by Ray Cummings
We passed 10,000 B. C. Man was progressing faster. He was finding new wants and learning how to supply them. Animals were domesticated, made subservient and put to work. A vast advance! No longer did man think it necessary to kill, to subdue: the master could have a servant.
Food was found in the soil. More fastidious always, in eating, man learned to grow food. Then came the dawn of agriculture.
And then we swept into the period of recorded history. 4241 B. C. In Egypt, man was devising a calendar....
This fragment of space upon which we gazed, this space of the Western Hemisphere near the shore of the sea, was destined to be the site of a city of millions, the New York City of my birth. But it was a backward space, now. In Europe, man was progressing faster....
Perhaps, here in America, in 4000 B. C. there was nothing in human form. I gazed out at the surrounding landscape. It seemed almost steady, now, of outline. We were moving through Time much less rapidly than ever before. I remarked the sweep of a thousand years on the Time-dials. It had become an appreciable interval of Time to me. I gazed again out the window. The change of outline was very slight. I could distinguish where the ocean came against the curving line of shore, and saw a blurred vista of gray forests spreading out over the land. And then I could distinguish the rivers, and a circular open stretch of water, landlocked. A bay!
"Mary, look!" I cried. "The harbor, the rivers! See, we are on an island!"
It made our hearts pound. Out of the chaos, out of the vast reaches of past Time, it seemed that we were coming home. More than a vague familiarity was in this panorama now. Here was the little island which soon was to be called Manhattan. Our window faced the west. A river showed off there, a gray gash with wall-like cliffs. The sea had swung, and was behind us to the east.
Familiar space! It was growing into the form we had known it. Our cage was poised near the south-central part of the island. We seemed to be on a slight rise of ground. There were moments when the gray quivering outlines of forest trees loomed around us; then they melted down and were replaced by others.
A primeval forest, here, solid upon this island and across the narrow waters; solid upon the mainland.
What strange animals were here, roaming these dark primeval glades? What animals, with the smaller stamp of modernity, were pressing here for supremacy? As I gazed westward I could envisage great herds of bison 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 were here yet; and to me there was a great imaginative appeal in this backward space. The New World, it was soon to be called. And it was six thousand years, at the least, behind the Hemisphere of the east.
Egypt, now, with no more than a shadowy distant heritage from the beast, was flourishing. In Europe, Hellenic culture soon would blossom. In this march of events, the great Roman Empire was impending.
1,000 B. C. Men were coming to this backward space. The way from Asia was open. Already the Mongoloid tribes, who had crossed where in my day was the Bering Strait, were cut off from the Old World. And they spread east and south, hunting the bison.
And now Christ was born. The turning point in the spiritual development of mankind....
To me, another brief interval. The intricate events of man's upward struggle were transpiring in Europe, Asia and Africa. The canoe-borne Mongols had long since found the islands of the South Seas. Australia was peopled. The beauty of New Zealand had been found and recognized.
500 A. D. The Mongoloids had come, and were flourishing here. They were changed vastly from those ancestors of Asia whence they had sprung. An obscure story, this record of primitive America! The Mongoloids were soon so changed that one could fancy the blood of another people had mingled with them. Amerindians, we call them now. They were still very backward in development, yet made tremendous forward leaps, so that, reaching Mexico, they may have become the Aztecs, and in Peru, the Incas. And separated, not knowing of each other's existence, these highest two civilizations of the Western World nourished with a singularly strange similarity....
I saw on the little island around me still no evidence of man. But men were here. The American Indian, still bearing evidence of the Mongols, plied these waters in his frail canoes. His wigwams of skins, the smoke of his signal fires, these were not enduring enough for me to see....
We had no more than passed the year 500 A. D., and were traveling with progressive retardation, when again I was attracted by the movements of the Robot, Migul. It had been sitting behind us at the control table setting the Time-levers, slowing our flight. Frequently it gazed eastward along the tiny beam of light which issued from the telespectroscope. For an interval, now, its recording mirror had been dark. But I think that Migul was seeing evidences of the other cage which was pursuing us, and planning to stop at some specific Time with whose condition it was familiar. Once already it had seemed about to stop, 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 flung out 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. Presently I shall stop, and capture or kill him. It will please the master and -"
The Robot checked itself, its hollow voice fading strangely into a gurgle. It added, "I do not mean that! I have no master!"
This strange mechanical thing! Habit had surprised it into the admission 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 say that!"
These words were spoken by a new voice, here with us in the humming cage. It was horribly startling. Mary uttered a low cry and huddled against me. But whatever surprise and terror it brought to us was as nothing compared to the effect it had upon the Robot. The great mechanism had been standing, fronting me with an attitude vainglorious, bombastic. I saw now the metal hinge of its lower jaw drop with astonishment, and somehow, throughout all that gigantic jointed frame and that expressionless face it conveyed the aspect of its inner surge of horror.
We had heard the sardonic voice of a human! Of someone else here with us, whose presence was wholly unsuspected by the Robot!
We three stood and gazed. Across the room, in a corner to which my attention had never directly gone, was a large metal cupboard with levers, dials and wires upon it. I had vaguely thought the thing some part of the cage controls. It was that; a storage place of batteries and current oscillators, I afterward learned. But there was space inside, and now like a door its front swung outward. A crouching black shape was there. It moved; hitched itself forward and came out. There was revealed a man enveloped in a dead black cloak and a great round hood. He made a shapeless ball as he drew himself out from the confined space where he had been crouching.
"So you have no master, Migul?" he said. "I was afraid you might think that. I have been hiding, testing you out. However, you have done very well for me."
His was an ironic, throaty human voice! It was deep and mellow, yet there was a queer rasp to it. Mary and I stood transfixed. Migul seemed to sag. The metal columns of its legs were trembling.
The cupboard door closed. The dark shape untangled itself and stood erect. It was the figure of a man some five feet tall. The cloak wholly covered him; the hood framed his thick, wide face; in the dull glow of the cage interior Mary and I could see of his face only the heavy 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 thick shoulders, one of which was much higher than the other, with the massive 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 like your ideas of mastery, and so I came just to make sure that you are still very loyal to me. You have done well, indeed. Who is in this other 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 of 1777, where I did your bidding. Master, the man Major Atwood is -"
"That is very good, Migul," Tugh said hastily. Mary and I standing gazing 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 regarded us 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 very close a while in the past. He is alone."
"So?" Tugh glanced at the Time-dials. "Stop us where we planned. You remember, in one of those years when this space was the big forest glade."
He fronted Mary and me. "You are patient, young sir. You do not speak."
His glittering black eyes held me. They were red-rimmed eyes, like those of a beast. He had a strangely repulsive face. His lips were cruel, and so thin they made his wide mouth like a gash. But there was an intellectuality stamped upon his features.
He held the black cloak closely around his thick, misshapen form. "You do not speak," he repeated.
I moistened my dry lips. Tugh was smiling now, and suddenly I saw the full inhuman quality of his face, the great high-bridged nose, and high cheek-bones; a face Satanic when he smiled.
I managed, "Should I speak, and demand the meaning of this? I do. And if you will return this girl from whence she came -"
"It will oblige you greatly," he finished ironically. "An amusing fellow. What is your name?"
"George Rankin."
"Migul took you from 1935?"
"Yes."
"Well, as you doubtless know, you are most unwelcome.... You are watching the dials, Migul?"
"Yes, Master."
"You can return me," I said. I was standing with my arm around Mary. I could feel her shuddering. I was trying to be calm, but across the background of my consciousness thoughts were whirling. We must escape. This Tugh was our real enemy, and for all the gruesome aspect of the pseudo-human Robot, this man Tugh seemed the more sinister, more menacing.... We must escape. Tugh would never return us to our own worlds. But the cage was stopping presently. We were loose: a sudden rush -
Dared I chance it? Already I had been in conflict with Migul, and lived through it. But this Tugh, was he armed? What weapons might be beneath that cloak? Would he kill me if I crossed him?... Whirling thoughts.
Tugh was saying, "And Mary -" I snapped from my thoughts as Mary gripped me, trembling at Tugh's words, shrinking from his gaze.
"My little Mistress Atwood, did you think because Tugh vanished that year the war began that you were done with him? Oh, no: did I not promise differently? You, man of 1935, are unwelcome." His gaze roved me. "Yet not so unwelcome, either, now that I think of it. Chain them up, Migul; use a longer chain. Give them space to move; you are unhuman."
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 murmured menacingly, "I will be obliged to kill you. I, I cannot be controlled."
It chained us now with longer chains than before. Tugh looked up from his seat at the instrument table.
"Very good," he said crisply. "You may look out of the window, you two. You may find it interesting."
We were retarding with a steady drag. I could plainly see trees out of the window, gray, spectral trees which changed their shape as I watched them. They grew with a visible flow of movement, flinging out branches. Occasionally one would melt suddenly down. A living, growing forest pressed close about us. And then it began opening, and moving away a few hundred feet. We were in the glade Tugh mentioned, which now was here. There was unoccupied space where we could stop and unoccupied space five hundred feet distant.
Tugh and Migul were luring the other cage into stopping. Tugh wanted five hundred feet of unoccupied space between the cages when they stopped. 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 distinguish the intervals when in the winter these trees were denuded. There would be naked branches; then, in an instant, blurred and flickering forms of leaves. Sometimes there were brief periods when the gray scene was influenced by winter snows; other times it was tinged by the green of the summers.
"750, Migul.... Hah! You know what to do if Harl dares to follow and stop 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 was the man.
"Migul, this is 761."
The Robot was at the door. I murmured to Mary to brace herself for the stopping. I saw the dark naked trees and the white of a snow in the winter of 761; the coming spring of 762. And then the alternate flashes of day and night.
The now familiar sensations of stopping rushed over us. There was a night seconds long. Then daylight.
We stopped in the light of an April day of 762 A. D. There had been a forest fire: so brief a thing we had not noticed it is we passed. The trees were denuded over a widespread area; the naked blackened trunks stood stripped of smaller branches and foliage. I think that the fire had occurred the previous autumn; in the silt of ashes and charred branches with which the ground was strewn, already a new pale-green vegetation was springing up.
Our cage was set now in what had been a woodland glade, an irregularly circular space of six or eight hundred feet, with the wreckage of the burned forest around it. We were on a slight rise of ground. Through the denuded trees the undulating landscape was visible over a considerable area. It was high noon, and the sun hung in a pale blue sky dotted with pure white clouds.
Ahead of us, fringed with green where the fire had not reached, lay a blue river, sparkling in the sunlight. The Hudson! But it was not named yet; nearly eight hundred and fifty years were to pass before Hendrick Hudson came sailing up this river, adventuring, hoping that here was the way to China.
We were near the easterly side of the glade; to the west there was more than five hundred feet of vacant space. It was there the other cage would appear, if it stopped.
As Mary and I stood by the window at the end of the chain-lengths which held us, Tugh and Migul made hurried preparations.
"Go quickly, near the spot where he will arrive. When he sees you, run away, Migul. You understand?"
"Yes, Master." The Robot left our doorway, tramping with stiff-legged tread across the glade. Tugh was in the room behind us, and I turned to him and asked:
"What are you going to do?"
He was at the telespectroscope. I saw on its recording mirror the wraith-like image of the other vehicle. It was coming! It would be retarding, maneuvering to stop at just this Time when now we existed here; but across the glade, where Migul now was leaning against a great 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 to hurt you, nor this young man of 1935. Not yet."
He left the table and came at us. His cloak parted in front and I saw his crooked hips, and shr
iveled bent legs.
"You stay at the window, both of you, and keep looking out. I want this 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," he was 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." I said. What, to me, was the life of this unknown Harl compared to the safety of Mary Atwood?
