Part 13

From Catty’s talk I knew Barbara was running into increasing difficulties now the workshop was complete and actual construction begun of what was referred to, with unnecessary crypticism I thought, as HX-1. The impending war created scarcities, particularly of such materials as steel and copper, of which latter metal HX-1 seemed inordinately greedy. I was not surprised when the fellows apologetically refused Barbara a new appropriation.

Next day Catty said, “Hodge, you know the haven wouldnt take my money.”

“And quite right too. Let the rest of us put in what we get; we owe it to the haven anyway. But the debt is the other way round in your case and you should keep your independence.”

“Hodge, I’m going to give it all to Barbara for her HX-1.”

“What? Oh, nonsense!”

“Is it any more nonsensical for me to put in money I didnt do anything to get than for her and Ace to put in time and knowledge and labor?”

“Yes, because she’s got a crazy idea and Ace has never been quite sane where she’s concerned. If you go ahead and do this you’ll be as crazy as they are.”

When Catty laughed I remembered with a pang the long months when that lovely sound had been strangled by terror inside her. I also thought with shame of my own failure; had I appreciated her when her need was greatest I might have eased the long, painful ordeal of restoring her voice.

“Perhaps I am crazy. Do you think the haven would make me a fellow on that basis? Anyway, I believe in Barbara even if the rest of you don’t. Not that I’m criticizing; you were right to be cautious. You have more to consider than demonstration of the truth of a theory which can’t conceivably have a material value; I don’t have to take any such long view. Anyway I believe in her. Or perhaps I feel I owe her something. With my money she can finish her project. I only tell you this because you may not want to marry me under the circumstances.”

“You think I’m marrying you for your money?”

She smiled. “Dear Hodge. You are in some ways so young; I hear the wounded dignity in your voice. No, I know very well you arent marrying me for money, that it never occurred to you it might be a good idea. That would be too practical, too grown up, too un-Hodgelike. I think you might not want to marry a woman who’d give all her money away. Especially to Barbara Haggerwells.”

“Catty, are you doing this absurd thing to get rid of me? Or to test me?”

This time she again laughed loud. “Now I’m sure you will marry me after all and turn out to be a puzzled but amenable husband. You are my true Hodge, who studies a war because he can’t understand anything simpler or subtler.”

She wasnt to be dissuaded from the quixotic gesture. I might not understand subtleties but I was sure I understood Barbara well enough. Foreseeing her request for more funds would be turned down, she must have cultivated Catty deliberately in order to use her. Now she’d gotten what she wanted I confidently expected her to drop Catty or revert to her accustomed virulence.

She did neither. If anything the amity grew. Catty’s vocabulary added words like “magnet,” “coil,” “induction,” “particle,” “light-year,” “continuum” and many others either incomprehensible or uninteresting to me. Breathlessly she described the strange, asymmetric structure taking shape in the workshop, while my mind was busy with Ewell’s Corps and parrott guns and the weather chart of southern Pennsylvania for July, 1863.

The great publishing firm of Ticknor, Harcourt & Knopf contracted for my book—there was no publisher in the United States equipped to handle it—and sent me a sizable advance in Confederate dollars which became even more sizable converted into our money. I read the proofs of volume one in a state of semiconsciousness, sent the inevitable telegram changing a footnote on page 99, and waited for the infuriating mails to bring me my complimentary copies. The day after they arrived (with a horrifying typographical error right in the middle of page 12), Catty and I were married.

Dear Catty. Dear, dear Catty.

With the approval of the fellows we used part of the publisher’s advance for a honeymoon. We spent it—that part of it in which we had time for anything except being alone together—going over nearby battlefields of the last year of the War of Southron Independence.

It was Catty’s first excursion away from Haggershaven since the night I brought her there. Looking at the world outside through her perceptions, at once insulated and made hypersensitive by her new status, I was shocked afresh at the harsh indifference, the dull poverty, the fear, brutality, frenzy and cynicism highlighting the strange resignation to impending fate which characterized our civilization. It was not a case of eat, drink, be merry, for tomorrow we die; rather it was, let us live meanly and trust to luck—tomorrow’s luck is bound to be worse.

We settled down in the autumn of 1951 in a cottage designed by Kimi and built by the fellows during our absence. It gave on the Agatis’ cherished garden and we were both moved by this evidence of love, particularly after what we had seen and heard on our trip. Mr Haggerwells made a speech, filled with classical allusions, welcoming us back as though we had been gone for years; Midbin looked anxiously into Catty’s face as though to assure himself I had not, in my new role as husband, treated her so ill as to bring on a new emotional upset; and the other fellows made appropriate gestures. Even Barbara stopped by long enough to comment that the house was ridiculously small, but she supposed Kimi’s movable partitions helped.

I immediately began working on volume two and Catty took up her sewing again. She also resumed her visits to Barbara’s workshop; again I heard detailed accounts of my former sweetheart’s progress. HX-1 was to be completed in the late spring, or early summer. I was not surprised at Barbara’s faith surviving actual construction of the thing, but that such otherwise level-headed people as Ace and Catty could envisage breathlessly the miracles about to happen was beyond me. Ace, even after all these years, was still bemused—but Catty ...?

Just before the turn of the year I got the following letter:

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, 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 without adequate 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, only asking me to consider the depth of my evaluation.

Truth is, I was not without increasing doubts of my own. 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 until I could draw a detail map from memory. I had turned up diaries, letters and accounts which had not only never been published, but which were not known to exist until I hunted them down. I had so steeped myself in the period I was writing about that sometimes the two worlds seemed interchangeable and I could live partly in one, partly in the other.

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 collect every detail, accept. I was not sure I had the grand scene in perfectly proper perspective. I admitted to myself the possibility that I had perhaps been too rash, too precipitate, in undertaking _Chancellorsville to the End_ so soon. I knew the shadowy sign, the one which says in effect, _You are ready_, had not been given. My confidence was shaken.

Was the fault in me, in my temperament and character, rather than in my preparation and use of materials? Was I drawing back from committing myself, from acting, from doing? That I had written the first volume was no positive answer, for it was but the fraction of a whole deed; if I withdrew now I could still preserve my standing as an onlooker.

But not to act was itself an action and answered neither Dr Polk nor myself. Besides, 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 couldnt face it. It would be corrupt to produce a work lacking absolute conviction and cowardly to produce none.

Catty responded to my awkward recapitulation in a way at once heartening and strange. “Hodge,” she said, “youre 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 you have to. You must do it so it will satisfy yourself; never mind what the publishers or the public say. But Hodge, you mustnt, in your anxiety, or your foolish fear of passiveness, you mustnt try any shortcuts. Promise me that.”

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

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

_17._ _HX-1_

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—without deliberately committing myself to abandon the book—I worked not at all, thus adding to my feelings of guilt and unworthiness. The tasks assigned by the fellows for the general welfare of the haven were not designed to take a major part of my time, and though I produced all sorts of revolutions in the stables and barns, I still managed to wander about, fretful and irritable, keeping Catty from her work, interrupting the Agatis and Midbin—I could not bring myself to discuss my problems with him—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. I thought I recognized Kimi’s touch in the structural changes of the walls, the strong beams and rows of slanted-in windows which admitted light and shut out glare, but the rest must have been shaped by Barbara’s needs.

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. Closer inspection proved the ring 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 and all dwarfed by a mammoth one towering in one corner. From the roof was suspended a large, polished reflector.

There was no one in the barn and I wandered about, cautiously avoiding the mysterious apparatus. For a moment I meditated, basely perhaps, that all this had been paid for with my wife’s money. Then I berated myself, for Catty owed all to the haven, as I did. The money might have been put to better use, but there was no guarantee it would have been more productive allotted to astronomy or zoology. During eight years 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.” For the first time I noticed that her cheeks were flushed. She had lost weight and there were deep hollows beneath her eyes. “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, triumph accenting the strained look on her face. “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 youre here for the preliminary I’m glad. Ace and Father and Oliver will be along in a minute.”

“Midbin?”

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

I started to speak, then swallowed my words. The dig at Catty was insignificant compared with the supreme confidence, the abnormal assurance prompting invitations 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 certain to come, “surely you don’t expect it to work the first time?”

“Why not? There are sure to be adjustments to be made, allowances for erratic chronology caused by phenomena like the pull of comets and so forth. There might even have to be major alterations, though I doubt it. 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 unbelievably at ease for someone whose lifework was about to be weighed. I have shown more nervousness 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. Ive 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, Ive missed you too; and afraid not to.

“Tell me about your own work, Hodge. Catty says youre having difficulties.”

I was faintly annoyed with Catty, but whether for confiding in Barbara at all or specifically for revealing something unheroic, I didnt stop to consider. At any rate this annoyance diluted my feeling of disloyalty for 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 took my hands in hers. Her eyes were gray and warm. “Hodge! It’s wonderful—don’t you see?”

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

“The solution. The answer. The means. Look: now you can go back, back to the past in your own person. You can see everything with your own eyes instead of relying on accounts of what other people said happened.”

“But ... but—” “You can verify every fact, study every move, every actor. You can write history as no one ever did before, for youll be writing as a witness, yet with the perspective of a different period. Youll 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 disillusionment so soon to come and filled with an irrational hatred of the thing 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 tells me you intend to try out this—this machine on yourself. I can’t believe you would be so foolhardy.”

Midbin didnt wait for her to reply. 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. Although it’s something you must be at least partly aware of. But consider objectively the danger involved in meddling with unknown natural laws—”

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; there’s no danger. 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 fifty-two years and a hundred and fifty-three 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 sixty seconds. Ready, Ace?”

“Ready.” He had been slowly circling the engines, checking the dials. He took his place before the largest, the monster in the corner, 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.” “Ten seconds,” said Ace firmly.

Still I couldnt think with any clarity. She had stood there; then she was gone. What ...? Midbin was right: we had let her go to destruction. Certainly more than a minute had passed by now.

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

She stood perfectly still, overwhelmed. Then 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, without pause, almost a little drunkenly. In her excitement her words cluttered her tongue; from time to time she had to go back and repeat a phrase or sentence to make it intelligible.

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 actually been unconscious, even for an instant, though she had an 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 birds. Alongside the door hung bits of harness beyond repair, some broken bridles, and a faded calendar on which the ink of the numerals 1897 was still bright.

The minute she had allotted this first voyage seemed fantastically short and incredibly long. All the paradoxes she had brushed aside as of no immediate concern now confronted her. Since she had gone back to a time before she was born, she must 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 on 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.