page12 (1/2)

Obituary

My husband, Lancelot, always reads the paper at breakfast What I see of hi its perpetual look of angry and slightly puzzled frustration He doesn't greet me, and the newspaper, carefully unfolded in readiness for hioes up before his face

Thereafter, there is only his ar from behind the paper for a second cup of coffee into which I have carefully placed the necessary level teaspoonful of sugar- neither heaping nor deficient under pain of a stinging glare

I aer sorry for this It makes for a quiet meal, at least

However, on thisthe quiet was broken when Lancelot barked out abruptly, 'Good Lord! That fool Paul Farber is dead Stroke!'

I just barely recognized the name Lancelot had ue, as another theoretical physicist From my husband's exasperated epithet, I felt reasonably sure he was a moderately famous one who had achieved the success that had eluded Lancelot

He put down the paper and stared attrash?' he demanded They make him out to be a second Einstein for no better reason than that he died of a stroke'

If there was one subject I had learned to avoid, it was that of obituaries I dared not even nod agreement

He thren the paper and walked away and out the roos half-finished and his second cup of coffee untouched

I sighed What else could I do? What else could I ever do?

Of course, my husband's na nauilty However, the point is that even if I used real nanize my husband

Lancelot had a talent in that respect-a talent for being passed over, for going unnoticed His discoveries are invari ably anticipated, or blurred by the presence of a greater made simultaneously At scientific conventions his papers are poorly attended because another paper of greater iiven in another section

Naturally this has had its effect on hied him

When I firstcatch He ell-to-do through inheritance and already a trained physicist with an intense areat promise As for myself, I believe myself to have been pretty then, but that didn't last What did last was my introversion andfaculty member needs for a wife

Perhaps that was part of Lancelot's talent for going unnoticed Had he ht have made him visible in her radiation

Did he realize that hireay from me after the first two or three reasonably happy years? Sometimes I believed this and bitterly blamed myself

But then I would think it was only his thirst for fa unslaked He left his position on the faculty and built a laboratory of his own far outside town, for the sake, he said, of cheap land and of isolation

Money was no problerants and those he could always get On top of that, he used our own money without limit

I tried to withstand him I said, 'But it's not necessary, Lancelot It's not as though we have financial worries It's not as though they're not willing to let you remain on the university staff All I want are children and a normal life'

But there was a burning inside hirily onthat nize ator'

At that tienius to himself

It didn't help The fall of chance reainst him His laboratory hummed ork; he hired assistants at excellent salaries; he drove hi came of it

I kept hoping he would give up someday; return to the city; allow us to lead a norht have admitted defeat, some new battle would be taken up, some new atteed with such hope and fell back in such despair

And always he turned on rindto believe I must leave him

And yet

In this last year he had obviously been girding hiht There was so about him more intense, more a-quiver than I had ever seen before There was the way heThere were the tihts without sleep He even took to keeping laboratory notebooks in a bedrooh he feared even his own assistants

Of course I was fatalistically certain that this attempt of his would fail also But surely, if it failed, then at his age, he would have to recognize that his last chance had gone Surely he would have to give up

So I decided to wait, as patiently as I could

But the affair of the obituary at breakfast ca of a jolt Once, on an earlier occasion of the sort, I had remarked that at least he could count on a certain anition in his own obituary

I suppose it wasn't a very clever rehthearted, to pull hi which I knew, from experience, he would be most intolerable

And perhaps there had been a little unconscious spite in it, too I cannot honestly say

At any rate, he turned full on me His lean body shook and his dark eyebrows pulled down over his deep-set eyes as he shrieked at me in falsetto, 'But I'll never read my obituary I'll be deprived even of that'

And he spat at me He deliberately spat at me

I ran to my bedroom

He never apologized, but after a few days in which I avoided hiid life as before Neither of us ever referred to the incident ere was another obituary

Somehow, as I sat there alone at the breakfast table, I felt it to be the last straw for hi-drawn-out failure

I could sense a crisis co and didn't knohether to fear or welcoe could not fail to be a change for the better

Shortly before lunch, he ca rooaveto do and a bit of television occupied my mind

He said abruptly, 'I will need your help'

It had been twenty years orlike that and involuntarily I thawed toward him He looked unhealthily excited There was a flush on his ordinarily pale cheeks

I said, 'Gladly, if there's so I can do for you'

There is I have given my assistants a month's vacation They will leave Saturday and after that you and I ork alone in the laboratory I tell you now so that you will refrain fro week'

I shriveled a bit 'But Lancelot, you know I can't help you with your work I don't understand-'

'I know that,' he said with complete contempt, 'but you don't have to understand my work You need only follow a few simple instructions and follow the, finally, which will put -'

'Oh, Lancelot,' I said involuntarily, for I had heard this before a number of times

'Listen to me, you fool, and for once try to behave like an adult This time I have done it No one can anticipate me this time because my discovery is based on such an unorthodox concept that no physicist alive, except eneration at least And when reatest name of all time in science'

'I'lad for you, Lancelot'

'I said I could be recognized I could not be, also There is a great deal of injustice in the assignh So it will not be enough merely to announce the discovery If I do, everyone will crowd into the field and after a while I'll just be a nalory spread out over a number of Johnny-come-latelies'

I think the only reason he was talking to et to work on whatever it was he planned to do, was that he could no longer contain himself He bubbled over and I was the only one as nonentity enough to be witness to that

He said, 'I intend my discovery to be so dramatized, to break on mankind with so thunderous a clap, that there will be no room for anyone else to be mentioned in the same breath with me, ever'

He was going too far, and I was afraid of the effect of another disappointht it not drive him mad? I said, 'But Lancelot, why need we bother? Why don't we leave all this? Why not take a long vacation? You have worked hard enough and long enough, Lancelot Perhaps we can take a trip to Europe I've alanted to-'

He sta? Saturday, you will come into my laboratory with me'

I slept poorly for the next three nights He had never been quite like this before, I thought, never quite as bad Might he not be mad already, perhaps?

It could be ht, a er endurable, and sparked by the obituary He had sent away his assistants and noanted me in the laboratory He had never allowedto me, to make ht

During the hts I would plan to call the police, to run away, to-to do anything But thenwould come and I would think surely he wasn'tincident was not truly violent and he had never actuary tried to hurt me physically

So in the end I waited and on Saturday I walked to what ether, silently, alked down the path that led fro to the laboratory

The laboratory was frightening just in itself, and I stepped about gingerly, but Lancelot only said, 'Oh, stop staring about you as though so to hurt you You just do as I say and look where I tell you'

'Yes, Lancelot' He had led me into a small room, the door of which had been padlocked It was ale appearance and with a great deal of wiring

Lancelot said, 'To begin with, do you see this iron crucible?'

'Yes, Lancelot' It was a small but deep container made out of thick metal and rusted in spots on the outside It was covered by a coarse wire netting

He urged me toward it and I saw that inside it was a white mouse with its front paws up on the inner side of the crucible and its s curiosity, or perhaps in anxiety I a to is startling, at least to me

Lancelot growled, 'It won't hurt you Now just back against the wall and watch me'

My fears returned rew horribly certain that fro bolt would shoot out and incinerate e and crush me, or-or-- I closed my eyes

But nothing happened; to h a small firecracker had misfired, and

Lancelot said to me, 'Well?'

I openedwith pride I stared blankly He said, 'Here, don't you see it, you idiot? Right here'

A foot to one side of the crucible was a second one I hadn't seen him put it there

'Do you mean this second crucible?' I asked

'It isn't quite a second crucible, but a duplicate of the first one For all ordinary purposes, they are the same crucible, atom for atom Compare them You'll find the rust marks identical'

'You made the second one out of the first?'

'Yes, but in a special way To create y ordinarily It would take the corareat secret I have stumbled on is that the duplication of an object at a point in future tiy is applied correctly The essence of the feat,it back is that I have accomplished the equivalent of time travel'

It was the measure of his triumph and happiness that he actually used an affectionate ter to me

'Isn't that remarkable?' I said, for to tell the truth, I was impressed 'Did the mouse come too?'

I looked inside the second cubicle as I asked that and got another nasty shock It contained a white mouse-a dead white mouse

Lancelot turned faintly pink That is a shortco matter

It comes back dead'

'Oh, what a shame Why?'

'I don't know yet I iine the duplications are completely perfect on the atoe Dissections show that'

'You lanced at est a collaboration of any sort, for I knew from experience that in that case the collaborator would invariably get all the credit for the discovery

Lancelot said with sour aist has perfor Of course, they didn't knohere the ani would happen to give it away Lord, even '

'But why must you keep it so secret?'

'Just because I can't bring objects back alive Soeereater faive information about the future'

I saw that quite well Nor need he say it 'ht' be done It would be done Inevitably In fact, no matter what he did, he would lose the credit I was sure of it

'However,' he went on, er I must announce this, but in such a way that it will be indelibly and permanently associated with me There must be a drama about it so effective that thereafter there will be no way ofto prepare that drama and you will play a part in it'

'But what do you want me to do, Lancelot?'

'You'll be my '

I clutched at his arm 'Lancelot, do you s that upset me at that moment

He disengaged hi suicide I a myself back from three days in the future'

'But you'll be dead then'

'Only the "ht back The real "me" will be as alive as ever Like that white rat' His eyes shifted to a dial and he said, 'Ah, Zero time in a few seconds Watch the second crucible and the dead mouse'

Before ain

'Where did it go?'

'Nowhere,' said Lancelot 'It was only a duplicate The moment we passed that instant in time at which the duplicate was formed, it naturally disappeared It was the first inal, and it remains alive and well The same will be true of inal "me" will be alive After three days, ill come to the instant at which the duplicate " the real "me" as a model, and sent back dead Once we pass that instant the dead duplicate "me" will disappear and the live "me" will remain Is that clear?'

'It sounds dangerous'

'It isn't Once my dead body appears, the doctor will pronounce me dead, the newspapers will report me dead, the undertaker will prepare to bury the dead I will return to life and announce how I did it When that happens, I will be more than the discoverer of time travel; I will be the man who came back from the dead Tihly and so interht of tiain'

'Lancelot,' I said softly, 'why can't we just announce your discovery? This is too elaborate a plan A sih and then we can move to the city perhaps-'

'Quiet? You will do what I say'

I don't kno long Lancelot was thinking of all this before the obituary actually brought ence Despite his pheno his brilliance

He had informed his assistants before they had left of the experione Once they testified it would seem quite natural that he should be bent over a particular set of reacting che to all appearances

'So you see to it that the police get in touch with my assistants at once You knohere they can be reached I want no hint of ical accident I want a quick death certificate from the doctor, a quick notification to the newspapers'

I said, 'But Lancelot, what if they find the real you?'

'Why should they?' he snapped 'If you find a corpse, do you start searching for the living replica also?

No one will look for me and I will stay quietly in the temporal chamber for the interval There are toilet facilities and I can bring in enough sandwich fixings to keep me'

He added regretfully, 'I'll have to h, till it's over I can't have anyone s unexplained coffee here while I'm supposed to be dead Well, there's plenty of water and it's only three days'

I clasped my hands nervously and said, 'Even if they do find you, won't it be the sa "you" -' It wasto prepare for the inevitable disappointment