Beyond the Barriers of Space and Time

by Judith Merril (ed. )

  You’ve heard of Green Mills; probably every once in a while seen something about it in the newspapers. That would be when a patient escaped and was at large for a day or two. For, you see, Green Mills Hospital handles the tough ones, the incurables—the psychopathies. But I don’t think you’ll see anything about my case in the papers; I don’t think those doctors will talk.

  I am not alone in this room; there is a dog with me—a dog named Charneel. He is asleep now on the rug beside my bed. Yet I cannot sleep, for something happened today that could not happen. I am not asking you to believe me; I can hardly believe it myself. But this is the way it came about:

  This morning at Green Mills I was standing, looking through the bars of my window, when the queerness of the day began. It was just after my breakfast tray had been taken out, and as the key turned again in the lock, I became coldly furious. This unscheduled visit could mean but one thing: more of their damnable questioning.

  When I heard the door open, I didn’t even turn around. Three men, I knew, would step in; two, of course, would be the nurses; the third, one of the staff doctors. The springs of my cot creaked. That would be the doctor sitting down. For we nuts have no chairs, no table, no furnishings of any kind with which we might hurt ourselves.

  I steeled myself for the session. But this man didn’t start out with a quick fire of questions like the others; this man surprised me. For a while he just sat; maybe waiting for me to turn around.

  Finally: “Captain Blanchard,” a quiet voice said, “I spent yesterday at Cranton, at the Coast Hospital.”

  I squared my jaw; he wasn’t going to get one word out of me. They hadn’t believed me at Coast; they weren’t ever going to believe me here.

  “Tell me. Captain,” my visitor went on, “this strange power you seem to possess, this ability of yours to talk to animals, did it come as a result of your wound?”

  I said nothing. If he’d spent the day checking at Coast Hospital, as he said, then he already knew the whole business; about the robin—everything. Certainly it must have been the result of the wound. But it hadn’t surprised me at first, because I was so ill. Actually, this sudden ability to talk to animals had seemed the only natural thing that was happening to me. I know that may sound odd, but, you see, all my life I had had animals around me. As a boy, there had been dogs, cats, chickens, pet squirrels and rabbits, and always there had been this feeling, when they looked up into my eyes, that they were trying to say things to me, get their thoughts across to me. And sometimes it had been so strong, so overwhelming, that I felt I was just on the verge of understanding.

  But I had told all that to those Coast Hospital doctors, over and over again. And it didn’t faze them. They’d cross-questioned me and grilled me until they had me fairly shouting at them. Yet I had talked to a robin, I had talked to a mouse. First they’d said it was a dream; then hallucinations; and then they’d sent me to Green Mills.

  But I had talked to a robin! It was as fresh in my mind as if it had happened yesterday. At first I hadn’t paid any attention to the little bird; I was so bewildered at finding myself in bed between cool, clean sheets, with the air so still and calm. My mind was all mixed up, too, for the last thing I remembered was leading a detachment down a ravine to wipe out an artillery observation post. Yet there I was in bed, strangely weak, and as if I’d just come up out of a deep black pit. But the robin on my window ledge had kept on crying—Well, not exactly crying; I guess you’d say mourning, about her eggs. When I asked what was wrong, she told me about a big black-feathered bird that had snatched the eggs from her nest and deliberately dropped them on the ground.

  That’s when the nurse came into the room—just as I was answering the robin. The nurse had looked at me, startled; and in a moment was back with a doctor. I should have known something was wrong, for the doctor’s line of questioning was so odd: What was my name?… William Ralph Blanchard… Where was I born?… Milton, Kentucky… How old was I?… Twenty-five… My rank?… Captain.

  He stood up. “Captain,” he said, “you’ve surprised us all. I wouldn’t have given a plugged nickel for your recovery.” But I was the one who was surprised. I learned I’d been lying there for thirty-three months; thirty-three months in a semicoma, eyes wide open, but never once saying a word. That doctor told me other things too. Of the wound in my head, now healed; of the skillful job the surgeons had done, and of the metal plate at the base of my skull just behind my right ear. Then we got into the business of the robin, and without knowing it, I took my first step toward Green Mills.

  “By the way. Captain”—the doctor was at the door, but paused a moment—“when you came to, you were saying something about a blackbird, and calling for a gun. Why?”

  So, if this man now sitting on my cot had looked into my case history at Coast, he had a far fuller account than I could give. For I wasn’t the one that said I was crazy; it was those doctors at Coast.

  But my visitor was not taking my silence as an answer, and his next remark literally spun me around.

  “Captain,” he said, “did any of the doctors at Coast ever check about the doors on the garbage bins?”

  “No!” And I heard myself screaming it. “Not one of them!”

  “Well, I did,” he said evenly.

  It was then I looked at him, my mind working like a trip hammer. This was some kind of trap, I thought, to get me talking.

  Yes, there was the little notebook he was just drawing from his pocket. “You can put that back. Doctor,” I said. “You’re not getting anything from me today.”

  He didn’t pay attention. Instead, he turned to the two nurses, standing alertly at the foot of my bed. “What takes place in this room this morning,” he said to them, “may affect Captain Blanchard’s whole future. I want you two men to listen carefully to everything I have to say to him. Take notes if necessary.”

  He opened the notebook and glanced down at it. “Captain, at two o’clock in the morning—the morning of May the ninth—while you were still at Coast Hospital, you summoned a nurse and asked for a piece of cheese—a small piece of cheese.”

  “Okay, okay!” I burst out. “And she wouldn’t believe me! She said there wasn’t a mouse in the hospital. And I told her there were mice all over the place and that they hadn’t had a bite to eat since morning. And if she didn’t believe me, ask the mouse; he was right there in the room under the dresser. So, please, bring me that cheese, so I could get to sleep. Yes, Doctor, that’s just what I told her!”

  The doctor nodded. “Captain”—and he flicked his little book shut—“I have one item to add to what you have just said—an item I picked up at Coast, all right, but not from the medical files. This item I got from the Maintenance Department records.”

  He paused a moment. “On May eighth,” he went on, “while you were still in a sixth-floor room, confined to your bed and helpless, a crew of men, according to the records of the Maintenance Department, went to work in the kitchen basement, took the wooden doors off the garbage bins and replaced them with steel ones; doors which no mouse could ever gnaw through.”

  It staggered me. At last, was here someone who believed?

  Half an hour later I was stepping into a car in front of the main building. But we weren’t making this trip alone; we had with us two guards, a sergeant and a private. Both were wearing their service pistols. The doctor put me in the back seat with the sergeant; he and the private were in the front, and on the whole trip he said not a word to me.

  Where he was taking me, or why, I didn’t know. But there was a thrill in being out on the open road, if only for a brief while; to get the tang of fresh air and space, and see green grass and trees that didn’t belong to any hospital.

  Finally we entered a town, a quiet little place; big lawns and houses substantially built. There was plenty of money here. Presently the car stopped, and then I learned that this man was no psychiatrist but a regular medical doctor. For the little sign in the window read: “H. E. Wilson, M.D.�
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  Our feet hardly touched the concrete of the front walk when a dog began barking inside the house. Dr. Wilson led us directly to his office, and had me sit down in the chair at his desk.

  “Can you use a typewriter?” he asked.

  I nodded.

  He got paper from a drawer, regular typing paper, and counted off some twenty-five sheets.

  “Captain Blanchard,” he said, “if you can talk to animals, you’ll be doing quite a bit of typing within the next hour, but I think this should be enough.” And next he did something which caused the two guards to exchange a quick glance. He asked them to examine both sides of each sheet, making certain they were blank, then produced his pen for them to put their initials in the top corner of each page. “Just to make certain,” he explained tersely, “that nobody switches these sheets.” With that, he left the room.

  I could sense a new wariness in the guards as their initials went down on page after page.

  The men had hardly finished when Dr. Wilson was back. With him was a dog, tawny, golden-haired; a magnificent animal. I wouldn’t know just how to class him, but certainly there were strains of German police in him, and, perhaps, collie. But what struck me most was the complete command Dr. Wilson had over his dog. For big as it was, it didn’t come lunging or romping into the room, but stepping close behind the doctor’s heels and, at a flick of the doctor’s hand, it stopped stock-still in the center of the room.

  “Captain, there’s not a doctor at the hospital,” Dr. Wilson began, “who believes you can talk to animals. Frankly— Well, this is Charneel.”

  I got my assignment then, my first inkling of what he had in mind for me to do.

  “I want you to talk to Charneel if you can.” He spoke quietly, soberly. “Charneel recently was involved in a very serious matter. Deliberately I’m not telling you what it is, for that would defeat my whole purpose in bringing you here. But this much I will tell you: there is a court order out for Charneel to be shot.”

  “Doctor—” I hesitated. And all kinds of thoughts were going through my mind. How did I know whether I could talk to this dog? I’d never talked to one before. And suppose I did. What would happen to me then? Would those men at Green Mills use that as just one more blot on my case to keep me locked up for life? No matter what happened, I was still in a jam. “No, Doctor,” I said, “I’m sorry. You’d better just take me back to the hospital.”

  A long moment he looked at me, his eyes holding mine. “I know what you’re thinking,” he said, “and I don’t blame you. But let’s put it this way, son: If you do talk to my dog, and convince me of it, I’ll do something about your case; and I’ll take it all the way to Washington, if necessary.”

  I heard his words, but at first I didn’t get it. Then all of a sudden I did, and something inside me seemed to swell up and choke me. I could hardly take it in—here at last was someone who was willing to fight for me. Without realizing it, I had taken a step forward and was grasping Dr. Wilson’s hand.

  He smiled reassuringly. “Captain, in talking to Charneel, I don’t want it to be just a conversation. What I want is for you to find out certain specific facts from him. So, in order to get you started in the right direction, I guess the thing to do is to give you a clue, a word, a key word: Habel. Find out from Charneel just what happened to Habel. And, man, how I wish you luck!”

  With that, he left me.

  Whether Habel was a man, a woman or another dog, the doctor had not said. But one thing I did know: I wasn’t going to risk trying to talk to a dog in front of these guards. Not if I could help it.

  So I said, “Does it matter whether you’re inside this room with me or outside, just so long as I can’t escape?”

  So outside the door the sergeant took up his station. And a moment later, through the windows, I could see Private Howard. Certainly there’d be no getting away, and no one could communicate with me without their knowing it. Charneel and I were alone in the room.

  On the desk was the stack of paper, blank but for the initials in the corner. I picked up the top sheet; rolled it into the machine. Then I turned to Charneel, and I wondered just how to go about talking to a dog.

  “Charneel”—and I phrased it like a question—“you heard what he said?”

  Charneel looked up. “No,” he said. “I heard the master talking to you, but I could not understand his words.”

  “But you understand me. So, tell me, Charneel. What about Habel?”

  At the word “Habel,” Charneel’s fangs bared, his ruff bristling.

  “Habel is dead!” he said. “As he should be!”

  So we talked, Charneel and I. And, gradually, I began to get straight in my own mind what had happened, and why. And soon even I was hating Habel, just as Charneel did. This Habel; he was a man. But not like the master. Always Habel had been cruel. Charneel’s first memory of him was as a killer, and never had he forgotten that moment when he and his sister Tolei, two helpless puppies nursing in the woods, had heard the blast of a gun and seen their mother drop in her tracks. Habel was the one who had fired that gun, and Habel was the one who had come up and savagely kicked the little she-puppy into the stream to drown.

  I guess I must have been in that room two full hours talking to Charneel. Of course it wasn’t straight talking all the time, and asking questions. For there would come moments, baffling moments, when I couldn’t quite seem to get what Charneel was saying. He’d be speaking, and suddenly the whole thought would seem to fade out, and I wouldn’t get it. Then I’d wait a few minutes, concentrating, and presently ask him again. These interruptions, they bothered me; for Dr. Wilson wanted Charneel’s whole story—that’s what he’d said.

  Just exactly who Habel was, I was never quite sure, but I gathered he must have been a servant in a wealthy home. For Charneel spoke of the little house to which Habel had taken him and where Habel lived, and of the big house where the two kind men lived. One of these men was young and his name was Buddy, said Charneel; and the other, the older man, they called the judge. And it was only because of Buddy that Charneel would stay on the same property with Habel.

  But always Charneel drew away from Habel, avoided him, and Habel hated him more and more. One day, Charneel knew, he and Habel would fight, and only one would live. But that would have to wait until his muscles were strong and his teeth long and sharp. Habel knew how Charneel felt, for he would strike out at him, hit him. And finally, when Charneel was half grown, Habel struck for the last time. He’d used a chain, too; a heavy one. Charneel had not picked that fight, but Habel was trying to corner him, cripple him. So he had fought back. “And but for Buddy’s coming,” said Charneel, “I would have killed him.”

  “But the master. Dr. Wilson,” I said, reminding Charneel.

  The fight with Habel had changed things, Charneel went on. For after this fight, after Habel had been bandaged up, a man came, and Charneel went off to live with him. “It was the master,” said Charneel.

  Now I began to get a picture of Dr. Wilson and Charneel, of the team the two of them made, how closely knit they had become. For Charneel told me of long walks with the master, with the master talking to him—talking and talking—trying desperately hard to teach him his language. And Charneel had learned a few words: “Guard, stand, heel”—words like that; commands which, when spoken by the master, could never be disobeyed.

  “And when I learned to obey,” said Charneel, “never did I wear a leash again, and we went farther and farther into the fields and woods.”

  Too, Charneel told me of something even the master did not know: he told me of Tolei. For Charneel’s little sister Tolei had not drowned; she had lived, and the woods were her home, and often in his ranging Charneel came across her. But there was something about Tolei that puzzled Charneel—she distrusted all men, even the master.

  “I have learned of men from Habel,” Tolei had said. And she had warned Charneel, “Habel often is in the woods, Charneel; I hear often the report of his gun. But I
am not as other animals,” she had boasted.

  “That is foolish,” Charneel had counseled.

  “No, Charneel; it is wise; very wise,” Tolei had replied. “No, Tolei shall never bleed! For Tolei runs to the noise, not away from it; and stalks the hunter, keeping him ever in sight, herself ever unseen.”

  And then, the evening Habel died. The air was crisp that late afternoon, and Charneel and the master had ranged far. It was almost time to turn back. One more little foray and they’d set their steps toward home. Dr. Wilson had led the way, parting the strands of the fence bordering the road, and began skirting the low stone wall that separated the woods from the field. Now and then he would pause to glance around, for to him all life was beautiful, but wild life, sleek of coat and lithe of muscle, was lovely beyond words. The flick of a bunny’s heels, the rising whir of a partridge, the wheeling blur of a young fox—“These,” said Charneel, “were the sights the master loved.”

  It was natural for the doctor to pause at the opening in the wall where the stones had fallen away, and to gaze down that narrow trail leading into the woods. No doubt it looked inviting. Dr. Wilson lifted a foot to step over; then paused, foot still in mid-air. Charneel had snarled.

  The doctor had looked down at Charneel. Again Charneel’s warning had sounded, low and deep-throated. For Habel had just walked that path—Habel and Buddy—and Charneel could smell death in the air.

  Evidently the master had but half understood Charneel. For he stooped and picked up a broken branch, testing it for strength. “Quiet!” he had ordered. Then: “Heel!”

  Slowly he led the way; and I could picture them; Charneel crowding his every step, a bristling, steeled dynamo of restraint. They reached the bend in the narrow trail, paused, bore on toward the clearing dimly ahead. Then it came! The blast of a gun… the choked human cry … and that awful silence.

  My fingers moved faster and faster. This was unbelievable.

  Finally I was through typing. I stepped to the door and spoke to the sergeant. “Will you call Dr. Wilson?” I said.