Half-Past Eternity

Chapter Three School for Champions

Sam watched the kid in centerfield. He had the expert’s knack of starting at the crack of the bat. His name was Wally Christopher. It was the lower half of the eighth. The last man up slammed a hard one over the second baseman’s head. Christopher came in fast, took it expertly on the bounce, came around with a greased throwing motion to second, nailing the runner to first. He trudged back out to his position.

It had taken six weeks to locate this boy and Sam Banth liked what he saw. He went over the statistics. Age nineteen, five foot eleven, a hundred and sixty-five pounds. Errors for the season, none. Batting average 166.

Christopher was up in the top of the ninth. He went down swinging after a ball, two foul tips and a called strike. He walked disconsolate from the batter’s box. Banth grinned. He’d been pulling for a hitless day for the kid, to yank the average down a little further.

This was bush-league ball, and even with Christopher’s outfield talent, he was slowly but very certainly slipping out of baseball because of that powderpuff batting average.

He left before the inning was over, confident that his note would bring Christopher to the hotel room in this small Pennsylvania city.

“Come right up and knock,” he had said in the note.

A few minutes after six there was a hesitant knock on the door. “Come on in,” Banth called.

Christopher came in. He was heavy-jointed with good hands and wrists, a reddened complexion, clear eyes and a diffident manner. “You Mr. Banth?”

“Sit down, Christopher. This is just a friendly little chat.”

The boy seemed despondent. “Sure.”

“You didn’t look so sharp out there today.”

“I knew that without coming up here, mister. Nothing for four. I’ve had other news. They’re letting me go the end of the week.”

Banth felt an inner excitement. This was better than he’d hoped. He sat down facing the boy. “What do you want to do with your life?”

“Play baseball. Ever since I was six years old that’s all I ever wanted to do. Fat chance I’ve got now.”

“This is the end of the road. Once they let you out here, you’re all done.”

Christopher squinted at him. “You trying to make me feel good?”

“How long do you expect to live?”

“Now that’s a damn-fool question.”

“Okay. We’ll try another one. Suppose you played baseball and maintained the best batting average in the country. How long would you last in the game?”

“Hell, up into my forties I suppose. Some do.”

“When they let you go, what are you going to do?”

“I don’t know. Go back home. Gel a job. Bread truck or something.”

“Here’s my card. I’m the president of a concern called Champions, Incorporated It’s a very hush-hush organization. We run a training course.”

“I can’t afford anything like that.”

“It won’t cost you a dime. All you have to do is sign a contract stating that you will pay us fifty percent of all your future earnings in baseball.”

“Fifty percent of nothing is nothing.”

“We’ll take that chance, provide free transportation, give you your training course and give you a chance to show your stuff to a good club after you’re trained.”

“What’s the catch?”

“We think you’ve got what it takes. But there is one thing. Our training course is very, very strenuous. It won’t cut short your active playing career, Christopher, but it may shorten your life a little. We want that understood.”

The boy frowned. “But you’ll take a chance on me just when I’m getting the can?”

“Yes.”

“If you want to be soft in the head, Mr. Banth, I guess I can be crazy too.”

“Have you got to finish out the week?”

“I think they’d rather I wouldn’t.”

“Then clear with them, pack up and meet me in the lobby tomorrow morning at nine o’clock. Here’s fifty. Put that against your expenses. There’s plenty more coming.”

With Christopher beside him Banth slowed the powerful convertible for Kingston traffic, then opened it up again. He came around the last bend.

“There’s the layout,” he said.

The twenty acres had been enclosed with hurricane fence topped by barbed wire and electrified wire. Two trucks loaded with building materials were just turning in at the gate. The gate guard, uniformed in slate blue, saw Banth approaching and yelled to the truckers to move along. A new white stone building stood a hundred yards back of the barn. Two foundations for other buildings were taking shape. Amidst the bustle of activity the sagging farmhouse looked forlorn, forgotten.

Sam pulled up beside it, gave a blast on the horn and said, “End of the line, Christopher.”

The boy got out. He looked puzzled. “That sign says Tomlinson Research Foundation.”

“Don’t worry about it. We’ve got the right place.”

As they reached the foot of the porch steps Linda came out the door. She smiled warmly. “Welcome home, Sam.” She wore a soft gray dress that matched her eyes. Her black hair had been done in the latest fashion and her fingernails were long and the color of blood.

“Miss Tomlinson, this is Wally Christopher.”

“Nice to meet you, Wally.”

“Same here.”

“Bring your bag along and I’ll show you your room. I’m sorry the new dormitory isn’t ready yet. That will be another month.”

Sam was waiting at the foot of the stairs when Linda came back down. She paused two stairs from the bottom. He reached up, took her by the waist with his big hands and lifted her lightly down. “Miss me?”

“Mmmm. Hard to tell.”

“Was I right in calling you Miss Tomlinson?”

“It came through yesterday. Restoration of maiden name and all.”

“Like the looks of our boy Christopher?”

“Poor little lost sheep.”

“Poor little lost gold mine. Inside a year he’ll be trying to find a lawyer smart enough to find a hole in that contract. But there won’t be any. He signed in the city before we came out. Next year they’ll be paying him at least sixty thousand. Thirty thousand for us, darling.”

“Fifty percent!” Her eyes widened. “You weasel, you!”

“I better go out and pay my respects to the esteemed Doctor Tomlinson. How did that fuddy get a kid like you?”

“Throwback. My great, great, great, great grandfather was a pirate.”

“I’ll tell him about the Christopher boy. I want this one fixed up fast so he can start bringing in the dough. Expenses are high.”

She held him close. “And they’re going to be higher, man.”

“Acapulco?”

“And the emerald too. I’m holding you to that.” She was warm against him. “I missed you, you thief,” she whispered. “Oh, how I’ve missed you!”

“This much?”

“Even more than that, Sam. More than that. You’ve got cold eyes, Sam. Pale eyes. What goes on behind them?”

“Ideas.”

“With me in them?”

“With you in them. I think it’s you. A big girl. Black hair, soot on her eyelashes. Eyes the color of campfire smoke.”

“Where there’s smoke—”

Wally Christopher sat on the edge of the bed. The tall dark girl had explained the schedule. Pretty girl. Wise looking. Made him uncomfortable somehow, as if she was laughing at him inside herself. Lots of girls like that in the world. Get in the big time and all you got to do is whistle. The big time!

She said to come down and eat at six. He looked at his watch. She hadn’t said anything about wandering around for a while. It was close to five. He went downstairs and out without seeing anyone. A swarm of men were working on the new buildings. He watched them for a while, wondering what time they’d quit, and then he saw them rigging floodlights so the masons could work at night.

From a distance he saw Mr. Banth coming out of the white stone building beyond the barn. Mr. Banth had his arm around the shoulders of an older man, a small man with gray hair that was nearly white. Mr. Banth was talking excitedly. Quite a guy, that Sam Banth. Convincing.

Banth waved to him casually so Wally guessed that it was all right to wander around the place. Diagonally off to the left beyond the white stone building he saw a tennis court. A girl and a fellow were talking over the net. The fellow turned and walked away toward the rear of the white stone building. Wally ambled toward the tennis court. She came walking rapidly toward him, slim brown legs twinkling. She wore white shorts and a halter. She was a striking tan, particularly in contrast to her carrot-red hair.

She stopped and stared at Wally. He saw that her small, pert-featured face was older than he had realized. The weather wrinkles were deep at the corners of her eyes, and the lines were stark from snub nostrils to the corners of her mouth.

“You play tennis?” she asked in a remarkably high-pitched voice. She spoke very rapidly.

“Play at it,” he said grinning. The grin faded. “Say!” he said. “I’ve seen you someplace. Wait a minute. Allison? No. Anson. That’s it. Barbara Anson.”

“Give the boy a cookie,” she said.

“I thought you quit tennis a long time ago.”

Her voice became slower and dropped in pitch. “I didn’t quit on purpose, son. My legs gave out.” They walked side by side. She kept getting a few steps ahead and then slowing down.

He gave her a bashful smile. “Gave out? They look good from here.”

“Listen to him! What’s your name? How old are you? What’s your sport?”

“Wally Christopher. Nineteen. Baseball.”

“Nineteen, eh? Then I am just barely old enough to be your mother.”

“Don’t kid me, Miss Anson.”

She gave him an odd smile. “What’s your trouble in baseball?”

“Can’t hit. Do you think they’ll be able to straighten me out?”

“You don’t know how it’s done?”

“Nobody’s told me a thing yet.”

“I’ll let them tell you, Wally. Don’t worry about it. Don’t worry about a thing. Every little kid in the country will know your name inside of two years.”

At nine o’clock in the morning Miss Tomlinson sent Wally to the white stone building. The old man he had seen Banth talking to was there. And some young men in white coats with high collars.

He was told to strip and then they had him climb onto a table and lie down. There was a long and uncomfortable period of tubes and needles and a thing wrapped around his arm. Then they had him breathing into a tube while a pen drew lines on a piece of graph paper wrapped around a cylinder, behind glass. They took all sorts of samples. They used words to each other that were strange. Wally had heard a few of them but he couldn’t remember what they meant. They put gunk on his temples, stuck metal things into the gunk and another pen drew a different sort of line. After he came back from lunch they waited thirty minutes and then pumped the lunch out of his stomach. It made him sick for a little while and then he was famished again. Another gadget, once it was fastened onto him, made a pen line that had a peak for every time his heart beat.

“Come back here at three in the afternoon the day after tomorrow,” Dr. Tomlinson said. “Your time is your own until then.”

During the two days he played tennis with Barbara. She was amazing; she seemed to know where the ball was going to go the instant he hit it. Banth had gone away again. The buildings were roofed, both of the new ones, and interior work had begun. The dark girl, Miss Tomlinson, wandered around looking glum. There was a lake ten miles away. He drove Barbara’s car and they went swimming. Later he kissed her and she pretended to think it was funny and called him a silly kid, but he guessed from the way her eyes looked that she enjoyed it all right. She didn’t kick the second time or from then on.

He went back at the time Tomlinson had said and they gave him two capsules with a glass of water. The room swung slowly back and forth and darkened and was gone.

When he woke up it was night. He was back in his room. He was very sleepy. He tried to think and remember, but his head hurt. He went back to sleep.

In the morning he got dressed and went downstairs. It was the same as any other morning except that he managed to break the laces in both shoes and that annoyed him. Miss Tomlinson was the only one in the dining room.

“Come and sit with me, Wally,” she said. Her voice was deep and slow.

“Have you got a cold?” he asked.

“That’s what Barbara Anson asked the first morning. No, I’m just as I’ve always been, Wally.”

“You’re different. You act sleepy and slow.”

“Look at the clock, Wally. Look at the pendulum.”

“It’s running down, isn’t it? About to stop?”

“No. It’s just the same. You’re different, Wally. The world is the same. You’re speeded up. Do you know how you’ve changed?”

“What is this?”

“Your voice is so high that you sound almost like a girl, Wally. Every move you make is too fast. You look and act like a man with a bad case of jitters.”

“What’s happened to me? What is this?”

“Everything in the world will look as though it has slowed down, Wally. So will that baseball floating down toward the batter’s box.”

Slowly he began to understand. “They — Dr. Tomlinson, he speeded me up?”

“That’s right. Now don’t look so upset. It will work out just the way you want it. But now your real work starts. You must learn to walk and talk and smile all over again. You must learn how to eat and how to drive a car. Then you’ll have to learn how to play baseball. You must start all over again and learn timing from the ground up. You can start right now. Keep saying to yourself every moment, ‘Slowly, slowly.’ See, you’re stirring your coffee right over the sides of the cup. Now move at the same speed I do. That’s right. Slow your hand down as you raise the cup. When you speak to me pretend you’re imitating a slow deep western drawl. Pitch your voice as low as you can. Only fair, Wally. Try again.”

It was a difficult ten days. They made him stay away from Barbara. Those who had been treated had to associate with people who had normal timing. That way it came faster. At the end of ten days his slips were very infrequent. His habits changed. Each night, at ten, he was exhausted and his body yearned for sleep. Yet by six in the morning he was slept out. He was ravenous an hour before lunch, an hour before dinner. And slowly he learned always to walk as though he were wasting an idle hour in a park, move his hands like a sleepwalker.

One of the young men took movies of him standing, sitting, talking, walking. He found that his head movements were too rapid, too jerky, and he had to learn that when he heard a sound behind him he must give himself a slow count as he turned around.

Banth came back with two glum young recruits. Wally found out later that one of them was a discouraged pro basketball player, the other a pro hockey player who had slowed down to the point where none of the top teams would have anything to do with him.

That night, at dinner, Sam Banth said, “Wally, you’ve done well. Tomorrow morning you and I have an appointment at Yankee Stadium. I want to get some bids for you. I’ve wangled three top managers into being there. I guess curiosity is bringing them around. Paul Paris will pitch to you.”

“Paris! Mr. Banth, he’s the hottest arm in the game right now! He’s hanging up new records. How about that no-hitter out in Cleveland?” Even in his excitement he managed to keep his voice pitched low and say the words slowly.

“I don’t think he’ll worry you any. I’m paying him five hundred to pitch ten times. That’s fifty a pitch. If I was worried, Wally, I wouldn’t pay out that much.”

“Yes, but—”

“Now you’ve got some memorizing to do. He’ll throw ten pitches. I want the first one lined out of the park. I want a clean miss on the second one. I want the next two hit deep. Another miss, another homer, two more strikes and then another one out of the park. That’s nine. Then see if you can bang the last one for a long foul.”

“Mr. Banth, nobody can call their shots that way when—”

“Now tell me what you’re going to do on each pitch.”

“It doesn’t work that way. He won’t throw the whole ten right across the sack.”

“His control is good. If he throws a wild one, it won’t count. But if they’re a little bit outside, go after them.”

It was a misty morning. Wally felt the sweat running down his sides. He wore spikes, but Mr. Banth hadn’t wanted him to put on a uniform. There was a fill-in catcher. Lean Paul Paris, with a smirk on his face, was warming up. Banth stood over at the side laughing and joking with the three managers. One of them had remembered seeing a scout’s report on Wally and had wanted to leave right away, but Sam Banth had talked him out of it.

The vast empty stadium was filled with a hard silence. When Banth laughed an echo came back from centerfield. The ball thwacked against the mitts. Wally sweated and swung the bat a few times.

“Okay,” Paris shouted. “I’m ready. Let’s get this screwball deal over with.”

Banth said quietly, “Okay, Wally.”

Wally walked to the box, tapped the dirt out of his spikes. The catcher pulled the mask down over his face and said, “Now I seen everything.”

Paris went into a windup that looked very slow to Wally. His long arm slanted down and the ball came down the groove. It was a fine, fat pitch. Wally tightened and swung. Usually the ball disappeared completely when it was within six feet of the bag. But this time he watched it the whole way and he saw the bat swinging to meet it. He saw that the swing was too fast and too soon and a shade high. He pulled the swing a little and moved the bat down a trifle. There was a fine deep-throated crack and the ball soared away. Paris turned and put his hands on his hips and watched it. It went into the left-field stands, fair by inches.

“Lucky,” the catcher grunted. Paris put a new ball into play. It was another fat pitch. The temptation was too strong. The bat stung his hands. Paris ducked after the ball was already beyond him. Wally glanced guiltily over at Banth. Sam was scowling at him. He looked back in time to see the ball hit the centerfield wall hard enough to rebound half way back to second base.

He made himself miss the third one. It was an outside pitch, but he swung anyway. Banth looked relieved. Paris was wild on the next one. Wally slammed the next into deep right center, then swung and missed, put the next into the rightfield stands, racked up two strikes, dropped the next into the left-field stands and banged the last one high and foul into the right-field stands. Paul Paris looked seriously shaken. He tore his glove off and glared toward Wally.

“Brother,” the catcher said with deep sincerity, “some of those were the best hit balls I seen in a long time.”

Wally moved over toward the three managers and Banth. Banth told him to go take the spikes off. When he came back out only one of the managers was left. He had a smug look and a happy gleam in his eyes. He slapped Wally on the shoulder. “Welcome aboard, son.”