THE SHADOW GIRL
By RAY CUMMINGS
(Author of "Into the Fourth Dimension," "Beyond the Stars," etc.)
_Here Is Another Classic Science Fiction Novel,
Reprinted by Your Request._
Illustrated by Smolenski.
Out of the misty reaches of time came a man and girl of the distant
future-New York to wreak vengeance upon Dr. Turber, prominent
physician of 1945. But what mystery lay behind Turber's Indian
assistant, who seemed to belong to the New Amsterdam of Peter
Stuyvesant, and how could Turber menace Great-New York of 2445?
An absorbing book-length novel by one of science fiction's prime
favorites.
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Science Fiction Quarterly Spring 1942.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
CHAPTER I
WHAT THE TELEVISION SHOWED
The extraordinary and mysterious visions of the shadow girl appeared
on the television screen which Alan and I had just erected in his
workshop. It was nearly midnight--a hot sultry evening of late June.
The instrument was a Farodyne polychrome receiver; latest model of
the multiple-cell semi-oscillating type. We had worked all evening
installing it. Alan's sister, Nanette, sat quietly in a corner,
modeling a little statue in green clay. Occasionally she would ask us
how we were getting along.
We were planning to receive the broadcasting from the powerful Bound
Brook station--a program which had been advertised for 11.30 p.m.
The room was dark as we sat at the small instrument table with the
six-foot screen erect against the wall and only the flashing beams from
the whirling color-filters to cast a lurid glow upon us. The screen
hummed as the current went into it. But at once we saw that something
was wrong. The screen lighted unevenly; we could not locate with any
precision the necessary frequency ranges; not one of the three near-by
broadcasting studios which we knew were at that moment on the air,
would come in.
Nanette was disappointed and impatient as I manipulated the dials at
random, and Alan verified the connections. "Is there nothing on it?"
"Presently, Nan. Alan must have grounded it badly--I'm sure we have
everything else--"
I stopped abruptly. My grip tightened on her arm. We all sat tense. An
image was forming on the screen.
Alan said sharply: "Don't touch it, Ed!" I relinquished the dials.
We sat watching, tense, and interested. Then mystified, awed. And
presently upon us all there settled a vague, uneasy sense of fear.
For this, confronting us, was the Unknown.
* * * * *
The screen glowed, not with the normal colors of an interior studio
set, but with what seemed a pale, wan starlight. A blurred image; but
it was slowly clarifying. A dim purple sky, with misty stars.
We sat staring into the depths of the television screen. Depths
unmeasurable; illimitable distance. I recall my first impression when
in the foreground faint gray-blue shadows began forming: was this
an earthly scene? It seemed not. Blurred shadows in the starlight,
crawling mist of shadows, congealing into dim outlines.
We saw presently the wide area of a starlit night. A level landscape
of vegetation. Grassy lawns; trees; a purpling brook, shimmering like
a thread of pale silver in the starlight. The image was sharp now,
distinct, and without suggestion of flicker. Every color rounded and
full. Deep-toned nature, pale and serene in the starlight.
A minute passed. In the center foreground of the vista a white wraith
was taking form. And suddenly--as though I had blinked--there was a
shape which an instant before had not been there. Solid reality. Of
everything in the scene, it was most solid, most real.
A huge, gray-white skeleton tower, its base was set on a lawn where
now I could see great beds of flowers, vivid with colored blossoms. The
brook wound beside it. It was a pentagon tower. Its height might have
been two hundred feet or more, narrowing at the top almost to a point.
Skeleton girders with all the substantiality of steel, yet with a color
more like aluminum.
We were, visually, fairly close to this tower. The image of it
stood the full six feet of our screen. A balcony girded it near the
top. A room, like an observatory, was up there, with tiny ovals
of windows. Another larger room was midway down. I could see the
interior--ladder-steps, and what might have been a shaft with a lifting
car.
The tower's base was walled solid. It seemed, as we stared, that like a
camera moving forward, the scene was enlarging--
We found ourselves presently gazing, from a close viewpoint, at the
base of the tower. It was walled, seemingly by masonry, into a room.
There were windows, small and high above the ground. Climbing vines and
trellised flowers hung upon the walls. There was a broad, front doorway
up a stone flight of steps.
And I became aware now of what I had not noticed before: the gardens
surrounding the tower were inclosed with a high wall of masonry. A
segment of it was visible now as a background to the scene. A wall,
looped and turreted at intervals as though this were some fortress.
The whole lay quiet and calm in the starlight. No sign of human
movement. Nanette said:
"But, Edward, isn't any one in sight? No people--"
And Alan: "Ed, look! There--back there on the wall--"
It seemed on the distant wall that a dark figure was moving. A guard?
A pacing sentry?
And now, other movement. A figure appeared in the tower doorway. The
figure of a girl. She came slowly from within and stood at the head of
the entrance steps. The glow of an interior light outlined her clearly:
a slim, small girl, in a robe faintly sky-blue. Flowing hair, pale as
spun gold with the light shining on it like a halo.
She stood a moment, quietly staring out into the night. We could not
see her face clearly. She stood like a statue, gazing. And then,
quietly, she turned and I caught a glimpse of her face--saw it clearly
for an instant, its features imprinted clearly on my mind. A young
girl, nearly matured; a face, it seemed, very queerly, singularly
beautiful--
She moved back into the tower room. There was a sudden blur over the
scene. Like a puff of dissipating vapor, it was gone.
The television screen before us glowed with its uneven illumination.
The color-filters whirled and flashed their merging beams. Everything
was as it had been a few moments before. The broadcasting studios would
not come in. Our apparatus was not working properly. The frequency
ranges were indeterminate. It was grounded badly. Or our fundamental
calibration was in error. Something wrong. What, we never knew.
But we had seen this vision--flung at us, from somewhere. A vision,
shining clear in every detail of form and color and movement. The image
of things solid and real. Things existing--somewhere.
* * * * *
That was the first of the visions. The second came that same night,
near dawn. We did not dare to touch our instrument. The dials, we
found, had been set by me at random with a resulting wave-length which
could not bring in any of the known broadcasting studios. We left them
so, and did not try to find what might be wrong with the hook-up. The
image had come; it might come again, if we left things as they were.
We sat, for hours that night, watching the screen. It glowed uneven;
many of its cells were dark; others flickered red and green.
Nanette at last fell asleep beside us. Alan and I talked together
softly so as not to disturb her. We had promised that if anything
showed, we would awaken her. We discussed the possibility. But often
we were silent. The thing already had laid its spell upon us. This
vision, this little glimpse of somewhere. It had come, perhaps, from
some far-distant world? Incredible! But I recall that instinctively I
thought so.
Yet why should I? A tower, and a dim expanse of starlit landscape.
And a girl, humanly beautiful. Surely these were things that could
exist now on our earth. The atmosphere, we knew as a matter of common
everyday science, teems with potential visions and sound.
Alan strove to be more rational. "But, Ed, look here--we've caught some
distant unknown broadcaster."
"But who broadcasts an outdoor scene at night? This is 1945, Alan, not
the year 2000."
He shrugged his wide, thin shoulders. His face was very solemn. He
sat with his long, lean length hunched in his chair, chin cupped in
his palm, the attitude of a youthful, pagan thinker, fronted with a
disturbing problem. But there was a very boyish modernity mingled with
it; a lock of his straight black hair fell on his forehead. He seized
it, twisted it, puzzled, and looked up at me and smiled.
Then Alan said a thing very strange; he said it slowly, musingly, as
though the voicing of it awed him.
"I think it was on Earth. I wonder if it was something that has been,
or that will be--"
It came again, near dawn. The same tower; the same serene, starlit
spread of landscape. The same grim encircling wall, with stalking dark
figures upon it. We did not at first see the girl. The tower doorway
stood open; the room inside glowed with its dim light. A moment of
inactivity; and then it seemed that at this inexplicable place at which
we were gazing--this unnamable time which seemed the present on our
screen--a moment of action had come. A dark figure on the wall rose
up--a small black blob against the background of stars. The figure of a
man. His arm went up in a gesture.
Another figure had come to the tower doorway, a youth, strangely
garbed. We could see him clearly: white-skinned, a young man. He stood
gazing; and he saw the signal from the wall, and answered it. Behind
him, the girl appeared. We could see them speak. An aspect of haste
enveloped all their movements--a surreptitious haste, furtive, as
though this that they were doing was forbidden.
The signal was repeated from the wall. They answered. They turned.
The youth pushed the girl aside. He was stooping at the doorway, and
her eager movements to help seemed to annoy him. He straightened. He
had unfastened the tower door. He and the girl slid it slowly closed.
It seemed very heavy. They pushed at it. The doorway closed with them
inside.
We had awakened Nanette. She sat tense between us, with her long
braids of thick, chestnut hair falling unheeded over her shoulders, her
hands gripping each of us.
"Tell me!"
* * * * *
Alan said: "That door's heavy. They can't close it--yes! They've got
it closed. I fancy they're barring it inside. The thing is all so
silent--but you could imagine the clang of bars. I don't see the guard
on the wall. It's dark over there. There's no one in sight. But, Nan,
you can see that something's going to happen. See it--or feel it. Ed,
look! Why--"
He broke off. Nanette's grip tightened on us.
A change had fallen upon all the scene. It seemed at first that our
instrument was failing. Or that a "hole" had come, and everything
momentarily was fading. But it was not that. The change was inherent
to the scene itself. The tower outlines blurred, dimmed. This image of
its solidarity was dissolving. Real, solid, tangible no longer. But
it did not move; it did not entirely fade. It stood there, a glowing
shimmering wraith of a tower, gray-white, ghostlike. A thing now of
impalpable aspect, incredibly unsubstantial, imponderable, yet visible
in the starlight.
The wall was gone! I realized it suddenly. The wall, and the garden and
the flowers and the stream. All the background, all the surrounding
details gone! The tower, like a ghost, stood ghostly and alone in a
void of shapeless gray mist.
But the stars remained. The purple night, with silver stars. But even
they were of an aspect somehow different. Moving visibly? For an
instant I thought so.
Time passed as we sat there gazing--time marked only by my dim
knowledge that Alan was talking with Nanette. Changes were sweeping
the scene. The gray mist of background under the stars held a distance
unfathomable. A space, inconceivable, empty to my straining vision.
And then, presently, there were things to see. It seemed that the
infinite had suddenly contracted. The wraith of the tower stood
unchanged. But abruptly I saw that it stood in a deep wooded area,
rearing itself above a tangled forest. A river showed, a mile or so
away, crossing the background in a white line. The stars were gone; it
was night no longer. A day of blue sky, with white-massed clouds. The
sun shone on the distant river.
The tower stood, faded even more in the daylight. I searched the forest
glade around its base. Figures were there! Familiar of aspect; a group
of savages--of this earth? Yes, I could not mistake them: Indians of
North America. Red-skinned, feathered figures, in vivid ceremonial
headdress as though this day they had been dancing in the forest
glade. And saw the strange apparition of this tower. Saw it? Why,
they were seeing it now! Prostrated in a group on the mossy ground,
awed, fear-struck; gazing fearfully upon this thing unknown; prostrate
because this thing unknown must therefore be a god; and being a god,
must be angry and threatening and to be placated.
* * * * *
An instant; and I knew that this which Alan Tremont, Nanette Tremont,
and Edward Williams were vouchsafed was a mere pause. A tableau. A
snatched vision from somewhere--sometime; presented all in an instant
and whirled away.
But the phantom of the tower stood motionless, unchanged. The gray
background whirled, pregnant with things unseeable. No! It was night.
There were the familiar, unchanging stars. I became aware that the
wraith of the tower was solidifying. The gray shadows under it were
turning dark. Gray--then black--then deep green. Trees and grass. A
small white spread of water near at hand.
The tower now was solid, tangible and real of aspect as we had first
seen it. The doorway was still closed. Around it now was the dark
stretch of a cultivated parklike space. All clear and distinct. A
reality here, beyond anything we had seen before.
I gasped. Alan's swift words to Nanette echoed as though from my own
thoughts. This was wholly familiar! This familiar space, pictured in
quiet detail upon the screen. Familiar trees, little paths with benches
along them, grassy lawns, a small, starlit lake. A winding roadway,
with lights at intervals. In the distance, behind the tower, I could
see plainly a large, low building of stone. A city street behind it,
beyond the park. All familiar.
Alan gasped: "Why, it's here! This is barely a mile from us! That's
Central Park! That's the Metropolitan Museum!"
Central Park, New York City. But when? We knew there was no tower like
that in Central Park. Was this the future of Central Park at which we
were staring?
* * * * *
The vision was more than a glimpse now. It held, vividly persisting in
every reality of its smallest detail. The same space of that forest
glade. But now man called it "Central Park." No ignorant savages were
prostrated here now, before this phantom of the tower. No one here--
And then I saw, in the foreground, a man in a blue uniform standing on
one of the paths of the park. A light shone on him. He stood, pressed
backward against the light-pole; staring at the tower with a hand
upflung against his mouth. Instinctive fear. But not prostrate upon
the ground. He stood tense. And dropped his hand and stood peering.
Incredulous.
"Ed--see that police officer there! He sees the tower!"
The tower door opened. I fancied I saw the figure of the girl step
furtively out and disappear into the shadows of the starlit park.
I could not be sure. It was dark. But in the background, above the
Metropolitan Museum, above the city buildings lining Fifth Avenue, I
could see that the east was glowing with the coming dawn. A mass of
billowing clouds flushed pink.
[Illustration: _I saw the girl step furtively out into the starlit
park._]
The tower doorway was closed again. The tower melted into a specter,
illusive, tenuous, but still there. A gossamer tower. And then, it
was gone. Everything was gone. But as though, in my fancy, or perhaps
merely the persistence of vision, for one brief instant I seemed to
see the park empty of the intruding tower; and the policeman, standing
there incredulous at this that he had seen which was now vanished.
The television screen was empty of image. Alan was on his feet. "Ed!
Look at the sky out there! That's the same sky!"
The workshop faced to the east. The same star-strewn sky of the vision
was outside our window--the same sky, with the same modeling of clouds,
flushed with the coming day.
Alan voiced my realization. "Why, that's this dawn we've been seeing!
That tower--in the park behind us--that policeman is out there now--he
saw it! That's today! That just happened--now!"