Old Faithful Plot

by Dora Benley

  "Stop speaking nonsense!" Edward insisted as he shook the witch even harder.

  "Your Yellowstone supervolcano is connected to all the other volcanoes on earth deep in the mantle. What Hitler and his Nazi scientists have discovered is that they are also connected to all the other volcanoes of past history, too. In fact, they serve as time tunnels into the past. We are headed back to Pompeii on August 24, 79AD almost two thousand years ago. In fact, we are almost there!" She stuck her nose defiantly in his face.

  "Why would Hitler want to go there of all places even if such a thing were possible?" Edward did not seem to understand anymore than Dora did. He wrinkled up his face.

  "Hitler wants to win the First World War which Germany lost to France, England, and America. A certain enemy Roman named Pliny the Elder wrote bad things about the Germans of that day two thousand years ago. He defamed the German tribes and made everybody for the rest of time hate them and gang up on them."

  "You mean the Germans ganged up on everybody else! In World War 1 they sank the Lusitania with my wife's friends aboard!" Edward protested Hitler's view of history. "I am sure the bastards did the same thing in the Middle Ages and even in ancient times. They're a bad lot for sure."

  Dora would never forget that day on May 7, 1915 when the Germans torpedoed her ship and brought the Americans into the war two years later. And now Hitler wanted to get away with that as well as the other bad things. The Kaiser had done likewise during the war and Bismarck had done worse in the century before him. Charlemagne had also caused chaos during the Middle Ages.

  Frau von Wessel threw off Edward. Herr von Wessel shot his gun at Edward's feet, and his wife escaped. The Nazi master mind grabbed his wife's hand, and they fled ahead toward the light in the center of the earth or in a time tunnel leading into the past or wherever it was. Edward followed along with the Prof beside him into the light ahead. Dora followed behind that, somehow never seeming to catch up.

  How had Hitler managed that? How had he learned all about volcanoes and how they were connected to all other volcanoes past and present? Or had he kidnapped Albert Einstein with his theories about matter and energy and made him construct a Nazi Time Tunnel into the past? It made her shiver as she was willy nilly forced to travel back through history in some bizarre Nazi plot fomented by Hitler, Prince of Darkness.

  Ahead the sky was alight with fire. A tall black mountain rose across what looked like the Bay of Naples on the Amalfi Coast. It was shooting off fireworks and hot ash tinged with red that was landing everywhere all around.

  Dora looked around in amazement at the women in long dresses sweeping against the ground and men wearing togas and purple tunics.. They were racing along on horses dragging carts. Others were on foot wearing sandals. It certainly did not look like the crowded parking lot at the Old Faithful Lodge. This was no Hollywood set. There were no camera men anywhere. It must be somehow just as Frau von Wessel had threatened. They were back in the days of ancient Rome in 79AD just as Vesuvius was erupting!

  Chapter 35: 79 AD

  The villagers and commoners were fleeing the erupting Vesuvius volcano that was spewing out hot ash from three thousand feet above the bay. Their screams and yells surrounded Dora on every side. She began to focus on the marble Roman villa straight ahead. It was backed up against a hillside covered with olive vines and grapes. Edward and the Prof seemed to be focused on this same building, too. Her eyes followed them as they raced up the brick steps towards it.

  It was a most elaborate, very extensive, two-story marble and brick structure with a red tile roof featuring Corinthian columns, arches, and domes in the classical style. The grounds seemed to be spread out over several acres. Through an open doorway where carts and carriages were gathered partially blocking Dora's view, she saw a vast reflecting pond open to the sky with water lilies floating on top of it. This interior garden extended almost the entire length of the main building.

  Flaming rocks and ash from the volcano were landing in the pond and splashing the water all over the place. Servants were fleeing about carrying what looked like scrolls in their arms and heading toward the main entrance where a stately-looking, half-bald gentleman with a receding hairline and gray hair dressed in a toga stood giving orders. Despite the chaos he was well-dressed in a long robe and had a certain calm about him. He spoke in educated Latin which Dora knew in only an elementary way from her college days at Bryn Mawr as a classics major. She tried to make out what he was saying as Edward and the Prof crept closer to the scene of destruction and devastation.

  A young man, no doubt his nephew, who looked very much like the older gentleman, rushed up to him. He carried an armful of scrolls. He exclaimed in fluent Latin, "Here is your work on Germany, the Germania. Let's get out of here." He directed his look toward the volcano in the near distance. It seemed to hang over them like a dark cloud. "We've already packed your Natural History, too. I don't think we can save much more. Not with Vesuvius acting like this."

  The older gentleman nodded as he glanced about him with dismay.

  A best friend to the younger man stepped up and nodded. "I am trying to write my own Germania. Do the gods not want anyone to read it in the ages to come? Is that why they have sent this fire from the heavens to show us their wrath and displeasure?"

  "Maybe the fire in the sky somehow is not the will of the gods. Perhaps it is not even a natural phenomenon — at least not totally," Pliny suggested.

  "What!" the two younger men exclaimed in unison.

  Pliny continued, " I have been observing the volcano for years and taking notes on it." The older gentleman looked with dismay towards the erupting mountain. "It has never acted like this before not even when the earth trembled and the shepherds in the hills predicted disaster and the waves from the sea rose higher."

  "What do you think caused it then?" his nephew asked. "Alchemy?"

  His younger relative's friend screwed up his face. "Black magic?"

  The older man nodded. "When I visited the Oracle of Delphi during my last travels to Greece, I asked to see the face of any unknown enemy that might be plaguing me. For some time I had felt a dark presence. The Sybil showed me the face of a man with hair on his cheeks and chins like one of the German tribesmen who hate me for writing such a book as the Germania. He did not look like any Roman to me," Pliny shook his head.

  "How eerie!" his younger relative's friend exclaimed.

  "What was even more peculiar," Pliny continued, "was that this tribesman was not wearing the clothes of a Roman. He was wearing long leggings like a German tribesman. But the clothes did not look like the present age. It was a material I have never seen before."

  "Was he from the past?" asked his nephew.

  Pliny shook his head. "No, the future I fear."

  "How is such a thing possible?" asked his nephew's friend.

  "There are more things in heaven and earth than we mortals can imagine. All my researches confirm that. Time travel is something that I have never explored. But it only makes sense if such a thing exists that the future would appear and come back to the past."

  They all looked fearfully towards the exploding volcano.

  "That man that the Delphi oracle warned me about wore all sorts of medals on his shirt. One of them I recognized. It was one that I saw in Germany. It has to do with their religion and the very essence of being German."

  "Here, draw it for us," said his nephew holding up a wax tablet.

  Pliny drew a symbol that Dora instantly recognized as a crude swastika. The man Pliny was talking about must be Adolf Hitler.

  "What does he want with you, uncle?" asked Pliny's nephew.

  Pliny frowned. "I figure he must be after me because of what I have written about his uncivilized countrymen whom I have had the chance to observe from close up when I was governor in Trier. They are the tribesmen who defeated the Emperor Augustus and his legions at the Ba
ttle of the Teutoburg Forest some years ago. They are very benighted, and unfortunately they don't seem to have learned much in the far flung future either. They are apparently still the bane of the earth."

  Dora could not agree more. Dora was amazed at the man's brilliance. He was guessing at the existence of Hitler himself though he could not possibly know about him. She decided he could be no other than the sage essayist and scientist Pliny the Elder. The younger man must be his nephew, Pliny the Younger. Pliny the Younger's best friend must be Tacitus. She remembered this all from her class in Latin literature. They were all to write important classics. All had things to say about the Germans.

  Pliny the Elder himself had been a governor of the Roman province of Germany. He was stationed in Trier and made firsthand observations in the oldest town in Germany. Hitler could not have picked out a more important man to persecute or to get his revenge on — or a more influential one when it came to knowledge and opinions about the Germans. But Dora guessed that was Hitler's chief motivation all along.

  Suddenly Herr von Wessel and his wife burst upon the scene carrying guns which had not been invented yet in Roman times. The Plinys and Tacitus fell back in amazement, not recognizing the weapons for what they were but judging by the von Wessels' menacing expressions that they were dangerous.

  "All right, hand over the Germania, whoever has it!" insisted Herr von Wessel, speaking in bad Latin which he must have polished up for this special not to be repeated occasion.

  "Give it to me now!" Frau von Wessel thrust out her long hand with the spider-like fingers palm up. She, too, managed to speak in Latin. "Or you will die!" She must have boned up on the language at the last minute. Dora did not remember her speaking it before.

  "I don't know what sort of strange weapons you are carrying!" Pliny gave the intruders an indignant look. "But you," he looked straight at Herr von Wessel, "resemble one of those Germans that I governed in Germania. You are loud and rude in your manners. You issue outrageous commands and do not speak good sense. Are you here to get revenge for Germanicus's appearance with his armies in the year 14?" he stepped back. "After all, you asked for Germanicus's retribution when you slaughtered our legions in 9AD right before I was born. What did you expect except that we would send a general to reconquer the province? And keep a firm hand on it after that?"

  "We don't care about that kind of crap!" Frau von Wessel burst out. "We are here from the far distant future working for a man not yet born in your time called Adolf Hitler, a man of the future German people, who doesn't want you to defame him and the Germans through thousands of years of history. He managed to get us back here in time two thousand years through a time tunnel in that volcano," she nodded at it. "We don't know how long we can stay here. So hand the text over right now. Herr Hitler wants the original so nobody else in history can get his dirty hands on it!"

  There was a big pause of horror as the Romans stared at the intruders from the future.

  "I have no such intention!" Pliny the Elder stuck up his nose. "The truth must be known. And I stand for the truth in my Natural History as well as my Germania."

  "You see this volcanic eruption?" Frau von Wessel challenged Pliny. "It isn't caused by your gods. It is caused by Adolf Hitler. We did it with sticks of dynamite that set off a big, big chain reaction. Hitler is more powerful than you stupid louts who don't even know about explosives yet, so you had better obey him."

  Herr von Wessel fired at Pliny the Elder's foot to scare him into submission.

  The Plinys and Tacitus backed up behind a marble statue, but the ancient Roman patricians did not yield.

  Dora felt the horrible tension. She sweated from the heat of the volcano surrounding her on all sides. Rocks and ash rained like fiery hail around her. The sky was turning black as night though it was midday.

  Edward and the Prof from the hillside suddenly opened fire on the von Wessels. The von Wessels fired back. Just then the volcano exploded with renewed vigor. A plume of smoke shot straight up into the air, branching off into separate streams of smoke going in all directions at once. A black bronze bust sitting on top of a column rocked back and forth. The statue's eyes were agog. The sculpture finally toppled and hit the earth with a loud bang.

  Pliny the Elder frowned. He did not know the name of the modern weapon that Edward was using, but he took advantage of the opportunity to signal to his nephew and his good friend. While the von Wessels were distracted shooting at Edward and the Prof, the Romans all piled into their elaborate wooden coach so finely crafted that it could have been from the eighteenth century. On the running boards in the back stood bronze figurines of wolves, the progenitors of the Roman people. Dora remembered from Roman history class at Bryn Mawr that the wolves had suckled Romulus and Remus on Palatine Hill, the founders of ancient Rome. Right below the rounded wooden roof of the coach was a pediment with figures from Mount Olympus celebrating at a banquet.

  Dora was glad when the horses raced off down the hill with their scrolls in safekeeping for the future. Pliny the Elder, one of the most perceptive and intelligent Romans who ever lived, was escaping from both the volcano and Hitler's attempted long arm grab back through history.

  Dora remembered something from one of her classical history courses at Bryn Mawr about Pliny the Elder getting killed in the Vesuvius eruption and his nephew writing a famous account about it, the only one to survive from antiquity about August 24, 79 AD. Pliny had supposedly gone off to examine the erupting volcano for his Natural History. Perhaps that had been what had really happened before Edward and Professor Lindemann had intervened. Tonight they had given this great man a second chance at greatness. Now he would escape from the ashes and not die after all. He obviously would not have time to try to tinker with the volcano when he had to high tail it out of there to escape the von Wessels. So Hitler had accomplished just the opposite of what he had intended!

  Pliny's Germania had been influential before in convincing other countries that there was something suspicious about German tyranny and German values that they could slaughter Augustus's best legions in 9AD. Now Pliny's Germania manuscript would resound through the ages. Perhaps it would even be found and translated someday now that it had not been destroyed in 79AD. Pliny had taken the time to save it instead of wandering off to examine Vesuvius. She could only cross her fingers and hope. Perhaps they really had changed history — but for the better and not for the worse.

  Dora again opened her eyes in horror and closed them again in her own supreme effort to escape her dreams. She struggled to wake up and shake off this unbelievable nightmare. But still Hitler would not let her go just yet.

  The von Wessels were about to leap into another coach and follow the Plinys and Tacitus. A fiery ball of rock descended from the volcano right in front of them and prevented their escape. Dora decided maybe Jupiter and the rest of the Olympians were on the side of Pliny after all — and maybe on the side of Edward, the Prof, Churchill, and Dora, too.

  Chapter 36: Back to New York

  With the sounds of volcanic explosions echoing in her ears and competing with the sounds of gunfire from every direction at once, Dora finally hurled herself from the bed in the cabin. She raced toward the door of the cabin at the Old Faithful Lodge and flung it open. In the darkness of dawn Old Faithful was erupting with a plume of white mist high into the air. She shook off the horrible nightmare that had seemed all too real and then charged out the door, calling, "Edward! Where are you?" Was her nightmare coming true, or what? Was she waking from a nightmare into still another nightmare?

  Up close the Old Faithful eruption looked like any normal, ordinary eruption, nothing more. The park was still in place around her. The Old Faithful Inn stood across the parking lot. All the cabins of the Old Faithful Lodge lay scattered about near the geyser basin just as they had yesterday at dinner time just before they had encountered the von Wessels. Despite what she had experienced in her long
, long nightmare last night, nothing had really changed.

  Dora wondered, Was it only dream? But it was so vivid!

  She started forward into the early dawn looking left and right for Edward Ware. Finally she saw two male figures slumped on a bench not far from the Old Faithful Geyser. Were they shot? Dead? She hurried toward Edward and the Prof.

  "Edward!" she called "Edward, what happened?"

  The two men startled awake and leaped to their feet. She rushed into Edward's arms. Dora thought never to see him again on this side of the grave.

  Dora pushed Edward away from her. "What was happening all night long? Where were you? Where did you go? Did you find the von Wessels?" She wracked her brain to make sense of it all.

  Edward shrugged. "We chased the von Wessels as far as we could towards the hillside behind the Old Faithful Geyser. But they got away in the pitch blackness." He pointed the path out to her.

  The three of them even headed in that direction and examined the hillside more carefully by the light of day. It looked very forbidding. The hillside covered with chalky white calcite and the black hole to nowhere. As she observed a marmot racing out of it, she shook off the foolish notion that somehow it was a time tunnel that led back to 79AD and the eruption of Vesuvius.

  "Hopefully the von Wessels left the park. When we couldn't see them anymore, Lindemann and I sat down here to discuss what to do next," Edward confessed.

  The Prof nodded. "I guess we just fell asleep from exhaustion. You woke us up right now." He rubbed his eyes and yawned.

  "But what about Pliny the Elder? What about Vesuvius and ancient Pompeii?" It all burst out of her mouth. She could not see evidence of a world destruction caused by Hitler around her, but she had to make sure.

  There was a moment's pause. Edward did not seem to understand what she was talking about at first. "Dora, were you dreaming or what?" Edward was surprised.

  "No wonder!" exclaimed the Prof as he stretched and yawned. "I was having a few queer dreams myself now that you mention it."