Читать книгу The Exile of Time - Raymond King Cummings - Страница 7

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I must take up now the sequence of events as Larry saw them.

Larry recovered consciousness in the back yard of the house on Patton Place probably only a moment or two after Mary and I had been snatched away in the Time-traveling cage. He found himself bruised and battered. He got to his feet, weak and shaken. His head was roaring.

He recalled what had happened to him, but it seemed like a dream. The back yard was then empty. He remembered vaguely that he had seen the mechanism carry Mary and me into the cage, and that the cage had vanished.

Larry knew that only a few moments had passed. The shots had aroused the neighborhood. As he stood now against the house wall, dizzily looking around, he was aware of calling voices from the nearby windows.

Then Larry stumbled over Alten, who was lying on his face near the kitchen doorway; he groaned as Larry fell over him.

Forgetting all about his weapon, Larry’s first thought was to rush out for help. He staggered through the dark kitchen into the front room, and through the corridor into the street.

Patton Place, as before, was deserted. The houses were dark; the alarm was all in the rear. There were no pedestrians, no vehicles, and no sign of a policeman. Dawn was just coming.

With uncertain steps Larry ran eastward through the middle of the street. But he had not gone more than five hundred feet when suddenly he stopped. Near the middle of the street, with the faint dawn behind it, a ball of gathering mist had appeared directly in his path. It was a luminous, shining mist—and it was gathering into form!

In seconds a small, glowing cage of white luminous bars stood there in the street, where there had just been nothing! It was not the Time-traveling cage from the house yard he had just left. This one was much smaller.

The doorway slid open, and a man leaped out. Behind him, a girl peered from the doorway. Larry stood gaping, wholly confused. The cage had materialized so abruptly that the leaping man collided with him before either man could avoid the other. Larry gripped the man before him, struck out with his fists and shouted. The girl in the doorway called frantically, “Harl—no noise! Harl—stop him!”

Then, suddenly the two of them were upon Larry and pulling him toward the doorway of the cage. Inside, he was jerked; he shouted wildly; but the girl slammed the door. Then in a soft voice with a curiously indescribable accent and intonation, the girl said hastily, “Hold him, Harl! I’ll start the traveler!”

The black garbed figure of a slim young man was gripping Larry as the girl pulled a switch and there was a shock, a reeling of Larry’s senses, as the cage, motionless in Space, sped off into Time. . . .

It seems needless to encumber this narrative with prolonged details of how Larry explained himself to his two captors. Or how they told him who they were, whence they had come, and why. They had not meant to capture him. The encounter had startled them, and Larry’s shouts would have brought others upon the scene.

Almost at once they knew Larry was no enemy, and told him so. And in a moment Larry was pouring out all that had happened. The robot, an enemy, had captured Mary Atwood and me, and whirled us off in the other—the larger—cage.

And in this smaller cage Larry was with friends—for he found their purpose the same as his! They were chasing this other Time-traveler.

The young man said, “You explain to him, Tina. I will watch.”

He was a slim, pale fellow, handsome in a queer, tight-lipped, stern-faced fashion. His close-fitting black silk jacket had a white neck ruching and white cuffs; he wore a wide white-silk belt, snug, black-silk, knee-length trousers and black stockings.

And the girl was similarly dressed. Her black hair was braided and coiled upon her head, and ornaments dangled from her ears. Over her black blouse was a brocaded network jacket; her white belt, compressing her slim waist, dangled with tassels; and there were other tassels on the garters at the knees of her trousers.

She was a pale-faced, beautiful girl, with black brows arching in a thin line, with purple-black eyes like somber pools. She was no more than five feet tall, and slim and frail. But, like her companion, there was about her a queer aspect of calm, quiet power and force of personality—physical vitality merged with an intellect keenly sharp.

She sat with Larry on a little metal bench, listening, almost without interruption, to his explanation. And then, succinctly she gave her own. The young man, Harl, sat at his instruments, with his gaze searching for the other cage, five hundred feet away in Space, but in Time unknown.

And outside the shining bars Larry could vaguely see the blurred, shifting, melting vistas of New York City hastening through the changes Time had brought to it.

This young man, Harl, and this girl, Tina, lived in New York City in the Time-world of 2930 A.D. To Larry it was a thousand years in the future. Tina was the Princess of the American Nation. It was an hereditary title, non-political, added several hundred years previously as a picturesque symbol.

Harl was an aristocrat of the New York City of Tina’s Time-world, a scientist. In the Government laboratories, under the same roof where Tina dwelt, Harl had worked with another, older scientist, and—so Tina told me—together they had discovered the secret of Time-traveling. They had built two cages, a large and a small, which could travel freely through Time.

The smaller vehicle—this one in which Larry now was speeding—was, in the Time-world of 2930, located in the garden of Tina’s palace. The other, somewhat larger, they had built some five hundred feet distant, just beyond the palace walls, within a great Government laboratory.

Harl’s fellow scientist—the leader in their endeavors, since he was much older and of wider experience—was not altogether trusted by Tina. He took the credit for the discovery of Time-traveling; yet, said Tina, it was Harl’s genius which in reality had worked out the final problems.

And this older scientist was a cripple. A hideously repulsive fellow, named Tugh!

“Tugh!” exclaimed Larry.

“The same,” said Tina in her crisp fashion. “Yes—undoubtedly the same. So you see why what you have told us was of such interest. Tugh is a Government leader in our world, and now we find he has lived in your Time, and in the Time of this Mary Atwood.”

From his seat at the instrument table, Harl burst out, “So he murdered a girl of 1935, and has abducted another of 1777? You would not have me judge him, Tina—”

“No one,” she said, “may judge without full facts. This man here—this Larry of 1935—tells us that only a mechanism is in the larger cage—which is what we thought, Harl. And this mechanism, without a doubt, is the treacherous Migul.”

There was, in 2930, a vast world of machinery. The god of the machine had developed them to almost human intricacy. Almost all the work of the world, particularly in America, and most particularly in the mechanical center of New York City, was done by machinery. And the machinery itself was guided, handled, operated—even, in some instances, constructed—by other, more intricate machines. They were fashioned in pseudo-human form—thinking, logically acting, independently acting mechanisms: the robots. All but human, they were—a new race. Inferior to humans, yet similar.

And in 2930 the machines, slaves of idle human masters, had been developed too highly. They were upon the verge of a revolt.

The revolt had not yet come, but it was feared. A great robot named Migul seemed fomenting it. The revolt was smouldering; at any moment it would burst; and then the machines would rise to destroy the humans.

This was the situation when Harl and Tugh completed the Time-traveling vehicles in this world. They had been tested, but never used. Then Tugh had vanished, was gone now, and the larger of the two vehicles was also gone.

Both Harl and Tina had always distrusted Tugh. They thought him allied to the robots. But they had no proof; he denied it, and helped always with the Government activities struggling to keep the mechanical slaves docile and at work.

Tugh and the larger vehicle had vanished, and so had Migul. Tina and Harl had taken the other cage and started in pursuit. It was possible that Tugh was loyal; that Migul had abducted him and stolen the cage.

“Wait!” exclaimed Larry. “I’m trying to figure this out. When did Tugh vanish from your world?”

“To our consciousness,” Tina answered, “about three hours ago. Perhaps a little longer than that.”

“But look here,” Larry protested, “according to my story and that of Mary Atwood, Tugh lived in 1935 and in 1777 for three years.”

Confusing? But in a moment Larry understood it. Tugh could have taken the cage, gone to 1777 and to 1935, alternated between them for what was to him, and to those Time-worlds, three years—then have returned to 2930 on the same day of his departure. He would have lived those three years; grown that much older; but to the Time-world of 2930 neither he nor the cage would have been missed.

“That,” said Tina, “is doubtless what he did. The cage is traveling again. But you, Larry, tell us only Migul is in it.”

“I couldn’t say that of my own knowledge,” said Larry. “Mary Atwood said so. It held only the mechanism you call Migul. And now Migul has Mary and George Rankin. We must reach them.”

“We want that quite as much as you do,” said Harl. “And to find Tugh. If he is a friend we must save him, if a traitor—punish him.”

“But can you get to the other cage?”

“Only if it stops,” said Tina. “When it stops, I should say.”

“Come here,” said Harl. “I will show you.”

Larry crossed the glowing room. He had forgotten its aspect—the ghostly unreality around him. He too—his body, like Harl’s and Tina’s—was of the same wraith-like substance. . . . Then, suddenly, Larry’s viewpoint shifted. The room and its occupants were real and tangible. And outside the glowing bars—everything out there was the unreality.

“Here,” said Harl. “I will show you. It is not visible yet.”

Each of the cages was equipped with an intricate device which Larry and I have since termed a Time-telespectroscope. Larry saw it now as a small metal box, with tuning vibration dials, batteries, coils, a series of tiny prisms and an image-mirror—the whole surmounted by what appeared the barrel of a small telescope. Harl had it leveled and was gazing through it.

The enemy cage was not visible now, but Harl and Tina had glimpsed it on several occasions. What vast realms Time opens within a single small segment of Space! The larger vehicle seemed speeding back and forth. A dash into the year 1777! as Larry learned from Mary Atwood.

And there had been several evidences of the cage halting in 1935. Larry’s account explained two such pauses. But the others?

The larger cage was difficult to trace in its sweep along the corridors of Time. Never once had Tina and Harl been able to stop simultaneously with it, for a year has so many separate days and hours. The nearest they came was the halt in the night of June 8-9, when they encountered Larry, and, startled, seized him and moved on again.

Harl continued to gaze through the eyepiece of the detecting instrument. But nothing showed, and the mirror-grid on the table was dark.

“But—which way are we going?” Larry stammered.

“Back,” said Tina. “The retrograd . . . Wait! Do not do that!”

Larry had turned toward where the bars, less luminous, showed a dark rectangle like a window. The desire swept him to gaze out at the shining changing scene.

But Tina checked him. “Do not do that! Not yet! It is too great a shock, in the retrograde. It was to me.”

“But where are we?”

In answer she gestured toward a series of tiny dials on the table edge. There were at least two score of them, laid in a triple bank. Dials to record the passing minutes, hours, days; the years, the centuries! Larry stared at the small whirring pointers. Some were a blur of swift whirling movement—the hours and days. Tina showed Larry how to read them. The cage was passing through the year 1880. In a few moments of Larry’s consciousness it was 1799. Then 1789.

Tina said, “The other cage may go back to 1777, if Tugh meant ill to Mary Atwood, or wants revenge upon her father, as you said. We shall see.”

They had reached 1790 when Harl gave a low ejaculation.

“You see it?” Tina murmured.

“Yes. Very faintly.”

Larry bent tensely forward. “Will it show on the mirror?”

“Yes, presently. We are about ten years from it. If we get closer, the mirror will show it.”

But the mirror held dark. No—now it was glowing a trifle. A vague luminosity.

Tina moved toward the instrument controls nearby. “Watch closely, Harl. I will slow us down.”

It seemed to Larry that the humming with which everything around him was endowed, now began descending in pitch. And his head suddenly was unsteady. A singular, wild, queer feeling was within him, a tugging torment of every tiny cell of his body.

Tina said, “Hold steady, Larry, for when we stop.”

“Will it shock me?”

“Yes—at first. But the shock will not harm you. It is nearly all mental.”

The mirror held an image now—the other cage. Larry saw, on the six-inch square mirror surface, a crawling, melting scene of movement. And in the midst of it, the image of the other cage, faint and spectral. In all the mirrored movement, only the apparition of the cage was still.

Over an interval, while Larry stared, the ghostly image grew plainer. They were approaching its Time-factor!

“It is stopping,” Harl murmured. Larry was aware that he had left the eyepiece and joined Tina.

“Tina, let us try to get it right this time.”

“Yes.”

“In 1777—but which month, would you say?”

“It has stopped! See?”

Larry heard them clicking switches, and setting the controls for a stop. Then he felt Tina gently push him.

“Sit here.”

He found himself on a bench. He could still see the mirror. The ghost of the other cage was now lined more plainly upon it.

“This month,” said Tina, setting a switch. “Would not you say so? And this day.”

“But the hour, Tina? The minute?”

The vast intricate corridors of Time!

“It would be in the night. Hasten, Harl, or we will pass! Try the night—around midnight.”

The vehicle was rapidly coming to a stop. Larry gripped the table, struggling to hold firm to his reeling senses. Outside the glowing bars he could now discern the luminous grayness separating. Swift, soundless claps of light and dark, alternating. Daylight and darkness. They had been blended, but now they were separating. The passing, retrograding days—a dozen to the second of Larry’s consciousness. Then fewer. Vivid daylight. Black night. Daylight again.

“Not too slowly, Harl—we will be seen! . . . Oh, it is gone!”

Larry saw the mirror go blank. The image on it had flared to great distinctness, faded, and was gone. Darkness was around Larry. Then daylight, then darkness again.

“Gone!” echoed Harl’s disappointed voice. “But it stopped here! . . . Shall we stop, Tina?”

“Yes! Leave the control settings as they are. Larry—be careful, now.”

A dragging second of gray daylight. A plunge into night. It seemed to Larry that all the universe was soundlessly reeling. Out of the chaos, Tina was saying, “We have stopped. Are you all right, Larry?”

“Yes,” he stammered.

He stood up. The cage room, with its faint lights, benches and settles, instrument tables and banks of controls, was flooded with moonlight from outside the bars. Night, and the moon and stars out there.

Harl slid the door open. “Come, let us look.”

The reeling chaos had fallen swiftly from Larry. With Tina’s small black and white figure beside him, he stood at the threshold of the cage. A warm gentle night breeze fanned his face.

A moonlit landscape lay somnolent around the cage. Trees were nearby. The cage stood in a corner of a field by a low picket fence. Behind the trees, a ribbon of road stretched away toward a distant shining river. Down the road some five hundred feet, the white columns of a large square brick house gleamed in the moonlight. And behind the house was a garden and a group of barns and stables.

The three in the cage doorway stood whispering, planning. Then Larry and Tina stepped to the ground. Harl remained to guard the cage.

The two figures on the ground paused a moment and then moved cautiously along the inside line of the fence toward the home of Major Atwood. And this was revolutionary New York, now. The little city lay well to the south. It was open country up here. The New York of 1935 had melted away and was gone. . . .

This was a night in August of 1777.