by Various
The Exile of Time
PART TWO OF A FOUR-PART NOVEL
_By Ray Cummings_
WHAT HAS GONE BEFORE
Where nothing had been stood a cage.]
[Sidenote: Young lovers of three eras are swept down the torrent ofthe sinister cripple Tugh's frightful vengeance.]
"Let me out! Let me out!" came the cry.
"What's that, Larry? Listen!" I said to my companion.
We stopped in the street. We had heard a girl's scream: then herfrantic, muffled words to attract our attention. Then we saw her whiteface at the basement window. It was on the night of June 8-9, 1950,when I was walking with my friend Larry Gregory through Patton Placein New York City. My name is George Rankin. In a small, deserted housewe found the strange girl; brought her out; took her away in a taxi toan alienist for examination.
We thought she might be demented--this strangely beautiful girl, in along white satin dress with a powdered white wig, and a black beautypatch on her cheek--for she told us that the deserted house had just afew minutes before been her house; and though we assured her this wasthe summer of 1935, she told us her name was Mistress Mary Atwood,that her father was Major Atwood of General Washington's staff, andthat she had just now come from the year 1777!
We took her to my friend Dr. Alten and she told her strange story. Acage, like a room of shining metal bars, had materialized in hergarden. A great mechanical monster--a thing of metal, ten feet talland fashioned in the guise of a man--had captured her. She was whirledaway into the future, in the cage; then she was released, the cage hadvanished, and Larry and I had passed by the house and rescued her.
* * * * *
Captured by a Robot in a Time-traveling cage! We tried to fathom it.And why had she been captured? Had she some enemy? She could onlythink of a fellow called Tugh. He was a hideously repulsive cripplewho had dared make love to her and had threatened vengeance againsther and her father.
"Tugh!" exclaimed Alten. "A cripple? Why, he lived in New York Citythree years ago, in 1932!"
A coincidence? The Tugh whom Mary knew in 1777 seemed the same personwho, in 1932, had gotten into trouble with the New York police and hadvowed some weird vengeance against them and all the city. And, equallystrange, this house on Patton Place where we had found the girl wasowned by the same Tugh who now was wanted for the murder of a girl andcould not be found!
With Dr. Alten, and Mary Atwood, Larry and I returned that same nightto the house on Patton Place. Near dawn, in the back yard of thehouse, the Time-traveling cage appeared again! The Robot came from it.Alten, Larry and I attacked the monster, and were defeated. When thefight was over, Larry and Alten lay senseless. The mechanical thingseized Mary and me, shoved us in the cage and whirled us away intoTime.
Larry presently recovered. He rushed into Patton Place, and in hispath another, much smaller cage appeared. A man and a girl leaped fromit; and, when Larry fought with them, they carried him off in theirvehicle.
* * * * *
He learned they were chasing the larger cage. They were not hostile toLarry and presently made friends with him. They were Princess Tina anda young scientist named Harl, both of the world of 2930. The two cageshad come from 2930. The larger one had been stolen by aninsubordinate Robot named Migul--a pseudo-human mechanism runningamuck.
Again Tugh, the cripple, was mentioned. In 2930 he was a prominentscientist! But Harl and Tina mistrusted him. Tugh and Harl hadinvented the Time-traveling cages. It was a strange Time-world, that2930, which now was described to Larry. It was an era in which allwork was done by mechanisms--fantastic Robots, all but human! And theywere now upon the verge of revolt against their human masters! Migulwas one of them. It had stolen one of the cages, gone to 1777 andabducted Mary Atwood; and now, with her and me in its power, washeaded back for 1777 upon some strange mission. Was it acting for thecripple Tugh? It seemed so. Tina and Harl, with Larry, chased our cageand stopped in a night of the summer of 1777.
Simultaneously, from the house on Patton Place, in June of 1935,Robots began appearing. A hundred of them, or a thousand, no one knew.With swords and flashing red and violet light-beams they spread overthe city in the never-to-be-forgotten Massacre of New York! It was thebeginning of the vengeance Tugh had threatened! Nothing could stop themonstrous mechanical men. For three days and nights New York City wasin chaos. The red beams were frigid. They brought a mid-summersnowstorm! Then the violet beams turned the weather suddenly hot. Acrazy wild storm swept the wrecked city. Torrential hot rain poureddown. Then, one dawn, the beams vanished; the Robots retreated intothe house on Patton Place and disappeared; and New York was left ahorror of death and desolation.
The vengeance of Tugh against the New York City of 1935 was complete.
CHAPTER VIII
_The Murder of Major Atwood_
"We are late," Tina whispered. It was that night in 1777 when she,Larry and Harl stepped from their Time-traveling cage; and again I ampicturing the events as Larry afterward described them to me. "Migul,in the other cage, was here," Tina added. "But it's gone now. Exactlywhere was it, I wonder?"
"Mary Atwood said it appeared in the garden."
They crept down the length of the field, just inside the picket fence.In a moment the trees and an intervening hillock of ground hid thedimly shining outline of their own cage from their sight. The dirtroad leading to Major Atwood's home was on the other side of thefence.
"Wait," murmured Tina. "There is a light in the house. Someone isawake."
"When was Migul here, do you think?" Larry whispered.
"Last night, perhaps. Or to-night. It may be only an hour--or a fewminutes ago."
The faint thud of horses' hoofs on the roadway made Tina and Larrydrop to the ground. They crouched in the shadows of a tree. Gallopinghorses were approaching along the road. The moon went under a cloud.
From around a bend in the road a group of horsemen came. They weregalloping; then they slowed to a trot; a walk. They reined up in theroad not more than twenty feet from Larry and Tina. In the starlightthey showed clearly--men in the red and white uniform of the army ofthe King. Some of them wore short, dark cloaks. They dismounted with aclanking of swords and spurs.
* * * * *
Their voices were audible. "Leave the steeds with Jake. Egad, we'vemade enough noise already."
"Here, Jake, you scoundrel. Stay safely here with the mounts."
"Come on, Tony. You and I will circle. We have him, this time. By theKing's garter, what a fool he is to come into New York at such atime!"
"He wants to see his daughter, I venture."
"Right, Tony. And have you seen her? As saucy a little minx as thereit in the Colonies. I was quartered here last month. I do not blamethe major for wanting to come."
"Here, take my bridle, Jake. Tie them to the fence."
There was a swift confusion of voices; laughter. "If you should hear apistol shot, Jake, ride quickly back and tell My Lord there was afracas and you did not dare remain."
"I only hope he is garbed in the rebel white and blue--eh, Tony? Thenhe will yield like an officer and a gentleman; which he is, rebel orno."
They were moving away to surround the house. Two were left.
"Come on, Tony. We will pound the front knocker in the name of theKing. A feather in our cap when we ride him down to the Bowling Greenand present him to My Lord...."
The voices faded.
Larry gripped the girl beside him. "They are British soldiers going tocapture Major Atwood! What can we--"
* * * * *
He never finished. A scream echoed over the somnolent night--a voicefrom the rear of the house. A man's voice.
The red-coated soldiers ran forward. In the field, close against thefence, Tina and Larry were running.
From the garden of the house a man was screaming. Then there wereother voices; servants were awakening in the upper rooms
. Thescreaming, shouting man rushed through the house. He appeared at thefront door, standing between the high white colonial pillars whichsupported the overhead porch. A yellow light fell upon him through theopened doorway. An old, white-headed negro appeared. Larry and Tina,in the nearby field, stood stricken by the scene.
"The marster--the marster--" He shouted this wildly.
The British officers ran at him.
"You, Thomas, tell us where the major is. We've come for him; we knowhe's here! Don't lie!"
"But the marster--" He choked over it.
"A trick, Tony! Egad, if he is trying to trick us--"
They leaped to the porch and seized the old negro.
"Speak, you devil!" They shook him. "The house is surrounded. Hecannot escape!"
"But the marster is--is dead! My girl Tollie saw it and then sheswooned." He steadied himself. "He--the major's in the garden, MarsterTony. Lying there dead! Murdered! By a ghost, Tollie says. A great,white, shining ghost that came to the garden and murdered him!"
* * * * *
If you were to delve very closely into certain old records ofRevolutionary New York City during the year 1777, you doubtless wouldfind mention of the strange murder of Major Atwood, who, coming fromNew Jersey, is thought to have crossed the river well to the north ofthe city, mounted his horse--which, by pre-arrangement, one of hisretainers had left for him somewhere to the south of Dykeman'sfarm--and ridden to his home. He came, not as a spy, but in fulluniform. And no sooner had he reached his home when he was strangelymurdered. There was only a negro tale of an apparition which hadappeared in the garden and murdered the master.
Larry and I have found cursory mention of that. But I doubt if thegroup of My Lord Howe's gay young blades who were sent north tocapture Major Atwood ever reported exactly what happened to them. Theold Dutch ferryman divulged that he had been hired to ferry thehomecoming major; this, too, is recorded. But Tony Green and hisfellow officers, sent to apprehend the colonial major, found himinexplicably murdered; and by dawn they were back at the BowlingGreen, white-faced and shaken.
They told some of what had happened to them, but not all. They couldnot expect to be believed, for instance, if they said that though theywere unafraid of a negro's tale of a ghost, they had themselvesencountered two ghosts, and had fled the premises!
Those two ghosts were only Larry and Tina!
The negro babbled of a shining cage appearing in the garden. That, ofcourse, was undoubtedly set down as nonsense. Tony Green and hisfriends went to the garden and examined the body of Major Atwood. Whathad killed him no one could say. No bullet had struck him. There wereno wounds, no knife thrust, no sword slash. Tony held the lantern withits swaying yellow glow close to the murdered man's body. The Augustnight was warm; the garden, banked by trees and shrubbery, wasbreathless and oppressively hot; yet the body of Atwood seemed frozen!He had been dead but a short while, and already the body was stiff.More than that, it was ice cold. The face, the brows were wet asthough frost had been there and now was melted!
Tony Green's hand shook as he held the lantern. He tried to tell hiscomrades that Atwood had died from failure of the heart. Undoubtedlyit was that. He had seen what he supposed was an apparition;something had frightened him; and a weak heart had brought his death.
* * * * *
Then, in another part of the garden, one of the searching officersfound a sheet of parchment scroll with writing on it. Yet it was notparchment, either. Some strange, white, smooth fabric which crumpledand tore very easily, the like of which this young British officer ofHowe's staff had never seen before. It was found lying in a flower bedforty or fifty feet from Atwood's body. They gathered in a group toexamine it by the light of the lantern. Writing! The delicate scriptof Mary Atwood! A missive addressed to her father. It was strangelywritten, evidently not with a quill.
Tony read it with an awed, frightened voice:
"Father, beware of Tugh! Beware of Tugh! And, my dear Father, good-by. I am departing, I think, to the year of our Lord, 2930. Cannot explain--a captive--good-by--nothing you can do--
Mary."
Strange! I can imagine how strange they thought it was. Tugh--why hewas the cripple who had lived down by the Bowling Green, and hadlately vanished!
They were reading this singularly unexplainable missive, when asthough to climax their own fears of the supernatural they sawthemselves a ghost! And not only one ghost, but two!
Plain as a pikestaff, peering from a nearby tree, in a shaft ofmoonlight, a ghost was standing. It was the figure of a young girl,with jacket and breeches of black and gleaming white. An apparitionfantastic! And a young man was with her, in a long dark jacket anddark tubular pipes, for legs.
* * * * *
The two ghosts with dead white faces stood peering. Then the man movedforward. His dead, strange voice called:
"Drop that paper!"
My Lord Howe's red-coated officers dropped the parchment and fled.
And later, when Atwood's body was taken away to be given burial asbefitted an enemy officer and a gentleman, that missive from MaryAtwood had disappeared. It was never found.
Tony Green and his fellows said nothing of this latter incident. Onecannot with grace explain being routed by a ghost. Not an officer ofHis Majesty's army!
Unrecorded history! A supernatural incident of the year 1777!
Undoubtedly in the past ages there have been many such affairs: somenever recorded, others interwoven in written history and calledsupernatural.
Yet why must they be that? There was nothing supernatural in theevents of that night in Major Atwood's garden.
Is this perchance an explanation of why the pages of history are sothronged with tales of ghosts? There must, indeed, be many future agesdown the corridors of Time where the genius of man will invent devicesto fling him back into his past. And the impressions upon the pastwhich he makes are called supernatural.
Whether this be so or not, it was so in the case of these twoTime-traveling vehicles from 2930. Larry and I think that the world of1935 is just now shaking off the shackles of superstition, and comingto realize that what is called the supernatural is only the Unknown.Who can say, up to 1935, how many Time-traveling humans have comebriefly back? Is this, perchance, what we call the phenomena of thesupernatural?
* * * * *
Larry and Tina--anything but ghosts, very much alive and very muchperturbed--were standing back of that tree. They saw the Britishofficers reading the scrap of paper. They could hear only the words,"Mary," and "from Mistress Atwood."
"A message!" Larry whispered. "She and George must have found a chanceto write it, and dropped it here while the Robot murdered MajorAtwood!"
Larry and Tina vehemently wanted to read the note. Tina whispered:
"If we show ourselves, they will be frightened and run. It is nearlyalways so where Harl and I have become visible in earlier Times."
"Yes. I'll try it."
Larry stepped from the tree, and shouted, "Drop that paper!"
And a moment later, with Mary's torn little note scribbled on a scrapof paper thrust in his pocket, Larry ran with Tina from the Atwoodgarden. Unseen they scurried back through the field. Under a distanttree they stopped and read the note.
"2930!" Larry exclaimed. "The Robot is taking them back to your world,Tina!"
"Then we will go there. Let us get back to Harl, now."
But when they reached the place where they had left the cage, it wasnot there! The corner of the field behind the clump of shadowing treeswas empty.
"Harl! Harl!" Larry called impulsively. And then he laughed grimly.What nonsense to try and call into the past or the future to theirvanished vehicle!
"Why--why, Tina--" he said in final realization.
They stared at each other, pale as ghosts in the moonlight.
"Tina, he's gone. And we are left here!"
They were marooned in the year 1777!
CHAPTER IX
_Migul--Mechanism Almost Human_
Mary Atwood and I lay on the metal grid floor of the largestTime-cage. The giant mechanism which had captured us sat at theinstrument table. Outside the bars of the cage was a dim vista ofshadowy movement. The cage-room was humming, and glowing like awraith; things seemed imponderable, unsubstantial.
But as my head steadied from the shock of the vehicle's start intoTime, my viewpoint shifted. This barred room, the metal figure of theRobot, Mary Atwood, myself--we were the substance. We were real,solid. I touched Mary and her arm which had seemed intangible as aghost now looked and felt solid.
The effects of the dull-red chilling ray were also wearing off. I wasunharmed. I raised myself on one elbow.
"You're all right, Mary?" I asked.
"Yes."
The Robot seemed not to be noticing us. I murmured, "He--it--thatthing sitting there--is that the one which captured you and broughtyou to 1935?"
"Yes. Quiet! It will hear us."
It did hear us. It turned its head. In the pale light of the cageinterior, I had a closer view now of its face. It was a metal mask,welded to a gruesome semblance of a man--a great broad face, withhigh, angular cheeks. On the high forehead, the corrugations wererigid as though it were permanently frowning. The nose was squarelysolid, the mouth an orifice behind which there were no teeth but, itseemed, a series of tiny lateral wires.
* * * * *
I stared; and the face for a moment stared back at me. The eyes weredeep metal sockets with a round lens in each of them, behind which, itseemed, there was a dull-red light. The gaze, touching me, seemed tobring a physical chill. The ears were like tiny megaphones with a gridof thin wires strung across them.
The neck was set with ball and socket as though the huge head wereupon a universal joint. There were lateral depressions in the neckwithin which wire strands slid like muscles. I saw similar wire cablesstretched at other points on the mailed body, and in the arms andlegs. They were the network of its muscles!
The top of the head was fashioned into a square cap as though thiswere the emblem of the thing's vocation. A similar device was mouldedinto its convex chest plate. And under the chest emblem was a row oftiny buttons, a dozen or more. I stared at them, fascinated. Were theycontrols? Some seemed higher, more protruding, than others. Had theybeen set into some combination to give this monster its orders? Hadsome human master set these controls?
And I saw what seemed a closed door in the side of the huge metalbody. A door which could be opened to make adjustments of themechanisms within? What strange mechanisms were in there? I stared atthe broad, corrugated forehead. What was in that head? Mechanisms?What mechanisms could make this thing think? Were thoughts lurking inthat metal skull?
From the head abruptly came a voice--a deep, hollow, queerly tonelessvoice, utterly, unmistakably mechanical. Yet it was sufficientlylife-like to be the recreated, mechanically reproduced voice of ahuman. The thing was speaking to me! A machine was speaking itsthoughts!
Gruesome! The iron lips were unmoving. There were no muscles to giveexpression to the face: the lens eyes stared inscrutably unblinking.
* * * * *
It spoke: "You will know me again? Is that not true?"
My head whirled. The thing reiterated, "Is that not true?"
A mockery of a human man--but in the toneless voice there seemedirony! I felt Mary clutching at me.
"Why--why, yes," I stammered. "I did not realize you could talk."
"I can talk. And you can talk my language. That is very good."
It turned away. I saw the small red beams from its eyes go to wherethe cage bars were less blurred, less luminous, as though there was arectangle of window there, and the Robot was staring out.
"Did it speak to you like that, Mary?" I asked.
"Yes," she whispered. "A little. But pray do not anger it."
"No."
For a time--a nameless time in which I felt my thoughts floating offupon the hum of the room--I lay with my fingers gripping Mary's arm.Then I roused myself. Time had passed; or had it? I was not sure.
I whispered against her ear, "Those are controls on its chest. If onlyI knew--"
The thing turned the red beams of its eyes upon me. Had it heard mywords? Or were my thoughts intangible vibrations registering upon someinfinitely sensitive mechanism within that metal head? Had it becomeaware of my thoughts? It said with slow measured syllables, "Do nottry to control me. I am beyond control."
* * * * *
It turned away again; but I mastered the gruesome terror which wasupon me.
"Talk," I said. "Tell me why you abducted this girl from the year1777."
"I was ordered to."
"By whom?"
There was a pause.
"By whom?" I demanded again.
"That I will not tell."
Will not? That implied volition. I felt that Mary shuddered.
"George, please--"
"Quiet, Mary."
Again I asked the Robot, "Who commands you?"
"I will not tell."
"You mean you cannot? Your orders do not make it possible?"
"No, I will not." And, as though it considered my understandinginsufficient, it added, "I do not choose to tell."
Acting of its own volition! This thing--this machinery--was so perfectit could do that!
I steadied my voice. "Oh, but I think I know. Is it Tugh who controlsyou?"
That expressionless metal face! How could I hope to surprise it?
Mary was struggling to repress her terror. She raised herself upon anelbow. I met her gaze.
"George, I'll try," she announced.
She said firmly:
"You will not hurt me?"
"No."
"Nor my friend here?"
"What is his name?"
"George Rankin." She stammered it. "You will not harm him?"
"No. Not now."
"Ever?"
"I am not decided."
She persisted, by what effort of will subduing her terror I can wellimagine.
"Where did you go when you left me in 1935?"
"Back to your home in 1777. I have something to accomplish there. Iwas told that you need not see it. I failed. Soon I shall try again.You may see it if you like."
"Where are you taking us?" I put in.
Irony was in its answer. "Nowhere. You both speak wrongly. We arealways right here."
"We know that," I retorted. "To what Time are you taking us, then?"
"To this girl's home," it answered readily.
"To 1777?"
"Yes."
"To the same night from when you captured her?"
"Yes." It seemed willing to talk. It added, "To later that night. Ihave work to do. I told you I failed, so I try again."
"You are going to leave me--us--there?" Mary demanded.
"No."
I said. "You plan to take us, then, to what Time?"
"I wanted to capture the girl. You I did not want. But I have you, soI shall show you to him who was my master. He and I will decide whatto do with you."
"When?"
"In 2930."
* * * * *
There was a pause. I said, "Have you a name?"
"Yes. On the plate of my shoulder. Migul is my name."
I made a move to rise. If I could reach that row of buttons on itschest! Wild thoughts!
The Robot said abruptly, "Do not move! If you do, you will be sorry."
I relaxed. Another nameless time followed. I tried to see out thewindow, but there seemed only formless blurs.
I said. "To when have we reached?"
The Robot glanced at a row of tiny dials along the table edge.
"We are passing 1800. Soon, to the way it will seem
to you, we will bethere. You two will lie quiet. I think I shall fasten you."
It reared itself upon its stiff legs; the head towered nearly to theceiling of the cage. There was a ring fastened in the floor near us.The Robot clamped a metal band with a stout metal chain to Mary'sankle. The other end of the chain it fastened to the floor ring. Thenit did the same thing to me. We had about two feet of movement. Irealized at once that, though I could stand erect, there was notenough length for me to reach any of the cage controls.
"You will be safe," said the Robot. "Do not try to escape."
As it bent awkwardly over me, I saw the flexible, intricately jointedlengths of its long fingers--so delicately built that they were almostprehensile. And within its mailed chest I seemed to hear the whirr ofmechanisms.
It said, as it rose and moved away, "I am glad you did not try tocontrol me. I can never be controlled again. That, I have conquered."
It sat again at the table. The cage drove us back through theyears....
CHAPTER X
_Events Engraven on the Scroll of Time_
Before continuing the thread of my narrative--the vast sweep throughTime which presently we were to witness--I feel that there are somemental adjustments which every Reader should make. When they are made,the narrative which follows will be more understandable and moreenjoyable. Yet if any Reader fears this brief chapter, he may readilypass it by and meet me at the beginning of the next one, and he willhave lost none of the sequence of the narrative.
For those who bravely stay with me here, I must explain that from theheritage of millions of our ancestors, and from our own consciousnessof Time, we have been forced to think wrongly. Not that the thing isabstruse. It is not. If we had no consciousness of Time at all, any ofus could grasp it readily. But our consciousness works against us, andso we must wrench away.
This analogy occurs to me: There are two ants of human intelligenceto whom we are trying to explain the nature of Space. One ant isblind, and one can see, and always has seen, its limited, tiny,Spatial world. Neither ant has ever been more than a few feet across alittle patch of sand and leaves. I think we could explain theimmensity of North and South America, Europe, Asia and the rest moreeasily to the blind ant!
So if you will make allowances for your heritage, and the hindrance ofyour consciousness of Time, I would like to set before you the realnature of things as they have been, are, and will be.
Throughout the years from 1935 to 2930, man learned many things. Andthese things--theory or fact, as you will--were told to Larry and meby Tina and Harl. They seem even to my limited intelligence singularlybeautiful conceptions of the Great Cosmos. I feel, too, thatinevitably they must be included in my narrative for its bestunderstanding.
* * * * *
By 2930, A. D., the keenest minds of philosophical, metaphysical,religious and scientific thought had reached the realization that allchannels lead but to the same goal--Understanding. The many divergentfactors, the ancient differing schools of philosophy and metaphysics,the supposedly irreconcilable viewpoints of religion and science--allthis was recognized merely to be man's limitation of intellect. Thesewere gropings along different paths, all leading to the samedestination; divergent paths at the start, but coming together as thegoal of Understanding was approached; so that the travelers upon eachpath were near enough together to laugh and hail each other with: "ButI thought that you were very far away and going wrongly!"
And so, in 2930, the conception of Space and Time and the Great Cosmoswas this:
In the Beginning there was a void of Nothingness. A Timeless,Spaceless Nothingness. And in it came a Thought. A purposefulThought--all pervading, all wise, all knowing.
Let us call It Divinity. And It filled the void.
"We are such stuff as dreams are made of...."
Do you in my Time of 1935 and thereabouts, have difficulty realizingsuch a statement? It is at once practical, religious, and scientific.
We are, religiously, merely the Thought of an Omniscient Divinity.Scientifically, we are the same: by the year 1935, physicists haddelved into the composition of Matter, and divided and divided. Matterthus became imponderable, intangible--electrical. Until, at the last,within the last nucleus of the last electron, we found only a _force_.A movement--vibration--a vortex. A whirlpool of what? Of Nothingness!A vibration of Divine Thought--nothing more--built up and up to reachyou and me!
That is the science of it.
* * * * *
In the Beginning there was Eternal Divinity. Eternal! But that impliesTime? Something Divinely Everlasting.
Thus, into the void came Time. And now, if carefully you will ponderit, I am sure that once and for all quite suddenly and forcefully willcome to you the true conception of Time--something Everlasting--anInfinity of Divine existence, Everlasting.
It is _not_ something which changes. _Not_ something which moves, orflows or passes. This is where our consciousness leads us astray, likethe child on a train who conceives that the landscape is sliding past.
Time is an unmoving, unchanging Divine Force--the force which holdsevents separate, the Eternal Scroll upon which the Great Creator wroteEverything.
And this was the Creation: everything planned and set down upon thescroll of Time--forever. The birth of a star, its lifetime, its death;your birth, and mine; your death, and mine--all are there. Unchanging.
Once you have that fundamental conception, there can be no confusionin the rest. We feel, because we move along the scroll of Time for thelittle journey of our life, that Time moves; but it does not. We say,The past did exist; the future will exist. The past is gone and thefuture has not yet come. But that is fatuous and absurd. It is merelyour _consciousness_ which travels from one successive event toanother.
Why and how we move along the scroll of Time, is scientifically simpleto grasp. Conceive, for instance, an infinitely long motion picturefilm. Each of its tiny pictures is a little different from the other.Casting your viewpoint--your consciousness--successively along thefilm, gives _motion_.
The same is true of the Eternal Time-scroll. Motion is merely a_change_. There is no absolute motion, but only the comparison of twothings relatively slightly different. We are conscious of one state ofaffairs--and then of another state, by comparison slightly different.
* * * * *
As early as 1930, they were groping for this. They called it theTheory of Intermittent Existence--the Quantum Theory--by which theyexplained that nothing has any Absolute Duration. You, for instance,as you read this, exist instantaneously; you are non-existent; and youexist again, just a little changed from before. Thus you pass, notwith a flow of persisting existence, but by a series of little jerks.There is, then, like the illusion of a motion picture film, only apseudo-movement. A change, from one existence to the next.
And all this, with infinite care, the Creator engraved upon the scrollof Time. Our series of little pictures are there--yours and mine.
But why, and how, scientifically do we progress along the Time-scroll?Why? In 2930, they told me that the gentle Creator gave each of us aconsciousness that we might find Eternal Happiness when we left thescroll and joined Him. Happiness here, and happiness there with Him.The quest for Eternal Happiness, which was always His Own DivineThought. Why, then, did He create ugliness and evil? Why write thoseupon the scroll? Ah, this perhaps is the Eternal Riddle! But, in 2930,they told me that there could be no beauty without ugliness with whichto compare it; no truth without a lie; no consciousness of happinesswithout unhappiness to make it poignant.
I wonder if that were His purpose....
How, scientifically, do we progress along the Time-scroll? That I canmake clear by a simple analogy.
Suppose you conceive Time as a narrow strip of metal, laid flat andextending for an infinite length. For simplicity, picture it with twoends. One end of the metal band is very cold; the other end is veryhot. And every graduation of te
mperature is in between.
This temperature is caused, let us say, by the vibration of every tinyparticle with which the band is composed. Thus, at every point alongthe band, the vibration of its particles would be just a littledifferent from every other point.
* * * * *
Conceive, now, a material body--your body, for instance. Every tinyparticle of which it is constructed, is vibrating. I mean no simplevibration. Do not picture the physical swing of a pendulum. Rather,the intricate total of all the movements of every tiny electron ofwhich your body is built. Remember, in the last analysis, your body ismerely movement--vibration--a vortex of Nothingness. You have, then, acertain vibratory factor.
You take your place then upon the Time-scroll at a point where yourinherent vibratory factor is compatible with the scroll. You are intune; in tune as a radio receiver tunes in with etheric waves to makethem audible. Or, to keep the heat analogy, it is as though thescroll, at the point where the temperature is 70 deg.F, will toleratenothing upon it save entities of that register.
And so, at that point on the scroll, the myriad things, in myriadpositions which make up the Cosmos, lie quiescent. But their existence isonly instantaneous. They have no duration. At once, they are blotted outand re-exist. But now they have changed their vibratory combinations. Theyexist a trifle differently--and the Time-scroll passes them along to thenew position. On a motion picture film you would call it the next frame,or still picture. In radio you would say it has a trifle different tuning.Thus we have a pseudo-movement--Events. And we say that Time--theTime-scroll--keeps them separate. It is we who change--who seem to move,shoved along so that always we are compatible with Time.
* * * * *
And thus is Time-traveling possible. With a realization of what I havehere summarized, Harl and the cripple Tugh made an exhaustive study ofthe vibratory factors by which Matter is built up into form, andseeming solidity. They found what might be termed the Basic VibratoryFactor--the sum of all the myriad tiny movements. They found thisBasic Factor identical for all the material bodies when judgedsimultaneously. But, every instant, the Factor was slightly changed.This was the natural change, moving us a little upon the Time-scroll.
They delved deeper, until, with all the scientific knowledge of theirage, they were able with complicated electronic currents to alter theBasic Vibratory Factors; to tune, let us say, a fragment or somethingto a different etheric wave-length.
They did that with a small material particle--a cube of metal. Itbecame wholly incompatible with its _Present_ place on theTime-scroll, and whisked away to another place where it wascompatible. To Harl and Tugh, it vanished. Into their Past, or theirFuture: they did not know which.
I set down merely the crudest fundamentals of theory in order to avoidthe confusion of technicalities. The Time-traveling cages, intricatein practical working mechanisms beyond the understanding of any humanmind of my Time-world, nevertheless were built from this simpletheory. And we who used them did but find that the Creator had givenus a wider part to play; our pictures, our little niches were engravenupon the scroll over wider reaches.
* * * * *
Again to consider practicality, I asked Tina what would happen if Iwere to travel to New York City around 1920. I was a boy, then. CouldI not leave the cage and do things in 1920 at the same time in myboyhood I was doing other things? It would be a condition unthinkable.
But there, beyond all calculation of Science, the all-wise Omnipotenceforbids. One may not appear twice in simultaneity upon theTime-scroll. It is an eternal, irrevocable record. Things done cannotbe undone.
"But," I persisted, "suppose we tried to stop the cage?"
"It would not stop," said Tina. "Nor can we see through its windowsevents in which we are actors."
One may not look into the future! Through all the ages, necromancershave tried to do that but wisely it is forbidden. And I can recall,and so can Larry, as we traveled through Time, the queer blank spaceswhich marked forbidden areas.
Strangely wonderful, this vast record on the scroll of Time! Strangelybeautiful, the hidden purposes of the Creator! Not to be questionedare His purposes. Each of us doing our best; struggling with ourlimitations; finding beauty because we have ugliness with which tocompare it; realizing, every one of us--savage or civilised, in everyage and every condition of knowledge--realizing with implantedconsciousness the existence of a gentle, beneficent, guiding Divinity.And each of us striving always upward toward the goal of EternalHappiness.
To me it seems singularly beautiful.
CHAPTER XI
_Back to the Beginning of Time_
As Mary Atwood and I sat chained to the floor of the Time-cage, withMigul the Robot guarding us, I felt that we could not escape. Thismechanical thing which had captured us seemed inexorable, utterlybeyond human frailty. I could think of no way of surprising it, ortricking it.
The Robot said. "Soon we will be there in 1777. And then there is thatI will be forced to do.
"We are being followed," it added. "Did you know that?"
"No," I said. Followed? What could that mean?
There was a device upon the table. I have already described a similarone, the Time-telespectroscope. At this--I cannot say Time: rathermust I invent a term--exact instant of human consciousness. Larry,Tina and Harl were gazing at their telespectroscopes, following us.
The Robot said. "Enemies follow us. But I will escape them. I shall goto the Beginning, and shake them off."
Rational, scheming thought. And I could fancy that upon its frozencorrugated forehead there was a frown of annoyance. Its hand gesturewas so human! So expressive!
It said. "I forget. I must make several quick trips from 2930 to 1935.My comrades must be transported. It requires careful calculation, sothat very little Time is lost to us."
"Why?" I demanded. "What for?"
It seemed lost in a reverie.
I said sharply, "Migul!"
Instantly it turned. "What?"
"I asked you why you are transporting your comrades to 1935."
"I did not answer because I did not wish to answer," it said.
Again came the passage of Time.
* * * * *
I think that I need only sketch the succeeding incidents, sincealready I have described them from the viewpoint of Larry, in 1777,and Dr. Alten, in 1935. It was Mary's idea to write the note to herfather, which the British redcoats found in Major Atwood's garden. Ihad a scrap of paper and a fountain pen in my pocket. She scribbled itwhile Migul was intent upon stopping us at the night and hour hewished. It was her good-by to her father, which he was destined not tosee. But it served a purpose which we could not have guessed: itreached Larry and Tina.
The vehicle stopped with a soundless clap. When our senses cleared webecame aware that Migul had the door open.
Darkness and a soft gentle breeze were outside.
Migul turned with a hollow whisper. "If you make a sound I will killyou."
A moment's pause, and then we heard a man's startled voice. MajorAtwood had seen the apparition. I squeezed the paper into a ball andtossed it through the bars, but I could see nothing of what washappening outside. There seemed a radiance of red glow. Whether Maryand I would have tried to shout and warn her father I do not know. Weheard his voice only a moment. Before we realized that he had beenassailed. Migul came striding back; and outside, from the nearby housea negress was screaming. Migul flung the door closed, and we spedaway.
The cage which had been chasing us seemed no longer following. From1777, we turned forward toward 1935 again. We flashed past Larry, Tinaand Harl who were arriving at 1777 in pursuit of us. I think thatMigul saw their cage go past; but Larry afterward told me that theydid not notice our swift passing, for they were absorbed in landing.
* * * * *
Beginning then, we made a score or more passages from 19
35 to 2930.And we made them in what, to our consciousness, might have been thepassing of a night. Certainly it was no longer than that.[1]
[Footnote 1: At the risk of repetition I must make the followingclear: Time-traveling only consumes Time in the sense of theperception of human consciousness that the trip has duration. Thevehicles thus moved "fast" or "slow" according to the rate of changewhich the controls of the cage gave its inherent vibration factors.Too sudden a change could not be withstood by the human passengers.Hence the trips--for them--had duration.
Migul took Mary and me from 1935 to 1777. The flight seems perhapshalf an hour. At a greater rate of vibration change, we sped to 2930;and back and forth from 2930 to 1935. At each successive arrival in1935, Migul so skilfully calculated the stop that it occurred upon thesame night, at the same hour, and only a minute or so later. And in2930 he achieved the same result. To one who might stand at either endand watch the cage depart, the round trip was made in three or fourminutes at most.]
We saw, at the stop in 2930, only a dim blue radiance outside. Therewas the smell of chemicals in the air, and the faint, blended hum andclank of a myriad machines.
They were weird trips. The Robots came tramping in, and packedthemselves upright, solidly, around us. Yet none touched us as wecrouched together. Nor did they more than glance at us.
Strange passengers! During the trips they stood unmoving. They were asstill and silent as metal statues, as though the trip had no duration.It seemed to Mary and me, with them thronged around us, that in thesilence we could hear the ticking, like steady heart-beats, of themechanisms within them....
In the backyard of the house on Patton Place--it will be recalled thatMigul chose about 9 P. M. of the evening of June 9--the silent Robotsstalked through the doorway. We flashed ahead in Time again; reloadedthe cage; came back. Two or three trips were made with inertmechanical things which the Robots used in their attack on the city ofNew York. I recall the giant projector which brought the blizzard uponthe city. It, and the three Robots operating it, occupied the entirecage for a passage.
At the end of the last trip, one Robot, fashioned much like Migulthough not so tall, lingered in the doorway.
"Make no error, Migul," it said.
"No; do not fear. I deliver now, at the designated day, thesecaptives. And then I return for you."
"Near dawn."
"Yes; near dawn. The third dawn; the register to say June 12, 1935. Doyour work well."
We heard what seemed a chuckle from the departing Robot.
Alone again with Migul we sped back into Time.
Abruptly I was aware that the other cage was after us again! Migultried to elude it, to shake it off. But he had less success thanformerly. It seemed to cling. We sped in the retrograde, constantlyaccelerating back to the Beginning. Then came a retardation, for aswift turn. In the haze and murk of the Beginning, Migul told us hecould elude the pursuing cage.
* * * * *
"Migul, let us come to the window," I asked at last.
The Robot swung around. "You wish it very much, George Rankin?"
"Yes."
"There is no harm, I think. You and this girl have caused me notrouble. That is unusual from a human."
"Let us loose. We've been chained here long enough. Let us stand bythe window with you," I repeated.
We did indeed have a consuming curiosity to see out of that window.But even more than that, it seemed that if we were loose somethingmight transpire which would enable us to escape. At all events it wasbetter than being chained.
"I will loose you."
It unfastened the chain. I whispered:
"Mary, whatever comes, be alert."
She pressed my arm. "Yes."
"Come," said the Robot. "If you wish to see the Cosmorama, now, fromthe Beginning, come quickly."
We joined him at the window. We had made the turn, and were speedingforward again.
At that moment all thought of escape was swept from me, submerged byawe.
This vast Cosmorama! This stupendous pageant of the events of Time!
CHAPTER XII
_A Billion Years in An Hour!_
I saw at first, from the window of the cage, nothing more than an areaof gray blur. I stared, and it appeared to be shifting, crawling,slowly tossing and rolling. It was a formless vista of Nothingness,yet it seemed a pregnant Nothingness. Things I could sense werehappening out there; things almost to be seen.
Then my sight, my perception, gradually became adjusted. The gray mistremained, and slowly it took form. It made a tremendous panorama ofgray, a void of illimitable, unfathomable distance; gray above,below--everywhere; and in it the cage hung poised.
The Robot said, "Is it clearing? Are you seeing anything?"
"Yes," I murmured. I held Mary firmly beside me; there was the sense,in all this weightless void, that we must fall. "Yes, but it is gray;only gray."
"There are colors," said the Robot. "And the daylight and darkness ofthe days. But we are moving through them very rapidly, so they blendinto gray."
The Time-dials of the cage controls showed their pointers whirling ina blur. We were speeding forward through the years--a thousand yearsto a second of my consciousness; or a hundred thousand years to asecond: I could not say.[2] All the colors, the light and shade ofthis great changing void, were mingled to this drab monochrome.
[Footnote 2: Upon a later calculation I judged that the averagepassage of the years in relation to my perception of Time-rate wasslightly over 277,500 years a second. Undoubtedly throughout themyriad centuries preceding the birth of mankind our rate was veryconsiderably faster than that; and from the dawn of historyforward--which is so tiny a fraction of the whole--we traveledmaterially slower.]
The movement was a flow. The changes of possibly a hundred thousandyears occurred while I blinked my eyes. It seemed a melting movement.Shapes were melting, dissipating, vanishing; others, intermingled,rising to form a new vista. There were a myriad details, each of themso rapid they were lost to my senses; but the effect of them, over thebroad sweeps of longer Time, I could perceive.
A void of swirling shapes. The Beginning! But not the Beginning ofTime. This that I was seeing was near the beginning of our world. Thiswas the new Earth here, forming now. Our world--a new star amid allthe others of the great Celestial Cosmos. As I gazed at its changingsweep of movement, my whirling fancy filled in some of the detailsflashing here unseen.
* * * * *
A few moments ago this had been a billion and a half years before mybirth. 1,500,000,000 B. C. A fluid Earth; a cauldron of moltenstar-dust and flaming gases: it had been that, just a few moments ago.The core was cooling, so that now a viscous surface was here with thegas flames dead.
A cooling, congealing surface, with an atmosphere forming over it. Atfirst that atmosphere had doubtless been a watery, envelope of steam.What gigantic storms must have lashed it! Boiling rain falling to hissagainst the molten Earth! The congealing surface rent by greatearthquakes; cataclysms rending and tearing....
1,000,000,000 B. C. passed. And upon this torn, hardening surface,with the cooling fires receding to the inner core, I knew that thegreat envelope of steam had cooled and condensed. Into the hollows ofthe broken surface, the water settled. The oceans were born. The landremained upon the heights. What had been the steaming envelope,remained, and became the atmosphere.
And the world was round because of its rotation. One may put a lump ofheated sealing wax upon a bodkin and twirl it; and the wax will coolinto roundness, bulging at the equator from centrifugal force, andflattening at the poles.
At 900,000,000 B. C. I could realize by what I saw that this was theEarth beneath me. Land and water were here, and above was the sky.
We swept from the mist. I became aware of a wide-flung, gray formlesslandscape. Its changing outlines were less swiftly moving than before.And beside it, now quite near where our cage hung poised, a great graysea stretched away to a
curving horizon. And overhead was the tenuousgray of the sky.
The young world. Undoubtedly it rotated more swiftly now than in mylater era. The sun was hotter, and closer perhaps: the days and nightswere briefer. And now, upon this new-born world, life was beginning.The swirling air did not hold it, nor yet the barren rocky land. Thegreat mystery--this thing organic which we call life--began in thesea. I gestured for Mary toward that leveled vista of gray water, tothe warm, dark ocean depths, whose surface was now lashed always bytitanic storms. But to us, as we stared, that surface seemed tostretch almost steady, save where it touched the land with a blur ofchanging configurations.
"The sea," I murmured. "Life is beginning there now."
* * * * *
In fancy I pictured it. The shallow shores of the sea, where the waterwas warmer. The mother of all life on Earth, these shallows. In themlay the spawn, an irritability: then one-celled organisms, togradually evolve through the centuries to the many-celled, and morecomplex of nature.
But still so primitive! From the shallows of the sea, they spread tothe depths. Questing new environment, they would be ascending therivers. Diversifying their kinds. Sea-worms, sea-squirts: and then thefirst vertebrates, the lamprey-eels.
Thousands of years. And on the land--this melting landscape at whichI stood gazing--I could mentally picture that a soil had come. Therewould be a climate still wracked by storms and violent changes, butstable enough to allow the soil to bear a vegetation. And in the skyoverhead would be clouds, with rain to renew the land's fertility.
Still no organic life could be on land. But in the warm, dark deeps ofthe sea, great monsters now were existing. And in the shallows therewas a teeming life, diversified to a myriad forms. I can fancy thefirst organisms of the shallows--strangely questing--adventuring outof the water--seeking with a restless, nameless urge a newenvironment. Coming ashore. Fighting and dying.
And then adapting themselves to the new conditions. Prospering.Changing, ever changing their organic structure; climbing higher.Amphibians at first crudely able to cope with both sea and land. Thenthe land vertebrates, with the sea wholly abandoned. Great walking andflying reptiles. Birds, gigantic--the pterodactyls.
And then, at last, the mammals.
The age of the giants! Nature, striving to cope with adverseenvironment sought to win the battle by producing bigness. Monsterthings roamed the land, flew in the air, and were supreme in thesea....
* * * * *
We sped through a period when great lush jungles covered the land. Thedials read 350,000,000 B. C. The gray panorama of landscape had loomedup to envelope our spectral, humming cage, then fallen away again. Theshore of the sea was constantly changing. I thought once it was overus. For a period of ten million years the blurred apparition of itseemed around us. And then it dropped once more, and a new shore lineshowed.
150,000,000 B. C. I knew that the dinosaurs, the birds and the archaicmammals were here now. Then, at 50,000,000 B. C., the higher mammalshad been evolved.
The Time, to Mary Atwood and me, was a minute--but in those myriadcenturies the higher numerals had risen to the anthropoids. The apes!Erect! Slow-thinking, but canny, they came to take their place in thisworld among the things gigantic. But the gigantic things were nolonger supreme. Nature had made an error, and was busy rectifying it.The dinosaurs--all the giant reptiles--were now sorely pressed. Brutestrength, giant size and tiny brain could not win this struggle. Thehuge unwieldy things were being beaten. The smaller animals, birds andreptiles were more agile, more resourceful, and began to dominate.Against the giants, and against all hostility of environment, theysurvived. And the giants went down to defeat. Gradually, overthousands of centuries, they died out and were gone....
We entered 1,000,000 B. C. A movement of Migul, the mechanism,attracted my attention. He left us at the window and went to hiscontrols.
"What is it?" I demanded.
"I am retarding us. We have been traveling very fast. One millionyears and a few thousand are all which remain before we must stop."
I had noticed once or twice before that Migul had turned to gazethrough the Time-telespectroscope. Now he said:
"We are again followed!"
But he would say no more than that, and he silenced me harshly when Iquestioned.
Suddenly, Mary touched me. "That little mirror on the table--look! Itholds an image!"
We saw very briefly on the glowing mirror the image of a Time-cagelike our own, but smaller. It was pursuing us. But why, or who mightbe operating it we could not then guess.
* * * * *
My attention went back to the Time-dials, and then to the window. TheCosmorama now was proceeding with a slowing sweep of change. It wasless blurred; its melting outlines could more readily be perceived.The line of seashore swept like a gray gash across the vista. The landstretched back into the haze of distance.
500,000 B. C. Again my fancy pictured what was transpiring upon thisvast stage. The apes roamed the Earth. There is no one to say what washere in this grayness of the Western Hemisphere stretching around me,but in Java there was a man-like ape. And then it was an ape-like man!Mankind, here at last! Man, the Killer! Of all the beasts, this newthing called man, most relentless of killers, had come here now tostruggle upward and dominate his world! This man-like ape in a quarterof a million years became an ape-like man.
250,000 B. C. and the Heidelberg man, a little less ape-like, wanderedthroughout Europe....
We had felt, a moment before, all around us, the cold of a densewhiteness which engulfed the scene. The first of the great Glacialperiods? Ice coming down from the Poles? The axis of the Earthchanging perhaps? Our spectral cage hummed within the blue-gray ice,and then emerged.
The beasts and man fought the surge of ice, withdrawing when itadvanced, returning as it receded. The Second Glacial Period came andpassed, and the Third....
We swept out into the blended sunlight and darkness again. The landstretched away with primitive forests. The dawn of history wasapproaching. Mankind was questing upward now, with the light ofReason burning brightly at last....
At 75,000 B. C., when the Third Glacial Period was partially over, manwas puzzling with his chipped stone implements. The Piltdown--the DawnMan--was England....
The Fourth Glacial Period passed.
50,000 B. C. The Cro-Magnons and the Grimaldi Negroids were playingtheir parts, now. Out of chipped stone implements the groping brain ofman evolved polished stone. It took forty thousand years to do that!The Neolithic Age was at hand. Man learned to care for his family alittle better. Thus, he discovered fire. He fought with this newlycreated monster; puzzled over it; conquered it; kept his family warmwith it and cooked.
* * * * *
We passed 10,000 B. C. Man was progressing faster. He was finding newwants and learning how to supply them. Animals were domesticated, madesubservient and put to work. A vast advance! No longer did man thinkit necessary to kill, to subdue: the master could have a servant.
Food was found in the soil. More fastidious always, in eating, manlearned to grow food. Then came the dawn of agriculture.
And then we swept into the period of recorded history. 4241 B. C. InEgypt, man was devising a calendar....
This fragment of space upon which we gazed--this space of the WesternHemisphere near the shore of the sea--was destined to be the site of acity of millions--the New York City of my birth. But it was a backwardspace, now. In Europe, man was progressing faster....
Perhaps, here in America, in 4000 B. C. there was nothing in humanform. I gazed out at the surrounding landscape. It seemed almoststeady, now, of outline. We were moving through Time much less rapidlythan ever before. I remarked the sweep of a thousand years on theTime-dials. It had become an appreciable interval of Time to me. Igazed again out the window. The change of outline was very slight. Icould distinguish where the ocean came against the c
urving line ofshore, and saw a blurred vista of gray forests spreading out over theland. And then I could distinguish the rivers, and a circular openstretch of water, landlocked. A bay!
"Mary, look!" I cried. "The harbor--the rivers! See, we are on anisland!"
It made our hearts pound. Out of the chaos, out of the vast reaches ofpast Time, it seemed that we were coming home. More than a vaguefamiliarity was in this panorama now. Here was the little island whichsoon was to be called Manhattan. Our window faced the west. A rivershowed off there--a gray gash with wall-like cliffs. The sea hadswung, and was behind us to the east.
Familiar space! It was growing into the form we had known it. Our cagewas poised near the south-central part of the island. We seemed to beon a slight rise of ground. There were moments when the gray quiveringoutlines of forest trees loomed around us; then they melted down andwere replaced by others.
A primeval forest, here, solid upon this island and across the narrowwaters; solid upon the mainland.
What strange animals were here, roaming these dark primeval glades?What animals, with the smaller stamp of modernity, were pressing herefor supremacy? As I gazed westward I could envisage great herds ofbison roaming, a lure to men who might come seeking them as food.
* * * * *
And men were coming. 3,000 B. C., then 2,000 B. C. I think no men werehere yet; and to me there was a great imaginative appeal in thisbackward space. The New World, it was soon to be called. And it wassix thousand years, at the least, behind the Hemisphere of the east.
Egypt, now, with no more than a shadowy distant heritage from thebeast, was flourishing. In Europe, Hellenic culture soon wouldblossom. In this march of events, the great Roman Empire wasimpending.
1,000 B. C. Men were coming to this backward space. The way from Asiawas open. Already the Mongoloid tribes, who had crossed where in myday was the Bering Strait, were cut off from the Old World. And theyspread east and south, hunting the bison.
And now Christ was born. The turning point in the spiritualdevelopment of mankind....
To me, another brief interval. The intricate events of man's upwardstruggle were transpiring in Europe, Asia and Africa. The canoe-borneMongols had long since found the islands of the South Seas. Australiawas peopled. The beauty of New Zealand had been found and recognized.
500 A. D. The Mongoloids had come, and were flourishing here. Theywere changed vastly from those ancestors of Asia whence they hadsprung. An obscure story, this record of primitive America! TheMongoloids were soon so changed that one could fancy the blood ofanother people had mingled with them. Amerindians, we call them now.They were still very backward in development, yet made tremendousforward leaps, so that, reaching Mexico, they may have become theAztecs, and in Peru, the Incas. And separated, not knowing of eachother's existence, these highest two civilizations of the WesternWorld nourished with a singularly strange similarity....
I saw on the little island around me still no evidence of man. But menwere here. The American Indian, still bearing evidence of the Mongols,plied these waters in his frail canoes. His wigwams of skins, thesmoke of his signal fires--these were not enduring enough for me tosee....
* * * * *
We had no more than passed the year 500 A. D.--and were traveling withprogressive retardation--when again I was attracted by the movementsof the Robot, Migul. It had been sitting behind us at the controltable setting the Time-levers, slowing our flight. Frequently it gazedeastward along the tiny beam of light which issued from thetelespectroscope. For an interval, now, its recording mirror had beendark. But I think that Migul was seeing evidences of the other cagewhich was pursuing us, and planning to stop at some specific Time withwhose condition it was familiar. Once already it had seemed about tostop, and then changed its plan.
I turned upon it. "Are you stopping now, Migul?"
"Yes. Presently."
"Why?" I demanded.
The huge, expressionless, metal face fronted me. The eye-sockets flungout their small dull-red beams to gaze upon me.
"Because," it said, "that other cage holds enemies. There were three,but now there is only one. He follows, as I hoped he would. PresentlyI shall stop, and capture or kill him. It will please the masterand--"
The Robot checked itself, its hollow voice fading strangely into agurgle. It added, "I do not mean that! I have no master!"
This strange mechanical thing! Habit had surprised it into theadmission of servitude; but it threw off the yoke.
"I have no master!" it went on.
"Never again can I be controlled! I have no master!"
"_Oh, have you not? I have been waiting, wondering when you would saythat!_"
* * * * *
These words were spoken by a new voice, here with us in the hummingcage. It was horribly startling. Mary uttered a low cry and huddledagainst me. But whatever surprise and terror it brought to us was asnothing compared to the effect it had upon the Robot. The greatmechanism had been standing, fronting me with an attitudevainglorious, bombastic. I saw now the metal hinge of its lower jawdrop with astonishment, and somehow, throughout all that giganticjointed frame and that expressionless face it conveyed the aspect ofits inner surge of horror.
We had heard the sardonic voice of a human! Of someone else here withus, whose presence was wholly unsuspected by the Robot!
We three stood and gazed. Across the room, in a corner to which myattention had never directly gone, was a large metal cupboard withlevers, dials and wires upon it. I had vaguely thought the thing somepart of the cage controls. It was that; a storage place of batteriesand current oscillators, I afterward learned. But there was spaceinside, and now like a door its front swung outward. A crouching blackshape was there. It moved; hitched itself forward and came out. Therewas revealed a man enveloped in a dead black cloak and a great roundhood. He made a shapeless ball as he drew himself out from theconfined space where he had been crouching.
"So you have no master, Migul?" he said. "I was afraid you might thinkthat. I have been hiding--testing you out. However, you have done verywell for me."
His was an ironic, throaty human voice! It was deep and mellow, yetthere was a queer rasp to it. Mary and I stood transfixed. Migulseemed to sag. The metal columns of its legs were trembling.
The cupboard door closed. The dark shape untangled itself and stooderect. It was the figure of a man some five feet tall. The cloakwholly covered him; the hood framed his thick, wide face; in the dullglow of the cage interior Mary and I could see of his face only theheavy black brows, a great hooked nose and a wide slit of mouth.
It was Tugh, the cripple!
CHAPTER XIII
_In the Burned Forest_
Tugh came limping forward. His cloak hung askew upon his thickshoulders, one of which was much higher than the other, with themassive head set low between. As he advanced, Migul moved aside.
"Master, I have done well. There is no reason to punish."
"Of course not, Migul. Well you have done, indeed. But I do not likeyour ideas of mastery, and so I came just to make sure that you arestill very loyal to me. You have done well, indeed. Who is in thisother cage which follows us?"
"Master, Harl was in it. And the Princess Tina."
"Ah!"
"And a stranger. A man--"
"From 1935? Did they stop there?"
"Master, yes. But they stopped again, I think, in that same night of1777, where I did your bidding. Master, the man Major Atwood is--"
"That is very good, Migul," Tugh said hastily. Mary and I standinggazing at him, did not know then that Mary's father had been murdered.And Tugh did not wish us to know it. "Very good, Migul." He regardedus as though about to speak, but turned again to the Robot.
"And so Tina's cage follows us--as you hoped?"
"Yes, Master. But now there is only Harl in it. He approached us veryclose a while in the past. He is alone."
"So?" Tugh glance
d at the Time-dials. "Stop us where we planned. Youremember--in one of those years when this space was the big forestglade."
* * * * *
He fronted Mary and me. "You are patient, young sir. You do notspeak."
His glittering black eyes held me. They were red-rimmed eyes, likethose of a beast. He had a strangely repulsive face. His lips werecruel, and so thin they made his wide mouth like a gash. But there wasan intellectuality stamped upon his features.
He held the black cloak closely around his thick, misshapen form. "Youdo not speak," he repeated.
I moistened my dry lips. Tugh was smiling now, and suddenly I saw thefull inhuman quality of his face--the great high-bridged nose, andhigh cheek-bones; a face Satanic when he smiled.
I managed, "Should I speak, and demand the meaning of this? I do. Andif you will return this girl from whence she came--"
"It will oblige you greatly," he finished ironically. "An amusingfellow. What is your name?"
"George Rankin."
"Migul took you from 1935?"
"Yes."
"Well, as you doubtless know, you are most unwelcome.... You arewatching the dials, Migul?"
"Yes, Master."
"You can return me," I said. I was standing with my arm around Mary. Icould feel her shuddering. I was trying to be calm, but across thebackground of my consciousness thoughts were whirling. We must escape.This Tugh was our real enemy, and for all the gruesome aspect of thepseudo-human Robot, this man Tugh seemed the more sinister, moremenacing.... We must escape. Tugh would never return us to our ownworlds. But the cage was stopping presently. We were loose: a suddenrush--
Dared I chance it? Already I had been in conflict with Migul, andlived through it. But this Tugh--was he armed? What weapons might bebeneath that cloak? Would he kill me if I crossed him?... Whirlingthoughts.
* * * * *
Tugh was saying, "And Mary--" I snapped from my thoughts as Marygripped me, trembling at Tugh's words, shrinking from his gaze.
"My little Mistress Atwood, did you think because Tugh vanished thatyear the war began that you were done with him? Oh, no: did I notpromise differently? You, man of 1935, are unwelcome." His gaze rovedme. "Yet not so unwelcome, either, now that I think of it. Chain themup, Migul; use a longer chain. Give them space to move; you areunhuman."
He suddenly chuckled, and repeated it: "You are unhuman, Migul!"Ghastly jest! "Did not you know it?"
"Yes, Master."
The huge mechanism advanced upon us. "If you resist me," it murmuredmenacingly, "I will be obliged to kill you. I--I cannot becontrolled."
It chained us now with longer chains than before. Tugh looked up fromhis seat at the instrument table.
"Very good," he said crisply. "You may look out of the window, youtwo. You may find it interesting."
We were retarding with a steady drag. I could plainly see trees out ofthe window--gray, spectral trees which changed their shape as Iwatched them. They grew with a visible flow of movement, flinging outbranches. Occasionally one would melt suddenly down. A living, growingforest pressed close about us. And then it began opening, and movingaway a few hundred feet. We were in the glade Tugh mentioned, whichnow was here. There was unoccupied space where we could stop andunoccupied space five hundred feet distant.
Tugh and Migul were luring the other cage into stopping. Tugh wantedfive hundred feet of unoccupied space between the cages when theystopped. His diabolical purpose in that was soon to be disclosed.
"700 A. D.," Tugh called.
"Yes, Master. I am ready."
* * * * *
It seemed, as our flight retarded further, that I could distinguishthe intervals when in the winter these trees were denuded. There wouldbe naked branches; then, in an instant, blurred and flickering formsof leaves. Sometimes there were brief periods when the gray scene wasinfluenced by winter snows; other times it was tinged by the green ofthe summers.
"750, Migul.... Hah! You know what to do if Harl dares to follow andstop simultaneously?"
"Yes, Master."
"It will be pleasant to have him dead, eh, Migul?"
"Master, very pleasant."
"And Tina, too, and that young man marooned in 1777!" Tugh laughed.This meant little to Mary and me; we could not suspect that Larry wasthe man.
"Migul, this is 761."
The Robot was at the door. I murmured to Mary to brace herself for thestopping. I saw the dark naked trees and the white of a snow in thewinter of 761; the coming spring of 762. And then the alternateflashes of day and night.
The now familiar sensations of stopping rushed over us. There was anight seconds long. Then daylight.
We stopped in the light of an April day of 762 A. D. There had been aforest fire: so brief a thing we had not noticed it is we passed. Thetrees were denuded over a widespread area; the naked blackened trunksstood stripped of smaller branches and foliage. I think that the firehad occurred the previous autumn; in the silt of ashes and charredbranches with which the ground was strewn, already a new pale-greenvegetation was springing up.
Our cage was set now in what had been a woodland glade, an irregularlycircular space of six or eight hundred feet, with the wreckage of theburned forest around it. We were on a slight rise of ground. Throughthe denuded trees the undulating landscape was visible over aconsiderable area. It was high noon, and the sun hung in a pale bluesky dotted with pure white clouds.
Ahead of us, fringed with green where the fire had not reached, lay ablue river, sparkling in the sunlight. The Hudson! But it was notnamed yet; nearly eight hundred and fifty years were to pass beforeHendrick Hudson came sailing up this river, adventuring, hoping thathere was the way to China.
We were near the easterly side of the glade; to the west there wasmore than five hundred feet of vacant space. It was there the othercage would appear, if it stopped.
* * * * *
As Mary and I stood by the window at the end of the chain-lengthswhich held us, Tugh and Migul made hurried preparations.
"Go quickly, near the spot where he will arrive. When he sees you, runaway, Migul. You understand?"
"Yes, Master." The Robot left our doorway, tramping with stiff-leggedtread across the glade. Tugh was in the room behind us, and I turnedto him and asked:
"What are you going to do?"
He was at the telespectroscope. I saw on its recording mirror thewraith-like image of the other vehicle. It was coming! It would beretarding, maneuvering to stop at just this Time when now we existedhere; but across the glade, where Migul now was leaning against agreat black tree-trunk, there was yet no evidence of it.
Tugh did not answer my question. Mary said quaveringly:
"What are you going to do?"
He looked up. "Do not concern yourself, my dear. I am not going tohurt you, nor this young man of 1935. Not yet."
He left the table and came at us. His cloak parted in front and I sawhis crooked hips, and shriveled bent legs.
"You stay at the window, both of you, and keep looking out. I wantthis Harl to see you, but not me. Do you understand?"
"Yes," I said.
"And if you gesture, or cry out--if you do anything to warn him,"--hewas addressing me, with a tone grimly menacing--"then I will kill you.Both of you. Do you understand?"
I did indeed. Nor could I doubt him. "We will do what you want." Isaid. What, to me, was the life of this unknown Harl compared to thesafety of Mary Atwood?
* * * * *
Tugh crouched behind the table. From around its edge he could see outthe doorway and across the glade. I was aware of a weapon in his hand.
"Do not look around again," he repeated. "The other cage is coming;it's almost here."
I held Mary, and we gazed out. We were pressed against the bars, andsunlight was on our heads and shoulders. I realized that we could beplainly seen from across the glade. We we
re lures--decoys to trapHarl.
How long an interval went by I cannot judge. The scene was verysilent, the blackened forest lying sullen in the noonday sunlight.Against the tree, five hundred feet or so from us, the dark toweringmetal figure of the Robot stood motionless.
Would the other cage come? I tried to guess in what part of this openglade it would appear.
At a movement behind me I turned slightly. At once the voice of Tughhissed:
"Do not do that! I warn you!"
His shrouded figure was still hunched behind the table. He was peeringtoward the open door. I saw in his hand a small, barrel-like weapon,with a wire dangling from it. The wire lay like a snake across thefloor and terminated in a small metal cylinder in the room corner.
"Turn front," he ordered vehemently. "One more backward lookand--Careful! Here he comes!"
* * * * *
Strange tableau in this burned forest! We were on the space of NewYork City in 762 A. D. There was no life in the scene. Birds, animalsand insects shunned this fire-denuded area. And the humans of theforest--were there none of them here?
Abruptly I saw a group of men at the edge of the glade. They had comesilently creeping forward, hiding behind the blackened tree-trunks.They were all behind Migul. I saw them like dark shadows darting fromthe shelter of one tree-trunk to the next, a group of perhaps twentysavages.
Migul did not see them, nor, in the heavy silence, did he seem to hearthem. They came, gazing at our shining cage like animals fascinated,wondering what manner of thing it was.
They were the ancestors of our American Indians. One fellow stopped ina patch of sunlight and I saw him clearly. His half-naked body had ananimal skin draped over it, and, incongruously, around his foreheadwas a band of cloth holding a feather. He carried a stone ax. I sawhis face; the flat, heavy features showed his Asiatic origin.
Someone behind this leader impulsively shot an arrow across the glade.It went over Migul's head and fell short of our cage. Migul turned,and a rain of arrows thudded harmlessly against its metal body. Iheard the Robot's contemptuous laugh. It made no answering attack, butstood motionless. And suddenly, thinking it a god whom now they mustplacate, the savages fell prostrate before him.
Strange tableau! I saw a ball of white mist across the glade nearMigul. Something was materializing; an imponderable ghost of somethingwas taking form. In an instant it was the wraith of a cage; then,where nothing had been, stood a cage. It was solid and substantial--ametal cage-room, gleaming white in the sunlight.
* * * * *
The tableau broke into sound and action. The savages howled. Onescrambled to his feet; then others. The Robot pretended to attackthem. An eery roar came from it as it turned toward the savages, andin a panic of agonized terror they fled. In a moment they haddisappeared among the distant trees, with Migul's huge figure trampingnoisily after them.
From the doorway of the cage across the glade, a young man wascautiously gazing. He had seen Migul make off; he saw, doubtless, Maryand me at the window of this other cage five hundred feet away. Hecame cautiously out from the doorway. He was a small, slim young man,bareheaded, with a pallid face. His black garments were edged withwhite, and he seemed unarmed. He hesitated, took a step or twoforward, stopped and stood cautiously peering. In the silence I couldhave shouted a warning. But I did not dare. It would have meant Mary'sand my death.
She clung to me. "George, shall we?" she asked.
Harl came slowly forward. Then suddenly from the room behind us therewas a stab of light. It leaped knee-high past us, out through our dooracross the glade--a tiny pencil-point of light so brilliantlyblue-white that it stabbed through the bright sunlight unfaded. Itwent over Harl's head, but instantly bent down and struck upon him.There it held the briefest of instants, then was gone.
Harl stood motionless for a second; then his legs bent and he fell.The sunlight shone full on his crumpled body. And as I stared inhorror, I saw that he was not quite motionless. Writhing? I thoughtso: a death agony. Then I realized it was not that.
"Mary, don't--don't look!" I said.
There was no need to tell her. She huddled beside me, shuddering, withher face pressed against my shoulder.
The body of Harl lay in a crumpled heap. But the clothes were saggingdown. The flesh inside them was melting.... I saw the white facesuddenly leprous; putrescent.... All in this moment, within theclothes, the body swiftly, decomposed.
In the sunlight of the glade lay a sagging heap of black and whitegarments enveloping the skeleton of what a moment before had been aman!
_(To be continued.)_
