The Two Timers by Bob Shaw Page B

the vast

chronomotive potential which had hurled him back through the barriers

of time. But supposing . . .

He wet his finger again, made a fresh dot to mark the present on the

line representing the main timestream, and matched it with a similar

dot on the divergent line. After a moment's thought, he drew a heavy

lateral stroke connecting the two.

Suddenly he understood why the deeply-buried but ever-watchful part of

his mind that controlled these things had allowed him to continue on

the path he had chosen eight years earlier. He had defied time itself

to create another Kate, and that was a far greater task than the one

which lay before him now.

All he had to do was reach her.

IV

It was long past midnight before Jack Breton stopped talking, but he

knew they were just about convinced.

Somewhere along the way John Breton and Kate had begun to believe him

-- which was why it was so important to go carefully, not risk losing

their trust. This far, everything he had told them had been true,

but now the lies would begin and he had to avoid falling into his own

trap. He sat back in the deep chair and looked at Kate. There had been

almost no physical change in the past nine years, except for her eyes,

and the way in which she had acquired conscious control of her own beauty.

"This must be a trick," Kate said tensely, not wanting to surrender

normalcy without a fight. "Everybody has a double somewhere."

"How do you know?" Both Bretons spoke at once, in perfect synchronization,

and glanced at each other while Kate seemed to grow pale, as though the

coincidence had proved something to her.

"Well, I read it . . ."

"Kate's a student of the funny papers," John interrupted. "If a thing

happens independently to Superman and Dick Tracy, then it must be true.

It stands to reason."

"Don't speak to her like that," Jack said evenly, suppressing sudden

anger at his other self's attitude. "It isn't an easy thing to swallow

first time around without proof. You should know that, John."

"Proof?" Kate was immediately interested. "What proof can there be?"

"Fingerprints, for one thing," Jack said, "but that calls for

equipment. Memories are easier. I told John something that nobody else

in the world knows."

"I see. Then I ought to be able to test you the same way?"

"Yes." His voice was shaded with sudden doubt.

"All right. John and I went to Lake Louise for our honeymoon. On the day

we left there, we went to an Indian souvenir place and bought some rugs."

"Of course we did," Jack replied, laying the faintest stress on the pronoun.

"That's one of them over by the window."

"But there was more. The old woman who ran the store gave me something

else, free of charge, because we were on our honeymoon. What was it?"

Kate's face was intent.

"I . . ." Jack floundered, wondering what had gone wrong. She had beaten

him, effortlessly. "I can't remember -- but that doesn't prove anything."

"Doesn't it?" Kate stared at him triumphantly. "Doesn't it?"

"No, it doesn't," John Breton put in. "I can't remember that episode

either, honey. I don't remember that old stick giving us anything."

He sounded regretful.

"John!" Kate turned to him. "That tiny pair of moccasins -- for a baby."

"I still don't remember. I've never seen them around."

"We never had a baby, did we?"

"That's the advantage of family planning." John Breton smirked drunkenly

into his glass. "You don't have any family."

"Your jokes," Kate said bitterly. "Your indestructible, polyeurethane

jokes."

Jack listened with a peculiar sense of dismay. He had created these

two people as surely as if he had stalked the Earth amid Biblical

lightnings and breathed life into handfuls of clay, yet they had lived independently. For nine years, he thought, with an indefinable feeling

of having been cheated. He fingered the oily metal of the pistol in his

pocket.

John Breton flicked the rim of his empty glass, making silvery ringing

sounds. "The point is that