Time Travel Omnibus, page 97
“I should be awfully glad to know it,” she said wearily.
“Oh, well, you can, you know. I mean you ought to know you needn’t worry!” he insisted.
“Ought I? Then I’ll see about it,” she said.
Paul’s secret of secrets was his wooden horse, that which had no name. Since he was emancipated from a nurse and a nursery governess, he had had his rocking-horse removed to his own bedroom at the top of the house.
“Surely you’re too big for a rocking-horse!” his mother had remonstrated.
“Well, you see, mother, till I can have a real horse, I like to have some sort of animal about,” had been his quaint answer.
“Do you feel he keeps you company?” she laughed.
“Oh yes! He’s very good, he always keeps me company, when I’m there,” said Paul.
So the horse, rather shabby, stood in an arrested prance in the boy’s bedroom.
The Derby was drawing near, and the boy grew more and more tense. He hardly heard what was spoken to him, he was very frail, and his eyes were really uncanny. His mother had sudden strange seizures of uneasiness about him. Sometimes, for half an hour, she would feel a sudden anxiety about him that was almost anguish. She wanted to rush to him at once, and know he was safe.
Two nights before the Derby, she was at a big party in town, when one of her rushes of anxiety about her boy, her first-born, gripped her heart till she could hardly speak. She fought with the feeling, might and main, for she believed in common-sense. But it was too strong. She had to leave the dance and go downstairs to telephone to the country. The children’s nursery governess was terribly surprised and startled at being rung up in the night.
“Are the children all right, Miss Wilmot?”
“Oh, yes, they are quite all right.”
“Master Paul? Is he all right?”
“He went to bed as right as a trivet. Shall I run up and look at him?”
“No!” said Paul’s mother reluctantly. “No! Don’t trouble. It’s all right. Don’t sit up. We shall be home fairly soon.” She did not want her son’s privacy intruded upon.
“Very good,” said the governess.
It was about one o’clock when Paul’s mother and father drove up to their house. All was still. Paul’s mother went to her room and slipped off her white fur cloak. She had told her maid not to wait up for her. She heard her husband downstairs, mixing a whisky-and-soda.
And then, because of the strange anxiety at her heart, she stole upstairs to her son’s room. Noiselessly she went along the upper corridor. Was there a faint noise? What was it?
She stood, with arrested muscles, outside his door, listening. There was a strange, heavy, and yet not loud noise. Her heart stood still. It was a soundless noise, yet rushing and powerful. Something huge, in violent, hushed motion. What was it? What in God’s Name was it? She ought to know. She felt that she knew the noise. She knew what it was.
Yet she could not place it. She couldn’t say what it was. And on and on it went, like a madness.
Softly, frozen with anxiety and fear, she turned the door-handle.
The room was dark. Yet in the space near the window, she heard and saw something plunging to and fro. She gazed in fear and amazement.
Then suddenly she switched on the light, and saw her son, in his green pyjamas, madly surging in his rocking-horse. The blaze of light suddenly lit him up, as he urged the wooden horse, and lit her up, as she stood, blonde, in her dress of pale green and crystal, in the doorway.
“Paul!” she cried. “Whatever are you doing?”
“It’s Malabar!” he screamed, in a powerful, strange voice. “It’s Malabar!”
His eyes blazed at her for one strange and senseless second, as he ceased urging his wooden horse. Then he fell with a crash to the ground, and she, all her tormented motherhood flooding upon her, rushed to gather him up.
But he was unconscious, and unconscious he remained, with some brain-fever. He talked and tossed, and his mother sat stonily by his side.
“Malabar! It’s Malabar! Bassett, Bassett, I know: it’s Malabar!”
So the child cried, trying to get up and urge the rocking-horse that gave him his inspiration.
“What does he mean by Malabar?” asked the heart-frozen mother.
“I don’t know,” said the father, stonily.
“What does he mean by Malabar?” she asked her brother Oscar.
“It’s one of the horses running for the Derby,” was the answer.
And, in spite of himself, Oscar Cresswell spoke to Bassett, and himself put a thousand on Malabar: at fourteen to one.
The third day of the illness was critical: they were watching for a change. The boy, with his rather long, curly hair, was tossing ceaselessly on the pillow. He neither slept nor regained consciousness, and his eyes were like blue stones. His mother sat, feeling her heart had gone, turned actually into a stone.
In the evening, Oscar Cresswell did not come, but Bassett sent a message, saying could he come up for one moment, just one moment? Paul’s mother was very angry at the intrusion, but on second thoughts she agreed. The boy was the same. Perhaps Bassett might bring him to consciousness.
The gardener, a shortish fellow with a little brown moustache and sharp little brown eyes, tiptoed into the room, touched his imaginary cap to Paul’s mother, and stole to the bedside, staring with glittering, smallish eyes at the tossing, dying child.
“Master Paul!” he whispered. “Master Paul! Malabar came in first all right, a clean win. I did as you told me. You’ve made over seventy thousand pounds, you have; you’ve got over eighty thousand. Malabar came in all right, Master Paul.”
“Malabar! Malabar! Did I say Malabar, mother? Did I say Malabar? Do you think I’m lucky, mother? I knew Malabar, didn’t I? Over eighty thousand pounds! I call that lucky, don’t you, mother? Over eighty thousand pounds! I knew, didn’t I know I knew? Malabar came in all right. If I ride my horse till I’m sure, then I tell you, Bassett, you can go as high as you like. Did you go for all you were worth, Bassett?”
“I went a thousand on it, Master Paul.”
“I never told you, mother, that if I can ride my horse, and get there, then I’m absolutely sure—oh, absolutely! Mother, did I ever tell you? I am lucky!”
“No, you never did,” said the mother.
But the boy died in the night.
And even as he lay dead, his mother heard her brother’s voice saying to her: “My God, Hester, you’re eighty-odd thousand to the good, and a poor devil of a son to the bad. But, poor devil, poor devil, he’s best gone out of a life where he rides his rocking-horse to find a winner.”
THE MACHINE MAN OF ARDATHIA
Francis Flagg
HERE is an astounding fourth-dimensional story, every bit as good as any that we have read in years. What will humanity look like 30,000 years hence? If, since the Egyptians or Romans, we have traveled to our present stage of development in the space of some 2,000 years, how high will the human have ascended in 30,000 years? Our new author has written excellent science into a most unusual and interesting story that can not fail to grip you.
I DO not know what to believe. Sometimes I am positive I dreamed it all. But then there is the matter of the heavy rocker. That undeniably did disappear. Perhaps someone played a trick on me. But who would stoop to a deception so bizarre, merely for the purpose of befuddling the wits of an old man? Perhaps someone stole the rocker. But why should anyone steal the rocker? It was, it is true, a sturdy piece of furniture, but hardly valuable enough to excite the cupidity of a thief. Besides the rocker was in its place when I sat down in the easy-chair. Of course, I may be lying.
Peters, to whom I was misguided enough to tell everything on the night of its occurrence, wrote the story for his paper, and the editor of “The Chieftain” says as much in his editorial of the 15th, when he remarks that “Mr. Matthews seems to be the possessor of an imagination equal that of an H. G. Wells.” And, considering the nature of my story, I am quite ready to forgive him for doubting my veracity.
However, the few friends who know me better think that I had dined a little too wisely or too well, and had been visited with a nightmare.
Hodge suggested that the Jap who cleans my rooms had, for some reason, removed the rocker from its place, and that I merely took its presence for granted when I sat down. The Jap strenuously denies having done so.
I must pause a minute here to explain that I have two rooms and a bath on the third floor of a modern apartment house fronting the Lake. Since my wife’s death three years ago I have lived thus, taking my breakfast and lunch at a restaurant, generally taking my dinners at the club. I may as well confess that I have a room rented in a down-town office building where I spend a few hours every day to work on my book, which is designed to be a critical analysis of the fallacies inherent in the Marxian theory of economics embracing at the same time a thorough refutation of Lewis Morgan’s “Ancient Society.” A rather ambitious undertaking, you will admit, and one not apt to engage the interest of a person given to inventing wild yarns for the purpose of amazing his friends. No; I emphatically deny having invented the story. However, the future will talk for itself. I will merely proceed to put the details of my strange experience on paper, (justice to myself demands that I should do so, so many garbled accounts have appeared in the press), and leave the reader to draw his own conclusions.
CONTRARY to my usual custom I had dined that evening with Hodge at the Hotel Oaks. Let me emphatically state that while it is well known among his intimates that Hodge carries a flask on his hip, I had absolutely nothing of an intoxicating nature to drink. Hodge will verify this. About eight-thirty I refused an invitation to attend the theatre with him and went to my rooms. There I changed into smoking-jacket and slippers and lit a mild Havana. The rocking-chair was occupying its accustomed place near the center of the sitting-room floor. I remember that clearly because, as usual, I had either to push it aside or step around it, wondering for the thousandth time as I did so why that idiotic Jap persisted in placing it in such an inconvenient spot; and resolving, also for the thousandth time, to speak to him about it. With a note-book and pencil placed on the stand beside me, also a copy of Frederick Engels’ “Origin of The Family, Private Property and The State,” I turned on the light in my green-shaded reading lamp, switched off all others, and sank with a sigh of relief into the easy-chair. It was my intention to make a few notes from Engels’ work relative to plural marriages, showing that he contradicted certain conclusions of Morgan’s when he said . . . But there; it is sufficient to state that after a few minutes’ work I leaned back in my chair and closed my eyes. I did not doze; I am positive of that. My mind was actively engaged in trying to piece together a sentence that would clearly express my thought.
I can best describe what happened then by saying there was an explosion. It wasn’t that exactly; but at the time it seemed to me there must have been an explosion. A blinding flash of light registered with appalling vividness through the closed lids on the retina of my eyes. My first thought was that someone had dynamited the building; my second, that the electric fuses had blown out. It was some time before I could see clearly. When I could . . .
“Good Lord,” I whispered weakly, “what’s that!”
Occupying the space where the rocking-chair had stood (though I did not notice its absence at the time) was a cylinder of what appeared to be glass standing, I should judge, about five feet high. Encased in this cylinder seemed to be a caricature of a man—or a child. I say caricature because, while the cylinder was all of five feet in height, the being inside of it was hardly three. You can imagine my amazement while I stared at this apparition. After awhile I got up and switched on all the lights to better observe it.
You may be wondering why I did not try to call someone in. I can only say that thought never occurred to me. In spite of my age (I am sixty) my nerves are steady and I am not easily frightened. I walked very carefully around the cylinder and viewed the creature inside from all angles. It was stretched out my hand in an effort to touch its surface, but some force prevented my fingers from making the contact; which was very curious. Also, I could detect no movement of the body or limbs of the weird thing inside the glass.
“What I’d like to know,” I muttered, “is what you are, where you came from, are you alive, and am I dreaming or am I awake?”
For the first time the creature came to life. One of its tentacle-like hands, holding a metal tube, darted to its mouth. From the tube shot a white streak, which fastened itself to the cylinder.
“Ah,” came a clear, metallic voice, “English, Primitive, I perceive; probably of the twentieth century.”
The words were uttered with an indescribable intonation; much as if a foreigner were speaking our language. Yet more than that . . . as if he were speaking a language long dead. I don’t know why that thought should have occurred to me then. Perhaps . . .
“So you can talk,” I exclaimed.
The creature gave a metallic chuckle.
“As you say, I can talk.”
“Then tell me what you are.”
“I am an Ardathian. A machine Man of Ardathia. And you . . . Tell me. is that really hair on your head?”
“Yes,” I replied.
“And those coverings you wear on your body, are they clothes?”
I answered in the affirmative.
“How odd. Then you really are a Primitive; a Prehistoric Man.”
The eyes behind the glass shield regarded me intently.
“A pre-historic man!” I exclaimed. “What do you mean?”
“I mean that you are one of that race of early men whose skeletons we have dug up here and there and reconstructed for our schools of biology. Marvelous how our scientists have copied you from some fragments of bone! The small head covered with hair; the beast-like jaw; the abnormally large body and legs; the artificial coverings made of cloth . . . even your language!”
FOR the first time I began to suspect that I was the victim of a hoax. I got up and walked carefully around the cylinder but could detect no outside agency controlling the contraption. Besides, it was absurd to think that anyone would go to all the trouble of constructing such a complicated apparatus as this appeared to be, merely for the sake of a practical joke. Nevertheless, I looked out on the landing.
I came back and resumed my seat in front of the cylinder.
“Pardon me,” I said, “but you referred to me as belonging to a period much more remote than yours.”
“That is correct. If I am not mistaken in my calculations, you are thirty thousand years in the past. What date is this?”
“June 5th, 1926,” I replied feebly.
The creature went through some contortions, sorted a few mental tubes with its hands, and then announced in its metallic voice:
“Computed in terms of your method of reckoning, I have travelled back through time exactly twenty-eight thousand years, nine months, three weeks, two days, seven hours, and a certain number of minutes and seconds which it is useless for me to enumerate exactly.”
It was at this point that I endeavored to make sure I was wide awake and in full possession of my faculties. I got up, selected a fresh cigar from the humidor, struck a light and began puffing away. After a few puffs I laid it beside the one I had been smoking earlier in the evening. I found it there later. Incontestable proof . . .
I said that I am a man of steady nerves. I am. I sat down in front of the cylinder again determined this time, to find out what I could about the incredible creature within.
“You say you have traveled back through time thousands of years. How is that possible?”
“By verifying time as a fourth dimension and perfecting devices for traveling in it.”
“In what manner?”
“I do not know whether I can explain it exactly, in your language, and you are too primitive and unevolved to understand mine. However I shall try. Know then that space is as much a relative thing as time. In itself, aside from its relation to matter, it has no existence. You can neither see nor touch it, yet you move freely in space. Is that clear?”
“It sounds like Einstein’s theory.”
“Einstein?”
“One of our great scientists and mathematicians,” I explained.
“So you have scientists and mathematicians? Wonderful! That bears out what Hoomi says. I must remember to tell . . . However, to resume my explanation. Time is apprehended in the same manner as is space—that is in its relation to matter. When you measure space, you do so by letting your measuring rod leap from point to point of matter. Or, in the case of spanning the void, let us say, from the earth to Venus, you start and end with matter, remarking that between lies, so many miles of space. But it is clear that you see and touch no space, merely spanning the distance between two points of matter with the vision or the measuring rod. You do the same when you compute time with the sun or by means of the clock, which I see hanging on the wall there. Time, then, is no more of an abstraction than is space. If it is possible for man to move freely in space, it is possible for him to move freely In time. We Ardathians are beginning to do so.”
“But how?”
“I am afraid your limited intelligence could not grasp what I could tell. You must realize that compared to us you are hardly as much as human. When I look at you, I perceive your body is enormously larger than your head. This means that you are dominated by animal passions and that your mental capacity is not very high.”
That this weirdly humorous thing inside a glass cylinder should come to such a conclusion regarding me, made me smile.
“If any of my fellow citizens should see you,” I replied, “they would consider you—well, absurd.”
“That is because they would judge by the only standard they know—themselves. In Ardathia you would be regarded as bestial. In fact, that is exactly how your reconstructed skeletons are regarded. Tell me, is it true that you nourish your bodies by taking food through your mouths into your stomachs?”
