The Man Who Folded Himself (4 page)

Ouch. And ouch again.

I'd thought I'd never have to worry about money in my life.
Now I was wondering if I would make it to the end of the year.

“—of course,” Biggs-or-Briggs was mumbling, “if you still feel you want to check our books, by all means—we don't want there to be any misunderstandings or hard feelings—”

“Yeah . . . ,” I waved it off. “I'll call you. There's no hurry. I believe you, I guess.” Maybe Uncle Jim hadn't been thinking straight that day. The more I thought about it, the odder his behavior seemed.

Oh, Uncle Jim! How could you have become so addled? A hundred and forty-three million!

I wasn't sure whom I felt sorriest for, him or me.

The lawyer was still talking. “—Now, of course, you're not responsible for any of his financial liabilities, and they aren't that much anyway. The company will probably cover them—”

“Wasn't there any insurance?” I blurted suddenly.

“Eh? No, I'm sorry. Your uncle didn't believe in it. We tried to talk to him about it many times, but he never paid any attention.”

I shrugged and let him go on. That was just like my Uncle Jim. Even he believed he was immortal.

“You're entitled to his personal effects and—”

“No, I don't want them.”

“—there is one item he specifically requested you to have.”

“What?”

“It's a package. Nobody's to open it but you.”

“Well, where is it?”

“It's in the trunk of my car. If you'll just sign this receipt—”

I waited until after what's-his-name had left. Whatever it was in the box, Uncle Jim had intended it for me alone. I hefted it carefully. Perhaps this was the hundred forty-three million—

I wondered—could you put that much money into a box this small?

Maybe it was in million-dollar bills, one hundred and forty-three of them. (I don't know—do they even print million-dollar bills?)

No, that couldn't be. Could you imagine trying to cash one? I shuddered. Uh-uh, Uncle Jim wouldn't do that to me. . . . Well,
let's see, maybe it was in ten-thousand-dollar bills. (That would be fourteen thousand, three hundred of them.) No, the box was too light—

If it was my fortune, it would have to be in some other form than banknotes. Rare postage stamps? Precious gems? Maybe—but I couldn't imagine a hundred and forty-three million dollars worth of them, at least not in this box. It was too small.

There was only one way to find out. I ripped away the heavy brown wrapping paper and fumbled off the top.

It was a belt.

A black leather belt. With a stainless-steel plate for a buckle. A belt.

I almost didn't feel like taking it out of the box. I felt like a kid at Santa Claus's funeral.

This was Uncle Jim's legacy?

I took it out. It wasn't a bad-looking belt—in fact, it was quite handsome. I wondered what I could wear it with—almost anything actually; it was just a simple black belt. It had a peculiar feel to it though; the leather flexed like an eel, as if it were alive and had an electric backbone running through it. The buckle too; it seemed heavier than it looked, and—well, have you ever tried to move the axis of a gyroscope? The torque resists your pressure. The belt buckle felt like that.

I looped it around my waist to see what it would look like. Not bad, but I had belts I liked better. I started to put it back in the box when it popped open in my hand. The buckle did.

I looked at the buckle more closely. What had looked like a single plate of stainless steel was actually two pieces hinged together at the bottom, so that when you were wearing the belt you could open it up and read the display on the inside of the front. It was a luminous panel covered with numbers.

Great. Just what I needed. A digital belt buckle. Clock, calculator, and portable stereo all in one. And wasn't that just like Uncle Jim. He loved these kinds of toys.

But the only thing that looked like a trademark said TIMEBELT. Everything else was display. Two of the rows of numbers kept flickering, changing to keep track of the tenths of seconds, the seconds,
and the minutes. Also indicated were the hours, the day, the month, the year—

Not bad, but I already had a watch, and that was good enough. Besides, this seemed such a silly idea, putting a clock in a belt buckle. You'd feel embarrassed every time you opened it.

Fine. I had the world's only belt buckle that told the time. I started to close it up again—

Wait a minute—not so fast. There were too many numbers on that dial.

There were four rows of numbers, and a row of lights and some lettering. The whole thing looked like this:

Odd. What were all those numbers for?

The date on the bottom, for instance: March 16, 2005—what was so special about that? What had happened at 5: 30 on March 16?

I frowned. There was something—

I went looking for my calendar. Yes, there it was.

March 16: Uncle Jim coming at 5: 30.

The date on the bottom was the last time I had seen Uncle Jim. March 16. He had knocked on the door at precisely 5: 30.

Uncle Jim was always punctual when he made appointments. On the phone he had said he would be at my place at 5: 30—sure enough, he was. But why, two months later, was that date so important as to still be on his calendar belt? It didn't make sense.

And there was something else I hadn't noticed. The other part of the buckle—the side facing the clock—was divided into buttons. There were four rows of them, all square and flush with each other. The top row was cut into two; the second row, six; the third row, three; and the bottom row, six again.

My curiosity was piqued. Now, what were all these for?

I touched one of the top two. The letter B on the lower right side of the panel began to glow. I touched it again and the letter F above it winked on instead. All right—but what did they mean?

I put the belt around my waist and fastened it. Actually, it fastened itself; the back of the clasp leaped against the leather part and held. I mean, held. I tugged at it, but it didn't slip. Yet I could pop it off as easily as separating two magnets. Quite a gimmick that.

The buckle was still open; I could read the numbers on it easily. Almost automatically my hand moved to the buttons. Yes, that was right—the buttons were a keyboard against my waist, the panel was the readout; the whole thing was a little computer.

But what in hell was I computing?

Idly I touched some of the buttons. The panel blinked. One of the dates changed. I pressed another button and the center row of lights flickered. When I pressed the first button again, a different part of the date changed. I didn't understand it, and there was nothing in the box except some tissue paper.

Maybe there was something on the belt itself. I took it off.

On the back of the clasp, it said:

The instructions were on the back of the clasp—when I touched it lightly, the words TIMEBELT, TEMPORAL TRANSPORT DEVICE winked out and the first “page” of directions appeared in their place. Every time I tapped it after that, a new page appeared. They were written in a kind of linguistic shorthand, but they were complete. The table of contents ran on for several pages itself:

 

OPERATION OF THE TIMEBELT

FUNCTIONS

USAGES

ACCLIMATIZATIONS

ARTIFACTING

I was beginning to feel a little dazed—of course this couldn't be for real. It couldn't be....

I sat down on the couch and began reading the directions in detail. They were easy to understand. There was a great deal about the principles of operation and the variety of uses, but I just skimmed that.

The readout panel was easy enough to understand. The top row of numbers was the time now; the second row was the distance you wished to travel away from it, either forward or back; and the third row was the moment to which you were traveling, your target. The
fourth row was the moment of your last jump—that is, when the belt had last come from. (Later I found that it could also be the date of the next jump if you had preprogrammed for it. Or it could be a date held in storage—one that you could keep permanently set up and jump to at a moment's decision.)

The letters F and B on the right side, of course, stood for Forward and Back. The letters J and T on the left side stood for Jump and Target. The lights in the center of the panel had several functions; mostly they indicated the belt's programming.