Time Travel Omnibus, page 262
And so he’d planned to use the other thing as an instrument of a different kind of compensation. For Campbell determined that if he couldn’t have Kathleen, no one else could have her.
Vickers couldn’t have her.
NOW Campbell bent over his wife and kissed her gently on the cheek. It was better, this kind of a goodbye. He could think for a moment, this way, that she was still fully his wife, that she still loved him completely.
Then Campbell turned and left the bedroom.
There was no one around the campus but the watchman when Campbell turned his automobile up the driveway that led to the college laboratories. Campbell had been with the college almost as long as the watchman had, and he stopped his car beside the old man and leaned out.
“Up early this morning, aren’tcha, Professor Campbell?” the watchman smiled.
Campbell forced a smile.
“Up very early, Mike. But then there’s a lot of work I have to catch up on.”
Mike nodded and said something else.
Campbell waved his hand and threw the car into gear. Two minutes later he parked behind the science building and was climbing out of the car.
“This will all change,” Campbell told himself. “I must remember that.”
Then he had his keys out of his pocket and was fumbling at the rear entrance to the science building. The door swung inward and Campbell flicked on a light switch that illuminated a locker-lined corridor.
Campbell walked along the corridor, and at the end he flicked another light switch. Then he marched up the three flights of stairs that led to his own laboratory.
He let himself into his personal laboratory and turned on the lights. He methodically began to change into a clean white smock. Moments later and he was rummaging around through a maze of equipment in a closet.
When he brought what he needed out of the closet, Campbell went over to his work bench in the corner. There was a long, almost oval object under a white sheet atop the table. Campbell removed the sheet and looked down at the machine of steel and glass that lay there. This was the other thing. This was the object over which he had labored these many years. This was his secret.
This was a Psychotrans Time Machine.
This would project the mind of a man into the past or into the future. This would open to man the undreamed of possibility to travel through Time. Through this machine the mind of a man in the present could be placed in the body of a man in the past or the future. It was the culmination of Campbell’s scientific genius. It was the dream of achievement which every scientist from Pythagoras to this modern day had groped for.
And it was Campbell, the drab, obscure, aging professor of a small western college who had finally conquered Time.
BUT Campbell wasn’t thinking of this as he set about to work. He wasn’t thinking of anything but the task he had at hand. He was going to project his mind into the past. He was going to project his mind into Yesterday. This was July 1st, Campbell was going back a scant space in Time to June 30th.
And Campbell was going to send his mind into the body of young Vickers.
Campbell sat down at the bench before his work table. He busied himself over a series of charts and graphs for an instant, arrived at the calculations he wanted, then rose again.
Now Campbell tinkered with the delicate dials on the face of the steel and glass machine that would send his brain back into Time.
According to Campbell’s calculations Kathleen and young Vickers must have left the meeting at Marshall Township sometime around eleven o’clock last night. That was a scant seven hours.
Campbell was going to send his brain back seven hours into the past. There, at that time, his brain would take possession of Vicker’s body.
Vickers and Kathleen would be leaving Marshall Township in the young chap’s car at that time. Ahead of them would be the sheer twisting, dangerous roads that lay along the mountain between Marshall Township and the college.
An automobile, roaring through the night, might very well hurtle off the side of one of those twisting roads. Hurtle off the side—
There were jagged rock beds at the bottom of those gruesome drops. An automobile, twisting, falling through the darkness down to these rocks—
Campbell sorted his equipment carefully. There was a round, glass and metal headpiece. Wires led from it. Campbell plugged the ends of this wire into his Time machine.
He made some more adjustments, consulted his charts again, and nodded in satisfaction. Everything was in order. Everything was ready. Campbell paused a moment.
“I must remember,” he told himself, “that everything will be different. Everything will change.”
Yesterday would change, of course, for Campbell. Last night would change for Kathleen and young Vickers. When you tamper with what has passed it is wise to remember that certain elements in the present also change. Campbell was prepared for this.
He was prepared to receive the shocking announcement that his wife and young Vickers had been killed when the car plunged off the cliff side. It would be a few hours anyway before it was discovered. It was good to remember not to mention having left your wife home; asleep, when she died the night before.
Campbell donned the headpiece.
NOW he reached forward and made the final adjustments on the dials of the time machine.
On the right of the machine was a switch which Campbell hadn’t touched. Now he threw the switch forward. His body suddenly began to tingle with electrical vibrations.
The dials on the time machine flickered for an instant, then climbed slightly and stopped. On Campbell’s face was an expression of desperate concentration. He felt himself growing weak. His knees would no longer support him. He sat down on the bench. The dizziness was growing, the room wheeling . . .
Campbell was suddenly aware that he was looking out through the windshield of an automobile roaring through the night along a narrow, twisting mountain road. His hands were gripped to the wheel of the car.
“Not so fast, Vick,” a voice said beside him. “These roads are tricky.”
It was Kathleen’s voice. Kathleen was beside him, and he was in control of Vickers’ mind, in Vickers’ automobile, for an instant, in Vickers’ body!
He turned to look at Kathleen. The last he’d see of her before she died. She looked gloriously beautiful in the faint glowing reflection of the dashboard.
“Not so fast, Vick,” Kathleen repeated worriedly. “I’d like to get home alive.”
Campbell looked ahead. There was a sharp turn up there, a very dangerous turn. It was a long drop to the rocks below if you didn’t make that turn. He mashed his foot down hard on the accelerator pedal. The turn rushed up at him.
Kathleen’s scream pierced into his ears.
Campbell saw the cliff’s edge looming up to him, blackly, terrifyingly. He was seized by an overwhelming frenzy of fear. He felt his heart pounding madly.
“Vick!” Kathleen screamed again. “Vick, for God’s sake!” She was reaching over toward the wheel, trying to get his fingers from it.
Campbell hung on, frozen in horror, the cliff edge was very near . . .
IT WAS half an hour later before young Vickers was able to light a cigarette, his hands trembled that badly. His face was still ashen. Kathleen was driving. They were just entering the little college town.
“I still can’t figure out what possessed me, Kathleen,” young Vickers said shakily. “It was just as if I was asleep. My mind was in a fog, a complete blank. If you hadn’t grabbed that wheel—” He didn’t finish the sentence. He put his hand over his eyes and shuddered.
“I know, Vick,” Kathleen said. “It was the most horrible thing. I looked at you and it was just as if you were in a trance. I’ll still never know how I managed to grab that wheel in time. You were frozen to it.”
“God!” Vickers shuddered. “Ugh!” They drove on in silence. When the girl stopped the car before the residence of Professor Campbell, she turned and said,
“Won’t you come in, Vick? Clive will fix you up a drink. I think you need it badly.”
Young Vickers shook his head.
“No thanks, Kathleen.”
Kathleen got out of the car. Vickers said good night shakily and drove off. Campbell’s wife let herself into the house. She called out to her husband. No one answered. She went upstairs wearily. He was probably still working at the laboratory . . .
They notified the young wife of the elderly Campbell the following morning. It was the morning of July 1st. They broke the news as gently as they could.
He had been tinkering with some unknown experiment. An electrical shock of tremendous force—similar almost to a sudden terrible fright in intensity—had stopped a heart that was none too strong. He was found dead, sprawled across a shattered machine on his work table.
Later, after the coroner had placed the time of her husband’s death, Kathleen was aware that he must have died just about the time the car in which she and Vickers were riding almost plummeted off the edge of the mountain cliff. Everyone agreed that it was the “strangest thing.”
THE END
HERITAGE
Robert Abernathy
• There are two ways of considering heritage—the heritage of physical kinship, of blood and racial descent, and the heritage of an intellectual, spiritual sort. And which is the more important?
If everyone will please keep his seat and refrain from mobbing the platform, I will make a very confidential admission. I am closely acquainted with the great time traveler, Nicholas Doody.
Now, I am not trying to add to the multitudes of pseudo-Doodyesque anecdotes which are perpetually being decanted into unoffending ears in Pullmans, clubs, cafes, and private drawing rooms, and which have undoubtedly driven countless persons into mental declines and padded cells. Neither am I endeavoring to verify either of the two prevailing opinions respecting the inventor of the time machine—one, that he is a half-cracked young genius whose invention’s usefulness is rendered null and void by the immutable laws of time; the other, that he is an insanely selfish, misanthropic, antisocial wretch who is deliberately withholding from the human race a gift of incalculable value.
In sober reality, Nick Doody is a tall, dark-skinned, darkhaired young man of twenty-seven, who looks like a cross between a tennis champion and a naval officer. He is likable, friendly, and not at all standoffish, even regarding his remarkable invention—which he freely admits to be the result of sheer accident rather than of calculated research on his part. Almost anyone in twentieth-century America, he says, might have done it in the same way; the materials are within the grasp of practically everyone. The machine itself has all the simplicity of the first crude beginning of any new science; its very lack of complexity is what makes it such an enigma to your average Einsteinian physicist. But if it were taken apart or put together before you, your wife, or the man across the street, you would wonder why you didn’t think of it yourselves.
As for the popular opinions of Doody—the first is hokum and the second is hogwash. The inventor labors under no mystical ideas about the immutability of the past or the inevitable predestination of the future; his machine affords just as much opportunity for control of the fourth dimension of time as ordinary tools offer for managing the usual three. However, neither is Doody subject to any illusions about his sacred duty to humanity being to reveal the secret of the time machine; he believes that humanity has made a quite adequate mess of its world in three spatial dimensions, and that to add a fourth would only complicate modern life to a point where nervous breakdowns would become as common as shiny seats on blue serge trousers.
Being a normal young fellow with a taste for adventure, he uses the time machine solely for minor exploring junkets into past or future ages, with no purpose save sheer amusement. In the process of these trips, as you might expect, he has seen and done many things which for sheer improbability outdo the wildest imaginings of the science-fiction writers.
It is possible that by making public the substance of a conversation which I had with Doody a few days ago—to be exact, on the evening of November 20, 1976—I may succeed in silencing a few of the macawvoiced critics who have been loudly and raucously insisting that he turn the principle of time travel over to the American government.
“Johnny,” remarked Doody, tête-à-tête with me over an excellent dinner served by the ménage of Elbert’s Exquisite Eatery—or is the adjective Elegant? Perhaps you know the place—it’s on Broadway, one of the most dignifiedly popular cafes of old New York, dating back to 1953. “Johnny, did you ever have any difficulty in proving that you are a man?”
“Not even when I went into the army,” said I, leaning my elbows on the tablecloth and wondering at him frankly. “Why?”
Doody grinned, flashing two thirds of a perfect set of even white teeth. “I did, Johnny; once upon a time that hasn’t happened yet. I stood trial on the question of whether I was or was not human, with my life as well as my reputation dangling in the balance. I conducted my own defense, such as it was—and I lost my case.”
“Well!” I exclaimed, hoisting an eyebrow. “What did they prove you were—a throwback to the chimp?”
“No, not quite,” replied Doody, smiling comfortably, though reflectively—in that curious manner which is his alone, of looking past a companion into far, dim vistas of time. “You know, I’m not sure that I lost that case, after all. Things were getting pretty hot, and I didn’t delay my fade-out long enough to see. Maybe my final argument settled the prosecution’s hash, although the jury had already brought in a verdict of guilty—guilty of impersonating a human being, a crime punishable in that far-off day by death. I’d like to go back to that era and find out; but my little gadget has practically no selectivity at such extreme ranges. I couldn’t even be sure of hitting the right millennium. It would take a much more delicate and complex instrument, with a power source superior to my two dry cells, and a lot of other stuff I haven’t bothered to work out and never will work out. Well, that’s all beside the point, which is that this little experience of mine set me wondering.”
“You wondering—along what line?” I wanted to know, understanding perfectly that I would get the story in Doody’s own good time.
“Ah, that’s a secret,” he evaded amusedly. “Seriously, though, Johnny, I’ll tell you the tale, and we’ll see whether it doesn’t evoke some speculation on your part—not overly pleasant, some of it. Push the signal for a waiter and order more champagne, Johnny, so they won’t be considering giving us the respectfully firm send-off; and I’ll give you the straight of it.”
It seems that Doody, on his last safari into the dark hinterlands of the unexplored aeons, had decided to try a longer jump across time than he ever had made before. It happened that on a previous excursion into one of the odd nooks and corners of chronology, he had had an intriguing little chat with a savant of the time, by name, I believe, Rudnuu Something-or-Other—the surname being placed first—who belonged to a period which Doody estimated in the neighborhood of 13,000 A. D. (They had no system of dates reconcilable with ours, and their records of the elder civilizations of the Indo-European and Neo-European cycles were incomplete and unreliable.) This fellow, who was something of a philosopher and historical student as well as an important member of the technocratic government of his era, was frankly worried about the future of the human race.
In Rudnuu’s day, eleven thousand years from our own, the civilization of the machine had advanced so far on Earth that there was no longer need for men to labor, with muscle or with mind. Briefly, the worldwide society of abundance had come at last into being; and, as the result of every culture which eliminates natural selection by permitting the survival of all, humanity was swiftly going to pot.
Of course, that was nothing new; it has never been new. It is the old, old cycle of man—hardship, ingenuity, civilization, ease, degeneracy, hardship again.
But in the fourteenth millennium the mechanical refinement of life had risen to such a high that the unescapable collapse must be more than catastrophic. The scientist-leader believed that it would be final; that mankind would follow many another dominant breed into the long oblivion of extinction. Unchecked, morbid mutation, without selection, was precipitating the race into a bottomless slough of physical and mental decay.
Scientist Rudnuu had enough curiosity—a quality well-nigh unheard of in his day—to wonder, with a touch of wistfulness, what reasoning race would inherit the Earth when man was gone. Whatever that future breed might be, it must develop from one of two definite groups: either from among the few surviving wild species, which by tenacity and cunning had held their own on the outskirts of human civilization, or from among the tamed animals which man had continued to rear through all these ages for pets or servants, such as dogs and cats and some of the apes.
Even now the members of those groups were far better fitted to rule than decadent humanity. Fierce and quick and clever the wild things had grown, driven by the life struggle of existence in unnoticed crevices and hiding places of a world monopolized by man; strong and sharp-sighted and intelligent the beasts of man had become, bred through the hundreds of centuries for physical and mental perfection. Strong new races, lacking only the skillful hands and the tools of fire and metal to push man off the Earth and claim it for their own.
“So, then,” said Rudnuu, with a shrug of defeat accepted sadly yet without bitterness, “the end is drawing near.”
The upshot of the scientist’s aeration of his views was that Nick Doody, in a hotel room in Brooklyn on a gray evening of 1976, set the simple adjustment of his absurd little instrument and closed its single switch. At once his three-dimensional being in space no longer existed; its four-dimensional counterpart, tenuous, fantastic, and unreal by human standards, was swept away along the world line of the Earth, rushing faster and yet faster, like a fleeting phantom, past the rise of empires and the fall of peoples, past the births and deaths of four hundred generations, to come to a final stop at a point twenty thousand years in our future—nine thousand years beyond the day of Doody’s gloomily prophetic friend.
