The Six Fingers of Time Read online

almost seen--a ghost: a ghost ofincredible swiftness that was more sensed than seen. The ghostopened the door of his car while it was going at full speed,jerked on the brake, and caused him to crack his head. This manwas dazed and had a slight concussion. I have convinced him thathe did not see any ghost at all, that he must have dozed at thewheel and run into something. As I say, I am harder to convincethan my patients. But it may have been coincidence."

  "I hope so. But you also seem to have another reservation."

  "After quite a few years in practice, I seldom see or hearanything new. Twice before I have been told a happening or adream on the line of what you experienced."

  "Did you convince your patients that it was only a dream?"

  "I did. Both of them. That is, I convinced them the first fewtimes it happened to them."

  "Were they satisfied?"

  "At first. Later, not entirely. But they both died within a yearof their first coming to me."

  "Nothing violent, I hope."

  "Both had the gentlest deaths. That of senility extreme."

  "Oh. Well, I'm too young for that."

  "I would like you to come back in a month or so."

  "I will, if the delusion or the dream returns. Or if I do notfeel well."

  After this Charles Vincent began to forget about the incident. Heonly recalled it with humor sometimes when again he was behind inhis work.

  "Well, if it gets bad enough I may do another sleepwalking actand catch up. But if there is another aspect of time and I couldenter it at will, it might often be handy."

  Charles Vincent never saw his face at all. It is very dark insome of those clubs and the Coq Bleu is like the inside of atomb. He went to the clubs only about once a month, sometimesafter a show when he did not want to go home to bed, sometimeswhen he was just plain restless.

  Citizens of the more fortunate states may not know of themysteries of the clubs. In Vincent's the only bars are beer bars,and only in the clubs can a person get a drink, and only membersare admitted. It is true that even such a small club as the CoqBleu had thirty thousand members, and at a dollar a year that isa nice sideline. The little numbered membership cards cost apenny each for the printing, and the member wrote in his ownname. But he had to have a card--or a dollar for a card--to gainadmittance.

  But there could be no entertainments in the clubs. There wasnothing there but the little bar room in the near darkness.

  The man was there, and then he was not, and then he was thereagain. And always where he sat it was too dark to see his face.

  "I wonder," he said to Vincent (or to the bar at large, thoughthere were no other customers and the bartender was asleep), "Iwonder if you have ever read Zurbarin on the Relationship ofExtradigitalism to Genius?"

  "I have never heard of the work nor of the man," said Vincent. "Idoubt if either exists."

  "I am Zurbarin," said the man.

  Vincent hid his misshapen left thumb. Yet it could not have beennoticed in that light, and he must have been crazy to believethere was any connection between it and the man's remark. It wasnot truly a double thumb. He was not an extradigital, nor was hea genius.

  "I refuse to become interested in you," said Vincent. "I am onthe verge of leaving. I dislike waking the bartender, but I didwant another drink."

  "Sooner done than said."

  "What is?"

  "Your glass is full."

  "It is? So it is. Is it a trick?"

  "Trick is the name for anything either too frivolous or toomystifying for us to comprehend. But on one long early morning ofa month ago, you also could have done the trick, and nearly aswell."

  "Could I have? How would you know about my long earlymorning--assuming there to have been such?"

  "I watched you for a while. Few others have the equipment towatch you with when you're in the aspect."

  So they were silent for some time, and Vincent watched the clockand was ready to go.

  "I wonder," said the man in the dark, "if you have readSchimmelpenninck on the Sexagintal and the Duodecimal in theChaldee Mysteries?"

  "I have not and I doubt if anyone else has. I would guess thatyou are also Schimmelpenninck and that you have just made up thename on the spur of the moment."

  "I am Schimm, it is true, but I made up the name on the spur of amoment many years ago."

  "I am a little bored with you," said Vincent, "but I wouldappreciate it if you'd do your glass-filling trick once more."

  "I have just done so. And you are not bored; you are frightened."

  "Of what?" asked Vincent, whose glass was in fact full again.

  "Of reentering a dread that you are not sure was a dream. Butthere are advantages to being both invisible and inaudible."

  "Can you be invisible?"

  "Was I not when I went behind the bar just now and fixed you adrink?"

  "How?"

  "A man in full stride goes at the rate of about five miles anhour. Multiply that by sixty, which is the number of time. When Ileave my stool and go behind the bar, I go and return at the rateof three hundred miles an hour. So I am invisible to you,particularly if I move while you blink."

  "One thing does not match. You might have got around there andback, but you could not have poured."

  "Shall I say that mastery over liquids is not given to beginners?But for us there are many ways to outwit the slowness of matter."

  "I believe that you are a hoaxer. Do you know Dr. Mason?"

  "I know that you went to see him. I know of his futile attemptsto penetrate a certain mystery. But I have not talked to him ofyou."

  "I still believe that you are a phony. Could you put me back intothe state of my dream of a month ago?"

  "It was not a dream. But I could put you again into that state."

  "Prove it."

  "Watch the clock. Do you believe that I can point my finger at itand stop it for you? It is already stopped for me."

  "No, I don't believe it. Yes, I guess I have to, since I see thatyou have just done it. But it may be another trick. I don't knowwhere the clock is plugged in."

  "Neither do I. Come to the door. Look at every clock you can see.Are they not all stopped?"

  "Yes. Maybe the power has gone off all over town."

  "You know it has not. There are still lighted windows in thosebuildings, though it is quite late."

  "Why are you playing with me? I am neither on the inside nor theoutside. Either tell me the secret or say that you will not tellme."

  "The secret isn't a simple one. It can only be arrived at afterall philosophy and learning have been assimilated."

  "One man cannot arrive at that in one lifetime."

  "Not in an ordinary lifetime. But the secret of the secret (if Imay put it that way) is that one must use part of it as a tool inlearning. You could not learn all in one lifetime, but by beingpermitted the first step--to be able to read, say, sixty books inthe time it took you to read one, to pause for a minute inthought and use up only one second, to get a day's workaccomplished in eight minutes and so have time for otherthings--by such ways one may make a beginning. I will warn you,though. Even for the most intelligent, it is a race."

  "A race? What race?"

  "It is a race between success, which is life, and failure, whichis death."

  "Let's skip the melodrama. How do I get into the state and out ofit?"

  "Oh, that is simple, so easy that it seems like a gadget. Hereare two diagrams I will draw. Note them carefully. This first,envision it in your mind and you are in the state. Now thissecond one, envision, and you are out of it."

  "That easy?"

  "That deceptively easy. The trick is to learn why it works--if youwant to succeed, meaning to live."

  So Charles Vincent left him and went home, walking the mile in alittle less than fifteen normal seconds. But he still had notseen the face of the man.

  There are advantages intellectual, monetary, and amorous in beingable to enter the accelerated state at will. It is a fox game.One must be careful not to
be caught at it, nor to break or harmthat which is in the normal state.

  Vincent could always find eight or ten minutes unobserved toaccomplish the day's work. And a fifteen-minute coffee breakcould turn into a fifteen-hour romp around the town.

  There was this boyish pleasure in becoming a ghost: to appear andstand motionless in front of an onrushing train and to cause thescream of the whistle, and to be in no danger, being able to movefive or ten times as fast as the train; to enter and to sitsuddenly in the middle of a select group and see them stare, andthen disappear from the middle of them; to interfere in sportsand games, entering a prize ring and tripping, hampering, orslugging