Out of Time, page 14
Berny looked at his watch and picked up the evening paper. The last item on the television programme seemed to be the late newscast at 11.35. It could not possibly have lasted till one in the morning, therefore there must have been something else. He would have to have the set repaired, unless, of course, the local station was experimenting with colour, or perhaps some new method of transmission. That would account for blurred pictures and bad sound. Next morning, he called Dick Rowlands, one of the local station engineers.
“No, Berny, we haven’t been experimenting. What time did you say?”
“One or a few minutes after. Also a couple of nights ago, later still.”
“No. What channel were you on?”
“Channel two.”
“That’s ours all right. Could be a long distance fluke. They happen, you know. What sort of an aerial have you got?”
“Indoor.”
“It’s certainly strange. Let me know if it happens again and I’ll run round.”
Two nights later, they were on again, the same men out of focus and with the sound guttural and barely audible.
“Nothing wrong with your set, Berny,” was Dick Rowland’s verdict the next day. “I’ll change this valve for you and stop that slight flickering at the top of the screen, but that is all it needs. What you have been seeing late at night must be some distant programme reflected from the stratosphere. For no explainable reason they occasionally get picked up by quite ordinary receivers.”
“Where would it be, then? Russia, Australia, or what?”
“Not that far, I shouldn’t think, but you never know. You did not hear what language they were speaking?” “No.”
Berny knew that he had run up against something really unusual the day he borrowed my portable set. The indistinct shadows had again been appearing on his screen and he wanted to see if they would appear on another set than his. He turned them both on after the final goodnight of our local station. Two minutes later, shadows began to appear on both screens but what made Berny sit up was that, although they were the same shadows and indistinct faces, they were not identical on both screens! That ruled out the possibility of a distant programme, for there would have had to be two programmes since he had quite evidently two different pictures. When the shadows disappeared and the sound died down to the usual gentle purr, he switched off and lit a pipe. There were evidently some experiments going on, near or far, which Dick did not know about. They could not be very secret though, since anyone was liable to pick them up.
Berny was, however, quite mistaken—as he discovered a few nights later, when the sound came on rather louder than usual. As he was about to tone it down, a strange cackling voice came through with perfect clearness and almost immediately another answered on a higher pitch. A second later, the screen lit up and in perfect focus he saw two men, obviously Japanese, talking. One of them turned and pointed towards the screen and both came forward.
So Dick was right after all, thought Berny. It was only a fluke and he had been picking up a Japanese programme. The two men on the screen had stopped talking and were looking at the camera. One of them spoke and pointed. He pointed his way and a little to the side, then pretended to pick up a glass and drink. Just a coincidence, thought Berny, glancing at the glass of milk next to him and searching his pocket for his matches. But the little man on the screen was also searching his pocket and when, scowling, Berny found them and lit his pipe, the little man on the screen pretended to light a pipe. The other one who had been merely watching, laughed and said something, and three or four other people, some in flowing robes it seemed, came crowding round the screen, staring at Berny.
The milk, the pipe, the way they were looking at him and talking about him, could only mean one thing: he was on the receiving end of a fantastic experiment. They were probably engineers—Japanese judging by their looks—who had invented a way of making a two-way television out of ordinary receiving sets, and that over tremendous distances. But he had to be quite sure and without taking his eyes off them, he slowly pulled off his tie. With a quick bow and a grin, the little man in the middle of the screen pretended to do likewise. There was no possible doubt!
“Can you hear me?” asked Berny, surprised at the sound of his own voice.
They stared at him, then one of them said something very rapidly and an old man with spectacles came to the centre of the screen and said quite distinctly:
“Speak English?”
“Yes,” said Berny, excited, “Can you hear me?”
Again they all chatted together and the one who had been imitating his movements said something to the old man who shook his head. After discussing for a while, the old man looked at him and said:
“Wait, please…yes?”
“You wish me to wait?” asked Berny, pointing at himself and they all bowed.
He did not have to wait long, but stood transfixed when, brushing her long hair back over one ear, a rather beautiful girl in a Simple white frock came into view. She looked at the men round her, hardly listening to what they were saying but touching their clothes and their hands, then touching her own arms and smiling at her two long white hands. She must have heard what they were saying, however, for, looking at the screen and Berny, she came quickly forward until her hands seemed to touch and feel the screen. The men had gathered round her and were all talking together. She waited patiently for them to stop; then looking straight at Berny, she said in perfect English:
“Do you speak English, please?”
“Yes. Can you hear me? Who are you? Where are you?”
She looked at him in dismay and again they all talked rapidly.
“It would seem that you can hear us but we cannot hear you,” she said. “Do you understand?”
“Yes,” nodded Berny, and rushing to his desk, he picked up a coloured pencil and wrote in large capitals across a sheet of paper the words: “CAN YOU READ THIS? WHO ARE YOU?”
“Yes, we can read,” she said when he held his message in front of the television set, “We…” But she was interrupted by the rapid cackling of half a dozen excited voices round her. Looking up at Bernyf she said quietly: “I am told that we will answer your questions in due course. We first wish to know who you are and where you are.”
Nodding his agreement, Berny rushed to get a small table and his typewriter which he set up by the television set. He slid in a sheet of paper and quickly typed in capital letters: “MY NAME IS BERNARD MARSDEN. THIS IS MY HOME IN RAY FALLS. WHO ARE YOU AND WHERE ARE YOU?”
He held the sheet of paper near the screen and, leaning forward, the girl was able to read it and translate.
“Where is Ray Falls? Is it the Atomic Research Centre?” she asked a moment later.
Yes, nodded Berny, pointing to the last question of his message.
“Wait, I will ask,” said the girl, turning to her companions.
“ARE YOU A PRISONER?” typed Berny rapidly during this consultation.
The girl looked at the message and smiled.
“No. These men are wise and it is through them that we have been able to communicate with you. It is difficult to explain where we are because, to be quite truthful, we are nowhere.”
Jerking back to his typewriter, Berny banged away rapidly as the girl and the men round her watched him through the screen. He typed:
“I AM QUITE READY TO BELIEVE THAT THIS IS A FANTASTIC EXPERIMENT BUT I WILL NOT BE MADE A FOOL OF. TELL THOSE GUYS THAT IF THEY WISH ME TO COOPERATE THEY MUST COME CLEAN. I REPEAT, WHO ARE YOU AND WHERE ARE YOU?”
He held the sheet of paper close to the set while the girl translated to the men looking over her shoulder. They said something and looking up at Berny, she said:
“They must decide on the best way of telling you. Will you please be patient for a few minutes?” Berny nodded. “Meanwhile, I can tell you my name, Mr. Marsden,” she said, glancing over her shoulder, “I am Mary Miles. I come from Hull, in Yorkshire.”
She was interrupted by the group of men who gathered round her. The old man with spectacles talked for several minutes. At last, she turned with a smile:
“They first wish me to assure you that this is not a joke. They are going to attempt to make you understand but it is not easy and you must be patient. We are not of your world any more…No, Mr. Marsden, I swear this is true and you must listen, please…As far as you are concerned, we are dead. No, we are not ghosts. Please don’t be impatient!” she said, seeing Berny shrugging his shoulders. The men had again gathered round and were talking rapidly. “They say that if you do not wish to hear me out, we will simply fade out and try somewhere else.”
“ALL RIGHT. I’LL HEAR YOU OUT,” typed Berny rapidly.
“Thank you. Where was I? Yes. The people round me . are Japanese. They are some of those who were caught in the full blast of the Nagasaki atom-bomb. I was also there and, as you would say, killed in the same circumstances.”
“ROT!” scribbled Berny over one of his messages.
“Please!” begged the girl. “Only one of us here, Professor Kizoki, is able to explain. I know nothing of these scientific things but I shall do my best to translate. He wishes me to state first of all that we were not killed and that this was because we happened to find ourselves in the very centre of an atomic and molecular disintegration. The chain reaction which produced this disintegration jumped ahead of time—I am quoting the Professor’s words—jumped ahead of time as you know it. To give you an idea, it took place at a much greater speed than that of light which, as you may know, is not the greatest speed known to ordinary man.”
“AT WHAT SPEED?” typed Berny with a grin.
She asked a question, listened to the Professor’s answer and turned back:
“You cannot understand but to give you an idea, the Professor says: suppose that it happened at such a speed that by the simple theory of relativity and your standards of measuring time, the disintegration was complete before or almost before it had started. Do listen, please! The Professor says that that is the only way in which he can give you a picture, a possibility of comprehension.” Berny nodded vigorously, and she went on:
“The result of all this is just as difficult to explain but the Professor suggests two pictures. From a three dimensional state in a four dimensional universe, we have been transferred or changed into a four dimensional state in a five dimensional universe. Or, if you prefer, we have become a form of antimatter, which amounts to the same thing, says the Professor. Does that make sense?”
Berny typed rapidly: “THEORETICALLY, IT COULD, BUT I DO NOT BELIEVE IT. CAN YOU PROVE IT?”
“I expect they can, somehow,” she said, smiling, before translating.
“DO YOU BELIEVE HIM?” he typed while she was listening to the Professor.
“Yes, because there is no other possible explanation.”
“HOW DO I KNOW THAT YOU ARE NOT IN A STUDIO SOMEWHERE, HAVING THE TIME OF YOUR LIVES?”
“WHAT ABOUT YOU, MISS MILES? IS THERE A PHOTO AND INFORMATION TO BE FOUND CONCERNING YOU SOME PLACE?”
“No, Mr. Marsden. I assure you that this is the first time I have seen myself since…since I vanished in Nagasaki. But listen, the Professor says that he can prove it in a roundabout way. For instance, you could easily check up on at least two of the people present who were well known in Nagasaki. The Professor says that you can find his photograph in a number of books in Tokio and also that he was on the list of victims of the Nagasaki bomb. He says he was known in scientific circles for his research work on the formation of the eye. He says that, when you have checked this, which should not take you very long, then the very fact that you have been able to talk to us over your television set will be another and perhaps more convincing proof.”
“Yes! I still have an aunt in Hull. I know that she has a photograph of me as a nurse when I started training at the Hull Infirmary. You should have no difficulty in looking up my records. You will see that I was sent out to Singapore and written off as missing after the arrival of the Japanese forces. I was brought over to Japan with two other nurses. One of them who is still alive—and whose name and address I can give you—can corroborate my story. We were separated in Yokohama.”
“HOW DO YOU KNOW SHE IS STILL ALIVE?”
“I have seen her often. You see, we can move around quite easily.”
“HAVE YOU APPEARED ON HER TELEVISION SET?”
“This is the first time I have thus appeared. The Professor has tried unsuccessfully on a number of sets. The proper conditions are not easy. You see, we can only integrate a picture of ourselves in the stream of electrons when a set is switched on and idle, that is, when there is nothing on the air. If we came on with a telecast, it might be dangerous. As you can readily imagine, people do not usually leave their sets turned on when there is nothing to see. You simply happened to be the first person whose attention he was thus able to attract.”
“SUPPOSING I BELIEVE YOU—MIND YOU I DO NOT SAY I DO—WHAT DO YOU WANT ME TO DO?”
“Act as liaison with certain scientists with whom the Professor would like to communicate.”
“ARE YOU NUMEROUS? HAVE YOU MET OTHERS?”
“Yes. Many whom we cannot understand so easily, beings from other worlds.”
“WHAT ARE THEY LIKE?”
“I don’t know. Shapes, features, sound, mean nothing in our…dimension. It is impossible to explain.”
The picture on the screen quivered as with a crash of cymbals and a blare of trumpets, the Ray Falls city hall clock appeared on the screen. Surprised, Berny glanced at his watch and went to the window. A little below him, reflected in the smooth water of the lake a streak of pink sky confirmed that it was really six o’clock and the birth of another day.
As he stripped for his morning swim, Berny was only sure of one thing: it had not been a dream. However, when he got back, his body still tingling and dripping with ice cold water, when he saw dear old Mrs. Ambrose laying the table and when, as he walked in, the smell of coffee and bacon made him realise that he was hungry, he could not help wondering. When, having shaved, he came back and sat down to his breakfast, he first went to switch off the television set where a very muscular young man was energetically illustrating the morning lesson of keep-fit exercises.
Berny decided not to speak about his “vision”, at least for the time being, but when he reached the Research Institute a little later, he went straight to the library and spent part of the morning consulting books which he had not looked at for years it seemed. Theoretically, it was barely possible that the atoms composing an object or even an animal could be transposed into something totally different and yet remain or go on forming an entity.
“It would not lack any of our known three basic dimensions but it could then conceivably include one or more other dimensions,” he mumbled, tucking a copy of Ouspensky’s New Model of the Universe under his arm.
He went home early and told Mrs. Ambrose that he would not need any dinner but that if she would prepare a little cold supper for him, he would be quite happy. Setting his alarm clock for midnight, he went to bed and to sleep.
Berny sat up all night but the flickering screen of his television remained hopelessly empty and the loudspeaker purred and cracked until the appearance of the city hall clock and the blare of music the next morning.
Could it be possible that the sudden flow of current through the cathode tube generated by the local station coming on the air had disrupted a few atoms and possibly killed…“people who have been dead almost twenty years, you darned fool!” he concluded aloud, as he undressed rapidly for his morning swim.
For a whole week, Berny sat up every night, waiting in vain for Mary to reappear. Though he could not imagine how, he was not at all sure that he had not been fooled. Even if it were so, someone, somewhere had made a stupendous scientific invention. However, he doubted that any girl could have played the part of Mary Miles so well. There really had been something so truthful, so simply tragic and so very sweet about her face. Did Mary really exist, he wondered, and the thought that perhaps she did not made him do the impossible and cut himself with his electric razor. Berny stopped and looked at himself sternly, as his school teacher used to look at him. Was he falling in love with a face, a shadow he had once seen on his television screen? Did Mary exist or not? She had told him she was not a ghost but she had also given him to understand that she was no longer human.
By the time Berny sat down to his breakfast, he had made up his mind. Hang the expense—in any case, it would count as his annual holiday—but he was going to check the story of this Mary Miles and, to do that, he was going to ask for time off to go to Hull.
On his return to Ray Falls three weeks later, Doctor Marsden was sure of one thing: Mary Miles had existed. In Hull, the Matron of the Royal Infirmary had confirmed that Mary Miles had indeed been a nurse there. Without having to consult her records she had told him that nurse Miles had left for Singapore with a group of doctors and three other nurses in the very early days of the war and, on his way out, she had shown him the memorial marble plaque on which the name of Mary Miles had been engraved.
At the local Y.W.C.A. where she had lived for some months, the Secretary remembered Mary Miles and even the number of her room. She did not, however, know of an aunt living in Hull. That could have proved a stumbling block but Berny had been lucky. The very first A. Miles which he had found in the telephone directory had been the right one. Yes, Mrs. Anne Miles had had a niece who had disappeared during the war. Could he come round? Certainly. The old lady had confirmed all he knew and under the excuse that he was checking up on people who had been in Singapore in the early part of the war, he had left with what he considered a proof that it had not all been a dream, a photograph of Mary Miles in her nurse’s uniform the day she had entered the Royal Infirmary. It was the girl he had seen and talked to on the television screen all right, and though the picture had been taken almost twenty years ago, the face was the same!
