by Anthology
The cage began to quiver.
“Hey—” it was my voice, but I didn’t know I was yelling. “Hey—the machine is moving!”
Walter had a funny grin on his face. “I know,” he said, rolling off me and sitting up. “You and me are taking Paul Revere home!”
I nearly fainted dead away. Because we were!
I had trouble in focusing my eyes: they persisted in trying to look about three ways at once. Then they drew blank for what may have been a minute or one hundred and fifty years. And then we stopped with a thud.
I smelled dirt. I rolled off of Walter and struggled to sit up. The landscape whirled about me like a merry-go-round gone mad. Before I could see clearly, I scrabbled around with my fingers and felt grass below me. Anyway, I kept on telling myself silently, we’re not in the house.
All at once, with a jolt, it all settled down. On a patch of greensward, before a lighted old barn of a place, sat Walter and me. Beside us lay a very quiet Paul Revere. One look at that house before us told me we had made the trip all right; nothing like that shack was ever built in Oakville!
“Well,” breathed Walter, awe in his voice, “how does it feel to be in good old ’75, Hank?”
I didn’t answer. I didn’t feel like it.
“Come on—bring the hero.”
Walter had climbed to his feet and was staggering off toward the lighted house, which bordered a road of sorts. I squinted through the darkness of a moonless night and saw that Walter was reeling in a long piece of cord. I remembered that he had thrown the coil of it into his pocket back—back there, before we started. He was winding it in, and I figured he must be looking for the crack in Time we had slipped through—for on the other end of that precious cord was the Time Swing and 1940!
I helped Revere to his feet, and we plodded unsteadily after Walter. He was heading straight toward the house ahead of us, reeling in wire as he went.
“Be with you in a minute,” he called over his shoulder to me; “but if we lose this cord, we don’t get back home!”
“Take all the time you want, pal,” I urged. Saving America might be pretty vital, but so was getting home again.
As we neared the building across the road, I made out a sign swaying above its door: INNE of Ye FOWLE & SPITTE. I could tell by the sudden pulse of life in the hulk I was dragging behind me that Paul Revere had caught that sign, too.
“Your local tavern?” I asked, and he nodded weakly. I began to worry about the Redcoats again. “Your horse must be hereabouts, then, eh?” I went on.
“Here is where I stood,” he managed thinly, “when your incantations found me. Yonder stands Brondelbuss . . .”
“Some horse,” I said, spotting the plug as he spoke; and then I turned to call out to Walter. “It’s just about twelve by my clock. What do we do now?”
At my words, a sad-hearted hound bayed mournfully at the lumpy moon above us. In the still night air, the braying must have carried for miles.
Walter was holding up a hand. “Listen to that, Hank!” he breathed. I saw he was pretty awed by it all. “That
dog brayed that way in the middle of the night a hundred and fifty years before we were born! Think of it, Hank! We’ve rolled back the years to Boston, 1775!—Boston—a little village in a brand new continent—with its few hundreds of souls all asleep around us . . . men and women who have been dead for more than a century! But tonight, Hank, thanks to us, we know they are alive again!”
I decided it was time we did something. I felt creepy. “Snap out of it, dreamy,” I said, shaking him. “If you got that cord safe, let’s spread the word about the British before it’s too late.”
“Lord, yes!” gasped Walter. “I’d almost forgotten our mission, in the miracle of just being here. Old Boston, Hank! 1775!”
He was in a most wonderful mood suddenly, fears and doubts gone like nothing. “Maybe this inn has a road map,” he cracked, pushing open the oaken door.
I followed and Revere wobbled along behind me. A thick smell assailed us that was no different than that in any gin mill in 1940. Walter forged on ahead, like a man in a dream.
“Ho!” rang a basso voice from behind the stout, reeking old bar. “Revere, I thought ye’d slipped anchor to perform a duty this night!”
Revere did not reply. He left me to roll over to a nearby table, where he plunked himself down limply, his head held between his hands.
“Revere,” the giant behind the bar was booming again, a note of anxiety and suspicion in his voice, “Methought ye’d be in Lexington by this. Who are these—men?”
Walter had followed a line of electric cord straight across the smoky, candle-lighted room, saying not a word to anyone. Then, while the bartender stared, and I stared, and Revere didn’t even look up, something very peculiar occurred.
Right smack at Walter’s feet there came a hissing and a whirring—and before our staring eyes the thick oaken planks of the floor seemed to melt, and the top of the cage of the Time Swing rose up through it!
It was uncanny, to say the least. And not a soothing sight to the monster who owned the joint! The bartender reached up for a huge blunderbuss high above the bar, and even Revere got to his feet.
“By my tops’le and spanker,” croaked the barkeep, slamming the gun on his bar, “what in Satan’s own name is going on over there?”
Walter, sneezing from the dust which was still settling in a cloud about that end of the big room, answered. But it was me to whom he spoke. “Look at that, Hank, there’s a funny one for you! After we stopped, the cage moved on—through the Fourth Dimension—a few additional space-seconds. The last couple of yards of this cord just materialized through Time-Space. Wonderful!”
If this was gibberish to me, it was worse than that to the barkeep. He looked sternly at Revere and bawled angrily: “Revere, you sot! Who are these friends of yours who come wrecking my inn? I thought—”
But Revere interrupted him with a wail: “They are not my friends! They’re not men at all—they’re wicked demons conjured up by some British magician!”
In a moment of stunned silence that followed, I began to sweat cold drops as big as grapes. You could scarcely blame Revere for thinking we were evil spirits summoned to fight against him by witchcraft, after all the hard luck he’d had with us and our manufactured miracle. But it did put us in a bad spot. One peep at the size of barkeep convinced me he could rub me and Walter together until we were powder. And by the look on his face, I knew he wanted to.
What with machinery which would not yet be invented for a hundred years, popping up from his cellar—I could readily believe he thought we were exactly what Revere had called us—good old-fashioned, New England-hatched demons!
“Walter, never mind the Redcoats,” I whispered, “pull that cord and let’s get home!” Home! What a wonderful word!
Walter, unheeding, said, “I—I know this looks a bit unusual, but there is a national crisis tonight, and we—we came over to help . . .”
“Stow it!” Barkeep was in an ugly mood. He strode across the tavern floor in three steps. The stout oak planks creaked beneath his weight. He picked up a small tree-trunk and slammed it into place across the door, barring us inside with his wrath.
“Revere,” he grated like the roar of a bull, “tell me this. Be ye drunk or drugged?”
“Drugged,” Revere managed to grunt, without lifting his head from the table. “Demons—and they drugged me. I swear it.”
Barkeep put his heavy hands on his hips and glared at Walter and me. He spat into a cuspidor with venom and force. He hoisted his pants, and I noticed that, as his arms flexed, his muscles bulged tightly beneath his shirt.
I forgot all about the colonies. “Walter, let’s you and me go home!”
“Stow it!” Barkeep drowned me out. “Hark, ye slithering things in the guise of men.” Slowly he began rolling up his sleeves. “Now, be ye men or be ye demons, I know by the work ye’ve done tonight that the pair of ye are British-sent scum. Ye’v
e kept matey here from his ridin’, and now ye’ll answer to Jim Toddy for it.”
And then he lowered his thick head and ran for us.
I leapt for the cage, which stuck out of the floor like a cellar-door, yelling: “Walter—he thinks we’re trying to help the Redcoats! Come on!”
But Walter never budged. Something came over his thin body. He tensed, stiff as a ramrod. Then Toddy lunged past the spot where a second ago Walter had been standing. I had never seen Walter move so fast. He had waited solidly as a rock until the man’s rush closed the distance between them. Then he had whipped aside like a toreador, and stuck out his foot. And the barkeep flashing by, roared like a bull and went down with a crash that shook the ground.
I looked at Toddy’s face as he picked it off the floor, and ducked my head. But I had to raise it again to see how Walter was going to die.
Walter stood firm: white and pale, but firm. Toddy roared in at him, seized poor Walter in a bear’s grip and his baboonish thumbs went round Walter’s throat. But Walter, though blue with pain, was not licked yet. He whipped a hand behind him, seized a bottle by the neck.
Crash! Spangles of glass shot out like sparks. Toddy shuddered, shook his thick head, and went sprawling onto the floor with a sound like thunder.
Walter struggled up, color coming back into his face with every pump of his pounding heart. He clutched the bottle neck, now all that was left whole of his make-shift weapon, and stared at the huge man at his feet. There was no need for further action, though. Toddy was prone among sawdust and glass fragments; the blow had removed him from combat.
“How—how did you think of doing that, Walter?” I managed to ask, climbing out of the cage again.
He shook his head, wiping his brow with a shaky hand. “I don’t know. I only thought of how mad I was that this big lump should try to stop us from our duty . . .”
“Come on, man,” I said. “If it’s duty you’re after, let’s get some horses.”
Walter was hiding the precious coil of wire which held the switch of the Time Swing in its end, when suddenly there came a thumping at the door. I froze where I stood.
Revere had been dazedly trying to pull himself together. Whether he saw the fight, I don’t know. But now he was staggering over to the door, fumbling to open it.
“Don’t open that!” I cried out.
He ignored me. “Just a moment, dear,” he was saying, “I saw you looking through the window.” He struggled to hoist the bar from its slots, and then lifted up the latch, just as the pounding began again. Revere fell back, as the door swung open, and began feverishly to straighten his messy clothes.
It was a woman.
“Oh, ye did see your wife through the window, did ye now, ye old reprobate?” she cried, bustling up to Paul Revere, oblivious to the rest of us. “Ye told me ye were out on civic business, out on patriotic duty, didn’t ye, Paul Revere? And where I find your horse tonight I’ve found the beast a dozen times—hitched before Jim Toddy’s saloon!”
“Listen, dear,” Revere explained, frantically dusting off his wig and wriggling into it, “I was delayed by these—”
Mrs. Revere turned and saw us. Her eyes narrowed. “So! You’re the minute-men, I’ve heard tell about! Look at ye, now! Where did ye find those oddments ye are wearing? Drunkards, draggin’ my husband off, making him—”
“Get out of here!” I yelled, all at once. “Scram! Don’t any of you old-fashioned idiots realize what’s happening? Do you think we have any time for family quarrels?” I came up alongside Revere’s wife, my eyes probably popping, if they gave the slightest indication of how I felt. “Hit the road!” I yelled.
The poor woman took a step back, then another, and with a sudden cry, ran out of the place.
“Get a horse!” I turned on Revere viciously. “Go out and get on some kind of a horse. You can’t pin the failure of the Revolution on Walter and me! Get out and ride, you dang-blasted son-of-a-hero, before I—”
And just then, Revere broke down. He laid his head on a table and almost cried. “Gentlemen, or demons—whatever ye may be—I cannot. My wife will never forgive me for this. You do what you can to help the colonies, God protect them! But I’m going home to explain matters to my wife!”
It was precisely at that instant that I heard Walter’s voice beside me, like the sound of a ghost.
“The dawn!” His lips were barely moving as he pointed through the shuttered windows to a grey streak across the horizon. “It’s almost morning!” Without another word, he went through the door, staggering, and sank limply down on the stoop.
I stood in the tavern for some minutes, listening to the stentorian breathing of the still unconscious barkeep, and the sobs from the drunken Paul Revere. They were the only sounds in a vast quiet.
I went out and sat down beside Walter. I couldn’t understand what had happened, but some things I knew. We had wasted one of the most historic nights in Time, trying to manage a drunken hero, fighting a belligerent barkeep, and arguing with a shrewish housewife . . . and in that time, the magnificent ride that Paul Revere should have made—had been forgotten!
“We must have become mixed up in our calculations somewhere,” Walter was saying, softly. “We probably didn’t even get here until it was too late.”
“There isn’t anything we can do?”
“No.”
A moment later, Walter suddenly leaped high into the air. “Hank!” he screamed. “Hank! I’ve got it! We’ll take Revere into the machine again. We’ll go back a few more hours, and begin again, and this time we’ll make sure!”
I didn’t wait another second. Together we dashed back into the tavern . . .
There was no one there. Paul Revere and the barkeep had both vanished. Only a little back-door, swinging idly in the morning breeze, indicated how the two men had disappeared . . . fleeing from demons from another age . . .
“Now what, Walter?”
“I’ll tell you what! We’re going out to find him and put him on the Swing.” He started to go out that little backdoor, going to Heaven alone knows where, when I seized his arm.
“Listen!” It was the second time that night.
There were horses in the distance, and shooting. The short bursts of rifle fire blasted the quiet morning air. “They’re coming for us!” I gasped. “Revere and the barkeep have gotten help. We’ve got to get out of here.”
“We can’t!” Walter said, with a strange firmness. “We’ve got to make them understand. We’re sacrificing the heritage—”
“Heritage! We’ll sacrifice ourselves! You know by now we’re through. All I want now is to die in my own time.”
Walter was about to say no when I let him have it. He had fallen halfway to the ground when I caught him and lugged him to the rickety Time Swing. I strapped the both of us in.
The horses were sounding louder now, the shots closer.
A million strange switches stared me in the face. I monkeyed with them the way I had seen Walter do, turned a lever which said, “Reverse,” and held on for life. Horses were galloping past the tavern.
Just then the door opened and a grimy man in a three-cornered hat strode in. He carried a gun in one hand, which he suddenly threw up and aimed at us. And then the whole world seemed to blur, like faces in an unsteady stream, and the machine quivered. My stomach twisted, and I heard the sound of a musket going off somewhere, and something soft brushed by me . . .
Walter’s workroom was swimming by at an angle, spinning on a mad pivot. There was a sudden rain of machinery, a swift jerk, and the leather straps that held me gave and spilled me out on the floor, with Walter following.
The most magnificent traitors in history had returned, after doing a job that no one on Earth could undo, selling out a nation that had paid in blood for a victory that had been wiped out.
Walter was sitting up, a foolish smile on his face. “Hell,” he said, “I feel like an American.”
I got up and peered through the drawn curtains of
the room. The dawn was coming up. Soon the sun would be shining over this land, the same sun that never set on British soil. And yet it all looked the same to me. History might have changed, but maybe Boston had been left out of it. It was impossible to believe that our world had been so changed.
The room was the same, the furniture the same. The street outside, even the street-name, Adams Street was the same; I could read it from where I stood. “Walter,” I said, suddenly, “do you suppose the British would have let us keep the same names on our streets—names of Revolutionary heroes?”
“Maybe,” he said, glumly. The idiot’s smile bad left him, and he was returning to full consciousness. “Just history, that’s all. We’ve changed every book ever written about it—like that.” He tried to snap his fingers, but it didn’t work.
“Exactly.” I almost whispered it. “That’s where we can find out exactly what we’ve done.” I lurched at the bookcase, and dragged out one of the musty volumes of the—I cursed the thought—Encyclopaedia Brittanica. Swiftly I ran through the pages on the American Revolution . . .
It was all the same . . . all the same . . .
“Walter! Look at this!”
But Walter had thought of something else. He had been reading another book. “It’s all right!” he shouted, “Hank, it’s all right.” He threw the book down on the floor, yelling, “Yankee Doodle,” jumped after it, opened it again, and lying there, he read to me.
“. . . On the night of April 18th, when the British were planning to seize the Concord military supplies and arrest John Hancock and Samuel Adams, and thus quash the Revolution before it started, a prominent patriot named Paul Revere was to catch a signal flashed from the Old North Church belfry and ride at midnight, spreading the alarm. But, in some peculiar circumstance, never clarified, Revere was captured on the outskirts of Boston, in the company of his wife, by a British scouting patrol. Fortunately for the colonists, however, Revere’s friend, William Dawes, was on hand when the signal showed from the historic old church . . .”
