One autumn afternoon, as it was growing dark in the streets outside and a fine gray rain fell steadily — the kind of weather that makes any memory of the sun unreal and that keeps a man glued to his seat by the fireplace — as I sat engrossed in old volumes (searching not for content — the content I knew well — but for myself from years ago), suddenly there was a rapping at my door. A violent rapping, as if my visitor, by not touching the bell, wished to announce at once that his mission was of a desperate nature. Putting aside my book, I went into the corridor and opened the door. I saw a man in a dripping oilskin; his face, twisted in great fatigue, glistened with raindrops. He did not look at me. He leaned with both his wet, reddened hands against a large chest that he had apparently carried up the flight of stairs himself.
“Sir,” I began, “what do you…” but corrected myself: “Can I help you?”
He made some vague waving gesture and continued panting; I realized then that he intended to bring his burden into my apartment but had not the strength. So I took hold of the soaked rough cords around the package and pulled it into the corridor. When I turned around, he was standing at my heels. I showed him the coatrack; he hung his coat up, put his hat (drenched to a shapeless felt rag) on the shelf, and on none-too-steady legs entered my study.
“What can I do for you?” I asked after a long pause.
It dawned on me that here was yet another of my unusual guests. Still not looking at me — absorbed, apparently, in his own thoughts — he mopped his face with a handkerchief and shivered at the touch of his wet shirt cuffs. I said that he should sit by the fireplace, but he did not respond. He seized the dripping crate and pulled, pushed, and turned it this way and that; it left a muddy track on the floor — an indication that during his journey here he must have put it down on the sidewalk once or twice to catch his breath. Only when it stood in the middle of the room and he could keep a constant eye on it did he take notice of me. He mumbled something, nodded, awkwardly went to an empty chair, and sank into its well-worn depths.
I sat opposite him. We were silent a long time, but somehow this seemed quite natural. He was not young; fifty, perhaps. His face was irregular, strikingly so, the left side smaller, as though it had fallen behind in its growth. The left corner of the mouth, the left half of the nose, and the left eyelid, all pinched, produced a permanent expression of gloomy puzzlement.
“You are Tichy?” he said finally, when I least expected it. I nodded. “Ijon Tichy? The traveler?” He leaned forward and looked at me doubtfully.
“Who else would be living in my apartment?”
“I could be on the wrong floor,” he muttered, as if preoccupied by something far more important.
Abruptly he stood up. He began to smooth out his jacket but then realized the futility of this — no ironing could have helped his clothes, which were threadbare in the extreme. He drew himself up and said:
“I am a physicist. Molteris is the name. You’ve heard of me?”
“No.” I really had not.
“It doesn’t matter,” he mumbled, more to himself than to me.
He was not so much morose as meditative; he was weighing some decision he had made, that had led to his visit, but now new doubts assailed him. I could read this in his furtive glances. I got the impression, almost, that he hated me — because of what he wanted, because of what he had to tell me.
“I’ve made a discovery,” he said suddenly in a hoarse voice. “An invention. Something that never before existed. Never. I don’t take others on faith; others don’t have to take me on faith. The facts will suffice. I’ll prove it to you. Prove everything. But — I’m not yet completely…”
“You’re afraid?” I suggested in a friendly, reassuring tone. They are, after all, children, these people — mad, brilliant children. “Afraid I’ll steal, give away your secret? Rest easy. This room has seen inventions…”
“None like this!” he exploded categorically, and for a moment in his voice, in his eye, there was infinite pride, as if he were a lord of creation. “Let me have a pair of scissors,” he said, again gloomy. “Or a knife.”
I handed him a letter opener that was lying on the desk. He cut the cords of the package with violent, sweeping motions, tore off the wrapping, flung it crumpled and wet onto the floor with what was, perhaps, deliberate carelessness, as if to say: “You can throw me out for dirtying your polished parquet floor — it doesn’t matter to me, who must stoop to this!” There stood revealed a nearly cubical box made of planed boards painted black. The lid, however, was only half black; the other half was green. It occurred to me that he must have run out of black paint. The box was fastened with a combination lock. Molteris turned the dial, hiding it with his hand, bending over so that I could not see. When the lock clicked, he slowly and carefully raised the lid.
Out of discretion, so as not to alarm him, I sat back down in my chair. It seemed to me — though he said nothing — that he was grateful for that. At any rate, he calmed down somewhat. He lowered his arms into the box and, straining until his cheeks and forehead were purple, lifted out a large apparatus. It was oxidized black and had lids, tubes, and cables — but I knew nothing about such things. Holding his burden in his arms as though it were his mistress, he asked in a choking voice:
“Where’s an outlet?”
“Over there.” I pointed to the corner by the bookshelf where the table lamp stood. He approached the bookshelf and with the greatest care deposited the heavy machine on the floor. Next he unwound a cord and plugged it in. Squatting down by his invention, he began moving levers and flipping switches; a soft, melodious hum filled the room. An anxious expression appeared on his face; he brought his eyes close to a tube that, unlike the others, was still dark. He tapped it with a finger and, when nothing changed, dug into his pockets until he found a screwdriver, a piece of wire, and a pair of pliers. Then, feverishly but with the greatest precision, he began poking around inside the apparatus. Suddenly the unlit tube was filled with a rosy glow. Molteris, who seemed completely to have forgotten where he was, put his tools back into his pockets with a deep sigh of relief, stood up, and said quite calmly, as one might say, “Today I had bread and butter for breakfast”:
“This is a time machine.”
I made no reply. I don’t know if you appreciate how delicate and difficult my situation was. Inventors of this type — those who have invented an elixir of life, an electronic fortuneteller, or, as in this case, a time machine — encounter complete incredulity from whomever they attempt to acquaint with their accomplishment. They are full of complexes, neuroses, fearing other people and at the same time despising them, for they must depend on others’ assistance. I exercise extreme caution at such moments. Whatever I do will be taken amiss. An inventor seeking help is driven by despair, not hope, and expects not kindness but derision. Kindness — as experience has taught him — is but a prelude to scorn, or humoring, or the gentle advice to abandon his idea. Were I to say, “Ah, how interesting, you really did invent a time machine?” he might fly at me with his fists. My silence surprised him.
“Yes,” he said, thrusting his hands defiantly into his pockets, “this is a time machine! A machine that travels through time! You understand?”
I nodded.
Seeing that his vehemence had no effect, the man became confused and stood for a moment with a silly expression on his face. It was not even an old face, just a tired, haggard one. The bloodshot eyes told of sleepless nights, the eyelids were swollen, and the stubble, removed for this occasion, remained around the ears and under the lower lip, indicating that he had shaved quickly and impatiently — which was also obvious from the Band-Aid on his cheek.
“You’re not a physicist, are you?” he asked.
“No.”
“All the better. If you were, you wouldn’t believe me even after the evidence of your own eyes. Because this” — he pointed to the machine, which still purred softly like a sleepy cat (the tubes cast a pinkish light on the wall) — “could arise only after the refutation of that tissue of absurdities they call physics nowadays. Do you have some object you can do without?”
“I might be able to find one,” I replied. “What should it be?”
“It doesn’t matter. A stone, a book, some metal — anything, provided it’s not radioactive. Not a trace of radioactivity, that’s important. There could be unfortunate consequences.”
I got up and went to my desk. I am, as you know, a stickler; the smallest article has its invariable place with me, and I go to particular pains to keep my bookshelves in order. I had been surprised, therefore, by something that had taken place the day before. I had been working at my desk since breakfast — that is, since the early hours of the morning — on a passage that gave me much difficulty, when, raising my head, I saw a maroon book lying against the wall in the corner; it looked as though someone had thrown it.
I went over and picked it up. I recognized the cover; it was a reprint, from a cosmic-medicine quarterly, of a doctoral thesis by one of my more distant acquaintances. I could not figure out how it had ended up on the floor. Indeed, I had been absorbed in my work and had not been looking around, but I could have sworn that when I entered the room there was nothing on the floor. Such a thing would have caught my attention immediately. I concluded that I had been more absent-minded than usual, unaware of my surroundings, and had noticed the book only when my concentration was broken. There was no other explanation. I put the book back on the shelf and forgot all about it.
But now, after Molteris’s request, the maroon cover of this quite unnecessary work seemed to thrust itself into my hand, so I gave it to him without a word.
He took it, weighed it in his palm, and, without looking at the title, lifted a black lid in the middle of the machine and said, “Come here.”
I stood next to him. He knelt, adjusted what looked like a radio knob, and pushed a concave button near it. The lights in the room dimmed, and from the socket where the cord was plugged came a blue spark and a loud crackle. Nothing else happened.
I thought that at any minute he would blow my fuses, but he said hoarsely:
“Watch!”
And lay the book flat inside the machine, and flipped a small black lever on the side. The tubes returned to their normal glow, but at the same time the maroon book grew blurry. In a second it was transparent; I thought I could see the white pages and the merging lines of print through the cover, but the transition was very fast. In the next second the book dissolved and disappeared, and I saw only the empty black chamber of the machine.
“It has moved through time,” he said without looking at me. He rose heavily from the floor. His forehead glistened with sweat, in beads tiny as pinpoints. “Or, if you prefer, it has become younger.”
“By how much?” I asked. At my matter-of-fact tone, his face relaxed somewhat. Its smaller, seemingly atrophied left side (which was also darker, I now noticed) twitched.
“About a day. I am not yet able to calculate exactly. But this — “ he broke off and looked at me.
“Were you here yesterday?” he asked, obviously hanging on my reply.
“I was,” I said slowly, feeling that the floor was slipping out from under me. I understood him. In a dreamlike daze I connected the two facts: the inexplicable appearance of the book, yesterday, on that very spot against the wall, and his present experiment.
I told him. He did not beam, as one might have expected, but silently wiped his forehead with a handkerchief. I saw that he was sweating profusely and had turned pale. I pulled up a chair for him and sat down myself.
“Could you tell me now what you want from me?” I asked when he had collected himself.
“Help,” he mumbled. “Support — not charity. Let it be… an advance on a share in future profits. A time vehicle — surely you realize — “ He stopped short.
I nodded. “You need a lot of money.”
“A lot. Great amounts of energy are involved. Besides, the chronoscope — to make the transposed body reach the exact time desired — still requires work.”
“How much?” I prompted.
“A year, at least.”
“Fine, I understand. But I’ll have to seek… the help of third parties. Financiers. If you have no objection.”
“No, of course not.”
“Good. I’ll lay my cards on the table. Most people in my shoes would assume — after what you’ve told me — that they were dealing with a trick, an ingenious swindle. But I believe you. I believe you and will do what I can. That will take time, of course. At the moment I am very busy. Also, I will need to consult —”
“Physicists?” he shot out. He was listening with the greatest attention.
“No, why? You’re touchy on that point — no, please. I am not prying. But I’ll need advice in choosing the most suitable people, those willing…”
I broke off. The thought must have occurred to him the instant it occurred to me. His eyes flashed.
“Mr. Tichy,” he said, “you don’t have to consult anyone. I myself will tell you who to go to.”
“Using your machine, you mean?”
He smiled triumphantly.
“I should have thought of it before. What an ass I am!”
“You’ve already traveled in time, then?” I asked.
“No. The machine has been working for only a short while — since last Friday, to be exact. I sent a cat…”
“A cat? And it returned?”
“No. It went five years, give or take a year, into the future; the calibration is not yet precise. Precision in determining the point of cessation of time displacement necessitates the inclusion of a differentiator able to coordinate the field warps. As it is, the desynchronization caused by the quantum tunnel effect…”
“Unfortunately, I don’t understand a thing you’re saying. But you haven’t tried it yourself?”
It seemed odd to me, not to use another word. Molteris was flustered.
“I planned to, but, you see, I — my landlord turned off the electricity on Sunday.”
His face — the normal, right side of his face — went scarlet.
“I’m behind in the rent…” he stammered. “But yes, you’re right. I’ll do it at once. I’ll climb in, like this. Now I’ll turn on the machine. When I reach the future, I’ll find out who financed the undertaking. I’ll get their names, and that will make it possible for you to…”
“Wait,” I said. “I don’t like this. How will you return if the machine stays here with me?”
He smiled.
“Ah, no. I’ll be traveling along with the machine. This is possible — it has two adjustments. Here, this variometer, see? If I send something through time and want the machine to stay, I focus the field into this little space under the hatch. But if I want to move through time myself, I expand the field so that it includes the whole machine. Except that the power consumption will be greater. How many amps are your fuses?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “But I don’t think they’ll take the load. Even before, when you … sent that book, the lights dimmed.”
“No problem. I can replace the fuses with larger ones, if you don’t mind; that is…”
“Be my guest.”
He set to work. His pockets were a compact electronics workshop. In ten minutes he was done.
“I’m off,” he said, coming back into the room. “I’ll need to go at least thirty years forward.”
“Why so far?” I asked. We stood before the black machine.
“In a few years, specialists will know about the project, but in a quarter of a century every child will. It will be taught in school, and I will be able to get from any passer-by the names of the people who sponsored it.”
He smiled wanly, shook his head, and got into the machine with both his feet.
“The lights are flickering,” he said, “but that’s nothing. The fuses will hold. But… there may be a problem with the return trip.”
“How do you mean?”
He threw a quick glance at me.
“You never saw me here before?”
“What are you saying?” I did not follow.
“Well, yesterday, or a week or month ago — even a year ago — you never saw me? Here, in this corner, did a man ever suddenly appear, with both his feet in such a machine?”
“Ah!” I cried, “I understand. You’re afraid that when you return, you might overshoot the mark and come to rest some time in the past. But no, I never saw you before. True, I returned from a voyage nine months ago; before then my apartment was unoccupied.”
“One minute …” He frowned. “I’m not sure myself. If I was here before — for instance, when your apartment was unoccupied, as you say — then I should remember that, shouldn’t I?”
“Not at all,” I was quick to reply. “That’s the paradox of the time loop. You were somewhere else then and doing other things — the you of then, I mean. Of course, you could accidentally enter that then from this now, in which case —”
“Well,” he said, “it doesn’t really matter. If I go back too far, I’ll make a correction. At the worst, the project will be delayed a little. Anyway, it is my first experiment and I must ask for your patience.”
He leaned over and pushed a button. The lights dimmed at once; the machine gave a faint, high-pitched tone like a glass rod that had been struck. Molteris raised one hand in a farewell gesture and with the other flipped the black lever, straightening himself at the same time. The tubes glowed with their full light again, and I saw his figure change. The clothing on him darkened and blurred, but I paid no attention to that, astounded by what was happening to his head. The black hair became transparent and simultaneously turned white. The body dissolved and shrank, and when he disappeared, along with his machine, and when I found myself facing an empty corner of the room, an empty floor — a white, bare wall in which there was no plug — when, I say, I stood there open-mouthed, with a cry of horror frozen in my throat, I could still see the gruesome metamorphosis that had come over him. Because, gentlemen, as he disappeared, swept away by time, he also aged at an incredible rate. He must have gone through decades in a fraction of a second! I tottered to a chair, moved it to have a clear view of that empty, brightly lit corner, sat, and began to wait. I waited the whole night, until morning. Seven years, gentlemen, have passed since then. I do not believe that he will ever return, for, caught up in his idea, he forgot about a simple, an extremely simple, a truly elementary thing, yet one that all the authors of science fiction neglect to mention, whether out of ignorance or dishonesty I do not know. You see, if a time traveler goes twenty years ahead, he must necessarily become as many years older. How could it be otherwise? It has been imagined that a man’s present can be transferred to the future, his watch thereby indicating the hour of his departure while all the clocks at his destination show the hour of the future. But, needless to say, that is impossible. To accomplish this, he would have to leave time, advance outside it to the future, find the desired moment, and enter it from without… as if there existed a place outside time. But there is no place outside time and no such path. Thus with his own hands poor Molteris started the machine that killed him — killed him with old age, nothing else — and when it reaches its stopping point in the future, it will contain a gray-haired, shrunken corpse…
And now, gentlemen, the most terrible thing. The machine has come to a halt there in the future; but this building, this apartment, this room, and this empty corner are traveling through time, too — though in the only manner accessible to us — and will travel and eventually arrive at the moment when the machine came to rest. And then the machine will appear there in the white corner, and, with it, Molteris… what is left of him… and this is inevitable.