somewhere, going about her business and not knowing we’ve already attended her funeral, not knowing she’s really dead.”
Jack Breton experienced an urge to correct Kate, but was unable to find any suitable grounds. If Kate was really alive, then Hetty was really dead — it was all part of the deal. He sipped hot coffee, surprised at the strength of the regrets conjured up by the memory of Hetty’s homely, capable face breathing through its centrally-mounted cigarette.
“I’m going to get dressed.” John Breton hesitated at the door as if about to say something further, then went out of the kitchen, leaving Jack alone with Kate for the first time. The air was warm, and prisms of pale sunlight slanted from the curtained windows. A pulsing silence filled the room as Kate toyed desperately with her food, looking slightly distraught and out-of-place against the background of cozy domesticity. She took a cigarette and lit it. Breton’s awareness of her was so intense that he could hear the tobacco and rice paper burning as she drew on the smoke.
“I think I arrived at just the right time,” he said finally.
“Why’s that?” She avoided looking at him.
“You and… John are about ready to split up, aren’t you?”
“That’s putting it a little strongly.”
“Come on, Kate,” be urged. “I’ve seen the two of you. It was never like this with us.”
Kate looked fully at him and he saw the uncertainty in her eyes.
“No? I don’t understand this Time A and Time B thing very well, Jack, but up until that night in the park you and John were the same person. Right?”
“Right.”
“Well, we had fights and arguments then, too. I mean, it was
“Don’t, Kate!” Breton struggled to make his mind encompass what she was saying. She was right, of course, but during the last nine years he had avoided some avenues of memory, and he was strangely reluctant to be forced to explore them now. The dream could not sustain the dichotomy.
“I’m sorry — perhaps that wasn’t fair.” Kate tried to smile. “None of us seem to be able to shake off that particular episode. And there’s Lieutenant Convery…”
“Convery! Where does he come in?” Breton’s senses were alerted.
“The man who attacked me was called Spiedel. Lieutenant Convery was in charge of the investigations into his death.” Kate looked somberly at Breton. “Did you know you were seen that night?”
“I hadn’t thought about it.”
“You were. Half a dozen teenagers who must have been having a communal roll in the grass told the police about seeing a man with a rifle who materialized almost on top of them and vanished just as quickly. Naturally enough, the description they were able to give fitted John. To be honest, until last night I always had an illogical feeling it had been John — although the investigation cleared him completely. Several of our neighbors had seen him standing at the window, and his rifle was broken anyway.”
Breton nodded thoughtfully, suddenly aware of how near he had come to saving Kate and getting rid of the Time B Breton at one stroke. So the police had tried to pin the shooting on John! What a pity the dictates of chronomotive physics had caused the bullet which killed Spiedel to snap back into Time A along with the rifle and the man who had fired it. The rifling marks on it would have matched those produced by John Breton’s unfired and broken rifle — which would have given the omnipotent ballistics experts something to think about.
“I still don’t see what you mean about Convery,” he said aloud. “You said John was cleared.”
“He was, but Lieutenant Convery kept on coming around here. He still calls when he’s in the district, and drinks coffee and talks to John about geology and fossils.”
“Sounds harmless.”
“Oh, it is. John likes him, but he reminds me of something I don’t want to remember.”
Breton reached across the table and took Kate’s hand. “What do I remind you of?”
Kate moved uneasily, but kept her hand in his. “Something I do want to remember, perhaps.”
“You’re my wife, Kate — and I want you back.” He felt her fingers interlock with his then grow tighter and tighter as though in some trial of strength. Her face was that of a woman in childbirth. They sat that way, without speaking, until John Breton’s footsteps sounded outside the kitchen door. He came in, now wearing a gray business suit, and went straight to the radio.
“I’ll get the latest news, before I go.”
“I’ll tidy up here,” Kate said. She began clearing the table.
Jack Breton stood up, aware of an overwhelming resentment at his other self’s presence in the house, and walked slowly through the house until he was standing in the cool brown silence of the living room. Kate had responded to him — and that was important. It was why it had been necessary for him to do it this way, to walk straight in on Kate and John and explain everything to them.
A more logical and efficient method would have been to keep his presence in the Time B world a secret; to murder John, dispose of the body and quietly take over his life. But then he would have been burdened with a sense of having cheated Kate, whereas now he had the ultimate justification of knowing she preferred him to the man the Time B Breton had come to be. That mattered very much, and now it was time to think in detail about his next step — the elimination of John Breton.
Frowning in concentration, Jack Breton moved about the living room, absentmindedly lifting books and small ornaments, examining them and carefully putting everything back in its original place. His attention was caught by a sheaf of closely-written squares of white paper, the top one of which had an intricate circular pattern on it. He lifted the uppermost sheet and saw that what he had taken to be a pattern was actually handwriting in a finely-executed spiral. Breton rotated the paper and slowly read a fragment of poetry.
I have wished for you a thousand nights, While the green-glow hour-hand slowly veers. I could weep for the very need of you, But you wouldn’t taste my tears.
He had set the sheet down and was turning away from the table when the significance of the lines speared into him. It took several seconds for the floodgates of memory to open, and when they did his forehead prickled icily with fear. He had written those words himself during the period of near-madness following Kate’s death — but he had never shown them to anyone.
And that had been in another world, and another time.
VI
John Breton made several abortive attempts to leave for his office, but each time returned to pick up small objects — papers, cigarettes, a notebook. The mounting tension in the pit of Jack’s stomach drove him away from the kitchen table, with a muttered apology, and up into the still-air privacy of his bedroom. He sat tensely on the edge of the bed, listening for the sound of the Lincoln crackling down the driveway.
When it finally came he went out onto the landing and part-way down the stairs. He stood there in the big house’s dark brown silence, hovering, feeling like a pike meditatively selecting its level in dim waters.
He went the rest of the way down, unable to prevent himself moving stealthily, and into the kitchen. Kate was standing near the window, washing apples. She did not look around, but went on dousing the pale green fruit with cold water. The simple domestic action struck Breton as being somehow incongruous.
“Kate,” he said. “Why are you doing that?”
“Insecticides.” She still refused to turn her head. “I always wash the apples.”
“I see. You’ve got to do it this morning? It’s urgent, is it?”
“I want to put them away in the fridge.”
“But there’s no hurry, is there?”
“No.” She sounded contrite, as though he had forced her to admit something shamefuL
Breton felt guilty — he was really putting her through it. “Did you ever notice the way fruit looks so much brighter and more colorful when it’s submerged in water?”
