Time and Time Again | Page 9

die."
Allan smiled. "I can't. I had a letter from you just before I left for the front. You were
seventy-eight, then, and you were still hunting, and fishing, and flying your own plane.
But I'm not going to get killed in any Battle of Buffalo, this time, and if I can prevent it,
and I think I can, there won't be any World War III."
"But--You say all time exists, perpetually coexistent and totally present," his father said.

"Then it's right there in front of you, and you're getting closer to it, every watch tick."
Allan Hartley shook his head. "You know what I remembered, when Frank Gutchall
came to borrow a gun?" he asked. "Well, the other time, I hadn't been home: I'd been
swimming at the Canoe Club, with Larry Morton. When I got home, about half an hour
from now, I found the house full of cops. Gutchall talked the .38 officers' model out of
you, and gone home; he'd shot his wife four times through the body, finished her off with
another one back of the ear, and then used his sixth shot to blast his brains out. The cops
traced the gun; they took a very poor view of your lending it to him. You never got it
back."
"Trust that gang to keep a good gun," the lawyer said.
"I didn't want us to lose it, this time, and I didn't want to see you lose face around City
Hall. Gutchalls, of course, are expendable," Allan said. "But my main reason for fixing
Frank Gutchall up with a padded cell was that I wanted to know whether or not the future
could be altered. I have it on experimental authority that it can be. There must be
additional dimensions of time; lines of alternate probabilities. Something like William
Seabrook's witch-doctor friend's Fan-Shaped Destiny. When I brought memories of the
future back to the present, I added certain factors to the causal chain. That set up an
entirely new line of probabilities. On no notice at all, I stopped a murder and a suicide.
With thirty years to work, I can stop a world war. I'll have the means to do it, too."
"The means?"
"Unlimited wealth and influence. Here." Allan picked up a sheet and handed it to his
father. "Used properly, we can make two or three million on that, alone. A list of all the
Kentucky Derby, Preakness, and Belmont winners to 1970. That'll furnish us primary
capital. Then, remember, I was something of a chemist. I took it up, originally, to get
background material for one of my detective stories; it fascinated me, and I made it a
hobby, and then a source of income. I'm thirty years ahead of any chemist in the world,
now. You remember I. G. Farbenindustrie? Ten years from now, we'll make them look
like pikers."
His father looked at the yellow sheet. "Assault, at eight to one," he said. "I can scrape up
about five thousand for that--Yes; in ten years--Any other little operations you have in
mind?" he asked.
"About 1950, we start building a political organization, here in Pennsylvania. In 1960, I
think we can elect you President. The world situation will be crucial, by that time, and we
had a good-natured nonentity in the White House then, who let things go till war became
inevitable. I think President Hartley can be trusted to take a strong line of policy. In the
meantime, you can read Machiavelli."
"That's my little boy, talking!"
Blake Hartley said softly. "All right, son; I'll do just what you tell me, and when you
grow up, I'll be president.... Let's go get supper, now."

THE END.

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