Horsesense Hank
in the Parallel Worlds
By NELSON S. BOND
What if Washington hadn't crossed the
Delaware? Horsesense Hank found the strange
answer when he traveled into the past.
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Amazing Stories August 1942.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
The whole damn thing was Jamieson's fault. He was a snippy sort of
somebody, anyway, even if he was head of the U. S. government's physics
research department. He liked nothing more than to fling his physical
and mental weight around. Because he had an exaggerated amount of the
first, and an exaggerated opinion of the second, he riled Hank Cleaver
worse than boils on the postscript.
"It ain't jest _whut_ he says, Jim," Hank groused one night. "That
don't matter. There's jest two opinions: right and wrong, logical an'
illogical. As a human bein', it's his priv'lege to think as screwy
as he wants. But, dag-gone, it's the _way_ he says things! Like he
was the oney one had a speck o' common-sense! Now, if I didn't have a
_little_ bit, would I be here?"
That question needed no answer. Hank was here--in Washington, D.
C.--simply and solely because the men who run our nation had finally
recognized his peculiar abilities.
"Horsesense Hank" Cleaver was not an educated man in the formal sense
of the phrase. He had never completed college or high school, and it is
an even money bet that he never got much farther than the sixth grade
of the rural grammar school near his Lower Westville farm. But he had
something greater, more important, than mere "book-larnin'." He had a
gift for determining the answers to problems of any scientific nature
by means of plain, old-fashioned, common-sense horse-logic.
It was this gift which had lifted him from his lonely turnip-patch to
the ivy-covered walls of Midland University, which alleged institution
of higher knowledge had installed him to the Chair of General and
Practical Sciences ... and it was this same gift which had enabled him
to serve his country well as Chief Estimator at the Northern Bridge,
Steel and Girder Company during the first months of the war.[1]
[Footnote 1: For previous adventures of "Horsesense Hank" Cleaver, see
issues of AMAZING STORIES ... March and November, 1940, May,
1942.--Ed.]
Now a grateful government had transferred him to the nation's capital,
where his straightforward reasoning might be at the service of the
President himself ... and because Hank Cleaver and Jim Blakeson are as
inseparable as corn pone and chitlins, I was here with him.
As a matter of fact, dear old Washington-on-the-Potomac was beginning
to look like an overgrown Midland U. campus. H. Logan MacDowell,
president of the college, was here as a "dollar a year man"--and worth
every penny of it!--while his charming daughter, Helen, Hank's fiancée,
was working in the U.S.O. headquarters.
"It ain't," complained Hank, scowling, "as if I was hard to git along
with. Gosh knows I'm easy-goin' enough--"
There was no gainsaying that. Hank was as mild and gentle as a
Carnation cow.
"--but he plagues me!" confessed Hank. "Disagrees with most everything
I say. Spouts facts an' figgers at me, when he knows dingbusted well
I can't understand that kind o' talk. My brain don't work thataway. I
jest git the theories an' work 'em out by plain, dumb hoss-logic--"
I said, "Well, what's the trouble now?"
* * * * *
Hank fingered a paper of cut-plug, tucked enough in his cheek to make
him look as if he were munching on a medium sized billiard ball. This
was his one vice. When he married fair Helen a few months hence,
it would probably become _tabu_. Meanwhile, in the privacy of the
apartment we shared, he kept his molars and incisors well lubricated.
"Wa-a-all," he said, "it's time!"
I stared at the clock. "Time? Time for what?"
"Not that kind o' time, Jim. I mean the problem o' Time. Whut it is,
and how you can shift around in it an' all that sort o' stuff."
I said, "Oh. In other words, pal Jamieson has been making with the
meta-physics, eh? On account of what?"
"On account," explained Hank, "of I happened to say wouldn't it be
swell if somebuddy could go backward in Time and do somethin' to stop
the Nazi movement from ever gettin' organized. Then there wouldn't be
no war like we're fightin' today."
"That," I approved, "sounds like a swell idea. Go back and push a
little paperhanger named Adolph Shicklgruber under a Munich street-car,
huh? I'd gladly volunteer for the job--if there was any way of doing
it."
"So would most of us. Oney Jamieson," continued Hank, "'lowed as how it
was impossible. He claims all this warfare and stuff is inescapable.
Says the progress of mankind is foreordained, an' they can't nobuddy
do nothin' to change it, ever. He says the Book o' Time was all writ
up in advance, an' they wasn't no way to change it--" Hank squinted at
me dubiously. "He quoted some pome out of a book called _The Di'mond
Sailboat_, or somethin'--"
"Sue me if I'm wrong," I grinned, "but maybe it was the _Rubaiyat_? By
an old Persian named Omar? He wrote:
_The Moving Finger writes, and having writ
Moves on; nor all your piety nor wit
Can lure it back to cancel half a line,
Nor all your tears erase a Word of it._"
"That's it, Jim," nodded Hank. "That's the poem he said. Well, I tried
to reason with him. Told him he was all wrong. Things _couldn't_ be
thataway!"
I asked, "Why not, Hank? Lots of philosophers have reached the
conclusion that existence is predestined."
"Mebbe so!" said Hank doggedly. "But it jest ain't logical. Life is
chemical, an' existence is jest like a chemical equation, Jim--balanced
on a hair-spring. Every little thing which happens: the fall of an
empire, the discovery of a new element, somebody's cold in the head,
anything an' everything, becomes a factor. We live in the world we live
in today because it's the only possible world under the conditions of
our past!
"Of course, there could be--" Hank's eyes clouded. "There _could_ be--"
I laughed at him. "For once, pal, you're caught in a middle. Your
theory is just as good as Jamieson's, but no better. You can't prove
it. So how about a couple rounds of checkers before we turn in?"
Hank temporarily forgot whatever new conjecture had occurred to him. He
looked a bit petulant as he aimed a shot of liquid brown at the distant
bronze jug.
"Now, looky here, Jim--you don't deny things would be a heap diff'rent
if you an' me'd never met, an' I'd stayed home on my turnip farm?"
"No."
"Well, then!"
"But," I pointed out, "perhaps it was ordained that we should meet and
that you should come to Midland U."
Hank groaned.
"Jim Blakeson, you make me plumb sick! You're durn near as bad as
Jamieson. That settles it! I began thinkin' this afternoon mebbe I'd do
it; now I've made up my mind!"
"Do what?" I demanded.
"I'm gonna settle this question," he said firmly.
"I'm goin' back to the past an' find out if you two are right. If
things is inevitable, or whether circumstances can change 'em."
I gulped. Hank sometimes said fantastic things but he never makes
boasts he cannot fulfil. This, however--
"T--the past?" I faltered.
"You heard me," declared Hank petulantly. "I guess I'll be kinda busy
f'r the next couple o' days. I'm goin' to build me one o' them there
now time-travel machines!"
CHAPTER II
Double Feature
Well, you know me! Old brain-like-a-fish Blakeson. I stared at him
foolishly for a moment, then, when he said no more about it, decided
Hank had finally developed, along with his many other virtues, a sense
of humor. So I chuckled, and he chuckled with me, and we went to bed a
little while later, and I proceeded to forget all about it.
It didn't even dawn on me, when the next morning he went out and
came home with a couple armloads of wires, tubes and miscellaneous
doogadgets, that he meant business. He was always prancing home with
some kind of lab equipment or other--you know how amateur scientists
are.
So I went ahead with my duties, which were plugging the sale of U.
S. Government Bonds and Stamps--and, by the way, you better buy 'em,
kiddies!--and three days whisked by as days have a habit of doing.
Then Travis Tomkins, chief technician of the observatory, halted me one
day on the street.
"Say, Blakeson, where's Cleaver hiding himself? He promised to help me
plot the orbit on that new comet he and I discovered."
"He and you!" I snorted. "Where do you get the community spirit? All
you did was point the telescope where Hank told you! Oh--he's places,
doing things. I'll tell him you want him."
And less than an hour later I bumped into H. Logan MacDowell, himself,
in person, and not the captive balloon he looked like, to meet the same
query.
"James, my dear lad," puffed the erstwhile Prexy of our former Alma
Mammy. "I have been endeavoring to ascertain the whereabouts of our
erudite rural companion. If you could enlighten me--"
"If you mean," I interpreted, "where's Hank, I guess he's home."
H. Logan pawed his plump jowls speculatively. "You might inform him
that my daughter is most disturbed about his apparent disinclination to
seek her company."
"H-how's that again?" I asked. MacDowell frowned at me disapprovingly.
"The custom," he hrrumphed, "is commonly known as--er--dating."
"You mean she wants to fling woo," I said, "and old Hank ain't been
parking on the divan lately? Now I _know_ he's off his button. A gal
like Helen, and with the marriage date already set--all right, Prexy.
I'll tell him."
* * * * *
So I guess those two chance meetings served as eye-openers, because
when I went home that evening, I came to the realization that Hank
Cleaver had turned our tiny flat into a super-scientific workshop.
There were odds and ends of things all over the living room; when I
entered I heard a humming in Hank's bedroom, a curious, whining wail
that stopped just as I entered, gave way to the tapping of a hammer on
metal.
"_Hank!_" I yelled.
No answer. The lamps dimmed for a moment then rose again as the humming
sound drowned out my call.
"_Hank!_" I cried again.
Still no answer. So I walked over to his door, and banged. "Hey! Come
out, come out, wherever you are!"
And Hank came to the door, hair rumpled, a smear of grease running
diagonally from his right temple to the tip of his nose, collar open,
sleeves rolled high--
"Was you callin' me, Jim?" he asked.
"Who, me?" I retorted elaborately. "Oh, no! I was just addressing an
envelope--hey, what the hell makes around here? Anyhow? Everybody and
his brother has been asking me where I hid the _corpus delicti_. What
are you making--"
Then I looked over his shoulder and saw it.
It was the wildest, weirdest looking thing you ever set eyes on in your
life. I can't describe it exactly. They say English is the most elastic
of all languages, but even _it_ lacks the words to describe some
things. Like this one.
But I'll take a running start and see what happens. It was a machine.
It was made of metal and glass and gadgets and doolollies and sugar
and spice and everything nice; that's what little _girls_ are made of!
It was shaped something like the tonneau of a 1931 model Packard, and
somewhat more like a big, old-fashioned bathtub with a hood. It was
roughly oval, but only roughly so, because you couldn't exactly decide
what shape it was. It _wriggled_!
* * * * *
So help me, that's just what it did! Coils of wire wound around and
around the tonneau part, in which there were two wide upholstered seats
and an incomprehensible dashboard, bedecked with twelve or twenty
dials; these coils twisted out to fore and aft of the egg-shaped
structure--and vanished!
It had other features. But that's all I saw during that first, startled
glance. And that was enough. I loosed a squawk of despair and held on
to Hank for dear life.
"W--what is it?" I yelped. "Great whispering winds, what do you call
that--that monstrosity?"
Hank said, "Now, ca'm down, Jim. It ain't like you to act thisaway.
They ain't no cause for alarm."
"That's what they told Mrs. O'Leary when she bought a cow," I moaned,
"only look what happened!" Then suddenly I remembered our conversation
of a few nights ago, and I choked on my own incredulous words.
"Hank--that's not _it_? Tell me it's not a--a time-machine?"
Horsesense Hank grinned and tugged at a straggling wisp of hair.
"Wa-a-all, I reckon I could tell you that, Jim, but it wouldn't be whut
you mought call the truth. 'Cause that's jest whut it is. The machine
that's gonna carry us back into the past to prove my theories!"
I said, "It's a time-machine," weakly. "A--a time-machine," I said--and
then the double-take struck me. "_Us!_" I howled. "Us! Into the past?
Oh, no! Gangway, pal--"
* * * * *
Hank grabbed me and held on tight. He's about four inches taller than
I am, and dawn-to-dusk workouts behind the plow built him muscles like
tension springs. My legs churned air, and I got nowhere. Hank said
aggrievedly, "Now, Jim--I never thought you'd let me down like this--"
"Talking about letting down," I bleated, "how about me? Who's holding
who? Leggo, Hank! I just remembered, I'm supposed to meet a guy about
four thousand miles from here!"
"Now, durn it, you got to come with me!" said Hank. "It wouldn't do me
no good to go gallivantin' off to the past by myself. I got to have
witnesses. I'll have this machine all finished by tomorrow--"
Then it wasn't completed yet! That was a horse of a different collar.
I stopped struggling. I said, "Will you be kind enough to take your
greasy paws off me, you dope! My goodness, you act as if I were afraid
of something!" I moved over to the machine, studied it with pacified
interest. "How does it work?" I asked.
Hank grinned sheepishly and worked one bulldog tipped toe into the rug.
"Aw, it wasn't nothin' much, really. Not when you understand whut Time
is."
"Oh, naturally!" I said. "But isn't it funny? For the moment it seems
to have slipped my mind. What is Time?"
"Why, it's another dimension o' matter. Some calls it the 'fourth
dimension,' but that's plumb silly, o' course. Dimensions is
dimensions, an' it don't matter how you number 'em so long as you know
how to use 'em.
"Anyhow, whut this here machine does is run down a pathway through the
Time dimension jest like an auto runs on a road or an elevator runs up
an' down or an airyplane flies 'round in circles. See?"
"No!" I said.
"Well, it's as simple as A-B-C, Jim. I just made a helical vortex with
these here wires as the motivating cores, and slung the machine in it
like a basket. Right now while I test it, I got it operatin' on A.C.
house current, but when I push this little doogummy--" He pressed a
small switch. "I shift it to self-generatin' D.C. These other levers
control the distance in Time it travels, and there's space-location
finders, too.
"Only thing I ain't figgered out yet is--"
"Yet!" I gasped. "Yet! You've done all this within four days. Solved a
problem that has eluded men of genius for centuries, and you're worried
about one minor detail!"
"Well, it ain't whut you might call minor, Jim--"
"Hank, you never had a day's mechanical training in your life. I know
that. So tell me--how on earth could you know how to make this machine?"
Cleaver blushed.
"Why, it just come sort o' natcheral, Jim. 'Peared to me as if they was
oney one way to make it, so--O golly!"
A stricken look swept suddenly over his face, and I spun to discover
the reason. The Reason was five-foot-two of loveliness standing in
the doorway of our apartment. Breath-taking but outraged loveliness,
answering to the name of Miss Helen MacDowell.
Her dark eyes were like thunder-clouds, and her foot tapped the carpet
angrily.
"Well!" she said. "Well, at last I find you!"
* * * * *
It was I who had to hold Hank Cleaver now. He was trying desperately to
wriggle out of my grasp. I believe he had some idea of trying to crawl
under the carpet. Finally he surrendered, turned to face his fiancée.
"H-hullo, honey!" he said.
"Don't 'honey' me!" snapped Helen. "What were you two talking about
just now?"
Hank had temporarily suffered a paralysis of the vocal cords. I went to
bat for him.
"Dimensions," I said. "Hank was explaining to me how the Time dimension
operates."
Helen sniffed. "Time, indeed! Perhaps he needs an explanation of Time
himself. I suppose you completely forgot you had a date with me an hour
and a half ago, Hank Cleaver?"
Hank strangled. I said apologetically, "Now, Helen--don't be angry. I
guess he forgot dimension it."
"That," scorned the girl, "is just the sort of poor joke I should
expect from you, Jim. Well, I'm going to marry him and get him away
from your bad influence soon--" Before I could think up a good comeback
to that one, she shouldered past me into Hank's bedroom-laboratory,
eyed with disdain the wavering, nebulous whatchamaycallit standing
there. "What do you call _this_?" she demanded.
"It--it's a time-machine, honey," said Hank meekly.
"Hmmm! Funniest looking clock _I_ ever saw!"
"Not that kind of Time, sugar-plum." Hank visioned forgiveness in her
aroused interest. He sprang to her side, pointed at the various dials
and gadgets. "This takes you to the past, so you can watch history
being made. Or into the future--"
Helen, being a woman, had no time for nonsense like that. She got
right down to fundamentals. "It's not streamlined," she said. "I
don't like the color, and the dashboard isn't pretty. Where's the
cigarette-lighter? And those seats don't look very comfortable--"
And she climbed into the front seat.
Hank said, "Now, Helen, don't git in there yet! It ain't quite
finished, an'--"
She ignored him with magnificent aplomb. "I'm glad _one_ of us has good
common-sense," she said. "If you're going to be an inventor, someone
has to keep an eye on you to make sure your inventions are practical.
"Just as I thought! These cushions aren't at all comfortable. They're
not wide enough, either. Get in here, Jim. Beside me--that's right! And
you, too, Hank. Now do you see what I mean? These seats should be lots
wider--"
Hank said nervously. "All right, sweety-pie. Now let's go see a nice
movie or--"
"And what," continued Helen blandly, "is this tiny key for? A glove
compartment? Let me see inside--"
Hank stiffened like a strychnine victim. His eyes bulged, and his voice
exploded in a sudden roar.
"_Don't touch that! Helen, don't--!_"
He spoke a split second too late. Already the key was turning. Freezing
in my chair, I heard a thin, whining hum from the time-machine's
motors. The framework shook, and I was suddenly aware that where
about us, a moment before, we had seen a brightly illumined bedroom,
now there was nothing but flickering mists of gray ... wavering ...
bottomless ... formless....
"Dagnab it!" cried Hank. "Oh, dagnab it to blazes! Now you've went an'
did it!"
* * * * *
He reached across the terrified girl, snapped over the key. Instantly
the flickering ceased ... the gray, bottomless mists dissipated ...
the illumination returned. We were once again back in the bedroom,
sitting in the time-machine.
But--there was a startling difference.
Standing beside us, staring at us with eyes huge as moons and mouths
incredulously agape, were three people. And those three people were--
Helen MacDowell ... Horsesense Hank ... and myself!