Sense of Wonder: A Century of Science Fiction (295 page)

“Oh Hodge! What a thing for a historian to say.”

“Catty, I can’t.”

The conversation made me nervous and fidgety. It also made me remember much I preferred to let fade: the Grand Army, Sprovis, the counterfeit pesetas…All the evil I had unwillingly abetted. If a man did nothing, literally nothing, all his life, then he might be free of culpability. Manichaeanism, said Enfandin. No absolution.

My idleness, I knew very well, heightened all these feelings of degradation. Were I able to continue in the happy, cocksure way I had gone about my note gathering and the writing of volume one, I would have neither the time nor susceptibility to be plagued by this disquiet. As it was I seemed to be able to do nothing but act as audience for what was going on in the workshop.

With childish eagerness Barbara and Ace explored HX-l’s possibilities for the next two months. They quickly learned that its range was limited to little more than a century, though this limit was subject to slight variations. When they tried to operate beyond this range the translation simply didn’t take place, though the same feeling of dissolution occurred. When the light faded they were still in the present. Midbin’s venture into the hay field had been a freak, possibly due to peculiar weather conditions at both ends of the journey. They set 1850 as a safe limit, with an undefined marginal zone further back which was not to be hazarded lest conditions change during the journey and the traveler be lost.

Why this limit existed at all was a matter of dispute between them, a dispute of which I must admit I understood little. Barbara spoke of subjective factors which seemed to mean that HX-1 worked slightly differently in the case of each person it transported; Ace of magnetic fields and power relays, which didn’t mean anything to me at all. The only thing they agreed on was that the barrier was not immutable; HX-2 or 3 or 20, if they were ever built, would undoubtedly overcome it.

Nor would HX-1 work in reverse; the future remained closed, probably for similar reasons, whatever they were. Here again they disputed; Ace holding an HX could be built for this purpose, Barbara insisting that new equations would have to be worked out.

They confirmed their tentative theory that time spent in the past consumed an equal amount of time in the present; they could not return to a point a minute after departure when they had been gone for an hour. As near as I could understand, this was because duration was set in the present. In order to come back to a timepoint not in correspondence with the period actually spent, another HX, or at least another set of controls, would have to be taken into the past. And then they would not work since HX-1 could not penetrate the future.

The most inconvenient circumscription was the inability of one person to visit the same past moment twice. When the attempt was made the feeling of dissolution did not occur, the light went on and off with no effect upon the would-be traveler standing beneath it. Here Barbara’s “subjective factor” was triumphant, but why or how it worked, they did not know. Nor did they know what would happen to a traveler who attempted to overlap by being already on the spot prior to a previous visit; it was too dangerous to try.

Within these limits they roamed almost at will. Ace spent a full week in October 1896, walking as far as Philadelphia, enjoying the enthusiasm and fury of the presidential campaign. Knowing President Bryan was not only going to be elected, but would serve three terms, he found it hard indeed to obey Barbara’s stricture and not cover confident Whig bets on Major McKinley.

Though both sampled the war years they brought back nothing useful to me, no information or viewpoint I couldn’t have got from any of a score of books. Lacking historians’ interests or training, their tidbits were those of curious onlookers, not probing chroniclers. It was tantalizing to know that Barbara had seen Secretary Stanton at the York depot or that Ace had overheard a farmer say casually that Southron scouts had stopped at his place the day before and they had thought neither incident worth investigating further.

I grew increasingly fretful. I held long colloquies with myself which always ended inconclusively.
Why not?
I asked.
Surely this is the unique opportunity. Never before has it been possible for a historian to check back at will, to select a particular moment for personal scrutiny, to write of the past with the detachment of the present and the accuracy of an eyewitness knowing specifically what to look for. Why don’t you take advantage of HX-1 and see for yourself?

Against this I objected—what? Fear? Uneasiness? The “subjective factor” in HX-1? The superstitious notion that I might be tampering with a taboo, with matters forbidden to human shortcomings?
You mustn’t try any shortcuts. Promise me that, Hodge
. Well, Catty was a darling. She was my beloved wife, but she was neither scholar nor oracle. On what grounds did she protest? Woman’s intuition? A respectable phrase, but what did it mean? And didn’t Barbara, who first suggested my using HX-1, have womanly intuition also?

A half dozen times I tried to steer our talk in the direction of my thoughts; each time I allowed the words to drift to another topic. What was the use of upsetting her?
Promise me that, Hodge
. But I had not promised. This was something I had to settle for myself.

What was I afraid of? Because I’d never grasped anything to do with the physical sciences did I attribute some anthropomorphism to their manifestations and like a savage fear the spirit imprisoned in what I didn’t understand? (But HX-1
did
have subjective factors.) I had never thought of myself as hidebound, but I was acting like a ninety-year-old professor asked to use a typewriter instead of a goose quill.

I recalled Tyss’s, “You are the spectator type, Hodgins.” And once I had called him out of my memory I couldn’t escape his familiar, sardonic, interminable argument. Why are you fussing yourself, Hodgins? What is the point of all this introspective debate? Don’t you know your choice has already been made? And that you have acted according to it an infinite number of times and will do so an infinite number of times again? Relax, Hodgins, you have nothing to worry about. Free will is an illusion; you cannot alter what you are about to decide under the impression that you have decided.

My reaction to this imagined interjection was frenzied, unreasonable. I cursed Tyss and his damnable philosophy. I cursed the insidiousness of his reasoning which had planted seed in my brain to sprout at a moment like this.

Yet in spite of the violence of my rejection of the words I attributed to Tyss, I accepted one of them. I relaxed. The decision had been made. Not by mechanistic forces, nor by blind response to stimulus, but by my own desire.

And now to my aid came the image of Tyss’s antithesis, Rene Enfandin.
Be a skeptic, Hodge; be always the skeptic. Prove all things; hold fast to that which is true. Joking Pilate, asking, “What is truth?” was blind. But you can see more aspects of the absolute truth than any man has had a chance to see before. Can you use the chance well, Hodge? That is the only question
.

Once I could answer it with a vigorous affirmative, and so buttress the determination to go, I was faced with the problem of telling Catty. I could not shut her out of so important a move. I told myself I could not bear the thought of her anxiety; that she would worry despite the fact others had frequently used HX-1, for my object could not be accomplished in a matter of minutes or hours. I was sure she would be sick with apprehension during the days I would be gone. No doubt this was all true, but I also remembered, Promise me, Hodge…

I finally took the weak, the ineffective course. I said I’d decided the only way to face my problem was to go to Gettysburg and spend three or four days going over the actual field. Here, I explained unconvincingly, I thought I might at last come to the conclusion whether to scrap all my work and start afresh or not.

Her faintly oblique eyes were inscrutable. She pretended to believe me and begged me to take her along. After all, we had spent our honeymoon on battlefields.

Would it be possible? Two people had never stood under the reflector together, but surely it would work? I was tempted, but I could not subject Catty to the risk, however slight. Besides, how could I explain?

“But, Catty, with you there I’d be thinking of you instead of the problem.”

“Ah, Hodge, have we already been married so long you must get away from me to think?”

“No matter how long, that time will never come. Perhaps I’m wrong, Catty. It’s just a feeling I have.”

Her look was tragic with understanding. “You must do as you think right. Don’t…don’t be gone too long, my dear.”

I dressed in clothes I often used for walking trips, clothes which bore no mark of any fashion and might pass as current wear among the poorer classes in any era of the past hundred years. I put a packet of dried beef in my pocket and started for the workshop.

As soon as I left the cottage I laughed at my hypersensitivity, at all the to-do I’d made over lying to Catty. This was but the first excursion; I planned others for the months after Gettysburg. There was no reason why she shouldn’t accompany me on them. I grew lighthearted as my conscience eased, and I even congratulated myself on my skill in not having told a single technical falsehood to Catty. I began to whistle, never a habit of mine, as I made my way along the path to the workshop.

Barbara was alone. Her ginger hair gleamed in the light of a gas globe; her eyes were green as they always were when she was exultant. “Well, Hodge?”

“Well, Barbara, I…”

“Have you told Catty?”

“Not exactly. How did you know?”

“I knew before you did, Hodge. After all, we’re not strangers. All right. How long do you want to stay?”

“Four days.”

“That’s long for a first trip. Don’t you think you’d better try a few sample minutes?”

“Why? I’ve seen you and Ace go often enough and heard your accounts. I’ll take care of myself. Have you got it down fine enough yet so you can invariably pick the hour of arrival?”

“Hour and minute,” she answered confidently. “What’ll it be?”

“About midnight of June 30, 1863,” I answered. “I want to come back on the night of July 4.”

“You’ll have to be more exact than that. For the return, I mean. The dials are set on seconds.”

“All right, make it midnight going and coming then.”

“Have you a watch that keeps perfect time?”

“I don’t know about perfect—”

“Take this one. It’s synchronized with the master control clock.” She handed me a large, rather awkward timepiece which had two independent faces side by side. “We had a couple made like this; the duplicate dials were useful before we were able to control HX-1 so exactly. One shows 1952 Haggershaven time.”

“Ten thirty-three and fourteen seconds,” I said.

“Yes. The other will show 1863 time. You won’t be able to reset the first dial—but for goodness sake remember to keep it wound—and set the second for 11:54, zero. That means in six minutes you’ll leave, to arrive at midnight. Remember to keep that one wound, too, for you’ll go by that regardless of variations in local clocks. Whatever else happens, be in the center of the barn at midnight—allow yourself some leeway—by midnight, July 4. I don’t want to have to go wandering around 1863 looking for you.”

“You won’t. I’ll be here.”

“Five minutes. Now then, food.”

“I have some,” I answered, slapping my pocket.

“Not enough. Take this concentrated chocolate along. I suppose it won’t hurt to drink the water if you’re not observed, but avoid their food. One never knows what chain might be started by the casual theft—or purchase, if you had enough old coins—of a loaf of bread. The possibilities are limitless and frightening. Listen: how can I impress on you the importance of doing nothing that could possibly change the future—our present? I’m sure to this day Ace doesn’t understand, and I tremble every moment he spends in the past. The most trivial action may begin a series of disastrous consequences. Don’t be seen, don’t be heard. Make your trip as a ghost.”

“Barbara, I promise I’ll neither assassinate General Lee nor give the North the idea of a modern six-barreled cannon.”

“Four minutes. It’s not a joke, Hodge.”

“Believe me,” I said, “I understand.”

She looked at me searchingly. Then she shook her head and began making her round of the engines, adjusting the dials. I slid under the glass ring as I’d so often seen her do and stood casually under the reflector. I was not in the least nervous. I don’t think I was even particularly excited.

“Three minutes,” said Barbara.

I patted my breast pocket. Notebook, pencils. I nodded.

She ducked under the ring and came toward me. “Hodge…”

“Yes?”

She put her arms on my shoulders, leaning forward. I kissed her, a little absently. “Clod!”

I looked at her closely, but there were none of the familiar signs of anger. “A minute to go, it says here,” I told her.

She drew away and went back. “All set. Ready?”

“Ready,” I answered cheerfully. “See you midnight, July 4, 1863.”

“Right. Good-bye, Hodge. Glad you didn’t tell Catty.”

The expression on her face was the strangest I’d ever seen her wear. I could not, then or now, quite interpret it. Doubt, malice, suffering, vindictiveness, entreaty, love, were all there as her hand moved the switch. I began to answer something, perhaps to bid her wait—then the light made me blink and I, too, experienced the shattering feeling of transition. My bones seemed to fly from each other; every cell in my body exploded to the ends of space.

The instant of translation was so brief it is hard to believe all the multitude of impressions occurred simultaneously. I was sure my veins were drained of blood, my brain and eyeballs dropped into a bottomless void, my thoughts pressed to the finest powder and blown a universe away. Most of all, I knew the awful sensation of being, for that tiny fragment of time, not Hodgins McCormick Backmaker, but part of an
I
in which the I that was me merged all identity.