The Time Axis

by Henry Kuttner

  "It seems clear to me," she went on, "that Mr. Cortland is a sort of catalyst in our affairs. From the moment he entered them things have speeded up rather frighteningly. I suggest it's time to make a definite forward move. What do you think, Ira?"

  De Kalb frowned a little. "How's Murray?" he asked.

  "He's dying," she said flatly. "I know of only one thing that could possibly postpone his death."

  "The neo-hypnosis, you mean," De Kalb said. "Well, yes – if it works. We've used it on sleeping subjects, of course, but with a man who is as far gone as Murray, I don't know."

  "We can try," Dr. Essen said. "It's a chance. I don't think he'd ever have entered the time-axis of his own volition but this way we can take him along. Things are working out, Ira, very surprisingly."

  "Can we keep him alive until we reach the shaft?" De Kalb asked.

  "I think so. I can't promise but – "

  "We can't save him," De Kalb said. "The People of the Face – maybe. And after all, Murray did go with us. I saw him. Mr. Cortland do you think that plane would carry the four of us as far as the Laurentians?"

  "Obviously, Mr. De Kalb," I said with somewhat hysterical irony, "obviously, if I guess what you have in mind, it did!"

  You could see the shaft-mouth from a long way up, dark above the paler slide of dug earth, and shadowed by the thick green of the Canadian mountains.

  It was easier to spot from the air than to reach on foot.

  We left the plane in a little clearing at the bottom of the slope. It seemed wildly reckless, but what else could we do? And we carried Murray's body up the mountain with us, De Kalb and I, while Dr. Essen, carrying a square case about two feet through, kept a watchful eye on the unconscious man. Once she had to administer adrenalin to Murray.

  I still hadn't come to any decision. I could simply have walked away but that would have meant shutting the last door of escape behind me. I told myself that I'd think of some other way before the final decision had to be made. Meanwhile I went with the others.

  "It wouldn't be as though I were running away from punishment," I told De Kalb wryly as we paused to catch our breath on the lip of the shaft. Tree-tops swayed and murmured below us, and the mountains were warm in the late, slanting sunlight of a summer evening.

  "If your theories are right I won't be escaping from anything. The moment I step into your time-trap my alter ego steps out and goes on down the mountain to take his medicine. All I can say is I hope he has a fine alibi ready."

  "He will have – we will have," De Kalb said. "We'll have all time at our disposal to think one up in. Remember what our real danger is, Cortland – the nekron. An infection of the mind. An infection of the earth itself and perhaps an infection in our own flesh, yours and mine.

  "What it is that I turned loose on the world when I opened that box I don't yet know but I expect to know when I go down that mountain again – ten minutes from now, a million years from now. Both." He shook his head.

  "Let's get on with it," he said.

  8. FANTASTIC JOURNEY

  I don't think I ever really meant to embark on that fantastic journey along the time axis. I helped carry Colonel Murray's body down the dusty shaft but it was a nightmare I walked through, not a real experience. I knew at the bottom of the tunnel I'd wake up in my hotel in Rio.

  At the foot of the shaft was a hollowed out room. Our flash-beams moved searchingly across the rough walls. We carried Murray into the cave and laid him down gently on a spot the scientist indicated, Dr. Essen immediately became busy with her patient. Presently she looked up and nodded reassuringly.

  "There's time," she said.

  But De Kalb waved his arm, sending light sliding erratically up the rock, and said, "Time – there is time here! This space and this air form one immutable axis upon which all the past and the future turn like a wheel."

  It was bombastic but it was impressive too. Dr. Essen and I were silent, trying to grasp that imponderable concept, trying perhaps to catch the sound of that vast turning. But De Kalb had moved into action.

  "Now," he said, kneeling beside the black suitcase Dr. Essen had set down. "Now you shall see. Murray is all right for a while? Then – " He snapped open the case and laid down its four sides so that the compact instruments within stood up alone, light catching in their steel surfaces.

  He squatted down and began to unpack them, to set up from among part of the shining things a curious little structure like a tree of glass and blinking lights, fitting tiny jointed rods together, screwing bulbs like infinitesimal soap-bubbles into invisible sockets.

  "Now, Letta," he said presently, squinting up at her in the dusty flash-beams, "your turn."

  "Ira – " She hesitated, shrugged uneasily. "Very well."

  I held the light for them while they worked.

  After what seemed a long while De Kalb grunted and sat back on his heels. There was a thin, very high singing noise and the tiny tree began to move. I let my flashlight sink upon my knee. De Kalb reached over and switched it off. Dr. Essen's beam blinked out with a soft click. It was dark except for the slowly quickening spin of the tree, the flicker of its infinitesimal lights.

  Very gradually it seemed to me that a gray brightness was beginning to dawn around us, almost as if the whirling tree threw off light that was tangible and accumulated in the dusty air, hanging there upon every mote of dust, spinning a web that grew and grew.

  It was gathering in an egg-shaped oval that nearly filled the chamber.

  By the gray luminous dimness I could see Dr. Essen with her hands on a flat thick sheet of metal which she held across her knees. There were raised bars of wire across its upper surface and she seemed almost to be playing it like a musical instrument as her fingers moved over the bars. There was no sound but the light slowly, very slowly, broadened around us.

  "In theory," Dr. Essen said, "this would have worked years ago. But in practice, only this very special type of space provides the conditions we need. I published some papers in Forty-one on special atomic structures and the maintenance of artificial matrix. But the displacement due to temporal movement made practical application impossible. Only at the time-axis would that displacement theory became invalid.

  "I am creating a rigid framework of matter now. Call it a matrix, except that the vibratory period is automatically adaptive, so that it's self-perpetuating and can't be harmed. Really, the practical application would be something like this – if you were driving a car and saw another car -about to collide with you, your own vehicle could automatically adjust its structure and become intangible. So – "

  "It isn't necessary for Mr. Cortland to understand this," De Kalb said, his voice suddenly almost gay. "Eager seeker after truth though he may be. There is still much I don't understand. We go into terra incognita – but I think we will come to the Face in the end.

  "Somehow, against apparent logic, we have managed to follow the rules of the game. Somehow events have arranged themselves – in an unlikely fashion – so that all four of us are entering the time axis where all four of us lie asleep – intangible, impalpable and invisible except under ultraviolet.

  "Murray may die. But since the nekronic creature attacked through time, as I believe, then perhaps sympathetic medicine may cure the Colonel. Some poisons kill but cure in larger doses. I don't know. Perhaps the long catalepsy outside time will enable Murray's wound to heal – wherever it is. I suspect that the people of the Face may have foreseen all this. Are you getting drowsy, Mr. Cortland?"

  I was. The softly whirling tree, the sweet, thin, monotonous sound of its turning were very effective hypnotics though I hadn't realized it fully till now. I made a sudden convulsive effort to rise. On the very verge of the plunge I realized that my decision had been made for me.

  I felt my nerve going. I didn't want to embark on this crazy endeavor at all. A suicide must know this last instant of violent revulsion the moment after he has pulled the trigger or swallowed the poison. I put out every ounce of
energy I had – and moved with infinite sluggishness, perhaps a quarter of an inch from where I sat.

  De Kalb's voice said, "No, no. The matrix has formed." My head was ringing.

  The gray light was like a web that sealed my eyes. Through it, dimly, remotedly, far off in space and time, I thought I could see motion stirring that was not our motion – and perhaps was –

  And perhaps was ourselves, at the other end of the closing temporal circle, rising from sleep after adventures a million years in the future, a million years in the past. But that motion was wholly theirs. I could not stir.

  Sealed in sleep, sealed in time, I felt my consciousness sinking down like a candleflame, like a sinking fountain, down and down to the levels below awareness.

  The next thing I saw, I told myself out of that infinite drowsiness, would be the Face of Ea looking out over the red twilight of the world's end. And then the flame went out, the fountain sank back upon the dark wellspring of its origin far below the surfaces of the mind.

  "And now we wait," De Kalb's voice said, ghostly, infinities away. "Now we wait – a million years."

  9. STRANGE AWAKENING

  There was a rhythmic ebb and flow of waves on some murmurous shore. It must, I thought, be part of my dream.

  Dream?

  I couldn't remember. The murmur was a voice, but the things it said seemed to slip by over the surface of my mind without waking any ripples of comprehension. Sight? I could see nothing. There was movement somewhere, but meaningless movement. Feeling? Perhaps a mild warmth, no more. Only the voice, very low – unless, after all, it were some musical instrument.

  But it spoke in English.

  Had I been capable of surprise that should have surprised me. But I was not. I was utterly passive. I let sensations come and go in the darkness that lay just beyond me, on the other side of that wall of the silenced senses. What world? What time? What people? It didn't matter yet.

  " – of waiting here so long," the voice said on a minor chord of sadness so intensely sweet that my throat seemed to tighten in response. Then it changed. It pleased – and I knew even in my stupor that no one of flesh and blood could possibly deny whatever that strange sweet voice demanded. "So I may go now, Lord? Oh, please, please let me go!" The English was curious, at once archaic and evolved. "An hour's refreshment in the Swan Garden," the plaintive voice urged, "and I shan't droop so." Then a sigh, musical with a deliberate lilt.

  "My hair – look at it, Lord! The sparkles all gone, all gone. Poor sparkles! But only an hour in the Swan Gardens and I'll serve you again. May I go, Lord? May I go?"

  No one could have denied her. I lay there enthralled by the sheer music of that voice. It was like the shock of icy water in the face to hear a man's brisk voice reply.

  "Save your tongue, save your tongue. And don't flatter me with the name of Lord. This is business."

  "But so many hours already - I'll die, I know I'll die! You can't be so cruel – and I'll call you Lord anyhow. Why not? You are my Lord now, since you have the power to let me live or – " Heart-rending sorrow breathed in the sigh she gave.

  "My poor hair," she said. "The stars are quite gone out of it now. Oh, how hideous I am! The sight of me when he wakes will be too dreadful, Lord! Let me take one little hour in the Swan Garden and – "

  "Be quiet. I want to think."

  There was silence for a moment or two. Then the sweet voice murmured something in a totally unfamiliar language, sullenly. The man said, "You know the rules, don't you?"

  "Yes, Lord. I'm sorry."

  "No more impudence, then. I know impudence, even when I can't understand it. Pay attention to me now. I'm going to put an end to this session. When this man wakes bring him – "

  "To the Swan Garden? Oh, Lord Paynter, now? I will love you forever!"

  "It isn't necessary," the crisp voice said, "Just bring him to the right station. The City's the nearest connection since this is confidential so far. Do you understand?"

  "The City? Walk through the City? I'll die before I've gone a dozen steps. My poor slippers – oh, Lord Paynter, why not direct transmission?"

  "You'll have new slippers if you need them. I don't want to remind you again all this is secret work. We don't want anybody tuning in accidentally on our wave-length. The transmitter in the City has the right wave-band, so you can bring him – "

  His voice trailed off. The girl's tones interrupted, dying away in the distance in a faint, infinitely pitiable murmuring quaver. There was a pause, then the sound of light feet returning on some hard surface and a rush of laughter like a spurt of bright fountaining water.

  "Old fool," she said, and laughed again. "If you think I care – " The words changed and were again incomprehensible, in some language I had never heard even approximated before.

  Then movement came, and light – a brief, racking vertigo wrenched my brain around,

  I opened my eyes and looked up into the face of the girl, and logic was perfectly useless after that. Later I understood why, knew what she was and why men's hearts moved at the sight and sound of her. But then it was enough to see that flawless face, the lovely curve of her lips, the eyes that shifted from one hue to another, the hyacinth hair where the last stars pulsed and died.

  She was bending over me, the tips of her scented ringlets brushing my shoulder. Her voice was inhumanly sweet, and so soft with warmth and reassurance that all my bewilderment melted away. It didn't matter where I was or what had happened, so long as that lovely voice and that lovely face were near – which was exactly the effect she had meant to make and exactly the reason why she was there. I knew her face.

  At that moment I was not even trying to reason things out. My tongue felt thick and my mind was lightly furred all over with the effects of what? Sleep? Some drug they might have given me while I lay there helpless? I didn't know. I accepted all that was happening with a mindless acquiescence. Later I would wonder. Now I only stared up at the lovely, familiar face and listened to the lovely, familiar face and listened to the lovely, remotely familiar voice.

  "You're all right now," she was murmuring, her changing eyes on mine. "Quite all right. Don't be worried. Do you feel strong enough yet to sit up? I have something I want you to see."

  I got an elbow under me and levered myself slowly up, the girl helping. I looked around.

  I was dressed in unfamiliar dark garments and I was sitting on a low couch apparently composed of a solid block of some hard yet resilient substance. We were alone together in a smallish room whose walls looked like the couch, hard yet faintly translucent, just a little yielding to the touch. Everything had the same color, a soft graylike mist or – I thought dimly – sleep itself, the color of sleep.

  The girl was the color of – sunlight, perhaps. Her smooth skin had an apricot glow and her gown was of thin, thin silky stuff, pale yellow, like layers of veiling that floated when she moved. There were still a few fading sparkles in her curls. Her eyes just now were a clear bright blue that darkened as I met them to something close to violet.

  "Look," she said. "Over there, behind you, on the wall."

  I turned on the couch and looked. The far wall had a circular opening in it. Beyond the opening I could see rough rock walls, a grayish glow of light, four figures lying motionless on the dusty floor. For a moment it meant nothing to me. My mind was still dim with sleep. Then –

  "The cave!" I said suddenly. And of course, it was. That little glittering tree which was the last thing I had seen before sleep overtook me stood there, motionless now. Beside it lay De Kalb.

  Dr. Essen slumbered beyond him, the flat metal sheet with the bars of wire still leaning against her knee. She lay on her side, the tired, gentle face half hidden by her bent arm, the gray curls on the dusty floor. There was a rather unexpected gracefulness to her angular body as she lay there, utterly relaxed in a sleep that was already – how many thousands of years long?

  My eyes lingered for an instant on her face, moved on to Murray's motionless
body, moved back again to search the woman's half-hidden features for a disturbing something I could not quite identify. It was – it was –

  The figure beyond Murray's caught my attention suddenly and for an instant my mind went blank with amazement. The puzzle of Dr. Essen's face vanished in this larger surprise, the incredible identity of that fourth person asleep in the dusty cave. I gaped, speechless and without thought.

  Up to that instant I suppose I had been assuming simply that all of us were being awakened, slowly and with difficulty, and that I had awakened first. But the fourth person asleep on the cavern floor was Jeremy Cortland. Jerry Cortland – me.

  I got to my feet unsteadily, finding after a moment or two that I was in fairly good control of all my faculties. The girl twittered in concern.

  "I'm all right," I said. "But I'm still there!"

  Then I paused. "That means the others may have wakened too. De Kalb – Dr. Essen – have they – ?"

  She hesitated. "Only you are awake," she said at last.

  I walked on slightly uncertain feet across the floor and peered into the cave. There was no cave.

  I knew it when I was close to the wall. I could see the light reflected slightly on the texture of the surface. The cave was only another reflection, television perhaps, or something more obscure, but with startlingly convincing depth and clarity.

  And if that scene was separated from me in space it might be distant in time as well – I might be seeing a picture of something hours or weeks old. It was an unpleasant moment, that. So long as I thought myself near to that last familiar link with my own world I had maintained a certain confidence that broke abruptly now. I looked around a little wildly at the girl.

  "I'm not in that cave now – they're not there now either, are they? This was just a picture that was taken before any of us woke. Did you wake first, then?" It was no good. I knew that. I rubbed my hand across my face and said, "Sorry. What did happen?"