What’s Done
|
Part 1 appears in this issue. |
| conclusion |
It was Greta Imelda Gandhi. She had found out that Evita Drugstore was kind of contemporary, born in the actual 132nd century. Furthermore, he was told that the fourth crime was scheduled to take place just a couple of years ahead. But Greta Imelda Gandhi did not know where. Well, he was not going to tell her.
Just a couple of years ahead? The time frame had been narrowed to an almost manageable seize.
He tuned in to the local news. There had been an accident when the teleportation system connecting Pluto with the other planets collapsed. No fatalities, but some travelers were treated for minor injuries.
Decision had been taken by the city council to build a museum for the collection of transdimensional artwork, which the recently deceased art collector Adolf Burenstam-Hotline had bequeathed to the capital. The museum was to be erected on the outskirts of the settlements. Williamstown was considered to be a suitable place.
Evita Drugstore... Torbjörn Ramrod spilled out his radium chloride when he heard her name... was due to act in Macbeth in connection with the celebrations when the Lord Mayor of Williamstown laid the foundation stone of the museum.
Ramrod stopped listening. It dawned on him that the place where Evita Drugstore had committed her future crime had not yet been built. Excited, he returned to his room, checked the co-ordinates and trilocated. Instantly, he was in the three other Williamstowns.
It was March 16, AD 2072, April 15, AD 6037 as well as September 7, AD 9263. It was always strange to experience three different conditions, as now the spring breeze of Earth mixed with the dry Martian atmosphere and the artificial oxygen of the shielded, inhabited areas on Titan, where Williamstown was the twin town of Kuiper City.
Torbjörn Ramrod knew well that above him were the satellite called Luna, two small moons called Deimos and Phobos, and one of the bigger planets of this particular system called Saturn. He saw none of them. It was daytime on Earth and Mars and even if the dome-shaped cover had been diaphanous, which it wasn’t, the opaque, red, aerosol-rich, eternal cloud-layer of Titan was there, effectively hindering anyone from seeing the grand sight of Saturn.
He stood in front of the Clark Art Institute, the Jewelry Collection and the Train Museum. He felt the remarkable surge that always surged up within him as he trilocated. He was in time. Evita Drugstore came rushing out of the three institutions. She was dressed in a transparent yellow haze, brandishing her stun gun. But she had no stolen property.
Suddenly, he realized that all three of her were aiming at him. At the very same moment as she fired, all three of him managed to relocate back to his room and time on Pluto, but Drugstore had hit him, and he fell stunned to the floor.
When he woke up his mouth was dry. He staggered and sat down, staring into the wall and feeling bad. It took some time before he was in full possession of his senses. He knew it wasn’t a good idea, but he nevertheless calibrated the co-ordinates and trilocated again.
This time he turned up inside the three buildings half an hour before the thefts. He went to the paintings, the jewelry and the trains he knew had been stolen. They were still there. He walked around and looked. He knew she would appear, stun the guards, steal the things, and run out of the buildings before she disappeared in a temporal haze.
He was somewhat annoyed at the fact that she would perform her acts not only at the three spots where he was but simultaneously in a future he on his part was unable to reach because he did not know the time co-ordinates as yet.
He stood just off. Even though he was prepared, he was taken aback when she arrived. She was like an irresistible whirlwind, sweeping away everything as she let her stun gun talk. And now he saw how the paintings, the jewelry and the trains disappeared in a yellow haze. She simply sent the stolen things back to her retreat.
Then she rushed to the exits, out of the buildings and he saw all three of her raising the stunners, hitting a threefold man, who simply disappeared. He had seen the three shes stunning the three himselves.
Back in Williamstown, Pluto, he stayed on and a week later he attended the foundation ceremony. He saw her arriving, a diva with prima donna behavior. He had bought a ticket for the performance in the capital and he was probably the most observant theatergoer that day.
Like a ghost she materialized on the scene, Lady Macbeth, sleeplessly asleep and Torbjörn Ramrod had to admit that Evita Drugstore’s performance was outstanding even before she opened her beautiful green-colored lips and spoke:
Yet here’s a spot. Out damned spot! Out, I say! — One; two; why then ‘tis time to do’t: — Hell is murky! — Fie, my lord, fie! A soldier, and afeard? What need we fear who knows it, when none can call our power to account? — Yet who would have thought the old man to have had so much blood in him?”
She moved forward, wobbling like a Denebian wormfly, her body stiff and trembling, her facial expression twitching, all of her signifying madness.
“The Thane of Fife had a wife; where is she now? — What will these hands ne’er be clean? — no more o’ that, my lord, no more o’ that: you mar all with this starting.”
Her hands seemed to grow, dripping with blood.
“Here’s the smell of the blood still: all the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand. Oh, oh, oh!”
Yes, Evita Drugstore was even more stunning without her stun gun than with it.
“Wash your hands, put on your nightgown; look not so pale: — I tell you yet again, Banquo’s buried; he cannot come out on’s grave. To bed, to bed; there’s knocking at the gate: come, come, come, give me your hand: what’s done cannot be undone: to bed, to bed, to bed.”
Of course, Shakespeare had known it. What’s done cannot be undone. What is committed cannot be uncommitted. And all of a sudden Torbjörn Ramrod got it. He had solved the problem. Before the curtain fell, he left Macbeth. Pretty soon he sat in front of Greta Imelda Gandhi somewhere else in the known universe.
He told her what to do.
AD 13271. Torbjörn Ramrod was on a mission improbable in the vicinity of Delta in Antlia when he heard the news that the museum building for transdimensional art had been completed in Williamstown, Pluto. He smiled. The mousetrap was in order.
AD 13275. He had to bilocate and he did not like it. But he was called in. One of him stayed with the lady he made love to. Another one of him faced Greta Imelda Gandhi.
“You were right,” she said. “A few minutes ago Evita Drugstore was caught red-handed as she came in like a whirlwind from the past to steal an irreplaceable transdimensional piece of artwork at the Williamstown Museum of Transdimensional Art on Pluto. She had no chance. She fell straight into the hands of the guards. How did you know?”
Torbjörn Ramrod had to make an effort to keep his concentration.
“Her mistake was that she stole in the future,” he said, obviously disturbed to have to explain his opinion. “Had she stuck to the past, we would never ever have been able to catch her. For, as Shakepeare put it into the head of Lady Macbeth, what’s done cannot be undone. By inference what’s not done, though planned, can be prevented. It was as simple as that.”
“Oh, come on now. She came from the past and stole in the future. The theft had been done. She was in possession of that piece of transdimensional artwork long before the museum was built.”
“Yes, that’s right, but no, you’re wrong.”
“What does that mean?”
“She stole it, she had it. But as long as she, from her objective viewpoint in time so to speak, had not reached the actual time of stealing in other than a subjective way, then her theft, as well as her possession of the theft, was of a potential kind. That is, even though it seemed real enough to her.
“We were not there yet when she potentially stole it, but when the actual or objective theft took place, we were in place at the actual or objective spot.
“I realized that during the performance of Macbeth. I knew that with an alert surveillance of the place, where we had reason to suspect that she would strike, she would be caught some day.
“Like most criminals, who stick to a certain behavior, she sort of set her own trap. She did it by choosing Williamstowns, all of them in the same solar system. That gave me a clue. Had she chosen her museums at random and spread them all over the universe, or at least along the Milky Way, she would probably still be at it, even if she had made one or two raids into the future.
“Try to get her to disclose how the heck she knew the co-ordinates even before the Museum was in place. That piece of information could be useful,” he said and added, “in the future.”
Puzzled, the mute woman he with a synchronous effort simultaneously made love to some parsecs away back in AD 13291 looked at him with her dead eyes.
“What’s wrong?” her stillborn eyes asked. “One minute you’re like a sex maniac and the next you’re more like a wrung out scouring-cloth.”
“Sorry,” the bilocating man murmured, “but I’m right in the middle of a meeting with Greta Imelda.”
“Well, well,” Greta Imelda Gandhi said in AD 13295. “The Lady in Black will be very pleased, I can tell you.”
“For the time being I’m not so sure about that,” Torbjörn Ramrod replied. “Not at all.”
Copyright © 2007 by Bertil Falk
