He shook his head. “I’ll have to dematerialize it. Put one on the table.”
I obeyed and watched curiously. A hand that was not quite a hand but more a thin pointing shape stretched out and touched the cigarette. It lingered a moment, then came away holding a white cylinder. The cigarette was still on the table.
I lit it and puffed hard. “Tastes just like any other Camel.”
“Of course. I took only the nonmaterial part. You wouldn’t miss that any more than you miss . . . well, me.”
“You mean you’re smoking the ghost of a cigarette?”
“You can put it that way.”
For the first five puffs it wasn’t easy to get the cigarette into my mouth. My hand was more apt to steer it at nose or ear. But with the sixth puff I began to feel as normal and self-possessed as any man talking with his own ghost. I even got argumentative.
“This isn’t possible,” I protested. “You won’t even come into existence until after I’m dead.”
“Certainly,” my ghost agreed politely. “But you see, you are dead.”
“Now, look. That’s nonsense. Even supernaturally. Because if I were dead . . . well, if I were dead, I’d be my own ghost. I’d be you. There wouldn’t be two of us.”
“I am glad that I had a clear and logical mind when I was alive. I didn’t know but that might have come later; it sometimes does. But this way we can understand each other. What I meant is this: Where I come from, of course I am dead; or if you prefer, you are dead. It means the same thing. Also I am alive and also I am not yet born. You see, I come from outside of time. You follow?”
“I think so. Eternity embraces all time, so when you’ve gone over from time into eternity, all time coexists for you.”
“Not too precise an expression, but I think you grasp the essentials. Then, perhaps you can see what’s happened. I’ve simply come back into time at the wrong point.”
“How—”
“Imagine yourself at large in three dimensions, facing a fence with an infinite series of two-dimensional slots. Think how easy it’d be to pick the wrong slot.”
I thought a while and nodded. “Could be,” I admitted. “But if it’s that easy, why doesn’t it happen more often?”
“Oh, but it does. You’ve heard of apparitions of the living? You’ve heard of Doppelgdnger? You’ve even heard of hauntings before the fact? Those are all cases like this—just slipping into the wrong slot. But it’s such a damned stupid thing to do. I’m going to take a terrible ribbing for this.” My ghost looked more downcast and perplexed than ever.
I started to be consoling. “Look. Don’t take it so— Hey!” The implication suddenly hit me. “You said haunting?”
“Yes.”
“Is that what you’re doing?”
“Well . . . yes.”
“But you can’t be haunting me?”
“Of course not.”
“Then whom are you haunting in my room?”
My ghost played with his ghostly cigarette and looked embarrassed. “It’s not a thing we care to talk about. Haunting, I mean. It’s not much fun, and it’s rather naive. But after all, it’s—well, it’s expected of you when you’ve been murdered.”
I could hear the right arm of the chair crack under my clutch. “When you’ve been—”
“Yes. I know it’s ridiculous and childish; but it’s such an old, established custom that I haven’t the courage to oppose it.”
“Then you’ve been murdered? And that means I’ve been murdered? I mean, that means I’m going to be murdered?”
“Oh, yes,” he said calmly.
I rose and opened a drawer of the desk. “This,” I prescribed, “calls for the internal application of alcoholic stimulants. Damn,” I added as the emergency buzzer rang. All I needed was a rush operation now, with my fingers already beginning to jitter.
I opened the door and looked out into star-bright emptiness. “False alarm.” I was relieved—and then heard the whiz. I ducked it just in time and got the door closed.
My ghost was curiously contemplating the knife where it stuck quivering in the wall. “Right through me,” he observed cheerfully.
It was no sinister and exotic stiletto. Just a plain butcher knife, and all the more chillingly convincing through its very ordinariness. “Your prophecies work fast,” I said.
“This wasn’t it. It missed. Just wait.”
The knife had stopped its shuddering, but mine went on. “Now I really need that stimulant. You drink rye? But of course. I do.”
“You don’t happen,” my ghost asked, “to have any tequila?”
“Tequila? Never tasted it.”
“Oh. Then I must have acquired the taste later, before you were murdered.”
I was just unscrewing the bottle top, and jumped enough to spill half a jiggerful. “I don’t like that word.”
“You’ll get used to it,” my ghost assured me. “Don’t bother to pour me one. I’ll just dematerialize the bottle.”
The rye helped. Chatting with your own ghost about your murder seems more natural after a few ounces of whiskey. My ghost seemed to grow more at ease too, and after the third joint bottle tilting the atmosphere was practically normal.
“We’ve got to approach this rationally,” I said at last. “Whatever you are, that knife’s real enough. And I’m fond of life. Let’s see what we can do to stave this off.”
“But you can’t.” My ghost was quietly positive. “Because I—or you—well, let’s say we—already have been murdered.”
“But not at this time.”
“Not at this time yet, but certainly in this time. Look, I know the rules of haunting. I know that nothing could have sent me to this room unless we’d been killed here.”
“But when? How? And above all, by whom? Who should want to toss knives at me:
“It wasn’t a knife the real time. I mean, it won’t be.”
“But why—”
My ghost took another healthy swig of dematerialized rye. “I should prefer tequila,” he sighed.
“That’s too damned bad,” I snapped. “But tell me about my murder.”
“Don’t get into such a dither. What difference does it make? Nothing you can do can possibly affect the outcome. You have sense enough to understand that. Foreknowledge can never conceivably avert. That’s the
