Time Travel Omnibus, page 589
“He climbed right on the Anvil. Then everything turned red and he was gone.”
Barrett clenched his fists. There was a white-hot blaze just behind his forehead that almost made him forget about his foot. He saw his mistake, now. He had depended for his espionage on two men who were patently and unmistakably insane, and that had been itself a not very sane thing to do. A man is known by his choice of lieutenants. Well, he had relied on Altman and Latimer, and now they were giving him the sort of information that such spies could be counted on to supply.
“You’re hallucinating,” he told Latimer curtly. “Ned, go wake Quesada and get him here right away. You, Don, you stand here by the entrance, and if Hahn shows up I want you to scream at the top of your lungs. I’m going to search the building for him.”
“Wait,” Latimer said. He seemed to be in control of himself again. “Jim, do you remember when I asked you if you thought I was crazy? You said you didn’t. You trusted me. Well, don’t stop trusting me now. I tell you I’m not hallucinating. I saw Hahn disappear. I can’t explain it, but I’m rational enough to know what I saw.”
In a milder tone Barrett said, “All right. Maybe so. Stay by the door, anyway. I’ll run a quick check.”
He started to make the circuit of the dome, beginning with the room where the Hammer was located. Everything seemed to be in order there. No Hawksbill Field glow was in evidence, and nothing had been disturbed. The room had no closets or cupboards in which Hahn could be hiding. When he had inspected it thoroughly, Barrett moved on, looking into the infirmary, the mess hall, the kitchen, the recreation room. He looked high and low. No Hahn. Of course, there were plenty of places in those rooms where Hahn might have secreted himself, but Barrett doubted that he was there. So it had all been some feverish fantasy of Latimer’s, then. He completed the route and found himself back at the main entrance. Latimer still stood guard there. He had been joined by a sleepy Quesada. Altman, pale and shaky-looking, was just outside the door.
“What’s happening?” Quesada asked.
“I’m not sure,” said Barrett. “Don and Ned had the idea they saw Lew Hahn fooling around with the time equipment. I’ve checked the building, and he’s not here, so maybe they made a little mistake. I suggest you take them both into the infirmary and give them a shot of something to settle their nerves, and we’ll all try to get back to sleep.”
Latimer said, “I tell you, I saw—”
“Shut up!” Altman broke in. “Listen! What’s the noise?”
Barrett listened. The sound was clear and loud: the hissing whine of ionization. It was the sound produced by a functioning Hawksbill Field. Suddenly there were goose-pimples on his flesh. In a low voice he said, “The field’s on. We’re probably getting some supplies.”
“At this hour?” said Latimer.
“We don’t know what time it is Up Front. All of you stay here. I’ll check the Hammer.”
“Perhaps I ought to go with you,” Quesada suggested mildly.
“Stay here!” Barrett thundered. He paused, embarrassed at his own explosive show of wrath. “It only takes one of us. I’ll be right back.”
Without waiting for further dissent, he pivoted and limped down the hall to the Hammer room. He shouldered. the door open and looked in. There was no need for him to switch on the light. The red glow of the Hawksbill Field illuminated everything.
Barrett stationed himself just within the door. Hardly daring to breathe, he stared fixedly at the Hammer, watching as the glow deepened through various shades of pink toward crimson, and then spread until it enfolded the waiting Anvil beneath it. An endless moment passed.
Then came the implosive thunderclap, and Lew Hahn dropped out of nowhere and lay for a moment in temporal shock on the broad plate of the Anvil.
IX
In the darkness, Hahn did not notice Barrett at first. He sat up slowly, shaking off the stunning effects of a trip through time. After a few seconds he pushed himself toward the lip of the Anvil and let his legs dangle over it. He swung them to get the circulation going. He took a series of deep breaths. Finally he slipped to the floor. The glow of the field had gone out in the moment of his arrival, and so he moved warily, as though not wanting to bump into anything.
Abruptly Barrett switched on the light and said, “What have you been up to, Hahn?”
The younger man recoiled as though he had been jabbed in the gut. He gasped, hopped backward a few steps, and flung up both hands in a defensive gesture.
“Answer me,” Barrett said.
Hahn regained his equilibrium. He shot a quick glance past Barrett’s bulky form toward the hallway and said, “Let me go, will you? I can’t explain now.”
“You’d better explain now.”
“It’ll be easier for everyone if I don’t,” said Hahn. “Please. Let me pass.”
Barrett continued to block the door. “I want to know where you’ve been. What have you been doing with the Hammer?”
“Nothing. Just studying it.”
“You weren’t in this room a minute ago. Then you appeared. Where’d you come from, Hahn?”
“You’re mistaken. I was standing right behind the Hammer. I didn’t—”
“I saw you drop down on the Anvil. You took a time trip, didn’t you?”
“No.”
“Don’t lie to me! You’ve got some way of going forward in time, isn’t that so? You’ve been spying on us, and you just went somewhere to file your report—somewhere—and now you’re back.”
Hahn’s forehead was glistening. He said, “I warn you, don’t ask too many questions. You’ll know everything in due time. This isn’t the time. Please, now. Let me pass.”
“I want answers first,” Barrett said. He realized that he was trembling. He already knew the answers, and they were answers that shook him to the core of his soul. He knew where Hahn had been.
But Hahn had to admit it himself.
Hahn said nothing. He took a couple of hesitant steps toward Barrett, who did not move. He seemed to be gathering momentum for a rush at the doorway.
Barrett said, “You aren’t getting out of here until you tell me what I want to know.”
Hahn charged.
Barrett planted himself squarely, crutch braced against the doorframe, his good foot flat on the floor, and waited for the younger man to reach him. He figured he outweighed Hahn by eighty pounds. That might be enough to balance the fact that he was spotting Hahn thirty years and one leg. They came together, and Barrett drove his hands down onto Hahn’s shoulders, trying to hold him, to force him back into the room.
Hahn gave an inch or two. He looked up at Barrett without speaking and pushed forward again.
“Don’t—don’t—” Barrett grunted. “I won’t let you—”
“I don’t want to do this,” Hahn said.
He pushed again. Barrett felt himself buckling under the impact. He dug his hands as hard as he could into Hahn’s shoulders, and tried to shove the other man backward into the room, but Hahn held firm and all of Barrett’s energy was converted into a backward thrust rebounding on himself. He lost control of his crutch, and it slithered out from under his arm. For one agonizing moment Barrett’s full weight rested on the crushed uselessness of his left foot, and then, as though his limbs were melting away beneath him, he began to sink toward the floor. He landed with a reverberating crash.
Quesada, Altman, and Latimer came rushing in. Barrett writhed in pain on the floor. Hahn stood over him, looking unhappy, his hands locked together.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “You shouldn’t have tried to muscle me like that.”
Barrett glowered at him. “You were traveling in time, weren’t you? You can answer me now!”
“Yes,” Hahn said at last. “I went Up Front.”
An hour later, after Quesada had pumped him with enough neural depressants to keep him from jumping out of his skin, Barrett got the full story. Hahn hadn’t wanted to reveal it so soon, but he had changed his mind after his little scuffle.
It was all very simple. Time travel now worked in both directions. The glib, impressive noises about the flow of entropy had turned out to be just noises.
“How long has this been known?” Barrett asked.
“At least five years. We aren’t sure yet exactly when the breakthrough came. After we’re finished going through all the suppressed records of the former government—”
“The former government?”
Hahn nodded. “The revolution came in January. Not really a violent one, either. The syndicalists just mildewed from within, and when they got the first push they fell over.”
“Was it mildew?” Barrett asked, coloring. “Or termites? Keep your metaphors straight.”
Hahn glanced away. “Anyway, the government fell. We’ve got a provisional liberal regime in office now. Don’t ask me much about it. I’m not a political theorist. I’m not even an economist. You guessed as much.”
“What are you; then?”
“A policeman,” Hahn said. “Part of the commission that’s investigating the prison system of the former government. Including this prison.”
Barrett looked at Quesada, then at Hahn. Thoughts were streaming turbulently through him, and he could not remember when he had last been so overwhelmed by events. He had to work hard to keep from breaking into the shakes again. His voice quavered a little as he said, “You came back to observe Hawksbill Station, right? And you went Up Front tonight to tell them what you saw here. You think we’re a pretty sad bunch, eh?”
“You’ve all been under heavy stress here,” Hahn said. “Considering the circumstances of your imprisonment—”
Quesada broke in. “If there’s a liberal government in power, now, and it’s possible to travel both ways in time, then am I right in assuming that the Hawksbill prisoners are going to be sent Up Front?”
“Of course,” said Hahn. “It’ll be done as soon as possible. That’s been the whole purpose of my reconnaissance mission. To find out if you people were still alive, first, and then to see what shape you’re in, how badly in need of treatment you are. You’ll be given every available benefit of modern therapy, naturally. No expense spared to—”
Barrett scarcely paid attention to Hahn’s words. He had been fearing something like this all night, ever since Altman had told him Hahn was monkeying with the Hammer, but he had never fully allowed himself to believe that it could really be possible.
He saw his kingdom crumbling, now.
He saw himself returned to a world he could not begin to comprehend—a lame Rip van Winkle, coming back after twenty years.
He saw himself leaving a place that had become his home.
Barrett said tiredly, “You know, some of the men aren’t going to be able to adapt to the shock of freedom. It might just kill them to be dumped into the real world again. I mean advanced psychos—Valdosto, and such.”
“Yes,” Hahn said. “I’ve mentioned them in my report.”
“It’ll be necessary to get them ready for a return in gradual stages. It might take several years to condition them to the idea. It might even take longer than that.”
“I’m no therapist,” said Hahn. “Whatever the doctors think is right for them is what’ll be done. Maybe it will be necessary to keep them here. I can see where it would be pretty potent to send them back, after they’ve spent all these years believing there’s no return.”
“More than that,” said Barrett. “There’s a lot of work that can be done here. Scientific works. Exploration. I don’t think Hawksbill Station ought to be closed down.”
“No one said it would be. We have every intention of keeping it going. But not as a prison. The prison concept is out.”
“Good,” Barrett said. He fumbled for his crutch, found it, and got heavily to his feet. Quesada moved toward him as though to steady him, but Barrett shook him off. “Let’s go outside,” he said.
They left the building. A gray mist had come in over the Station, and a fine drizzle had begun to fall. Barrett looked around at the scattering of huts. At the ocean, dimly visible to the east in the faint moonlight. He thought of Charley Norton and the party that had gone on the annual expedition to the Inland Sea. That bunch was going to be in for a real surprise, when they got back here in a few weeks and discovered that everybody was free to go home.
Very strangely, Barrett felt a sudden pressure forming around his eyelids, as of tears trying to force their way out into the open.
Then he turned to Hahn and Quesada. In a low voice he said, “Have you followed what I’ve been trying to tell you? Someone’s got to stay here and ease the transition for the sick men who won’t be able to stand the shock of return. Someone’s got to keep the base running. Someone’s got to explain things to the new men who’ll be coming back here, the scientists.”
“Naturally,” Hahn said.
“The one who does that—the one who stays behind—I think it ought to be someone who knows the Station well, someone who’s fit to return Up Front, but who’s willing to make the sacrifice and stay. Do you follow me? A volunteer.” They were smiling at him now. Barrett wondered if there might not be something patronizing about those smiles. He wondered if he might not be a little too transparent. To hell with both of them, he thought. He sucked the Cambrian air into his lungs until his chest swelled grandly.
“I’m offering to stay,” Barrett said in a loud tone. He glared at them to keep them from objecting. But they wouldn’t dare object, he knew. In Hawksbill Station, he was the king. And he meant to keep it that way. “I’ll be the volunteer,” he said. “I’ll be the one who stays.”
He looked out over his kingdom from the top of the hill.
HOW TO CONSTRUCT A TIME MACHINE
Alfred Jarry
1. The Nature of the Medium
A Time Machine, that is, a device for exploring Time, is no more difficult to conceive of than a Space Machine, whether you consider Time as the fourth dimension of Space or as a locus essentially different because of its contents.
Ordinarily, Time is defined as the locus of events, just as Space is the locus of bodies. Or it is defined simply as succession, whereas Space—(this will apply to all spaces: Euclidean or three-dimensional space; four-dimensional space implied by the intersection of several three-dimensional spaces; Riemannian spaces, which, being spheres, are closed, since the circle is a geodesic line on the sphere of the same radius; Lobatchevski’s spaces, in which the plane is open; or any non-Euclidean space identifiable by the fact that it will not permit the construction of two similar figures as in Euclidean space)—Space is defined by simultaneity.
Every simultaneous segment of Time is extended and can therefore be explored by machines that travel in Space. The present is extended in three dimensions. If one transports oneself to any point in the past or the future, this point will be present and extended in three directions as long as one occupies it.
Reciprocally, Space, or the Present, has the three dimensions of Time: space traversed or the past, space to come or the future, and the present proper.
Space and Time are commensurable. To explore the universe by seeking knowledge of points in Space can be accomplished only through Time; and in order to measure Time quantitatively, we refer to Space intervals on the dial of a chronometer.
Space and Time, being of the same nature, may be conceived of as different physical states of the same substance, or as different modes of motion. Even if we accept them only as different forms of thought, we see Space as a solid, a rigid system of phenomena; whereas it has become a banal poetic figure to compare Time to a flowing stream, a liquid in uniform rectilinear motion. Any internal obstruction of the flow of the mobile molecules of the liquid, any increase in viscosity is nothing other than consciousness.
*
Since Space is fixed around us, in order to explore it we must move in the vehicle of Duration. In kinematics Duration plays the part of an independent variable, of which the coordinates of the points considered are a function. Kinematics is a geometry in which events have neither past nor future. The fact that we create that distinction proves that we are carried along through them.
We move in the direction of Time and at the same speed, being ourselves part of the Present. If we could remain immobile in absolute Space while Time elapses, if we could lock ourselves inside a Machine that isolates us from Time (except for the small and normal ‘speed of duration that will stay with us because of inertia), all future and past instants could be explored successively, just as the stationary spectator of a panorama has the illusion of a swift voyage through a series of landscapes. (We shall demonstrate later that, as seen from the Machine, the Past lies beyond the Future.)
2. Theory of the Machine
A Machine to isolate us from Duration, or from the action of Duration (from growing older or younger, the physical drag which a succession of motions exerts on an inert body) will have to make us ‘transparent’ to these physical phenomena, allow them to pass through us without modifying or displacing us. This isolation will be sufficient (in fact it would be impossible to design it any more efficiently) if Time, in overtaking us, gives us a minimal impulse just great enough to compensate for the deceleration of our habitual duration conserved by inertia. This slowing down would be due to an action comparable to the viscosity of a liquid or the friction of a machine.
To be stationary in Time means, therefore, to pass with impunity through all bodies, movements, or forces whose locus will be the point of space chosen by the Explorer for the point of departure of his Machine of Absolute Rest or Time Machine. Or one can think of oneself as being traversed by these events, as a projectile passes through an empty window frame without damaging it, or as ice re-forms after being cut by a wire, or as an organism shows no lesion after being punctured by a sterile needle.
*
The Time Explorer’s Machine must therefore:
(1) Be absolutely rigid, or in other words, absolutely elastic, in order to penetrate the densest solid as easily as an infinitely rarified gas.
