UNRECORDED HISTORY
To me, the rest of those sixty minutes were a vague, drab dream of
things horrible to see. Awesome--but though the rocking, shattering
Turber city went down while I watched, it all seemed dreamlike. My mind
was on that torn heap of wreckage which had been Turber's Time-vehicle.
Nanette's body lying somewhere there.
Alan seemed dazed. A man shoved him away and took his place. He sat
huddled by Lea. I sat, numbly staring. Then someone said: "Two minutes!
That's enough, Grantson! Get the girl and those ancients to insulate
the projector. Hurry! We won't need it any more, but no use ruining it."
The world-power was about to come on again. We hastened to insulate
our projecting mechanism. The light-beam died. But its work was
through. All this end of the Turber-owned city was in ruins. The black
waters of what had once been New York Bay were exposed. The islands
and the causeways and all the structure there was strewn and tumbled
and broken. All of what had been Staten Island was wrecked. Fires and
explosions everywhere, and masses of lurid smoke mounting; and all the
upper air pungent with the smell of chemicals.
The gas clouds hid the Staten Island hill, with its wrecked aero.
We swung back toward Manhattan as the world-power flashed on. Our sixty
minutes were over.
Aftermath of the battle; I need not detail it. To Alan and me it was
all unimportant. We kept Lea close with us. Gentle little creature!
Why, I suppose her ethereal beauty could not be matched in all the
world. But my mind went always to Nanette.
I recall how vaguely I gazed at the mirrors as they pictured the
rout and final destruction of the Turberites. The hunt for the
panic-stricken mobs ceased in a few hours; those still alive were
allowed to escape. I recall sitting with triumphant city officials and
hearing it all discussed. The Turberites would be banished to various
other localities--scattered. I heard the triumph when searching parties
in the ruins found the Turber Treasure Vaults. His tremendous wealth
would go to enrich the city government; to rebuild the destroyed area.
Turber and all his leaders were dead. His Empire was broken; its menace
met and conquered. There was official government praise and thanks for
Lea, Alan and myself. Our interest in it all was apathetic. We had lost
Nanette--we found that our greatest desire was to get away from this
world which had taken her from us.
Alan and I did not go with the party of searchers who brought back
the bodies from the wreckage around Turber's vehicle. Nanette was not
found--but they told us there were many bodies not recognizable. We did
not go to see them.
A day passed--then another--and on the third a message came which took
Lea and Alan and me in shuddering trembling haste to where now workmen
were cleaning away the wreckage of the shattered area.
Nanette!
Three workmen had seen it happen. They were working just now, close
beside the mangled pile of metal which was Turber's vehicle. From
the air a few feet above their heads--the empty air--a human form
came hurtling. They saw it all in an instant materialize. A shadow--a
ghost--but in a second, when it struck the ground almost at their feet,
it was solid. A human form. A girl--lying broken and unconscious. But
still alive!
We were taken to see her in the improvised morgue and hospital near the
ruins. It was Nanette. We could see that. And we looked just once, and
then they led us away.
She was still alive. Oh, I thanked God for this era of progress of
2445! Five hundred years ahead of my own lifetime these surgeons and
physicians who for days were working over Nanette! They said she might
live. Her broken body might be restored to a semblance of itself.
Our tower with San arrived. It waited, this time.
* * * * *
Then, at last, they said that Nanette surely would live. They took us
one day to see her. She lay so swathed in bandages that not much more
than her eyes were visible. We spoke to her, just for a moment; bending
low, we could hear her murmuring answers. Then Lea held her close and
crooned to her, and she went back to sleep.
Another week. We saw her again; propped up for a moment in bed to
receive us. The bandages were gone now from her face and head and
shoulders. She sat, staring into the direction of our voices.
My poor Nanette! Her face, shriveled and scarred! She raised what
seemed a twisted arm to welcome us. She tried to smile. A travesty--a
mockery. I recalled her gentle beauty, her sweet womanly dignity--that
little smile, so sweet, that she used to have.
I leaned over her. "Nanette, darling!"
"Edward, you came--I didn't want them to let you come--"
I said: "Lea is here. Do you recognize her voice?" I bent over her as
though with a great secret. "Nanette, she and Alan love each other.
We're just waiting for you to get well--it won't be so long now. Then
we're going home."
"No," she murmured. "They say it won't be long now. And they say--"
"San is here with the tower. But he stays always in it. That's why he
hasn't been to see you."
Oh, I had phrased it wrongly! She shuddered.
"Edward--that time, you remember--when I said good-by over the aerial?
I--I thought that it was--really good-by. You understand?" She was
stammering.
"I don't understand, Nanette."
"I mean--I--I told you that I loved you. That was very wrong of me. I
do not--I do not love you. I n-never did."
She could not see the rush of moisture that clouded my eyes. I gulped,
but I managed a laugh.
"You can't get out of it that way. Of course you love me! I'll make
you!"
But she held me off. "No."
From across the room the watching nurse said: "She should be kept
quiet, Mr. Williams."
I relaxed and sat back. "We'll forget it, Nanette--not talk about it
now, because--"
"Yes, forget it. They say, these surgeons--"
"Nanette, listen--we're rich! You didn't know that. The city government
here has awarded us--the four of us--and some for San--some of the
Turber gold. In 1945, Nanette, what we four have will be accounted at
nearly a million dollars."
She was trying to speak, but I talked fast against it. "You've always
wanted to live in the country, haven't you? So does Lea. We're going to
buy--Alan and I are--two little homes--near each other, understand--out
in the country somewhere in our world of 1945. Where there will be
trees and flowers--and the beautiful sky over us."
"Edward, I'd rather you went away. You understand? It's wonderful of
you--your plans and all that."
"Nanette, you're talking nonsense!"
"All right. Perhaps I am. They say my hair can be made to grow long
again very quickly, Edward." Her voice was trying to be jocular. "That
will help, won't it? And yesterday a surgeon was here from Great
London. A specialist in plastic surgery--"
The nurse called: "Better go now, Mr. Williams. Not tire her."
* * * * *
There were more days of waiting.
We had long since heard, through Nanette's nurse, her brief account
of those last moments in Turber's aero. She had been for a time alone
in the control room with Bluntnose and Jonas. They were waiting for
Turber. Jonas had fallen into a panic of fear; he sat huddled and
chattering, dominated by the Indian who, with stolid indifference to
the city tumbling around them, was waiting for the master.
Nanette had stood in the aero doorway. Her mind was groping with a
plan. Bluntnose came and pulled her back. He stood in the doorway and
shouted welcome to the arriving Turber and the woman Josefa.
Nanette knew that the control room was filled with a blinding glare of
light reflected from our white beam so near at hand outside. She heard
Jonas scream something about the glare; she could feel it--almost see
it. And she could hear, outside the aero, a pandemonium of sound.
She knew every detail of the corridor and the control room. She ran
past the huddled Jonas. In a moment Turber would enter, and the aero
would flash away and escape. Nanette ran for the instrument table which
held the controls. She knew it was close by a window; she knew that the
window was open and that it was some six or eight feet above the ground.
Desperate plan! Just a chance to wreck the aero and still to save her
own life. She had no knowledge of the controls' operation. She leaped
for the table. Her fingers tore at the delicate wires--her clenched
little fists smashed the fragile vacuum globes.
She felt the aero sway crazily; she felt it flash as she flung her body
through the window. She fell into the black emptiness of insensibility--
The aero had lurched a few seconds into the future, and with every
law of Nature transgressed by its derelict flight it had stopped and
crashed into ruins.
Nanette's body, hurtling through the air, must have been just within
the aero's influence. Inconceivable shock to her! A fall through Space
of a few feet. But the impulse from the lurching Time-vehicle had
thrown her--as she fell those few feet--into the third day forward.
But it was over now. She lived; these surgeons with their science were
giving her back to me.
We waited through those hours; the operation was successful. Her face
was--restored.
* * * * *
And so I find myself now with little more to record. We are back now
in the world of 1945. We went with Lea while she took leave of her
grandfather; and she left him to follow her destiny with Alan. But San
would not come. He took us to our own Time-world and left us. He said,
forever.
No one saw us as we slipped from the tower into Central Park that last
time. A few days only since we had left. It was in the night; and no
one was there to see the phantom tower as it came, paused solid for a
moment, and then vanished.
Or if we were seen, what of it? No one would believe it; the newspapers
would not bother to print it again.
The world here moves quietly along.
Not far from New York City--now in 1945, as I write--there are two
little houses, twins upon a small farm. Alan Tremont and his wife
live in one of them; and the other is Nanette's home and mine. No one
around here is very interested in us. Nanette says that the neighbors
sometimes speculate upon Mrs. Tremont's nationality. Some of the women
have called her a Scandinavian; they say she looks like one--or talks
like one, I forget which. But there is a Swedish woman in the village
who is convinced that Lea Tremont is a fair-haired, blue-eyed native
girl of the South Sea Islands. The Swedish woman has never been to the
South Sea Islands, but she is convinced of it nevertheless.
Once--only last week--Nanette found Lea dancing in the shadowed
moonlight of our apple orchard. Dancing for Alan. Her robe of blue
fabric--her golden hair flying. Shadow girl! Her fairy figure weaving
in and out of the shadows.
But you can't explain to the farmer's wife down the road that Mrs.
Tremont is a shadow girl!
THE END