The Time Axis

6. THE MILITARY MIND

Colonel Harrison Murray, at sixty, still had a fine military figure and was proud of it. You could see him remember to throw his shoulders back and pull in his waist about once every ten minutes. Then age and the subject at hand would gradually divert him and he would sag slowly – until he remembered again.

He had a discontented drooping mouth, a face all flat slab-shaped planes and an incongruously high thin voice that got higher when he was angry, which was most of the time. He was angry now.

"A man can't help it if he was born a fool, De Kalb," he said. "But luckily we're not all fools. You're going to drop this idiotic sideline of yours, whatever it is, and go back to work on our current job. You agreed to assist the War Department – " He gave me a quick, wary glance. "You agreed to do a certain job."

"I've done it," De Kalb told him. I've set up the Bureau and laid out all the plans. Oh, it's no secret – we're not the only ones who've been experimenting along this line. I'll be willing to bet Mr. Cortland knows more than you think about this top-secret Bureau of ours. How about that?"

He was looking at me. I said, "Well, I've heard rumors on the grapevine. Hypnotism, isn't it?"

Murray swore softly. De Kalb chuckled.

"Subliminal hypnosis," he said. "It doesn't matter, Colonel. The important secrets are the specialized techniques that have been worked out and they're still under cover – I hope. The Bureau is operating efficiently now. I've set up the plan. Now there are competent researchers doing quite as much as I could do. If I stayed on now it would simply be as a figurehead. My usefulness was over when I explained my theories to the technicians and psychologists who were able to apply them."

"Allow me to decide that," Murray said angrily and there was a pause.

Quietly, from her chair by the window, Dr. Essen spoke. "Ira, perhaps if Colonel Murray saw the Record – "

"Of course," De Kalb said. "No use squabbling any further. Cortland, will you do the honors this time?"

I opened the cupboard door. I took down the wrapped bundle which was the box. I set it on the table between De Kalb and Murray. The Colonel looked suspiciously at it.

"If this is some childish joke – " he began.

"I assure you, sir, it's no joke. It is something the like of which you've never seen before, but there's nothing humorous about it. I think when you've looked into this – this package – you'll have no further objections to the problem I'm working on."

De Kalb undid the wrappings. The stained and battered box, blue-white, imperishable as the time-currents upon which it had drifted so long, lay there before us, the universe and the destiny of man locked inside it.

De Kalb's fingers moved upon its surface. There was a faint, distant ringing as if the hinges moved to a sound of music and the box unfolded like a flower.

I didn't watch. I knew I'd get nothing further from it now until my mind had rested a little. I looked at the ceiling instead, where the lights from the unfolded leaves and facets of the Record moved in intricate patterns on the white plaster. Even that was hypnotic.

It was very quiet in the room. The silence of the end of the world seemed to flow out of the box in waves, engulfing all sound except for De Kalb's heavy breathing and the quick rasping breath that came and went as Murray sat motionless, staring at the flicker of lights that had been lit at the world's end and sent back to us along the circumference of time.

I found that I was holding myself tense in that silence. I was waiting – waiting for the nova to burst again inside me, perhaps. Waiting for another killing, perhaps somewhere in my sight this time, perhaps someone in this room. And I was waiting for one thing more – the first spreading coldness that might hint to me that my own flesh, like the stone of the studio hearth, had given root to the nekron.

The box closed. The lights vanished from the ceiling.

Murray very slowly sat upright in his chair ...

De Kalb leaned back heavily, his curiously dull eyes full on Murray's face.

"And that's the whole story," he said.

It had taken over an hour of quick, incisive questions and painstaking answers to present Murray with a complete picture of the situation in which he himself played so curious a part. We all watched his face, searching, I think, for some sign of the tremendous intellectual and emotional experience through which everyone must go who opened that box.

Nothing showed. It was the stranger because I knew Murray was almost a hysteric, psychologically. Perhaps he'd learned to control himself when he had to. Certainly he showed nothing of emotion as he shot his cold, watchful questions at De Kalb.

"And you recognized me," he said now, narrowing his eyes at De Kalb. "I was in that – that underground room?"

"You were."

Murray regarded him quietly, his mouth pulled downward in a curve of determination and anger.

"De Kalb," he said, "you tell a good story. But you're a grasshopper. You always have been. You lose interest in every project as soon as you think you've solved it. Now listen to me a minute. The indoctrination project you were working on with me is not yet fully solved. I know you think so. But it isn't. I see exactly what's happened. Hypnosis as an indoctrination method has led you off onto this wild scheme. You intend to use hypnosis on whatever guinea-pigs you can enlist and – "

"It isn't true, Murray, It isn't true." De Kalb was not even indignant, only weary. "You saw the Record. You know."

"All right," Murray admitted after a moment. "I saw the Record. Very well. Suppose you can go forward in time. Suppose you step out, back in the here and now, ten seconds after you step in. You say no time is lost. But what energy you'll lose, De Kalb! You'll be a different man, older, tired, full of experiences. Disinterested, maybe, in my project. I can't let you do it. I'll have to insist you finish that first and then do what you like on this Record deal of yours."

"It can't be done, Murray," De Kalb said. "You can't get around it that way. I saw you in the time-chamber, remember. You did go."

Murray put up an impatient hand. "Is this telephone connected with the exchange? Thanks. I can't argue with you, De Kalb. I have a job to do."

We all sat quiet, watching him as he put a number through. He got his departmental headquarters. He got the man he wanted.

"Murray speaking," he said .briskly. "I'm at De Kalb's in Connecticut. You know the place? I'm leaving immediately in my plane. I want you to check me in as soon as I get there, probably around three. I'm bringing a man named Cortland with me, newspaper fellow – you know his work? Good? Now listen, this is important." Murray took a deep breath and regarded me coldly over the telephone. Very distinctly he said into it.

"Cortland is responsible for that series of murders he reported from Brazil. I'm bringing him in for questioning."