ME, MYSELF AND I
By KENNETH PUTNAM
Never before in history had such an
amazing, baffling and faintly horrifying
thing happened to anyone as happened to
Galahad McCarthy ... but—whaddyamean, history?
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Planet Stories Winter 1947.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
"Don't you think you might look up from that comic book long enoughto get interested in a last minute briefing on the greatest adventureundertaken by man? After all, it's your noodle neck that's going to berisked." Professor Ruddle throbbed his annoyance clear up to his thinwhite hair.
McCarthy shifted his quid and pursed his lips. He stared dreamily at anenameled wash-basin fifteen feet from the huge, box-like coil of wireand transparencies on which the professor had been working. Suddenly, along brown stream leaped from his mouth and struck a brass faucet witha loud ping.
The professor jumped. McCarthy smiled.
"Name ain't Noodleneck," he drawled. "Gooseneck. Gooseneck McCarthy,known and respected in every hobo jungle in the country, including herein North Carolina. And looky, bub, all I wanted was a cup of coffee anda pair of sinkers. Time machine's your notion."
"Doesn't it mean anything that you will shortly be one hundred and tenmillion years in the past, a past in which no recognizable ancestors ofman existed? That your opportunities to—"
"Nawp!"
Blathersham University's greatest physicist grimaced disgustedly. Hestared through thick lenses at the stringy, wind-hardened derelict whomhe was shortly going to trust with his life's work. A granite-like headset on a remarkably long, thin neck; a body whose limbs were equallyextended; clothes limited to a faded khaki turtleneck sweater, patchedbrown corduroy pants and a worn-out pair of heavy brogans. He sighed.
"And the fate of human knowledge and progress depends on you! When youwandered up the mountain to my shack two days ago, you were broke andhungry. You didn't have a dime—"
"Had a dime. Only it was lead."
"All right. All right. So you had a lead dime. I took you in, gave youa good hot meal and offered to pay you one hundred dollars to take mytime machine on its maiden voyage. Don't you think—"
Ping! This time it was the hot water faucet.
"—that the very least you could do," the little physicist's voice wasrising hysterically, "the very least would be to pay enough attentionto the facts I make available to insure that the experiment will be asuccess? Do you realize what fantastic disruption you might cause inthe time stream by one careless slip?"
McCarthy rose suddenly and the brightly-colored comic magazine slid tothe floor in a litter of coils, gauges and paper covered with formulae.He advanced toward the professor whom he topped by at least a foot. Hisemployer gripped a wrench nervously.
"Now, Mister Professor Ruddle," he said with gentle emphasis, "if'nyou don't think I know enough, why don't you go yourself, huh?"
The little man smiled at him placatingly. "Now don't get stubbornagain, Swan-neck—"
"Gooseneck. Gooseneck McCarthy."
"You can be the most irascible person I've ever met. More stubbornthan Professor Dudderel for that matter. And he's that short-sightedmathematician back at Blathersham who insisted in spite of irrefutableevidence that a time machine would not work. Even when I showed himquartzine and demonstrated its peculiar time-dissolving properties, hewasn't convinced. The university refused to grant an appropriation formy research and I had to come out here in North Carolina. On my owntime a