by Anthology
“How’d you get mixed up with him in the first place?”
“He’s my uncle,” said Betty, and I groaned like a punctured balloon. She went on, unheeding, “He’s no ordinary screwball—he’s the grand duke of all screwballs. That’s why we’re stuck here. You don’t mind my talking about it?”
“Mind? I’ve practically gone blind for lack of light on the subject,” I said.
The rain was smashing down on the vast river now and our cavern roared and groaned with echoes of the violent percussions. The warm rock wall was at our backs. Our shoulders barely touched. Betty talked, and her voice, close to my ear, was like a magic whisper from far flung centuries against the roar of the ages.
“I’ll begin with my father,” she said. “He was a great man—a genius. If he had lived, the world would have looked up to him. He was a student of Einstein, but he had his own distinct theories of universes interlocked through time. His experiments were highly successful up to that fateful year when he began to use time-transfer devices.”
“Then your father was Professor Clifton Milholland, the physicist and inventor?”
“Yes. Unfortunately his laboratory fell to my uncle, the absent-minded Colonel, who is so zany about making a name for himself as a naturalist that he’d gladly send you to the sun if any new animal calls were to be found there. That’s why you came here, wasn’t it? What did you bring, a phonograph-recorder?”
“A vocoder,” I said. “You’ve seen them used, I suppose? They break a voice down into its simple elements, such as volume—tone qualities—pitch.”
“I remember,” said Betty. “And they remake voices, too.”
“Right. This instrument of mine is the latest, most compact model. I could take an impression of your voice; then, by operating the keys, I could make it speak my words to you in your voice—that is, in the same pitch-range, with the same overtones, the same consonant qualities, and so on. Your own mother wouldn’t know but what it was you.”
“Remarkable,” she mused. “Have you used it?”
“Not once . . . Well, I did take a record of Slaf-Carch’s voice—he was a vibrant, mellow baritone, you know—but I never completed the demonstration. We were prisoners at the time, and he was more interested in telling me about a foreigner-girl named Betty.”
Betty quickly shifted the subject away from dangerous ground. “I suppose Jipfur has been curious about the instrument?”
“He’s never seen it,” I said.
“Then you’ve hid it?”
“The fact is, I got rid of it a few days before Jipfur claimed me.”
“Got rid of it?”
“Sold it—to a peddler with a mule cart full of secondhand junk. I needed a little coin to buy a present for Slaf-Carch in exchange for my keep. The peddler paid a good price. He said he could pan it off on some magician as a magic box. It looks magic enough—a solid black case—heavy—”
“You must be a cousin to Jack and the Bean Stalk, selling a valuable instrument like that—”
“No one will know how to use it. For that matter, I doubt if anyone will open it. It locks like a steel chest, and I forgot to throw in the key. But some charlatan will get his money’s worth.”
“And scare money out of innocent peasants—you soulless creature,” said Betty. “I’d like to have heard it work, just for the sake of old times. Did you give the Colonel a demonstration?”
I was glad for the talk to drift back to America. Betty’s coming to this age was still a mystery to me; but I knew we must have many things in common. From the safe distance of twenty-five centuries we began poking fun at Colonel Milholland.
“The old boy began reading the encyclopedia to me as soon as I dropped in for an interview,” I recounted. “He had a passage about a bull moose—its mating season, and such.”
“I suppose he offered to mount an animal for you if you, could bring one back from this age?”
“Come to think of it, he did. Though it was his own wall-space he pointed toward. He suggested a bull moose with wide antlers. Don’t tell me he expected you to bring back some big game?”
“You haven’t seen me out gunning for moose, have you?” she laughed.
“If anything, vice versa.”
“Meaning what?” she asked.
“Meaning that there’s a certain bull moose by the name of Jipfur who dwells in a forest called Babylon. If you remember, that encyclopedic article said that in the fall the mating season—”
“I suggest we change the subject,” said Betty shortly.
“Very well,” I said. “But I’m still in the dark as to why you came here.”
“In search of my family,” said Betty, a pained note in her voice.
She told me the whole story.
Her father had insisted on being the first to try his own invention. She and her brother were on the roof porch with him, at their Rocky Mountain laboratory, and preparations were almost complete. There were keys provided for any of a hundred different time jumps.
Suddenly Colonel Milholland came out to join them, and in his blundering absent-minded way he dropped a book on the keys.
“Father had warned that the machine would cut clean,” Betty said. “The instant the book struck the keys, the big magic hoops swished down from overhead aid caught my father just as he was crossing the transfer zone. His head was sliced instantly.”
The girls’ voice became a tense whisper.
“At once he was gone—all except the tell-tale evidence of the deadly stroke. His left leg had been sliced diagonally below the knee. The severed part lay there, not bleeding. And with it—”
“A part of the head?”
“Yes. A left section of the forehead, with most of the left eyeball, the left cheekbone, part of the nose, mouth, chin—”
“But the rest of his body?”
“Gone—through time—to one of the hundred distant ages.”
Her whisper ceased, and there was only the solid, soothing roar of down pouring rain.
“Couldn’t you recover the body?” I asked.
“Not a gambler’s chance,” said Betty with a sigh. Her voice was strong and firm, now, for she had long reconciled herself to the tragedy. “You see, the instant it happened, the Colonel, seeing what he had done, jerked the book off the keys. Which ones he had struck we’ll never know.”
“No dust marks?”
“We applied the microscope without much luck. Finally our best guess was that he had shot backward about twenty-five centuries, which may have been a few hundred years long, or short. Anyhow, when the Colonel, months later, decided to use the time machine for his hobby, my brother agreed to make the passage if the Colonel would send him back twenty-five hundred years.”
“Then your brother did come here?”
“Yes—but he accomplished nothing. If father’s body came to this age it was either devoured by lions, or buried. No clue was ever found. That was the end of that. For a time my brother squandered his days in nature study, but soon he realized that he had come on a one-way time-ride, so he cast his lot with the patesi who took him in—good old Slaf-Carch.”
“Good old Slaf-Carch,” I echoed.
“When my brother failed to return,” Betty continued, “I suspected that the Colonel wasn’t operating the time machine correctly for return trips. I wanted him to call in some scientists, but he was too conceited. Besides, we had all of my father’s instructions in black and white. So we pondered over them, but they were too deep for me. I had to admit that the Colonel seemed to be on the right track, as far as I could tell.”
“Then you signed up for a one-way ride, I suppose?”
“Yes. My brother had made me promise not to follow him, but I was desperate, with him and Dad both gone. If they had been swallowed up in thin air, I might as well know the worst.”
That was Betty—as nervy as they come. She was strong and adventurous. A girl had to be, to come through the crises she’d faced. A man looks at a beautiful girl and
tells himself there’s his prize and the campaign’s as good as won. But Betty Milholland—well, maybe the man had better think twice, whether his name is Slaf-Carch, or Jipfur—or Hal Norton.
“Those were my thoughts as she went on with her story. She had reached this age, she said, just in time to talk with her brother before his death. A chariot wheel had cut him down. He had been in Slaf-Carch’s service. A band of Assyrian cutthroats had made a surprise attack on Borbel, and the suburb had suffered several casualties.
Betty felt no bitterness toward Slaf-Carch. She was proud that her brother had rallied to the town’s defense, and proud that Slaf-Carch had later led a retaliatory expedition—though this latter effort had been ill-fated, having led to Slaf-Carch’s own capture and eventual enslavement.
“There,” said Betty, darting out of her seriousness, I’ve given you so much personal data you’ll feel like a personal credit corporation. Do I get the loan, or don’t I?”
“I think we can arrange a mortgage, Miss Milholland,” I said, “On your estimated value of—er—what did Jipfur say you were worth?”
Her joking mood stopped short at the mention of Jipfur. She had heard rumors, she said bitterly, that she wasn’t supposed to hear. Jipfur had offered Slaf-Carch a hundred and twenty shekels for her. However, she had been secretly informed that Slaf-Carch would never sell her. With that assurance, she had determined to accept her lot as a Babylonian slave.
The rain was over. The clouds opened and a streak of hazy moonlight sifted down on the river. Two wet, ragged creatures came up the river path, black against the graying sky.
As they came closer, I guessed them to be two of the three “Serpents” I had seen a week before. They entered the cavern and melted into the blackness of the wall opposite us.
I do not know whether they could see us. They talked in hushed tones, then fell silent.
“It’s nearly dawn,” Betty whispered. “I must get back.”
“I’ve been living for the past eighteen months for this talk with you,” I said. “But now that a couple ragamuffins have intruded on our date, how about making it again soon?”
“We don’t dare risk seeing each other often,” said Betty, “except as we happen to meet in the line of duty. But under the surface of convention we’ll know that we’re—friends.”
I suggested that she might use a stronger word than “friends.” After all, we had everything in common—
But my delusions about falling in love were instantly derailed.
“Hal, if were back in our own century,” Betty said, with a frankness that was dizzying, “you’re the sort of fellow I might fall for without half trying. But we’d better face the facts. We’re stuck here—five hundred and fifty B. C. Whatever we’ve been brought up to believe is right or wrong, the right thing in this age is for us to submit to the ways of Babylonian slaves.”
“You don’t mean that you’ll go through with all the ghastly obligations?”
“Hal, don’t misunderstand me. I’m not considering my own desires. Slaf-Carch is a great man among his fellow men. He’s wealthy, he’s honest, he’s respected for what he is. His slaves are proud to have him for a master. And in this civilization every female slave who comes into womanhood is proud to bear children for her master.”
“Betty!” The hard gasp that escaped my lips caused the ragged creatures who were sharing our cave to stir uneasily. They had been so quiet, after shaking off their soaked outer garments and settling down, that I had forgotten them.
“Shh!” said Betty. “You’ll wake our chaperons.”
“But what you were saying, Betty—it’s outlandish. I can’t believe that a swell girl like you—”
“I am Slaf-Carch’s property.” Again her voice was low, impassionate. “I’ve gone through weeks of mental torture to bring myself to that realization. But I’ve come to a decision—the only decision possible in these times. You mustn’t shatter it, Hal. I am subject to the Babylonian property laws. Within a few days, when Slaf-Carch calls for me, I will come.”
“All right,” I said finally, and my words came forth bitterly. “We understand each other.”
“I know you’ll hate me, Hal, because you haven’t begun to live in these times.”
“I’d take a train for home this minute if I could,” I said.
“Without any farewells, no doubt.” Betty rose to go.
“One question, Betty.” I must have stood challengingly in her path, for her starlit eyes searched me curiously.
“If Jipfur buys you, as I’m sure he means to do—”
“Hal! Don’t say it!”
“Jipfur is handsome,” I said icily. “He’s hot-tempered and he’s masterful. Personally I think he’s conceited, and I know he’s a coward. But that’s beside the point.”
“What is the point?”
“That there’ll be more than slave customs and economic arrangements involved when Jipfur buys you.”
Betty’s face turned away from me. She looked anxiously at the gray streak spreading across the horizon, at the velvet shadows across the broad black river.
“If he buys me, I may obey—or I may come to this river—”
She gave a little sigh, then tried to fling her troubled thoughts away with a toss of her braided tresses. She led the way out of the cave, dropping some comical remarks about our chaperons, the tattered rascals who lay in a snoring heap not twenty feet from where we had been sitting.
Curiously there were three of them now, the third one being the huge deformed member of the Serpent Trio, looking no less repulsive than a week before.
“That third fellow must have been here already,” said Betty, “only it was so dark when we entered the cave we couldn’t see him.”
“I hope he was asleep, considering all we’ve been saying,” I said. “Or have we been talking any Babylonian?”
“Mostly English, I think,” said Betty.
We took off our sandals to wade through the mud holes along the lane. Betty was a carefree child again, chasing along beside me, laughing with glee as the mud squashed up through her toes.
But I was weighed down with the heaviest mood of a lifetime. The torment that Betty had fought through was now mine to fight.
Daylight was fast approaching by the time we reached the crossroads. Each of us would have to hurry to get back undiscovered. But I had to have my final say, and it wasn’t an easy job.
“Thanks for all you’ve told me, Betty,” I said. “There’s not much I can do. But I know how you feel about Jipfur, so count on me. I’m fighting on your side, and I’ll give my right arm rather than let Slaf-Carch sell you.”
“Hal—”
Whatever she meant to say evidently couldn’t be said in words, for she looked up at me with serious trusting eyes, caught my shoulders with her hands, kissed me.
For a long moment we kissed. Then we parted.
CHAPTER IV
At high noon two days later a parade formed in the scanty shade of the park that surrounded Jipfur’s palace.
Kish and I were near the front of the parade, resplendent in our fancy gold and green uniforms, riding the backs of a handsome team hitched to the first chariot.
We were merely ornaments, of course, dressed to match the gold and green harness of the horses. But we had a right to feel important, nevertheless, because our chariot was occupied by Jipfur’s haughty sister and her two ladies-in-waiting.
But Kish didn’t feel important. He wouldn’t have shared Jipfur’s artificial self-glorification if he’d been dressed in pure gold. He was cynical about pomp and ceremony anyway, and doubly so when instigated by Jipfur.
“It smells like rotten figs to me,” Kish kept whispering to me on the sly. “Why should he put on all this public show for a man he tries to cheat in private?”
Jipfur led the parade, needless to say. We lumbered into action, following him straight through the heart of the city.
I must admit that Jipfur had the appearance of a man born t
o ride at the head of a parade. The pose of his somewhat pudgy head, the bearing of his slightly stocky shoulders, the proud lift of his arms as he held the reins of his horse, gave him an aspect of supreme grandeur fully as convincing as his magnificent regalia.
His costume was a mixture of the ceremonial uniform of a devout patesi and the gleaming armor of a warrior. He wore the priest’s tall cone-shaped cap, specially ornamented with a band of carved gold. This band blended effectively with his tawny forehead, bestowing a golden quality upon his handsome thick-set face.
“The bull moose!” I chuckled to myself. Two locks of black hair spiraled out from under his conical cap like a mountain goat’s horns. If Betty had been here I would have pointed them out as antlers.
The crowds closed in around us as we entered the market streets. Here and there a pompous merchant shouted at a lackey to fetch his chariot or his riding horse so that he could join the procession. All manner of men joined us, from bankers to vagabonds. Before we came within sight of the king’s palace, street crowds and paraders were all rolled into the same snowball. The rumor that there would be feasting at the end of the march did nothing to lessen the parade’s popularity.
Beyond the king’s palace Jipfur called a halt and made a speech. In the shadow of the great ziggurat he made another. And when we reached the city’s gates, by now a crowd of fully five thousand, Jipfur made the most eloquent speech of all. He appeared completely convinced of his own big-heartedness in instigating this celebration.
“Our beloved Slaf-Carch will be the most surprised patesi in the valley when we pour in upon him to do him honors,” Jipfur shouted grandly, and the wobble of his tall cone-shaped cap kept pace with his gesturing arms. “But Slaf-Carch deserves our honors. He is a great man and a great patriot!”
Everybody cheered, and the inevitable riff-raff made noises on all manner of cymbals and noise-beaters.
“No one has missed Slaf-Carch more than I during his long absence. I do not refer to the fact that the care of all of his property burdened me with heavy responsibilities. I refer to that affection which every man holds for his fellow countrymen. I knew that Slaf-Carch was not dead. The gods told me so. That is why I sent out expedition after expedition to make forays among the nomads—with what result? At last, by the grace of Marduk, acting through me, his faithful servant, Slaf-Carch has been recovered.”
