“Tell me what you have done and where you have been,” he instructed.
I did so, and finished bitterly, “Well, let’s have it! What is wrong with me?”
He hesitated, then going over to his desk he handed me a sheet of paper on which was a curious-looking drawing, the finished effort that I had seen him commence just before I had evaporated. The drawing looked like a plus sign. The horizontal line was marked “Past” at the left hand end, and “Future” at the right hand end. Where the vertical line intercepted it in the centre was the word “Now.” This same “Now” was also inscribed at top and bottom of the vertical line. So far, so good. Now came the odd bit— Starting from the exact center of the plus sign was an ever widening curve, just like the jam line inside a Swiss roll. You know how that line circles out wider and wider! Well, that is what it looked like, and or course it inevitably crossed the right hand section of the horizontal line marked ‘Future’, and the left hand line marked ‘Past’.
So I sat staring at this drawing that looked as though it had come out of Alice in Wonderland, then Pembroke started speaking.
“Young man, I don’t want to be blunt, but I have to. You are a freak of Nature! Every human being, every animal, every thing is following a Time Line through space, and that line is straight. You may recall Sir James Jeans’ observations on this in his Mysterious Universe?”
I shook my head. “I never read Jeans.”
“Mmm, too bad. Then let me quote the relevant statement on page one forty-two of my copy....” Pembroke picked up an ancient blue-covered paperback. “He says—‘Your body moves along the Time Line like a bicycle wheel, and because of this your consciousness touches the world only at one place at one time, just as only part of the cycle wheel touches the road at one time. It may be that Time is spread out in a straight line, but we only contact one instant of it as we progress from past to future.... In fact, as Weyl has said— “Events do not happen: we merely come across them.”’ End quote....”
“And what has this to do with me?” I demanded.
“Just this.” Pembroke returned the book to his desk. “Your Time Line is not straight. It operates in a circle, like that circular design you see there. You told me that in earlier life you noticed you were unaccountably late sometimes and unusually early at others?”
“Ye—es,” I agreed, thinking. “That’s right enough.”
“That,” Pembroke mused, “can be taken as evidence of the first aberrations in the Time Line you were following. Now it has taken its first real curve. Instead of progressing normally in a straight line, you are carried into hyperspace—that gray mist you have mentioned—which is non-dimensional, non-solid: in a word, plain vacuum—”
“But I lived and breathed!” I interrupted.
“Are you sure?” he asked quietly.
I hesitated. Now I came to think back, I wasn’t!
“You can no more be sure you lived and breathed than you can be sure of what you do under anesthetic,” he said. “But you were still heading along a Time Line—not of your own volition, mind you, but inevitably, because Time sweeps along with it. And so, when the curve struck the normal straight Time Line leading from past to future—the world Line, that is, which Earth herself is following—you became a part of it again, but you were twenty-five years ahead of the present.”
I nodded slowly. So far he made sense.
“You stayed there for a period of which you are uncertain, chiefly because your sense of Time had become catastrophically upset; and then, still impelled along this circular Time Line you came back through hyperspace and once more intersected the normal Now Line exactly twenty-four hours afterwards. Events then proceeded normally for a while—still following the circle—you passed through hyperspace to a past event. Then, hyperspace once more, and so back to Now.”
“Then—as the circles grow larger from the center the gaps will become correspondingly greater?” I questioned, and my voice sounded as though it did not belong to me.
“Just so; and the mathematical accuracy of first twenty-five and then two hundred years—forward and backward—shows that the problem is not a disorder but a mathematical fluke quite beyond human power to alter. You move in a circle, Mr. Mills, not a straight line, and unless at some point the circle turns back on itself—an unlikely possibility since the Universe is a perfect cyclic scheme—I can foresee nothing else but...endless circular traveling, gradually taking in vast segments of Time until....”
Pembroke stopped and the room seemed deathly quiet. For some reason though, I was calm now the thing was explained. “Can you account for my not feeling tired?” I asked presently.
“Certainly. You somewhat resemble a battery. You use up energy in a forward movement into Time because you are, in essence, moving into the unexplored—but in the backward movement the energy replaces itself because you are merely returning to a state already lived. You cannot grow old, or tired, or suffer from ketabolism in the ordinary way because you represent a perfect balance between ketabolism and anabolism, the exact amount of each being equal because each journey is the same amount of Time—namely, first twenty-five, then two hundred. And next— Well, who knows?”
“Look here,” I said slowly. “This last time I went back two hundred years, as I told you, but I was somebody else! A pioneer or something of two centuries ago. I was never that!”
“In a past life you must have been,” he answered calmly. “Otherwise you could not have taken over that identity.”
“Then when I was that person why didn’t I know what lay in the future?”
“Perhaps you did. Can you be sure that you didn’t?”
This was becoming involved all right, but after all.... No, damnit, I couldn’t answer it. Maybe I had known!
“And when I was a boy of seven?” I asked. “I presume I became a boy again because I was just that at that age?”
“Just so. Time-instants are indestructible. You are bound to become at a certain instant what you are at that instant, otherwise Time itself would become a misnomer. You will ask why, at seven years of age, you did not know what you would do at thirty-two...? Again, I say, are you sure you didn’t?”
“I—I don’t know. I don’t think so—unless it was buried in my subconscious or something.”
“It must have been. It was there, that knowledge, but maybe you considered it as just a dream fancy and thought no more about it, just as we speculate on how we may look in, say, ten years time and then dismiss it as pure imagination. But with you such an imagining would be fact. And incidentally, as for your carrying a memory of these present experiences about with you, remember that your physical self is all that is affected by Time. Mind and memory cannot alter.”
“And—what happens now?” I simply dragged the words out.
“For your sake, young man, I hope things will straighten out for you—but if they don’t, I have a proposition.... Tell me, have you any relatives?”
“None living, no. I was intending to marry Miss Hargreaves here very soon.”
“Mmmrn, just so. Well, the Institute of Science is prepared to subsidize a Trust by which anybody you may name can benefit. In return we ask that in your swing back to the Now Line you will give us every detail of what has been happening to you during your absences....”
I shook my head bewilderedly. “I’ll—I’ll do it willingly, but I don’t want the money. And Bet—Miss Hargreaves, has plenty of money anyway.... Doc, isn’t there some way?” I asked desperately. “I can tell from you making this proposition that you—”
“I’m sorry, Mr. Mills; I really am. But no human agency can get to grips with your problem.”
I was silent through a long interval, Betty seated now at my side. I looked at her, hopelessly.
“Bet, sweetheart, what do you say? Do you know anybody who needs money in trust?”
“No!” she answered bitterly. “Money is the cheapest, most earthly compensation science can offer you for a ruined life. I don
’t want any part of it.... Oh, Dick, for God’s sake, there must be some way out of this!”
I shook my head. There wasn’t. I knew it now.... Finally I told Pembroke that the money had better be handed over to scientific research, and. on my all too infrequent returns to Now I would tell all I knew.
“We could marry,” I whispered to Betty. “Only it wouldn’t be fair to you. A day might come when I’ll never return.”
“It will,” Pembroke confirmed quietly. “When your circular line takes so wide an orbit that it passes beyond the ends of the Now Line into hyperspace.”
Then I was doomed indeed! All I could hope for was an occasional glimpse of Betty. As for the rest....
My five-hour stay was taken up in signing legal documents; then once more I was swept inevitably into hyperspace. So I went through that gray enigma which baffles description, and this time I was six hundred years ahead of the Now Line. There was still progress, the building of superb cities, the conquest of other worlds, a sense of greater equality and comradeship between both sexes....
So back to Now for a brief spell with a tearful Betty, a long description of my experiences to the scientists, a banquet in my honor at the Science Institute—then outwards and backwards into the past, for a gap of another six hundred years.
Back and forth as the circle widened.
I have tried to keep out of this narrative the inner horror I experienced at it all—the dull, dead futility of being flung by nameless force into an ever-widening gulf. Each time, of course, as the circle widened I went further afield.
Hundreds of years, thousands of years, from one end of the pendulum’s swing to the other—backwards into scores of lives which had long since been effaced from memory; forwards into a wonder world of ever-increasing splendor.... Then in the tens of thousands of years ahead I saw Man was pretty close to leaving his material form altogether and becoming purely mental. So much so that on my visit after this one Earth was empty and turning one face to the sun. Age, old and remorseless, crawled over a once busy planet.
At the opposite end of the scale life was swinging down into the Neanderthal man stage, and then further back still to where Man was not even present. But there were amoeba, the first forms of life, and I fancy I must have been one of these!
Backwards—forwards—with the visions of Now mere shadows in a universe which was to me insane. Nothing held sense any more. I was losing touch with every well-remembered thing, with the dear girl who always awaited my comings and goings—growing older, but always loyal. And around her the cold, impersonal scientists logging down information that could chart the course of civilizations for ages to come. No wonder I had seen progress ahead! My own guidance had prevented any mistakes, and in those distant visions I had seen the fruit of my own advice! Incredible—yet true.
Gradually I realized that my Time Circle was now becoming so huge that it was involving a stupendous orbit that did not include Earth but the Universe as a whole, proving how independent of normal Time Lines had my vicious circle become.
In my swing I saw the birth of the Earth and the gradual slowing down of the Universe—and this I think is destined to be my last return to the Now Line, for the next curve will be so enormous that—well, I do not think I shall be able to contact the Now Line at all. The scientists have charted it all out for me.
The curve will take me to the period of the initial explosion that created the expanding universe out of—what? That will be in the past. And my futureward movement will carry me to that state of sublime peace where all the possible interchanges of energy have been made, where there exists thermodynamic equilibrium and the death of all that is. At either end of the curve Time is non-existent! This is where I may at last find rest.
As I think on these things, writing these last words in the world of Now, I cannot help but marvel at what I have done.... But I hate it! I hate it with all my human soul! Opposite to me in this bright room Betty is seated, silent, dry-eyed, faithful to the last. Science is still represented in the quiet men in the chairs by the far wall, all of them busy writing and checking notes.
Never was so strange a sentence passed on a human being!
The grayness is coming! I have no time to write any more—
CHAOS
For nearly two hours Nal Folan had been seated almost motionless, held in the grip of profound abstract reasoning. In this time only his right hand had moved, turning over the sheets of light durable metal foiling covered with a maze of figures and mathematical computations. He had been working alone in complete silence, a single living man in the midst of a towering array of scientific apparatus.
Finally he laid aside the last sheet of foiling, stretched muscular arms, and got to his feet. He was tall, young, and dressed in a brief toga-like costume, his legs and arms almost bare. Nal Folan was a perfect creature of his race. Product of a magnificent science built up through generations.
The timepiece on the far wall of the huge laboratory showed him it was still early in the evening. He nodded to himself, brushed the thick black hair from his forehead with his hand, and then hurried to the door. A short walk down a gleaming corridor and up a flight of emergency steps brought him to the immense flat roof which extended over the entire area of the laboratory. Save for a distant figure the square expanse was deserted.
But the distant figure was all Nal Folan wished to see. He smiled to himself and walked swiftly across the space, his soft-footed sandals making hardly any noise. Before he had covered more than half the distance however the figure turned and began to hurry towards him—a graceful girl in brief garments similar to his own, her black hair streaming to her shoulders.
“Nal,” she murmured, as they seized each other’s hands.
He did not answer for a moment. Gently he kissed her oval face, looked for a moment into the darkness of her eyes. Then putting his arm about her waist he walked with her to the high metal rail which entirely encircled the roof parapet
“I thought you’d forget,” she said, smiling up at him. “With so many other things on your mind.”
“It would take more than wave-mechanics to make me forget you, Mydia,” he answered. “You said you’d meet me around this time on the laboratory roof, and that’s enough for me. You didn’t have any difficulty in getting here, did you?”
“Not particularly. I used the stairway from the street.”
He nodded. “Good. As long as we remain up here on this roof we’re within bounds. But we can’t go down into the laboratory, of course. Visitors are not allowed—not even when they are as beautiful as you are. Old man Grifa would go crazy if he found the rule had been broken.”
They were both quiet for a moment. Over in the west the sun had vanished in the magenta and orange of the warm spring evening. The sky was pale blue and empty, a star or two winking here and there. No wind stirred. From this high eminence the young roan and woman had an uninterrupted view of the city, a metropolis wider than it was high, nowhere rising above three stories except in the case of this laboratory.
The buildings were all of white metal, incorrodible, gleaming now with the strings of lights in the windows. Faintly, drifting on the still air, came the hum of the mighty engines which controlled the aircraft, the radio-television systems, the atomic power-houses, and the climate.
“Not a bad city to live in,” Nal Folan commented at length, his elbows on the rail and his young, powerful body half stooped as he gazed towards the west.
“Atlantis?” The girl smiled. “It’s a wonderful city, Nal, and you know it. Yet even with our scientific perfection I suppose there is still a good deal to be learned. You and your wave-mechanics theory, for instance.”
Nal Folan meditated, his keen gray eyes shifting to the distant Sphinx and Pyramids just outside the city. The Sphinx was a recent creation, a gigantic idol of stone etched out by scientific engineers, a traditional god which the race still revered despite their immense grasp of scientific realities. The Pyramids were
for a very different purpose. They housed the ashes of the city fathers who had at last come to the end of their three-centuries span.
“Just what,” the girl asked presently, “are you trying to do in the laboratory, Nal? You’ve only given me vague hints. It’s important, isn’t it?”
He straightened up and regarded her. “Important enough, yes. Grifa and the others are coming tomorrow morning to see my demonstration. If it is successful I may become the Third Physicist. After that, a few more years say, and then I’ll have the same position as Grifa himself. That’s worth striving for.”
“That I know,” Mydia said. “You’ve mentioned it many times. But it still doesn’t explain what you are doing. Please remember that I’m only a very commonplace machine-minder in the climatic powerhouse and—”
“Commonplace!” Nal caught her shoulders and shook her gently. “If beauty were commonplace, which it isn’t even in this city, you might be right. Certainly not otherwise. My work?” He seemed suddenly conscious of her question. “It is a method of proving that an electron-area is not limited to being merely a microscopic probability.”
Mydia looked at him solemnly, her pretty face troubled. Then she sighed. “It serves me right,” she said. “I shouldn’t have asked you. I don’t know the first thing about electron-areas.”
“Then why bother?” he asked, smiling. “I asked you to come here after your machine shift so that we could talk—not of mathematics and probabilities but about ourselves. You and me—our coming marriage—the things we intend to do.”
Mydia was silent, looking down at the city. Men and women were going back and forth. Silent vehicles skimmed up and down the broad avenues. To the east the emptiness of the sky was broken as an exploration flyer, detailed to seek out fresh lands for expansion, came down on the guiding radio-beam.
“You—haven’t changed your mind?” Nal whispered frowning.
The girl laughed. “Of course not! Can’t I be silent for a moment or two without you thinking that? I was just considering. It’s so safe now for us to be married, to have children, and not be afraid that they will be destroyed. It was so different in our grandparent’s time.”
Dynasty of the Small Page 9