sense of wholeness that historians, knowing they can never collect
every detail, accept. I was not sure I had the grand scene in
perfectly proper perspective. I admitted to myself the possibility
that I had perhaps been too rash, too precipitate, in undertaking
_Chancellorsville to the End_ so soon. I knew the shadowy sign, the
one which says in effect, _You are ready_, had not been given. My
confidence was shaken.
Was the fault in me, in my temperament and character, rather than in my
preparation and use of materials? Was I drawing back from committing
myself, from acting, from doing? That I had written the first volume
was no positive answer, for it was but the fraction of a whole deed; if
I withdrew now I could still preserve my standing as an onlooker.
But not to act was itself an action and answered neither Dr Polk nor
myself. Besides, what could I do? The entire work was contracted for.
The second volume was promised for delivery some eighteen months hence.
My notes for it were complete; this was no question of revising, but
of wholly re-examining, revaluing and probably discarding them for an
entirely new start. It was a job so much bigger than the original,
one so discouraging, I felt I couldnt face it. It would be corrupt to
produce a work lacking absolute conviction and cowardly to produce none.
Catty responded to my awkward recapitulation in a way at once
heartening and strange. “Hodge,” she said, “youre changing and
developing, and for the better, even though I love you as you were.
Don’t be afraid to put the book aside for a year—ten years if you have
to. You must do it so it will satisfy yourself; never mind what the
publishers or the public say. But Hodge, you mustnt, in your anxiety,
or your foolish fear of passiveness, you mustnt try any shortcuts.
Promise me that.”
“I don’t know what youre talking about, Catty dear. There are no
shortcuts in writing history.”
She looked at me thoughtfully. “Remember that, Hodge. Oh, remember it.”
_17._ _HX-1_
I could not bring myself to follow the promptings of my conscience and
Catty’s advice, nor could I use my notes as though Dr Polk’s letter
had never come to shatter my complacency. As a consequence—without
deliberately committing myself to abandon the book—I worked not at
all, thus adding to my feelings of guilt and unworthiness. The tasks
assigned by the fellows for the general welfare of the haven were
not designed to take a major part of my time, and though I produced
all sorts of revolutions in the stables and barns, I still managed
to wander about, fretful and irritable, keeping Catty from her work,
interrupting the Agatis and Midbin—I could not bring myself to discuss
my problems with him—and generally making myself a nuisance. Inevitably
I found my way into Barbara’s workshop.
She and Ace had done a thorough job on the old barn. I thought I
recognized Kimi’s touch in the structural changes of the walls, the
strong beams and rows of slanted-in windows which admitted light and
shut out glare, but the rest must have been shaped by Barbara’s needs.
Iron beams held up a catwalk running in a circle about ten feet
overhead. On the catwalk there were at intervals what appeared to be
batteries of telescopes, all pointed inward and downward at the center
of the floor. Just inside the columns was a continuous ring of clear
glass, perhaps four inches in diameter, fastened to the beams with
glass hooks. Closer inspection proved the ring not to be in one piece
but in sections, ingeniously held together with glass couplings. Back
from this circle, around the walls, were various engines, all enclosed
except for dial faces and regulators and all dwarfed by a mammoth one
towering in one corner. From the roof was suspended a large, polished
reflector.
There was no one in the barn and I wandered about, cautiously avoiding
the mysterious apparatus. For a moment I meditated, basely perhaps,
that all this had been paid for with my wife’s money. Then I berated
myself, for Catty owed all to the haven, as I did. The money might have
been put to better use, but there was no guarantee it would have been
more productive allotted to astronomy or zoology. During eight years
I’d seen many promising schemes come to nothing.
“Like it, Hodge?”
Barbara had come up, unheard, behind me. This was the first time we had
been alone together since our break, two years before.
“It looks like a tremendous amount of work,” I evaded.
“It was a tremendous amount of work.” For the first time I noticed
that her cheeks were flushed. She had lost weight and there were deep
hollows beneath her eyes. “This construction has been the least of it.
Now it’s done. Or has begun. Depending how you look at it.”
“All done?”
She nodded, triumph accenting the strained look on her face. “First
test today.”
“Oh well ... in that case—”
“Don’t go, Hodge. Please. I meant to ask you and Catty to the more
formal trial, but now youre here for the preliminary I’m glad. Ace and
Father and Oliver will be along in a minute.”
“Midbin?”
The familiar arrogance showed briefly. “I insisted. It’ll be nice
to show him the mind can produce something besides fantasies and
hysterical hallucinations.”
I started to speak, then swallowed my words. The dig at Catty was
insignificant compared with the supreme confidence, the abnormal
assurance prompting invitations to witness a test which could only
reveal the impossibility of applying her cherished theories. I felt
an overwhelming pity. “Surely,” I said at last, seeking to make some
preparation for the disillusionment certain to come, “surely you don’t
expect it to work the first time?”
“Why not? There are sure to be adjustments to be made, allowances
for erratic chronology caused by phenomena like the pull of comets
and so forth. There might even have to be major alterations, though
I doubt it. It may be some time before Ace can set me down at the
exact year, month, day, hour and minute agreed upon. But the fact of
space-time-energy-matter correspondence can just as well be established
this afternoon as next year.”
She was unbelievably at ease for someone whose lifework was about to be
weighed. I have shown more nervousness discussing a disputed date with
the honorary secretary of a local historical society.
“Sit down,” she invited; “there’s nothing to do or see till Ace comes.
Ive missed you, Hodge.”
I felt this was a dangerous remark, and wished I’d stayed far away from
the workshop. I hooked my leg over a stool—there were no chairs—and
coughed to hide the fact I was afraid to answer, Ive missed you too;
and afraid not to.
“Tell me about your own work, Hodge. Catty says youre having
difficulties.”
I was faintly annoyed with Catty, but whether for confiding in Barbara
at all or specifically for revealing something unheroic, I didnt
stop to consider. At any rate this annoyance diluted my feeling of
disloyalty for conversing with Barbara at all. Or it may be the old,
long-established bond—I almost wrote, of sympathy, but it was so much
more complex than the word indicates—was reawakened by proximity
and put me in the mood to tell my troubles. It is even possible I
had the altruistic purpose of fortifying Barbara against inevitable
disappointment on a misery-loves-company basis. Be that as it may, I
found myself pouring out the whole story.
She jumped up and took my hands in hers. Her eyes were gray and warm.
“Hodge! It’s wonderful—don’t you see?”
“Oh....” I was completely confused. “I ... uh....”
“The solution. The answer. The means. Look: now you can go back, back
to the past in your own person. You can see everything with your own
eyes instead of relying on accounts of what other people said happened.”
“But ... but—”
“You can verify every fact, study every move, every actor. You can
write history as no one ever did before, for youll be writing as a
witness, yet with the perspective of a different period. Youll be
taking the mind of the present, with its judgment and its knowledge of
the patterns, back to receive the impressions of the past. It almost
seems HX-1 was devised especially for this.”
There was no doubt she believed, that she was really and unselfishly
glad her work could aid mine. I was overcome by pity, helpless
to soften the disillusionment so soon to come and filled with an
irrational hatred of the thing she had built and which was about to
destroy her.
I was saved from having to mask my emotions by the arrival of her
father, Ace, and Midbin. Thomas Haggerwells began tensely, “Barbara,
Ace tells me you intend to try out this—this machine on yourself. I
can’t believe you would be so foolhardy.”
Midbin didnt wait for her to reply. I thought with something of
a shock, Midbin has gotten old; I never noticed it. “Listen to
me. There’s no point now in saying part of your mind realizes the
impossibility of this demonstration and that it’s willing for you to
annihilate yourself in the attempt and so escape from conflicts which
have no resolution. Although it’s something you must be at least partly
aware of. But consider objectively the danger involved in meddling with
unknown natural laws—”
Ace Dorn, who looked as strained as they in contrast to Barbara’s ease,
growled, “Let’s go.”
She smiled reassuringly at us. “Please, Father, don’t worry; there’s no
danger. And Oliver....”
Her smile was almost mischievous and very unlike the Barbara I had
known. “Oliver, HX-1 owes more to you than you will ever know.”
She ducked under the transparent ring and walked to the center of the
floor, glancing up at the reflector, moving an inch or two to stand
directly beneath it. “The controls are already adjusted to minus
fifty-two years and a hundred and fifty-three days,” she informed us
conversationally. “Purely arbitrary. One date is good as another, but
January 1, 1900 is an almost automatic choice. I’ll be gone sixty
seconds. Ready, Ace?”
“Ready.” He had been slowly circling the engines, checking the dials.
He took his place before the largest, the monster in the corner,
holding a watch in his hand. “Three forty-three and ten,” he announced.
Barbara was consulting her own watch. “Three forty-three and ten,” she
confirmed. “Make it at three forty-three and twenty.”
“OK. Good luck.”
“You might at least try it on an animal first,” burst out Midbin, as
Ace twirled the valve under his hand. The transparent ring glowed, the
metal reflector threw back a dazzling light. I blinked. When I opened
my eyes the light was gone and the center of the workshop was empty.
No one moved. Ace frowned over his watch. I stared at the spot where
Barbara had stood. I don’t think my mind was working; I had the feeling
my lungs and heart certainly were not. I was a true spectator, with all
faculties save sight and hearing suspended.
“ ... on an animal first.” Midbin’s voice was querulous.
“Oh, God ...” muttered Thomas Haggerwells.
Ace said casually—too casually, “The return is automatic. Set
beforehand for duration. Thirty more seconds.”
Midbin said, “She is ... this is....” He sat down on a stool and bent
his head almost to his knees.
Mr Haggerwells groaned, “Ace, Ace—you should have stopped her.”
“Ten seconds,” said Ace firmly.
Still I couldnt think with any clarity. She had stood there; then she
was gone. What ...? Midbin was right: we had let her go to destruction.
Certainly more than a minute had passed by now.
The ring glowed and the brilliant light was reflected. “It did, oh, it
did!” Barbara cried. “It did!”
She stood perfectly still, overwhelmed. Then she came out of the
circle and kissed Ace, who patted her gently on the back. I suddenly
noticed the pain of holding my breath and released a tremendous
sigh. Barbara kissed her father and Midbin—who was still shaking his
head—and, after the faintest hesitation, me. Her lips were ice-cold.
The shock of triumph made her voluble. Striding up and down, she spoke
with extraordinary rapidity, without pause, almost a little drunkenly.
In her excitement her words cluttered her tongue; from time to time she
had to go back and repeat a phrase or sentence to make it intelligible.
When the light flashed, she too involuntarily closed her eyes. She had
felt a strange, terrifying weightlessness, an awful disembodiment,
for which she had been unprepared. She thought she had not actually
been unconscious, even for an instant, though she had an impression
of ceasing to exist as a unique collection of memories, and of being
somehow dissolved. Then she had opened her eyes.
At first she was shocked to find the barn as it had been all her life,
abandoned and dusty. Then she realized she had indeed moved through
time; the disappearance of the engines and reflector showed she had
gone back to the unremodelled workshop.
Now she saw the barn was not quite as she had known it, even in her
childhood, for while it was unquestionably abandoned, it had evidently
not long been so. The thick dust was not so thick as she remembered,
the sagging cobwebs not so dense. Straw was still scattered on the
floor; it had not yet been entirely carried away by mice or inquisitive
birds. Alongside the door hung bits of harness beyond repair, some
broken bridles, and a faded calendar on which the ink of the numerals
1897 was still bright.
The minute she had allotted this first voyage seemed fantastically
short and incredibly long. All the paradoxes she had brushed aside as
of no immediate concern now confronted her. Since she had gone back to
a time before she was born, she must have existed as a visitor prior
to her own conception; she could presumably be present during her own
childhood and growth, and by making a second and third visit, multiply
herself as though in facing mirrors, so that an infinite number of
Barbara Haggerwells could occupy a single segment of time.
A hundred other parallel speculations raced through her mind without
interfering with her rapid and insatiable survey of the commonplace
features of the barn, features which could never really be commonplace
to her since they proved all her speculations so victoriously right.
Suddenly she shivered with the bitter cold and burst into
teeth-chattering laughter. She had made such careful plans to visit on
the First of January—and had never thought to take along a warm coat.
She looked at her watch; only twenty seconds had passed. The temptation
to defy her agreement with Ace not to step outside the tiny circle
of HX-1’s operating field on the initial experiment was almost
irresistible. She longed to touch the fabric of the past, to feel
the worn boards of the barn, to handle as well as look. Again her
thoughts whirled with speculation; again the petty moment stretched and
contracted. She spent eternity and instantaneity at once.
Suppose.... But she had a thousand suppositions and questions. Was she
really herself in the flesh, or in some mental projection? A pinch
would do no good; that might be projection also. Would she be visible
to the people of the time, or was she a ghost from the future? Oh,
there was so much to learn, so much to encounter!
When the moment of return came, she again experienced the feeling of
dissolution, followed immediately by the light. When she opened her
eyes she was back.
Midbin rubbed his belly and then his thinning hair. “Hallucination,” he
propounded at last; “a logical, consistent hallucination. Answer to an
overriding wish.”
“You mean Barbara was never gone?” asked Ace. “Was she visible to
you—or Mr H or Hodge—during that minute?”
“Illusion,” said Midbin; “group illusion brought on by suggestion and
anxiety.”
“Nonsense,” exclaimed Barbara. “Unless youre accusing Ace and me of
faking youll have to account for what you just called the logical
consistency of it. Your group illusion and my individual hallucination
fitting so neatly together.”
Midbin recovered some of his poise. “The two phenomena are separate,
connected only by some sort of emotional hypnosis. Certainly your
daydream of having been back in 1900 is an emotionally induced
aberration.”
“And your daydream that I wasn’t here for a minute?”
“The eyes are quickly affected by the feelings. Note tears, ‘seeing
red’ and so forth.”
“Very well, Oliver. The only thing to do is to let you try HX-1
yourself.”
“Hay, my turn’s supposed to be next,” protested Ace.
“Of course. But no one is going to use it again today. Tomorrow
morning. Bring Catty, Hodge, if she wants to come, but please don’t
say anything to anyone else till weve made further demonstrations,
otherwise we’ll be besieged by fellows wanting to take short jaunts
into popular years.”
I had little inclination to discuss what had happened with anyone, even
Catty. Not that I shared Midbin’s theory of nothing material having
taken place; I knew I’d not seen Barbara for sixty seconds and I was
convinced her account of them was accurate. What confused me was the
shock to my preconceptions involved in her proof. If time and space,
matter and energy were the same, as fog and ice and water are the same,
then I—the physical I at least—and Catty, the world and the universe
must be, as Enfandin had insisted, mere illusion. In that sense Midbin
had been right.
I went furtively to the workshop next day without telling Catty, as
though we were all engaged in some dark necromancy, some sacrilegious
rite. Apparently I was the only one who had spent an anxious night; Mr
Haggerwells looked proud, Barbara looked satisfied, Ace cocky, and even
Midbin, for no understandable reason, benign.
“All here?” inquired Ace. “I’m eager as a fox in a hen-house. Three
minutes in 1885. Why 1885? I don’t know; a year when nothing much
happened, I suppose. Ready, Barbara?”
He returned to report he had found the barn well occupied by both
cattle and fowl, and been scared stiff of discovery when the dogs set
up a furious barking.
“That pretty well settles the question of corporeal presence,” I
remarked.
“Not at all,” said Mr Haggerwells unexpectedly. “Dogs are notoriously
psychic.”
“Ah,” cried Ace, bringing his hands from behind his back; “look at
this. I could hardly have picked it up with psychic feelers.”
“This” was a newlaid egg, sixty-seven years old. Or was it? Trips in
time are confusing that way.
Barbara was upset, more than I thought warranted. “Oh, Ace, how could
you be so foolish? We darent be anything but spectators, as unseen as
possible.”
“Why? Ive a notion to court my grandmother and wind up as my own
grandfather.”
“Don’t be stupid. The faintest indication of our presence, the
slightest impingement on the past, may change the whole course of
events. We have no way of knowing what actions have no consequences—if
there can be any. Goodness knows what your idiocy with the egg has
done. It’s absolutely essential not to betray ourselves in any way.
Please remember this in future.”
“You mean, ‘Remember this in past,’ don’t you?”
“Ace, this isnt a joke.”
“It isn’t a wake either. I can’t see the harm in bringing back tangible
proof. Loss of one egg isnt going to send the prices up for 1885
and cause retroactive inflation. Youre making a mountain out of a
molehill—or an omelette out of a single egg.”
She shrugged helplessly. “Oliver, I hope you won’t be so foolish.”
“Since I don’t expect to arrive in, say, 1820, I can safely promise
neither to steal eggs nor court Ace’s female ancestors.”
He was gone for five minutes. The barn had apparently not yet been
built in 1820 and he found himself on a slight rise in a field of wild
hay. The faint snick of scythes, and voices not too far off, indicated
mowers. He dropped to the ground. His view of the past was restricted
to tall grass and some persistent ants who explored his face and hands
until the time was up and he returned with broken spears of ripe hay
clinging to his clothes.
“At least that’s what I imagined I saw,” he concluded.
“Did you imagine these?” asked Ace, pointing to the straws.
“Probably. It’s at least as likely as time-travel.”
“But what about corroboration? Your experience, and Barbara’s and Ace’s
confirm each other. Doesnt that mean anything?”
“Certainly. Only I’m not prepared to say what. The mind can do
anything; anything at all. Create boils and cancers. Why not ants and
grass? I don’t know. I don’t know....”
After more fruitless argument, he and I left the workshop. I was again
reminded of Enfandin—Why should I believe my eyes? I felt though that
Midbin was carrying skepticism beyond rational limits; Barbara’s case
was proved.
“Yes, yes,” he answered when I said this. “Why not?”
I puzzled over his reply. Then he added abruptly, “No one can help her
now.”
_18._ _THE WOMAN TEMPTED ME_
Gently, Catty said, “Ive never understood why you cut yourself off from
the past the way you have, Hodge.”
“Ay? What do you mean?”
“Well, youve not communicated with your father or mother since you left
home, fourteen years ago. You say you had a dear friend in the man from
Haiti, yet youve never tried to find out whether he lived or died.”
“Oh, that way. I thought you meant ... something different.” By not
taking advantage of Barbara’s offer I certainly was cutting myself off
from the past.
“Yes?”
“Well, I guess more or less everyone at the haven has done the same
thing. Let outside ties grow weak, I mean. You for one—”
“But I have no parents, no friends anywhere else. All my life is here.”
“Well, so is mine.”
“Ah, dear Hodge; it is unlike you to be so indifferent.”
“Catty darling, you were brought up comfortably in an atmosphere
knowing nothing of indenting or sharecropping, of realizing the only
escape from wretchedness was in a miracle—usually translated as a
winning number in the lottery. I can’t convey to you the meaning of
utterly loveless surroundings, I can only say that affection was a
luxury my mother and father couldnt afford.”
“Perhaps not; but you can afford it. Now. And nothing of what you have
said applies to Enfandin.”
I squirmed shamefacedly. My ingratitude and callousness must be
apparent to everyone; even Barbara, I remembered, had once asked me
much the same questions Catty asked now. How could I explain, even to
my own satisfaction, how procrastination and guilt made it impossible
for me to take the simple steps to discover what had happened to my
friend? By a tremendous effort I might have broken through the inertia
years ago, just after Enfandin had been wounded, but each day and month
between confirmed the impossibility more strongly. “Let the past take
care of itself,” I muttered.
“Oh Hodge! What a thing for an historian to say.”
“Catty, I can’t.”
The conversation made me nervous and fidgetty. It also made me remember
much I preferred to let fade: the Grand Army, Sprovis, the counterfeit
pesetas.... All the evil I had unwillingly abetted. If a man did
nothing, literally nothing, all his life, then he might be free of
culpability. Manichaeism, said Enfandin. No absolution.
My idleness, I knew very well, heightened all these feelings of
degradation. Were I able to continue in the happy, cocksure way I
had gone about my note-gathering and the writing of volume one, I
would have neither the time nor susceptibility to be plagued by this
disquiet. As it was I seemed to be able to do nothing but act as
audience for what was going on in the workshop.
With childish eagerness Barbara and Ace explored HX-1’s possibilities
for the next two months. They quickly learned that its range was
limited to little more than a century, though this limit was subject
to slight variations. When they tried to operate beyond this range
the translation simply didnt take place, though the same feeling of
dissolution occurred. When the light faded they were still in the
present. Midbin’s venture into the hayfield had been a freak, possibly
due to peculiar weather conditions at both ends of the journey. They
set 1850 as a safe limit, with an undefined marginal zone further back
which was not to be hazarded lest conditions change during the journey
and the traveler be lost.
Why this limit existed at all was a matter of dispute between them,
a dispute of which I must admit I understood little. Barbara spoke
of subjective factors which seemed to mean that HX-1 worked slightly
differently in the case of each person it transported; Ace of magnetic
fields and power relays, which didnt mean anything to me at all. The
only thing they agreed on was that the barrier was not immutable; HX-2
or 3 or 20, if they were ever built, would undoubtedly overcome it.