Sense of Wonder: A Century of Science Fiction (293 page)

Dear Catty. Dear, dear Catty.

With the approval of the fellows we used part of the publisher’s advance for a honeymoon. We spent it—that part of it in which we had time for anything except being alone together—going over nearby battlefields of the last year of the War of Southron Independence.

It was Catty’s first excursion away from Haggershaven since the night I brought her there. Looking at the world outside through her perceptions, at once insulated and made hypersensitive by her new status, I was shocked afresh at the harsh indifference, the dull poverty, the fear, brutality, frenzy, and cynicism highlighting the strange resignation to impending fate which characterized our civilization. It was not a case of eat, drink, be merry, for tomorrow we die; rather it was, let us live meanly and trust to luck—tomorrow’s luck is bound to be worse.

We settled down in the autumn of 1951 in a cottage designed by Kimi and built by the fellows during our absence. It gave on the Agatis’ cherished garden, and we were both moved by this evidence of love, particularly after what we had seen and heard on our trip. Mr. Haggerwells made a speech, filled with classical allusions, welcoming us back as though we had been gone for years; Midbin looked anxiously into Catty’s face as though to assure himself I had not, in my new role as husband, treated her so ill as to bring on a new emotional upset; and the other fellows made appropriate gestures. Even Barbara stopped by long enough to comment that the house was ridiculously small, but she supposed Kimi’s movable partitions helped.

I immediately began working on volume two, and Catty took up her sewing again. She also resumed her visits to Barbara’s workshop; again I heard detailed accounts of my former sweetheart’s progress. HX-1 was to be completed in the late spring, or early summer. I was not surprised at Barbara’s faith surviving actual construction of the thing, but that such otherwise level-headed people as Ace and Catty could envisage breathlessly the miracles about to happen was beyond me. Ace, even after all these years, was still bemused—but Catty…?

Just before the turn of the year I got the following letter:

LEE & WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY

Department of History

Leesburg, District of Calhounia, CSA

December 19, 1951

Mr. Hodgins M. Backmaker

“Haggershaven”

York Pennsylvania, USA

Sir:

On page 407 of
Chancellorsville to the End
, volume I,
Turning Tides
, you write, “Chronology and topography—timing and the use of space—were to be the decisive factors, rather than population and industry. Stuart’s detachment, which might have proved disastrous, turned out extraordinarily fortunate for Lee, as we shall see in the next volume. Of course, the absence of cavalry might have been decisive if the Round Tops had not been occupied by the Southrons on July 1…”

Now, sir, evidently in your forthcoming analysis of Gettysburg you hold (as I presume most Yankees do) to the theory of fortuitousness. We Southrons naturally ascribe the victory to the supreme genius of General Lee, regarding the factors of time and space not as forces in themselves but as opportunities for the display of his talents.

Needless to say, I hardly expect you to change your opinions, rooted as they must be in national pride. I only ask that before you commit them, and the conclusions shaped by them, to print, you satisfy yourself as a historian of their validity in this particular case. In other words, sir, as one of your readers (and may I add, one who has enjoyed your work), I should like to be assured that you have studied this classic battle as carefully as you have the engagements described in volume I.

With earnest wishes for your success,

I remain, sir, Cordially yours,

Jefferson Davis Polk

This letter from Dr. Polk, the foremost historian of our day, author of the monumental biography,
The Great Lee
, produced a crisis in my life. Had the Confederate professor pointed out flaws in my work or even reproached me for undertaking it at all without adequate equipment I would, I trust, have acknowledged the reproof and continued to the best of my ability. But this letter was an accolade. Without condescension Dr. Polk admitted me to the ranks of serious historians, only asking me to consider the depth of my evaluation.

Truth is, I was not without increasing doubts of my own. Doubts I had not allowed to rise to the surface of my mind and disturb my plans. Folk’s letter brought them into the open.

I had read everything available. I had been over the ground between the Maryland line, South Mountain, Carlisle, and the Haven until I could draw a detail map from memory. I had turned up diaries, letters, and accounts which had not only never been published, but which were not known to exist until I hunted them down. I had so steeped myself in the period I was writing about that sometimes the two worlds seemed interchangeable and I could live partly in one, partly in the other.

Yet with all this, I was not sure I had the whole story, even in the sense of wholeness that historians, knowing they can never collect every detail, accept. I was not sure I had the grand scene in perfectly proper perspective. I admitted to myself the possibility that I had perhaps been too rash, too precipitate, in undertaking
Chancellorsville to the End
so soon. I knew the shadowy sign, the one which says in effect,
You are ready
, had not been given. My confidence was shaken.

Was the fault in me, in my temperament and character, rather than in my preparation and use of materials? Was I drawing back from committing myself, from acting, from doing? That I had written the first volume was no positive answer, for it was but the fraction of a whole deed; if I withdrew now I could still preserve my standing as an onlooker.

But not to act was itself an action and answered neither Dr. Polk nor myself. Besides, what could I do? The entire work was contracted for. The second volume was promised for delivery some eighteen months hence. My notes for it were complete; this was no question of revising, but of wholly reexamining, revaluing, and probably discarding them for an entirely new start. It was a job so much bigger than the original, one so discouraging I felt I couldn’t face it. It would be corrupt to produce a work lacking absolute conviction and cowardly to produce none.

Catty responded to my awkward recapitulation in away at once heartening and strange. “Hodge,” she said, “you’re changing and developing, and for the better, even though I loved you as you were. Don’t be afraid to put the book aside for a year—ten years if you have to. You must do it so it will satisfy yourself; never mind what the publishers or the public say. But, Hodge, you mustn’t, in your anxiety, or your foolish fear of passiveness, you mustn’t try any shortcuts. Promise me that.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Catty dear. There are no shortcuts in writing history.”

She looked at me thoughtfully. “Remember that, Hodge. Oh, remember it.”

XVII.

HX-1

I could not bring myself to follow the promptings of my conscience and Catty’s advice, nor could I use my notes as though Dr. Folk’s letter had never come to shatter my complacency. As a consequence—without deliberately committing myself to abandon the book—I worked not at all, thus adding to my feelings of guilt and unworthiness. The tasks assigned by the fellows for the general welfare of the Haven were not designed to take a major part of my time, and though I produced all sorts of revolutions in the stables and barns, I still managed to wander about, fretful and irritable, keeping Catty from her work, interrupting the Agatis and Midbin—I could not bring myself to discuss my problems with him—and generally making myself a nuisance. Inevitably I found my way into Barbara’s workshop.

She and Ace had done a thorough job on the old barn. I thought I recognized Kimi’s touch in the structural changes of the walls, the strong beams, and the rows of slanted-in windows which admitted light and shut out glare, but the rest must have been shaped by Barbara’s needs.

Iron beams held up a catwalk running in a circle about ten feet overhead. On the catwalk there were at intervals what appeared to be batteries of telescopes, all pointed inward and downward at the center of the floor. Just inside the columns was a continuous ring of clear glass, perhaps four inches in diameter, fastened to the beams with glass hooks. Closer inspection proved the ring not to be in one piece but in sections, ingeniously held together with glass couplings. Back from this circle, around the walls, were various engines, all enclosed except for dial faces and regulators and all dwarfed by a mammoth one towering in one corner. From the roof was suspended a large, polished reflector.

There was no one in the barn, and I wandered about, cautiously avoiding the mysterious apparatus. For a moment I meditated, basely perhaps, that all this had been paid for with my wife’s money. Then I berated myself, for Catty owed all to the Haven, as I did. The money might have been put to better use, but there was no guarantee it would have been more productive allotted to astronomy or zoology. During eight years I’d seen many promising schemes come to nothing.

“Like it, Hodge?”

Barbara had come up, unheard, behind me. This was the first time we had been alone together since our break, two years before.

“It looks like a tremendous amount of work,” I evaded.

“It was a tremendous amount of work.” For the first time I noticed that her cheeks were flushed. She had lost weight, and there were deep hollows beneath her eyes. “This construction has been the least of it. Now it’s done. Or has begun. Depending how you look at it.”

“All done?”

She nodded, triumph accenting the strained look on her face. “First test today.”

“Oh well…in that case—”

“Don’t go, Hodge. Please. I meant to ask you and Catty to the more formal trial, but now you’re here for the preliminary I’m glad. Ace and Father and Oliver will be along in a minute.”

“Midbin?”

The familiar arrogance showed briefly. “I insisted. It’ll be nice to show him the mind can produce something besides fantasies and hysterical hallucinations.”

I started to speak, then swallowed my words. The dig at Catty was insignificant compared with the supreme confidence, the abnormal assurance prompting invitations to witness a test which could only reveal the impossibility of applying her cherished theories. I felt an overwhelming pity. “Surely,” I said at last, seeking to make some preparation for the disillusionment certain to come, “surely you don’t expect it to work the first time?”

“Why not? There are sure to be adjustments to be made, allowances for erratic chronology caused by phenomena like the pull of comets and so forth. There might even have to be major alterations, though I doubt it. It may be some time before Ace can set me down at the exact year, month, day, hour, and minute agreed upon. But the fact of space-time-energy-matter correspondence can just as well be established this afternoon as next year.”

She was unbelievably at ease for someone whose lifework was about to be weighed. I have shown more nervousness discussing a disputed date with the honorary secretary of a local historical society.

“Sit down,” she invited; “there’s nothing to do or see till Ace comes. I’ve missed you, Hodge.”

I felt this was a dangerous remark and wished I’d stayed far away from the workshop. I hooked my leg over a stool—there were no chairs—and coughed to hide the fact I was afraid to answer, I’ve missed you, too; and afraid not to.

“Tell me about your own work, Hodge. Catty says you’re having difficulties.”

I was faintly annoyed with Catty, but whether for confiding in Barbara at all or specifically for revealing something unheroic I didn’t stop to consider. At any rate this annoyance diluted my feeling of disloyalty for conversing with Barbara at all. Or it may be the old, long-established bond—I almost wrote, of sympathy, but it was so much more complex than the word indicates—was reawakened by proximity and put me in the mood to tell my troubles. It is even possible I had the altruistic purpose of fortifying Barbara against inevitable disappointment on a miseryloves-company basis. Be that as it may, I found myself pouring out the whole story.

She jumped up and took my hands in hers. Her eyes were gray and warm. “Hodge! It’s wonderful—don’t you see?”

“Oh…”I was completely confused. “I…uh…”

“The solution. The answer. The means. Look, now you can go back, back to the past in your own person. You can see everything with your own eyes instead of relying on accounts of what other people said happened.”

“But…but—”

“You can verify every fact, study every move, every actor. You can write history as no one ever did before, for you’ll be writing as a witness, yet with the perspective of a different period. You’ll be taking the mind of the present, with its judgment and its knowledge of the patterns, back to receive the impressions of the past. It almost seems HX-1 was devised especially for this.”

There was no doubt she believed, that she was really and unselfishly glad her work could aid mine. I was overcome by pity, helpless to soften the disillusionment so soon to come, and filled with an irrational hatred of the thing she had built and which was about to destroy her.

I was saved from having to mask my emotions by the arrival of her father, Ace, and Midbin. Thomas Haggerwells began tensely, “Barbara, Ace tells me you intend to try out this—this machine on yourself. I can’t believe you would be so foolhardy.”

Midbin didn’t wait for her to reply. I thought with something of a shock, Midbin has gotten old; I never noticed it. “Listen to me. There’s no point now in saying part of your mind realizes the impossibility of this demonstration and that it’s willing for you to annihilate yourself in the attempt and so escape from conflicts which have no resolution. Although it’s something you must be at least partly aware of. But consider objectively the danger involved in meddling with unknown natural laws—”