Lesperance seized Travis’s arm. “Wait—”
“Stay out of this!” Travis shook his hand away. “This fool nearly killed us. But it isn’t that so much, no. It’s his shoes! Look at them! He ran off the Path. That ruins us! We’ll forfeit! Thousands of dollars of insurance! We guarantee no one leaves the Path. He left it. Oh, the fool! I’ll have to report to the government. They might revoke our license to travel. Who knows what he’s done to Time, to History!”
“Take it easy, all he did was kick up some dirt.”
“How do we know?” cried Travis. “We don’t know anything! It’s all a mystery! Get out of here, Eckels!”
Eckels fumbled his shirt. “I’ll pay anything. A hundred thousand dollars!”
Travis glared at Eckels’ checkbook and spat. “Go out there. The Monster’s next to the Path. Stick your arms up to your elbows in his mouth. Then you can come back with us.”
“That’s unreasonable!”
“The Monster’s dead, you idiot. The bullets! The bullets can’t be left behind. They don’t belong in the Past; they might change anything. Here’s my knife. Dig them out!”
The jungle was alive again, full of the old tremorings and bird cries. Eckels turned slowly to regard the primeval garbage dump, that hill of nightmares and terror. After a long time, like a sleepwalker he shuffled out along the Path.
He returned, shuddering, five minutes later, his arms soaked and red to the elbows. He held out his hands. Each held a number of steel bullets. Then he fell. He lay where he fell, not moving.
“You didn’t have to make him do that,” said Lesperance.
“Didn’t I? It’s too early to tell.” Travis nudged the still body. “He’ll live. Next time he won’t go hunting game like this. Okay.” He jerked his thumb wearily at Lesperance. “Switch on. Let’s go home.”
* * *
1492. 1776. 1812.
They cleaned their hands and faces. They changed their caking shirts and pants. Eckels was up and around again, not speaking. Travis glared at him for a full ten minutes.
“Don’t look at me,” cried Eckels. “I haven’t done anything.”
“Who can tell?”
“Just ran off the Path, that’s all, a little mud on my shoes – what do you want me to do – get down and pray?”
“We might need it. I’m warning you, Eckels, I might kill you yet. I’ve got my gun ready.”
“I’m innocent. I’ve done nothing!”
1999. 2000. 2055.
The Machine stopped.
“Get out,” said Travis.
The room was there as they had left it. But not the same as they had left it. The same man sat behind the same desk. But the same man did not quite sit behind the same desk. Travis looked around swiftly. “Everything okay here?” he snapped.
“Fine. Welcome home!”
Travis did not relax. He seemed to be looking through the one high window.
“Okay, Eckels, get out. Don’t ever come back.”
Eckels could not move.
“You heard me,” said Travis. “What’re you staring at?”
Eckels stood smelling the air, and there was a thing to the air, a chemical taint so subtle, so slight, that only a faint cry of his subliminal senses warned him it was there. The colors, white, gray, blue, orange, in the wall, in the furniture, in the sky beyond the window, were … were … And there was a feel. His flesh twitched. His hands twitched. He stood drinking the oddness with the pores of his body. Somewhere, someone must have been screaming one of those whistles that only a dog can hear. His body screamed silence in return. Beyond this room, beyond this wall, beyond this man who was not quite the same man seated at this desk that was not quite the same desk … lay an entire world of streets and people. What sort of world it was now, there was no telling. He could feel them moving there, beyond the walls, almost, like so many chess pieces blown in a dry wind …
But the immediate thing was the sign painted on the office wall, the same sign he had read earlier today on first entering. Somehow, the sign had changed:
TYME SEFARI INC.
SEFARIS TU ANY YEER EN THE PAST.
YU NAIM THE ANIMALL.
WEE TAEK YU THAIR.
YU SHOOT ITT.
Eckels felt himself fall into a chair. He fumbled crazily at the thick slime on his boots. He held up a clod of dirt, trembling. “No, it can’t be. Not a little thing like that. No!”
Embedded in the mud, glistening green and gold and black, was a butterfly, very beautiful and very dead.
“Not a little thing like that! Not a butterfly!” cried Eckels.
It fell to the floor, an exquisite thing, a small thing that could upset balances and knock down a line of small dominoes and then big dominoes and then gigantic dominoes, all down the years across Time. Eckels’ mind whirled. It couldn’t change things. Killing one butterfly couldn’t be that important! Could it?
His face was cold. His mouth trembled, asking: “Who – who won the presidential election yesterday?”
The man behind the desk laughed. “You joking? You know very well. Deutscher, of course! Who else? Not that fool weakling Keith. We got an iron man now, a man with guts!” The official stopped. “What’s wrong?”
Eckels moaned. He dropped to his knees. He scrabbled at the golden butterfly with shaking fingers. “Can’t we,” he pleaded to the world, to himself, to the officials, to the Machine, “can’t we take it back, can’t we make it alive again? Can’t we start over? Can’t we—”
He did not move. Eyes shut, he waited, shivering. He heard Travis breathe loud in the room; he heard Travis shift his rifle, click the safety catch, and raise the weapon.
There was a sound of thunder.
VINTAGE SEASON
Henry Kuttner & C.L. Moore
Henry Kuttner was an American science fiction and fantasy writer. He collaborated on many stories with his wife, C.L. Moore, who he met through “Lovecraft’s Circle.” He was considered one of the most important writers in genre in the 1940s. Although he wrote many novels, he is best known for his short fiction. Catherine L. Moore was an American science fiction and fantasy writer, most often known as C.L. Moore. She was one of the first women to write in either genre, and paved the way for many other female speculative fiction writers. Her earliest stories appeared in Weird Tales. Many of her stories were collaborations with her husband, Henry Kuttner, although this particular story is often credited to her alone. It was first published in Astounding Science Fiction in 1946 under the pseudonym Lawrence O’Donnell. “Vintage Season” inspired Robert Silverberg’s time travel story “In Another Country,” taking place at the same time yet told from a different point of view. In later years she wrote for television, most notably for Maverick and 77 Sunset Strip.
Three people came up the walk to the old mansion just at dawn on a perfect May morning. Oliver Wilson in his pajamas watched them from an upper window through a haze of conflicting emotions, resentment predominant. He didn’t want them there.
They were foreigners. He knew only that much about them. They had the curious name of Sancisco, and their first names, scrawled in loops on the lease, appeared to be Omerie, Kleph and Klia, though it was impossible as he looked down upon them now to sort them out by signature. He hadn’t even been sure whether they would be men or women, and he had expected something a little less cosmopolitan.
Oliver’s heart sank a little as he watched them follow the taxi driver up the walk. He had hoped for less self-assurance in his unwelcome tenants, because he meant to force them out of the house if he could. It didn’t look very promising from here.