The Time Masters

by Wilson Tucker

  “All this,” Shirley said in a small voice, “is leading up to something, I can feel it.”

  “All this is leading up to Gilgamesh and his supposed immortality. I repeat, supposed immortality. An immortal according to common definition is a person who never dies, a person with unending existence. Gilgamesh was no immortal; he was only thought to be because he existed before the ancient poets were born and was still there after they had gone. He seemed immortal to them because he did not grow old and die as they did, because he did not follow their timetable to the grave. Therefore, it pleased them to build a host of spurious legends about him, around him, to make of him something he was not.

  “The human species has a terrible blind spot: time. Because they are able to reason and to measure, they reasoned time into existence and then measured it according to standards they could easily understand. But humans also have egos, and whenever and wherever possible, those egos are catered to; so they built time around themselves and used measures that fitted themselves alone. They cast the entire universe into their own time mould, judging it by their own vain standards as if those standards were the universal prime law. Humans believe they alone live natural life spans the oft-mentioned three score and ten, while all else in creation is either above or below normal. Their vanity must make them the normal ones. They look down upon the insect as subnormal because he live only hours or days of their time; they openly gape and marvel at those hoary old trees because the trees live an abnormal length of their time. They will never admit that the insect, or the tree, or something else altogether may know time in the true normal—if the true normal actually exists.”

  “Does it?” she asked.

  “I wouldn’t know. I’m not that big.” He shook his head. “Humans believe they are the pinpoint upon which all creation revolves.”

  “That doesn’t sound fair.”

  “No, it doesn’t. But I believe it to be the truth. An ego living on an island with millions of similar egos of the same pattern will eventually arrive at the erroneous conclusion that they, the egos, are creation and therefore all else must conform to their schedules and standards. Your histories are full of repetitions of that.”

  “But there is a way out.”

  “Is, yes. Get kicked off the island by something bigger.”

  Shirley was still watching his face. “Or have that bigger something move onto the island with them.”

  “Fine theory, but it doesn’t prove out in practice. An individual ego here and there may be convinced but the greater mass will not. So—Gilgamesh. Those ancient ones could not see the contradiction of their own legends; they said he was an immortal, seeking the local equivalent to the fountain of youth. If he were immortal he wouldn’t have need of the miraculous waters, but if he needed the waters he could not be an immortal. They confused cause and effect to build a contradictory legend.”

  The fire burned merrily behind them, warming their backs and sending fairy shadows dancing on the walls. High overhead in the sight sky a heavy plane laboured through the darkness, the noise of its motors trailing far behind it.

  Shirley finally asked, “What was Gilgamesh seeking?”

  “Water. Water to prolong his life.”

  “You said . . .” and she halted to remember his words. “You said he found it too late to save his life, he found his ‘immortality’ too late. What did you mean by that?”

  “I meant that Gilgamesh sought water to live, and by the time he found it the die was already cast—it was too late to save his life because he had gone too long without it.”

  “Water?” she asked incredulously.

  “There was water on the island, the type of water natural to that island. But it was not his kind of water.”

  “I think you’d better explain that,” she said dubiously.

  “Suppose I tell you a story?”

  “What kind of a story?”

  “About a shipwrecked mariner, a castaway.” He stared at the moving shadows on the opposite wall. “About a man from another island who lived a part of his life span on the foods and water natural to his island.” He paused again. “About Gilgamesh.”

  “I want to know all about Gilgamesh.”

  “To satisfy a man you know?”

  “To satisfy me.”

  To be concluded

  FOREWORD

  To Dikty and Cummings, members of the secret security police working direct from Washington, Gilbert Nash was something of an enigma. His back-trail stopped short in Miami in 1940 and nothing was known about his earlier life. Yet he was apparently in possession of many vital secrets belonging to the nation, added to which there is a certain air of ‘foreigness’ about him and the fact that he is set up in business as a private detective in Knoxville, Tennessee, only a few miles from the government experimental research laboratories at Oak Ridge.

  Nash is visited by Gregg Hodgkins an atomic scientist from Oak Ridge and asked to trace his wife Carolyn who has disappeared. Nash elucidates that Carolyn has obtained some vital information regarding experimental rockets or a spaceship from her husband before leaving him and decides to take the case. Hodgkins is unsuccessful in his attempts to buy a gun— whether for protection or violence—and is found late that night apparently murdered by a revolver wound in the head. Dikty discusses with Shirley Hoffman, Cummings’ secretary, alt the information they have obtained regarding the visit of Hodgkins to Nash’s office and the former’s death and learns that yet another secret operator has tyeen assigned to their office to help unravel the deepening mystery.

  Twenty-four hours after Hodgkins’ death Nash breaks into the darkened house of the scientist looking for information that might help find Carolyn or solve Hodgkins’ murder and is surprised by another intruder, a woman, whom he cannot see in the darkness but with, whom he speaks for a while and vows to find again. The following day at Hodgkins’ funeral he has no difficulty in identifying Shirley Hoffman by her perfume as the intruder of the previous night and later ‘ accidentally ’ has lunch with her, the conversation becoming increasingly abstract as Shirley, working hard for her boss Cummings, tries to discover something new about Nash’s background. Nash however merely hints that some of the mystery surrounding Carolyn Hodgkins may lay in the distant past and concerns a prehistoric man named Gilgamesh who was seeking immortality.

  Despite police investigation no trace of Carolyn Hodgkins can be found although Dikty turns up the surprising information that she also is a person without a past. Nash, with more information to go on, has reasoned out that Carolyn is working toward a definite goal and that she must be somewhere near one of the few areas where rocket missiles are being tested, probably Los Alamos, but wherever it was she had obviously provided for such an eventuality.

  The day after his lunch with Shirley, Nash is out shadowing Dikty who is trying to find some evidence that Carolyn has withdrawn money or securities from one of the banks, when he realises that he in turn is being shadowed but cannot trace who it is, except that he is sure it cannot be Shirley. This is proved later when he finds her in the public library trying to find references to Gilgamesh. He invites her back to his apartment for dinner, still aware that he is being followed. After the meal they continue their earlier discussion of Gilgamesh and Nash shows her a collection of rare and ancient etchings which point up the fact that this being could have had some degree of immortality as there are references to him throughout a variety of different eras in early history.

  XI.

  “Gilgamesh was born on an island,” he began slowly, choosing his words with care, “an island that he thought was all the universe, all creation, until he left his childhood and began to learn that it was only an island, one among many. When he discovered there were many other islands and ships that plied between them, he decided then and there he wanted to sail in those ships to visit the other islands, wanted to spend his life in such travel. As soon as he had left his childhood behind he began the rigorous training necessary to become a mar
iner, began to accumulate the knowledge he needed to know to assist in the operation of those ships, began to learn about the other islands.

  “And at the same time he learned about himself. He discovered—with quite a shock—that there weren’t really very many people on his island, not nearly as many as there were on other islands. In that one respect his island was really unique—the smallness of its population was a thing to be remarked. Eventually he discovered why, and the answer lay in genetics. The life in his world was one of lethal heredity because he, his parents, his relatives and his friends were victims of doubled chromosomes, a quite deadly trait that pared the newborn down to a minimum, permitted only a fantastically low number of children to be born with normal bodies. By far the majority of births were stillborn, or mutated monsters that would not or could not live. Perverse genetics in the form of an unbalanced number of chromosomes was the curse upon the island and its people, and none there escaped it. Life very nearly became extinct, would have vanished altogether had not a saving factor appeared , in an attempt to balance the scale of nature. Longevity. The only possible answer was an extended life span so that the adults would have an opportunity to overcome the infant mortality rate, to prolong the race as a whole.

  “Very few infants lived. Those that did lived a great length of time, to enable them to procreate oftener and longer, to enable them to keep the race alive until a few more could be born to take their places. It was a poor balance, but the best that the tortured natural forces could provide. So it was accepted. Gilgamesh accepted it as had his parents before him, accepted it because he found himself with no living brothers and sisters, accepted it because he soon learned how thinly populated the island was. But meanwhile he grew into early manhood, he completed the training necessary to sail, and he married.”

  Shirley flashed him a startled look.

  “He married early because it was the custom and the means of prolonging the race. He married early because it was required of him. Before he made his first voyage he had two children—both stillborn. And then he began a career as a mariner, of sailing between the islands.

  “One of the vital things he quickly learned was that life—his life—always hung in a delicate balance. The ships were the stoutest, the best made, yet they were continually running afoul unseen things that wrecked them. Continually striking previously charted objects that did not remain in the positions assigned to them. A ship could founder at any moment, and when the ship went, life went with it because the islands were scattered amazingly far and wide. Too, the food and water on a given island were not always acceptable to life—his life. Food wasn’t as much a problem as water, because the water welling up on the island of his birth was not the same as water elsewhere.

  “It was a peculiar kind of water, natural enough if one remained on the island during his lifetime, but really quite rare if one visited other islands and discovered how unusual it was. It was a water with certain, special qualities not found in very many other places that the ships visited. Hence, those ships must carry great stores of it to enable them to make complete round-trip voyages without refilling the tanks. The water of the other worlds was drinkable in emergencies—yes, but it was water of a drastically altered nature which failed to yield the mineral qualities necessary to sustain the lengthened life span. It was a poor substitute which, if one were forced to rely on it alone, would not sustain life the natural span. It was, in short, a thin liquid to prolong life a short while—nothing more. The natural water of the island on which one was born and raised was needed for a healthy life.”

  The girl had been sitting very quietly, listening to his voice and watching his profile against the flickering firelight. Now she said, “So Gilgamesh became a sailor. Despite the dangers to the mariner, despite the need for the peculiar water of his home world, he became a sailor. And he was shipwrecked.”

  Nash nodded sombrely, his eyes still following the shadowy patterns on the far wall. “It was one of those dark unseen things that moved in a blacker sea, a chunk of rock that hurtled out of nowhere; it happened in an instant. He was with his wife—standing in their cabin engaged in idle conversation when the alarm bell rang. Arid in the next instant he was hurled through a breach in the cabin wall, not knowing if his wife had found time to prepare herself.”

  “Did he . . . did he ever find out?”

  “Did, yes. When her body was washed ashore.”

  Shirley closed her eyes, moved her lips to form the words, “I’m sorry,” without actually speaking them. She said nothing aloud, waiting for him to continue.

  “So—Gilgamesh hunted water, the kind of water needed for his kind of life. He had his own emergency rations and he took more from the body of his wife; he doled that out a little at a time, sipping at it while he accustomed himself to the new, weaker water he found on the strange island. It did not last forever of course and was soon gone, but he continued his search over all the known world, over all the world that he could manage to cover, always hoping that somewhere he would find it. You see—it was quite inevitable that those ancient Mesopotamian poets should concoct stories about him, should make him out a demigod.”

  “But he did find it somewhere—too late.”

  “Did, yes. He never found it in its natural state, and so his body began to die—simply began to deteriorate for lack of it the same as your body would deteriorate if you were deprived of water and forced to drink some other fluid. He was so long without it that when a near-substitute finally appeared in an artificial state, complete rejuvenation was impossible. Compare it if you like to the doctor who discovers a serum too late to heal his patient; the serum will prolong the patient’s life a while, but nothing more.”

  “This water is manufac—oh!”

  “Yes,” Nash repeated dryly, “oh.”

  “Heavy water?” she questioned.

  “That’s the popular name for it. Deuterium oxide. Eventually men began scientific experimentation for purposes of war, and produced heavy water.”

  “But that was only a short time ago. Twenty or thirty years ago,” she protested.

  “I told you Gilgamesh found it far too late to save his life.”

  She was silent for a long while and he said nothing to break the silence, allowing her the privacy of her thoughts. He sat with his back to the fire and listened to the quiet house, listened to the stillness of the night outside. Her nearness wafted the gentle perfume to his nostrils and he enjoyed that. Quite unconsciously she first straightened and then recrossed her legs beneath her skirt, briefly flashing slim ankles in the dim light. Shirley was silent for so long that at last he moved his head to look at her, to study the intense expression on her face. Their eyes met.

  “All of this . . .” she paused and swallowed, “all of this is rather difficult to believe in one sitting. And not a little confusing.”

  “Is, yes. I’m aware of that.” He smiled down at her. “I don’t ask you to believe any of it, if you don’t wish to.” He moved his hand rapidly as though to wave it all away. “Consider it only a tale, told by another imaginative poet.”

  “No,” she protested haltingly, “not quite that. I’m unable to grasp the whole thing, but not quite that. You’ll have to forgive my slowness but I’m only—human. It seems just a little too much to perceive and believe all at once.”

  “I understand.”

  “Once before,” she continued slowly, fumbling with an idea difficult to translate into words, “I asked you how old Gilgamesh was—at the time of Noah, for instance. Oh, and by the way, I’ve discovered since that Gilgamesh predated the biblical flood as well as postdated it, if we may believe the stone tablets. You see, I’ve been doing a little bit of research of my own.”

  “I see.”

  “But I’m curious about the age of Gilgamesh, about his original appearance on this—island. The tablets give no hint of course. How long ago was the shipwreck? How long ago was Gilgamesh washed ashore?”

  Nash furrowed his brow. “
Now that is difficult to answer. How would you mark time before the invention of the calendar? The best I can do is make an estimate based on the people and the life he first discovered on the island. And then compare those people to present-day anthropological studies.”

  “I’ll accept that people?”

  “The Azilian culture.”

  “Azilian? I’m sorry, but that doesn’t convey a meaning to me. I’m not familiar with it.”

  “It is generally identified with the early mesolithic period in western Europe.” He was still watching her face, watching for the shock that he knew would be there. “That was roughly 8000 B.C.”

  She sat still with her eyes closed.

  “The climate was quite warm—very similar to what it is today in that part of Europe; the last of the ice sheets had retreated northward and warm-weathered animals were starting to appear. The people—the Azilians—were a small-statured but wild hunting race; they possessed half-tamed dogs to aid them in the hunt, and lived chiefly on the wild cattle and horses that roamed the countryside. A very fierce race. The Azilians overflowed most of western Europe, I believe: Spain, Switzerland, France, Belgium and parts of Britain.”

  Shirley turned on him with wide staring eyes and he saw the shock reflected in them. “But that was nearly ten thousand years ago I” He nodded agreement. “Was, yes.”

  Nash brought in from the kitchen a bubbling percolator and refilled their coffee cups, carrying hers across the room to place it beside her on the hearth-rug. Kindling had been added to the waning fire, rebuilding its light and warmth. He indicated the coffee. “Dr. Nash prescribes.”

  “Thank you. I suppose I’ve been acting like a dope?”

  “I wouldn’t say that.”

  “I feel like one.”

  “Please don’t.”

  “I try to keep an open mind,” she explained. “I try at all times to be credulous and understanding and willing to learn new things. But sometimes I just can’t help myself!”