As Time Goes By Read online

  “Poor fellow—?” I repeated, blankly.

  “The one you shot yesterday.”

  “I shot?”

  “Probably tomorrow or the next day,” Tavia said, briskly. “Uncle, you really are dreadful with those settings, you know.”

  “I understand the principles well enough, my dear. It’s just the operation that I sometimes find a little confusing.”

  “Never mind. Now you are here you’d better come indoors,” she told him. “And you can put that handkerchief away in your pocket,” she added.

  As he entered I saw him give a quick glance round the room, and nod to himself as if satisfied with the authenticity of its contents. We sat down. Tavia said:

  “Just before we go any further, Uncle Donald, I think you ought to know that I am married to Gerald—Mr. Lattery.”

  Dr. Gobie peered closely at her.

  “Married?” he repeated. “What for?”

  “Oh, dear,” said Tavia. She explained patiently: “I am in love with him, and he’s in love with me, so I am his wife. It’s the way things happen here.”

  “Tch, tch!” said Dr. Gobie, and shook his head. “Of course I am well-aware of your sentimental penchant for the twentieth century and its ways, my dear, but surely it wasn’t quite necessary for you to—er—go native?”

  “I like it, quite a lot,” Tavia told him.

  “Young women will be romantic, I know. But have you thought of the trouble you will be causing Sir Ger—er, Mr. Lattery?”

  “But I’m saving him trouble, Uncle Donald. They sniff at you here if you don’t get married, and I didn’t like him being sniffed at.”

  “I wasn’t thinking so much of while you’re here, as of after you have left. They have a great many rules about presuming death, and proving desertion, and so on; most dilatory and complex. Meanwhile, he can’t marry anyone else.”

  “I’m sure he wouldn’t want to marry anyone else, would you, darling?” she said to me.

  “Certainly not,” I protested.

  “You’re quite sure of that, darling?”

  “Darling,” I said, taking her hand, “if all the other women in the world—”

  Dr. Gobie recalled our attention with an apologetic cough.

  “The real purpose of my visit,” he explained, “is to persuade my niece that she must come back, and at once. There is the greatest consternation and alarm throughout the faculty over this affair, and I am being held largely to blame. Our chief anxiety is to get her back before any serious damage is done. Any chronoclasm goes ringing unendingly down the ages—and at any moment a really serious one may come of this escapade. It has put all of us into a highly nervous condition.”

  “I’m sorry about that, Uncle Donald—and about you getting the blame. But I am not coming back. I’m very happy here.”

  “But the possible chronoclasms, my dear. It keeps me awake at night thinking—”

  “Uncle dear, they’d be nothing to the chronoclasms that would happen if I did come back just now. You must see that I simply can’t, and explain it to the others.”

  “Can’t—?” he repeated.

  “Now, if you look in the books you’ll see that my husband—isn’t that a funny, ugly, old-fashioned word? I rather like it, though. It comes from two ancient Icelandic roots—”

  “You were speaking about not coming back,” Dr. Gobie reminded her.

  “Oh, yes. Well, you’ll see in the books that first he invented submarine radio communication, and then later on he invented curved-beam transmission, which is what he got knighted for.”

  “I’m perfectly well-aware of that, Tavia. I do not see—”

  “But, Uncle Donald, you must. How on earth can he possibly invent those things if I’m not here to show him how to do it? If you take me away now, they’ll just not be invented, and then what will happen?”

  Dr. Gobie stared at her steadily for some moments.

  “Yes,” he said. “Yes, I must admit that that point had not occurred to me,” and sank deeply into thought for a while.

  “Besides,” Tavia added, “Gerald would hate me to go, wouldn’t you darling?”

  “I—” I began, but Dr. Gobie cut me short by standing up.

  “Yes,” he said. “I can see there will have to be a postponement for a while. I shall put your point to them, but it will be only for a while.”

  On his way to the door he paused.

  “Meanwhile, my dear, do be careful. These things are so delicate and complicated. I tremble to think of the complexities you might set up if you—well, say, if you were to do something irresponsible like becoming your own progenetrix.”

  “That is one thing I can’t do, Uncle Donald. I’m on the collateral branch.”

  “Oh, yes. Yes, that’s a very lucky thing. Then I’ll say au revoir, my dear, and to you, too, Sir—er—Mr. Lattery. I trust that we may meet again—it has had its pleasant side to be here as more than a mere observer for once.”

  “Uncle Donald, you’ve said a mouthful there,” Tavia agreed.

  He shook his head reprovingly at her.

  “I’m afraid you would never have got to the top of the historical tree, my dear. You aren’t thorough enough. That phrase is early-twentieth century, and, if I may say so, inelegant even then.”

  The expected shooting incident took place about a week later. Three men, dressed in quite convincing imitation of farmhands, made the approach. Tavia recognized one of them through the glasses. When I appeared, gun in hand, at the door, they tried to make for cover. I peppered one at considerable range, and he ran on, limping.

  After that we were left unmolested. A little later we began to get down to the business of underwater radio—surprisingly simple, once the principle had been pointed out—and I filed my applications for patents. With that well in-hand, we turned to the curved-beam transmission.

  Tavia hurried me along with that. She said:

  “You see, I don’t know how long we’ve got, darling. I’ve been trying to remember ever since I got here what the date was on your letter, and I can’t—even though I remember yon underlined it. I know there’s a record that your first wife deserted you—‘deserted,’ isn’t that a dreadful word to use? As if I would, my sweet—but it doesn’t say when. So I must get you properly briefed on this because there’d be the most frightful chronoclasm if you failed to invent it.”

  And then, instead of buckling down to it as her words suggested, she became pensive.

  “As a matter of fact,” she said, “I think there’s going to be a pretty bad chronoclasm anyway. You see, I’m going to have a baby.”

  “No!” I exclaimed delightedly.

  “What do you mean, ‘no’? I am. And I’m worried. I don’t think it has ever happened to a traveling historian before. Uncle Donald would be terribly annoyed if he knew.”

  “To hell with Uncle Donald,” I said. “And to hell with chronoclasms. We’re going to celebrate, darling.”

  The weeks slid quickly by. My patents were granted provisionally. I got a good grip on the theory of curved-beam transmission. Everything was going nicely. We discussed the future: whether he was to be called Donald, or whether she was going to be called Alexandra. How soon the royalties would begin to come in so that we could make an offer for Bagford House. How funny it would feel at first to be addressed as Lady Lattery, and other allied themes . . .

  And then came that December afternoon when I got back from discussing a modification with a manufacturer in London and found that she wasn’t there anymore . . .

  Not a note, not a last word. Just the open front door, and a chair overturned in the sitting room . . .

  Oh, Tavia, my dear . . .

  I began to write this down because I still have an uneasy feeling about the ethics of not being the inventor of my inventions, and that there should be a straightening out. Now that I have reached the end, I perceive that “straightening out” is scarcely an appropriate description of it. In fact, I can foresee so much trouble a
ttached to putting this forward as a conscientious reason for refusing a knighthood, that I think I shall say nothing, and just accept the knighthood when it comes. After all, when I consider a number of “inspired” inventions that I can call to mind, I begin to wonder whether certain others have not done that before me.

  I have never pretended to understand the finer points of action and interaction comprehended in this matter, but I have a pressing sense that one action now on my part is basically necessary: not just to avoid dropping an almighty chronoclasm myself, but for fear that if I neglect it I may find that the whole thing never happened. So I must write a letter.

  First, the envelope:

  To my great, great grandniece, Miss Octavia Lattery.

  (To be opened by her on her 21st birthday 6th June 2136.)

  Then the letter. Date it. Underline the date.

  My sweet, far-off, lovely Tavia,

  Oh, my darling . . .

  The Girl Who Made Time Stop

  INTRODUCTION

  He was, of course, the luckiest man in the world, engaged to a gorgeous woman . . . and then an adorable ditz showed up and claimed that (a) they were made for each other, (b) and by the way, she was from another planet, and (c) also by the way, he wasn’t at all the luckiest man in the world, because his fiancé wasn’t what she seemed to be and he was making a big mistake. She must have been a nutjob, of course—but she was such a cute nutjob. And what if she was telling the truth?

  # # #

  Robert F. Young (1915-1986) was known for writing polished stories with a delicate emotional touch. His first story appeared in Startling Stories in 1953, and he frequently sold to the leading SF magazines, such as Analog, the Cele Goldsmith Lalli-edited Amazing Stories, If, and Galaxy, but he was a frequent contributor to The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, where his most memorable stories appeared, and also sold to The Saturday Evening Post, where “The Girl Who Made Time Stop” first appeared. His work ranged from warmly romantic to slyly satirical. He wrote prolifically for three decades, but most of his output was in the short story length, with few novels, one of which has the distinction of having been published only in French. His only two short story collections, The Worlds of Robert F. Young and A Glass of Stars are both long out of print, as are his novels Starfinder, The Vizier’s Second Daughter, The Last Yggdrasil, and Eridahn—the last being a story which would fit the theme of this anthology. Young is definitely a writer long overdue for rediscovery.

  The Girl Who Made Time Stop

  by Robert F. Young

  Little did Roger Thompson dream when he sat down on the park bench that Friday morning in June that in a celibate sense his goose was already in the oven and that soon it would be cooked. He may have had an inkling of things to come when he saw the tall brunette in the red sheath walking down the winding walk some several minutes later, but that inkling could not conceivably have apprised him of the vast convolutions of time and space which the bowing out of his bachelorhood would shortly set in motion.

  The tall brunette was opposite the bench, and it was beginning to look as though Roger’s goose was in no imminent danger of being roasted after all when one of those incidents that so much inspire our boy-meets-girl literature occurred: one of her spike heels sank into a crevice in the walk and brought her to an abrupt halt. Our hero rose to the occasion admirably—especially in view of the fact that he was in the midst of a brown study concerning a particularly abstruse phase of the poetic analysis of science which he was working on and was even less aware of girls than usual. In a millisecond he was at her side; in another he had slipped his arm around her waist. He freed her foot from the shoe, noticing as he did so that there were three narrow golden bands encircling her bare leg just above her ankle, and helped her over to the bench. “I’ll have it out of there in a jiffy,” he said.

  He was as good as his word, and seconds later he slipped the shoe back upon the girl’s dainty foot.

  “Oh, thank you, Mr. . . . Mr. . . .” she began.

  Her voice was husky, her face was oval; her lips were red and full. Looking into the pearly depths of her gray eyes, he had the feeling that he was falling—as in a sense he was—and he sat dizzily down beside her. “Thompson,” he said. “Roger Thompson.”

  The pearly depths grew deeper still. “I’m glad to meet you, Roger. My name is Becky Fisher.”

  “I’m glad to meet you, Becky.”

  So far, so good. Boy has met girl, and girl has met boy. Boy is suitably smitten; girl is amenable. Both are young. The month is June. A romance is virtually bound to blossom, and soon a romance does.

  Nevertheless it is a romance that will never be recorded in the annals of time.

  Why not? you ask.

  You’ll see.

  They spent the rest of the day together. It was Becky’s day off from the Silver Spoon, where she waited on tables. Roger, who was sweating out the sixth application he had tendered since graduating from the Lakeport Institute of Technology, had every day off for the moment.

  That evening they dined in a modest cafe, and afterward they played the jukebox and danced. The midnight moment upon the steps of the apartment house where Becky lived was a precious one, and their first kiss was so sweet and lingering on Roger’s lips that he did not even wonder, until he reached his hotel room, how a young man such as himself —who saw love as an impediment to a scientific career—could have fallen so deeply into it in so short a span of time.

  In his mind’s eye the bench in the park had already taken on the aspect of a shrine, and the very next morning saw him walking down the winding walk, eager to view the sacred object once again. Consider his chagrin when he rounded the last curve and saw a girl in a blue dress sitting on the very section of the hallowed object that his goddess had consecrated the most!

  He sat down as far away from her as the length of the bench permitted. Perhaps if she had been glamorous he wouldn’t have minded so much But she . . . Her face was too thin, and her legs were too long. Compared with the red dress Becky had worn, hers was a lackluster rag, and as for her feather-cut titian hair, it was an insult to cosmetology.

  She was writing something in a little red notebook and didn’t appear to notice him at first. Presently, however, she glanced at her wrist watch, and then—as though the time of day had somehow apprised her of his presence—she looked in his direction.

  It was a rather mild—if startled—look, and did not in the least deserve the dirty one he squelched it with. He had a glimpse, just before she hastily returned her attention to her notebook, of a dusting of golden freckles, a pair of eyes the hue of bluebirds and a small mouth the color of sumac leaves after the first hard frost. He wondered idly if his initial reaction to her might not have been different if he had used a less consummate creature than Becky for a criterion.

  Suddenly he became aware that she was looking at him again. “How do you xpell matrimony?” she asked.

  He gave a start “Matrimony?”

  “Yes. How do you xpell it?’

  “M-a-t-r-i-m-o-n-y,” Roger said.

  “Thankx.” She made a correction in her notebook, then she turned toward him again. “I’m a very poor xpeller—expexially when it comex to foreign wordx.”

  “Oh, you’re from another country, then?” That would explain her bizarre accent.

  “Yex, from Buzenborg. It’x a xmall provinxe on the xouthernmoxt continent of the xixth plsanet of the xtar you call Altair. I juxt arrived on earth thix morning.”

  From the matter-of-fact way she said it, you’d have thought that the southernmost continent of Altair VI was no more remote from Lakeport than the southernmost continent of Sol III and that spaceships were as common as automobiles. Small wonder that the scientist in Roger was incensed. Small wonder that he girded himself immediately to do battle.

  His best bet, be decided, would be a questions-and-answers campaign designed to lure her into deeper and deeper water until finally she went under. “What’s your name?�
� he began casually.

  “Alayne. What’x yourx?”

  He told her. Then: “Don’t you have a surname?”

  “No. In Buzenborg we dixpenxed with xurnamex xenturiex ago.”

  He let that go by. “All right, then, where’s your spaceship?’

  “I parked it by a barn on a dexerted farm a few milex outxide the xity. With the forxe field turned on, it lookx xomething like a xilo. People never notixe an obvious object, even if it’x right under their noxex, xo long ax it blendx in with itx xurroundingx.”

  “A xilo?’

  “Yex. A—a silo. I see I’ve been getting my ‘X’s’ mixed up with my ‘S’s’ again. You see,” she went on, pronouncing each word carefully, “in the Buzenborg alphabet the nearest sound to the ‘S’ sound is the ‘X’ sound, so if I don’t watch myself, whenever I say ‘S’ it comes out ‘X,’ unless it is followed or preceded by a letter that softens its sibilance.”

  Roger looked at her closely. But her blue eyes were disarming, and not so much as a smidgin of a smile disturbed the serene line of her lips. He decided to humor her. “What you need is a good diction teacher,” he said.

  She nodded solemnly. “But how do I go about getting one?”

  “The phone directory is full of them. Just call one up and make an appointment.” Probably, he thought cynically, if he had met her before Becky swam into his ken he would have thought her accent charming and have advised her not to go to a diction teacher. “But let’s get back to what we were talking about,” he went on. “You say you left your ship in plain sight because people never notice an obvious object so long as it doesn’t clash with its surroundings, which means that you want to keep your presence on Earth a secret. Right?”

  “Yes, that’s right.”

  “Then why,” Roger pounced, “are you sitting here in broad daylight practically throwing the secret in my face?”