Science-Fiction Adventures in Dimension, page 12
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The water, that at first had been so warm, enveloped him with a cold embrace that contracted his muscles, that threatened to squeeze his heart itself to a standstill. The salt mouthfuls that he was now swallowing with almost every stroke choked him and seared his lungs. The smarting eyes were blind, no longer staring towards the yellow line of beach that, at the beginning of it all, had seemed so close ...
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Marion Gross
THE GOOD PROVIDER
Here we meet our second Garret Inventor (or Mad Scientist)—only this one invents in the basement. Unlike the philosophic-scientific gadget of Murray Leinster’s Mr. Binder, the one developed here by Miss Gross’s Mr. Leggety does turn out to be mildly useful—to Mrs. Leggety. . . .
Incidentally, this was the first story ever published by Miss Gross, according to the editors of the magazine in which it originally appeared. We hope that it is a forerunner of many equally delightful tales from her quietly fey pen.
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MINNIE LEGGETY turned up the walk of her Elm Street bungalow and saw that she faced another crisis. When Omar sat brooding like that, not smoking, not “studying,” but just scrunched down inside of himself, she knew enough after forty years to realize that she was facing a crisis. As though it weren’t enough just trying to get along on Omar’s pension these days, without having to baby him through another one of his periods of discouragement! She forced a gaiety into her voice that she actually didn’t feel.
“Why, hello there, Pa, what are you doing out here? Did you have to come up for air?” Minnie eased herself down beside Omar on the stoop and put the paper bag she had been carrying on the sidewalk. Such a little bag, but it had taken most of their week’s food budget! Protein, plenty of lean, rare steaks and chops, that’s what that nice man on the radio said old folks needed, but as long as he couldn’t tell you how to buy it with steak at $1.23 a pound, he might just as well save his breath to cool his porridge. And so might she, for all the attention Omar was paying her. He was staring straight ahead as though he didn’t even see her. This looked like one of his real bad spells. She took his gnarled hand and patted it.
“What’s the matter, Pa? Struck a snag with your gadget?” The “gadget” filled three full walls of the basement and most of the floor space besides, but it was still a “gadget” to Minnie—another one of his ideas that didn’t quite work.
Omar had been working on gadgets ever since they were married. When they were younger, she hotly sprang to his defense against her sisters-in-law: “Well, it’s better than liquor, and it’s cheaper than pinochle; at least I know where he is nights.” Now that they were older, and Omar was retired from his job, his tinkering took on a new significance. It was what kept him from going to pieces like a lot of men who were retired and didn’t have enough activity to fill their time and their minds.
“What’s the matter, Pa?” she asked again.
The old man seemed to notice her for the first time. Sadly he shook his head. “Minnie, I’m a failure. The thing’s no good; it ain’t practical. After all I promised you, Minnie, and the way you stuck by me and all, it’s just not going to work.”
Minnie never had thought it would. It just didn’t seem possible that a body could go gallivanting back and forth the way Pa had said they would if the gadget worked. She continued to pat the hand she held and told him soothingly, “I’m not sure but it’s for the best, Pa. I’d sure have gotten airsick, or timesick or whatever it was. What’re you going to work on now that you’re giving up the time machine?” she asked anxiously.
“You don’t understand, Min,” the old man said. “I’m through. I’ve failed. I’ve failed at everything I’ve ever tried to make. They always almost work, and yet there’s always something I can’t get just right. I never knew enough, Min, never had enough schooling, and now it’s too late to get any. I’m just giving up altogether. I’m through!”
This was serious. Pa with nothing to tinker at down in the basement, Pa constantly underfoot, Pa with nothing to keep him from just slipping away like old Mr. Mason had, was something she didn’t like to think about. “Maybe it isn’t as bad as all that,” she told him. “All those nice parts you put into your gadget, maybe you could make us a television or something with them. Land, a television, that would be a nice thing to have.”
“Oh, I couldn’t do that, Min. I wouldn’t know how to make a television; besides, I told you, it almost works. It’s just that it ain’t practical. It ain’t the way I pictured it. Come down, I’ll show you.” He dragged her into the house and down into the basement.
The time machine left so little free floor space, what with the furnace and coal bin and washtubs, that Minnie had to stand on the stairway while Pa explained it to her. It needed explanation. It had more colored lights than a pinball machine, more plugs than the Hillsdale telephone exchange, and more levers than one of those newfangled voting booths.
“Now see,” he said, pointing to various parts of the machine, “I rigged this thing up so we could move forward or back in time and space both. I thought we could go off and visit foreign spots, and see great things happening, and have ourselves an interesting old age.”
“Well, I don’t rightly know if I’d have enjoyed that, Pa,” Minnie interrupted. “I doubt I’d know how to get along with all them foreigners, and their strange talk and strange ways and all.”
Omar shook his head in annoyance. “The Holy Land. You’d have wanted to see the Holy Land, wouldn’t you? You could have sat with the crowd at Galilee and listened to the Lord’s words right from His lips. You’d have enjoyed that, wouldn’t you?”
“Omar, when you talk like that you make the whole thing sound sacrilegious and against the Lord’s ways. Besides, I suppose the Lord would have spoke in Hebrew, and I don’t know one word of that and you don’t either. I don’t know but what I’m glad you couldn’t get the thing to work,” she said righteously.
“But Min, it does work!” Omar was indignant.
“But you said—”
“I never said it don’t work. I said it ain’t practical. It don’t work good enough, and I don’t know enough to make it work better.”
Working on the gadget was one thing, but believing that it worked was another. Minnie began to be alarmed. Maybe folks had been right, maybe Omar had gone off his head at last. She looked at him anxiously. He seemed all right, and now that he was worked up at her, the depression seemed to have left him.
“What do you mean it works, but not good enough?” she asked him.
“Well, see here,” Omar told her, pointing to an elaborate control board. “It was like I was telling you before you interrupted with your not getting along with foreigners, and your sacrilege and all. I set this thing up to move a body in time and space any which way. There’s a globe of the world worked in here and I thought that by turning the globe, and setting these time controls to whatever year you had in mind, you could go wherever you had a mind to. Well, it don’t work like that. I’ve been trying it out for a whole week and no matter how I set the globe, no matter how I set the time controls, it always comes out the same. It lands me over at Main and Center, right in front of Purdey’s meat market.”
“What’s wrong with that?” Minnie asked. “That might be real convenient.”
“You don’t understand,” Omar told her. “It isn’t now when I get there, it’s twenty years ago! That’s the trouble, it don’t take me none of the places I want to go, just Main and Center. And it don’t take me none of the times I want to go, just twenty years ago, and I saw enough of the depression so I don’t want to spend my old age watching people sell apples. Then on top of that, this here timer don’t work.” He pointed to another dial. “It’s supposed to set to how long you want to stay, wherever you want to go, but it don’t work at all. Twenty minutes, and then woosh, you’re right back here in the basement. Nothing works like I want it to.”
Minnie had grown thoughtful as Omar recounted the faults of the machine. Wasn’t it a caution the way even a smart man like Pa, a man smart enough to make a time machine, didn’t have a practical ounce to his whole hundred and forty-eight pounds? She sat down heavily on the cellar steps and, emptying the contents of her purse on her broad lap, began examining the bills.
“What you looking for, Min?” Omar asked.
Minnie looked at him pityingly. Wasn’t it a caution . . .
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Purdey the butcher was leaning unhappily against his chopping block. The shop was clean and shining, the floor was strewn with fresh sawdust, and Purdey himself, unmindful of the expense, had for the sake of his morale donned a fresh apron. But for all that Purdey wished that he was hanging on one of his chromium-plated meat hooks.
The sky was blue and smogless, something it never was when the shops were operating and employing the valley’s five thousand breadwinners. Such potential customers as were abroad had a shabby, threadbare look to them. Over in front of the Bijou old Mr. Ryan was selling apples.
While he watched, a stout, determined-looking woman appeared at the corner of Main and Center. She glanced quickly around, brushing old Mr. Ryan and his apples with her glance, and then came briskly toward Purdey’s shop. Purdey straightened up.
“Afternoon, Ma’am, what can I do for you?” He beamed as though the light bill weren’t three months overdue.
“I’ll have a nice porterhouse,” the lady said hesitantly. “How much is porterhouse?”
“Forty-five a pound, best in the house.” Purdey held up a beauty, expecting her to change her mind.
“I’ll take it,” the lady said. “And six lamb chops. I want a rib roast for Sunday, but I can come back for that. No use carrying too much,” she explained. “Could you please hurry with that? I haven’t very much time.”
“New in town?” Purdey asked as he turned to ring up the sale on the cash register.
“Yes, you might say so,” the woman said. By the time Purdey turned back to ask her her name, she was gone. But Purdey knew she’d be back. She wanted a rib roast for Sunday. “It just goes to show you,” Purdey said to himself, surveying the satisfactory tab sticking up from the register, “there still is some money around. Two dollars, and she never even batted an eyelash. It goes to show you!”
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Amelia R. Long
REVERSE PHYLOGENY
I have always been fond of this story, by a lady otherwise better known for her whodunits, not only for its unique plot and idea but for its delightfully screwball characters. Science fiction is not always successful when it attempts the light touch, but it’s my feeling that this one brings it off very well.
The story is time travel only by courtesy, I suppose; which is another good reason for its inclusion here. It is actually our only example of “subjective” travel in the time dimension: the protagonists remain right with us while they “see” the past and are able to report its mysteries— and its terrors. Even this seemingly safe-and-sane method of temporal voyaging turns out to have its unexpected hazards, though. . . .
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ONCE more I have before me the task of explaining to the public another of the escapades of my friend, Professor Aloysius O’Flannigan. Not that Aloysius has asked me to do so; he is far too proud for that. But when—because of a minor incident that had no place in his original plan, and for which he can in no way be held responsible—remarks are made that the whole experiment concerning the lost continent of Atlantis had a decidedly fishy flavor, and when certain malicious-tongued individuals begin to accuse an inoffensive, peace-loving man like Aloysius of deliberately attempting to drown Mr. Theophilus Black on dry land, it seems to me that in mere fairness something ought to be done about it.
It all began with a series of articles of a well-known science magazine, of which Aloysius is an ardent reader. Dropping into his library one day, I found him sitting cross-legged upon the floor, with several copies of the magazine strewn around him. As I entered, he glanced up, made a dive for one of the magazines, and thrust it at me.
“Eric, I want you to read this!” he exclaimed, his eyes gleaming behind his thick-lensed spectacles. “Then tell me what you think of it.”
He had turned the magazine open at an article entitled “Atlantis; Proof of Its Existence,” written by a Mr. Theophilus Black. It was a well-constructed article, exhibiting excellent imaginative qualities and, to my mind at least, quite a bit of erudition on the part of its author. As I finished it and was about to comment, Aloysius pushed a second magazine into my hand.
“Read this before you say anything,” he directed. “Then give me your reaction to both of them.”
The article in the second magazine was called “Atlantis Debunked”; and it lived up to its title. I read it as Aloysius directed; and, whereas only a few minutes before, Mr. Black had had me ready to swallow the whole continent of Atlantis, Mr. Kenneth McScribe, the author of the second article, now had me gagging on the first pebble. I looked helplessly at Aloysius, feeling a trifle groggy.
“There are several other articles here, but you needn’t go into them,” he said understandingly. “But what do you think of the Atlantis theory as a whole?”
“I hardly know,” I answered, trying to sort out my jumbled reactions. “There seem to be equally good arguments on both sides.”
“That’s what I felt, too.” He nodded. “Mr. Black’s logic is excellent, but he builds it upon a rather porous situation, upon which Mr. McScribe has very cleverly turned a microscope. But, in his enthusiasm, Mr. McScribe has used too powerful a lens, and blurred matters a little. For example”—he picked up one of the magazines and selected a particular paragraph—”Mr. McScribe would throw out the evidence of the air-cooled volcanic rocks found in the Atlantic Ocean because Mr. Black cannot quote their geological age. I fail to see where their age has a great deal to do with it. After all, the question is not when Atlantis might have existed, but whether it existed at any time.”
“True,” I agreed hopefully. “And the very existence of those rocks is a strong indication—”
“Not so fast!” he broke in. “The existence of those rocks need indicate nothing more than a now-submerged island, and it’s going a little strong to construct a whole continent out of that—a little like making a mountain out of a molehill, on an exalted scale.”
“You have the darndest way of switching from one side of a question to another!” I complained. “A fellow can’t tell whether you actually turn the corners, or just wander in a circle.”
“I’m afraid you haven’t got the scientific mind, Eric.” He sighed. “What I’m trying to do is sift the evidence.”
“And what have you found so far?” I inquired with a touch of sarcasm.
. “Not much, I’m afraid,” he admitted. “You see, both Mr. Black and Mr. McScribe have made the same error of arguing over material evidence: such things as similarity of place names on both sides of the Atlantic, prehistoric remains, social development, and the like. They should look for psychological indications: racial characteristics or instincts in man himself that would either prove or disprove his descent from inhabitants of a continent—”
He broke off in midsentence, and a rapt expression came over his face. “Divil an’ all!” he exclaimed, slapping his right fist into the palm of his left hand. “I believe it could be done; I’m going to try it@”
“Now what?” I asked a little fearfully, knowing from past experience that when Aloysius used that tone anything might be expected to happen.
“I’m going to awaken racial memory,” he replied. “After all, our so-called instincts are nothing more than inherited race memory, as any psychologist will tell you. If those dormant memories can be aroused, brought up from the unconscious into the conscious mind and—”
“But how can it be done?” I wanted to know.
“Through hypnotism, of course,” he answered. “I could turn the mind of a subject back through the deep strata of instinct bequeathed to him by his ancestors, inducing him to relive them as if they were a part of his own experience, until we had discovered whether there was or was not an Atlantean layer. Why, we might even settle the moot question of whether mental traits can be inherited!”
There are times, I reflected, when nothing else in the English language is so expressive as the single word “Nuts.” But I said nothing, hoping that he would work off his enthusiasm by writing a letter to the magazine. I should have known better.
It was only a week later that he sent for me to come around again. Upon arriving at his house, I found that he already had three other guests: two very scholarly-looking gentlemen and a full-blooded Indian, feathers and all.
“Eric,” he said, “I want you to meet Mr. Black, Mr. McScribe, and Chief Rain-in-the-Face. Gentlemen, my friend and sometimes colleague, Mr. Dale.”
