RS01. The Reluctant Sorcerer Read Free Page A

could not remember it because he only had that experience further back along the timestream? And since he had repeated the experiment, did this suggest that there were now two past segments of the timestream, one in which he had seen two time machines and two rabbits, and another, slightly further back, in which he had seen three time machines and three rabbits? The whole thing gave Brewster quite a headache. (And if you feel like putting down the book right now and taking a couple of aspirin, your narrator doesn’t mind at all. Go ahead. I’ll wait.) The only solution to this dilemma that Brewster could devise was to actually get inside the time machine himself, so that he could find out where it went after he tripped the switch. (A video camera might have been an excellent solution to this problem, but he had tried that and discovered that the temporal field caused interference.) He had actually planned to make the trip himself all along, though he would have liked having some solid data before he made the attempt. However, Bugs seemed none the worse for wear after his two journeys, so Brewster felt the risk was justified. After all, nothing ventured, nothing gained.
    He had set everything up again, carefully following the same procedure, and he had programmed in the sequence, complete with auto-return commands. He had then set the timer, and turned around to pick up his notepad and his pen before getting into the machine... only when he turned around again, the thing had disappeared. The trouble was, this time, it did not come back. This was why Brewster had been so distracted during the past two months, while Pamela had been trying to get him to the church. She wanted him to say “I do,” only he kept repeating, “I don’t get it.” The first time he had missed the wedding, he’d been sequestered in the library, combing through the work of Albert Einstein to see if maybe there was something he’d missed. There wasn’t. The second time he blew it, when he’d made the trip to Liverpool, he had gone to pick up the special microchip component that would allow him to assemble several more circuit boards for the auto-return modules, so he could run tests to see where the thing might have malfunctioned. The third time, the occasion of Pamela’s breakdown in communications with her father, he’d been locked up in the lab, putting the circuit boards together and assembling the modules. And so far as he could tell, there were no problems in the wiring or the assembly.
    He found the whole experience extremely frustrating and he had taken to carrying at least one of the modules around with him, taking it apart and putting it back together again repeatedly, running tests and scratching his head and generally being off in the ozone somewhere, which Pamela found rather trying. However, she was a patient woman and she knew that as soon as Brewster managed to clear up whatever problem was presently occupying his attention, there would be a space of time, however short, in which he would be receptive to new ideas. Such as getting married, for instance. So Pamela didn’t press. But the moment he worked out whatever it was that he was working on, she was going to pounce.
    The commercial ended and Brewster set the little black box that he had reassembled back down on the coffee table. Almost absently, he tripped a little switch on it. And an instant after he did it, it quietly clicked back to its original position.
    “Damn!” Brewster suddenly exclaimed, leaping to his feet and sending popcorn tumbling all over the rug and Pamela’s hair. “Thafs it!” “Marvin!” Pamela protested, brushing greasy kernels of unpopped corn out of her hair, but Brewster was already rushing across the room and flinging open the front door of their apartment. “Marvin, where are you going? Marvin! Your shoes!” The door slammed shut behind him. She sighed heavily. A moment later he came barging back in his stocking feet, swept up his brown