Time and Again

I

The man came out of the twilight when the greenish yellow of the sun's last light still lingered in the west. He paused at the edge of the patio and called.

"Mr. Adams, is that you?"

The chair creaked as Christopher Adams shifted his weight, startled by the voice. Then he remembered. A new neighbor had moved in across the meadow a day or two ago. Jonathon had told him…and Jonathon knew all the gossip within a hundred miles. Human gossip as well as android and robot gossip.

"Come on in," said Adams. "Glad you dropped around."

And he hoped his voice sounded as hearty and neighborly as he had tried to make it.

For he wasn't glad. He was a little nettled, upset by this sudden shadow that came out of the twilight and walked across the patio.

He passed a mental hand across his brow. This is my hour, he thought. The one hour I give myself. The hour that I forget…forget the thousand problems that have to do with other stars. Forget them and turn back to the green-blackness and the hush and the subtle sunset shadow-show that belong to my own planet.

For here, on this patio, there are no mentophone reports, no robot files, no galactic co-ordination conferences…no psychologic intrigue, no alien reaction charts. Nothing complicated or mysterious…although I may be wrong, for there is mystery here, but a soft, sure mystery that is understood and only remains a mystery because I want it so. The mystery of the nighthawk against a darkening sky, the puzzle of the firefly along the lilac hedge.

With half his mind he knew the stranger had come across the patio and was reaching out a hand for a chair to sit in, and with the other half once again he wondered about the blackened bodies lying on the riverbank on far-off Aldebaran XII and the twisted machine that was wrapped around the tree.

Three humans had died there…three humans and two androids, and androids were almost human. And humans must not die by violence unless it be by the violence of another human. Even then it was on the field of honor with all the formality and technicality of the code duello or in the less polished affairs of revenge or execution.

For human life was sacrosanct…it had to be or there'd be no human life. Man was so pitifully outnumbered.

Violence or accident?

And accident was ridiculous.

There were few accidents, almost none at all. The near-perfection of mechanical performance, the almost human intelligence and reactions of machines to any known danger, long-ago had cut the incidence of accident to an almost non-existent figure.

No machine would be crude enough to slam into a tree. A more subtle, less apparent danger, maybe. But never a tree.

So it must be violence.

And it could not be human violence, for human violence would have advertised the fact. Human violence had nothing to fear…there was no recourse to law, scarcely a moral code to which a human killer would be answerable.

Three humans dead.

Three humans dead fifty light-years distant and it became a thing of great importance to a man sitting on his patio on Earth. A thing of prime importance for no human must die by other hands than human without a terrible vengeance. Human life must not be taken without a monstrous price anywhere in the galaxy or the human race would end forever and the great galactic brotherhood of intelligence would plummet down into the darkness and the distance that had scattered it before.

Adams slumped lower in his chair, forcing himself to relax, furious at himself for thinking…for it was his rule that in this time of twilight he thought of nothing…or as close to nothing as his mind could come.

The stranger's voice seemed to come from far away and yet Adams knew he was sitting at his side.

"Nice evening," the stranger said.

Adams chuckled. "The evenings are always nice. The Weather boys don't let it rain until later on, when everyone's asleep."

In a thicket down the hill a thrush struck up its evensong and the liquid notes ran like a quieting hand across a drowsing world. Along the creek a frog or two were trying out their throats. Far away, in some dim other-world a whipporwill began his chugging question. Across the meadow and up the climbing hills, the lights came on in houses here and there.

"This is the best part of the day," said Adams.

He dropped his hand into his pocket, brought out tobacco pouch and pipe.

"Smoke?" he asked.

The stranger shook his head.

"As a matter of fact, I am here on business."

Adam's voice turned crisp. "See me in the morning, then. I don't do business after hours."

The stranger said softly, "It's about Asher Sutton."

Adam's body tensed and his fingers shook so that he fumbled as he filled his pipe. He was glad that it was dark so the stranger could not see.

"Sutton will be coming back," the stranger said.

Adams shook his head. "I doubt it. He went out twenty years ago."

"You haven't crossed him out?"

"No," said Adams, slowly. "He still is on the payroll, if that is what you mean."

"Why?" asked the man. "Why do you keep him on?" '

Adams tamped the tobacco in the bowl, considering. "Sentiment, I guess," he said. "Sentiment and faith. Faith in Asher Sutton. Although the faith is running out."

"Just five days from now," the stranger said, "Sutton will come back."

He paused a moment, then added, "Early in the morning."

"There's no way," said Adams, crisply, "you could know a thing like that."

"But I do. It's recorded fact."

Adams snorted. "It hasn't happened yet."

"In my time it has."

Adams jerked upright in his chair. "In your time!"

"Yes," said the stranger, quietly. "You see, Mr. Adams, I am your successor."

"Look here, young man…"

"Not young man," said the stranger. "I am half again your age. I am getting old."

"I have no successor," said Adams, coldly. "There's been no talk of one. I'm good for another hundred years. Maybe more than that."

"Yes," the stranger said, "for more than a hundred years. For much more than that."

Adams leaned back quietly in his chair. He put his pipe in his mouth and lit it with a hand that was steady as a rock.

"Let's take this easy," he said. "You say you are my successor…that you took over my job after I quit or died. That means you came out of the future. Not that I believe you for a moment, of course. But just for argument…"

"There was a news item the other day," the stranger said. "About a man named Michaelson who claimed he went into the future."

Adams snorted. "I read that. One second! How could a man know he went one second into time? How could he measure it and know? What difference would it make?"

"None," the stranger agreed. "Not the first time, of course. But the next time he will go into the future five seconds. Five seconds, Mr. Adams. Five tickings of the clock. The space of one short breath. There must be a starting point for all things."

"Time travel?"

The stranger nodded.

"I don't believe it," Adams said.

"I was afraid you wouldn't."

"In the last five thousand years," said Adams, "we have conquered the galaxy…"

" 'Conquer' is not the right word, Mr. Adams."

"Well, taken over, then. Moved in. However you may wish it. And we have found strange things. Stranger things than we ever dreamed. But never time travel."

He waved his hand at the stars.

"In all that space out there," he said, "no one had time travel. No one."

"You have it now," the stranger said. "Since two weeks ago. Michaelson went into time, one second into time. A start. That is all that's needed."

"All right, then," said Adams. "Let us say you are the man who in a hundred years or so will take my place. Let's pretend you traveled back in time. What about it?"

"To tell you that Sutton will return."

"I would know it when he came," said Adams. "Why must I know now?"

"When he returns," the stranger said, "Sutton must be killed."