The Best Alternate History Stories of the 20th Century Page 27

  Midbin had for some while been showing the dumb girl drawings of successive stages of the holdup, again nagging and pumping me for details to sharpen their accuracy. Her reactions pleased him immensely, for she responded to the first ones with nods and the throaty noises we recognized as signs of agreement. The scenes of the assault itself, of the shooting of the coachman, the flight of the footman, and her own concealment in the cornfield evoked whimpers, while the brutal depiction of the Escobars’ murder made her cower and cover her eyes.

  I cannot here omit mentioning that Barbara constantly taunted me with what she called my “devotion” to the girl; when I protested that Midbin had drafted me for the duty she accused me of hypocrisy, lying, faithlessness, sycophancy and various assorted vices and failings. Midbin, of course, explained and excused her outbursts by his “emotional pathology,” Ace accepted and suffered them as inescapable, but I saw no necessity of being subject to her tantrums. Once I told her so not, I think, too heatedly, adding, “Maybe we shouldn’t see each other alone after this.”

  “All right,” she said, “yes . . . yes. All right, don’t.”

  Her apparent calm deceived me completely; I smiled with relief.

  “That’s right; laugh—why shouldn’t you? You have no feelings, no more than you have an intelligence. You are an oaf, a clod, a real bumpkin. Standing there with a silly grin on your face. Oh, I hate you! How I hate you!”

  She wept, she screamed, she rushed at me and then turned away, crying that she hadn’t meant it, not a word of it. She coaxed, begging forgiveness for all she’d said, tearfully promising to control herself after this, moaning that she needed me, and finally, when I didn’t repulse her, exclaiming that it was her love for me which tormented her so and drove her to such scenes.

  Perhaps this storm changed our relationship somewhat for the better, or at least eased the tension between us. At any rate it was after this she began speaking to me of her work, putting us on a friendlier, less passionate plane. I learned now how completely garbled was my notion of what she was doing.

  “Heavier than air flying-machines!” she cried. “How utterly absurd!”

  “All right. I didn’t know.”

  “My work is theoretical. I’m not a vulgar mechanic.”

  “All right, all right.”

  “I’m going to show that time and space are aspects of the same entity.”

  “All right,” I said, thinking of something else.

  “What is time?”

  “Uh? Dear Barbara, since I don’t know anything I can slide gracefully out of that one. I couldn’t even begin to define time.”

  “Oh, you could probably define it all right—in terms of itself. I’m not dealing with definitions but concepts.”

  “All right, conceive.”

  “Hodge, like all stuffy people your levity is vulgar.”

  “Excuse me. Go ahead.”

  “Time is an aspect.”

  “So you mentioned. I once knew a man who said it was an illusion. And another who said it was a serpent with its tail in its mouth.”

  “Mysticism. Time, matter, space and energy are all aspects of the cosmic entity. Interchangeable aspects. Theoretically it should be possible to translate matter into terms of energy and space into terms of time; matter-energy into space-time.”

  “It sounds so simple I’m ashamed of myself.”

  “To put it so crudely that the explanation is misleading: suppose matter is resolved into its component—”

  “Atoms?” I suggested, since she seemed at loss for a word.

  “Something more fundamental than atoms. We have no word because we can’t quite grasp the concept yet. Essence, perhaps, or the theological ‘spirit.’ If matter—”

  “A man?”

  “Man, machine or chemical compound,” she answered impatiently. “Is resolved into its essence it can presumably be reassembled at another point of the time-space aspect.”

  “You mean . . . like yesterday?”

  “No—and yes. What is ‘yesterday’? A thing—or an aspect? Oh, words are useless. Even with mathematical symbols you can hardly. . . . But someday I’ll establish it. Or lay the groundwork for my successors. Or the successors of my successors.”

  I nodded. Midbin was at least half right; Barbara was emotionally sick. For what was this “theory” of hers but the rationalization of a daydream, the daydream of discovering a process of going back through time to injure her dead mother and so steal all of her father’s affections?

  AT THE NEXT MEETING of the fellows Midbin asked an appropriation for experimental work and the help of haven members in the project. Since both requests were modest, their granting would ordinarily have been a formality. But Barbara asked politely if Dr. Midbin wouldn’t like to elaborate a little on the purpose of his experiment.

  I knew her manner was a danger signal. However Midbin merely answered good-humoredly that he proposed to test a theory of whether an emotionally induced physical handicap could be cured by recreating in the subject’s mind the shock which had caused—if he might use a loose and inaccurate term—the impediment.

  “I thought so. He wants to waste the haven’s money and time on a little tart with whom he’s having an affair while important work is held up for lack of funds.”

  One of the women called out, “Oh, Barbara, no,” and there were exclamations of disapproval. Mr. Haggerwells, after trying unsuccessfully to hold Barbara’s eye, said, “I must apologize for my daughter—”

  “It’s all right,” interrupted Midbin. “I understand Barbara’s notions. I’m sure no one here really thinks there is anything improper between the girl and me. Outside of this, Barbara’s original question seems quite in order to me. Briefly, as most of you know, I’ve been trying to restore speech to a subject who lost it—again I use an inaccurate term for convenience—during an afflicting experience. Preliminary experiments indicate the likelihood of satisfactory response to my proposed method, which is simply to employ a kinematic camera like those used in making entertainment photinugraphs—”

  “He wants to turn the haven into a tinugraph mill with the fellows as mummers!”

  “Only this once, Barbara. Not regularly; not as routine.”

  At this point her father insisted the request be voted on without any more discussion. I was tempted to vote with Barbara, the only dissident, for I foresaw Midbin’s photinugraph relying pretty heavily on me, but I didn’t have the courage. Instead, I merely abstained, like Midbin himself, and Ace.

  The tinugraph did indeed demand much of my time. I had to set the exact scene where the holdup had taken place and approximate as nearly identical conditions as possible. (Here Midbin was partially foiled by the limitations of his medium, being forced to use the camera in full sunlight rather than dusk.) I dressed and instructed the actors in their parts, rehearsing and directing them throughout. The only immunity I got was Midbin’s concession that I needn’t play the part of myself, since in my early role of spectator I would be invisibly concealed, and the succor was omitted as irrelevant to the therapeutic purpose. Midbin himself, of course, did nothing but tend his camera.

  Any tinugraph mill would have snorted at our final product and certainly no tinugraph lyceum would have condescended to show it. After much wavering Midbin had finally decided against making a phonoto of it, feeling that the use of sound would add no value but considerable expense, so that the film did not even have this feature to recommend it. Fortunately, for whatever involuntary professional pride involved, no one was present at the first showing but the girl and I, Ace to work the magic-lantern, and Midbin.

  In the darkened room the pictures on the screen gave—after the first few minutes—such an astonishing illusion of reality that when one of the horsemen rode toward the camera we all reflexively shrank back a little. In spite of its amateurishness the tinugraph seemed to us an artistic success, but no triumph in satisfying the reason for its existence. The girl reacted no differently than she had toward t
he drawings: her inarticulate noises ran the same scale from pleasure to terror; nothing new was added. But Midbin slapped Ace and me on the back, predicting he’d have her talking like a politician before the year was out.

  I suppose the process was imperceptible; certainly there was no discernible difference between one session and the next. Yet the boring routine was continued day after day, and so absolute was Midbin’s confidence that we were not too astonished after some weeks when, at the moment “Don Jaime” folded in simulated death, she fainted and remained unconscious for some time.

  After this we expected—at least Ace and I did, Midbin only rubbed his palms together—that she would begin talking at a great rate. She didn’t, but a few showings later, at the same crucial point, she screamed. It was a genuine scream, high-pitched and piercing, bearing small resemblance to the strangled noises we were accustomed to. There was no doubt Midbin had been vindicated; no mute could have voiced that full, shrill cry.

  Pursuing another of his theories, Midbin soon gave up the idea of helping her express the words in her mind in Spanish, but concentrated on teaching her English. It was soon clear she must have had some grounding in this language, and it seemed an amazingly short time before she pointed to me and said clearly, “Hodge . . . Hodge . . .”

  A month of common nouns followed, interspersed with a few easy verbs, before she touched her own breast and said, shyly, “Catalina.”

  Her name was Catalina García; she was the much younger sister of Doña María Escobar, with whom she had lived after the death of her parents. So far as she knew she had no other relatives. Please—we would not send her away from Haggershaven, would we?

  Again Mr. Haggerwells communicated with the Spanish diplomats, recalling his original telegram and mentioning their aloof reply. He was answered in person by an official who acted as though he himself had composed the disclaiming response—perhaps he had. Nevertheless he confirmed the existence of one Catalina García and at last satisfied himself that she and our Catalina were the same person. Further, the Señorita García was heiress to a moderate estate. According to embassy records the señorita was not yet eighteen; as an orphan living in foreign lands she was a ward of the Spanish Crown. The señorita would return with him to Philadelphia where she would be suitably accommodated until repatriation could be arranged. The—ah—institution could submit a bill for board and lodging during her stay.

  But Catalina protested so earnestly, appealing alternately to me and to Mr. Haggerwells, that Midbin, who was hovering solicitously, insisted he could not guarantee against a relapse. The official shrugged, managing to intimate in that gesture his opinion that the haven was of a very shady character indeed and had possibly engineered the holdup itself. However, if the señorita wished to remain, he had no authority at the moment either to inquire into what influences had persuaded her nor to remove her by—ah—nor to remove her. Of course the—ah—institution understood it could hope for no further compensation, that the señorita would be visited without notification from time to time by an official, that she might be removed whenever His Most Catholic Majesty saw fit, that none of her estate would be released before her eighteenth birthday, and that the whole affair was entirely irregular.

  After he left, Catalina put her head against my collarbone, sobbing with relief, and I must admit, now she was able to talk I no longer found her devotion so tiresome—even though I was somewhat uneasy lest Barbara discover us in this situation.

  VIII

  And now I come to the period of my life which stands in such sharp contrast to all the rest. Was it really eight years I spent at Haggershaven? The arithmetic is indisputable: I arrived in 1944 at the age of 23; I left in 1952 at the age of 31. Indisputable, but not quite believable; like the happy countries which are supposed to have no history I find it hard to go over those eight years and divide them by remarkable events. They blended too smoothly, too contentedly into one another.

  There was no question about success in my chosen profession—not even the expected alternation of achievement and disappointment. Once started on the road I kept on going at an even, steady pace. For what would have been my doctoral thesis I wrote a paper on The Timing of General Stuart’s Maneuvers During August 1863 in Pennsylvania. This received flattering comment from scholars as far away as the Universities of Lima and Cambridge; because of it I was offered instructorships at highly respectable schools.

  But I could not think of leaving the haven. The world into which I had been born had never been revealed for what it was until I had escaped from it.

  The idea of returning to enter into daily competition with other underpaid, overdriven drudges striving fruitlessly to apply a dilute coating of culture to the unresponsive surface of unwilling students was abhorrent. Life at Haggershaven suited me perfectly.

  In those eight years, as I broadened my knowledge I narrowed my field. Perhaps it was presumptuous to take the War of Southron Independence as my specialty when there were already so many comprehensive books on the subject and so many celebrated historians engaged with this epochal event. However, my choice was not made out of arrogance but of fascination, and the readiness of the scene and materials influenced the selection of my goal, which was to be a definitive work on the last thirteen months of the war, from General Lee’s invasion of Pennsylvania to the capitulation at Reading.

  My monographs were published in learned Confederate, British, and German journals—there were none in the United States—and I was rejoiced when they brought attention, not so much to me as to Haggershaven. I could contribute only this notice and my physical labor; on the other hand I asked little beyond food, clothing and shelter—just books. My field trips I took on foot, often earning my keep by casual labor for farmers, paying for access to private collections of letters or documents by indexing and arranging them.

  But it was not the time devoted to scholarship which alone distinguished these eight years. The absence of the shadows of anxiety and violence, the freedom from constant harassment and fear, as well as the positive aspects of life at the haven—the companionship of like-minded people, labor to achieve ends rather than just to stay alive—the surety of acceptance and unselfish praise for achievement, all set this time apart, so I think of it as a golden period, a time of perpetual warm sunshine.

  Though sometimes I was inclined to wonder if Barbara Haggerwells’ neurosis was not precarious—on the edge of sanity, and there were moments when I found her morality distasteful, it was impossible to deny her attraction. Often we were lovers for as long as a month before the inevitable quarrel came, followed by varying periods of coolness between us. But during those weeks of distance I remembered how she could be tender and gracious, just as during our intimacy I remembered her ruthlessness and dominance.

  It was not only her temperamental outbreaks nor even her unappeasable hunger for love and affection which thrust us apart. It was increasingly hard for her to leave her work behind even for moments. She was never allowed to forget either by her own insatiable drive nor by outside acknowledgement that she was already one of the foremost physicists in the country. She had been granted so many honorary degrees she no longer traveled to receive them; offers from foreign governments of well-paid jobs connected with their munitions industries were frequent. Articles were written about her equation of matter, energy, space and time, acclaiming her as a revolutionary thinker; though she dismissed them contemptuously as evaluations of elementary work they nevertheless added to her isolation and curtailed her freedom.

  Midbin was, in his way, as much under her spell as Ace or myself. His triumph over Catalina’s dumbness he took lightly now it was accomplished; stabilizing Barbara’s emotions was the victory he wanted. Patiently, whenever she would grant the time—and this was increasingly less often—he tried with her new techniques, but to no apparent effect. Indeed, it seemed he was, if anything, retrogressing; she no longer paid him the respect of even partial co-operation; instead she made fun of his efforts.r />
  There was a great unlikeness between Barbara and Catalina. That the Spanish girl had in her own way as strong a will was demonstrated in her determination to become part of Haggershaven. She had gone resolutely to Thomas Haggerwells. She knew quite well, she told him, she had neither the aptitudes nor qualifications for admission to fellowship, nor did she ask it. All she wanted was to live in what she now regarded as her only home. She would gladly do any work from washing dishes to running errands. When she came of age she would turn over whatever money she inherited to the haven without qualification.

  Long after this and similar conversations I heard how he had patiently pointed out that a Spanish subject was a citizen of a wealthier and more powerful nation than the United States; as an heiress she could enjoy the luxury and distractions of Madrid and eventually make a suitable marriage. How silly it would be to give up all these advantages to become an unnoticed, penniless drudge for a group of cranks near York, Pennsylvania.

  Catty—as we soon called Catalina—was adamant. What Mr. Haggerwells said might be true, but she was simply not interested. Evidently he realized the quality of her determination for eventually he proposed to the fellows that she be allowed to stay and the offer of her money be rejected; the motion was carried, with only Barbara—who spoke long and bitterly against it—voting “no.”

  Catty, she of enchanting voice, so expressive, so controlled, was a very different creature from the nameless dumb girl. Even her beauty, always undeniable, was now heightened and sharpened by the fact of her speech. I suppose it is a confession of weakness or obtuseness to say that where I had been inclined to impatience or even annoyance at her former all too open devotion, I now felt deprived and even pettish at its lack.

  I don’t mean by this that Catty was either disingenuous or coquettish. But with the return of speech came a certain maturity and an undeniable dignity. She was self-possessed, self-contained and just a trifle amusedly aloof. Having made it clear she had interest in no other man, she withdrew from all competition. When I wished to seek her out she was there, but she made no attempt to call me to her.