“I cannot,” the fellow’s despairing whimper came to him. “I cannot remember.”
“You’ve got to, man! Try. Try hard!”
Silence fell in the round-walled cubicle, a thick silence that seemed to quiver with tension. Stratton stared at the future-man, concentrating on his thoughts, on that storehouse of forgotten but never eradicated brain-impressions the psychologists call subconscious memory.
No words came to him, but pictures seemed to form on his retina, pictures like the hazy visions of a dream. They grew more definite in outline. He saw Flaton resting on his grey cloud cushion. He saw the view-screen in front of him. It was a porthole looking out on a platform thronged with hundreds of creatures in the nightmarish shapes of the world of the future. Silhouetted against a blue sky were towering pinnacles of gleaming crystal, fairylike highways leaping from facade to facade in a gossamer arabesque, clouds of ovoid stratocars?
The view-screen drifted upward and he saw the lever-banks. Thin, boneless fingers reached out, pushed one down in its short slot. In the view-screen the crowded platform shot down.
“I have it!” Stratton shouted, and leaped to the bow of the stratocar. He glimpsed the real view-screen, glimpsed a steel-capped Viking rushing in through it, a crowd of others behind him. His shaking hand found a lever, pushed it down.
The uprush of the stratocar flung him down on Talus, crushing the future-man as Stratton had crushed Flaton in his irate onslaught. But the flier was rising. The crater was dwindling in the television screen, was once more a pit in the plain’s boundary-less surface.
Ronald Stratton struggled back to the control levers. “I’ve got to stop this or we’ll keep on going up forever.” Talus was dead, could not help him any longer. He pushed the tiny handle back into the central point of its slot. The precipitate rise stopped; the stratocar hovered, motionless in the air.
Stratton stared at the control board. He saw now that the switch lifting the stratocar was the topmost of a vertical row of three, that to left and right of the central lever there were two more.
“It looks simple enough,” he muttered, “Now that I’ve got a starting point. Top—up. Bottom—down. Middle—forward. Left—left. Right—right. Let’s try it. I’ll push down the middle one. Here goes!”
The craft leaped forward. The problem was solved! He could fly the stratocar. But where? Where in this terrible place was safety for him? For Elaise?
“Look, Ronny!” the girl exclaimed. “It waxeth light again. The night here is indeed very short.”
The strange red glow that passed here for day was growing in the screen. “It’s just some kind of fluctuation of the light, sweetheart,” Stratton thought aloud. “You see, there could not really be any day or night here because there isn’t any Time.”
Below, the eerily colored plain was visible once more, stretching undisturbed to a featureless horizon. No. There, straight ahead, something bulked against the lurid sky, a familiar, grateful green margining its upper edge.
“How would you like to come home with me, Elaise?” Stratton whispered. “Home to England?”
“Ronny!” She was wordless, but her arms around his neck, her kiss on his cheek, was enough.
“All right,” he said. “Here goes.”
The stratocar came down in the clearing, where Flaton had captured them. Stratton stepped out of it, helped Elaise to descend. They turned shuddering away from the gruesome remnants of the last of the future-men.
“We came from that direction,” Stratton Said. “Maybe if we go back there we’ll find the eddy once again.”
“Whither thou goest I will go,” Elaine murmured. “I am thine, my knight, soul and body?”
“Not more than I’m yours, honey. Remember that when we get back to 1936. Come on.”
The underbrush rustled against their knees, the trees whispered overhead. They passed the still body of the Neanderthal Man. Then—a wall confronted them, a wall of hazy, swirling nothingness.
“Here goes! Together does it, Elaise, One—two—three!” His arm around her warm waist, Ronald Stratton stepped into the haze.
CHAPTER VI
THROUGH THE EDDY
It was as if he had walked over the brink of an abyss, save that he did not fall. He was standing on the gentle slope of Silbury Hill. A great monolith loomed above him, black and gaunt against a dusk sky grey and haunting with the death of day. Not a minute, not a second had elapsed since he had taken the fateful step in the other direction.
“Look, Elaine.” Ronald Stratton said. “Look down there. See the spire of Avebury Church? We can find a minister there, to wed us.” She didn’t answer.
“Elaise!” he said sharply, turning to her. She wasn’t there beside him. She wasn’t anywhere?
“Elaise!”
But she had walked into the eddy, close against him. She must have walked into it. What had happened? Where was she, the girl he had found in the Timeless Zone, who had fought so bravely by his side? The girl he had learned to love, the blue-eyed, fair-haired girl from the days of King Arthur?
From the days? Abruptly he understood. He remembered his first explanation of their strange adventure. “We’ve shot along the year-spokes of that great wheel, each from our own time, and met here at the center?” The reverse, too, was true. Returning, they had each gone back along his own year-spoke, he to 1936, she to A. D. 520. Some vibration of their cosmos, some esoteric, unknown quality, had provided for that. They were fourteen centuries apart.
Ronald Stratton started slowly down the hill, descending toward the valley whose moor was already dark with the gloom of night. Little stars sprinkled it, lights in the homes of people like himself. Of people of the twentieth century. Above them, the red and green winglights of an airplane drifted across the dusk.
“I don’t care how advanced your era is; if you haven’t got love, I pity you.” He had said that to Flaton. “It’s the greatest thing in life.”
Stratton halted, turned back to the monumental double-ring the Druids had built to warn their people of the terrible thing that lay within. Abruptly he was running back to the high stone that marked the boundary of the eddy. He stopped on its very edge.
“Elaise!” he cried into that dread maelstrom of haze. “Elaise!”
Mad! He would be mad to plunge back into it. She wouldn’t be there, in the forest. She was hastening down Silbury Hill, fourteen hundred years ago so as not to be late for evening prayers. She—
“Ronny!”
Her voice came out of the mists. He hadn’t heard it, couldn’t have heard it, across fourteen centuries. He was mad!
“Ronny!”
“I’m coming, Elaise. Wait for me! I’m coming!”
* * * *
Above a forest of tall and ancient oaks a lurid sky bent its eerie dome. A tiny horse, three-toed and knee-high to a full-grown man, peered through the underbrush at the couple walking, hand in hand, into the lowering, threatening future of the Land Where Time Stood Still. Hand in hand, heart to heart, the man of the twentieth century and the maid of the sixth went, together, into the Unknown.
OUTSIDE OF TIME, by Carroll John Daly
They call me simply L. D. or The Lazy Dean. I have come to accept it as a title both of esteem and affection. The boys at the university started it. The faculty took it up. They mean, a lazy body and not a lazy mind. I am not so well informed on the happenings of the day. I use my reading time for the things that others do not read.
I am much more interested in what does not appear in the newspapers than what does appear. There are many better fitted to understand and explain the everyday happenings of life. I like to live by the side of the road—but the side of a side road.
For years I have enjoyed a very unofficial position at the school. I am a good listener and a good believer. Will I believe in
the impossible? I don’t have to believe in the impossible, for I have eliminated the word impossible from my own lexicon. I find things improbable but nothing more. Too many strange things happen.
It is a pleasant saying around the university when one relates anything that strains the credulity, of the academic mind: “Tell it to the Lazy Dean.”
So the boys often come to me with improbable happenings. Even the faculty, half-apologetically, with a pretense that it is all in good fun—but watching me furtively to see how I take it.
It is surprising how busy I am.
It is with a feeling of satisfaction and comfort that I sit down with my pipe and listen to one of our students confide to me things he would not even breathe to his closest friend.
So it was with that feeling that I opened the door of my rooms on the second floor of the museum building to Tommy Slater of the medical school. Tommy was a medium-sized rather slim dark young man who if he avoided surgery and didn’t specialize would, make a remarkably fine family doctor. Easygoing, pleasant of manner—mild, friendly bright blue eyes and a generous humorous mouth. He would never set the river on fire but then it was my opinion that a good doctor never would. Nature cures. A good doctor brings simply comfort and confidence to the sick.
There were lines under Tommy’s eyes and the likable little twist to the corner of his mouth was more pronounced. Tommy was the school hero though he hadn’t been near the university since it happened almost a week ago. He was New York City’s hero. Indeed a national and international hero who had swept all other news from the press and the radio and no doubt from the minds of men and women.
He saw me look at the clock for although I kept late hours it was then five minutes before twelve.
“Come, come, L. D.” His laugh was a forced one. “You never turn down your fellow man day or night. I know it is late and I expect it will be much later still before you get rid of me. I’ve come to smoke a pipe with you.”
Tommy assisted me in pushing the other easy chair close to the fire. Despite my gesture he waited until I was seated. Then he sat down opposite me—stretched his feet out toward the fire—placed a cigarette between his lips and lighted it. Though he always talked of smoking a pipe with me I had never seen him smoke one. I filled my pipe slowly, and lighted it, smiled over at him and waited.
“I hope,” he said suddenly, “That you have read a paper lately—or if you haven’t someone told you what was in it.”
“Yes,” I told him. “I have read all the papers; seen all the pictures—even went to the news-reel theatre twice. Surely you received my note of congratulation.”
“If I did I never read it.” He inhaled deeply. “I have had—literally thousands and thousands of letters. Hundreds of women want to marry me. Hundreds of people want to shower me with money—as many more want to deprive me of that money before I even receive it. I’ve been offered fabulous amounts from the movies—and one night club offered me ten thousand dollars for a single appearance.” He sat up a little straighter and leaned forward into the light. “Look at me,” he said. “And don’t say I’ve worn myself out—run myself down mentally and physically by overwork here at the school.”
“No—Tommy,” I told him. “I would never say that.”
“Of course you wouldn’t.” He permitted himself a weak grin. “Do you know I’ve been to see Dean Stone—that august head of this whole institution. I saw him once before from a distance. I didn’t think he would breathe the same air with me, and do you know he tripped all over the foot-high softness in his rug trying to shake hands with me.”
“He should.” I nodded. “No matter how lightly you take it. It was a very courageous act—a very noble one—the school is proud of you.”
“Baloney.” The blue eyes sparkled into life. “I did nothing but reach up and lift the girl out of the air.”
“Yes—you told that to the reporters. It has been discussed here at the university. There is general agreement that you put it very modestly, Tommy—and they have been proud of the way you have conducted yourself. Modesty—”
“Was not my strong point,” he cut in. “I’m ashamed not to be modest. I feel like a crook and a cheat. That is exactly what I did do. Simply reach up and lift her out of the air.
“But the girl fell from the penthouse terrace—and you caught her in your arms and held her. The papers may play it up a bit for they say there was not so much as a scratch on her.”
“There wasn’t,” Tommy said. “Not so much as a pin prick.” And very seriously, “Did you read the number of floors she fell?”
“Yes—fourteen. I don’t think you have anything to be ashamed of, Tommy. It was a remarkable piece of daring and courage.”
“Fourteen stories,” he said again. “I spread my legs apart—braced myself—my knees gave slightly and I stayed erect and held her so. I’m quoting that from the newspaper accounts. Now—did you ever think what became of the force of gravity? Do you—do you think that possible?”
“Possible—well I would have thought it highly improbable—but it did happen. You did catch her. You didn’t fall down. Countless people saw you. A news-reel camera—” He was looking intently at me.
“What is it, Tommy?” I asked.
“Go over it for me please,” he said. “Tell me what you read and what you saw in the news-reel. Tell it to me as you might to a stranger who hadn’t heard the full account.”
“Do you think there is such a stranger? All right, Tommy, if you want it that way. Wanda Lou Sherman, age eighteen, only daughter of Johnson H. Sherman, multimillionaire, steel magnate, was playing table tennis on the terrace of their penthouse apartment in the upper fifties on Park Avenue. It used to be ping-pong when I played it. In her enthusiasm for the game—or was it one of the few remaining English balls that made her dash to the little wall. But she did dash—jumped upon it—grabbed at the ball and for some unaccountable reason—and such reasons, Tommy, are always unaccountable—the heavy sturdy steel fencing bent over and she pitched out toward the street—fourteen floors below. So far we are correct?”
“Quite correct.” Tommy was very serious. “Go on.”
“Very well. It was before the dinner hour—rather five o’clock. The street was crowded, for there was a wedding across the way. The girl screamed as she fell. People looked up. The camera man turned and so got the picture. Then, Tommy, you dashed out. Caught the falling body—staggered—nearly fell. But held steady and saved the girl’s life. Am I to go on about the part you are going to marry her and learn the steel business and—”
“No. We can skip that. How many people do you suppose saw me dash out and catch the girl?”
“Everyone who was there I suppose. Even those who didn’t see you. That is human nature, Tommy. They said you just dashed across the street—I don’t think any of them were questioned as to the direction you came from.”
“Do you remember the old lady in the shawl—in the news-reel? What she said?” And when I seemed puzzled. “She said I just appeared as if from nowhere and had her in my arms.”
“Is that important?”
“So important,” said Tommy, “That it is the only true statement made. Besides mine that I simply reached up and lifted her out of the air.”
Tommy got up then and paced the room.
“Listen, L.D.” He talked as he walked. “I am serious about gravity and the speed of the falling body. Common sense would tell anyone that a giant of a man, let alone a shrimp like me, could not have caught a girl—even though she was only five-feet-two and weighed little more than a hundred pounds—after she had fallen fourteen stories. We’d both have been dashed to the street, dozens of bones broken. Can you believe that?”
“I believe that nature can reach great heights at times. Let us say that nature suddenly gave you super-human strength. Or perhaps more simp
ly that you arose to the occasion.”
“Anything,” he smiled at me now, the little wistful smile again, “Is possible. But you see there is a simpler solution to the whole thing. The truth—that I just reached up and lifted her out of the air. I saw Dean Stone. I nearly blurted it out to him. I wanted to see how the truth would strike a cold-blooded, practical man. I actually threatened him with the truth. And do you know what he said? ‘The truth can never hurt anyone.’ Do you believe that?”
“Well—no, Tommy. It is simply a stock phrase of the good dean’s. He couldn’t very well advise you to lie about it.” And after a long wait. “Are you going to tell me the truth, Tommy? I don’t think it will hurt either of us.”
“No,” said Tommy. “It can’t hurt you. You’ve talked to men who have seen so much—experienced—the—well other men would call them mad. And you didn’t have them committed—or anything like that.”
“No.” I smiled. “Nothing like that.”
“But it could be all an illusion, couldn’t it?”
“If life is an illusion, yes.”
“Could that be?”
“Anything could be—but I don’t believe that probable. You see, Tommy, I hear a great many things from a great many people. Each one taken individually seems beyond belief—but when you take them altogether you have a great deal of evidence that makes you believe. We do not deny the stars because we cannot see them on a cloudy night.”
“So you have heard about everything?”
“I hope not everything, Tommy.” And I meant that. “Life would be very dull indeed if I did not expect—at least always hope—to hear something different, something new to me—new to man.”
“Well I’ve got it.” Tommy stood looking down at me. “If it weren’t for the girl, and the newspapers and newsreels, I’d question my own sanity. But odd and impossible as it sounds it is the only thing that explains the truth about Wanda Lou Sherman… and my lifting her out of the air. It doesn’t make a hero out of me—but it explains how I happened to take the girl in my arms—with such ease.”
The Second Time Travel Megapack: 23 Modern and Classic Stories Page 32