Time Travel Omnibus, page 98
“Yes.”
“And are at that stage of bodily evolution when you will eliminate the waste products through the alimentary canal?”
I lowered my head.
“How disgusting.”
The unwinking eyes regarded me intently. Then something happened which startled me very much. The creature raised a glass tube to its face. From the end of the tube leaped a purple ray which came through the glass casing and played over the room.
“THERE is no need to be alarmed,” said the A metallic voice. “I was merely viewing your habitat and making some deductions. Correct me if I am wrong, please. You are an English-speaking man of the twentieth century. You and your kind live in cities and houses. You eat, digest, and reproduce your young, much as do the animals from which you have sprung. You use crude machines and have an elementary understanding of physics and chemistry. Correct me if I am wrong, please.”
“You are right to a certain extent,” I replied. “But I am not interested in having you tell me what I am. I know that. I wish to know what you are. You claim to have come from some thirty thousand years in the future, but you advance no evidence to support the claim. How do I know you are not a trick, a fake, an hallucination of mine. You say you can move freely in time. How is it you have never come this way before? Tell me something about yourself; I am curious.”
“Your questions are well put.” replied the voice, “and I shall seek to answer them. Know then, that I am a Machine Man of Ardathia. It is true we are beginning to move in time as well as in space: but note that I say ‘beginning.’ Our Time Machines are very crude as yet, and I am the first Ardathian to penetrate the past beyond a period of six thousand years. You must realize that a time traveler runs certain hazards. At any place on the road, he may materialize inside of a solid of some sort. In that case, he is almost certain to be blown up or otherwise destroyed. Such was the constant danger until I perfected my enveloping ray of——I cannot name or describe it in your tongue, but if you approach me too closely you will feel its resistance. This ray has the effect of disintegrating and dispersing any body of matter inside of which a time traveler may materialize. Perhaps you were aware of a great light when I appeared in your room? I probably took shape, within a body of matter and the ray destroyed it.”
“The rocking-chair!” I exclaimed. “It was standing on the spot you now occupy.”
“Then it has been reduced to its original atoms. This is a wonderful moment for me. My ray has proved an unqualified success for the second time. It not only removes any hindering matter from about the time-traveler but also creates a void within which he is perfectly safe from harm. But to resume.
“It is hard to believe that we Ardathians evolved from such creatures as you. Our written history does not go back to a time when men nourished themselves by taking food into their stomachs through their mouths, digested it, or reproduced their young in the animal-like fashion in which you do. The earliest men of whom we have any written records were the Bi-Chanics. They lived about fifteen thousand years before our era and were already well along the road of mechanical evolution when their civilization fell. The Bi-Chanics vaporized their food substances and breathed them through the nostril, excreting the waste products of the body through the pores of the skin. Their children were brought to the point of birth in ecto-genetic incubators. There is enough authentic evidence existing to prove that the Bi-Chanics had perfected the use of mechanical hearts and were crudely able to make . . . I cannot find the words to explain just what they made, but it doesn’t matter. The point is, that while they had only partly subordinated machinery to their use, they are. the earliest race of human beings of whom we possess any real knowledge, and it was their period of time that I was seeking, when I inadvertently came too far and landed in yours.”
The metallic voice ceased for a moment and I took advantage of the pause to speak. “I do not know a thing about the Bi-Chanics, or whatever it is you call them.” I remarked, “but they were certainly not the first to make mechanical hearts. I remember reading in the paper only several months ago about a Russian scientist who kept a dog alive four hours by means of a gasoline motor which pumped the blood through the dog’s body.”
“You mean the motor was used as a heart?”
“Exactly.”
The Ardathian (for so I will call the creature in the cylinder henceforth) made a quick motion with one of its hands.
“I have made a note of your information; it is very interesting.”
“Furthermore,” I pursued, “a year or two ago I read an article in one of our current magazines telling how a Vienna surgeon was hatching out rabbits and guinea pigs in ecto-genetic incubators.”
The Ardathian made another quick gesture with its hand. I could see that my news excited it.
“Perhaps,” I said, not without a feeling of satisfaction (for the casual allusion to myself as hardly human had irked my pride) “perhaps you will find it as interesting to visit the people of five hundred years from now. let us say, as you would to visit the Bi-Chanics.”
“I can assure you.” replied the metallic, voice of the Ardathian. “that if I succeed in returning successfully to Ardathia, those periods will be thoroughly explored. I can only express surprise at your having advanced as far as you have, and wonder why it is you have made no practical use of your knowledge.”
“Sometimes I wonder myself.” I returned. “But I am very much interested in learning more about yourself and your times. If you would resume your story. . . .”
“With pleasure,” replied the Ardathian. “In Ardathia, we do not live in houses or in cities. Neither do we nourish ourselves as do you, or as did the Bi-Chanics. The chemical fluid you see circulating through these tubes which run into and through embody has taken the place, of blood. The fluid is produced by the action of a light ray on certain life-giving elements in the air. It is constantly being produced in those tubes under my feet and driven through my body by a mechanism too intricate for me to describe. The same fluid circulates through my body only once, nourishing it and gathering all impurities as it goes. Having completed its revolution, it is dissipated and cast forth by means of another ray which carries it back into the surrounding air. Have you noticed the transparent substance enclosing me?”
“The cylinder of glass, you mean?”
“Glass! What do you mean by glass?”
“Why, that there,” I said, pointing at one of the panes of glass in the window.
THE Ardathian directed a metal tube at the spot indicated. A purple streak flashed out, hovered a moment on the pane, and then withdrew.
“No,” came the metallic voice, “not that. The cylinder, as you call it, is made of a transparent substance, very strong and practically unbreakable. Nothing can penetrate it but the rays which you see, and the two whose action I have described above, which are invisible. Know then that we Ardathians are not delivered of the flesh; nor are we introduced into incubators as ova taken from female bodies, as were the Bi-Chanics. Among the Ardathians there are no males or females. The cell from which we are to develop is created synthetically. It is fertilized by means of a ray and then put into a cylinder such as you observe surrounding me. As the embryo develops, the various tubes and mechanical devices are introduced into the body by our mechanics and become an integral part of it. When the young Ardathian is born, he does not leave the case in which he has developed. That case—or cylinder, as you call it,—protects him from the action of a hostile environment. If it were to break and expose him to the elements, he would perish miserably. Do you follow me?”
“Not quite,” I confessed. “You say that you have evolved from men like us, and then go on to state that you are synthetically conceived and machine made. I do not see how this evolution was possible.”
“And you may never understand! Nevertheless, I shall try to explain. Did you not tell me you had wise ones among you who are experimenting with mechanical hearts and ecto-genetic incubators? Tell me, have you not others engaged in tests tending to show that it is the action of environment, and not the passing of time, which accounts for the aging of organisms?”
“Well,” I said hesitatingly, “I have heard tell of chicken hearts being kept alive in special containers which protect them from their normal environment.”
“Ah,” exclaimed the metallic voice, “but Hoomi will be astounded when he learns that such experiments were carried on by pre-historic men fifteen thousand years before the Bi-Chanics! Listen closely, for what you have stated about chicken hearts provides a starting point from which you may be able to follow my explanation of man’s evolution from your time to mine. Of the thousands of years separating your day from that of the Bi-Chanics I have no authentic knowledge. My exact knowledge begins with the Bi-Chanics. They were the first among men to realize that man’s bodily advancement lay on and through the machine. They perceived that man only became human when he fashioned tools; that the tools increased the length of his arms, the grip of his hands, the strength of his muscles. They observed that with the aid of the machine, man could circle the earth, speak to the planets, gaze intimately at the stars. We will increase our span of life on earth, said the Bi-Chanics, by throwing the protection of the machine, the things that the machine produces, around and into our bodies. This they did, to the best of their ability, and increased their longevity to an average of about two hundred years. Then came the Tri-Namics. More advanced than the Bi-Chanics, they reasoned that old age was caused, not by the passage of time, but by the action of environment on the matter of which men were composed. It is this reasoning which causes the men of your time to experiment with chicken hearts. The Tri-Namics sought to perfect devices for safe-guarding the flesh against the wear and tear of its environment. They made envelopes—cylinders—in which they attempted to bring embryos to birth and to rear children, but they met with only partial success.”
“You speak of the Bi-Chanics and of the Tri-Namics,” I said, “as if they were two distinct races of people. Yet you imply that the latter evolved from the former. If the Bi-Chanics civilization fell, did any period of time elapse between that fall and the rise of the Tri-Namics? And how did the latter inherit from their predecessors?”
“It is because of your language, which I find very crude and inadequate, that I have not already made that clear,” answered the Ardathian. “The Tri-Namics were really a more progressive part of the Bi-Chanics. When I said the civilization of the latter fell. I did not mean what that implies in your language. You must realize that fifteen thousand years in your future, the race of man was, scientifically speaking, making rapid strides. It was not always possible for backward or conservative minds to adjust themselves to new discoveries. Minority groups, composed mostly of the young, forged ahead, made new deductions from old facts, proposed radical changes, entertained new ideas, and finally culminated in what I have alluded to as the Tri-Namics. Inevitably, in the course of time, the Bi-Chanics died off, and conservative methods with them. That is what I meant when I said their civilization fell. In the same fashion did we follow the Tri-Namics. When the latter succeeded in raising children inside the cylinder, they destroyed themselves. Soon all children were born in this manner, hi time the fate of the Tri-Namics became that of the Bi-Chanics, leaving behind them the Machine Men of Ardathia, who differed radically from them in bodily structure—so many human nucleii inside of machines—yet none the less their direct descendants.”
For the first time, I began to get an inkling of what the Ardathian meant when it alluded to itself as a Machine Man. The appalling story of man’s final evolution into a controlling center that directed a mechanical body, awoke something akin to fear in my heart. If it were true, what of the soul, spirit, God. . . .
The metallic voice went on.
“You must not imagine that the early Ardathians possessed a cylinder as invulnerable as the one which protects me. The first envelopes of this nature were made of a pliable substance, which the wear and tear of environment wore out within three centuries. The substance composing the envelope has gradually been improved, perfected, until now it is immune for fifteen hundred years to anything save a powerful explosion or some other major catastrophe.”
“Fifteen hundred years!” I exclaimed.
“Barring accident, that is the length of time an Ardathian lives. But to us fifteen hundred years is no longer than a hundred would be to you. Remember, please, that time is relative. Twelve hours of your time is a second of ours, and a year. . . . But suffice it to say that very few Ardathians live out their allotted span. Since we are constantly engaged in hazardous experiments and dangerous expeditions, accidents are many. Thousands of our brave explorers have plunged into the past and never returned. They probably materialized inside solids and were annihilated. But I believe I have finally overcome this danger with my disintegrating ray.”
“And how old are you?”
“As you count time, five hundred and seventy years. You must understand that there has been no change in my body since birth. If the cylinder were everlasting, or proof against accident, I should live forever. It is the wearing out, or breaking up of the envelope, which exposes us to the dangerous forces of nature and causes death. Some of our scientists are engaged in trying to perfect means for building up the cylinder as fast as the wear and tear of environment breaks it down; others are seeking to rear embryos to birth with nothing but rays for covering—rays incapable of harming the organism, yet immune to dissipation by environment and incapable of destruction by explosion. So far they have been unsuccessful; but I have every confidence in their ultimate triumph. Then we shall be as immortal as the planet on which we live.”
I STARED at the cylinder, at the creature inside the cylinder, at the ceiling, the four walls of the room, and then back again at the cylinder. I pinched the soft flesh of my thigh with my fingers. I was awake all right; there could be no doubt about that.
“Are there any questions you would like to ask?” came the metallic voice.
“Yes,” I said at last, half fearfully. “What joy can there be in existence for you? You have no sex; you cannot mate. It seems to me,” I hesitated, “it seems to me that no hell could be greater than centuries of living caged alive inside that thing you call an envelope. Now I have full command of my limbs and can go where I please. I can love . . .” I came to a breathless stop, awed by the lurid light which suddenly gleamed in the winkless eyes.
“Poor pre-historic mammal,” came the answer, “how could you, groping in the dawn of human existence, comprehend what is beyond your lowly environment! Compared to you, we are as gods. No longer are our loves and hates the reaction of viscera. Our thoughts, our thinking, our emotions are conditioned, molded to the extent we control the immediate environment. There is no such thing as mind—of the . . . Pint it is impossible to continue. Your vocabulary is too limited. Your mentality—it is not the word I like to use, but as I have repeatedly said, your language is woefully inadequate—has a restricted range of but a few thousand words. Therefore I cannot explain further. Only the same lack—in a different fashion, of course, and with objects instead of words—hinders the free movements of your limbs. You have command of them, you say. Poor primitive, do you realize how shackled you are with nothing but your hands and feet! You augment them, of course, with a few machines; but they are crude and cumbersome. It is you who are caged alive and not I. I have broken through the walls of your cage; have shaken off its shackles; have gone free. Behold the command I have of my limbs!”
From an extended tube shot a streak of white—like a funnel—whose radius was great enough to encircle my seated body. I was conscious of being scooped up and drawn forward with inconceivable speed. For one breathless moment I hung suspended against the cylinder itself, the winkless eyes not an inch from my own. In that moment I had the sensation of being probed, handled. Several times I was revolved, as a man might twirl a stick. Then I was back in the easy-chair again, white, shaken.
“It is true that I never leave the envelope in which I am encased,” continued the metallic voice. “But I have at my command rays which can bring me anything I desire. In Ardathia are machines—machines it would be useless for me to describe to you—with which I can walk, fly, move mountains, delve in the earth, investigate the stars, and loose forces of which you have no conception. Those machines are mechanical parts of my body, extensions of my limbs. I take them off and put them on at will. With their help I can view one continent while busily employed in another. With their hell) I can make time machines, harness rays, and plunge for thirty thousand years into the past. Let me again illustrate.”
The tentacle-like hand of the Ardathian waved a tube. The five foot cylinder glowed with an intense light, spun like a top, and so spinning, dissolved into space. Even as I gaped like one petrified—perhaps twenty seconds elapsed—the cylinder reappeared with the same rapidity. The metallic voice announced:
“I have just been five years into your future.”
“My future!” I exclaimed. “How can that be when I have not lived it yet?”
“But of course you have lived it.”
I stared, bewildered.
“Could I visit my past if you had not lived your future?”
“I do not understand,” I said feebly. “It doesn’t seem possible that while I am here, actually, in this room, you should be able to travel ahead in time and find out what I shall be doing in a future I haven’t reached yet.”
“That is because you are unable to grasp intelligently what time is. Think of it as a dimension—a fourth dimension—which stretches like a road ahead and behind you.”
“But even then,” I protested, “I could only be at one place at a given time on that road, and not where I am and somewhere else at the same second.”
“You are never anywhere at any time,” replied the metallic voice, “save always in the past or the future. But I see it is useless to try to acquaint you with a simple truth, thirty thousand years ahead of your ability to understand it. As I said, I traveled five years into your future. Men were wrecking this building.”
