"I guess you could say this is your first big decision in two years," he
added. "There's no hurry. You can think it over for a while."
I asked questions--lots of them--but I didn't get too many answers. Mr.
Atkins explained that naturally the affair was hush-hush. After the way
the Grundy Projector had been thrust so irresponsibly upon us, no one
wanted any further complications. But there were some answers I could
piece together both from what I already knew and the hints he dropped.
I'd been in on conferences and listened to Mr. Atkins try to figure out
ways of expanding, building up our business. Each time, he'd been
stymied by the Grundy Projector. If he'd bull some idea through, his
competitors would see exactly how it worked out. If he didn't, they'd
know that, too. And I had heard him rant when the accountants--using the
Grundy Projectors, of course--would make up their inventory, sales,
profit-and-loss and tax statements two years or more in advance.
That was actually what galled him. Mr. Atkins was used to making plans,
calculating risks and gains, taking his chances. With the Grundy
Projectors in existence, nobody could do that any more. I gathered from
what he told me that there was a syndicate of men like himself backing
the inventor of a genuine time machine. They didn't condemn the Grundy
invention on any moral or religious or even selfish grounds. They just
resented very bitterly the same thing that annoyed me--the sense of
repetition.
As Mr. Atkins put it, "It's no different than reading a story and then
having to relive the whole thing, anticipating each action and bit of
dialogue. And that's precisely what this is. Only it's our lives, not
fiction. We didn't like it, Gerald. We didn't like it at all! But we did
something about the problem instead of merely complaining."
Let me say right now that I thought the solution they came up with was
nonsensical and I kept searching, all the time we talked, for ways of
politely turning down the offer. Escaping to to the past was a
ridiculous answer. But it was just the kind of notion that would appeal
to an old-fashioned character like Mr. Atkins.
I didn't tell him so, of course. I thanked him for his consideration and
shook hands and felt relieved when he finally left.
* * * * *
My mind was made up by then. I'd back out, quit if I had to, rather than
take refuge in the past to evade the future.
It wasn't until I got out of the office that I realized there was no big
decision to make; it was already made for me. Either I was going to die
or I was going into the past--and I wasn't going to die if I could help
it. But neither did I intend going into the past if I could really help
_that_!
When Marge realized that I wasn't merely trying to take her mind off the
fatal day, she pounced on me and hugged me as though I myself had
invented the time machine just to save her life!
"It's wonderful, darling!" she cried. "You were right all along! Oh, how
can you forgive me for making things so unbearable for you?"
"About this idea of going into the past--" I said.
"What's the difference when we go to," she cut in, "as long as we don't
have to die?"
"But I figured on telling Mr. Atkins at the last minute that all I want
is a transfer--"
"What's the sense of guessing?" she asked excitedly. "All we have to do
is borrow a couple of Projectors and see!"
I began to feel myself being squeezed into a one-way trap. I put my foot
down--but where it landed was in a Grundy Projector from the people next
door--and where it figuratively emerged was eleven days later, when I
couldn't shut my non-physical eyes to the way the whole situation would
turn out.
Marge and I, with half a dozen others, were getting into a helicar. I
followed them out to a house in the country. We handed in all the money
we had saved and in return were given old-style clothes, ancient-looking
money and a small amount of luggage. Then we all stepped into what
looked like an oversized version of a Grundy Projector and vanished.
[Illustration]
Fight? Argue? Scheme?