"What?" Pearce was startled.
"Looking at that doggoned watch of yours." Fuller's expression was
accusing. "You aren't fooling anybody, Andy. You're up to some
thing--and it's about time you explained yourself. This beating around
the bush is no way to treat your friends. You drag us out here, to
the place where you grew up. You have a suitcase along that certainly
doesn't have bricks in it. You drop mysterious hints about something
special."
Fuller's voice softened, his blue eyes turned anxious. "Just what have
you got up your sleeve, Andy?"
* * * * *
Pearce looked away, pain, a sudden tightness in his chest. He said
slowly, "Well, I'm taking a sort of trip, Dave. I ... I'm afraid I'm
never going to see you and Ellen again."
"Andy!" Ellen's voice was a stricken whisper.
"Never see us again...." Fuller muttered blankly.
The symphony came to an end. There was a moment of strained quiet.
"What are you talking about, Andy?" Fuller demanded in hurt
bewilderment. "Where are you going that you'll never see me and Ellen
again?"
"It's a long story," Pearce said. He grinned faintly. "I mean that.
It's a story that begins fifteen years in the past and ends some
two thousand years in the future."
Fuller and Ellen were rigid, staring. Pearce drained the last of his
beer and lighted a cigarette.
"In another way," he went on, "the story really begins right where we
are now. This part of the woods always was a favorite spot of mine.
I'd sneak off here to read books and magazines that I borrowed from
a neighbor whose taste in literature was on the blood and thunder
side--lucky for me. My uncle didn't like to see me reading, thought it
a waste of time. But it was in the middle of the Depression, and there
wasn't much else to do. Uncle was an intolerant old bird, a widower,
and he wasn't happy about getting stuck with me. I didn't like it,
either, but there didn't seem anything a twelve-year-old kid could do
about it."
Pearce drew at his cigarette, his gray eyes squinting into distance.
"Uncle's chicken farm was a lonely place, and in self-defense I guess
I developed a lot more imagination than most kids my age. Most of the
time I wasn't on the farm at all--except when Uncle gave me a spanking
by way of a reminder. I was out on the deserts of Mars, or walking the
streets of a lost city in Africa, or tracking down an international
spy ring in London. This day-dreaming, as I can see now, was pretty
important."
Fuller said impatiently, "But Andy, what on earth does this build-up
have to do with the trip you're going to make?"
"Keep your shirt on," Pearce said. "You'll see."
He resumed. "What I've outlined was the general situation when I came
here one summer afternoon, to read a book. About a half-hour later
something happened that practically made me jump out of my skin. The
air in the glade seemed suddenly to thicken, and the trees all around
grew crazily twisted, as though seen through optical glass. I felt
oddly light, dizzy and sick at the same time. And from somewhere came a
deep, humming sound--the kind of sound that might have been made by a
string on a giant harp.
"The next thing I knew there was a sort of machine in the glade that
seemed to have popped right out of nowhere. It was a metal globe about
eight feet across, with tapering legs or supports on the bottom to keep
it upright. There was the outline of a door in the side turned toward
me.
"I was scared stiff, of course, but I had been reading about this kind
of thing happening in stories--and as far as I was concerned, there was
hardly any dividing line between stories and real life. So I stayed
put. I knew the machine was something special, because I'd never seen
anything like it outside of the illustrations in the more imaginative
type of magazines."
* * * * *
Pearce drew at his cigarette again. Fuller and Ellen were like store
window figures, arranged in attitudes of rapt attention.
"After several seconds the door in the side of the machine opened and a
woman stepped out. I thought she was the most beautiful creature I had
ever seen, a princess--or an angel. She looked the way ancient Egyptian
women must have looked. She made me think of a tropical flower, which
wasn't far from truth, considering that she came from a time when the
Earth was--or will be--a great deal warmer than it is now. She was
wearing a sort of thin dress that sparkled as though covered with
jewels, and over this she held a long cloak. It was summer, but I
suppose it was a bit too cool for her.
"She smiled at me--and I was glad I had stuck around. She said she
hoped I hadn't been frightened by the appearance of her machine, and I
guess I tried to sell her the idea that I strangled lions with my bare
hands just for exercise. Then she explained that her name was Nela, and
that she had come from two thousand years in the future especially to
see me. Her machine, of course, was a time machine."
"Good grief!" Fuller said explosively. "What kind of a gag are you
trying to put over, Andy?"
"I know just how it all sounds," Pearce returned. "But believe me,
for one of the few times in my life I'm dead serious. Keep quiet and
listen. I don't have much time left."
"Go on, Andy," Ellen said. "I'm fascinated."
Pearce took a final puff of his cigarette crushed it out in the grass,
and continued. "Nela explained how it was possible to travel in time,
but in the sort of terms a kid would understand. Even what I've figured
out up to now isn't specific enough to be worth detailing, except
to say that what we consider space and time are merely illusions
of sense perception. They are really one stationary system or
complex--stationary, yet dynamic and changing within itself--and under
certain conditions one can travel through this system, from future
to past, or the other way around, like through a museum--the biggest
museum that can possibly be imagined.
"Nela's machine operated on energy principles that won't be known
for a great many years yet, and it will be even longer before those
principles are put into application. She was, in effect, making a
round-trip from one part of the museum to another--a trip that took
her across two thousand years of what we call time, or across a couple
of hundred light years of what we call space. It's one and the same
thing. Actually, she was following a sort of huge orbit, and was,
so to speak, stopping off along the route. A trip between one point
and another can be made only once, because even that one trip brings
changes which affect the whole system, or complex. One point, it seems,
is always shifted so that it lies outside of any orbit which can be
plotted from the other.
"Nela told me about the kind of world she came from, too, and it
sounded--and still sounds--like a perfect place. There was, so she
said, practically no government, practically no laws, restrictions, or
penalties. In two thousand years enough had been learned about the mind
to make these unnecessary. Men at last were truly equal. There was no
longer any need to work for a living. Machines of all sorts attended to
every task and human requirement. Earth was one huge garden--and there
was plenty of room for everyone. Men had reached the stars and had
found new homes almost beyond number.
"An ideal picture--but there was a catch to it. The machines on which
Nela's people depended were breaking down, and it seemed nobody knew
even how to begin repairing them. The men of her time could take suns
apart and put them back together again, but the machines baffled them
in much the same way that our atomic scientists would be baffled
when it came to repairing a suit of Medieval armor. The answer to
the problem was to obtain the help of persons who understood the
construction and operation of the machines at least as well as Medieval
armorers understood their steel suits. And that answer--in both
cases--lay back in time."
* * * * *
Pearce changed position on the blanket under him and glanced at his
watch. He went on, "Time travel had been accomplished well before
Nela's period, but the process had proved too involved and tricky for
serious, large-scale use. The important thing, though, was that a
number of machines were immediately available for time travel, and Nela
was one of those chosen to operate them. She was, it seems, a gal of
parts. In addition to being one of the leaders of a world-wide group
which had been formed to deal with the machine break-down problem, she
was also an expert on time travel and an authority on Twentieth Century
life.
"Actually, you see, Nela's people were undergoing a cultural
renaissance, a reawakening of interest in every field of knowledge
and endeavor. For many hundreds of years there had been stagnation.
The machines had filled every human want, and there had been little
need for effort of any kind. Also, progress had been discouraged by a
hidebound government, which had remained in power through its control
of certain of the more important machines. The government had fallen
when realization came that it could do nothing to keep the machines in
repair, but the damage had been done. After centuries of a hands-off
attitude toward the machines, nobody else knew how to repair them,
either. Rapid progress was made everywhere except in this one direction.
"Nela and the others decided to travel to different points in time and
obtain specialists who would each be able to deal with some particular
repair job on the machines. The machines, of course, were not the
product of any one time period, but were the cumulative result of the
knowledge and skills of different periods. I was the specialist with
whom contact was made at this point in time. It was, I realize now,
quite a complicated business.
"When a beautiful girl appears in a time machine and tells some young
man she needs his help, he doesn't just drop whatever he happens to
be doing and go sailing blithely off into the mysterious future. Not
in real life. He has to consider his family and friends, the career
he was working on, all the things familiar and important to him, his
surroundings, interests and amusements, climate, customs, clothing--all
the rest. He has to consider that he might not be happy in the
future, that he might not fit, that he might not even be physically
comfortable, that the beautiful girl herself might very well turn out
to be disappointing.
"But if he is a young man of average intelligence, he most likely
wouldn't even bother to consider these things. He simply would refuse
to believe the beautiful girl from the future, would be certain it was
some sort of a hoax. Or he might even be scared stiff by the very idea
of traveling in time. All of which boils down to the fact that the girl
from the future would face a mighty tough job getting the right kind of
young man to help her."
"I get it now," Fuller broke in musingly. "So that's what your suitcase
is for, Andy." Then his voice sharpened with protest. "But it ... it's
ridiculous! I just can't believe it's possible."
"The young man of average intelligence speaking," Pearce murmured.
"Yeah?" Fuller swung to Ellen. "What do you think?"
* * * * *
She shook her dark head slightly, lower lip caught between her teeth.
"I'm trying not to think... Go on, Andy--before I start thinking."
"Hate to have that happen, if Dave's mental acrobatics are any
example." Pearce abruptly sobered, glancing at his watch. "Well," he
resumed, "Nela and the others foresaw the difficulties they would
encounter in obtaining help, and they figured out what they hoped would
be a fool-proof method of approach. What happened in my case shows
what this was. It seems Nela first scouted out a group of specialists
to find a couple with the right qualifications. The man she wanted had
to be young and adventurous, without any family or romantic ties. Then
she narrowed her field still further by tracing her selection back to
childhood and making direct contact there.
"It was clever--for after all, the child is father to the man. A child
is credulous and imaginative to an extent a man is not. And a child is
adventurous, will let his enthusiasms carry him spontaneously where
a man will hesitate and look for a catch. Most of all a child is
impressionable and can be imbued with an idea which he will follow like
a beacon light all his life.
"I was the child Nela finally settled on. The Andy Pearce she had first
scouted still existed in time, and nothing would change for him. But no
paradox is involved, for what we call time is an illusion, a subjective
quality arising from an awareness of objective conditions--and these
conditions are not quite what we think they are. That first Andy Pearce
was something like a bubble moving in a glass tube. All Nela did was
put another bubble in motion. The tube itself was not affected, nor was
time shifted, bent, nullified, or anything of the sort. Each bubble was
as real as anything can be said to be real, each existed in its own
particular space-time, each was completely distinct and independent of
the other.
"Nela visited me here several times, while she told me all the details
of her mission. She was also getting acquainted with me and giving
me time to thoroughly digest the idea of going with her. I agreed to
go, of course. It seemed the most natural thing in the world to do,
and I didn't change my mind. Once she had satisfied herself on that
score, she worked out a plan of operations for me to follow until I was
finally ready to leave. The plan took in schools, subjects, finances,
and the like. Nela, you see, was making a big improvement on the first
Andy Pearce.
"I never saw Nela again after those first visits. It was quite
unnecessary, as I can see now. For she and her people understood the
mind with an amazing thoroughness, and during her talks she subtly
injected me with knowledge, emotions and ideals that set me in motion
toward my goal as effectively and undeviatingly as though I had been
hypnotized. And I suspect that she set other bubbles in motion as well,
to guide and assist me and generally keep me moving in one direction."
* * * * *
Pearce gestured. "I've kept moving, all right. Fifteen years have
passed, and I know all I need to know about the particular technical
subject Nela chose me to handle. I'm ready to leave--and I'm leaving
very soon. Nela is coming here to pick me up, having meanwhile been
moving to this point along her orbit to make one last stop-off before
completing the swing back to her own point in time. There can be no
return, for once I leave, this point in time can never be reached
again. But then I've had fifteen years to get used to the idea.
"This picnic today was in the nature of a farewell party. You, Dave
and Ellen, have been the only friends I've allowed myself--and you've
both been fine friends. I wanted you both to know exactly where I
was going instead of doing a mysterious fade-out. I felt I owed you
that much. I've never told anyone about Nela before--not because the
information was likely to prove harmful, or anything of the sort, but
simply because it would have created doubts about my sanity. I know I
can trust you with it for the same reason."
Pearce spread his hands, grinning crookedly. "Well, I hope that leaves
me and my suitcase explained to the complete satisfaction of everyone."
Fuller ran his hand through his red hair in agitation and rose to his
feet. "It's the damnedest story I've ever heard, Andy. I wish I could
be dead certain it isn't a gag. I can't believe it--or maybe it's just
that I can't accept the idea of never seeing you again. If this hadn't
come all of a sudden--" He broke off, gesturing helplessly.
"Picnics," Ellen muttered to no one in particular, "are going to be
permanently spoiled for me."
"Hell!" Fuller growled. "I need a drink. I guess we all need a drink."
He reached out as though to detain Pearce. "Andy, I've got a bottle in
the car. For emergencies, you know--and this certainly is an emergency.
So stay right here, Andy. Don't go running off into the future until I
get back. Promise?"
"On my word of honor," Pearce said.
"Don't drop that bottle, Dave," Ellen put in.
With a last anxious glance at Pearce, Fuller turned and hurried away
through the trees. Pearce was abruptly, sharply aware that he was alone
with Ellen.
She seemed aware of it also. For a moment her dark eyes met his with a
kind of pensive directness, then dropped.
There was an uncomfortable silence.
"I'll never be quite the same again after today, Andy," Ellen murmured
at last.
He stared morosely at his hands. "I'm sorry. I guess I did spring the
story a bit too suddenly. Maybe I shouldn't have said anything at all,
done a quiet fade-out."
"I think I'd rather have known what happened to you than otherwise."
She traced a design on the blanket with one slim finger, then said,
"Andy, you made a remark in the car--about avoiding what you called
romantic complications. Were you avoiding them because you were
eventually going away with this Nela female?"