A plump and energetic chanteuse of some ten summers, incandescently blond, now emerged from a back recess wearing a gown of artificial golden paillettes sewn, not to any underlying fabric but only—precariously—to one another, creating a louche aspect more eye-catching than even outright nakedness, and, accompanied by the tiny “jazz” orchestra, sang,
Dey high-hats us uptown,
Dey low-balls us downtown,
We’re known all around town,
As Boids of d’ Night—
Duh goilz of duh Bow-ry
Looks voi-gin and flow-ry
Alongside of how we-
’S regawded, awvright!
Siddown for a drink or
Jump up for a dance,
Dough ol’ Missus Grundy, she
May look askance,
Yiz can bring da wife and kiddies,
Plus yuhv uncles and aunts,
(Dey’ll love it) down in Hell’s
Kitchen ta-night!
“You boys got da ‘ying’ for any o’ dis in heeuh, hey, just name it, we’ll see wha’ we kin do,” offered Plug.
“Actually—” began Darby, gazing at the underage “songbird,” but he was interrupted by Chick Counterfly.
“Something you mentioned the other day—”
“Yeah, yeah? I’m just a kid, can’t remember everyt’in, can I?”
“Something like, all you needed was a ‘time machine.’ . . .”
“So? Who wouldn’t go fuh one o’ dem?”
“Actually,” Darby elaborated, “it was the way you said ‘the time machine.’ Almost as if you knew of a particular one, someplace.”
“Yiz woikin fuh duh coppiz, uh what?”
“There could be a nice steerer’s fee in this one, Plug,” mentioned Chick, casually.
“Yeeh? how noice?”
Chick produced an envelope stuffed with greenbacks, which the young tough refrained from touching but weighed with eyebeams sensitive as a laboratory balance. “Runnuh!” he called. Half a dozen small urchins materialized at the table. “You! Cheezy! Kin yiz foind d’ Doctuhv in a huvvry?”
“Shaw t’ing, boss!”
“Giddoudahere den, tell ‘m he’s gonna have visiduhs!”
“You got it, boss!”
“Be witchiz in a minnit. Drink up, ‘s onna house. Uh, an’ so’s Angela Grace heeuh.”
“Evening, boys.” It was the very songstress in the spangled garment who, or perhaps which, had so compellingly claimed Darby’s attention a moment before.
“WE’ UH MOVIN OFFA duh Gophiz’s toif inta Hudson Dustuhs tevritawvry now . . . leastways whut use ta be till all dese damn bushwahs stawhdit slickin up da place,” Plug informed the boys as their party made its way westward and south, in the fog, which had now grown general. From far out in the Harbor came the dismal tolling of bell-buoys, the harsh fanfares of foghorns and steam sirens. “Can’t see a damn t’ing,” Plug complained. “Gotta use ah snoot. Yiz boids know what dat ‘ozone’ stuff smells like?”
Chick nodded. “I guess we’re looking for an electrical generating station, then?”
“Blawngs tuh da Nint’ Av’nya ‘El,’” Plug said, “but the Doctuhv and dem, like, dey share it. Some deal wit’ Mr. Mawgin. Da Machine, it uses a lotta ‘juice,’ see.”
There was a dull, fog-muffled clank. “I think this may be your ‘El,’” called Darby in an aggrieved tone. “I just walked into some dadblamed stanchion, here.”
“Oh, poor baby!” cried Angela Grace, “let me kiss it?”
“If you can find it,” muttered Darby.
“Now we just follas d’ tvrain loine sout’,” announced Plug, “till ah snoot tells us we’re dere.”
They approached a memorial arch, gray and time-corroded, seeming to date from some ancient catastrophe, far older than the city. The mists parted long enough for Chick to read a legend on an entablature, I AM THE WAY INTO THE DOLEFUL CITY—DANTE. Passing beneath the colossal arch, they continued to grope along over fog-slick cobblestones, among decaying animals, piles of refuse, and the smoldering fires of homeless denizens of the quarter, till at length, the pungent triatomic signature having become overwhelming, along with a harsh buzzing which filled the vicinity, they stood before a stone gateway dripping with moisture, the dwelling beyond largely invisible except for a scattering of bluish electric lights blooming in this vaporous midwatch, which neither aeronaut found himself able to read as to distance or elevation. Plug pushed a button on the gatepost, and a metallic voice from somewhere replied, “Later than you think, Mr. Loafsley.” A solenoidal relay slammed into place, and the gate screeched open.
Inside, in a mews with a carriage house converted to a laboratory, they found an elfin figure, whom Plug introduced as Dr. Zoot, in workingman’s fatigues, carpet-slippers, smoked goggles, and a peculiar helmet punctuated over its surface by not entirely familiar electrical fittings.
“So! Just in from the cows and chickens I’ll bet, seeking some new city fun to tell the folks about back at those church socials! Well we might be able to fix something up for you. Thousands of satisfied customers, all of the best sort, for Mr. Loafsley has never disappointed me yet, ain’t that right, lad?”
As if having glimpsed through the obscurity of Dr. Zoot’s eyeglass lenses something unacceptably ominous, Plug, looking pale in the already harsh illumination of the laboratory, grasped Angela Grace firmly, and together they backed out through the door as if departing from the presence of royalty.
“Thanks, Plug,” called the boys, “bye Angela Grace,” but the two children of the depths had already vanished.
“Come along, then.”
“We’re not keeping you up, Doctor, I hope,” Chick said.
“Later the better,” said Dr. Zoot. “Not as many trains running this time of night, so the current is more dependable, though not a patch on German product, of course . . . but now, gents, voilà—and you tell me what you think.”
The Machine’s appearance struck neither lad as particularly advanced. Amid a hoarse droning, violent blue sparks leapt noisily between unwieldy electrodes that might not have seemed out of place in a dynamo of Grandmother’s day. A once-unblemished exterior had become long pitted and stained with electrolytic wastes. What numerals were visible on the dust-covered dial-faces owed much to the design preferences of an earlier generation, as did the Breguet-style openwork of the indicator arrows. More alarmingly, even the casual eye could detect everywhere emergency weld-lines, careless shimming, unmatched fasteners, blotches of primer coat never painted over, and other evidences of the makeshift. The overwhelming impression was of revenue diverted from any but the simplest upkeep.
“This is it?” blinked Darby.
“Problem?”
“Can’t speak for my partner,” shrugged the acerbic juvenile, “but it’s a little ramshackle for a time machine, ain’t it?”
“Tell you what, how’s about a sample ride, into the future, then and back, only charge you half price, and if you like it, we can try something more audacious.”
With a gay panache somewhat compromised by the hideous shrieking of the hinges and a noticeable sag to the gutta-percha gasketry around the coaming, Dr. Zoot swung open the hatch of the passenger chamber and nodded them inside, where the boys found an odor of spilled—and to the instructed nose, suggestively cheap—whiskey. The passenger seating appeared to’ve been purchased at auction long ago, with unmatched upholstery as stained and worn as the wood finishes were scarred and cigar-burned.
“This will be fun,” said Darby.
Through the single smeared quartz window of the chamber, the lads observed Dr. Zoot lurching frantically about the room, setting forward the hands of every timepiece he encountered, including those of his own pocketwatch. “Oh, please,” groaned Darby, “ain’t this kind of insulting? How do we undog this hatch and get the heck out of here?”
“We don’t,” replied Chick, indicating the absence of the necessary fixtures with an air more of scholarly cur
iosity than the panicked alarm one might, in the circumstances, have forgiven him—”no more than we are likely to find in here any means of controlling our ‘journey.’ We seem to be at the mercy of this Dr. Zoot person, and must now proceed in a faith that his character will prove not altogether diabolical.”
“Swell. Something a little different for the Chums of Chance. One of these days, Counterfly, our luck’s gonna run out—”
“Suckling, look—the window!”
“Don’t see anything.”
“That’s just it!”
“Maybe he turned off the lights.”
“No—no, there’s light. Maybe not light as we know it, but . . .” The two boys squinted at where the quartz translucency had been, trying to make out what was happening. A kind of vibration, less from the physical chamber itself than from somewhere unsuspected within their own nervous organizations, now began to strengthen in intensity.
They seemed to be in the midst of some great storm in whose low illumination, presently, they could make out, in unremitting sweep across the field of vision, inclined at the same angle as the rain, if rain it was—some material descent, gray and wind-stressed—undoubted human identities, masses of souls, mounted, pillioned, on foot, ranging along together by the millions over the landscape accompanied by a comparably unmeasurable herd of horses. The multitude extended farther than they could see—a spectral cavalry, faces disquietingly wanting in detail, eyes little more than blurred sockets, the draping of garments constantly changing in an invisible flow which perhaps was only wind. Bright arrays of metallic points hung and drifted in three dimensions and perhaps more, like stars blown through by the shockwaves of the Creation. Were those voices out there crying in pain? sometimes it almost sounded like singing. Sometimes a word or two, in a language almost recognizable, came through. Thus, galloping in unceasing flow ever ahead, denied any further control over their fate, the disconsolate company were borne terribly over the edge of the visible world. . . .
The chamber shook, as in a hurricane. Ozone permeated its interior like the musk attending some mating-dance of automata, and the boys found themselves more and more disoriented. Soon even the cylindrical confines they had entered seemed to have fallen away, leaving them in a space unbounded in all directions. There became audible a continuous roar as of the ocean—but it was not the ocean—and soon cries as of beasts in open country, ferally purring stridencies passing overhead, sometimes too close for the lads to be altogether comfortable with—but they were not beasts. Everywhere rose the smell of excrement and dead tissue.
Each lad was looking intently through the darkness at the other, as if about to inquire when it would be considered proper to start screaming for help.
“If this is our host’s idea of the future—” Chick began, but he was abruptly checked by the emergence, from the ominous sweep of shadow surrounding them, of a long pole with a great metal hook on the end, of the sort commonly used to remove objectionable performers from the variety stage, which, being latched firmly about Chick’s neck, had in the next instant pulled him off into regions indecipherable. Before Darby had time to shout after, the Hook re-appeared to perform a similar extraction on him, and quick as that, both youngsters found themselves back in the laboratory of Dr. Zoot. The fiendish “time machine,” still in one piece, quivered in its accustomed place, as if with merriment.
“Got a friend works at one of the Bowery theatres,” the Doctor explained. “This hook here can come in mighty handy sometimes, specially when the visibility’s not too good.”
“What was that we just saw?” Chick as smoothly as he was able.
“It’s different for everybody, but don’t bother to tell me, I’ve heard too much, more than is good for a man, frankly, and it could easily do you some harm as well to even get into the subject.”
“And you’re sure that your . . . machine . . . is running up to its design specifications and so forth.”
“Well . . .”
“I knew it!” Darby screamed, “you miserable psychopath, you nearly murdered us, for God’s sake!”
“Look, fellows, I’ll let you have the trip for free, all right? Truth is, the cussèd rig ain’t even one of my designs, I picked it up for a pretty good price a couple of years ago, out in the Middle West at one of these, I guess you could call it a convention. . . . The owner, now I recall, did seem anxious to be rid of it. . . .”
“And you bought it used?” shrilled Darby.
“‘Pre-owned’ was how they put it.”
“I don’t suppose,” Chick striving for his accustomed suavity of tone, “you obtained engineering drawings, operating and repair manuals, anything like that?”
“No, but my thinking was ‘s if I already know how to take apart the latest Oldsmobile, and put it back together again blindfolded, well how tough could this contraption be?”
“And your attorneys will agree with that, of course,” snapped Darby.
“Aw, now, fellas . . .”
“Exactly where and from whom, Dr. Zoot,” pressed Chick, “did you happen to purchase the unit?”
“Don’t know if you’ve heard of Candlebrow U., institute of higher learning out there in the distant heart of the Republic—once a year, every summer, they hold a big get-together on the subject of time-travel—more cranks, double-domes, and bugbrains than you can scare off with any known weapon. I happened to be out there, just, you know, some drumming, nerve tonics and so forth, ran into this particular jasper at a saloon down by the river called the Ball in Hand, and the name he gave me then was Alonzo Meatman, though it could’ve changed since. Here, here it is on the bill of sale—though, if you’re really gonna look him up . . . well I hope it won’t be necessary to mention my name?”
“Why not?” Darby still in some agitation, “he’s dangerous, you mean? you’re sending us into another death trap, right?”
“Not him so much,” Dr. Zoot fidgeting and unable to meet their gaze, “but his . . . associates, well, you just might want to keep an eye out.”
“A criminal gang. Swell. Thanks.”
“Say that I was just as glad to get back out again on the road soon as I could, and even then I didn’t feel comfortable till I had the river between us.”
“Oh, they don’t like to cross running water,” sneered Darby.
“You’ll see, young fella. And you might wish you hadn’t.”
At Candlebrow U., the crew of the Inconvenience would find exactly the mixture of nostalgia and amnesia to provide them a reasonable counterfeit of the Timeless. Appropriately, perhaps, it would also be here that they would make the fatal discovery which would bring them, inexorable as the Zodiac’s wheel, to their Imum Cœli. . . .
In recent years the University had expanded well beyond the memories of older alumni, who, returning, found Chicago-style ironwork and modern balloon-framing among—even in place of—the structures they remembered, earlier masonry homages to European models, executed often as not by immigrants from university or cathedral towns on the elder continent. The West Gate, intended to frame equinoctial sunsets, still retained two flanking towers of rusticated stone and Gothical aspect, quaintly dwarfed now by the looming and more boxlike dormitories just inside, and managing somehow, though itself not much older than a human generation, to present an aspect of terrible antiquity, evoking a remote age before the first European explorers, before the Plains Indians they had found here, before those whom the Indians remembered in their legends as giants and demigods.
The now-famous yearly Candlebrow Conferences, like the institution itself, were subsidized out of the vast fortune of Mr. Gideon Candlebrow of Grossdale, Illinois, who had made his bundle back during the great Lard Scandal of the ‘80s, in which, before Congress put an end to the practice, countless adulterated tons of that comestible were exported to Great Britain, compromising further an already debased national cuisine, giving rise throughout the island, for example, to a Christmas-pudding controversy over which to this day families rema
in divided, often violently so. In the consequent scramble to develop more legal sources of profit, one of Mr. Candlebrow’s laboratory hands happened to invent “Smegmo,” an artificial substitute for everything in the edible-fat category, including margarine, which many felt wasn’t that real to begin with. An eminent Rabbi of world hog capital Cincinnati, Ohio, was moved to declare the product kosher, adding that “the Hebrew people have been waiting four thousand years for this. Smegmo is the Messiah of kitchen fats.” With astonishing rapidity, Smegmo had come to account for the majority of Candlebrow Ventures’ annual profits. The secret of its formula was guarded with a ruthlessness that would have embarrassed the Tsar of Russia, so at Candlebrow U., ubiquitous as the product was in the cuisine and among the table condiments of the Student Cafeteria, you kept hearing different stories about exactly what was in it.
Profits flowing from sales of Smegmo provided funding, on a scale almost describable as lavish, for the First International Conference on Time-Travel, a topic suddenly respectable owing to the success of Mr. H. G. Wells’s novel The Time Machine, first published in 1895, a year often cited as a lower limit to the date of the first Conference, although no one had yet agreed on how to assign ordinal numbers to any of the gatherings, “because once time-travel is invented, you see,” declared Professor Heino Vanderjuice, who the boys were delighted to discover was attending this year as a guest lecturer, “there’s nothing to keep us from going as far back as we like, and holding the Conferences then, even back when this was all prehistoric around here, dinosaurs, giant ferns, flammivomous peaks everywhere sort of thing. . . .”
“All due respect to the Professor,” protested Lindsay Noseworth at the nightly Unit meeting, “but is this what we have to look forward to around here, these sophomoric slogs through endless quagmires of the metaphysical? Frankly, I don’t know how much of that I can tolerate.”
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