing. Have a drink."

Collingwood snatched up his glass. "Now, Your Efficiency, you're talking sense!""