Philip Van Doren Stern (ed)

by Travelers In Time

  The hours passed slowly. No sound penetrated from the London streets. It seemed the silence deepened to something beyond silence. Beneath the surface the turmoil in my mind ran helter-skelter among a thousand thoughts and pictures, playing pitch-and-toss with my years in the prison camp, with my reading, with my own strange experiments in escape. ... I wondered, wondered, for wonder seemed the single attitude that held calm and steady in me. For the hundredth time I went over my brief talk with Vronski just before he left, the few wild questions I had put, the startling replies. Incoherent and almost childish that exchange seemed now. Was there anything in particular I should look for, I had asked, apart from noting what my cousin might say? And Vronski, eyeing me hungrily, had hesitated a moment, as though reflecting deeply. "A change," he had said at length, "an alteration—of unexpected kind—a sudden —possibly a very shocking one." Into my mind leaped the idea of mania. "No, not that," came the reply, reading my thoughts again. "I mean that its suddenness, its rapidity—you might find shocking." It was nothing mental, I realised. "Oh, physical then?" I asked with a little gasp impossible to repress, and he had nodded, the expression on his face dreadful almost, because a queer superior smile lay mingled in it. "He might appear suddenly—rather—different," his words came slowly. I guessed faintly at what his allusion meant perhaps. I recalled, all in a flash, the stories, my own casual observations in the past, the fact that for a generation Mantravers had not grown older, and the unnatural horror of it came back to me like ice. And Vronski's slow words were still dropping from his lips in whispers. "The stresses and energies where he has been lie beyond anything we can know or imagine. Their removal here may result in abrupt collapse of even dreadful kind. The price must be paid—paid back!—in our time, of course." His voice became almost inaudible. "It may be sudden," I just caught, "what we call sudden."

  The talk ran in a ceaseless circle through my mind, round and round, till any meaning it might have held was lost, as I sat there watching the sleeper's bed. My armchair was against the open door. The silence deepened, the cold increased, the city traffic lay dead, no birds awake, no wind astir. No hint of sleep came near me. If he wakened—should I dare to ask the thousand questions raging fn my mind, dare to frame a single one of them? He did not stir an inch, he did not turn over, trunk and head and limbs lay motionless, and I doubt if my eyes ever left his face for more than a few seconds at a time.

  So long this silence and immobility continued that, beginning to feel nothing would ever happen again, I glanced at my wrist-watch, noting that it was close upon four in the morning, the hour when human vitality sinks to its lowest ebb, and thinking that daylight must presently come filtering through the blinds. I can swear that my eyes did not leave his face for longer than ten seconds at most, but it was in this very brief interval I became aware of a sudden movement in the still room. I started, gave a jerk as though a bullet had passed through me, while my questions fled like a flock of terrified sheep. The movement was of the slightest, but it was real—the opening of his eyelids. Mantravers was staring at me across the floor. And accompanying this movement was a low sound that came at me like a bell—his voice.

  Caution, circumspection, sensible action, all forsook me in that instant, and fear went with them: memory of detailed instruction vanished utterly; caught in a wave of passionate and overwhelming curiosity, I sprang to my feet, obeying instinctively my dominating impulse. I was across the strip of intervening carpet in a second, I rushed up to the bed; with barely a foot between our two faces, I plumped out my first question, regardless of all else. It was what, above all, I wanted to know, apparently, for it burst out like an automatic explosion.

  "How did you do it, Sydney—keep young—arrest age and decay, I mean, for twenty-five years on end?"

  The question had spurted spontaneously out of my "subconscious," of course, where it had lain so long, perplexingly unanswered; for I had no thought of asking it till then, and there were others I had meant to put.

  Those strange electric eyes gazed into mine. He spoke, and his voice again was like a bell: "A man in his own place," he answered with a curious gentleness, "is the ruler of his fate. And I found mine."

  "How—how did you get there?" came from my lips, stupidly enough.

  "By leaving—this—this imagery." He made a slight, even a tiny, gesture with his arm, yet it was as though he swept away the house, London, England itself and all it stood for in ordinary experience. Imagery! I almost felt myself swept with it into something beyond all trivial, confined and relative conditions I had hitherto mistaken for reality and life. Though my mind and emotions were a boiling cauldron, little clear and steady in them, another question rising to the surface shot out of its own accord.

  "Our knowledge, then—science-------- "

  An extraordinarily sweet expression stole upon his face. He gently shook his head. "Unreal," rang the voice, though fainter than before, "and part of the dream we ourselves create. The How is nothing— mere effects. Here we can dream effects only. Knowledge and reality can be known only in the Why—the world of causes. . . ."

  On the last three words the bell-like quality grew fainter, fading from his voice, the eyelids dropped slowly over the terrific eyes. I searched for one more question among the hundreds I longed to ask, but found no single word. He lay quite still again, apart from the gentle rise and fall of the body that breathed equably in what men call physical sleep. The queer notion came to me that he had not really wakened at all, that Mantravers in his totality had certainly not been there, nor gazed at me, nor spoken, but that only a fraction of his being, using the familiar terms of limited human intelligence, had brushed my mind in passing. True enough, of course, the fragment that was spoken, for even I grasped that, and classifying effects can bring no knowledge of reality. Science, which explains how a thing happens, can tell nothing as to why it happens, nor has normal human consciousness any faculty for apprehending this region of causes. Had he, then, experienced that, dwelt in that, known reality face to face?

  I remember withdrawing softly, as a giddy man withdraws cautiously from the edge of a precipice that makes him tremble. Quickly, I jotted down the brief exchange in a hand that shook a little. I sank back into my deep armchair with the strange assurance that it would be long before he really woke. I fell asleep. It was, this time, Vronski's sharp, practical voice that startled me.

  "Humph! So you had to sleep, of course," he exclaimed in a whispered voice between a snap and a growl, yet somehow not unkindly. "It's six o'clock, you know. You've lost something, probably." He had already examined the sleeper, I knew, for he came to me out of the bedroom. His fearful eagerness was pathetic.

  I shook my head, wide awake on the instant, all my faculties about me. I pushed my notes towards him.

  "What?" he whispered. "He's waked then—and spoken? You heard it? You put questions—good ones? You understood—something?" He seized the notes as a famished man might snatch at food, his hand shaking, while he eyed my face and the paper alternately like a hungry wolf. I told him briefly what had occurred, as he read the sentences over and over again, first very rapidly to take in their general sense, then very slowly, reflectively, laboriously even. They were laconic enough, but I filled in the blanks in a whisper. His hunger, his envy, his greed to know, again touched my pity. I felt ashamed of being so unworthy a go-between.

  "Yes, yes, of course," he was mumbling, as though speaking to himself rather than to me, "but we both knew that. We've been there before together already. The why of things, rather than the futile how that science gabbles. That's the first result of a changed, a different consciousness. But he's been beyond that—far, far beyond it. That's what I want to know—what the new faculties that come with a changed consciousness reveal—beyond the region of causes even. . . ."

  His speech grew so rapid, so involved, I could not follow it. On his face the ravaged look intensified. He kept one eye, none the less, both ears as well, I knew, upon the inner room, and th
en suddenly glanced sharply back at me, as though my presence had just occurred to him. "There was more, much more, he wanted—tried—to say, wasn't there?" he shot at me. A quick smile of apology, of courtesy, accompanied it.

  "That's the impression made upon me," I agreed. "He knew things impossible—utterly impossible—to communicate in ordinary words."

  Vronski fell silent, thoughtful, for a moment, then went on again, as though talking to himself rather than to me:

  "He was awake, of course, awake here in our sense," he muttered. "Just for those moments he was awake here—but to him that would be falling asleep again. He was talking in his sleep. He had already waked up out of all this long ago—waked up a second time. To come back to conditions here would be falling asleep again." His meaning was quite clear to me. Ordinary waking every morning is merely the gain of increased and clearer consciousness; to wake up then a second time involves a yet greater gain. "If he had talked nonsense, instead of sense," Vronski was whispering to himself, "he could have told more. Yes, yes, as you felt, he was just talking in his sleep," again picking an earlier thought out of my own mind. "A man in his own place," he repeated, "is ruler of his fate."

  I stared stupidly, perhaps, yet not as stupidly as I doubtless looked. I realised, at least, that from the point of view of a different consciousness having new faculties, our own best scientific dicta must be childishly inadequate and false. But I found no useful word to say. Fatigue, too, began to stupefy me. "It was a good question all the same," he went on, "the one you put. Our three-dimensional consciousness has no faculty that can know anything of a universe that is certainly many-dimensional. Our best knowledge is a dream, bom of dream-minds in a dream-civilisation. To tell us how water runs downhill is to tell us nothing—why it runs downhill is god-like." He looked me over as man might regard a stupid employee who had done his best, and then suddenly something I found awful crept into the face.

  "I doubt, I doubt now our getting anything," he whispered lower

  than before, and the voice made me think of ice. "He'll wake of

  course, right enough, but—but he'll leave us before he can—speak.

  Leave finally I mean," his voice breaking queerly. "Just pay his debt

  and go before we can get a word. The debt—twenty-five years—

  twenty-five stolen years. Taken from here, they can only be repaid

  here. In our time, I mean—for where he has been they are not even a

  moment------ "

  He stopped, he stood stock-still. He looked me over again, but with an intensity and thoroughness that made me avoid an inspection I found too much. I trembled a little in spite of myself.

  "Something I could understand?" I stammered. "You mean—I should witness it?"

  The expression that frightened me was gone: he was still grave,

  extremely perplexed, but his look became human, sympathetic, gentle

  towards me, as he nodded his head in answer. "Yes," he murmured,

  "witness it, and with your own eyes." I left it there, asking no further

  question because I dared not, and he went on quickly: "If he wakes,

  have questions ready. Avoid his eyes, I advise. Hang on firmly, tightly,

  to your own personality. Grip yourself like iron. Ask him"—he re-

  flected a moment—"ask if he knows death—if he can speak of the

  War—if love, Love, mind you—exists with value—if—if------------ "

  He shrugged his great shoulders; the tired eyes that had not closed all night gave me a warmer look. "Oh, ask your own questions," he added almost hopelessly. "Just ask what occurs to you. And if anything—happens, call me up instantly. The telephone is at your hand. I shall be near—in this building." He read the shock in my face, of course. "Can you stand it?" he asked suddenly, moving away towards the door, my heart sinking as I noticed it.

  I nodded stiffly. "Sudden, swift repayment, you mean?" I stammered. His head bowed as he turned the handle.

  "Departure—final departure?" I heard my own horrified whisper.

  "All those years—in just a moment?" For I caught his meaning, such was the intensity of his mind. With a shock I caught it. Decay and age involve considerable time, as I understood time, for normal life lays such process so gradually, slowly, softly on us all. Years compressed into a moment could only be appalling.

  Vronski, now half out of the room, his face a mask of white, answered below his breath, a mere whisper that was dreadful with a kind of spiritual pain:

  "If at all—it must be very rapid, may seem almost instantaneous," came the syllables across the quiet air. "Sweet, too, if terrible. The questions first, remember—if you can." And the door closed noiselessly behind him.

  Alone again, after taking the coffee he had left me in a thermos, I tried to think out the questions I would ask. Something, perhaps subconscious guidance, assured me my cousin would not wake for hours. Were our deeper selves in telepathic communication possibly? I cannot say, I did not even try to think. At the time I was sure of nothing except that it was safe for me to take my rest and sleep, and this I therefore did, opening my eyes again after what must have been many hours, for it was well on into the short winter afternoon and dusk had come. My mind felt clear, it felt also calm, and this calmness I noticed with something of surprise. It has always seemed to me remarkable, indeed, that my nerves and faculties supported the entire experience as they did, and that I did not, almost literally, lose my senses. The riot of tearing emotions I certainly had known, bewilderment, excitement, a raging curiosity and fear beyond easy description, but deep within me all the time was some centre that held steady enough, some part of me that observed and judged, burned with a clear light, and even, for intolerable flashes, understood.

  When I woke, at any rate, there was no violence of feeling in me, the tumult had died down, and only two words seemed to ring on hauntingly in my mind, with some touch of the turmoil that had first accompanied them. The combination, "sweet and terrible," was unusual still, but the horror with which I had first heard them did not now appear. And, after a cautious inspection of the sleeper and the bed in the next room to assure myself that there was no sign of change as yet, I bent my mind to the framing of the questions as best I might.

  Yet behind each attempt, and despite my strongest effort to deny it, rose always the ghost of an expectant dread—the dread that before there was time to ask a single one, perhaps, something would happen to prevent, something to render replies impossible, something rapid, sweet and terrible. And this ghost of twenty-five years to be repaid I could not lay, it waved a shroud, as it were, above each word my pencil traced.

  Within its limitations, none the less, my mind worked reasonably well, though the difficulty of choosing words and subject were too much for me. The subject was so vast, the field it might cover so inexhaustible. All the great adventuring Discoverers, from Buddha to Christ, I remembered, used childish local parables to convey something they themselves knew that yet lay beyond language, beyond any faculties their listeners possessed. How might I, thus, explain to a dog, watching me turn mere pages, that I am deeply immersed in the soul-fortunes of a dozen living characters? And how, similarly, could I, the dog this time, ask intelligently about a superhuman experience? I fell back, at last, upon questions of a very simple kind.

  I would ask for information on what I called "man-in-the-street" matters, questions about what a commonplace mind like my own would like to know. If Mantravers had actually changed his type of consciousness so that his new faculties made him free of time in more than our one dimension, and in space of more than three, what could he report intelligibly about his experiences? Was he conscious, for instance, of being away from ordinary London life, or was he living both lives simultaneously, one life parallal to the other? Was there continuity of memory and personality, was the duration long or short and what did he do, feel, suffer and enjoy? I longed to know whether his experiences and reactions in this state of "elsewhere
and otherwise" were commensurable with our three-dimensional existence, and while I knew it could not possibly be so, I had this burning curiosity to hear what he might say. Did he look forward into a future and back into a past, or were these both simultaneously accessible in the sense that a biography, from childhood to old age, lie between the covers of a book, for the reader to choose any period he will? If, too, the future was accessible to him now, as we say, could he thence influence, even alter, the past? Above all, I longed to know about what, on earth, is called happiness. Having risen above the world of effects which is human knowledge, into the world of causes, which is reality, did he gain satisfaction, rest for the spirit, peace?

  I laid my pencil down, having covered sheet upon sheet with questions I knew to be futile—because I should never ask them. They were worthless, in any case, because unanswerable. I challenged myself, as I challenge anybody, to think of better ones. He had no terms, I had no terms, in which comprehensible answers could be given and understood. The Great War? Pain? Sleep? Love?—I drew my pencil through at least a hundred such, and leaned back in my chair to await events. . . .

  Dusk was falling, the room darkening, shadows gathering, and my eyes, ever on the mysterious sleeper, saw details of wall and furniture less clearly now. Outlines of bed and chairs and windows faded, the silhouette of the sheets above the sleeper became filmed, there was a blur over the entire room, yet I had the queer feeling that this was less due to the waning light than to a lack of reality in the objects themselves. Each picture lost vividness because it was but a transient appearance of something more real that lay behind, something the senses never knew because no sense could apprehend directly. The idea came, then vanished again. At the same time I became aware of an invading stupor stealing over me, a stupor I fought against with all my power—not sleep or exhaustion of physical kind, but a dulling of my surface consciousness, as though some brighter faculty beyond it were trying to assert itself. That I resisted was, I came to believe long afterwards, a mistake; I here missed an opportunity, offered directly or indirectly by Mantravers. I can only guess at this. It was fear that prevented. Remembering Vronski's vehement warning, I held on to myself as tightly as I could, afraid of losing grip upon my personality. I was afraid, too, of being caught unawares, of being taken by surprise, suddenly horrified at the sight of the sleeper rising from his bed, coming across the room, standing beside me, looking down into my face. . . . And, it seemed, a long period passed, whose duration quite escaped my measurement, for though I can swear I did not sleep, I recall that my eyes now opened with a sudden start, and my ears similarly became sharply alert. Had twelve hours passed or twenty-four, or a few minutes only? It was the first definite thought that came to me—was it evening still, or early morning? The same thin layer as of dusk or twilight lay upon the room, but objects were more plainly visible than before. There was a light somewhere, it seemed.