by C. S. Lewis
‘To hear is to obey,’ said the attendant, and rising, opened the door, and motioned to Camilla to follow him. It was not what either of them wished and there was no opportunity to exchange words. At all costs, he must arouse no unnecessary suspicion. Camilla hesitated and went.
Left alone, Scudamour suffered a sudden reaction from the strain of the last hour. He found that his legs were trembling and sank into his chair. He tried to think out his next move. It would have been easier if his head had not ached so.
The respite lasted only a few minutes and then the attendant returned. He knelt as before but there was a subtle change in his voice as he began.
‘It went roughly, as I have already told you. They tried to spare the workmen as they always do, and the workmen had no taste for coming within the reach of their lances. When the Jerkies came, it was as always. They do not seem to know how to get out of the way of the horses. Do what we will, we cannot make them move like real men and change their direction. They go on as they are set all right.’
‘And what of the message?’
‘Oh, it was the same they have given elsewhere, that whoever comes to them—the Lord of the Tower will forgive me—whoever comes to them with a sting in his hand, cut from a Unicorn’s head, shall have a good welcome, he and all his party, and be a great man among them. I am afraid many of the people heard it.’
‘It is no matter,’ said Scudamour. That cryptic remark came readily off his tongue and served well enough, but he found himself very much at a loss for something more to say when the attendant began again.
‘And the woman, Lord?’ he said tentatively.
‘Well,’ said Scudamour, ‘what of the woman?’
‘Surely she was not wrongly chosen for stinging. All care was taken. They are very like.’
The last words electrified Scudamour. They bore to him an obvious sense—that the Othertime woman was like Camilla Bembridge in his own time, or, as he preferred to think, that there had once been two such Doubles, though now, somehow or other, Camilla was imprisoned with him in the wrong world. It had not occurred to him that the Othertimer would know this. The intense complexity of the problem rushed suddenly upon his mind and made him speechless. But he must not stop to think now—at all costs he must avoid a silence. At last he said sternly, ‘There are other things to be done before that.’
The man looked hard at him. ‘The Lord will remember that such things do not end well for the Unicorn who tries them.’ Then, after a short pause, he added, ‘But the Lord need not fear me. I will keep his secret. I am his son and his daughter.’
In our world the words would hardly have been uttered without some sort of confidential leer, but even the mask-like gravity of the speaker’s face could not conceal his meaning. It is, I think, a rather curious fact that Scudamour felt a quite old-fashioned desire to hit the man hard in the face—an old-fashioned, if you will a Victorian, indignation as at an insult to Camilla. For the real Camilla Bembridge was what is called ‘modern’. She was so free to talk about the things her grandmother could not mention that Ransom once said he wondered if she were free to talk about anything else. There would have been no difficulty about suggesting to her that she might become your mistress; I do not think you would have succeeded unless you offered very good security, but there would have been no tears or blushes or indignation. And Scudamour, one gathers, had taken his tone from her. But here he felt different. Perhaps he had never been so very ‘modern’ in his heart. At all events he now felt a strong desire to hit that man. The idea of sharing a secret, and such a secret, with him was infuriating. He relapsed into his haughtiest manner.
‘You are a fool,’ he said. ‘How should you know what is in my mind? It is more a question how long I shall keep your secret, or whether I am ready to forget that you have spoken thus.’ At this moment an inspiration came to Scudamour. It was very risky and if he had had time to weigh the risks he might not have acted on it. He turned to the broken chronoscope. ‘Does this mean nothing to you?’ he said. ‘Do you think nothing out of the ordinary is now to be planned and done?’
The man opened his eyes wider—perhaps he was genuinely impressed. ‘I am your son and your daughter,’ he said. ‘Have they broken it?’
Scudamour made a motion of his head which, he hoped, might at need be interpreted as a sign of assent or as a mere pensive refusal to answer.
‘Have I the Lord’s leave to speak?’ said the man.
‘Speak,’ said Scudamour.
‘Does the Lord think of using the woman’s brain? Would it not be wasteful? Would not any common brain do as well?’
Scudamour started. He knew that Orfieu had had great trouble in finding a preparation equivalent to the Z substance in the human brain—a necessary element in his chronoscope. Obviously the Othertimers had a simpler method.
‘You do not understand in the least what is to be done,’ he said coldly. All through the conversation he had been reminding himself that it was foolish to begin by insulting and antagonising the first Othertime man he had met, but he was continually being forced to do so. His only asset in this new world was his official superiority as a Stingingman and the only means of disguising his ignorance was to play that superiority for all it was worth. But he felt that he was now very nearly at the end of his tether.
‘Bring me some food,’ he said.
‘Here, Lord?’ said the attendant, apparently in some surprise.
Scudamour hesitated. His chief purpose in asking for food had been to get a few moments alone, but it now occurred to him that he had better begin as soon as possible to explore—to find out what rooms and passages surrounded him.
‘Set me food in the usual place,’ he said.
The attendant rose and opened the door, standing aside for Scudamour to pass. Much as he hated the carved room, he did not cross the threshold without a tremor, for he had no idea what he might encounter. He found himself in a much larger room—an oblong hall of patterned stone with many doors. At one end of it some dozen or fifteen of the stingless Stingingmen were seated close together on the floor. They rose and bowed low, or even prostrated themselves, as he appeared, but he had time to notice that they had all been whispering with their heads close together and busily examining a miscellaneous litter of objects which strewed the floor about them as toys strew the floor about a child. Indeed they were such things as a child might well have used for playing shop. There were little boxes and jars and bowls, bottles, tubes, packets, and tiny spoons.
Scudamour learned much later what all this meant, but it may as well be mentioned here. The truth is that the stingless relatives of the Stingingmen—the Drones, as we may call them—have only one interest in life. They are all hoping to grow stings. They spend nearly all their spare time in the laboratory, concocting every kind of nostrum which they think may produce the coveted deformity. Sometimes it is drugs to drink, sometimes powders and plasters for the forehead, sometimes incisions and cauterisations. One depends on diet, another on some kind of exercises. Scudamour says they reminded him of nothing so much as of the inveterate gamblers whom one finds living in the neighbourhood of any big continental casino—every one with an infallible private recipe for making his fortune. And like the gamblers they seemed to have a hope which no experience could overthrow. Very few of them, perhaps none, as far as he could learn, had ever succeeded. Year after year they watched young men on whom the caprice of nature had lavished the sting succeeding to the seats of power while they themselves grew old amid their experiments. Often if Scudamour came suddenly into the anteroom he heard fragments of their whispered conversation—‘When my sting has grown,’ ‘Now that I have found the real treatment,’ ‘Of course it is almost certain that I shall not be with you next year.’
The attendant led him through this hall and into another, smaller, room, where he noted with disappointment the same high windows. The food was brought him here. To his relief, the attendant showed no tendency to remain and wait on him.
Presumably the body which Scudamour now animated had not fed for some time, and he found himself turning to his meal with alacrity. He was thirsty as well as hungry and raised eagerly to his lips a silver cup which appeared to be full of water. A moment later he set it down in astonishment. There may have been some water in it, but most of the mixture was some kind of spirit, a raw, fiery liquid that left the mouth parched. He was surprised that he did not dislike it more. He then found that he had taken up a fruit from the plate before him and was beginning to eat it with the ease of long habit. It was rather like a persimmon and he could not at first understand the relish with which he ate it, for he had always disliked persimmons. From this he proceeded to a dry, grey concoction in a wooden bowl. It consisted of small grey particles, many of them gritty in texture. The whole meal, indeed, was of a dry, choleric, and adust nature; and all the time he enjoyed what he ate with a curious feeling that it was unnatural to enjoy it. Only when his hunger was three parts satisfied did he realise the explanation. He was experiencing the pleasures of an alien body; the palate and stomach which liked these foods and were habituated to them, did not belong to him. And with the discovery there came a sense of horror. Perhaps this was the very diet on which the venom of a Stingingman was maintained. Perhaps . . . he was not sure that there might not have been insects, or worse, in that grey mixture. He pushed his chair back from the table and rose. He was trying to remember something—some warning in a fairy tale heard long before he went to school. He could not quite recapture it, but it was borne in upon him that he had better eat as little of such food as he could. He wondered how much suspicion it would arouse if he asked for something else. In the meantime he must find out where they had put Camilla.
He came out into the oblong hall, and the same attendant rose from where he had been sitting among the other Drones and came to him. In answer to his questions the man explained, as far as he could make out, that he had put Camilla in Scudamour’s own bedroom. He spoke almost in a whisper and the desire to put himself on a confidential footing with his master was clearer than before. His manner was a shade less deferential and more insinuating. Scudamour again took a high line. He made the man lead him to Camilla—and thus incidentally discovered his own room—and then find other lodging for her. They were not able to speak to one another alone or even to exchange incautious glances, but at least each now knew where the other was housed. Scudamour was surprised at the number of sleeping chambers and wondered who the usual guests of a Stingingman might be. After he had given fresh orders that Camilla should be well cared for and not molested he made a tour of all the rooms. He was followed everywhere by his attendant and by the eyes of all the Drones. This was not pleasant and he felt that what he was doing might raise their wonder. But it had to be risked, since the first condition of any possible plan was a knowledge of his surroundings. What he mainly wanted to find was the way out of his own apartments—at any moment it might become desirable to leave the Dark Tower in haste. In this he was not successful: room opened into room interminably and long before he had exhausted the possibilities he decided that, on this occasion at any rate, he dared not continue the search any further. In the meantime, however, he had found a library—a room as large as the anteroom and lined with books to the ceiling. He did not suppose at this stage that he would be able to read them, but he welcomed the library as a pretext for shaking off the Drone, and he wanted to rest.
VII
‘I wish Ransom were here,’ said Scudamour to himself. Ransom is a philologist. Scudamour knows little about languages and scrips, and a glance at the characters on the backs of the books convinced him that he would never be able to decipher them. He had not expected that he would, and sat down at once to consider his situation. Two ideas were, at this stage, contending in his mind. The first was the possibility of repairing the chronoscope and returning by the way he had come. This was beset with difficulties. He knew it would take Orfieu, on our side, a long time to make a new chronoscope and he rightly assumed that two instruments, one in each time, were necessary. Nor was he at all clear how he could get Camilla through with him. His other idea was much nearer to despair—a vague hope that if return were impossible, escape, and escape with Camilla, from the Dark Tower into the territories of the White Riders might be managed. He was fairly certain that these barbarians were more human than the Stinging people, and that some life not utterly detestable might be lived among them. But then he remembered their proclamation and thought that what he bore in his forehead would exclude him, of all people, from any alliance with them. And with that reflection a rebellious horror at the monstrosity he had now become surged over him anew, and he rose and paced the silent room in his anguish.
Then came a surprise. He had taken perhaps six or seven turns in this fashion when, hardly noticing that he had done so, he paused at one end of his walk, took a volume from the shelves, and to his astonishment found that he had read a line or two with ease. Of course he ought to have anticipated this. The body which he was using had already so paced in that library, so paused, and so taken down a book; and Scudamour’s mind, using the Stingingman’s eyes, could read his books for the very same reasons which enabled him to use the Othertime language. It was only his own doubts and his own conscious efforts which had prevented him from understanding their titles when he first entered the library.
The lines he had read were as follows: ‘It must be remembered that even the instructed had, at this period, no conception of the real nature of time. The world, for them, had a unilinear history from which there was no escape, as it has for the common people to the present day. It was therefore very natural that—’
The passage went on to some historical matter that did not interest him. Hastily he turned over several pages, but the book seemed to be all historical and he saw no more references to the subject of time. He was beginning to wonder whether he should sit down and read the book from the beginning when he discovered that it had an index. Fortunately he was now too excited to stop and ask himself whether he knew the Othertime alphabet. He found the word time easily enough, but the only passage mentioned under it turned out to be the one he had already read. For a moment his researches were at a standstill. Then he discovered that the book he held in his hands was one of a series, a history in many volumes. He put it back and tried the volume on his right, but a few minutes of comparison convinced him that it dealt, not with a later, but with an earlier period. Perhaps the Othertimers put books on a shelf in what we regard as the wrong order. He tried a volume to the left and could not at first discover whether his surmise was correct. The business was going to take him longer than he thought, and he had to master the concluding pages of the original volume fairly thoroughly. They dealt with a history absolutely unknown to him. Some people called the Darkeners were being suppressed ‘with great but necessary severities’, though whether they were a sect, a nation, or a powerful family he could not discover. He learned enough, however, to enable him to decide that the volume to the left was the sequel. He went to its index and found about twenty references to ‘time,’ but all of the same cryptic character. The reader was constantly reminded that ‘complete ignorance on this fundamental subject still prevailed’, that ‘the monistic view of time which immediate experience seems to suggest had not yet been called in question’, or that ‘the detestable superstitions of the Dark Age still found a foothold in the pessimistic view of time then current’, and this sent him post-haste to the next volume. Feeling sure that he was now approaching the heart of the mystery, he carried it to a table in the centre of the room and sat down to read in earnest.
The index to this volume bristled with entries under the heading that interested him. He tried the first and learned that ‘the new conception of time was destined to remain for centuries of purely theoretical interest, but this should not lead us to underrate its effects’. He turned on: ‘As has already been pointed out, the revolution in our knowledge of time had as yet given us no pow
er to control it, but it had profoundly modified the human mind.’ There were dozens of similar statements and Scudamour, more accustomed to laboratories than to libraries, began to feel impatient. In despair he turned back to the first page of the book and after reading a few lines flung it from him in anger; for he had seen that it began with the statement that ‘this was not the place’ for an account of those discoveries with whose historical results the following pages were mainly concerned.
‘They expect you to know,’ said Scudamour drily. Then he picked up the volume, replaced it, and began studying other titles. Many of them were unintelligible to him. He realised that any of them, or none of them, might contain what he wanted to know, and that he would not have time—at least he hoped he would not have time—to read the whole library.
A book with a title like The Nature of Things looked promising, and the contents held his attention for some time, not because they proved helpful but because they amazed him. Whatever these people knew about time, they knew very little about space. He read that the Earth was the shape of a saucer, and that you could not reach the edge of the saucer because you slipped down the incline ‘as the experience of sailors shows’, that the Sun was twenty miles high, and that stars were ‘inflammations of the air’. Somehow this ignorance comforted him. The next book—Time Angles—had the opposite effect. It began: ‘An uncontrolled time proceeding in the backwards-forwards direction is subject, as is known, to fluctuations during which small extensions of it (say .05 of a second) will make a measurable angle with the backwards-forwards direction. If, now, we suppose this increased to a right angle, this time will proceed from eckwards to andwards’—so the words appeared to Scudamour’s memory when he told us the story—‘and will cut an ideally normal time at right angles. At the B moment of intersection the whole series of events in each of these times will then be contemporary to those living in the other.’