Time Travel Omnibus, page 357
The larger hemisphere was the front, and the entire upper half was a clear, unobstructed glasslike substance, either glass or plastic. Jim scratched it—and it scratched with some hardness, so it was not glass. He tasted it, but it was tasteless. It was air-warm.
And he got a stern reprimand from his master for, one: making scratches on the surface, and two: for putting nose-prints and lick-marks on the ultra-clean surface.
Then the car lifted by an inch, firmly and without tremor. It moved sidewise first, and then floated straight up for five hundred feet, turned a quarter way around, and darted forward swiftly. Below, they could see the rooftops of the community, and once they passed a car on their own level, going in the same direction.
Cross traffic went either above or below by a couple of hundred feet.
They did not cross toward any city, but went across open country until they came to a huge enclosure, into which the man dropped his car and parked it beside several others.
“Come, Topsy,” ordered the man, and they went into the building nearby.
They waited in the waiting room, and Jim Forrest knew fear, for as they entered his first view was that of a huge Dalmatian that eyed him with disfavor. The Dalmatian got up and growled, and Jim felt his hackles rise.
“Butch!” snapped the Dalmatian’s master. “Lie down!”
Butch registered canine disappointment and reclined, but Jim would have preferred that the bigger dog were leashed.
But eventually the doctor came, and they went in.
“Trouble?” asked the doctor.
“We’re not certain,” said Jim’s master. “Topsy refused the nightly dog biscuit, and then barked when I asked what was the matter.”
The doctor looked down at Jim. “Here, Topsy. Up on this table.”
Jim might have grinned. He’d show ’em. If they expected him to understand them, they’d be surprised! He obeyed the command.
“Open your mouth and stick out your tongue,” said the doctor. Jim did, after deliberately looking around to be sure that they were all watching.
“His response seems slow,” said the doctor, with some concern. “Raise your right front paw!”
THIS Jim did, after some thought. He was not used to having his right hand called a paw, and he had to think before he lifted the member.
“Definitely slow.” The doctor turned and picked up a thermometer. Jim looked askance at this; he’d seen a dog’s temperature taken and he felt like objecting to the indignity. But the doctor shook it down, and presented it to Jim’s face. He inserted the thermometer below Jim’s tongue, picked up a paw and felt the pulse.
“Any pain?” asked the doctor. Jim puzzled, and then shook his head. His long black ears flapped against his chin and cheeks. “Discomfort? Food agreeing with you?” The doctor ran through a list of possible symptoms, to which Jim shook his head to indicate “no.”
The doctor read the temperature and then sat down at his desk, thinking.
It was at that point that Jim Forrest really began to wonder. They all were treating him as though he were expected to know their tongue and to act accordingly. Instead of being surprised when he followed the rules, they were a little hurt that his response was slow. And when he shook his head in response to a question of some complication, they accepted it as normal.
Perhaps he should really show them some intelligence. On the wall behind him was a large wax-slate, and Jim stood up on the table and faced the slate. He sat close to it and extended his right paw.
“Why, Topsy’s using her other foot,” exclaimed the woman. “Her toenails aren’t cut for writing!”
Jim blinked, and looked at the foot, and then sat full up and compared the two feet. The nails of the right foot were clipped short; the left foot had one long nail. Jim wondered if he could manage the left-handed paw while writing, but he tried.
“That’s better—use the left one like a good dog,” said Martha.
The doctor smiled. “Perhaps the dog has been trying to switch,” he said. “That often causes trouble, you know.”
Jim wrote:
2 x 2 = 4
4 x 4 = 16
Then because he couldn’t recall offhand what the square of sixteen was, he put it down in longhand:
16
x 16
96
x 16
256
After which he turned to them and waited. “Has he some fixation with numbers?” asked the doctor.
“Not that we know of.”
“It’s strange that a dog should just turn and write that elementary stuff,” said the veterinarian. “Has he had the normal canine education?”
“Of course.”
“But simple multiplication—we include mathematics only as mental training and never expect a dog to take to the stuff. Wait.”
The doctor lifted the cover-sheet and cleaned the slate. Then he wrote:
“Now, Topsy, if you like numbers, do that one!”
JIM looked at the thing. So that’s how it stood! Well, he was as smart as any dog, and so he did it. When he finished, he turned to see the doctor calculating mentally from the face of a stopwatch.
“Timing’s not too bad,” said the doctor. “Yet there’s something off-key here. Too bad dogs can’t talk; I’d like to give Topsy a word-association test. But if the dog has to write the association-word, it gives time to frame an answer. We can try him on the blot-test.”
He took a chart from his desk. It contained a number of printed blots which were similar to those made when you drop ink on a folded paper and then crease the paper while the ink is wet.
“Now, Topsy, take a look at this first blot and write down what your impression of it is.”
Jim looked at the blot. It was jagged and lacelike, and to Jim Forrest it resembled the filigree work on a wrought-iron fence. He wrote that down. The next blot made him think of a scientist peering into a microscope, the third was an octopus, the fourth a cumulus cloud. And so on through the batch he went.
“Have you been treating him in any strange manner?” asked the doctor.
“Not that we know of.”
“Well, from the results, I’d say that your dog is suffering from a delusion. Topsy seems to think that she is smarter than any dog in the Solar System.”
That brought forth a general laugh, which Jim resented deeply. He sat up and wrote:
“Am I not?”
The doctor smiled tolerantly.
“Topsy,” he said. “No doubt you are quite intelligent, but you mustn’t get grandiose ideas.” To the man, he said: “Mr. Harding, what is your business?”
“I’m a neutrinics engineer.”
“Topsy, do you know what that is?”
Jim wrote:—“The neutron is an atomic particle having no charge and an atomic mass of L0089.”
“Now, where did he get that?” asked the doctor.
“Topsy, have you been reading any of my collection-volumes?”
Jim realized that he had made an error of some sort Doubtless two hundred years had added to man’s store of nuclear physics. So he nodded.
“Thought so. We’ve been basing all atomic masses on the neutron being unity. But Topsy misunderstood, Doctor. Perhaps you’d better check the dog’s word-recognition. Not only is Topsy slow in response, but she misconceives the word,” He turned back to Jim. “I said neutrinicist.”
“The neutrino,” wrote Jim, “is an atomic particle having no charge and a mass approximately equivalent to the mass of the electron.”
Mr. Harding shook his head. “Those old books,” he grumbled. “Why, they were so crude that they could hardly detect the difference in properties between the isotopes of hydrogen! About all they knew was that deuteron-water boiled at a different temperature than normal water, let alone the many other differences in physical and chemical properties.”
“They were rather vague,” the doctor said with a smile. “They say that the old boys knew nothing of inonotronics or even azy-centric geometry.”
“No. Kiefer made his initial discoveries in inonotronics less than a hundred years ago. That must have been a dull time, indeed. Imagine living in a world without science! Never to know the relation between the Skarmer principle of light and the polypolar fields. Why, men couldn’t live without the practical application of the polypolar fields.”
“Supposing that DeGallman had never realized that bipolar gravitic fields existed, though. Then what?” asked the doctor.
HARDING shook his head negligently. “When they isolated the neutron, the theory of gravities is naturally the next step. If DeGallman hadn’t researched, others would have found it in a matter of months. It doesn’t take a single genius to put an azy-centric crystal in a polypolar field and observe the results. After the results are known and analyzed, the use of the geotonic is almost mandatory. Then comes the tetrapositional gravitostriction and its analysis. This leads to the whole useful field of inonotronics.”
“An interesting viewpoint,” observed the veterinarian. “I’d like to continue, but we have a patient here. Psychoanalytically, I’d say that Topsy has been reading some of your old volumes and has a distorted viewpoint. Many of the statements made as fact are at such a variance to the known fact that reading them might well be dangerous to a mind not trained to receive them.
“For some unknown reason, Topsy is certain that her intelligence is higher than any other dog’s, and I believe that she may even consider her intellect as high as a man’s. Frankly, she is—quite normally, too—a good deal lower than the moron.
“I say this in front of her because we are going to eliminate it all anyway, and re-educate her. No man wants an insane dog in his house. You may, of course, consult some other dog analyst before proceeding?”
“I trust your judgment, doctor,” said Mr. Harding. “You may proceed.”
“Thank you. Yes, we’d be lost without inonotronics. My mental therapy machine is based on the qualtorecintive fornance circuits. No pain, no strain. Come, Topsy!”
Jim viewed this with distrust. He hung back, and when the doctor went over, Jim bared his canine teeth and growled.
“Recalcitrant, too?” muttered the doctor. “A slight paranoid tendency, easily dispelled. Topsy, listen. You will either come with me or you’ll come under the influence of tetradiphenylene-sarcophomate, olfactorily introduced. Which?”
Jim hung his head, and with his stubby tail down, he leaped from the table and followed the doctor.
The machine was not terrifying nor complex. He was laid on a table between two plates, and then the doctor pressed a button on the machine, and Jim Forrest’s mind blacked-out . . .
* * * * *
Ed Knight’s vigil was tiresome. Twenty-four hours is a long time to sit and watch a machine do nothing apparently but maintain certain fields and potentials as indicated by a batch of simple meters. He dozed and he ate reams of sandwiches and drank gallons of strong black coffee. Finally the time came, and he waited for Jim Forrest’s return.
The clock ticked, and the relays clicked, and the machine ran down to a stop. The man on the table opened his eyes and looked around. “Well, what did you learn?” asked Ed Knight.
Forrest jumped off of the table onto all fours. “Arf! Arf! Aowouuuuuu!” he said.
IT WAS Ed Knight who wrecked the machine.
And it was six weeks before he could get Jim Forrest to walk on his hind feet and hold things in his hands. Forrest came out of it gradually, but to the day he died, he had an uncontrollable urge to wag his non-existent tail.
A year after his fateful trip a scientist by the name of DeGallman observed some strange radiation effect emanating from a strange crystalline mass when it was immersed in a multipolar motor field winding. He put it down as a possible discovery and figured that it might take five years of analysis to unravel the scientific reason for such an occurrence.
The man who might have known didn’t remember a thing.
HE WALKED AROUND THE HORSES
H. Beam Piper
This tale is based on an authenticated, documented fact. A man vanished—right out of this world. And where he went—
In November 1809, an Englishman named Benjamin Bathurst vanished, inexplicably and utterly.
He was en route to Hamburg from Vienna, where he had been serving as his government’s envoy to the court of what Napoleon had left of the Austrian Empire. At an inn in Perleburg, in Prussia, while examining a change of horses for his coach, he casually stepped out of sight of his secretary and his valet. He was not seen to leave the inn yard. He was not seen again, ever.
At least, not in this continuum . . .
(From Baron Eugen von Krutz, Minister of Police, to His Excellency the Count von Berchtenwald, Chancellor to His Majesty Friedrich Wilhelm III of Prussia.)
25 November, 1809
Your Excellency:
A circumstance has come to the notice of this Ministry, the significance of which I am at a loss to define, but, since it appears to involve matters of State, both here and abroad, I am convinced that it is of sufficient importance to be brought to your personal attention. Frankly, I am unwilling to take any further action in the matter without your advice.
Briefly, the situation is this: We are holding, here at the Ministry of Police, a person giving his name as Benjamin Bathurst, who claims to be a British diplomat. This person was taken into custody by the police at Perleburg yesterday, as a result of a disturbance at an inn there; he is being detained on technical charges of causing disorder in a public place, and of being a suspicious person. When arrested, he had in his possession a dispatch case, containing a number of papers; these are of such an extraordinary nature that the local authorities declined to assume any responsibility beyond having the man sent here to Berlin.
After interviewing this person and examining his papers, I am, I must confess, in much the same position. This is not, I am convinced, any ordinary police matter; there is something very strange and disturbing here. The man’s statements, taken alone, are so incredible as to justify the assumption that he is mad. I cannot, however, adopt this theory, in view of his demeanor, which is that of a man of perfect rationality, and because of the existence of these papers. The whole thing is mad; incomprehensible!
The papers in question accompany, along with copies of the various statements taken at Perleburg, a personal letter to me from my nephew, Lieutenant Rudolf von Tarlburg. This last is deserving of your particular attention; Lieutenant von Tarlburg is a very level-headed young officer, not at all inclined to be fanciful or imaginative. It would take a good deal to affect him as he describes.
The man calling himself Benjamin Bathurst is now lodged in an apartment here at the Ministry; he is being treated with every consideration, and, except for freedom of movement, accorded every privilege.
I am, most anxiously awaiting your advice, et cetera, et cetera,
Krutz
(Report of Traugott Zeller, Oberwachtmeister, Staatspolizei, made at Perleburg, 25 November, 1809.)
At about ten minutes past two of the afternoon of Saturday, 25 November, while I was at the police station, there entered a man known to me as Franz Bauer, an inn servant employed by Christian Hauck, at the sign of the Sword & Scepter, here in Perleburg. This man Franz Bauer made complaint to Staatspolizeikapitan Ernst Hartenstein, saying that there was a madman making trouble at the inn where he, Franz Bauer, worked. I was, therefore, directed, by Staatspolizeikapitan Hartenstein, to go to the Sword & Scepter Inn, there to act at discretion to maintain the peace.
Arriving at the inn in company with the said Franz Bauer, I found a considerable crowd of people in the common room, and, in the midst of them, the innkeeper, Christian Hauck, in altercation with a stranger. This stranger was a gentlemanly-appearing person, dressed in traveling clothes, who had under his arm a small leather dispatch case. As I entered, I could hear him, speaking in German with a strong English accent, abusing the innkeeper, the said Christian Hauck, and accusing him of having drugged his, the stranger’s, wine, and of having stolen his, the stranger’s, coach-and-four, and of having abducted his, the stranger’s, secretary and servants. This the said Christian Hauck was loudly denying, and the other people in the inn were taking the innkeeper’s part, and mocking the stranger for a madman.
On entering, I commanded everyone to be silent, in the king’s name, and then, as he appeared to be the complaining party of the dispute, I required the foreign gentleman to state to me what was the trouble. He then repeated his accusations against the innkeeper, Hauck, saying that Hauck, or, rather, another man who resembled Hauck and who had claimed to be the innkeeper, had drugged his wine and stolen his coach and made off with his secretary and his servants. At this point, the innkeeper and the bystanders all began shouting denials and contradictions, so that I had to pound on a table with my truncheon to command silence.
I then required the innkeeper, Christian Hauck, to answer the charges which the stranger had made; this he did with a complete denial of all of them, saying that the stranger had had no wine in his inn, and that he had not been inside the inn until a few minutes before, when he had burst in shouting accusations, and that there had been no secretary, and no valet, and no coachman, and no coach-and-four, at the inn, and that the gentleman was raving mad. To all this, he called the people who were in the common room to witness.
I then required the stranger to account for himself. He said that his name was Benjamin Bathurst, and that he was a British diplomat, returning to England from Vienna. To prove this, he produced from his dispatch case sundry papers. One of these was a letter of safe-conduct, issued by the Prussian Chancellery, in which he was named and described as Benjamin Bathurst. The other papers were English, all bearing seals, and appearing to be official documents.
