Part 1

TYBALT

BY STEPHEN BARR

Adolescence is a perilous time--whether it is the adolescence of a man, or of the whole race of Man!

[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Worlds of If Science Fiction, March 1962. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]

The physics teacher, Howard Dax, dismissed the class. He picked up a felt-covered block and erased the diagrams he had drawn on the blackboard. He noticed with annoyance that the lines were shaky, and in one place was an irregular star where the chalk had broken because of his exasperation at his pupils--or more exactly, one particular pupil.

When the blackboard was clean to the corners--Howard Dax was a very precise man--he turned around and saw that the particular pupil was still sitting at his desk. He was a thin boy of fifteen, called Mallison, whose dark, wavy hair was too long. It rose in a kind of breaker over his forehead, and he had sideburns cut to a point. His expression was neither sullen nor impertinent, but Dax had always had the feeling that Mallison was concealing intense boredom and only listened to him perforce. He was sure that the narrow, rather handsome face was on the verge of sneering. But there had never been quite anything that he could put his finger on. The boy was definitely not good at physics, yet he wasn't at the bottom of the class. The thing was that he gave the impression of being above average intelligence. He obviously could do very much better if he wanted to. Dax was convinced that he despised physics, and school in general.

"Yes?" Dax said. "What is it?" He tried to make his voice sound natural and casual.

Mallison stared at him impassively for a moment. Then he said, "You don't like me, Mr. Dax, do you?"

"My dear boy, I neither like you nor dislike you," Dax said. He could feel his hands beginning again to tremble slightly. Damn adrenalin! "I am merely trying to teach you elementary physics. Why do you ask?"

"Why do you give me such low grades?" Mallison said, but with no sense of urgent curiosity.

Howard Dax thought that the boy's manner was altogether too adult. He didn't expect deference from a modern teenager, but neither did he like to be spoken to in such a man-to-man way. No; come to think of it, man-to-man wasn't quite the phrase. It was off-hand. And yet it was artificial: Mallison never spoke in this way to his contemporaries. He usually talked like a ... what was it? Hipster?

"I give students the grades that in my opinion they deserve," Dax said. "In your case they are low because I don't think you're trying."

"I am trying," Mallison said, then added, "sir."

"You are," Dax said. "Very." He thought the remark was rather neat, but the boy looked at him without any change of expression. Why was he here? What did he want to say? "I must confess," Dax went on, "that I am surprised at your interest in grades. I should have thought that rock-and-roll was more your style. That and ... er ... racing around at night in a fast car!" He felt that he was sneering, and made his face blank.

"I'm too young for a driver's license," Mallison said.

"But old enough to pull yourself together and do some real work. You could do much better in class. You're not stupid."

* * * * *

The boy said nothing and continued to stare at him without expression.

"When I see signs of an improved attitude," Dax said, "and a little more work, I shall mark you accordingly. One gets the impression usually that your mind is on other things. Things like jazz records."

"Didn't you listen to jazz when you were young, Mr. Dax?"

Howard Dax at thirty-nine hardly thought of himself as old. The boy was not being exactly fresh, but he had a sort of polite tactlessness. It was absurd, but he felt that Mallison had the upper hand, somehow.

Dax had an older brother who had been a lieutenant in World War II, and he had described to him an occasion on which he had interviewed an elderly staff sergeant. The staff sergeant in civilian life had been his brother's boss. Although his manner was scrupulously correct, there remained an atmosphere of his peacetime ascendancy. Howard Dax sympathized with his brother. There was nothing actually wrong with Mallison's manner, but the pupil had the master on the defensive.

He decided to ignore Mallison's question. He had no idea how the young nowadays felt about the subject of early Benny Goodman or the emergence of Barrel House. Why was he even bothering?

"The point at issue," he said with asperity, "is not whether I used to listen to jazz twenty-five years ago, but whether you are going to pay attention in class _now_. I admit you manage to scrape through in the tests, but this morning, for example, you acted as if you were half asleep!"

"I'm sorry. I was very tired." Mallison did look pale.

"I suppose you were up half the night--cutting a rug."

Mallison winced at the outdated jargon but he merely shook his head. There were firm steps in the corridor, and the school principal marched in.

Mallison stood up; Dax was still standing. The principal had a small piece of folded paper in his hand, and did not immediately notice the boy, whose desk was near the back row and next the open windows. He went straight to the platform and put the folded paper on Dax's desk. He nodded curtly and glanced towards the windows, and saw Mallison sitting there for the first time.

* * * * *

"I thought you were alone," he said, turning to Dax.

"You may go," Dax said to the boy. "That will be all. Remember what I said." He looked at the folded paper and then at the principal questioningly. "Yes, Mr. Lightstone?"

The principal was a short white-haired man with a dogged expression. He turned again to make sure the boy had left and said. "I want you to look at this, Dax." He tapped the folded paper, which had been made into a sort of envelope, with its ends tucked in. Dax bent to examine it.

"Pick it up, man! Open it," the principal said, and came around and sat in the teacher's chair. "Be careful not to spill it!"

Dax picked up the little packet and opened it. Inside was a teaspoonful of white powder. "What is it?" he asked.

"That," said the principal, "is something for our friends upstairs in the chemistry department to determine. I found it myself, in the flowerbed right outside these windows!"

Howard Dax looked puzzled. "I don't think I understand--"

"If I don't miss my bet," said the principal, "that's heroin!" He jerked his head towards the windows. "And somebody threw it out of this classroom!"

"Oh, I don't think it's heroin, Mr. Lightstone," Dax said. "Heroin has a distinct glitter, and this seems--"

"I had the impression you were a physicist, not a chemist," the principal said. "Besides, the police told us last week that they believe a gang of narcotics pushers--I think they called them--are operating in the neighborhood! What else could it be? I've been on the lookout for something of this sort."

There was a silence. Dax didn't know what to say.

He himself was very tired, he had been working late every evening. He had three different tasks that occupied every minute of his waking hours: his job as teacher being the least important although the most essential. The other two were perhaps visionary, but they might lead to something more exciting than retiring on a pension.

"Well?" Mr. Lightstone was impatient--his usual condition. "Have you any ideas? It has been my experience that drug-taking and juvenile delinquency go together." This was not strictly true as Mr. Lightstone had never knowingly seen a drug-taker, but he did read the papers.

"I suppose there is a certain amount of delinquency here," Howard Dax said uncertainly, "but _narcotics_...."

"Wake up, man!" the principal said. "You look half asleep! This is a serious matter. I found the stuff right outside these windows! You must have some idea of who might be involved. Which are the unruly ones? Who sits next the windows?"

Dax glanced at the desk recently left by Mallison. Mallison? One couldn't exactly call him unruly.... Yet he had the earmarks of a type he detested and instinctively mistrusted. He even feared him a little, though not perhaps for reasons of which he was quite aware.

"Who was that boy that just left?" The principal had noticed the direction of Dax's glance. "Mallison, wasn't it?"

"Yes, but the packet might just as well have been thrown from one of the paths outside."

"There's no path near here. You know that perfectly well," said the principal. "There's a wide stretch of grass beyond the flower bed and no one's allowed to walk on it! I've had my eye on that boy...."

* * * * *

Howard Dax thought this over. Come to think of it, he wouldn't put such a thing past the young smart-alec. Hoodlumism doesn't necessarily advertise itself in the classroom.

He looked at the principal. The man had a nerve to accuse _him_ of seeming half asleep! Working in his private lab after dinner and then at his desk until all hours, struggling to learn Middle English--or rather, transitional Anglo-Saxon. He had done well at English lit at college, even though majoring in science, and Chaucer had come fairly easy to him. But Twelfth Century speech--and that was what he had to learn--was something else again. Chaucer himself couldn't have understood it. He wondered what young Mallison and his hipster friends would think if they knew his secret occupations. He could just imagine the sneering.

"Well, you _could_ be right, I suppose," he said. "He's not my--shall I say?--favorite pupil."

"I'm glad you think I could be right," Mr. Lightstone said. "I intend to hold an investigation. At the first possible opportunity. This very evening, in fact. At my office, and I shall have young Mallison brought before us. I shall expect you." He got up and strutted out of the class room.

After a few moments Howard Dax followed him. Outside, on his way to the gate, he passed Mallison, who was standing talking to another boy who had a similar haircut, but was unfamiliar to the physics teacher. He thought he was not a pupil of this school. They both became silent as he drew near them, looking at him without any expression. Dax wondered if narcotics could be responsible for Mallison's pallor.

After dinner Dax went into his little lab, which was actually the kitchenette he never used. On the table and sink was some chemical apparatus. The principal's remark had been ill-chosen since Dax at college had started with chemistry as his major and had only switched to physics in his senior year. He had also become interested in genetics, and it was this all-around interest in the sciences that had perhaps militated against him. Nowadays one ought to specialize.

Well, he was specializing now.

In an evaporating dish in the sink were some dark brown crystals that his landlady would have taken for Damerara sugar, but which had a considerably more complex formula. They would have lent a rather odd flavor to Indian pudding. The logic which had given rise to this formula was not merely complex but revolutionary. It involved the concept of reversibility of entropy--the application of which was itself unprecedented.

There were, Howard Dax was aware, certain aspects of germ chemistry that defied description in terms of classical and mechanistic theory; details that seemed to require the inversion of Time's arrow. To say that a physical process was "non-reversible" usually implied the presence of the probability factor. But that didn't seem to be the case here. There was the suggestion of prophecy. Or else that time was flowing backwards. Or ... was it that something flowed backward through time?

Then there was the fact that the germ plasm was immortal. Not indestructible, for the overwhelming majority of zygotes and gametes died; but if one disregarded the soma, all living germ cells had been alive since the beginning of life. After terrific work, none of which would have seemed quite orthodox to his colleagues, Dax had arrived at the end of theory and the beginning of practical application--at the taking-off point--the countdown.

* * * * *

Lying on the drainboard near the evaporating dish was a hypodermic syringe.

If he were to dissolve the dark brown crystals and inject the solution into his veins, Dax believed that whatever it was that impeded this time-reversal would be neutralized. His consciousness--not his body, his somatic cells--would travel back along the unbroken line of his identity as a germinal continuity. Back to the extent that the effect of the chemical would allow.

He would then be in the body of one of his ancestors. Not spread among them all, but following the line of greatest genetic valence to one individual: living in the Twelfth Century A. D. Probably, but not certainly, somewhere in England, since most of his ancestors came from there.

Of course the time might be wrong. He had no way of making a precise determination. He had experimented with a rabbit, but after the soft little beast's eyes glazed over in unconsciousness it had immediately come to. The time taken during its visit to the purlieus of its remote and unknown forebears was of no duration in the present. And it had at once attacked him and bitten him savagely.

It seemed curious that an ancestral rabbit at a period not so very far back from a biological point of view should have a spirit so foreign to the rabbits of today. Perhaps the drug had overshot its mark....

What if that were to happen in his case? Wouldn't it perhaps take him to some earlier, non-human form and then, as it were, rebound to the precise moment in history that the strength of the drug indicated? A man is not a rabbit. But suppose he found himself not in the body of a Twelfth Century Englishman--a risky enough situation--but hanging by his tail from a tree in Java? How long before the hypothetical rebound to the time of the Plantagenets?

Howard Dax was too tired to concentrate on the problem: it was probably moonshine. The rabbit had been frightened, not atavistic.

The cumulative effect of overwork and irritation at the boy Mallison and the principal's manner had made him reckless and impatient. He made a sudden decision to stop worrying about precautions and take the plunge ... now.

He had plenty of time before the meeting. The trip to the past would have no duration in the present. He measured out an amount of distilled water and stirred the brown crystals into it with a glass rod. Then he filled the hypodermic and went into his bed-sittingroom.

He went to his desk and took a last look at a list of early English irregular verbs and lay down on his sofa, rolling up his sleeve.

He hardly felt the prick of the needle but he realized that the rather painful bump on his forehead had distracted his attention from it.

He looked at the thing he had bumped against. It was wooden and round in section, about as thick as his neck, and rose at a slight deviation from the vertical to a circular platform that was supported at other places by two more wooden uprights. Beyond and above was an immensely lofty roof of dark timbers. Far to the sides were stone walls.

He looked down to discover that the cold floor under him was also of stone, covered here and there with dry yellowish reeds. Then he saw that he was on all fours.

Instead of hands he had black, furry paws.

II

Trice, the jester, was getting old. So, he feared, were his jokes.

His joints were stiff and he could no longer do the amusing contortions that used so to entertain the Earl and his little court. In fact, the Earl was getting on, too. He looked as though he was falling asleep in his chair. Next to him the Lady Godwina was mumbling and giggling--not at poor Trice's feeble quips, but as a result of too much blackberry wine mixed with mead. She hiccoughed loudly and the Earl opened his eyes.

He glanced at the Lady Godwina with bored distaste, and then at Trice the jester. Would that the fellow would cease his tedious clowning and go to the kitchens! Yet he hesitated to get rid of him altogether. Having a jester at all in these days was a mark of prestige, and he didn't know where he'd get a replacement.

Now that King Henry was dead he had fortified his castle like the other barons. Since feudal pomp had become the fashion he hung onto its trappings--poor old Trice was one of them. But, ye gods, what stale jokes! Well, at least they seemed to please the younger serving men, who must be too young to remember them.

Trice was unhappily aware that his humor was missing the mark. He fell back on the one thing that never failed to make them laugh. He swung his bauble and hit himself on the nose. He staggered back with comic terror. "Hold on!" he cried to an imaginary assailant. "Not so hard!" He struck himself again, harder. "Stop! Or I shall appeal to my noble lord for protection!"

The Earl smiled faintly; he didn't want to disappoint the old man. Besides, his nose was bleeding. It really was rather funny. Curious about these people: they had almost no sense of pain. Trice, seeing the smile, hit himself again and again, and feeling the blood, he smeared it over his face in fantastic curlicues. The Earl closed his eyes again, and Trice caught the eye of the clerk, a young man who had come from Normandy. He was sneering. The Lady Godwina was singing a little tune to herself, and paid no attention.

The old jester shrugged, and turned towards the archway to the kitchens and offices. Better have supper and go to bed--his head ached and his nose hurt badly, although the bleeding had stopped. Next to a wooden stool he caught sight of his cat, Tybalt, staring at him fixedly. Tybalt. His only friend! he thought to himself. But as he passed him, the cat, instead of following him out with tail erect to share the jester's wretched supper, backed cringing under the stool and turned his head as he went by, keeping his staring eyes on him. Most unusual. Very un-catlike.

"Here! Tybalt!" Trice said, but the cat backed further away.

* * * * *

Just before he realized what had happened to him, Dax recognized that the big wooden thing that loomed over him was a stool.

Maybe it was this realization--and the sight of his own paws--that gave him an idea of his size, and on looking back at the rest of himself he knew that he was a cat. Something had gone wrong. The flashback and subsequent rebound must have taken him far into the dim mammalian past, but for what duration he could not tell. The transition had been unconscious. At least he did not remember it. But to judge by the style of the round stone arches of the hall he was now in--and the stonework looked brand new--the ultimate effect had been according to plan, and this was the early Middle Ages.

A movement caught his eye and he saw it was the cavorting of an enormous man, dressed in gigantic tattered motley.

No. He wasn't enormous; it was just the unfamiliar scale of things. The man was saying something in a booming voice, and Dax began to recognize it as a form of transitional early English--but with an admixture of Norman French and some pure Anglo-Saxon phrases. And what an accent! If this man was typical, how wrong modern research and learned speculation were! He would have some interesting things to tell the experts--particularly his tutor--when he got back.

When he got back.... That was supposed to be in three days approximately, when the inhibiting effect of the chemical would wear off. Then he would, he hoped, be swept back to his own time and his own body. But he was a cat. This was disastrous! How could he speak to people? He could understand them fairly well, but a cat's bucal cavity and vocal apparatus were not designed for the sounds of human speech.

He decided to try his voice, just on the chance, but stopped, horrified at the muffled yowl that resulted.

Two rangy hounds, six times his size, roused themselves from the rush-covered floor and glared growling at the sound with raised hackles. "Down, Colle! Stop it, Bayard!" a gruff voice commanded, and they reluctantly sank back again, keeping their fierce eyes on him. Was this a sample of what he must expect from dogs? He hoped it was merely his abortive attempt at human speech. Any further communication must be tried silently.

He looked around the hall. There were other humans too. Several men-at-arms standing by the walls and a few serving men. At the big trestle-board were seated five people--one of them clearly the lord of the castle--it must be a castle--and the one woman sitting next to him in soiled finery would be his lady. The place reeked with the stale odor of humans and dogs, and less obnoxiously the smell of wood smoke and cooked meat. Dax realized that he now had a feline nose, and made allowances. After all, the well-to-do bathed themselves, in the still existing classic tradition, and would until the Black Death.

The ridiculous giant in motley stopped his capering and came across the stone flags towards him. As he passed with ponderous footsteps he looked down and said, "Here, Tybalt!"

Dax backed under the stool, terrified at the deep, hoarse voice. The man was probably trying to be gentle. He must keep in mind that he had a cat's hearing now, and all sounds would seem lower and louder.

* * * * *

How were cats treated in Medieval England? He did not know, and he was not prepared for this contingency. But at least cats as a species had survived. He hoped he was one of the lucky ones. He must at all costs manage to keep alive for three days, because if he were killed before the drug wore off he would not return.

What would they think at the school? Nothing, of course. He would never have been there. That would be changing the future ... but you changed the future every time you exerted your free will, anyhow.

One of his experimental rats had not come back: it had merely disappeared with a loud pop. Perhaps an early Colonial terrier had got it. It might be the best thing to do to take to the woods, and wait out the time safe from the unknown dangers of men and dogs--but what of the dangers of the woods? It was winter, to judge by the fire in the hall, on a raised stone platform in the middle of the floor, from which the smoke found its way out through a louver in the high roof. And the icy drafts that came across the floor. Although he was a cat, he had little confidence of being able to hunt like one, or find refuge from the cold and snow.

He decided to follow the court jester. At least the man had spoken to him kindly. And he had a name: Tybalt. He must remember to answer to it.

He got up and began to walk towards the arched doorway through which the jester had disappeared.

Walking on all fours felt perfectly natural--rather as if he were following himself. There was no trouble about keeping in step, or, rather, just out of it. His mouth was dry and he ran his tongue over his muzzle ... he could lick his eye! Then he did something that also felt natural, though pleasantly novel: he waved his tail. Then he stuck out his claws. They clicked against the flagstones and he sheathed them again.

He had never in his life felt so supple and physically complete. He felt like running up the tapestry that hung by the doorway.

At the other end of the vaulted corridor that he found himself in he could see the jester as he went into another chamber that was lit with a smoky reddish glow. There was an increased smell of cookery, and he guessed it was the kitchen.

When he got to the door he could see the jester was being given something in a bowl that steamed, and a large hunk of dark bread. The man turned and came out again and saw him.