Part 1

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Z

BY CHARLES L. FONTENAY

_Time reversal exists at the sub-atomic level according to Feynman's Theory--and according to that same theory any entity can exist in three places at one time.... Does this explain, the strange co-existence of Summer, Mark and Wyn?_

[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Worlds of If Science Fiction, June 1956. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]

What scientific or supernatural principle is behind the mysterious appearances recorded some years ago by Mr. Charles Fort, I'm sure I don't know. It could, of course, be the same as that behind the sudden appearance of Wyndham Storm in Central Park, but I don't believe I've heard of a case that exactly paralleled this one.

I gather from a perusal of Mr. Fort's works that it is not uncommon for these unheralded visitors to come onstage without the formality of clothing; but I don't believe it's customary for them to bring their wives along.

I got caught in a thunderstorm that night in Central Park--not New York's Central Park, but Allertown's Central Park, which isn't as big. Having no raincoat--the skies had appeared clear when I left home for the movies--I took refuge in the big octagonal bandstand.

The storm was brief, but spectacular; one of those violent affairs that often mark the arrival of a cold front to dispel an unusually intense midsummer heat wave. The rain slashed across the park in wind-whipped sheets, managing to drench me even in my shelter. Big trees bowed low and reluctantly hurled away leaves and limbs. Thunder rolled incessantly and the lightning made an eerie daylight of the blackness.

Suddenly, there was a terrific clap of thunder and a fiery flash that blotted out everything around me. Shaken, I picked myself up from the floor of the bandstand, still not sure I hadn't been struck. Blue smoke was boiling away from a wrecked tree about thirty feet away, in the midst of a clump of charred, waving shrubbery.

And like Venus rising from the foam the naked woman stepped out of the shrubbery, followed by the naked man.

My first impulse was to laugh at these two whom the storm had chased from their hiding place and to be astonished at their brashness in disrobing completely in the heart of the park. Then it occurred to me that the lightning must have stripped them. They might be hurt.

I jumped from the bandstand and walked swiftly over to them. To my utter amazement, the young woman promptly threw her arms around my neck and said:

"Whatever has just happened, Don, I want you to know it's you I love."

Then she kissed me.

"What on earth!" I exclaimed, disengaging myself. The man was looking from one to the other of us, mutely.

"I'm Summer Storm and this is my husband, Wyn Storm, and we live at 138 March Street," she said, all in a rush. "Oh, Don, I'm sorry you don't know us any more, but I should have known from the way Wyn was acting and everything that's going to happen...."

"Wait a minute, wait a minute!" I interrupted. "I don't know you. How did you know my name?"

She didn't answer, but just stood there, looking at me intently. I averted my eyes. I was beginning to recover from shock enough to be embarrassed.

"How about this?" I asked the man. "Why should I know you, and where do you come from?"

"I'm afraid I don't know," he replied, sounding perfectly honest about it. "I'm afraid I don't remember anything. Do you suppose I have amnesia?"

"That's possible," I said. "But your wife seems not to be bothered with it. All right. Summer Storm and Wyn Storm it is--but the names are too trite in these circumstances not to be false. Both of you had better get back in the shrubbery while I get some help."

I found the policeman on the Main Street beat. As I thought, it was my old friend, Gus Adams. He accompanied me back to the park, the rain gleaming on his slicker.

"They picked a good address to lie about," he said, when I had explained the situation to him on the way. "The house at 138 March Street is vacant."

"They're probably spooners who got caught by that lightning bolt and are too ashamed to give their right names," I said. "If they had any clothes, I don't know what happened to them. I didn't see any in those bushes."

"What do you figure I ought to do with them, Mr. Gracey?" he asked.

"They look like decent youngsters," I said. "If it's all right with you, we'll take them out to my house until they're ready to let me help them get back where they came from."

"You're taking a chance," he grunted. But we wrapped the woman in his slicker and tied my best suit coat around the man's waist. Gus called the town's only patrol car and had them drive us out to my house.

I suppose nudists and doctors eventually reach the point where they look on nakedness as normal. But, to me, my "orphans of the storm" looked a lot more like human beings when I had them clothed in a couple of my old sweaters and some slacks.

They might have been twins. For all I knew, they were, in spite of the woman's claim that they were man and wife. Their eyes were an identical sky-blue, their hair an identical pale, wavy gold. Her hair was cut short, his needed cutting, so they were a good match. I judged their ages to be about 23, although I've been over-estimating young women's ages since I passed 30.

"Now, suppose you tell me where you're from and what this is all about," I said sternly, when they had finished eating the meal I had rustled up for them.

The man spread his hands and, for the first time, he smiled. It was the smile of an archangel. Whatever the failure of his memory, his smile was that of wisdom and patience. I was to find, not much later, that the woman's smile was its feminine counterpart.

"I'm afraid I don't remember anything before standing in the park in the rain," said the man.

"What's wrong? What's wrong, Don?" demanded the woman, a note of hysteria in her voice. "What's happening to us?"

"It's just that I don't understand this situation at all," I said. "You say you're husband and wife. Then you won't mind both sleeping here in the den, and tomorrow we'll see what we can find out."

In this remarkable fashion began a remarkable fifteen years.

* * * * *

Looking back on it, I suppose I loved Summer Storm from the time I saw her. I've been trying to decide what that makes me. Incestuous? Just narcissistic? Or, perhaps, Jovian?

She was alone in the den when I looked in the next morning before breakfast. Wyn--short for "Wyndham," I learned later--was wandering around in the back yard, looking lost.

Summer had a pair of my scissors in her hand, evidently preparing to trim her hair. Somewhat to my surprise, she looked contrite when she saw me.

"I just thought I might look better with short hair," she explained.

"Good Lord, it's too short now!" I exclaimed. "I like women with long hair."

She hesitated, then reached up to begin clipping. Somewhat nettled, I turned on my heel and walked out.

That incident is noteworthy for its strange sequel. At breakfast, I was thunderstruck to observe that Summer Storm's hair was long--at least shoulder length, for it was done up in a neat bun behind her head. Where in my house had she found a wig to match her own hair? And how long must the wig have been originally, for her to have cut from it the long tresses I found later in the wastebasket?

After breakfast, I took Wyn with me to check on the house at 138 March Street. I left Summer at home. Although she claimed to remember things and Wyn said he couldn't, I could make nothing of her "memories." There was a strangeness about talking with her, too, something I couldn't quite put my finger on yet.

As Gus had said, the house at 138 March Street was vacant. It was for rent. The owner, old Albert Meecham, lived next door, and I made an impulsive decision on the spot.

"Your wife insists you live here, so you two must be connected with this address in some way," I told Wyn. "I'll rent the place for you while we're trying to run down some information on your background. If you decide to stay in Allertown, you can pay me back after you get a job."

The only way I knew to probe the origins of Wyn and Summer was through the customary channels. That afternoon, I went down to the police station to talk with my friend, Gus, before he started on his beat.

The Allertown police station is nothing but a room in the ancient city hall, a block off Main Street, but it does have a separate outside entrance. Gus was sitting on a bench in the shade by the entrance, fanning himself with his cap. The perspiration pasted his dark blue shirt to his well-padded arms and chest. The relief the storm had brought hadn't lasted long.

I sat down on the other end of the bench.

"Gus," I said, "can you fellows help me find out who those people are we picked up in the park last night? It's funny, but the man has amnesia, and I think the woman's a little strange in the head."

Gus looked at me a little reproachfully. He laid the cap down, to pull his handkerchief from his hip pocket and mop his brow.

"You mean that story you told me was the truth?" he asked. "I thought they might be some relatives of yours, that had got into some sort of a scrape. Both of them look a lot like you."

"Do they? Well, they're no relatives of mine. I'd like to know just who they are. Mr. and Mrs. Wyndham Storm, she says."

"They don't come from Allertown," he said. "I'd know them if they was from Allertown. But they was raised around in this country somewhere."

"How do you know that?"

"There's a way of talking folks have around here. You don't hear it outside these three or four counties, and you wouldn't notice it if you wasn't watching for it. Take my word for it, those folks was born and raised not fifty miles from here."

"Well, just to be on the safe side, you'd better check to see that they're not wanted criminals," I said. "Amnesia would make a good dodge for a criminal."

"I've already done that," he said quietly. "They're not."

Wyn and Summer weren't missing persons from anywhere in our section of the state, either. Gus looked into that angle very thoroughly during the next few weeks, and reported failure.

Wyn got a job as clerk at McClellan's Dry Goods Store and, for reasons he did not confide to me, enrolled in night classes at Slayden College. He and Summer soon were established in the neighborhood as "that nice young couple that Don Gracey brought in from somewhere out West." How the townspeople got started on that Western origin theory, I don't know; I suppose it's natural for people to tack some sort of an origin on strangers.

I confess that their origin soon became a matter of minor importance to me, although I remained curious about it. I found Wyn extremely likeable; we became very close friends, although I estimate that I am ten to fifteen years older than Wyn. And, as I say, I was in love with Summer, although it was a long time before I admitted that to myself.

I told myself I felt about Summer as I would my own daughter, if a bachelor like me could say such a thing; and I felt toward Wyn as though he were my son. There was a good deal of accuracy to that description of my feelings, but there was a mystery about Summer that drew me powerfully.

I think the unattainable in woman is always irresistible. Summer had the most peculiar air of unattainability about her I ever have experienced. It was as though, when I touched her, it was a fleeting touch; when I looked at her, I was constantly beset by the feeling that she would, the next instant, shimmer into insubstantiality.

Talking with her heightened this illusion, rather than lessening it. A conversation with Summer was a unique experience. It was a little like two people trying to talk at once, each talking, then each hesitating to let the other have his say. Our words crossed each other, like scissor blades that do not quite meet. She might answer a question before it was asked, or take the conversation off on tangent after tangent. Disconnected, discontinuous--those adjectives describe our conversations.

Except for his amnesia, dating back to the night in the park, Wyn was perfectly normal. After some time, he confided that he, too, was concerned about Summer's strangeness. I got the impression from him--though he did not go into great detail--that it extended beyond her conversation, to her actions.

"It seems to me that I ought to know what's wrong with Summer," he told me, very puzzled about it. "I mean, it seems I ought to remember. But I don't. I've gone so far as to talk it over with her."

"What did she say?" I asked.

"She said she wasn't going to tell me now. She said she'd tell me one of these days, but that when she did, I'd leave her. She smiled all the time she was saying it, in the strangest way."

Well, we had Summer examined. Old Doctor Lodge is no psychiatrist, but a man isn't a general practitioner for as long as he's been at it without learning something about the way a person's mind ticks. He said there was nothing wrong with Summer, mentally.

"She acts like she's still suffering a little from some sort of shock," he said. "If she was right next to a lightning bolt when it struck, I'm not surprised. It's lasting a little longer than such things usually do, but it'll clear up."

It didn't clear up, but Wyn and I got used to it.

Amateurs, they say, shouldn't fool around with hypnosis, and I suppose there's a sound reason behind that admonition. But I'm a little better than the average amateur hypnotist. I've not only done a good deal of it at club benefits and what not, but I've read pretty heavily in psychology. I decided to see if hypnotizing Wyn would give me any clue to his past and Summer's.

Summer sat beside me that night at their home, as I went through the familiar motions and Wyn sank into hypnotic trance.

Under hypnosis, Wyn recalled easily everything that had happened since that night in the park. But attempts to regress him past that night brought only a death-like silence, in which he sat pale and immobile. I tried several times, and at last succeeded in getting him in an extremely deep hypnotic state.

Suddenly, Summer interrupted with an exclamation.

"That's me!" she exclaimed. "That's what I told him four years ago!"

"Quiet, Summer," I commanded, looking at her curiously. "I think I may be able to get something out of Wyn now."

Despite total lack of response when regressed to ages 22 and 20, I regressed him to age 18. He stirred and murmured. His eyelids fluttered.

"What do you see?" I asked eagerly. "What are you doing?"

"Wyn?" he exclaimed. His voice was clear and treble, the voice of a woman, as he called his own name. He clenched his fists, and moved his head from side to side. "Wyn, I'm going to have a baby!"

"What!" I exploded, amazed. "Wyn, what do you see?"

He opened his eyes.

"Why, I see you, Don," he said in his normal hearty voice. "What else should I see?"

With a suddenness I never have seen before or since, he had come out of the hypnotic state. I was afraid to delve any deeper. I didn't try hypnosis again.

* * * * *

During these first few years, Wyn and Summer gradually lost that identity of appearance which had made them look so much like twins the night I found them in the park. Wyn aged, not excessively but as any adult man would age in a few years. Summer, on the other hand, seemed to have found the secret of eternal youth. She grew ever more delicate and beautiful, and her fair skin seemed to take on a translucent glow.

I was a close friend of the couple, and I found that I was alone with Summer a good deal. Summer had shown an interest in schooling, too. She started in college with Wyn, then dropped back to high school, and finally fell back on studying at home. It wasn't that she wasn't bright. She seemed to recognize the facts she was studying almost at once, but tests and examinations were her downfall. She never could remember enough of the things she had studied to make a passing grade.

So I went to the house at 138 March Street often in the early evenings, to help Summer in her studies.

Their son was born about six years after they came to Allertown. It was a peculiar thing. There was no noticeable sign of pregnancy. Summer was sure she was pregnant, but Doctor Lodge scoffed at her, right up to the time of the birth.

"Sure, she has milk," he told Wyn and me, tugging at his white mustache and giving us a wise smile. "It's not unusual. She isn't carrying a child, though. It's a false pregnancy."

But the child was born. Then Doctor Lodge reversed himself and insisted she was carrying an unborn twin. Again he was wrong. Summer gradually but steadily recovered from the effects of the birth and regained her slender figure.

I still do not attempt to excuse Wyn for leaving his wife and newborn son. He was overwrought, it's true, but he should have taken them with him.

Instead, he came to me, his suitcase packed, when the child was about a month old. His face showed his agitation.

"Don, I'm leaving Summer," he said abruptly.

"Wyn! Why? What's happened?"

"I found out yesterday why she acts and talks so strangely. She told me. I couldn't sleep last night, and I've decided I must leave Allertown. Somewhere there may be people who can help me, but I can't find the help I need here."

"Was it so terrible?" I asked, trying to calm him. "What did she tell you, Wyn?"

He leaned forward intensely, pointing a finger at me, and opened his mouth to speak. Then he shut it and sat back. He shook his head.

"No," he said. "Maybe it wouldn't affect you as it has me, but you couldn't feel comfortable about it. All I want from you, Don, is the promise that you'll take care of Summer and little Mark for me until I come back."

"You know I'll do that. They can move in here right away. But I think you're making a mistake, running away from whatever it is."

"I'm not running away," he replied. "I told you, I've got to have help."

That's all he would say. He left on the mid-afternoon train for Mayer City, and I went around to 138 March Street to help move his wife and child into my own home.

I didn't recall until three days later that Summer had predicted--or so Wyn had said--that when she told him why she acted as she did, he would leave her.

* * * * *

If I can't excuse Wyn for leaving his wife and child, I have even less excuse for becoming his wife's lover. The fact that the interlude may have been necessary to his very existence--and hers--is no justification, for I did not know that then. Nor do I know it certainly now.

But picture the plight of a man who has in his home a young and beautiful woman, the realization growing on him, day by day, that he has loved her for six years. And it was Summer's fault, as much as my own. Perhaps more. Despite Wyn's words, I could not be sure that he would return to her, and certainly she must have known that he would. Despite this, she did more than merely encourage me.

I have wondered often about the philosophical implications of this fact. If Summer had not encouraged me, I wouldn't have been bold enough to make any advances on my own account ... and where would that have left Summer?

On the other hand, it was the most natural thing in the world that Summer should encourage me. She knew.

Wyn had been away only about two months when Summer, rousing herself from a deeply pensive mood one night, sat down by my side on the sofa and snuggled up close to me. I couldn't bring myself to pull away from her, but I exclaimed:

"Summer, this isn't right. What about Wyn?"

"I don't understand this coolness toward me, Don," she said, laying her head on my shoulder. "People who love each other shouldn't act so aloof."

I was thunderstruck at this admission. But I couldn't help saying what I said then.

"I do love you, Summer," I confessed, almost choking.

At once she arose and left me. I thought I had offended her, and I was almost relieved that I had. It was best that she should be discouraged about any ideas she might have about me.

But thirty minutes later she gave me a smile that made me not so sure she was offended. And the incident seemed to increase, rather than dampen, the warmth of her attitude toward me.

It was unpardonable, with Wyn gone so short a time, but I had no strength to resist the inexorable attentions of a woman I loved. When she came to me in negligee late one night a week later, I became Summer's lover.

I have said it was partly Summer's fault, and the sequence of events would make it appear almost entirely her fault. This is not true; and I found out several years later why it is not true.

My inexcusable affair with Summer lasted for about a year, before the conversation occurred which caused me to terminate it abruptly. I had just entered the parlor, where Summer was curled in a big chair, reading.

"I don't see any reason for our not loving each other, if we really do, Don," she said petulantly. "Wyn says he's my husband, but I don't feel that he is. Why should I be tied by a marriage ceremony I don't know anything about yet?"

I could not answer, for I was looking at her through new eyes. Her tone of voice had been so like that of an indignant child that it awakened me to something I should have seen before.

How like an adolescent girl she was, really! The pale gold hair framed a young face. Despite the rondures of her figure, there was a looseness about the way her legs were attached to her pelvis, giving her frame that impression of hollowness that is frequent among slender young virgins.

In the seven years I had known her, how could I ever have built up in my mind the picture of her as a mature woman?

When I thought about that sudden protestation of hers, made after we had lived as man and wife for a year, it seemed to me that it could only have arisen from remorse at such a situation. But it was neither this nor the fact that I was wronging her and Wyn that caused me to resolve then and there that never again would I so much as kiss her. It was that she was too young!

I did not waver in that resolve, from that time on.

But I thought a great deal about this matter: I had known Summer for seven years and she had been a woman when I first saw her. Yet her youthful appearance now made it impossible that she should have been adult then. Surely my memory did not play me wrong in picturing the Summer Storm I had seen that night in the park; indeed, the picture of her was burned indelibly on my mind. She must have, in the interim, become slighter, even smaller.

Oddly, this slenderizing process, once I noticed it, seemed reluctant to stop. The bathroom scales proved that she was losing weight slowly, but in her appearance the decline progressed much more rapidly. She began to get leggy and angular and she completely lost the once-voluptuous contours of her body, despite all the milk and starchy foods I could feed her. Nor was it that she lost appetite. She ate voraciously.

At the same time, I became convinced she was losing her memory. Chance remarks dropped at odd times indicated that her recollection of Wyn, of the events before Mark's birth, of all her past life in Allertown, was extremely faulty; she never had shown signs of remembering any events before she came to Allertown.

As a matter of fact, it became increasingly apparent that she no longer accepted Mark as her son. The boy was growing out of babyhood with that speed which is so remarkable in children. She cared for him solicitously, but seemed to look on him as her little brother.