The Six Fingers of Time Read online

a half. Itis always hard to judge time, and now it had become all butimpossible.

  "I am still hungry," said Charles Vincent, "but it would befoolhardy to wait for service here. Should I help myself? Theywill not mind if they are dead. And if they are not dead, in anycase it seems that I am invisible to them."

  He wolfed several rolls. He opened a bottle of milk and held itupside down over his glass while he ate another roll. Liquids hadall become perversely slow.

  But he felt better for his erratic breakfast. He would have paidfor it, but how?

  He left the cafeteria and walked about the town as it seemedstill to be quite early, though one could depend on neither sunnor clock for the time any more. The traffic lights wereunchanging. He sat for a long time in a little park and watchedthe town and the big clock in the Commerce Building tower; butlike all the clocks it was either stopped or the hand would creeptoo slowly to be seen.

  It must have been just about an hour till the traffic lightschanged, but change they did at last. By picking a point on thebuilding across the street and watching what moved past it, hefound that the traffic did indeed move. In a minute or so, theentire length of a car would pass the given point.

  He had, he recalled, been very far behind in his work and it hadbeen worrying him. He decided to go to the office, early as itwas or seemed to be.

  He let himself in. Nobody else was there. He resolved not to lookat the clock and to be very careful of the way he handled allobjects because of his new propensity for breaking things. Thisconsidered, all seemed normal there. He had said the day beforethat he could hardly catch up on his work if he put in two dayssolid. He now resolved at least to work steadily until somethinghappened, whatever it was.

  For hour after hour he worked on his tabulations and reports.Nobody else had arrived. Could something be wrong? Certainlysomething was wrong. But this was not a holiday. That was not it.

  Just how long can a stubborn and mystified man plug away at histask? It was hour after hour after hour. He did not become hungrynor particularly tired. And he did get through a lot of work.

  "It must be half done. However it has happened, I have caught upon at least a day's work. I will keep on."

  He must have continued silently for another eight or ten hours.

  He was caught up completely on his back work.

  "Well, to some extent I can work into the future. I can head upand carry over. I can put in everything but the figures of thefield reports."

  And he did so.

  "It will be hard to bury me in work again. I could almost coastfor a day. I don't even know what day it is, but I must haveworked twenty hours straight through and nobody has arrived.Perhaps nobody ever will arrive. If they are moving with thespeed of the people in the nightmare outside, it is no wonderthey have not arrived."

  He put his head down on his arms on the desk. The last thing hesaw before he closed his eyes was the misshapen left thumb thathe had always tried to conceal a little by the way he handled hishands.

  "At least I know that I am still myself. I'd know myself anywhereby that."

  Then he went to sleep at his desk.

  Jenny came in with a quick click-click-click of high heels, andhe wakened to the noise.

  "What are you doing dozing at your desk, Mr. Vincent? Have youbeen here all night?"

  "I don't know, Jenny. Honestly I don't."

  "I was only teasing. Sometimes when I get here a little early Itake a catnap myself."

  The clock said six minutes till eight and the second hand wassweeping normally. Time had returned to the world. Or to him. Buthad all that early morning of his been a dream? Then it had beena very efficient dream. He had accomplished work that he couldhardly have done in two days. And it was the same day that it wassupposed to be.

  He went to the water fountain. The water now behaved normally. Hewent to the window. The traffic was behaving as it should. Thoughsometimes slow and sometimes snarled, yet it was in the pace ofthe regular world.

  The other workers arrived. They were not balls of fire, butneither was it necessary to observe them for several minutes tobe sure they weren't dead.

  "It did have its advantages," Charles Vincent said. "I would beafraid to live with it permanently, but it would be handy to gointo for a few minutes a day and accomplish the business ofhours. I may be a case for the doctor. But just how would I goabout telling a doctor what was bothering me?"

  Now it had surely been less than two hours from his first risingtill the time that he wakened to the noise of Jenny from hissecond sleep. And how long that second sleep had been, or inwhich time enclave, he had no idea. But how account for it all?He had spent a long while in his own rooms, much longer thanordinary in his confusion. He had walked the city mile after milein his puzzlement. And he had sat in the little park for hoursand studied the situation. And he had worked at his own desk foran outlandish long time.

  Well, he would go to the doctor. A man is obliged to refrain frommaking a fool of himself to the world at large, but to his ownlawyer, his priest, or his doctor he will sometimes have to comeas a fool. By their callings they are restrained from scoffingopenly.

  Dr. Mason was not particularly a friend. Charles Vincent realizedwith some unease that he did not have any particular friends,only acquaintances and associates. It was as though he were of aspecies slightly apart from his fellows. He wished now a littlethat he had a particular friend.

  But Dr. Mason was an acquaintance of some years, had thereputation of being a good doctor, and besides Vincent had nowarrived at his office and been shown in. He would either haveto--well, that was as good a beginning as any.

  "Doctor, I am in a predicament. I will either have to invent somesymptoms to account for my visit here, or make an excuse andbolt, or tell you what is bothering me, even though you willthink I am a new sort of idiot."

  "Vincent, every day people invent symptoms to cover their visitshere, and I know that they have lost their nerve about the realreason for coming. And every day people do make excuses and bolt.But experience tells me that I will get a larger fee if youtackle the third alternative. And, Vincent, there is no new sortof idiot."

  Vincent said, "It may not sound so silly if I tell it quickly. Iawoke this morning to some very puzzling incidents. It seemedthat time itself had stopped, or that the whole world had goneinto super-slow motion. The water would neither flow nor boil,and fire would not heat food. The clocks, which I first believedhad stopped, crept along at perhaps a minute an hour. The peopleI met in the streets appeared dead, frozen in lifelike attitudes.And it was only by watching them for a very long time that Iperceived that they did indeed have motion. One car I sawcreeping slower than the most backward snail, and a dead man atthe wheel of it. I went to it, opened the door, and put on thebrake. I realized after a time that the man was not dead. But hebent forward and broke his face on the steering wheel. It musthave taken a full minute for his head to travel no more than teninches, yet I was unable to prevent his hitting the wheel. I thendid other bizarre things in a world that had died on its feet. Iwalked many miles through the city, and then I sat for hours inthe park. I went to the office and let myself in. I accomplishedwork that must have taken me twenty hours. I then took a nap atmy desk. When I awoke on the arrival of the others, it was sixminutes to eight in the morning of the same day, today. Not twohours had passed from my rising, and time was back to normal. Butthe things that happened in that time that could never becompressed into two hours."

  "One question first, Vincent. Did you actually accomplish thework of many hours?"

  "I did. It was done, and done in that time. It did not becomeundone on the return of time to normal."

  "A second question. Had you been worried about your work, aboutbeing behind?"

  "Yes. Emphatically."

  "Then here is one explanation. You retired last night. But veryshortly afterward you arose in a state of somnambulism. There arefacets of sleepwalking which we do not at all understand. Thetime-out-of-focus interludes were p
arts of a walking dream ofyours. You dressed and went to your office and worked all night.It is possible to do routine tasks in a somnambulistic staterapidly and even feverishly, with an intense concentration--toperform prodigies. You may have fallen into a normal sleep therewhen you had finished, or you may have been awakened directlyfrom your somnambulistic trance on the arrival of your co-workers.There, that is a plausible and workable explanation. In the caseof an apparently bizarre happening, it is always well to have arational explanation to fall back on. They will usually satisfy apatient and put his mind at rest. But often they do not satisfyme."

  "Your explanation very nearly satisfies me, Dr. Mason, and itdoes put my mind considerably at rest. I am sure that in a shortwhile I will be able to accept it completely. But why does it notsatisfy you?"

  "One reason is a man I treated early this morning. He had hisface smashed, and he had seen--or