Time Travel Omnibus, page 333
“Well, old boy,” Reggie said cheerfully, “hurry along, don’t waste any time y’know. Make up your mind and strike while the iron is hot. Pip! Pip! old fellow.”
“Farewell!” Columbus said sorrowfully. Then he wheeled swiftly and jumped—a long, arching jump that deposited him with a thump on the deck of the departing sailing ship!
Reggie’s mouth dropped open. “Wait a minute!” he yelled. “You can’t do that. Where do you think you’re going?”
“To Spain,” Columbus shouted exultantly, “to borrow money from Isabella. My success I will owe to you. When you referred to this earth as a globe, something in my mind came alive again. I started for the dock, but without your encouragement I would have turned back, as I have on countless other occasions. Thank you, noble stranger, and may you be blessed to the end of your days.”
“Come back!” Reggie yelled frantically. His mind was a wild malestrom of despair and chagrin. Columbus was leaving, escaping to borrow the necessary money from Isabella. Reggie acted with the desperation of an inspired fanatic. He dashed back into the crowd, wheeled and raced for the edge of the dock.
“You won’t get away from me!” he yelled. Then he was flying through the air. It was a noble effort, a splendid, magnificent effort. His thin body hurtled through the ozone, the tattered toga flying behind him like the tail of a kite. His grasping fingers, distended like the talons of an eagle, grabbed for the rail. Grabbed—and missed!
Reggie clawed frantically at the side of the boat. But it was a futile gesture. The next instant his twisting body dropped with a painful splash into the murky water.
Reggie’s first sensation was a bitter galling sense of failure. His next was hardly more comforting. He couldn’t swim! He realized that as he sank for the first time. It was demonstrated to him as he sank for the second time. Sputtering, gasping, strangling, Reggie started down for the third time.
With his last desperate strength he groped for his Time Machine. He tried to set the machine for the Revolutionary War but his eyes were filmed with water and he could hardly see his hands. He was sinking into the greenish water as he made the last frantic adjustment. Then he pressed the button. A pounding, roaring noise filled his ears but whether this was heralding his escape or his death he didn’t know. Then a smothering blackness descended upon him. . . .
THE black, whirrling feeling of flying through Time had become common to Reggie, and so it was without surprise or shock that he woke to find himself reclining on the the floor of a long veranda.
It was night. The cold gloomy blackness that settled over him matched the condition of the Vliet soul. He sat up and tasted the ashes of despair and futility in his mouth. Off a way, he saw an ice-locked river glinting in the moonlight. It was, he knew, the Delaware and that meant that he was now in Trenton during the Revolution.
“Trenton,” Reggie muttered. “Bah!”
He glanced at his Time Machine. If the thingumajig was still working, he must be right in the thick of the Revolutionary War. Reggie thought about this for a while. The Revolutionary War was quite a biggish thing in history. And he hoped to fix it so England would win instead of—
“Oh, what’s the use?” he groaned.
He had botched everything he had touched, so far. Anthony and Cleopatra! Alaric! Chris Columbus! He had tried to change the history of these immortals and had merely made history.
He was a hopeless, dismal failure. He had lost Sandra through his own sloppiness and inability. Still—the thought buzzed in his head like a persistent gadfly—there was yet a chance for him if he could disrupt the course of the Revolutionary War. If he could do that—the Randhope optimism was rising to the fore—it might rectify all his past mistakes.
Reggie stood up, his cheeks flushed. “Try, try again,” he whispered jubilantly to the darkness. Peering about, he saw a pair of swinging doors a dozen feet from him. A pale flickering light shone through these onto the floor of the veranda. Listening closely, Reggie could hear muted voices from within the structure.
He still wore his tattered Roman toga. Entering the house cautiously he discovered a hall clothes closet. Fumbling in the dark he found clothes and donned a suit blindly. Then he reentered the hall.
Reggie squared his shoulders, strode to the inner doors, shoved them open and entered. In spite of the poor illumination, Reggie could see that the room was large and well-furnished. A half dozen soldiers who were lounging against the wall sprang to their feet and saluted smartly.
“My General,” one of them said breathlessly, “we did not know you would make an inspection on Christmas Eve.”
Reggie tried to cover his surprise. “Well, now, didn’t you?” he said. “And what made you think I wouldn’t?”
The soldier, a phlegmatic, stolid fellow peered closely at Reggie. “What is this?” he muttered. “You are not our commander, yet you wear the uniform of a general.”
Before he finished speaking he had grabbed Reggie by the arm and dragged him uncermoniously into the circle of light cast by the one lighted lantern in the room.
“Comrades,” he exclaimed. “This man wears the uniform of France! What does this mean? Rumor has it that France is ready to declare war against England.”
There was a ominous growl from the men encircling Reggie.
“Now, just a minute,” Reggie put in hastily. “Who are you fellows?”
“We are Hessians,” their spokesman answered, “fighting in the cause of England. The report is being circulated that your government, the Government of France, is ready to throw their aid to the colonies in their fight against England. If that is true, then you must be a spy. The penalty for that you well know.”
REGGIE glanced about the circle of unfriendly faces. Everything he did seemed to get him into more trouble. It was the only thing he did well. But the realization that almost all of his stopping places in Time had been used up, put new starch in his back-bone. This was his fourth stop. He only had five. He was perilously close to the end of his rope. If he didn’t pull the cat out of the fire they’d be throwing him into it.
“Listen, boys,” he said, in what he hoped was a chummy tone of voice, “if I were a spy, do you think I’d come marching in here like this?” Taking advantage of their momentary hesitation he rushed on. “And furthermore, that talk about France helping the colonies is a lot of bunk. As a French officer—I can say that with authority.”
The soldiers appeared doubtful. “If what you say is true,” one of them put in, “it is the first encouraging news we have had since we were tom from our homes months ago. We hear so many depressing rumors and always there is the General Washington to scare us out of our wits. We do not wish to fight but we are made to. That is why we are so gloomy this Christmas Eve, Instead of fun and frolic, we wait for Washington to strike. And if he doesn’t Cornwallis will make us smoke him out.” The soldier shuddered. “To smoke out Washington is like trying to drive a tiger from his cave.”
“I know what’s the trouble with you fellows,” Reggie snapped. “You haven’t got any spirit. No morale. What’s the matter with you? You’re quitting before you’ve started to fight. You haven’t got that old college try in you.”
Reggie realized, even as he spoke, that he had hit the nail on the head—but definitely. The only thing wrong with the soldiers fighting for England was that they lacked spirit, courage and zip! England had been defeated—or would be defeated—by that very lack of enthusiasm and morale. Why, this was going to be a snap! All that was needed was someone who could inspire and encourage these gloomy, spineless Hessians. Once that was done, the war would certainly take a deddely different turn. Reggie rubbed his hand in anticipation. He, Reginald Vliet, was just the boy for that job.
“Now look, boys,” he cried jubilantly. “The team that won’t be licked can’t be licked! Remember that! You’re not licked! You can’t be licked I Let’s have a little spirit, now. Turn up the lights, bring out the wine. Let’s have a real celebration in honor of the victories to come!”
Reggie had not served his trick as a college cheerleader in vain. His words brought new life to the weary, despondent mercenaries. Their mouths split wide in confident grins and they crowded about Reggie, slapping him on the back and Cheering into his ear.
Lanterns were lighted, wicks turned up and the gloomy shadows of the huge room receded into the corners. Along one wall, Reggie beheld a sight that brought a delighted gleam to his eye. A magnificently carved and heavily stocked bar!
“Hurray for Christmas!” Reggie shouted. “The drinks are on the house. Get your friends, come one, come all!”
The soldiers surged to the bar and soon bottles were passing from hand to mouth and the sounds of raucous merriment were swelling in a happy chorus to the ceiling. More soldiers, attracted by the sounds of gayety, poured into the room and soon it was jam-packed with happy, wildly cheering Hessians.
Reggie, obeying a strong but nameless impulse, climbed to the top of the bar and executed a neat, unrestrained clog dance. For some reason he felt wildly happy. Maybe it was the bottle of brandy that he had drained, or maybe it was the realization that he was finally succeeding in his task of rearranging history. He beamed proudly upon the lustily singing Hessians. With this kind of spirit and enthusiasm they couldn’t be stopped. They’d make short work of the colonists, and then the whole outcome of American history would be changed and Sandra at last would be within his reach.
“Have a drink!” he bellowed happily. “Jush a lil’ drink to lil’ Sandra.”
“To lil’ Sandra!” the Hessians chorused, delighted. “To lil’ Sandra.”
THE bottles were dropping to the floor now as the men drained them and clamored insistently for more. Reggie jumped behind the bar and dragged case after case of dusty, spider-webbed bottles, forth, setting them within reach of the straining hands. He crawled laboriously to the top of the bar again, a fresh bottle of brandy in his hand. It was the most delightful beverage he had ever tasted. Smooth as silk and strong as steel.
“Yippeee!” he yelled. “Hurray for Princeton!”
Somewhere, men were shouting, but it was a vague, blurred echo that drifted into the hall of merriment. Reggie started to dance again, but this time something was wrong. His legs were each apparently possessed with a mind of its own, with a very firm and diametrically opposed conviction as to how this dance should be executed.
“My calves,” Reggie punned drunkenly, “are mooin’ at each other!”
This, he thought, was pretty funny, and its poor reception irritated him. He shouted something over the din of the mob and then he was lying on his back on the floor, tangled in a mass of happily threshing legs. Struggling to his feet, Reggie pieced events together.
“Why,” he thought angrily, “I must have fallen off the bar.”
“Somewhere in his dive, he had lost his bottle, so there was nothing to do but fight his way to the bar and uncork another. This he tilted and tried to drain at a gulp, but at least a pint of the strong liquor splashed down his braided chest.
He sagged against the bar and stared moodily about the room. Some of the noise was dying out as the soldiers collapsed against the wall in drunken weariness. Others sprawled on the floor, still nursing bottles in tight grips.
The shouting he had noticed was growing louder, and suddenly the swinging doors crashed open and a breathless sentry stumbled into the room.
“To your stations!” he shouted. “They’re coming. Up, do you hear me? The colonists are coming across the ice. Get on your feet! We must be ready to face them!”
A loud chorus of jeers and hoots arose from the drunken soldiers.
“Go ’way!” one of them bawled. “We’re goin’ win thish war, y’hear? The team that won’t be licked won’t be licked, I guesh. Have a drink to lil’ Sandra.”
“To lil’ Sandra!” the Hessians bellowed, “to lil’ Sandra!”
“To lil’ Sandra,” Reggie added, somewhat solemnly. “For she’s a jolly good—” he stopped to throw his voice into high, then continued—“felloooooooow, which noooobooody can denyyyyy.”
“I tell you, they’re coming!” the sentry cried distractedly. “Get to your battle stations, of all our supplies and munitions will fall into the enemies’ hands!”
One of the Hessians started to cry softly. “Auj wiedersehn, little munitions, we will miss you.”
The sentry, with one last wild look at the sodden, slumbering Hessians, fled from the room.
Reggie shrugged. Then, unable to stifle his drunken curiosity, he staggered across the floor, stepping gingerly over the recumbent Hessians.
He collapsed against the door and lurched through onto the veranda where he sprawled helplessly on his face.
“Must’ve tripped,” he muttered, as he crawled laboriously to his feet. Straightening his hat on his head, he peered foggily toward the river. Dozens of figures were climbing out of beached boats and assembling themselves in military formation on the uneven, ice-locked shore.
REGGIE blinked and passed an unbelieving hand over his eyes. The soldiers were shouldering their muskets and marching rapidly toward him. By the pale light of the moon, Reggie had a clear view of their leader.
A staunch, stout figure with a stern, noble face framed by long white hair. He wore the uniform of a commander and in his right hand he carried a sword.
Reggie staggered back as if he had been kicked in the stomach by a Kentucky mule. For he knew who the grimly determined leader of the colonists was. He knew—and the knowledge turned his knees to jelly—that he was none other than the Father of the United States, George Washington!
Other facts were coming to him. This was the famous Christmas Eve raid on the carousing Hessian soldiers at Trenton. This was the historic night that Washington crossed the ice-locked Delaware River and plundered the English storehouses of munitions and supplies. Munitions and supplies that were to give the revolutionary forces new life and courage and enable them to eventually fight the English to a standstill.
Reggie thought of the drunken, helpless Hessians, made drunk and helpless by that prize ass of all ages, Reggie Randhope! He thought of what they might have done to repel the troops of Washington if he hadn’t gotten them blindly drunk. Tears of despair oozed from his bleary eyes and trickled down his cheeks.
The soldiers of the revolution were closer and suddenly Reggie realized his own danger. For a moment he was tempted to remain where he was and be shot for disturbing the peace, or something, but he thought of Sandra and changed his mind. She, poor deluded girl, was depending on him. He had wasted four of his precious opportunities in Time, and now only one remained. One chance to change the history of the world. If he failed in this last attempt, everything he held dear would be irretrievably lost.
Reggie wheeled and ran staggeringly along the veranda, plunged over a low railing and landed up to his neck in prickly bushes. Extricating himself, he staggered along the side of the house as muskets began to explode behind him. Balls blasted past his head singeing his hair with their passage. But, miraculously, he rounded the last corner in an unperforated condition. His eyes, handicapped by the fumes of brandy, tried vainly to penetrate the darkness. He was searching for the stables—there must be stables. Where his eyes left off, his nose took up. It guided him, weavingly but unerringly, to the horses.
Revolutionary soldiers raced around the corner of the building before Reggie could climb onto a horse. They advanced cautiously, holding their fire until they could gain a clear, unobstructed shot at their target. Reggie experienced a foggy sort of terror. With his last sober strength he climbed awkwardly to the bony back of a horse. Then he slapped it wildly with his hat. The animal bolted forward like a shot from a cannon. Reggie saw something flashing toward him but he didn’t duck in time, A beam of the stable struck him a stunning blow across the head, and the next instant the floor smashed him athwart the skull. He rolled aside frantically as a slug blasted into the floor next to him. He could hear the triumphant shouts of the colonists as his hand groped for the Time Machine.
He spun the indicator wildly, while his mind sought for an idea where he might go to make his last bid for a chance to change history. But the sight of a uniformed member of the Continental Army, his bearded face twisted with satisfaction as he drew a bead on the Vliet right eye, was too much for Reggie. Already the soldier’s heavy forefinger was tightening on the musket trigger.
Heedless of the pointer’s location, he pressed the button on the watch—just as the roar of the musket filled his ears with thunder and his eyes with fire. There was a prolonged sensation of falling, and Reggie Vliet knew no more. . . .
CONSCIOUSNESS returned to him very slowly on this occasion, and there was a horrible, throbbing ache above his left ear that had not been there before. He was lying on his right side on a brown carpet with a very thick pile, and there seemed to be a conglomeration of metal wheels and springs and shattered glass about him.
There was but one thought in his mind by the time he had recovered sufficiently to think at all. “This,” Reggie muttered, “is my fifth chance—my last chancel If I fail to change history this time, Sandra is lost to me—forever!”
“He’s coming around,” said a shaky, masculine voice.
Something cold and wet—very wet—enveloped the pain above his left ear. And then a slim, very lovely, brunette girl dropped to her knees before him, holding a dripping towel.
“Oh Reggie, darling,” she gasped. “Are you all right?”
It, Reggie realized with a pang, was Sandra Vanderveer!
“No!” he said loudly. “It’s all wrong, darling! I’ve made a mess of everything! The five chances are gone! I haven’t changed history, Sandra; now we can never be married!”
“But Reggie,” wailed the girl. “We are married!”
