A World Apart Page 4

twentyyears ago, without seeing me, without letting me see you, you destroyedme."

  "Good God!" Coulter exclaimed. "But how? I know it was rude, but I didmean to come back. And when things moved differently it seemed better tokeep a clean break clean." He hesitated, added, "I'm sorry."

  "Sorry that you destroyed me?" Her tone was acid-etched.

  "Dammit, do you want me down on my knees?" he countered. "How the devildid my leaving destroy _you_?" Anger, prodded by fear, was warming hisblood.

  "I was sensitive--aware of the collapse of my family, of my ownshortcomings, of my lack of opportunity," she said, staring with immensegrey eyes at the wall behind him. "I was just beginning to feel I couldbe somebody, could mean something to someone I--liked--when you droppedme and never looked back.

  "I took a job at the bank. For twenty years I've sat in a cage, countingout money and putting little legends in bank-books. I've felt myselfdrying up day by day, week by week, year by year. When I've sought loveI've merely defiled myself. You taught me passion, Banning, thendestroyed my capacity to enjoy it with anyone but you. You destroyed meand never even knew it."

  "You could have gone out into the world," he said with a trace ofcontempt. "Other girls have."

  "Other girls are not me," Eve replied steadily. "Other girls don't givethemselves to a man as completely as I gave myself to you."

  "What can I do now?" Coulter asked, running a hand through his newlycrew-cut hair. Recalling Eve at dinner, seeing her in the doorway,holding her briefly in his arms--he had almost decided that in this newlife she was the partner he would carry with him.

  Now, however, he was afraid of her. It was Eve who had, in some strangeway, brought him back twenty years for purposes she had yet to divulge.One thing he knew, logically and intuitively--he could never endure lifewith anyone of whom he was frightened.

  She was no longer looking at the wall--she was looking directly at himand with curious intensity. She said, "Do you have to ask?"

  She was testing him, of course. Sensitive, brilliant, she might be--yetshe was a fool not to have judged the effect of his fear of her. Hewalked around the table, took hold of her shoulders, turned her to facehim, said, "What has this particular evening to do with bringingme--us--back?"

  "Everything!" she said, her eyes suddenly ablaze. "_Everything_,Banning! Can't you understand?"

  He released her, lit himself a cigarette, seeking the calmness he knewhe must have to keep his thinking clear. He said, "Perhaps I understandwhy--a little. But how, Eve, _how_?"

  She got up and walked across the wide hearth, kicked a fallen log backinto place. Its glowing red scales burst into yellow flame. She turnedand said, "Remember my father's last work? His efforts to discover thesecrets of Time?"

  "I remember he threw away what should have been your inheritance on aflock of crackpot ideas," he told her.

  "This wasn't a crackpot idea," she said, eyeing him as if he wereanother log for the fire. "His basic premise that Time is all-existentwas sound. Time is past, present and future."

  "I might have argued that with you--before today," he replied.

  "It was like everything else he tried." She made an odd little gestureof helplessness. "He went at it wrong-end-to, of course. Not until afterhe died and Jim got back from M.I.T. did we get to work on it. I wasmerely the helper who held the tools for Jim. And when we completed it_he_ lacked the courage to try it out." There was the acid of contemptin her voice at her brother's poltroonery.

  "I don't blame him," said Coulter. "After all ..." He changed thesubject, asked, "Where _is_ Jim?"

  "He was killed at Iwo Jima," she told him.

  "What's to keep him from walking in here tonight--or to keep _you_ fromwalking in on us?" he asked.

  "Jim's in Cambridge, studying for exams," she replied. "As for mymeeting myself, it's impossible. It's hard to explain but in coming backhere I became reintegrated with the past me. Just as you are both apresent and a past you. You must have noticed a certain duplication ofmemories, an overlapping? _I_ have."

  "I've noticed," he said. "But _why_ only we two?"

  "I'll show you," she said. "Come." She led him down rough wooden cellarstairs to a basement, unfastened with pale and dexterous fingers apadlocked wooden door behind the big old-fashioned furnace with itsup-curving stovepipe arms, under which he had to stoop to avoid bumpinghis head.

  The sharp sting of dead furnace-ashes was in his nostrils as he lookedat the strange device. The strange cage-like device, the strangejerry-built apparatus was centered in a bizarre instrument panel thatseemed to hang from nothing at all. He said, eyeing a bucket-seat forthe operator, "It looks like Red Barber's cat-bird seat, Eve."

  "And we're sitting in it, just you and I, darling," she replied. "Justyou and I out of all the people who ever lived. Think of what we can dowith our lives now, the mistakes we can avoid!"

  "I'm thinking of them," said Coulter. Then, after a brief pause, "Buthow in hell did you manage to get _me_ into the act?"

  She stepped inside the odd cage, plucked things from a cup-likereceptacle that hung from the instrument panel, showed them to him.There were a lock of hair, a scarf, what looked like fingernail parings.At his bewilderment her face lighted briefly with the shadow of a smile.

  She said, "These are _you_, darling. Oh, you _still_ don't understand!Lacking the _person_ or _thing_ to be sent back in Time, something thatis part of the person or thing will work. It keys directly to individualpatterns."

  "And you've kept those things--those pieces of me--in there all thistime?" He shuddered. "It looks like voodoo to me."

  She put back the mementos, stepped out of the cage, put her armsfiercely around him. "Banning, darling, after you left me I _did_ tryvoodoo. I wanted you to suffer as I suffered. But then, when the Timemachine was finished and Jim was afraid to use it, I put the things init--and waited. It's been a long wait."

  "How did it reach me while I was still miles away?" he asked.

  "Jim always said its working radius was about five miles," she said."When you drove within range, it took over.... But let's go backupstairs, darling--we have our lives to plan."

  To change the subject Coulter said, when they emerged from the basement,"You must have had a time picking the right moment for this littlereunion--or was it hit or miss?"

  "The machine is completely accurate," she said firmly. She stood there,the firelight making a halo of her dark hair. There was urgency in her,an expectation that the remark would mean something to him. It didn't.

  Finally she burst out with, "Banning, are you really so forgetful? Don'tyou remember what tonight was ... _don't_ you?"

  Coulter did some hasty mental kangaroo-hopping. He knew it was importantto Eve and, because of the incredible thing she had accomplished, hefelt a new wave of fright. From some recess of his memory he got aflash--Jim was in Cambridge, the housekeeper asleep in the rear ell ofthe old farmhouse, he and Eve were alone.

  He drew her gently close to him and kissed her soft waiting lips as hehad kissed them twenty years before, felt the quiver of her slim bodyagainst him as he had felt it twenty years before. He should haveknown--Eve had selected for their reunion the anniversary of the firsttime they had truly given themselves to each other.

  He said, "Of course I remember, darling. If I'm a little slow on theuptake it's because I've had a lot of things happen to me all at once."

  "The old Banning Coulter would never have understood," she said, givinghim a quick hug before standing clear of him. Her eyes were shining likestar sapphires. "Banning, you've grown up!"

  "People do," he said drily. There was an odd sort of tension betweenthem as they stood there, knowing what was to happen between them. Evetook a deep unsteady breath and the rise and fall of her angora sweatermade his arms itch to pull her close.

  She said, before he could translate desire into action, "Oh, I've beenso _wrong_ about so many things, darling. But I was so _right_ to bringyou back. Think of what we're going to be able to do, you and Itogethe
r, now that we have this second chance. We'll know just what'sgoing to happen. We'll be rich and free and lord it over ordinarymortals. I'll have furs and you'll have yachts and we'll ..."

  "I'm a lousy sailor," said Coulter. "No, I don't want a yacht."

  "Nonsense, we'll have a yacht and cruise wherever we want to go. Thinkof how easy it will be for us to make money." Her eyes were shining morebrightly still.