Three Days to Never (20 page)

It wouldn't have been precisely the same as the happy life with Amber that the old man remembered, but it should have been acceptably close. And it would have been affluent.

Of course neither of the Marrity-lives the old man had experienced had included a visit from his long-missing “father.” And in neither of the remembered lives had the semiblind woman tried to shoot him!

And there were a couple of other discrepancies too between this young Marrity's life and what the old man remembered. In neither of the time lines he had lived through, the happy one or the miserable one, had Grammar's VHS tape burned up. He had been surprised to see the scorched VCR lying in the grass outside Marrity's kitchen door, yesterday morning. And neither Daphne nor this young Marrity should know anything about a connection with Albert Einstein yet; he had not learned of it until 2006. But somehow Frank and Daphne did already know about it.

And why had they been an hour late for lunch yesterday? Urgent housework that couldn't wait?

And then at the hospital he'd seen that Daphne was still alive after all, and decrepitude had fallen onto him again like a waterlogged plaster ceiling. When he had struggled weakly to his feet, Daphne and Marrity had been gone,
Daphne's IV tube swinging free and dripping dextrose and sodium chloride onto the floor, and he had had to curse his way past the shouting nurses and limp out of the hospital.

He hoped to be able to find the foreign crowd, the sunglasses girl and her friends, and make a bargain with them—to get them to leave Marrity alone. He could tell them priceless facts about future events, in exchange for that. Even give them Grammar's time machine, for that.

He could try to do that much for his younger self, at least.

Lying on Grammar's bed now, he sniffed—then hiked himself up on his elbows. The raw reek of gasoline was overpowering the scent of the jasmine, and for a breathless instant he thought some recoil effect was pulling him back to the moment of his arrival in the gasoline-fumey Kaleidoscope Shed—with the dozen impossible infants waving their arms in the weeds outside—and then he heard young Frank Marrity's voice through the open window behind his head.

“There's a cigarette in it!” Marrity said.

Then the old man bared his teeth and winced, for twelve-year-old Daphne said, “What, in the gasoline?”

“Right, see, that's the filter, and that's the paper that used to be around it.”

“Who'd throw a cigarette in a gas can?”

“Somebody who thought it would set it on fire. I bet she laid a lit cigarette across the open mouth of the can, figuring when it burned down it'd fall in. Which it did. But then it just went out.”

“You shouldn't pour it into the dirt. I think that's illegal. Why didn't the cigarette set the gas on fire?”

“The can was nearly full. I guess there wasn't enough vapor. We can't just leave it sitting here; and we can't take it to a gas station for, for whatever the proper disposal is, on a bus.” The old man heard the clang of the empty gas can being put down on the concrete of the patio. “I wouldn't have taken bets on it
not
catching fire, though,” Marrity's voice said. “I can see why she
thought
she had reliably burned down the shed. She must have left too fast to see that it hadn't worked.”

The old man in the bedroom shivered in sudden comprehension—if Grammar's makeshift incendiary device
had
worked, he would have been jumping straight into the middle of an inferno, at noon on Sunday, instead of just into a heady reek of gasoline fumes. Even the fumes had made him scramble out of the shed as fast as he could.

“Poor old Grammar,” said Daphne. “I wonder what was going on.”

“I think we've got to figure
out
what was going on, before somebody else tries to shoot me.”

“Let's go look at the shed,” said Daphne, her voice moving away from the window.

Old Marrity swung his legs off the bed. In both his previous lifetimes he had eventually dug up the gold wire, and in horrible Life B he had sold his trailer to get gold wire to replace it and rewire the time machine, but he couldn't let them disassemble it
now
—they might just wreck it, and if the machine was gone, could he still have jumped back here? He couldn't figure out the logic of it, but he didn't want them fooling with the machine.

“Wait!” he shouted, limping toward the bedroom door.

He hobbled past the washing machine and wrenched at the dead bolt on the back door; finally he got it back and pushed the door open, squinting at the bright sunlight in the yard. It occurred to him that he hadn't shaved in two days, and his jowls must be bristling with white stubble.

Daphne and his younger self were standing in the weedy yard gaping back at him.

“Wait,” he said again. And then he took a deep breath, not having any idea what he could say next.

S
turm and Drang had driven Bennett to the Bank of America on California Street and led him inside, and there they really had given him six cashier's checks, each for $8,333; Bennett had tucked the envelope into his inner jacket pocket, feeling dizzy and anxious. The bank happened to be only a couple of blocks from Grammar Marrity's house.

Then they had driven out of that neighborhood, north to the cedar-shaded parking lot at the Holiday Inn by the Civic Auditorium. Sturm had parked next to a big brown Dodge van with a sliding door in the side, which had rolled open when Sturm got out of the car and knocked on it. From the passenger seat of the idling car, Bennett had been able to see three burly young men and a dark-haired woman in sunglasses in the van; white-haired Sturm had conferred with them for a few moments, then had got back into the car and driven out of the lot, eyeing the rearview mirror to make sure the van was following. The air-conditioning was
uncomfortably cold, and somehow the car smelled of burnt fabric.

“Where are we going?” Sturm asked now, without looking sideways at Bennett.

“Uh, 204 Batsford,” said Bennett. “It's two blocks south of the bank we were just at. What burned in here?”

In the backseat, Drang lifted a shoe box from beside him and held it forward, lifting the cardboard lid.

Bennett hitched around in his seat to look, then recoiled from the little blackened figure inside. “What the hell is that?” he barked. The burnt smell was gagging him now.

“Your niece's teddy bear, we assume,” said Drang, clearly pleased with Bennett's reaction. He put the lid back on the box and set it down on the floor by his feet. “It was buried in Marrity's yard. She apparently burned it up.”

“When we get there,” Sturm went on, “don't mention any of this about the sale of the grandmother's property. Just get Marrity and his daughter, both, to come to the van. Tell them you've got a bicycle for the girl or something.”

From the backseat, Drang said cheerfully, “We can take them from there.”

Sturm glanced at Drang in the rearview mirror. “When we get there,” he told the fat man, “you go back and wait in the van.”

Drang raised his eyebrows. “You think I look alarming?”

“Better that they see only one stranger.”

Bennett shifted uncomfortably under the front seat's shoulder strap, wishing he could lean forward and put his face into the cold air coming from the dashboard blowers. “Why did you bring the, the burned-up teddy bear?”

Sturm scowled, as if he wished Drang had not shown Bennett the bear. “It might mean something to the girl,” he said.

Bennett realized he was nodding, and he made himself stop it. “You could just let me go—I mean, I can get a cab to get back to my car, then. After.” He rubbed his hand over his mouth, feeling sweat in his mustache. “When you've—”

“Okay,” said Sturm.

It occurred to Bennett that they were now paying him just for the delivery of Marrity and Daphne, and not for the things Grammar had wanted to sell—if in fact these men were going to
let
him keep the money, or even let him go.

I should have awakened Moira, he thought. She'd have stopped me. Why the hell couldn't she have woken on her own?

D
aphne stared at her grandfather, who was standing in the shade of the trellis looking like a bum. His white hair was all shoved up in the back, and she knew that when her father's hair was that way it meant he'd been napping.

She was glad to see that he'd mostly recovered from whatever had happened to him at the hospital this morning. Over the door behind him was the wooden sign that read,
Everyone Who Dwells Here Is Safe.
She wondered if that sign was why he had come here.

“Wait?” said her father beside her. “Wait for what?”

Her grandfather was swaying in the patchy trellis shade.

“Don't—go,” the old man said. “I was asleep, and I heard your voices. I—”

“Who was that woman who shot at me,” her father interrupted, “in the hospital lobby?”

“I don't know—”

“You said, ‘She's blind if you don't look at her.' Which was true. And she tried to kill Daphne and me an hour ago. Who is she?”

“Ach! She did? She's a—a psychic. I haven't spoken to her in years, I truly can't imagine why she tried to kill you. I saved your life.”

Daphne's father shifted his feet in the weeds. “It's true, you did. Thank you. How do you know her?”

“She—she was part of a team that interviewed me once, after a, a bereavement—she's with a secret agency—”

“Not a United States one,” said her father. “We talked to a man from the National Security Agency last night, and he told me not to speak to her.”

“You did? I never did, not the NSA. I—only want what's best for you.”

Daphne noticed that he said it directly to her father. How about what's best for me too? she thought.

“What sort of secret agency?” her father asked.

The old man sat down in a shaded wicker chair against the outside bedroom wall. “They were interested in something a…family member of mine had previously picked up, which didn't belong to her.” He waved his spotty old hands inexpressively. “A family member who had in fact just died. I gave it to them, and they went away. They were psychics, they had a head—anyway, I didn't argue with them, so I didn't learn anything about them.”

“When was this?”

The look the old man gave her father seemed defiant. “I was thirty-five.”

“You're not saying you met that woman then,” Daphne's father objected. “She's only about thirty now.”

“I've met her,” said the old man. “Leave it at that.”

Marrity shook his head impatiently, then asked, “What did your family member take, that you gave to these people?”

The old man exhaled. “Call it a book. Call it a photo album. Call it a key.” He glanced at Daphne for the first time, then quickly looked away. To her father, he said, “Next time I'm inclined to save your life, remind me of how grateful you were this time.”

Her father paused, and Daphne looked up and saw him nodding. “Sorry, sorry. But you need to tell us
all
these things, not just the things you think we'll believe. Why did you think Daphne was dead, this morning?”

“A nurse, I must have misunderstood what a nurse said. I don't hear very well. Leave me alone.”

Marrity relented. “Okay. Do you want a beer?”

“They're gone, if you mean Grammar's.”

“Well,
I'd
like a beer,” Marrity said. He put his briefcase down on the cement porch slab to reach into his pocket. “Where's Grammar's car? I can drive it.”

“It—broke down. I took a bus here.”

Daphne doubted that. She and her father had taken a bus, and had got here a few minutes ago; her grandfather had been here long enough to have taken a nap. What did he do really, she wondered, steal a car? There's an old car parked by the garage with the hood up. Do you need to open the hood to steal a car? Or to stop it, once you've driven it somewhere?

“I want you to know,” said the old man abruptly, “that
I
hate my father
too.
”

“Why do you want me to know that?” asked Marrity.

“It's something you and I have in common. For a father to just leave his poor wife and children—what excuse could there be?”

Marrity laughed in evident surprise. “Well, you tell me, old man. I can't think of one. Not blackmail and the threat of imprisonment, for example. I wouldn't abandon Daphne to avoid those things.”

“No, I know you wouldn't. Not even to save your soul. I know you wouldn't.”

“To save my—” Her father seemed to consider getting angry, then just relaxed and laughed. “No, not even to do that.”

The old man spread his shaky hands and frowned. Daphne wondered if he was quite awake yet, after his nap.

“Eventually it winds up costing everything,” he said. “But remember I hate the old man as much as you do.”

Marrity was frowning. “Which old man? Your father, or…
my
father?”

“That one,” the old man mumbled, nodding.

Daphne heard the front door slam inside the house, and then there were footsteps coming through the kitchen.

“Who's here?” came her uncle Bennett's voice from the dimness beyond the open back door. “Why is the door unlocked? Frank? Daphne?”

“Out back, Bennett,” said her father loudly. He gave Daphne a look, and she knew he meant
Good thing we didn't start prying up the bricks.

She imagined the two of them on their knees in the shed—covered with mud and with a treasure chest full of gold coins
half exposed in a hole under the bricks, blinking up in confusion at her grandfather and Uncle Bennett—and her father smiled at her before looking back to the back door.

Daphne wondered if her uncle Bennett would yell at her father again about coming here without him and Aunt Moira—but, in fact, he didn't seem upset.

Bennett was standing there on the back step, blinking and smiling nervously. “Well, this is lucky!” he said. “I got a free bicycle from an ad shoot, and I was going to give it to you next time I saw you, Daphne! But I've got it right outside, in a van!”

A van, thought Daphne. A free bicycle. If this was a stranger, I'd run away as fast as I could. She could feel reflexive caution in her father too.

But, “Okay,” she said. “Thanks!”

“I'll go look too,” her father said, stepping forward. Daphne stared hard at his briefcase on the cement, and he hurried back to pick it up. “Thanks,” he muttered.

“Yes,” said Bennett eagerly, “you come look too, Frank.”

“I'll come too,” said her grandfather, and Bennett jumped, clearly noticing the old man in the shadows for the first time.

“Who are you?” Bennett asked.

The old man didn't answer, and didn't seem to want to look at Bennett.

“He's my father,” said Marrity.

Bennett frowned at the old man. “Moira's father?”

Marrity nodded. “Probably he inherits the place, actually. All Grammar's stuff.”

Bennett touched the lapel of his jacket. He started to say something, then just said, “Fine! Let's go look at the bike!”

Daphne and her father followed Bennett through the musty-smelling kitchen and living room to the front door. As Bennett pushed aside the creaking screen door and stepped out onto the porch, Daphne saw two vehicles parked in the shade of the big old curbside jacaranda: a brown van and a gray compact car. A man with a white brush cut sat in the driver's seat of the compact.

“That's the—producer, in the car,” said Bennett, almost babbling. “His name's Sturm.”

Daphne's grandfather had followed them out onto the porch. “Sturm?” he said gruffly. “Where's Mr. Drang?”

Daphne knew that
Sturm und Drang
was some kind of German literary term, but Bennett blinked at the old man in confusion. “How do you know them?” Again he slapped at the lapel of his jacket, as if to be sure something was still in his pocket. “Have
you
made a deal with them?”

“Relax, Bennett,” the old man said, still not looking at him. “Life—trust me—is too short.”

As Bennett led the group from the house down the walkway, the Sturm man was getting out of the car, smiling like a chef on a label, and Daphne noted that the man's gray suit looked expensive but didn't really fit his figure. Bennett stepped ahead of the others, apparently wanting to talk to him.

Daphne's grandfather was staring at Sturm, and his mouth was open in evident dismay.

He turned to Daphne and her father. “Run,” he said quietly. “This is the crowd that tried to shoot you this morning.”

Peering around the old man's shoulder, Daphne saw Sturm squinting at them, ignoring Bennett, and he reached into his jacket and opened his mouth.

Daphne's father had grabbed her hand and yanked her back, but she saw Bennett brace himself and then drive his fist very hard into Sturm's stomach.

“Wait, Dad!” she yelled. She heard her father's heels tear the grass as he halted.

The white-haired man folded and tumbled facedown onto the sidewalk pavement, and Bennett was right on top of him, fumbling inside the man's jacket.

The door to the van rumbled back, and two younger men in T-shirts hopped down to the sidewalk—then stopped. Bennett, crouching above Sturm, was holding a pistol, pointing it at them.

“Get in the car!” Bennett screamed. He hammered the butt of the pistol down onto the back of Sturm's head, and Daphne flinched at the sudden hard
pop
of a gunshot.

But her father was pulling her toward Sturm's now empty gray car, and Bennett was on his feet and running around toward the driver's side. As if the accidental shot had taken away his inhibitions, Bennett paused before getting into the car and fired the gun three times at the van; Daphne saw dust fly away from the left front tire and then the van sagged on that side.

Her father had yanked open the back door and bundled her and his briefcase into the backseat and slid in behind her. Bennett was in the driver's seat, and without even closing the door he twisted the ignition key and jerked the engine into gear.

The car's back door was still open, and Daphne struggled up to look out at her grandfather, but the old man was backing away, toward the house.

“Wait for my grandfather!” said Daphne. “Get in!” she yelled at him over her father's shoulder.

The old man shook his head. “No,” he said clearly.

A slim, dark-haired woman in sunglasses had stepped out of the van and seemed to be staring very hard at the people in the car.

Her grandfather saw the woman too. “Go!” he yelled, waving them on.