Time Travel Omnibus, page 295
“Well, I guess it’s all true, huh?” Ned Vince muttered in a flat tone.
Behind him he heard an excited, squeaky chattering. Rodents in pursuit. Looking back, he saw the pinpoint gleams of countless little eyes. Yes, he might as well be an exile on another planet—so changed had the Earth become.
A wave of intolerable homesickness came over him as he sensed the distances of time that had passed—those inconceivable eons, separating himself from his friends, from Betty, from almost everything that was familiar. He started to run, away from those glittering rodent eyes. He sensed death in that cold sea-bottom, but what of it? What reason did he have left to live? He’d be only a museum piece here, a thing to be caged and studied . . .
Prison or a madhouse would be far better. He tried to get hold of his courage. But what was there to inspire it? Nothing! He laughed harshly as he ran, welcoming that bitter, killing cold. Nostalgia had him in its clutch, and there was no answer in his hell-world, lost beyond the barrier of the years . . .
LOY CHUK and his followers presently came upon Ned Vince’s unconscious form, a mile from the city of Kar-Rah. In a flying machine they took him back, and applied stimulants. He came to, in the same laboratory room as before. But he was firmly strapped to a low platform this time, so that he could not escape again. There he lay, helpless, until presently an idea occurred to him. It gave him a few crumbs of hope.
“Hey, somebody!” he called.
“You’d better get some rest, Ned Vince,” came the answer from the black box. It was Loy Chuk speaking again.
“But listen!” Ned protested. “You know a lot more than we did in the Twentieth Century. And—well—there’s that thing called time-travel, that I used to read about. Maybe you know how to make it work! Maybe you could send me back to my own time after all!”
Little Loy Chuk was in a black, discouraged mood, himself. He could understand the utter, sick dejection of this giant from the past, lost from his own kind. Probably insanity looming. In far less extreme circumstances than this, death from homesickness had come.
Loy Chuk was a scientist. In common with all real scientists, regardless of the species from which they spring, he loved the subjects of his researches. He wanted this ancient man to live and to be happy. Or this creature would be of scant value for study.
So Loy considered carefully what Ned Vince had suggested. Time-travel. Almost a legend. An assault upon an intangible wall that had baffled far keener wits than Loy’s. But he was bent, now, on the well-being of this anachronism he had so miraculously resurrected—this human, this Kaalleee . . .
Loy jabbed buttons on the black box. “Yes, Ned Vince,” said the sonic apparatus. “Time-travel. Perhaps that is the only thing to do—to send you back to your own period of history. For I see that you will never be yourself, here. It will be hard to accomplish, but we’ll try. Now I shall put you under an anesthetic . . .”
Ned felt better immediately, for there was real hope now, where there had been none before. Maybe he’d be back in his home-town of Harwich again. Maybe he’d see the old machine-shop, there. And the trees greening out in Spring. Maybe he’d be seeing Betty Moore in Hurley, soon . . . Ned relaxed, as a tiny hypo-needle bit into his arm . . .
As soon as Ned Vince passed into unconsciousness, Loy Chuk went to work once more, using that pair of brain-helmets again, exploring carefully the man’s mind. After hours of research, he proceeded to prepare his plans. The government of Kar-Rah was a scientific oligarchy, of which Loy was a prime member. It would be easy to get the help he needed.
A horde of small, grey-furred beings and their machines, toiled for many days.
NED VINCE’S mind swam gradually out of the blur that had enveloped it. He was wandering aimlessly about in a familiar room. The girders of the roof above were of red-painted steel. His tool-benches were there, greasy and littered with metal filings, just as they had always been. He had a tractor to repair, and a seed-drill. Outside of the machine-shop, the old, familiar yellow sun was shining. Across the street was the small brown house, where he lived.
With a sudden startlement, he saw Betty Moore in the doorway. She wore a blue dress, and a mischievous smile curved her lips. As though she had succeeded in creeping up on him, for a surprise.
“Why, Ned,” she chuckled. “You look as though you’ve been dreaming, and just woke up!”
He grimaced ruefully as she approached. With a kind of fierce gratitude, he took her in his arms. Yes, she was just like always.
“I guess I was dreaming, Betty,” he whispered, feeling that mighty sense of relief. “I must have fallen asleep at the bench, here, and had a nightmare. I thought I had an accident at Pit Bend—and that a lot of worse things happened . . . But it wasn’t true . . .”
Ned Vince’s mind, over which there was still an elusive fog that he did not try to shake off, accepted apparent facts simply.
He did not know anything about the invisible radiations beating down upon him, soothing and dimming his brain, so that it would never question or doubt, or observe too closely the incongruous circumstances that must often appear. The lack of traffic in the street without, for instance—and the lack of people besides himself and Betty.
He didn’t know that this machine-shop was built from his own memories of the original. He didn’t know that this Betty was of the same origin—a miraculous fabrication of metal and energy-units and soft plastic. The trees outside were only lantern-slide illusions.
It was all built inside a great, opaque dome. But there were hidden television systems, too. Thus Loy Chuk’s kind could study this ancient man—this Kaalleee. Thus, their motives were mostly selfish.
Loy, though, was not observing, now. He had wandered far out into cold, sad sea-bottom, to ponder. He squeaked and chatted to himself, contemplating the magnificent, inexorable march of the ages. He remembered the ancient ruins, left by the final supermen.
“The Kaalleee believes himself home,” Loy was thinking. “He will survive and be happy. But there was no other way. Time is an Eternal Wall. Our archeological researches among the cities of the supermen show the truth. Even they, who once ruled Earth, never escaped from the present by so much as an instant . . .”
THE INCREDIBLE ANTIQUE
David Wright O’Brien
As far as gifts go, this antique was a perfect gesture—for a mother-in-law!
THERE’S an ancient adage to the effect that a man with a hobby is a chap you’ll never find flirting with trouble. And like all such saws, it is about as accurate as the latest bit of hogwash from the Third Reich.
Any hobby, no matter how harmless it may seem apparently, is a perfect passkey to a closet full of trouble. I ought to know, for my own hobby, although just about as mild and gentle as any collecting mania known to man, turned out to be—
Well, maybe I’d better start at the beginning . . .
It was the afternoon the two Roman battle shields had arrived and I’d hung them up in the dining-room and my wife, Gwen, had raised such a hellish stink.
“You can take those monstrosities up in the attic and pile them with the rest of your junk, Tom Hastings!” Gwen exploded when she saw them.
“But they are ancient Roman battle shields,” I said with thin patience. “They date back to the days of Julius Caesar and maybe further!”
“I don’t care if they’re the secondhand fig leaves of Adam and Eve,” Gwen shrilled. “Get them out of my dining-room!”
As I grimly began their removal from the dining-room wall, Gwen came up behind me to watch. After a minute, in a small, tight voice, she asked: “And how much did you pay for these ancient Roman thingamahjigs?”
“They’d be cheap at twice the price,” I answered evasively.
“How much were they?” Gwen asked determinedly.
“Twenty-five dollars,” I muttered.
“Twenty-five dollars for those hideous blobs of metal!”
“Twenty-five dollars apiece,” I corrected her gently.
“Fifty dollars!” Gwen sounded as if I’d just informed her casually that I’d been living a bigamous existence for the ten years of our marriage.
I continued to take down the shields as the silence curled into a nice tense ball of dynamite.
Then at last my spouse said in soft horror: “Do you realize what fifty dollars would buy?”
I leaned the shields against the dining-room table. “Fifty dollars would buy a hundred stingers or five hundred beers,” I said, trying to put the light touch into the conversation.
But Gwen wasn’t having any of it. She stared at me aghast. Then she glanced in incredulous dismay at the shields. I could see that she was on the verge of the weeps.
“Fifty dollars would buy Mother that new spring coat she’s had her heart set on,” Gwen said tremulously. The tears were gathering in her lovely gray eyes and I knew that I’d be in for it if I didn’t head her off somehow.
“You didn’t tell me anything about your mother’s wanting a new spring coat,” I said swiftly.
“I—I didn’t mention it because I didn’t think we could afford it,” Gwen said, her underlip beginning to tremble. The first tear was starting down her cheek.
“Now listen, honey,” I told her. “All you had to do was mention it. Just mention it to me, and I’d have written a check for her coat then and there. You go in and tell your mother she can have the coat.”
The tears stopped temporarily at least.
“Mother has gone out to the hairdresser’s,” Gwen said. “But I’ll tell her the moment she comes home.”
“That’s fine,” I said. “Now what about these shields? How about that spot over my desk in the study?”
THE glint came back to Gwen’s eyes.
She shook her head firmly.
“Take them up into the attic, Tom. They have no place around this house. And another thing; I want to talk to you about all this.”
“About all what?” I asked suspiciously.
“About your collecting. It’s just about time that we settle it once and for all.”
“What,” I demanded, “is there to settle?”
“It’s sending us to the poorhouse, Tom. It will just have to stop. We have an attic cluttered up with antique knickknacks which you’ve collected over ten years. There’s hardly any room for them, and they just lie up there gathering dust. Mother and I decided that it would be a wonderful thing if you’d get rid of them all, sell them to another collector, and stop this nonsense.”
At last it was becoming clear. Mother and Gwen. How ducky. How too, too nice. It wasn’t enough that my dear sweet uncomplaining mother-in-law had maneuvered me into a new spring coat promise; she had also been at her favorite topic with Gwen again—the extravagance of my hobby. I began to do a slow burn.
“Listen. We’ve covered this ground before. It is all too familiar. Your mother would please me greatly by minding her own business. I like collecting antiques, even if no one around this damned house has brains enough to understand the value of them. When the day comes that your mother isn’t getting enough to eat around here, or can’t have two new coats on me each year, she can start worrying about my personal expenditures!”
Gwen gave me a shocked, hurt stare.
“Tom,” she gasped, “why, Tom!”
I picked up the shields and started for the stairs. Behind me I could hear Gwen beginning to sob. I knew that she expected me to drop the shields and race madly back to her side to apologize profusely. But I continued toward the attic.
That was perhaps the sixth time in ten years of marriage that I’d ever sounded off to Gwen about her mother. And Gwen’s mother had been with us ever since we returned from our honeymoon ten years ago. If I recall correctly, she came to help Gwen get the house in order, “just for the first few weeks.” She’d stayed with us ever since.
The common conception of a mother-in-law is a big, ample-bossomed thunder-voiced, dominating woman. At least that’s the way they are in movies and comic strips. But Gwen’s mother is nothing of the sort. She is by far the most insidious variety of mother-in-law imaginable. She is small, demure, sweet-faced and gray haired. She just wouldn’t think of trying to run things. She only suggests, sweetly, and without apparent malice. Give me the movie and comic strip variety any day!
When I came down from the attic I could hear Gwen in our bedroom. She was still sobbing, but I was damned if I’d go in there and recant. I slammed around in the hall looking for my hat, and then I got the car out of the garage and raced the motor defiantly as I drove past beneath her bedroom window.
A long drive in the country usually served as my refuge from mother-in-law trouble, and so I headed out for open highway the minute I reached the outskirts of town. Once on the broad white concrete stretches I didn’t pay much attention to where I was going. I just drove, and let the air swoosh in through the side-window vent and cool off my face and my emotions.
THEN I came to the little wayside village that had the big roadhouse with the neon sign advertising a popular brand of beer. I decided to stop for a few drinks.
The bartender in the roadhouse made excellent stingers, and after about six or seven of them I decided to head back home. I was buzzing most pleasantly when I stepped out into the sunlight and noticed for the first time that there was a ramshackle little store across the road that brought all my troubles back to mind.
The sign out in front of the little store read:
ANTIQUES FOR SALE
I put my car keys back into my pocket and crossed the road.
The windows of the little shop were cluttered with the usual array of spinning wheels and other standard antique items, but that didn’t stop me. You can never tell what’s inside.
The shop was dark, almost dingy, and had that marvelous musty smell to it that affects a collector the same way smoke does a fireman. A bell jangled as I opened the door and stepped inside, and a prim, long nosed, bald headed little man came out from the back as I stood there looking around.
“How do you do?” he asked.
I told him I did pretty well, considering, and mentioned my curiosity at finding this little shop like I did. He agreed that it wasn’t generally well known, but said that he had a pretty steady trade of collectors coming from the city every weekend.
We got to talking, and he showed me some things which had just been shipped to him in a load from New England. Some of them were interesting enough, others run of the mill. I was beginning to get a little bit disappointed at not finding anything that struck my fancy to the extent of making me want to buy it, when the little shopkeeper said:
“A very interesting thing came in with this last shipment. It wasn’t classified, and I’ve found myself at a loss to figure out exactly what its origin was. Perhaps you might know. Would you like to see it?”
“Yes. Sure. By all means. Where is it?”
“Back this way,” the little shopkeeper said, waving his hand toward the rear of the store.
I followed him to a particularly poorly lighted corner in the back, where he pulled something out from an assortment of dusty furniture.
It was a chair.
Specifically, it wasn’t quite a chair. It was sort of a stool with arms on it. It had four spindly legs and was about as high as the ordinary straight backed chair you have in your dining-room. It was well worn, but the wood seemed still tough and undecayed.
It was an ugly piece, but it was fascinating.
I got that love-at-first-sight feeling peculiar to antique collectors and automatically reached for my wallet. I knew I was hooked. The little shopkeeper was bending over it and commenting on design and period and a lot of other technical appraisal, but I was scarcely listening to him. I was staring at the chair, and the chair seemed to be staring at me.
“So you see,” said the little shopkeeper, “I am quite at a loss to say exactly where it fits.”
“Eh?” I was startled. “How’s that? Oh, yes. Sure, I see what you mean. I agree with you. It’s a puzzler. I don’t quite think I could make any guesses at it myself. But I like it. Have you price tagged it yet?”
THE shopkeeper saw that I’d taken out my wallet. Naturally he was startled. Collectors don’t run around picking up pieces about which they know admittedly nothing. He gave me a shrewd glance.
“Are you sure you can’t classify it, sir?”
I shook my head. “Positive. Beyond a rough guess at New England, maybe sixteenth century, I couldn’t say further.”
“But surely, sir,” the little man protested, “you don’t want to buy a piece that has such an uncertain origin, do you? Wouldn’t you care to wait until I write the shipper and find out what he knows about it?”
Again I shook my head. “I just like the damned ugly thing,” I said. “I want it. Now. I’ll take it along with me. What’s your price?”
I hadn’t been shrewd. Stupidly, I’d aroused the shopkeeper’s suspicions. Perhaps he thought I’d realized something especially significant and valuable about the ugly little chair at first sight. Maybe he figured I was trying to hoodwink him out of a valuable piece. At any rate his answer almost knocked my hat off.
“A hundred and fifty dollars, sir.”
“What!”
“A hundred and fifty dollars,” the shopkeeper repeated firmly.
I waved my hand in disgust. “No sale. Why should I pay such a price for an unclassified piece?”
The shopkeeper shrugged. “I am only trying to protect myself against the possibility that it might have great value.”
I started toward the door. “Suit yourself. You’re only talking yourself out of a sale.”
He saw that I wasn’t bluffing.
“What price would you think fair, sir?” he said, following quickly after me.
I stopped. “Thirty dollars,” I said.
The shopkeeper locked pained. “I will let it go for a hundred,” he said.
“Thirty bucks,” I repeated, starting toward the door again.
