Part 17 (1/2)

I unwrapped it for him.

He said, ”It's the thing my friends had. You stole it from my friends.”

”They ran away” and left it. I want a look at it.”

”You see other times with it,” said Tupper.

”You know about this, Tupper?”

He nodded. ”They show me many times-not often, I don't mean that, but many other times. Time not like we're in.”

”You don't know how it works?”

”They told me,” Tupper said, ”but I didn't understand.”

He wiped his chin, but failed to do the job, so wiped it a second time.

They told me, he had said. So he could talk with them. He could talk with Flowers and with a race that conversed by music. There was no use, I knew, in asking him about it, because he couldn't tell me. Perhaps there was no one who could explain an ability of that sort-not to a human being.

For more than likely there'd be no common terms in which an explanation could be made.

The basketball glowed softly, lying on the jacket.

”Maybe,” Tupper said, ”we should go back to bed.”

”In a little while,” I said. Anytime I wanted, it would be no trouble going back to bed, for the ground was bed.

I put out a hand and touched the basketball.

A mechanism that extended back in time and recorded for the viewer the sight and sound of happenings that lay deep in the memory of the s.p.a.ce-time continuum. It would have, I thought, very many uses. It would be an invaluable tool in historical research. It would make crime impossible, for it could dig out of the past the details of any crime. And it would be a terrible device if it fell into unscrupulous hands or became the property of a government.

I'd take it back to Millville, if I could take it back, if I could get back myself. It would help to support the story I had to tell, but after I had told the story and had offered it as proof; what would I do with it? Lock it in a vault and destroy the combination? Take a sledge and smash it into smithereens? Turn it over to the scientists? What could one do with it'?

”You messed up your coat,” said Tupper, ”carrying that thing.”

I said, ”It wasn't much to start with.”

And then I remembered that envelope with the fifteen hundred dollars in it. It had been in the breast pocket of the jacket and I could have lost it in the wild running I had done or when I used the jacket to wrap up the time contraption.

What a d.a.m.n fool thing to do, I thought. What a chance to take. I should have pinned it in my pocket or put it in my shoe or something of the sort. It wasn't every day a man got fifteen hundred dollars.

1 bent over and put my hand into the pocket and the envelope was there and I felt a great relief as my fingers touched it. But almost immediately I knew there was something wrong.

My groping fingers told me the envelope was thin and it should have been bulging with thirty fifty-dollar bills.

I jerked it from my pocket and flipped up the flap. The envelope was empty.

I didn't have to ask. I didn't have to wonder. I knew just what had happened. That dirty, s...o...b..ring, finger-counting b.u.m-I'd choke it out of him, I'd beat him to a pulp, I'd make him cough it up!

I was halfway up to nail him when he spoke to me and the voice that he spoke with was that of the TV glamour gal.

”This is Tupper speaking for the Flowers,” the voice said. ”And you sit back down and behave yourself.”

”Don't give me that,” I snarled. ”You can't sneak out of this by pretending...”

”But this is the Flowers,” the voice insisted sharply and even as it said the words, I saw that Tupper's face had taken on that wall-eyed, vacant look.

”But he took my roll,” I said. ”He sneaked it out of the envelope when I was asleep.”

”Keep quiet,” said the honeyed voice. ”Just keep quiet and listen.”

”Not until I get my fifteen hundred back.”

”You'll get it back. You'll get much more than your fifteen hundred back.”

”You can guarantee that?”

”We'll guarantee it.”

I sat down again.

”Look,” I said, ”you don't know what that money meant to me. It's part my fault, of course. I should have waited until the bank was open or I should have found a good safe place to hide it. But there was so much going on...”

”Don't worry for a moment,” said the Flowers. ”We'll get it back to you.”

”OK,” I said, ”and does he have to use that voice?”

”What's the matter with the voice?”

”Oh, h.e.l.l,” I said, ”go ahead and use it. I want to talk to you, maybe even argue with you, and it's unfair, but I'll remember who is speaking.”

”We'll use another voice, then,” said the Flowers, changing in the middle of the sentence to the voice of the businessman.

”Thanks very much,” I said.

”You remember,” said the Flowers, ”the time we spoke to you on the phone and suggested that you might represent us?

”Certainly I remember. But as for representing you...”

”We need someone very badly. Someone we can trust.”

”But you can't be certain I'm the man to trust.”

”Yes, we can,” they said. ”Because we know you love us.”

”Now, look here,” I said. ”I don't know what gives you that idea. I don't know if...”

”Your father found those of us who languished in your world. He took us home and cared for us. He protected us and tended us and he loved us and we flourished.”

”Yes, I know all that.”