"Look," said Wyn, taking up a pencil. He drew a big "Z" on a piece of
scrap paper, labelling the two arms "E" and the connecting line "P".
The angles he marked "A" and "B:"
* * * * *
"The flow of Time is from left to right," he explained. "At left is the
past, at right the future. This electron, E, is moving normally along
at the top of the diagram when it runs into an energy explosion at A.
It reverses itself, going back through time as the positron, P, until
it hits another energy explosion at B. Then it is reversed again into
the right time direction, continuing as the electron E, at the bottom.
You follow the line, as the pencil point does in making the Z, and it's
a single body."
E
---------
/A
/
/
/P
/
/
/ E
B ---------
"But," and he drew a vertical line through the Z, "we move always
forward in time. To us, the energy explosion at B happens before the
one at A. Suddenly at B, a positron and an electron are created out
of nothing. The electron at the top apparently has nothing to do with
either of them. But the positron moves along and collides with it at A,
leaving nothing there again--except, once more, an apparently unrelated
electron, the one at the bottom of the diagram."
"But you're saying the same thing can exist in three places at once," I
objected.
"Exactly, but in one of those places, it's traveling backward in time.
So, if Summer's time reversal occurred or will occur after birth, she
may be existing somewhere else, as a younger girl, right now; besides
being here in the house with us."
"Your example is, as you say, at the atomic level," I said. "How can
you transfer that into terms of human beings?"
"The only thing I know to do," he said, "is to create an energy
explosion which I know won't hurt Summer physically, but may reverse
her back to a normal direction. It would be like the energy explosion
that meets the positron at B and forces it to continue existence as an
electron."
"It appears to me," I said slowly, trying to grasp the concept, "that
your explosion at B would have to have happened already if it were
going to happen at all."
The amazing thing about it is that Wyn, the man who had studied all
this thoroughly, apparently didn't understand what I meant. It just
goes to show that he must have been right, when he said the future is
as fixed as the past.
* * * * *
It took Wyn four years to get his equipment ready for a test. He
explained to me what it was supposed to do, but I never did get more
than a general idea of the principle involved. The heart of the thing
was a heavily wired chamber in the basement.
"The human body can take a lot of electricity, if it's administered in
the right way," he said. "If it's administered in the wrong way, you've
electrocuted somebody.
"I still don't know whether I've probed the secrets of the space-time
fabric deeply enough to make this work, but I think it will reverse
the charge of every atomic particle in the body of whatever is in that
cubicle. I'm going to put a cat in it, as our first time-traveler.
"We may turn up with a cat and an anti-cat, the latter traveling
backward in time. We may end with no cat at all. If so, maybe we've
created an anti-cat in the past or maybe we've just electrocuted a cat."
"I don't see how you expect to interpret your results," I commented
drily.
"If there's no cat, I won't risk it," he answered. "If we double our
cats, I think we're on the way to something that may help Summer."
We picked our way through the mess of wiring and went upstairs. He had
torn my bookcases out of one wall of the den and installed a control
board with a television screen where the fireplace had been.
"The experiment will be controlled from here," he said. "The energies
that are going to run around all over the basement would make it
pretty dangerous for anyone down there. I'm sorry you can't watch, but
somebody's got to keep the children away from here."
When he said "children," he meant Summer and Mark. Summer now looked as
much a twin to her nine-year-old son as she had looked to her husband
when I first saw them. At the last two Christmases, we had bought toys
for both of them, and she played happily with Mark. She called Wyn
"daddy" and me "Uncle Don," just as Mark did.
Making them look even more like twins as we entered the living room on
the day of Wyn's experiment was the fact that they were dressed alike.
She wore a pair of Mark's overalls, and both had on T-shirts.
At the moment, the two were trying to put doll clothes on Thomas, the
stray yellow cat Wyn had picked up for his experiment. We had had
Thomas about six months now. Wyn and I had dubbed the animal "Tom,"
unaware of its sex--it had borne kittens during its stay with us--but
the children thought the cat too dignified for the nickname. It was,
except when they were trying out their various original ideas on it.
"Thomas is our first heroine--or martyr," said Wyn, and swept the cat
up from the floor. Over the protests of the children, he stripped off
the doll clothing. "You youngsters go out on the side lawn and play.
Uncle Don will take care of you for a while."
Caring for the children had been my chore for so long I was accustomed
to the peculiarities involved. Mark was as much a problem as any
normal, active boy--no more. But Summer's reverse living, her reverse
memory, made her even more difficult to deal with as she reverted to
childish habits and attitudes.
For some weeks now, she had indulged in the fantasy that she was Mark
and Mark was she, a game Mark rebelled at strenuously. At the same
time, her manner of speaking had become so confused and tangled that
it was often incoherent. If Wyn failed in his experiment, the next nine
years threatened to be trying indeed.
The children left the house with me docilely enough, but as soon as we
reached the lawn Mark burst into tears.
"What's the matter with you, young fellow?" I asked in surprise.
"What's Daddy going to do to Thomas?" he demanded. "Daddy's going to
hurt Thomas!"
"Don't worry, Thomas isn't going to be hurt," I reassured him, aware
that I might not be telling the truth.
The boy looked at me straight.
"I know what a martyr is," he said indignantly, his sobs subsiding. "I
studied Joan of Arc in school."
"Daddy ... Thomas in big furnace put," Summer informed us in her
labored fashion. "Thomas all burnt up was going to. Him ... but I him
saved. Saved him, Summer and I."
"Neither one of you is going to do anything about Thomas right now,"
I said brusquely, recognizing Summer's use of the past tense as an
expression of intention. "When Daddy's through with Thomas, you may
play with him again."
Mark subsided, but he retained on his face a rebellious expression
which had by now become familiar to me. Summer, although she said
nothing for a few moments, became more excited. She alternately flushed
and paled, breathing hard, until I began to fear she was ill.
Now a deep, powerful hum arose from the house. Wyn had switched on the
power and was ready for his experiment.
It was a tremendous volume of sound, a physical thing that throbbed
through the ground under our feet and caused the leaves of the trees to
tremble as in a breeze. An electric tension filled the air and seemed
to intensify Summer's agitation. Her eyes dilated in fright and her
teeth began to chatter.
"Away got I but!" she cried suddenly in a shrill voice. "Up blew it
before away ran he and Thomas saved I! Me with up blew it and fire of
full furnace big a was it! Furnace a in Thomas had they!"
"Here, child!" I shouted above the increasing roar of the generators.
"You're hysterical. Nothing's going to happen to Thomas."
She quieted abruptly, glaring at Mark in affright. He stared back,
equally alarmed.
"He isn't, Summer he's?" she asked me plaintively. "Boy a be Summer
could how? Mark I'm know I."
I didn't understand this at all, especially when Summer began feeling
her arms and legs and inspecting herself all over, carefully.
The sound of the machinery in the basement reached a shrieking
crescendo that must have put the teeth of everyone in the neighborhood
on edge. Mark came to life. His eyes shining fiercely, he grasped
Summer by the arm.
"Are they going to hurt Thomas?" he demanded intently. "Are they,
Summer?"
She looked at me, not the boy, and suddenly she was calm as though in
the grip of profound shock. I could hardly hear her quiet, childish
voice through the noise from the basement.
"Where ... know ... don't," she began haltingly. "Gone ... Summer's
but. Furnace the in him had they. Thomas saved I."
Her voice trailed to a gurgle and then she began to chant, "Burn Thomas
burn Thomas burn Thomas...."
The boy suddenly broke from her and began to run for the house.
And, BACKWARD, she ran after him.
Caught by surprise, it was a moment before I could gather my wits and
follow, shouting at them. They had disappeared around the corner of
the house, and I rounded it in time to see them tug open the outside
basement door and vanish inside. An eerie blue light flickered from the
open door.
Trying to run too fast, I tripped over the garden hose and fell. I got
to my feet, momentarily dazed.
The explosion knocked me flat on my back, blinded by the flash that
burst from the basement windows and through the cracking walls.
The blast tilted the den up from the bottom. Its metal and concrete
floor, reinforced for the experiment, buckled but remained unbroken,
like a giant slide. Down that slide, through the smashed walls, Wyn
catapulted, to fall unhurt into the grass.
But the rest of the house crumpled in on the basement and caught fire.
Under the blazing piles of ruins, I could only surmise, were trapped
the children, both mother and son.
* * * * *
I wept frantically. At my age, I must have been a pitiful spectacle.
Neighbors put their arms around my shoulders, tried to comfort me.
In contrast, Wyn was remarkably calm as he reported to Gus Adams.
"Every precaution was taken, Mr. Adams," he said, staring morosely into
the smoking embers of the house. "Both of them ran into the basement
just before the explosion. There was nothing anyone could do after
that."
"Too bad, Mr. Storm, to lose your wife and son all at once," said Gus
sympathetically, writing in his report book. We had kept Summer pretty
well concealed behind the high board fence in recent years, so few
people were aware of her retrogression. "If there's anything I can do
to help, let me know."
I upbraided Wyn for his apparent callousness when we got to a room at
the City Hotel.
"You may be right," he said. "But, first, I want to know something."
He had me relate to him everything that had transpired with the
children after we left the house. He made me repeat several points and
questioned me closely. He was interested particularly in what Summer
had said, how she had said it and how she had acted. The whole thing
was so clearly impressed on my mind, as it is today, that I'm sure I
made few errors.
"Well," he said, when I had finished, "we'll never see either of them
again, but I think I can say definitely they weren't killed in that
explosion."
"I don't see how you can say that!" I exclaimed.
"You remember what I told you--that if Summer's existence had been
reversed in time after she was born, she was existing somewhere else at
the same time? Living normally as a younger child in one place, and as
we knew her in reverse?"