Ardor on Aros Read Free

remind me about my spectagles—better still, call Dr. what’s-’is-name for an appointment. Make three, as soon as possible; I’ll try to keep them. Well, Miss Shay.”
    Miss Shay—and Hank. Relative importance, of course.

    “Oh—yes. Well. That’s three times, doctor.”
    We were sitting in what Dr. Blakey calls his study—it was meant to be a dining room. It was 2 P.M., we had not had lunch, we had just listend to my tape, we were having, ad Dr. Blakey’s suggestion, a very large brandy-soda. I swigged mine with the usual covered-up shudder.
    “Please tell me.”
    Dr. Blakey looked at me. “Henry, at 11:25—and probably a half—this morning, my gold Cross pen vanished. At 3:15 yesterday my chiming watch also vanished. From the same platform, in the same manner, apparently instantaneously as the relay was closed.”
    I sighed and pulled at the brandy soda (heavy on Coronet; light on IGA soda). I remember thinking that Dr. Blakey was playing hell keeping gold in the country.
    “Yes sir. But sir—where? I mean—vanished to where? ”
    “Henry, in a word—we do not know.” He favored my gaping mouth with a benign smile. “I call that platform and the materials, that, uh, motivate it, a temporal dissociator.”
    “Sir?”
    “Time machine,” Evelyn Shay said.
    “Time machine,” Dr. Blakey said, not without some sigh of irritation. “‘Time machine,’ however, is a fictional phrase, an over-used one, and it has been proved impossible. I could not even discuss it with the editor of my favorite magazine, Engineering Analogies, for he considers time, uh, travel to be fantasy, and his mind is closed until and unless I allow some university dean to drive it to his office, with blueprints. But—I cannot prove that it is a ‘time machine,’ of course.” (His eyebrows placed the quote-marks around the phrase.) “Nevertheless, two solid objects have been placed on the platform and both have vanished. Unfortunately we know neither to where, nor to when, if we may invent a new phrase.” He looked thoughtful. “And I think perhaps we must.” He rose to his feet, swirling the amber liquid in his glass. It was a peanut-butter glass.
    “I propose we try to think of something else. I must make notes—Henry, you will type these, and I remind you of your secrecy pledge. Tomorrow—tomorrow we shall experiment once again, this time with a live subject: Pope Borgia.”
    Poor ole Pope, I thought, secretly delighted. Loudmouthed bighead!
    Doctor Blakey departed. Evelyn and I stared at each other.
    “Marry me,” I said, “ and let me take you away from all this.”
    “Oh god, Hank, shut up!”
    “OK. Where, O Iron Maiden dedicated to Science, did Dr. Blakey’s hardware go? ”
    She spread her hands. “Even he doesn’t know. The future? (“Fū chah.” Sounds pretty.) The past? 10 B.C.? The Pleisocene Maybe tomorrow; maybe tomorrow he’ll have his pen back again. Maybe key, pen, and paper are in the LaBrea Tar Pits. Or Waukegan. We’re trying to find out, Hank.”
    “In other words, male secretary, don’t bug us geniuses.”
    She looked contrite. “Oh Hank—“
    I had her contrite, which was enough for starts, and I pursued by switching off on another track. “Oh god, Evelyn,” I sighed, “give me your manuscript.” I needed to think of something else. Too, I thought, the flattery of being asked for her story should aid my amorous angling.
    He eyes were suddenly bright, her voice unscientifically eager. That manuscript was her go-button, all right! I hoped it would lead me to her other one. “Let me read it to you.”
    If she’d had a tail she’d have wagged it. Interesting idea; let’s keep Pope Borgia, I thought, and send Iron Evelyn. And her cute li’l tail.
    I watched it switch as she went for her manuscript. I typed up the notes. Including this description of the temporal dissociator, which didn’t tell me much:
    “When brass plates A & B (cf. enclosed diagram) are opposite each other,