by Anthology
“Gone! Probably struggling in these very waters, four centuries ago, as our men are out there now where the galleon was anchored.”
I stared at him.
A swift boat was running toward us from the beach.
Professor Callieri stumbled breathlessly up the ladder.
“It works! It works! I deescover what the trouble ees, an’ thee radio ees now in condeetion. Eet ees what I t’ink make us go back to year fifteen-sixty-four. Las’ night I t’ink try my cool wave once more, an’ I make circuit t’ees time in wrong munnair. Then shock—Like t’at—shock! Doctor, he fin’ me, shock. Las’ night, he fin’ me like t’at. Jus’ now I go down again, because mast is raise again, an’ radio wire O.K. Once more I try. Bang! Whish! Thee sun fall, thee galleon deesappear, thee Anglishmans—” The little professor threw up his hands expressively—“an’ we haf come back to our own time, wit’ thee United States of America to use thee Callieri Cool Wave for efer and for efer now. Dios, what a frightfulness t’at was!”
At last I had awakened.
The radio! I had not thought of that. The radio—and CaJlieri’s request last night to go below and attempt something in the way of a combination of his cool wave and the ordinary waves. That was what did it!
Electric waves in the ether. The theory of vibration. Something had gone wrong, as the professor said. Some peculiar vibration had suddenly seized upon the ship, and we had been, sent in the flash of an instant and with the speed of light, into the past. Radio—the fourth dimension—the theory of vibration.
I shuddered. Suppose we had not gotten back.
I looked about me. All seemed a dream. Yet above our heads was the patched foremast. And here, the men who had been on the galleon.
“We anchored, sir, according to signal. It was noon; the sun at meridian. The next thing we knew, we were struggling in the water, the galleon vanished from about us, the sun hanging at mid-afternoon. That is all I can say, captain. We were on the Spanish ship, then it was gone and we were in the water.” The man wiped beads from his forehead that were not salt water of the sea. “Whew! It’s all I want of that!”
We quite agreed. And we wondered what the thoughts of the five Englishmen had been, going through the same experience almost four hundred years ago. Magic! Black magic!
Callieri suddenly gripped my arm, with a cry of delight.
“Thee treasure—thee treasure. Eet mus’ have fallen like thee Anglishmans. An’ eef it deed so fall, t’en—”
“By Heaven!” cried the skipper. “Then it’s still on the bottom of the seas beneath our very decks!”
But the search for that is another story. We were thankful enough just then that we had returned.
Chapter VIII
THE GREAT GOD—TIME
That was the story that Lieutenant Graham Hardwick, Medical Corps, United States Navy, told me: Brief enough it was, but the doctor was still laboring under the awe of the thing, and there were many details undoubtedly omitted that would have made interesting reading. But I dared not question the lieutenant too deeply. Indeed, he and every other man of the Shoshone were ill with what seemed a peculiar nervous condition somewhat similar to shell-shock for a space of three weeks after their miraculous appearance lying at anchor in the harbor of Colon.
I leave to your imagination the astonishment on board the flagship, when a man came rushing into the radio shack where the squadron commander and the radio officer were awaiting some word of the lost Shoshone.
“Captain! Captain! She’s back!”
How the squadron commander and others there had jumped outside, and beheld the Shoshone lying peacefully at anchor. Lying there at anchor, when no man could be found who had seen the ship come up over the horizon, although a hundred were on watch! Lying there at anchor, although no man in the crowded harbor had seen the ship come in!
The mate of a banana boat, with his eyes starting from their sockets, came rowing madly over to the flag.
“I was looking at the very spot! The very spot, captain. Clear as day, with the sun shinin’ bright. Lookin’ right at the spot—and nothin’ was there. Not a thing. Nothin’! I was lookin’ right there, sir,
kirida at nothing jest a dreamin’ an’ a’ gazin’. The next thing I knowed, why there was the Shoshone, anchored!”
I swear I would not anticipate such an experience, with any great, degree of joy. And yet I would, that I had been on the Shoshone when she made that short day’s cruise into the past. Few men have, done that and fetched back the proof. What a memory to have! What tales to tell! What a glorious thing to have lived in a day four centuries back. I envy every man of them. And yet if the opportunity should come my way I would think twice before I seized it!
After Word
With a purpose in mind I withheld part of the ancient pen-written manuscript of Francisco Vedugo de Coloma, and bearing a date just three months and nine days from that we saw in the galleon’s log—the date the doctor had seen.
Just a sentence or two it is, but pertinent. A point of view it gives—the idea the writer held regarding the story of the returned, galleon’s crew:
. . . But (de Coloma goes on) we have heard much of sea demons and fire breathing monsters of the Western Seas. And it is in our secret mind that such, tales often, are the outgrowth of a fear-inflamed imagination; or given in excuse for a disaster that, coming through poor seamanship, destroyed many of His Majesty’s galleons.
Too many such tales are brought back, and always, it seems, when galleons have been lost. Now, were some fleet of His Majesty’s to sail for Las Indias Occidentales, remain there for a length of time, then return intact bringing such a tale, we might have cause to believe, the story not being fired through fear of consequences. But this continual notice given to fiery monsters becomes wearisome.
We would that some of these returned mariners, in accounting for their troubles, might bring back some new and unheard account, and, not forever and ever lay the blame upon the Devil of the Western Seas.
May I, in concluding; repeat one small thought I put down in the beginning.
There have been strange incidents in the past. There have been strange events of today. It is my belief, sincere and frank, that between certain of those of the past and these of the present, there lies a definite and explainable relationship.
That is the point I hoped to drive home. And the story brought to de Coloma of old Spain by the crew of a lone surviving galleon, with that of Dr. Hardwick of the modern destroyer, so-fit together in every detail that I have come to believe. And frankly, I hope that you see the things as clearly as do I. We know but little of the marvels of this world of ours. The past is behind us, the present is here, and the future ahead.
Who knows when the great god Time will relent, and let us tread all three?
THE DEVIL YOU DON’T
Matthew Hughes
The frantic sparks fly up into the November night like lost souls seeking safe harbor, who, finding none, extinguish themselves against the unheeding darkness. Or so I might write it if ever I should put pen to paper to tell this tale. But I shall not.
The fire itself is confined by the blackened steel barrel. I poke again with the gardener’s fork, and another flurry of sparks shoots up, and, with them, scraps of burning paper. By the flickering light of the flames, I can sometimes see a printed word or two before they are consumed: Alamein, Rommel, Singapore, Yalta.
The books are thick. They will take time to burn but I have learned patience. I have always taken the longer view. Perhaps it is a sense of history. Perhaps it is just how I am formed. But, in the arena of public life, he who takes the longer view must win out in the end.
The gardener has left in heaps his cullings from the bygone summer’s flower beds. I gather another armful of dried stalks and withered blossoms and throw them onto the flames. The flare of light illuminates the disturbed earth that the gardener turned over this afternoon and the pile of red bricks that have lain here much longer—more than a
year since I abandoned building a wall to take Mr. Chamberlain’s reluctant call.
First Lord of the Admiralty, then. Prime Minister now. It was what I had always wanted, I will admit, though I would have preferred its arrival under less perilous circumstances.
The books are burning well. I leave them and kneel beside the wall. The cement with which to mix the mortar is just where I left it and there is water at hand. I lay a red fired brick atop the black soil, trowel its side with mortar, then place a second beside it.
Another pass with the trowel, then another brick. The work proceeds as it always did, a step at a time. That is how walls are built. As are lives. And futures.
The man appeared from thin air. I wanted to think he had stepped out of the darkness, but the space behind him was well-lit by the lights of Chartwell’s great house, my house. I had not been here since the start of the war.
“Please don’t be alarmed,” he said.
“I am alarmed,” I said. “My visitors usually make less startling entrances, and then only when invited.”
“I mean you no harm.”
“I am relieved to hear it.”
“I’ve come from the future.”
“Now I am alarmed anew,” I said.
There was a policeman in the house, a Special Branch man with a pistol. But I did not call out. My visitor begged me to allow him to demonstrate his bona fides.
I did so and was soon convinced. He had a watch that displayed time through ingenious means and a device no larger than a calling card that could extract a square root in the blink of an eye. He showed me coins and paper money bearing the likeness of the young Princess Elizabeth, grown grandmotherly beneath the Crown of State.
“I am glad to know that the royal family endures,” I said. “You bring me a heartening sign when one is sorely needed.”
“I have brought you more than signs,” he said. “I have brought you wonders.”
He produced a package of books, small paperbound editions such as I had not seen before. I took them in my hands. The titles had a ring to them: The Gathering Storm, Their Finest Hour, Blood, Sweat and Tears.
Then I saw the name of the author. It was mine own.
“What are these?” I said.
“Your memoirs,” he said. “The war years, at least.”
“Then I survive,” I said.
“More than that. You win.”
“I am glad to hear it.”
“It was touch-and-go for a while,” he said. “But that was not the worst of it.”
“Oh? Then what was the worst of it?”
I have not often seen a man look so forlorn. “The cost,” he said. “The sheer waste. The horror.”
I did not know how to comfort him. I set the books down on a heap of bricks, then brought out cigars and offered him one. He seemed delighted to take it. His face shed its melancholy and he exhibited an exhilaration I have seen only in the shining eyes of schoolboys encountering their idols on the sidelines of a cricket pitch.
“I knew you would be here tonight, alone,” he said, when he had puffed his cigar alight. He had studied my life, he said, choosing a night when I had come to the old place, away from memoranda and telephones and committees, to wrestle with my old black dog of a mood that had gripped me since the terrible raid on Coventry two nights ago.
He savored the rich Cuban leaf, blew out a long stream of blue smoke, then said, “But now you can stop all of it before it happens—the Blitz, the Battle of the Atlantic.” He looked wistful for a moment, then continued. “My mother’s younger brother drowned when his ship was torpedoed off Newfoundland in 1942. Fifty years later, she still cried for him.”
“I am very sorry,” I said.
“But you see, now he doesn’t have to die,” he said, gesturing to the books with the hand that held the cigar so that a scattering of ash fell upon the cover of the one entitled The Hinge of Fate. “It’s all in there. Hitler’s plans, his blunders. His invasion of Russia, D-Day, all of it.”
I looked at the books atop the bricks but did not touch them.
“Now you can strike where he is weakest, shorten the war, save tens of millions of lives.”
“Are there others like you?” I asked. “Other travelers through time?”
He told me that the channels by which he had come back to me were abstruse, unknown to any other. He had hit upon time travel by the most outrageous twist of odds. “But once I knew I could come here, I had to,” he said. “The war was the most terrible thing that ever happened. But with these books, you can prevent the worst of it.”
“Hmmm,” I said. “Show me.”
He bent to retrieve one of the volumes. I reached for a brick.
I mortar a second layer of bricks over the first, tapping each carefully into line with its brothers. The man from the future lies with his wonders beneath the fire-hardened oblongs. His books are ashes now.
I wonder if he understood, as the light was going out of his eyes, that I must accept all the horrors to come. That is the price to be paid for the knowledge he had brought me, the knowledge that we will be able to endure and that then will come brighter days.
But would they still come if I had looked into those books? If I could see the present as the past through my own future eyes, would I not surely wander from the path that I now tread in darkness, though with a good hope that it will lead us eventually to those broad sunny uplands?
I must choose the devil I know, though I know him now to be even more horrid than I feared, because the devil I don’t know may well be even worse.
Yet the man from the future has not striven in vain. He has done much good. Because of him, my black dog is once more whipped back to his dark kennel.
I finish the second layer of bricks, stand and brush the dirt from the knees of my trousers. I lay the trowel on the unyielding surface.
I shall carry on. We shall see it through.
THE DRAGON WORE TROUSERS
Bob Buckley
There are at least two sides to every story . . .
It was a hot and sultry afternoon, a normal day, a perfect day. The ancient city should have been filled with the noisy clamor of everyday life, but its wide streets and majestically fluted stone towers and sweeping sky bridges were all hushed and deserted, an unnatural emptiness that shouted at the nerves. No clash of iron-bound wheels or scaled feet or talons tapping at worn cobbles half a millennium old came through the narrow windows of the cluttered workroom. There was only the soft chiming of thecalitor as Maker-Of-Wonders gave the inner channels of the light guide one final polish.
“There! Are you not beautiful?” he exclaimed proudly, holding the intricately shaped mass of gleaming quartz to the bars of sunlight streaming down from the arched ceiling. Prismatic rainbows danced on the water-clear curves, throwing colored highlights across the chiseled planes of his scaly face. Large, thoughtful eyes glowed from shadowed brow ridges. And truly, the glass sang. Light entering the strange turnings seemed to become confused, to twist frantically, growing ever brighter in agitation. Finally satisfied with his labors, Maker upended the light guide over a circular stone well set into the floor and gave it a shake. With a despairing cry, the tremulous wisp of sun glow slid from the maze of mirrored channels into the shaft and was consumed by velvety darkness.
Hissing contentedly through the gap of a broken tooth as wide and as long as a man’s hand, Maker whirled grandly, his huge tail making the humid air hum with its passage, as he approached his latest, and perhaps final, creation.
As transparent as air, taller than She-Who-Speaks-Law, his revered mate, the Thing-That-Rearranges-Now-And-When was not something that could be easily seen. The transport cavity at its crystalline heart was so cramped that it could hold but one, and then only uncomfortably. But no matter, there was no one left to use it but Maker. Their feisty offspring were now encamped with their mother at the cold forests at the bottom of the world where darkness dwelled half the year. And the populace of the city, woeful
fools, had scattered in a thousand directions to deluded safety: all the hunt masters, stone shapers, hide tanners, heavy haulers, meat strippers, keepers of herds, and, sadly, even the wisest of the preservers guild, all fled because of warnings from the great glass eye atop Thorntree mountain. The news had been dire, true, suggesting that all life would perish, even here, half a world away in fiery turmoil from the sky. If any survived, it would be at the distant southern climes. But the odds of salvation even there seemed dubious, doubtful enough to prompt Maker to try another way, a theoretical leap, sidewise, through time itself.
Maker did not miss the crowds. In his view, the city was vastly improved by its emptiness. And now, wrought in haste, through much trial and error, his curious device based on the latest discoveries in hard physics, and honed by just a pinch of black arts, was finally ready.
Bony hand trembling, Maker slid the light guide into its recess. Happily, it clicked into place perfectly within the base of the device. Immediately a harsh light began to pulsate. Now, the crystal could do much more than sing. Indeed, it hummed with power as its innermost facets began to glow.
Maker scurried frantically about the room, darting from table to table, the loose, tubular panels of the lab apron flapping against his muscular thighs. This handy utility garment was a sea of pockets which he stuffed full of gadgets and tools, anything that might conceivably prove useful during his exile. Then, something went SQUEAK! Startled by all the activity and disturbing of things long left untouched, a creature small and furry with a naked twist of pink tail sprang off the table to the floor. Maker hissed in annoyance. The hairy little pests were everywhere, it seemed, in the walls, under the floor, scurrying about in trees. Angrily, he trod on the squirming thing as it darted between his feet. Then, for just a moment, Maker paused, overcome by sudden sentimentality for his doomed world. He stood in silent reflection, drinking in the scents of the cypress and pines that surrounded the garden, admiring the play of light on clumps of shiny green cycadales, enjoying one last time the caress of the warm wind off the island-studded sea.