for similar reasons, whatever they were. Here again they disputed, Ace
holding an HX could be built for this purpose, Barbara insisting that
new equations would have to be worked out.
They confirmed their tentative theory that time spent in the past
consumed an equal amount of time in the present; they could not return
to a point a minute after departure when they had been gone for an
hour. As near as I could understand, this was because duration was
set in the present. In order to come back to a time-point not in
correspondence with the period actually spent, another HX, or at least
another set of controls, would have to be taken into the past. And then
they would not work since HX-1 could not penetrate the future.
The most inconvenient circumscription was the inability of one person
to visit the same past moment twice. When the attempt was made the
feeling of dissolution did not occur, the light went on and off with no
effect upon the would-be traveler standing beneath it. Here Barbara’s
“subjective factor” was triumphant, but why, or how it worked, they
did not know. Nor did they know what would happen to a traveler who
attempted to overlap by being already on the spot prior to a previous
visit; it was too dangerous to try.
Within these limits they roamed almost at will. Ace spent a full
week in October 1896, walking as far as Philadelphia, enjoying the
enthusiasm and fury of the presidential campaign. Knowing President
Bryan was not only going to be elected, but would serve three terms,
he found it hard indeed to obey Barbara’s stricture and not cover
confident Whig bets on Major McKinley.
Though both sampled the war years they brought back nothing useful to
me, no information or viewpoint I couldnt have got from any of a score
of books. Lacking historians’ interests or training, their tidbits were
those of curious onlookers, not probing chroniclers. It was tantalizing
to know that Barbara had seen Secretary Stanton at the York depot or
that Ace had overheard a farmer say casually that Southron scouts
had stopped at his place the day before and they had thought neither
incident worth investigating further.
I grew increasingly fretful. I held long colloquies with myself which
always ended inconclusively. _Why not?_ I asked. _Surely this is the
unique opportunity. Never before has it been possible for an historian
to check back at will, to select a particular moment for personal
scrutiny, to write of the past with the detachment of the present and
the accuracy of an eyewitness knowing specifically what to look for.
Why don’t you take advantage of HX-1 and see for yourself?_
Against this I objected—what? Fear? Uneasiness? The “subjective factor”
in HX-1? The superstitious notion that I might be tampering with a
taboo, with matters forbidden to human shortcomings? _You mustnt try
any shortcuts. Promise me that, Hodge._ Well, Catty was a darling. She
was my beloved wife, but she was neither scholar nor oracle. On what
grounds did she protest? Woman’s intuition? A respectable phrase, but
what did it mean? And didnt Barbara, who first suggested my using HX-1,
have womanly intuition also?
A half-dozen times I tried to steer our talk in the direction of my
thoughts; each time I allowed the words to drift to another topic. What
was the use of upsetting her? _Promise me that, Hodge._ But I had not
promised. This was something I had to settle for myself.
What was I afraid of? Because I’d never grasped anything to do with
the physical sciences did I attribute some anthropomorphism to their
manifestations and like a savage fear the spirit imprisoned in what I
didnt understand? (But HX-1 _did_ have subjective factors.) I had never
thought of myself as hidebound, but I was acting like a ninety-yearold
professor asked to use a typewriter instead of a goose quill.
I recalled Tyss’s, “You are the spectator type, Hodgins.” And once
I had called him out of my memory I couldnt escape his familiar,
sardonic, interminable argument. _Why are you fussing yourself,
Hodgins? What is the point of all this introspective debate? Don’t
you know your choice has already been made? And that you have acted
according to it an infinite number of times and will do so an infinite
number of times again? Relax, Hodgins; you have nothing to worry about.
Free will is an illusion; you cannot alter what you are about to decide
under the impression that you have decided._
My reaction to this imagined interjection was frenzied, unreasonable. I
cursed Tyss and his damnable philosophy. I cursed the insidiousness of
his reasoning which had planted seed in my brain to sprout at a moment
like this.
Yet in spite of the violence of my rejection of the words I attributed
to Tyss, I accepted one of them. I relaxed. The decision had been made.
Not by mechanistic forces, nor by blind response to stimulus, but by my
own desire.
And now to my aid came the image of Tyss’s antithesis, René Enfandin.
_Be a skeptic, Hodge; be always the skeptic. Prove all things; hold
fast to that which is true. Joking Pilate, asking,_ What is truth? _was
blind. But you can see more aspects of the absolute truth than any man
has had a chance to see before. Can you use the chance well, Hodge?
That is the only question._
Once I could answer it with a vigorous affirmative, and so buttress the
determination to go, I was faced with the problem of telling Catty. I
could not shut her out of so important a move. I told myself I could
not bear the thought of her anxiety; that she would worry despite
the fact others had frequently used HX-1, for my object could not be
accomplished in a matter of minutes or hours. I was sure she would be
sick with apprehension during the days I would be gone. No doubt this
was all true, but I also remembered, _Promise me, Hodge_....
I finally took the weak, the ineffective course. I said I’d decided
the only way to face my problem was to go to Gettysburg and spend
three or four days going over the actual field. Here, I explained
unconvincingly, I thought I might at last come to the conclusion
whether to scrap all my work and start afresh, or not.
Her faintly oblique eyes were inscrutable. She pretended to believe me
and begged me to take her along. After all, we had spent our honeymoon
on battlefields.
Would it be possible? Two people had never stood under the reflector
together, but surely it would work? I was tempted, but I could not
subject Catty to the risk, however slight. Besides, how could I explain?
“But Catty, with you there I’d be thinking of you instead of the
problem.”
“Ah, Hodge, have we already been married so long you must get away from
me to think?”
“No matter how long, that time will never come. Perhaps I’m wrong,
Catty. It’s just a feeling I have.”
Her look was tragic with understanding. “You must do as you think
right. Don’t ... don’t be gone too long, my dear.”
I dressed in clothes I often used for walking trips, clothes which bore
no mark of any fashion and might pass as current wear among the poorer
classes in any era of the past hundred years. I put a packet of dried
beef in my pocket and started for the workshop.
As soon as I left the cottage I laughed at my hypersensitivity, at
all the to-do I’d made over lying to Catty. This was but the first
excursion; I planned others for the months after Gettysburg. There was
no reason why she shouldnt accompany me on them. I grew lighthearted as
my conscience eased and I even congratulated myself on my skill in not
having told a single technical falsehood to Catty. I began to whistle,
never a habit of mine, as I made my way along the path to the workshop.
Barbara was alone. Her ginger hair gleamed in the light of a gas globe;
her eyes were green as they always were when she was exultant. “Well,
Hodge?”
“Well, Barbara, I....”
“Have you told Catty?”
“Not exactly. How did you know?”
“I knew before you did, Hodge. After all, we’re not strangers. All
right. How long do you want to stay?”
“Four days.”
“That’s long for a first trip. Don’t you think you’d better try a few
sample minutes?”
“Why? Ive seen you and Ace go often enough and heard your accounts.
I’ll take care of myself. Have you got it down fine enough yet so you
can invariably pick the hour of arrival?”
“Hour and minute,” she answered confidently. “What’ll it be?”
“About midnight of June 30, 1863,” I answered. “I want to come back on
the night of July Fourth.”
“Youll have to be more exact than that. For the return, I mean. The
dials are set on seconds.”
“All right, make it midnight going and coming then.”
“Have you a watch that keeps perfect time?”
“I don’t know about perfect—”
“Take this one. It’s synchronized with the master control clock.” She
handed me a large, rather awkward timepiece which had two independent
faces side by side. “We had a couple made like this; the duplicate
dials were useful before we were able to control HX-1 so exactly. One
shows 1952 Haggershaven time.”
“Ten thirty-three and fourteen seconds,” I said.
“Yes. The other will show 1863 time. You won’t be able to reset the
first dial—but for goodness sake remember to keep it wound—and set the
second for ... 11:54, zero. That means in six minutes youll leave, to
arrive at midnight. Remember to keep that one wound too, for youll
go by that regardless of variations in local clocks. Whatever else
happens, be in the center of the barn at midnight—allow yourself some
leeway—by midnight, July Fourth. I don’t want to have to go wandering
around 1863 looking for you.”
“You won’t. I’ll be here.”
“Five minutes. Now then, food.”
“I have some,” I answered, slapping my pocket.
“Not enough. Take this concentrated chocolate along. I suppose it
won’t hurt to drink the water if youre not observed, but avoid their
food. One never knows what chain might be started by the casual
theft—or purchase, if you had enough old coins—of a loaf of bread. The
possibilities are limitless and frightening. Listen: how can I impress
on you the importance of doing nothing that could possibly change the
future—our present? I’m sure to this day Ace doesnt understand, and I
tremble every moment he spends in the past. The most trivial action
may begin a series of disastrous consequences. Don’t be seen, don’t be
heard. Make your trip as a ghost.”
“Barbara, I promise I’ll neither assassinate General Lee nor give the
North the idea of a modern six-barreled cannon.”
“Four minutes. It’s not a joke, Hodge.”
“Believe me,” I said, “I understand.”
She looked at me searchingly. Then she shook her head and began making
her round of the engines, adjusting the dials. I slid under the
glass ring as I’d so often seen her do and stood casually under the
reflector. I was not in the least nervous. I don’t think I was even
particularly excited.
“Three minutes,” said Barbara.
I patted my breast pocket. Notebook, pencils. I nodded.
She ducked under the ring and came toward me. “Hodge....”
“Yes?”
She put her arms on my shoulders, leaning forward. I kissed her, a
little absently. “Clod!”
I looked at her closely, but there were none of the familiar signs of
anger. “A minute to go, it says here,” I told her.
She drew away and went back. “All set. Ready?”
“Ready,” I answered cheerfully. “See you midnight, July Fourth, 1863.”
“Right. Goodbye, Hodge. Glad you didnt tell Catty.”
The expression on her face was the strangest I’d ever seen her wear. I
could not, then or now, quite interpret it. Doubt, malice, suffering,
vindictiveness, entreaty, love, were all there as her hand moved the
switch. I began to answer something—perhaps to bid her wait—then the
light made me blink and I too experienced the shattering feeling of
transition. My bones seemed to fly from each other; every cell in my
body exploded to the ends of space.
The instant of translation was so brief it is hard to believe all the
multitude of impressions occurred simultaneously. I was sure my veins
were drained of blood, my brain and eyeballs dropped into a bottomless
void, my thoughts pressed to the finest powder and blown a universe
away. Most of all, I knew the awful sensation of being, for that tiny
fragment of time, not Hodgins McCormick Backmaker, but part of an _I_
in which the I that was me merged all identity.
Then I opened my eyes. I was emotionally shaken; my knees and wrists
were watery points of helplessness, but I was alive and functioning,
with my individuality unimpaired. The light had vanished. I was in
darkness save for faint moonlight coming through the cracks in the
barn. The sweetish smell of cattle was in my nostrils, and the slow,
ponderous stamp of hooves in my ears. I had gone back through time.
_19._ _GETTYSBURG_
The barking of the dogs was frenzied, filled with the hoarse note
indicating they had been raising the alarm for a long time without
being heeded. I knew they must have been baying at the alien smells
of soldiers for the past day, so I was not apprehensive that their
scent of me would bring investigation. How Barbara and Ace had escaped
detection on journeys which didnt coincide with abnormal events was
beyond me; with such an unnerving racket in prospect I would either
have given up the trips or moved the apparatus.
Strange, I reflected, that the cows and horses were undisturbed. That
no hysterical chicken leaped from the roost in panic. Only the dogs
scented my unnatural presence. Dogs who, as Mr Haggerwells remarked,
are supposed to sense things beyond the perceptions of man.
Warily I picked my way past the livestock and out of the barn,
fervently hoping the dogs were tied, for I had no mind to start my
adventure by being bitten. Barbara’s warnings seemed inadequate
indeed; one would think she or Ace might have devised some method of
neutralizing the infernal barking. But of course they could hardly do
so without violating her rule of non-interference.
Once out on the familiar Hanover road every petty feeling of doubt or
disquiet fell away and all the latent excitement took hold of me. I was
gloriously in 1863, half a day and some thirty miles from the battle
of Gettysburg. If there is a paradise for historians I had achieved it
without the annoyance of dying first. I swung along at a good pace,
thankful I had trained myself for long tramps, so that thirty miles in
less than ten hours was no monstrous feat. The noise of the dogs died
away behind me and I breathed the night air joyfully.
I had already decided I dared not attempt to steal a ride on the
railroad, even supposing the cars were going through. As I turned off
the Hanover road and took the direct one to Gettysburg, I knew I would
not be able to keep on it for any length of time. Part of Early’s
Confederate division was moving along it from recently occupied York;
Stuart’s cavalry was all around; trifling skirmishes were being fought
on or near it; Union troops, regulars as well as the militia called
out by Governor Curtin for the emergency, were behind and ahead of me,
marching for the Monocacy and Cemetery Ridge.
Leaving the highway would hardly slow me down, for I knew every
sideroad, lane, path or shortcut, not only as they existed in my day,
but as they had been in the time where I was now. I was going to need
this knowledge even more on my return, for on the Fourth of July this
road, like every other, would be glutted with beaten Northern troops,
supplies and wounded left behind, frantically trying to reorganize as
they were harassed by Stuart’s cavalry and pressed by the victorious
men of Hill, Longstreet, and Ewell. It was with this in mind I had
allowed disproportionately longer for coming back.
I saw my first soldier a few miles further on, a jagged shadow sitting
by the roadside with his boots off, massaging his feet. I guessed him
Northern from his kepi, but this was not conclusive, for many Southron
regiments wore kepis also. I struck off quietly into the field and
skirted around him. He never looked up.
At dawn I estimated I was halfway, and except for the sight of that
single soldier I might have been taking a nocturnal stroll through a
countryside at peace. I was tired but certainly not worn out, and I
knew I could count on nervous energy and happy excitement to keep me
going long after my muscles began to protest. Progress would be slower
from now on—Confederate infantry must be just ahead—even so, I should
be at Gettysburg by six or seven.
The sudden drumming of hooves brushed me off the dusty pike and
petrified me into rigidity as a troop dressed in gray and dirty tan
galloped by screaming, “Eeeeee-yeeee” exultantly. The gritty cloud they
stirred up settled slowly; I felt the particles sting my face and eyes.
It would be the sideroads from now on, I determined.
Others had the same impulse; the sideroads were well populated.
Although I knew the movement of every division and of many regiments,
and even had some considerable idea of the civilian dislocation, the
picture around me was jumbled and turbulent. Farmers, merchants,
workers in overalls rode or tramped eastward; others, identical in
dress and obvious intensity of effort, pushed westward. I passed
carriages and carts with women and children traveling at various
speeds both ways. Squads and companies of blue-clad troops marched
along the roads or through the fields, trampling the crops, a confused
sound of singing, swearing, or aimless talk hanging above them like a
fog. Spaced by pacific intervals, men in gray or butternut, otherwise
indistinguishable, marched in the same direction. I decided I could
pass unnoticed in the milling crowds.
It is not easy for the historian, ten, fifty or five hundred years away
from an event, to put aside for a moment the large concepts of currents
and forces, or the mechanical aids of statistics, charts, maps, neat
plans and diagrams in which the migration of men, women and children is
indicated by an arrow, or a brigade of half-terrified, half-heroic men
becomes a neat little rectangle. It is not easy to see behind source
material, to visualize state papers, reports, letters, diaries as
written by men who spent most of their lives sleeping, eating, yawning,
eliminating, squeezing blackheads, lusting, looking out of windows,
or talking about nothing in general with no one in particular. We are
too impressed with the pattern revealed to us—or which we think has
been revealed to us—to remember that for the participants history is a
haphazard affair, apparently aimless, produced by human beings whose
concern is essentially with the trivial and irrelevant. The historian
is always conscious of destiny. The participants rarely—or mistakenly.
So to be set down in the midst of crisis, to be at once involved and
apart, is to experience a constant series of shocks against which there
is no anesthetic. The soldiers, the stragglers, the refugees, the farm
boys shouting at horses, the tophatted gentlemen cursing the teamsters,
the teamsters cursing back; the looters, pimps, gamblers, whores,
nurses and newspapermen were indisputably what they appeared: vitally
important to themselves, of little interest to anyone else. Yet at the
same time they were a paragraph, a page, a chapter, a whole series of
volumes.
I’m sure I was faithful to the spirit if not the letter of Barbara’s
warnings, and that none of the hundreds whom I passed or who passed
me noted my presence, except cursorily. I, on the other hand, had to
repress the constant temptation to peer into every face for signs which
could not tell me what fortune or misfortune the decision of the next
three days would bring to it.
A few miles from town the crowded disorder became even worse, for the
scouts from Ewell’s Corps, guarding the Confederate left flank on the
York Road, acted like a cork in a bottle. Because I, unlike the other
travelers, knew this, I cut sharply south to get back on the circuitous
Hanover road I had left shortly after midnight, and crossing the bridge
over Rock Creek, stumbled into Gettysburg.
The two and a half storey brick houses with their purplish slate roofs
were placid and charming in the hot July sun. A valiant rooster pecked
at horsedung in the middle of the street heedless of the swarming
soldiers, any of whom might take a notion for roast chicken. Privates
in the black hats of the Army of the Potomac, cavalrymen with wide
yellow stripes and cannoneers with red ones on the seams of their
pants, swaggered importantly. Lieutenants with hands resting gracefully
on sword hilts, captains with arms thrust in unbuttoned tunics,
colonels smoking cigars, all moved back and forth across the street,
out of and into houses and stores, each clearly intent on some business
which would affect the course of the war. Now and then a general
rode his horse through the crowd, slowly and thoughtfully, oppressed
by the cares of rank. Soldiers spat, leered at an occasional woman,
sat dolefully on handy stoops, or marched smartly toward an unknown
destination. On the courthouse staff the flag hung doubtfully in the
limp summer air. Every so often there was a noise like poorly organized
thunder.
Imitating the adaptable infantrymen, I found an unoccupied stoop and
sat down after a curious glance at the house, wondering whether it
contained someone whose letters or diaries I had read. Drawing out
my packet of dried beef, I munched away without taking any of my
attention from the sights and sounds and smells around me. Only I knew
how desperately these soldiers would fight this afternoon and all day
tomorrow. I alone knew how they would be caught in the inescapable trap
on July Third and finally routed, to begin the last act of the war.
That major, I thought, so proud of his new-won golden oak leaves, may
have an arm or leg shot off vainly defending Culp’s Hill; that sergeant
over there may lie faceless under an apple tree before nightfall.
Soon these men would be swept away from the illusory shelter of the
houses and out onto the ridges where they would be pounded into defeat
and disaster. There was nothing for me now in Gettysburg itself, though
I could have spent days absorbing the color and feeling. Already I
had tempted fate by my casual appearance in the heart of town. At any
moment someone might speak to me, to ask for a light or a direction; an
ill-considered word or action of mine might change, with ever-widening
consequences, the course of the future. I had been foolish enough long
enough; it was time for me to go to the vantage point I had decided
upon and observe without peril of being observed.
I rose and stretched, my bones protesting. But a couple of miles
more would see me clear of all danger of chance encounter with a too
friendly or inquisitive soldier or civilian. I gave a last look,
trying to impress every detail on my memory, and turned south on the
Emmitsburg Road.
This was no haphazard choice. I knew where and when the crucial, the
decisive move upon which all the other moves depended would take place.
While thousands of men were struggling and dying on other parts of the
battleground, a Confederate advance force, unnoticed, disregarded,
would occupy the position which would eventually dominate the scene
and win the battle—and the war—for the South. Heavy with knowledge no
one else possessed I made my way toward a farm on which there was a
wheatfield and a peach orchard.
_20._ _BRING THE JUBILEE_
A great battle in its first stages is as tentative, uncertain, and
indefinite as a courtship just begun. At the beginning the ground was
there for either side to take without protest; the other felt no surge
of possessive jealousy. I walked unscathed along the Emmitsburg Road;
on my left I knew there were Union forces concealed, on my right the
Southrons maneuvered. In a few hours, to walk between the lines would
mean instant death, but now the declaration had not been made, the
vows had not been finally exchanged. It was still possible for either
party to withdraw; no furious heat bound the two indissolubly together.
I heard the periodic shell and the whine of a minie bullet; mere
flirtatious gestures so far.
Despite the hot sun the grass was cool and lush. The shade in the
orchard was velvety. From a low branch I picked a near ripe peach and
sucked the wry juice. I sprawled on the earth and waited. For miles
around, men from Maine and Wisconsin, from Georgia and North Carolina,
assumed the same attitude. But I knew for what I was waiting; they
could only guess.