"One more to go."
George Hanmer paused dramatically and stared around ... at the opposition benches, at the Speaker on the woolsack, at the silver mace on a crimson cushion before the Speaker's chair. The entire House of Parliament, hypnotized by Hanmer's fiery oratory, waited breathlessly for him to continue.
"I can say no more," Hanmer said at last. His voice was choked with emotion. His face was blanched and grim. "I will fight for this bill at the beachheads. I will fight in the cities, the towns, the fields and the hamlets. I will fight for this bill to the death and, God willing, I will fight for it after death. Whether this be a challenge or a prayer, let the consciences of the right honorable gentlemen determine; but of one thing I am sure and determined: England must own the Suez Canal."
Hanmer sat down. The house exploded. Through the cheering and applause he made his way out into the division lobby where Gladstone, Churchill and Pitt stopped him to shake his hand. Lord Palmers ton eyed him coldly, but Pam was shouldered aside by Disraeli who limped up, all enthusiasm, all admiration.
"We'll have a bite at Tattersall's," Dizzy said. "My car's waiting."
Lady Beaconfield was in the Rolls Royce outside the Houses of Parliament. She pinned a primrose on Dizzy's lapel and patted Hanmer's cheek affectionately.
"You've come a long way from the schoolboy who used to bully Dizzy, Georgie," she said.
Hanmer laughed. Dizzy sang: "Gaudeamus igitur . . ." and Hanmer chanted the ancient scholastic song until they reached Tattersall's. There Dizzy ordered Guinness and grilled bones while Hanmer went upstairs in the club to change.
For no reason at all he had the impulse to go back for a last look. Perhaps he hated to break with his past completely. He divested himself of his surtout, nankeen waistcoat, pepper and salt trousers, polished Hessians and undergarments. He put on a gray shirt and gray trousers and disappeared.
He reappeared in Ward T of the St. Albans hospital where he was rendered unconscious by 1 1/2 cc of sodium thiomorphate.
"That's three," somebody said.
"Take 'em to Carpenter”
So there they sat in General Carpenter's office, PFC Nathan Riley, M/Sgt Lela Machan, and Corp/2 George Hanmer. They were in their hospital grays. They were torpid with sodium thiomorphate.
The office had been cleared and it blazed with light. Present were experts from Espionage, Counter-Espionage, Security and Central Intelligence. When Captain Edsel Dimmock saw the steel-faced ruthless squad awaiting the patients and himself, he started. General Carpenter smiled grimly.
"Didn't occur to you that we mightn't buy your disappearance story, eh Dimmock?"
"S-Sir?"
"I'm an expert too, Dimmock. I'll spell it out for you. The war's going badly. Very badly. There've been intelligence leaks. The St. Albans mess might point to you."
"B-But they do disappear, sir. I—"
"My experts want to talk to you and your patients about this disappearing act, Dimmock. They'll start with you."
The experts worked over Dimmock with preconscious softeners, id releases and superego blocks. They tried every truth serum in the books and every form of physical and mental pressure. They brought Dimmock, squealing, to the breaking point three times, but there was nothing to break.
"Let him stew for now," Carpenter said. "Get on to the . patients."
The experts appeared reluctant to apply pressure to the sick men and the woman.
"For God's sake, don't be squeamish," Carpenter raged. "We're fighting a war for civilization. We've got to protect our ideals no matter what the price. Get to it!"
The experts from Espionage, Counter-Espionage, Security and Central Intelligence got to it. Like three candles, PFC Nathan Riley, M/Sgt Lela Machan and Corp/2 George Hanmer snuffed out and disappeared. One moment they were seated in chairs surrounded by violence. The next moment they were not.
The experts gasped. General Carpenter did the handsome thing. He stalked to Dimmock. "Captain Dimmock, I apologize. Colonel Dimmock, you've been promoted for making an important discovery . . . only what the hell does it mean? We've got to check ourselves first."
Carpenter snapped up the intercom. "Get me a combat-shock expert and an alienist."
The two experts entered and were briefed. They examined the witnesses. They considered.
"You're all suffering from a mild case of shock," the combat-shock expert said. "War jitters."
"You mean we didn't see them disappear?"
The shock expert shook his head and glanced at the alienist who also shook his head.
"Mass illusion," the alienist said.
At that moment PFC Riley, M/Sgt Machan and Corp/2 Hanmer reappeared. One moment they were a mass illusion; the next, they were back sitting in their chairs surrounded by confusion.
"Dope 'em again, Dimmock," Carpenter cried. "Give 'em a gallon." He snapped up his intercom. "I want every expert we've got. Emergency meeting in my office at once."
Thirty-seven experts, hardened and sharpened tools all, inspected the unconscious shock cases and discussed them for three hours. Certain facts were obvious: This must be a new fantastic syndrome brought on by the new and fantastic horrors of the war. As combat technique develops, the response of victims of this technique must also take new roads. For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. Agreed.
This new syndrome must involve some aspects of teleportation . . . the power of mind over space. Evidently combat shock, while destroying certain known powers of the mind must develop other latent powers hitherto unknown. Agreed.
Obviously, the patients must only be able to return to the point of departure, otherwise they would not continue to return to Ward T nor would they have returned to General Carpenter's office. Agreed.
Obviously, the patients must be able to procure food and sleep wherever they go, since neither was required in Ward T. Agreed.
"One small point," Colonel Dimmock said. "They seem to be returning to Ward T less frequently. In the beginning they would come and go every day or so. Now most of them stay away for weeks and hardly ever return."
"Never mind that," Carpenter said. "Where do they go?"
"Do they teleport behind the enemy lines?" someone asked. "There's those intelligence leaks."
"I want Intelligence to check," Carpenter snapped. "Is the enemy having similar difficulties with, say, prisoners of war who appear and disappear from their POW camps? They might be some of ours from Ward T."
"They might simply be going home," Colonel Dim-mock suggested.
"I want Security to check," Carpenter ordered. "Cover the home life and associations of every one of those twenty-four disappeared. Now . . . about our operations in Ward T. Colonel Dimmock has a plan."
"We'll set up six extra beds in Ward T," Edsel Dimmock explained. "We'll send in six experts to live there and observe. Information must be picked up indirectly from the patients. They're catatonic and nonresponsive when conscious, and incapable of answering questions when drugged."
"Gentlemen," Carpenter summed it up. "This is the greatest potential weapon in the history of warfare. I don't have to tell you what it can mean to us to be able to teleport an entire army behind enemy lines. We can win the war for the American Dream in one day if we can win this secret hidden in those shattered minds. We must win!"
The experts hustled, Security checked, Intelligence probed. Six hardened and sharpened tools moved into Ward T in St. Albans Hospital and slowly got acquainted with the disappearing patients who reappeared less and less frequently. The tension increased.
Security was able to report that not one case of strange appearance had taken place in America in the past year. Intelligence reported that the enemy did not seem to be having similar difficulties with their own shock cases or with POWs.
Carpenter fretted. "This is all brand new. We've got no specialists to handle it. We've got to develop new tools." He snapped up his intercom. "Get me a college," he said.
They got him Yale.
"I want some experts in mind over matter. Develop them," Carpenter ordered. Yale at once introduced three graduate courses in Thaumaturgy, Extrasensory Perception and Telekinesis.
The first break came when one of the Ward T experts requested the assistance of another expert. He needed a Lapidary.
"What the hell for?" Carpenter wanted to know.
"He picked up a reference to a gem stone," Colonel Dimmock explained. "He's a personnel specialist and he can't relate it to anything in his experience."
"And he's not supposed to," Carpenter said approvingly. "A job for every man and every man on the job." He flipped up the intercom. "Get me a Lapidary."
An expert Lapidary was given leave of absence from the army arsenal and asked to identify a type of diamond called Jim Brady. He could not.
"We'll try it from another angle," Carpenter said. He snapped up his intercom. "Get me a Semanticist."
The Semanticist left his desk in the War Propaganda Department but could make nothing of the words Jim Brady. They were names to him. No more. He suggested a Genealogist.
A Genealogist was given one day's leave from his post with the Un-American Ancestors Committee but could make nothing of the name Brady beyond the fact that it had been a common name in America for five hundred years. He suggested an Archaeologist.
An Archaeologist was released from the Cartography Division of Invasion Command and instantly identified the name Diamond Jim Brady. It was a historic personage who had been famous in the city of Little Old New York some time between Governor Peter Stuyvesant and Governor Fiorello La Guardia.
"Christ!" Carpenter marveled. "That's ages ago. Where the hell did Nathan Riley get that? You'd better join the experts in Ward T and follow this up."
The Archaeologist followed it up, checked his references and sent in his report. Carpenter read it and was stunned. He called an emergency meeting of his staff of experts.
"Gentlemen," he announced, "Ward T is something bigger than teleportation. Those shock patients are doing something far more incredible ... far more meaningful. Gentlemen, they're traveling through time."
The staff rustled uncertainly. Carpenter nodded emphatically.
"Yes, gentlemen. Time travel is here. It has not arrived the way we expected it ... as a result of expert research by qualified specialists; it has come as a plague ... an infection ... a disease of the war ... a result of combat injury to ordinary men. Before I continue, look through these reports for documentation."
The staff read the stenciled sheets. PFC Nathan Riley . . . disappearing into the early twentieth century in New York; M/Sgt Lela Machan . . . visiting the first century in Rome; Corp/2 George Hanmer . . . journeying into the nineteenth century in England. And all the rest of the twenty-four patients, escaping the turmoil and horrors of modern war in the twenty-second century by fleeing to Venice and the Doges, to Jamaica and the buccaneers, to China and the Han Dynasty, to Norway and Eric the Red, to any place and any time in the world.
"I needn't point out the colossal significance of this discovery," General Carpenter pointed out. "Think what it would mean to the war if we could send an army back in time a week or a month or a year. We could win the war before it started. We could protect our Dream . . . Poetry and Beauty and the Culture of America . . . from barbarism without ever endangering it."
The staff tried to grapple with the problem of winning battles before they started.
"The situation is complicated by the fact that these men and women of Ward T are non compos. They may or may not know how they do what they do, but in any case they're incapable of communicating with the experts who could reduce this miracle to method. It's for us to find the key. They can't help us."
The hardened and sharpened specialists looked around uncertainly.
"We'll need experts," General Carpenter said.
The staff relaxed. They were on familiar ground again.
"We'll need a Cerebral Mechanist, a Cyberneticist, a Psychiatrist, an Anatomist, an Archaeologist and a first-rate Historian. They'll go into that ward and they won't come out until their job is done. They must learn the technique of time travel."
The first five experts were easy to draft from other war departments. All America was a tool chest of hardened and sharpened specialists. But there was trouble locating a first-class Historian until the Federal Penitentiary cooperated with the army and released Dr. Bradley Scrim from his twenty years at hard labor. Dr. Scrim was acid and jagged. He had held the chair of Philosophic History at a Western university until he spoke his mind about the war for the American Dream. That got him the twenty years hard.
Scrim was still intransigent, but induced to play ball by the intriguing problem of Ward T.
"But I'm not an expert," he snapped. "In this benighted nation of experts, I'm the last singing grasshopper in the ant heap."
Carpenter snapped up the intercom. "Get me an Entomologist," he said.
"Don't bother," Scrim said. "I'll translate. You're a nest of ants ... all working and toiling and specializing. For what?"
"To preserve the American Dream," Carpenter answered hotly. "We're fighting for Poetry and Culture and Education and the Finer Things in Life."
"Which means you're fighting to preserve me," Scrim said. "That's what I've devoted my life to. And what do you do with me? Put me in jail."
"You were convicted of enemy sympathizing and fellow-travelling," Carpenter said.
"I was convicted of believing in my American Dream," Scrim said. "Which is another way of saying I was jailed for having a mind of my own."
Scrim was also intransigent in Ward T. He stayed one night, enjoyed three good meals, read the reports, threw them down and began hollering to be let out.
"There's a job for everyone and everyone must be on the job," Colonel Dimmock told him. "You don't come out until you've got the secret of time travel."
"There's no secret I can get," Scrim said.
"Do they travel in time?"
"Yes and no."
"The answer has to be one or the other. Not both. You're evading the—"
"Look," Scrim interrupted wearily. "What are you an expert in?"
"Psychotherapy."
"Then how the hell can you understand what I'm talking about? This is a philosophic concept. I tell you there's no secret here that the army can use. There's no secret any group can use. It's a secret for individuals only."
"I don't understand you."
"I didn't think you would. Take me to Carpenter."
They took Scrim to Carpenter's office where he grinned at the general malignantly, looking for all the world like a redheaded, underfed devil.
"I'll need ten minutes," Scrim said. "Can you spare them out of your tool box?"
Carpenter nodded.
"Now listen carefully. I'm going to give you the clues to something so vast and so strange that it will need all your fine edge to cut into it."
Carpenter looked expectant.
"Nathan Riley goes back in time to the early twentieth century. There he fives the life of his fondest dreams. He's a big-time gambler, the friend of Diamond Jim Brady and others. He wins money betting on events because he always knows the outcome in advance. He won money betting on Eisenhower to win an election. He won money betting on a prize fighter named Marciano to beat another prize fighter named La Starza. He made money investing in an automobile company owned by Henry Ford. There are the clues. They mean anything to you?"
"Not without a Sociological Analyst," Carpenter answered. He reached for the intercom.
"Don't order one, I'll explain later. Let's try some more clues. Lela Machan, for example. She escapes into the Roman Empire where she fives the life of her dreams as a jemme fatale. Every man loves her. Julius Caesar, Savonarola, the entire Twentieth Legion, a man named Ben Hur. Do you see the fallacy?"
"No."
"She also smokes cigarettes."
"Well?" Carpenter asked after a pause.
"I continue," Scrim said. "George
Hanmer escapes into England of the nineteenth century where he's a member of Parliament and the friend of Gladstone, Winston Churchill and Disraeli, who takes him riding in his Rolls Royce. Do you know what a Rolls Royce is?"
"No."
"It was the name of an automobile."
"So?"
"You don't understand yet?"
"No."
Scrim paced the floor in exaltation. "Carpenter, this is a bigger discovery than teleportation or time travel. This can be the salvation of man. I don't think I'm exaggerating. Those two dozen shock victims in Ward T have been H-Bombed into something so gigantic that it's no wonder your specialists and experts can't understand it."
"What the hell's bigger than time travel, Scrim?"
"Listen to this, Carpenter. Eisenhower did not run for office until the middle of the twentieth century. Nathan Riley could not have been a friend of Diamond Jim Brady's and bet on Eisenhower to win an election . . . not simultaneously. Brady was dead a quarter of a century before Bee was President. Marciano defeated La Starza fifty years after Henry Ford started his automobile company. Nathan Riley's time traveling is full of similar anachronisms."
Carpenter looked puzzled.
"Lela Machan could not have had Ben Hur for a lover. Ben Hur never existed in Rome. He never existed at all. He was a character in a novel. She couldn't have smoked. They didn't have tobacco then. You see? More anachronisms. Disraeli could never have taken George Han-mer for a ride in a Rolls Royce because automobiles weren't invented until long after Disraeli's death."
"The hell you say," Carpenter exclaimed. "You mean they're all lying?"
"No. Don't forget, they don't need sleep. They don't need food. They're not lying. They're going back in time all right. They're eating and sleeping back there."
"But you just said their stories don't stand up. They're full of anachronisms."
"Because they travel back into a time of their own imagination. Nathan Riley has his own picture of what America was like in the early twentieth century. It's faulty and anachronistic because he's no scholar, but it's real for him. He can live there. The same is true for the others."
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