Time and Again Read Online Free PDF Page B

wall. There in the blanks under my name, birthplace, and date of birth were written my father's name, Earl Gavin Morley; his birthplace and date of birth, Muncie, Indiana, 1908; my mother's maiden name, Strong; my hobbies, sketching and photography; and my entire history of employment beginning with Neff Carter in Buffalo. All the other forms were filled out, too: every one of them, just like this, in my own unmistakable handwriting. It was impossible for me to have done this without knowing it, but there it was. It wasn't possible that twenty minutes had passed, but they must have. And the white phone — I glanced at it again — was still green. The hair on the back of my neck was prickling, trying to stand erect, and the fear in my stomach was like a clenching fist.
    Then it stopped. I had not filled out these forms, and I knew it. I'd been in this room no more than three or four minutes at most, and I knew that, too. My eyes were narrowed, I stood staring out across the desk top thinking, then I saw the watercolor on the wall. The covered bridge was gone; now it was a pine-covered snow-capped mountain, and I laughed aloud, the fear instantly shrinking to nothing. The door opened, and Rube Prien walked in. "All finished? What's the matter?"
    "Rube, what in the hell do you think you're doing?" I stood grinning at him as he walked toward the desk. "Why am I supposed to think I've been here twenty minutes?"
    "But you have."
    "And that the picture on the wall" — I nodded at it — "changed from a bridge to a mountain?"
    "The picture?" Rube was standing before my desk, and he turned to look back at the watercolor, puzzled. "It's always been a mountain."
    "And was the phone always green, Rube?"
    He glanced at it. "Yeah, I guess so; far as I can remember."
    I was slowly shaking my head, still smiling. "It's no use, Rube; I've been here five minutes at the most." I gestured at the papers on the desk top. "And I never filled those out, no matter how much it looks like my writing."
    Through a moment or so Rube stood looking across the desk at me, his eyes concerned. Then he said, "Suppose I swear to you, Si, that you did? And that you've been here" — he looked at his watch — "just under twenty-five minutes?"
    "You'd be lying."
    "And suppose Rose swears it, too?"
    I just shook my head. Suddenly I squatted down beside the little telephone table and looked underneath it. There hung the white phone, held in place and the receiver prevented from falling by a wide U-shaped copper band fastened between two sides of the underpart of the table; near it was fastened a small metal box from which a pair of thin wires ran down the inside of the table leg. I pressed the table top near the edge, and a panel within the intricate design revolved, the white phone rolling up into sight, the green phone sliding down onto the copper holding strip. When I looked up at him Rube was smiling, and he beckoned over his shoulder at the office doorway behind him.
    A man in shirt-sleeves walked in. He was young, dark-haired, with a thin trimmed mustache, and he was looking at me in a pleased way. As he walked toward us Rube said, "Dr. Oscar Rossoff, Simon Morley." We each said how-do-you-do, and he reached across the desk top while my hand rose to shake his, but instead of taking my hand he took my wrist between thumb and fingers.
    After a moment he said, "Pulse almost normal, and slowing rapidly. Good." He let go my wrist, stood smiling at me happily, and said, "How did you know? What tipped you off?" In the doorway Rose stood watching us, smiling.
    "Nothing tipped me off except that it's impossible. I just knew I hadn't filled out those forms. That I hadn't been here twenty minutes." I had to smile again as I nodded toward the picture. "And that a few minutes ago that crazy mountain was a bridge."
    "Inner-directed," Rossoff was murmuring before I finished. "This is fine," he said to Rube, "a very good reaction." He turned to me again. "To you it may seem