The Seeds of Time

‘What did you come for?’ I asked Jean.

She had her back towards me now, and did not turn.

‘Curiosity,’ she said, in an unsteady voice.

I hesitated, but he was right about the similarity of our minds-what had caught his interest caught mine, too.

‘All right,’ I agreed, more than half reluctantly. The street was almost empty when we came out into the dusk, and turned towards the Institute. The grounds beyond the gates were quite deserted: the building itself showed a few lighted windows where there were some people still at work. We walked along, with Jean silent, and Peter talking about time quantum-radiation, and explaining how the scope appeared to have quite natural limits at present-how it was possible, for instance, to move on to another rib of the fan only if there happened to be the space for you to do so. One could, for instance, move only to a line of existence where old Whetstone’s room was arranged in such a way that there was a clear area ready to receive what he called the transfer chamber. If there were something else occupying that space it would be destroyed, so there must always be a preliminary practical test to ensure that it would return intact. That established quite a narrow limit: go too far round the fan, so to speak, and you would hit a time-sequence in which the room did not exist at all because the Institute had never been built. The consequences to a transfer chamber trying to occupy an already occupied space, or making its debut in the new time-sequence in mid air, would be quite disastrous.

When we reached the room everything looked as usual except for the transfer chamber itself, standing in the middle of the sheeted apparatus. It looked rather like a sentry-box with a door added.

We cleared the covers off some of the rest of the stuff, and the other Peter started explaining to me what he had done in the way of altering circuits and introducing new stages. Jean dusted off a chair and sat on it, smoking a cigarette patiently. We should have got along more quickly had we been able to refer to the old man’s notes and diagrams, but unfortunately the steel filing-cabinet which held them was locked. Nevertheless, he was able to give me the general theory and a fair working idea of how to set about making the necessary changes.

After a time Jean looked pointedly at her watch, and got up.

‘Sorry to interrupt,’ she said, ‘but we really must get back. I told the girl we’d not be later than seven-and it’s half-past already.’

‘What girl?’ enquired my double, absently. That baby-sitter girl, of course,’ she told him. Somehow that brought me up more sharply than anything yet.

‘You-you’ve got a baby?’ I asked, stupidly.

Jean looked at me. ‘Yes,’ she said, gently. ‘And she’s a lovely little baby, isn’t she, Peter?’

‘Definitely quite the best baby known to us,’ agreed Peter.

I stood there, blankly.

‘Oh, don’t look like that, my dear,’ Jean said. She came closer. She put her right hand on the left side of my face, and pressed my other cheek against hers. ‘Go to her, Peter. Go to her. She wants you,’ she whispered close to my ear.

The other Peter opened the door of the transfer chamber, and they got in. It was a close fit for two. Then he got out again, and indicated a piece of the floor.

‘When you’ve got it working, come and find us,’ he said.

‘We’ll keep that area clear for you.’

‘Bring her with you,’ said Jean.

Then he got back, and pulled the door to. The last thing I saw as it closed was Jean’s face, with tears in her eyes….

While I was still looking at it the transfer chamber vanished: it did not fade, or dim, it went in a split second. It might never have been, but for four flattened cigarette ends by the chair where Jean had sat….

I was in no mood to go home. I hung about the room, going over the apparatus and memorizing what the other Peter had told me, trying to lose myself in the technicalities of it. The attention with which I went over the principles was rather grimly forced; I felt I should have had more of a chance to become absorbed if I had been able to get hold of the locked-up notes and diagrams.

After an hour or so I gave it up. I walked back home from the Institute, but I arrived with something more than a disinclination to go into the house. Instead, I got out the car.

And then, somehow, I was driving out along the Reading road….

Jean looked startled when she answered the doorbell. ‘Oh!’ she said, and went a little pale, and then a little flushed. In a carefully calm voice she said: ‘Freddie is working over in Number Four Lab.’

‘I don’t want Freddie,’ I told her. ‘I wanted to talk to you-about your father’s stuff in the room over there.’ She hesitated, and then opened the door wider.

‘All right,’ she said, in a non-committal voice. ‘You’d better come inside.’

It was the first time I had set foot in her house. I followed her to a large, comfortable sitting-room which looked out on the back-garden. The interview began with as much awkwardness as anything I’ve known. All the time I had to keep on reminding myself that she was another Jean from the one of the afternoon. This Jean was a person I had not spoken to for over three years except when some Institute function forced us to recognize one another’s existence. The more I looked at her, the more incredibly crass that barrier became.