Perchance. Michael Kurland
sky darkened. They looked up.
And the girl began to scream, as giant birds with glowing red eyes and cruelly pointed beaks circled overhead, blotting out the sun. First one dived toward them, and then another, and a third.
Delbit covered his head with his hands and jerked from side to side to evade the sharp beaks and claws. One clutched at him, and he screamed as its talons pierced his scalp.
* * * * * * *
“You ripped the electrodes out,” Dr. Faineworth complained querulously.
“Sorry,” Delbit said. He was standing in front of the doctor’s desk, the position from which he received criticism and instruction.
“You were supposed to be awake—aware of what was going on.”
“It was a very powerful image,” Delbit said.
“Do not let it happen again, or I shall supply an even more powerful image.” The doctor leaned back in his chair and dismissed Delbit with a gesture. “We are ready to proceed to the next step,” he told his stout friend Edbeck, who was filling a chair to the right of the desk.
Delbit retreated to his desk in the corner and bent over it, apparently hard at work transcribing his night’s experiences. Sometimes, when they realized he was there, they sent him out of the office. And this time he didn’t want to leave. Whatever was being planned for the questioning of the girl, he wanted to know.
“When you say ‘the next step,’” Edbeck asked, his eyes half lidded and his hands folded over his belly, “are you referring to one minuscule, mincing step along a long and badly marked trail, or a giant stride along a short, well-lighted path? I only ask to have some frame of reference.”
Faineworth chuckled. “Edbeck, my friend, do you have any idea of just what it is we’re striving for here?”
“You have told me several times,” Edbeck said. “And, obviously, impressed me with the potential that lies within this girl’s fair body. Else I would not be here. My fortune is your fortune, Doctor, as soon as I sense a profit to be made. So far it is all guesswork.”
“Guesswork?” Dr. Faineworth sat up, and his hand slapped the desktop. “Does the girl not disappear?”
“Yes, but—”
”And where do you suppose she goes—Rhode Island Free State?”
“She goes—somewhere else, Dr. Faineworth, not of this world. That is clear, and I agree with you. The only possible point of dissent is whether we can exploit this—elsewhere—for our own benefit. And on that point I remain unconvinced. The girl goes, yes; but can we follow? You don’t know, and I don’t know.”
“Elsewhen,” Dr. Faineworth said.
“Pardon?”
“I rather think it’s not ‘elsewhere,’ Edbeck, but ‘elsewhen.’”
Edbeck smiled incredulously. “She travels into the past? Is that what you’re saying?”
“Perhaps. But more probably she goes, let us call it, sideways in time.”
Delbit’s head jerked up at that, but he quickly lowered it again and resumed his carefully edited transcribing of last night’s dream.
“Don’t have sport with me, Dr. Faineworth. Just because my scientific knowledge is not as strong as yours does not mean I am an innocent gull.” Edbeck shook his head. “I do not swallow raw fish, my medical friend.”
“Come, come, Edbeck, do not allow your thoroughly admirable skepticism to get in the way of your even more admirable cupidity. There’s nothing intrinsically strange about the suggestion, once you accept that she came from somewhere else. And we have empirical evidence of that; we’ve seen her go back and forth three times. I’m giving you my theory as to where she goes. If I’m wrong, then we’ll soon know. But still, as you say, she goes somewhere. And soon we shall find out where that somewhere is.”
“A forest,” Edbeck commented, looking unconvinced. “Of use to us only if the market for raw lumber were to suddenly increase.”
“That is merely a part of her illness,” Faineworth said. “This cycling back and forth between here and some primitive forest.”
“You believe so?”
“Obviously. The girl does not come from a forest; so much is evident. The same brain damage that gave her amnesia brought her here, and causes her to cycle between this, ah, reality and that forest. And, Edbeck—”
”Umph?”
“—that amnesia, that brain intrusion, is induced.”
”You think so?”
“No, no, my petulant friend. I know so. Such is my specialty. Such is my training. It is what I myself have been trying to do for these past twenty years. I can at least recognize an external intrusion, even though I cannot as yet create it. And I’d give a considerable part of my fortune to discover who did create it, how they accomplished it, and where they learned the trick.”
Edbeck thought that over for a few seconds, and then suddenly sat up. “The devil you say! You mean someone else did that to her?”
“Just so. The tests show it. Clever, whoever did this. Deucedly clever. Sections of her memory are, effectively, blocked off. And there are now built in, let us call them, signposts warning her not to approach. ‘Calla’ and ‘Nimber,’ for example, are two concepts she is not even to explore. So they mean something important to whoever did this to her. And so they will to her when she has her memory. It’s a fascinating technique—quite beyond anything we can do. Believe me. If anyone in this country—or this planet—were using such techniques, I would be aware of it.” Faineworth slapped his hand firmly on the desk. “One more sign that she’s from another, ah, place.”
“Well, wherever it came from, if it’s beyond our skills—”
Yes, Delbit silently agreed.
“We could not do it, Edbeck, my friend, but we can undo it. That is a different sort of problem.”
“We can?”
“Most assuredly. But we are not going to for the moment.”
“We’re not?”
“No. For then she would fly away, untethered. We must first find a way to tether her to us before we restore her memory.”
“Ah. And how do we do that?”
Dr. Faineworth reached over to the floor by the left side of his desk and lifted a cardboard box onto the desktop. “My newly designed cerebral monitor,” he said, pulling out a thick leather helmet. It looked much like the one Delbit wore for his dream-interloping, but it was larger and had a great bundle of wires coming from the top instead of the mere twelve that Delbit’s carried.
“The helmet connects to a recording device that is being made for me now,” Dr. Faineworth said. “Sixty simultaneous outputs. When I get it, sometime tomorrow, the girl gets hooked up and stays hooked up until the next time she disappears. And I think I have determined how to induce her to disappear.”
“How?”
Dr. Faineworth separated a white wire and a red wire from the bundle going into the helmet. “These two wires here,” he said.
“Ah,” Edbeck said, nodding wisely.
Delbit took a deep breath.
“Then, once we have induced her to disappear, we look at the readings. Then we adjust the apparatus to give us more of what seems to be the most interesting.”
“Then she comes back, and we do it again!” Edbeck said, clapping his pudgy hands together.
“Precisely. And after the third or fourth time, we should have it pegged. Just