by Anthology
Blake stared at him, then silently investigated his own saddlebags. He found two revolvers, with what seemed an abnormally large supply of cartridges. He found a mass of paper, which turned out to be books with their cardboard backs torn off. He glanced professionally at the revolvers, and slipped them in his pockets. He put back the books.
“I appoint you second in command, Blake,” said Minott, more dryly than before. “You understand nothing, but you wait to understand. I made no mistake in choosing you despite my reasons for leaving you behind. Sit down and I’ll tell you what happened.”
With a grunt and a puffing noise, a small black bear broke cover and fled across a place where only that morning a highly elaborate filling station had stood. The party started, then relaxed. The girls suddenly started to giggle foolishly, almost hysterically. Minott bit calmly into a sandwich and said pleasantly,
“I shall have to talk mathematics to you, but I’ll try to make it more palatable than my classroom lectures have been. You see, everything that has happened can only be explained in terms of mathematics, and more especially certain concepts in mathematical physics. You young ladies and gentlemen being college men and women, I shall have to phrase things very simply, as for ten-year-old children. Hunter, you’re staring. If you, actually see something, such as an Indian, shoot at him and he’ll run away. The probabilities are that he never heard the report of a firearm. We’re not on the Chinese continent now.”
Hunter gasped, and fumbled at his saddlebags. While he got out the revolvers, Minott went on imperturbably,
“There has been an upheaval of nature, which still continues. But instead of a shaking and jumbling of earth and rocks, there has been a shaking and jumbling of space and time. I go back to first principles. Time is a dimension. The past is one extension of it, the future is the other, just as east is one extension of a more familiar dimension and west is its opposite.
“But we ordinarily think of time as a line, a sort of tunnel, perhaps. We do not make that error in the dimensions about which we think daily. For example, we know that Annapolis, King George courthouse, and, say, Norfolk are all to the eastward of us. But we know that in order to reach any of them, as a destination, we would have to go not only cast but north or south in addition. In imaginative travels into the future, however, we never think in such a common-sense fashion. We assume that the future is a line instead of a coordinate, a path instead of a direction. We assume that if we travel to futureward there is but one possible destination. And that is as absurd as it would be to ignore the possibility of traveling to eastward in any other line than due east, forgetting that there is northeast and, southeast and a large number of intermediate points.”
Young Blake said slowly: “I follow you, sir, but it doesn’t seem to bear”
“On our problem? But it does!” Minott smiled, showing his teeth. He bit into his sandwich again. “Imagine that I come to a fork in a road. I flip a coin to determine which fork I shall take. Whichever route I follow, I shall encounter certain landmarks and certain adventures. But they will not be the same, whether landmarks or adventures.
“In choosing between the forks of the road I choose not only between two sets of landmarks I could encounter, but between two sets of events. I choose between paths, not only on the surface of the earth, but in time. And as those paths upon earth may lead to two different cities, so those paths in the future may lead to two entirely different fates. On one of them may lie opportunities for riches. On the other may lie the most prosaic of hit-and-run accidents which will leave me a mangled corpse, not only upon one fork of a highway in the State of Virginia, but upon, one fork of a highway in time.”
“In short, I am pointing out that there is more than one future we can encounter, and with more or less absence of deliberation we choose among them. But the futures we fail to encounter, upon the roads we do not take, are just as real as the landmarks upon those roads. We never see them, but we freely admit their existence.”
Again it was Blake who protested: “All this is interesting enough, sir, but still I don’t see how it applies to our present situation.”
Minott said impatiently: “Don’t you see that if such a state of things exists in the future, that it must also have existed in the past? We talk of three dimensions and one present and one future. There is a theoretic necesssity, a mathematical necessity, for assuming more than one future. There are an indefinite number of possible futures, any one of which we would encounter if we took the proper ‘forks’ in time.
“There are any number of destinations to eastward. There are any number to futureward. Start a hundred miles west and come eastward, choosing your paths on earth at random, as you do in time. You may arrive here. You may arrive to the north or south of this spot, and still be east of your starting point. Now start a hundred years back instead of a hundred miles west.”
Groping, Blake said fumbilingly: “I think you’re saying, sir, that, well, as there must be any number of futures, there must have been any number of pasts besides those written down in our histories. And-and it would follow that there are any number of what you might call ‘presents’.”
Minott gulped down the last of his sandwich and nodded. “Precisely. And today’s convulsion of nature has jumbled them and still upsets them from time to time. The Northmen once colonized America. In the sequence of events which mark the pathway of our own ancestors through time, that colony failed. But along another path through time that colony throve and flourished. The Chinese reached the shores of California. In the path our ancestors followed through time, nothing developed from the fact. But this morning we touched upon the pathway in which they colonized and conquered the continent, though from the fear that one peasant we saw displayed, they have not wiped out the Indians.
“Somewhere the Roman Empire still exists, and may not improbably rule America as it once ruled Britain. Somewhere, not impossibly, the conditions causing the glacial period still obtain and Virginia is buried under a mass of snow. Somewhere even the Carboniferous period may exist. Or to come more closely to the present we know, somewhere there is a path through time in which Pickett’s charge at Gettysburg went desperately home, and the Confederate States of America is now an independent nation with a heavily fortified border and a chip-on-the-shoulder attitude toward the United States.”
Blake alone had asked questions, but the entire party had been listening open-mouthed.
Now Maida Haynes said: “But-Professor Minott, where are we now?”
“We are probably,” said Minott, smiling, “in a path of time in which America has never been discovered by white men. That isn’t a very satisfactory state of things. We’re going to look for something better. We wouldn’t be comfortable in wigwams, with skins for clothing. So we shall hunt for a more congenial environment. We will have some weeks in which to do our searching, I think. Unless, of course, all space and time are wiped out by the cause of our predicament.”
Tom Hunter stirred uncomfortably. “We haven’t traveled backward or forward in time, then?”
“No,” repeated Minott. He got to his feet. “That odd nausea we felt seems to be caused by travel sidewise in time. It’s the symptom of a time oscillation. We’ll ride on and see what other worlds await us. We’re a rather well-qualified party for this sort of exploration. I chose you for your trainings. Hunter, zoology. Blake, engineering and geology. Harris, he nodded to the rather undersized young man, who flushed at being noticed, “Harris is quite a competent chemist, I understand. Miss Ketterling is a capable botanist. Miss Blair..”
Maida Haynes rose slowly. “You anticipated all this, Professor Minott, and yet you brought us into it. You, you said we’ll never get back home. Yet you deliberately arranged it. What, what was your motive? What did you do it for?”
Minott climbed into the saddle. He smiled, but there was bitterness in his smile. “In the world we know,” he told her, “I was a professor of mathematics in a small and unconsidered college. I had abso
lutely no chance of ever being more than a professor of mathematics in a small and unconsidered college. In this world I am, at least, the leader of a group of reasonably intelligent young people. In our saddlebags are arms and ammunition and more important, books of reference for our future activities. We shall hunt for and find a world in which our technical knowledge is at a premium. We shall live in that world, if all time and space is not destroyed, and use our knowledge.”
Maida Haynes said: “But again, what for?” “To conquer it!” said Minott in sudden fierceness. “To conquer it! We eight shall rule a world as no world has been ruled since time began! I promise you that when we find the environment I seek, you will have wealth by millions, slaves by thousands, every luxury, and all the power human beings could desire!” Blake said evenly: “And you, sir? What will you have?”
“Most power of all,” said Minott steadily. “I shall be the emperor of the world! And also his tone changed indescribably as he glanced at Maida, “also I shall have a certain other possession that I wish.”
He turned his back to them and rode off to lead the way. Maida Haynes was deathly pale as she rode close to Blake Her hand closed convulsively upon his arm.
“Jerry!” she whispered. “I’m-frightened!” And Blake said steadily, “Don’t worry! I’ll kill him first!”
V
The ferryboat from Berkeley plowed valorously through the fog. Its whistle howled mournfully at the regulation intervals.
Up in the pilot house, the skipper said confidentially, “I tell you, I had the funniest feelin’ of my life, just now. I was dizzy and sick all over, like I was seasick and drunk all at the same time.”
The mate said abstractedly: “I had somethin’ like that a little while ago. Somethin’ we ate, prob’ly. Say, that’s funny!”
“Say what?”
“Was a lot o’ traffic in the harbor just now, whistlin’. I ain’t heard a whistle for minutes. Listen!” Both men strained their ears. There was the rhythmic shudder of the vessel, itself a sound produced by the engines. There were fragmentary voice, noises from the passenger deck below. There was the wash of water by the ferryboat’s bow. There was nothing else. Nothing at all.
“Funny!” said the skipper.
“Damn funny!” agreed the mate.
The ferryboat went on. The fog cut down all visibility to a radius of perhaps two hundred feet.
“Funniest thing I ever saw!” said the skipper worriedly. He reached for the whistle cord and the mournful bellow of the horn resounded. “We’re near our slip, though. I wish.”
With a little chugging, swisbing sound a steam launch came out of the mist. It sheered off, the men in it staring blankly at the huge bulk of the ferry. It made a complete circuit of the big, clumsy craft. Then someone stood up and bellowed unintelligibly in the launch. He bellowed again. He was giving an order. He pointed to the flag at the stern of the launch, it was an unfamiliar flag, and roared furiously.
“What the hell’s the matter of that guy?” wondered the mate.
A little breeze blew suddenly. The fog began to thin. The faintly brighter spot which was the sun overhead grew bright indeed. Faint sunshine struggled through the fog bank. The wind drove the fog back before it, and the bellowing man in the steam launch grew purple with rage as his orders went unheeded.
Then, quite abruptly, the last wisps of vapor blew away. San Francisco stood revealed. But, San Francisco? This was not San Francisco! It was a wooden city, a small city, a dirty city with narrow streets and gas street lamps and four monstrous, barracklike edifice fronting the harbor. No hill stood, but it was barren of dwellings. And, “Damn!” said the mate of the ferryboat.
He was staring at a colossal mass of masonry, foursquare and huge, which rose to a gigantic spiral fluted dome. A strange and alien flag fluttered in the breeze above certain buildings. Figures moved in the streets. There were motor qars, but they were clumsy and huge.
The mate’s eyes rested upon a horse-drawn carriage. It was drawn by three horses abreast, and they were either so trained or so checkreined that the two outer horses’ heads were arched outward in the fashion of Tsarist Russia.
But that was natural enough. What an interpreter could be found, the mate and skipper were savagely abused for entering the harbor of Novo Skevsky without paying due heed to the ordinances in force by the ukase of the Tsar Alexis of all the Russias. These rules, they learned, were enforced with special rigor in all the Russian territory in America, from Alaska on south.
The boy ran shouting up to the village. “Hey, grandpa! Hey, grandpa! Lookit the birds!” He pointed as he ran.
A man looked idly, and stood transfixed. A woman stopped, and stared. Lake superior glowed bluely off to westward, and the little village most often turned its eyes in that direction. Now, though, as the small boy ran shouting of what he had seen, men stared, women marveled, and children ran and shouted and whooped in the instinctive excitement of childhood at anything which entrances grown-ups.
Over the straggly pine forests birds were coming. They came in great dark masses. Not by dozens, or by hundreds, or even by thousands. They came in millions, in huge dark clouds which obscured the sky. There were two huge flights in sight at the boy’s first shouting. There were six in view before he had reached his home and was panting a demand that his elders come and look. And there were others, incredible numbers of others, sweeping onward straight over the village.
Dusk fell abruptly as the first flock passed overhead. The whirring of wings was loud. It made people raise their voices as they asked each other what such birds could possibly be. Daylight again, and again darkness as the flocks poured on. The size of each flock was to be measured not in feet or yards, but in miles of front. Two, three miles of birds, flying steadily in a single enormous mass some four miles deep. Another such mass, and another, and another.
“What are they, grandpa? There must be millions of ‘em!”
Somewhere, a shotgun went off. Small things dropped from the sky. Another gunshot, and another. A rain of bird shot went up from the village into the mass of whirring wings. And crazily careening small bodies fell down among the houses.
Grandpa examined one of them, smoothing its rumpled plumage. He exclaimed. He gasped in excitement. “It’s a wild pigeon! What they used to call passenger pigeons! Back in ‘78 there was these birds by billions. Folks said a billion was killed in Michigan that one year! But they’re gone now. They’re gone like the buffalo. There ain’t any more.”
The sky was dark with birds above him. A flock four miles wide and three miles long made lights necessary in the village. The air was filled with the sound of wings. The passenger pigeon had returned to a continent from which it had been absent for almost fifty years.
Flocks of passenger pigeons flew overhead in thick, dark masses equaling those seen by Audubon in 1813, when he computed the pigeons in flight above Kentucky at hundreds of billions in number. In flocks that were innumerable they flew to westward. The sun set, and still the air was filled with the sound of their flying. For hours after darkness fell, the whirring of wings continued without ceasing.
VI
A great open fire licked at the rocks against which it had been built. The horses cropped uneasily at herbage near by. The smell of fat meat cooking was undeniably savory, but one of the girls blubbered gustily on a bed of leaves. Harris tended the cookery. Tom Hunter brought wood. Blake stood guard a little beyond the firelight, revolvers ready, staring off into the blackness. Professor Minott pored over a topographical map of Virginia. Maida Haynes tried to comfort the blubbering girl.
“Supper’s ready,” said Harris. He made even that announcement seem somehow shy and apologetic.
Minott put down his map. Tom Hunter began to cut great chunks of steaming meat from the haunch of venison. He put them on slabs of bark and began to pass them around. Minott reached out his hand and took one of them. He ate with obvious appetite. He seemed to have abandoned his preoccupation the instant he la
id down his map. He was displaying the qualities of a capable leader.
“Hunter,” he observed, “After you’ve eaten that stuff, you might relieve Blake. ‘We’ll arrange reliefs for the rest of the night. By the way, you men mustn’t forget to wind your watches. We’ll need to rate them, ultimately.”
Hunter gulped down his food and moved out to Blake’s hiding place. They exchanged low-toned words. Blake came back to the fire. He took the food Harris handed him and began to eat it. He looked at the blubbering girl on the bed of leaves.
“She’s just scared,” said Minott. “Barely slit the skin on her arm. But it is upsetting for a senior at Robinson College to be wounded by a flint arrowhead.”
Blake nodded. “I heard some noises off in the darkness,” he said curtly “I’m not sure, but my impression was that I was being stalked. And I thought I heard a human voice.”
“We may be watched,” admitted Minott. “But we’re out of the path of time in which those Indians tried to ambush us. If any of them follow, they’re too bewildered to be very dangerouus.”
“I hope so,” said Blake.
His maimer was devoid of cordiality, yet there was no exception to be taken to it. Professor Minott had deliberately got the party into a predicament from which there seemed to be no possibffity of escape. He had organized it to get it into just that predicament. He was unquestionably the leader of the party, despite his action. Blake made no attempt to undermine his leadership.
But Blake himself had some qualifications as a leader, young as he was. Perhaps the most promising of them was the fact that he made no attempt to exercise his talents until he knew as much as Minott of what was to be looked for, what was to be expected.
He listened sharply and then said: “I think we’ve digested your lesson of this morning, sir. But how long is this scrambling of space and time to continue? We left Fredericksburg and rode to the Potomac. It was Chinese territory. We rode back to Fredericksburg, and it wasn’t there. Instead, we encountered Indians who let loose a flight of arrows at us and wounded Bertha Ketterling in the arm. We were nearly out of range at the time, though.”