first decade of the 1800’s were not primitive. They were non-existent.
He was waked on the third night after Dubois’ departure. There was a terrific pounding on the home-made door to the time-tunnel. Carroll was there before him, unfastening the elaborate lock he’d installed the day after Albert’s reappearance.
He opened the door. A sneeze came through it. Another sneeze. Strangling coughs. A moan.
M. Dubois came feebly into the cottage dining room from the year 1804. His eyes watered. His nose ran. He was half-starved and disreputably dirty, and he had a fever of thirty-eight degrees centigrade. Between coughs, sneezes, and moans of despair he confided to Carroll that he had been continually soaked to the skin for the past three days; that his horse had been stolen, and that his saddlebags with their precious contents of high-priced perfume were buried at the foot of a large tree a kilometer down-stream from a bridge beyond the village of St. Fiacre on the way to Paris.
Carroll gave him hot rum-and-water and got him into dry clothing. He put the plump little man to bed, where he moaned and wheezed and coughed himself into exhausted sleep.
Pepe Ybarra arrived next morning with the costumes and forged identity-papers and other documents to be filled in as the occasion demanded. He had a certain quantity of counterfeit assignats —authentic ones were too ancient to have a chance of passing unquestioned—and a note for Harrison from Valerie. The note was not remarkable at its beginning, but Harrison read the last page with enormous apprehension.
Valerie mentioned as a curious experience that she was in the shop, quite alone, when she felt oddly giddy for a moment. Then it seemed to her that the shop was strange. It was not the shop of Carroll, Dubois et Cie at all, but a place where pots and pans were on sale for housewives. And she was there to purchase something. She was not astonished. It seemed quite natural. Then she heard someone—perhaps the shop-keeper—moving in the back room as if to come and wait on her. She waited to be waited on. And then she felt the giddiness again and she was once more in her aunt’s place of business and everything was as it should be. Then she was astounded. But she said that she had felt much ennui and undoubtedly had dozed for a moment and this peculiar dream was the result. It was the more singular because Harrison was not in it. She did not even think of him in it. He was, she confessed, present in most of her more ordinary dreams.
He went frantically to Carroll. Valerie had evidently had an experience like the one they’d shared, when he was convinced there’d never been a Maximilian, and Pepe had been sure there’d been four emperors of Mexico. The happening was pointless, and so was Valerie’s, but there’d been a moment when she did not think of him! There’d been a temporary, substitute present in which she’d never met him! It could be a present in which he’d never been born! Something had to be done! This crazy de Bassompierre was trying to change past history! He was succeeding! At any moment another such thing might happen, and Carroll could talk all he pleased about history’s modulus of elasticity and claim that events could be changed and of their own nature change back again. But there was also such a thing as an elastic limit! If the past were changed enough, it would stay changed! Something had to be done!
It was pure coincidence, of course, but while Harrison protested in a frenzy of apprehension, some eight thousand miles away the mainland Chinese exploded a second atomic bomb. It appeared that they intended a series of such explosions, by which they’d acquire the experience to make them equal to the other atom-armed nations in their ability to make earth uninhabitable.
Naturally, this was inconsistent with the theory that the cosmos was designed for people to live in, and therefore nothing would happen to stop them from doing it. This
He was waked on the third night after Dubois’ departure. There was a terrific pounding on the home-made door to the time-tunnel. Carroll was there before him, unfastening the elaborate lock he’d installed the day after Albert’s reappearance.
He opened the door. A sneeze came through it. Another sneeze. Strangling coughs. A moan.
M. Dubois came feebly into the cottage dining room from the year 1804. His eyes watered. His nose ran. He was half-starved and disreputably dirty, and he had a fever of thirty-eight degrees centigrade. Between coughs, sneezes, and moans of despair he confided to Carroll that he had been continually soaked to the skin for the past three days; that his horse had been stolen, and that his saddlebags with their precious contents of high-priced perfume were buried at the foot of a large tree a kilometer down-stream from a bridge beyond the village of St. Fiacre on the way to Paris.
Carroll gave him hot rum-and-water and got him into dry clothing. He put the plump little man to bed, where he moaned and wheezed and coughed himself into exhausted sleep.
Pepe Ybarra arrived next morning with the costumes and forged identity-papers and other documents to be filled in as the occasion demanded. He had a certain quantity of counterfeit assignats —authentic ones were too ancient to have a chance of passing unquestioned—and a note for Harrison from Valerie. The note was not remarkable at its beginning, but Harrison read the last page with enormous apprehension.
Valerie mentioned as a curious experience that she was in the shop, quite alone, when she felt oddly giddy for a moment. Then it seemed to her that the shop was strange. It was not the shop of Carroll, Dubois et Cie at all, but a place where pots and pans were on sale for housewives. And she was there to purchase something. She was not astonished. It seemed quite natural. Then she heard someone—perhaps the shop-keeper—moving in the back room as if to come and wait on her. She waited to be waited on. And then she felt the giddiness again and she was once more in her aunt’s place of business and everything was as it should be. Then she was astounded. But she said that she had felt much ennui and undoubtedly had dozed for a moment and this peculiar dream was the result. It was the more singular because Harrison was not in it. She did not even think of him in it. He was, she confessed, present in most of her more ordinary dreams.
He went frantically to Carroll. Valerie had evidently had an experience like the one they’d shared, when he was convinced there’d never been a Maximilian, and Pepe had been sure there’d been four emperors of Mexico. The happening was pointless, and so was Valerie’s, but there’d been a moment when she did not think of him! There’d been a temporary, substitute present in which she’d never met him! It could be a present in which he’d never been born! Something had to be done! This crazy de Bassompierre was trying to change past history! He was succeeding! At any moment another such thing might happen, and Carroll could talk all he pleased about history’s modulus of elasticity and claim that events could be changed and of their own nature change back again. But there was also such a thing as an elastic limit! If the past were changed enough, it would stay changed! Something had to be done!
It was pure coincidence, of course, but while Harrison protested in a frenzy of apprehension, some eight thousand miles away the mainland Chinese exploded a second atomic bomb. It appeared that they intended a series of such explosions, by which they’d acquire the experience to make them equal to the other atom-armed nations in their ability to make earth uninhabitable.
Naturally, this was inconsistent with the theory that the cosmos was designed for people to live in, and therefore nothing would happen to stop them from doing it. This
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