The Seeds of Time

I looked at the dope. I was needing it badly, but I didn’t dare to touch it. I trundled my chair over to the cupboard where the spare supply was kept. But when I took out the bottle, I hesitated. It looked like the real stuff, and intact -but, then, of course, it was essential that it should.

Deliberately I threw it into the fireplace, smashing the bottle, and wheeled my chair to the telephone. The doctor was pretty short with me, but he came, bringing the stuff with him, thank God.

Various plans occurred to me. A poisoned needle, for instance, set strategically in the arm of the chair. Or some infection which would take a few days to develop-but that was too risky on account of possible delays. And over the former I was up against a problem which also balked several other ideas. The disabled have so little privacy. It is difficult enough to get the deadlier poisons, anyway: when it has to be done by finding a third party ready to flout the law, it becomes virtually impossible. And if someone did do it for me he would later appear as an accessory to suicide. The same objection applied to my laying hands on a few sticks of dynamite. But I could buy a time switch without many questions-and I did.

It was, I thought, a neat arrangement. My old service pistol was trained on the exact position my head would occupy when I was at the instrument. Only if you were searching for it would you notice the muzzle looking out from ‘the bookshelves. It was fixed to fire when the two handles of the instrument were grasped-but not until the time-switch had gone in. Thus I could set the switch and operate the instrument. Two hours later, for safe margin, the switch would go over, and the thing become lethal. If I tried and failed to make contact, I had only to set the switch again.

I waited three days, reckoning that Hymorell would be as chary of sleep as I had been, and uncertain whether his little grenade had been successful. Then I tried, successfully. -But three days later I was back again in my chair. Hymorell, damn him, was too cautious. He must have spotted the extra lead to the switch right away. It had been snipped off…. But I found his little surprise-packet, too-I would have melted the instrument, and most likely myself, too, if I had touched it before disconnecting. (The switch was thermostatic this time, set to cut in as the room cooled down-very neat.) The pistol and the time-switch had vanished, and I set about looking for them everywhere within range of my chair. I didn’t find the pistol, but the switch was in the cupboard under the stairs. It was arranged to set off a percussion cap which would ignite a grey powder obviously taken from the pistol cartridges. There was paper and oily rag close by.

Once I had made sure there were no other booby traps around, I settled down to work out another little reception device of my own. There used to be a type of mine that the Germans used which didn’t go up until the seventh truck had passed over it. The idea had points. I spent a couple of days fixing that, and then turned to the transference instrument again.

I was getting sick of the game, but it seemed to be a duel which could only end with one of us outsmarting the other. But while I was keeping awake for a couple of days and trying to look ahead to what he might have laid for me if my present little gimmick failed to catch him, I had an idea. I took it to Clytassamine.

‘Look here,’ I said. ‘Suppose I were to transfer to one of the feeble-minded the way you people do. Then when he operates again, it will be the half-wit who will take my place in the chair. We’ll both be here and the whole thing will be solved.’

She shook her head. ‘You need some sleep, Terry. You’re getting fuddled. It’s your mind he’s working the exchange with. It wouldn’t make any difference what kind of body you were using.’

She was right, of course. I was fuddled. On the third day I just had to sleep, come hell or high water. I slept for about fourteen of their hours-and woke up in the same place. That was great. I couldn’t believe he’d let that length of time pass without making an attempt if he were in a state to do so. There was justification for believing that my little gadget had brought it off this time, and at last I began to feel easier.

As the days went on, I began to grow sure. After the first half dozen times my dread of sleep diminished. At last I began to feel like a citizen of this other world, and to look for my place in it. With unlimited time ahead of me I didn’t intend to spend it hanging around the way the rest of them did.

‘Maybe there is only chance now,’ I said to Clytassamine, ‘but did you never hear of making chances?’

She smiled, but, it seemed to me, a little wearily.