The Best Alternate History Stories of the 20th Century (28 page)

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 that you satisfy yourself,
as an 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 with inadequate 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 and besought me as an equal to consider the depth of evaluation.

The truth is I was not without my own increasing doubts. Doubts I had not allowed to rise to the surface of my mind and disturb my plans. Polk’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 so that I could draw a detail map from memory. I had turned up diaries, letters and accounts which had never been published. 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 achieve a knowledge of every detail, accept. I was not sure that what I thought was the final and just estimate was really either one, or that I had the grand scene in perfectly proper perspective. I admitted to myself the possibility I had perhaps been too rash, too precipitate, in undertaking
Chancellorsville to the End
. I knew the shadowy sign—the one which says in effect, You are ready—had not been given. My confidence was shaken.

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 re-examining, 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 could not face it—and yet I knew it would be corrupt to produce a work lacking certain conviction.

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

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

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

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. Polk’s letter had never come to shatter my complacency. As a consequence I worked not at all, thus adding to my feelings of guilt and unworthiness. I wandered about the haven, fretful and irritable, interrupting more diligent fellows 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. 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. On closer inspection the ring proved 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. From the roof was suspended a large, polished reflector.

There was no one in the barn and I wandered about, cautiously avoiding the various pieces of apparatus whose purpose and operation were completely mysterious to me. For a moment I meditated—meanly perhaps—that all this had been paid for by my wife’s money. Then I berated myself. Catty owed all she had to the haven, as I did. True, the money might have been put to better use than this one of encouraging a senseless project, but there was no guarantee that it would have been more productive allotted to astronomy or zoology. During eight years at the haven 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. 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, her face triumphant. “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, Father and Midbin’ll be along in a minute.”

“Midbin?”

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

I began to speak, then swallowed the words. The dig at Catty was insignificant beside the supreme confidence, the abnormal assurance prompting the invitation 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 that was bound to come, “surely you don’t expect it to work the first time?”

“Why not? There are bound to be minor adjustments to be made, allowances for erratic chronology caused by phenomena like the pull of comets and so forth. 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 unaccountably at ease for someone whose lifework was about to be weighed. I have shown more nervousness in 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 annoyed with Catty, but whether for confiding in Barbara or specifically for revealing something unheroic, I didn’t stop to consider. At any rate this annoyance probably diluted the feeling I was somehow disloyal in 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 misery-loves-company basis. Be that as it may, I found myself pouring out the whole story.

She jumped up and put her hands on my shoulders. I would not be truthful if I said that, looking into her eyes, gray and warm, I did not feel some reciprocation. “Hodge! It’s wonderful—don’t you see?”

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

“Look: now you can go back—back to the past in your own person and see everything with your own eyes, instead of relying on second- or third-hand accounts. 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 it 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 blow of disillusionment to fall so soon, and filled with an irrational hatred of the great apparatus 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 says you intend to test this—this thing on yourself. Is that true?”

Midbin didn’t wait for her answer. 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—”

Ace Dorn, who looked as strained as they, in contrast to Barbara’s ease, growled, “Let’s go.”

She smiled reassuringly at us. “Please, Father, don’t worry. And Oliver...”

Her smile was almost mischievous and very unlike the Barbara I had known. “Oliver, HX-1 owes more to you than you will ever know.”

She ducked under the transparent ring and walked to the center of the floor, glancing up at the reflector, moving an inch or two to stand directly beneath it. “The controls are already adjusted to minus 52 years and 11 days,” she informed us conversationally. “Purely arbitrary. One date is good as another, but January 1, 1900, is an almost automatic choice. I’ll be gone 60 seconds. Ready, Ace?”

“Ready.” Ace had been slowly circling the engines, checking the dials. He took his place before the largest, holding a watch in his hand. “Three forty-three and ten,” he announced.

Barbara was consulting her own watch. “Three forty-three and ten,” she confirmed. “Make it at three forty-three and twenty.”

“OK. Good luck.”

“You might at least try it on an animal first,” burst out Midbin, as Ace twirled the valve under his hand. The transparent ring glowed, the metal reflector threw back a dazzling light. I blinked. When I opened my eyes the light was gone and the center of the workshop was empty.

No one moved. Ace frowned over his watch. I stared at the spot where Barbara had stood. I don’t think my mind was working; I had the feeling my lungs and heart certainly were not. I was a true spectator, with all faculties save sight and hearing suspended.

“...on an animal first.” Midbin’s voice was querulous.

“Oh, God!” muttered Thomas Haggerwells.

Ace said casually—too casually, “The return is automatic. Set beforehand for duration. Thirty more seconds.”

Midbin said, “She is... this is...” He sat down on a stool and bent his head almost to his knees.

Mr. Haggerwells groaned, “Ace, Ace—you should have stopped her.”

Still I couldn’t think. Barbara had stood there; then she was gone. What...? Midbin must be right; we had let her go to destruction. Certainly much more than a minute had passed now.

The ring glowed and the brilliant light was reflected. “It did, oh, it did!” Barbara cried. “It did!”

She came out of the circle and kissed Ace, who patted her gently on the back. I suddenly noticed the pain of holding my breath and released a tremendous sigh. Barbara kissed her father and Midbin—who was still shaking his head—and, after the faintest hesitation, me. Her lips were ice-cold.

The shock of triumph made her voluble. Striding up and down, she spoke with extraordinary rapidity.

When the light flashed, she too involuntarily closed her eyes. She had felt a strange, terrifying weightlessness, an awful disembodiment, for which she had been unprepared. She thought she had not been actually unconscious, even for an instant, though she had the impression of ceasing to exist as a unique collection of memories, and of being somehow dissolved. Then she had opened her eyes.

At first she was shocked to find the barn as it had been all her life, abandoned and dusty. Then she realized she had indeed moved through time; the disappearance of the engines and reflector showed she had gone back to the unremodelled workshop.

Now she saw the barn was not quite as she had known it, even in her childhood, for while it was unquestionably abandoned, it had evidently not long been so. The thick dust was not so thick as she remembered, the sagging cobwebs not so dense. Straw was still scattered on the floor; it had not yet been entirely carried away by mice or inquisitive nesting birds. Beside the door hung bits of harness beyond repair, some broken bridles, and a faded calendar on which the ink of the numerals 1897 still stood.

The minute she had allotted this first voyage seemed fantastically short and incredibly long. All the paradoxes she had always brushed aside as of no immediate concern now confronted her. Since she had gone back to a time before she was born, she must always have existed as a visitor prior to her own conception; she could presumably be present during her own childhood and growth, and by making a second and third visit, multiply herself as though in facing mirrors, so that an infinite number of Barbara Haggerwells could occupy a single segment of time.

A hundred other parallel speculations raced through her mind without interfering with her rapid and insatiable survey of the commonplace features of the barn, features which could never really be commonplace to her since they proved all her speculations so victoriously right.

Suddenly she shivered with the bitter cold and burst into teeth-chattering laughter. She had made such careful plans to visit the First of January—and had never thought to take along a warm coat.

She looked at her watch; only twenty seconds had passed. The temptation to defy her agreement with Ace not to step outside the tiny circle of HX-1’s operating field on the initial experiment was almost irresistible. She longed to touch the fabric of the past, to feel the worn boards of the barn, to handle as well as look. Again her thoughts whirled with speculation; again the petty moment stretched and contracted. She spent eternity and instantaneity at once.

When the moment of return came, she again experienced the feeling of dissolution, followed immediately by the light. When she opened her eyes she was back.

Midbin, who could not deny Barbara’s disappearance for a full minute while we all watched, nevertheless insisted she had suffered some kind of hallucination. He could offer no explanation of her vanishing before our eyes, but insisted that this and her alleged traveling in time were two separate phenomena. Her conviction she had been back to 1900 he attributed to her emotional eccentricity.

The logical answer to this obstinate skepticism was to invite him to see for himself. To Ace, of course, belonged the honor of the second journey; he elected to spend three minutes in 1885, returning to report he had found the barn well occupied by both cattle and fowl, and been scared stiff of discovery when dogs set up a furious barking. He brought back with him a new laid egg 67 years old. Or was it? Trips in time are confusing that way.

Barbara was upset—more than I thought warranted. “We daren’t be anything but invisible spectators,” she scolded. “The faintest indication of our presence, the slightest impingement on the past may change the whole course of events. We have no way of knowing what actions have no consequences—if there can be any. Goodness knows what your idiocy in removing the egg has done. It’s absolutely essential not to betray our presence in any way. Remember this in the future.”

The next day Midbin spent five minutes in 1820. The barn had not yet been built, and he found himself in a field of wild hay. The faint snick of scythes, and voices not too far off, indicated mowers. Midbin dropped to the ground. His view of the past was restricted to tall grass and some persistent ants who explored his face and hands until the time was up and he returned with broken spears of ripe hay clinging to his clothes.

I was reminded of Enfandin’s, “Why should I believe my eyes?” by Midbin’s reaction. He did not deny that a phenomenon had taken place, nor that his experience coincided with Barbara’s theories. On the other hand he didn’t admit he had actually been transported into the past. “The mind can do anything, anything at all. Create boils and cancers—why not ants and grass? I don’t know—I don’t know....” And he added abruptly, “No one can help her now.”