The Collected Stories

by Earl

  Goodwin left again. A few days later came a letter from Callahan, stating that Dr. Festus, who knew him quite well, had attempted to dissuade him from his course upon learning he had accepted. Callahan also said that Dr. Festus seemed to imply that he thought the project the height of folly, and even that he might attempt to disrupt their plans. Professor Reinhardt became alarmed at this, unduly perhaps, and rushed to New York. He returned next day and informed Boswell that only after hours of arguing had he won a promise from the spoil-sport Dr. Festus to calm his violent opposition and let the others do as they wished. The biologist also visited Callahan to find that individual sadly shaken in his resolve by the dark hints of disaster that Dr. Festus had thrown at him in the attempt to save his friend from what he openly considered wilful suicide. But he had firmly shook hands with Reinhardt and assured him that he would go through with it.

  To Boswell, all these fears were past comprehension. He looked forward to the event as a glorious adventure; never so much as a tremor of doubt or fear shook his confidence or resolve. Certain it was that he passed through the strain of the month before the departure with far less perturbation than Goodwin and Callahan, less perhaps even than the biologist, whose weight of years carried less of optimism than the buoyant, high-spirited younger man.

  * * *

  Mutely, the four adventurers climbed into the car. It was Sunday near midnight, a month after the meeting of those same four and three others when the project had first been announced. The butler acted as chauffeur on this occasion and drove the big car smoothly past the city limits and out into the quiet country-side. Not a word was spoken during the hour and a half it took to get to the burial place—words seemed unnecessary, inadequate under the circumstances to express feeling as these four moodily stared at the bright stars for what might be the last time in life—certainly for the last time in their present configuration and arrangement. The mooing of cows from a passing barn caused involuntary tremors to shake them, a symbol of departure of things they knew and understood. Callahan, particularly, seemed moved the most. He sat tight-lipped and pale, watching each passing pair of headlights with eager fascination, as if trying to crowd these last few minutes with the impressions of a world that would soon cease to exist for him. Goodwin tried to say once that the moon was exceptionally pretty, hanging like a golden sickle on the horizon, but the words came out hoarse and short, belying the speaker’s mood. It was not the beauty that he saw, but the spectre of irrevocable change, transition that would engulf them. Possibly only pride withheld him, and also Callahan, from bursting out in hysterical pleas to release him from his promise and let him go back to a life that now seemed so dear and wonderful in its remoteness. Even the eager Boswell felt the mood pressing down upon his heart with an intangible but heavy hand.

  The car stopped beside a natural grotto down in which could be seen the black mouth of a cave. They filed in separately, the biologist in the lead, stooping to avoid bumping their heads on the low roof. A short passageway led them to a fairly large chamber lighted by several flickering candles, whose center floor was marred by the opening of a rectangular pit. The newcomers muttered subdued “hellos” to the two men who were there already, the laboratory assistant, at whose feet reposed a box, and the close friend to whom the biologist had bequeathed his personal belongings. With an unwilling fascination gripping them, the four who were to leave the world of that time stepped to the edge of the pit and looked down at the caskets.

  Professor Reinhardt played a flashlight about as he spoke: “You notice the metal rack that holds the four caskets, two above two. They are welded to the frame so that we are assured of remaining together through the centuries that they will lie there. Only a major earth movement, which is extremely unlikely, can tear the frame asunder, separating us. On the surfaces of the four caskets have been acid-written the date and year of interment and a short message in English, so that the people who dig us up will know exactly what and from what period they are. Of course, as you know, inside the caskets with our bodies will be placed the thin aluminum plates with a complete and engraved record of this whole affair, so that even if. . . . ah. . . . we do not survive to talk to them, they will know all about us.”

  For a moment, the four stared silently at the shiny, nickeled caskets as the flashlight played over them. The tipper halves were swung back onto the frame and held in place by strong chains and pulleys. Each of the lower halves was bedded with cotton, protected at the moment from dirt and dust by cloths.

  l Boswell tore his eyes away from the pit and swung them about the cave. In one corner he distinguished a cement mixer, beside it piles of cement sacks and sand. In another corner were cylinders of gas for the welding and cans of thermite. Both thermite and gas welding were to be used to insure that the caskets would be sealed properly. A large vacuum pump and fittings lay ready for use against one wall.

  Professor Reinhardt, after engaging in a whispered conversation with the assistant, addressed the three men again.

  “Well, my fellow time-travellers—for that’s what we’ll be, in a way—there is nothing more to do except prepare for the last act. We will take off all our clothes and clamber down to our separate caskets. Boswell’s and mine are the lower two. After we are settled comfortably on the cotton, my former assistant will inject the virus into our arms. It will take effect in about three minutes and will be nothing more troublesome than falling asleep. Then these two men will pack cotton all around our bodies. That cotton, by the way, has been treated so that all potential decaying bacteria have been destroyed. I am not sure, but I think the cotton will last without deterioration. The three men who will lower the lids will be here in an hour—I thought it best not to have them here during the actual process of injection—and they will weld the halves firmly together and pour the cement to the level of the floor. On the top surface of the wet cement, my friend will trace a message for the finders of the caskets to read, if English is still used by them. After all the paraphernalia has been cleared out, the cave entrance will be dynamited to seal us off completely from the outer world.

  “My friends,” continued Professor Reinhardt solemnly, “when next we open our eyes, we will he in 12,000 A.D. or later. God grant that we open our eyes again.”

  Callahan gasped audibly and then flushed in embarrassment. The flush was instantly replaced by the white hue of a corpse; his eyes were wide in the strong emotion he felt. Goodwin seemed calm, but his skin too had paled to a semblance of death itself. Perhaps not until then had the full realization of the step they were taking come upon them—the chance they were taking with their lives. Boswell, although subdued by the graveyard-like scene, alone of them all retained a normal color. His eyes flashed like diamonds in the candle light. Professor Reinhardt was white of skin, but there shone from his burning eyes the fires of hope and determination. He saw not death but a new life. His eyes met those of Boswell, and almost like a living force there passed exultation and the undying spirit of adventure between them. The two men who were to send them to the beyond appeared horribly depressed, almost as though they felt they were the participants in some evil rite which was a blasphemy in the eyes of Heaven.

  Goodwin cast a sidelong glance at Boswell. A trace of his normal color returned and he stirred from the trance that had gripped them all for many long moments, squaring his shoulders.

  “All right, professor,” he said firmly, “I’m ready.”

  Callahan started as from a deep sleep and then muttered weakly, “I too.”

  Boswell signified readiness by beginning to remove his clothes. In a few minutes they stood naked beside the pit. The two watchers stepped up and shook hands all around, muttering strange and broken sentences that no one heard or paid any attention to. Then the four naked men faced each other and shook hands with nervous grips. Callahan’s lip trembled a bit, but when he looked full into the inspiring face of young Boswell, he drew in his breath sharply and pursed his lips tightly together.

 
“Au revoir, my friends and companions,” said the biologist softly with admirable control of his voice under the circumstances. “We are entrusting ourselves to the care of Mother Earth—we have nothing to fear.”

  He turned and jumped to the flat top of the framework, which was five feet below level. The two clothed men stood at the edge and shone their flashlights below. With a bit of puffing, the biologist clambered down the metal bars to the damp, but clean, cement foundation upon which the assembly rested. He carefully pulled away the cloth, covering the cotton bedding, and settled himself at full length. He waved an arm and the lights were switched to the other side where Boswell clambered down and fitted his body into the soft bed of cotton.

  He watched every little detailed move the other two made as they clambered into their caskets—as much as he could see between the metal parts of the frame. Then the laboratory assistant came down to the bottom and quickly inoculated them with a hypodermic needle. There was a momentary shuffling of feet above them, a few faint whispers, and then utter silence.

  As the virus took effect, Boswell felt a delightful languor steal over him. Time suddenly ceased to exist and the outlines of the things above and around him faded into a blur. He felt his body floating on an endless sea of clouds, his Heavens a globe of corruscating color. There seemed to be a weird pain—a sad and sweet ache—stealing through every fiber of his young body. The colors around him began to sweep majestically across his vision, moving, somehow, with the mighty ponderance of ages and ages of time in their ripples and convolutions. It seemed a cosmic book were being opened and read, page by page, written in a language of colors to which no one had the key. The ache increased in intensity but it brought no desire to cry out in pain; it was a pleasing ache that seemed to hold a promise of reward in the future to which he was going. In a surge of rational thought, he attempted to think of what had gone before and found that he had completely forgotten that which was past. Nor could he divine where he was or what he was doing; all he could see and was conscious of was the vibrating ache all over his body and the grand spectacle of color before his eyes. He was like a man going down a swift—supernaturally swift—river in a boat, unable to see the dock for distance and unable to distinguish his surroundings for swiftness.

  Then a blanket of ebon enfolded the colors and the ache became the unfelt emptiness of a void.

  CHAPTER IV

  The Awakening

  l Out of the ebon void came a soft ray of light, so soft that it did not seem to be there at times. Like soft evening shadows a dim remembrance came to Boswell—a remembrance of undefinable things that tore his heart like a plaintive melody. In the chaos of awakening consciousness, he knew not where to begin grasping at straws of things that would end a dream—the dream that had infested his slumbers for all eternity, it seemed. As a disembodied spirit might wander about looking for a haven, his numbed brain probed here and there, trying to bring out vague things that he felt should be, but which remained beyond his mental grasp. He was looking for an end to a dream—a fantasy that chilled his heart by its immense duration—but his brain reeled in thick clouds of more dream-stuff. He summoned all his powers of thought and fluttered his eyelids. Centuries rolled by his eyes, ages of time that had forgotten to move, had clogged like mud on a wheel.

  But that was the Awakening. He opened his eyes wide and dim vision came to organs that had almost forgotten their purpose. Soft blue light bathed them and strengthened them. At first Boswell saw only a blur, a blending of glowing colors, which dropped to his eyes as lightly as a thistle. In a pleasing languor, he closed them again and his mind flowed with currents that had been dormant for eons. Like a flood came the tide of memory. Waxing stronger second by second, his thoughts filed in regular order until the empty void of his drugged mind bridged the last gap.

  When next he opened his eyes, he knew what he was looking for. He had been put into suspended animation in the twentieth century; he was opening them now in some future age. The first thing he saw was a human face. But it was a face that reflected distinct departure from faces he had known in his age. It was kindly, almost sad, lined with age or wisdom—he could not know which.

  That was all Boswell waited to see. Next moment he had propped himself up on elbows, eyes shining in eagerness. With the clouds of the first awakening gone, he felt as if he had just lain down a few moments before, as a sound sleeper finds it hard to credit that many hours have passed when he awakes in the morning. But a hasty glance around quickly dispelled any lingering doubt he might have that the virus had failed to do its work.

  First of all, Boswell saw that he was not in the underground cave near Boston; he was in an immense chamber that brought a broken exclamation to his lips in its total foreignness of decoration from what he knew. Then the three humans that watched his every move with quick, excited eyes—they by no manner of mental flexibility could belong to the twentieth century. In fact, for a brief panicky moment, Boswell wondered if they were humans, so amazingly different were they. But he realized that they were immediately after, although altered in several astounding ways.

  Boswell ran his eyes over the nearest figure, still propped on his elbows. He saw a dwarfed body with broad hips and thin, short legs—not deformed to the standards he knew, but smaller and weaker-looking. Also the arms were thin but extraordinarily long and terminated by a hand of astonishingly long fingers. But the head brought a muffled gasp from Boswell. From a normal-sized face tapered a bulky cranium that seemed ready to burst from internal pressure. The instant impression of vast intelligence, betokened by that bulging, hairless skull, struck Boswell like a blow in the face. He suddenly felt himself dwindle mentally to insignificance before the intellect that fairly poured out of the deep-set eyes fastened on him. He caught again an indefinable, intangible look of great, deep sadness, not only in one, but all three faces.

  But the exuberance and patience of Boswell’s youth had reached its limit. He leaped joyfully from his metal bed to the floor, and then sat on the edge of the casket, overcome by an intense vertigo. It passed as quickly as it had come and he rose to his feet.

  Facing the three figures, who had not changed expression a whit, he noticed suddenly that they were stark naked. This reminded him of his own predicament and he flushed quite naturally, for one of the figures before him was unmistakably female. Then it flashed on him that there could be no similar embarrassment or false modesty in them, for assuredly, if they were naked before each other, it must signify that it was a universal practice of the time.

  Eased of this troublesome detail, he essayed to speak. A fit of dry coughs had to be conquered before he could bring out the words.

  “Hello,” he said and then promptly chided himself for the inane word.

  “Greetings, people of the future,” he resumed with a firmer voice, thrilling through and through that he was the first to greet them. “We are from the year 1930 A.D. What year is this?”

  He wondered even as he spoke whether the English language had survived that long or been replaced centuries before by some more efficient tongue. He hoped that in that case, English had been preserved as a dead but still known language so that they could converse together.

  But his hopes were dashed. The foremost figure swung that bulbous head of his from side to side in a gesture that had apparently survived all change. A slight smile appeared on his lips. Then the three of them began conversing amongst themselves in a style of speech that Boswell knew was of a date never to be confounded with the twentieth century.

  The young man took the opportunity to see what had been done with the other caskets. He saw the top half of his casket lying flat on the floor nearby. Then he looked up to the casket above his, which would be Callahan’s.

  A hoarse cry burst from his lips, causing the three talking together to look at him. But Boswell became oblivious of them as his unwilling brain interpreted what his eyes saw. The casket on a level with his head had an open seam that was large enough for him to put h
is arm through. Some crushing force, it seemed, had struck the casket from the top and split open the weld. Furthermore, every vestige of nickel plating was gone—as well on his own as on the upper casket—and none of the original cement could be seen. The framework, Boswell saw, as he feverishly looked closely, was bent and twisted and each part was far thinner than it had been; some of the crossbars were entirely absent.

  l Slowly the fact burned into his brain that John Callahan, poor soul, had died—perhaps ages before. With another wild cry, Boswell ran around to the other side, hardly daring to look for fear he would see similarly damaged caskets. His eyes encountered Goodwin’s casket first. It seemed all right; dented, unplated, uneven, but seemingly intact. Then Boswell closed his eyes and fought back a desire to scream. He had seen a little hole at the back end, tapered to a funnel-mouth, such as might have been caused by the action of a biting acid. Goodwin, too, was dead!

  Then Boswell, swimming up from a hell of mental torment, felt a light touch on his arm. One of the men was standing beside him, an understanding look in his eyes. Then Boswell saw him touch the last casket, Reinhardt’s, and nod his head vigorously. The young man from the past breathed in vast relief. He was not stranded alone in this world of the future.

  He felt the touch on his bare arm again. It was more than a touch; the man had grasped his arm gently by the wrist and was tugging for him to move. Boswell obediently followed him. He was led to the wall opposite and the bulbous-headed man pointed to several metal rings. At Boswell’s puzzled frown, the man flattened himself against the wall and held firmly to two of the rings. Boswell followed suit, completely bewildered.